“Criminal Intent.” sundance – “Intent”, not consequence, is now the larger shield being applied toward excusing the action of people within institutions of government and society.

“It was a “mistake”…. he/she/it made “a poor decision” etc. A pattern of obfuscation downplaying consequence and allowing those decision-makers charged with delivering accountability to withdraw or apply the rules of law based on their individual overlay of ‘intent’.

That shift is factually visible everywhere now.
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Following along the ideological lines of: “all actions are justified”, do you see how the shift to ‘intent’ is a serious issue within a corrupt system?

Within that system, and against that purposeful filter and determination, plausible deniability becomes the construct for intentional criminal engagement.

Fight the Denigration of American History. Michael Finch – “The recent skirmishes started with the campaign to remove Confederate statues, but it surely won’t end there.”

“As our betters in America’s universities want us to know, the whole of American history is suspect. In our media, in the popular culture, and in our schools, we’re subject to an unending drumbeat of how America was founded to promote imperialism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and genocide—unimpeachable facts, we’re told, for which all Americans must forever share the burden of collective guilt and shame.

For America to atone for her sins, her history must be denounced and then purged.
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One thing we should have learned is that the Left never stops; there is no end to their relentless pursuit of destructive hate. There is no room for reasonable adjudication of their claims.
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The same creative gift of God that has allowed us to build and dream and create such beauty has often conflicted with our ability to do great evil. It is called the human condition. Only through the grace of God does our ability to do great good outpace our ability do evil and allow us to be forgiven for our sins. And nowhere else, at no other time in human history, have these conditions taken place, has our better nature and our creative facility triumphed, such as it has in the hundreds of years of America history and the creation of this blessed nation.

‘Great Things Are Taking Place Whether The Media Tells Us Or Not’: Christian Musicians Hold Spontaneous WH Worship Session. Patrick Goodenough – “A “faith briefing” at the White House this week saw Christian music artists hold an impromptu worship session, singing songs of praise near the Oval Office.” The biggest lie is a truth not told. Here’s one.

“The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was established by President George W. Bush a week after taking office in January 2001, as a way to enhance the capacity of faith-based and community groups to provide federally-funded social services, by removing legal and institutional barriers preventing them from doing so.

President Obama renamed the initiative the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and also established an advisory council.

President Trump in an executive order last May renamed it the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative, to empower faith-based organizations and “promote religious freedom.”

Obvious Double Standard On Recusals Proves Russia Probe Is About Getting Trump. Adam Mill – “Don’t bother reading the underlying rules on conflict of interest, because there’s only one test that matters: Would the recusal help get Trump?” Back in Watergate days, the meme was that it wasn’t the crime, it was the cover-up. That has resurfaced at times today by folks presuming it is all about the President. This time it isn’t. Mill describes how and why.

Obama Judges Can’t Save Dem Losers. David Catron – “the apparent losers haven’t benefited from arbitrary changes these partisan jurists made in the laws by which election officials are legally bound.”

Hmmm: Florida Dems plotted use of altered forms statewide; Update: Judge calls Florida “laughingstock of the world”. Ed Morrissey – “Lesson from the Naples Daily News: When Florida Democrats plot to fudge election law, they go big or go home.”

“The plan to use altered official forms to flood counties with improper “cure affidavits” went up higher and farther than first reported by Politico yesterday. Florida Democratic Party deputy field director Jennifer Kim sent the e-mails statewide, and it’s now unclear how many more altered forms might be outstanding. The e-mails went out the day after the election — two days after the actual deadline for “cure affidavits”
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In one sense, this has been mooted anyway. A federal judge extended the actual deadline this morning for “cure affidavits” until Saturday, November 10th at 5 pm ET. It might well be that Kim and the FDP figured they could win in court on this point, and with the gaps so tight on Election Night, it would have made sense to get their voters to keep sending in the affidavits.

The biggest problem in this for the FDP is the altered forms. They could have just sent a cover letter instructing voters to ignore the deadline on the proper form, arguing that they would fight in court to get it extended. Instead, they altered an official election form on their own, and apparently did so in an organized manner.

High snobbery from the Washington Post. Paul Mirengoff – “The Post’s article is phony. But its snobbery, though selective, is genuine.”

Why the data debate must separate authorized versus unauthorized access. Sam Taussig – “The importance of upholding the customers’ absolute right to authorize data access, while simultaneously safeguarding against unauthorized misuse are equally critical.” There is nuance and that is food for FUD mongers.

GOP failed to fight Dem’s health-care scare tactics in midterms. Paul Roderick Gregory – “HR676 could become law if American voters pay no attention to its real contents and fall under the spell of the promise that everything will be free.” FUD Mongering has consequences.

In Democratic circles, anti-Semitism is becoming normal. Roger Kimball – “I am of two minds about where our country’s new flirtation with socialism is heading.”

“Perhaps it is a predictable by-product of affluence, a toxic gas emitted by the mighty engine of the free market. Much of the rhetoric and histrionics might be put down to the enforced childishness wrought the breakdown of our educational institutions.
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As people scramble to explain the sudden resurgence of socialism not only on America’s college campuses but also in the corridors of political power, it is worth noting the concomitant resurgence of anti-Semitism in those redoubts. The coincidence is not, as the Marxists like to say, an accident. The truth is that unfettered socialism, though based primarily on a demand for the abolition of private property, always comes riding on a current of anti-Semitism. Picking apart the conceptual reasons for this link is a complex business that I will leave aside here. But it is worth noting how impeccable a provenance the union enjoys.
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The efflorescence of anti-Semitism is always a bad sign in a culture, not least because it harbingers a spirit of thuggish intolerance and breakdown of faith in society’s mediating civil institutions.
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Donald Trump’s gospel of ‘principled realism,’ his gentle and patriotic version of broad-church, America-first nationalism, offers a healing alternative. The angry Left, which has yet to accept the results of the 2016 election, refuse to take their seats at the table he has set for them. The increasingly violent confrontations with journalists, politicians, and talk show hosts is one troubling sign of that recalcitrance. The normalization of anti-Semitism is another.

It is only the wealthy that can afford to destroy what they have.

Democrats and the Rule of Lawyers. David Catron – “Live by pettifoggery, die by pettifoggery.”

“As Graham put it, “In the eyes of Democrats, the law is just something to get around when it comes to winning what you want.” That’s why they’re dangerous. Our government, like the Roman republic, is based on the principle that no one is above the law. The Democrats have assiduously undermined that principle, but this is as dangerous for them as it is for us. They should consider Cicero, whose executioners had been sent by his young protégé, Octavian. The latter knew about those five executions and the former wound up with his head in a bag. Both men were above the law.

Camille Paglia, women, and #MeToo. Neo – “the last couple of decades have brought home to me the irrationality not just of so many women, but of so many men as well. And that seems to be increasing, too.”

“One of the reasons the Kavanaugh hearing energized so many women (and others) on the right to support Senate Republicans in the 2018 election is that it was a graphic example of how easy it is to “credibly” accuse an innocent man, and how even someone with a sterling previous reputation such as Kavanaugh is highly vulnerable to a woman who tells a good story in a believable manner, even without corroborative evidence, without important details such as time and place, and even though the events the woman alleges to have occurred supposedly took place many decades ago. It was a chilling prospect for anyone who believe in due process, the rule of law, and rationality over emotion when making a judgment about an issue so important.

Did John McCain kill the House in November of 2018? neo – “Did McCain’s “no” cause the GOP to lose the House? Maybe. If so, however, it was certainly misplaced anger on the part of any GOP voters who stayed home because of it. The fault was the Senate’s and McCain’s, not the House members’ at all.”

Forest Fires in the Golden State. Willis Eschenbach – “California Governor, Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown, has announced that all climate-change deniers are “definitely contributing” to the wildfires in the northern and southern parts of the state over the past few days, as well as blazes “in the coming years.”

“Since 1895, it [CA temperature average] has been going up at a rate of about 0.02°C, two-hundredths of a degree Celsius, per decade.
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0.02°C is about the altitude-caused temperature drop between … wait for it … your toes and the top of your head. Far, far to small to even feel.
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Well, if it’s not the temperature, how about the rainfall? Is climate change making the state dryer? Fortunately, the WRCC has the data for that as well.
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Is the precipitation decreasing? Yes … by a totally meaningless five-hundredths of an inch (1.1 mm) per decade. So that is clearly not the reason for the increase in fires.

So what is the reason for the increase in fires? Actually, there are a few reasons.

First, our forests have not been harvested properly for some years.
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Next, California regulations highly restrict both the logging and the thinning of forests.
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Finally, a couple of years back we had a big El Nino/La Nina event.

Tragedy can focus the mind — or cloud it with emotions. 

So Much For The Afterglow. Derek Hunter – “We were told that civility would return once Democrats regained the House of Representatives. In fact, we were told that was the only way civility would return to a world of angry liberal mobs assaulting and shouting down anyone who dare not agree with them. We were lied to.”

“Being lied to by liberals is not a surprise. What is a little surprising is how quickly, boldly, and proudly they broke their word as if no one would remember the promise.

After winning the House, as expected, Democrats immediately turned the thermostat up to 11 by promising to investigate everything Donald Trump ever did. His high school girlfriends should be expecting a subpoena.

In the name of civility, Democrats openly spoke about going after the President’s tax returns and business records.
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Democrats aren’t even going to pretend their word is worth more than a pile of soiled diapers anymore, Republicans need to get this through their heads and act accordingly.

Civility isn’t coming back until incivility stops working. Liberals learned Tuesday that there are very few consequences for bad actions. Since then it’s been a stream of even more – thwarting of state election law in Florida, ballots being “discovered” in strange places, more cries of racism when things don’t go their way.

It’s Not Quite Kristallnacht, but It’s Not The Fourth of July Either. Clarice Feldman – “DC police did nothing to these modern-day brownshirts.”

“Just days before the eightieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Nazis burned synagogues, looted Jewish homes and shops, and rounded up Jewish families for concentration camps, Tucker Carlson’s home was surrounded by Antifa thugs who pounded on his door (cracking it), terrifying his wife, uttered threats against him and his family and painted an anarchist symbol on his driveway
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In several places in Arizona, Georgia, and Florida — most obviously in Broward and Palm Beach — Florida, election workers are racing to undo the results of a free election, undermining the very basis of our political system. And they are thumbing their noses at judicial efforts to halt the theft.

Trump Is Blessed with His Enemies. Conrad Black – “Now it is easy to see the disconcertion of the Democrats at their failure to derail Trump.”

“What was left of the pretense that he was somehow not a legitimate president has been shredded, and what the Democrats have taken as their inviolable extra-constitutional right to keep the president’s hands tied while the Mueller-Inspector Clouseau charade carries on into its third year, has been debunked. The silent eunuch attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has finally gone. And now the Justice Department will have the ability to discomfit the Democrats who misrepresented the Steele dossier, used it to obtain false FISA warrants, and who lied to Congress under oath, or to federal officials. This prestigious group appears to include Hillary Clinton, agency chiefs John Brennan, James Clapper, and James Comey, and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. They are all vulnerable to grand jury indictments.
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It is clear that in their distaste for Trump and overconfidence of a Clinton victory, the FBI, CIA, NIA, and Justice department all crossed the double-white line into improper activity, confident that President Hillary Clinton would sweep it under the White House rug. More important than vengeance on the wrongdoers is institutional reform and safeguards to prevent a recurrence.

God And Guns In The Synagogue. Daniel Greenfield – “Jews across America choose between self-defense and gun control.”

“There are two types of synagogues: those that believe in G-d and those that believe in government.

After the mass shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue, the government synagogues turned to the government with calls for gun control. And those that believe in G-d, turned to the Almighty.

And then, trusting in the Almighty to stand with them against danger, they went out and got their guns.
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The choice between self-defense and gun control is at also a choice between dependency and independence. It’s the quintessential dilemma out of which the United States of America was born.

The thing is, “gun control” means laws centered on tools used for self defense as well as for assault. It does not mean gun control. Actual control of human behavior is not within the scope of government. The mob rule ethos evident is today’s political activity should make that clear.

Caravan not viewed nicely by people who actually know Honduras. Monica Showalter – “Yes, dishonest press coverage should take the cake.”

“This is also the era of first-person reporting and Internet instant transmission, so a little bit of the reality is getting out, and it’s not pretty for the caravan.
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culture matters, and that poor Hondurans who are offered things for free often value them for exactly what they paid for them, which is to not value them at all, which suggests problems down the line for the states if these caravan migrants are let in
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She [Jennifer Zilly Canales] also points out that the caravan itself is an enticement to irresponsibility, with children abandoned as their military-aged young fathers head off to the states in search of the gringo’s free stuff. Seriously, the children are dumped.
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Seriously. With this garbage going on as the caravan takes off, is this what the press, and the Catholic Church, with its liberation theology acolytes, is really encouraging in a supposedly Catholic country? Is this kind of child-dumping what Pope Francis is encouraging us here in the states to support as he asks us to “walk with migrants”? It’s unvarnished moral turpitude and right there ought to disqualify anyone who does it from entry into the U.S. One wonders if the immigration officers would even ask about such a thing – did you abandon a child in the streets to get the goodies here – but it sounds like something that would be very difficult to prove.

What it all highlights is how thick the tissue of lies from the press really has been about an otherwise little-known country that has been painted as hell on earth, but which really isn’t. The people who have been cited have spent their lives working to help Hondurans better themselves in a real way. Along comes a caravan, promising paradise (and big gringo benefit packages), and their work is undercut.

Thank goodness they are saying something. Because with their accounts, the caravan stands exposed as a lefty political fraud.

1,600 “scientists” defy science to support transgender activism. Jazz Shaw – “What’s truly amazing is the fact that these supposed pillars of the scientific community are calling on the Trump administration to reject such notions and formulate a policy which is more scientific and ethically based. (This Hill)” It’s a common logical fallacy as often seen in the climate argument. A number of “scientists” offer themselves as sacrificial lambs to serve the idea that ‘might makes right’ and a vote of the people can settle matters of reality and fact.

“The authors go on from there to adopt a favorite trick of activists and attempt to conflate the conditions displayed by the tiny fraction of the population with legitimate intersex traits caused by genetic anomalies (a completely valid topic) and all of the people who just really, really, really feel like they were born in the wrong body. Granted, some men produce more or less testosterone than others. That doesn’t make the ones producing less women. Ditto for females and estrogen levels.

What we’re seeing here is the downstream effects of the corruption of the educational system by liberal politics. As schools are overrun by social justice warriors and those controlling the flow of grant money bend to liberal demands, we’re seeing this nonsense now being passed off as science. And as it bleeds over into other areas, everyone in society will be paying the price for it.

NY Times launches histrionic alarm over “white nationalism” days before election. Jazz Shaw – this is an example of why Fake News™ is an enemy of the people.

“The sad part is that this is a conversation the public could benefit from if it were conducted impartially. There are clearly still pockets of violent racism out there. And while thankfully very small in number, when they act up our law enforcement resources need to be able to take them down. If you choose to belong to a branch of the Klan or march around with a swastika chanting about Hitler, we have to defend your right to free speech. But when you go beyond speaking an begin busting heads, you’re going to the slammer. But the same must apply to all of the left wing groups who attack groups of conservatives or take to the streets calling for the execution of cops.

Of course, the groups in those latter categories won’t be mentioned by the Gray Lady until we get past this election.

Another Kavanaugh Accuser Lied, Allegations Were A “Ploy” To Derail Nomination. Nina Bookout – “I’d say that Judy Munro-Leighton is in deep kimchi right about now.” The perfidy of the Democrats unravels. That’s now two retractions to add to the complete lack of evidence and other problems.

Ace of Spades details the latest shoe to drop as “Chuck Grassely Criminally Refers Leftwing Activist Who Claimed in Graphic Detail to Have Been Raped by Brett Kavanaugh, But Who Turned Out to Be Decades Older Than Him and Never Having Been in the Same State as Him; She Admits It Was all a “Ploy” … Then there is a get out the vote effort, “Grab Them by the Ballot” featuring a picture of Democrat-supporting women going nude – “Question: Have I been eye-raped? Am I now a #Survivor?”

When Laws Are Not Enforced, Anarchy Follows. Victor Davis Hanson – “The result of hundreds of “sanctuary cities” is not just to forbid full immigration enforcement in particular jurisdictions. They also signal that U.S. immigration law, and other laws by extension, can be ignored.”

“The problem with ignoring laws is that it is contagious—and can boomerang.
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German philosopher Immanuel Kant noted that “anarchy is law and freedom without force.”

Translated to our current context, Kant might say that all our high-minded talk about the Bill of Rights means absolutely nothing without the cop on the beat and the local district attorney.

Why engage in false character assassination? Why go nude to parade a hate distorted perception of others? Why has a handle on reality been lost by so many?

Census Win – Supreme Court Strikes Down Activist New York Court in Census Citizenship Ruling. Sundance – “framing a challenge based on the question being discriminatory- ruled that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross must submit to a deposition to discover “the motives” of the decision.” A very typical example of assuming guilt and trying to prove it by any means necessary gets a blow but isn’t done yet.

“An appellate circuit panel initially agreed with the lower court and ACLU lawyers. However, U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco asked the Supreme Court to stay the circuit court ruling. SCOTUS agreed with the administration and blocked the ridiculous activist lawyers from questioning the cabinet; the supreme court does allow the plaintiffs to question the DOJ civil rights division lawyer.
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The challengers are led by New York’s attorney general and left-wing activist groups such as the ACLU. They are claiming that President Trump’s real reason for adding the citizenship question is to reduce the representation of immigrant populations in the census. There is no structural basis for their claim. It is not likely their challenge will succeed on the merits. The case is schedule to go to trial November 5th.

Obama Tells One Whopper Of A Lie. It’s About Lying. Daily Wire – “Speaking in Nevada on Monday, former president Barack Obama uttered what may have been the most pompous, patronizing, and pretentious lie from a politician since Woodrow Wilson” Note that this isn’t a generic ‘he lies’ but rather a specific assertion supported by examples that can be observed.

Wow – The Bloom is Really Off The Ruse. Sundance – “When I watched this earlier today I noticed something was odd; the background sound and the responses from the visible audience don’t align with the visual as presented.”

“Watch. When President Obama is speaking there’s almost no visible reaction; but something more… LISTEN ! There’s almost no audible audience response… it just seems weird.

The media have always covered for the Manchurian lightbringer, so we knew something was off when we first watched the Obama presentation. Thanks to twitter video we now know what that something was … It’s the Obama Potemkin village again; only this time in Nevada.

Then, “Meanwhile in Texas” …. Pictures for comparison and contrast.

The Dems October Surprise May be on Them. William L. Gensert – “If we learned anything from the Kavanaugh smear and the endless Russia collusion investigation, it’s that just as Islam is a political system masquerading as a religion, Democratic Party ideals are a religion masquerading as a political system.”

“It has been said that President Donald Trump is a buffoon, that he is a loudmouth from Queens with little impulse control. But everything Trump does can be seen in a different light if one only bothers to look. Much of what the president says on Twitter and during political rallies can be interpreted as deliberate and designed to control the conversation.
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Trump has Democrats playing his game and it’s not a good look for them. David Gelernter wrote in the Wall Street Journal that all the Democrats have is their hatred of Trump and many people may see that as a hatred of the country as well.

Another Reason Why You Got Trump: Feds Draft Plan to Discard Obama’s Transgender Ideology. J.J. Sefton – “And yet for the sake of maybe a few thousand mentally disturbed people, a nation of 315 million or so citizens is supposed to turn society upside down not just to accommodate them, but in fact, to submit to them. And by them, I mean the totalitarian Left.”

Yes, Be Very Worried Over Growing Polarization. Victor Davis Hanson – “Especially worrisome is the recent habit of social scientists and statisticians of claiming near-scientific authority through purported numerical precision.” It is one way that people deceive themselves and that is what leads to divergent outcomes and reason for worry.

“It is now difficult not to witness political sermonizing in popular culture in a fashion not seen in the recent past. The Oscars, Grammys, Hollywood movies, stand-up comedy, and professional sports were never devoid of politics, but they were not perceived as all-political. Such current ideological saturation of entertainment might explain why many of these venues are suffering losses in audiences, of which political weariness may be one contributing cause, and polarization and anger another.
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Popular culture can certainly provide a much-needed veneer of commonality in language, fashion, and habit. But without a commitment to shared values, a common agreement on constitutional norms, allegiance to the rule of law, and some deference to collective American traditions and customs, factions that superficially seem similar in their language and habits might devolve into violence of the sort now associated with Antifa or attacks on invited speakers to college campuses (or even on congressional representatives).

The lesson from the American Civil War and the French Revolution, the rise of Nazism in Germany or of Bolshevism in Russia, is not that clear majorities of partisans and countless news junkies are needed to foment extremism and tear apart a country. Instead, it is that zealous and sometimes warring tiny minorities can escalate tensions, nullify opposition, and bully the silenced majority to sanction–or at least not object to–the violence by which they eventually make their illiberal agendas go mainstream.

Dear Resistance, listen to my lived totalitarian experience – you have no effing idea what you’re talking about. Arthur Chrenkoff – “As a straight, white, Christian, right-wing, middle class male of European extraction I get told to shut up a lot.”

“you really have no idea, and I mean it with the greatest possible respect. Actually, I don’t. Most of you are supposedly mature, rational adults but you seem to have at best the most superficial knowledge of history and a complete lack of self-awareness, any sense of perspective, and an ability to contextualise. Having spent your lives relatively free of hardship, deprivation and persecution on any remotely comparable scale to people in other, less fortunate corners of the world, you probably get some frisson from believing yourself to be big actors at a critical time in history, the last line of separating civilisation from the descent into new dark ages. You’re free to engage in whatever ideological cosplay you want, but don’t expect others to take you seriously.

HT neo. Instapundit also linked the essay and the resulting storm got this update from Chrenkoff”

“You can very well believe that Trump is a bad president with wrong policies who is damaging American society and America’s international standing, but calling him Hitler or imagining that the United States is months away from a fascist dictatorship simply means I will never take you seriously. It’s stupid, self-indulgent and arguably insulting to the tens of millions of people around the world who have actually experienced real dictatorships and lack of freedom. It doesn’t insult me personally, as I’m not a sensitive type, but it simply makes me pity you for your pathetic need to cloak yourself with the rhetoric and symbols of historical martyrdom and heroism. Grow up and engage in politics like a rational adult.

Many examples of what he is talking about receive comments here.

Trail Covering: As Predicted U.S. DOJ and Treasury Turn on Oleg Deripaska. sundance – “Because of the associations with the scheme and coup-plotters, Oleg has buckets of dirt on corrupt U.S. officials who were trying to target Donald Trump.” And, are you wondering where the ‘golden showers’ in the Steel Dossier came from?

“Oleg Deripaska is a typical Russian gremlin, and if you research him you can tell he loves mocking the corrupt elements within U.S. politics. I’m almost positive it was Oleg who put the Trump “pee tapes and hookers” into the Steele Dossier just to see if the knuckleheads in the DOJ/FBI would actually use it.

Considering Christopher Steele was a contracted employee of the billionaire it just looks like something Oleg would do. Deripaska and many Russian political types just work that way. To them, manipulating U.S. officials is funny….. ‘stoopid Amerikans‘ etc.
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The Russians (Deripaska) really do have leverage and blackmail… but it ain’t over Trump. Oleg has blackmail on Comey, McCabe and conspiracy crew. Oleg Deripaska must be kept away from congress and away from exposing the scheme.

The Democrats’ Moral Confusion. Karen McQuillan – “Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against Judge Kavanaugh was deeply unethical.” Despite the denials, the hysteria, the accusations against witnesses, projection, and the prejudice and bigotry on display, reality does not move and that presents a problem for the Democrats. McQuillan walks through the components of their moral dilemma.

“Bearing false witness is of the utmost seriousness as a moral breach. It breaks the Ninth Commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” It is right up there with murder and stealing, because it partakes of both.
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At the end of his life, Moses spells out in detail God’s teaching on how to safeguard an innocent man from false accusations. One witness is not sufficient to lodge an accusation. Two witnesses do not suffice. There must be three witnesses.

Moses also spells out the need for consequences – that is, punishment – for bearing false witness.
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The Democrats think anything goes ethically in their drive for power, because they have defined their desire to rule as ethical in itself, and their political opponents as evil. We have just experienced what happens when a just cause – to end sexual abuse and assault – is twisted to serve a partisan political purpose.

America has become morally confused. Good and evil do not lie along party lines. To follow that moral reasoning leads to horrors.

There are others who are unable to avoid false witness despite the evidence in front of them. See, for instance, Partisans on Both Sides Fervently Believe the Other Side Is More Devious and Less Constrained by Ethics at the Coyote Blog. “Both sides” ?? can you cite equivalent ethical breaches for both sides and maintain any pretense of being objective? This is asserting guilt by innuendo and is in the same league, ethically, as the false witness against Kavanaugh. But the perpetrator in this case is blind unto himself and that is where there is a very big problem for all of us.

Kavanaugh Casualties. Victor Davis Hanson – “Yes, both parties are now more united and energized. But one did so by enticing the recalcitrant back into the fold; the other, by warning them to join the revolution or be guillotined.”

“When Donald J. Trump rants at his rallies about “fake news” and claims that the media is not just biased but lies, Americans wince — but now more so at the accuracy of his charges and no longer so much at the crassness with which he delivers them.

New Kavanaughcalypse hotness: If you accuse, you must recuse — from all “politically charged” cases. Ed Morrissey – “By that measure, shouldn’t Ruth Bader Ginsburg already be recusing herself from the same cases? In July 2016, Notorious RBG told the New York Times’ Adam Liptak that it might be time for her to move to New Zealand if Donald Trump got elected.”

“Best guess: That’ll worry Kavanaugh as much as it worries Ginsburg, which is to say not at all. He’s there to do his job, just as she’s there to do hers. There’s only one Supreme Court and only nine members on its panel, which is why recusals are very rare, and occur as a result of real and personal conflicts of interest or previous work on cases that come before the court. Elena Kagan recused herself from a few such cases when it involved work she did as Solicitor General; various justices have felt it proper to recuse on rare occasions when their investments involved one of the parties. Otherwise, activists can demand recusals as much as they want, as long as they’re prepared to look like fools, shrieking about bias while exposing their own.

The ever receding climate goalpost: IPCC and Al Gore “12 years to save the planet” (again). Anthony Watts – “Ah, it’s beginning to sound like a broken record. The same message over and over again. It’s as if these folks don’t pay attention to history. The United Nations has once again issued another dire climate change report (SR15, see it here) claiming we must act before it’s too late.” It’s amazing how flexible the goalposts are to the Left.

“In the meantime, the audit of faulty climate data suggests the rush to judgment is unwarranted.
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But as the new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide® to Climate Change reveals, climate tipping points have a long history of repetition, moved deadlines and utter failure. The book documents that the earliest climate “tipping point” was issued in 1864 by MIT professor who warned of “climatic excess” unless humans changed their ways.
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The climate change scare campaign has always relied on arbitrary deadlines, dates by which we must act before it’s too late. Global warming advocates have drawn many lines in the sand, claiming that we must act to solve global warming—or else.

False witness infects many passions.

How Deep is This Swamp? sundance – “There are two facets, two recent researched stories, that paint a very disturbing scenario.”

“The first facet is a reality that Senate Security Officer James Wolfe was given, and leaked, a copy of the Carter Page FISA application on March 17th, 2017. This is important because it leads to context within the larger issue.
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Why? Why is that massive DC corruption story completely overlooked? What does that say about the fourth estate?

It would be entirely impossible for that story to be hidden if the DOJ, FBI, political system (within the Senate Intelligence Committee), and fourth estate were functioning correctly. Something is severely broken, and there’s no-one doing a darned thing about it.
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The smear campaign against Judge Brett Kavanaugh didn’t just involve a small team of connected insiders; their enterprise carried across multiple institutions, the legislative branch, political operations and the media.
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Do you really think that all of those elements described above would even consider going after a supreme court nominee with a baseless lie if they thought they would get caught?

Think about it.

The left escalates its vilification of Susan Collins. Monica Showalter – “For all the appearances of leftishness, she seems to have a thing about not being pushed around and her independent backbone is not just confined to Republicans. That comes as a shock to the left”

“Money didn’t work and Collins called it was it was: Bribery. The Wall Street Journal in its editorial above explained why that was accurate …

Second, the left tried rabid threats and piggery. According to USAToday …

Well, that didn’t work. Leftist threats to rape Collins’s staffers in the name of standing up for women’s “health” had a weird way of not being persuasive.
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Yet Collins stood firm, scolded the hell out of the Democrats, seeing right through them, and as the left continues escalating its campaign to vilify, threaten and harass her, her massive two-thirds majority among Maine’s voters is now likely to just get bigger now. Voters notice. And Collins is a standing tall and powerful. Funny that the left, despite getting slapped in its fat mug for its ‘persuasion’ tactics over and over, hasn’t. It just wants to keep coming back for more.

Susan Collins’ Game Changer. The New York Sun – “what strikes us about Senator Collins’ magnificent moment is that it is about more than courage — it is a profile in substance.”

“The Maine Republican is practically the only person in the Senate to approach this decision by reasoning out the substance of the constitutional questions that have the Democrats so panicked. She parsed the parchment’s preambular purpose of a more perfect union.
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What riveted us, though, was the senator’s fidelity to fairness.
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“Certain fundamental legal principles about due process, the presumption of innocence, and fairness do bear on my thinking, and I cannot abandon them,” she confessed in what will become a famous sentence. Added she: “We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy.” She called the presumption of innocence particularly relevant “when an accusation departs from a nominee’s otherwise exemplary record.”

Susan Collins Saved the Senate (For Now). Roger L Simon – “The Democrats and their choleric supporters, overwhelmed by anger and bile, may not realize it yet (or possibly ever) but Susan Collins saved the Senate, at least for now, with her superb, well-reasoned speech explaining her support for Brett Kavanaugh Friday.”

“This seems to have made little impact on the Democrats, at least on the surface. They declined to applaud Collins after a more impressive speech than any single one of them, to my knowledge, has ever given. I guess they couldn’t abide what she was saying toward the end, that she hoped that this hideous period of treating the rule of law like garbage was over and that Congress and the Court could learn to work together for the good of the country.

In a contrary example, Ace of Spades says Sarah Palin Threatens Murkowski With Primary – “Abortion extremist and 2nd-most-liberal Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski will vote against Kavanaugh on social (group) justice grounds — other women were assaulted and not believed in the past, so she will scape-goat an innocent man to balance the Social Justice Warrior karmic scales.” In doing so, Murkowski burns her constituency by showing a lack of support for those responsible for resolving many issues that have helped her state economically and otherwise.

Trump the Indestructible. Conrad Black – “The entire febrile effort to delegitimize President Donald Trump continues to be based on the ability of the Trump-hating media to confect or unveil a Trumpocidal deus ex machina every two weeks”

“ I have just learned from a dear friend of many years, an intelligent and reasonable man who happens to be in the camp of the Trump-haters, what is being thrown into the line as the successor anti-Trump story to the Kavanaugh drama. … The smooth-faced talking heads are earnestly wagging in unison across the channels as they find the judge’s lack of a “judicial temperament” to be “concerning.” … the Trump presidency will be brought down by the New York Times’ revelation of a supposed tax fraud by Trump involving hundreds of millions of dollars. The president has been constantly subjected to tax audits for nearly 40 years. This is another clunker, after so many. I doubt that it will be more effective than the Times’ effort to fell Kavanaugh with the suspicion that he “may have” thrown ice-water at someone at a collegiate social occasion 35 years ago.

Note the “temperament” as with the “non-presidential” and then the allegation that attempts to overturn history.

Kavanaugh boomerang #1: Fanatical Dems finally have unified the GOP behind Trump. Thomas Lifson – “The Democrats have not merely overplayed their hand in opposing the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, they have provoked a reaction that has serious consequences for the power struggle ahead.”

“Going forward, the salient consideration is that the whole approach to slandering Kavanaugh is being revealed as a setup. There is an actual potential crime to investigate:

Where Do We Go From Here? John Hinderaker – “the slanders the Democratic Party directed toward Kavanaugh were, if anything, even more disgraceful [than the Bork case]. We will feel their impact for many years to come.”

“So, looking to the future, what are the notable features of our political landscape?

1) The validation of violence for political ends. …
2) The final discrediting of the liberal media. …
3) The yawning chasm between our institutions and our people. …

How to Prevent Another Kavanaugh Circus. Ted Noel – “The rules already exist. It’s just a matter of following them.”

“While Feinstein’s leak is a clear violation of trust with Dr. Ford, it’s also an ethical violation. Senate Judiciary Committee Rule II, 1 presupposes fourteen-day advance notice of witnesses in regular order. There was no reason to not present Dr. Ford in regular order.
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How many times do we have to hear this song to realize it’s time to turn off the jukebox and get a new D.J.? If we don’t pull the plug, this will just get worse and worse. Fortunately, Willie Sutton shows us just what we need to do.

Every time the Democrats pull a stunt like this, one of two things happens. Either it works, and they get what they want, or it fails, and they move on to another drama.
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But what if she is actually charged with an ethics violation, as Senator Cotton suggests? In theory, with great power comes great responsibility. A proper penalty for her ethical violation would be expulsion from the committee.
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This brings us to the larger issue. Punishing the useful idiots does little to the power-hungry leftists who exploit them. There will always be GoFundMe contributors to lessen the cost. The Democrats at the top who solicit these lies should suffer. In the case of Michael Avenatti, the crime is subornation of perjury (18 USC §1622). But for Dianne Feinstein and others of her ilk, the solution must be directed at the currency in which she is paid by this evil: power.
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This won’t solve everything, but it’s a beginning. The Rule of Law is the only thing that separates us from being Zimbabwe or Venezuela. A little bit of law applied to our lawmakers seems to be a modest place to start. They won’t be as anxious to rob that bank if there’s no money there to steal.

Accountability needs someone – and many – to stand tall.

Virgil: We’ve Seen this Craziness Before–An Ancient Historian Tells Us How How It Ends — “we might look to the Greek historian Polybius.  He can’t directly address the current state of affairs, since he died in 118 B.C., and yet his wisdom still speaks to us, loud and clear.  In fact, his analysis of political events during polarizing times is timeless.”

Being president already cost President Trump $1.4 bilion. Don Surber – “Trump falls 138 spots on Forbes list of richest Americans”

“Emoluments.

Being president already cost President Trump $1.4 billion, Forbes gleefully reported.

The past two Democratic presidents made out like bandits accumulating post-presidential net worths of $40 million or more, which was about $40 million more than they were worth when they entered the White House.

Running for president not only cost President Trump $66 million in donations to his own campaign but the value of his companies shrank.
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Donald John Trump did not seek high office for power or money. He sought the office to Make America Great Again after 28 years of a White House run by the modern equivalents of Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan.

Lincoln followed the originals.

That cost Lincoln his life.

So far, it has only cost President Trump money.

Sons of America, beware. Cheryl K. Chumley – “The left, with one fell Supreme Court nomination swoop, has managed to upturn the entire notion of due process and collapse the cherished American principle of innocent until proven guilty.”

“Democrats shrug off such assertions and warnings by saying, in essence, oh, this isn’t a court of law — due process doesn’t apply. But that’s a skirt of accountability. That’s an argument of deceit. The left knows very well what it’s doing.
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Senate Democrats know they don’t have the evidence to prove these flimsy and fantastical allegations against Kavanaugh, so they instead resort to theatrics and distractions to convict — to convict in the court of public opinion, that is.

But slander is serious business. Tearing apart a man’s reputation for political sport is a grave enterprise.

So is the Democrats’ utter disregard for the long-term.
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Your son — yes, yours — is one Ford-like accusation away from complete character destruction.

My Critical ‘Critical Theory’ Theory. Steven Hayward – “Everyone is buzzing today about the revelation of the three academics—James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian—who placed over a dozen complete hoax articles with various premier “cultural studies” or “identity studies” academic journals.”

“Why aren’t more mainstream academic liberals speaking out and objecting to this farcical “scholarship” in the fashion of Lindsay, Pluckrose, and Boghossian? The chief reason is that there is no upside to trying to oppose this nonsense, as you’ll be called a racist/bigot, etc., and maybe even face a harassment complaint from the administrative bureaucracies that universities have set up and allowed to be infiltrated by identity politics dogma. And since academic departments are by tradition entirely self-governing in hiring and promotion decisions, there is no way for senior scholars in, say, political science, to curtail the nonsense scholarship.

The only way this problem will be fixed is for administrators—deans, provosts, presidents, academic councils—to say Enough!, and actually cut back some of these tendentious departments, or at least put out notice that publication in just about any Sage journal will not be recognized by the university. I’m not going to hold my breath.

A lot of talk today about how modern academic values have corrupted Congress.

Where Is the Polygraph Trail Leading? Charles C. W. Cooke – “Chuck Grassley has sent a letter to Dr. Ford’s lawyers requesting more information.”

“At the time I thought Mitchell’s inquiries were strange — especially the first one. Now, I can see why they were asked. Or, rather, now I think it is pretty likely that they were asked because Mitchell knew the answer to them ahead of time (or thought she did; the ex-boyfriend could, of course, be lying). Perhaps this was a straightforward attempt to catch Ford in a lie. Or perhaps this is going somewhere else — somewhere none of us can intuit quite yet.

Blasey Ford facing perjury trap? Thomas Lifson – “It seems pretty clear to me that Rachel Mitchell knew about this letter and was getting Blasey Ford to go on the record under oath. My suspicion is that Ford was prepared for many days for her testimony, but her lawyers and handlers did not anticipate this line of questioning, so she winged it.”

“It is a possible indicator of the depth of the doo-doo Blasey Ford stepped into that Glenn Kessler-the so-called fact checker at the Washington Post, is trying to run interference and failing at it
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Obviously, the key to taking the perjury trap beyond a he said/she said standoff would be the testimony of the person who allegedly received the coaching. Kate Prengel of Heavy.com has the goods on her

Christine Blasey-Ford Friend In Delaware Was Career FBI Agent and Likely Together During Accusation Letter Construct. sundance – “The media has begun to focus on the letter as outlining a lie told by Ms. Ford during recent congressional testimony… But the backstory to Ms. Monica Lee McLean is an even bigger story.” Connecting dots creates a picture of a very large and very ugly monster.

Investigate the Senate Democrat Wrecking Machine. Michelle Malkin – “Taxpayers have a right to know who sponsored the deliberate sabotage and abuse of the gallery pass privilege, which has been in place since 1890.” … “Leaky Sneaks. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. … Accuser Procurement. …”

Chuck Grassley: This frat party allegation ‘has all the markings of a tabloid headline’. John Sexton – “Sen. Coons of Delaware apparently forwarded another allegation about Judge Kavanaugh to Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley. Today, Grassley responded to Coons by pointing out the allegation in question isn’t really an allegation at all, more of a suggestion about something that could be made into tabloid fodder, at best”

“The letter concludes with an admonition to Sen. Coons: “I…hope that, before forwarding an allegation in the future, you will first consider whether you’d want you or your staff to spend valuable time investigating it.”

The most remarkable thing about the current moment in our politics is that, urged on by their own desperations, Democrats have abandoned any pretense at having standards for these allegations. That’s how you get Sen. Feinstein referencing the allegations by Julie Swetnick before anyone has provided any corroboration of her story.

And the media, urged on by the Democrats and their own barely concealed impulses, is doing the same. …

Once the standards are abandoned completely, then we have vague accusations like this one appearing. Don’t forget, we’ve already seen other accusations like this which have been refuted or withdrawn. Last week, Grassley referred one of these allegations to the FBI for investigation

Sorry For Blurting It Out, But Christine Blasey Ford Is A Liar. David Horowitz – “And her story isn’t credible.”

“One thing I learned watching the witch trial of Brett Kavanaugh on MSNBC, is that a prestigious university in New York has a Vice President for Social Justice. (She is an MSNBC commentator).
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This is the ideologically constructed atmosphere, which makes a latter-day witch trial like the Judiciary hearings possible. Christine Blasey Ford’s story is unbelievable on its face. She claims that after the alleged incident at the alleged party, where three of her friends (who have denied it) were allegedly present, she fled.
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On the face of it, Christine Blasey Ford’s story is not only unsubstantiated. It isn’t credible. The destruction of Brett Kavanaugh’s reputation is the equivalent of a modern-day lynching – the third that Democrats have orchestrated in the last twenty-seven years. It’s despicable. At least Republicans like Lindsey Graham have laid that charge at the door of the Democratic culprits who worked so hard to accomplish it. But, as a nation, we have obviously not reached the point where we can grant women true equality by confronting their lies and their reckless accusations with the same candor and frankness we would if they were coming out of the mouths of men.

Fallout from the Kavanaugh Hearings: A Permanent Cloud? Victor Davis Hanson – “After the trial by fire, he could prove to be one of the most fearless, principled justices on the Court.”

Atticus Finch Was on the Wrong Side. Rich Lowry – “In today’s #BelieveAllWomen environment, due process isn’t what it used to be.”

“Lee’s novel is deeply out of sympathy with a moment when on college campuses, and in the culture more broadly, due process isn’t what it used to be, when it is often thought to be a hateful act to insist that allegations of sexual misconduct be proven.

A refresher on the story: It is told from the perspective of a young girl, Scout, who is the daughter of a small-town lawyer named Atticus Finch (played by Peck in the movie). The setting is Depression-era Alabama. Finch is unpopular in town because he has decided to take on the defense of a black man named Tom Robinson who is accused of rape by a young white woman.

And this is where the story, in contemporary terms, goes off the rails.
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Atticus Finch is not the man for this moment, but we need him, and his reasoned yet unshakable commitment to fairness and justice, more than ever.

First Principles Are at Stake in Kavanaugh Confirmation. Tom Coburn – “Still, in the midst of the circus, two quiet and enduring questions about American first principles remain unanswered that are critically important for future generations.” He shows bias and contradicts himself with the ‘both sides do it’ fallacy but does otherwise have a point.

“Still, in the midst of the circus, two quiet and enduring questions about American first principles remain unanswered that are critically important for future generations.
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If senators love the Constitution as much as they say they do, they should define total victory not as vesting power in the court, but devolving power from the court. Republicans and Democrats should embrace, not fear, democracy.
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Second, in America you can’t be pro-victim and pro-justice and confused about the rule of law and the presumption of innocence. In our system, the accused is innocent until proven guilty. The alternative to the rule of law is either the rule of rulers or mob rule.

In the rule of rulers, each new dictator or regime gets to write new rules favorable to that regime. In mob rule, truth gives way to frenzy. Justice isn’t determined by facts but by whatever side of the mob can scream the loudest or intimidate most effectively. The Senate exists to protect all Americans, especially political minorities, from tyrannical rulers and mobs.

And the frenzy of the mob is on display, but only from the Left, just ask Flake or, now, McConnell.

A Showdown Like No Other. Conrad Black – “The militant feminist movement is certainly a powerful force, but it is not as strong or durable as the solid majority of Americans who oppose a justice and appointments system of denunciation. As Kavanaugh and others have pointed out, it is totalitarian to convict people without evidence.”

Website that archived Blasey Ford’s high school yearbook disappears from Google-owned Blogspot. Thomas Lifson – “I have no knowledge of why The Cult of the 1st Amendment was removed, but I do know that Google has amply demonstrated that its employees harbor an animus toward conservatives.”

On this, see LEAKED EMAILS: Senior Google Search Engineer Advocates for Censorship of ‘Terrorist’ Marsha Blackburn. Allum Bokhari – “A senior software engineer at Google with responsibility for a key feature of Google’s search engine labeled Tennessee Senate candidate Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) a “violent thug” and a “terrorist,” who Google shouldn’t “negotiate” with, according to internal emails obtained by Breitbart News. The employee also defended the censorship of her campaign ads on social media.”

How Low Can They Go? [Updated]. John Hinderaker – “Some of these people aren’t just misinformed, they are evil. How, exactly, are we supposed to coexist with them as fellow citizens of a republic?”

I’ll Drink to Confirmation. Steven Hayward – “The point ought to be clear: With six previous FBI background checks of Kavanaugh, unless the FBI is unusually incompetent (possible, as we’ve seen in the whole Trump campaign saga), testimony of overconsumption would very likely have come up before. And some of Kavanaugh’s accusers on this point, such as one of his freshman year roommates at Yale, have obvious motives for lying about him, as it is well established that they didn’t get along.”

Eliminating presumption of innocence. Don Surber – “The Marxist Mob’s attack on Judge Brett Kavanaugh is part of a multi-decadal plan to eliminate the Constitution — which Marxists slander as a a slave document.”

“The hearing and the FBI witch hunt (and I am sure the Deep State will find something) are a specific attack on the presumption of innocence.
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The Marxist Democrats can deny constitutional rights to a sitting federal judge, imagine what they will do to you.

America’s Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution specifically to prevent the sort of takeover of America desired by Marxist Democrats.

The Case against Kavanaugh Is Collapsing. David French – “There is entirely insufficient evidence to prove even one of the terrible allegations against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.”

Betsy Newmark stays away from her TDS to provide a comprehensive summary of French, Fund, et al in today’s Cruising the Web. “When you hear the Democrats whining that a one-week FBI investigation is insufficient for looking into Kavanaugh, remember this.”

Fight Together or Fall Apart. William L. Gensert – “The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is a watershed moment for the republic. This is the moment we decide who we are and who we will allow ourselves to be.”

“More than 200 years ago the Founders set out in our Constitution a set of rules for the United States of America. For years, these rules were inviolable. They constitute the framework upon which Americans have built the most successful nation, and the only viable democratic republic to have ever existed.
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The dreams of the Founders, of a place where work and merit decide success or failure, will be gone. It will be replaced with a country where there are no rules. Where those who have power and its intendant wealth are all that matter. Truth will have no place in this progressive utopia, because “truth” will become subjective, defined by the whims of those in power and becoming merely what they say it is. And most of all, this will be a place where an enemy can be eliminated by accusation, because the presumption of innocence has been replaced by guilty until… whatever or whenever.
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Because most of all, for the Democrats to succeed in “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” we must refuse to fight. Kavanaugh came out fighting last Thursday, and so did Graham. Trump fights. It is high time the rest of us did so as well. The stakes have never been higher. I weep for this nation and weep for our future if we don’t.

For it has never been truer that for evil to succeed all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing.

Some folks are trying to rock the boat to tip it over. Perhaps enough of the others are considering the risk that they will end up in the brink sufficiently high to do something about it?

Who Was behind the Flake Set-Up? John Fund – “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 they had 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.
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Perhaps because the women expressed such raw emotion, few media outlets dug into their political activism. Archila is an executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy; she had spent the previous week in Washington engaged in protests against Kavanaugh. Gallagher is a 23-year-old activist with the group. The Center is a left-wing group that is heavily funded by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Indeed, as of 2014, the Open Society was one of the three largest donors to the group.
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It’s a sign of media bias that the people from the well-funded groups behind the anti-Kavanaugh protests are described merely as “activists” and that their political motives and origins are largely unexplored.

Two ‘Brave’ Women Didn’t Confront Jeff Flake In That Senate Elevator – George Soros Did. DCWhispers – “Well, in actuality, they are paid political operatives of Mr. George Soros – the same Mr. Soros who has openly advocated for the destruction of U.S. sovereignty. Funny how the Establishment Media neglects to include that bit of information in their coverage.”

James Comey’s forked tongue goes into overdrive. Monica Showalter – “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.”

“Whoa! Channels the president? Kavanaugh channels the president by defending his honor? Kavanaugh, the man with the spotless, six-times-FBI-certified clean record? Hit by a barrage of false — and out of the blue — charges, cooked up with suspicious involvement of Democratic and leftwing political operatives? And now to defend one’s honor and long record of honesty from false charges is channeling Trump? That’s some logic.
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After that, Comey takes a shot at Republican voters.

The left’s complaints about equal representation in Senate won’t stop. Taylor Millard – “One of the ‘best’ (note sarcasm) things about the hearings concerning Judge Brett Kavanaugh is the fact it’s exposing the contempt some on the left have for the Constitution.” This one is about representation of both states and the people.

New low in Kavanaugh battle: stop coaching girls basketball. Karen Townsend – “There is no floor for the ugly accusations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh.”

“The implication is, of course, that Kavanaugh has now gone from accused sex offender to potential pedophile. How else are we to interpret such a hideous comment? I don’t even want to think about where this goes by the end of next week. The mob mentality hell-bent on destroying Judge Kavanaugh, and this includes his family, knows no boundaries.

In Kavanaugh fight, Democrats move goalposts far, far away. Byron York – “Now, a key issue is Kavanaugh’s teenage drinking, and whether he testified truthfully to Congress about the amount of beer he consumed in high school and college more than three decades ago, and the effect it had on him.”

“The new developments raised two questions. One, did Kavanaugh actually lie to the Senate about his drinking? And two, why are Democrats, now that they have finally won the FBI investigation they wanted into the sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh, suddenly making a bigger deal of his drinking?
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The problem, of course, is that is all anti-Kavanaugh theorizing. There’s no evidence to support it, just as there is no evidence beyond Christine Ford’s word to support the original attack allegation. But it’s what Democrats have to work with right now, and it’s why they are trying to change the subject from alleged sexual misconduct to Kavanaugh’s teenage drinking.

Do You Trust Kavanaugh’s Inquisitors With Our Future? David Catron – “The Democrats just demonstrated their governing philosophy.”

“If you want to know how life as an American will change if the Democrats win majorities in the House and Senate, an illuminating glimpse of that dystopian future was provided during last Thursday’s meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The transparently counterfeit compassion received by Christine Blasey Ford and the remorseless cruelty meted out to Brett Kavanaugh constitute a perfect microcosm of the Democratic governing philosophy — fake empathy for the vulnerable and unremitting malice toward the “deplorable” majority of Americans who oppose their increasingly authoritarian agenda. The Democratic Party has no real ideology beyond an insatiable lust for power.
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So where are all the “moderate” Democrats on this garbage? They are silent. Despite the brazen lies red state Democrats like North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin tell their constituents, they are not weighing the “merits” of the Kavanaugh nomination.
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And it’s not just men who worry. Mothers, sisters, and daughters of good men fear the consequences of a Kavanaugh defeat under such circumstances.
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All of which brings us back to the future, and what kind of America we want to leave for our children. The Democrats and their supporters frequently present themselves as social justice warriors. But they don’t really seem very partial to actual justice as codified in the Constitution as well as millennia of tradition and common law. The presumption of innocence, to coin a phrase, is the golden thread of English and American common law. And it applies to the Public Square as well as the courts. You can’t have genuine justice without it, and you can’t privilege females over males in its application. That’s what the Democrats are willing to do for the sake of power, and it’s precisely why they aren’t fit to govern.

Dems Spend Millions To Mislead Voters About Pre-Existing Conditions. Investor’s Business Daily – “Democrats want health care to be a major deciding issue in the midterm elections and are spending a fortune running campaign ads. Too bad most of the ads make the false claim that Republicans would take away protections for pre-existing conditions.”

“The GOP proposals aren’t perfect, a point we made in this space many times. But ObamaCare as it exists today is a disaster. It promises affordable coverage, but makes it impossible for millions to get it. And it requires massive taxpayer subsidies to bring individual insurance within reach of anyone.

The massive health care ad campaign may help Democrats win control of the House, and possibly the Senate, in November. But if they do, they’ll be the ones responsible for figuring out how to deal with the ObamaCare mess they created eight years ago.

Our Present Discontents, Then and Now. Steven Hayward – “One of Burke’s famous essays was “Thoughts on Our Present Discontents,” and we could use a Burkean restatement on that theme just now.”

“There are many passages in his most famous work, Reflections on the Revolution in France, that perfectly describe the temper and disposition of the left today. One of the salient traits of the left today, often remarked upon, is how angry and humorless they are. I think it goes beyond rage and a perverted and immature sense of injustice, and explains the categorical loathing of Western civilization itself that goes beyond mere “liberal guilt”—leftists actually loathe themselves. In speaking of the revolutionaries and Jacobins who thought they could and should tear down everything, Burke writes: …

Take care, neo – “It’s rather trite and formulaic, but it’s a convenient way to say take care of yourself, be kind to yourself, relax, enjoy and also be careful. – And it seems to me very appropriate for this moment in time to say to you all: take care.”

“The level of outraged anger I see on the right side of the blogosphere is as high as anything I’ve witnessed before. It’s a different kind of anger than usual, a feeling that a Rubicon has been crossed. Shared values? Don’t think so. Rule of law? Gone. It really strikes home that, as a commenter here wrote recently: “The differences go to the metaphysical level, to the depths where conversation can only elicit, as a famous philosopher once said, an incredulous stare.”

The comments I read yesterday on articles at liberal sites exhibit a level of gleefully vengeful vitriol that rivels anything I’ve seen before online, and that’s saying a lot. It’s not just the invective, it’s the form it takes and the huge number of people expressing it. Just to take one example, there’s a vicious hatred toward Brett Kavanaugh for the crimes of having gone to private school and being a white man.
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I see a lot of evil out there right now, and I see it laughing with delight. So I need to turn away sometimes and take care.

Facebook Blackout: I’m a Traitor to My Gender Because I Won’t Participate in the Virtual Burka Protest. Jenny North – “Friends, I am going to let you in on a secret operation to make the men of this world feel really bad.”

“But let me tell you something – you untamed, misbehaving, radical feminists – you are standing in the place of the patriarchy when you order me to do something I think is counterproductive and stupid. So I am going to think for myself, and politely decline to join your man-hating club. I know many of you proclaim that you don’t hate men, but you need to look a little more closely at your actions. What you do isn’t meant to enlighten men, it is meant to shame them.
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Feminists wanted a sexual revolution, but come to find out they can’t handle it the morning after. They wanted women to be in the locker room, but come to find out they can’t handle a little rough talk. They wanted to be taken seriously, but come to find out they have made a mockery of themselves by presenting as fragile teenagers who need chaperones and vocal coaches. Women need to take responsibility for themselves and quit blaming their shortcomings on men. Men have graciously moved out of the way, but please let’s not expect them to be doormats too.

Epitaph for a Dying Culture. Victor Davis Hanson – “The Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and their endless sequelae have ended up as an epitaph for a spent culture for which its remedies are felt to be worse than its diseases. Think 338 B.C., A.D. 476, 1453, or 1939.”

“The coordinated effort to destroy Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court required the systematic refutation of the entire notion of Western jurisprudence by senators and much of the American legal establishment. And there was no hesitation in doing just that on the part of Senate Democrats, the #MeToo movement, and the press.
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So everything from Facebook and Twitter censorship to politically recalibrating the order of Google searches serves the larger collective “good.” Even ancient ideas of wealth and poverty fade before our current ideology. If riches are used for social change, even if cynically and for careerist and self-interested reasons, then how they were obtained or otherwise used is irrelevant; if not, then they are proof of greed in their acquisition. Multibillionaire George Soros might be a wanted felon in France or have attempted to break the Bank of England and thereby ruin small depositors. But his wealth is welcomed because he invests a small percentage of it in progressive causes and thereby purchases his own progressive insurance and protection. As did the Catholic Church in the Dark Ages of yore, the Progressive Church now sells indulgences.

If we look to consensual government for hope, we see instead the courts and the permanent administrative class more often as the new governance. Their directives are to obstruct or overturn residual popular forces of tradition and custom, whether that consists of overriding bothersome federal immigration law, or advancing states’ rights ideas of nullification such as “sanctuary cities.”
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An idea of retirement is not merely a house by the lake or a cottage on the coast to die in peace, but now a mental refuge in which we are at last free from 24/7 sermonizing and worry over thought crimes, both in person and electronically—a world in which a sermonizer on a computer screen or in a television set does not lecture us for perceived shortcomings without acknowledgment that he is more likely than not to also fail to meet his own standards of morality.

In other words, America is resembling the medieval Balkans, where spent traditionalists fled to the mountaintops, abandoned the plains of a dying culture to the new zealots who stormed in under the pretense of civilization.

WaPo goes all in on socialism with an attack on capitalism. Jazz Shaw – “People with very little exposure to actual socialism are either asking questions or, in some cases, eagerly adopting the label of socialist. Of course, this flies in the face of democratic capitalism, the foundation upon which our society has grown and thrived. Who will make sense of it all?” … “This sort of cheerleading for socialism is spreading like a plague. People need to remember that socialism almost always ends the same way and you need look no further than Venezuela in 2018 to see where that road leads.”

Democrats ask for the FBI and now they’d better be prepared for the consequences. Ed Timperlake – “America will live through this week long FBI “sprint” trying to shed as much light on the most infamous “He said/She” said moment in American history.”

“More than a few of our elected officials have a very nasty character trait in that everyone is expendable in their keeping power.
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The vicious enemies of Judge Kavanaugh got what they asked for, now the FBI is involved, and it is time for sunlight, transparency, and possible legal payback.

Many commentators speculate that after the FBI finishes their week-long investigation, Americans will not know any more than they did after the Hearing. I bet that is true for Judge Kavanaugh: his words personified “the truth is the truth” However, for many of his nasty enemies in one of the ugliest conspiracies in American history, their day of reckoning may be fast approaching.

Sheldon’s Folly – Chairman Chuck Grassley Requests Criminal Investigation of Kavanaugh Accuser Jeffrey Catalan. Sundance – “Mr. Jeffrey Catalan accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting a woman on a boat in Rhode Island. Mr. Catalan first sent the accusation to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the primary Democrat operatives who was helping to construct the attacks against Judge Kavanaugh.”

“Grassley has called on the Justice Department and the FBI to review the matter as a possible violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001 and 1505, portions of the U.S. code criminalizing the sharing of materially false information with committee investigators and obstruction of proceedings of congressional committees.

Healthy Shame Woefully Absent in Washington, DC. Brian C. Joondeph – “Righteous and appropriate indignation was on full display at last week’s Senate hearing over sexual assault allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh.”

“How did the Senate process of “advise and consent” deteriorate into a Supreme Court nominee having to detail his teenage sexual chastity on an international media stage?

Shaming a guiltless person before others inflicts humiliation, disgrace, and disrepute on an entire family – shame without guilt. This is what the left has been throwing at Judge Kavanaugh and his family for weeks, shaming him through allegations and insinuations of being a sexual predator, a rapist, an alcoholic, even a pedophile, along with death threats to him and his family.
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What is obvious is that the American left has no shame, no conscience.
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What drives such hatred and lack of healthy shame, conscience, or human decency?
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Now these senators demand another FBI background check, the seventh for Kavanaugh, a background check that many of them would not pass.

As an aside, did anyone notice that President Trump had no reluctance or objection to another FBI background check – that in fact, he seemed eager? Such investigations can go both ways. The accusers may also find themselves investigated, as well as those who financed and abetted them. What if the FBI uncovers some surprises or perjury?

The Moral-Panic Phase. Jonah Goldberg – “Why is the Kavanaugh nomination causing people to lose their minds?” Goldberg, slowly and reluctantly, seems to be ‘finding his way to Jesus’ – maybe. Here’s a letter filled with angst.

“finally, there was a left–right fight about which I am largely un-conflicted. This wasn’t a brouhaha about Trump or any of the usual stuff. The issue here was that the Democrats and their abettors in the media simply behaved atrociously.
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I actually agree that Kavanaugh’s anger towards Democrats in the hearing — though morally and emotionally justified — isn’t a good thing over the long run if he were to make it on the Court. But this idea that he can’t be a Supreme Court justice because he wasn’t dispassionate in the face of multiple bogus allegations that he’s a rapist is both grotesque and grotesquely dumb.
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contrary to the tsunami of smug sorrowful opining, judges are not expected to be cold and dispassionate in the face of charges about themselves. That’s why they recuse themselves from cases in which they have personal interests.
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It’s no secret that I’m a Trump critic, but I do my best to stay rational and fair about it. … when you actually look at how the Democrats have behaved . . . Great Odin’s Raven, I don’t want anything to do with any of that.
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you can’t blame him [Trump] for Democrats believing that Brett Kavanaugh ran a rape gang in high school. Nor can you blame Trump for all of the liberals who know it must be a lie and refuse to say so. That’s on them.
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I truly and sincerely don’t want to make light of sexual assault. Rape is evil. Which also means that false accusations of rape are evil. And treating each additional, wholly unverified accusation as if it is more proof is evil.

Anti-Kavanaugh media and Hollywood bias explodes in a bad week for America. Dan Gainor – “Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh was targeted for demonization in a disgusting display of media malpractice this past week, as he was depicted in almost every disparaging way possible in coverage of uncorroborated sexual misconduct allegations against him.”

“The bias was so bad all week that conventional media spin was shoved aside and countless smaller examples of a craven media culture went largely ignored. One such example is The New York Times apologizing for asking readers if they found Ford’s “testimony credible.” This is the woke era, and even the most liberal paper in America can’t ask such blasphemous questions.

Empathy, Accuracy, and Credibility. Victor Davis Hanson – “The “process” of memorializing Ford’s testimony involved a strange inversion of constitutional norms:”

“The idea of a statute of limitations is ossified; hearsay is legitimate testimony; inexact and contradictory recall is proof of trauma, and therefore of validity; the burden of proof is on the accused, not the accuser; detail and evidence are subordinated to assumed sincerity; proof that one later relates an allegation to another is considered proof that the assault actually occurred in the manner alleged; motive is largely irrelevant; the accuser establishes the guidelines of the state’s investigation of the allegations; and the individual allegation gains credence by cosmic resonance with all other such similar allegations.
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The lesson of the hearings transcends the Kavanaugh confirmation. We were presented with two radically different and now competing versions of American jurisprudence and due process, one traditional and constitutional, one fluid and revolutionary. It will be up to Americans, ultimately, to decide by which version they wish to conduct their lives.

Dear Senators Flake, Collins, and Murkowski. Derek Hunter – “I call it a battle rather than a process because it is a battle, a fight, even a war. I know each of you think you’re doing your best to stave off that war, but you’re only making it more likely.”

“The same people who’ve been threatening all of you and your staffs are the same people you’re hoping to placate. There is no process that ends with anything other than what they want that will quell this angry mob.
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What will be enough for people who verbally attacked Senator Ted Cruz and his wife in a restaurant? Or Secretary Kristjen Neilson? Or anyone else with an (R) as their political affiliation who’s been on the receiving end of the liberal mob’s rage?
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Unless everyone named by Dr. Ford was, under penalty of felony, lying to you and the press, the FBI will return quickly with the same statements you’ve already read.
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There is nothing remotely resembling proof of anything alleged, yet these partisan guttersnipes don’t care, they want his head because they are terrified he reveres the Constitution.
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The Democrats’ playbook is to keep people in an emotional frenzy over everything to prevent rational thought. Have you heard widespread condemnation of Republicans being confronted in public by Democratic leaders? Passive, yes, but consistent rebuking of each event? No, you have not.

I wrote a book on this very subject. I’d send each of you copies, but I know how the Senate mail system works and how the radiation used to render any chemical or biological agents harmless destroys paper. But trust me, none of this is spontaneous, and none of this will end as long as there are people who stand in their way.

Life in a Gynocracy. Clarice Feldman – “The performance of women this week – from Senator Dianne Feinstein to Christine Blasey Ford to the howling mobs on Capitol Hill – made me seriously consider surgically altering my sex.”

“Or maybe, like me, you can vow to never vote for a Democrat again and fight tooth and nail against such efforts to distort our constitutional rights to due process.

Pedophilia Isn’t The Main Problem With Catholic Priests, Homosexuality Is. Maureen Mullarkey – “Inadequate—and blameworthy—are expressions of sympathy for the abused that disguise the elephant in the rectory. The first responsibility is to call things by their right name.” A story of a consequence that can’t be ignored but must be rationalized somehow. Misdirection etc provided a comfortable start but hasn’t solved the problem.

“To casual readers, duly angered, the Times’ charge sounds about right. More thoughtful ones, however, will hesitate over the word pedophilia. With few exceptions, sexual abuse by priests has been visited overwhelmingly upon pubescent boys, and young men, most often teenagers. This is pederasty, not pedophilia. And pederasty is endemic to gay culture.
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Homosexuality has been normalized, officially approved, ratified, and okayed. Since the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the roster of mental disorders in 1973, activists have parlayed homosexuals into a protected species, more like black rhinos or orangutans than moral beings. The church’s ancient description of homosexuality as an “objective disorder” is dismissed as the last gasp of the 19th-century Society for the Suppression of Vice.
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Down the centuries, stigma against same-sex activity—and all non-marital sex—was universally accepted by a society that was Christian by birth, including those to whom censure applied.
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Those constraints are gone, the brakes shot. They have been psychologized and conjured out of existence.

Much denial. Evasion. Avoidance. … Consequences?

God Stalks the Kavanaugh Hearings. Roger L Simon – “For the first time I had a visceral understanding of what Dennis Prager meant when he said God was involved in the American founding.”

“I guess it first hit me when Judge Kavanaugh, in the midst of his powerful and heartfelt opening statement, one few expected him to make, choked up, fighting back tears as he spoke of his ten-year old daughter’s desire to pray for Dr. Ford. I had trouble choking back my own and it dawned on me I was watching an event that I thought was political being transformed into a spiritual one.

Nothing was as expected. A real rape had taken place but it wasn’t the one everyone was talking about. It was simultaneously a rape of Judge Kavanaugh, his family, and the American people themselves. The collateral damage was Dr. Ford, her friends, and her family. And the perpetrator was the Democratic Party, principally their Judiciary Committee members, their ranking member, and the minority leader.

It also dawned me that whatever the pundits were saying had become irrelevant. The American people were watching now — they would make up their own minds — and… I thought I’d never say this… God was looking down on the proceedings.

The Feinstein Farce Will Let Rapists Go Free. Mytheos Holt – “#BelieveWomen, in short, is merely the first step to #IgnoreWomen.”

“A better way is necessary, which is why the correct response to rape allegations was enunciated by President Ronald Reagan on a much different subject: “Trust, but verify.”

And therein lies the rub. It is not for nothing that our society holds to the aphorism that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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In other words, like Harvey Weinstein’s accusers, these women either had to provide a mountain of evidence themselves, or make their accusations with such conviction that the dam would break and the evidence would come out naturally.
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Were Kavanaugh to fall to these accusations, it would set an example not merely for every Supreme Court nominee, but for what society should assume about men accused of rape, period. Given the high stakes involved in that sort of confrontation, Ford, Ramirez, and Swetnick should’ve known that, in the words of “The Wire,” “you come at the king, you best not miss.”

Well, not only did they miss, but they shot themselves in the foot—repeatedly. To put it bluntly, these women have behaved in every way that fake rape victims out of Incel message board Central Casting would behave.
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And what happens when young men, seeing that teenage drinking and fratty behavior can condemn them as rapists by association without their so much as losing their virginity, decide that there is no reason to strive for goodness, having already been damned by the cultural elite?

But the Democrats believe the accuser be she seems so earnest and nice. Evidence isn’t in their thoughts.

Democrats abused Ford (and Kavanaugh). Washington Examiner – “The party of the Left has shown that there is no calumny it will not retail, no false or uncorroborated allegation it will not use to whip up ideological passions, and no depths to which it will not stoop to win and hold power.”

“Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh came to the Senate Judiciary Committee with emotional and powerful testimony on Thursday. Ford told a story of trauma and bravery. Kavanaugh brought outrage and righteous anger. The anger and suffering of both had the same just cause — the disgusting perfidy of Senate Democrats. …

Let’s hope voters look at the noisome spectacle that has just taken place on Capitol Hill and deliver a resounding rebuke to the people who perpetrated it. Their behavior during the Kavanaugh confirmation process outstrips even the disgraceful conduct of their partisan forebears at the confirmation hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Thursday was a black day, capping a period of bleak weeks in the history of American governance.
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Many questions will not be answered by these confirmation hearings. But they have established one fact beyond peradventure. It is that Democrats are not interested in truth. They are only interested in power. Let us hope they do not get it.

Kavanaugh is the poster child for the perils of politicizing pain. Liz Harrison – “explaining to my son that these hearings should be focused on Ethos, or the character of especially Kavanaugh, since he’s being considered for the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, Pathos, or the emotional arguments, have been ruling the day, primarily because there is a lack of Logos, or logic and reason being applied.”

“I know they weren’t pleased when I admitted that I mostly believed Ford’s testimony, but the key word is “mostly.” The fact is that I believe Ford described a real attack she suffered at some point in her life. The questionable part is in the important details of when, where, and by whom.
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We have become accustomed to hyper-partisan politicking, but now it has moved on to exploiting victims of sex crimes, and destroying reputations without the benefit of fair warning, let alone due process.
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At the end of the day, there were two victims in the Judiciary Committee hearings today – Ford and Kavanaugh. The only question is “who is truly guilty of exploitation?” Based on what I had seen from both sides, I have to say the guilty parties sit in our Senate. If I’m brutally honest, I would expand that to include the media gallery, and across our entire nation, because as Americans with a seemingly endless appetite for the salacious and sadistic, we are all guilty of encouraging this reprehensible kind of politicking.

Kavanaugh and Graham used political jiu-jitsu on the Judiciary Committee Dems. Thomas Lifson – “Judge Kavanaugh seems to have surprised many observers and shocked the Committee’s Democrats with his emotional testimony on the impact on his children of seeing their father portrayed as a horrendous brute.”

“A couple of hours after Judge Kavanaugh’s emotional statement, Senator Lindsey Graham delivered the knockout punch, denouncing his former “friends” on the committee for their duplicitous handling of the July 30 letter to Senator Feinstein, victimizing both Professor Blasey Ford (and her family) and Judge Kavanaugh (and his family). If you missed his use of his five minutes to question Judge Kavanaugh, watch it below. It was a historic moment, one that will be mentioned in Senator Graham’s obituary and cited by historians of our era’s politics: …

Yesterday, I called for someone other than Judge Kavanaugh to shame the Democrats in the same manner that Joseph Welch, counsel to the United States Army, shamed Senator Joe McCarthy in 1954. That is precisely what Senator Graham did. Jeffrey Lord called it Senator Graham’s “Joseph Welch moment.”

The Nuclear Option: Cory Booker, Dems Defeated in Kavanaugh Hearing Despite Orgy of Leaks, Lies, Smears. Charles Hurt – “The only bright speck in the whole circus of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings has been the honorable behavior of Republicans on the SenateJudiciary Committee.”

“Though her claims are strenuously disputed, entirely uncorroborated and riddled with inconsistencies and shifting versions, the woman deserved to make her case. Mr. Grassley made sure she was able to.

She was not shouted down by protesters. She was not silenced. Nobody called her a murderer.

We have come a long way since Paula Jones was called a liar and trailer-park trash by Bill Clinton’s war dogs after she accused the then-governor of exposing himself to her and sexually harassing her. Those charges were corroborated, and Mrs. Jones was ultimately vindicated.

But James Carville’s disgusting treatment of her could never be erased.

Mr. Grassley does not play those vile games. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about others.

Over the past two weeks, sitting senators have publicly and enthusiastically denounced the single most fundamental tenet of fairness in America: the notion that an accused person is presumed innocent until proved guilty.

Now it’s doxxing – Committee Republicans’ addresses, phone numbers splashed on WIKIPEDIA

WaPo: Bush to the barricades for Kavanaugh. Ed Morrissey – “Trump wisely chose Kavanaugh based on his long experience, but part of that choice was at least a tacit outreach to the Bush wing of the party.”

“Last night, my friend Erick Erickson made an astute observation about one outcome from the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing debacle. It’s creating a kind of unity among the GOP, perhaps especially in the leadership caste, that’s been notably absent for the last couple of years
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Bush might be the one man who can unlock those three votes for Mitch McConnell, in part by reminding them that Kavanaugh represents a critical norm in more ways than one. Kavanaugh is no nihilist, on the bench or anywhere else; he’s spent a lot of time in Washington and hasn’t thrown tables around the room anywhere he’s been. Collins, Murkowski, and perhaps Flake would appreciate that reminder, as well as another that what follows after a Kavanaugh character assassination might be not only much less part of a norm, but also impossible to oppose after the injustice seen in this process. In fact, if Bush is smart (and he most certainly is), he’ll argue that Trump’s selection of Kavanaugh is a defense of norms, while rewarding Democrats’ character assassination would be abetting their destruction.
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This brings us to another missed point — Rachel Mitchell’s hiring. Chuck Grassley certainly wanted to avoid the optics of Republican men pressing Ford for details, but he also knew that he’d have to produce a line of questioning that would satisfy the three holdouts that the allegation wasn’t substantiated. That’s precisely what he got

Who Won [Updated]. John Hinderaker – “I think it is important to keep in mind the audiences for whom today’s performance was enacted. There were two.”

“The first is the public, or that portion of it that watched some of the hearing or will read and hear about it. The Democrats seem to think that “believe women” is a majority sentiment–regardless, apparently, of what the woman says, and subject to such exceptions as may be convenient. I doubt that is correct. I think a great many Americans have had it with #MeToo and associated abuses and can sympathize with a wrongly accused public figure. We may or may not ever know who won the public battle.

The second and more important audience for today’s hearing was Republican senators who could possibly vote No on Kavanaugh’s nomination.
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So I think Kavanaugh will be confirmed. Will the Democrats be disappointed? It is hard to say. If Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed, the next Justice will be the younger and more conservative Amy Barrett. The fact is that Kavanaugh is as moderate a nominee as the Democrats are going to see. So they may be content with the pleasure of slandering an innocent man, the damage they have done to the Supreme Court as an institution, the fundraising they are feverishly doing at this moment, and another bogus issue to fire up their low-information base in November. The damage they are doing to our republic? They don’t care.

I was wrong. The Ford, Kavanaugh hearings were worth the effort. Jazz Shaw – “the value didn’t come from the question and answer sessions with committee members of each party, which were, for the most part, worse than worthless.”

“The real value of these hearings came in the opening statements of the two subjects. Blasey Ford gave a startling performance which even caught me by surprise. By the time she was done, I was ready to concede that either something happened to her all those years ago or she’s an actress who missed her calling and should be up for several Academy Awards. But it was Kavanaugh’s opening remarks which really sealed the deal as far as I was concerned. His presentation was either ignored by most of the media or mocked as being overly “loud” or “defiant.” But that ignores the reality of what we saw.
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But never in a million years did Kavanaugh see Christine Blasey Ford coming as the doomsday weapon Democrats would pin their hopes and dreams on. Rather than being accused of being a partisan or even bad judge, Brett Kavanaugh was accused of being a bad person. In the opinion of one committee member, an evil person. And like any normal human being, such attacks wounded him. It was that wounded individual we saw on display yesterday, genuinely hurting from the assaults on his character but refusing to get on his knees and beg or accept the labels applied to him.

Cornyn: This is the Senate’s worst moment since the McCarthy hearings; Update: Has the votes? Ed Morrissey – “Lindsey Graham’s angry speech may have been the most satisfying moment of the second half of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Republicans, at least after Brett Kavanaugh’s opening statement. However, John Cornyn may have hit closest to the mark in his five minutes.”

“Cornyn tells Kavanaugh that this is the Senate’s most embarrassing moment since the McCarthy hearings, focusing on the abandonment of the normal standard of the burden of proof when allegations arise
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We have revived the specter of McCarthyism thanks to the demolition of due process and reliance on the proper burden of proof. The Senate Judiciary Committee all but signaled open season on Brett Kavanaugh, encouraging a slew of uncorroborated and unsubstantiated allegations to become public, all while insisting that we must “believe” the allegation rather than examine the evidence, or even wait to see if any evidence exists.

It’s a disgrace, all the more so because we clearly haven’t learned from history. Cornyn hits the nail on the head here, and delivered a speech which should be remembered for its wisdom, clarity, and purpose.

There is a lot of perfidy in this case. See Dianne Feinstein: I didn’t leak Dr. Ford’s letter to the media for a bit about who leaked confidential information to get the ball rolling. Kavanaugh would be done already if the Dems hadn’t filibustered Gorsuch, right? This is about tactics and cites Byron York to discuss what happens when you go full tilt obstructionism without examining consequences and implications.

The Truths Behind Our Current Political Turmoil. Victor Davis Hanson – “Reading between the lines to understand the overwhelming cycle of sensational news.”

“There are a few subtexts to all these spectacles, scandals, and melodramas.

First, those in power had never imagined that Donald Trump either could or should win the 2016 election.
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Second, both the Democratic and Republican establishments, as well as the proverbial “deep state” bureaucracy, agreed that President Trump was so crude and uncouth that he must not continue in office.
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Third, had Trump simply failed, as predicted, there would be far less frenzy.
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Fourth, if Trump could not be removed by impeachment, a lawsuit citing the emoluments clause of the Constitution, application of the 25th Amendment, indictment or forced resignation, then the only remaining mechanisms of aborting his presidency were either through the courts or by winning the midterm elections to facilitate impeachment and a trial in the Senate in 2019.
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Fifth, Trump did not follow the examples of John McCain and Mitt Romney by adhering to the usual Republican Marquess of Queensberry etiquette.
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The day’s blaring headlines, of course, differ in details. But the common themes behind the headlines are that Trump should never have been president, that he is an inexplicably successful ogre, and that he won’t shut up — and therefore he must be forced to go away by any means necessary.

It’s jujitsu time on the Kavanaugh accusations. Thomas Lifson – “We are ready for a game-changer, such as that delivered during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954.”

“There are genuine victims of the Democrats’ smear campaign here, and the GOP and its allies already are pointing them out.
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even more harmful to the Democrats is the realization-to-come that these false accusations harm genuine victims of sexual assault, who will not be believed because of the false accusations that have been widely publicized.

The Democrats’ answer to Joseph Welch’s immortal question, “Have you no decency, sir?” is all too obvious to anyone not incapacitated by Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Kavanaugh, Cold Anger and The Reckoning. sundance – “The vulgar lies and filth are now extreme as the ideological entities utilize their microphones in a brutal attempt to tear down the Kavanaugh family.”

“There’s a level of anger far deeper and more consequential than expressed rage or visible behavior, it’s called Cold Anger.

Cold Anger does not need to go to violence. For those who carry it, no conversation is needed when we meet. You cannot poll or measure it; specifically because most who carry it avoid discussion… And that decision has nothing whatsoever to do with any form of correctness.
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Cold Anger absorbs betrayal silently, often prudently.
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Cold Anger is not driven to act in spite of itself; it drives a reckoning.
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This family is as unfamiliar with their current enemy as any virtuous family who has never encountered the corrupt, conniving and Godless leftist ideology. It is our job now to stand afore them and fight on their behalf. They have done enough; they have suffered too much.
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Throw aside the sense of discomfort and bear witness to the evil we oppose. Do not turn your eyes from the hatred focused in our direction. Stand firm amid the solace of our number and resolve to the task at hand.

Those who oppose our efforts are merely vile parasites quivering as they stare into the Cold Anger furnace of righteousness.

A Case of Mistaken Identity? John Hinderaker – “the Judiciary Committee put out a statement that summarizes events in the Kavanaugh smear from July 30 to the present. The chronology provides overwhelming evidence of bad faith on the part of the Democratic Senators on the committee, and the lawyers representing the “accusers.”

The Death of Reason and the Slaying of Civility. Don Boudreaux – “I simply – and I mean this claim literally – cannot begin to begin to begin to begin to understand why so many of my fellow Americans are oblivious to the dangers of imposing the burden of proof or of persuasion upon the accused.”

“if we human beings routinely treated accusations alone as sufficient proof of, if not their absolute validity, at least of their presumptive validity, civilization as we know it would not exist. Whatever civilization we would then be members of would look and feel radically different from that which we now know.

The Kavanaugh Battle Is The Culmination Of Unanswered Leftist Kulturkampf. Sumantra Maitra – “There’s no greater sin than condemning an innocent man without evidence. There’s no greater cowardice than caving in to mob pressure.”

“Is there anyone who believes now that the leaks, every new uncorroborated allegation every single week, the protests, the fliers, the posters and placards, the coordinated media line, and the coordinated social media tweets are not premeditated?
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There’s no greater sin than condemning an innocent man without evidence. There’s no greater cowardice than caving in to mob pressure. Nothing is conservative about either of those two, and if the Senate Republicans cannot hold their line, be stoic and disciplined, and confirm Kavanaugh, they deserve every public wrath they will face.

Scuttling Sanity to Repeat History and Sink a Country. Jarod Paul Young – “The seizures had predictable results: mass starvation, economic ruin, and citizens fleeing in droves for fruited plains – mainly South Africa. … But South Africa is on the threshold of an identical plunge”

“Taking the private property of those best capable of yielding bounties that feed millions is a prescription not only for a Zimbabwe redux, but a re-visitation of Mao’s Agrarian Reform Law that put China on a path to the Great Famine, or Stalin’s elimination of landed interests – “kulaks” – that instigated genocidal starvation in Ukraine. And don’t forget Venezuela.

Sanity to Sink?

Trump’s Triumph at the U.N. by Roger Kimball – “one of the greatest political speeches ever delivered in peacetime.” … “What President Trump said was not braggadocio. It was the unvarnished truth.”

“Barack Obama is reputed to be an impressive orator. But he never gave a speech that, in substance, could hold a candle to President Trump’s speeches at Warsaw, at Riyadh, before the joint session of Congress last year, or indeed his “rocket man” speech at the United Nations. And this topped them all for forcefulness, clarity, and wisdom.
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What, in the end, was this speech about? It was an elaboration of Trump’s chief foreign policy idea, “principled realism.”

“Realism” connotes an accurate and unsentimental appreciation of the metabolism of power. The “principles” in question involve an affirmation of who we are as a people, which turns on our affirmation of national sovereignty.

The president’s articulation of this simple, yet deep, idea is what lifted his speech out of the realm of pedestrian blather and marked it for the history books.
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What was new was his meditation on the importance of sovereignty.

Rosenstein -vs- McCabe by sundance – “There are two warring camps: Team Rosenstein and Team McCabe. Team Rosenstein consists of current officials: Jeff Sessions, Dana Boente et al; and Team McCabe has former officials: Lisa Page, James Baker, Mike Kortan et al.” It’s a sundance analysis trying to make sense of the nonsense and how it got to where it is.

“Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein created a mess by going along with the corrupt officials inside the FBI and DOJ. By facilitating their endeavors – he was aiding the soft-coup attempt.

It’s ok to argue whether this was intentional (Team McCabe position) or unintentional (Team Rosenstein position); however, regardless of intent, the outcome was the same.
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From the White House position the knucklehead Rod Rosenstein needs to clean up the mess he has created. From knucklehead’s position, he wants out before congress starts asking him questions.
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Rod Rosenstein knows what he did wrong; and President Trump knows what Rosenstein did wrong. Though it could change based on new discoveries, President Trump isn’t likely to let Rosenstein go until everyone else knows what Rosenstein did wrong.

Rod Rosenstein’s Resistance by Andrew C. McCarthy – “Weasel words, weasel moves from an emotionally overwrought deputy AG eager to ingratiate himself with Democrats”

“In truth, what transformed Rosenstein into a high-strung drama queen (“conflicted, regretful and emotional,” writes the Times) was not Trump’s firing of Comey; it was the ferocious Democratic blowback against Comey’s firing.
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Yet, on Comey’s firing, he badly misdiagnosed the Democrats.
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The apoplectic Democratic reaction sent Rod a-reeling, anguished by such taunts as this one by Senator Christopher Murphy of Connecticut: “You wrote a memo you knew would be used to perpetuate a lie. You own this debacle.”

Is this the hill they die on? By Anna L. Stark – “Ask yourself the following question: Is the repugnant and egregious behavior of the Democrats on Senate Judiciary Committee and their enablers the hill they want to die on?”

“Is the hideous, unfounded, but well-coordinated attack on Judge Brett Kavanagh worth it, considering that President Trump may have the opportunity to nominate not one, but perhaps two more people to the Supreme Court during his tenure in the White House? Given the better than average chance that Judge Kavanagh will be confirmed by the Senate by the end of this week, it’s not too farfetched to imagine that future Senate Judiciary committee hearings will be tainted from the outset, clouded by doubt, much more nefarious behavior by Democrats, and punctuated with despicable vulgarity.
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Given the depth of Democrat depravity and reprehensible behavior to date, there is no questioning the level of lewdness the Democrats will stoop to in their poorly contrived attempt to derail Brett Kavanagh.

10 Red Flags About Sexual Assault Claims, From An Employment Lawyer by Adam Mill – “It’s not nice or politically correct to say, but people do sometimes lie to get money, revenge, power, attention, or political advantage. False allegations of assault have been documented.”

“I stand athwart the streamroller of sexual misconduct complaints that crush the innocent, end marriages, and destroy careers. In the Me Too era, I am an employment attorney in the politically incorrect vocation of defending who must pay if misconduct is found.
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When the complaint is “he said/she said,” we should not helplessly acquiesce to coin-flip justice that picks winners and losers based upon the identity politics profile of the accused and accuser. Experience with a career’s worth of complaints in hearings, depositions, and negotiations has taught me some tells, red flags that warn that an innocent person stands accused.
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These accusations destroy the lives of the accused, often men, and bring devastation to the women who love and support them. Some of the falsely accused commit suicide. When the mob attacks legitimate inquiry into the accusation, it’s a sure sign that the mob isn’t confident about the truth of the allegation. Rather than shrink in fear when attacked, we should take it as a sign that there is a risk that the accused is innocent, and the questions need to keep coming.

You may have heard that the Kavanaugh accuser has brought in four corroborating witnesses. Check item ten on Mill’s list about this.

Did the NYT stealth-edit an article to downplay a Dem activist source? Ed Morrissey – “several people accused the New York Times of removing a reference to Deborah Ramirez’ admission that she had no clear recollection of Brett Kavanaugh being the one that allegedly abused her at a party where she had been drinking heavily.”

“The shame involved here isn’t that the Times removed the name of a source whose presence might call into questions the motives of those pushing the “Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook makes him unfit” narrative. It’s that the Times hasn’t deleted the entire article yet. It’s a shameful exercise, setting up a standard for character that’s not only impossible to meet but so clearly wrong as to be painfully obvious outside the editorial halls of the Paper of Record. Who among us remains exactly as mature as they were at 17? Do we even know anyone who hasn’t grown since that time with age and experience? Good Lord, literally no one would qualify for public service under this standard.

We Are Living Nineteen Eighty-Four by Victor Davis Hanson – “Truth, due process, evidence, rights of the accused: All are swept aside in pursuit of the progressive agenda.”

“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
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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.
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Statue of limitations? It does not exist. … Presumption of Innocence? Not at all. … Evidence? That too is a fossilized concept. … Details? Again, such notions are counterrevolutionary. … Testimony? No longer relevant. … Rights of the accused? They too do not exist.
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Then we come to Orwell’s idea of “memory holes,” or mechanisms to wipe clean inconvenient facts that disrupt official ideological narratives.
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According to some polls, about half the country believes that Brett Kavanaugh is now guilty of a crime committed 36 years ago at the age of 17. And that reality reminds us that we are no longer in America. We are already living well into the socialist totalitarian Hell that Orwell warned us about long ago.

Warnings ignored?

‘GMO Free USA’ Attacks World-Famous Biochemist Bruce Ames by Alex Berezow – “For the crime of using evidence-based science to tell people to calm down, he’s been painted as a villain by the anti-GMO movement.”

“It’s one thing to debate a person who doesn’t know any better. At least in theory, they can be convinced once they are shown the error in their thinking. But it’s an entirely different matter debating a person who is deliberately and maliciously ignorant. How do you debate somebody who insists against all evidence that 2 + 2 = 17, vaccines cause autism, and GMOs cause cancer?

Trumponomics Triumphant by Jack Hellner – “Trumponomics is working extremely well and it can for a long time if we don’t screw it up.”

“I saw a headline in the Washington Post telling us that Trumponomics is not working, and I wondered what the heck these people must be smoking because obviously the economy is humming on almost all fronts.
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We should all remember that a lot of economists predicted doom and gloom by now, and since they were way off they will just predict doom and gloom down the road a little. Few predicted the growth that we are having now so why would we believe their predictions for the future.

Let’s look at the current economic statistics to see how Trumponomics is working today:

Investor’s Business Daily says The Trump Boom Is Real — Just Ask The Global Economy. “Remember when everybody said that the “unexpectedly” strong economy under President Trump had nothing to do with his policies? He was just lucky because the global economy was booming, they said. Well, that attempt to dismiss the Trump boom just fell by the wayside.”

A puff or two of smoke, but no fire by Wesley Pruden – “Women are entitled to change their minds. … But some women, bless their hearts, abuse the female privilege.”

“Whether the accusation is true or the work of a troubled imagination is not the point. Mrs. Feinstein herself says she doesn’t know whether there was “truth” in the bombshell. What the senator wants is delay, to string out the proceedings until some time after the midterm congressional elections and hope that will enable further delay and send the Kavanaugh nomination to the briny deep. Her ploy, as transparent as Cellophane, succeeded. But so far nobody has confirmed anything
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California has different standards from the rest of the republic. Destroying Brett Kavanaugh might have to require destroying some of the things the rest of us think are important. One of them is the presumption of innocence that is the bedrock of the great American experiment. Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii figured that people elsewhere think more highly of the great American experiment than she does. She set out her solution to what ails America the other day to Jake Tapper of CNN. “Men have to shut up.” She thinks there’s entirely too much attention paid to the Constitution.
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When Deborah Ramirez was brought forward as “another woman” victimized by Judge Kavanaugh, her story had the same Swiss-cheese pattern of Mrs. Ford’s tale, lots of holes.
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Rape, the second most heinous crime in the human crime catalog, was once taken more seriously than it is now. Rapists were subject to punishment at the end of a rope. It’s still something heinous, but some women want to use the accusation to keep their men in line.

Whatever works.

Fox News interview shows that the Kavanaugh family are the real victims by Thomas Lifson – “The blowback begins.”

“The entire appeal of the assault on Brett Kavanaugh’s character has been based on the Left’s adherence to the ideology of victimology. In any political situation, there are oppressors and victims, and “justice” demands that the victims triumph. Regardless of the facts.
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But with the moving Fox News interview of Judge and Mrs. Kavanaugh yesterday, embedded below, Americans got a view of the way in which this man and his family have been deeply hurt. If you have not already watched it, I urge you to view the whole thing.

The New Refuge of Scoundrels by Victor Davis Hanson – “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.”

The Democrats have viciously overplayed their hand by Patricia McCarthy – “This tragedy that became a farce is now a crime, the crime of purposeful defamation of an innocent man.”

“The left is so determined to prevent Kavanaugh from becoming a justice on the Supreme Court, they have exposed themselves as the lowlife cheaters they are, without shame or any sense of decency.

When they do not win, they will do anything to undo their loss. This is what has motivated the left since the 2016 election. From the moment Trump won, they set about their plans to remove him from office by any means necessary. The cabal that put this plan into motion cares nothing for the law, the Constitution, or the people they set out to ruin as they have Brett Kavanaugh.

There are no words to adequately describe how venal these conspirators among the Congressional left are, how low they are prepared to go. And to this day, not one Democrat has spoken out against this monstrous plan to destroy a fine man who has led an impeccable life. Not one. Each and every one of them knows this is an odious campaign based on lies but not one of them will admit to this fact. The Democratic Party is officially deplorable in every sense of the word.
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Taking Trump out means humiliating anyone and everyone in his administration, his judicial nominees, and his supporters; no ethics, no morals, no scruples required. Trump is dealing with the Harry Reid/Chuck Schumer brand of politics: lethal, cruel, and barbaric.
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It is too soon to predict how this horrific, criminal upheaval will end. Will the left succeed in destroying Kavanaugh? If they do, it will signal the end of our democratic republic as we know it.

The Smearing Of Brett Kavanaugh Is Truly Evil By Mollie Hemingway – “This media-enabled Democratic smear campaign simply can’t be the standard by which we destroy people.”

“But the idea that the country should convict him and destroy his life with no evidence other than recovered and uncorroborated memories and creepy porn lawyer Michael Avenatti’s say-so is quite insane.
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Our Founding Fathers were well aware of the danger posed by people throwing accusations against political enemies. The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does a good job of explaining some of the rights of the accused in our political system: …

Kavanaugh isn’t facing criminal prosecution in part because his accusers have come nowhere near the standard required for criminal prosecution. And senators predisposed to vote against him are not the definition of an impartial jury.
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No profession has as high a self-conception as journalism. And yet in recent weeks, in an environment where they are accused of being partisan activists instead of truth tellers, they have dropped their standards somehow even further.
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Democratic senators announced at the outset of the Kavanaugh nomination that they would do what it took to stop him. They have held to their word, believing that any means necessary is morally defensible.
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At some point one must consider whether evil means are justified for progressive ends. The bottom line is that this media-enabled Democratic smear campaign simply can’t be the standard by which we destroy people. Watching this miscarriage of justice is radicalizing those who care about rule of law and political processes that have a semblance of sanity.

Report: Grassley hires former sex-crimes prosecutor to question Ford during hearing by Allahpundit – “No matter how courteous they are to Ford, the howls about patriarchal right-wing men re-violating a sexual assault victim by asking her skeptical questions about what happened to her will follow.”

“As for the process that’s due to the accuser and accused, here’s a worthy thread on the left-wing talking point that essentially no due process is owed to Kavanaugh. This is a job interview, not a court hearing, right? Well…
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I wrote about this over the weekend but will reiterate the point here: The reason we keep hearing that the burden of proof should be placed in this case on the accused, not the accuser, is because Kavanaugh’s critics understand that the evidence against him is so weak that it would fail to meet any threshold of demonstrable culpability in American law, civil or criminal. The only way to arrive at the conclusion that Kavanaugh is probably guilty of assaulting Ford based on the evidence we have is to begin there. Assume he’s guilty and force him to make the case that he isn’t. Never mind that Ford is so hazy on the where and when of the attack that she’s left him with no way to provide an alibi.

Yes, let’s see the emails that led to Deborah Ramirez’s accusation against Kavanaugh by Allahpundit – “After 35 years of uncertainty, within the span of six days, Ramirez somehow recovered her memories sufficiently to accuse a Supreme Court nominee of having sexually assaulted her.”

“And coincidentally, this memory recovery appeared to happen only after her classmates had begun emailing about Kavanaugh’s time at Yale following his nomination this summer. At some point, by Ronan Farrow’s own admission, Senate Democrats got involved in the process.

Robert VerBruggen raises a very obvious possibility: “These emails would appear to be important evidence regarding how this ball got rolling. They also may bear on the question of whether Ramirez’s memory closely matches the anonymous source’s simply because they’re both the account that was circulating while Ramirez was putting her memories together and contacting her former classmates. Let’s see them.” Yeah, let’s. Let’s see if it was Ramirez or someone else who first identified Kavanaugh as the person who assaulted her. Let’s see just how many gaps in Ramirez’s memory required filling in by others, seemingly not one of whom actually witnessed the incident. Let’s find out how many second-hand or even third-hand “witnesses” were needed to help the victim herself “remember.”
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This sure sounds like a case of someone’s hazy memory being reshaped after the fact through the power of suggestion.
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What a shrewd way to launder a smear into “news.” Investigate it privately, leak to the New Yorker that you’re investigating it, then cite their report that you’re investigating it privately as evidence of its seriousness, worthy of yet another delay in the confirmation vote.

Farrow: New Kavanaugh accuser came forward because “Senate Democrats came looking” by Jazz Shaw – “When asked about the genesis of the story and how this new accuser came into the public eye, Farrow dropped a bit of a bombshell. Deborah Ramirez apparently wasn’t looking to save the world from Brett Kavanaugh reaching the Supreme Court bench.”

“What’s really fascinating is the way Farrow is sticking to his claim that this story somehow meets normal journalistic standards for publication. Even George Stephanopoulos was pushing back on him, asking about the six days Ramirez spent being coached by her lawyer prior to making a statement and the lack of anyone listed as a witness backing up her claims. (To say nothing of her admittedly drunken state when the incident allegedly took place and the fact that she couldn’t even be sure Kavanaugh was there until her six-day legal conference.)
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It’s quickly becoming obvious that this is yet another part of a carefully coordinated attack on Brett Kavanaugh by Democrats in an attempt to thwart his confirmation to the Supreme Court. And if Ramirez isn’t a willing participant in the plot she’s one of its victims. She can blame these “Senate Democrats” who came around fishing for her if it blows up in her face.

The Descent into Progressive Madness by Victor Davis Hanson – “From Dianne Feinstein to John Kerry to Maxine Waters to Cory ‘Spartacus’ Booker, Democrats are losing their marbles.”

Ms. Blasey-Ford Attorney Casts Doubt on Appearance by sundance – “Ms. Ford cannot testify because there’s no truth in her sketchy accusations; this was a political stunt with no intention of testimony. So, with a deadline looming it is more likely her political lawyers will try to extricate Ford from their prior commitments.”

Here’s what Donald Trump is doing right by Andrew Malcolm – “Probably more than one child over the years asked a father how to handle an ominous schoolyard bully. The typical reply was to avoid a confrontation if possible.”

“But that advice often came with a warning that at some point it would likely come to physical confrontation, the only language bullies understand. And be prepared to fight.
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The United States, its people, businesses, economy and intellectual properties have been pushed around for years in the rapidly evolving cyber-world.

To put it bluntly, we’ve been patsies. Our government, companies, infrastructure and institutions have been the targets of countless cyberattacks, feints and breaches.
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To put it bluntly, official U.S. retaliation is now a real possibility, just as it was with the military during the long Cold War.
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“It’s important for people to understand,” Bolton added, “that we’re not just on defense, as we have been primarily on defense for a period of time.”

Of course, the new idea, which is actually old, is that weakness invites attack. Strength and the credible willingness to use it discourage that. Obama was willing to threaten the use of force. Remember his infamous “red line” vow if Syria used chemical weapons?

Syria did. But President Obama did nothing. President Trump issued the same warning. Syria again used gas on civilians. Five dozen Tomahawk missiles aimed at the launching base promptly took out 17 percent of Syria’s air force.

Finally, it appears the U.S. is willing to demonstrate to adversaries the costs of engaging in anti-U.S. cyber operations is higher than they want to bear.
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It will, no doubt, take a while — and probably some damaging retaliations — for those “malicious nation-state, criminal and terrorist actors” to fully grasp this administration’s new American attitude, determination and willingness to scrap back.

It’s the kind of stand-up posture that would make all those fathers of old, including mine, smile and nod.

Trump Buries The Old-World Order by Victor Davis Hanson – “the late 20-century global order of grand illusions had long ago gone comatose, but only now has been taken off life support.” … “Trump is blamed for ending the postwar order. But all he did was bury its corpse—very loudly and bigly.”

Obama Won by Victor Davis Hanson – “Yet in terms of culture, Obama clearly won.”

Corruption Junction – Desperation Amid Democrat Members of The Intelligence “Gang of Eight” by sundance – “I have never seen anything like this before.”

“The combination of arrogance, hubris and desperation within a letter (pdf here) from the four Democrats on the intelligence oversight Gang of Eight, is palpable even in text format.
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Perhaps more stunningly, and extra-constitutionally (meaning outside the framework of constitutional separation of power), within the jaw-dropping letter the four Democrats outline previous verbal conversations and current agreements with Coats, Rosenstein and Wray where the Cabinet officers agreed to keep information away from the White House Chief Executive, the President.
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This letter reeks of corruption, manipulative intent, and between-the-lines admissions of gross intelligence abuses.

At Ace of Spades: Kavanaugh’s Accuser Says She Won’t Testify Until The FBI, Which Has Already Declined to Investigate Her Non-Federal-Jurisdiction 37 Year Old Allegations, Completes Its Investigation, Sometime After a Democrat is President – Former Fusion GPS Employee: Almost Every Claim We Made About Paul Manafort Was Wrong and I Regret Having Pushed This Hoax On to the Public

Kamala Harris: Make the FBI investigate Ford allegation, not us by Ed Morrissey – “For a former Attorney General and a sitting US Senator, Kamala Harris (D-CA) has a lot of trouble grasping basic concepts such as jurisdiction.”

“Not only does it not involve a federal crime, it doesn’t have enough specificity to warrant a local police investigation either. At least from the reporting so far, Ford doesn’t have a specific time or place where this occurred, and the only other named person in the allegation — Mark Judge — denies it ever happened at all. Plus, the statute of limitations would have long ago passed on an aggravated assault, especially when committed by a minor. But even if Ford remembered the specific date, time, and provided the names of potential witnesses, and it had happened within the statute of limitations, it still wouldn’t be the FBI’s jurisdiction. It’s a local crime, and the local police would have to investigate it.
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The state of California is very lucky not to have Harris in charge of law enforcement if this is how she perceives the administration of justice. Unfortunately, they stuck the rest of us with her.

Kavanaugh’s will be the end of “normal” SCOTUS confirmations by Jazz Shaw – “If Ford is telling the truth, or at least a story with more than a kernel of truth at the heart of it, then such accusations will be impossible to completely refute. But if the charges are false and Kavanaugh’s career is left in ruins, that’s just as bad, if not worse.”

“The professor’s story simply can’t be completely proven or disproven absent some totally remarkable piece of physical evidence or truly compelling testimony from multiple individuals with remarkable memories and sterling reputations for unvarnished truth-telling. And with that, the weapon has been put on the table. Given the arc of politics in the modern era, do you honestly think that nobody else will pick it up in the future? The #MeToo moment is spawning many children and some of them are looking very problematic.

The Wall Street Journal nails it by Scott Johnson – “Today’s Wall Street Journal has published an editorial on the Kavanaugh ambush. I detect Kim Strassel’s hand in the editorial. The Journal condemns the charade staged by Senate Democrats starring Christine Blaesy Ford” – Johnson also provides Reflections on the devolution – “The long descent on which Senate Democrats have taken us now results in the smearing of Brett Kavanaugh. Neither Chuck Schumer nor Dianne Feinstein — nor any of the other Senate Democrats who announced their opposition to Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court months ago — is fit to carry Kavanaugh’s briefcase. How have we arrived at this pass?”

Climate Alarmism Fails the Test of Observation by John Hinderaker – “The catastrophic anthropogenic global warming theory is falsified by observation, and therefore is wrong. Ken Haapala, SEPP’s President, explains. There is far more at the link, but I will try to excerpt enough to make the point comprehensible”

“In most industries, if you produced calculations that were off by a factor of 2.7, you would quickly be out of a job. But government, and pro-government research, are different. Here the purpose is not to be right, but to produce alarmist reports that, amplified by uncritical news stories written by ideologically aligned journalists, justify ever-greater government control over the economy and many billions of dollars in “green” cronyism. When the whole purpose of an enterprise is corruption, truth is only an inconvenience.

Still, truth remains an annoying presence–annoying, that is, if you are a global warming alarmist. Feynman’s adage remains indisputable: a theory that is disproved by observation is worthless.

Dispatches from District 48: Adding Solar to Our House — Here Is Why – “Our house has always been a good candidate for solar. It has a large flat roof, good sightlines to the south, and we live in just about the best solar location in the country (Phoenix). The problem has been two-fold”

“The total payback comes to just about 10 years for our system. At historic cost of capital numbers this probably does not pencil out but today with ZIRP it makes sense, especially with the extra benefit of some immunity from outages. Even to get to these numbers you folks had to chip in to help my economics, in the form of the 30% tax rebate you are giving me and the above-wholesale price you are paying me for power I put into the grid.

[footnote] there is an added subsidy in the equation there from well-meaning but naive stockholders.

somebody else pays.

So, the anonymous Kavanaugh accuser reveals herself by neo – “If this sort of thing can hurt Kavanaugh, or anyone else, then no man is safe. There is always someone who can come out of the woodwork and say that something like this happened. Always. And it cannot be refuted.”

“If Flake et al decide to stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation, mission accomplished by the left. If not, the ante will have to be upped. New accusers will come forward—or rather, they will be brought forward.

So Now What? By Charles C. W. Cooke – “We have a name and an accusation, which is an improvement over the status quo ante. If you’re going to make an allegation of misconduct, this is how you do it: publicly, and attached to as much information as you have. Eternal shame on those who made specific calls before they knew what was being alleged.”

“Trouble is, while this is closer to how this is supposed to work, there’s still nothing much to investigate. The accuser has summoned a vague memory of an event from thirty years in the past — a memory she didn’t mention until six years ago, to which she cannot attach a time or place, and that is recorded in notes that neither line up cleanly with her current story nor name Kavanaugh as the perpetrator. The two other parties have both categorically denied it, and nobody else from that era has weighed in. In addition, there are no other accusers, and every thing else we know about the accused is positive. That doesn’t mean the accuser is not telling the truth, of course. But it does mean that there’s no way of preventing a classic he said/she said dispute.

Which is all to say that this has now become a political question. Unfair as it may be, the core calculation now will not be whether the charges are true (we don’t know) or whether the timings and assumptions are fair (they are not) … Either way, this is a low moment in the history of the Senate — and one that has little to do with justice.

Transparent Political Hit Job – Kavanaugh Accuser, Christine Ford-Blasey, Activated To Advance 35-year-old Accusations by sundance – “Today the Washington Post announces the accuser of Brett Kavanaugh has stepped forward to tell her story.”

“The timing is transparent: the week prior to Brett Kavanaugh committee vote; the outlet is transparent: the intelligence ‘resistance’ apparatus, The Washington Post; the accuser is transparent: a far-left California liberal professor, Christine Ford Blasey, anti-Trump ‘resistance activist’ with an anti-policy background, including recently. The accusation is transparent: 35-year-old harassment claim/accusation, from high school intended to activate the “Me Too” activists. The motive is transparent: block the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Kavanaugh.
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After carefully deleting her social media profile; and after carefully selecting left-wing attorney Debra Katz to represent her political interests; and after carefully scripting some dubious and sketchy supportive material including a lie-detector test and vague notes from a 2012 couples-therapy session, the 51-year-old academic psychologist steps forward.

Kavanaugh’s accuser recovered her memory at the time Dems were panicked Romney would win and nominate him to SCOTUS by Thomas Lifson – “It certainly is an odd coincidence.”

Professor accusing Kavanaugh is radical SJW with some damning student reviews by Selwyn Duke – “since Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hopes are being influenced by accusations that may speak to his character, it’s only fair to examine the character of his accuser.”

“Whatever the truth of the matter, however, certainly true is that Ford is a radical leftist who’d be inclined to zealously oppose a Kavanaugh nomination. For example, Breitbart reports that she not only has attended anti-Trump events, but actually donned a pink “brain p‑‑‑‑ hat” for a 2017 anti-Trump march.

Just as telling may be her student reviews.
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As for Kavanaugh, unless it’s shown that he’s like Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy and has exhibited a pattern of sexual wrongdoing, there’s nothing to see here.

Attorney: Kavanaugh accuser willing to testify publicly to Judiciary Committee by Ed Morrissey – “All she has is her testimony, which is contradicted by the other two people accused in the allegation. If Ford can’t find witnesses to identify even where and when the party took place, let alone to her state of mind during it, then all we have is an allegation without any evidence at all, and a lifetime of character and service to rebut it.”

After 35 years and no other contemporaneous witnesses, it’s unresolvable. This is why statutes of limitation exist, and why we don’t derail someone’s life over an allegation when it can’t be substantiated. Unless that equation changes, and it seems very doubtful it will, forcing Kavanaugh to withdraw or shooting down his confirmation over this will set a very bad precedent and create new incentives for political witch hunts. And you can bet that those incentives will produce more of these last-minute unsubstantiated attacks on nominees in the future.

Jeff Flake, Traitor by John Hinderaker – “Traitor” is normally considered a harsh word, but it is the only printable thing I have called “Republican” Senator Jeff Flake since he announced, a few hours ago, that he is “not comfortable voting yes” on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

“His concern is the ridiculously stale allegation by Democrat professor Christine Ford that Kavanaugh groped her and tried to kiss her at a party when they were both high school students more than 30 years ago.

Medical treatment? David Bernstein has a question. “if you allege sexual assault in the distant past against a Supreme Court nominee, and you claim in writing to have undergone medical treatment as a result of the assault, but you never saw a medical doctor, and didn’t even see a therapist for thirty-three years, a Senator might not want to stake her reputation on your claim.”

Sabotaging Trump on Iran’s Behalf by Jed Babbin – “Earlier this year, when President Trump revoked the deal, Obama said it was a serious mistake for him to have done so. What we didn’t know then was that Vichy John Kerry undertook a concerted private diplomatic effort, without the knowledge of the Trump administration, to undermine what Trump has done.”

The politics of calculating hurricane deaths by Jazz Shaw – “The current argument over precisely how many people died in Puerto Rico when Hurricane Maria came barreling through has gotten ugly.”

“The article at the WaPo turns out to be from Lynn R. Goldman of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, which compiled the death toll of 2,975 “excess deaths” in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Maria. Bear with me here, because the phrase “excess deaths” will become critical later. She took to the pages of the Washington Post to assure everyone that their study “was carried out with no interference whatsoever from any political party or institution.”
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Here’s where we run into trouble. Look at the description of the methodology they used. It’s based on “a careful examination of all of the deaths officially reported to the government of Puerto Rico between September 2017 and February 2018… using state-of-the-art mathematical modeling to compare the total number of deaths during that time to the expected number of deaths, based on historical patterns as well as age, sex, socioeconomic status and migration from the island.”

They’re counting deaths which took place five months after the storm had passed.

Pardon my incredulousness over such a serious matter, but when did we start defining hurricane deaths in this fashion?
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I’m not saying that there was or wasn’t any political bias involved in the compilation of the Milken Institute study, but that’s really not the point. The question is whether or not this is actual science. If you’re suggesting that every person who gets sick and dies months after a storm comes through because the infrastructure is inadequate, or medical supplies aren’t available, or because they were bitten by a dog who might have been too hungry because he lost his owners in the storm, are directly attributable to the hurricane, then… please. If that’s the case, the death tolls of every hurricane, tornado, wildfire, earthquake or drought in the history of the country should probably be multiplied by a factor of anywhere from 10 to 100.

How 9/11 Made a European Upper-Middle-Class Radical a Conservative by Annika Hernroth-Rothstein – “Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.”

“He and his friends were having a party, celebrating the attack on America. He called to invite me, and to this day I have never felt such intense shame.

During his speech on September 14, 2001, President Bush said that adversity introduces us to ourselves. Well, on that day I was introduced to who I had been and who I truly was. I saw my own place in the context of history, and how the ideas that I helped promote, the accusations I had met with silence, all had a part in shaping the world I now saw burning before me.

It wasn’t a game. I had played it, but it was never a game.
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On September 11, 2001, I saw, for the first time, the difference between fear and freedom, and I vowed not to be neutral between them, ever again.

Seventeen Years Later by Richard Fernandez – “Perhaps the issues raised by that attack seventeen years ago remain unresolved because the West is unwilling to answer the basic question it posed: what do we believe in?” … “Our protypical myths are missing and we have not noticed they are gone.”

“The world is now in the post-Obama phase of the response to 9/11 with no clear outcome in sight. What is clear is that immigration controversies are fueling what Anne Applebaum calls a rejection of Democracy across the West or a cold civil war depending on your point of view. Worse, surveillance technology has made Big Silicon, once the liberal bastion of the ‘digital frontier’, into Big Brother, the enforcer of hate speech rules and arbiter of truth which has added an element of paranoia to the mix.

The video of Google employees vowing never to allow something like Hillary’s defeat to occur again illustrates shows the suddenness with which the civilization’s tools can be turned against it. The ease with which instruments of surveillance and censorship can be directed at the Deplorables instead of al-Qaeda was recently brought home by a video showing a senior Google official vowing to “use the great strength and resources and reach we have to continue to advance really important values”. The unspoken agreement on values at the Google all-hands meeting is a reminder of how easily groupthink can become what Scott Adams called the ‘casual evil’ of self-righteousness.”

the “casual evil’ of self-righteousness.” It seems the ‘casual’ part is withering as self awareness grows and dissonance becomes prominent.