GOP NEEDS UPDATE TO DEMS’ UFC CAGE MATCH RULES

By Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/
October 10, 2018



It's time to update the GOP's Marquess of Queensbury Rules. 

If you saw Ruth Bader Ginsburg at Brett Kavanaugh's swearing-in ceremony, you know that we may need to fill her seat in about 4 1/2 minutes. Naturally, I hope she lives to be 300 -- although parenthetically, it seems she already has. 

The confirmation hearings for Kavanaugh made Robert Bork's hearings look like a day at the beach. At least liberals only lied about Bork's judicial philosophy. They didn't accuse him of being Ted Bundy. The next nomination hearing will make Kavanaugh's look like an ice cream social. 

Just because it didn't work this time doesn't mean Republicans' work is done. They have to make sure this never happens again. 

Democrats are already pushing the idea that Kavanaugh's confirmation was somehow illegitimate because of the shoddy FBI investigation. Liberals' beef is that the FBI neglected to interview Kavanaugh's former Yale classmates, who dispute his characterization of precisely how big a drinker he was in college. 

I wouldn't say he was a belligerent drunk, but more of an obstreperous drunk.

No, no! I would say he was a mild drunk with periods of obstreperousness. 

This is not the stuff of perjury prosecutions. 

Of course, if true, it's HUGE. Kavanaugh's demeanor when drunk in college sounds nearly as awful as liberals' behavior when sober -- obnoxious, aggressive and argumentative. I refer you to the recent antics we've seen on Capitol Hill, as well as anywhere Ted Cruz stops in for a bite. 

Since none of the FBI's latest report on Kavanaugh has leaked, the one thing we can be sure of is that the agents turned up nothing unfavorable on him. Except for a colonoscopy, I think we're done with Kavanaugh. 

It's the accusers who have skirted investigation. Even Republicans have moved on. He's on the court, so who cares if Kavanaugh was falsely accused of "rape" in front of his little girls?

That's what everyone thought when the falsely accused Duke lacrosse players were proved innocent and the D.A. was disbarred. Why go after the accuser? Hasn't she suffered enough? 

Crystal Mangum was not prosecuted for falsely charging she was gang-raped. And see? No harm, no foul! She went on to live a happy and productive -- oh, wait! The next time we heard about Mangum was when she stabbed her boyfriend to death. 

On reflection, it certainly seems possible that Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick was not being completely, 100 percent honest in her sworn statements about repeatedly attending high school parties in the 1980s, when she was a college student, where underage girls were drugged and gang-raped. 

Deborah Ramirez's three-decade-old, unsubstantiated, recovered memory of a drunken Kavanaugh exposing himself as a college freshman is the sort of charge that makes feminists laugh! (I know that from reading Gloria Steinem's explanation in The New York Times that Gov. Bill Clinton summoning a female underling to his hotel room, dropping his pants and saying, "Kiss it!" did not rise to the level of sexual harassment. He took "no" for an answer!) 

Perhaps Republicans could get Steinem to explain under oath why it's acceptable for a sitting governor to do what is disqualifying for a drunk college freshman to do. 

While no one would question the word of a living saint like Christine Blasey Ford, some parts of her testimony demand the clarity that can be obtained only in a formal legal proceeding -- such as her trauma-induced need for two front doors (when the second front door seems clearly attached to a rental apartment); her fear of flying (but only when it will delay a confirmation hearing); and her claim that she never helped anyone prepare for a polygraph (contradicted by her ex-live-in boyfriend); among other things. 

Pretending they are the wronged ones, liberals keep yipping about Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. They believe any attack on Kavanaugh was justified after the dirty trick pulled by Republicans on Garland. 

The Republicans' refusal to hold hearings on Garland has been called an "unprecedented obstruction" (MSNBC's Chris Hayes), a "violation of traditions in norms" (Hayes again), an "insult and injury" (Sen. Cory Booker) and "remarkable and unprecedented" (MSNBC's Rachel Maddow). The GOP's treatment of Garland showed their "hypocrisy on Brett Kavanaugh" (MSNBC's Ari Melber). 

The truth is apparently a big secret, inasmuch as even Republicans aren't saying it. You'll read it here for the first time. 

The Republicans' wily, underhanded, double-dealing trick with Garland was this: Win a majority of seats in the U.S. Senate! I know liberals won't read the Constitution, but can they do math? Garland didn't have the votes. 

Republicans had 54 seats and, in 2016, Senate rules still required 60 votes for Supreme Court appointments. Democrats would have needed 14 Republican senators to switch sides to confirm a Democratic president's nominee. 

There was no way that was happening. A Republican Senate simply wasn't going to give "consent" to any Democratic nominee eight months before a presidential election -- even an election that everyone thought Hillary was going to win. The Constitution says "advice and consent," not "advice and rubber-stamp." 

There was nothing "unprecedented" about a Republican Senate rejecting a Democratic nominee -- other than the fact that Republicans were the ones doing it. Democrats do it all the time. 

That's how we got Justice Anthony Kennedy -- whom Kavanaugh replaced: A Democratic Senate rejected Reagan nominee Robert Bork. That's also how we got Harry Blackmun, author of the ridiculously lawless Roe v. Wade: A Democratic Senate rejected Richard Nixon's previous nominees Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell. 

It would have been a waste of time and only humiliated Garland to hold hearings. At least Republicans didn't accuse him of gang rape.

Lock Up Your Sons

By Jonathan David Farley
https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/09/lock-up-your-sons/
October 9, 2018


Protesters on Capitol Hill October 5, 2018 (Jose Luis Magana/AFP/Getty Images)

Look at thus [sic] chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement,” wrote Georgetown University professor Christine Fair, referring to Senate Republicans and the guilty-until-proven innocent Supreme Court nominee (now Justice) Brett Kavanaugh. “All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”

“It is hard to read an article like this and avoid the conclusion that we live in a culture that hates women, just hates us,” spat Chloe Angyal on MSNBC, referring to the University of Virginia “rape” case. A woman Rolling Stone called “Jackie” had claimed that several members of a fraternity took turns raping her at a party. The magazine ended up paying $1.65 million to the fraternity because “Jackie” lied. But the fact that it was so easy for so many to believe the outrageous lie shows, in truth, that we live in a culture that hates men.

“But really, guess who’s perpetuating all of these kinds of actions? It’s the men in this country,” Senator Mazie Hirono(D-Hawaii) said recently. She was referring, of course, to the assault allegation against Kavanaugh. “And I just want to say to the men in this country: Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing, for a change.”

Never mind that in March a 36-year-old woman in Hirono’s home state was indicted for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy. Never mind that 88 percent of police─the people who protect women from assaults─are men (i.e., only 12 percent of those who’ve “stepped up” are women). Never mind that 96 percent of firemen are men. Never mind that 85 percent of our military personnel are men, and 100 percent of the people with Selective Service numbers (for military draft eligibility) are men.

Men doing the “right thing,” using their natural aggression to protect others, is the norm. If Hirono had made her comment about a racial group (“It’s the blacks in this country”), she would be forced to resign. If a male politician had told the women of America to “Just shut up,” an army of purple- and red-haired Amazons would be outside his office with pitchforks.

Shifting Narratives

Our society in fact adulates women. More than 80 percent of the men on The Titanic died, while 75 percent of the women lived; yet clearly men, being stronger, could probably have taken all of the lifeboats if what Chloe Angyal claimed were true.  A Baltimore woman was able to get a mob to murder a man  just by falsely claiming that the man had raped her.  Though disputed, some say that in Muslim jurisprudence, the word of a woman is sometimes worth half that of a man, and, we in the West look down our noses at that. Yet it is undisputedly the case in our society that the word of a woman is worth more than that of two men.

Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, named four people at the alleged party where Kavanaugh allegedly attacked her. Kavanaugh categorically denied this. A second man said he had no memory of such a party or incident. A third man said he had no knowledge of such a party. None of that mattered. The fourth purported witness, a woman, said she has been a lifelong friend of Blasey, but could not recall ever being at a party with Kavanaugh.

That was when the media conveniently started discussing a second accuser.

Deborah Ramirez says she was drunk and cannot clearly remember a college party where Kavanaugh allegedly showed her, in the presence of several people, something of his she did not wish to see. Indeed, it was only “[a]fter six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney” that she could remember. Even though “The New Yorker [had] not confirmed with other eyewitnesses that Kavanaugh was present at the party”—indeed, “two of those male classmates who Ramirez alleged were involved in the incident, the wife of a third male student she said was involved, and one other classmate, Dan Murphy, disputed Ramirez’s account of events”—The New Yorker published the story anyway. The word of one drunk girl is worth more than that of three men.

Ramirez claimed that she was scarred by the experience because she only ever wanted to see a naked man after she was married. And yet she later attended Kavanaugh’s wedding, posing with him, smiling, for pictures.

Protect Men From False Claims

This gives us the solution. Today, there are “rape shield” policies that allow women, like Jackie, to make anonymous accusations with impunity. Courts are forbidden to discuss the history of accusers, even when it is relevant, as in Ramirez’s case (she says Kavanaugh exposed himself to her, and this was bad because she only ever wanted to see such a sight after she got married. We’re discussing when he lost his virginity; so, did she wait until she got married? If not, this suggests that she’s not truthful. Knowing if she was a virgin bride, as she implies she wanted to be, enables us to assess her credibility) or in Bill Cosby’s case (one of his accusers pled guilty to prostitution; prostitutes literally will lie with men for money, no drugs needed).

If it is relevant what a friend of Kavanaugh’s may have once told an ex-girlfriend about a party not involving Kavanaugh (!), why can’t we discuss Blasey’s high-school yearbook—we’re discussing his—or the rumor that Blasey boasted of having been with 54 men in high school? Someone like that may have tussled with more than one male and gotten her parties confused. In an era of slutwalks, when women can legally go topless, laws protecting the “honor” of women are anachronistic.

Laws protecting men are needed. Women are the perpetrators in 70 percent of cases of one-sided domestic violence.

A few years ago, a woman threatened my life, touting her connection to the mafia (a credible claim) and saying that I might wind up “in the news.” I reported this thinly veiled threat to police. After I filed charges, I got an appointment with two women working for the office of the state’s attorney. One of those women literally laughed in my face, saying it’s good to be “in the news.”

Our society is dripping with the hatred of women─for men.

Today’s “Josef K” is Kavanaugh. Tomorrow it’s your son.

Trauma and Truth

The feminist movement has shifted the definition of rape to include regret.

Heather Mac Donald

https://www.city-journal.org/rape-16216.html

October 7, 2018

Protesters demonstrate at the U.S. Capitol October 6th. (Chris Kaplonis/AFP/Getty Images)

The confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court dealt the #MeToo and #BelieveSurvivors movements their first major defeat. Those feminist ideologies will continue wreaking havoc throughout American institutions, however—especially the claim that self-professed sexual-assault victims deserve unqualified belief.

That idea—that the presumption of innocence, fundamental to common law, should be suspended for accusations of sexual assault—has been the cornerstone of the campus-rape bureaucracy; during the Kavanaugh hysteria, that conceit jumped out of the ivory tower into the world at large. It will be no easy task to put it back. In preparation for the next Salem witch trial-like ordeal, therefore, it is worth empirically rebutting the #BelieveSurvivors mandate, as well as its corollary: the claim that if most self-professed rape survivors in our patriarchal culture don’t report their assaults, that’s because the “social and emotional” costs are too high, as California congressman Ted Lieu explained on MSNBC last Sunday.

Columbia University’s infamous “mattress girl,” Emma Sulkowicz, was conducting an on-again, off-again sexual relationship with another student, Paul Nungesser. Two days after one of their consensual couplings, in August 2012, Nungesser invited Sulkowicz to a party in his room. She texted back: “yusss,” adding: “Also I feel like we need to have some real time where we can talk about life and thingz because we still haven’t really had a paul-emma chill sesh since summmmerrrr.” A week later, she suggested that they hang out together: “I want to see yoyououoyou.” Two months later, she texted: “I love you Paul. Where are you?!?!?!?!” 

It wasn’t until eight months after their August 2012 coupling that Sulkowicz filed a campus-rape charge, alleging that Nungesser had anally raped her while she struggled and told him to stop. She claims that she waited so long to file so as to avoid re-traumatizing herself. Nungesser argues that she was simply chagrined that they had not become an exclusive couple. Whatever Sulkowicz’s motivation for filing, it is impossible to read her post-coital pleas to Nungesser as the aftermath of the most terrifying experience a woman can have, short of murder, rather than as the attempts of a female to reel a favored male back into her orbit.

Nevertheless, Sulkowicz was canonized as a martyr to rape culture, thanks to her stunt of carrying around a mattress to protest Columbia’s failure to expel Nungesser. New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand declared herself “inspired by Emma and all of her sisters in arms who have made their voices heard and given voice to thousands of other survivors all around the country.” Gillibrand invited Sulkowicz to President Obama’s 2015 State of Union address in order to “further amplify her voice.”

In September 2013, two freshmen at Occidental College in Southern California had sex after both had been on a 24-hour drinking binge. After making out at a party in the male’s dorm room, they conspired to evade the girl’s friends, who had escorted her back to her own room. The male, known as “John Doe” in court papers, texted “Jane Doe”: “The second that you away from them, come back.” Jane responded: “Okay.” John wrote back: “Just get back here.” Jane responded: “Okay do you have a condom.” John replied: “Yes.” Jane texted back: “Good, give me two minutes.” Before leaving her dorm room for their appointed tryst, Jane texted a friend from back home: “I’m going to have sex now.” After their sexual encounter, Jane texted a smiley face to her friends. She then went to a common room and sat on another guy’s lap, joking about NASCAR. The next day she went back to John’s room to pick up her earrings and belt.

Jane reported their coupling to campus authorities only after seeing that John was unaffected emotionally by it, whereas she, having lost her virginity, felt distracted and unable to concentrate. Having been instructed in the ways of the patriarchy by Occidental’s Title IX bureaucracy, she decided that she should not have to experience the psychological discomfort of randomly running into John Doe around campus, and that he should be expelled. Occidental was only too happy to comply. It found John Doe guilty of rape and expelled him in December 2013.

Jane’s psychological distress was undoubtedly real. Sexual liberation pretends that males and females respond identically to one-night stands, and that the loss of virginity is just an insignificant way station en route to the rounds of casual sex expected of contemporary adults. In fact, women are hormonally and emotionally affected by intercourse in a way that most men are not. And traditional culture was right to regard the loss of virginity as a milestone in a girl’s life, and to surround it with the sanctifying rituals of marriage.

But however understandable Jane’s post-coital emotions, they do not justify converting what was clearly a mutually agreed-upon coupling into rape. Any male whose partner asks about condoms, then voluntarily enters his bed for the express purpose of sex, is going to assume consent, and with reason.

In 2014, Brett Sokolow, a prominent advisor on campus sexual-misconduct cases, provided another window into the consensual sex that the feminist-industrial complex converts into campus rape. In an open letter to the higher-education community, he described a series of trumped-up charges with which his Title IX consulting firm had been involved, including a female student who had spread rumors by social media that she had been raped by a male student. She then admitted to investigators that she had consented to their drunken hook-up. When asked why she had called the encounter rape, she replied: “You know, because we were drunk. . . . we just call it that when we’re drunk or high.”

In another case, a female student was caught by her boyfriend while cheating on him with another male student. She then filed a complaint of assault against that second male. The morning after their sexual encounter, they had exchanged texts. He wrote: “How do I compare with your boyfriend?” She responded to the boy she later accused of rape: “You were great.”

In 1985, Ms. magazine published a study by psychologist Mary Koss that gave rise to the statistic that one in four college females would be sexually assaulted during college. The study also found that 42 percent of putative rape victims went on to have intercourse again with their alleged assailant—a behavior inconceivable in the case of actual rape. In fact, it was the researcher herself who classified the subjects as victims; 73 percent of the women whom the researcher designated as rape survivors said that they hadn’t been raped, when asked directly.

According to the #BelieveSurvivors platform, the reason why most researcher-classified rape victims don’t report their rapes is because the reporting process is too anti-female and re-traumatizing. In fact, most researcher-classified rape victims don’t report because they don’t think what happened to them was serious enough to report—another conclusion inconceivable in the case of actual rape.

In 2015, the Association of American Universities (AAU) conducted a sexual-assault survey at 27 selective colleges. The vast majority of survey respondents whom the AAU researchers classified as sexual-assault victims never reported their alleged assaults to their colleges’ rape hotlines, sexual-assault resource centers, or Title IX offices, much less to campus or city police. And the overwhelming reason that the alleged victims did not report is that they did not think that what happened to them was that serious. At Harvard, for example, over 69 percent of female respondents who checked the box for penetration by use of force did not report the incident to any authority. Most of those non-reporters—65 percent—did not think that their experience was serious enough to report. Over 78 percent of Harvard female respondents who checked the box for penetration due to “incapacitation” did not report. Three-quarters of them said that what happened to them was not serious enough to report. This is a judgment not allowed by the campus rape industry. 

Even before the sexual revolution destroyed the norms that once governed the male libido and that steadied the relationship between the sexes, sex was the realm of ambiguity and indirection. The #BelieveSurvivors contingent asserts that survivors rarely if ever lie about their experiences—meaning, they rarely make those experiences up out of whole cloth. This assertion is mostly true; in most cases of alleged campus rape, something did happen between the accused and the accuser. The issue is how to classify what happened. (To be sure, there are rapes that go unreported, but there are also outright fabrications, such as the Rolling Stone University of Virginia campus rape hoax, which cost the magazine millions in damages, and the Duke lacrosse team rape hoax, for which the local prosecutor lost his law license.) The #BelieveSurvivors movement claims unique authority to interpret women’s experiences, even if that means ignoring a woman’s own classification of her experience as not rape.

The rest of us need not accede to this assertion of monopoly interpretive power. Our booze-fueled hook-up culture has made relations between men and women messier than ever, leaving many girls and women with pangs of regret—but those regrets do not equal rape. If we were actually in the midst of an “epidemic of sexual assault,” as New Jersey senator Cory Booker asserted the evening of the Ford-Kavanaugh hearings, we would presumably have seen women and girls take protective actions, such as avoiding frat parties and flocking to single-sex schools. None of those protective actions has occurred, however. Either women are too clueless to avoid patent danger, or the epidemic of sexual assault is a fiction. All evidence points to the latter conclusion. Judge Brett Kavanaugh may be the latest male to have his life torn apart by that fiction, but he won’t be the last.

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

The Left Criminalizes Politics by Weaponizing Investigations

By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/leftists-weaponize-investigations-for-political-gain/

October 6, 2018

Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speak during the fourth day of Brett Kavanaugh's hearing before members of the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday Sept. 7, 2018.(Getty Images)

The Left ruins everything.

That’s because the Left stands ready to eradicate any norm at any time if there is political advantage in it. The latest to be cast aside are the precepts that we never tolerate unbridled, abusive investigations, nor do we abide full-blown criminal investigations without solid evidence that a crime has been committed — and even then, we demand adherence to time-honored limits.

In the probes of Donald Trump and, now, Brett Kavanaugh, these norms have been wiped away by the simple expedient of rebranding criminal investigations. Now the sleuths are unleashed under the guise of “counterintelligence” and “background checks” — whatever pretext is needed to get their foot in the door. Once they’re in, the earth is to be scorched, as if the crime of the century had occurred.

Of course, we want criminal investigators to be aggressive. But that has always meant aggressive within strict parameters. These are dictated by the degree of certainty that a crime has been committed, and by due-process rules with which the FBI must comply or be held to account when the case gets to court.

By contrast, when the Left criminalizes political opposition, no crime is required; just gossamer-thin, incoherent, uncorroborated, often unverifiable allegations: perhaps multiple-hearsay innuendo against a Republican presidential candidate, passed on by anonymous foreigners to a hyper-partisan, left-wing foreign spy working for the opposition Democratic political campaign. Or maybe a 36-year-old claim of sexual assault by an alleged victim who cannot remember basic details or keep straight the details she claims to remember; whose named witnesses do not back her account; who declines to address whether her accusation has been influenced by the controversial psychotherapeutic process of “recovered memory”; who refuses to disclose highly relevant therapy notes and polygraph information; and who is a Democrat advised by a prominent Democratic strategist and represented for free by Democratic activist lawyers, who were recommended to her by a senior Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat even as that Democratic senator concealed the sexual-assault claim from her Republican counterparts.

The Left requires no solid evidence of a crime, because solid evidence — the kind that truly justifies a criminal probe — narrows a good-faith investigator’s focus. To the contrary, the Left wants all the aggressiveness of a criminal investigation but none of the limits. The criminalization of politics leans on counterintelligence and background investigations; it wants no part of criminal courts, where due-process safeguards are enforced and allegations must be proved.

Political progressives will tell you this is just “good government” in action. Republican presidents and their appointees may not technically be criminal suspects, but they must be investigated as if they were, in order to protect our institutions.

In reality, this is the antithesis of good government. It is an ugly process in which the new Democratic party — the party that prefers Bill Ayers to Joe Lieberman, “social justice” to patriotism, and “change” to the Constitution — menaces decent people and their attachments to American traditions until they retreat from the public square.

The world has changed. People who care nothing about norms can no longer be dismissed as a fringe. For generations, left-wing activists have instructed students and other groups that norms are the building blocks of a rigged system that deprives them of power and denies their “selfless” desires.

We don’t want to acknowledge what this has wrought. We have norms because they safeguard foundational principles, such as due process, the presumption of innocence, and freedom from unreasonable and unwarranted police prying. But the Left is no longer attached to those principles. Far from protecting what we must preserve, norms are seen as the redoubts of adversaries who must be not merely defeated but humiliated. Defeat is fine for the enemy at hand, but humiliation is what suppresses prospective challengers. Would you put your family through what the Kavanaugh family has been put through?

Under the pretext of carrying out its counterintelligence mission or conducting a background check, the Left turns the FBI loose to do an aggressive investigation that leaves no stone unturned. Except now there is no crime — no proper trigger, no identifiable criminal transaction with essential elements on which the FBI can get a quick, definitive handle. Instead, the bureau is being told to leave no stone unturned until it finds something on which the president can be impeached. Democrats demand that Judge Kavanaugh’s life be scrutinized until the FBI finds some misconduct — no matter how old, ambiguous, and remote from his developed adult character — that might be used to brand him unfit for the High Court.

Counterintelligence is not an excuse to subject someone to what is actually an aggressive criminal investigation in the absence of a known crime. A background investigation is not an occasion for a deep dive into every nook and cranny of a person’s life, much less for a full-blown criminal investigation, as if the person were on trial. A background check is just an exercise in gathering enough information so that we can judge whether a person is a good fit for the responsibilities of an office. If a Democratic senator has already decided against a conservative nominee over philosophical differences about abortion and gun rights, the senator should simply vote against the nominee, not exploit a background check as an abusive fishing expedition.

The Left is destroying investigative norms. If we do not insist on these norms and defend them, then investigations become a political weapon from which only the Left will be spared. The moral of the story: When politics is involved, we can no longer presume that investigations are being sought and will be conducted in good faith. We should not agree to them in the absence of enforceable norms that limit scope, protect privacy, and ensure that decent people of all ideological persuasions are not discouraged from participating in the political life of a free, pluralistic society.

‘But, Kavanaugh!’ NeverTrump’s Awakening

By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/05/but-kavanaugh-nevertrumps-awakening/

October 5, 2018

Bret Stephens (Real Time)

The headline was a stunner: “For Once, I’m Grateful For Trump.”

Even more shocking was the column’s author: New York Times columnist Bret Stephens.

At great risk of alienating his Trump-hating readership at theTimes, Stephens carefully explained why he is relieved a man he detests now sits in the Oval Office. From evidence-free accusations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh to grandstanding, hypocritical senators, Stephens admitted he was reluctant to make such a heretical confession in the pages of a newspaper committed to destroying the Supreme Court nominee:

I’m grateful because Trump has not backed down in the face of the slipperiness, hypocrisy and dangerous standard-setting deployed by opponents of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination. I’m grateful because ferocious and even crass obstinacy has its uses in life, and never more so than in the face of sly moral bullying. I’m grateful because he’s a big fat hammer fending off a razor-sharp dagger.

The piece was not well-received by Times readers. As of Friday morning, there were more than 3,500 comments, mostly tantrums by progressives about Stephens’s viewpoint.

The attempted political assassination of Brett Kavanaugh has triggered an epiphany for NeverTrump “conservatives” such as Stephens. Some of Trump’s most vicious and vocal critics on the Right are shockedthat the Left has orchestrated such a craven crusade against a decent man, alarmed that their progressive compatriots are so desperate for power that they would seek the destruction of an innocent man’s career, his reputation and his family while bulldozing long-cherished standards of decorum and law to prevail where they failed at the ballot box.

They now realize—just as millions of Americans did back in November 2016 and have appreciated in the months since—that Trump is the only bulwark between us and a leftist junta intent on annihilating everything we value and anyone who gets in their way. It has been, to rephrase a famous taunt, their “But, Kavanaugh!” moment.

Writing at Townhall this week, Erick Erickson—who called himself one of the “original NeverTrump conservatives”—said he is for the first time is considering voting for Trump in 2020. Seth Mandel, an editor at the New York Post, admitted that the Kavanaugh allegations were rallying his fellow Trump foes behind the president. “In the days leading up to the hearing, I started noticing something: Mild-mannered anti-Trump conservatives would, in private conversations, fume at Kavanaugh’s treatment and insist Democrats had crossed a line and could not be appeased.”

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg turned on the elite media for how they’ve fueled the Kavanaugh travesty. Goldberg first explained that he abhors when the president calls the media the “enemy of the people” because it sounds authoritarian—but then proceeded to produce a litany of examples why the media is indeed the enemy of the people. Then this advice to his journo-pals: “You might also consider why millions of people love it when Trump says you are the enemy of the people: It’s because of how you are behaving right now,” Goldberg warned. “You’re letting the mask slip. You’re burning credibility at such a rate, you won’t have enough to get back to base when this is all over.”

Where Have They Been?

Those of us who have been subjected to NeverTrump’s scorn; who have defended the president in his darkest days while being mocked by Trump foes; who have been called every name in the book from racist to homophobes to stupid are tempted to say, “better late than never.” But not without first turning a mirror toward these antagonists and apologists for the Left so they own up to the dystopia they have helped create.

For two years, NeverTrump has united with the Left to sabotage Trump’s presidency, smear congressional Republicans who support him, and ridicule Trump voters. Led by Bill Kristol, the editor-at-large-and-getting-larger of the Weekly Standard, this group is as culpable as the news media and Democratic politicians for the smoldering hellscape that now is American politics.

NeverTrump has bolstered the sham special counsel probe into phony claims of election collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin; they have joined the Left on several occasions to demand that the president be removed from office—in late August, Stephens insisted the president’s actions met the “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard for impeachment. They mock Trump supporters with the childish, “But, Gorsuch!” mantra at every presidential misstep, an insult aimed at Americans who voted for Trump singularly out of concern about the future composition of the Supreme Court.

Many NeverTrumpers including National Review’s Goldberg and David French have helped legitimizeMichael Avenatti, the creepy porn lawyer also trying to take down Kavanaugh. The president has been compared to Adolf Hitler and Mussolini by this crowd, while they compare themselves to courageous dissidents who fought communism. “Expert” Tom Nichols claimed Trump voters are ruining the country, and the Washington Post’s reprehensible Jennifer Rubin condoned violence against Trump aides, including Sarah Sanders, the first mother to serve as White House press secretary.

As part of #TheResistance, NeverTrumpers landed sweet gigs on CNN and MSNBC—not because they are intelligent or even photogenic—but because they are quick with an inflammatory remark about Trumpworld. It has been a profitable endeavor as they sell books and earn speaking fees for their Trump-hating views.

So now some NeverTrumpers have grown a conscience when it comes to the mistreatment of Trump appointees and allies? The Kavanaugh hit job is the result of a steady and successful trajectory of attacks on other Trump associates.

Where were they when the Left ruthlessly and relentlessly harassed EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and his family? Oh yes, they were chiming in alongside the New York Times: some finally capitulated to the environmental bullies and demanded Pruitt’s resignation.

Collusion of the Worst Sort

What did NeverTrump say when the Left came for Dr. Ronny Jackson? Or Gen. Michael Flynn? Or Reps.Devin Nunes and James Jordan? Or even Trump’s wife and family? They can’t even speak up when MSNBC pundits claim Trump wants to round up people and kill them, or when the media mock the murder of a college girl in Iowa.

Where was NeverTrump’s defense of Carter Page, a former naval officer who was targeted by his own government, spied on for a year, and vilified in the news media? According to some NeverTrumpers, Page deserved what he got. They have aided the obstruction of a full investigation into widespread corruption at the Justice Department, warning Republicans that any questioning of the FBI is an attack on law enforcement. Many have shielded from scrutiny folks such as former FBI Director James Comey and his henchmen Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok.

On every issue, big and small, NeverTrump worked in lockstep with the media, Hollywood and the Democratic Party to undermine Trump’s presidency and damage anyone aligned with him.

There are still NeverTrump holdouts. Kristol, Nichols, Rubin and Boot are not just opposing Kavanaugh’s nomination but urging people to vote for Democrats this fall, which would empower the very thugs who are leading this assault on our political system and our democracy. Nichols argued that Kavanaugh’s conduct is worse than the Democrats, and accused him of buying into conspiracy theories. So NeverTrumper nutters still abound.

But their numbers are shrinking, and it’s only a matter of time before they turn on each other. That will be a gratifying scene to watch unfold. Sadly, the pile of post-2016 political wreckage lies all around us, with Brett Kavanaugh now in the center of the debris. And NeverTrump, even those now seeking atonement, is as responsible for this as anyone.

It's All Gone: The Democrats' Dead Ideals

BY ROGER KIMBALL
https://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/its-all-gone-the-democrats-dead-ideals/
October 3, 2018

As the spurious case against Brett Kavanaugh disintegrates, splinters, and re-forms into a cacophony of whiny, irrelevant expostulations, it is instructive to step back and survey the field upon which this battle took place.

The ground is littered with dead and wounded ideals: civility, dead; basic decency, dead; the presumption of innocence, gravely wounded, ditto for the idea of due process. And this disgusting carnage is all on you, O ancient one, Dianne Feinstein, and your self-important, preposterous colleagues. You were desperate to keep Brett Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court so you abandoned any semblance of decency and respect. You travestied the processes of the United States Senate for the sake of a cynical grab at power. I’d say that you should be ashamed of yourselves, but, like the thugs that you are, you have no shame. You believe the acquisition of power is a magical antidote to shame. You are wrong about that, and one can only hope that you will one day reap some portion of the obloquy you have sowed.

It is not yet clear what the snarling, incontinent attacks on Brett Kavanaugh will mean for him and his family. Early indications are not encouraging.

For many years, Judge Kavanaugh has taught a course at Harvard Law School. A couple of days ago, that Cambridge-based plutocratic bastion of privilege, smugness, and political correctness announced that Judge Kavanaugh was no longer welcome to teach there. Later,  a coven of lonely and unappealing Harvard feminists filed a battery of groundless Title IX claims against him.

Hundreds of alumni, students, and faculty of Yale Law School have signed an open letter denouncing the school’s implicit support of Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Among other things, the signatories of this malodorous missive say that Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination represents  “an emergency -- for democratic life, for our safety and freedom, for the future of our country. ... Without a doubt, Judge Kavanaugh is a threat to the most vulnerable. He is a threat to many of us, despite the privilege bestowed by our education, simply because of who we are.”

What are these people talking about? But it is not insanity that moves them. It is malice and the desire for power.

Judge Kavanaugh mentioned in his testimony that one of his delights was coaching girls basketball. Will he be allowed to do that in the future? It is unclear. A putrid column in USA Today by Erik Brady -- silently redacted after a cataract of outrage -- said that “he should stay off basketball courts for now when kids are around.”

Who knows what toll the mob hysteria against him has taken on his wife and two young daughters. One of the most moving moments of his testimony last week came when he mentioned that one of his daughters suggested during evening prayers that they ought to pray for Christine Ford, the hysteric who first accused Judge Kavanaugh of committing an impropriety 36 years ago at a high school party. A wretched cartoonist for a large national newspaper -- I won’t say which one, and I will forbear to link to that piece of filth -- depicted the judge’s daughter on her knees praying that God forgive “my angry, lying, alcoholic father for assaulting Dr. Ford.”

There are not words sufficiently contemptuous to describe this repulsive display. Several commentators have drawn parallels between the unfounded attacks on Judge Kavanaugh and the tirades of Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s. A better parallel, perhaps, is the case of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was ritually humiliated, drummed out of the French army, and given a sentence of life imprisonment on trumped up charges of espionage. He was eventually cleared, years later, but his career had been shattered and his life ruined. “Where do I go to get my reputation back?”

The real crime of Captain Dreyfus was that he was Jewish. The crime of Brett Kavanaugh is that he is Donald Trump’s nominee.

Here are some facts of the matter. Until he was nominated by President Trump in July, Brett Kavanaugh was not just widely admired, he was universally commended for his intelligence, his judiciousness, and his impartiality. Everyone who worked for him, he worked for, and everyone he worked with sang his praises. In the aftermath of Christine Ford’s accusation, scores of women from Judge Kavanaugh’s past -- girls he had been friends with and dated in high school, college friends, professional colleagues -- attested to his integrity and decency.

On the other side, what do we have? We have Christine Ford and in her toxic wake increasingly preposterous accusations by unhappy hysterics like Deborah Ramirez, whom The New Yorker spent six days helping to “assess” her memories, and various lowlifes dredged up by Creepy Porn Lawyer™ Michael Avenatti. Stepping back, we can see that the spectacle forms a sort of bell curve:

1. Rumors of a letter in Senator Dianne Feinstein’s possession are leaked to the jackals of the press.
2. After the Senate hearings conclude, the letter itself is leaked. It accuses a drunken 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh of pushing Christine Ford on a bed and fumbling with her bathing suit. (That, by the way, was the alleged “assault.”)
3. With Deborah Ramirez, the volume increases in this Wagnerian drama. Now an 18-year-old Brett Kavanaugh is accused (no witnesses, though) of exposing himself to Ramirez at drunken party at Yale.
4. Volume now at full blast, Creepy Porn Lawyer™ Michael Avenatti pushes Julie Swetnick into the jackals’ klieg lights. She says (but offers no proof or witnesses) that she had been at 10 parties -- 10! I guess she liked those soirées --  at which Brett Kavanaugh participated in drugging and gang-raping women.
5. Another chap, now under criminal investigation for offering false information to the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Brett Kavanaugh participated in assaulting a woman on a boat in Newport.
6. Diminuendo now. The Newport story falls apart. The Ramirez story falls apart. The Julie Swetnick story falls apart.
7. The music is very soft now. Almost every particular of Christine Ford’s story disintegrates. Remember the second front door she wanted installed in her house as an emergency escape route in case the boogeyman came back and assaulted her? She said it was in an argument with her husband over that that she first mentioned Brett Kavanaugh. But that was in 2012, when she was in couples therapy. (It would be nice to know more about Christine Ford’s psychiatric history.) In fact, the Fords got a permit for the front door in 2008, years before. Over the years, the front door was used by renters and then for Ford’s psychology practice (though I can see how her patients might have regarded it as an escape hatch).Remember her supposed fear of flying? It turns out that she flies all the time. The real question is, who gets her frequent flier miles? Rachel Mitchell, the sex-crimes prosecutor that the GOP senators employed to question Christine Ford at the hearings because she was too delicate to be questioned by men, has released a memo detailing the many contradictions in Ford’s testimony.
8. Back on the ground floor now, the New York Times, in one last, pathetic effort to smear Brett Kavanaugh, runs a piece titled “Kavanaugh was Questioned by Police After Bar Fight in 1985.” The story, written by an anti-Trump, anti-Kavanaugh Times opinion writer, reveals the astounding fact that Brett Kavanaugh might have thrown ice at someone in a bar. It’s so quiet now that you can hear the titters in the background. From drugging and gang raping women to throwing ice at someone in a bar in one week. Swift work!

At a rally last night, President Trump, speaking about Judge Kavanaugh, said: “A man's life is in tatters. His wife is shattered.” Musing on the attempted public execution the country just witnessed, the president continued, “They destroy people. They want to destroy people. These are really evil people.”

Yes, they are. But here’s the saving grace. The president, like Brett Kavanaugh, is a fighter. The president’s support has been as unwavering as Judge Kavanaugh’s determination to stay the course. Senator Spartacus (neé Cory Booker, and the accent is not a mistake) says that whether Judge Kavanaugh is “innocent or guilty”the Senate should “move on to another candidate.” Why? Because he’s tainted.

So: Democratic jackals on the Senate Judiciary Committee, aided and abetted by their loyal public relations firms -- the mainstream media -- and hectoring unpleasant people funded by George Soros, heap mud on Brett Kavanaugh for weeks and then step back and say: “He’s got mud all over him! Let’s move on to a more pristine victim.”

This is of a piece with the spurious claim that Judge Kavanaugh’s impassioned testimony last week shows that he lack the requisite judicial temperament to be a Supreme Court Justice. Andy McCarthy dispensed with that ridiculous meme with some portion of the contempt it deserves. But since some of the squealers in the press have castigated Judge Kavanaugh for the condign anger he displayed in answering the scurrilous attacks on his character, let’s give the last word to Aristotle on the just deployment of anger. “We praise a man,” says Aristotle, “who feels anger on the right grounds and against the right persons, and also in the right manner and at the right moment and for the right length of time.” Indeed, those who do not get angry at things it is right to be angry at “are considered foolish.” After having been groundlessly accused of drunkenness, belligerence, and rape, Judge Kavanaugh was right to display anger towards those who had slandered him. He did so in a fitting manner, in an eloquent, heartfelt address. And he did so at the right moment, the Senate hearings, and for the right amount of time.

The travesty that was the smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh is disintegrating. He will be confirmed, but the mephitic stench of the attack against him and the rule of law will linger. I wonder if the Democrats will remember it when the tallies come in on November 6 and their vaunted blue wave turns out to be a moist, impotent trickle.