Rachel Mitchell, the veteran prosecutor who the House Judiciary Committee majority hired to conduct the Republican questioning of Ford last week, also prepared a five page memo, which the Washington Post purloined and published last night. Go here to read it. There is nothing new in it, but it lays out well all the problems in Ford’s tale, and the complete lack of evidence to support it. It explains why no prosecutor would prosecute this case, or even be able to obtain a warrant as part of an investigation. With Ford’s Fable we have a bald-faced accusation that rests securely in the middle of thin air, rather like Wile E. Coyote, in an old Road Runner cartoon, running off a steep cliff, in the instant before he plummets to Earth.
From a legal stand-point this is all rubbish and pure politics. Ford’s accusation doesn’t rise to she said-he said. It is she said-everyone else said. That this is taken seriously by a broad swathe of the American public indicates declining educational standards, that the spirit of the Yellow Dog Democrat is alive and well and that Leftists value power greatly and truth not at all.
May their love and lust for power be their demise.
Many more crimes committed by Professor Fraud need to be investigated.
It isn’t taken seriously by anyone but partisan Democrats. That’s 12% of the adult population. They’re supplemented with some too-cool-for-school paulbots, as one might expect.
It’s almost an occasion of sin to read anything they say. I haven’t encountered any in the fora I frequent who dismiss it. I know one in meatworld who is a phlegmatic type who hates rude contention; she just wants this controversy to go away.
I don’t think it has a blessed thing to do with education. It has to do with the emotional commitments and identity markers that adhere to certain people, as well as their propensity to guises and poses. It also has to do with who they hate. Brett Kavanaugh was in 1982 a suburban haut bourgeois who in middle age affirms work, faith, family, neighborhood, and an approach to intellectual life which incorporates conscientiousness, mastery, and fidelity. That he’s not a member of any of the Democratic Party’s mascot groups means he gets the standard preparation of vitriol. Were he a black guy or a woman, they’d put in some additives.
Plus, Rachel Mitchell’s four-page memo blows up Professor Fraud’s lies.
Art,
Outstanding comment. I am going to quote [unattributed] your second paragraph, second sentence. Just outstanding!
I think it should be taken very seriously because millions of our fellow citizens are voicing a level of comfort with visiting injury on folks, on the basis of only allegations. Would they change their tune if the target of the allegations was close to them? Most probably would but this is the stuff of which vengeful mobs are made.
I am a practical, pragmatic man. I can’t persuade millions of unschooled folks that our Bill of Rights does not exist in a vacuum. I can’t make folks ready to lynch fellow citizens for thinking differently than them. I can’t convince Stalinist wannabees that this is a dangerous direction for them, personally.
What I am working on is what to tell my children.
I have a 17 year old daughter, a 14 year old son, and an 11 year old daughter. I need for them to understand the seriousness of conduct and whom they hang out with much earlier than should be the case. Remember, Kavanaugh was allegedly 17 when he is supposed to have committed crimes… And HE kept journals, nothing any of my children do.
We are moving into dangerous turf and we have to prepare our children for that reality.
Teenagers’ do keep journals today, it’s called Facebook. God help us, only those in lock step with the left may someday hold office.
There are some things that I have long done that are applicable.
It was personally offensive when folks were making fun of VP Pence for not dining alone with women other than his wife and other close family members. I haven’t done so in 23 years, since Janet and I became a couple, so, before we married.
Who we count as friends matters too. Look at the Kavanaugh situation, would he be in this spot if his friend, Mark Judge, hadn’t written a tell-all autobiography detailing his wild youth? Maybe Judge Kavanaugh is a character mentioned therein, maybe he isn’t. What IS certain is that the relationship between the two of them has come back to haunt them both.
Then, we have the underage drinking. To be sure, different times. They were lawfully allowed to drink when they were 18 so there is just a breath of time prior to lawful drinking that applies but that course of action led Judge Judge to a disastrous course of action, the subject of his tell-all book. For Judge Kavanaugh, the continuation of that conduct through college lends credibility that the allegation shouldn’t have. What I mean is that, if he were known as a straight-shooter in high school and college, he would be on firmer ground now.
(This is not to say I think this appropriate or good to be Monday-morning quarter-backing. It isn’t. I am less concerned with this situation than what it portends. I think we can and should look at what got us here in order to inform our decisions as adults and as parents.)
I think back to the parties I attended in college, the times in the Navy that I was on leave in foreign ports, etc and I recognize that it is by the grace of God that none of that went wrong. Sure, I can pretend that I was just smarter and better put together than folks who ran into trouble but I recognize that that is not true, that my guardian angel was working overtime to remind me of what I was taught and to point out the distance between what I was taught and the temptations that lurked around every corner.
No, David, unfortunately they really don’t. To them they believe the evidence for themselves and their loved ones is just so obvious that there’s no way they would ever be guilty. They never realize that to everyone else outside their group, that “evidence” is unseen and counts for nothing. For example, that time Wil Wheaton got lambasted by his own SJW crowd (read that feed by scrolling up, not down). Look at his words, “I just want to make it extremely clear: that is a lie, and the people spreading it are misinformed.”
Did he learn his lesson? I don’t know, I haven’t looked to see if he has weighed in on Kavanaugh but it’s just one example among many I’ve seen. I call them the “feelz b4 realz” crowd that thinks their feelings should determine everything about the world – including guilt or innocence. What none of that crowd seem to realize is that there’s no solution for when feelings conflict (“I feel you are guilty” vs “I feel I am innocent”).
My biggest takeaway, (other than the obvious alcohol & hormones are a volatile mix that every sane adult learned one way or the other) have nothing to do socially with leftists of any kind: liberals, progressives, socialists, marxists, communists and especially feminists.
Particularly feminist women.
anet and I became a couple, so, before we married.
Who we count as friends matters too. Look at the Kavanaugh situation, would he be in this spot if his friend, Mark Judge, hadn’t written a tell-all autobiography detailing his wild youth? Maybe Judge Kavanaugh is a character mentioned therein, maybe he isn’t. What IS certain is that the relationship between the two of them has come back to haunt them both.
Then, we have the underage drinking. To be sure, different times. They were lawfully allowed to drink when they were 18 so there is just a breath of time prior to lawful drinking that applies but that course of action led Judge Judge to a disastrous course of action, the subject of his tell-all book. For Judge Kavanaugh, the continuation of that conduct through college lends credibility that the allegation shouldn’t have. What I mean is that, if he were known as a straight-shooter in high school and college, he would be on firmer ground now.
Again, Kavanaugh’s association with Judge is not a cause of the current controversy. Neither is Kavanaugh’s drinking in high school. This is just junk and filler with which partisan Democrats are manufacturing excuses and distractions.
(If I’m not mistaken, BK said that the drinking age was 18 for most of the time he was in high school. That statement is true. Maryland modified the drinking age in 1982. It is not true that he and Judge could drink legally in high school and I do not believe he asserted that they could. Persons born after 30 June 1964 could not drink legally until their 21st birthday in Maryland at that time. (I was a Maryland resident and the grandfather clause created some amusing and frustrating anomalies).
I think you are interpreting my comment differently than I intended, Art Deco.
I do not mean to say that “Kavanaugh is getting what is coming to him.” This is an outrageous attack on someone’s reputation and family. There is no justification for it and I do not believe that Judge Kavanaugh laid a hand on Dr. Ford.
What I am saying is that our Progressive friends have struck hard at the pillars of our Republic by generally accepting the proposition that an allegation is enough to punish someone. I observe that it is not only a radical fringe accepting that proposition but an awful lot of folks I considered Center Left accept it too.
So, how do we respond?
Certainly, we have to try to educate and to resist this erosion of Liberty. I think there are more mundane things we can and ought to do as well, such as diminishing the opportunity to make false allegations, to embrace a life of pre-marital chastity for our children, to help young adults navigate this horrific situation…
I am open to other suggestions and offered the drinking and the association with Mark Judge as an examples of poor choices for youth to repeat. That is solely an effort to spur discussion on practical approaches to dealing with this new environment, not because I think they tell us anything at all about Judge Kavanaugh.
There was a time when atheists feared God-fearing people. Now we have none.
Another reason why Grassley and the GOP leadership shouldn’t have let the democrats inflict this poor excuse for a soap opera onto the American public.
And my bete noire, Mark Shea, is all in.
This past year I had gone back to re-read Franz Kafka’s legendary work The Trial, never realizing it would soon come to life for Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the present surreal madness..
Obviously Jeff Flake during his NGO and Goldwater Foundation work never bothered to take the time to read Kafka. Doesnt matter, it would have gone over his head.
And Jeff Flake, from little, rural mountain town Snowflake, AZ—it’s very pretty, very nice, very ingenuous and Maybery-like—wants to be a nice guy. Be nice and everyone else will become nice and it will all be fine.
Thank God my hell-for-leather uncle Jack Toups was not a nice guy when he went ashore at Omaha Beach in the first wave. We would all be speaking German.
Right now, every hour it seems, a new story is released that is supposed to tarnish Kavanaugh’s reputation; suggesting he violated some ethic, drank in college, can’t remember every day of his life, or anything. It’s full throat witch hunt at this point. But I can’t help but think it’s because they know they really have nothing for people who are sane and fair.
“It’s almost an occasion of sin to read anything they say. I haven’t encountered any in the fora I frequent who dismiss it. I know one in meatworld who is a phlegmatic type who hates rude contention; she just wants this controversy to go away.”
Only on my job where I work with extreme Leftists have I seen some who believe Ford. In my personal life, which is rich with conservatives, Christians, those who have earned their own livings, and/or those who staunchly believe in due process—no one believes this pitiful lying woman.
“What I am saying is that our Progressive friends have struck hard at the pillars of our Republic by generally accepting the proposition that an allegation is enough to punish someone. I observe that it is not only a radical fringe accepting that proposition but an awful lot of folks I considered Center Left accept it too.”
Part of properly educating our children is teaching them the long march of the Left through the history of our nation. This attempt to destroy our nation’s founding by destroying due process start in the last 20 years.
Also, children need to know that, though there are some things about evil actions that are logical, evil itself is not and never be logical because it is part of a spiritual battle. The Bible says that there are some people who cannot sleep until they have done evil. It also says that those who are evil work deliberately to cause the righteous to fall.
In making efforts to stay out of others’ unnecessary drama, & this horrible situation the Republicans have allowed to control events is completely unnecessary drama, I also have learned that it is very important to be secure in my identity as a child of God. All Hell can be going on around me & as long as I am secure in God, I am ok.
It helps tremendously to stay out of unnecessary drama by focusing on what my explicit responsibilities are and exactly what is under my control.
As the Bible says, God requirements for us is to do justly, love mercy, & walk humbly with our God. Anyone can do this.
Also, our children need to know that as Mother Teresa once said, if we want to change the world that we simply need to go home & love our family.
“What I am saying is that our Progressive friends have struck hard at the pillars of our Republic by generally accepting the proposition that an allegation is enough to punish someone. I observe that it is not only a radical fringe accepting that proposition but an awful lot of folks I considered Center Left accept it too.”
Even though it is hard for me to accept, I have learned that there are a myriad of folks in this country who do not understand nor care what is right or wrong–they are moral & practical chameleons changing as need be to accomplish their given, immediate purpose at a given time. Amoral thinking cut loose from any foundation of absolutes allows for this.
I seriously fear for my country.
https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/30/epitaph-for-a-dying-culture/
@ Christian teacher.
Good link.. unfortunately.
We most certainly have entered into the “new dark age.” It’s similar to a vortex. In 1973 we might of been on the edge of it. Today we are being sucked deep into this death spiral.
Holding on tight to our Faith and fighting the current. Always fighting the current!
So-called recovered recollections put a lot of innocent people in jail. One does not need hypnosis to recall the false accusations brought against wrongly convicted day-care owners during the eighties.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/ford-paper-enhance-memory/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=CBBreaking&utm_campaign=ct-breaking&utm_content=libertyalliance
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/cognitive-science-false-memories-more-common-than-you-think/