Kavanaugh hearing transcripts and other links

Posted by Sappho on October 1st, 2018 filed in News and Commentary

Many people like to judge the truthfulness of the two parties, Ford and Kavanaugh, by watching them, listening to them, and getting whatever sense they can from their voices, body language, and general demeanor. I know that I am not good at detecting lies in this way, so I prefer to skip the TV and go for transcripts. Here are some links (a few days late, so you may have read them all, but I’ll save them here for my benefit):

WaPo: Kavanaugh hearing: Transcripts

Vox: Every time Ford and Kavanaugh dodged a question, in one chart (you can click on each line colored pink for a dodge and see whether you agree)

Not directly about Kavanaugh, but related because discussion of Swetnick’s allegations raised some general discussion of date rape drugs, here’s an old Five Thirty-Eight article relating that Rapes Assisted By Drugs Or Alcohol Are All Too Common but actual use of date rape drugs much less common. I suspect that often the actual “date rape drug” is a larger dose of alcohol than the victim thought she had, sometimes because she miscalculated her tolerance and sometimes because, for example, she was given mixed drinks with a stronger than usual dose of alcohol, or her beer was topped off when she wasn’t looking, etc. Of course, date rape drugs or none, “having sex” with someone who’s actually incapacitated by alcohol or drugs is rape. (In at least some cases, a woman may be truly raped, telling the truth about her suspicion that date rape drugs were used on her, but mistaken about that suspicion.)