News is breaking fast in this matter, and I won't attempt to keep up with it all, but I will note two matters reported in the press as follow-ups to the earlier post.
Following up on the vote to send the Kavanaugh nomination to the floor, the Judiciary Committee asked the Administration to reopen the FBI background investigation "limited to current credible allegations against the nominee."
Not sure about that plural "credible allegations." Hopefully it is only intended to leave to the FBI to determine which of the current allegations are sufficiently credible to be worth investigating and not prejudge that there is more than one.
President Trump promptly directed the FBI to update its background investigation in accordance with the terms requested, limited in scope and within a week.
Eleven days ago, I put it this way in a comment to a long ago post:
"Here is my (simplistic?) take: if it turns out Kavanaugh is conclusively proven to be a grown up Brock Turner, I presume even many in the GOP would want another candidate; if it turns out this allegation is clearly suspect, the GOP will want to confirm. So the real question is what evidence/level of proof will fracture the GOP votes."
My sense is this is still the question, and we still do not yet have an answer. Word is the FBI will interview Mark Judge, and I am eager to hear what he now has to say.
Remarkable times.
This is an allegation about something that purportedly happened 36 years ago. The idea that we can come to any resolution about what actually happened is specious. This is a political, and "fact-finding" is politicized. Just from the standpoint of how we treat allegations--Ford doesn't know so many things, and others contradict her story--this isn't something that would get inside the courtroom.
The Democrats have acted disgracefully here. And I hope the GOP finally learns to stick it to them each and every time.
We can evaluate demeanor and credibility. As lawyers we do that all the time. Dr. Ford’s testimony was “credible” according to GOP Senator Richard Shelby and “very credible” according to Donald Trump.
Judge Kavanaugh yelled, cried, interrupted, refused to answer questions and gave implausible and dubious answers on numerous points, as detailed in the articles below:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/us/politics/brett-kavanaugh-fact-check.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/20/brett-kavanaughs-unlikely-story-about-democrats-stolen-documents/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c2294e371384
I wouldn’t hire someone with such suspicions, who testified in the way Judge Kavanaugh did, to a position of trust and don’t think he should be elevated to the Supreme Court.
Democratic Senators directed calumny after calumny at Kavanaugh, and, as Senator Durbin said, he and his family went through hell.
As for the supposed lies, no serious person believes that.
The allegations regard events that happened 36 years ago. Let that sink in--36 years ago. Dr. Ford doesn't recall key details. Let's not forget one Senator Kerry--key details were seared in his brain, and yet they turned out not to be accurate. And during the 2016 campaign, didn't we see articles devoted to "Maybe Clinton wasn't lying when she said she was under fire."
From my point of view, it’s possible t reach that conclusion by restricting the universe of “serious people” to conservatives like you and abandoning the tools one ordinarily uses as a lawyer to evaluate witness credibility, evasiveness and demeanor. I don’t know how you get to where you are otherwise Federalist. The articles I linked to involved serious and in depth analysis, not ipse dixit.
Given all the research on memories, and those from 36 years ago, I am truly shocked that you think that demeanor is really all that.
Kavanaugh's demeanor when answering direct questions was convincing. His combativeness with Dem Senators that have distorted his record and have tried to make hay out of high school stuff rang true to me.
Kavanaugh’s surfeit of evasions and implausible answers is what it is., quite apart from questions of demeanors. He dodged and ducked quite a lot
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2018/9/28/17914308/kavanaugh-ford-question-dodge-hearing-chart
And that’s apart from the the answers that were simply hard to believe, both in this hearing and earlier ones, as detailed in the articles cited above.
As an attorney, I’ve had clients in civil and criminal cases who’ve gotten combative and watching that or reading the transcript generally makes we want to bury my head in my hands. From experience, it’s wildly unhelpful and raises
red flags for objective observers.
Given that a hero to your party is Senator Neckbrace, I don't really take the idea that Kavanaugh owes clowns like Durbin or Whitehouse any respect. This was an ambush, and he was entitled to treat it as such.
As for evasiveness, puh-lease. He told Whitehouse straight-up that he liked his beer. So what?
Here’s why, in a larger sense than this hearing, Judge Kavanaugh’s demeanor matters. As Elliot Cohen noted:
“Perhaps the collapse of modern conservatism came out most clearly in Kavanaugh’s own testimony—its self-pity, its hysteria, its conjuring up of conspiracies, its vindictiveness. He and his family had no doubt suffered agonies. But if we expect steely resolve from a police officer confronting a knife-wielding assailant, or disciplined courage from a firefighter rushing into a burning house, we should expect stoic self-control and calm from a conservative judge, even if his heart is being eaten out. No one watching those proceedings could imagine that a Democrat standing before this judge’s bench in the future would get a fair hearing. This was not the conservative temperament on display. It was, rather, personalized grievance politics.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/571747/?__twitter_impression=true
Give me a break.
Sorry for the late comment, but I’d be happy to hear what you think about this, Kent and Federalist:
“In a series of texts before the publication of the New Yorker story, Yarasavage wrote that she had been in contact with ‘Brett's guy,’ and also with ‘Brett,’ who wanted her to go on the record to refute Ramirez. According to Berchem, Yarasavage also told her friend that she turned over a copy of the wedding party photo to Kavanaugh, writing in a text: ‘I had to send it to Brett’s team too’....Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that the first time he heard of Ramirez’s allegation was in the Sept. 23 article in The New Yorker.“
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna915566
If Kavanaugh intentionally lied under oath about this topic during his confirmation hearing, should he be confirmed or not?
My apologies on this one. In other testimony, Judge Kavanaugh notes that he had heard she was calling around about him before the story broke. The stories can be reconciled without an implication of dishonesty on this issue.