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Ruth King

Dianne Feinstein ‘on the Hot Seat’ Republicans aren’t the only ones questioning her handling of an accusation against Kavanaugh….By James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dianne-feinstein-on-the-hot-seat-1537463501

“DiFi on the Hot Seat” announces a Los Angeles Times newsletter emailed to readers this morning. It is beginning to dawn on even liberal politicians that the Kavanaugh controversy could potentially hurt Democrats more than Republicans.

The L.A. Times reports on the challenges that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) has created for herself and her party with her handling of an initially anonymous claim that a teenage Brett Kavanaugh assaulted another teen in the 1980s:

Republicans accuse her of withholding the allegation until the most politically advantageous moment. Even some Democrats initially complained that she didn’t share the explosive information with them earlier.

Next week, Feinstein may have to lead Democrats into a hearing — if it takes place — with Kavanaugh and possibly his accuser, Northern California psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford, that will likely determine whether Kavanaugh goes to the high court or watches his confirmation fall apart amid the #MeToo movement over sexual misconduct.

The Times reports that Democrats have generally rallied to Sen. Feinstein’s defense but notes that “at least one Democrat is ready to publicly criticize.” It’s her November election opponent, California State Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León. Because the Golden State maintains a “jungle primary” system in which the top two vote-getters in the primary election advance, regardless of party affiliation, Sen. Feinstein faces her fellow Democrat in the general election. The Times notes the political fire she’s now taking from both the left and the right:

“The American people deserve to know why the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee waited nearly three months to hand this disqualifying document over to the federal authorities, and why Sen. Feinstein politely pantomimed her way through [the confirmation] hearing without a single question about the content of Kavanaugh’s character,” De León said.

Feinstein landed in hot water Tuesday when she told a reporter that she “can’t say everything’s truthful” in Ford’s account, a comment that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said makes “clear” why she didn’t bring the allegation forward sooner.

Feinstein later tweeted that she’s found “every single piece of information from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford eminently credible, sincere and believable.”

The Times report follows an editorial this week in Ms. Feinstein’s hometown San Francisco Chronicle:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s treatment of a more than 3-decade-old sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was unfair all around. It was unfair to Kavanaugh, unfair to his accuser and unfair to Feinstein’s colleagues — Democrats and Republicans alike — on the Senate Judiciary Committee. CONTINUE AT SITE

Checkmate for Chequers – and a miserable day for Theresa May Michael Deacon

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/09/20/checkmate-chequers-miserable-day-theresa-may/

Well, at least someone seemed to be enjoying himself. “No deal is not my working assumption,” purred Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, “but should it happen, we are prepared. The Commission has prepared in detail for all the consequences of a no deal. So don’t worry. Be happy!”

Looking somewhat less carefree was Theresa May. At the end of the EU’s summit in Austria, the Prime Minister gave a brief press conference. Her day had not gone well. Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, had just announced to the world that Mrs May’s plan for Brexit “will not work”. For the Prime Minister, it was a public humiliation. At the weekend, she’d declared that MPs would be forced to choose between two options: support her Chequers plan, or face no deal. Thoughtful of the EU, I suppose, to save them the time.

Mrs May stalked into the press room. She looked pale. Perhaps it was just the contrast created by the dazzlingly bright red jacket she was wearing. Or perhaps not.

Still, if we know one thing about Mrs May, it’s that, no matter how bad things get for her, she has a matchless ability to put on a brave face and act as though all is going to plan. Even as the light bulb blows, the door falls from its hinges, and the lumps of plaster flutter down around her like snow.

She spoke briskly. She had, she said, had a “frank” meeting with President Tusk. She had “always said these negotiations were going to be tough”. But she was, she claimed, “confident that we will reach a deal”. And her Chequers plan, she maintained, was still “the only serious and credible proposition on the table”.

Among Britain’s Anti-Semites The Labour Party’s Moral Dilemma By Tanya Gold

https://harpers.org/archive/2018/

This is the story of how the institutions of British Jewry went to war with Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party. Corbyn is another feather in the wind of populism and a fragmentation of the old consensus and politesse. He was elected to the leadership by the party membership in 2015, and no one was more surprised than he. Between 1997 and 2010, Corbyn voted against his own party 428 times. He existed as an ideal, a rebuke to the Blairite leadership, and the only wise man on a ship of fools. His schtick is that of a weary, kindly, socialist Father Christmas, dragged from his vegetable patch to create a utopia almost against his will. But in 2015 the ideal became, reluctantly, flesh. Satirists mock him as Jesus Christ, and this is apt. But only just. He courts sainthood, and if you are very cynical you might say that, like Christ, he shows Jews what they should be. He once sat on the floor of a crowded train, though he was offered a first-class seat, possibly as a private act of penance to those who had, at one time or another, had no seat on a train.

When Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, the British media, who are used to punching socialists, crawled over his record and found much to alarm the tiny Jewish community of 260,000. Corbyn called Hez­bollah “friends” and said Hamas, also his “friends,” were devoted “to long-term peace and social justice.” (He later said he regretted using that language.) He invited the Islamist leader Raed Salah, who has accused Jews of killing Christian children to drink their blood, to Parliament, and opposed his extradition. Corbyn is also a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a former chair of Stop the War, at whose rallies they chant, “From the river to the sea / Palestine will be free.” (There is no rhyme for what will happen to the Jewish population in this paradise.) He was an early supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and its global campaign to delegitimize Israel and, through the right of return for Palestinians, end its existence as a Jewish state. (His office now maintains that he does not support BDS. The official Labour Party position is for a two-state solution.) In the most recent general election, only 13 percent of British Jews intended to vote Labour.

Fast times at Holton-Arms High when Christine Blasey Ford was a student there By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/fast_times_at_holton_arms_high_when_christine_blasey_ford_was_a_student_there_.html

Since high school keg parties at the elite prep schools attended by Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey are now a matter of consuming interest to the Democrat-media complex, it is perhaps telling that the high school yearbooks of Holton-Arms, the school attended by Blasey, have been scrubbed from the web. The blog Cult of the First Amendment says:

On Monday Sept. 17th, Christine Blasey Ford’s high school yearbooks suddenly disappeared from the web. I read them days before, knew they would be scrubbed, and saved them. Why did I know they would be scrubbed? Because if roles were reversed, and Christine Blasey Ford had been nominated for the Supreme Court by President Trump, the headline by the resistance would be this:

CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD AND THE DRUNKEN WHITE PRIVILEGED RACIST PLAYGIRLS OF HOLTON-ARMS.

And it would be an accurate headline. That’s why the yearbooks have been scrubbed. They are a testament to the incredible power these girls had over their teachers, parents and the boys of Georgetown Prep, Landon and other schools in the area. In the pages below, you will see multiple photos and references to binge drinking and the accompanying joy of not being able to remember any of it.

The most revealing page in that regard is this one, which seems to indicate that drunken keg parties were a frequent pastime for the Holton-Arms girls:

These yearbooks are, therefore, relevant to the national investigation now being conducted in the media, in homes, and in the halls of Congress. And they should not have been scrubbed. If Brett Kavanaugh’s yearbooks are fair game, so are these.

And you will wonder while reading them, why the hell did the faculty approve of these yearbooks? Why did the parents take out paid ads in these yearbooks? Animal House had nothing on the infamous “Holton party scene”.

The resistance media has been singularly focused on Brett Kavanaugh’s high school yearbooks, which imply that he got drunk and threw up. There’s no need to imply anything from the Holton-Arms yearbooks. It’s all there in focus, and the written word too. All of the sordid details as approved for publication by a “look the other way” faculty. And now it’s available for historical/evidentiary review.

Gillibrand on Ford’s Allegation: ‘I Believe Her Because She’s Telling the Truth’ By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/kirsten-gillibrand-believes-christine-blasey-fords-allegation-true/

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York on Thursday expressed no doubt in the truth of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school.

Speaking at a press conference on Capitol Hill, Gillibrand cited Ford’s request that her claim be investigated by the FBI as evidence of her truthfulness.

“I believe Dr. Blasey Ford because she’s telling the truth. You know it by her story. You know it by the fact that she told her therapist five years ago. She told her husband. This is a trauma she’s been dealing with her whole life. She doesn’t want to be in a bedroom that doesn’t have two doors. People knew that about her a long time ago,” Gillibrand said.

“These are the hallmarks of truth, these are the hallmarks of someone who wants to be believed. I believe her because she’s telling the truth. She’s asking the FBI to investigate her claims,” the senator added. “She’s asking for that kind of review, that investigative work, that oversight, that accountability. Someone who is lying doesn’t ask the FBI to investigate their claims.”

Brett Kavanaugh and the Therapy Mob By Heather Wilhelm

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-therapy-mob/

Too many of his detractors mistake the man for their abstract mental mock-up of a “privileged” preppy white male.

This week, a former classmate of Christine Blasey Ford, the California professor who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of committing sexual assault in high school, blew up the Internet with a long, emotional Facebook post. The Kavanaugh saga, she wrote, touches a “very personal nerve.”

This must be true, because she then went on for an entire opening paragraph about how Mark Judge, whom Ford has named as a witness to the assault — and who flatly denies that anything happened — once stood her up for prom, getting “bombed” before dinner. Woah! What a cad! Men are horrible, am I right? But wait a minute: What on earth does this have to do with Brett Kavanaugh and the very serious accusations at hand? Nobody knows! Anyway, let’s move on: “The incident did happen,” she wrote, confident and assured.

Well. That’s a very big deal. (It’s also a little weird, considering that Ford says she told no one about the incident until 2012, but whatever. As we’ll see, details are becoming increasingly irrelevant in this case.) The Facebook post is now deleted; so is the corresponding and equally definitive Tweet, which declared that “Kavanaugh should stop lying, own up to it, and apologize.”

Life, however, comes at you fast: “That it happened or not, I have no idea,” the classmate told NPR within a day. “I can’t say that it did or didn’t.” Wait. What? Here’s more: “In my [Facebook] post, I was empowered and I was sure it probably did” happen, she continued. “I had no idea that I would now have to go to the specifics and defend it before 50 cable channels and have my face spread all over MSNBC news and Twitter.”

Oh. Well, never mind. It’s a good thing we’re dealing with an abstract mental mock-up of a “privileged” preppy white man who represents all of our pent-up resentments and issues, rather than with a serious, potentially career-destroying accusation against a real human being with a family and a job and a soul!

PC Culture The Word ‘Problematic’ Declared Problematic By Katherine Timpf

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/the-word-problematic-declared-problematic/

‘Problematic’ is problematic because it’s not specific enough.

According to an essay written by a Dartmouth student, the word “problematic” is actually in itself kind of problematic or something.

“The word problematic . . . gives people a way out, easing the burden of identifying exactly what about the state of the word gives people unease,” Steven Chun writes in an essay titled, “The Problem with ‘Problematic’” for the school’s newspaper, The Dartmouth.

Chun explains that although he does not think that people who use the word “problematic” are necessarily “in the wrong,” and although the word “captures so many of the ills that plague us: racism, ableism, twisted power dynamics, ignorance, discrimination, injustice, and the intersection of every one of those evils,” it is still “vague and incomplete.”

“It doesn’t tell us which injustice has taken place,” Chun writes. “In fact, it allows us to ignore the details completely.”

“Problematic means you know it’s wrong and that’s enough,” he continues.

According to Chun, however, simply knowing that something is wrong is not enough. Rather, you still need to know the answers to questions such as “Where does the injustice lie and what societal values has it violated?” and “Is it disrespectful to a culture or peoples? If so, are historical power dynamics at play?”

“These are the questions we must ask ourselves if we are to know how and where to respond to injustice,” he writes.

Chun advises that, instead of using the word “problematic,” people should stay silent until they have more specific words to describe what’s wrong before speaking.

Can Trump Possibly Survive the New Michael Moore Movie? By Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/movie-review-fahrenheit-11-9-michael-moore-tedious/

Moore shakes his fist, and I yawn.

A few weeks after President Trump was sworn in, Michael Moore announced a one-man Broadway play using the advertising slogan, “Can a Broadway show take down a sitting president?” The answer turned out to be no. So Moore moves on to Fahrenheit 11/9, a two-hour movie in which he compares the World Trade Center attack to the Reichstag fire and plays footage of Hitler over audio of a Trump speech.

It’s the same old Moore we’ve seen for 30 years, except these days hardly anyone cares: Moore is a bit late to the Trump-is-Hitler party. Today he’s just another indistinguishable voice in a crowd of the very shouty, and his admixture of breathless hyperbole, vague calls for revolution, and corny humor has no zing. Every late-night comic is woke these days, and their writers are a lot more talented than Moore. His big cinematic stunt in this film is to take a tank of Flint, Mich., water to the home of the Republican governor, who isn’t present, and spray it over the fence into the yard: Watering the lawn to own the cons.

In Moore’s second anti-Trump movie (if you missed Michael Moore in TrumpLand, which grossed $149,000, you have a lot of company), our host’s analysis of Election 2016 is to suggest that reporters took it easy on Trump during the campaign because Big Media were run by fellow sexual predators such as Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Roger Ailes, and Mark Halperin. Moore cites no data, perhaps because even he noticed what actually happened: One study showed 91 percent of network-TV coverage of Trump was negative. The media cheered Trump only through the Republican primaries; then they tried to drag Hillary Clinton across the finish line. The beat reporters covering Clinton were a gang of HRC fangirls who had a collective emotional breakdown when she lost.

Reality-unconstrained conspiracy theories are, of course, Moore’s brand: This is the man who blamed the Columbine massacre on the presence nearby of a company that made rockets used to launch DirecTV satellites, which was the closest Moore could come to saying teen psychosis was caused by the military-industrial complex. This time, judicious as ever, Moore plays footage of the Reichstag fire juxtaposed against audio of news reports of 9/11 including snippets of President George W. Bush’s speeches, then segues into Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S.

French Court Orders Psychiatric Evaluation for National Rally Leader Le Pen By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/trending/french-court-orders-psychiatric-evaluation-for-national-rally-leader-le-pen/

Le Pen is obviously crazy because she posted images of ISIS executions on Twitter.

Marine Le Pen, the French nationalist leader who lost in the second round of the presidential elections last year to Emanuel Macron, has been ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation by the judge presiding over her trial on charges of disseminating violent images.

Le Pen posted three graphic images of executions by Islamic terrorists, including the beheading of American journalist James Foley, on Twitter.

Reuters:

The tribunal declined to confirm it had ordered the evaluation but said the assessments were a normal part of such probes.

“I thought I had seen it all: but no! For having denounced the horrors of #Daesh in tweets, the ‘justice’ is submitting me to a psychiatric evaluation! How far will they go?” Le Pen wrote on Twitter. “It’s UNBELIEVABLE.”

She later told reporters she would skip the test. “I’d like to see how the judge would try and force me do it,” she said. CONTINUE AT SITE

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

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.”