Bizarre, Congress, Media

Definition of “Devil’s Triangle” Changed On Wikipedia To Make Kavanaugh’s Answer

As I discussed in yesterday’s earlier in a column, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., RI) going through the yearbook entries of Brett Kavanaugh was one of the most bizarre moments of confirmations in our history.  Whitehouse was attempting to undermine Kavanaugh’s account of not being a black out drunk or participating in sexual exploits at parties with his friends.  The hearing devolved into a discussed of the terms “boofing” and the “Devil’s Triangle.”  The terms are widely defined on the internet to mean anal sex and a threesome (with one male and two females).  Kavanaugh insisted that they meant farting and a drinking game.  That led many to question his veracity (I am thankfully ignorant of either term but I have come to realize that my high school and college years were monastic in comparison to most everyone else).  One person using a congressional computer however decided to try to add at least some support for Kavanaugh on the Internet by changing the definition on Wikipedia.  He or she only succeeded in causing a row that highlighted the controversy over Kavanaugh’s answers.

Wikipedia was edited to include a possible definition of a “popular drinking gme enjoyed by friends of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.  As reported by CNN and other sites, he source is a congressional IP address.

 

Frankly, I do not know what to make of this issue (I did not even know what “Quarters” was after Kavanaugh said it was the same thing as the Devil’s Triangle.).  There is no way to prove that Kavanaugh was lying in his colloquial understanding 36 years later.  In the end, there is something deeply unsettling in the scene of a United States senator going through the yearbook entries written by a teenage boy in High School as a material issue for a confirmation to the United States Supreme Court.  I understand that Whitehouse was trying to show not the meaning of these terms but that Kavanaugh was lying.  However, it was a moment that will not be soon forgotten as capturing how far our confirmation hearings have strayed from core issues of competency and qualifications.

I did not know what to make of these hearings. I found both witnesses to be highly compelling. I am glad that there is more time for investigation but I doubt that a week will offer much of an opportunity for meaningful inquiries.  While it may not uncover anything new, it will offer cover to a handle full of uncommitted Senators who want to vote for Kavanaugh to avoid political backlash while maintaining that they did so only after demanding an investigation.

108 thoughts on “Definition of “Devil’s Triangle” Changed On Wikipedia To Make Kavanaugh’s Answer”

  1. from james howard kunstler:

    “The Kavanaugh hearing underscored another eerie condition in contemporary USA life that offers clues about the combined social, economic, and political collapse that I call the long emergency: the destruction of all remaining categorical boundaries for understanding behavior: truth and untruth, innocent and guilty, childhood and adulthood, public and private. The destination of all this confusion is a society that can’t process any quarrel coherently, leaving everyone unsatisfied and adrift, and no actual problems resolved.

    One element of the story is clear, though. The Democratic party, in the absence of real monsters to slay, has become the party devoted to sowing chaos, mainly by inventing new, imaginary monsters using the machinery of politics, the way the Catholic Church manufactured monsters of heresy during the Spanish Inquisition in its attempt to regulate “belief.”

    “I believe her” is the new totalitarian rallying cry, conveniently disposing of any obligation to establish the facts of any ambiguous matter. It was stealthily inserted in our national life during the Obama years, when Title IX “guidelines” originally written to correct imbalances in college sports funding for men and women were extended to adjudicate sexual encounters on campus. The result was the setting up of officially sanctioned kangaroo courts where due process was thrown out the window — by people who have should have known better: college presidents, deans, and faculty. That experiment produced not a few spectacular injustices, such as the Duke Lacrosse team fake rape fiasco, the University of Virginia fake rape fraternity incident (provoked by a mis-reported story in Rolling Stone Magazine), and the Columbia University “Mattress Girl” saga — all cases eventuating in punishing lawsuits against the institutions that allowed them to spin out of control.

    The spirit of the kangaroo court has since graduated into business and politics where it has proven especially useful for settling scores and advancing careers and agendas dishonestly. Coercion has replaced persuasion. Coercion is at the heart of totalitarian politics. Do what you’re told, or else. Believe what we say, or else. (Or else lose your reputation, your livelihood, your friends….) This plays neatly into the dynamics of human mob psychology. When the totalitarians set up for business, few individuals dare to depart from the party line. It’s the perfect medium for cultivating mendacious ideologies.

    And so many Americans may be wondering these days whether the ideas and principles that have held this country together, even through a disastrous civil war, can endure through a long emergency of exogenous events so overwhelming that we dare not even debate them publicly. These are climate change, the crack-up of a debt-based money system, the winding–down of techno-industrial economy, and the ecological destruction of the only planet that human beings call home.

    Of course, the lives of societies, like everything else in a living universe, unfold emergently. Which is to say that circumstances are in the driver’s seat taking us where they will whether we like it or not. What humans can do is decide how to ride these events. For the moment, America has opted for a grand circus of sexual hysteria. It’s really an easy, lazy choice because sex is full of easily manipulated tensions and ambiguities prone to melodramatic misrepresentation.

    Next on tap for this beleaguered nation will be a constitutional crisis and a financial crisis. It’s difficult to predict the order of their unfolding, except to say that these will open up a maelstrom of losses which will then be hard to either adjudicate or correct, once our system of law is compromised. As this occurs, all the raging hysteria over sex will be overshadowed by real existential issues as the people lose their homes, incomes, and futures and desperately search for a way out of more chaos than they bargained for.”

  2. So much like a 3 y.o. spoiled child who doesn’t get their way and throws a temper tantrum. That is exactly the behavior of the people who expected HRC to ride to victory on a white but old horse.

  4. Just ask any black person in any ghetto in the US the question of In 8 Years, What Did Obama Do For You? Did your job opportunities increase? Were you safer where you live? Did your level of hope increase or decrease?

  5. On msnbc TV, Todd is video taped flashing a hand signal during a live interview that signals a secret and nefarious code sign to the sex group that he promotes with his “white power” guru Eugene Gu.

  6. Have just read Justice Ginsberg’s yearbook. It seems “Jitterbugging”, was code word for Bloody Mary’s while “Going to beach” was code word for hookup with General Grant.

    1. rcocean – I knew she was nekkid under those robes. You couldn’t fool me. 😉

    1. “anonymous” is code for “The office of Diane Feinstein”, often used when leaking to the press victim statements/letters held in “confidence” or posting on jonathanturley.org

  8. ““The fundamental question the FBI can help answer is whether Judge Kavanaugh has been truthful with the committee,” Sanders wrote. “This goes to the very heart of whether he should be confirmed to the court.”” -from the following linked article

    “Bernie Sanders wants FBI to probe whether Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath”

    “Sen. Bernie Sanders wants the FBI to examine whether embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanugh told the truth when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    “The independent Vermont senator sent a letter Saturday to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the panel’s chairman, calling on investigators probing allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh to take a look at statements he made while under oath.

    ““The fundamental question the FBI can help answer is whether Judge Kavanaugh has been truthful with the committee,” Sanders wrote. “This goes to the very heart of whether he should be confirmed to the court.””

    https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/09/29/bernie-sanders-wants-fbi-to-probe-whether-brett-kavanaugh-lied-under-oath/23545950/

    1. “anonymous” is code for “The office of Diane Feinstein”, often used when leaking to the press victim statements/letters held in “confidence” or posting on jonathanturley.org

  9. I find it difficult to believe you actually believe the congressman or his staff actually initiated a search of his yearbook. I think it more likely followed a tip from another source. Professor Turley, I used to enjoy the legal analysis this blog provided, but you seem to consistently lean to one political side. Is that intentional? I started noticing this back in 2016 when you seemed to be against Hillary Clinton. I was a little sensitive to that back then, despite my personal disdain for her as a candidate. (I voted for Bernie, then Jill Stein.) Now, my jaw gaped open when I read you found Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony to be compelling. Compelling to what end? Seriously, you might want to get a brain scan. Kavanaugh was arrogant, belligerent, disrespectful and he failed to answer relevant questions pertaining to claims made by his accuser. Even his opening statement was accusatory towards Democrats, with an expectation that he should be accorded blind acceptance. That’s the epitome of white privilege. His wife’s unemotional stare throughout his hearing belies caring at all. I believe he was angry and sad that his life’s dream was hanging by a thread. His temperament was unbecoming for judge in any court.

    1. You have a naive view of Federal judges. Who wants a U.S. Assoicate Justice with no feelings about the severe injustice committed by these corrupt DEMs?

      1. No judge should be partisan. To accuse democrats as conspiratorial because Dr. Ford made accusations against him, is irrational. Yes, being irrational without evidence should be disqualifying. It’s shows he would not judge fairly. Even the ABA has reservations about Kavanaugh. They also had reservations before he was appointed to the Circuit Court of Appeals.

        1. Rippleton you are a total moron. The evidence that Senate DEMs are liars and manipulators is obvious to anyone who has even the brain of an earthworm.

      1. See my above reply. Such an awful judge is the one who sentenced Steven Avery. We don’t need a judge like that on the Supreme Court of the United States.

  11. Let’s see now. We have a credible, accomplished woman who claims that when she was trying to go to a bathroom, she was shoved into a bedroom, the door was locked, and a very drunken Brettie and his admittedly alcoholic buddy were trying to rape her, but failed because she had a one-piece bathing suit on under her clothes. Brettie did grope her, and he and his pal, Drunky, were laughing their asses off. Her identification of Brettie and Drunky were 100% certain. Their laughter at her expense is locked into the hippocampus of her brain as a traumatic event.

    We have Brettie, who denies not only the above incident, but that he drank to excess in high school. He also claims that the age for drinking was 18 in Maryland then, so it was legal. Turns out, he wasn’t 18 at the time, so his admitted drinking was not legal. When given the opportunity to create his own yearbook page, he put in the following references: “boofed”, which he claims is slang for farting. Not true then or now. “Renate Alumnius”, repeated by other jocks on their yearbook pages, which he claims meant he and the others were merely admirers of hers. Sounds like a load of bull to me. “Devil’s Triangle”, which means a 3-way between one woman and 2 men, but which Brettie claims was just some sort of game, and the reference to “quarters”, which he claims had nothing to do with drinking. Also untrue. He also alludes to a “100 keg club”.

    Brettie’s roommate says he was a heavy drinker, and that he’s lying. Two other women who knew him at the time, also say he was a heavy drinker and became belligerent when drunk. Two other women have accused him of attempted sexual assaults.

    Brettie’s choices in yearbook references are very relevant to the issues in this case because they are close in time to the incident involving Dr. Ford, because of his belligerent denials of being a heavy drinker, plus his claims that he was a serious scholar, that he remained a virgin for many years after high school and his focus was on religion and athletics while in high school. This is not a case where someone goes back in time to dig up dirt on someone just to smear them for youthful indiscretions. Brettie denied drinking to excess and engaging in sex, so he voluntarily placed into issue his reputation, values and conduct at that time. His yearbook page, drafted by him, is critical evidence as to his values and state of mind at the time, and it hangs him, not just on the point as to his heavy drinking, but his cavalier attitudes toward females and references to anal sex and sex with multiple partners. He is not SCOTUS material. In fact, he’s not material for the D.C. Court of Appeals, either.

    1. She isn’t credible. And she lied. We know she lied because she named four other people as present who recall no such even. We know she lied because no evidence circumstantial or otherwise has emerged which demonstrate these two individuals were ever associated. We know she lied because she referred to one time frame to her counselor in 2012 and then displaced it backward several years in her letter to Eshoo. No amount of gassy emotionalism from you is going to change that.

      1. Wrong again.

        Seems there is a saying amongst lawyers that if you don’t have the facts or the law on your side, pound on the table.

        Who pounded on the table during his job interview?

      2. Let’s examine this. Mark Judge, a history of disreputable behavior, was an accomplice with the accused Kavanaugh and denies it happened. Go figure. PJ and Leyland said they weren’t at that party, except Leyland believes her friend Dr Ford-a fact Kavanaugh misrepresented in his responses. And, Dr. Ford explained it was not a party but a small afternoon gathering. PJ and Leyland were testifying about not attending a party. They neither lied nor refuted Dr. Ford’s testimony.

        1. rippleton – when alcoholics sober up they have a tendency to be truthful. Truthful to a fault because they spent so much time lying when they were drinking.

        2. Rippleton you are from a universe where reason is foreign and attacks against those who have different opinions are enemies. Please go home.

      3. And she lied about not being able to fly to DC. She lied when she told the story about renovation plans and the need for a second front door on their home was because of the trauma from her assault.

        She has yet to be asked the obvious questions. Why can she recall having “only one beer” but not whose house she was at, who was there or how she got home? Why did she go upstairs to a bathroom? Wasn’t there a bathroom on the first floor? Why was there music playing in an empty bedroom upstairs but not downstairs where the party was? Didn’t her friend who she abruptly left alone at the party call her up the next day and ask her what happened or how she got home? Instead, that friend says she doesn’t even know Brett K. or have any recollection of such a gathering.

        On and on the obvious questions go. But the media and the Dems have made her into a rock star hero who we cannot question. Nothing about this story screams “courageous sexual assault survivor” to me. And it disgusts me, on behalf of true rape and sexual assault victims, when I hear her referred to this way in the media. She’s no hero.

        1. Tbob, I agree as do many assault victims. I keep hearing “credible.” I didn’t hear it and I didn’t see it.

          1. Exactly, because her story is not credible. It is full of holes and gaps — intentionally– full of holes and gaps and missing information. And all of it done for a very calculated reason. She would wither under cross examination and she would likely perjure herself if her lawyers ever allowed her to be interviewed by the media. Maybe the new FBI investigation will give us some answers.

        2. Dude you ridiculous retard! Jesus you can’t reallly believe the shit pouring out of your mouth. Have you never met men like this. Of course he did this and could not care less about doing it because he can’t remember. These kids have always been here and always will be until we call out their Elitist asses and their lying parents. Everyone in that realm is a part of a tragic leftover group that have kept the weak down as they progress

          1. of course huh well i wonder what you would say if flimsy accusations were made of you. would you just say of course? ridiculous indeed

            or is it that just because he went to elites schools he is thereby guilty? you’re the kind Lenin had in mind for his “go hang the kulaks” order

            1. All you need to do is look back in your memory of a time when you were a teen and had a night where something tragic or amazing happened to you. I know you remember the names the people the scene but maybe not every detail. You can see their faces right now. Remember Dr. Fords words. 100%. She’s not a puppet man. She’s a pawn. But she’s not lying. She didn’t want to be there in the first place. I’m not trying to be political here I’m being logical. One person has everything to gain and one person has nothing. Uses your brain sir

              1. Joe – if you think she is a pawn check out Rachel Mitchell’s report and timeline. Pawn my a$$.

          2. Joe, you are from another universe where reason and evidence are enemies of humans. Please, you alien, go home to the sleazy planet you came from.

    2. “He is not SCOTUS material. In fact, he’s not material for the D.C. Court of Appeals, either”

      He certainly isn’t.

        1. DBB:

          anonymous says:
          September 29, 2018 at 4:08 PM

          “He is not SCOTUS material. In fact, he’s not material for the D.C. Court of Appeals, either”

          He certainly isn’t.
          Reply

          David B. Benson says:
          September 29, 2018 at 4:14 PM

          Agree.
          *******************************

          Please advise as to your experience in evaluating judges at any level. Also, how about telling us about your encounters with judges and the surrounding circumstances qualifying you to evaluate judicial acumen, temperament and their jurisprudence. Oughta be fascinating.

            1. David Benson:

              “See the letter, widely circulated, from over 650 law professors.”

              ********************

              Well, it was 2400 which represents about 14% of the faculty in ABA accredited law schools (17,047). Why don’t we “see” the 86% who likely disagree.

      3. Because? The ABA have him their highest rating anonymous. Or that doesn’t count when he’s guilty according to a woman who has no evidence other than a story?

        1. a bunch of liberals at aba are now right wingers. wow., what a difference a few weeks can make.

    3. Anonymous – I am amazed at your intimate knowledge of all things sexual and alcoholic. However, the meaning of words change and high school students change them more than anybody. I was in a meeting with the principal, a student, the special ed teacher and his mother trying to decide if we should suspend him from school for calling a student “gay.” He contended that “You’re gay!” did not mean homosexual, we contended that it did and it was a pejorative. He was so adamant that we met in the middle and had him apologize and he stayed in school. 6 months later, “That’s gay.” was common slang. He was just ahead of the curve.

      Students have a secret language and when teachers and other adults figure it out, they change it. It is like the Germans adding an extra rotor to the Enigma machine. You add that extra rotor, the Allies cannot decode Enigma.

      I played “Quarters” in high school and it was a gambling game in which you tried to get your quarter closest to the wall, but still hit the wall. Closest got all the other quarters. Then, while watching an NCIS episode, I saw them play “Quarters” as a drinking game. No reason why it cannot be both or something else.

    4. Accusation without evidence + all her named eye witnesses deny it + conviction in the court of public opinion = lynch mob.

      How ironic, considering this is about selecting a judge to the highest court of the land who, one would home, would do none of the above in presiding over any case before him.

    5. So are you saying that the FBI sucks at their job? Because they have gone through six background investigations on him to clear him at Top Secret levels where he had access to the nuclear codes. They go way back and ask around. Is this guy a drinker, a druggie, a carouser, a gambler? etc. So you’re saying the FBI is utterly incompetent at doing these background checks?

    6. As a 1979 high school graduate, I can assure everyone that Kavanaugh was NOT lying about the definition of those terms at the time at least. My friend had a Poodle we called Morris, the boofer because of his prolific flatulence. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll get back to scrubbing my yearbook lest my immaturity at 17 be used as evidence against me. Geezuz.

  13. Words change over time. When I was growing up a gay caballero was a happy cowboy. Then he became a homosexual cowboy. Then he became a bad cowboy. I don’t know what he is now. This is why we have the OED. I am looking at you David Benson.

    1. And I remember when “cornhole” was not the name of a game. I still find it jarring to hear my children and grandchildren say, “Let’s go play cornhole!”

        1. Bob Miller – I heard that the other day and I thought WTF, that’s an acceptable game?

  14. Who is Whitehouse to know what those terms meant to a 17 year old Kavanaugh?

    One of my favorite movies when I was a teenager was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. My best friend and I would innocently laugh about how our favorite number was 69. In public. We would do this in public. We had no idea. Years later, a senator could say that 69 was a euphemism for oral sex, and he’d be right. But that’s not what it meant to us at the time. It certainly didn’t mean were were doing it.

    No reputable adult should be picking apart teenage yearbooks in an interview for the Supreme Court of the United States. Now we are also picking apart the yearbook of Dr Ford, for proof she drank a lot at parties.

    This is ridiculous. Just stop. People are under so much pressure to believe each and every victim, when there is no proof, or even contradictory proof, or else we will be accused of supporting a rape culture. That’s absurd, and devoid of any critical reasoning whatsoever. People lie, they are mistaken, they are mentally ill, or they tell the truth. With contradictory evidence disproving an accusation, the only reasonable conclusion to draw is that you cannot support her claim. If you can’t, then it is a gross miscarriage of justice to deny a person the pinnacle of his career.

    If you deny the Supreme Court to Judge Kavanaugh, then the public will forever believe it was because he was a rapist. That ridiculous, fabricated story about him running gang rape rings will start to get a little credibility. HIs life is over. His family’s lives will be impacted. All when there is contradictory proof, and the only reason why she believed she was the right age for him to have even been in the same state was because she didn’t remember how she got to or from a party 36 years ago. Are you kidding? You would convict a man in the court of public opinion based on that? That’s not justice. That’s mob rule.

    People have been shot, hanged, and run out of town for centuries based on accusations without a shred of evidence. I find it telling that this is the state of injustice that Democrats would have us return to, from college campuses to judiciary committees.

    1. I would like to add that whenever there is a prominent crime or drama unfolding on the news, unstable people call in from all over making up tips, claiming they are involved, they were the killer or kidnapper, they were the victim, they have information, it’s their friend/enemy, or they saw him. They get excited and want relevance by claiming the honor of a close call or victimhood, so they can gather people around them in a circle to gasp at their brush with danger.

      We are going to see this with Kavanaugh. Urban legends will spring up. Ridiculous claims like the gang rape train will breathlessly spring up. Congress must behave like rational adults in the chaos.

    2. Karen S – in 1963 I told a joke. “How do you get 71 people in a VW?” The answer is “2 in front, 69 in the back.” Now, I did not know that 69 meant mutual oral sex, to me the image of 69 people in the back of a VW was hysterical. 😉

      1. Oh my gosh, I would have repeated that joke to everyone, including my mother and grandmother.

        I was so innocent as a teenager…

        1. Karen S – I was an innocent college sophomore. 😉 Even if someone had explained the joke to me, I would not have believed them. People just didn’t do that sort of think, not in my social circle anyway. Although, my circle broadened later. 😉

    3. It seems the most important corroborating witness to Dr. Ford’s memory would be the person who drove 6 miles to take her home. Surely that person would have observed her reaction to the traumatizing event. Is everyone willing to accept without question that Dr. Ford can’t remember how she got home? Despite the convenient excuses for memory lapses, doesn’t the lack of interest in Ford’s memory lapse seem odd?

      1. Maybe the FBI investigators will ask her about this. How is it that she can remember that she clearly had “only one beer.” But she has no idea how she got home or who’s house she was at?

        1. Rippleton that’s so stupid because everyone knows you will say the FBI investigation was corrupted when they come back and find that BK testified reasonably (for an event over 35 years in the past) and within an acceptable range of accuracy. Rippleton, you are an ideological idiot.

        2. An FBI investigation will not be helpful to you. It will prove Rippleton drank too much Ripple in her youth and pickled her brains.

          1. jfjoyner3 – I always found Ripple to be a step up from T-bird. 😉 However, taste is personal.

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