This week is the 35th anniversary of the first Borking, named after Robert Bork following his failed nomination to the US Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1987. Celebrate by sharing what embarrassing movies you've watched!

The nomination of Judge Bork (formerly known for being Nixon's Attorney General) was one of the first attempts to politicize SCOTUS, and the whole thing was a shitshow from start to finish.

As a statement about Bork's stances against personal privacy, someone invaded his personal privacy by obtaining his video rental history and getting it published in a newspaper. Congress was predictably incised by this transgression (which was the point), and reacted by passing the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988, making it illegal to publish the video rental history of a private citizen. As a result, your Blockbuster account is one of about four types of private data that is legally protected in the United States, alongside insured healthcare records (HIPAA), education records (FERPA), and financial data (FINRA, etc).

The VPPA was updated in 2013 for the explicit purpose of allowing Netflix to add a Facebook Share button.

Bork's rental history was published in the Sept 25 - Oct 2 edition of the DC City Paper. It was actually pretty boring and didn't even contain porn. While I've used "Blockbuster" in this post for illustrative purposes, the actual video store in question was Potomac Video, which closed in 2014. Bork resigned as judge about a year after his failed nomination.