RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/10/brett-kavanaugh-reader/

Only a lengthy and voluminously footnoted book could paint the full picture the judge’s ordeal on his way to the US Supreme Court. Nevertheless, what Roger Kimball, John Hinderaker and others have had to say sheds a grimly unflattering light on the tactics and motivations of his accusers.

In Quadrant‘s October issue, Hal G.P. Colebatch contributes the second installment of his two-parter on TDS — Trump Derangement Syndrome — and notes how hatred of this outsider president has drawn forth a venomous insanity wherever the Left prevails. “The Sydney Morning Herald in October, 2016, claimed that ‘Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler Have More in Common than Slogans‘,” Hal writes, adding that the globe-girdling hysteria on the Left has seen “the institutionalisation and acceptance of violence and lies.” If you scratch from the ledger of ‘progressive’ bullying the attempted massacre by a Bernie Sanders supporter of congressional Republicans training for a charity baseball game, an outrage seldom mentioned since in the manistream media, the most vile manifestation of the Left’s principle- and decency-free strategy has been the Borking of US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Below, a selection of the slanders and misrepresentations masquerading as commentary, interspersed with rebuttals the mainstream media has found it convenient to omit. In a better world you might have come across the facts on the ABC, rather than the by-rote Democratic Party talking points the national broadcaster serves up as news. And when an agent of accuracy does get a word in edgeways, the get the treatment accorded Judith Sloan on The Drum. Skip to the 40-minute mark of this video when Judith is repeatedly shouted down by the customary stacked panel. That’s the ABC’s idea of debate, just as this off-with-the-fairies polemic from a US contributor proceeds from the premise that Kavanaugh is the beast from Central Casting and must he held responsible for the ills inflicted on women. (…the image of Dr Ford, giving her testimony, now will accompany Mr Kavanaugh for the rest of his career. The image, in fact, is that of American women of her generation and everything that they have tried to become, and what they have had to endure to do so.)

Roger Kimball’s observations are especially worthwhile, but first a couple of cartoons that further the Democrats’ guilty-until-proven-innocent framing of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/10/04/on_the_question_of_judicial_temperament_138257.html

Last Thursday, we watched Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh vigorously defend himself against very serious charges of misconduct that he has consistently and unequivocally denied, and for which no corroboration seems to exist.

In the wake of that hearing, we began to hear murmurs, which then escalated into much louder criticisms, that Judge Kavanaugh lacks the necessary judicial temperament to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court.

From 1988 to 2006, I served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming chief judge in 2000. Additionally, I have worked with many judges throughout my career, in private practice and in government service. So the concept of judicial temperament is not an abstraction for me, but one that I have had to give considerable thought to.

As it turns out, Judge Kavanaugh is not a newcomer to these concepts either. He had not one but two hearings to become an appellate judge on the D.C. Circuit. His first hearing was in 2004, but his nomination was initially filibustered by Senate Democrats for partisan reasons, based on his role in President George W. Bush’s administration. He was re-nominated and eventually confirmed in 2006, but not before being subjected to another round of intense partisan attacks.

With the bitter taste of partisan acrimony still in his mouth, Judge Kavanagh began his tenure on the D.C. Circuit — considered by some to be the second-most important court in the country. He has served in that role with distinction and earned widespread respect across the ideological spectrum. It was no surprise to those of us who know him that Elena Kagan invited him to teach at Harvard Law School when she was dean there; or that he was recently introduced to the Senate Judiciary Committee by leading feminist lawyer Lisa Blatt; or that he has been praised by leading legal liberals such as former Obama Solicitors General Don Verrilli and Neal Katyal.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/04/dems-give-in-to-our

As Democrats indulge in another high-tech lynching of a Supreme Court nominee, it’s worth noting that the fight over Brett Kavanaugh isn’t really about who’s qualified to serve on the nation’s highest court. The controversy is the latest manifestation of the Left’s effort to reshape or destroy American institutions. Now rapidly morphing into a leftist party reminiscent of those in Europe and Latin America, the Democrats and their activist supporters are not following a policy agenda focused on a specific issue or candidate so much as a grand strategy to discredit and redefine the institutions that make civic American life possible.

To beat the Left, the GOP not only must understand this reality, it must refuse to play by rules for which Democrats have no respect nor interest in maintaining. Not only that, conservatives and classical liberals should embolden themselves and re-engage the American cultural spheres long dominated by the Left. Fretting on the sidelines simply won’t do.

Designed for character assassination, the manufactured scandal Democrats arrayed against Brett Kavanaugh followed a simple formula based upon past leftist successes in politics and culture. Unable to find legitimate arguments over prior rulings or procedure to block Kavanaugh’s appointment, the Democrats accused him of a crime and capitalized on our culture’s moral panic du jour embodied in the #MeToo movement. The Democrats would have us pay no mind to the fact that the way someone was in high school, thankfully, does not often translate into the way a person will be throughout life. Nor would the Democrats remind us that the #MeToo movement only was made possible by the predatory behavior by powerful men in Hollywood, one of the most profitable of the Left’s occupied territories.

Fact is, the Democrats placed Kavanaugh in a position of having to prove he did not commit a crime. The only way definitively to prove innocence is to prove someone else committed the crime in question; otherwise, all that can be done is to cast doubt upon the notion of guilt. As with Hollywood, the Left controls academia and has done so for decades. If the Left comprises the erudite class that it so often claims for itself, however, its spokesmen would know that a nonevent couldn’t effectively be disproven. Was Kavanaugh at a party with Christine Blasey Ford or not? She says one thing, he says something else. There is no evidence either way—and so there is nothing an investigation might find to say he wasn’t there.

In the president, one big bully stands up to others.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/04/opinion/trump-kavanaugh-ford-allegations.html

For the first time since Donald Trump entered the political fray, I find myself grateful that he’s in it. I’m reluctant to admit it and astonished to say it, especially since the president mocked Christine Blasey Ford in his ugly and gratuitous way at a rally on Tuesday. Perhaps it’s worth unpacking this admission for those who might be equally astonished to read it.

I’m grateful because Trump has not backed down in the face of the slipperiness, hypocrisy and dangerous standard-setting deployed by opponents of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. I’m grateful because ferocious and even crass obstinacy has its uses in life, and never more so than in the face of sly moral bullying. I’m grateful because he’s a big fat hammer fending off a razor-sharp dagger.

A few moments have crystallized my view over the past few days.

The first moment was a remark by a friend. “I’d rather be accused of murder,” he said, “than of sexual assault.” I feel the same way. One can think of excuses for killing a man; none for assaulting a woman. But if that’s true, so is this: Falsely accusing a person of sexual assault is nearly as despicable as sexual assault itself. It inflicts psychic, familial, reputational and professional harms that can last a lifetime. This is nothing to sneer at.

The second moment, connected to the first: “Boo hoo hoo. Brett Kavanaugh is not a victim.” That’s the title of a column in the Los Angeles Times, which suggests that the possibility of Kavanaugh’s innocence is “infinitesimal.” Yet false allegations of rape, while relatively rare, are at least five times as common as false accusations of other types of crime, according to academic literature.