The Fish Rots

I do not understand why the loutish drunken behavior of a 17 year old high school boy has anything to tell us about the character of a 53 year old judge. By God’s grace (literally), I am not the same person I was at 17. This is a terrible standard to establish in public life.

— Rod Dreher (@roddreher) September 17, 2018

Except, by his statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh is clearly NOT over his "loutish behavior." As Slate noted, that speech was beyond parody.

The problem with Kavanaugh is not what he did then, it's what he's saying about it now: 

“When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive,” Ludington said in a statement. “On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.”

Ludington added that he does not think “heavy drinking” or “loutish behavior” done in youth should haunt Kavanaugh forever, but he was disturbed when he watched Kavanaugh’s performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“If he lied about his past actions on national television, and more especially while speaking under oath in front of the United States Senate, I believe those lies should have consequences,” Ludington told the Post.

Ludington is not Kavanaugh’s only Yale classmate to publicly contradict his testimony about his collegiate behavior.
On Saturday, classmate Liz Swisher said that she did not find his answers during the hearing “credible.” Kavanaugh’s freshman roommate James Roche said last week that he was a “notably heavy drinker” and also said that he was “aggressive” and “belligerent” when drunk.

I never threw a beer on someone (I threw a shoe at a friend once, hit the beer can he was holding.  It seemed funny to me at the time, because I was drunk.), and I was never belligerent enough to start a fight, but I was an obnoxious drunk (more obnoxious than usual).  I'm not proud of it, but I wouldn't deny it, either, even though I haven't been drunk in almost 40 years.  But that's the difference between Brett Kavanaugh and me; and while I'm not qualified for the Supreme Court neither, for different reasons, is he.

The FBI is not investigating his crimes of the past, but his lies of the present. To allow a judge to get away with that is the terrible standard to set.  As is this:

[Rachel] Mitchell, [the prosecutor hired by the GOP to question Christine Blasey Ford during the hearing with Brett Kavanaugh last week], after describing her analysis as being strictly from a legal perspective, said that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against Kavanaugh based on Blasey Ford’s recollection of the alleged sexual assault in high school.

“A ‘he said, she said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove,” she wrote. “But this case is even weaker than that. Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them. For the reasons discussed below, I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the committee.”

That's a remarkably low standard of review (listening to Ford's statement, and her answers to questions), and again, the allegation is not the issue.  The issue is Kavanaugh's response, and the question of his fitness for the bench.

On that, apparently, Mitchell is silent; as she should remain, even in a memo.

This is so irresponsible and plainly flawed. But this dishonest memo aside, the person Rachel Mitchell should be writing a memo about is Brett Kavanaugh. It’s the veracity of his claims that count. He’s the person being considered for a lifetime appointment. https://t.co/F8BxmuBS9P

— Shaunna Thomas (@SLThomas) October 1, 2018