Sitting here, at my computer, I can’t be. Luckily, I believe in the concept of delegation, and the appropriate group to delegate this issue to is the investigative body charged with investigating these types of things. So, I can wait for the experts to conclude. Unless, for some reason there was someone with a vested interest in not letting the experts conclude…
If I were credibly accused of rape, I would be investigated. Period.
If I were investigated for rape and were innocent I would want the best investigators in the world to investigate it, confident in the knowledge that they would not find evidence to implicate me.
If I were investigated for rape and were guilty I would not want the best investigators in the world to investigate it, because they would find evidence to implicate me. I would do everything I could to avoid the investigation.
To be clear, the latter is what I see happening in the Kavanaugh matter.
I don’t know how many different way I need to say this, and I don’t know why people persist in misunderstanding it.
Better to ask when he wasn’t drinking heavily at parties in high school. I bet it was rare. Ford says she believes it happened in the summer of 1982.
But I get your point here, and the broader point that it is impossible to determine what exactly happened. And she will get a lot of, “Is it possible…” questions. However, I don’t expect her to have any doubt that she was sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh at a party when she was in High School and that Judge was in the room when it happened.
Just to be clear, if the FBI does investigate Kavanaugh, they will not be offering any conclusions about guilt or innocence and if Kavanaugh is criminally investigated for the alleged assault, it won’t be the FBI doing that investigation. I know you guys are bantering about a hypothetical, but in terms of how that applies to this situation it’s important to keep in mind exactly what the FBI will be doing. They will be fact finding and offering those facts to either the President or the Senate Judiciary Committee. They won’t be determining whether Kavanaugh is guilty as charged, either in a legal sense or a colloquial one.
OK, so bottom line I was correct that Rape Shield laws generally prohibit defendants in criminal cases from introducing evidence about the sexual history of their accusers, and your earlier statement was misleading.
What you’re doing now is maneuvering into a position that laws about this are more lax in criminal cases than in civil. OK .(FTR it’s possible that this is what you meant all along, but your language was misleading at best, hence my comment.)
Yikes. I go out of my way to try to return to the merits of discussion, and you again derail it into personal attacks. Here’s the exact text of my post on the subject:
"In the civil context, yes. In the criminal context, no, for all the reasons I have described.
(It’s a bit more subtle than that, but basically we let criminal defendants get away with a lot more of this than we do civil defendants, much less people outside judicial proceedings.)"
If you feel misled, despite my very clear disclaimer that it is complicated and that I was merely giving the gist that we let criminal defendants get away with a lot more of this than we do civil defendants (including letting them raise sexual history in contexts in which civil defendants cannot), then that is 100% on you. I think I’ve reached my limit of tolerance for your style of diverting everything into personal controversy.
She won’t…I don’t think she is lying. However, to play devils advocate, many people know they have been abducted by aliens, or remember for sure that X event happened, even when it never did. That’s the thing about the evidence presented thus far…it sounds to me a lot like many of the false memory scares in the 80’s. Perhaps it’s not…but it could be. And at this late date with the level of evidence presented to date there is literally no way to verify any of this outside of the memories of a bunch of drunk high school students 37 years ago. So much could be conflated or just made up, but that each of the people involved truly believe to be how it happened that I just don’t see how interviewing any of them would be meaningful.
Basically, if this is a precedence we use going forward to determine if a candidate is viable I can see a lot of room for abuse down the line…and that leaves aside deliberate, crafted abuse. Just asking people to recall events from so long ago and if they recall anything hinky going on, to me, sounds an awful lot like the devil worshiping child care scares, or the parental abuse scares, or myriad other false memory scares we’ve had in the past. Everyone else seems to be cool with this, so many I’m fretting for no reason.
If you don’t like diverting everything into personal controversy, my suggestion would be to avoid opening with lines like “I’m not really interested in educating you on this” when I was essentially correct in my statements on the subject while you were misleading at best.
re the evidence presented so far (which I think is too early to draw conclusions from), you’re explaining why no credible prosecutor would charge Kavanaugh with this crime - the evidence is spotty. And you’re spot on. There’s no realistic way, outside a confession, to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
Doesn’t matter. Most Senators would vote for him even if this is absolutely true (boys will be boys, he was young, drunk, one time deal, etc.). A lot of Senators were not voting for him before this ever came to light. This is about one or two Senators - giving them enough cover to not vote for him/still vote for him. That’s all. (leaving aside how politicians might use this during the mid-terms).
As far as precedence, it’s happened twice in the last nine nominations (?). I’m not sure what the process is supposed to be, though. With that lack of clarity, yea, it’s open for abuse (the abuse being the tardiness in bringing forth the allegation). I mean, we vote for the President (politicians) on X day come hell or high water, so get all the allegations in before then or it’s too late - seems fair. Maybe make a rule that we vote on SC nominees within 5, 10, 30 days after the hearings are over, or before. I don’t know. You can’t stop someone from bringing forth a credible allegation against someone, not today.
It’ll be interesting how I/we feel after we listen to him and to her.
Is she definite about the date? I thought earlier she was not clear if it might have been the summer before or the summer after.
It will be a tightrope for Republicans to walk to ask “was there something that refreshed your memory of the exact year?” without sounding accusatory. Obviously there will be people who will say that any question about any detail is accusatory, but that can’t be helped. If she just gets up there and says “Bret Kavanaugh attacked me, sometime between 1981 and 1983, and I don’t remember anything else except I only had one beer” that won’t do either side much good.
You mentioned earlier that her attorney needs to prepare her to present details so as to tell her story truthfully but convincingly. I would think her problem is going to be not to add details to the story. If she doesn’t remember, just say “I don’t remember”. Because once she says “now I recall that there were six people in the house” when she said earlier that there were four, that is a detail that does not allow her to tell her story convincingly, even if it is true either way.
The reporting is that in her “individual therapy notes”, it happened when she was in her late teens. I believe she was 15 in 1982. Maybe that will be clarified during her testimony. But as of now, that’s what we have to work with.
Just an interesting anecdote: I had a partner once tell me that when preparing witnesses, he likes to ask them what the time is. When they go to look at their watch, he corrects them that the answer is, “They don’t know.” I always thought that was very illustrative.
First, I am left wondering as to whether the Republican strategy to vote on Kavenaugh as soon as possible is motivated in some way (either large or small) out of concern for another accuser stepping forward.
Second, let’s say that everything goes poorly for Kavenaugh this week and his nomination is pulled. I have literally zero doubt that Trump will nominate someone whose judicial philosophy is more extreme than Kavenaugh’s. Who? I don’t know. Maybe the secret writings of Judge Bork can be nominated. But there’s no doubt in my mind that Trump would shift course and nominate someone more moderate.
Third, let’s say that Kavenaugh is confirmed, and then some other shoe drops that makes Kavenaugh look bad. Might that shoe drop shortly before the election? If so, Republicans will have a real political shit-show on their hands for not taking a little bit of time to pass this matter on to professional investigators.
Fourth, what is the best case scenario for Republicans here? It isn’t like there’s some monumental case on the Supreme Court docket for the first week of session that Kavenaugh is desperately needed for – at least so far as I know.
Add that all up and I see more risks for Republicans for pursuing the “confirm ASAP!” strategy than for the “let’s hold on for just as long as it takes to expedite an investigation and not draw this out too much” strategy. After all, if the Kavenaugh nomination turns to crap, another right winger will be nominated pretty shortly and McConnell can easily jam that one through (assuming there’s no rape-related allegations) during the lame duck.
So, I still don’t understand the conservative fixation with “OMGOMGOMG we have to vote THIS WEEK!!”
The summer of 1982 was from the initial Washington Post article. But it did not read like a firm timeframe. It’s clearly worth following-up with is it possible this summer, that summer, this year, that year…she’ll probably say it’s possible. If I’m helping her, I concede all those details and that she does not remember them because she apparently doesn’t. But it still happened.
She needs to focus on, and add details to, what she absolutely knows. That she was a young girl. That she was assaulted by a very drunken Kavanaugh. And that he put his hands over her mouth that prevented her from breathing and she thought she might die - the last part gets us out of the boys will be boys territory and into…something else. Something more potentially tragic. How she articulates that part - some 20 words or so, could decide this thing (for those couple Senators).
Politically, I’d expect the very best scenario (highest probability of being very politically beneficial) for the Democrats would be that Kavanaugh is confirmed but then more accusers/otherwise ironclad evidence of abuse come to light in mid-late October. In that case, Democrats could heavily campaign on obtaining the Senate to further investigate (and maybe impeach!) Kavanaugh, while also preventing his replacement from being confirmed under Trump.
Cite.The first two seem reasonable, and the last condition seems already to have come about -
So now perhaps Ms. Ford, or her lawyers, will change and say that she has to be able to hear what he says but not let him hear what she says. Which I suppose is smart on her part, if it happens that way, but if she tells her story to the best of her ability, why would that change based on anything he says?
Let’s say that it takes 2 weeks before Kavanaugh is dismissed as a candidate. That would be reasonable if they are talking about a hearing on this sometime late next week, which, AFAIK, is what we are talking about now. Let’s say that Trump has someone else lined up, so that he can get that person in the pipeline and start the hearings for that candidate then in 3 weeks. That seems reasonable to me. I’d say that even a small delay at that point could push this to the point where the Dems can simply say, well, let’s wait until after the elections. I find it hard to believe that this hasn’t occurred to people in this thread. And that we are supposed to believe that this hasn’t occurred to the Dems either, or that they aren’t just playing for time on this.
As I said, I’m good with it. I think there are enough questions about this guy to warrant a delay, and probably him being dismissed as a candidate. But to say, with a straight face that really there is no reason why the Republicans want to push things is simply because they are afraid of another witness is just silly. There are 45 days until the elections. Even getting close to that target is going to allow the Dems to delay until afterward. And look how that strategy worked out for the Republicans. They have reaped a huge reward for their delays, while paying, so far, minimal political costs. Assuming there is a sea change in the Congress, the Dems are trying to do the same thing.