Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Investigate what exactly, and how are they going to do that? Magically timewarp back to 1980, or 1981, or 1982 (you know, like, whenever) and show up at Tommy's, I mean Timmy's, I mean Janice's house (or, you know, wherever man), and talk to Bob, or Mark, or Randy or Marsha (or, you know, whomever)?
Is this where we're at these days? Some partisan makes a slanderous accusation against a political opponent and it's taken seriously enough to derail their career? This is total ____, and you know it.
This won't stop his nomination, but, in the future, don't you dare clutch your pearls when the Repubs pull another Kenneth Starr investigation on our guy/girl. Take the high road my ass...
- Doc
You keep telling me what I know. You're full of crap when you do that. I know what I know from lots of years assisting in lots of investigations and questioning people under oath in connection with those investigations. You've fallen into the classic traps that makes people crappy at assessing evidence: prejudging a claim at the outset based only on a small snippet of story from the two most relevant parties. You're like the guy on the jury that makes up his mind at the conclusion of opening statements and doesn't give any consideration to whatever the evidence might be. Even worse, you seem to restrict what happened to only the most extreme of possibilities: either the accuser is part of a political hit job based on a lie or K is a "monster" that no woman would ever go near.
At the beginning, you have to put aside what your gut thinks it knows about what people would and wouldn't do in a particular situation. People can and do act in all sorts of ways for all sorts of reasons that you likely have not experienced, given that you've only encountered a minuscule slice of humanity. When you make comments like "Oh, c'mon," or "It's X land you know it" that's a tell -- you're acting on what your brain thinks of as common sense. But what you're forgetting is that your common sense is not necessarily common or sensible.
You have to think about all the possible real life facts that could have led to the current situation, especially the ones that could be consistent with the story that both sides are telling. Because what you'll be doing down the road is trying to see how many of those possible sets of facts you can eliminate.
Perhaps most important of all: you never, ever pre-judge the state of the evidence before you try and look for it.
So, here's how you start. First, you recognize that people rarely tell everything they know or remember when they first present their story. What that means is that you interview them, preferably a recorded interview. You let them tell their own story in their own words, encouraging them at the beginning to tell you everything they recall. Then, you go back through there story asking as many questions as you can think of, trying to encourage them to provide details that they may not think are important or may not have recalled. You don't lead them -- just try to prompt them to think and recall details. You want to encourage them to talk. The more they talk, the more chance there is that they will pop out with something that you can try to verify.
Once you've finished those interviews, you look for anything in the stories that you can try to verify or contradict through further investigation. It is surprising what you can find when you approach an interview transcript with that purpose. Often, that involves shoe leather and talking to people. Here, you start with folks who have spoken up, like Judge. Again, you have to understand that they most likely haven't said everything relevant that they know. In this case, you ask about other people who were friends with K and his accuser. You ask about everything you can think of -- going to parties with K and/or his accuser, anything the two might have said about contact with each other, etc.
Sometimes all you have is circumstantial evidence. Sometimes you find the proverbial smoking gun. Sometimes you come up dry. But what you do with all that information is first try and eliminate any possible versions of the facts that don't fit the evidence you've discovered. Then, and only then, armed with whatever evidence you've got, do you put people under oath and have them testify, using what you've learned to try and test their credibility.
That's how you investigate -- at least if you're interested in trying to figure out what happened. As for whether its relevant to whether K should be on the bench, it really depends. What if the investigation reveals that there was someone who did witness the incident? What if that witness says K called him after the story broke to try and influence his recollection? Is that any crazier than claiming the accuser made anything up. ? Wouldn't attempted witness tampering disqualify any SC candidate? What if there is a witness who says there actually was a conspiracy to derail the nomination with a fake story? Shouldn't those folks be prosecuted? in my opinion, you've got to try as hard as you can not to pre-decide what the facts mean until you are satisfied you have all the facts you can get. Otherwise, you're investigating with tunnel vision.
Not that it's relevant to what actually happened, but I think Feinstein should lose her seat on the judiciary over this. She had evidence that the nominee committed a past crime and didn't even tell her colleagues on the committee until the 11th hour. At a minimum, that shows extraordinarily bad judgment.