You know it is a real privilege to have opinions published weekly. Usually I’m not short of an opinion to foist off on the public. It allows you to speak your mind (such as it is).

This week is a real challenge though because the question being faced comes from the bizzaro political world of the United States and it is whether Brett Kavanaugh is fit for the U.S. Supreme Court. Now I have watched Kavanaugh at the confirmation hearings a couple of weeks ago and I don’t like him.

Arch-Conservative

He is a Donald Trump guy with a kind of ‘greasiness’ that comes off him. Part of the problem is that he is an arch-conservative and small ‘l’ liberal like me can’t stand that. We want everyone to be like us and are all upset that conservatism is spreading across the world.

The issue on the table all week though was whether Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was fit for office. At the core of that question is the possibility that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Dr. Christine Blasey Ford when they were students a long, long time ago? Now the short answer to the question for me is; “I don’t know!”

I listened to Dr. Blasey Ford in her sworn testimony and she was very believable. I listened to Kavanaugh and I thought he was an idiot… but I can’t say he was guilty. Kavanaugh talked about his grades at Yale and how he is playing varsity football in school but as my mom used to say, “Self praise is a very poor recommendation.” In his testimony Brett Kavanaugh came across as a real jerk but that isn’t a crime. When he talked about his school days and his drinking habits he seemed to be lying.  

Would I lie?

Should that have been a disqualifying issue with his court appointment? Let me tell you right now I would not want to be held accountable for legal things that I did 40 years ago… drinking habits and other escapades included. Would I lie about some of those things today? Absolutely!! None of them were crimes but were they bad judgement? Oh yeah!

Much was made this week of Kavanaugh’s participation in a dispute at a bar where he allegedly threw ice at someone. He was at Yale at the time. So, what? Years ago, I was at Ben’s late one night with friends when a dispute over unions boiled over and there was some shoving and a couple of tables got turned over and we were all thrown out on the street. We were drunk as lords. No arrests. No injuries.

Now should that keep me out of the Supreme Court? It shouldn’t but if I lied about my drinking habits and other things under oath… that might be different. If… I was seeking to be a Supreme Court judge.