Who would like to sit on trial for things you said 40 years ago? And have a mass media misinterpret everything out of context? It's fucking primitive.

Who wouldn't lose their composure? Only a cool, level headed liar like Bill Clinton could pull that off.

I was also deliberate in my pointing-out that many of the questions asked of him could be perceived as being in bad faith. Whether that's so is quite subjective. Your "inside joke" is other people's "description of a sex act". For the same reason we can't truly know Kav's innocence or guilt, we can't know whether the jokes are harmful or not.

I want to point out a distinction that I made, that I'm not sure you're making: I don't discredit Kavanaugh because he "lost his cool". I too would most certainly be crying in that situation, without a doubt. But when Leahy pressed him, repeatedly over a span of excruciatingly long minutes, to explicitly request and comply with an investigation, and Kavanaugh dodged and bent over backwards to avoid doing such a thing, I found it difficult to understand how a person interested in the truth could behave in that way. A SCOTUS judge should be wiling to be investigated, and expected to survive such a thing.

These allegations were held in the pocket as a political football instead of being handed over to a bipartisan committee and investigated by the FBI from the get go.

Feinstein's unethical manipulation of this allegation in the handling of Dr. Ford and outright lies about her alleged fear of flying in order to prevent her being forensically interviewed, like a normal case, are inexcusable.

The Democrats had two months to hatch a plan while Kavanaugh's life got turned upside down in less than a week. That's a legal ambush, complete with an angry mob. It's not just at all.

Because it was an obvious trap and he was right to avoid stepping into it.

By the standards of criminal proceedings, yes. But this is a job interview, the standards for disqualifying someone are lower.

This makes me angry every time I read it. A failed job interview usually means you can just go back to whatever it was you were doing before you applied, none the worse for wear.

A job interview shouldn't require you to defend yourself against scurrilous personal attacks which result in you becoming an unemployable social pariah if you fail.

This was not a job interview.

(1) There will be millions of people against any Supreme Court nominee

(2) The bar for dismissal of a Supreme Court nominee is accusations, even without corroboration

Premise (1) is bound to be true, and premise (2) will be fulfilled if we decide Kavanaugh should not be nominated. The logical conclusion is thus likely:

(3) Any of the millions of people against a Supreme Court nominee can come forward with accusations without corroboration and block their nomination

While I think Kavanaugh's defensive and angry response is another valid issue, we could then just add a 3rd premise to the above where the uncorroborated claims would have to be met with anger by the nominee to be disqualified. It still seems like a screwed up system, with that third premise installed.

The problem isn't supported much the accusations (though Ford gave powerful testimony) as his response. He is condemned by his own words. He was evasive, dissembling, maudlin, vengeful, conspiracy minded, hair splitting, seemingly conveniently forgetful, enraged at being questioned, sly, prevaricating, devious. In a word, dishonest. Not the qualities one wants for a judge on the highest court in the land.

"generally that's not something you need to worry about" is not a statement claiming that it's never something anyone, ever needs to worry about. It is still true that in general if you don't rape someone, you don't need to worry about being accused of having raped someone, because false rape accusations are statistically unlikely.

The "obvious intent of the questions" is to block his nomination by any means they can come up with, as was made clear months ago by the protest signs printed with a blank where the name would be inserted just as soon as the name of the nominee was announced.

Anyone who blatantly ignores the obvious intent of these questions has an agenda other than finding the actual facts.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you're right about "why they're asking:", and he's being asked questions that are intentionally constructed to lead to dark places, trip him up, and paint him in a negative light.

Nevertheless, I think any layperson can detect "what they're asking". A person interviewed for SCOTUS, in my view, must still give a straight answer to a question asked in bad faith. Ill intent on the part of (D) committee members does not justify intentionally incomplete answers that intentionally fail to address "what they're asking". Even if the questions are meant to derail him, that doesn't justify omission or disearnestness.