Cruising the Web

From the excerpts of the hearings I’ve watched, I can see how each side feel vindicated. Dr. Ford seemed to be suffering from what she says she experienced. She seemed to be telling the truth as she remembers it. Judge Kavanaugh seems to be telling the truth and to be legitimately angry that these allegations have impugned his honor and reputation. Both of their statements were riveting So, if both the accused and accuser seem to be truthful, how are we to decide? It becomes a question of if there is any corroborating or refuting evidence for either. Dr. Ford has named three people who were present and all three have sworn under oath that they were not there and have no memory or any such event. There was no corroboration for her account as might well be expected after 36 years. But there was contradictory evidence from the three other witnesses and. also from his very detailed calendar. He gave a good explanation of why he has such a detailed calendar. It was something that his father started as both a calendar and a diary. So he has contemporary evidence of what he was doing every weekend during that summer. He also listed who was at every gathering he attended.

I was impressed with Dr. Ford’s testimony and, as I said, she seemed truthful. But I thought his statement was also very credible and powerful. If you haven’t watched it, watch it now and see what you think. Maybe it’s not a good idea to decide issues based on how people seem or how they make us feel.

As David French writes, “Ford’s testimony has changed everything and nothing.”

Moreover, we also often have this mystical faith in our own ability to discern the truth by examining tone, demeanor, and likeability. She was “real.” He’s been “wooden.” These things impact us far more than we’d like to admit. Yet if there is one thing we know from our modern re-examinations of the impact of witness testimony on case outcomes, our faith in ourselves is deeply misplaced. We’re not very good at determining who’s correct and who’s mistaken by watching people talk. That’s one reason why innocent people go to prison, including for rape.

So, given the human dynamics of watching a person in obvious pain, the lack of real cross-examination, and our misplaced faith in ourselves to discern truth, it’s entirely possible that Dr. Ford’s testimony changed everything. That she moved the needle decisively in her favor.

But it’s also very important to note that Dr. Ford’s testimony has changed nothing about the underlying evidence in the case. She has made her claim, there are no corroborating witnesses. No one else can place the two of them together at the party — not even the witnesses she’s identified. She is inconsistent or forgetful on a number of key points. She can’t even identify who brought her to the party or who took her home. He’s denied the claims and will deny them again.

That’s thin — very thin — evidence of sexual assault. The evidence is no stronger this afternoon than it was before Dr. Ford testified. When this controversy began, I said that her claims were serious enough that, if true, Kavanaugh should not be confirmed. Further, I said that that she should only have to carry the lowest burden of proof — to establish that her claims were more likely than not. If you step back, look at the totality of the evidence and consider that she has brought no new evidence to the committee, I still don’t believe she has met that minimal burden.

We can’t make decision because of how people “seem.”

There was a lot of criticism on Twitter and cable news criticizing Kavanaugh for showing anger as if any human being would not be angry after having his name dragged through the mud for two weeks having been accused of attempted rape and then the ridiculous other allegations of sexual misbehavior and then repeated gang rapes. His wife and young daughters have received death threats and vile attacks. And they are dismayed that he is angry? Just go away and shut up.

If he hadn’t seemed angry, he would have been criticized for being cold and unfeeling. Remember how Michael Dukakis was excoriated for giving a reasonable answer when he was asked if he would support the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered. People said he lost the debate with that Bernard Shaw question and his temperate response. So, there is no winning with how Judge Kavanaugh responded to these vile accusations.

As Ramesh Ponnuru writes,

How do these people expect him to be reacting if he is innocent, or even sincerely believes he is? What would they be saying if he weren’t showing emotion? What would they do if they were falsely accused of vile crimes before the entire nation? The standard for judicial qualification, and innocence, that these people are defending can’t withstand a moment’s thought.

I have had my own criticisms of Lindsey Graham, but I’ve always thought that he is someone who says and votes how he believes and respected him for that. I thought his statement yesterday was powerful and I liked that he gave it to the Democrats for how they’ve behaved through this whole episode.

When I got home yesterday and started watching the hearing, it seemed that all the Democrats had just one point – pressing Kavanaugh to ask for a FBI investigation. However, as the Republicans pointed out, neither the Democrats nor their staff participated in interviews with some of the very same people they would want the FBI to interrogate. It’s almost as if they deliberately chose not to participate in order to later claim that there had been no investigation. And, as has been repeatedly pointed out, Feinstein’s holding the letter forestalled an actual FBI investigation that was going on or a confidential investigation that could have protected the privacy that Dr. Ford so clearly desired. This constant harping on an FBI investigation seemed to be the only thing they had. That’s their talking point and they’re sticking to it even though it isn’t up to him how the committee handles the investigation. They couldn’t shake him on his testimony and his statement seemed to spike their guns. Instead we had a line by line questioning about parts of his high school yearbook so we could be told the references to flatulence and the way his friend said the f-word.

Yup, it’s the world’s greatest deliberative body.

I also thought it very suspect that the Republicans offered through Ford’s attorney for her to be interviewed privately back home in California and she said that she never received that offer. It’s almost as if her lawyer, a Democratic activist, preferred that her client come and testify publicly in the spectacle that yesterday was because that would be more politically advantageous than such a private interview which Ford seemed to have wished that she could have had.

Dianne Feinstein claimed that she hadn’t leaked the letter that Ford sent. This is after Dr. Ford testified that the only people whom she gave the letter to were her lawyers, her Democratic congresswoman, and Senator Feinstein. Feinstein got very self-righteous about this. When asked about her staff, she said that she hadn’t asked them yet. That shows how unserious she was about finding out how this letter got leaked. Wouldn’t that have been one of the first things she would do if she wanted to know how it leaked. Then she looked at one aide who told her that she hadn’t leaked it and that was good enough for Feinstein. What about the rest of her staff? And this seems rather apropos.

Feinstein says she’s innocent and didn’t leak the letter. Since an assertion of innocence is good enough for her, maybe now she knows how Brett Kavanaugh feels.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) September 27, 2018

Gee, Dianne Feinstein seemed a bit miffed at being accused, without evidence, of leaking the letter to the press. Imagine that!

— Samantha Harris (@SamatFIRE) September 27, 2018

And then Feinstein blamed Ford’s friends for leaking the letter. Way to go in throwing the victim under the bus.

I hope they track down who did this and prosecute that person.

An unknown person located in the House of Representatives on Thursday posted the personal information of Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, as well as Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch of Utah.

All three senators sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and their personal information was posted shortly after each questioned Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during Thursday’s hearing.

“They appear to be targeting Republican members of the committee after they question Judge Kavanaugh,” a Hatch spokesman told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The staffer noted the change revealed Hatch’s home address and that Thursday was the senator’s wife’s birthday.

Let’s not forget that just last year a gunman tried to kill Republicans practicing for a ball game.

We’re living in such an ugly time. Just imagine that there are people who do this.

The owner of a Washington, D.C. restaurant where Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and his wife were heckled by a group of protesters earlier this week, said staffers have received “life-threatening” messages in the wake of the incident.

“Personally, I am blessed to work with the staff who have handled the harassment and life-threatening messages we and our families have received in the wake of the event,” Fabio Trabocchi, the owner, said in a statement on Wednesday posted to Twitter. “They have shown remarkable grit and calm, It is scary to hear anger directed at you and those you love — I am lucky to work with brave people who respect our work.”

So it is not only Senator Cruz and his wife that they want to torment, but workers whose only offense seems to be that they work at the restaurant where the Cruzes dined.

Andrew McCarthy notes how differently the Democrats are taking the uncorroborated accusations against Brett Kavanaugh and the police report and witness statement for that Beto O’Rourke tried to drive away from a drunken car accident.

We await the next shoe to drop in the Judge Kavanaugh saga. Rest assured that if there’s a rumor that, in third grade, young Brett yanked on the ponytails of the girl in the second row (war on women!), the New York Times, NBC News, and phalanxes of their journalistic colleagues will be all over it.

Meanwhile, Representative Beto O’Rourke had a pair of felony arrests in his mid-to-late 20s, including a reckless drunk-driving incident in which he crashed into a car and allegedly tried to flee from the scene. The cases appear to have mysteriously disappeared without serious prosecution, notwithstanding that O’Rourke continues to deny basic facts outlined in at least one police report.

So, what really happened? We don’t know. See, Representative O’Rourke is a Democrat.

Not just that. O’Rourke is the Democrat running for a Senate seat against Ted Cruz, the Republican incumbent who is a favorite of grass-roots conservatives. Consequently, the press and Democrats have about as much interest in probing O’Rourke’s checkered past as they do in exploring allegations against Keith Ellison — the hard-Left Minnesota congressman, attorney-general candidate, and deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who has been accused of physically abusing his longtime girlfriend….

The Cruz campaign has asked about the incident, but O’Rourke has denied the police report’s allegation that he tried to leave the scene. So . . . did he? And did he make false statements to police about his alcohol intake after crashing into another vehicle at a high speed (but, luckily, not killing anyone)?

We don’t know. His name is not Kavanaugh and he’s not a Republican. We are told it is vital to find out what Kavanaugh did and how much alcohol he consumed while doing it. In O’Rourke’s case . . . not so much.

By the way, the drunk-driving incident is not a one-off, an aberration in an otherwise uneventful early adulthood. About three years before the car crash, O’Rourke was arrested for allegedly burglarizing a campus building at the University of Texas at El Paso. He reportedly claimed the incident was a college prank, but he was not a college student at the time.

Both of these potential felony cases against O’Rourke seem to have been dropped. This is strange, particularly given the palpable seriousness of the car crash and alleged attempted flight. The press is remarkably uncurious about the unanswered questions, taking a “nothing to see here” approach to the lack of prosecution.

He goes through some rather suspect events concerning both his mother and father involving drugs and money-laundering. But O’Rourke has some other suspicious moments in his recent past that I wasn’t aware of.

Meanwhile, as a first-term lawmaker, O’Rourke skirted a 2012 law that barred members of Congress from profiting on initial public offerings of stock based on information not available to the public. A House Ethics Committee memo warned members to avoid such IPOs as Twitter’s, which was about to launch. O’Rourke, who says he did not see the memo (but was nevertheless required to follow the law), bought Twitter shares, then quickly sold many of them as the stock rocketed higher in value. After he found out that Legistorm, a congressional news site, had caught wind of the transaction, O’Rourke fessed up to the Ethics Committee that he had engaged in several IPO trades. The congressman agreed to sell off IPO shares he was still holding and send the Treasury Department a check for what he said was the amount of his profits. The matter appears to have been dropped without any law-enforcement investigation.

Oh, and he said he was sorry. Clearly . . . nothing to see here, right?

The point here, we should stress, is not that people can’t redeem themselves. We’re all sinners. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. It is not a matter of O’Rourke’s being disqualified; that’s for Texans to decide. The question is whether we should tolerate a blatant double standard in the media reporting on which we rely to make important decisions.

Like Brett Kavanaugh, Beto O’Rourke is seeking one of the most important positions in the U.S. government. Unlike Kavanaugh, O’Rourke will have no swarms of reporters combing through files and tracking down witnesses about the details of years-old misconduct — misconduct that, in O’Rourke’s case, is not merely “alleged” but actually happened. There will be no television-spectacle hearing. He will be treated with respect, not treated as if he were a criminal suspect.

It’s good to be a Democrat.