Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Twenty Things You Probably Didn’t Know about Kamala Harris


Pronounced Kah-ma-la, if that is important for us to not seem ignorant.

National Review
A trip through the life and career of the California senator as she gears up for a probable presidential run
 
. . . "11. Some have asked tough questions about whether Harris, as San Francisco district attorney, did everything she could to root out abuse in the local Catholic churches. Prosecutors had obtained personnel files from the Archdiocese of San Francisco dealing with sexual abuse going back decades. But her office did not prosecute any priests, and she argued that those records were not subject to public-records laws:
In 2005, while she was San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris rebuffed a public-records request by SF Weekly to release personnel files from the Archdiocese of San Francisco. (Her predecessor had planned to make them public after prosecuting criminal priests, but the California Supreme Court stopped those cases when it declared unconstitutional a 2002 law that lifted the criminal statute of limitations.) Similar archives in Boston had exposed the scope of the scandal there. “We’re not interested in selling out our victims to look good in the paper,” Harris told SF Weekly in a statement — this, even though many of those victims pleaded with her to release the documents.
. . .
"16. Starting in 1993, Harris began dating Willie Brown, then the speaker of the California Assembly and later a candidate for mayor of San Francisco — a relationship that brought her in contact with many of the city’s political and financial movers and shakers. Early in 1994, Brown named her as his appointee to the state’s Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, a job that paid $97,088 a year. Six months later, he named her to the California Medical Assistance Commission, a post which paid $72,000 a year.
"Into 1994, press accounts described Harris as Brown’s girlfriend. He was still married, and in his early 60s; she had just turned 30. The relationship had a surprising and tumultuous end, as James Richardson describes in Willie Brown: A Biography:
Columnist Herb Caen all but predicted two days after the election that Brown would wed Kamala Harris, his constant companion throughout the campaign. “Keep an eye on these two,” Caen wrote. No mention was made of what Brown would do about Blanche, to whom he was still married. But the day after Christmas, Brown stunned his friends by announcing that he was breaking up with Kamala. Brown invited Blanche to appear with him on stage for his swearing-in and to hold the Bible. A television reporter from KPIX caught up to Blanche, who had kept a low profile throughout the campaign, and asked her what it was like to live with the future mayor.
“Difficult,” was her one-word answer.
. . .
 Kamala Harris’s Outrageous Assault on the Knights of Columbus

No comments: