Ben Greenberg stays on as 1st Assistant

Chief Judge Moore swore in Ariana Fajardo Orshan on Monday. In her remarks, she thanked Ben Greenberg and said he would be staying on as First Assistant.

In other news, there is talk about letting Dr. Ford’s lawyer (Debra Katz) question Judge Kavanaugh at the hearings next week before the Senators get their chance to grandstand ask questions. It’s an interesting proposal. I wonder whether Judge Kavanaugh’s lawyer (Beth Wilkinson) would get to ask Ford questions as well.

I like the idea of having the lawyers ask questions instead of the Senators, who don’t know how to ask real cross-like questions and are not really interested in getting out what happened as opposed to making different political points.

If you were able to cross either Ford or Kavanaugh, what questions would you ask?

Here’s Professor Althouse on what she would ask Kavanaugh:

But the bigger problem is that Kavanaugh can only say he has no memory of something. And Kavanaugh's accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, is telling us that he was very drunk, so maybe a failure to remember could be attributed to drinking. He could honestly testify to no memory of the incident, but still need to establish that he didn't have a memory blanked out by alcohol use. Now, since we're not going to hear of the specific time and place of the incident, Kavanaugh will need to say that he never, in that entire period, experienced alcohol-induced amnesia. (And what if he can only say I have no memory of losing my memory?!).

If Kavanaugh denies ever experiencing alcohol-induced amnesia during that period, anyone who hung out with him back then is a potential source of testimony that they saw him drunk and, especially damning, they had reason to know that he couldn't remember what he had done. Is there anybody who knew Kavanaugh in high school who has tales of things Kavanaugh couldn't remember later? Did Kavanaugh ever have a discussion with anyone about alcohol-induced amnesia?

Once we get this far, you can see that whether Christine Blasey Ford's story is accurate or not, Monday's hearing can be used to trap Kavanaugh in lies, and then it's not a possible attempted rape from 30 years ago but perjury in the present.

Remember, the other person in the room, according to Ford, was Mark Judge, and Mark Judge seems inclined to corroborate Kavanaugh, but Judge is on record as a having been "completely annihilated" in high school.