The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

#Kavanaugh: Graham Emerges Heroic

Posted on | September 27, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

Sen. Lindsey Graham is one of the Republicans I’ve hated most over the years, because of his pro-amnesty stance on immigration. Most other conservatives feel the same way. But today? He was absolutely a hero.

“This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics,” Graham said, and pointed the finger quite obviously at Dianne Feinstein. “If you really wanted the truth, you really wouldn’t have done what you’ve done to this guy. . . . I hope the American people can see through this sham. That you knew about it and you held it. You had no intention of protecting Dr. Ford. She’s as much of a victim as you are. God, I hate to say it, cause these have been my friends, but let me tell ya when it comes to this, you’re looking for a fair process? You came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend. This is going to destroy the ability of good people to come forward because of this crap!”

 

Feinstein held onto Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation for six weeks, waited until after Judge Kavanaugh had sat through more than 30 hours of testimony to the Judicial Committee, and then went public with this charge from circa 1982, which has been denied by everyone Professor Ford claimed could have verified it, and which does not comport with any known facts. Then, in today’s hearings, Democrats had the effrontery to demand an FBI investigation which could have been inaugurated in July, if only Feinstein had asked for it. However, Feinstein would not share Ford’s accusation with Republican members of the committee. Why? Because she obviously viewed it as a “hole card” she could play late in the game, as part of a calculated strategy to delay Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Feinstein should be ashamed, and every Democrat who has cooperated with Feinstein’s unethical behavior should be ashamed.

Thank you, Sen. Graham, for courageously speaking the truth. I hereby take back half of the bad things I’ve said about you.

UPDATE: Great headline from Ace:

MANSPLAINED! Graham Runs a Train on Senate Democrats

After the hearing ended, I spoke to a source on Capitol Hill who told me that there should be an ethics investigation of Feinstein’s handling of the Ford letter.



 

Category: Senate, Supreme Court

#Kavanaugh Hearing Update: A Few Thoughts on Prosecutorial Discretion

Posted on | September 27, 2018 | 2 Comments

Remember the Kaitlyn Hunt saga?

While watching today’s morning session of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, I found myself thinking about that 2013 case, in which an 18-year-old former high-school cheerleader was caught in a lesbian affair with a 14-year-old girl. When that story made nationwide headlines, I took alarm because the so-called #FreeKate movement was trying to put a “gay loophole” into statutory rape laws.

As the case progressed, I had frequent occasion to mention that Hunt had been offered a plea bargain and had, unwisely, refused that offer.

No prosecutor wants to take a statutory rape case to trial because, in most such cases, it involves an underage person who was a willing participant in this sexual activity which, as a matter of law, made her a victim. Generally, the underage victim does not want the accused person to go to prison, but the crime has been brought to attention of the police by the minor’s parents, and this puts the prosecutor in a difficult spot. If clear evidence of the illegal sexual relationship exists — as in the Hunt case — the prosecutor would be derelict in his duty if he failed to bring charges. However, he doesn’t want to spend the taxpayer’s money for a trial that would require him to put the minor victim on the witness stand, to endure cross-examination by the defense attorney. Therefore, in such cases, a plea-bargain is offered and, in almost every case, the accused takes the deal. Why didn’t Hunt take the plea?

Politics — she and her parents believed she was a victim of “homophobia,” and that they could mobilize gay-rights activism on her behalf, thus forcing the prosecutor to drop the charges. Oops.

 

Kaitlyn Hunt went to jail because of that miscalculation, and I’m watching this Kavanaugh hearing with the same sense of regret I felt as I watched the Hunt case hurtle toward a predictable disaster.

This didn’t have to happen. When Christine Blasey Ford contacted Diane Feinstein in July, she said she wanted to remain anonymous. Feinstein could have done many things with this. Among other things, she could have informed the Judiciary Committee chairman, Senator Grassley, about this information she had received. Instead, Feinstein held onto the letter for weeks, and it was not until Sept. 13 — after Judge Kavanaugh had sat through more than 30 hours of hearings — that Feinstein went public with this startling accusation. Those of us who, as conservatives, find ourselves forced to defend Judge Kavanaugh, are not responsible for the consequences of Feinstein’s decision. This was her exercise of prosecutorial discretion, as it were, and the entire responsibility rests on Feinstein and the Senate Democrats.

Don’t blame me, in other words, because circumstances compel me to cast doubt on Professor Ford’s credibility. That’s like people who kept yelling “homophobia” at me during the Kaitlyn Hunt ordeal.

Really, I’m just a guy with a blog. I can’t tell other people what to do. Dianne Feinstein didn’t ask for my advice, and all I can do under these circumstances is to fight the battle thrust upon me. Selah.



 

Category: Senate, Supreme Court

While Watching the #Kavanaugh Hearing

Posted on | September 27, 2018 | 1 Comment

Not going to live-blog today’s Senate Judiciary Committee, exactly, but I do want to have a thread to share a few of my thoughts and allow the commenters to provide their own feedback. When confronted with something like Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation, intelligent people must consider the possibility that it is either true or false. If she is telling the truth, not only did Brett Kavanaugh engage in bad — and perhaps criminal — behavior, but he is also lying in his denials. Yet this would also mean that all the other people named by Professor Ford as witnesses, but who instead denied any knowledge of the events she described, are also lying. The fact that these other witnesses failed to corroborate Professor Ford’s story, and that by her own admission she never told anyone about it until 2012, makes this story unverified although we cannot claim to know that she is lying. That is to say, it is still possible that Professor Ford’s story could be true even if no one else remembers the particular house party she described. This perplexes me, and it should bother everyone, for many reasons. Having called attention to this crucial aspect of the drama, however, I’ll leave off for now.

UPDATE: Observing the reaction on Twitter, it’s obvious that many people who have never watched a Senate committee hearing are watching this one. So at least this televised trainwreck will have some educational value. Lemons, lemonade, some assembly required.

UPDATE II: So, it’s five minutes of Democrats pontificating, alternating with five minutes of patient fact-based question from the lawyer chosen by the Republican side of the committee. Chairman Grassley occasionally makes a few points.

Via Stephen Green at Instapundit:

“Feinstein is paving the way to prohibit questions on Ford’s character yet in he/she said cases, it is one’s impression of character that is the determining factor. There’s nothing else to go by when you have to unsubstantiated claims.”
Feinstein is no dummy. She’s trying to rule out in advance the only meaningful questions.

UPDATE III: Can I mention that politics is a team sport? This is important to understand. When a waitress at a D.C. restaurant claimed that Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd tried to make a “sandwich” with her, Republicans were like, “Believe the survivors!” So you have to understand, in this particular situation, that the debunking of Professor Ford’s claim is a task undertaken by Republicans as a partisan duty, in the same way that defending Professor Ford as 100% credible is a partisan duty for Democrats. I don’t like this. It’s not my choice, but has been thrust upon me, to defend Judge Kavanaugh and to decry the tactics used by Democrat in their attempt to derail his nomination. We must fight the battles we are in, without regard to how we got into them. There is no use wishing things were some other way than they actually are.

UPDATE IV: This hearing is traumatizing me. Having to listen to pious lectures about “credibility” from, e.g., Senator Blumenthal? Recovering from this will require years of therapy. Or maybe a few beers. Readers are invited to contribute to the Trauma Recovery Fund.

UPDATE V: A Few Thoughts on Prosecutorial Discretion.

UPDATE VI: Watching Judge Kavanaugh’s opening statement. It’s gut-wrenching, and also makes me angry enough to chew through steel. As he recites all the evidence pointing toward his innocence, you get the sense of how wrong it was for him to have been falsely accused in such a manner, simply because the Democrats wanted to block his nomination.

UPDATE VII: Wow. Fireworks. CrazyTown.

FINAL UPDATE: Graham Emerges Heroic.



 

Category: Senate, Supreme Court

The Big Day: Avenatti Client Discredited, Ford’s Accusation Now Collapsing

Posted on | September 27, 2018 | Comments Off on The Big Day: Avenatti Client Discredited, Ford’s Accusation Now Collapsing

 

Wow, what an eventful 24 hours this has been! The client of the Creepy Porn Lawyer, Julie Swetnick, came forward with her wild “gang rape” tale and was almost immediately was discredited. First, we learned her ex-boyfriend had gotten a restraining order against her, then Lisa Miller (who partied with the Georgetown Prep football team back in the day) explained she never saw anything like what Swetnick described and, also, there was no way this trashy Gaithersburg girl was at those parties.

Possibly more consequential, at least two men have contacted Senate Judiciary Committee investigators to say that they believe that they, and not Kavanaugh, may have been the preppie boys Ford described having a drunken encounter with at a house party. This calls to mind the mistaken-identity scenario Ed Whelan discussed last week, and it certainly would explain why Ford was so certain it was Kavanaugh while Kavanaugh was certain it wasn’t him. Memory is tricky, and if you’ve seen one Irish Catholic prep-school jock, you’ve seen ’em all.

So the big televised showdown today in the Judiciary Committee may prove to be a complete debacle for the Democrats who put their faith in Ford as the weapon that would destroy Kavanaugh, and as for the Creepy Porn Lawyer’s client — wow, she had Crazy Eyes, didn’t she?

We are no longer living in a republic, and no longer governed by the rule of law, if Senate Democrats succeed in their dishonest smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh. Abandoning every concept of justice and all standards of decency, Democrats have disgraced themselves in their desperate partisan effort to derail Judge Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court. And if the GOP majority in the Senate cannot summon the courage to stand firm against this stampede of flimsy accusations, what point is there in even having a Republican Party?
Democrats have turned the confirmation process into a surrealistic circus of smears that Judge Kavanaugh himself called the “Twilight Zone.”
“This process is a disgrace and is harming good people,” a group of Judge Kavanaugh’s high-school friends declared in a letter sent Wednesday to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley and the committee’s ranking minority member, Sen. Dianne Feinstein. These friends were reacting to the latest and most lurid of the accusations made against Judge Kavanaugh, this one by a woman named Julie Swetnick, who is represented by Michael Avenatti. Swetnick’s bizarre claim that Kavanaugh was a participant in gang rapes at house parties was denounced as false by those who knew him during his days at Georgetown Prep.
“Nonsense,” these 60 friends declared in their letter to Sens. Grassley and Feinstein. “We have never witnessed any behavior that even approaches what is described in this allegation. It is reprehensible. In the extensive amount of time we collectively spent with Brett, we do not recall having ever met someone named Julie Swetnick. Nor did we ever observe Brett engaging in any conduct resembling that described in Ms. Swetnick’s declaration.” . . .

You can read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.



 

Category: Senate, Supreme Court

In The Mailbox: 09.26.18

Posted on | September 26, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #390
357 Magnum: Lawyers Behaving Badly
EBL: Andrew Breitbart – On Clarence Thomas And Political Correctness
Twitchy: Did Kavanaugh Accuser Julie Swetnick Accidentally Implicate Herself In A Crime?
Louder With Crowder: Rebuttal – John Oliver’s Dangerous “Hate Speech” Lies

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #92 – The Nordic Walking Episode
American Power: Senate Majority Leader McConnell Promises Vote On Kavanaugh Confirmation
American Thinker: Trump’s Real Job Approval Could Be As High As 60%
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: Pat Condell On “Brexit Morons”, also, A Smear Too Far
CDR Salamander: Buy Italian, All The Cool Kids Are
Da Tech Guy: Kavanaugh As Will Cane In Washington Town, also, Will Ford Cut & Run?
Don Surber: Only 21% Believe The Media
Dustbury: Somehow It Missed Me
First Street Journal: Hold Them Accountable!
The Geller Report: Somali Muslim Migrants Riot At Minnesota Amusement Park On Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, Force Evacuation, also, Bolton Warns Iran of “Hell To Pay” If Aggression Continues
Hogewash: Don’t Know Much About The Constitution, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Legal Insurrection: 60 Kavanaugh Classmates To Sign Letter Scotching Swetnick Allegations, also, Kavanaugh Dismisses New Allegations – “Ridiculous And From The Twilight Zone”
Michelle Malkin: Stop Google’s Kiddie Predators
The PanAm Post: At The UN, Discussion of How To Remove Maduro From Office
Power Line: Third Time’s A Charm, also, Dear Senator Feinstein
Shark Tank: Gillum’s Tallahassee Crime Claims Skewered By His Former Chief Of Staff
Shot In The Dark: Advice For Modern Life
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA
The Political Hat: Transing Academia
This Ain’t Hell: President Trump Visits The UN, also, Navy Says Assault Rifles Seized From Persian Gulf Boats
Victory Girls: The Blasey Ford roller Coaster Ride Continues
Volokh Conspiracy: Why It’ll Be Difficult To Assess Ford’s Credibility
Weasel Zippers: Illegal Alien Accused Of Murdering Fishing Boat Crewmate Makes Bail, also, Avenatti Bombshell Witness Claim Actually The Fruit Of A 4chan Prank?
Mark Steyn: Hearing The Women, Then & Now


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Your Tax Dollars at Work

Posted on | September 26, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

Recent news from Dayton, Ohio:

The Ohio Liquor Control Commission revoked the liquor permit of Sharkey’s bar, an adult entertainment establishment, effective at the close of business Thursday, after investigators used food stamps to buy lap dances.
Agent-in-Charge Michelle Thourot said agents began investigating the Twenty Two Fifty Inc., also known as Sharkey’s, in May 2017. During the investigation, agents were able to purchase drugs and lap dances using food stamp benefits.
Throughout the five-month investigation, agents reportedly exchanged $2,404.87 in food stamps to purchase heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil, cocaine, methamphetamines and lap dances.
Criminal charges were filed against employees and patrons for drug trafficking, food stamp trafficking, aggravated shipment and distribution of heroin, engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity and illegal sexual activity.
Agents also filed 44 charges that were heard by the Liquor Control Commission that included drug possession, drug sales, engaging in sexual activity, food stamp trafficking and solicitation.
This is the second adult entertainment establishment liquor permit that has been revoked by the Liquor Control Commission as a result of an Ohio Investigative Unit investigation into food stamp and drug trafficking this year in the Dayton area. The other location, The Harem, lost its liquor license in May 2018.

Food stamps for lap dances? Federal benefits exchanged for heroin?

This demonstrates how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We do not want the poor to suffer from hunger, and so our tax dollars are used to feed them. However, poverty is not a random occurrence. It has been demonstrated (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994) that there is a strong correlation between poverty and low IQ. Now, a person may be both stupid and poor without being immoral. We are sympathetic to the dimwit who barely made it past eighth grade, who works low-wage jobs to support himself, and who is an honest, decent, law-abiding citizen despite all his disadvantages. However, the liberal welfare state acts to promote moral corruption among the poor. Considering the poor to be victims of society, the liberal wishes to substitute welfare benefits for wages, to relieve the poor of the burden of earning their own living.

With food stamps, Medicaid and Section 8 housing vouchers, the poor are given a higher standard of living than they could honestly earn and, rather than understanding this as a species of charity — something they are provided because of the sympathy of their well-meaning fellow citizens — the poor are encouraged to believe they have a “right” to all these taxpayer-funded benefits. This rights-based view of welfare as an entitlement is destructive of every moral principle. We are justifying theft when we tell people that they have a “right” to other people’s money, and permit able-bodied people to be exempt from labor because they have a “right” to live at the expense of hard-working taxpayers.

Years ago, I was asked to speak at a Christian home-schooling conference. I presented a libertarian critique of the public education system. During the Q-and-A after my speech, I got a question I hadn’t expected: “How does your Christianity affect your political beliefs?”

“Well,” I answered, “it has something to do with ‘Thou shalt not steal.'”

From there, I launched into a critique of the immorality of the liberal welfare state, and how we are corrupted by our complicity in a system that tells us we are entitled to be given things “free.” More than half a century ago, Democrats vastly expanded the welfare system and called this a “War on Poverty.” In his final State of the Union address in 1988, Ronald Reagan delivered the epitaph for this folly:

My friends, some years ago, the Federal Government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.
Today the Federal Government has 59 major welfare programs and spends more than $100 billion a year on them. What has all this money done? Well, too often it has only made poverty harder to escape. Federal welfare programs have created a massive social problem. With the best of intentions, government created a poverty trap that wreaks havoc on the very support system the poor need most to lift themselves out of poverty: the family. Dependency has become the one enduring heirloom, passed from one generation to the next, of too many fragmented families.

Here we are, three decades later, and Democrats still haven’t accepted the truth that President Reagan told them. Food stamps are being exchanged for lap dances and heroin in Ohio, and if you point to this as evidence of the corrupting influence of welfare, they’ll call you a racist! Yet I don’t care whether the perpetrators of welfare fraud are white, black or Chinese, the point is that the wages of honest citizens are being taxed to pay for this, and that the morality of poor people is being destroyed by the entitlement mentality these programs encourage.

Unlike Democrats, I still believe in the American Dream. I still believe that there is dignity in honest labor, and that the poor man who earns his own living by the sweat of his brow deserves respect. I still believe that, through a life of hard work, sobriety and thrift, a poor man has reason to hope that his labor is not in vain, and that if his children will follow his example, they have a decent chance for a better life. It is wrong — it is immoral — for Democrats to say otherwise, to promote policies that encourage the poor to think of themselves as helpless victims.

By the way, while I appreciate the diligence of these agents in Ohio in exposing the food-stamps-for-lap-dances scheme at Sharkey’s Lounge, I’m hurt that they didn’t call me in to help with their investigation. This is the kind of work that I’d be happy to do on a freelance basis.

“Where were you last night?” my wife will ask.

“Investigating welfare fraud.”

Just doing my duty as a citizen. God bless America.



 

 

Category: Corruption, Crime, Ohio

The Democrats as Underpants Gnomes

Posted on | September 26, 2018 | Comments Off on The Democrats as Underpants Gnomes

In a comment on last night’s post, Daniel Freeman described the Democrats’ strategy in the Kavanaugh confirmation process:

Step 1: Present a non-disprovable claim.
Step 2: Demand that it be disproven.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!

It’s the “Underpants Gnomes” plan, you see.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a vote on the Kavanaugh nomination Friday morning. My brother Kirby suggests that Judge Kavanaugh’s accuser will find an excuse to skip Thursday’s hearing.

This does seem like the most likely scenario. Christine Blasey Ford never expected to be compelled to prove her accusation. As Oregon Muse said, she wanted to smear Judge Kavanaugh anonymously, like Eric Clanton wearing a mask and smashing Trump supporters in the head.

Democrats promote a worldview in which no one ever has to consider consequences of their actions or take responsibility for their own behavior, because there’s always a scapegoat to take the blame. Crime and poverty are attributed to racism, which means that white people who’ve never set foot in Baltimore or Chicago are somehow to blame for the misery that prevails in those Democrat-run cities. Women are never responsible for their own actions, because they’re victims of sexism, so we’re not allowed to question Professor Ford’s unsubstantiated claims.

Buying into that Democrat worldview creates a sort of paranoia, a persecution complex where people think of themselves as victims and are constantly looking for scapegoats to blame for their problems, and the political process breaks down into a series of witch hunts. The mob that stormed into a D.C. restaurant to harass Sen. Ted Cruz was a typical exercise of this mentality. Last night on Sean Hannity’s show, Newt Gingrich had some interesting comments about that:

 

“I mean, what has happened to America, when random left-wing totalitarians think they can violate private property, trespass in a restaurant, go in and intimidate a citizen who is simply trying to have dinner, and they think they’re heroes? . . . We’re watching a period where what we have to understand is this is about raw power, and if the left can stop Kavanaugh we will not get another conservative Justice in our lifetime on the Supreme Court.”

These “random left-wing totalitarians” are typical Democrat voters. They don’t care about facts. They couldn’t possibly defend their worldview in debate, and so they seek the kind of “raw power” that will enable them to silence anyone who disagrees with them. This is why your liberal cousin has “unfriended” you on Facebook. Their devotion to the Democrat Party is emotional and irrational, and the only reason they can think of to explain why someone might disagree with them is “hate.” Therefore, if you voted for Trump, you must be a racist sexist homophobe — a bad person, morally and intellectually inferior — and Democrats don’t want to hear any argument that might require them to consider alternative explanations. You can never hope to persuade such people that they’re wrong; the liberal is a type of religious fanatic, whose prejudices are a core element of their identity. It’s a cult, like Scientology.

Republicans have no choice but to beat the Democrats at this “raw power” game. Ram the Kavanaugh nomination through the Senate — damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, to quote Admiral Farragut — and then make Democrats pay for their circus in the midterm elections.

November 6 is coming. People need to wake the hell up.



 

Category: Senate, Supreme Court

Late Night With In The Mailbox: 09.25.18

Posted on | September 26, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Did Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti Have A Bad Day Fishing!
Twitchy: Final Chapter of “Ted Cruz & Wife Chased From Restaurant” Story Proves Lefty Harassment A Big Time Fail
Louder With Crowder: All Your Hot Takes Comparing Bill Cosby To Brett Kavanaugh Suck. Stop It.

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Going Down Without A Fight
American Power: Brutal Binaries Of American Politics, also, Playboy Club New York Opens
American Thinker: Trumponomics Triumphant
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Friend Zone News
BattleSwarm: James Woods Refuses To Delete Tweet
CDR Salamander: How Long Do We Want Our Ships In Service Again?
Da Tech Guy: The Ivory Tower & Truth, also, Tripped
Don Surber: Chaos & Incompetence In The White House Press Corps
Dustbury: Pick On Someone Your Own Caliber
First Street Journal: The Success Of Socialism – Around 7% Of Venezuelans Have Fled The Workers’ Paradise
The Geller Report: Facebook Bans Rainbow Hijab Photo For “Islamic Blasphemy”, also, Maldives Marine Artwork Destroyed As “Threat To Islamic Unity”
Hogewash: Yours Truly, Johnny Atsign, also, Team Kimberin Post Of The Day
JustOneMinute: Brett Goes To College
Legal Insurrection: NYT Removes Language Helpful To Kavanaugh From Article On Yale Accuser Ramirez, also, #MeToo PAC Launches, Only Targets Republicans
The PanAm Post: Venezuelan Oil Industry In Crisis As Rig Count Plummets
Power Line: Are The Democrats Throwing Ellison Under The Bus? also, Jane Mayer Revisited
Shark Tank: Florida GOP Slams Gillum As Soft On Crime
Shot In The Dark: The Cold Civil War
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday
The Political Hat: Kernal Of Social Justice
This Ain’t Hell: The Virtue Of Military Service Is A Myth & It’s Destroying This Country, also, Ridiculous
Victory Girls: President Trump Speaks To The UN
Volokh Conspiracy: Minneapolis Star Tribune Seeking To Unseal Rep. Ellison’s Divorce Records
Weasel Zippers: Jimmy Kimmel Wants To Amputate Brett Kavanaugh’s Penis, also, Sen. Hirono (D-HI) Says No Presumption Of Innocence For Kavanaugh
Megan McArdle: #MeToo Credibility Depends On The Journalists Reporting On It
Mark Steyn: Fever, also, Wilderness Of Mirrors


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