Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
The presumption of innocence technically does not apply to nomination confirmations. The question is not whether the person should or should not be jailed, or even just put on parole. It is whether he should be given a job — in this case a lifetime job on the Supreme Court.
If character matters for a president who can only give us grief for 8 years, then it should really matter for a SCOTUS judge. Too many questions could be enough. There is no bright line of "beyond a reasonable doubt," or even "more likely than not." It is not unreasonable to withhold confirmation just because there were too many unanswered (or inadequately answered) questions.
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I agree with this. However, I feel that this should not be a license to smear or falsely accuse, which is clearly what ultimately happened with Kavanaugh. If Feinstein had raised this concern in the closed session it could have all been answered and investigated without slandering. Instead we got some woman accusing him of being involved in a gang rape in the media. So he was unable to defend himself, it wasn't done in the hearing, lowering her risk of perjury, yet was clearly damaging to Kavanaugh and his family. Feinstein should be held accountable for this. Now if this woman is held accountable a Supreme court justice will have to take her to court for slander. That in turn creates a whole new media circus. Feinstein should be held accountable for creating this travesty.
It seems to me that public comments and concerns should be left to those that have been verified with 2 or more witnesses, FBI investigative conclusions, etc. and unverified charges should be limited to closed door sessions.
Just as we should be holding our elected officials and nominees to important positions to a higher standard than "reasonable doubt" we also should not be ignorant that there will be political forces that wish to defeat the nominee/ candidate by any means necessary. For example, this case with the women being bribed to accuse Mueller of sexual harassment:
Robert Mueller: Woman targeted by inept plot to bring down US special counsel reveals how it rapidly fell apart