3359

He’ll take it to the American people… who overwhelmingly hate Kavanaugh.

I’ll take that deal Lindsey.

3360

He was doing that before McCain died.

At one point I calculated the actual day it happened, but I can’t be bothered to go back and find it.

But it was literally an over night thing. One day he’s bitching about Trump. Next week after a period of silence, Trump fan #1 Trump is perfect and can do no wrong.

3361

I’m pretty sure he means “take it to REAL Americans.” You know, in the America where Trump won the popular vote.

3362

Wasn’t it the day after his private golf outing with Trump?

3363

Yes, and they don’t have to worry about him suddenly becoming an independent thinker, as other conservative Justices have done.

3364

A friend of mine who also knows I like science fiction sent this to me years ago. She was the political director for a national union, I ran a political action committee. The quote is likely well known to many of you but it was new to me and it seems more appropriate than ever. I have two daughters so I don’t see politics as a game, more a deadly competition.

IMG_0009
IMG_0009.jpg1512×2016 688 KB

3365

I don’t read The Federalist, but if this is what passes for argument there I guess there is no reason to start.

https://thefederalist.com/2018/10/02/better-put-guilty-man-court-keep-innocent-man-off/

Two things jump out at me about this.

The first is the headline: That Kavanaugh should be confirmed even if he is guilty. I wanted to read an argument constructed along those lines to see what it could possibly look like. The problem is, the piece never argues that he should be confirmed even if he is guilty. Instead,it argues that we just don’t (perhaps can’t) know either way.

This leads to the second thing: The piece argues that if he is not confirmed we will keep an innocent man from his rightful place on the Supreme Court.

I mean, that’s it. That’s the whole argument. Kavanaugh has a right to be on the Supreme Court, and failing to confirm him out of uncertainty over the allegation denies him that right.

3366

From your summary, it just sounds like garden variety doublethink.

  1. He should be on the court because he is a reliable Republican, even though he is guilty.
  2. Reliable Republicans are never guilty.

It’s possible to believe both of these ideas at the same time if you put the Party first in all things.

3367

The Federalist has descended in quality to nothing more than a hyper partisan rag. There was a time this was not true.

3368

Article by… Kyle Smith. I’m sure his name doesn’t mean he’s a white dude.

Nevermind.

3369

Yeesh. He falls squarely into the category of what Joe Rogan calls “unfuckable white dudes”.

3370

Is Ellison toast?

3371

I’m not sure if they buried or cremated Harlan Ellison, RIP.

Keith Ellison? The DFL is happier after one of their lawyers gave their considered opinion yesterday that his domestic abuse allegations against him were unsubstantiated. But they knew that the general populace wouldn’t buy that, so they pushed the problem out to local law enforcement. The problem with that is that various local law enforcers are looking at each other, shrugging their shoulders, not knowing if this is in their jurisdiction or some other guys’. So far, he is not toast, but he is still in the toaster. And of course he is not running for SCOTUS, merely Attorney General of Minnesota, no doubt another stepping stone in his political career.

3372

Oh.

3373

Good piece by Greg Sargent.
(He doesn’t however address judicial temperament - that alone IMO is disqualifying.)

A narrator says liberals are trying to “ruin a good man with smears,” intoning that “Kavanaugh fought back, clearing his name, defending his honor,” and calling on Democrats to “stand with President Trump” against the liberal smear merchants.

In other words, at the core of the final push to save Kavanaugh is the idea that the real stakes in this affair turn on whether the destruction of a good man will be legitimized. If Kavanaugh is not confirmed, we will have destroyed him, and that would be terribly unjust.

But what this argument really means, inescapably, is that Ford’s claims should never have gotten the examination they are now getting. Note that Graham is claiming this whole process has been deeply unfair to Kavanaugh. The ads on his behalf claim that Democrats are trying to “ruin” him with “smears” — but what they’ve really done is insist on a fuller inquiry than Republicans wanted.

3374

I think the argument is a bit obscurely stated, but there seem to be a few premises:

  1. The evidence we currently have is inconclusive and we are unlikely to acquire conclusive evidence
  2. In the absence of conclusive evidence, we can only make subjective assessments of veracity
  3. Those subjective assessments will, at best, still leave some doubt about the accusation
  4. If there is doubt about the accusation then confirming him means putting a potentially guilty attempted rapist on the Supreme Court, which is essentially the same as putting an actually guilty one
  5. If there is doubt about the accusation then not confirming him means derailing a nomination that was otherwise going to happen over a potentially false accusation, which is essentially the same as denying a seat to someone falsely accused
  6. Since false accusations are easy to come by, all future nominees are vulnerable to them
  7. Since we know how Kavanaugh has acted as a lower court judge, we know how he will act as Supreme Court judge
  8. Given that we know how he will act and find that satisfactory in a world without this accusation, it is irrelevant whether he is also guilty of attempted rape
  9. So, to protect future nominees from spurious charges, at the cost of nothing since we get the same SCOTUS decisions either way, we have to confirm him.

Now, if you are one of Socrates disciples, who accepts whatever the master posits as true, this forms a logical argument. It fails in a bunch of ways, of course, for those who think about it (i.e., not their target audience). Even if you grant them points 1-6, point 7 is somewhat suspect (as lower court judge he was always auditioning for the nomination, once freed from that constraint he may or may not rule the same way). Point 8 is flat out wrong because there’s also the consideration of the message it sends to not give a shit whether one of the most prestigious positions in the government should be held by a sexual abuser. Not to mention that it’s an absurd premise that believing an accusation where there’s any degree of uncertainty about guilt is the same as believing all unsupported accusations. And, even if we granted the whole argument as is, Kavanaugh invalidated himself as a judge by a) lying over and over again to Congress, and b) displaying a hyper-partisan paranoia that can’t help but seep into his decision making.

That said, this does seem to be the argument that could allow the GOP to proceed with the nomination. They will chalk up the lying and partisan ranting to indignation over a false accusation, and they will put their fingers in their ears about the message it sends, because who cares as long as we get good decisions from the Court?

I do think it also points to a reason people are going to the mat for him, aside from generally circling the wagons around their boy: they are sincerely worried about the slippery slope possibility that any powerful white man could be taken down by false accusations simply because people get in the habit of believing accusers.

3375

This is a fair thing to be worried about. And it certainly doesn’t only apply to powerful white men.

However, I did consider what the actual implications of this slippery slope are, from the perspective of the SCOTUS at least…

Basically, it means that any nominee could be knocked out by trumped up charges, since it’s not actually required to provide proof of those claims. In practice I think it’s a bit more difficult, since it requires some amount of coincidental contact then… I mean, you can only make an accusation if you indeed were in contact with the accused at some point. But, still, you could potentially have folks making stuff up for political reasons. Clearly, the GOP has basically stated that this is their intent moving forward.

So, on some level this means that for both parties, they would be forced to nominate folks who really aren’t offensive to the other side. They’d have to all be moderates that the other side says, “Meh, ok,” because those are the only folks who the other side wouldn’t be poltiically motivated to really fight hard against.

But then, upon further reflection, I considered that the lunatics on the fringes might end up making stuff up about the moderate justices, because they only want crazy extremists… and the lunatic fringes are probably the most likely folks to just straight up lie about shit.

Ultimately in the case of BK though, I think the biggest problem at this point is not the specific allegation, which may or may not be true… but rather that BK demonstrated what I don’t believe to be appropriate behavior during his hearing. Regardless of whether the allegation is true, BK showed me that he’s probably not the best pick to be a justice.

3376

I think you’re missing the most glaringly wrong premise in this example: That anyone has a right to a seat on the SC. It’s possible that someone could construct the argument without that premise (which you just did) but this particular example explicitly leans on that premise.

Of course, if people have a right to be on the SC, then Garland was deprived of that right. Indeed, I am being deprived of that right at this exact moment, and have been for my entire life, as have you and nearly everyone else in the country.

3377

This would not be a bad outcome, would it?

3378

Thanks for the summary. Point 6 is 100% wrong. This was not ‘easy’ for Ford. She has had to move her family out of their home, she’s received multiple death threats, she is being hounded by media at her job, etc. Not to mention having her traumatic personal experience broadcast to the world.

The idea that we must appoint Kavanaugh because otherwise anyone can be destroyed by baseless accusations is ridiculous. Somebody has to be willing to have their normal life destroyed to make an accusation against a powerful person.