Category: crime and punishment

Armed robbers apprehended at the U of C after a chase and a crash; school paper publishes photo of one suspect; students use the incident to criticize our armed cops

February 13, 2019 • 1:00 pm

We had a bit of excitement here on Monday when, sitting at my desk, I got three successive email alerts from the campus authorities that there were criminal suspects loose on campus. The final one was that they were apprehended. But the first ones, like this, were a bit scary:

Shelter in place! That sounds ominious. Eventually we got the all clear, and it turned out that, according to the Chicago Maroon, there was a crime, a crash, and a chase (click on screenshot):

Summary from the paper (it was an armed robbery):

At around 11:48 a.m., a stolen black Dodge Charger believed to have been involved in the robbery of a GameStop ran a red light on the intersection of Midway Plaisance and South Woodlawn Avenue, supposedly while chased by police. In the process, it ran into two additional cars, damaging both significantly. The driver of one of the vehicles escaped without injury but the status of the other driver is unknown.

The suspects fled their Dodge Charger, and police pursued. One of the suspects was arrested immediately after the crash, according to an e-mail sent by the University after the events at around 4:25 p.m. Around 30 police officers cornered multiple suspects in the Saieh Hall of Economics, though it is unclear whether all the remaining suspects fled inside the building.

The suspects in Saieh were later apprehended at around 12:40 p.m. Police on scene said no one was hurt inside Saieh and there was no substantial property damage.

There were five suspects, all apprehended by the University of Chicago police without a shot being fired (our campus cops are armed, which the students generally object to).

Kudos for the cops for a prompt and nonviolent response, and to the University for keeping us informed (I’m generally in my office behind a locked outer door, so I wasn’t too scared).

Isn’t this over until the trial, then? Well, no, as there’s community outrage on two counts. If you read the Maroon article above, you’ll see a picture of a UC police officer walking one of the handcuffed suspects out of the economics building. I don’t know his age, but he may be underaged (I didn’t show the photo, but it’s right below the headline above). That has caused a fight to erupt in the comments, with a lot of people demanding that the photo be taken down because the accused robber is too young to show.  There are 131 comments—unheard of for this newspaper.

The pictured suspect is also black, which I suppose is one reason why people want the photo down. I didn’t think of that at first, but there’s a petition to the paper to remove the photo that explicitly mentions how the photo could reflect poorly on African-Americans (click on screenshot):

678 people have signed the petition, which includes this language:

As many University of Chicago students, faculty, staff, and residents of Hyde Park have pointed out, the publication of such a photo can cause incredible harm to the accused individual and their loved ones. It has the potential to infringe upon their right to a fair and unbiased criminal-legal process and negates the presumption of innocence.

It also cannot go unmentioned that the young man in the photograph is Black and the publication of this image perpetuates the Myth of Black Criminality and the racist, distorted view of Black youth as less innocent, more adult-like and dangerous than their White peers. Furthermore, if the young man in the photograph is under 18, their records of arrest and court processes are automatically sealed. Illinois law recognizes that children grow and change, and as a result, provides special protections to prevent collateral consequences from youthful arrests. This photo undermines those protections.

We demand that the photo of this young man be taken down immediately.

Now I’m not sure what rules, if any, obtain in journalism about publishing the photo of underage accused perps. The accused in the photo looks about 16 or 17 to me.  I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other, but if that’s old enough so that mainstream newspapers would have published such a photo, so be it. The Maroon editors obviously aren’t bowing to public pressure, as they haven’t removed the photo. I’m not sure whether it’s illegal or unethical to publish pictures of the accused even if they are under 18 and have their records sealed.

What bothers me more is that because the suspect is black, to many that’s even more of a reason to take down the photo since it would “perpetuate the Myth of Black Criminality” and so on. If it’s unethical to publish a picture of someone under 18—and, as I said, I’m not sure it is—then it doesn’t matter what race the person is. Publish or don’t, but don’t put ethnicity into the equation.

The other consequence, reported by the right-wing site The College Fix, is that students began going after the campus police on Twitter. They have blocked their Twitter accounts, so the tweets aren’t shown, but the CF reproduces some of them:

. . . a flurry of tweets arose among students who condemned the university for not providing alerts in a timely fashion and the actions of several professors who attempted to meet for class despite the shelter in place code.

“You shouldn’t have a midterm right after a lockdown,” one student tweeted. [JAC: Midterms were, I believe, scheduled the day of the incident]

Criticism was also leveled at the Maroon, for not only advising students that it was “safe to go outside” while the police was still searching for the last suspect, but also for plastering his photo on their front page, despite clearly appearing to be a minor.

A petition has been launched demanding the paper’s editors take the photo down.

What’s more, even though no students were harmed and the suspects were arrested without a single shot being fired, some students began calling for the abolition of police.

“there were militarized cops (literally carrying assault rifles) crawling all over campus looking for armed, african-american men. a black student could’ve worn a striped shirt (like one of the robbers)… reached for a phone at the wrong time… etc. and could have been shot,” one student tweeted. “Anywho … disarm/abolish the police.:

“UCPD is absolutely worthless thank you for coming to my ted talk,” tweeted another student.

A third offered this on social media: “dear god we’re gonna have to listen to c*llege r*publicans talk about how this proves we need more cops.”

This reporter reached out to several of the commenters regarding what kind of solution they would support instead of the police, but only received the following answer from one student: “We should arm the working class, disarm the pigs.”

These are students, not thugs. Arm the working class? And I wonder whether they would have been in favor of unarmed police if the suspects had started shooting, or had taken hostages.

Thank Ceiling Cat none of that happened.  I don’t expect anybody here will align with the reaction of condemning the cops, but do weigh in on the photo, especially if you have expertise about these matters.

El Chapo convicted

February 12, 2019 • 11:46 am

And he’ll undoubtedly get life in prison (he’s 61), as he was found guilty of all ten counts of the indictment, including conspiracy to murder, money laundering, and, of course, running a criminal enterprise. In this case life in prison is the mandatory sentence

Kudos to the prosecution for amassing and presenting a mountain of evidence. The trial itself had its weird moments, but you can read about them below.

But El Chapo isn’t the only guilty one. As the NYT reports:

Witness after witness took the stand at the trial and talked about paying off nearly every level of the Mexican police, military and political establishment — including the shocking allegation that Mr. Guzmán gave a $100 million bribe to the country’s former president, Enrique Peña Nieto, in the run-up to Mexico’s 2012 elections. There was also testimony that bribes were paid to Genaro García Luna, one of Mexico’s top former law enforcement officers, a host of Mexican generals and police officials, and almost the entire congress of Colombia.

They better put this guy under the strictest possible security given his cartel’s wealth and the fact that he’s escaped from prison twice before. And the cartel moves on, headed by his sons.

Michael Egnor gives a religionist’s view of free will and its implications for criminal justice

January 18, 2019 • 10:45 am

I really don’t like linking to Michael Egnor’s posts—or anybody’s posts—on Evolution News, the flaccid organ of the Discovery Institute. This is because, in the absence of evidence for intelligent design, the site has taken to ad hominem argumentation, ignoring evolution and simply attacking the evolutionary messengers. Egnor in particular has it in for me, and misses no opportunity to show that my non-evolutionary views are reprehensible, especially to believers. (He’s a Catholic.)

Further, I hate giving publicity to the Discovery Institute, for they lie about evolution for Jesus or Yahweh, and they do crave the views they get from this site, so I’ve archived Egnor’s lucubrations and you can see them by clicking on the headline below:

But the main reason I’m responding to Egnor is to remind readers of the importance for religionists of contracausal free will (the kind of free will which claims, that at any moment of your life, you could have made a choice different from the one you did); and to show that, contrary to some readers’ claims, a belief in free will does have an influence on people’s views on how justice should be dispensed and how the courts should be run.

Since surveys show that most people conceive of free will as contracausal free will, I suspect that most folks would go along with Egnor, even if they aren’t religious. In the following discussion, I’ve indented stuff I’ve posted previously and excerpts from Egnor’s new post; my take on Egnor is flush left.

First, Egnor quotes from a recent post I wrote on free will (this, of course, has nothing to do with “Evolution News”). In that post I said this.

There are ramifications for the justice system. I firmly believe that if we grasped that nobody, including criminals, has a “choice” in whether or not to do something, like mugging someone, we would structure the justice system differently, concentrating less on retribution and more on keeping baddies out of society, trying to reform them, and using punishment as a deterrent to improve society.

Egnor’s response:

He’s [i.e., me] right — the consequences of free will denial for our justice system are profound. But he needs to consider the ramifications on a deeper level.

Our current justice system is dependent on the acknowledgement that man can choose good or evil, in a real sense.

JAC: note Egnor’s strong claim that our justice system is based on contracausal free will. That’s largely true, for when some factors are supposed to derail our ability to choose “freely”, such as mental illness or childhood abuse, punishments are altered or mitigated. That’s a tacit judicial admission that punishment is based on the assumption that people can freely choose whether to commit a crime.

Egnor continues:

We may be influenced by our neurotransmitters, genes, etc., but in most situations we have the genuine ability to choose good or evil. The law then is not merely or even primarily a deterrent. It is first and foremost retribution. Retribution in law is not bad. In fact, it is the cornerstone of a legal system that respects the full humanity — the genuine freedom — of citizens. If we freely choose evil, in the sense that we could have chosen otherwise, we deserve retributive punishment. A murderer deserves to be incarcerated, because he has chosen to do evil. We can choose good and evil, and are held responsible for the choice. Retributive justice is a system fit for free and responsible people.

Note here the flat assertion that we do have contracausal free will, a key belief of Abrahamic religions. Note further that, according to Egnor, this justifies retributive justice, presumably including the death penalty, which most people see as retributive. Now Coyneian justice may coincide with some mandates or retribution, such as keeping malefactors out of society, but the former is based on what works to keep criminals from hurting other people, while the latter depends not on consequences but on “deontological” adherence to rules. More from Egnor:

If we deny free will, there is no justice in retribution. There is no justice in punishing a man for an act he could not elide. There is no justice in sanctioning a meat robot for being a meat robot, any more than we apply “justice” in the eradication of mosquitoes or rats.

Here Egnor comes close to saying that we shouldn’t punish anyone if determinism be true. If that’s not what he means, what does he mean?

I believe Egnor’s view of “justice” is one of “divine justice,” but it doesn’t matter. I see punishment as consequentialist: it’s meted out for the good of society and its members. As I’ve written so often, the functions of punishment should be threefold: sequestering a malefactor from society so he doesn’t offend again; allowing society to try to reform the criminal in prison (something that the U.S. is really bad at); and deterrence of others who, tempted to commit a crime, might refrain when they see that there’s possible punishment. When these sanctions are dispensed in a rational and effective way, that’s what I consider “justice”. (Of course, it’s an empirical question exactly how to punish people to achieve the ends of sequestration, reformation, and deterrence).

And if these three things be our goals, we don’t have to worry about any other notion of “justice”, especially those based on God’s rules.

But wait! Egnor has more!

The Danger to Humanity

In a justice system that denies free will, the only justification for punishment is deterrence, as Coyne appropriately notes. But he seems not to understand the danger a justice system based wholly on deterrence poses to humanity. Such a system is no longer a “justice” system at all; there is nothing just about punishing men for doing what they could not choose or avoid.The sole purpose of a criminal justice system in a society that denies free will is management of behavior. And management need not be merely reactive. In fact, efficient management is proactive. Management of deterministic behavior is most effective if it is preemptive.

In Coyne’s deterministic justice system, identification and interdiction of miscreants is the most effective, and if fact, the most sensible approach. Incarceration for “pre-crimes” is not unjust in a system without justice. Interdiction is efficient, in fact. Why wait for a murderer to murder before you lock him up? And a free will denier like Coyne can’t plausibly argue that such preemptive incarceration would be “unjust,” if there is no such thing as guilt or innocence anyway.

Egnor makes two errors here. First, deterrence is not the only justification for punishment that I’ve given, and he’d know that if he’d ever read what I wrote about free will.

Second, Egnor is signing on to the Minority Report View of Justice, in which we should punish, reform, or intercede beforehand if we know someone is predisposed to commit a crime.

I won’t go into the complicated issues of how we “know” somebody is going to do that, except to say that we’re nowhere near that point and, for some crimes like pedophilia, you know someone is “{predisposed” only after they’ve committed a type of crime with a high rate of recurrence. That doesn’t mean you should punish them for future crimes, but they should be monitored after release since crimes like pedophilia have a very high rate of recidivism. That’s why these kinds of sex offenders have to register and be monitored, which I consider justifiable.

Further, what kind of society would we have if we incarcerated those likely to commit crimes, but who haven’t yet done anything? It would be a draconian society in which people’s brains and personalities are constantly monitored by the state to test their “criminal propensity.” People would walk around in a state of terror, worried that their dark thoughts—and yes, we all have them—could lead to their incarceration. We don’t have “precogs” who can predict the future without any intercession by the state, and we never will. So, for the good of society, we don’t lock people up simply because they’re “predisposed” to be criminals.

Finally, Egnor says this

Without free will, there is no guilt and there is no innocence. There are merely animals to be managed, behavior to be modified. A society without free will is a society without responsibility or human dignity. A society without recognition of free will is a totalitarian hell predicated on behavioral interdiction. Where there is no guilt, there can be no innocence.

He’s wrong again. “Guilt” or “innocence”, as I’ve written before, simply means, “You did the crime” or “You didn’t do the crime” according to the standards of justice. You are responsible for the crime and for that you are responsible (but in my view not morally responsible, since you couldn’t choose), and so you must suffer the consequences.

If you think that belief or disbelief in free will has no ramifications for the justice system, just consider Egnor’s view that contracausal free will justifies retributive punishment.

h/t: Blue

Two nuns embezzle half a million dollars to gamble in Las Vegas, face NO charges

December 11, 2018 • 10:00 am

Posting may be light today as I’m writing for real (i.e., not on this site, and for dosh) with two deadlines. Like Maru, I do my best. Please enjoy—if that’s the right word—this short BBC article that’s at once funny and irritating (click on the screenshot):

The funny part is, of course, the idea of nuns stealing money to gamble. And they did (emphasis is the BBC’s):

Two nuns who worked at a Catholic school in California have admitted embezzling about $500,000 (£396,000) and using it to gamble in Las Vegas.

Sisters Mary Kreuper and Lana Chang took the money from St James’ Catholic School in the city of Torrance, near Los Angeles, to spend in casinos.

The pair, who are said to be best friends, took funds from an account holding tuition fees and donations.

The sisters, who recently retired, have expressed remorse for their actions.

Mary Kreuper was the school principal for 29 years, while Lana Chang worked as a teacher for about 20 years. They are thought to have stolen the money over a period of at least a decade to spend on travel and gambling.

. . . The Archdiocese of Los Angeles said the church discovered that the money was missing during a routine audit.

The nuns were allegedly able to conceal their actions by depositing a number of cheques made out to the school for tuition and other fees into a separate bank account not used by the school.

The not so funny part is that the money was substantial (I can’t get too worked up about the Catholic Church losing it, though), and, most of all, that the nuns didn’t even face charges, although they’ve resigned:

On Monday, St James’ Catholic Church said the nuns had expressed “deep remorse” over their actions, adding that while the police had been informed, no criminal charges would be brought against the pair.

Once again religion gets a pass. These nuns are admitted felons, yet no charges will be brought. Although they’re no longer Brides of Jesus, they can live their lives without stigma, opprobrium, or any jail time. And there’s no God to punish them, either.

I’ve sent the article to the FFRF for possible inclusion in the “black collar crime” section of their monthly newspaper: a long listing of all the priests, preachers, and nuns recently found guilty of committing crimes.

h/t: Kevin

The shooting in Pittsburgh

October 28, 2018 • 1:30 pm

I’ve been asked by several people why I haven’t responded to the horrible news of 11 people shot to death in a synagogue in Pittsburgh. It happened on Squirrel Hill, a Jewish area of the city in which, it so happens, most of my relatives used to live. I’m not sure whether any of them went to that schul.

I haven’t responded simply because I have nothing to say about this kind of thing that I haven’t said before. I mourn the loss of those 11 people, and can only imagine the grief of their friends, families and loved ones. Anti-Semitism is on the rise (the killer apparently hated Jews), the gun culture is horrible, and Americans seem unwilling to do anything about it.

But I’ve said all this before. I don’t want to start affixing blame on anyone, as the whole thing is complex and I’m simply too sad and just want the killing and the demonization of others to stop.

I’ll let other folks do the analyses in other venues.

A misguided execution of a cognitively disabled prisoner

October 5, 2018 • 2:46 pm

This report, from the science journal Nature (click on screenshot) shows what happens when punishment is purely retributive.

The story: Vernon Madison killed a police officer in Alabama in 1985. He was sentenced to death.  In the ensuing 33 years on death row, Madison has had multiple strokes that have left him without any memory of the crime. He is, psychologists say, no different from someone born with severe enough intellectual impairment to be deemed not guilty by reason of insanity. But of course Madison was “sane” when he did the crime.

Madison is still scheduled to die. Why? Let Alabama explain:

[Madison’s] lawyers say that, in terms of his intellectual function, there is no difference between his current condition and that of a person born with an intellectual disability. The latter group is protected from execution, thanks to a 2002 Supreme Court decision.

Madison’s case differs because he did not have a severe cognitive impairment at the time he committed the murder, and presumably knew it was wrong. The state of Alabama argues that once the situation is explained to him, Madison also understands that he was tried and will be executed. Alabama says it doesn’t matter whether he remembers it, because he can still rationally conceptualize it.

But psychologists and psychiatrists say that this is very different from a deep understanding of one’s own guilt.

Well, I oppose the death penalty in general, as it doesn’t serve as a deterrent for others, it doesn’t allow those wrongfully convicted to be freed, it’s more expensive than giving life without parole, and it offers no chance of rehabilitation. I understand that if there’s a death penalty that is waived when the murderer is cognitively impaired, then someone who becomes impaired after doing the crime poses a problem for that system.

But it wouldn’t pose a problem to a humane justice system. Madison might be kept in custody for the rest of his life; but he shouldn’t be in prison rather than in a facility for psychiatric cases, or just in a hospital. What is gained by killing him? It’s not a deterrent, and if he’s still a danger he can be sequestered. There’s something especially sickening about killing someone who doesn’t know why he’s being killed, but of course there’s something sickening about executions in general.

Nature takes the humane stance in its op-ed, but the counterarguments show what happens when you dispense retributive justice on the grounds that someone deserves to be killed because they made the wrong choice (my emphasis below):

The case highlights the illogic of capital punishment. Death-penalty proponents argue that it is necessary for justice to be served, as well as to deter others from crime. Yet neither of these conditions applies here. Madison cannot see his execution as justice because he cannot recall his crime. And executing a person with an intellectual disability hardly serves as an example or deterrent.

Regardless of the decision, Madison is not going unpunished. If he escapes execution, he will spend the rest of his life in prison alone, disabled and confused by the world around him. He is no longer a threat. The court should set an example and grant mercy.

The mere phrase “justice must be served” is purely retributive, at least in this case. Killing a cognitively impaired prisoner is not a dispensation of justice to anybody with a drop of humanity in their veins.

Nature implies that a better scientific understanding of brain function could help with this case, which is being appealed to the Supreme Court, but I think they’re wrong. Someone shouldn’t be executed simply because they remember their crime and understand that it’s wrong. Neither of those are a matter of free choice.

If science does have a role here, it’s to help us realize that every criminal can be treated like a broken machine, but each should be treated uniquely because each criminal is broken in a different way. Nobody could have chosen not to murder at the moment of a killing. Because of that, because of the failure of execution to be a deterrent, and because of the impossibility of resurrecting executed people later found to be innocent, nobody should be executed.

Ever.

Did the Kavanaugh hearings help Trump?

October 2, 2018 • 1:00 pm

As I’ve written before, my feeling, based on what I know and the testimony I heard, is that Brett Kavanaugh was guilty of sexual assault or malfeasance. Now I think he’s guilty not just of lying about that, but lying about many things, and that is perjury and disqualifies him from the Supreme Court. But I would have voted against him because of his extreme ideology before any of the accusations surfaced.

Is the testimony against Kavanaugh by Christine Ford and others absolutely damning, showing beyond a reasonable doubt? No, they don’t. We can’t be even 95% certain that Ford was correct. (I think we can be more certain that he lied about various things).  But do the data make it seem more likely than not that Kavanaugh is temperamentally and ideologically unsuited for the Court? Yes, that’s my judgment. Your mileage will vary. And, as I predicted, I don’t think he’ll make it to the Senate’s voting stage, but if he does, he won’t be approved. Again, I may well be wrong.

No matter what happens, though, I felt that the hearings were an embarrassment for nearly everyone: Democrats, Republicans, and Kavanaugh (Ford at least behaved with decorum). And I have no idea how either the approval or rejection of Kavanaugh will play out in the midterm elections.

But Seth Mandel, in the Atlantic article published yesterday (click on screenshot below), thinks that they’re helping Trump.

I’m not sure I agree, for if the judge is approved it’s going to turn many women on the fence against the GOP, and bring to the polls all those liberal women who didn’t vote in 2016. But let us hear what Mandel has to say. First, note that, like me, he’s against Kavanaugh’s confirmation:

I find Ford’s allegation to be credible, her behavior admirable, her bravery undeniable. But I also understand that there simply isn’t enough corroborating evidence to justify the certainty we’re seeing on either side, and that the 11th-hour leaking of the allegation—Senator Dianne Feinstein had Ford’s letter in her possession through the entire process—reeked of “October surprise” politics. Still, I have advocated consistently that Kavanaugh’s nomination be withdrawn. [JAC: I can’t say that my opinion of Feinstein has been burnished by her behavior at the hearings.]

. . . Christine Blasey Ford has acted honorably, with grace and care far beyond what we should in good conscience demand of a victim of sexual assault. But instead of having her warning quietly passed along, she was forced to offer her story in a grotesque spectacle, against her clear intentions. I have said multiple times that the White House should not advance Kavanaugh’s nomination any further. But those who carefully considered Thursday’s testimonies and concluded they could not in good faith reject his heartfelt denial are not rape apologists. Tarring them as such is a deliberate act to erase the distinctions between Trump and his critics on the right, and to then blame that erasure on the targets of a smear campaign.

Rape apologists? Yes, that’s what the Women’s March said about every Republican who voted to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination. That’s a bit strong, and I wouldn’t characterize every Republican member of the panel in that way—especially Jeff Flake, who made the Republicans get the FBI to investigate. Yet he, too was smeared, and unfairly (click on screenshot below to see the March’s whole thread):

What we are seeing, I think, is a clash of completely polarized ideologies that uses Kavanaugh as an fulcrum. It’s the polarization itself that is the big problem in our country, and it’s largely, but not completely, because of the Republicans and Donald Trump. What should we, as liberals, do? What Mandel doesn’t think we should do is engage in smear campaigns. (My own bête noire is the mantra “Believe survivors”, which is tautological, begs the question in the correct sense of that term, and also contravenes the basic principles of fairness. What we should be saying is: “We will take the claims of accusers very seriously and investigate them thoroughly if the accusers wish it.)

We have two choices. Since the Republicans and Trump are odious, almost beyond belief in their mendacity and stupidity, we could demonize them and lash out at them, which is what we saw last week. The other choice is to TRY to find some common ground, and, in the process, at least behave according to our own principles, and with decency. We should not accost our opponents in restaurants and harass them mercilessly, nor should we call people like Jeff Flake a “rape apologist”. What good do these things do?

You might say, “Well, nothing we can do will put even a dent in Republican truculence, so we might as well use their playbook.” I’m not at that point, and doubt I’ll ever be. It’s uncivil and accomplishes nothing. At least being a bit more conciliatory has a chance of working. That doesn’t mean being sympathetic to Kavanaugh, but simply being civil to our opponents and trying our best to convert them. And that’s what Mandel has to say. He ends his piece like this:

In contemporary American politics, persuasion is increasingly abandoned in favor of disqualification. The goal of partisans is often to convince their own side why they must not even listen to the other side.

The result is the eradication of principle from public life. Republicans’ treatment of Merrick Garland—Barack Obama’s nominee who was not even granted a hearing, let alone a vote—was atrocious. Along with others on the right, I said so at the time. But the sheer number of times liberals raise Garland as an answer to the Democrats’ procedural perversions is astonishing—as if what matters is not Kavanaugh’s guilt or innocence, but the satisfaction of partisan bloodlust.

One of the tragedies in all this is that leftists have identified those on the right who have been and are prepared to be their allies—Never Trumpers and others—and prioritized such people for destruction. I have said multiple times that the White House should not advance Kavanaugh’s nomination any further. But those who disagree with me, on principle, are not rape apologists. And labeling them so sends an unmistakable message: You would be a fool to reach across the aisle and work with Democrats to rein in the excesses of your colleagues.

This is what enabling Trump looks like: torpedoing efforts that could incentivize constraining his worst instincts. Such people consider themselves the “resistance” to the president. In reality, they are painting the country Trump. The rest of us can only hope they fail.

The sentences in bold ring true to me. Yes, many Republicans are mendacious and acting not out of principle but out of a misguided adherence to a warped ideology. But not all of them. On my part, I think we have to rein in the hysteria and demonization, while at the same time searching for the truth. I know politics isn’t science, but in science we convince our opponents with the facts, not by calling them jerks. Since nobody knows the facts in the Kavanaugh case, we must make the best judgment we can and recognize that at least some of our opponents are honorable people.

h/t: Grania