Reasonable Doubt

Here are the Senators who voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act in 2013 — all of them Republicans, of course.

And here are the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who will vote to decide whether Judge Kavanaugh is telling the truth.

See any overlap?

I notice Chuck Grassley, the committee chair . . . Ted Cruz and John Cornyn from Texas . . . Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee from Utah (really? Utah represents 1% of the US population but 10% of the Judiciary Committee?) . . . and Lindsey Graham, who says that if the Ford allegation is all there is, he can’t see “ruining Kavanaugh’s life” over it.

(If being relegated to a lifetime of comfort and prestige as an appellate court judge is to have one’s life ruined, one wonders how Lindsay would describe the consequences of violence against women?  Or of being denied health insurance because of a preexisting condition?)

Only one Republican on the Committee — Jeff Flake — voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act in 2013.  The remaining four were not yet senators, so we don’t know how they would have voted.

It seems to me there are two questions before the committee, if in fact Kavanaugh did what he is accused of (which, absent the equivalent of a blue dress, none of us can know for sure):

First . . . is such behavior in high school disqualifying 36 years later?

Second . . . is lying about it under oath this week disqualifying?

Just how high should the standard to be a Supreme Court Justice be? 

When something is really embarrassing, and perhaps in and of itself not disqualifying, is lying about it under oath okay?

Should anyone nominated to the Supreme Court be presumed qualified until proven to have lied?  Or is “reasonable doubt” a better standard?

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