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Lies, empathy and partisanship.

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After his latest testimony, Judge Brett Kavanaugh faced more questions about his behavior as a young adult and at his confirmation hearing. Credit Credit Erin Schaff for The New York Times

1. Isn't an itsy-bitsy lie still a lie?
Judge Kavanaugh, I don't know what happened in 1982. But I'm deeply troubled by what I perceive as your lack of integrity last week. You told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that your "have you boofed" yearbook question referred to farting, that "devil's triangle" was a drinking game, that a "Renate alumnius" was simply a friend of Renate with no sexual insinuations, that the drinking age was 18.

Really? As James Comey tweeted: "small lies matter, even about yearbooks." No one sensible is going to hold teenage drinking against you, but we are bothered when you mislead senators and the public today and deny what is obvious: As you put it in 1983, "we're loud, obnoxious drunks."

I appreciate that it's embarrassing to be pressed to explain juvenile humor, but it takes only a moment online for anyone to see that "boofing" refers to anal sex or rectal infusions of alcohol or drugs, that a "devil's triangle" is sex involving two men and a woman, that the drinking age in Maryland was raised to 21 when you were still 17. And the boast about being a " Renate alumnius "? Come on. We were all teenagers once.

What can we call these but lies? And they come on top of deeply misleading testimony about your knowledge of stolen documents when you were in the Bush White House and your involvement in judicial nominations then.

As Republicans noted in the time of Bill Clinton's impeachment, lying under oath is still perjury when it is about sex or a salacious topic. So it seems to me that whether or not you broke any law 36 years ago, you broke it last week.
2. Do you have empathy for those who aren't so blessed as yourself?
An air of entitlement hangs over both your testimony and the sexual assaults, if they happened as alleged, and it leaves many of us with misgivings even as we acknowledge that you are a smart, hardworking and distinguished public servant. Presidential elections have consequences, and I don't know that lack of empathy should be disqualifying. But here's why it worries me.

Where the Supreme Court has made its worst mistakes, the problems have arisen often not from a lack of intelligence but from a failure of empathy. In Dred Scott and Plessy, justices did not appreciate what it meant to be black in America; in Korematsu, what it meant to be a Japanese-American facing internment; in Buck v. Bell, what it meant to be a marginalized woman; in Lochner, what it meant to be a laborer; in Bowers v. Hardwick, what it meant to be gay.

If you had been on the court, Judge Kavanaugh, in 1873 for Bradwell v. Illinois, which upheld the State of Illinois's decision to deny a woman a license to practice law based on her gender, your opinion no doubt would have been well reasoned - but would it have been just?

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3. What should we make of your rage and partisanship?
We understand that you feel ambushed by Senate Democrats, and you have a point: Democrats should have raised the allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford earlier.

But your fury at the Democrats who questioned you left you looking less like a judge than like a political operative. When you attributed the opposition to you to "revenge on behalf of the Clintons," you looked conspiratorial and partisan. Frankly, Christine Blasey Ford showed a more judicial temperament than you did.

The American Bar Association's Model Code of Judicial Conduct states, "A judge shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity and impartiality of the judiciary." Sneering at senators, even when feeling provoked, does not fit that code.

Judge Kavanaugh, I've learned from my criminal justice reporting that witnesses err surprisingly often. You have earned a reputation as a first-rate conservative judge, and I thought it possible that there was some mistake and that you had been terribly wronged. But ultimately what perhaps damaged you most was not the unproven allegations of assaults decades ago, but your own lies and partisanship just last week.

Your supporters are also doubling down. Instead of backing a thorough investigation that would take the time to interview ALL witnesses, President Trump has mocked Dr. Blasey, and Republican senators have released an explicit sexual statement to shame Julie Swetnick, another woman whom they have not bothered to listen to. So it appears that your side's strategy is not to dispel the suspicion but rather to humiliate the accusers - violating them in a display of power and entitlement that is an echo of what they say took place so many years ago. If that's the path you choose, you should not sit on the Supreme Court.
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Opinion | Three Questions for Judge Kavanaugh

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Lies, empathy and partisanship. 1. Isn't an itsy-bitsy lie still a lie? Judge Kavanaugh, I don't know what happened in 1982. But I'm deeply troubled by what I perceive as your lack of integrity last week.

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