Kavanaugh



  • @Bwag No, mine only included several murder cases, a death penalty case, and about 10 people in prison under life sentences. Not anything as momentous as a Senate committee taking testimony.



  • Half my family is outrageously happy- the other half is certain life as we know it will cease to exist. As for me, it’s all Kabuki Theatre. The Bible doesn’t say America saves the world. If they can’t get Trump out, then they’ll crash the stock market, and get him out that way. I’ll say it again: it’s much bigger than Repubs vs. Dems. Both sides have been compromised. We’re the frog sitting in the cooking pan not noticing the heat is being turned up. The entire South American continent is on the verge of complete economic collapse. Country after country across the world are experiencing terrible financial woes. The bond market bubble is about to pop, and all that fake money, hot off the printing presses, is about to become worthless. Once a week, we see a story where someone is warning us that it’s going to explode. In fact, the chairman of the FED said our great economic news isn’t real. Now, Trump supporters probably shook that off as another sleight from the Trump derangers, but I think he was simply trying to cover his backside when it all goes to hell in a hand basket.



  • @DoubleDD no, the problem with the entire thing is that they delved into whether he drank beer while in high school - come on, get real…! Glad that I haven’t been nominated to the Supreme Court (the witness list would be extremely long, and America would grow bored and tired, having learned too much about themselves).



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  • And so there is finally this…only time will tell, but might be interesting to see if he aligns with Thomas after this ordeal and create an even more solid originalist foundation for Constitutional jurisprudence.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-05/kavanaugh-confirmation-battle-moves-supreme-court-further-right

    Some interesting analysis is out there that shows that Thomas has been moving the court to a more literalist interpretation than even Scalia had over the last decade or so.



  • @Crimsonorblue22 are we prosecuting for HS now…and some of us on this board are willing to forgive our basketball players the benefit of the doubt for their college behavior. Just saying.



  • Did I say hs?



  • Bwag said:

    @justanotherfan Kavanaugh is probably more a centrist or barely center-right. You’ll gonna love it when Amy Barrett is nominated to take Notorious RBG’s spot when she finally slips off into that final sleep. What’s the over-under on days until that, and will it occur while sitting in session?

    Unfortunately, that’s just not true. Kavanaugh is fairly conservative.

    Fivethirtyeight has a judicial score that determines how liberal or conservative a judge is, based on their past rulings.

    To no surprise, Justice Sotomayor and Justice Ginsburg are the most liberal on the current court. However, Kavanaugh is only slightly to the left of Clarence Thomas, who is easily the most conservative judge on the SCOTUS, and well to the right of Gorsuch and Alito, both clearly conservative justices.

    Perhaps Kavanaugh will be more moderate on the court. There is a history of justices moving more to the middle once they get to the SCOTUS, but even then, he probably is to the right of Gorsuch and Alito, and still well right of Roberts (who himself is barely within the moderate quadrant).



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  • Here is the entire FBI report. Looks like none of the accusations could be even remotely corroborated. Read it (if you have the time) and form your own opinion,



  • Yep as I figured it was mostly made up BS. Anyone with any amount of common sense could thousands, literally thousands of holes in most the stories. Not to mention most people don’t take criminal accusations to politicians, they take them to the police.



  • @justanotherfan I know your post is kinda old but which do you prefer as a judge? Liberal or conservative? I don’t consider my self either but being a foster parent for 7 years I pray to god I never have to sit in another court room with a liberal judge. I have literally seen it cost children their lives because the judge gives abusers and addicts 10 or 15 chances before they try to take parental rights. A conservative gives them about 3 before they allow the kid to be adopted.



  • @BShark Washington times is a spin rag. This accuser wasnt on the table in the first place with the investigation. Who cares? This is feel good mop up duty for people who supported Kavanaugh. Nothing has changed as far as the picture of his character. Justice Stevens, the ABA, and his other detractors have moved on.



  • @JayHawkFanToo I cannot find any FBI report in those 414 pages. This is Grassley’s Committee Report. I like the fact that, rather than including an FBI report, the document footnotes a CNN story saying that Ramirez was interviewed by the FBI with no further information. Good to have such a thorough investigation.

    I still want someone to explain how Ford went about making up this story by telling people about it in 2012, 2013, 2016, and 2017.



  • @mayjay

    The Ramirez case is presented in great detail in pages 14-17. A number of sources are cited and a number of individuals were interviewed and none would corroborate her story, in fact quite the contrary…of course all these pesky details will never be enough for some people. SMH.

    If you do not want to read the entire report, perhaps you could read this summary about one item that had gone unreported until now.

    Interesting that the only person that Ford “told” the name before Kavanaugh was mentioned as potential supreme was conveniently her husband, all others you mentioned happened after he went into the short list of potential nominees.

    Just about every single assertion Ford made was uncorroborated by her own witness or rebutted by a number of other witnesses and some were even pressured to change testimony and now they are rightfully being investigated for tampering with evidence.

    Again, you can believe whatever you want to believe even when the overwhelming evidence points the other way.

    By the way, in 2012, 2013 I mentioned to friends that a college basketball coach at a well known program was going to be nominated to the Hall of Fame and in 2017 I did tell someone it was Coach Self.😏



  • @JayHawkFanToo My reference to the Ramirez case was about the alleged FBI interview, about which the report is silent except relying on a CNN report that they conducted one. Highly professional job, that. I looked at all 414 pages trying to find the FBI report because I couldn’t imagine you getting something so blatantly wrong. I guess we are alike in thinking that.

    So Ford lay in wait for several years, laying the groundwork with several references to friends about a federal judge, so she could conveniently ambush Kavanaugh whom she knew way back when? The mind boggles at the intricacies of the scheme.



  • kjayhawks said:

    @justanotherfan I know your post is kinda old but which do you prefer as a judge? Liberal or conservative? I don’t consider my self either but being a foster parent for 7 years I pray to god I never have to sit in another court room with a liberal judge. I have literally seen it cost children their lives because the judge gives abusers and addicts 10 or 15 chances before they try to take parental rights. A conservative gives them about 3 before they allow the kid to be adopted.

    Both have their flaws.

    Conservatives tend to side with the state quite a bit more, while liberals tend to try to avoid taking kids away, although that is by no means a hard and fast rule.

    I have noticed that lots of people (not just directing at you) tend to say a judge is liberal or conservative based on a ruling they don’t like. Judges make lots of rulings.

    I would prefer judges that are more centrist, but probably slightly left, but that is mostly because that also aligns with my personal politics. The best judges aren’t either liberal or conservative, but rule based on the facts before them. The reason we often end up with judges leaning one way or another is because the majority (whatever it may be at the time) attempts to bend the law in a certain direction to fit their own politics.

    Conservatives have been wanting a “conservative court” for some time because they were frustrated that a lot of things got overturned by judges that they branded “liberal”. The truth is, many of those judges were “conservative” politically, but ruled against the conservative position because it was not legally defensible.

    As I have said before, when you are looking for specific outcomes rather than looking for the law to be applied, you will get judges that make rulings that are not consistent, like what happened earlier this year on the Supreme Court.



  • @mayjay

    OK, I should have written the Senate Judiciary report based on the FBI report and now you are going on and on on semantics rather than on the content of the report (based on the FBI report) that overwhelmingly contradicts the testimony of Ford and others about alleged wrong doings by Kavanaugh.

    Did you read the part where someone else came forward and confessed to a consensual situation very similar to that cited by Ford but did not involve Kavanaugh? Of course not, it does not fit your narrative and you will continue to defend the indefensible despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

    You are asking me to suspend reality, take two alleged statements and disregard the mountain of evidence to the contrary including allegations she made that proved to be false? You remind me of this NBC announcer…



  • @JayHawkFanToo As always, you are arguing with someone else, rebutting positions I have not argued. I have never said Ford’s allegations were true, only that I believe she believes them. And I have said it is too difficult to assess allegations about events that long ago, and that is why stautues of limitations exclude all but the most serious crime (murder) after a number of years.

    What I have contended is that “uncorroborated” does not mean “disproven” and that there is a lot of circumstantial evidence supporting an in-depth investigation, and that the issue of a supreme court nomination merits taking sufficient time. The guy who should welcome one if he is innocent has been protected by shoddy Committee work and a perfunctory FBI investigation. The person who should oppose one if she is lying has laid her life open. The Republicans can bitch about the timing all they want, but anything they say is the height of hypocrisy after they ignored their most sacred constitutional duty in 2016.

    The report glosses over the evidence about Kavanaugh lying in the hearing. Literally thousands of legal scholars, attorneys, and judges believed his conduct in the hearing, including his partisan attacks, constituted an independent basis to oppose his nomination.

    Enough on this. He was confirmed. Just watch out for your wishes coming true, because ideological partisans like K have a way of screwing up legal certainty for everybody.



  • @mayjay

    What I have contended is that “uncorroborated” does not mean “disproven” and that there is a lot of circumstantial evidence supporting an in-depth investigation, and that the issue of a supreme court nomination merits taking sufficient time. The guy who should welcome one if he is innocent has been protected by shoddy Committee work and a perfunctory FBI investigation.

    Actually, the majority of her claims have been disproven. How many in-depth investigations must there be? Wasn’t he subject to several previous background checks (6?)? Didn’t he indicate he welcomed an in-depth FBI investigation? Didn’t the latest investigation not interview dozens of witnesses who not only did not corroborate her and other allegations but actually disproved them?

    Now, if by in-depth investigation you mean one that would have lasted until the mid-term elections when the Democrats were hoping to win the Senate so he would not be confirmed…then no, the results of the investigation would have been the same since it has been done ad-nauseum and there is nothing left to investigate but a democrat majority would have rejected the nomination all the same.

    You are pushing a narrative with no merit, You remind me of Richard Pryor when he got caught by his wife with another woman…

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  • So coming out now that Kavanaugh accusers were lying. Sad!



  • @Bwag I can accuse you of some crazy stuff and then you can renounce my claims if that makes you feel better about stuff too.



  • @approxinfinity having fun. Glad it’s bball season. But maybe good guys will win in elections tonight too! Lol



  • Bwag said:

    @approxinfinity having fun. Glad it’s bball season. But maybe good guys will win in elections tonight too! Lol

    Well, Paul Davis and Laura Kelly are ahead right now. 🙂



  • @BShark I moved. Never had much use for Kansas.



  • @Bwag Fair. I like how cheap it is to live here.



  • Geez, I love living here.



  • @mayjay Very well stated.

    And Kavanaugh’s tenure begins with some eerie parallelism.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/us/politics/supreme-court-death-penalty-kavanaugh.html

    “Are you saying,” he asked a lawyer for the state, “even if the method creates gruesome and brutal pain you can still do it because there’s no alternative?”

    The lawyer, D. John Sauer, did not immediately give a direct response, and Justice Kavanaugh pressed him. “Is that a yes?” Justice Kavanaugh asked.

    “Yes, it is, Your Honor,” Mr. Sauer said.



  • @bskeet

    I fear that Kavanaugh is a result based judge. He decides the outcome he wants, then looks for a legal rationale to support it. We will know soon enough, as those types of judges typically have conflicting rationales on similar issues because they wanted one outcome in one situation, and the opposite outcome in another situation.



  • @justanotherfan Good observation. If you see decisions that seem conflictory please call them out. I remain interested, regardless of Senator Turtlehead’s proclamation that “these things always blow over”.



  • approxinfinity said:

    @justanotherfan Good observation. If you see decisions that seem conflictory please call them out. I remain interested, regardless of Senator Turtlehead’s proclamation that “these things always blow over”.

    It will probably take a little bit of time because Kavanaugh might not write more than a couple of opinions in this first session.

    The most recent example from the SCOTUS was their rulings in Masterpiece Cake and the “Muslim Ban”, which came only weeks apart.

    In Masterpiece Cake, SCOTUS ruled that the comments that one of the reviewers in Colorado made during the hearing showed animus that caused the decision to be clouded even though those statements were not contained within the order.

    However, when considering the “Muslim Ban”, the court determined that statements by the President and his administration should not be considered because they were not part of the actual language in the executive order.

    That’s a results based approach, where in one case statements made outside the language of the determination were considered, while in another case they were not.

    As a result, you have case law now where statements by government officials may be considered, or they may not be. Those are bad rulings because people have no way of knowing how the court will rule when statements outside the order are made because the SCOTUS has made two completely opposite decisions, using those outside statements to strike down one ruling, while ignoring the statements to uphold the other.

    This inconsistency is bad for the legal environment. I would rather they either upheld both (or struck down both) because it gives us a clear rule - statements that take a negative view of a particular religion will (or will not) be considered when looking at the order in question. Right now, we don’t know because we have rulings in conflict.



  • @justanotherfan I understand where you are coming rrom, but I have to disagree about the two examples you cited. In the cake case, the comments were made by someone acting in a quasi-judicial capacity in a particular case involving weighing the rights of two parties in conflict. Animus against one side is highly relevant. The holding was limited to deciding that the party facing an apparent bias was entitled to an unbiased decision-maker.

    In the second (third?) ban, the Court did not need to look at underlying motives because as an Executive Order, the ban could be examined purely on its face. Issued under the Presidential authority to restrict admission of aliens, it is more akin to a policy decision than a judicial decision. It would be an unimaginable nightmare if Executive Orders were subject to challenges solely because of a politician’s extraneous comments that are not reflected in the mandate issued. Result oriented, I think, only in the sense of applying a heavy presumption of lawfulness of Executive action, just as courts are supposed to do whenever governmental action is challenged.

    I do think in the bakery case that the Court should have reached the underlying issues, but in the ban, it was a foregone conclusion that eventually restrictions would be upheld.



  • justanotherfan said:

    @bskeet

    I fear that Kavanaugh is a result based judge. He decides the outcome he wants, then looks for a legal rationale to support it. We will know soon enough, as those types of judges typically have conflicting rationales on similar issues because they wanted one outcome in one situation, and the opposite outcome in another situation.

    His tenure on the DC Circuit suggests otherwise.



  • @FarmerJayhawk

    Some of his dissents make me question that.



  • https://twitter.com/mjs_dc/status/1385232484565196801?s=21

    This seems bad. Someone explain to me why the Supreme Court (conservative or progressive) would want more kids in jail for life? From everything I’m reading this is going against precedent even. Sotomayor seems not pleased with the decision.



  • @benshawks08 Well this is why it was so terrible that the Republicans were able to load up the supreme court with conservatives. I would blame Trump but it didn’t matter who the president was, any Republican would have done it.

    Keeps their prison labor system well stocked I’m sure.



  • He’s lucky he’s not “that” kid.



  • @benshawks08 said in Kavanaugh:

    https://twitter.com/mjs_dc/status/1385232484565196801?s=21

    This seems bad. Someone explain to me why the Supreme Court (conservative or progressive) would want more kids in jail for life? From everything I’m reading this is going against precedent even. Sotomayor seems not pleased with the decision.

    The constitutionality of life without parole for minors wasn’t before the Court. Only whether it was mandatory to make a separate judgment on sentencing. Legislatures really need to take this up. This and death penalty litigation are absolute trash fires


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