Former New York Times editorial board member (from 2002-2010) Adam Cohen, who once served as lawyer for the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, reviewed Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus’s book on the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. (The book’s title gives the slant away: Supreme Ambition -- Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover.)
Cohen’s review unloaded a cheap shot in the text box: “‘If you had asked me who was the biggest drinker in our class I would have said Brett,” one classmate said.” Anonymous hearsay? Now there’s some hard evidence for you.
Down the memory hole: Any mention of the paper’s own dogs’ breakfast of a Kavanaugh investigation, which included a botched, biased roll-out that caused the book's impact to fizzle. The paper never even reviewed Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino’s book, Justice on Trial, which was a best-selling book, the paper’s efforts notwithstanding.
After retelling Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he declared:
Blasey Ford’s testimony was precise and measured -- and credible. Even many of Kavanaugh’s supporters thought it sounded the death knell for his nomination....
Cohen also rehashed the unsubstantiated and discredited accusations hurled at Kavanaugh as reliable:
After Blasey Ford, other witnesses emerged. Deborah Ramirez, a college classmate, told reporters that Kavanaugh thrust his penis in her face at a party, although she had significant memory lapses. Another late-arriving witness, the Washington lawyer Max Stier, remembered seeing Kavanaugh in college exposing himself to a different woman, lending possible further credence to Ramirez’s account.
Showing gall, Cohen turned Kavanaugh’s anger at being falsely accused against him (click "expand"):
The main reason the case against Kavanaugh failed, however, was that there simply was no audience for it in the Senate. Even if Republican senators could not bring themselves to believe the sexual misconduct charges, they witnessed with their own eyes Kavanaugh’s angry partisan rant against “left-wing opposition groups” and supporters of the Clintons. Given the ethical obligation of judges to act at all times in ways that promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary, his outbursts should have been disqualifying....
Kavanaugh’s confirmation has profound implications for the court. If he turns out to be significantly more conservative than Kennedy, he could provide the fifth vote to end abortion rights or affirmative action. His arrival also means that two of the nine justices joined the court despite credible charges of serious misconduct toward women -- something that has done incalculable damage to the court’s reputation.
Cohen concluded:
...there was something even more profound at stake: whether...our nation is capable of putting the public interest ahead of partisanship, and whether the truth matters....
In 2007 he flashed his hard-left credentials in a signed editorial attacking Justice Clarence Thomas, questioning “why the justice who has faced the greatest hardships regularly rules for the powerful over the weak, and has a legal philosophy notable for its indifference to suffering.”
