>>>I'm not saying he doesn't deserve due process - that is not what I'm asking you and you know that because I told you so. I'm asking you who you believe and you know this because I told you so. He's not on trial he's up for election.
>
>By insisting that he is a liar and only the women must be believed, you ARE denying him due process. And the meme that fair process gets suspended during an election, is absurd.
>
>/edit/
>
>Thought it might be helpful to show you the though process I'm following.
>
>On the serious allegation of underage predation: we agree that if true, he's not fit to be any sort of representative.
>
>But the first thing to say about Alabama, is that the age of consent is 16.
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>Next, so far there's one piece of physical evidence from a yearbook of a then-16-year-old who says he tried to rape her: the yearbook has a signed endearment attributed to Moore, who denies he wrote it.
>
>Perfect. Handwriting science is highly advanced these days so if it's submitted to handwriting experts who conclude Moore wrote it: she's telling the truth and he's in big trouble. But if examination shows it's a forgery, what then?
>
>How long will it take handwriting experts to form their opinion? A matter of days at most, I'm told- meaning this vital information for Alabama voters could already be available...
>
>except that the accuser's activist lawyer refuses to release the yearbook to examination until after the election. Moore's team, on the other hand, is eager to have it examined immediately.
>
>Sorry but Alabama voters are going to make judgments based on this that you will not like.
>
>There's one other item: the yearbook signature has a "D.A" suffix that laypeople like you and I might conclude is reference to his status as (assistant) District Attorney at the time. But the Moore team says if D.A. is after his name, those are the initials of his then assistant who applied the suffix when stamping court documents on his behalf.
>
>So there's another testable item. if Moore's name only is ever followed by D.A. in court documents signed off by his assistant, how does it come to be in the yearbook? The immediate question is whether he ever did use the D.A. himself and I'm reliably advised that all the resources of MSM juggernauts are directed towards this sort of evidence that will be very useful to Alabama voters. So if all they hear is crickets on this point, savvy Alabama voters will add that to their decisionmaking too. Whereas if WAPO comes up with a sensational expose of private signatures where he did use the D.A., he's lied to the people of Alabama and he's toast.
>
>More troubling are the allegations of the 14-year-old. She says that Moore began meeting her and taking her home, on the second occasion stripping her and initiating/trying to initiate sexual contact. When she said she felt uncomfortable, he took her home. If true, he deserves the book thrown at him, but how do you validate such an event from 40 years ago? Inevitably you have to review the characters of those involved- and if there's been synchronized complaints just before an election, then the veracity of one- such as that involving the yearbook- has strong influence on the others too. If Moore's lying about the yearbook, he can't hope for benefit of the doubt on other allegations, and he's toast.
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>So that's an example of how I think these things through. I won't tell you my gut feeling (though as I have daughters, you might guess) but I'm careful not to take sides prior to the yearbook analysis and other evidence. Both versions remain credible at this stage and worthy of respect. If sensational new evidence appears, I think you're far better off not to have already formed an inflexible opinion and acted upon it. So when you seem to pick a side and angrily demand agreement, I still prefer my way.

Here in Canada the Lindsay Shepherd case has been big news recently and generated a lot of debate. One opinion piece had some, to my mind, memorable quotes:

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/barbara-kay-wlus-contemptible-conduct-proof-of-intellectual-assault-underway-on-campuses

"... as John M. Ellis, emeritus professor at the University of California Santa Cruz and chairman of the California Association of Scholars, observes in a recent Wall Street Journal article, “Higher Education’s Deeper Sickness,” “[I]ntellectual dominance promotes stupidity. As one side becomes numerically stronger, its discipline weakens. The greater the imbalance between the two sides, the more incoherent and irrational the majority will become…. With almost no intellectual opponents remaining, campus radicals have lost the ability to engage with arguments and resort instead to the lazy alternative of name-calling: opponents are all ‘fascists,’ ‘racists’ or ‘white supremacists’.”"

"This contemptible episode has proven, if proof were needed, that, as one WSJ letter-writer put it: “The left is no longer able to recognize opposing political thought as thought.”"

Your travails in this thread recalled that article to me.