RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/17/anonymity-the-new

Just when observers had concluded the desperate progressive opposition to Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court could not stoop much lower, it most certainly did.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), in the news recently for somehow unknowingly employing a Chinese spy as her gofer and chauffeur for 20 years, passed on information to federal investigators that weeks ago had come to her attention from an unnamed, unidentified, and anonymous female who claimed she was a high school acquaintance of Kavanaugh’s. Apparently, we were to believe that the once-anonymous informant had harbored a long-simmering, but heretofore never-voiced complaint of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, which coincidentally reached a peak of unsustainable resentment at the time of his nomination to the highest court in the land.

After days of gossip and innuendo to the effect that the likely next Supreme Court Justice might just be some sort of pervert, Anonymous finally came forward and identified herself as a victim of a then 17-year-old inebriated Brett Kavanaugh who (she says) sexually manhandled her in 1982 when she was 15. More specifically, the woman now alleges that Kavanaugh and another student at a high-school party entered a room inebriated, pinned her to a bed, and then groped her while she was clothed. Young Kavanaugh then allegedly attempted to take her clothes off her while he and his classmate, Mark Judge, both laughed “maniacally.” She adds that she had sought “medical treatment” for her unspecified injuries.

Anonymous identified herself in the Washington Post on Sunday as Christine Blasey Ford, a registered Democrat, Bernie Sanders supporter, and psychology professor at Palo Alto University, who otherwise had no recollection exactly where or when the supposed assault occurred some 36 years ago. Nor did she offer any clear reason why she had never then, or in the more than three decades since, contacted authorities to report the purported assault, other than claiming in 2012 that the incident then 30 years earlier still troubled her and contributed to her own sense of unease.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/mental-health-system-assisted-outpatient-treatment-success/States can keep the public, patients, and police safer while saving money for taxpayers.

Earlier this month, Andrew Goldstein was released from Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y. He’d spent 19 years behind bars for pushing Kendra Webdale to her death in front of a subway train during a period when his schizophrenia was not being treated.

Kendra lost her life, Andrew lost his freedom, and commuters learned to stand back from the subway tracks. But a law that came out of Kendra Webdale’s tragedy taught states how they can keep the public, patients, and police safer while saving money for taxpayers.

The law is technically known as assisted outpatient treatment (AOT). In New York it was named after Ms. Webdale and called Kendra’s Law. The notoriety of her pushing, combined with the well-researched and inarguable success of the program in New York, caused at least nine other states to make changes to their own AOT laws or enact them if they didn’t have one.

These laws were also named after victims. Kentucky enacted “Tim’s Law,” California enacted “Laura’s Law,” New Jersey enacted “Gregory’s Law,” and on it goes. While 47 states now have AOT — Connecticut, Maryland, and Massachusetts being the exceptions — no state makes sufficient use of it. They should.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pediatricians-group-urges-acceptance-of-childrens-preferred-gender/

The American Academy of Pediatrics released new guidelines on Monday urging parents to accept the preferred gender identity of their children.

In a policy statement entitled “Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents,” the group recommended “gender-affirming” health care for minors who do not identify with their birth sex. In some cases, this includes “surgical intervention,” as well as using gonadotrophin-releasing hormones to delay puberty up to age 16 and prevent the development of some sex characteristics, such as breasts and a deeper voice.

The group also prescribes therapy for family members of youth who identify as gender-diverse. It said it hopes to eradicate discrimination and stigma associated with “youth who do not conform to social expectations and norms regarding gender.”

The AAP’s statement cites statistics showing transgender individuals are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicide, all of which the group blames on inadequate health care and social stigma. Gender-diverse youth must be assured that “transgender identities and diverse gender expressions do not constitute a mental disorder,” and are “normal aspects of human diversity,” the authors of the statement wrote. Meanwhile, so-called “conversion therapies” are “unfair and deceptive” and “have been proven to be not only unsuccessful but also deleterious and are considered outside the mainstream of traditional medical practice.”

https://pjmedia.com/trending/200-women-testify-to-kavanaughs-history-of-treating-women-with-respect-going-back-to-high-school/

Roughly 200 women have testified to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s history of treating women “with decency and respect,” going back 35 years. This testimony seems particularly important, given the suspiciously timed accusation of sexual assault coming from 51-year-old accuser Christine Blasey Ford. On Friday, 65 women who knew Kavanaugh in high school joined at least 131 other women who testified to his character over the years.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court this Thursday. On Monday, Kavanaugh again reiterated his denial of the allegations. With the Democrats increasingly desperate to stop the judge at all costs, these allegations seem particularly convenient…

“We are women who have known Brett Kavanaugh for more than 35 years and knew him while he attended high school between 1979 and 1983,” the women wrote in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee members Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

“For the entire time we have known Brett Kavanaugh, he has behaved honorably and treated women with respect. We strongly believe it is important to convey this information to the Committee at this time,” the women added, directly addressing Feinstein. Last Thursday, Feinstein announced she had referred a letter accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault to “federal authorities.” Later that day, the FBI announced it would not open an investigation.

On Sunday, the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, came forward with her allegations in an interview with The Washington Post. Ford said Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge, were “stumbling drunk” when they got her in a room. According to her account, Kavanaugh “held her down with the weight of his body and fumbled with her clothes, seemingly hindered by his intoxication.”

The accuser said the now-Supreme Court nominee “groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it.”

“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford added.

Ford did not express her account until she spoke with a therapist in 2012. She sent the letter to Feinstein in July, and Feinstein did not reveal the letter until the 11th hour.

In a statement provided by the White House, Kavanaugh denied the allegation. “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time,” he said. Mark Judge called Ford “absolutely nuts.”CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-metoo-kavanaugh-ambush-1537197395

The woman accusing Brett Kavanaugh of a drunken assault when both were teenagers has now come forward publicly, but that should not deter Republicans from proceeding with their current confirmation-vote schedule. There is no way to confirm her story after 35 years, and to let it stop Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation would ratify what has all the earmarks of a calculated political ambush.

This is not to say Christine Blasey Ford isn’t sincere in what she remembers. In an interview published in the Washington Post on Sunday, Ms. Ford offered a few more details of the story she told anonymously starting in July. She says she was 15 when Mr. Kavanaugh, who would have been 17, and a male friend pushed her into a bedroom at a drinking party, held her down, and pawed her until the male friend jumped on them both and she escaped to a bathroom until the two boys left the room.

Mr. Kavanaugh denies all this “categorically and unequivocally,” and there is simply no way to prove it. The only witness to the event is Mr. Kavanaugh’s high school male friend, Mark Judge, who also says he recalls no such event. Ms. Ford concedes she told no one about it—not even a high school girl friend or family member—until 2012 when she told the story as part of couples therapy with her husband.

The vagaries of memory are well known, all the more so when they emerge in the cauldron of a therapy session to rescue a marriage. Experts know that human beings can come to believe firmly over the years that something happened when it never did or is based on partial truth. The Post reports that the therapist’s notes from 2012 say there were four male assailants, but Ms. Ford says that was a mistake. Ms. Ford also can’t recall in whose home the alleged assault took place, how she got there, or how she got home that evening.

https://www.city-journal.org/dems-anita-brett-kavanaugh-16173.html

It’s uncanny how closely the Democrats are following the Anita Hill playbook as they try to “Anita” Brett Kavanaugh, looking to prevent his confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice. Like Hill, Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford is a professor who made her accusation in the expectation of anonymity, never dreaming that newspapers from coast to coast would blazon her name across Page One. Hill had received assurances from a Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee staffer that, in all likelihood, Clarence Thomas would quietly withdraw his name from consideration, to spare himself and his family embarrassment. After all, Hill’s friend, administrative law judge Susan Hoerchner, had reportedly sprung a similar surprise on a fellow judge, with complete success, and it may well have been she who urged Hill to try the same tactic with Thomas. But there’s nothing leakier than a politician’s office, and Senate Democrats plainly considered Hill as a mere tool to derail Thomas’s confirmation without any concern about what would happen to her.

I didn’t believe Hill’s accusations back then, and now, having a clear picture of Justice Thomas’s sterling character, and having just reread the transcript of the Hill-Thomas hearings, I believe them still less. What, then, would have been her motivation in accusing the judge? her supporters ask. Though Hoerchner and many of Hill’s allies wanted to bar Thomas from the High Court to ward off any threat to the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, Hill’s own motive may have been her strong disagreement with Thomas’s opposition to affirmative action, about which the Supreme Court would have much to say in the years ahead. Also, those who believe her ask, how would such a prim-seeming young lady know some of the very concrete salacious details of what she claimed Thomas had said to her a decade earlier? The answer: the most graphic detail, complete with photograph, is in a federal appellate case whose transcript was in the library of the federal agency where Hill had worked as a Thomas employee. The other lurid detail comes from The Exorcist, a bestselling book and hit movie during the 1970s. But even supposing that Hill was telling the truth—which I do not—the most you could say, as Judiciary Committee member Orrin Hatch commented, is that Thomas talked dirty to her. He never touched her.

https://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/406952-collins-knocks-democrats-over-handling-of-kavanaugh-assault
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is knocking Senate Democrats for their handling of a sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Collins, a key swing vote in the Supreme Court fight, questioned why Democrats had waited for weeks to come forward with the allegation, arguing it wasn’t “fair” to either Kavanaugh or Christine Blasey Ford, who alleges that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s.

“What is puzzling to me is the Democrats, by not bringing this out earlier, after having had this information for more than six weeks, have managed to cast a cloud of doubt on both the professor and the judge,” Collins told The New York Times.

Collins asked if Democrats believed Ford, “why didn’t they surface this information earlier,” and if they didn’t believe Ford, “why did they decide at the 11th hour to release it?”

“It is really not fair to either of them the way it is was handled,” Collins said.

Collins’s comments come after Ford spoke publicly about the alleged incident for the first time during an interview with The Washington Post that was published on Sunday.

Ford told the Post that Kavanaugh “groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it.”

Kavanaugh has denied the alleged incident, which Ford says took place when they were both in high school.

Collins has not announced a decision on Kavanaugh, and where she ultimately comes down will help determine when, and if, he gets confirmed.

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

Mark Wauck, retired FBI agent and AT contributor, has written an important essay on the true dimensions of the Russia hoax, on his blog Meaning in History. Building on Andrew McCarthy’s close analysis of the redacted FISA warrants two days ago. I will take the liberty of quoting his argument, but urge those interested to read the whole thing:

McCarthy gets to the heart of the matter–the first of many important points he makes–right up front:

Page has never been charged with any crime, much less with espionage. That is a salient fact because to get a FISA warrant on an American citizen, the FBI is required to show that the citizen’s activities on behalf of a foreign power violate federal criminal law. The FBI and Justice Department went to the FISA court four times over nine months, from October 2016 through June 2017, claiming to have grounds that Page was involved in heinous clandestine activity. Why isn’t he in handcuffs?

I believe it is because they never had a case. All they appear to have had were the 2013 attempt by Russian spies to recruit Page as an asset, and the Steele dossier.

Now here’s what I want to make clear. The original FISA order, when the target is a US Person (USPER) such as Carter Page, lasts for 90 days. A FISA order can be renewed, but the renewal is NOTgranted on an “if at first you don’t succeed, try try again” basis. To get an extension on a FISA–and let me say here that I completely agree with McCarthy that the initial FISA was pure BS–the FBI has to either:

1) make a reasonable showing that it is making progress in its investigation as a result of its use of FISA, i.e., it is moving forward with additional evidence gained through FISA that tends to confirm the presentation of the case that was made in the initial application, or

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271345/dianne-feinsteins-metzenbaum-moment-lloyd-billingsley

Last week California Senator Dianne Feinstein kept confidential the individual who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh more than 30 years ago. On Sunday, the accuser came out of the closet in classic style.

Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of psychology at Palo Alto University in California, is an activist Democrat, who in June signed a letter denouncing President Trump’s border policy. The ACLU used the letter in a lawsuit against the Trump administration. Ford told the Washington Post she had been attacked by four individuals from an unnamed “elitist boys school.” The four attackers were all now “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington.”

The attack occurred at a private residence but Ford did not recall who owned the house or how she got there. On the other hand, she did recall that Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were “stumbling drunk” when Kavanaugh tried to remove her clothes and put his hand over her mouth.

“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford told the Post. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.” The attack left her with “anguish and terror about retaliation,” and “derailed me substantially for four or five years.” And so on, like the bogus University of Virginia rape story in Rolling Stone. For some observers the smear job on Kavanaugh may recall the 1991 hearings for Clarence Thomas.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271343/last-minute-character-assassination-judge-joseph-klein

Using any despicable tactic at hand to derail Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation less than a week before the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on whether to approve his nomination, Senate Democrats have sunk to their lowest level of character assassination yet. They have resorted to peddling an allegation of sexual misconduct against Judge Kavanaugh that supposedly occurred while the judge was in high school. The accuser had refused to identify herself before and during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. She conveniently waited until this Sunday to come forward via an on-the-record interview with the Washington Post. The accuser’s name is Christine Blasey Ford, a registered Democrat who is currently a California professor teaching clinical psychology.

Judge Kavanaugh issued a statement on Friday in which he said, “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee that heard Judge Kavanaugh’s public testimony earlier this month during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, had received last July a copy of a letter written by the woman making the charge, who we now know was Ms. Ford. Even though Senator Feinstein had the letter in hand, she never brought up the charge during the public hearing, nor during her own meeting with the judge. Instead, Senator Feinstein sat on the letter until late last week, when she issued a cryptic release stating that she had received the letter but did not want to give more details in deference to the woman’s wish to keep the matter confidential. Senator Feinstein turned the letter over to the FBI. The FBI placed the letter in its background file on Judge Kavanaugh but decided not to pursue any further investigation. Senator Feinstein had initially resisted sharing the contents of the letter with her fellow Democrat members of the Senate Judiciary Committee or to go public with its existence because “the incident was too distant in the past to merit public discussion” and she had already “taken care of it,” according to a source quoted by The New Yorker. Nevertheless, Senator Feinstein evidently bowed to pressure from her leftist colleagues to find a way to insert the allegation into the cesspool of public gossip at the eleventh hour.