Facebook removed this post as "spam" -- I don't know whether it was merely because of its length (they could just give that simple answer, and so, so that's not it) or because it challenges their own received wisdom on Kavanaugh, who knows. So it goes here.
To summarize: this is a debate about due process and institutions such as Congress and the Supreme Court and nomination hearings, between two people who did not vote for Trump -- I voted for Hillary and I don't know who Raph voted for. We both have the same values but line up different pieces of evidence to support them, and these are at odds. My argument is basically that if you insist on these standards for "evidence" from Kavanaugh's treatment at the hands of the Democrats and liberal media, they could come for you next.
Raph cites as his chief piece of evidence in this round the accusation from James Roche, who is described as a doctor and room mate of Kavanaugh's at Yale. From just a few minutes of digging, however, you can find out that he is not a practicing physician but CEO of a multi-million dollar Silicon Valley company who made his millions from a company that sold customer responses to big corporations like Wal-Mart, and by his own admission, only socialized with Kavanaugh a few days, despite being his room mate.
So I go to work on him, using the same methods of association and circumstantial evidence that he -- and Raph -- want applied to Kavanaugh. In the end I ask if Raph, himself a denizen of Silicon Valley, could like Roche to be summoned to a Congressional hearing on customer data privacy on the Internet using the same standards that the Democrats think should have been used -- and were in part used -- on Kavanaugh.
Raph Koster: From that very Vox article: "But Kavanaugh swore to the Senate Judiciary Committee that not only was it impossible that he attended a party with Ford in which he blacked out from drinking, he’s never been that drunk in his life. “I’ve never blacked out,” he told the committee. He answered “no” to a series of questions from guest prosecutor Rachel Mitchell about whether he’d ever, for example, been told about something he did while drunk that he hadn’t remembered or woken up without knowing how he got there. (Mitchell quickly sidelined soon afterward.) And when asked by Senator Amy Klobuchar if he’d ever drank so much that he’d been unable to remember things, he retorted, “I don’t know. Have you?” (Kavanaugh apologized to Klobuchar later in the hearing.)
This is at odds with the accounts of some contemporaries — particularly some of Kavanaugh’s Yale classmates. James Roche, Kavanaugh’s freshman roommate, told the New Yorker that he remembers Kavanaugh “frequently drinking excessively and becoming incoherently drunk.” Another college classmate, who’s now a doctor, told the Washington Post that “there’s no medical way I can say that he was blacked out. ... But it’s not credible for him to say that he has had no memory lapses in the nights that he drank to excess.”"
> "Being president of the Keg Club isn't proof of being black-out drunk; being black-out drunk isn't proof of rape."
Ah, but I didn't claim it was proof of rape. You're arguing against something more extreme than what I am saying.
> "No, I don't conclude that a plausible outcome is that Kavanaugh would undo Roe v. Wade after he has stated that it is settled law"
Again, that's specifically NOT something I said. I said that the plausible outcome was his voting in favor of restrictions on clinics based on states' rights. We just had a lengthy discussion about whether that was a real issue. But that's all I said.
> "Yet this subject makes you return again and again, with vim and vigor. Unlike some of my friends, you've had children, not abortions. So what drives you? What imaginary loss of the institutionalization of the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, before you were even born (! -- I was born in 1956) causes this energy? I marched against the Vietnam war when I was 14 and against the war in Iraq holding my small daughter's hand. Did you march against anything when you were 14 or ever? What causes your vehemence on this subject?"
I am not sure what subject you are referencing. I wasn't discussing anything related to abortion when I first showed up in this thread. Abortion didn't even come up until yesterday.
The kinds of things I marched against and wrote letters for and whatnot when I was young were against apartheid, for political prisoners of conscience, mostly with Amnesty International. I think I attended an anti-Iraq War thing as well during college.
The topic that I started with, and I think I have continued to return to throughout, was "we need to maintain due process." My initial post was "Of course, the answer to that would be to do a proper investigation, which didn’t happen. I suspect it *still* wouldn’t have found enough facts to prove anything but then at least we’d know that both presumption of innocence and due process had been upheld as principles. When presumption of innocence is used to dismiss even the need for an investigation, or to limit it unduly, we are left without confidence in the process."
In other words, the motive for my posting was fear for our institutions. That's what worries me these days. What I see is partisans actively destroying institutions, partisans letting members of their party -- their leaders -- get away with things that are corrupt or undemocratic because they are more invested in winning than the orderly functioning of the country.
It so happens that right now, most of those happen to be GOP, but that's because Trump himself is signally uninterested in democratic norms and because the GOP happens to be the party in power.
I don't think that concern over corruption should be a partisan issue. In fact, I would have hoped that conservatives would be prompt to the defense of basic principles. But I tend to get a lot of "Obama did it too!" when I talk about it.
My big gripe with Kavanaugh was the process. Literally, that. Oh, I don't like his politics in a bunch of ways, but I didn't like Gorsuch's much either and I didn't post anything at all about him. That's because the Gorsuch process went smoothly.
You say, “What I see is partisans actively destroying institutions, partisans letting members of their party -- their leaders -- get away with things that are corrupt or undemocratic because they are more invested in winning than the orderly functioning of the country.
But that’s exactly what happened when Democratic activists, many among the left wing of the party with indeed financial backing and already-existing press adulation, set out to sink Kavanaugh because they couldn’t come up with arguments proving that in fact he’d be against abortion rights. So I share your concerns, but with just the opposite set of facts that you think are merely good civic activities.
So no, Raph, the testimony you cite is not "at odds" with the statements of Kavanaugh. You don't like Kavanaugh -- he's Republican, he may be a secret abortion rights remover in your view, or maybe because he's a preppie, or even an Irish Catholic, and you know how they drink! So you're predisposed to *think* it's at odds. It is not.
There are four possibilities: 1) Ford has mixed up the identity of her assailant; 2) Kavanaugh was black-out drunk and doesn't remember it; 3) Kavanaugh wasn't black-out drunk but doesn't remember it anyway; 4) Kavanaugh was either black-out drunk or wasn't, but knows it did happen and is lying. It's this fourth option that many Democrats such as yourself think is true -- but you have no evidence whatsoever of this; no corroboration of Ford's story from anyone. So what you're trying to do is turn one of these *other* stories about his drinking into a corroboration -- to see if you can "catch him in a lie" or "corroborate her story" and not even to back up Ford – which you claim you aren’t doing – but only to indicate “his character” isn’t suitable for a justice. That’s what’s so sneaky about it. You know perfectly well that if there was no allegation from Ford at the height of the #MeToo movement, and the stories were only about his high school or college drinking with no sexual connotation, we would never have heard them. Absent a sexual abuse angle, these stories would only say more about the accusers than the accused and they wouldn’t risk them.
Kavanaugh’s statements under oath aren’t “at odds” -- the 4th option is the only one you're considering whereas any of the others could ALSO be true and be consistent with the friends' memories. For one obvious point, you can be "stumbling drunk" or "incoherent" but NOT "black-out drunk," which means not passing out, but not remembering what you did while drunk. These friends could remember that Kavanaugh was "stumbling drunk" -- which may or may not be true -- but a) that wouldn't mean he was black-out drunk b) and even so, it wouldn't mean that he's an assailant. It's your refusal to understand all the possibilities with these hysterical hypotheticals that is so troubling. You seem to think that if a friend remembers him as "stumbling drunk", THEREFORE he is a) blacking out b) has committed a rape attempt [which you claim not to be assessing, but it is implied]. But neither a) or b) follows definitely -- it's ONLY SPECULATION. "Becoming incoherently drunk" is way more common than "blacking out" -- and committing assault is even less rare than blacking out. They aren't welded couplets.
Kavanaugh's retort to Klobuchar is rude, but understandable, given the hostile situation in which he was placed. It's not relevant whether she was ever blackout drunk, but then what did she expect as an answer? The very definition of "black-out drunk" is that you don't remember. So if the answer is "yes," it would go with a situation where "everybody else" told him he was blackout drunk, not that he "remembered that he was blackout drunk". And again, if he admitted such a thing, it would only strengthen the innuendo of hostile Democrats, not constitute proof of assault.
Having the guest prosecutor there was a gambit designed to avoid the optics of mean white old Republicans questioning a delicate Democrat victim of sexual assault, but it's odd, given that we've been told a million times that this is not a criminal investigation but a "job interview". How many job interviews have guest prosecutors?
This college classmate was not called as a medical witness, nor was any medical witness called in this non-criminal trial (just as Ford was not called as a scientific expert on memory, and no one was). So it's only his opinion. He admits that "there is no medical way I can say he was blacked out". That's good, because it would be malpractice for him to make a diagnosis over the Internet over something that was alleged to have happened 36 years ago with a person he admits he saw infrequently. That's helpful for you to realize, since you cite him, that there is no lock-step way in which you can claim that "incoherence=black-out". But for him to then say "it's not credible for him to say that he has no memory lapses" is merely his opinion -- and one that his previous statement said to avoid legal/professional problems undermines. Yes, it is credible. Because he may have drank to excess -- which he admits -- yet not blacked out. And certainly not committed rape.
>Ah, but I didn't claim it was proof of rape. You're arguing against something more extreme than what I am saying.
In a climate where the whole purpose of drilling down on his drinking was to link it to an assault, this is pretty disingenuous. So what you're saying is that you want to gather all these "witnesses" about his "black-outs" but merely for "character" purposes, not to prove rape. Except, they aren't character witnesses given that these events happened in high school and college. If you think people should be denied a political position based on what they did in high school or college, say so. I don't, because there is no evidence of any serious crime. And more to the point, they aren't a) any circumstantial evidence of a rape attempt b) not relevant to examining his character now, as he has been a judge for the last 30 years and not to our knowledge had any episodes of drunk driving, or bad behavior while drunk, or even any anecdotal tales of his drinking to excess now. So that's why I'm not for admitting it as "evidence" in this "job interview" as it does not describe his 30 years as a judge -- which is what matters -- and the background of his private life as an adult while serving as clerks or judges -- which is what is relevant now.
James Roche, Kavanaugh’s freshman roommate, is complaining that "the FBI never contacted him." And? The FBI doesn't contact all your room mates from college or anywhere, and even in the extended background check granted, it's quite reasonable to assume that if such room mate has already told what he knows to the Washington Post, there isn't much to get there. (Again, there's this assumption that the FBI works magic).
James Roche said in his statement, "Brett and I did not socialize beyond the first few days of freshman year" a fact you can glean only if you click through to read his actual statement. Why is someone who didn't socialize "beyond a few days" and only occasionally spoke to his room mate at night (it's like the room mate in "I am Charlotte Simmons") a credible witness?
Making a claim that someone "lied under oath" as Roches does about Kavanaugh is a very serious matter. I'll bet if he were a lawyer, he would risk doing that. Roche also said he believed Kavanaugh's other accuser, Ramirez, who was a "good friend" of his by his own admission. But her story is pretty flimsy, even by the standards of the liberal press. And evidently while at these same Yale parties, Roche himself was never "black-out" drunk and of course has a pristine memory, right?
But I don't believe that a doctor speculating on the meaning of someone's drinking -- after his own caveats -- is anything that can be used against Kavanaugh. Furthermore, I’m happy to use the same association on Roche as he used on Kavanaugh. Roche is " CEO of Helix Re, a San Mateo-based software company spun out of the Google X project." It's also described as providing “advanced technology solutions” for real estate owners, operators and tenants." Likely he is a Democrat, and could be a contributor to Democrats. The same kind of hysterical speculation could be started about him as he has indulged in about Kavanaugh.
Crunchbase has more that explains that like all Internet millionaires, these brothers got their start scraping data (and likely that is still the core function of that "advanced technology" for selling real estate).
"Jamie and Matthew Roche are the Co-CEOs of BO.LT. Over 15 years, the two brothers have created three successful startups. Their most recent company, Offermatica, defined the category of online testing and targeting and is now the Adobe Test and Target platform, which serves billions of impressions per week.
Prior to Offermatica, the two advised and built solutions for many of the most powerful companies in the world including Wal*Mart, Intuit, Intel, CNET, Nike and many others. James and Matthew have spent their careers focused on removing the barriers that separate marketers from their audience."
I raise this to explain that I can only be profoundly cynical about James Roche. No, his tech career is not relevant to a rape charge about a Supreme Court nominee but neither are his memories of 30 plus years vintage relevant. But his status as a tech millionaire may be relevant to his character. He's a rich, Yale-educated, successful start-up seller (he got $65 million for selling his company which "helps companies analyze their customers' online behavior to boost revenue", i.e. for personal data scraping operations -- who naturally has his own press spokesman -- and who evidently wants to influence politics from Silicon Valley -- as you do. Let's not pretend he's a mere concerned country doctor. Let's not pretend he's an innocent actor in general -- he's the kind of liberal who can get away selling to Wal-Mart despite all the hatred it generates on the left because no one will bother to look. He's the kind of data-scraper like Obama who first scraped all our data from Facebook to win the elections, then privatized his Organizing for America to a non-profit group where now the data is not accessible, who did this long before Cambridge Analytica, and will never have the scrutiny they did.
Shall I keep going? I raise the details of his biography to illustrate that two can play at this game -- he dredges up details of Kavanaugh's biography that may or may not be true from more than 30 years ago and which have no bearing on his activity as a judge, i.e. he cites no court decisions or legal theory or action. Meanwhile he himself from all indications has had 30 years of scraping data for profit. Which is the more despicable human being, if you want to get into biographical details?
He says in his statement that he has "no political agenda" and he merely thinks Ramirez, his friend, has a right to be heard. Can we probe some more on what it means for him to be the friend of Ramirez, given her self-reporting – and does he still socialize with her today? I simply don't believe him -- chances are strong that he votes Democrat, gives to candidates, hates Trump, is pro-abortion and all the rest, and this all came together in his sense of "civic duty" which is really a form of vanity. What was especially precious is his refusal to provide any more information -- "that's all I'm comfortable sharing" and refusal to grant any press interviews. That lets me know it's bullshit. You may feel that he could give confidential information in an FBI interview and that it's the fault of Congress or the White House for not allowing the FBI free range as long as they wish, but he can comfortably hide behind that forever -- which is why I think it's bullshit.
Ramirez is a woman who by her own admission was drunk to the point of having only a patchy memory of this incident in which she claimed Kavanaugh exposed himself after a dildo game. Why is that credible? It would never be coming from a Democrat against a Republican.
>Again, that's specifically NOT something I said. I said that the plausible outcome was his voting in favor of restrictions on clinics based on states' rights.
But you don't have evidence of that, either. A Supreme Court justice isn't going to determine a state's restrictions; a state would. It's a red herring. Because quite frankly, states *do* have right to determine matters of health, welfare, and education, not to mention other rights, and thank God for it, that's what makes America not-Russia. If Missouri or Kentucky wants to place restrictions on abortion, they have the democratic majority to do so, and if you want an abortion in the third-trimester, because you can't manage to get it together to have one before that, then you will have to cross a state line.
>When presumption of innocence is used to dismiss even the need for an investigation, or to limit it unduly, we are left without confidence in the process.
But presumption of innocence is just that. It's supposed to give way to the speculation of a Silicon Valley doctor who makes charges about something 34 years ago about a man he didn't socialize beyond a few days? It's supposed to give way to a woman drunk and on the floor at a dildo game who admits her memory is patchy? It's supposed to give way even to a person like Ford who appears credible but who can't remember the time, or the place, or the manner in her story? Why? Presumption of innocence is just that. You might counter that for all we know, Roche never violated customer privacy in any of his start-ups; we don't know that he did, only that it is likely given the nature of his companies and what they offered. Then you can concede that Kavanaugh never had a black-out.
You are imagining you are championing due process in this debate but what you are championing is hearsay, innuendo, cultural beliefs, and at best circumstantial evidence that doesn't prove anything. I think due process has to be about at the very least, journalistic facts, if not "beyond a reasonable doubt" which isn't the standard for a nomination hearing. Raph, would you like the standards that you think should apply to Kavanaugh be used in a Congressional hearing about customer privacy on the Internet to which Roche is subpoenaed?
Judging from all the Democratic activists email I get calling for "revenge" and spreading cartoons of the Supreme Court of Kavanaugh in a funny frat cap and all the rest, and judging from the kind of powerful individuals who have indeed lined up and do indeed have the cash for running these campaigns as Kavanaugh complained, and as I know from having worked at Soros or received grants from Soros from most of my adult life, if they really think perjury has been committed and a great wrong has occurred, they will chase down every story, find every fact, launch every lawsuit for incompetence, get every ABA ruling, do everything possible they can to discredit Kavanaugh. Watch them. It didn't work on Clinton (when it was the GOP versus Clinton) or on Thomas (when the Democrats warred on him as they did on Bork). Good luck!
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