Defending Brett Kavanaugh

[Tisme]

US Senate votes 51-49 to confirm Kavanaugh.

But its not over yet.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-...loser-to-lifetime-supreme-court-post/10345232

One thing that has been bugging me is how haggard Ford looked at the hearing. I'm sure her wiley lawyer insisted she look washed out and distressed, but looking like a 70+ women who had spent her life on a beach and croaking like she smoked two packs a day?

but then I saw this and realised she had been dealt that hand naturally:

 

[SirRumpole]

It must be emotionally exhausting having the fate of a Supreme Court judge in your hands in opposition to the full weight of the White House evil.

 

[basilio]

This is an excellent essay for those who would like to read an indepth analysis from a friend of Judge Kavanaugh as to why he shouldn't be a Supreme Court Judge.

I Know Brett Kavanaugh, but I Wouldn’t Confirm Him
This is an article I never imagined myself writing, that I never wanted to write, that I wish I could not write.

Oct 2, 2018

Benjamin Wittes
Editor in chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow at the Brookings

If I were a senator, I would not vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh.

These are words I write with no pleasure, but with deep sadness. Unlike many people who will read them with glee—as validating preexisting political, philosophical, or jurisprudential opposition to Kavanaugh’s nomination—I have no hostility to or particular fear of conservative jurisprudence. I have a long relationship with Kavanaugh, and I have always liked him. I have admired his career on the D.C. Circuit. I have spoken warmly of him. I have published him. I have vouched publicly for his character—more than once—and taken a fair bit of heat for doing so. I have also spent a substantial portion of my adult life defending the proposition that judicial nominees are entitled to a measure of decency from the Senate and that there should be norms of civility within a process that showed Kavanaugh none even before the current allegations arose.

This is an article I never imagined myself writing, that I never wanted to write, that I wish I could not write.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/why-i-wouldnt-confirm-brett-kavanaugh/571936/

 

[SirRumpole]

This is an excellent essay for those who would like to read an indepth analysis from a friend of Judge Kavanaugh as to why he shouldn't be a Supreme Court Judge.

Well I suppose we should ask ourselves how should he behave if

a. he did it
b. he didn't do it.

Yes, judges should be impartial to both parties, and he's too obviously a Republican to do that so the Dems would be crazy to vote for him.

I still have problems with people imposing guilt over what teenagers did in their formative years.

Neurologists say that the brain is not fully formed at that point, they don't evaluate risk properly and teenagers, both men and women do things that they look back on with shame in later years.

But I have a feeling that he'll get in anyway.

 

[basilio]

Rumpy the essay is far more subtle than simply asking if he "did it or didn't do it". It is well worth reading just to get one's head around the ideas of peoples acceptance of the legitamacy of a judicial system.

Came across a 10 minute clip which also explores these issues. It features a retired conservative judge who expresses his concern about how Judge Kavanaugh came across and the inconsistancies in his respons.

 

[SirRumpole]

I did read it bas, it seems very well argued.

So what would you have said in options a. and b. ?

 

[basilio]

With reference to the believability of Brett Kavanaughs testimony

On the other side of the ledger is Kavanaugh’s testimony, and here we cannot be quite so confident that the witness was being candid.

Further reading: Here’s why white women are abandoning the GOP

Kavanaugh’s testimony, whatever one makes of his impassioned claims of innocence on the specific charge, is not credible on the more general issue of his drinking habits. It is, as Kavanaugh suggested at the hearing, absurd for senators to argue with a Supreme Court nominee over his high-school yearbook. Then again, Kavanaugh’s unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious—that his yearbook described a hard-drinking culture that he was a part of and that makes Ford’s account more plausible—made it necessary to do so. Kavanaugh would not concede that the phrase “Beach Week Ralph Club—Biggest Contributor” referred to drinking culture, claiming it was simply a reference to his having a weak stomach. He ascribed implausibly innocent definitions to other terms that appeared in the yearbook. He diminished the casual cruelty he and his friends showed to one girl, Renate Schroeder Dolphin, by describing themselves as “Renate Alumni.” He claimed they intended to show her respect and friendship, but that is not how she reads it three and a half decades later. She told The New York Times, “The insinuation is horrible, hurtful and simply untrue. I pray their daughters are never treated this way.” She is not a fool. His repeated suggestion at the hearing that he had never been so drunk as to have any possibility of memory loss flies in the face of the memories of a number of classmates from college.

My point is not that his confirmation in any sense turns on how much Kavanaugh drank or whether he and his friends made misogynistic jokes as teenagers. But his testimony doesn’t have the ring of truth either. And lack of candor in a witness in one area raises questions about the integrity of that witness’s testimony in other areas.

Thursday evening, after the hearing, former FBI Director James Comey tweeted, “Small lies matter, even about yearbooks. From the standard jury instruction: ‘If a witness is shown knowingly to have testified falsely about any material matter, you have a right to distrust such witness’ other testimony and you may reject all the testimony of that witness.’”

Further reading: The pernicious double standards around Kavanaugh’s drinking

...
To be clear, I am emphatically not saying that Kavanaugh did what Ford says he did. The evidence is not within 100 yards of adequate to convict him. But whether he did it is not the question at hand. The question at hand is how a reasonable senator should construct the evidence to guide a binary vote for or against elevation of a judge to a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. By my read, we have two witnesses who both profess 100 percent certainty of their position—one whose testimony is wholly credible and marginally corroborated in a number of respects, and the other whose testimony is not credible on a number of important atmospheric points surrounding the alleged event.

It’s not a tie, and it doesn’t go to the nominee.

Read Caitlin Flanagan on Christine Blasey Ford: “I believe her.”

There’s one more reason I could not vote to confirm Kavanaugh: His apparent lack of candor on the culture of drinking at Georgetown Prep and later is a problem of its own, quite apart from what it may indicate about the truth of Ford’s story. People throw around words like perjury too blithely. I won’t do so here. I will say that I do not believe he showed the sort of candor that warrants the Senate’s—or the public’s—confidence. To the extent some commentators on the right are defending Kavanaugh’s testimony as containing the sort of white lies that anyone might tell under the circumstances, let me just say that I don’t believe that Supreme Court justices get to tell self-exculpating white lies—and I don’t believe in white lies from anyone else, either, in sworn congressional testimony.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/why-i-wouldnt-confirm-brett-kavanaugh/571936/

 

[Knobby22]

Basilio
The writer is desiring the ideals of the High court.
Kavanaugh is a Republican insider married to another Republican insider. He can be trusted to act on their interest.

The founders had idealism. We now have powerful interest groups and base politics.
That is just the way it works. People voted to take away healthcare for the poor and give the wealthiest a tax cut.

It is a Democracy but most people don't vote.
They get what they deserve.

 

[dutchie]

It is a Democracy but most people don't vote.
They get what they deserve.

That's true of all democracy's around the world (Australia, UK, Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands etc etc)

 

[wayneL]

Due process prevails over political hit jobs and baying mobs with no evidence.

It is a good day today.

 

[SirRumpole]

Due process prevails over political hit jobs and baying mobs with no evidence.

It is a good day today.

Nah, he's still a biased pratt. He shouldn't have got in but the attack on him for what happened 40 years ago was OTT.

 

[basilio]

Nah, he's still a biased pratt. He shouldn't have got in but the attack on him for what happened 40 years ago was OTT.

He shouldn't have been approved because of
1) The lies he gave to the Senate about his behavior as a High school/College student
2) The way he behaved in the Senate hearing. He is supposed to be an impartial Supreme Court Judge not a ranting partisian Trump sock puppet.

 

[luutzu]

Basilio
The writer is desiring the ideals of the High court.
Kavanaugh is a Republican insider married to another Republican insider. He can be trusted to act on their interest.

The founders had idealism. We now have powerful interest groups and base politics.
That is just the way it works. People voted to take away healthcare for the poor and give the wealthiest a tax cut.

It is a Democracy but most people don't vote.
They get what they deserve.

People voted before, but they still don't get what they deserve. So they stopped voting.

It's all a sham really. More like a public subsidy for media corporations every two years, one big one every four.

 

[luutzu]

Due process prevails over political hit jobs and baying mobs with no evidence.

It is a good day today.

If you scan through the papers, you'll see that the FBI investigation is anything but "due process".

What kind of an investigation does not get permission from the White House [its boss] to ask the accused and the accuser?

So Dr Ford accused Kavanaugh of attempted rape. The WH figured they've said enough so no need to talk to them? What a joke.

 

[luutzu]

One thing that has been bugging me is how haggard Ford looked at the hearing. I'm sure her wiley lawyer insisted she look washed out and distressed, but looking like a 70+ women who had spent her life on a beach and croaking like she smoked two packs a day?

but then I saw this and realised she had been dealt that hand naturally:

View attachment 89624

"Too ugly to rape" now is it?

What's wrong with you people?

 

[wayneL]

I had to laugh at reports that Ford won't pursue allgations further.

A. Statute of limitations

B. Absolutely zero evidence

C. Is already in imminent peril of being charged with perjury, and facing a civil defamation case.

She should just slink off into deserved obscurity now that the dems will have dumped her like a cheap rag.

 

[luutzu]

I had to laugh at reports that Ford won't pursue allgations further.

A. Statute of limitations

B. Absolutely zero evidence

C. Is already in imminent peril of being charged with perjury, and facing a civil defamation case.

She should just slink off into deserved obscurity now that the dems will have dumped her like a cheap rag.

You think she's doing all this because she want the Democrats to win or because she's aligned with the Democrats?

Get real.

If you're from a family that send their kids to those elite schools. If you're part of the political or economic elite, all these partisan rubbish is just that... rubbish.

Just look at the Clintons. Their daughter is best friend with the Trump's. They attend each other's weddings.

It's a joke that a guy like Kavanaugh sits on the Supreme Court. Well, it is if you believe in such thing as justice and democracy, independent branches of government and all that bs.

There are Senators publicly condemning protesters loitering around Senate offices like it's their rights to confront their "representatives". What's all these bs, "mob rule"? "Grow up" and get a job or go to prison. Get off our lawn, let us wise elders decide what's good for everyone.

 

[SirRumpole]

You think she's doing all this because she want the Democrats to win or because she's aligned with the Democrats?

Did you ever stop to ask yourself why she waited 35 years to make these allegations ?

If there were witnesses their minds would have fresh at the time it happened and the chances of conviction would be much higher.

It appears to be a grandstanding exercise.

 

[basilio]

I had to laugh at reports that Ford won't pursue allgations further.

A. Statute of limitations

B. Absolutely zero evidence

C. Is already in imminent peril of being charged with perjury, and facing a civil defamation case.

She should just slink off into deserved obscurity now that the dems will have dumped her like a cheap rag.

You are such a cheap, nasty little toe rag Wayne. Dr Ford brought up the incident with Judge Kavanaugh to give the Senate important knowledge of the person they were going to appoint as Supreme Court Justice for life.

No one was going to take this to a court case. Ever.
She had never intended to take this to the police for all the obvious reasons so far demonstrated

She deserves admiration and respect for the guts she showed to stand and say what happened to her.
The Trump sock puppet that is Brett Kavanaugh will still be regarded as a casual liar for the way he denied his behaviour as a drunken teenager. But that is the Trump way isn't it ?

 

[SirRumpole]

Dr Ford brought up the incident with Judge Kavanaugh to give the Senate important knowledge of the person they were going to appoint as Supreme Court Justice for life.

You don't think that people can change over time ?