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[Frumple]

Let us humbly pass the Arcane Pool Judicial Reformation Act, replacing every SCOTUS justice with a Magic 8 Ball. I can see no way that could go poorly.

[Dunamisdeos]

The standards are already bloody high, and the only bearing that his drunkenness from 20 years ago could possible have on his position as a judge of any kind is the sexual assault aspect. There is no realistically quantifiable moral or physical negativity to be drawn whatsoever from drunkenness in and of itself without context. He was not in a position in his life that required sobriety, and he apparently did well enough at university to graduate well and with the kind of reputation intact that allowed him to practice law. The only reason current drunkenness would have a bearing on his viability is that presently drunk people make mistakes, and you cannot afford mistakes as a SCOTUS judge.

This being the case, putting into practice a policy of "you drank in college, you aren't fit for leadership" will absolutely result in it's being enacted when we want, how we want due to it's utterly nebulous nature. How drunk were you? Some people say really, really drunk. Other people say you weren't drunk. A person you had a falling out with decades ago says you were super violently drunk. This isn't scrutiny related to his job performance at that point.

What are we afraid of, he's going to block the next prohibition? What we are actually trying to prevent here is a possible sexual predator taking office, and I feel we are now in danger of turning this into another Trump situation where he gains credibility because of the ridiculous nature of the evidence against him.

I am in favor of 8-ball judge.

[MrRoboto75]

Let us humbly pass the Arcane Pool Judicial Reformation Act, replacing every SCOTUS justice with a Magic 8 Ball. I can see no way that could go poorly.

Ask again later.

[Karnewarrior]

But I don't think this kind of microscopic scrutiny should be normalized in all cases. The idea is to prevent people who will abuse their position from entering office, not punish people we disapprove of.

In all cases, no. For a fucking SCOTUS seat, or position of similar power, maybe yeah.

Same sentiment for the convict comparison. This isn't some kind of basic job being considered, nor something necessary for someone's survival, or anything even remotely along those lines. This isn't a "good job" or "good home." This is a consideration for literally the fucking highest judicial position in the country, and to an arguable extent by dint of it being the US's highest position the highest on literally the entire goddamn planet.

The standards. Should. Be. Real. Bloody. High. Yes, we should probably be holding significant drinking problems in their late teens/early twenties against them, because we don't fucking have to excuse shit like that. We can say, hey, you know, maybe you stick to being an appellate judge and we find someone who didn't spend their formative years thinking that was okay. We have that option. We probably should take it.

... beyond all that, it's way past the point we should stop peddling the line that shit like getting blackout drunk is just "college shenanigans", particularly when that bullshit is being used to attempt to excuse attempted or explicit rape. Shit isn't something that "just happens", it's something we as a people have been tolerating and in many ways encouraging, and giving how many people that ends up varyingly literally fucking maybe just maybe we're due to knock that shit off a bit harder.

This. There's a difference between being eligible to work in general, being eligable to work in a position of power, and being eligible to lead a country. The SCOTUS is meant to be one of the heads of state, and should be treated with the utmost care and delicacy. Everyone, at birth, should be capable of getting into the SCOTUS, but not everyone should be eligible by the time they graduate college. It has powers that require the utmost discretion, and we should have Justices who have demonstrated morally upright behavior consistently for extremely long periods of time - I've never drunk a drop of alcohol in my life, not for moral reasons but simply because I don't care to, and it really wasn't hard to do. I'm all for forgiveness being the highest virtue, but there's really no level of scrutiny I would be uncomfortable with for someone with that much power, as long as it's fair scrutiny and not a witch-hunt. In this case, the scrutiny seems justified, although I don't know if I trust congress to carry out the investigation without bias in one direction or the other. But if Kavanaugh really knew he hadn't done anything, I would have suggested he just let the FBI handle the investigation. Fighting back like this just makes him seem defensive.

I feel like Ford was politically motivated, but I also think she's telling the truth to the extent of her knowledge. And if she's telling the actual truth and not a misrecollection, then we need to cut Kavanaugh from the consideration, regardless of why the allegation was brought up. I want them to let the FBI look into things until they're satisfied that nothing happened, and only then should Congress even consider voting on the new Justice.

(also we should probably have several justices going in parallel, since we have the resources to check these sorts of things in parallel and it would be far faster, but I suppose people are already hard pressed to pay attention to politics, so perhaps that's not a good idea.)

[Dunamisdeos]

snip snip snip

Nah, the concern is that he lied about it, significantly and extensively. If we can impeach a president ove lying about a blowjob, we can refuse a supreme court nominee over lying about being a raging alcoholic in their youth.

Yeah see, that's what I was talking about with getting him to lie as a means of preventing his taking office. It might be argued that the tactic is being used positively in this instance, but what we are insinuating is that there is no other legitimate reason to block him from office.

@Karnewarrior
I completely agree that an FBI investigation into the allegations is warranted, and necessary. In the meantime we need to just let them work.

Also, the notion that he is only defending himself because he is guilty seems odd to me in a conversation about why we can't let this guy become a judge.

[smjjames]

The standards are already bloody high, and the only bearing that his drunkenness from 20 years ago could possible have on his position as a judge of any kind is the sexual assault aspect. There is no realistically quantifiable moral or physical negativity to be drawn whatsoever from drunkenness in and of itself without context. He was not in a position in his life that required sobriety, and he apparently did well enough at university to graduate well and with the kind of reputation intact that allowed him to practice law. The only reason current drunkenness would have a bearing on his viability is that presently drunk people make mistakes, and you cannot afford mistakes as a SCOTUS judge.

This being the case, putting into practice a policy of "you drank in college, you aren't fit for leadership" will absolutely result in it's being enacted when we want, how we want due to it's utterly nebulous nature. How drunk were you? Some people say really, really drunk. Other people say you weren't drunk. A person you had a falling out with decades ago says you were super violently drunk. This isn't scrutiny related to his job performance at that point.

What are we afraid of, he's going to block the next prohibition? What we are actually trying to prevent here is a possible sexual predator taking office, and I feel we are now in danger of turning this into another Trump situation where he gains credibility because of the ridiculous nature of the evidence against him.

I am in favor of 8-ball judge.

Nah, the concern is that he lied about it, significantly and extensively. If we can impeach a president ove lying about a blowjob, we can refuse a supreme court nominee over lying about being a raging alcoholic in their youth.

Yeah, AFAIK, nobody is giving a damn about the alcohol drinking itself as theres no evidence that he gets into trouble like that these days.

But I don't think this kind of microscopic scrutiny should be normalized in all cases. The idea is to prevent people who will abuse their position from entering office, not punish people we disapprove of.

In all cases, no. For a fucking SCOTUS seat, or position of similar power, maybe yeah.

Same sentiment for the convict comparison. This isn't some kind of basic job being considered, nor something necessary for someone's survival, or anything even remotely along those lines. This isn't a "good job" or "good home." This is a consideration for literally the fucking highest judicial position in the country, and to an arguable extent by dint of it being the US's highest position the highest on literally the entire goddamn planet.

The standards. Should. Be. Real. Bloody. High. Yes, we should probably be holding significant drinking problems in their late teens/early twenties against them, because we don't fucking have to excuse shit like that. We can say, hey, you know, maybe you stick to being an appellate judge and we find someone who didn't spend their formative years thinking that was okay. We have that option. We probably should take it.

... beyond all that, it's way past the point we should stop peddling the line that shit like getting blackout drunk is just "college shenanigans", particularly when that bullshit is being used to attempt to excuse attempted or explicit rape. Shit isn't something that "just happens", it's something we as a people have been tolerating and in many ways encouraging, and giving how many people that ends up varyingly literally fucking maybe just maybe we're due to knock that shit off a bit harder.

This. There's a difference between being eligible to work in general, being eligable to work in a position of power, and being eligible to lead a country. The SCOTUS is meant to be one of the heads of state, and should be treated with the utmost care and delicacy. Everyone, at birth, should be capable of getting into the SCOTUS, but not everyone should be eligible by the time they graduate college. It has powers that require the utmost discretion, and we should have Justices who have demonstrated morally upright behavior consistently for extremely long periods of time - I've never drunk a drop of alcohol in my life, not for moral reasons but simply because I don't care to, and it really wasn't hard to do. I'm all for forgiveness being the highest virtue, but there's really no level of scrutiny I would be uncomfortable with for someone with that much power, as long as it's fair scrutiny and not a witch-hunt. In this case, the scrutiny seems justified, although I don't know if I trust congress to carry out the investigation without bias in one direction or the other. But if Kavanaugh really knew he hadn't done anything, I would have suggested he just let the FBI handle the investigation. Fighting back like this just makes him seem defensive.

I feel like Ford was politically motivated, but I also think she's telling the truth to the extent of her knowledge. And if she's telling the actual truth and not a misrecollection, then we need to cut Kavanaugh from the consideration, regardless of why the allegation was brought up. I want them to let the FBI look into things until they're satisfied that nothing happened, and only then should Congress even consider voting on the new Justice.

Politically motivated my ass. Theres no proof that she was politically motivated other than being in California and her Representative just happens to be Democrat. Though I suppose to keep this from escalating as I can see it going nowhere, lets just say we disagree on that particular point.

(also we should probably have several justices going in parallel, since we have the resources to check these sorts of things in parallel and it would be far faster, but I suppose people are already hard pressed to pay attention to politics, so perhaps that's not a good idea.)

Multiple nominations in parallel? The White House already does that when looking for a nominee.

snip snip snip

Nah, the concern is that he lied about it, significantly and extensively. If we can impeach a president ove lying about a blowjob, we can refuse a supreme court nominee over lying about being a raging alcoholic in their youth.

Yeah see, that's what I was talking about with getting him to lie as a means of preventing his taking office. It might be argued that the tactic is being used positively in this instance, but what we are insinuating is that there is no other legitimate reason to block him from office.

@Karnewarrior
I completely agree that an FBI investigation into the allegations is warranted, and necessary. In the meantime we need to just let them work.

Nobody forced him to lie, he chose to lie (I mean Kavanaugh, not Clinton, but Kavanaugh wasn't boxed in like Clinton).

[Frumple]

Yeah see, that's what I was talking about with getting him to lie as a means of preventing his taking office. It might be argued that the tactic is being used positively in this instance, but what we are insinuating is that there is no other legitimate reason to block him from office.

Well, no, we're insinuating it's a legitimate reason to block him from office. Even beyond all the reasons there he's made obvious over the last few days, suspecting (and subsequently preferring to not have grounds to do so, either due to to actions having not having occurred or there having actually been substantial penitence for the behavior) that the history might just inform present decision making -- such as, I'unno, minimizing circumstances that lead to sexual assault -- should relevant casework appear before them.

You can say otherwise as much as you like, but I'm going to have a bit of trouble buying that someone balls deep in that kind of shitty behavior when they're younger isn't going to downplay the problems with it when they're older. Particularly if they're willing to do exactly bloody that under oath and in front of the proverbial god and everybody.

Still, sure. We'd be using any of the like dozen other, more overtly judicially pertinent, reasons to kick the shit to the curb if it weren't for reasons republican. You play the hand you're dealt at the end of the day, I guess.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah, I mean for real Merkel openly imbibes in between appointments. Nobody has ever cared one whit if a head of anything drank so long as it didn't interfere with their duties. If she came before the press and lied about having a drink beforehand, she would still be exactly as effective a head of state as if she didn't.

You can say otherwise as much as you like, but I'm going to have a bit of trouble buying that someone balls deep in that kind of shitty behavior when they're younger isn't going to downplay the problems with it when they're older.

Literally everyone I've talked to that had a drinking problem and kicked it will talk to you for hours about how you should never start having a drinking problem. That's silly. Likewise, most of them will lie or refuse to talk about it if you try to force them to talk about the specifics, because it's basically asking them to display an ugly part of themselves they moved on from years ago. It does not mean he's going to start legislating drunken rape any more than Clinton was about to start pardoning rapists from prison.

I'm sorry folks... I keep coming at everyone about this, and the points you are making are valid to me, and his character is 100% in question for certain with everything that's going on around him, and I'm not at all convinced he's worthy of the seat. But this isn't scrutiny, it's looking until we find an excuse to block/impeach, and it will never produce positive results in the end.

[Lord Shonus]

I think you're looking at this the wrong way. The focus on Kavanaugh's relationship with alcohol isn't primarily "if he's a drunk, we have an excuse to go after him!". Rather, the focus on his relationship with alcohol is because his possible drunken past directly affects the credibility of his defense against accusations of sexual assault.

His primary defense is (unless I've missed something) "I rarely went to those parties, and I never got as drunk as she's claiming I was at the time, therefore she is mistaken and it wasn't me." If he is lying about his alcohol problems, and did routinely get blackout drunk at the time, then his entire line of defense is blown out of the water.

[SalmonGod]

I have met very few folks who do not have a "got so drunk I forgot parts of the night" story. I don't think I've met anyone who doesn't, now that I try and think about it.

I'll be the 2nd in the thread to raise my hand on this.  I hate the taste of alcohol, and never understood the appeal of drunkenness.  I can only tolerate vanishingly weak drinks, and only reached the point of being able to sorta enjoy wine coolers in my late 20s.  I pushed myself to try getting tipsy once.  Just to sample this experience that is a near universal cultural staple.  I got just to the point of feeling somewhat disoriented for about an hour and feeling slightly nauseous for a bit afterwards.  It was kinda fun for the novelty but never had the desire to do it again.  There's not many of us, but we're out there.

While I agree with the statements that the bar should be set really fucking high for a position as important as U.S. supreme court justice, I also want to throw in that I have more faith in someone who has made mistakes and grown from them than someone who never made those mistakes at all.  Many of the most respectable people are also those with the craziest histories.  I care less about what he did in the past than I do about how he speaks on those past experiences in the present.  What his thoughts are on that past self, and how he has taken those experiences to mold himself into a better person today.

And yeah... Kavanaugh is clearly failing on this point horrendously.  Just throwing out my sort of middle ground on the debate over whether public figures of this level should be scrutinized in this fashion and expected to have perfect histories.  Yeah, it's fair to scrutinize them to this extent.  But no, I think it's far less important for their life stories to be squeeky clean than it is for them to demonstrate integrity and sophisticted perspective (something that often grows as a direct result of rocky personal history).

[smjjames]

You can say otherwise as much as you like, but I'm going to have a bit of trouble buying that someone balls deep in that kind of shitty behavior when they're younger isn't going to downplay the problems with it when they're older. Particularly if they're willing to do exactly bloody that under oath and in front of the proverbial god and everybody.

Yeah, I mean for real Merkel openly imbibes in between appointments. Nobody has ever cared one whit if a head of anything drank so long as it didn't interfere with their duties. If she came before the press and lied about having a drink beforehand, she would still be exactly as effective a head of state as if she didn't.

You can say otherwise as much as you like, but I'm going to have a bit of trouble buying that someone balls deep in that kind of shitty behavior when they're younger isn't going to downplay the problems with it when they're older.

Literally everyone I've talked to that had a drinking problem and kicked it will talk to you for hours about how you should never start having a drinking problem. That's silly. Likewise, most of them will lie or refuse to talk about it if you try to force them to talk about the specifics, because it's basically asking them to display an ugly part of themselves they moved on from years ago. It does not mean he's going to start legislating drunken rape any more than Clinton was about to start pardoning rapists from prison.

Point taken to both frumple and dunamis

I'm sorry folks... I keep coming at everyone about this, and the points you are making are valid to me, and his character is 100% in question for certain with everything that's going on around him, and I'm not at all convinced he's worthy of the seat. But this isn't scrutiny, it's looking until we find an excuse to block/impeach, and it will never produce positive results in the end.

The thing is that while the current focus is on the drinking habits, the lying and evasiveness didn't start with denying his drinking habits, the Democrats suspect him of perjury from previous hearings back in 2006 or something and he's been pretty dang evasive. It's not solely about his drinking habits, it's about overall credibility. Yes, it's hyperfocused on the drinking stuff because that just happens to be the latest and biggest thing in the news.

I think you're looking at this the wrong way. The focus on Kavanaugh's relationship with alcohol isn't primarily "if he's a drunk, we have an excuse to go after him!". Rather, the focus on his relationship with alcohol is because his possible drunken past directly affects the credibility of his defense against accusations of sexual assault.

His primary defense is (unless I've missed something) "I rarely went to those parties, and I never got as drunk as she's claiming I was at the time, therefore she is mistaken and it wasn't me." If he is lying about his alcohol problems, and did routinely get blackout drunk at the time, then his entire line of defense is blown out of the water.

Exactly. Lord Shonus probably explained it better. The whole point is his credibility.

[Descan]

Yeah see, that's what I was talking about with getting him to lie as a means of preventing his taking office. It might be argued that the tactic is being used positively in this instance, but what we are insinuating is that there is no other legitimate reason to block him from office.

I'd argue that him being the kind of person that you can actually get to lie like this is a legitimate reason to block him from office.

[nenjin]

This whole thing has ultimately been a test of his character as well. How has he handled himself during this? How have his attitude and responses changed? These are all tangible qualities for a SC justice I think. And have only really been seen because he's been asked to answer to accusations.

[WealthyRadish]

I think he shouldn't be a justice because there's a strong likelihood that he'll contribute to rulings that negatively impact policy, and attempts to make this strictly about his moral character are only handing tools to the people who use messes like these to their advantage. Whatever our opinions regarding the particulars of this public discussion are, it's a very safe stage for politics to happen on for the powers involved; it's a low-risk opportunity for the politicians near the center to publicly exhibit a few crowdpleasers, while reaffirming their authority to decide the issue for the pedestrian public. I wouldn't mind much, but I'm thinking more lately that it's the sum of all these distractions that fills the air with noise and keeps us on a safe track that excludes a more critical questioning of the systems at work.

[misko27]

I think he shouldn't be a justice because there's a strong likelihood that he'll contribute to rulings that negatively impact policy, and attempts to make this strictly about his moral character are only handing tools to the people who use messes like these to their advantage.

The simple fact here is that every single time up until and including Kavanaugh that the Senate has confirmed a SC Justice in recent years, they've asked them a huge number of questions about their positions, and the prospective justices have universally answered along the lines of "Well I can't discuss these issues in the abstract, I'd need to examine these issues in the context of the case." Which is a way of pretending they have no positions at all, when in fact they certainly do. There has been no real debate on the Justices, it has come down to party line votes about whether or not they were nominated by a Democrat or a Republican. It's not been a choice between debating the issues and debating trivialities, it's between debating this and debating absolutely nothing at all.

At the very least, if his character sinks him, it will be something about him that sunk him, and not just that he belonged to the wrong party.