Brett Kavanaugh is Lying
Here's what really gets me about Brett Kavanaugh: He's lying.
I suppose we can debate how applicable high-school and college crimes should be to an adult in their 50s. Isn't the point of grace that we all get a second chance? And when is a 53-year-old ever the same person as a 17-year-old? On the other hand, @emrazz tweeted that the Brock Turners of the world grow up to be the Judge Kavanaughs, who protect the Brock Turners. Similarly, would it be a bad thing if 17 year-olds grew up knowing that severe actions WILL have severe consequences?
So I suppose we can debate how applicable decades-old crimes committed by adolescents and very young adults should be. I would likely say that we should set them aside if and only if the people grow into different adults, which they prove by displaying honesty and working to right their wrongs. If Kavanaugh didn't have a pattern of lying to Congress (which is the real point of this post), acknowledged what we all know about his drunken past, and requested a full investigation into the accusations against him, I would still *absolutely* believe the women, but I might also be inclined to wait for the results of that investigation with an open mind before holding anything against the judge. That is not even remotely the way that Kavanaugh has handled himself, which is why I do not think he should be released from his past.
But right now, I also don't really care, because when it comes to Brett Kavanaugh, his past harm is not the only issue. The present is also a problem, one that should matter to people of all ideologies and partisan persuasions:
Brett Kavanaugh is a liar. No matter what you think of the sexual-assault accusations, which I find to be profoundly credible, the man is a liar.
1) From yearbooks to countless witnesses to his own recent jokes, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that Kavanaugh was a drunken lout. That in and of itself may not matter for the bench--but why is he LYING about it?
2) Moreover, Kavanaugh was probably lying to Senator Dick Durbin during his SCOTUS confirmation hearing when he said he didn't know that certain documents he used in the Bush White House were stolen from Democratic Senate staffers.
3) Emails suggest that Kavanaugh also lied in 2004 during his circuit confirmation hearing, denying that he helped a different judge get confirmed when he was a White House staffer.
4) And Kavanaugh lied, more casually as a kiss-up, when Trump nominated him and he said, "No president has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination."
Is lie too strong a word for these instances? Maybe. But the man certainly displays a casual relationship with the truth.
If Brett Kavanaugh would lie about documents and teenage drinking, what else would he lie about? What other truths would he dismiss in pursuit of a political agenda? And is that a person we Americans want on the Supreme Court for life?
