The “preponderance of evidence” here is this:
You have an unsurprisingly-partisan view of which way the “preponderance of evidence” leans.
And we have been through why I take the account of one person who gave a candid answer, vs, 4 people who gave a different answer at a later time when it was publicly known what Kavanaugh’s answer was.
You can have the opinion that 4 friends giving an alibi after they know what alibi to give is more credible than one person candidly answering a question. That’s not an invalid opinion, even though I disagree with it. Too bad you seem incapable of treating the opinions of others the same way.
Your accusation of partisan bias is unnecessary, untrue, and inappropriate.
Why? Because it is a partisan witch hunt. No witness in the country would be investigated for perjury given the prima facie case that you and others have put forth. If they are untruths (which there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that they are) there is no reason to believe that Kavanaugh knowingly lied about them as opposed to being mistaken, and they are so laughably irrelevant to the purpose of the hearings to make his statements immaterial.
So what if he was merely involved in the Pryor confirmation instead of handling it? Is there an agreed upon meaning for those words? So what if he messed around with a girl named Renate in high school? Did that change a single vote?
This new talking point of “we don’t know anything, that’s why we should investigate” belies the practices of any investigative agency in the entire country. They have limited budgets. They have to prioritize their resources. They go after cases where it is likely to uncover some evidence of a crime.
By your standard, we should investigate Dr. Ford for perjury regarding her “fear of flying” statement. She told the committee that she didn’t want to come earlier because she was afraid of flying yet the evidence shows that she routinely and regularly flew all over the world. Investigate her? Hell no. You would have to quadruple the number of FBI agents and/or U.S. Marshals to look into all of that kind of stuff.
When you depart from standard practice and investigate a person because you don’t like his politics or are steamed off that he was confirmed to the Supreme Court, that looks like selective prosecution which is an absolute abuse of power in a free society. It chills speech and it deters people from becoming public figures. An investigation, in and of itself, is burdensome, causes anxiety, and besmirches the good name of a person who may be completely innocent. Law enforcement knows this (the good ones) and they prioritize for that reason in addition to budgetary constraints.
So I disagree with your premise. It is not on me to say why we shouldn’t investigate. It is on you to say why we should investigate this instance of possible perjury (with no probable cause) when in any other instance we would not.
You describe it as a partisan witch hunt to dismiss it. I do not see it as such, I see it as investigating credible allegations against someone in the highest seats of power in the world.
Out of curiosity, where were you for the umpteenth investigation of hillary?
So what? Well, if it is not big deal as to how much influence he had over the nomination, then why did he lie? If it wasn’t that big a deal that he was referring to one of his classmates as promiscuous and implying that he had been a par of that, why did he lie?
And no, it didn’t change a single vote, as the republican are pretty well in lockstep. They don’t care the character of the judges that they appoint, only the content of their decisions.
This is not new, this is not odd, this is not anything out of the ordinary. If you don’t think that there is probable cause to investigate, then make that claim, don’t make the claim that it is a new thing to investigate based on probable cause.
Well, first, you’d have to put her statement back into the context that you took it out of, and then you would realize that the claim you just made has no merit.
Once again, tell that to hillary.
I have made the case, and you simply saying “(with no probable cause)” doesn’t negate the probable cause that I laid out.
Because it’s vital for the nation that the public retains high confidence in the legitimacy of the SCOTUS (and the judicial system in general). We need to know whether a member of the SCOTUS is a dishonest and dishonorable person, and if so, the extent of his dishonesty and dishonor. Since there was reasonable skepticism about the honesty of some of his assertions and answers during his hearings, it’s reasonable that Congress would want to investigate them.
Partisan concerns certainly make such an investigation much more likely when the opposite party controls a part of Congress, but partisan concerns don’t invalidate this legitimate and rational concern.
And, in this case, it primarily does so because partisan concerns were the reason for a lack of investigation in the first place. The Republican-led congress deliberately avoided having these investigations, because their goal was to get the guy in. It took a guy who was going to quit to get them to even investigate whether or not the guy committed rape, and even then they got the investigation crippled to ensure it wouldn’t find anything.
This is merely the investigation that should have happened before his confirmation. The entire point of having a hearing is to then have everything on record so that you can then check if they are lying. If you don’t do that, then the hearing is entirely pointless. It’s not like someone is going to confess during the hearing. They’re gonna lie.
But they did all of this. For example Pryor. He said that he didn’t “handle” Pryor’s confirmation. The Democrats scoured the planet for any contrary information and found all of those emails. He then pointed out that being involved does not mean that he handled it, some other guy did that. At no time did he say that he was blind to the process or had no idea what was going on. He has been investigated by the FBI and the Dems and the media were looking for something, anything in a desperate attempt to derail his confirmation.
I’ll bet there is not a person in this country as of today who has been investigated more than Kavanaugh. And you guys keep saying “probable cause” “reasonable” etc. but there is simply none of that present. You think he is lying because you don’t like him. You hate that Garland got snubbed and that the Ford allegations didn’t work, so now we just keep trying.
Is this the new normal? Keep launching criminal investigations against one’s political enemies?
If you really believe this, we live on different planets. On mine, he had the normal background check, and then when the allegations came out, only one of them (the one from Ford) had any sort of significant investigation, and that was a deliberately limited and hamstrung investigation. It didn’t even involve looking at employment records that could have confirmed (and narrowed the time frame) or denied parts of Ford’s story (the part in which she says she ran into Mark Judge at the supermarket he worked at a few weeks after the incident). And for the other accusations, there was pretty much zero investigation. And since then, there has been zero investigation into his possible perjury.
So this is just a delusional assertion, IMO.
So you howling mad yet?
And apparently congress couldn’t care less about yours.
I kindly recommend you take your personal problem with me to the Pit, since you’ve been ignoring what I’ve been actually saying about this topic.
It’d not a personal problem. You made a prediction about what the Dermocrats would do and what you (and other “progressives” would do if the Democrats didn’t do what you expected). Now it seems like the Democrats aren’t going to do what you expected. Are you and other “progressives” doing what you said you would?
Did I misquote you?
Did I misrepresent what you said?
Or did you overstate your position?
Do you still think the principle was really important to the Democrats or was it only important when it could possibly delay the confirmation until a possible democratic majority in the senate.
I don’t blame the Democrats. After all the Republicans pulled off something like this with Merrick Garland and ended up with a pretty solidly right leaning supreme court.
You’ve greatly misrepresented what I’ve said. I’ve explained this before, and you ignored my explanation. I’m pleased that (based on news reports in the last few weeks) Congress will be investigating possible perjury during the confirmation hearings by Kavanaugh, which broadly meets what I hoped for and expected. And jives (broadly) with my posts earlier in this thread.
It’s not unusual to circle back to speculative statements made earlier in the debate when they turn out to be untrue. They could still come investigate these allegations of sexual assault but it doesn’t seem to be the sort of priority that you thought it was.
No I haven’t. You have shifted the goalposts. I seems YOU are the one misrepresenting what you said. You were specifically talking about the sexual assault allegations in that post.
Now you seem to be happy if they simply go after kavanaugh in some way shape or form. It’s no longer #metoo style outrage over the short shrift given to uncorroborated allegations of sexual assault from 35 ears ago. Its simply partisan now.
And frankly they are not likely to pursue perjury either. The intent requirement to establish perjury is at least as high as the intent requirement for breaching national security was for Hillary. You its just political theater for someone that never has to face re-election. A real waste of political capital.
I’m not really interested in going back and forth on your continuing insistence on misinterpreting what I’ve said, making false psychic assertions about the state of my mind, and making weird and baseless predictions about the future.
It’s pretty obvious for everyone to see that you thought the allegations of sexual assault were so significant that they simply MUST be investigated and you would be upset if the Democrats didn’t do this.
You may have overstated your position and overestimated the actual sincerity of the pursuit of the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh.
Now that it is becoming clear that this was simply a case of politicians engaging in politics (to stall a vote until after the elections) and that they have no intention of pursuing these uncorroborated allegations, you are shifting goal posts (or letting your political leaders shift them for you).
How does that feel knowing that you were played by your own party? How does it feel to know that the Democrats ginned up all that outrage in you (and others like you) in a cynical effort to capitalize on #metoo to try and force a delay in the confirmation vote and not because they actually cared that much about dr. ford’s allegations?
I am curious to see how you rationalize things when they don’t pursue perjury charges.
I’m not interested in playing around in this fantasy reality you’ve created (which apparently involves reading not only my mind, but the minds of the Democrats who have held Congress for approximately 1 month, and ignoring the indications they will indeed be seriously looking into possible perjury by Kavanaugh), nor in playing the role of this fantasy version of me that you want to take down.
Oh, please do not attempt to spread this horse manure around any more. Merrick Garland did not commit anything like the malfeasance that Kavanaugh almost surely has to deserve the unconscionable treatment that McConnell & Co. gave him. Be very glad “false equivalency” is not an indictable offense. :dubious:
You know, this thread seems to have been bumped just to start a pissing match.
Andy, Damuri Akashi. Take it to the Pit if you want to duel like that.
Closed.