Which is fine, you didn’t claim they were BFF’s or “close friends”.
But now you’ve made a claim that I wonder if you can support. You said Wittes knows him on a personal level. What’s your cite for that? Everything the author offers in the article (the Starr investigation, the White House counsel’s office, the D.C. Circuit) deals with a professional relationship, not a personal one.
AFAICT, the article is by an author that is overselling the shit out of a slight acquaintance with Kavanaugh over the years to try to leave gullible people with the impression that one of Kav’s “close friends” / personal relations is denouncing him. I think you (and Evil Economist) fell for it.
Here.
*
I have known Brett Kavanaugh for a long time—in many different contexts. I am fond of him personally. I think the world of him intellectually. I don’t believe he lied in his Senate testimony. I don’t believe he’s itching to get on the Supreme Court to protect Donald Trump from Robert Mueller. I’m much less afraid of conservative judges than are many of my liberal friends. As recently as a few days ago, I was cheerfully vouching for Kavanaugh’s character.*
I’m going to need a cite for “slight acquaintance.”
And if you want evidence of Kav’s friends saying he’s full of shit, look no further than Chad Ludington or Renate Schroeder Dolphin. Two more people who know him much better than you ever will and think he’s a horrible person.
The part I quoted, that “he knows Kavenaugh better than * do.”
The broader point you seem to be driving at here seems flawed, at least from the side I assume you’re on in this argument. If we should defer to Wittes’ opinion of Kavanaugh because “he knows Kavanaugh better”, shouldn’t Wittes defer to Ashley Kavanaugh’s opinion on the matter, because presumably she knows him best?
That’s not evidence of a “personal level” relationship, is it? Are you banking on “I am fond of him personally”? Here is what he said on Twitter:
“We interacted over a bunch of the issues” and “some of the emails are to and from me (none very interesting, by the way)” doesn’t appear to speak to a personal relationship.
I know a shitload of people on a professional level that I can say without hesitation “I am fond of [them] personally”. Most of those people I would not claim to have a “personal” relationship with.
Here’s what Benjamin Wittes said prior to the testimony last week:
Another good reason to oppose him is not that he’s a liar. He’s not. Full stop. There’s no need to demonize one’s opponents. And there’s no need to gin up a “perjury” issue here.
and here’s what he said after:
There’s one more reason I could not vote to confirm Kavanaugh: His apparent lack of candor on the culture of drinking at Georgetown Prep and later is a problem of its own, quite apart from what it may indicate about the truth of Ford’s story. People throw around words like perjury too blithely. I won’t do so here. I will say that I do not believe he showed the sort of candor that warrants the Senate’s—or the public’s—confidence. To the extent some commentators on the right are defending Kavanaugh’s testimony as containing the sort of white lies that anyone might tell under the circumstances, let me just say that I don’t believe that Supreme Court justices get to tell self-exculpating white lies—and I don’t believe in white lies from anyone else either in sworn congressional testimony.
From (paraphrasing) “he’s not a liar” to (again paraphrasing) “he told a bunch of lies”.
If you want to make this a case where we all defer to the people that know him best, I doubt it’s going to shake out the way you want. If you insist though, I’d be happy to accept the balance of the opinion of people that know Kavanaugh closely. Shall we weight their opinions by how closely they know Kavanaugh? Maybe points for frequency of interaction and recency?
Yes, that is weird. I think he knows him, but the claim in question was this: “… this someone who knows Kavanaugh on both a personal and professional level …”
What sort of things, in your mind, would move a relationship from a “professional level” to a personal one? Has Wittes done those things with Kavanaugh?
ETA: let me put it this way - I have met some people through work that are not particularly good at their job. I might say “I’m fond of him personally, but he’s not very good at his job”. This does NOT mean that I know that person on a “personal level”. I may have never met their family, or hung out with them on the weekends, or get a Christmas card from them, or whatever else might denote knowing someone on a “personal level”. Do you understand?
In my experience, it’s the people who “know someone best” who are the last to know what a shit person he is. How many mothers have you seen defending murderers?
But when multiple of a person’s friends start declaring he’s a shit person, that’s when you know that person has done something pretty shitty.
Oops! I have made an oopsie. The first quote, about Trump being a serial liar, wasn’t by RBG at all. It was from Ted Cruz. So I guess it isn’t bias by the judiciary at all!
But I guess that you concede that Kavenaugh has a bias against Democrats for destroying his family, I suppose that error is rendered moot.
I think my work is done here.
Yes, indicating that he is demonstrating, by poking fun at his presumed bias against hippies, why judicial temperament is important. I believe these remarks were made in the context of why he voted to protect flag burning as projected First Amendment expression.
Using statements by RBG or Scalia that were either retracted because they were exceptionally poor judgment and made AFTER confirmation (in the case of RBG), or rather lighthearted and self-deprecating remarks on the merits of the judiciary (in the case of Scalia) are about the worst examples you can point to in order to defend Kavenaugh’s meltdown.
In one case, it shows how little recourse the nation has for a lifetime appointment given to a stark partisan (and perhaps one with a score to settle), and in the other, the temperament that Kavenaugh failed to demonstrate to the public.
Yes, but are you aware that the Supreme Court used to be located in the Capitol Building?
Because that factoid also has nothing to do with anything.
No. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you can possibly choose this hill, of all hills, to die on. Because saying “I like him personally” obviously means that he knows him personally. My cite for this is the fact that words mean things.
Would it help if I posted it on 4chan and then linked it here? That seems to be the level of evidence that you accept for some reason.
Wittes and Kavanaugh **probably got together for drinks **or happened to frequent the same bar. That would take their relationship to a personal level.
I don’t think you’ve grasped my point if you think your work here is done. My point is that all of our justices have biases. Some of them have even expressed those publicly. That doesn’t make them unfit for service on the Court in my eyes, and neither do Kavanaugh’s biases.
Because I’m not the one dying on the hill. Evil Economist claimed he was a “close friend”. When his mistake was pointed out to him, he conceded it wasn’t the case. Then you with the face jumped in with the claim that Wittes knew him “on both a personal and professional level”. He didn’t provide any evidence for this relationship ‘on … a personal … level’. It seems like the logical thing would have been for ywtf to concede “yeah, you’re right, I don’t have any evidence they knew each other on a personal level, but they do appear to have been professional acquaintances”. You guys chose a different route though, so I’m delighted to continue pointed out the dearth of evidence for a relationship on a “personal level”.
If 4chan has evidence that Wittes and Kavanaugh knew each other on a “personal level”, then yes, cite away. It would at least be something, which would beat the nothing that’s been offered thus far.
I’m sure that you’ll argue that in this newly released email when he refers to his group as “prolific pikers” you’ll be arguing that it might actually mean that they are bulimic.