There are men and women who did bad things as teens and acknowledged what they did wrong, worked hard, and earned a second chance. Then there are rich Maryland prep-school kids who attempted rape and decades later are still denying they did anything. Nichols sees *no* difference.
2/ I might also tell Nichols that rape doesn't happen "between kids." Rape is something that one person *commits upon* another as a violation of human dignity, and it doesn't matter a rat's ass whether it happens at a party, in a field, in an alley, in school, or *anywhere else*.
3/ It's not just understandable but natural that one of the assumptions we make about someone who's going to be an *unreviewable judge* is that they have an unbroken or nearly unbroken history of lawfulness—it's *not* a "permanent disqualification from everything" to expect that.
