RUTHFULLY YOURS

At last count more than 1,700 law professors have signed an open letter complaining that Judge Brett Kavanaugh “displayed a lack of judicial temperament” in responding to uncorroborated sexual assault accusations against him. In his 12 years on the federal bench, Judge Kavanaugh has produced ample evidence of his judicial temperament. If anyone’s temperament should be of concern to these professors, it’s that of their students, enthralled by identity politics and victim ideology.

Immediately after President Trump nominated Judge Kavanaugh in July, hundreds of Yale law students, alumni and faculty signed a petition claiming the nomination presented an “emergency . . . for our safety.” When Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations became public in September, Yale law students convened a town hall to combat a “culture” on campus “that privileges power and prestige over safety and wellness, [and] that precludes many of us from flourishing in this space.”

When the New Yorker published its own uncorroborated account of lewd conduct purportedly committed by Mr. Kavanaugh as a Yale freshman, Yale law-school alumnae organized an open letter supporting “all women who have faced sexual assault, not only at Yale, but across the country.” Thirty-one Yale law professors canceled classes to facilitate student protests against Judge Kavanaugh, both in New Haven and on Capitol Hill. The Office of Student Affairs put out a plate of cookies to let students “know we are thinking of you.”

Not to be outdone, Harvard law students walked out of their classes the day after the New Yorker article appeared, wearing pink buttons declaring “I Believe Christine Blasey Ford.” America must “stand by these survivors,” the president of the Harvard Black Law Students Association told the crowd. The dean of students announced, “We are supporting our students as they grapple with these issues.” Whether she provided cookies is unknown.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kavanaugh-and-the-senates-honor-1538695662

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has scheduled a Senate vote for Friday morning to close debate and move Brett Kavanaugh toward a final confirmation vote on Saturday, and it’s about time. The undecided Senators have had their extra week for an FBI probe, the review has turned up nothing to support the assault accusations against him, and now Senators should vote to put a worthy judge on the Supreme Court.

Democrats are complaining that the FBI report is incomplete, but then no report would satisfy them unless it found evidence that apparently doesn’t exist. “The most notable part of this report is what’s not in it,” said Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She thinks accusations that have no corroboration are credible because the FBI can’t prove that something didn’t happen.

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The FBI was always likely to turn up little new evidence because Christine Blasey Ford recalls so little about the assault she says took place 36 years ago. The witnesses she says were there, including her best friend, say they don’t recall the party or refute that it happened. There are no corroborating witnesses and no incriminating evidence, and Ms. Ford’s story about key details also keeps changing.

The best summary of her case is in the memo by Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona prosecutor who specializes in sexual-assault cases and was invited to question Ms. Ford by Judiciary Republicans. “A ‘he said, she-said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that,” Ms. Mitchell wrote. “I do not think that 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.”

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/04/science-shows-people-regularly-remember-thing

In 2015, the National Academy of Sciences released a report summarizing decades of rigorous evidence demonstrating that people regularly ‘recall things we never experienced.’

“Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.” — George Santayana, “The Life of Reason: Human Understanding”

In 1975, a young woman was brutally raped in her home while she was watching TV. Shortly thereafter, she identified her assailant as Dr. Donald Thomson. On the basis of her compelling and apparently credible testimony, Thomson was arrested and charged despite having an irrefutable alibi.

In an ironic and exculpatory turn of events, authorities discovered that, prior to the attack, the woman had been watching Thomson on live TV discussing the inaccuracies of eye-witness testimony and simply confused his face with that of her rapist’s. As bizarre as this incident may appear, false memories in concert with compelling but false testimony is often the rule rather than the exception.

For example, the failure of memory and recall contributed to the wrongful criminal convictions of 75 percent of the first 250 cases in which DNA evidence exonerated the incarcerated individuals. In 2015, the National Academy of Sciences released a reportsummarizing decades of rigorous evidence demonstrating that common cognitive processes lead us to “recall things we never experienced.”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/04/the-campus

The polarizing atmosphere of the university has now spread to Congress.

During the recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, we witnessed how college values have become the norms of the Senate. On campus, constitutional due process vanishes when accusations of sexual harassment arise. America saw that when false charges were lodged against the Duke University lacrosse players and during Rolling Stone magazine’s concocted smear of a University of Virginia fraternity.

Americans may disagree about the relative credibility of either Kavanaugh or his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. But they all witnessed how the asymmetry of the campus governed the hearings.

Ford’s veracity hinged on empathy and perceived believability. There was little requirement of corroborating testimonies, witnesses and what used to be called physical evidence. In contrast, Kavanaugh was considered guilty from the start. He had to prove his innocence.

One belief of the university is the postmodern idea of relativist truth.

On campus, all can present equally valid narratives. What privileges one story over another is not necessarily any semblance to reality, at least as established by evidence and facts. Instead, powerful victimizers supposedly “construct” truths based on their own self-interests. As a result, self-described victims of historical biases are under no obligation to play by what they consider to be rigged rules of facts, evidence or testimony.

This dynamic explains why Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J) insisted that Dr. Ford told “her truth.” In other words, evidence was not so relevant. Ford’s story of events from 36 years ago inherently would have as much claim on reality as Kavanaugh’s rebuttal—and perhaps more so, given their different genders and asymmetrical access to power.

There was little interest in discovering the ancient idea of the Truth. To do that would have required the messy work of taxing the memories of teenage behavior nearly four decades prior.

Truth-finding would have required difficult, time-honored examinations of physical evidence, the testimony of witnesses, and even unpleasant cross-examinations about the time and place of the allegations. Feelings might have been hurt. Motives might have been questioned, as they are under constitutional norms of due process.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/2001_video_shows_obama_admitting_being_a_thug_fighting_drinking_drugging_in_high_school.html

The standards being applied to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s fitness for high office would have killed the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, among other recent Democrats (Clinton and Kennedy, for starters). Bill Clinton has adopted a low public profile, and deployed Hillary’s ”Bimbo Eruptions” squad to silence and discredit the women “survivors” of his sexual aggression. But Barack Obama went on the record in 2001, and nobody cared about behavior in high school they now feign outrage over in the case of judge Kavanaugh.

Kudos to Ryan Saavedra of The Daily Wire for uncovering a video from 17 years ago in which Barack Obama discusses his own behavior in high school. Evaluating it in light of the claims used to pretend that Brett Kavanaugh was too degenerate in high school and college to merit membership on the Supreme Court reveals the utter hypocrisy of Kavanaugh’s opponents.

While it is true that the unsupported claims of rape attributed to Kavanaugh have no counterpart in Obama’s admissions, the “evidence” against Kavanaugh’s character including drinking and “ralphing” is pale compared to what Obama admits to.

-“I was a thug,” a “mischievous child”
-“I got into fights.”
-“I drank and did–and consumed substances that weren’t always legal.”
-“I might have drank a six-pack in an hour before going back to class”

In point of fact, most people not crazed by desire to maintain the Supreme Court as a means of imposing progressive social policy that is too unpopular to pass Congress understand that childhood foibles should not be held against anyone.