RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/hillary-clinton-2020-presidential-campaign-farce/

She actually believes she still has a shot at the White House.

W hen Homer Simpson looks in the mirror, he sees ripped chest muscles and arms like the trunks of beech trees. When Hillary Clinton looks in the mirror, she sees America’s sweetheart. She thinks: America adores me. She thinks: America already chose me to be president once! She thinks: Everyone is comparing me with Donald Trump and realizing I’m a better choice. She is hoping for a call that will never come: an earnest, sobbing plea from the Democratic party to be their standard bearer in 2020.

How else to explain Clinton’s latest media blitzkrieg? You’d think she’d be in Jimmy Carter mode: quiet, making a display of humility, working hard to rebuild her reputation for posterity by doing good deeds and writing non-political books (like Carter’s disarming series of memoirs). Instead, she is acting like a fired-up political candidate. The poor dear actually thinks she’s still in the game. The woman who, on Election Night 2016, slunk away in ignominy from thousands of supporters in the glass-ceilinged Javits Center without even saying thanks to the many who would have lain down in front of a bus for her, these days is once again singing her fight song. But it’s a pathetic 4 a.m. karaoke act and no one can bear to tell this frail elderly lady to stop screeching so they can mop the floors and turn out the lights. Because she has the personality of a cactus and hates everyone, H-Rod never should have entered politics to begin with, but her inability to leave it behind is an embarrassment. Not to me, mind you. Not to Republicans. We all hope she keeps talking. For us every HRC tweet and MSNBC appearance is a dopamine cookie. It is merely herself she is embarrassing.

The media are, of course, a big part of this auto-humiliation, having constructed around her a fake township of fawning admirers: It Takes a (Potemkin) Village to keep her self-delusion alive. She is the geriatric version of the Batkid, the leukemia-stricken little boy for whom the entire city of San Francisco agreed to dress up in costume and behave as characters from Gotham City to cheer him on for a day. (Batkid is reportedly in remission and recently celebrated his ninth birthday, by the way.) As Hillary tears her way from the pages of The Atlantic to Maddow to Twitter, her acolytes cheer her on. She’s a “rock star,” exclaimed one fan on Twitter this week. Nay, she’s a Power Ranger! said another. Last year Clinton herself invited us to think of her as Wonder Woman. Yeah, remember that time when Wonder Woman collapsed while she was getting into her limo on a balmy September day? Remember when Wonder Woman frumped it up in pastel pantsuits, blamed the “glass ceiling” whenever she failed, and loaded up her staff with sexist men? Remember when Wonder Woman owed her entire career to leveraging the success of her immensely more charismatic husband? Remember when Wonder Woman remained married to a sexual predator for decades and put down her golden lariat of truth to help him smear his female victims? Hillary Clinton is as much like Wonder Woman as Dianne Feinstein is like Beyoncé.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/christine-blasey-ford-friend-contradicts-her-on-party/

A friend of the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault has denied that she was at the party where the alleged assault occurred.

The Senate Judiciary Committee reached out to Leland Ingham Keyser, a friend of Christine Blasey Ford. Ford claims Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed when he was drunk, covered her mouth, and tried to remove her clothing at a party in the early 1980s when they were in high school.

Keyser’s lawyer, Howard Walsh, responded to the committee late Saturday in a written statement.

“Simply 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,” the attorney wrote.

Keyser — a lifelong friends of Ford’s according to Walsh — is the third individual to deny suggestions that they were at the alleged party. Mark Judge and Patrick J. Smyth have also issued statements rejecting Ford’s recollection.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/poking-a-hole-in-professor-fords-fear-of-flying-excuse/

Last night’s 10:00 pm deadline for Christine Blasey Ford’s team to agree to come to testify came and went, and unfortunately, Senator Chuck Grassley has given her yet another extension—until 2:30 pm ET today—to reach an agreement.

Personally, I don’t think Ford has any intention of testifying, and I don’t believe Democrats actually want her to either. Ford’s demands have been crazy and absurd, and the entire negotiation circus feels more like a stalling tactic than a negotiation in good faith on Ford and her team’s part.

One of her recent excuses was based on the claim that she couldn’t possibly make it to the hearing in time because Ford has a fear of flying (aviophobia) and would have to drive. Now, let’s put aside the fact that Republicans have literally offered to come out to California to accommodate her, and look into this claim. According to a report from ABC News, we get the following nugget of information.

Meantime lawyers for Ford are asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to schedule a hearing for her to be heard on Thursday, allowing time for Ford to make the drive from California to Washington D.C. Ford’s friend, Kate Devarney, told CNN this week that Ford’s fear of flying is directly related to her allegation of assault, and that an airplane is “the ultimate closed space where you cannot get away.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/kavanaugh-hearings-chuck-grassley-senate-judiciary-committee-chairman/He must not let Democrats delay the Judiciary Committee’s hearing or turn it into even more of a farce.

So now it looks like next Thursday.

On Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s manifestly meritorious nomination to the Supreme Court, what was supposed to be the vote out of the Senate Judiciary Committee this past Thursday now appears to be sliding into a hearing to be held next Thursday. Or, who knows, maybe a Thursday or two after that. Or maybe The First of Never — though even that would undoubtedly be postponed to The Twelfth of Never.

Delay, delay, delay. It is what the Democrats want and it is what the Democrats are getting. They took the measure of their opposition and figured the GOP would bring a knife to a gunfight. From the first day of the confirmation hearing, committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) ceded control of the proceedings to the minority — in particular, to its ever-harder-Left, mak show presidential primary contestants.

It’s a kangaroo court.

Understand, this is not about Christine Blasey Ford. She’s a tool — a quite willing tool, but a tool all the same. This is not even about the eminently qualified federal circuit-court judge Brett Kavanaugh — it would be no different regardless of which nominee President Trump selected in consultation with White House counsel Don McGahn, the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the rest of the originalist, conservative legal community come of age. Democrats do not want a model of constitutional fidelity and judicial restraint elevated to the Supreme Court. End of story.

And who can blame them? Republicans did not want the eminently qualified federal circuit-court judge Merrick Garland to be elevated to the Supreme Court.

The only difference is that Republicans had the majority and the rules on their side. Now Democrats are out to prove that if you abuse the process until it becomes a circus, the rules don’t matter. The steroid effect of their media echo chamber can overcome any thin, fraidy-scared GOP majority.

Back in the Garland days of 2016, Republican control of the Senate meant there were civilized limits on opposition. The gentlemen were not willing to slander the gentleman as, say, a would-be rapist. But, in a stunning display of vertebrae, Republicans were willing to block the nomination, which they were legally entitled to do: They had the majority and nothing in the Constitution required them to vote on an outgoing Democratic president’s election-year nomination to fill the seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/21/

If the recent generic ballots tell us anything, it is that the Republican establishment should stop trying to run generic Republicans as candidates. The GOP of Paul “throw-granny-off-a-cliff-and-give-her-Social-Security-check-to-the-Koch-Brothers” Ryan has never been popular, and for good reason. This is why Donald Trump, despite having ostensibly low approval ratings, is virtually unstoppable compared to his purported “allies” in Congress. Against this alleged political party with approval ratings somewhere between those of Typhoid Mary and the man who ran over your dog, and with all the instinct to fight of said dead dog, a blue wave should surprise no one.

On the surface, therefore, the potential success of the Democratic Party would seem to be a banner day for #TheResistance.

Except it won’t be. Indeed, should a blue wave arrive in November, it will be the high water mark of #TheResistance’s influence. Within the administration, and even in Congress, the very policies that could shipwreck #TheResistance on the shores of its own extremism are closer than ever to coming to pass, and what’s more, #TheResistance knows this. Indeed, the campus-style freakout on the part of Democratic Party activists in response to the baseless accusations of Christine Blasey Ford, who recently lobbed a Duke Lacrosse-level slimeball of scurrilous envy disguised as grievance at Judge Brett Kavanaugh, shows as much.

Hobble the Left: Here’s How
No serious party would latch onto the rhetoric of the most asinine #MeToo activist unless it believed that was the only way to avoid an extinction-level event. Republicans everywhere should be much more pleased with Kavanaugh’s nomination, knowing the Left views it as such a threat to their agenda.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/21/

If the recent generic ballots tell us anything, it is that the Republican establishment should stop trying to run generic Republicans as candidates. The GOP of Paul “throw-granny-off-a-cliff-and-give-her-Social-Security-check-to-the-Koch-Brothers” Ryan has never been popular, and for good reason. This is why Donald Trump, despite having ostensibly low approval ratings, is virtually unstoppable compared to his purported “allies” in Congress. Against this alleged political party with approval ratings somewhere between those of Typhoid Mary and the man who ran over your dog, and with all the instinct to fight of said dead dog, a blue wave should surprise no one.

On the surface, therefore, the potential success of the Democratic Party would seem to be a banner day for #TheResistance.

Except it won’t be. Indeed, should a blue wave arrive in November, it will be the high water mark of #TheResistance’s influence. Within the administration, and even in Congress, the very policies that could shipwreck #TheResistance on the shores of its own extremism are closer than ever to coming to pass, and what’s more, #TheResistance knows this. Indeed, the campus-style freakout on the part of Democratic Party activists in response to the baseless accusations of Christine Blasey Ford, who recently lobbed a Duke Lacrosse-level slimeball of scurrilous envy disguised as grievance at Judge Brett Kavanaugh, shows as much.

Hobble the Left: Here’s How
No serious party would latch onto the rhetoric of the most asinine #MeToo activist unless it believed that was the only way to avoid an extinction-level event. Republicans everywhere should be much more pleased with Kavanaugh’s nomination, knowing the Left views it as such a threat to their agenda.

But it isn’t just Kavanaugh. Over the past few weeks events suggest that the Trump Administration and Congress can, and will, hobble the far Left by dismantling their strongest weapons in America’s ongoing cold civil war.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-punishment-is-cruel-and-unusual-for-a-crime-committed-at-17-1537567051

What happens when a state supreme court fails to follow the precedents of the U.S. Supreme Court? Over the past decade, the high court has applied the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment to limit penalties for juvenile crimes. First the justices barred capital punishment for defendants who committed their crimes—including murder—while they were under 18. Later they barred life without parole for juveniles who committed noncapital offenses, and eventually even for juvenile murderers, unless they were found to be in that “rare” group that “exhibits such irretrievable depravity that rehabilitation is impossible.”

These decisions reasoned that the immaturity of juvenile defendants made such sentences impermissibly disproportionate. Dissenters argued that the Eighth Amendment was written simply to forbid cruel methods of punishment, not to impose a judicially created sentencing proportionality regimen. The dissenters also cited numerous state sentencing laws permitting life without parole for juveniles to show that such sentences weren’t unusual.

Whether one agrees with the majority or the dissenters in those cases—a question on which the authors of this article take different views—a case the high court is now considering for review could unite those positions. In Chandler v. Mississippi, the sentencing judge imposed life without parole after pronouncing the defendant “mature” and noting that 17-year-olds—the age at which Joey Chandler committed the murder in question—may engage in numerous adult activities, from driving to obtaining an abortion. The judge also recounted the story of a 17-year-old who received a Medal of Honor during World War II, adding that he couldn’t have been called “immature.” As a final fillip, in recognition of the Supreme Court’s “talk” about prospects for rehabilitation, the judge pointed out that the executive is empowered to commute sentences.

What the judge did not do before imposing life without parole was consider whether he could find that the defendant was irretrievably depraved. Yet the Supreme Court of Mississippi affirmed the sentence over a strong dissent.

The circumstances of Mr. Chandler’s crime include the social pathology that often surrounds such cases. He shot his 19-year-old cousin in 2003 for stealing marijuana Mr. Chandler intended to sell to support his pregnant girlfriend. As also happens occasionally in such cases, while in prison Mr. Chandler appears to have turned around his life, or what there is of it. He earned a high-school diploma, trained extensively in two trades, married and maintained an unblemished disciplinary record. Lawyers and advocates routinely present that sort of evidence to parole boards in aid of release, often successfully.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-presumption-of-guilt-1537570627

“As Judge Kavanaugh stands to gain the lifetime privilege of serving on the country’s highest court, he has the burden of persuasion. And that is only fair.”

—Anita Hill, Sept. 18, 2018

“Not only do women like Dr. Ford, who bravely comes forward, need to be heard, but they need to be believed.”

—Sen. Maize Hirono (D., Hawaii)

The last-minute accusation of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is an ugly spectacle by any measure. But if there is a silver lining, it is that the episode is providing an education for Americans on the new liberal standard of legal and political due process.

As Ms. Hill and Sen. Hirono aver, the Democratic standard for sexual-assault allegations is that they should be accepted as true merely for having been made. The accuser is assumed to be telling the truth because the accuser is a woman. The burden is on Mr. Kavanaugh to prove his innocence. If he cannot do so, then he is unfit to serve on the Court.
***

This turns American justice and due process upside down. The core tenet of Anglo-American law is that the burden of proof always rests with the person making the accusation. An accuser can’t doom someone’s freedom or career merely by making a charge.

The accuser has to prove the allegation in a court of law or in some other venue where the accused can challenge the facts. Otherwise we have a Jacobin system of justice in which “J’accuse” becomes the standard and anyone can be ruined on a whim or a vendetta.

Another core tenet of due process is that an accusation isn’t any more or less credible because of the gender, race, religion or ethnicity of who makes it. A woman can lie, as the Duke lacrosse players will tell you. Ms. Hirono’s standard of credibility by gender would have appalled the civil-rights campaigners of a half century ago who marched in part against Southern courts that treated the testimony of black Americans as inherently less credible than that of whites. Yet now the liberal heirs of those marchers want to impose a double standard of credibility by gender.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/kavanaugh-hearings-dianne-feinstein-senate-should-censure/The Senate cannot let this wrong go unaddressed.

Regardless of the fate of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, the Senate should censure the ranking Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein. Her deception and maneuvering, condemned across the political spectrum, seriously interfered with the Senate’s performance of its constitutional duty to review judicial nominations, and unquestionably has brought the Senate into “dishonor and disrepute,” the standard that governs these matters. As a matter of institutional integrity, the Senate cannot let this wrong go unaddressed.

Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution provides that each House of the Congress may “punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour.” Nine times in American history the Senate has used that power to censure one of its members. Feinstein has richly earned the right to join this inglorious company.

The senior senator from California not only disgraced herself personally in the underhanded and disingenuous way she dealt with the sex-assault charge against Judge Kavanaugh, but she also misused her position on the Judiciary Committee and broke faith with her fellow committee members. She was further, to quote the San Francisco Chronicle, no less, “unfair” to Judge Kavanaugh — manipulating the public disclosure of the charge so as to maximize the adverse publicity Judge Kavanaugh received and minimize the judge’s opportunity to defend himself. Censure is appropriate in this case for the Senate to defend its procedures and institutional reputation.

By her own account, Feinstein was aware of the charge shortly after President Trump nominated Kavanaugh, nearly two months before her committee opened its hearings. She came into possession of the letter making the charge by virtue of her position on the Judiciary Committee. We don’t know what contact she had thereafter with the accuser or the accuser’s Democrat-activist Washington lawyer — but we do know that Feinstein kept the information from her Senate colleagues, ensuring it was untested and unmentioned in the committee’s hearings. This, even though the hearings were accompanied by loud complaints from Democrats that the administration’s document production was insufficient. Indeed, as this is being written, while yet another Judiciary Committee hearing has been scheduled, she still has not released the unredacted text of the letter that made the charge.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-nomination-stop-stalling-and-vote/

This is about preventing a conservative justice from being added to the Supreme Court, nothing more.

Senate Democrats’ blatant abuse of the hearing process, their “delay, delay, delay” strategy, continues to pay dividends. Putting a stop to it would be long overdue.

Thursday was the day Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s manifestly meritorious nomination to the Supreme Court should have been voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee and sent to the full Senate. Instead the nomination languishes because of an eleventh-hour stunt pulled by committee Democrats — led by ranking member Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.).

Notwithstanding that Feinstein was well aware almost three months ago of a flimsily supported allegation against Kavanaugh — to wit, that 36 years ago, as a 17-year-old high school student, he groped and tried to force himself on a 15-year-old girl at an underage beer party — the senator sat on the information rather than submitting it to the hearing process. Although she met face-to-face with Kavanaugh and later questioned him when he was under oath at the hearing, Feinstein did not utter a word about the ancient, unverifiable claim to Kavanaugh.

Instead, the senator referred the allegation to the FBI, without identifying the self-proclaimed witness, despite knowing that:

1) The FBI had no jurisdiction to investigate a state-law assault claim.

2) Even if the FBI had had jurisdiction, it is federal practice not to investigate and prosecute minors, especially for offenses that state authorities have jurisdiction over, except in rare circumstances involving heinous crimes.

3) Even if the FBI had had jurisdiction over the offense, the bureau would never have opened an investigation of a 36-year-old allegation, even if the evidence were strong.

4) Even though the FBI had jurisdiction to conduct a background investigation of Kavanaugh, such investigations are not occasions to trigger full-blown criminal investigations of crimes the Justice Department has no jurisdiction to prosecute, but rather result in a flagging of allegations for the Senate’s consideration (which has been done here).

5) Even though Maryland state and local authorities (to whom neither Senator Feinstein nor the alleged victim apparently referred the allegation) have jurisdiction over any conceivable statutory offenses in question, they would never have opened an investigation based on a sketchy allegation of 36-year-old misconduct for which the statute of limitations lapsed decades ago (i.e., a case it would be impossible to investigate and prosecute).