Cruising the Web

The Democrats have really overplayed their hand. First they demand that the committee allow her to testify since it’s important for her voice to be heard. Then the Republicans on the committee invite her to testify. And so they jerk the goalposts away and now demand a full FBI investigation even though that’s not the FBI’s role in background checks. Now they’re saying that asking her to come speak to the committee is basically victimizing her. Senator Grassley points out that he’s invited her to speak in either public or private. He’s also offered for her to stay in California and be interviewed in private by Judiciary Committee staff.

Guy Benson reminds us of how this has progressed over the past week.

With the allegation out in the open, Democrats loudly declared that Ford be allowed to make her allegations publicly, on the record, and under oath. They demanded new hearings. Republicans, who control the committee, promptly agreed, setting a date for next Monday. In doing so, they abided by the panel’s rule dictating that members must be notified of a new hearing one week in advance. Democrats responded by pivoting to a new complaint: The hearing they said must happen is now happening…too soon. The FBI needs to investigate the issue before any additional steps are taken, they now say. The accuser’s attorneys are echoing Democrats’ new stance, though they still have not entirely ruled out Ford’s participation in Monday’s scheduled session (remember, her primary lawyer went on national television earlier this week and said her client was prepared to testify). Ed Morrissey raises another problem with the actions of the accuser’s representatives:

Ford’s legal team is engaging in bad-faith posturing on those points, but they added a shabby accusation against Grassley as well. The letter accused Grassley of planning to seat Ford “at the same table” as Kavanaugh, but Grassley responded yesterday by saying that no one had planned the two to appear together. They would have appeared at “the same table,” but at two different times.

But it’s the Democrats’ conduct here that strikes me as particularly cynical goalpost shifting, for several reasons:

(1) The FBI has already declined to launch an investigation into this 36-year-old claim, for which there is no alleged crime scene or date. Ford says she doesn’t know where the house was, and can’t even narrow down the encounter to any specific month of 1982. This not only renders any criminal investigation hopeless, it also forecloses any possibility for Kavanaugh (or any of the other three boys alleged to have attended the party) to potentially provide an accusation-destroying alibi. The Bureau, which has already performed six background checks on Kavanaugh, inserted the allegation into Kavanaugh’s background file. There’s nothing more to be done. Insisting on their resumed involvement, with no jurisdiction, or even a clear or realistic goal, smells like yet another delay tactic. I’ll return to this theme later.

(2) The counterpoint on FBI involvement is that the Bureau did “investigate” Anita Hill’s allegations against then-nominee Clarence Thomas (which also dropped after his hearings ended, by the way). As others have noted, however, that was a matter between two federal employees — and that “investigation” involved a collection of relevant parties’ statements, which nobody had at that time. In this case, we already have the statements of the accuser, the accused, a supposed eyewitness, and now another witness Ford has placed at the scene….

Lying in a letter to the committee is a crime, incidentally. Some liberals, including CNN employees, are downplaying this update, chiding conservatives for wrongly “seizing” on it. This is ludicrous. We have very, very few actual facts to try to verify, based on Ford’s allegation (which, yes, contains some gaps and inconsistencies). One of those possible facts is the list of attendees (the number of whom has shifted) at the house that night, as she remembers it. This is one of those people stepping forward and disavowing any knowledge of her allegation and vouching for Kavanaugh’s character….

(3) The “we need much more time” grousing from Democrats is particularly brazen, given both their endless delay efforts in other facets of this nomination battle, and the fact that Feinstein kept a lid on this for two months. You don’t get to bury something for weeks on end (downplaying its significance in private before hyping it as hugely consequential in public), and then stomp your feet about how the eleventh-hour grenade you chucked, at the tail end of the process, isn’t being adjudicated as deliberately and thoroughly as you want. It’s so transparent. If Democrats had wanted this to be explored at length, they could have brought the issue to the fore at the beginning of the process. They didn’t. But hey, at least Democratic members of the committee aren’t publicly floating a partisan plot to derail Kavanaugh, then hold his seat open for two full years, right? Oops

Jonathan Turley explains why a witness cannot demand an FBI investigation as a condition for testifying.

Ford’s demand is, to put it simply, out of line, both with her prior statements and with congressional precedent. It is not that the FBI has not investigated such allegations; it did so with Clarence Thomas. However, there is no precedent for a quid pro quo demand for testimony by a witness. Individuals can certainly refuse to testify, yet conditioning testimony on a criminal investigation by a federal agency is well beyond the province of any witness. There may indeed be a basis for reopening the FBI background investigation, but the priority is to get both the testimony of Ford and Kavanaugh under oath.

This demand is the latest twist in an increasingly confusing record. Ford originally sent a letter to Congress to ask that her allegations be considered by the committee before voting on Kavanaugh. She then demanded that she be left in anonymity — denying Kavanaugh an opportunity to know who had accused him. After her letter was leaked to the media, Ford came forward publicly and said she would testify before the committee. Now she is saying she will not testify unless her demand for an FBI investigation is met….

It would be useful to interview any witnesses, and that may be where this should lead. However, Democrats themselves did not move with particular dispatch since July in locating possible witnesses. As for Ford, her counsel stated publicly that it is simply not her job (or her counsel’s) to determine if there are corroborating witnesses. So, while arranging a polygraph examination, her counsel did not reportedly seek out witnesses to support the claims of her client, including high school friends.

In reality, Kavanaugh was more likely to face an “interrogation” than Ford. Republican senators were clearly leery of being seen as roughing up a sexual assault victim, and potentially losing female voters in the midterms. There was no such reluctance with Kavanaugh, who was always looking at an aggressive, unrelenting examination by Democrats.

The key to holding testimony is to establish under oath exactly what these two individuals remember; it might not be much beyond what is already known. Feinstein stated this week that she could not recall whether she contacted Ford six weeks ago. Yet, these witnesses would be expected to recall details from 36 years ago. Once their testimony is locked in, the Senate — and the public — will have a better idea of whether further investigation is warranted.

The only condition for either witness that will be recognized by the Senate is that their testimony will be truthful. If Ford will not testify, the Senate committee would have grounds to move toward to a final vote. That may avoid the “interrogation,” only to clear the path to confirmation.

Am I wrong or did Dems’ messaging shift from “hear what she has to say” to “how dare you ask to hear what she has to say” https://t.co/SxvX2nIUPB

— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) September 19, 2018

Even Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski are chiding the Democrats for playing cynical politics with their changing demands for her testimony. Wow, if the Democrats lose Joe and Mika, they should rethink things.

Her lawyer was on TV on Monday saying that Dr. Blasey Ford wanted to tell her story. Then on Tuesday the lawyer turned down the invitation to speak on Monday. Well, maybe the lawyer should have kept her mouth shut. And she shouldn’t have allowed her client to speak to the Washington Post. It’s hard to argue that she’s willing to talk to the Post but not the Judiciary Committee, especially when she’s offered private sessions. I get that she is receiving all sorts of hate and threats online and has had to move out of her house. No one should have to undergo that sort of treatment. People can be such slime. Though I do wonder if the Kavanaughs have received death threats through the summer. Susan Collins’ office has also received threats. What this demonstrates is that there are garbage people on both sides of the spectrum.

The thing is that this whole situation is Dianne Feinstein’s fault. There is a procedure in place to investigate such claims in private and it has apparently been used many times before with bipartisan cooperation. But Feinstein didn’t take advantage of that procedure. It was only the Democrats who knew her name so who do you think leaked it out?

I’m coming to think that the best solution for both sides is for Dr. Blasey Ford to not appear on Monday. The Democrats can blame the Republicans for not conducting a FBI investigation, whatever that would have done. It gives cover to the red-state Democrats who worried about voting against Kavanaugh. They can simply say that they were willing to vote for him, but can’t do so with such serious allegations against him. And, of course, Dr. Blasey Ford can avoid the circus that a public hearing would have been or have her testimony leaked out if she testified behind closed doors. She can fall back on the whole phoney FBI demand.

The Republicans can say that they provided her all sorts of choices of how she wanted to testify and that they really wanted to hear from her. They wanted to give her the opportunity to explain her story. But she refused to come and, therefore, they can’t vote against Kavanaugh based on an unprovable allegation that he vociferously denies and two of the other men who were supposed to be at the party also deny happened.

Kavanaugh would get on the Court. The Democrats would always regard him as illegitimate, but they were going to do that anyway. I happen to believe that he was never going to vote to overturn Roe, but if he did, they can attack him as an abuser the same way that they accuse Thomas.

Both parties can use this whole episode to try to rally their base. The Democrats can talk about how a man with an awful record with women nominated a sexual predator and the Republicans can campaign telling their voters that they have to vote for Republicans because it’s clear that the Democrats are so so over-the-top that they can’t be trusted to have control of the Senate.

It certainly doesn’t help to Hawaii’s Senator Hirono go on camera telling men to shut up.

“Guess who’s perpetuating all these kinds of actions?” Hirono said. She continued, “It’s the men in this country. And I just want to say to the men in this country, just shut up and step up. Do the right thing.” Then, after a pause, she added, “For a change.”

Lovely. As John Sexton writes, we’ve gone beyond “believe all women” to men need to just shut their mouths and accept their guilt.

You know, it used to be a standard liberal position that people are innocent until proven guilty and everyone deserves due process. But they’ve totally thrown that fundamental concept of liberty out the window when it comes to allegations of sexual misconduct whether it be on college campuses or 35-year old allegations.

And Senator Hirono is giving Republicans another talking point as they try to convince Republicans the importance of coming out to vote.

Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono (D.) said Democrats could keep the open seat on the Supreme Court vacant until after the 2020 election if Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination collapses and Democrats regain control of the Senate in November.

Hirono pointed to the long vacancy of Antonin Scalia’s former seat as a justification for holding off on confirming any nominee from President Donald Trump. When Barack Obama was president and Republicans held the Senate, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not hold a vote on Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland, and Hirono said Democrats could do the same if they had the Senate.

“I think we’ve had those kinds of vacancies before, and we certainly had over a one-year vacansuggecy with Merrick Garland,” Hirono told Politico Magazine. “So the world does not come to an end because we don’t fill all of the nominees.”

Given that a lot of Republicans held their noses and voted for Trump because of the Supreme Court. Given a recent RNC internal poll saying that complacent Trump voters might not come out to vote in November because they don’t worry about losing the House, much less the Senate, assertions like Hirono’s might give voters some impetus to come out and vote.

This is what media bias looks like.

Last night, two of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s high school classmates, each named by accuser Christine Blasey Ford as witnesses to the 1982 assault she alleges Kavanaugh committed, issued public statements flatly denying that they saw anything even resembling Ford’s story.

Yet today, CNN viewers have barely heard a peep about these denials, even as the Kavanaugh story dominates their on-air coverage. From 4:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Eastern, CNN spent 3 hours and 23 minutes talking about the Kavanaugh controversy, but only about eight minutes of that were devoted to passing along these confirmations of Kavanaugh’s denial.

Excellent.

Earlier this month, the job-search site Glassdoor compiled a list of 15 major companies that no longer require applicants for certain posts to have a college degree. The list included an array of entry- and mid-level jobs —everything from barista to “Apple Genius” to “senior manager of finance” — at such corporate giants as Apple, Google, Bank of America, Penguin Random House, Home Depot, Costco, Whole Foods, and Starbucks. Glassdoor lauded these firms for opening new pathways to success and recognizing “that book smarts don’t necessarily equal strong work ethic, grit and talent.” CNBC and Axios provided similar, approving coverage.

I’ve long thought that too many jobs require a college degree when they don’t really need them.

This is a praiseworthy development, to be sure. But it should also raise an obvious question: Why were firms requiring college degrees for such jobs in the first place? Is there good reason to believe that having a B.A. in sociology or women’s studies makes one more qualified to be a stocker at Costco or shift supervisor at Starbucks?

No, there isn’t.

In fact, there’s clear evidence that over-credentialing is bad for workers and for businesses. A comprehensive 2017 study by researchers at Harvard Business School found that college graduates filling middle-skill positions cost more to employ, have higher turnover rates, tend to be less engaged, and are no more productive than high-school graduates doing the same job. The long-term consequences of degree inflation look to be even worse, as employers continue to pay a premium for a college-educated workforce even when filling positions that non-credentialed workers could just as easily do, leading ever more students to incur the costs of pursuing a degree.

Young people too often spend four or five years while going deeply into debt to get a degree that wouldn’t make a bit of difference to how they do the job. Instead, as AEI writes, employers just use a college degree to screen out students.

Today, thousands of employers use college degrees as a convenient way to screen and hire job applicants, even when postsecondary credentials bear no obvious connection to job duties or performance. In fact, last year’s Harvard study documented increasing “degree inflation,” as employers demand baccalaureate degrees for middle-skill jobs that previously did not require one. They estimated that this phenomenon encompassed 6.2 million jobs across dozens of industries. In fact, 61 percent of employers surveyed admitted to having rejected applicants with the requisite skills and experience simply because they lacked a college degree.

There are multiple factors to blame for degree inflation, but a big one is the unintended consequences of federal anti-discrimination law. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited employers from discriminating against workers or job applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It did, however, allow the use of “professionally developed” ability or employment tests, insofar as they were not “designed, intended or used” to discriminate. In Griggs v. Duke Power Company (1971), the Supreme Court unanimously interpreted this language to mean that when a selection process disproportionately affects minority groups (e.g. has a “disparate impact”) employers must show that any requirements are directly job-related and an accurate predictor of job performance.

Importantly, this “disparate impact” standard, which Congress would codify into law in 1991, applies to any test or selection proce

When I discuss voter turnout with my students and ask them for explanations of why college students don’t come out to vote in numbers commensurate with other age groups, I get all sorts of suggestions. A lot of my high school students think that college students are just so busy that they don’t have time to come out and vote. They have no idea how much free time college students have. But this is one explanation I never considered.

A Fairfax County focus group this summer found many college students who have gotten an absentee ballot simply fail to send it back because a U.S. Postal Service stamp seems to be a foreign concept to them.

“One thing that came up, which I had heard from my own kids but I thought they were just nerdy, was that the students will go through the process of applying for a mail-in absentee ballot, they will fill out the ballot, and then, they don’t know where to get stamps,” Lisa Connors with the Fairfax County Office of Public Affairs said.

“That seems to be like a hump that they can’t get across.”

The focus group included college interns from across numerous county departments.
“They all agreed that they knew lots of people who did not send in their ballots because it was too much of a hassle or they didn’t know where to get a stamp,” Connors said.

“Across the board, they were all nodding and had a very spirited conversation about ‘Oh yeah, I know so many people who didn’t send theirs in because they didn’t have a stamp.’”

I guess buying stamps is just so last century. Apparently, they don’t have post offices on their campuses. I guess Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts will have to include stamps.