In a planned leak of party attendees, Kavanaugh's name is at the top of the list; other names below his include some with business before the Court. The linked article provides some details on that, and also notes
If Kavanaugh was a judge in any other federal court, his attendance at Schlapp's party might have violated Cannon 2 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. Specifically, Kavanaugh is permitting Schlapp and others to, at a minimum, "convey the impression" that they have special access.
A judge should neither lend the prestige of the judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others nor convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge.
We know Kavanaugh's not the only one, nor are the conservative justices alone on stuff like this. But with all the focus on Justice Clarence Thomas, his wife Ginni, Justice Samuel Alito and his parties, and the leaks, I can't help wondering why Kavanaugh didn't just find a quiet bar somewhere to share some holiday cheer.
Speaking of "all the focus on" people, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Brittney Griner, the WNBA star and world's most famous vaper. Griner, you know, was released from her Russian prison camp in an exchange for convicted international arms dealer Viktor Bout who had served more than half his 25-year sentence. Not released along with Griner? Former Marine Paul Whelan, who's been held in Russia on espionage charges.
I don't know enough to talk intelligently about whether any trade for Bout would have been a good idea, and I certainly don't know diddly about the negotiations that led to the exchange. All I do know is lots of people were arguing about whether we should have brought home the vaping 'woke' black lesbian National Anthem protestor, or if we should have brought home the white former presumably straight presumably non-vaping Marine.
Noticeably missing from any of the arguments? The fact that Whelan was a staff sergeant in the Marines, until he was busted down to private, and was given a bad conduct discharge. I have to wonder this: if people were as aware of his military history as they are of her National Anthem history, would they think he was really all that much better a trade?
And speaking of history, there's Texas, which has a long history of interjecting into things that the government doesn't really need to get involved in: keeping pregnant women on life support against their wishes, or providing bounties to folks who report women seeking health care, or wanting to investigate parents of trans children for child abuse, for example.
And, we learned, the Lone Star State is still interested in interjecting where it doesn't need to be. As the WaPo reported, Texas AG Ken Paxton went looking for info on transgender Texans.
“Need total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months, broken down by month,” the chief of the DPS’s driver license division emailed colleagues in the department on June 30, according to a copy of a message obtained by The Washington Post through a public records request. “We won’t need DL/ID numbers at first but may need to have them later if we are required to manually look up documents.”
That's what Department of Public Safety staff were asked to provide, based on a verbal request from Paxton. And they found "more than 16,000 such instances," which led them to tell the AG they couldn't provide the data he asked for.
So, what's the wondering, you're wondering? Simply, this: what the actual hell is going on down there? What compelling government interest is there in having this data? Is it because their plan to charge parents got shot down, so they're going to attack adults instead? Or is it because Paxton's a Texas-sized jerk?
What's got you wondering these days?
