The Democrats' (et al) treatment of Kavanaugh has reared its ugly head as of late in the wake of (1) the new book, Justice on Trial, by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino, and (2) Jane Mayer, who published the clearly dubious Deborah Ramirez accusation against Kavanaugh, going to bat for former Sen. Al Franken (a #MeToo casualty). If there is justice in the world, the Democrats' reckless and malicious smears of Kavanaugh will come back over and over to bite them in the rear; until they learn some decency and restraint (to use Hemingway & Severino's phrasing) they deserve to keep losing SCOTUS seats. How can Mayer publish her Kavanaugh piece, not retract it, go to bat for Franken, and not look like a partisan POS after all that?
I suppose the Dems could reconcile their reckless treatment of Kavanaugh and their lack of curiosity about the Ilhan Omar marriage rumors by pulling the gender card: both Kavanaugh's accusers and Omar's categorical denial of marriage fraud should be believed because they are all women.
I don't know what sounds worse, that sort of rationale or the evident blatant hypocrisy about standards of evidence/credibility. If one of these is the gutter and the other the sewer, which is which?
In that Politifact article in the first link above, the Star-Tribune's politics editor does say this:
My interest as an editor began with the silence she has maintained about her improper tax filings. That got my attention. She would say only that she had corrected the 2014 and 2015 tax filings and would not divulge anything about why she had filed taxes with a man she was not married to when she was separated but still married to someone else....What’s really made it hard is that she’s been unwilling to address any of these questions. That has fueled the controversy. We quoted her at length to say that these were mere accusations, that they were unfair, and that she shouldn’t have to address them. Be that as may, there was an undisputed instance of her filing her taxes improperly. And if you’re in Congress, you should explain that to your constituents.
This is not some right-wing rumor outlet saying this.
We currently have Democrat-majority House committees issuing subpoenas for Trump's tax returns. What are the chances these partisan so-and-sos and their media allies are curious about Omar's tax returns? I'm guessing about the same as the chances that they were actually interested in getting to the truth with the Kavanaugh accusations.
Applying the Dems' partisan standards (sic) of evidence, it seems quite credible that Omar married her brother. I mean, why not? Applying the point more generally: what wouldn't be credible? Would we have to pull that gender card (or the race card, or . . .) to introduce something at least resembling some standard, however ludicrous it may be?
If the Republicans are guilty of such a degree of viciousness and intellectual bankruptcy, I am unaware of it. The case of their having nominated and voted for Trump for president is too full of complicating factors - e.g., he probably had the best chance to beat HRC and there were judicial nominations up for grabs - whereas the Kavanaugh smears are too clear-cut. (Maybe the party's having drunk the Sarah Palin Kool-Aid back in '08 is reasonably clear-cut evidence of their willingness to do away with standards [of qualifications for POTUS, in that case]. See also the next paragraph.) There's just no way the Dems come out of that very ugly episode not looking like partisan POS willing to undermine plain and simple standards of evidence and destroy someone's career and reputation in the process.
If I were in a position to propose a fair "exchange" of propositions with Democrats, I'd offer up this example of bad faith from the ever-glib Trump spokesman Stephen Miller in reply to eminently reasonable questions/challenges from Fox News' Chris Wallace this past weekend, in exchange for their admission that their treatment of Kavanaugh was beyond the pale. (Same offer applies in reverse, as it were, to Trump-defenders who think Miller's answers are part of a respectable and fair dialogue.)
Given all the intellectual bankruptcy referenced in all of the above, this is as good a time as any to reiterate my no-brainer plea for philosophical education for everyone, including especially for children. (ffs already, etc.) As for applying serious epistemic standards/methods to the initial subject-header question, consult the Politifact link and others in the google search. (Snopes for example calls into question the logic of such a sham-marriage narrative. Can we unaccountably disregard what Snopes has to say, the way Democrats unaccountably disregarded evidence (sworn statements, a calendar, basic logic) that would run counter to accusations against Kavanaugh?)
