They are cowards because of outside counsel? Ford doesn’t get to set the rules.
Who watched the Kavenaugh interview? (I know it’s taking one for the team.)
I did. I support him but I thought he came across as stiff and unpersuasive.
Serious question, as I don’t normally follow committee hearings all that carefully. When’s the last time a committee used an outside counsel and denied the members a chance to grandstand? This seems like an extremely rare event to me, and that it’s being done because they don’t want the optics of a bunch of old white men questioning a woman.
Same as he was in high school, then.
I don’t recall it ever being done. However, Ford has asked for a chance to tell her story. I know she would like to tell her story and then whine about how her questioners were old white men, but that’s not how it works, and it is pretty smart for the GOP to cut off that accusation from the outset.
That actually is very funny. 
They’re cowards because they’re afraid to face her. That letter is not an attempt to set the rules. The goal is to shine a light on their cowardice.
How in the fuck did you read it and conclude stalling?
John Mace, I think you might also find this section of the article interesting:
To my knowledge, not illegal, but definitely pathetic and disgusting. Lacking character too. Not the sort of person I want in the judiciary.
YMMV
From HERE for those who missed it the first time.
Ford doesn’t want to be cross-examined by a professional in the art of cross examination. It’s not a search for the truth, but to poke holes in her story. That’s the gist of why she’d prefer the Senators do the questioning (they’d not do it as well) and that’s the reason the Senators would prefer it.
Not her call, though.
They do get to set the rules. But when they do so in a way that has every appearance of hiring a person to serve as the inquisitor of Ford and the defender of Kavanaugh and that attempts to insulate them from embarrassing video clips … well pointing that out, hell mocking their chickenshittedness, is fair game.
This must be why he drank so much back then.
Right on.
The cross-examiner has no constituents, either. That allows the attorney to go the extreme with the questioning, if needed.
And you can already imagine the Republican Senators giving quotes afterwards, “Personally, I wouldn’t have gone that far with the questioning, but the fact remains Ford’s story is missing too many key details…”
Hell, I’ve been told by an eyewitness that maybe 15 years ago, when I was in my middle 50s, I rushed into an arena to rescue a woman from being trampled and injured or killed by the horse she’d abused into a murderous rage – and I have only vague wisps of memories of the event, though I definitely recall the person and the horse.
On the other hand I have painfully clear memories of the times I was groped on the street by a couple of passing, laughing guys, ordered to “Smile, honey!” by a disgusting slimeball in my neighborhood, had an erect naked dick stuck in my back as I stood in the stairwell of a streetcar. Could I give you precise dates when each of these things happened? Hell, no. Could I describe the episode itself? Yes, including location and precisely what happened and how I felt about it.
Bravo, sir.
So instead of taking on the risk of looking like a bunch of sexist troglodytes, their preference is to look like cowards who have to hide behind an outsider because they are too politically incompetent to do their jobs without appearing like sexist troglodytes.
Exactly. They want to call her a slut, but that would look bad. Somehow they came to the conclusion that hiring someone to call her a slut is better optics.
It isn’t.
You can right click on the link and tell it to open in an incognito window. That’s what I did because I had the same problem.
Kavanaugh writes whiney letter to Senate judiciary committee. Suck it up buttercup. You don’t get to make the rules.
That’s the proper response when someone tries to communicate with the judiciary committee, right?