Kavanaugh and Perjury

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I think you are confusing two issues.

I mean, you're free to feel whatever it is you think I feel or think. It's a free country. I've already explained why I posted it. If you want to run with that meme then knock yourself out.

- Doc

[_ajax18]

So you're going to jail folks for being wrong? What about all the people who misidentified all those black guys in prison.

If you say you're sure and it turns out your wrong, how reliable is your testimony?

Are we going to jail all them, too?

There should be some kind of penalty for it.

If you're called to testify and you tell what you believe is the truth and it turns out you were wrong, should we really throw you in the slammer? Just for being wrong?

I would not say I'm 100% sure about anything if I were asked to testify, especially if it's a 35 year old reconstructed hazy memory.

While Judge Kavenaugh went through 6 FBI investigations over a career as lawyer and circuit court judge, we haven't really been privy to much investigation at all about Dr. Ford, her life, and how credible she is or is not.

[_Res Ipsa]

There's no evidence that the memory was "reconstructed." She never forgot about it and had to rebuild it. I don't know about you, but I have memories from 35 years old that are vivid, not hazy. I remember my last phone call with my mission president pretty damn vividly. I'm 100% certain that he accused me of "kicking dust in the face of Jesus Christ." I'm also 100% certain that he threatened that something would happen if I left my mission. But the call was lots longer than that, and I couldn't tell you with that much certainty what else we discussed. I also couldn't tell you, for example, what color the phone was, or the names of my zone leaders, or what color ties everyone was wearing. I believe it was in a trailer, but that part is hazier. The brain remembers what it thinks is important, so even a vivid memory may not be 100% complete in terms of all the information available at the time.

We also haven't been privy to what's in the other 6 FBI background checks or what exactly was covered. **Shrugs** There's pretty good evidence that K misrepresented his history of drinking while under oath, yet that doesn't seem to be a big deal to his supporters.

At any rate, it's done. And the national consciousness will move on to the next shiny object. I'd like to know more, too. But I'm more likely to get a pony for my birthday.

[_EAllusion]

I don't see it. And if that were true, obviously that makes him egregiously unfit to sit on any bench.

So what if he is unfit? He's on the bench to stay whether unfit or not. Are the Democrats going to impeach him because they think he's retaliating for the slander leveled against him by congressional Democrats?

Democrats might be weak-kneed surrender monkeys at the moment when it comes to Constitutional hardball, but it's not like they are powerless to do anything if they win unified government just once. For example, in 2020. They can expand the Supreme Court to 15 members and appoint 6 liberal justices if they want to. Hell, if they wanted to, they could shrink the Supreme Court to 1 member on Monday and expand it back to 9 with 8 new members on Tuesday. No impeachment needed. The Constitution allows for all sorts of means of taking over the judiciary with simple Congressional majorities that the parties refrain from out of a fear of retaliation and a sense of civic responsibility. If you stock the Supreme Court with partisan hacks who thwart liberal legislative agenda, they're increasingly apt to fight back. So to your question of, "So what? Whaddya gonna do about it," my response is you probably don't want to poke the beast too much. There's good pragmatic reason not to appoint people who are unfit to sit on the bench outside of it being the right thing to do.

Knowing you, you might have a "bring it on!" mentality, but you probably should remember that Republicans are a minority party whose core coalition is literally dying off and Democrats could put a boot on the throat of Republicans if they had the political will to do so. They don't, but maybe don't give them it?

[_Maxine Waters]

You have some good points Res Ipsa. I personally think the Democrats took advantage of Dr. Ford. Who wants their testimony of a sexual assault to be a part of the national political process? Since EAllusion wouldn't touch this I'll ask you. Do you think there should have been criminal penalties for Crystal Mangum's false testimony in the Duke rape case? How about the way they were convicted in the media? Maybe these things shouldn't be used as p ok political cudgels?

[_EAllusion]

Democrats are increasingly in the majority by population while increasingly in the minority in controlling the levers of government because of how their population is distributed. If every state that voted for Trump had only Republican Senators and every state who voted for Clinton had only Democratic Senators, the Senate split would be 60/40 Trump even though he lost the popular vote by 3 million. Republicans own a significant structural edge in the Senate that is only getting wider. It's a bit masked by the fact that Democrats have lucked into favorable election cycles when their red state Senators are up. There are literally zero blue state Republican senators.

Democrats, if they have any realistic hope of not getting rolled for a generation, need to start playing some serious Constitutional hardball if they get lucky enough to win unified government in 2020. One of the first things on the table would be to make Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico states to get more Democratic Senators. They should also consider Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands if those territories will reliably vote Democrat, which I believe is the case. That's probably 6-8 net Senators in their favor.

Then they should expand the number of representatives in the House by at least 100 to fix distorted electoral math and make representatives more responsive to local constituencies. Then they should raise the Supreme Court total to 15 and appoint 6 liberal justices. They should expand the size of federal courts, which is sorely needed anyway, and own every last one of those appointments before creating an independent nonpartisan recommendation commission that tries to remove partisanship from the process to an extent. Then they should pass comprehensive voter rights reform that includes an automatic voter registration for all US citizens, federally mandated independent redistricting commissions for every state, and federal rules on access to polling locations. They should change national election days to Mondays and make it a national holiday.

This all could be done with simple majority. Outside of the court packing, most of these things would be popular or at least relatively neutral. If they don't put their boot on Republicans' throat the second they get the chance, they're getting pretty close to it just being game over since Republicans very much are sliding into a true authoritarian party that works to prevent its opponents from fairly translating votes into power.

The intent behind this isn't to ensure perpetual Democratic control, though it would significantly improve their structural edge, but to hit Republicans so hard that both parties are persuaded to come to a table for a mutual disarmament. But really, that's not likely to work either. Things are really bad right now.

[_EAllusion]

You have some good points Res Ipsa. I personally think the Democrats took advantage of Dr. Ford. Who wants their testimony of a sexual assault to be a part of the national political process? Since EAllusion wouldn't touch this I'll ask you. Do you think there should have been criminal penalties for Crystal Mangum's false testimony in the Duke rape case? How about the way they were convicted in the media? Maybe these things shouldn't be used as p ok political cudgels?

It's not that I wouldn't "touch it" but that I didn't think you were adequately addressing the problem a chilling effect on reporting crimes based on your incorrect understanding of how witness testimony works. I think people who can be proven to have intentionally made false allegations of crime should be subject to criminal penalties and have civil exposure for defamation.

[_subgenius]

You have some good points Res Ipsa. I personally think the Democrats took advantage of Dr. Ford. Who wants their testimony of a sexual assault to be a part of the national political process? Since EAllusion wouldn't touch this I'll ask you. Do you think there should have been criminal penalties for Crystal Mangum's false testimony in the Duke rape case? How about the way they were convicted in the media? Maybe these things shouldn't be used as p ok political cudgels?

It's not that I wouldn't "touch it" but that I didn't think you were adequately addressing the problem a chilling effect on reporting crimes based on your incorrect understanding of how witness testimony works. I think people who can be proven to have intentionally made false allegations of crime should be subject to criminal penalties and have civil exposure for defamation.

Glad you think that, because giving false testimony is actually a crime.

[_EAllusion]

My favorite shenanigans idea is for a million New Yorkers and a million people from Los Angeles just set up residency for voting purposes in depopulated red states and control their politics. A politically active neighborhood in New York city could dominate Wyoming politics, yielding two Democratic Senators and 1 Democratic House member if they wanted to. Nobody lives there. The state has a smaller population than a mid-sized city. Republican margins of victory are a little over 100k. That's it. Of course, that kind of behavior was a major factor in the US falling into civil war once before. It would be a nightmare nationally, but I say do it. Screw 'em. Force them to the bargaining table. Get a Constitutional amendment that redefines the compromise so less than 20% of the population doesn't end up controlling 80% of the Senate.

[_Res Ipsa]

You have some good points Res Ipsa. I personally think the Democrats took advantage of Dr. Ford. Who wants their testimony of a sexual assault to be a part of the national political process? Since EAllusion wouldn't touch this I'll ask you. Do you think there should have been criminal penalties for Crystal Mangum's false testimony in the Duke rape case? How about the way they were convicted in the media? Maybe these things shouldn't be used as p ok political cudgels?

Thanks, Ajax. I think there's a delicate balancing act between encouraging victims to come forward and report and weeding out the false claims that, based on experience, we know will be mixed in with the valid ones. I think there should be some penalty for knowingly making false reports to the police. But there are laws in place for that, and I don't see a need for new laws. And any criminal prosecution for false reporting should be subject to the same burden of proof as any other crime: beyond reasonable doubt.

I really didn't follow the Duke case so I don't remember the particulars. I did just read the wiki entry on it. I'd defer to the prosecutors on this one, but I certainly wouldn't have had any argument with prosecuting her for filing a false police report. I think it's likely that the prosecutors could have persuaded a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that she knowingly reported a crime that didn't happen. But that's just basing my opinion on the wiki. There may be other facts in the file that would change my mind.

I was glad to read that Nifong was disbarred and went to prison. He was supposed to be one of the mechanisms that prevent false cases from being prosecuted. He violated a serious duty to his fellow citizens that they relied on him for.

I know we tend to think of false reporting in terms of rape, but it's broader than that. SWATting is a vicious style of false police report that I think should be prosecuted vigorously, as the harm is not to reputation, but puts folks in danger of their lives.