Reader Bill Thompson has written to their ABC:

Zoe Daniel, your ABC’s North American bureau chief just filed this piece of detritus masquerading as analysis

Perhaps I was under a misunderstanding that the role of judges, including those on the US Supreme Court, is to consider the evidence presented in a trial & apply the law to the facts, in order to reach their decision?

I didn’t think “dishing out morality” entered into it.

ENDS

Ms Daniel's analysis:

The question should not be whether a 35-year-old allegation regarding teenage behaviour should derail a career, but whether the unanswered question — is the allegation true? — is tolerable when it hangs over a US Supreme Court justice forever after.

Realistically, that may never be answered, so can Brett Kavanaugh ever sit on the court dishing out morality to the American people?

Such is the complex moral question roiling the nation as the confirmation of the Supreme Court nominee is threatened by something he's alleged to have done when drunk and 17.

In this era of #MeToo, even the President has been surprisingly tempered in his use of language towards the judge's accuser Christine Blasey Ford, who is under pressure to testify on the matter, delaying the confirmation process.

"I don't know about the other party, but Judge Kavanaugh is anxious to do it, and a delay is certainly acceptable," Mr Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

"We want to get to the bottom of everything. We want everybody to be able to speak up and speak out."

That said, he has expressed sympathy for the judge and his family rather than the alleged victim, joining a GOP chorus suggesting that Democrats are using the allegation to delay confirmation hearings until after the mid-terms.

There's no doubt some superb timing in all of this for the Democrats, who favour an FBI investigation ahead of any testimony in front of the judicial committee.

But in the middle of it all is a woman who says she's been carrying this around for more than three decades and has now had to go into virtual hiding due to threats since the allegations became public (not by her choice).

Professor Ford, a 51-year-old research psychologist, alleges that the now Supreme Court nominee forced himself on her and sexually assaulted her at a party in Maryland when they were both teenagers.

She got away, but has provided medical notes from therapists showing she's struggled with men and relationships since. A polygraph test found she was telling the truth. This article sets it out in detail and is worth a read.

Mr Kavanaugh has outright denied the claim, as have several of his friends who were said to have been there that night. For some context on that, see this piece on Mr Kavanaugh's high school mate Mark Judge and what sounds like a pretty awful alcohol culture back then at private school Georgetown Prep in Maryland just outside DC.

The White House press office issued the following statement from Mr Kavanaugh:

"This is a completely false allegation. I have never done anything like what the accuser describes — to her or to anyone."

The nation is split.

Did Mr Kavanaugh do it? What if he did? Do the actions of a 17-year-old, who has since led a seemingly fair and lawful life, carry over to age 53?

ENDS

Why does that moral standard apply only to a US Conservative judge?

Why not to Gillard Federal Court appointee Judge Bernard Murphy?

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