[jeremysalwen]

Don't really think the Kavanaugh example really fits in with the rest. Sorry, if you want to be a Supreme Court justice, yes, you should should be held to a much higher standard. Yelling about "revenge on behalf of the Clintons" does indeed count as "partisan bitterness".

[manfredo]

If allegation of a decades old crime at an unspecified date, time, and location, and with no corroborating evidence is enough to block a Supreme Court nomination then we're not going to be nominating new justices any time soon (Democrat or Republican).

[perfmode]

His attitude while defending himself on the stand is the basis for which I would rescind his nomination. His behavior was not befitting of someone who is about to be conferred lifetime appointment to the highest court in the country. I don’t want him crafting laws and making decisions that impact huge groups of people.

[manfredo]

Behavior such as? Most people who I've seen criticize his behavior essentially boil down to criticizing him for not admitting guilt, or because he tried to discredit Ford - neither of which are valid points in my view. Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser, to criticize defendants for doing so is essentially saying it should be socially unacceptable to defend oneself from an accusation. While I probably won't agree with Kavanaugh's court opinions, the opposition to his appointment also has negative effects. It was correlated with a drop in trust for alleged victims of sexual assault, for example: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/10/15/after-a-...

[jacobolus]

Behavior such as repeatedly making easily disprovable statements (which numerous past acquaintances who had no particular reason to otherwise make public statements about his nomination called out as blatant lies), and pugnaciously asking a Senator whether she ever gets black-out drunk.

After starting his career in politics as a vicious partisan hack e.g. involved directly in a conspiracy to undermine Judiciary Committee hearings, perjuring himself in his first judicial confirmation hearing, and spending his judicial career on tireless and extreme support for corporate interests, he should have not been the nominee; there are many less controversial and more respected choices among high-profile career members of the GOP. But if he had acted like an adult in the hearing and been willing to admit to being an angry drunken partier as in his teens and twenties who might have done stupid things and not remembered, and demonstrated some contrition and sign of personal growth, I and many others would have some respect for it.

Instead, his behavior was the most hostile and disrespectful I have ever seen in a public hearing. I urge anyone curious about this to watch the 3 hour hearing for yourself. In my view his confirmation is a stain on the Senate and the Court. It cements the public perception that the rich and powerful can do anything they want, remain unapologetic, and face no consequences.

[manfredo]

He repeatedly stated that did consumed large quantities of alcohol in late high school and in college. Maybe there is diagreement over the exact degree of inebriation, but I am not so sure it's correct to say he lied. Regardless, the two points after are where the problematic nature of the complaints against Kavanaugh surface:

> who sometimes shoved his penis in women’s faces,

Another allegation which he denies. As I predicted, the core complaint is that he denies the allegations made against him. This is effectively constructing a situation in which the accused is guilty of something no matter what. Either 1) the accused does not defend themselves and is guilty of the alleged crimes, or 2) the accused does defend themselves, but in the world view you've constructed this makes them guilty of hostility and disrespect.

> and demonstrated some contrition

Contrition for what? He denies said allegations. Again, when you get to the bottom of it this is essentially criticizing the fact that Kavanaugh maintained his innocence. This is what was so pernicious about the Kavanaugh hearings that bothered even me, a lifelong Democrat. The fact that merely trying to defend oneself against an allegations is grounds for negative character judgement is at odds with the core principles of justice.

> and sign of personal growth, I and many others would have some respect for it.

If going from a binge drinking teenager to Supreme Court nominee (let alone Justice) doesn't demonstrate personl growth I don't know what does. This is greater growth than most people on HN will likely achieve (myself included).

Update: It appears the above poster had since edited their comment. My response took a while to write, so it could be that their edit was made before my response was done. I urge commenters not to assume bad faith on their part.

[jacobolus]

> He repeatedly stated that did consumed large quantities of alcohol in late high school and in college.

No, he repeatedly denied it (while only admitting that he “liked and likes beer” and occasionally drank beer in moderation). He also made up comically absurd lies about his high school yearbook, and lied about several other more serious topics e.g. related to his work for Starr and his work as a Bush staffer. (I don’t intend to re-litigate this here. You can do a web search and find numerous analyses of the details.)

[BryantD]

> Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser

This reduces the question to a black and white decision, which is unreasonable. I see two major flaws here:

1. You're eliding the difference between discrediting the accuser's claim and discrediting the accuser themselves. There is a significant difference between saying "that's not accurate" and saying "the person who said that is a drunken loser who has been out to get me for years."

2. You're likewise removing any distinction between true and untrue responses! Surely it's acceptable to criticize a defendant for lying?

Now, we have not established whether or not Kavanaugh was lying, and I'm not saying he was -- but your response completely skips over that entire facet of the question. You are assuming a conclusion which has not been reached.

[manfredo]

>There is a significant difference between saying "that's not accurate" and saying "the person who said that is a drunken loser who has been out to get me for years."

Did Kavanaugh ever say the latter? In fact this line of criticism seems to work in his favor: the label "drunken loser" was applied to Kavanaugh much more frequently than it was applied to Ford, at least from the coverage I saw (admittedly, mostly from left leaning outlets so that may be a factor).

I'm not sure why you brought up #2 given that you later state that you don't know of any instances in which Kavanaugh lied. Yes, if Kavanaugh lied that would be significant. But as you stated in your own comment, you do not know of any such instances. I am not aware of any statement that was proven to be false either, at least outside of tangents that stretch my idea of relevance to the accusations (e.g. contents in his yearbook). So, yes if Kavanaugh lied that would be valid criticism - but we both agree that this was never demonstrated, so this point is moot.

[BryantD]

No, he did not say such a thing.

I'm not specifically addressing Kavanaugh, I'm pointing out a flaw in your logic. You made a general assertion, which I'll quote again: "Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser, to criticize defendants for doing so is essentially saying it should be socially unacceptable to defend oneself from an accusation."

Did you mean that, or did you generalize a bit more than you intended while defending Kavanaugh?

[lern_too_spel]

He was often blackout drunk according to his classmates, but he repeatedly lied and said he wasn't.

[jerf]

Stand in his place for a week and tell me that.

To echo manfredo, if the only people we can nominate to the Supreme Court are people who can just calmly sit there while the absolute worst accusations possible are flung against them, we're not going to be nominating new justices any time soon (Democrat or Republican). Or, alternatively, we're going to get a very, very distorted set of justices who lack all emotional affect or something.

Or, looking at it from another view point, there is this idea floating around (you're not the first place I've heard it from) that simultaneously, poorly-founded [1] accusations of rape are really, really terrible, like, the worst thing ever, more than sufficient to scotch a nomination to any serious office of the land... but at the same time, a person who is so accused of literally the worst thing ever should also have no reaction to this and be completely impassive in the face of these nominally terrible accusations.

Look, either it's that serious and it should be treated that seriously across the board, or it's not that serious at all, and it should be treated unseriously across the board. But if you try to have it both ways, the conclusion people are eventually going to come to is that it must not be serious. That's what's going to win out; are you sure you want that? Do you really want to say that the standard for reacting to being accused of serious crimes is that the accused should just wave the accusations away and be completely unaffected by them? Are you really asking for that to be the standard? Because if you think about it, I bet that's not what you want.

[1]: You want to consider them true, you want to consider them false, that's your business, but I'm very comfortable characterizing the accusations as very poorly founded either way.

[yongjik]

> Stand in his place for a week and tell me that.

Imagine going to the less well-off part of America and start a conversation like that.

"Imagine you're accused of rape twenty years ago and you have to defend it in front of angry people."

"So, if I fail, I go to jail?"

"No, not really."

"...Are they gonna beat me up?"

"No."

"Do I lose my job? My house? Will they take my daughter away for me being a rapist?"

"No, none of this happens. But a lot of people will call you names."

"...A lot of people call me names for just walking around!"

[manfredo]

From my discussions, as well as from surveys conducted (remember, poorer less educated people were more likely to support his appointment), it actually resonated more with less well off demographics. True, for Kavanaugh the stigma of being seen as a rapist doesn't have much effect - his employment is guaranteed for life after all. But for a poor person it may greatly impede their ability to get employment, potentially even putting them on the streets. For the less well off, being seen as a rapist, is a lot more impactful than getting called names.

[perfmode]

That office is so important that I’m happy to wait until the right candidate shows up. And I don’t want republicans or Democrats.

I want scientists of law with integrity.

And there are plenty competent people with integrity. It is people who lack integrity that marginalize them.

[lifeformed]

Well there was one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland

A bipartisan moderate that everyone loved, recommended by both parties, poised to take the nomination, then blocked for years by the Republican party just as a total partisan f-you to Obama.

[zeveb]

> blocked for years

He was nominated on the 16th of March 2016; the election was on the eighth of November of the same year, and his nomination expired on the third of January 2017, less than a year later. No matter how you slice that, his nomination to the Supreme Court wasn't 'blocked for years.'

[AcerbicZero]

Garland would have made an excellent choice instead of Kagan, or even Sotomayor, if there was a desire for a more balanced, more centrist SCOTUS. However after those two nominations replacing Scalia with Garland was obviously a bridge too far which the R's could not accept. As unpopular as it may have been, In a way, I don't really blame them, and it seems to have paid off for them in the long run.

[jerf]

"And there are plenty competent people with integrity."

But there are also plenty of people who lack integrity and, if it is permitted and gets them what they want, will fling arbitrarily nasty false accusations at people. There is no one with so much integrity that false accusations can't be made of them. You're pushing a rope.

[perfmode]

The Obama family has not had a single scandal.

[brodouevencode]

Shouldn't that office should be held to the same standards as the other three branches?

[int_19h]

No, because the other branches have failsafes, such as periodic elections. But with SCOTUS, if you make a mistake and confirm the wrong candidate for the job, the only remedy is impeachment, which is very hard to pull off (by design). Thus, the standards have to be extremely high.

[commandlinefan]

> I’m happy to wait until the right candidate shows up

Well, you're in luck, because he was confirmed.

[lifeformed]

In Kavanaugh's case, the problem is deeper than the rape accusation itself. False accusations are horrible but we have to stop pretending that the people pushing for his nomination even cared if it was true or not. A majority of Republicans polled said that he should be confirmed even if it is proven he is a rapist. The Republican senators said they'd push the nomination through no matter what was found. It's clear from these facts that these Republicans were not approaching the nomination in good faith.

If you were interviewing someone for a job, and then found that he was accused of rape multiple times, do you:

A) Ignore them.

B) Not hire him.

C) Look into the situation more deeply.

D) Want to hire him even more.

I think we can agree C makes most sense, but most Republicans were pushing hard for D. They were an inch away from doing it without an investigation, but finally caved due to one holdout senator, and then did a quick crippled investigation where they couldn't even interview Kavanaugh or the accuser Ford.

As for the accusations itself, we know that Ford named Kavanaugh as her rapist to multiple people decades ago. We also know that Kavanaugh sent texts about how to deal with another accuser, before the accuser even went public. Also, he then perjured himself saying he didn't know about her until she went public.

Because of these reasons, I think the outcry against Kavanaugh's nomination was justified. If the Republicans really wanted the best person for the job, and if he really was innocent, they should have all agreed early on for a thorough FBI investigation which should clear his name. Instead, they made it a culture war issue and played up the circus. If they didn't want it to be a shame storm, they could've taken the allegations seriously and do their job to represent the will of the citizens.

We all know that we're not going to get 100% evidence of if he did it or not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to find what we can and build up some percentage of confidence in the candidate. If the available evidence instills us with perhaps 30% doubt of his word, should that have a factor in our hiring decision? Or do we only consider 0% or 100% conclusions? Is 30% too risky for hiring someone for what is arguably the most important job in the world?

To be fair, I don't think a media circus crucifixion is the right outcome of an unproven allegation, but it's also wrong to totally disregard such allegations when making such a high-stakes decision. It seems fair to me to at least take a risk-adverse approach without casting total judgement on the candidate.

[perfmode]

Thanks for taking the time to write this analysis.

[weberc2]

"I don't like their attitude" is even more rife for abuse than blocking nominations on the basis of unsupported allegations...

[matt4077]

You’re willfully misrepresenting the accusations, and completely ignoring the reaction to them that many considered to be even more problematic. But let’s not rehash this particular flamewar.

[moduspol]

Put yourself in his shoes for a moment, and pretend you're genuinely innocent of the accusations. Isn't a group of partisan operatives conspiring against you the most likely reason for very conveniently-timed and uncorroborated sexual assault allegations?

But put that aside. Maybe he's actually guilty of at least one of them. Even then, though, some of the allegations ended up being false:

Most recently here [1], but also here [2], and here [3], and here [4]. Four clear examples of accusations made that turned out to be completely false. So at best, one must acknowledge that this man endured a national media spotlight under four false accusations of sexual assault/rape, but came across as "too partisan" when speculating as to one of the few possible explanations for why these false accusers may have come forward.

I sure hope I'm never in the situation he's in, but if I'm on national TV being essentially questioned if maybe I don't remember all the gang raping I did because of how drunk I was, I can assure you my answers will be far less dignified.

[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/news/kavanaugh-accuser-admits...

[2] https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fifth-brett-kavanaugh-ac...

[3] https://www.apnews.com/c5ecf76c62ec4c398e35020b5df01061

[4] https://www.npr.org/2018/09/20/649787076/kavanaugh-accuser-c...

[beat]

The problem with Kavanaugh isn't what he did as a drunken teenager. It's what he did as a sober adult - his angry, petulant outbursts at senators. A Supreme Court seat isn't just a question of experience or background. It's a question of temperament. Even if he was completely innocent (and being too drunk to remember or too arrogant to think it important isn't the same as innocent), he should have been completely calm and peaceful with the senators.

Think of it another way - it's a job interview. If you were crying and screaming about a conspiracy of your interviewers, would you get hired for any other job?

The GOP should have pulled him and put forward another candidate, one without that controversy. They've managed to find such candidates before. The resemblance of the Kavanaugh vote to a bunch of men having their way with women and covering their mouths while they screamed was unsettling.

[moduspol]

Again: It is now objective fact that at least four of his accusers were lying, so we're legitimately evaluating how someone should react when being questioned surrounding false sexual assault and rape allegations after being in the media spotlight for weeks.

Many of these senators opposed his nomination prior to his name even being selected, yet you're expecting him to sit back non-chalantly as senators try to trick him into acknowledging maybe he was just too drunk to remember the raping. Him getting a little testy after weeks of the most intense character assassination I've ever seen is not unreasonable.

> Think of it another way - it's a job interview. If you were crying and screaming about a conspiracy of your interviewers, would you get hired for any other job?

This isn't a job interview, and again: at least four objectively false accusers. If there wasn't any planning involved, then at least four people acted independently to make very conveniently timed false accusations. Both conclusions seem implausible to me, yet logically one must be true.

> The GOP should have pulled him and put forward another candidate, one without that controversy.

It is now political reality that if the stakes are high enough, especially on the Republican side, you can expect false sexual assault allegations. Again: this is factual. It happened here, and it can happen again.

Dropping candidates due to "controversy" stemming directly from uncorroborated sexual assault allegations would only give more power to false accusers. Maybe we can come up with a standard of how we expect people to respond when the mainstream media and political left are openly labeling you as a "potential gang rapist" for weeks, but until then, I can only judge him based on how I'd expect a potential SC justice (and human being) to act in such a difficult situation.

[nebulous1]

I don't think they should have dropped him for simply being controversial.

That said, which four have been shown to be lying? Only Munro-Leighton has admitted lying outright, and Swetnick changed her statement enough that you could say she was lying too. And Munro-Leighton admitted she wasn't actually the original Jane Doe accuser anyway.

I do believe something happened with Blasey Ford, although ultimately I don't know if her memory of the events will fully gel with what happened, or with what Kavanagh thought was happening at the time.

Yes, I would have expected him to keep his cool even under such intense pressure. I wouldn't expect you or I would be able to do so, but I wouldn't put either of us forward for a lifetime position on the US supreme court either.

Ignoring his composure, a bigger issue for me is that he outright lied about his drinking at the time and the meaning of many phrases used in his yearbook. Renate Alumnus just meant they were all good friends? Boof is farting and devils triangle is a drinking game? These are simply lies, and not even good ones. I don't think the existence of lewd comments in his yearbook is disqualifying, but lying about them should be.

[moduspol]

> That said, which four have been shown to be lying?

I posted a separate source for each of the four above. The two you're missing are the "rape on a boat" allegation and the woman who initially corroborated Ford's allegation on Facebook before backtracking after questions arose.

Keep in mind that at the time, the pressure was on to just drop him as a mere result of a large number of allegations. These allegations weren't intended to stand up to scrutiny--just to mount political pressure to drop him.

> I do believe something happened with Blasey Ford, although ultimately I don't know if her memory of the events will fully gel with what happened, or with what Kavanagh thought was happening at the time.

Agreed.

> Yes, I would have expected him to keep his cool even under such intense pressure.

I think he was in a no-win situation. If he had kept his cool, he would have appeared inhumanly cold. It would have been spun as him being uncaring and confident he's getting away with his sexual assaults.

That's kind of why I find this so disgusting, though. This is essentially the "new normal" of high-stakes politics. You're going to be put under a microscope as we hang "potential gang rapist" around your neck for weeks, and then win or lose, we'll move onto the next news cycle without even acknowledging how explicit this character assassination was, or the effect on future nominations.

And there will still be people who don't see this as reprehensible.

> Boof is farting and devils triangle is a drinking game?

Devil's triangle did end up being a drinking game, though [1]. It's not even weird or unexpected that high school boys would name a game after an explicit sexual act.

That the rest are being grouped in under "presumed lies" isn't fair, either, and the fact that this stuff is even being discussed is more an indictment of this circus of a process than the judge. We can expect future candidates to keep as many secrets as possible, be as vague as possible in answers, and we're all worse off for it.

[1] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/devils-triangle-drin...

[nebulous1]

I didn't know about the boat allegations.

I agree that a lot of the main stream media, and particularly social media, can whip up a shitstorm over unfounded allegations.

However, the root of the allegations against Kavanaugh did have merit, as in they deserved to be looked into. After they were made a number of other allegations were made with less merit, or outright lies. However, just as there's an issue with rushing to judgement when a number of allegations are made, there's also an issue of letting unfounded allegations cast doubt on other allegations.

The mere existence of unfounded or fabricated allegations shouldn't negatively impact on different allegations, just as the existence of an uninvestigated allegation shouldn't discount him as a candidate. If either or these thing were true it would be too easy to either destroy a candidate or invalidate all allegations against them.

Although a number of anonymous allegations shouldn't mean anything, I think you'd agree that if 10 Blasey Fords came forward with similar stories that would be a big problem. Obviously this is counter-factual, I'm not talking about Kavanaugh only how these situations can be dealt with in the future. I agree that this can get out of hand, but I can't see an alternative. Ignoring Blasey Ford did not seem like a viable option.

Regarding future candidates being vague, this could just be rejected. I don't have an issue with the path to the SC being a difficult and fairly grueling process.

To my eyes the Democrats severely wounded their stance by waiting until the last moment before revealing Blasey Ford. The Republicans lost it during the post Ford Kavanaugh questioning, choosing to grandstand instead of letting the prosecutor they'd specially brought in continue. Both of them fairly disgraced themselves. And let's not forget that the only reason this didn't happen with Garland is because the Republicans abused their power to avoid even having a hearing.

[beat]

"Objectively false".

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

[moduspol]

> objective - (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts: historians try to be objective and impartial.

It does mean what I think it means, actually.

[fareesh]

He was 100% right in speculating revenge on behalf of the Clintons in my opinion. It was a pointed reference to the accuser's lawyers, who kept her in the dark about the option of testifying privately. The lawyers had previously represented Bill Clinton. It's not a big leap, honestly.