RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/james_comeys_forked_tongue_goes_into_overdrive_on_kavanaugh.html

With the Russia collusion issue falling apart and winding down, fired former FBI director James Comey is now speaking out against the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh through the New York Times’ editorial page. Characteristic for him, he’s speaking with a forked tongue, playing Mister Probity to disguise his real aim of undercutting President Trump.

It’s obnoxious stuff, given that it involves piling on against Kavanaugh, but hey, anything to Get Trump and return from the wilderness of irrelevance.

Comey starts with this supposedly innocuous opener before showing his hand.

The F.B.I. is back in the middle of it. When we were handed the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2015, the bureau’s deputy director said to me, “You know you are totally screwed, right?” He meant that, in a viciously polarized political environment, one side was sure to be furious with the outcome. Sure enough, I saw a tweet declaring me “a political hack,” although the author added, tongue in cheek: “I just can’t figure out which side.”

And those were the good old days. President Trump’s decision to order a one-week investigation into sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nominee, comes in a time of almost indescribable pain and anger, lies and attacks.

Here’s Comey, trying to make you think he’s Mr. Objectivity with one hand and pulling a fast one for the lefties with the other.

In other words, he would have you think the FBI is this objective outfit, just looking for the facts, ma’am, even after the amazing revelations of the Comey bureau’s Deep State politicking.

Then we get right down to his real complaint:

We live in a world where the president routinely attacks the F.B.I. because he fears its work. He calls for his enemies to be prosecuted and his friends freed. We also live in a world where a sitting federal judge channels the president by shouting attacks at the Senate committee considering his nomination and demanding to know if a respected senator has ever passed out from drinking.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/american-bar-association-backs-kavanaugh-despite-previous-letter-to-the-contrary/

The American Bar Association (ABA) has clarified its position regarding the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, explaining in a Friday letter that a previous letter urging the Senate to delay his confirmation had not been reviewed by the relevant committee prior to its release.

The chairman for the American Bar Association Standing Committee, the body tasked with evaluating the qualifications of judges, said in the letter that he was not given an opportunity to review a letter sent by the ABA president Thursday urging that the confirmation be delayed.

“The Committee conducts non-partisan, non-ideological, and confidential peer review of federal judicial nominees. The ABA’s rating for Judge Kavanaugh is not affected by Mr. [Robert] Carlson’s letter,”committee chairman Paul Mosley wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Carlson’s letter, sent Thursday evening following the testimony of Kavanaugh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford, seemed to reverse the ABA’s previous endorsement of the confirmation, instead calling for a delay until the FBI investigated the allegations of sexual assault.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/nature-90-nurture-10/

Anyone with an ounce of common sense, two eyes, and a grasp of history understands instinctively that most genetic traits are inheritable. Height, body type, skin color, even eye color run in genetically related families, and those families, bound together in local, tribal, ethnic, and national communities, reflect that. There’s nothing inherently conspiratorial, “racist” or “supremacist” about any of this. And yet, for decades, ideologically driven scientists and cultural Marxist apologists have struggled with such a raw truth, and have endeavored to show that nurture, not nature, is the determining factor, especially when it comes to talents and intelligence. After all, what do human sperm and eggs have to do with the making of the New Soviet Man omelet?

So this book is sure to cause a fuss:

There are few areas of science more fiercely contested than the issue of what makes us who we are. Are we products of our environments or the embodiment of our genes? Is nature the governing force behind our behaviour or is it nurture? While almost everyone agrees that it’s a mixture of both, there has been no end of disagreement about which is the dominant influence.

And it’s a disagreement that has been made yet more fraught by the political concerns that often underlie it. Traditionally, those on the left have tended to see the environment as the critical factor because it ties in with notions of egalitarianism. Thus inequalities, viewed from this perspective, are explained not by inherent differences but by social conditions.

Similarly, those on the right have leaned towards a more Darwinian conception, in which different social outcomes are accounted for by differences of suitability to the environment. In turn, such an understanding has in the past led to the promotion of eugenics (both on the left and right) – through selective breeding, sterilisation and, in the case of the Nazis, wholesale murder.

And this is from the Guardian, Britain’s leftiest of left-of-center newspapers. In an even-handed review of Robert Plomin’s new book, Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, Andrew Anthony writes:

In common with many other scientists, Plomin believes that Freud sent society looking in the wrong place for answers to the question of what makes us as we are. The key to personality traits does not lie in how you were treated by your parents, but rather in what you inherited biologically from them: namely, the genes in your DNA.

He finds that genetic heritability accounts for 50% of the psychological differences between us, from personality to mental abilities. But that leaves 50% that should be accounted for by the environment. However, Plomin argues, research shows that most of that 50% is not attributable to the type of environmental influences that can be planned for or readily affected – ie it’s made up of unpredictable events. And of the environmental influences that can be moderated, much of it, he argues, is really an expression of genetics. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/5-devastating-hits-on-christine-blasey-fords-credibility-from-rachel-mitchells-memo/

“A ‘he said, she said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that.” – Rachel Mitchell

During the hearings where Judge Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, was questioned, the Republicans deferred their questions to Maricopa County sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell. Well now, a memo from Rachel Mitchell has been released. Mitchell begins by saying that she was not pressured to write the memo, notes that she works in the “legal world, not the political world,” and then begins to systematically explain the problems with Ford’s case.

She begins, “I do not think a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the committee. Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.”

Why did she say that? Well, to begin with…
1. What year did this actually happen?

We have been proceeding with the idea that this alleged party occurred in 1982. Actually, as Mitchell notes, Ford’s story has changed quite a bit. In fact, it’s conceivable that there is a range of four to five years that this could have happened in.

In a July 6 text to the Washington Post, she said it happened in the “mid 1980s.”

In her July 30 letter to Senator Feinstein, she said it happened in the “early 80s.”

Her August 7 statement to the polygrapher said that it happened one “high school summer in early 80’s,” but she crossed out the word “early” for reasons she did not explain.

A September 16 Washington Post article reported that Dr. Ford said it happened in the “summer of 1982.”

Similarly, the September 16 article reported that notes from an individual therapy session in 2013 show her describing the assault as occurring in her “late teens.” But she told the Post and the Committee that she was 15 when the assault allegedly occurred. She has not turned over her therapy records for the Committee to review.

Did this happen in the early eighties or the mid-eighties? In her late teens or at 15? The fact that Ford can’t even pin down the YEAR this supposedly happened makes this whole allegation faintly ridiculous.
2. Ford has no memory of many key details that could help prove her story

As many people have noted, Ford does not know the most basic details about the attack that supposedly happened. There are so few details that you could very fairly ask what the proof is that there was ever a party at all, much less that Brett Kavanaugh attended or did something to Ford.

She does not remember in what house the assault allegedly took place or where that house was located with any specificity.

Perhaps most importantly, she does not remember how she got from the party back to her house.

Her inability to remember this detail raises significant questions.

She told the Washington Post that the party took place near the Columbia Country Club. The Club is more than 7 miles from her childhood home as the crow flies, and she testified that it was a roughly 20-minute drive from her childhood home.

She also agreed for the first time in her testimony that she was driven somewhere that night, either to the party or from the party or both.

Dr. Ford was able to describe hiding in the bathroom, locking the door, and subsequently exiting the house. She also described wanting to make sure that she did not look like she had been attacked.

But she has no memory of who drove her or when. Nor has anyone come forward to identify himself or herself as the driver.

Given that this all took place before cell phones, arranging a ride home would not have been easy. Indeed, she stated that she ran out of the house after coming downstairs and did not state that she made a phone call from the house before she did, or that she called anyone else thereafter.

With the almost non-existent level of detail combined with the fact that she doesn’t seem to really know what year this happened, how do you investigate? Talk to every person within a five-year age range who lived within 50 miles? It’s ridiculous. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/brett-kavanaugh-left-attacks-scotus-nominees-temperament/

Some figures on the left exhibit major flaws, yet are still beloved by Democrats

In executing their Delay, Delay, Delay strategy against President Trump’s nomination of the eminently qualified Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the most risible and blatantly political claim posited by Democrats is their objection to his purported lack of judicial temperament. The idea is that, because Judge Kavanaugh reacted with indignation to slanders that he is a gang-rapist, and because he observed that the unabashed left-wing smears against him were, well, left-wing smears, he is unfit to be an objective jurist — as opposed to a normal human being, and a perceptive one at that.

Of course, the best measure we have of how someone will perform in a government office is how that person has already performed when in that office, or in a very similar one. And the best measure we have of the seriousness and good faith of a critic’s claim against a nominee is whether the critic consistently levels similar charges in analogous situations.

On that score, I note the following:

Brett Kavanaugh has been a judge for a dozen years on one of the most important judicial tribunals in the country, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In that office, not only has he issued over 300 opinions, which have been broadly admired for their craftsmanship and heavily relied on by the Supreme Court and other federal courts; he has also been widely praised for his judicial temperament by litigants, colleagues, and bar associations. The diverse group of clerks he has mentored has been in high demand for Supreme Court clerkships and other distinguished positions in the legal profession.

His judicial temperament could not be more apparent.

By contrast, here is Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaking about Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, two years ago:

He is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. . . . How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns?

Guy Benson reminds us of some similarly injudicious remarks by Justice Ginsburg:

In a New York Times interview, Ginsburg doesn’t hold a thing back when it comes to the 2016 election. “I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president. . . . For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.” Ginsburg also recalled something her late husband said about such matters: “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”

https://canadafreepress.com/article/p.t.-barnum-had-nothing-on-the-democrats-freak-show

The Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus that I attended in my youth showcased acts like the freak show in which people with all sorts of bizarre physical features would attract millions of morbidly curious wide-eyed visitors.

But even Tom Thumb and the Siamese twins, the bearded lady and the dog-faced boy, and the head of Medusa that “turned men into stone” had nothing on the oddities of the 2018 circus that billed itself as the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee’s Hearing to determine if Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s selection for the Supreme Court, is fit for that august position.

Those oddities, however, were not physical, but rather deformities of character, integrity, honor.

After an exhaustive interview process, a marathon of visiting members of Congress for personal interviews, and being investigated six times by the FBI for his position as U.S. Circuit Judge on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (and other lofty positions), the married father of two adorable young daughters seemed headed straight to take his place beside the president’s former pick, conservative jurist Neil Gorsuch.

But wait! What is this slithering worm in the ointment?

It was the prospect of a majority of conservative justices on the highest court in the land eventually overturning their most cherished law—the “right” to kill in-utero embryos, fetuses, and babies…right up to the ninth month of pregnancy! And we all know how proud State Legislator Obama was about his legislation in Chicago that allowed doctors to snuff the lives out of living, breathing infants who survived the gruesome abortion procedure.

As far as the left is concerned, you can take military strength, low taxes, high employment (for blacks, Hispanics, women and youth), the genuine protection of our borders, equitable treaties between the U.S. and other countries, huge inroads in foreign policy, on and on and on, and throw them all in the garbage in comparison to the absolute Holy Grail of leftism: abortion.
THE PLAN

The Democrats’ initial plan to quash the Kavanaugh nomination was to grill him so relentlessly and to examine his judicial decisions so microscopically that personal and professional flaws would be found to disqualify him for the job. It turned out, to their everlasting anguish, that he passed all the tests with flying colors and the only remaining procedure was a vote in the Senate which promised to be narrow but successful.

Then quite suddenly—literally out of the blue, it seemed—came a challenge to Judge Kavanaugh’s heretofore sterling reputation: an accusation from a female professor in California that when teenager Kavanaugh and his friend were 17 and drunk, he groped her 15-year-old self and her bathing-suit-clad body and put his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream. Her report was a little sketchy—not sure of the date or venue—but quite sure of the perpetrator.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271486/jeff-flakes-confirmation-circus-matthew-vadum

The Senate Judiciary Committee may have approved the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh on a straight party-line vote Friday, but the confirmation process will not wrap up until the end of the week at the earliest.

And Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the high court remains in doubt. If Kavanaugh fails to be confirmed, the proximate cause will be the treachery of Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).

It’s the same old sad, tired story of Republicans snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. With the midterm elections approaching and the possibility of Democrats recapturing the Senate looming, every delay only works to Democrats’ advantage. The longer the process drags on, the more fake victims with implausible stories can surface to bear false witness against Kavanaugh. Putting the final Senate vote off only helps the bad guys.

The Supreme Court will be shorthanded this morning as it begins hearing cases in its new term. It normally has a complement of nine justices but with Anthony Kennedy’s retirement July 31, which cleared the way for Kavanaugh’s nomination, there have been only eight justices. Roughly speaking there is a 4-to-4 liberal to conservative ideological split on the court. Democrats are trying to drag the confirmation process into the next Congress where they hope to seize control from Republicans. Election Day is November 6. The GOP currently controls the Senate, which has the final say on judicial nominations, by an uncomfortably close margin of 51 to 49.

Things had gone well for Kavanaugh Thursday at an evidentiary hearing pitting him against attempted rape accuser Christine Blasey Ford, who made herself look ridiculous on national television. Ford can’t remember much if anything of the high school party she alleges took place more than 30 years ago. The only thing she claims to remember with perfect certainty is that Kavanaugh, the would-be ninth member of the Supreme Court, somehow tried to rape her. She can’t remember when or where the party was, how she got there, how she got home after, or much else. The witnesses she claims were there for the party either deny her claims or don’t remember being there. It is obvious to anyone who watched the hearing that the left-wing activist is lying.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/who-was-behind-the-flake-set-up/

ACORN’s tactics live on in the senator’s elevator confrontation with activists from a Soros-backed group.

On Friday morning, two women raced past reporters and security officers and blocked a senators-only elevator in the U.S. Capitol. They cornered Arizona senator Jeff Flake, who had just announced he was going to vote yes on moving Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination out of the Judiciary Committee and onto the Senate floor for a full debate. The women wouldn’t let Flake leave until had they yelled at him, face to face, for several minutes. Anyone who thinks the two left-wing activists acted without a well-thought-out plan hasn’t read The Intimidation Game by Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal.

A CNN camera broadcast the event live, and from there it went viral. “Thank you,” Flake said, as he was finally allowed to exit after one of the women revealed, apparently for the first time, that she’d been sexually abused:

I was sexually assaulted, and nobody believed me. I didn’t tell anyone, and you’re telling all women that they don’t matter. . . . That’s what you’re telling all of these women. That’s what you’re telling me right now. Look at me when I’m talking to you! You are telling me that my assault doesn’t matter. . . . Don’t look away from me. Look at me.

The New Yorker reported that, after the incident, Flake “looked more withdrawn than ever, eyes wet, voice a little frayed, chin tucked down in the somber knot of his tie.” Shortly afterward, Flake voted to refer Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate but with a sudden proviso: He wouldn’t vote for the judge on the floor unless the vote was delayed to do an FBI investigation, “limited in time to no more than one week,” into “current allegations that are already there.” Democrats rejoiced.

A reporter for the Washington Examiner asked Flake, “Did the women who confronted you this morning, did they have any role in changing your mind?”

“No, no,” Flake said as he shook his head.

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-midsummer-nights-nightmare_30.html

By now, many readers are doubtless sick of reading about the latest whirligigs in the Brett Kavanaugh nomination brouhaha in the Senate Judiciary Committee. They may have grown tired of all the speculative commentary about how or why the Dems have manipulated the Judicial hearings over Kavanaugh, commentary with which they probably agree, and which explains how the Dems’ witch hunt plan suits their agenda to defeat Donald Trump and destroy Kavanaugh with the whiny testimony of an alleged rape victim. All in all, the whole charade has been and continues to be nauseous. As many commentators and even Republican Senators have have remarked, the hearing’s vicious tone is unprecedented in our political history.

Christine Blasey Ford was obviously coached by her attorneys and the Dems on how and what to say in her testimony, and was probably coached on how to comport herself. I even suspect that she did not compose the typewritten testimony from which she read, as she played with her glasses and fussed with her hair, all the while playing to be a “nervous Nellie,” uncomfortable with her testimony with all eyes, ears, and cameras focused on her.

Wikipedia has an interesting observation on Shakespeare’s comedy, which has four interconnected subplots and a confusing cast of nineteen characters, not including dancing fairies. The comedy is less complex and confusing to follow than has been the Kavanaugh hearing.

In 1972, Ralph Berry argued that Shakespeare was chiefly concerned with epistemology in this play. The lovers declare illusion to be reality, the actors declare reality to be illusion. The play ultimately reconciles the seemingly opposing views and vindicates imagination.

Diane Feinstein and Company subscribe to this notion, and struggle to reconcile illusion and reality. She and her ilk “believe” Ford’s assertions, so, ergo, Kavanaugh “really” attacked Ford, with as much sutstance and evidence as wind storms on Pluto, and he’s automatically guilty (no amount of “mansplaining” by him or any other man will exonerate him). The illusion of guilt becomes a “fact” which must be further investigated by the FBI until the “truth” is discovered, thus delaying his nomination before the national elections at the end of the year. It isn’t as though Feinstein and her Democratic ilk place any importance on truth. Truth to them, if a malleable concept that can be fitted to their political agenda.