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October 2018

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Hillary Clinton Says Kavanaugh Self-Defense Is a ‘Denial of the Legitimacy of Women’s Stories’ By Tyler O’Neil

By on October 2nd, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/video/hillary-clinton-says-kavanaugh-self-defense-is-a-denial-of-the-legitimacy-of-womens-stories/

On Tuesday at The Atlantic fest, Hillary Clinton laughed at President Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. She attacked him as “unconvincing” and lacking “judicial temperament,” but praised Christine Blasey Ford — the woman who accused him of sexual assault — as “credible,” despite her story’s many holes and inconsistencies. She also praised the two women who angrily accosted Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) last Friday.

Why did she so vigorously defend the accusers and dismiss the accused? It seemed to boil down to one statement — made about then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas — that a man defending himself against sexual assault accusations “very much felt like — and in fact it probably was — the denial of the legitimacy of women’s stories” (emphasis added).

If any innocent man’s defense against allegations of sexual assault constitutes “the denial of the legitimacy of women’s stories,” then no man ever can defend himself against a false accusation.

Clinton framed her views on the issue in terms of women triumphing over a long tradition of patriarchy. She claimed the modern movement against sexual assault is “finally righting the balance, because there’s been a tremendous imbalance on women’s lives, women’s narratives. They’ve been historically dismissed, condescended to.”

The former presidential candidate argued that women in politics “find themselves picked apart, second-guessed, held to a double standard. We want to have as much right to our agency, to our autonomy, as we should be able to have, where women’s lives are valued as much as men’s lives, their stories are as important as men’s stories, they are written into history, not out of history. So that’s what I see happening.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Other Girl in the Kavanaugh Story Whatever the FBI learns, the free press has a job to do. By James Freeman

By on October 2nd, 2018

The unquestioned conventional wisdom in Washington these days is that suburban female voters will overwhelmingly reject Republicans in November elections and that the controversy over Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh will be a contributing factor. But perhaps many of these voters would first like to know what happened to two particular suburban females in the 1980s.

It won’t be easy to find out, because most professional journalists seem to have lost interest in trying to ascertain whether Professor Christine Blasey Ford’s compelling testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee was accurate. Judging by recent coverage, much of the press corps is now endlessly fascinated by demands for a broader investigation of her allegation of attempted rape by a teenage Brett Kavanaugh but largely uninterested in the emerging evidence.

For example, most reporters don’t seem to have noticed that the woman who was the other teenage girl allegedly attending the party described by Professor Ford still isn’t backing her story. CBS News mentioned in the fifth paragraph of a story last night:

An attorney who represents Leland Keyser, who Ford said was at the house that night, told CBS News Keyser met with the FBI on Saturday. Through the attorney, Howard Walsh, Keyser has said she does not refute Ford’s account but that she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where Kavanaugh was present, with or without Ford.

Today Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times reports:

Leland Keyser, the high school friend Christine Blasey Ford counted on to corroborate her sexual assault charges, has told the FBI she has no knowledge of the supposed 1982 party or the accused, Brett Kavanaugh.

Howard J. Walsh III, her attorney, told The Washington Times that she met with the FBI on Saturday.

Asked if she had repeated the same two statements she provided the Senate Judiciary Committee, the lawyer answered, “yes.”

Sex-crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell reported to Republican senators on the inconsistencies in the evolving story from Professor Ford and specifically noted two statements that her lifelong friend provided to the Judiciary Committee:

Ms. Keyser stated through counsel that, “[s]imply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.” In a subsequent statement to the Committee through counsel, Ms. Keyser said that “the simple and unchangeable truth is that she is unable to corroborate [Dr. Ford’s allegations] because she has no recollection of the incident in question.”

Ms. Mitchell also noted another relevant part of the professor’s testimony:

Dr. Ford testified that her friend Leland, apparently the only other girl at the party, did not follow up with Dr. Ford after the party to ask why she had suddenly disappeared.

Professor Ford has reasonably made the argument that being assaulted would have made the evening much more memorable to her than to anyone else. But she’s also describing a chain of events that ought to have made an impression upon her friend. Perhaps the FBI is now exploring why a 15-year-old Leland Keyser, surprised to learn that she was the only girl at a party with older boys, would not have asked her friend at some point why she left without a word. It’s important to emphasize here that this is not a question of whether Ms. Keyser would remember such communication more than three decades later. Professor Ford testified that such communication never occurred.

One could argue that given that Ms. Keyser’s story hasn’t changed since her statements delivered by her lawyer to the committee, this is not news. But the whole premise of the new government investigation is that such statements are insufficient and that witnesses must be interviewed by FBI agents.

There is also of course an argument in this era that those alleging sexual assault should be believed, but Professor Ford will have difficulty arguing at this point that her account should not be questioned. That’s because her legal team has repeatedly demanded that she be questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Perhaps raising again the issue of whose interests her attorneys are really serving, the Ford team has been public in its call for further examination of the events she’s described. “NEW: FBI has not responded to requests from Christine Blasey Ford to do an interview. “We have not heard from the FBI, despite repeated efforts to speak with them,” her lawyer, Debra S. Katz, told me, when asked,” tweeted New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg on Sunday.

Whatever the government does, there seems to be a job here for reporters as well in trying to discover more facts about what did or did not happen in a house in suburban Maryland in the 1980s. But good luck getting the press corps to focus on the alleged sexual assault when reporters are on the hunt for evidence of drunken ice-tossing.

The bet here is that suburban women, just like people in every other demographic group, want evidence to evaluate the Ford claim.

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Fake News Comes to Academia How three scholars gulled academic journals to publish hoax papers on ‘grievance studies.’ By Jillian Kay Melchior

By on October 2nd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fake-news-comes-to-academia-1538520950

The existence of a monthly journal focused on “feminist geography” is a sign of something gone awry in academia. The journal in question—Gender, Place & Culture—published a paper online in May whose author claimed to have spent a year observing canine sexual misconduct in Portland, Ore., parks.

The author admits that “my own anthropocentric frame” makes it difficult to judge animal consent. Still, the paper claims dog parks are “petri dishes for canine ‘rape culture’ ” and issues “a call for awareness into the different ways dogs are treated on the basis of their gender and queering behaviors, and the chronic and perennial rape emergency dog parks pose to female dogs.”

The paper was ridiculous enough to pique my interest—and rouse my skepticism, which grew in July with a report in Campus Reform by Toni Airaksinen. Author Helen Wilson had claimed to have a doctorate in feminist studies, but “none of the institutions that offers such a degree could confirm that she had graduated from their program,” Ms. Airaksinen wrote. In August Gender, Place & Culture issued an “expression of concern” admitting it couldn’t verify Ms. Wilson’s identity, though it kept the paper on its website.

All of this prompted me to ask my own questions. My email to “Helen Wilson” was answered by James Lindsay, a math doctorate and one of the real co-authors of the dog-park study. Gender, Place & Culture had been duped, he admitted. So had half a dozen other prominent journals that accepted fake papers by Mr. Lindsay and his collaborators—Peter Boghossian, an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and Helen Pluckrose, a London-based scholar of English literature and history and editor of AreoMagazine.com.

The three academics call themselves “left-leaning liberals.” Yet they’re dismayed by what they describe as a “grievance studies” takeover of academia, especially its encroachment into the sciences. “I think that certain aspects of knowledge production in the United States have been corrupted,” Mr. Boghossian says. Anyone who questions research on identity, privilege and oppression risks accusations of bigotry.

Beginning in August 2017, the trio wrote 20 hoax papers, submitting them to peer-reviewed journals under a variety of pseudonyms, as well as the name of their friend Richard Baldwin, a professor emeritus at Florida’s Gulf Coast State College. Mr. Baldwin confirms he gave them permission use his name. Journals accepted seven hoax papers. Four have been published.

This isn’t the first time scholars have used a hoax paper to make a point. In 1996 Duke University Press’s journal Social Text published a hoax submission by Alan Sokal, a mathematical physicist at New York University. Mr. Sokal, who faced no punishment for the hoax, told me he was “not oblivious to the ethical issues involved in my rather unorthodox experiment,” adding that “professional communities operate largely on trust; deception undercuts that trust.”

But he also said he was criticizing an academic subculture “that typically ignores (or disdains) reasoned criticism from the outside.” He concluded: “How can one show that the emperor has no clothes? Satire is by far the best weapon; and the blow that can’t be brushed off is the one that’s self-inflicted.” Messrs. Lindsay and Boghossian were already known for a hoax paper titled “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct,” which they published in the journal Cogent Social Sciences last year under the names Jamie Lindsay and Peter Boyle. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Dems Risk Losing Suburban Women with Kavanaugh Attacks By Julie Kelly

By on October 2nd, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/02/dems-risk

I am not a crier. One of my best friends teases me that Satan cries more than I do; my husband jokes about my “six-second cry” when I finally shed some tears.

But as I watched Brett Kavanaugh’s opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, I cried—and for more than six seconds. I wept for him, for his crushed wife seated behind him, for his young daughters, and for his friends. I cried for our country. It was an emotional release of sympathy, frustration and rage.

I wasn’t alone. Several of my friends admitted they had the same reaction. The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway mirrored the feelings of millions of women when she choked up that evening during an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News: “I was sobbing when I was watching it,” Hemingway said. “I heard that a lot from people as well. It was hard just to watch those clips here.”

A bungled political assassination attempt on Brett Kavanaugh will cost the Democrats more than a seat on the Supreme Court: The party might also have killed its edge with suburban women just weeks before the pivotal midterm elections. The near-unanimous reaction to this travesty among my fellow suburban moms is unlike anything I’ve seen in the Trump era.

Until now, Democrats have been confident that women living in the suburbs would propel the much-vaunted “blue wave” this fall because President Trump remains unpopular with this traditionally Republican constituency. Polling conducted over the summer indicated suburban women had a strong preference for Democratic candidates over their Republican opponents. Several vulnerable Republican-held congressional districts are located in suburban areas.

But Democrats have overplayed their dirty hand, and women might exact their revenge in November. Republican women are outraged at Democrats and their media accomplices for what they’ve done to Brett Kavanaugh and his family. One poll taken right after Kavanaugh’s testimony showed 71 percent of Republican women believed Kavanaugh was telling the truth. In a Morning Consult poll released late Monday, 58 percent of Republican women described Dr. Christine Ford as “opportunistic.” Republican women are the only voters whose support for Kavanaugh’s nomination has increased post-hearing.

The majority of women voters in red states with vulnerable Democratic senators up for reelection next month support Kavanaugh’s confirmation; a Harvard/Harris poll shows identical voter enthusiasm between Republican and Democratic women for the midterm election.

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Peter West Gender Quotas, Merit and Faux Equality

By on October 2nd, 2018

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/10/gender-quotas-merit-faux-equality/

To reflect the world as it is, let’s put the ratio of women who pursue careers with the uninterrupted vigour that mostly characterises men at, say, four to one. To insist, therefore, on equal representation at each level of management amounts to a demand that women be not equal but privileged.

Since the outbreak of #metoo hashtagging in the federal parliamentary Liberal Party, Peta Credlin (among others) has been promoting targets for Liberal women in Parliament. Simultaneously, she decries quotas as endorsed by, for example, the Labor Party. Women, she says, don’t want a handicapping system for men; women want to win entirely on their own merits. More than that, women don’t want to walk into the party room aware that there were better candidates whose shoes they are not quite filling. Women who are like Ms Credlin only want to get into Parliament by their own honest and honourable efforts.

What’s the difference between a quota and a target? A target has a handbrake. That’s it. The rationale of each is identical. It starts with the unchallengeable premise: the country must have equal numbers of women in the Federal Parliament (and just about everywhere else, to boot.) A target is designed to achieve the same result, but more slowly, and with a little bit of wiggle room.

If the aim is the same, what’s the logic of claiming that targets are better? Your guess is as good as this one of mine. A quota forces the pace, and the women who are injected into Parliament suffer all of the detriments to self-esteem that Ms Credlin has sketched (although they seem to manage it bravely.) A target, on the other hand, can be accompanied by a development program, which will bolster the skills, the confidence, and the network of the participating women. By the time the target dates roll around, they won’t be needed, because the women will be competing on an equal footing with the men.

I don’t know whether the thinking about targets actually ascends to the level of some such theory – any such theory – but looming behind this theory is an out-of-focus vision of the restored state of nature, with the elimination of all the handicaps that have been clamped onto women like so many electronic ankle bracelets to confine them to house arrest. In that wonderful day to come, women will realise their full potential and compete, unimpeded and uninhibited, with men. And if restored womanhood finds that its natural level is to have greater representation than men, well, let the lines fall in such pleasant places. It’s Rousseau in a pantsuit.

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61 Questions The FBI Should Ask About Christine Blasey Ford’s Story A former prosecutor details dozens of as yet unanswered questions the FBI should ask Ford and others regarding her allegation against Kavanaugh. By James M. Thunder

By on October 2nd, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/02/61-questions-the-fbi-should-ask-about-christine-blasey-fords-story/

I am a former prosecutor, a father of three daughters, a brother to five sisters. I’ve drawn up a list of questions relevant to the FBI investigation of Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Several, including the first ones, are for the FBI to answer. The rest are for the FBI to ask of Ford and others, including her parents and her siblings. The FBI may not read this, of course, but it may help you assess the FBI’s work and Ford’s credibility. It can be difficult for any of us to remember an incident. And our memories can play tricks. As an examiner, all we can do is try to help the alleged witness remember what happened, with all five senses and the accompanying emotions.

I number these for reference. I have sought to avoid including any questions that appeared to have been answered already.

I won’t address why I’ve included each question, but let me describe the two groupings of questions.

First, there are a few questions on Ford’s knowledge of national current affairs and of Washington, D.C., affairs, and on her knowledge of Kavanaugh’s career. It may be that because she lives on the West Coast and works in a field unrelated to history, current events, journalism, law, and government, Ford may have been totally oblivious to Kavanaugh’s career. Until we know the answers to those questions, we don’t know. But a good prosecutor could line up one detail after another, and raise suspicions about why, after all of the national notoriety Kavanaugh received, especially after his nomination to the D.C. Circuit (that lasted three years), she raised no allegation against him before his nomination to the Supreme Court.

Second, there are questions about who knew Ford was leaving the gathering on the first floor to go upstairs. It is not likely that two boys lay in wait on the second floor for her. So they must have gone up the stairs behind her, so close behind her that she didn’t have enough time to get to the bathroom. Not just one boy, but two. And neither of them lived in that house. And she didn’t notice, or hear, that? And no one else noticed this oddity either?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France Freezes Iranian Assets Over Bomb Plot Blamed on Tehran French government seeks to punish Iran without undermining talks over the nuclear accord By Matthew Dalton

By on October 2nd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/france-freezes-iranian-assets-over-bomb-plot-blamed-on-tehran-1538487926

France froze assets of Iran’s intelligence agency and two agents in retaliation for an alleged Iranian terror plot on French soil, seeking to punish Tehran for planning terror activities in Europe even as the French government tries to salvage the Iran nuclear deal.

The freeze will apply for at least six months to two officials—Assadollah Asadi and Saeid Hashemi Moghadam—whom European authorities allege were involved in the foiled attack, and the internal security directorate of Iran’s intelligence ministry.

The moves mark an attempt by the French government to discipline Iran for a plot it has linked directly to Iranian government officials without undermining talks over the Iranian nuclear accord, Europe’s top diplomatic priority with Tehran. European governments are scrambling to keep Iran signed on to the deal after Washington withdrew from the agreement and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.

The U.S. and Israel, Iran’s main international opponents, have used the foiled attack to urge Europe to abandon its support for the accord. They allege that Iran has an extensive covert-operations network that is hunting down opponents of the regime on European soil.

The alleged Iranian operation “confirms the necessity of a forceful approach in our relations with Iran,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Tuesday.

It remains unclear what assets the Iranian intelligence officials and the directorate hold in France, if any. CONTINUE AT SITE

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U.N. Atomic Agency Rebuffs Israeli Criticism Over Iran Sites Netanyahu has twice alleged over the past six months that Iran is cheating on the 2015 nuclear deal By Laurence Norman

By on October 2nd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-n-atomic-agency-rebuffs-israeli-criticism-over-iran-sites-1538494912

The United Nations atomic agency hit back Tuesday at Israeli claims it is failing to police Iran’s nuclear work, rebuffing criticisms of the agency’s credibility.

The dispute comes as European countries, China and Russia seek to uphold the 2015 deal that placed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities, a deal which the Trump administration quit in May. Israel has consistently opposed the agreement, arguing it wouldn’t prevent Tehran obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency oversees compliance with the agreement and polices Iran’s nuclear work. Tehran claims its nuclear program, which was scaled back under the 2015 deal, was for peaceful purposes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has twice alleged over the past six months that Iran is cheating on the deal and is still harboring a nuclear-weapons program.

In April, Mr. Netanyahu said Israeli agents had extracted thousands of documents and material from what he alleged was a nuclear archive in Tehran. The information was passed to Washington and to the IAEA.

Last week he showed images of what he said was a secret atomic warehouse in Tehran that he said the Iranian government is now trying to cleanse. Iran has denied the claims.

Speaking at the U.N. last week, Mr. Netanyahu said that despite sharing the nuclear archive information with the IAEA, the agency had “still not taken any action” and that he was therefore going public in disclosing the alleged nuclear site.

“Well, Mr. Amano, do the right thing,” he said of IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano. “Go inspect this atomic warehouse. Immediately. Before the Iranians finish clearing it out…And Mr. Amano, while you’re at it, inspect the other sites we told you about. Once and for all, tell the world the truth about Iran.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Feinstein: Friday Is Too Soon to Vote on Kavanaugh By Jack Crowe

By on October 2nd, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/dianne-feinstein-friday-too-soon-to-vote-brett-kavanaugh/

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said on Tuesday that lawmakers should not be made to vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court this week.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday that the Senate would vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation on Friday, at the conclusion of the one-week FBI investigation into the allegations of sexual assault that have been levied against the nominee by three women.

“The time for endless delay and destruction has come to a close,” McConnell said. “Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination is out of committee, we’re considering it here on the floor, and Mr. President, we’ll be voting this week.”

Feinstein, who led her Democratic colleagues in calling for the confirmation vote to be delayed pending an FBI probe, said on Tuesday that the report detailing the findings of the investigation should not be made public.“It would seem to me that if people are going to be identified, this ought to be held very close,” she said.

McConnell confirmed on Tuesday afternoon that the report will only be seen by senators and will not be made publicly available.

The White House ordered the FBI to investigate the sexual-assault allegations against Kavanaugh on Friday at the behest of Republican leadership. The FBI was initially instructed to interview just four witnesses, but the White House expanded the probe on Monday, instructing the FBI to interview any witnesses with pertinent information.

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Hazmat Team Responds to Ted Cruz Campaign Office after White Powder Arrives in the Mail By Jack Crowe

By on October 2nd, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hazmat-team-responds-ted-cruz-campaign-office-after-white-powder-arrives-in-mail/

Update 2:58p.m.: The Houston Fire Department confirmed Tuesday afternoon that the substance was found to be non-toxic.

A Hazmat team was dispatched to Senator Ted Cruz’s campaign office in Houston, Texas Tuesday after staffers opened an envelope containing a white powder that may be toxic, The Weekly Standard reported.

While it remains unclear whether the material was in fact toxic, two people present at the office building were hospitalized after coming into contact with the substance, according to the Houston Fire Department.

Two people were taken to the hospital after apparently being exposed to a white powdery substance in an office building at 3200 SW Fwy. The 9th floor of the Phoenix Tower has been evacuated as HFD HazMat is responding to the scene working to determine the nature of the substance.

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