At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today, suppose both Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford testify under oath. Suppose they each stick to their story. Ford says the drunken sexual assault happened as she has described, and Kavanaugh once again categorically denies that he has ever done such a thing or was even at the party in question. Suppose also that both Ford and Kavanaugh give stirring, emotional performances.
What is the Senate Judiciary Committee supposed to conclude from that? What are individual senators supposed to do about it afterwards? Make a decision on the basis of who gave the best performance? Do they calculate the political optics of voting for or against an embattled nominee? Do they simply go with their gut?
Whatever they do, they are not going to be able to decide on the basis of facts, such as they are, or anything like evidence. They will not even be able to decide on the preponderance of evidence, which is the standard in a civil as opposed to criminal trial, because no substantive evidence of any kind has been presented amid all the accusations swirling around Kavanaugh in recent days. The Judiciary Committee has bent over backwards just trying to get sworn statements from Kavanaugh’s accusers.
What is likely to happen today is a kind of grand farce: a real-life reenactment of a Title IX rape tribunal on steroids—and not on some left-wing college campus but in the U.S. Senate, supposedly the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” now reduced to a kangaroo court before the eyes of a gazing world.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/27/kavanaugh-ford-hearing-will-craven-pointless-spectacle/
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