Displaying posts published in

September 2018

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Believing Kavanaugh or Blasey Ford before hearing testimony is bias, not blind justice Jonathan Turley

By on September 20th, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/09/19/brett-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-mazie-hirano-believe-survivor-column/1358923002/
Democratic senators say they believe Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, but belief before the hearing isn’t blind justice. It’s bias.

It is a growing mantra on and off Capitol Hill. Both members and commentators have insisted that Christine Blasey Ford “has a right to be believed.” Hawaii’s Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono not only has insisted that she and other women alleging abuse “need to be believed,” but men need to “just shut up and step up.” It is a jarring disconnect for members who insist that they confirm a nominee who will approach legal questions with a fair and open mind while dispensing with such considerations in their own treatment of his nomination. The fact is that Ford has a right to be heard and to be treated fairly. Neither she nor Kavanaugh have a right to be believed on the basis for an allegation or a denial.

Throughout the confirmation hearings, Democratic Senators pressed Kavanaugh as to whether he was a lock for business and corporate interests — favoring certain types of litigants and not giving a fair hearing to others. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse denounced the conservatives on the Court — and by extension Kavanaugh — as changing their approach based on who was making allegations. He decried conservative jurists who spared corporate or business litigation from what they viewed as the “indignity of equal treatment.”
Kavanaugh and Ford deserve blind justice

Yet, the touchstone of legal process is neutral, consistent, and fair review. That means that no one has an advantage because who they are or what they represent or what they are alleging. Law is objective and, yes, blind.

These politicians however insist that blind justice means turning a blind eye to abuse. Various Democratic senators announced within days of Ford’s allegations that they believe her, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Hillary Clinton and others have insisted that the test is whether you believe any woman alleging abuse. Clinton declared “I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault … You have the right to be believed, and we’re with you.”

Continue reading →
MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Arts Life Ian Buruma and the age of sexual McCarthyism The New York Review of Books editor is the latest casualty of the identitarian mob Toby Young

By on September 20th, 2018

https://spectator.us/2018/09/ian-buruma-nyrb-sexual-mccarthyism/

Those unfamiliar with the politics of New York’s intellectual Brahmin class will find this hard to get their heads around, but Ian Buruma, the editor-in-chief of the New York Review of Books, has just been forced to resign for publishing an essay by Jian Ghomeshi, a Canadian radio host who was accused of sexual assault several years ago. To be clear, Buruma’s sin isn’t having committed a sexual misdemeanour himself. Rather, it consists of having run a piece by someone who was charged with sexual assault, even though Ghomeshi was acquitted. Welcome to Salem, 2018.

The essay, headlined ‘Reflections from a Hashtag’, caused uproar on social media when it was published at the beginning of the week. Some critics focused on the fact that Ghomeshi hadn’t gone into detail about the crimes he was accused of – choking and hitting women, among other things – and glossed over the sheer number of his accusers – he used the word ‘several’, when there were at least 20. This was a failure of ‘fact-checking’, apparently. Others pointed out that, even though Ghomeshi wasn’t found guilty of any of the charges, one was only dropped on condition that he apologise to his accuser and sign a ‘peace bond’, whereby he promised to stay out of trouble. Still others objected to the fact that his accusers weren’t given the opportunity to respond at equal length in the same issue of the NYRB.

Buruma didn’t help his cause by giving an interview to Slate on September 14 to explain why he’d published the piece. This question and answer, in particular, seems to have enraged a lot of people:

There are numerous allegations of sexual assault against Ghomeshi, including punching women in the head. That seems pretty far on the spectrum of bad behaviour.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Playbook, the Press, the Plan, and the Patsies By Michael Walsh

By on September 20th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/19/the-playbook

Call their bluff. Call the vote.

Who really can be surprised by the Democrats’ latest antics surrounding Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court? As the sands of the hourglass pour over what once seemed like their inevitable ideological triumph, and leftists across America and around the world realize that their Glorious Revolution will not be completed in their lifetimes, the agitators, true believers, and committed cultural Marxists have grown increasingly desperate as they try to stave off their imminent discomfiture and defeat.

Still, the tactics they’re now employing against Kavanaugh, while extreme, are nothing new for them. They’ve always shot from the hip and aimed for the heart, hoping to sway public opinion by means of passion rather than reason. The more convinced they are of the righteousness of their cause—call it their “higher loyalty” to the arc of history—the more antic they get, like chimps in the zoo at feeding time, moving from whingeing servility to outright viciousness the hungrier they get. Left unchecked, even the cuddliest Cheetah eventually will rip off your face.

By now, the outlines of their playbook are well known. Since winning isn’t just everything, it’s the only thing, “by any means necessary” is their working ethos. It matters not whether any part of their argument contradicts their own long-held beliefs and principles (although if you don’t like those, they have others), or that their prescriptions are inconsistently applied, and that rarely if ever are they willing to live under the same strictures they wish to force upon others. If they weren’t so malevolent, you might mistake them not for Karl Marx, but for Groucho:

But malicious they are, with a madness to their method. First, they posit a counterfactual—say, “diversity is our strength”—and then they argue it as if it were prima facie true. Should you object, they bombard you with insults and imprecations, calling your intelligence and, even more, your moral fiber into question. And once you’ve accepted their unexamined premises, if only out of politeness and conflict avoidance, they beat you to death with them.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Are We on the Verge of Civil War? By Victor Davis Hanson

By on September 20th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/20/are-we-on

Americans keep dividing into two hostile camps.

It seems the country is back to 1860 on the eve of the Civil War, rather than in 2018, during the greatest age of affluence, leisure and freedom in the history of civilization.

The ancient historian Thucydides called the civil discord that tore apart the fifth-century B.C. Greek city-states “stasis.” He saw stasis as a bitter civil war between the revolutionary masses and the traditionalist middle and upper classes.

Something like that ancient divide is now infecting every aspect of American life.

Americans increasingly are either proud of past U.S. traditions, ongoing reform, and current American exceptionalism, or they insist that the country was hopelessly flawed at its birth and must be radically reinvented to rectify its original sins.

No sphere of life is immune from the subsequent politicization: not movies, television, professional sports, late-night comedy or colleges. Even hurricanes are typically leveraged to advance political agendas.

What is causing America to turn differences into these bitter hatreds—and why now?

The internet and social media often descend into an electronic lynch mob. In a nanosecond, an insignificant local news story goes viral. Immediately hundreds of millions of people use it to drum up the evils or virtues of either progressivism or conservatism.

Anonymity is a force multiplier of these tensions. Fake online identities provide cover for ever greater extremism—on the logic that no one is ever called to account for his or her words.

Speed is also the enemy of common sense and restraint. Millions of bloggers rush to be the first to post their take on a news event, without much worry about whether it soon becomes a “fake news” moment of unsubstantiated gossip and fiction.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

John O’Sullivan Hypocrisy by the Sackful

By on September 20th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/09/sacks-hypocrisy/

Women in European cities have been attacked, slashed and had acid thrown in their faces for wearing ‘immodest’ dress in areas where Islamic misogyny prevails. Yet what garners the most reactive ink? Boris Johnson and his column decrying the burka
In the last month several Iranian women have been sentenced to long years of imprisonment in the country’s harsh jails for the crime of removing the burka in public. Wearing a garment that covers most of the body and head is mandatory in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Demonstrations by women against this and similar rules have been spreading in both countries and have subsequently been broadcast on Twitter, YouTube and other social media. It’s a movement of great cultural significance, and the women who lead it meet street attacks as well as official punishments. They are extraordinarily heroic.

Yet if you type the single word burka into Google, the first three visual stories that pop up are all related to the recent article by Boris Johnson in the London Daily Telegraph in which he criticised the burka as resembling a “letterbox”. If you then type in both burka and Boris, no fewer than 13 million links to stories involving both words then appear. If you have a morbid curiosity to find out about the rebellion of Iranian women against wearing the burka, however, Google will link you to 5 million stories—a solid number but only just over a third of the number involving Boris.

To be fair, the Boris column generated a lot of secondary stories. There were attacks on him by Prime Minister Theresa May, by the chairman of the Tory party, Brandon Lewis, by “Muslim community leaders” and their “spokesmen” (denouncing his descent into Islamophobia), by various Tory MPs from the party’s Remainer faction (two of whom threatened to leave the party if he ever became its leader), by columnists from several newspapers, notably the Guardian, and even from faraway New York by the US news program the Daily Show, which issued one of its standard solemn moral reproofs in “satirical” disguise.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Ladies, We Don’t Need To Be Part of Your Group Therapy By Julie Kelly

By on September 20th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/20/ladies-we-dont-

Do we really have to be here for this?

By “we,” I mean America. And by “this,” I mean some form of forced group therapy session for adult women who cannot move past an ugly event from their teen years and feel the need to relitigate it in public nearly four decades later. A serious vetting process for a Supreme Court nominee has suddenly devolved into the GenX version of “The Big Chill.”

Here’s the deal: Christine Blasey Ford is one year older than I am. We came of age in the hard-partying 1980s when binge drinking among Americans teens was at an all-time high. A huge cultural shift was happening: Moms were entering the workforce and divorce rates were surging. Teenagers had extra latitude to do naughty things while our parents were busy working or finding new relationships post-divorce.

Plenty of GenX women have at least one story somewhat similar to the one Ford now says happened to her in the early 1980s: Attending a “house party” with a small group of drunk teens at a home where no parent was present; getting so blitzed you can’t later recall important details—like the exact date it happened or how you got home. Having inebriated boys take advantage of the situation—getting sloppy and aggressive, maybe even trying to force themselves on you. While the behavior was not excusable or acceptable, nor was it criminal. Especially if it ended after a firm “no.” (And, before any of you morons say it, NO I AM NOT DEFENDING RAPE.)

Human Nature Doesn’t Change
Moreover, these kinds of situations are not unique to the 1980s because they still happen every weekend in towns and on campuses across the country. Something that is definitely different today than it was in the 1980s is that responsible parents of boys now caution their sons about the dangers of even the perception of mistreating a girl. Parents now are keenly aware of the legal and long term consequences of alleged abusive behavior. And girls are more informed about how to defend themselves, whether its moving in groups, watching your drinks, or having each other’s backs to mitigate situations that may get out of control.

My generation, as parents, do not pretend that the impulses of teenagers and young adults do not exist, or that these impulses are not fueled by drugs and alcohol. Human nature does not adapt to conform to any particular cultural moment.

Which brings me back to Ford. I don’t doubt that some version of the incident she described did happen to her—or to someone she knew—at some point during her teen years. It appears to be traumatizing enough that it was brought up during her marriage counseling.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump says exposing ‘corrupt’ FBI probe could be ‘crowning achievement’ of presidencyBy John Solomon and Buck Sexton

By on September 20th, 2018

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/407335-exclusive-trump-says-exposing-corrupt-fbi-probe-could-be-crowning-achievement

President Trump in an exclusive interview with Hill.TV said Tuesday he ordered the release of classified documents in the Russia collusion case to show the public the FBI probe started as a “hoax” and that exposing it could become one of the “crowning achievements” of his presidency.

“What we’ve done is a great service to the country, really,” Trump said in a 45-minute, wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office.

“I hope to be able to call this, along with tax cuts and regulation and all the things I’ve done … in its own way this might be the most important thing because this was corrupt,” he said.

Trump also said he regretted not firing former FBI Director James Comey immediately instead of waiting until May 2017, confirming an account his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, gave Hill.TV earlier in the day that Trump was dismayed in 2016 by the way Comey handled the Hillary Clinton email case and began discussing firing him well before he became president.

“If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries,” Trump said. “I should have fired him right after the convention, say I don’t want that guy. Or at least fired him the first day on the job. … I would have been better off firing him or putting out a statement that I don’t want him there when I get there.”

Trump has offered different reasons in the past for his firing of the FBI chief, blaming Comey’s handling of the Clinton case but also linking it to Comey’s actions in the Russia investigation.

The president also called into question the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation, again criticizing it for surveilling his campaign.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Funding UNRWA: Are European Taxpayers Being Taken for a Ride? by Bassam Tawil

By on September 20th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12996/unrwa-funding

Iran’s average annual contribution to UNRWA in recent years has been $2,000.
Iran does spend billions of dollars a year outside its borders in the Middle East. Iran provides weapons and cash to terrorist groups such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Iran helps these groups because they want to destroy the “Zionist entity.” Iran is now devoting huge resources in Syria to help dictator Bashar Assad in his fight against the rebels, as well as substantial sums of money helping Houthi militias in Yemen.
Lebanon’s laws treat Palestinians as a special group of foreigners, even denying them the same rights granted to other foreigners. Palestinians in Lebanon are not only denied basic rights enjoyed by Lebanese citizens and other foreigners, but also denied rights as refugees under international conventions.
Arab and Muslim states could start to think of ways to help Palestinians achieve a better life and improve their children’s future instead of sitting in refugee camps and waiting for handouts from the UN and other Western countries. Or is continuing to beg non-Arabs and non-Muslims for money the better deal?

At a meeting in Cairo this month, Arab and Muslim foreign ministers expressed concern about the fate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) after the US administration decided to cut all US aid to the agency. The ministers “underscored the importance of allowing UNRWA to continue playing a pivotal role in providing humanitarian aid” to Palestinian “refugees.” They also warned that “harming” UNRWA will aggravate the crisis in the Middle East.

If these Arab and Muslim countries are so worried about UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees, why don’t they step in to fill the vacuum and pay for the loss of the US funds? What is keeping them from pulling out their checkbooks and solving this “refugee crisis”?

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The International Criminal Court: A Failed Experiment by Ahmed Charai

By on September 20th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13008/international-criminal-court

Ambassador John Bolton was prescient in his 1998 warning, when the formation of body was first being debated in Rome, that it would be ineffective, unaccountable and overly political.

The reconciliation commissions of South Africa and Morocco aimed to rehabilitate victims, and pay compensation for state outrages against them. That method would be a better model for Africa than a court funded and run from Europe.

The International Criminal Court is a noble ideal but a flawed institution. Far better to encourage nations to develop courts that are accountable to the victims and free from charges of selective enforcement or foreign intervention.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is “already dead to us” National Security Adviser John Bolton told the Federalist Society recently. The U.S. will, he said, resist the court “by any means necessary.”

Why would the Trump Administration take such a hard line against “the world’s court of last resort”? Founded in 2002, in the wake of the Rwandan and Yugoslavian genocides and mass rapes, the international body was supposed to try evildoers who would otherwise escape justice due to broken legal systems in failed states.

Opposing the court is not a new position for the U.S. or Ambassador Bolton. The Bush Administration refused to sign the court’s implementing treaty in 2003, contending that it would lead to trials of U.S. soldiers and spies by a politically turbo-charged body located in Europe. At the time, many European leaders opposed President Bush’s war in Iraq and questioned its actions in the war on terror, including rendition and holding prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay. Ambassador Bolton was even more prescient. He warned, in 1998, when the formation of body was first being debated in Rome, that it would be ineffective, unaccountable and overly political.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Kavanaugh and Doing the Right Thing Kavanaugh’s accuser wants an FBI investigation; here’s what Republicans need to do next.Lloyd Billingsley

By on September 20th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271376/kavanaugh-and-doing-right-thing-lloyd-billingsley

On Tuesday Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford made it known she would only testify if the FBI investigates first. Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and other Democrats echoed this demand, but former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova wasn’t going for it.

“This is utter nonsense,” diGenova told Tucker Carlson of Fox News. Blasey Ford “really doesn’t want to testify. Because when she does, she is going to look like the loon she is. She may very well believe everything she’s saying, and that is one of the signs of lunacy, believing something that isn’t real.” And her lawyer was “even loonier.”

As the former U.S. Attorney explained, the accusation is a nonfederal matter, an alleged assault unconfirmed even by the witness herself. She failed to report it to anyone and was not sure when it happened or where it happened, or who else was there. So the FBI could not investigate “because there is nothing to investigate.”

On Wednesday, Blasey Ford’s attorney Lisa Banks said there are “multiple witnesses” who should testify and Ford wants a “full non-partisan investigation.” But as law professor Jonathan Turley pointed out Wednesday, “conditioning testimony on a criminal investigation by a federal agency is well beyond the province of any witness.”

Kavanaugh has endured six FBI background checks and the Bureau was on record that it would do nothing with the 36-year-old accusation. So it was all, as diGenova said, “clearly a desire to delay proceedings.” Carlson wondered why any Republicans would go along with that and asked diGenova how he would advise them.

Continue reading →