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Ben Stein:
“…The sad facts: Some women lie. Politicians lie. The politicians have now wrecked the life of a good man, as Mr. Trump said. Let’s give him back his good name. And let’s stand in the way of the locomotive of Stalinism and shout “stop” as the late, great Mr. Buckley would have said.
It’s all amazing. To stop Donald Trump, the Democrats have tossed out the whole basis of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence — innocent until proven guilty. They’ve taken the greatest deliberative body in the world, the Senate —and made it the chapter room of a sorority at a tenth rate college. Is there no end to it? Stalin would approve. So would Goebbels. If this Democrat trick works, there simply is no meaningful legal protection in this country any longer.
This is a defining moment for the Constitution. Republicans. Democrats who still love America. All hands on deck. This is about protecting the whole country and our future. If the gossip of the beautiful people overrule the Constitution, it’s a catastrophe…”
“…Consider the Democrat game. As Andrew McCarthy pointed out in his superlative essay, in the history of recent judicial nominations it has been only Republicans showing bipartisanship for Democrat-nominated judges. Why? Because conservative instinct dictates judging a person by merit.
How was that paid in return? Robert Bork was blocked, Miguel Estrada was blocked (which led his wife to suicide), and Samuel Alito was filibustered. What did Republicans give in return? Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Brayer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor sailed through, until Merrick Garland was finally stopped, and then not based on his judicial philosophy but timing.
Even then, the process was within the letters of the law, unlike the coordinated character assassination against Kavanaugh, or the public humiliation of Judge Amy Coney Barett during her circuit court confirmation. As McCarthy writes, “Republicans have defeated Democratic nominees, but they never Bork them. They never demagogue Democratic nominees as sex offenders, racists, or homophobes. There are no ‘Spartacus’ moments.”
This is common sense, but something Republican leadership apparently fails to understand…”
http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/26/kavanaugh-battle-culmination-unanswered-leftist-kulturkampf/
“…On the eve the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining the stories of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, two men have reportedly come forward claiming that they, not Judge Kavanaugh, were the ones who had the encounter in question with Ford.
Burgess Everett, a reporter for Politico, broke the news on Twitter. “[Senate Judiciary] Committee staff have a second interview with a man who believes he, not Judge Kavanaugh, had the encounter with Dr. Ford in the summer of 1982 that is the basis of her allegation,” Everett wrote. “He described his recollection of their interaction in some detail.”
“For people asking for more info,” Burgess added in a second tweet, “this is from a long investigation summary from Judiciary Republicans distributed tonight. These interviews happened this week, according to the committee.”…”
https://pjmedia.com/trending/bombshell-man-tells-judiciary-committee-he-did-it-not-kavanaugh/
“…Facebook is currently doing everything in their power to protect CNN after they censored evidence that one of their producers, Scott Bronstein has been randomly calling people who used to attend school with Judge Brett Kavanaugh in an attempt to dig up dirt on the Supreme Court nominee that might be used to prevent his confirmation to the Supreme Court from taking place. Mark Zuckerberg’s social media platform took things a step further when they not only censored the evidence, but they deleted all media articles related to the evidence that was presented by Amy Dryden and banned Amy Dryden herself from the social media platform.
In response to being banned by Facebook for the audio that she shared Amy Dryden tweeted “This is what happens when you post an actual recording of a CNN producer’s dirty journalism on Facebook. #banned So wrong!” Dryden felt the information that was contained in the video showing Bronstein calling random people from the Yale class of 1987 who may have known Judge Brett Kavanaugh was important enough for the rest of America to see. She apparently was right with this belief given the fact that liberal controlled Facebook has done everything possible to keep people from learning about the video and what took place…”
Monica Showalter:
Google has drawn a lot of scrutiny, and not in a good way, for biasing search results against conservatives, artificially promoting leftists and leftwing causes, and smearing and blacklisting conservatives. This 2016 account by psychologist, artificial intelligence maven, and tech whiz Robert Epstein gives a superb point-by-point breakdown of what Google’s been up to so far. (Epstein is the same guy in the news two days ago who said there is credible evidence that Google manipulated search results to swing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.)
So much for not being evil.
But all of this is nuisanceware compared to what the people at Google have been caught doing in China and are now trying to cover up. According to Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept:
Google bosses have forced employees to delete a confidential memo circulating inside the company that revealed explosive details about a plan to launch a censored search engine in China, The Intercept has learned.
The memo, authored by a Google engineer who was asked to work on the project, disclosed that the search system, codenamed Dragonfly, would require users to log in to perform searches, track their location – and share the resulting history with a Chinese partner who would have “unilateral access” to the data.
CNET adds:
According to the report, the so-called Dragonfly search engine would require Chinese citizens to log in to perform searches, track their physical location, and then share all of its data with a Chinese partner company that could presumably share it with the Chinese government. The company would reportedly have “unilateral access” to the data. That might also presumably include Chinese citizens’ phone numbers, as described in an earlier Intercept report.
Plus, that Chinese company would reportedly be able to independently add new words to the blacklist of searches to be censored, according to today’s report.
Sounds like the Orwellian dream come true. Anyone who wants to have a cell phone and look up information in China would become a target for communist China’s odious secret police, and they will be looking.
“…When President Trump nominated D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, red-state Democrats up for re-election knew they faced a difficult choice: betray either liberal party leaders or the conservative voters who could end their political career.
Kavanaugh’s solid performance during Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings eliminated the possibility of a misstep that Democrats hoped for, leaving Sens. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., Jon Tester, D-Montana, Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and Joe Manchin, D-W.V., with the same no-good-option dilemma.
Delay was the best hope for the political future of these five moderate Democrats. And for a week, it looked like the last-minute referral from Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to the FBI of Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault accusation against Kavanaugh would stall the vote until after the November midterms. But now that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has vowed a floor vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination “in the near future,” red-state Democrats face an impossible choice.
The choice awaiting Democrats is now between confirming Kavanaugh or endorsing a “grotesque and obvious character assassination” of public servants to achieve political ends.
While the public at first seemed sympathetic toward Ford, as more details emerged it became clear that Ford’s last-minute charge lacked merit. But as Ford’s allegations fell apart, the New Yorker ran an uncorroborated hit piece promoting Deborah Ramirez’s claim that, after “six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney,” she believed that, while in college, Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her.
Concern for putative victims turned to righteous anger on behalf of Kavanaugh, his wife, and two young daughters. And before Senate Democrats could reclaim the narrative, Stormy Daniels’ gadfly attorney Michael Avenatti cemented the public’s disgust over the treatment of Kavanaugh, with Avenatti claiming he has evidence that Kavanaugh promoted and participated in gang rape.
Red-state Democrats will soon have a choice to make. But it is a much different one than they faced just a month ago: A “no” vote on Kavanaugh now is not merely bucking the desires of their conservative electorate, but it is a “yes” vote on vile character assassination.
Donnelly, Tester, Heitkamp, and Manchin must now decide and publicly proclaim whether they are for decency, or smears…”
“…More than two-thirds of the nation believe the media are biased, and among Republicans, a huge 86 percent believe reporters favor one side, presumably not theirs, according to a new survey.
The Pew Research Center reported Tuesday that 68 percent of a huge poll of over 5,000 sees bias.
Most Americans also continue to think the news media favor one side when covering political and social issues. About two-thirds (68 percent) say this, compared with three-in-10 who say they deal fairly with all sides. And as in previous years, Republicans (86 percent) are far more likely than Democrats (52 percent) to say news organizations favor one side,” said the survey analysis.
Trust in the media is also miserably low, but not as bad as for social media. Said Pew, “While one-in-five Americans (21 percent) have a lot of trust in the information they get from national news organizations, that share is about five times as high as the portion that have a lot of trust in the information they get from social media sites (4 percent)…”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/25/consumer-confidence-september.html
I want to say again how despicable the democrat/media smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh is. It is truly unbelievable. Democrat senators act like peevish high school children. Recovered memories from democrat activists are not evidence. The accused is not required to prove his innocence. He is innocent until proven guilty by the accuser. The left has lost its mind—Trump Derangement Syndrome writ large.
Mollie Hemingway:
“…Maybe Brett Kavanaugh is a gang-raping attempted murderer who managed to live a public life of acclaim and honor. Maybe the devotion to his wife and two daughters, his respect for countless women and their careers, and his wisdom on the bench are parts of an elaborate plot to get away with it. Anything is possible.
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…”
http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/24/the-smear-campaign-against-brett-kavanaugh-is-truly-evil/
Gallup:
“…Forty-five percent of Americans now have a favorable view of the Republican Party, a nine-point gain from last September’s 36%. It is the party’s most positive image since it registered 47% in January 2011, shortly after taking control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections. Forty-four percent give the Democratic Party a favorable rating.
The parity in Republicans’ and Democrats’ favorable ratings marks a change from what has generally been the case since Barack Obama’s election as president in November 2008. Republicans have usually been rated less positively than Democrats over this time, with the Republican Party’s favorability rating for the last decade averaging 39%, compared with the Democratic Party’s 44%…”
https://news.gallup.com/poll/242906/republican-party-favorability-highest-seven-years.aspx
Alexandra DeSanctis:
“…The idea that we must “believe all women” is similarly reckless, and left-wing activists and abortion-rights groups are pushing it nearly nonstop. Far from being a way to support women, this argument means that the truth of an allegation matters not at all, a terrible development for real victims of assault — not to mention for men falsely accused.
All of this will add up to the average person, who naturally wants justice for survivors, being less inclined to take sexual-abuse allegations seriously, the exact opposite of what the Me Too movement has promised and until now largely delivered. Because these accusations against Kavanaugh have so clearly been weaponized as a partisan tool, it only makes sense that onlookers will dismiss stories presented by biased politicians or shoddy reporting.
When people become numb to outrageous claims launched without verification and wielded by those with no interest in the truth, they will close their eyes to real instances of abuse. This debacle is teaching onlookers to take the stories of victims with a grain of salt. How can the average person be expected to care about seeking justice when so many in the public square seem to care more about advancing an agenda than about discerning who has actually been mistreated or abused?
The Me Too movement has gained immense influence over the last year precisely because it has encouraged us to acknowledge the reality of sexual abuse and follow the truth wherever it leads. Now, the question of whether the accusations against Kavanaugh are true has been subjugated to a political endgame. That promises to destroy the cultural power of the Me Too movement…”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/kavanaugh-nomination-circus-could-destroy-me-too-movement/
“…The cynics — or, perhaps more precisely, the realists — believed that the Democrats were playing for time in the hopes of finding another accusation against Brett Kavanaugh. The cynics were right.
The New Yorker stooped to publish a shoddy story alleging that Kavanaugh exposed himself to a woman while he was at Yale. The alleged incident occurred at a drunken party when both were in their freshman year. What’s extraordinary is that the woman making the charge, a fellow Yale student named Deborah Ramirez, admits that she hesitated to come forward because there were such large gaps in her memory.
As the magazine puts it: “In her initial conversations with The New Yorker, she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty.” She only decided to talk, it says, “after six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney.”
Even after her new-found certainty — which happens to accord with her political interest as a Democrat — her story still contains gaps. She was drunk and didn’t directly see that it was Kavanaugh who put his penis in front of her face when she was on the floor. She says she heard someone yell out that it was Kavanaugh who had done this, and she saw him make a motion afterward that was consistent with pulling up his pants. So even she is making the charge as a matter of hearsay and interpretation.
The only other corroboration is an unidentified classmate who tells the magazine that he heard of the incident afterwards — in other words, more hearsay.
Otherwise, the authors write, “The New Yorker has not confirmed with other eyewitnesses that Kavanaugh was present at the party,” a rather important lacuna if you are publishing a story that will contribute to an effort to destroy a man’s reputation. (Where’s William Shawn when you need him?) Two male students identified by Ramirez as being present at the party said they had no recollection of any such incident.
The New Yorker story comes on the heels of another blow to the credibility of Christine Blasey Ford’s account. She has identified four other people who were present at the high-school party where Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her as a teenager. All have denied it, now including Leland Keyser, who is a long-time friend of Ford’s and a Democrat. She told the Judiciary Committee through her lawyer, “Simply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.”
Clearly, the opposition to Kavanaugh hopes that the two stories — with perhaps more on the way — will support each other despite their inherent weakness. If Democrats take down Kavanaugh on the basis of these charges, they will have achieved the miraculous by stopping a Supreme Court nominee with two unproven and probably unprovable charges, in a smashing victory for garbage-pail politics.
Brett Kavanaugh is an excellent jurist who has earned his sterling reputation over decades of public service. If his career is going to be ruined and his reputation besmirched, it should require clear and convincing evidence. We are willing to follow the facts wherever they lead, but so far, they lead only to the belief that this is a disgraceful episode that makes Borking look above-board and responsible by comparison.
If Republicans surrender on the basis of what we know now, they will face the fury of their own voters — and rightly so…”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-nomination-republicans-should-fight/