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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Time for sunshine on Trump-Russia investigation By Mark Penn

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/407153-time-for-sunshine-on-trump-russia-investigation

Democrats are squawking about President Trump’s order to release the material used by the FBI and the Justice Department to initiate the investigation of his campaign. These minority committee chairs, soon likely to be in the majority, claim it’s unfair, an abuse of power, one-sided.

Since when have these “Guardians of Our Republic” ever been against the release of more information from our government? Obviously, only when such release might put a dent in the Russia cloud that they have deliberately perpetuated regardless of the drip, drip, drip of evidence implicating high-ranking FBI, CIA and Justice officials in wrongdoing.

This investigation of the Trump campaign, his administration, family and associates has gone on for more than two years without any serious evidence supporting the Russia-Trump collusion theory. And, increasingly, it looks like there never was any real evidence to support the launching of the largest investigation of an administration in history. It’s the only known investigation ever by an outgoing party of the incoming officials of the other party. It was whipped up by opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, former British spy Christopher Steele and partisans in the Obama administration, creating a vast echo chamber with information that was never substantiated in any material way and, on the face of it, was preposterous. (No one ever offered Trump campaign adviser Carter Page $19 billion for anything.)

A New Color of Censorship from the SPLC A hate group sets out to coopt major corporations. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271310/new-color-censorship-splc-daniel-greenfield

Reprinted from Amgreatness.com.

Color of Change, a radical leftist group campaigning to censor conservatives and right-leaning groups, exploited the 2015 Charleston church shooting to go after the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The Freedom Center’s investigations had exposed Color of Change, but the leftist group’s campaign to silence the Center briefly succeeded last month.

“Bloodmoney,” Color of Change’s smear campaign, seeks to shut down the fundraising abilities of conservative organizations by pressuring credit card companies and payment processors to deny access to conservative groups blacklisted by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Color of Change falsely accuses all of these groups of promoting violence and white supremacy.

Two weeks ago, the group’s pressure campaign successfully misled Mastercard into refusing to process donations for the Freedom Center, until an outcry forced the company to change course. Though the battle may have been won, Color of Change’s censorship campaign continues.

Color of Change’s “Bloodmoney” campaign is a blood libel. The effort falsely links conservative organizations targeted by the SPLC—including some run by African-Americans and Jews—to the Charleston church shooting and the violence in Charlottesville. The leftist group founded by CNN’s Van Jones and funded by George Soros is out to censor conservative organizations by choking off their fundraising.Color of Change’s blood libel accuses credit card companies and payment processors of taking “blood money” and financing “violence” and of complicity in “white supremacist murders” if they process donations for conservative organizations, including the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

“Financial service companies doing business with white supremacists are profiting from hate,” the campaign alleges.

The truth behind the blood libel is that Color of Change is a racialist partisan group trying to cut off financial services to mainstream conservative groups using shameless lies.

Kavanaugh and Accuser to Testify Publicly Before Judiciary Committee Monday By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/brett-kavanaugh-and-accuser-to-testify-before-judiciary-committee/

““He is somebody very special; at the same time, we want to go through a process, we want to make sure everything is perfect, everything is just right,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “If it takes a little delay, it will take a little delay — it shouldn’t certainly be very much.”

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and the woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her when they were high-school students will testify publicly regarding the allegation before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the New York Times reported.

The hearing will delay Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote, which was previously scheduled for Thursday.

“Judge Kavanaugh looks forward to a hearing where he can clear his name of this false allegation. He stands ready to testify tomorrow if the Senate is ready to hear him,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told the Times.

Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley confirmed Monday evening that a public hearing has been scheduled for the following Monday.

A Spectral Witness Materializes The passage of time sometimes causes people to forget, sometimes to invent or embellish. By Lance Morrow

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-spectral-witness-materializes-1537225498

The Salem witch trials turned on what was called “spectral evidence.” That was testimony from witnesses—either malicious or hysterical—who claimed the accused had assumed the form of a black cat or some other devilish creature and had come visiting in the night in order to torment the witness with bites and scratches, or to rearrange the bedroom furniture, or to send the baby into paroxysms.

Susannah Sheldon, aged about 18, testified that the defendant Sarah Good’s apparition—not the actual Sarah Good, but her spirit, her specter—“most violently pulled down my head behind a chest and tied my hands together with a whale band and almost choked me to death.” Other witnesses blamed Good for the mysterious deaths of cows or for causing a broom to fly up into an apple tree.

The judge, William Stoughton, admitted this nonsense into evidence. Hysterical fantasies had real consequences: Sarah Good and four other defendants were hanged on July 19, 1692.

Three hundred twenty-six years later, an anonymous woman—a spectral and possibly nonexistent woman, for all that one knew when the story emerged—accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her 36 years ago, when he was a high-school student. It seemed as if the American constitutional process might be drawn back to the neighborhood of Salem, Mass. According to this phantom testimony, 17-year-old Brett held the girl down, pawed her and tried to force himself upon her, and held his hand over her mouth when she screamed, until a second prep-school devil piled on top, they all tumbled to the floor, and the girl managed to slip away. The boys were “stumbling drunk,” according to the account.

You were supposed to feel the sudden wind-shear of hypocrisy. The nominee was a seeming paragon—perfect father and husband and coach of his daughters’ basketball teams. He is a Roman Catholic with an Irish name, but now the script became as gleefully Calvinist as a Hawthorne tale. What imp of hell had possessed the Kavanaugh boy? The Protestant tale seemed to obtain subliminal verification against the background of Catholic sex-abuse scandals.

Thus the constitutional process takes on an aspect of the 21st-century medieval. The accuser’s story first emerged in a letter that came into the hands of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Ms. Feinstein brought it to light only after the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing, which featured somewhat Salem-like drama—costumed apparitions from “The Handmaid’s Tale” arranging themselves outside the committee room; inarticulate background screams of people being led away for disrupting the proceedings. It seemed as if Ms. Feinstein, not liking the odds of defeating Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation, had found a devilishly clever way to head it off after all.

But then the accuser materialized, in the form of a 51-year-old California professor of clinical psychology, Christine Blasey Ford.

What to make of it now? The tale became a lot less spectral. Still, there had been no police report, and there were no witnesses. The second boy allegedly in the room said he had no memory of such an incident and called the accusation “absolutely nuts.” Judge Kavanaugh flatly denied it. Her therapist’s notes from 30 years later are not objective reporting, merely a transcription of what Ms. Ford herself said. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Bad Boy Brett Baloney By Joan Swirsky

https://canadafreepress.com/article/the-bad-boy-brett-baloney

Judge Brett Kavanaugh has always been in the crosshairs of the left, ever since he played a major role in urging the impeachment of their icon of moral rectitude, President Bill Clinton, and also led the investigation into the alleged suicide (or fishy murder) of Vince Foster, Clinton’s Deputy White House Counsel and close friend of Ms. Hillary.

No doubt red flags were raised by the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party when Kavanaugh was confirmed for the Court of Appeals in 2006 as a potential candidate for the Supreme Court––especially because an analysis covering the period 2003–2018 found that in every area of policy he had the most or second-most conservative voting record on the D.C. Court.
Kavanaugh has been vetted 6 times

It didn’t help that Kavanaugh was given thorough and extensive and exhaustive colonoscopies––I mean vetting––by the F.B.I., not once or twice or three times, but six times!

Yet somehow, this microscopically intrusive process failed to uncover the mortal sin––or was it simply typical teenage rambunctiousness?––that the archeologists of the left just uncovered. Specifically, that a drunken 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, and his equally drunken friend, got a hold of the cold-sober and very proper teenager Christine Blasey, who went where with the boys? To the porch? the den? the kitchen? the backyard? Noooooo––to the bedroom! Clearly to talk about college applications!

Then, according to Ms. Recovered Memory, Mr. Drunk misinterpreted her none-too-subtle behavior and lay down alongside her or on top of her on the bed and––gasp––touched her!

The New Refuge of Scoundrels By Victor Davis Hanson

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.

How a 1999 Subway Pushing Changed the Nation’s Mental-Health System By D. J. Jaffe

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.

Pediatricians’ Group Urges Acceptance of Children’s Preferred Gender By Mairead McArdle

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.”

200 Women Testify to Kavanaugh’s History of ‘Treating Women With Respect,’ Going Back to High School By Tyler O’Neil

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

The #MeToo Kavanaugh Ambush A story this old and unprovable can’t be allowed to delay a Supreme Court confirmation vote.

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.