Thumpalumpacus said:
If that is not what you meant, perhaps you should cease dissembling.
I meant what I said, "I do not know of any law that says Senators must not confirm candidates that commit perjury. If you know of one, please let me know, but as far as I can tell, there was no law breaking on the part of any of the Senators". As you can see, I do not know that it is illegal for Senators to do that. I was not talking about morality, but about the law. If you think senators broke a law, please let me know which one (maybe they did, and I'm just not familiar with the law in question).
As you can see in the post of mine you quoted, I was talking about the law, not about morality, and more specifically, I was talking about the legality of the actions of the senators.
Thumpalumpacus said:
By the way, while this is not codified law, this is from the US Judicial Code of Conduct:
Canon 2: A Judge Should Avoid Impropriety and the Appearance of Impropriety in all Activities
(A) Respect for Law. A judge should respect and comply with the law and should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.
You'll note the phrase, "respect and comply with the law."
I will note it, but I will say that it is irrelevant. If he does not comply with the law, well he is not complying with the law. No need for a Code of Conduct to tell us that. And I do think he acted illegally by lying under oath.
However, in the post of mine you replied to, I was talking about the legality of the actions
of the senators, not the legality of the actions of Kavanaugh.
Thumpalumpacus said:
Why do you think Senators should ignore a judge's compliance with these standards while they ponder his accession to another judgeship?
Why did you stop beating your dog?
Yes, I know, that would be a completely unfair accusation. And it would be epistemically irrational on my part to believe, on the basis of the information available to me, that you ever had a dog, let alone that you beat it. But the situation is analogous. I did not say or in any way suggested that senators have a moral obligation to ignore a judge's compliance with those standards. I did not even suggested that they did not have a moral obligation to take that into consideration. Of course, senators did have a moral obligation to take that into consideration. Whether that would be decisive would have to be assessed on a case by case basis.
Of course, that is also irrelevant to the matter at hand in the post you quoted and saying "Wait, you accept that perjury isn't a disqualifier?", because as you can see in the passage you quoted from my post, I was not talking about what senators
should do (i.e., about their moral obligations), but about their
legal obligations.
Thumpalumpacus said:
Whether or not the law dictates, why should not Senators use the standards established by judges themselves?
First, actually senators should morally consider those standards and the rest of the evidence.
Second, in the passage you quoted, I said:
me said:
If you mean legal duties, I do not know of any law that says Senators must not confirm candidates that commit perjury. If you know of one, please let me know, but as far as I can tell, there was no law breaking on the part of any of the Senators.
You'll note the beginning, "If you mean legal duties,..". That was the part of my post in which I was commenting about the legal obligations of senators, not about their moral obligations.
Thumpalumpacus said:
As I said much earlier in this discussion, I think any person who commits perjury, or gives strong suspicion of it, during his confirmation, should not be empaneled without a thorough investigation into the specific matter. You seem to disagree, and that's fine, it's a free country.
You mean, two free countries?
Still, mine is free enough. But your assessment that I "seem to disagree" is not warranted by the available evidence. I have made no comment about that. But since you ask, I would say this:
In most cases, senators would have a moral duty not to vote for that person, and precisely for that reason, at least if they know the person in question committed perjury. There are hypothetical scenarios in which that would not hold, so the matter has to be assessed on a case by case basis. And there are senators who might not know that the person lied. At any rate, I think most senators voted probably for at least some wrong reasons (for or against him), and so they probably behaved immorally. But I'm not certain about any specific cases. I have not studied them one by one. There probably is conclusive evidence in the case of some senators, but I have a limited amount of time to do this and I have not seen that conclusive evidence yet.
Thumpalumpacus said:
Hopefully you'll leave irrelevant analogies to foreign countries with different standards. But to put things plainly, I regard all of their leaders as too authoritarian for my tastes.
You did not understand my point at all. That was not an irrelevant analogy to China. It was a relevant analogy to a claim about your posts that did not have anything to do with their contents. For that matter, instead of "
Wait, you accept that Xi is worse than Deng?" I could have replied "Wait, you accept that Carter is worse than Kennedy?". I'm not asking you about Xi or Deng, or Carter or Kennedy. I'm telling you to stop grossly misrepresenting my posts.
Thumpalumpacus said:
Now get back on the subject and quit stocking the thread with red herrings. We've caught enough already and have had our fill.
Not from me. You just make up stuff about my beliefs, intentions, and content of my posts, and then attack it and me. Sure, you actually believe what you say about me and the content of my posts. But you're wrong.
