Judge Kavanaugh didn't answer most of the questions which were asked of him, nor was his evasion recognized or challenged by Senator Graham or Judge Kavanaugh's other supporters. Judge Kavanaugh's recitation of his resume wasn't an answer; in the context of the proceedings, it was an indictment of male privilege. Nobody stopped him from mistreating women before, and what Senator Graham's actions are saying is that, despite Judge Kavanaugh's dishonesty, nobody should stop Judge Kavanaugh from advancing to the world's most influential court now, and that people who are trying to slow the process so that the allegations against him can be fully investigated are mistreating Judge Kavanaugh and hurting the United States.
You can't set aside reason when it's your job to be impartial. Judge Kavanaugh did not answer crucial questions, and to help him bluster his way through them is a disservice.
Before President Trump started to attack Dr. Ford, I was thinking about hypothetical ways that the situation could be addressed. Not that anyone is requesting my opinion about it, but I have a tentative opinion; tentative because I feel that other people do know more about it than I do. I'm not a Senator.
What I was thinking was this:
-The FBI investigation is definitely not being given enough time or scope. You've already heard that; I agree that it isn't.
-I don't think that I would necessarily support Judge Kavanaugh being prosecuted for perjury, even though everything about his testimony suggests that he's lying. What the government needs to do is to develop a standardized procedure for processing these types of allegations, and the first step of the procedure needs to be an intelligible, accessible and confidential way for these types of allegations to be reported. Talking to the media should be a last resort for accusers who feel that the government doesn't appropriately address their concerns. It is understandable, although not admirable, that Judge Kavanaugh, without having a lot of time to decide what to do, decided to rely on evasion and partisanship to prevent his ultimate career opportunity from evaporating. A functional process that everyone in the country knows how to access and follow might have protected Dr. Ford and other accusers from unwanted publicity and might have given Judge Kavanaugh time to consider his other options besides a televised battle for public opinion.
-My guess is that reporters started to contact Dr. Ford because the media is totally out of control in terms of hacking everyone who can be hacked without detection or consequence. During her testimony, Dr. Ford said that The Washington Post, the first media source that she had contacted, reached out to her numerous times, and if I'm being accurate about the timeline, reporters from other media sources subsequently began to call her and to stalk her in person. I wouldn't be surprised if many media sources are hacking the government, but since that's a riskier thing to do than hacking other media sources, I am certain that media sources are in a war with each other, unknown to everyone outside the media, in which every media source is being hacked by every other media source in competition for stories. Technology has outpaced the law.
-Whether or not it's an official conflict of interest for Senator Feinstein to have recommended law firms to Dr. Ford, she probably should have left that conversation at advising Dr. Ford to get a lawyer rather than giving her names of law firms to contact.
-I think that what I'd do in this situation is start another nomination and allow Judge Kavanaugh to continue working at his old job or one similar to it while there's a full investigation of all allegations. Because the process so far has been disorganized, I think that would be all right. It's not my impression that Dr. Ford's intention in telling her story was to start a prosecution for attempted rape. I don't know that Ms. Ramirez's allegations could result in a prosecution, although I grew up and spent most of my life in a time when "sexual assault" had a much narrower definition. What Ms. Ramirez described was a very unpleasant and inappropriate incident, particularly for someone who was as young and unsuspecting as she was. Nobody should be treated that way. I'd also say that I think it's important not to allow hysteria to remove all perceived gradations of misconduct, and I'd agree that there's been a disturbing trend toward that blurring which precedes Judge Kavanaugh's nomination and is helping nobody. If it turns out that Judge Kavanaugh and some of his old friends are being credibly accused of gang rape, which would mean that they had a pattern of predatory behavior and that the incident described by Dr. Ford wasn't an isolated instance of clumsy boys making a terrible mistake while copying what they thought real men do, then potentially they could be prosecuted for that.
-If Judge Kavanaugh isn't confirmed, and he is also subsequently not prosecuted for perjury, there will probably be a lot of protest about his not being prosecuted for perjury. If I were a Senator, which I hope never to be, I could deal with that protest. When a process fails, it's not fair to make one person take all of the blame for it. A felony conviction for perjury really would ruin his career; not being a Supreme Court Justice won't.