RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/metoo-becomes-a-political-ploy-1537915920

Pity Lady Justice; she’s had a rough couple of weeks. On “State of the Union” Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper tossed Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii what should have been a grapefruit: “Doesn’t Kavanaugh have the same presumption of innocence as anyone else in America?” Ms. Hirono responded: “I put his denial in the context of everything that I know about him in terms of how he approaches cases.” Conservative jurists in America have been put on notice: They are to forfeit their most basic rights as punishment for their judicial philosophy.

In the national circus that is the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, sexual assault is very much beside the point. Christine Blasey Ford claims that 36 years ago she suffered an attempt at the most terrifying act of brutality a woman can live through. But in the hands of Senate Democrats, this is one more bit of materiel flung at the other side. Ms. Ford is merely the expedient means to a desirable end.

I have no idea what if anything happened to Ms. Ford. (Is it necessary to say this?) I have no idea whether she is more credible than Leland Keyser, whom Ms. Ford places at the party, though Ms. Keyser has no memory of it and says she’s never met Brett Kavanaugh. Neither do any of the senators, including Dianne Feinstein, who learned of the accusation and withheld it from her Republican colleagues and the Federal Bureau of Investigation for six weeks, knowing as every good gunslinger must, that if you’ve only got one bullet left, you don’t let it go to waste.

Imagine if we treated murder this way. Imagine if a woman had written to Mrs. Feinstein alleging that the man who was about to be appointed to the Supreme Court had murdered her brother 36 years ago. What would we say of a senator who failed to turn this evidence over immediately to the authorities? That the question is so easily answered indicates how much less seriously we already take crimes of sexual violence.

Mrs. Feinstein was elected in 1992, the year after Justice Clarence Thomas’s appointment. When he was accused, we were told the woman is always right. Why else would Anita Hill have brought these claims? A few years later, when the accused was Bill Clinton, elite opinion cried we shouldn’t rush to believe the accuser. He was a good feminist—and Paula Jones, not nearly our sort of girl. In both cases, we knew that the point was not any of the accusations. It was to shelter powerful men with views we liked or punish men with views we didn’t.

Then came #MeToo. For a moment, it seemed everything might change. Public opinion was on the side, not of all women exactly, but of those women with credible, corroborated claims who were willing to name powerful men—even those men with the right political allegiances. In this light, Bill O’Reilly and Harvey Weinstein seemed more alike than different; they met the same disgrace not for their political beliefs but for behavior that Americans of every political stripe should want to stop. For the first time in years, even Bill Clinton seemed less a gift to women than a Trojan Horse.

But now we’re back to our cheap tricks, using sexual assault as a political ploy. If Judge Kavanaugh were liberal, Sen. Hirono makes clear, she would give him the benefit of the doubt. If he adjudicates like a conservative, that’s evidence of rape. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.weeklystandard.com/adam-j-white/brett-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-and-the-senates-burden-of-proof
Understanding where the burden of proof really rests.

As the Senate considers Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that Judge Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her 30 years ago, senators find themselves asking a basic question familiar to all lawyers: Who bears the burden of proof—the accuser or the accused?

But the greater burden is the one borne by the Senate itself, which now must come to a decision on Kavanaugh’s nomination, and do so in the manner that will best promote transparency and fact-finding in this nomination and all future nominations.

The “burden of proof” issue is the crux of the debate surrounding Dr. Ford’s accusations against Judge Kavanaugh precisely because she has produced no evidence to support her accusations against him. She has no physical evidence, though that is unsurprising given that she is alleging a three-decades-old-crime. More surprising, and more disconcerting, is the fact that the direct witnesses that she identified disclaim any knowledge of the crime she says they were present for; the fact that her therapist’s notes of her statements neither name Kavanaugh nor square with her other specific allegations; and the fact that Senator Feinstein herself did not pursue the allegations until after the regular confirmation hearings had ended and Kavanaugh was poised for a successful vote.

In sum, Dr. Ford’s accusation against Kavanaugh is unsupported save for the accusation itself, and those who say that she told them about Kavanaugh in the last handful of years, three decades after the alleged incident. And Kavanaugh, for his part, denies the accusation categorically—he denies assaulting her at any time or any place, including at the unspecified house party in an unknown house during an unknown year.

So is that enough for the senators to decide to vote for Kavanaugh, Ford’s accusation notwithstanding? Judge Kavanaugh’s supporters think so, pointing to the traditional criminal-law standard of presuming the defendant’s innocence and requiring the prosecutor to prove otherwise.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/kavanaugh-confirmation-hearings-not-a-trial

Kavanaugh’s hearing has become a farce.

I’ve never thought the big Ford–Kavanaugh hearing scheduled for Thursday would actually happen. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong, but I’ve never believed Christine Blasey Ford wants to testify. This hearing is not going to settle the issue of what, if anything, happened 36 years ago — which, as I’ve noted, is why there is no point in having the hearing.

Senator Chuck Grassley, the Judiciary Committee chairman, should just invite affidavits from the witnesses and call it a day. Democrats, in any event, would rather have the specter of Ford’s testimony than the real thing, given that the latter will highlight: (a) her inability to recall and relate rudimentary details, (b) the fact that she did not utter a word about the alleged sexual assault for 30 years, (c) the discrepancies between her current version of events and the notes of what she told her therapist, and (d) the fact that the other witnesses she has identified do not corroborate her story. Moreover, now that Republicans have reportedly retained an experienced female litigator to conduct the questioning, there is no longer the prospect of video clips featuring Ford being grilled by old white guys — grist for what Democrats hoped would be their “War on Women 2.0” campaign ads.

Ford’s legal team continues to add new demands. The latest is a push to have two “trauma experts” and Ford’s polygrapher testify. The purpose of these outlandish proposals is likely to prompt denials that would allow Ford to bow out of the hearing, blaming purported GOP intransigence and insensitivity.

This underscores that the point of the hearing is being lost.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-consumer-confidence-rose-in-september-1537885594?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=pop&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

Consumer confidence hit an 18-year high in September, a positive indicator for spending going into the holiday shopping season, as robust job growth and a strong economic outlook bolstered Americans’ expectations for the future.

The Conference Board, a private research group, said Tuesday its index of consumer confidence rose to 138.4, up from 134.7 in August—the highest level since September 2000, which represented the late stages of the 1990s technology boom. An index reading of 100 represents how households saw the economy in 1985.

The report came on the heels of a separate University of Michigan survey that said sentiment jumped in early September to the second-highest level since 2004—behind only the reading in March of this year.

Economists have voiced concerns about trade and tariffs as risks to economic growth over the next 12 months. For consumers, however, the issue isn’t registering.

“We are kind of in a little bit of a Goldilocks moment in the economy. I think things are really strong for the consumer,” said David Jaffe, chief executive of Ascena Retail Group Inc., during an earnings call this week. The company, one of the largest women’s clothing retailers with brands like Dressbarn and Ann Taylor, reported its first positive quarter of overall comparable-stores sales growth in more than three years Monday.

“The tariffs, while it’s not going to impact apparel very much, haven’t really hit yet. We’ve seen unemployment go down. What we’re seeing, I think, is maybe a little bit of a rebound due to a lack of shopping for apparel over the last couple of years,” Mr. Jaffe said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sen-feinstein-clean-up-your-mess-1537915772?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=pop&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

Republicans and others who live in California and are appalled by the Senate’s Brett Kavanaugh spectacle at least can do something about it. In November, they can hold their noses and pull the lever for Dianne Feinstein’s ultraliberal challenger and thereby send the state’s four-term Senate doyenne down to landslide defeat.

Mrs. Feinstein’s ending an otherwise a long and creditable career in humiliation and ignominy would be justice not only because of her culpable role in the Kavanaugh travesty. It would be poetic for her to finish under a real and recent cloud given actions that have cast a cloud over Judge Kavanaugh because of unprovable, last-minute claims about how he may have behaved in his teens.

Mrs. Feinstein could learn something from the New York Times in its own debunking of the latest ill-sourced Kavanaugh allegation, in which the paper says it contacted dozens of potential witnesses and found none who would verify a complaint floated Sunday in backhanded fashion by the New Yorker magazine.

Lesson: You don’t need the FBI. Private investigators are available. Opposition researchers can be hired—just not the Fusion GPS kind, who specialize in producing anonymous, unsubstantiated slurs rather than checking them out.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/25/anti-kavanaugh-mob-chases-sen-ted-cruz-wife-restaurant/

A mob of people calling themselves democratic socialists, LGBT activists, anarchists, anti-fascists, and anti-racists descended upon Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife while they were out to dinner last night. They chanted “We believe survivors,” surrounded the Cruzes, blocked their exit, and screamed in their faces, show videos of the altercation. Cruz can be heard saying “Let my wife through.”

The hecklers also shouted “[Cruz’s Senate opponent] Beto is way hotter than you, dude.” After the Cruzes exited through an side door, protesters can be heard shouting “Ted Cruz and Brett Kavanaugh are best friends!” and “Cancel Kavanaugh for women’s rights!”

“This is a message to Ted Cruz, Bret Kavanaugh, Donald Trump, and the rest of the racist, sexist, transphobic, and homophobic right-wing scum,” wrote Smash Racism DC in a statement taking responsibility for the harassment. “You are not safe. We will find you. We will expose you. We will take from you the peace you have taken from so many others.”

The incident appears to begin with a woman walking up to the Cruzes in the restaurant, calling herself a constituent and victim of sexual assault, and demanding to know how Cruz plans to vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. “Do you believe survivors, sir?” she demands, as her mob chants “We believe survivors” in the background.Democrats are charging, based purely on hazy and uncorroborated claims of alcohol-fueled sexual encounters nearly 40 years ago, that Kavanaugh is a vicious pervert. Cruz sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee that is slated to receive testimony Thursday from one woman making such accusations. But her legal team has already caused the testimony to be rescheduled six times. Such testimony would put Christine Blasey Ford under oath and liable to perjury charges.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/408250-rosenstein-guided-by-politics-not-a-pursuit-of-justice

The New York Times’s blockbuster report that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein broached the subject of seeking President Trump’s ouster cannot be separated from his appointment of a special counsel.

From the start of the Trump administration, politics has overwhelmed law enforcement. It was the political uproar stoked by the May 9, 2017, firing of FBI Director James Comey that induced Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel, Robert Mueller, to investigate President Trump. There was insufficient basis in law to do this. But that turned out to be of no more moment than the complete absence of any basis to remove the president under the 25th Amendment, the harebrained proposal the Times reports Rosenstein was floating at exactly the same time.

To be clear, the special counsel regulations require the existence of a factual basis for a criminal investigation — a crime — before a prosecutor is assigned. Moreover, a special counsel, who by regulation is recruited from outside the government, is not supposed to be assigned absent a Department of Justice (DOJ) conflict of interest so profound that the department is ethically barred from investigating the crime in question.

Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein could satisfy neither of these conditions. To this day, he has never specified a crime the president is suspected of committing. And there is no conflict; Mueller not only recruited prosecutors from the Justice Department, he has transitioned the two Russia indictments he’s brought to Justice Department components.

Both of these actions would be improper if there were an actual conflict. But, of course, there isn’t one because, again, Rosenstein has not specified a crime. It is the crime allegedly committed by a president that creates a conflict for the president’s Justice Department and calls for an outside prosecutor.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/kavanaugh-nomination-battle-like-orwells-1984/

Truth, due process, evidence, rights of the accused: All are swept aside in pursuit of the progressive agenda.

George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is no longer fiction. We are living it right now.

Google techies planned to massage Internet searches to emphasize correct thinking. A member of the so-called deep state, in an anonymous op-ed, brags that its “resistance” is undermining an elected president. The FBI, CIA, DOJ, and NSC were all weaponized in 2016 to ensure that the proper president would be elected — the choice adjudicated by properly progressive ideology. Wearing a wire is now redefined as simply flipping on an iPhone and recording your boss, boy- or girlfriend, or co-workers.

But never has the reality that we are living in a surreal age been clearer than during the strange cycles of Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

In Orwell’s world of 1984 Oceania, there is no longer a sense of due process, free inquiry, rules of evidence and cross examination, much less a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Instead, regimented ideology — the supremacy of state power to control all aspects of one’s life to enforce a fossilized idea of mandated quality — warps everything from the use of language to private life.

Oceania’s Rules

Senator Diane Feinstein and the other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee had long sought to destroy the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. Much of their paradoxical furor over his nomination arises from the boomeranging of their own past political blunders, such as when Democrats ended the filibuster on judicial nominations, in 2013. They also canonized the so-called 1992 Biden Rule, which holds that the Senate should not consider confirming the Supreme Court nomination of a lame-duck president (e.g., George H. W. Bush) in an election year.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/senate-republicans-eye-monday-tuesday-floor-vote-kavanaugh

Senate Republican leaders want to schedule a floor vote for Monday or Tuesday on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court “unless something derailed it along the way,” according to Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune of South Dakota.

Thune told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday that if all goes according to plan, Republicans could get the procedural gears turning over the weekend. That assumes Thursday’s hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee featuring Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of sexual assault, does not alter the current trajectory that Senate GOP leaders have set.

When asked if that meant floor debate on Kavanaugh could take place Monday or Tuesday, he said, “I would think so, if things were to stay on schedule, unless something derailed it along the way.”

“Again, we’ll see what happens on Thursday. But at this point, if nothing changes, my assumption would be from a timing standpoint that we could begin that process Friday, Saturday timeframe and wrap it up next week sometime,” the Republican Conference chairman said

Under that timeline, a Judiciary Committee markup might take place Friday, allowing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to file a cloture to cut off debate on the nominee as early as Saturday, which would set up a Monday vote to limit the debate on the Supreme Court nominee.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271415/castros-torture-american-pows-vietnam-jamie-glazov

Editors’ note: Last Friday, Sept. 21, 2018, our nation, led by our president, solemnly marked National POW/MIA Recognition Day, during which we honored all American prisoners of war and expressed our deep gratitude and respect for what they endured and — as empirical evidence suggests — in some cases may very well be continuing to endure. Indeed, we pay tribute to those who never returned — and, of course, also to their suffering families. In honor of this sacred day, Frontpage has deemed it important to run Jamie Glazov’s article, Castro’s Torture of American POWs in Vietnam from Breitbart’s Dec. 8, 2016 issue. We hope that our leadership and citizens will take serious action on this issue. We will always remember and we will never forget.

*
Castro’s Torture of American POWs in Vietnam.
By Jamie Glazov

The death of communist tyrant Fidel Castro has yielded much-deserved coverage of the monstrous nature of his tyrannical rule.

What has gone virtually unreported, however, is the direct and instrumental role Castro played in the torture and murder of American POWs in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The story of Castro’s atrocities against American soldiers in this conflict is rarely ever told, least of all by our mainstream media.

During the Vietnam War, Castro sent a gang of his henchmen to run the “Cuban Program” at the Cu Loc POW camp in Hanoi, which became known as “the Zoo.” As Stuart Rochester and Frederick Kiley have documented in their book Honor Bound in a chapter entitled “The Zoo, 1967–1969: The Cuban Program and Other Atrocities,” one of the primary objectives of this “program” was to determine how much physical and psychological agony a human being could withstand.

Castro selected American POWs as his guinea pigs. A Cuban nicknamed “Fidel,” the main torturer at the Zoo, initiated his own personal reign of terror. He was described in documents based on POW debriefings as “a professional who was trained in psychology and prison control in Russia or Europe.”

Among Fidel’s torture techniques were beatings and whippings over every part of his victims’ bodies, without remission.