On The Irrelevant Temperament Argument
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/brett-kavanaughs-temperament-a-compromise/
One obvious problem with the present letter is that when, on September 27, Kavanaugh was responding to allegations of serious (and criminal) acts, he himself wasn’t a judge deciding a case. So why in that capacity would we expect him to act like a judge? An accused whose position is that he is completely innocent should not be impartial. He should shout his innocence from the rooftops. And if he believes there is a grave injustice afoot, he should bring it to light not pretend to be perfectly happy with how things are playing out and whatever conclusion is reached. That seems to me exactly what out legal system permits and expects.
This doesn’t somehow mean, though, that when the judge returns to the bench, as judge, to decide cases before him, he will continue to act as though he himself is there as the (wrongly) accused. The context is entirely different. Thus, while the letter makes much of the federal recusal statutes, they are irrelevant. The recusal statutes don’t apply to a witness before the judiciary committee, and in court they only apply on a case-by-case basis. Contrary to the letter’s suggestions, they don’t tell us who and who cannot be confirmed to the bench. Put differently, why wouldn’t Kavanaugh’s long service as a sitting judge be the place to look to know whether he is impartial, judicious, and so on? The letter makes no mention of whether the signatories have ever themselves reviewed Kavanaugh’s judicial record or appeared before him—much less why they believe what we know about Kavanaugh as a judge can be breezily disregarded.
This is obviously correct. And so, in the spirit of open-mindedness, I propose a compromise: Given what we now know about Judge Kavanaugh’s temperament, the Senate should vote Yes on the question of whether Judge Kavanaugh should be elevated to the role of Supreme Court Justice, and No on the question of whether Judge Kavanaugh should be subject to endless uncorroborated smears, coupled with the routine presumption of guilt.
Comments
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@Bill_Coley @c_m_ ?? Crickets....
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@reformed said:
@Bill_Coley @c_m_ ?? Crickets....Coming from a person who on multiple occasions has refused to mention, let alone respond to, questions I've posed to him until I reminded him of the questions three, four, or five times over a period of days, your concern about the "crickets" in response to your judicial temperament post that, as of this writing, has been up about two hours is delicious.
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@Bill_Coley said:
@reformed said:
@Bill_Coley @c_m_ ?? Crickets....Coming from a person who on multiple occasions has refused to mention, let alone respond to, questions I've posed to him until I reminded him of the questions three, four, or five times over a period of days, your concern about the "crickets" in response to your judicial temperament post that, as of this writing, has been up about two hours is delicious.
Ideas not people Bill. Another infraction.
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@reformed said:
@Bill_Coley said:
@reformed said:
@Bill_Coley @c_m_ ?? Crickets....Coming from a person who on multiple occasions has refused to mention, let alone respond to, questions I've posed to him until I reminded him of the questions three, four, or five times over a period of days, your concern about the "crickets" in response to your judicial temperament post that, as of this writing, has been up about two hours is delicious.
Ideas not people Bill. Another infraction.
Re-read my post, reformed.
I didn't call YOU "delicious." I called "your concern about the 'crickets' in response to your judicial temperament post that, as of this writing, has been up about two hours" "delicious."
I criticized "your concern," not you. Ideas, not people, reformed. Not another infraction.
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@Bill_Coley said:
@reformed said:
@Bill_Coley said:
@reformed said:
@Bill_Coley @c_m_ ?? Crickets....Coming from a person who on multiple occasions has refused to mention, let alone respond to, questions I've posed to him until I reminded him of the questions three, four, or five times over a period of days, your concern about the "crickets" in response to your judicial temperament post that, as of this writing, has been up about two hours is delicious.
Ideas not people Bill. Another infraction.
Re-read my post, reformed.
I didn't call YOU "delicious." I called "your concern about the 'crickets' in response to your judicial temperament post that, as of this writing, has been up about two hours" "delicious."
I criticized "your concern," not you. Ideas, not people, reformed. Not another infraction.
No sir. You criticized my past behavior and perceived tendencies. That's not an idea. So yes, another infraction. Of course you could just respond to the post.
Granted you can't because you don't have a valid argument against it. The idea of someone having to have judicial temperament when they are the defendant is absurd.
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@reformed said:
No sir. You criticized my past behavior and perceived tendencies. That's not an idea. So yes, another infraction.
That's correct, reformed. I criticized your past "behavior" and perceived tendencies." That is, I didn't criticize YOU; I criticized your conduct - i.e. something about you... just as you seem to be criticizing our conduct when you raise a question about the fact that we haven't responded to your OP in this thread yet. Whether we've responded to your post isn't an "idea," is it?
It's also "delicious" to me that your bluster over my purported "infraction" serves as a convenient distraction from the point I made.
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@Bill_Coley said:
@reformed said:
No sir. You criticized my past behavior and perceived tendencies. That's not an idea. So yes, another infraction.
That's correct, reformed. I criticized your past "behavior" and perceived tendencies." That is, I didn't criticize YOU; I criticized your conduct - i.e. something about you... just as you seem to be criticizing our conduct when you raise a question about the fact that we haven't responded to your OP in this thread yet. Whether we've responded to your post isn't an "idea," is it?
It's also "delicious" to me that your bluster over my purported "infraction" serves as a convenient distraction from the point I made.
Care to get back to the topic instead of hijacking yet another thread?
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Bill, you are the most self-defensive human I think I have ever met. Good grief. The infraction king always comes up smelling like a R...R...Red herring.
Kavanaugh has long proven himself as a judge. In a totally different setting, he also reveals that he is not a legal robot but has an innate sense of decency, of fairness and opposes lies and manipulation and feeding families to Molech for political gain. That would be the right man for the Supreme Court.
