IT CONTINUES: Woman Accuses Senator Al Franken Of Molesting Her During USO Tour. “You knew exactly what you were doing. You forcibly kissed me without my consent, grabbed my breasts while I was sleeping and had someone take a photo of you doing it, knowing I would see it later, and be ashamed.”

Like I said.

UPDATE: Senator Al Franken Kissed and Groped Me Without My Consent, And There’s Nothing Funny About It.

Plus: Playmate Says Al Franken Groped Her. Photographic evidence at the link.

I’M NOT SURE IF DON CORLEONE WOULD FEEL FLATTERED BY THE COMPARISON. Bill Clinton: Godfather of Harvey Weinstein and Roy Moore, Roger Simon writes.

JOHN YOO ON How To Stop North Korea.

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH EUROPE? Global Deaths from Terrorism Dropped in 2016 While Rising in Europe.

HEH: Senate GOP Tax Bill Includes A ‘Harvey Weinstein Tax:’ “An end to corporations’ ability to deduct attorney fees and settlement payments in sexual harassment or abuse cases if there is a nondisclosure agreement.”

ERRR…: Senator Ben Cardin says a Carbon Tax might pass the Senate in a secret vote. That’s exactly why we don’t have secret votes, Senator.

Update: Incorrect link replaced. There is a paywall, but the point in in the headline.

ONLY POLICE SHOULD BE ARMED: Detroit police officers fight each other in undercover op gone wrong.

Sources say it started when two special ops officers from the 12th Precinct were operating a “push off” on Andover near Seven Mile. That is when two undercover officers pretend to be dope dealers, waiting for eager customers to approach, and then arrest potential buyers and seize their vehicles.

But this time, instead of customers, special ops officers from the 11th Precinct showed up. Not realizing they were fellow officers, they ordered the other undercover officers to the ground.

FOX 2 is told the rest of the special ops team from the 12th Precinct showed up, and officers began raiding a house in the 19300 block of Andover. But instead of fighting crime, officers from both precincts began fighting with each other.

Sources say guns were drawn and punches were thrown while the homeowner stood and watched.

The department’s top cops were notified along with Internal Affairs. Each officer involved is now under investigation as the department tried to determine what went wrong.

I’m having a hard time working up any sympathy for undercover cops engaged in a sting operations aimed at using asset forfeiture to seize citizens’ cars.

THE NOT-SO-MAGIC KINGDOM: Disney is hardly alone in groveling before the gates of the Middle Kingdom. Disney is really sad these days.

THAT’S RICH: NFL Accuses Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones of Damaging the League.

Throughout the season, Mr. Jones has sharply criticized Mr. Goodell’s discipline of Cowboys star running back Ezekiel Elliott over violations of the league’s personal conduct policy related to alleged domestic violence. Mr. Jones and the NFL Players Association have called the suspension unfair and criticized how the investigation was conducted.

Mr. Elliott has denied the allegations and after a protracted legal battle that kept him on the field served the first game of that six-game suspension last Sunday.

Mr. Jones pivoted against Mr. Goodell after Mr. Elliott’s suspension, according to executives from around the league. They said as recently as two days before Mr. Elliott’s suspension was announced in August, Mr. Jones expressed his continued support for extension of Mr. Goodell’s contract as commissioner.

Although the league’s owners voted unanimously in May to proceed with negotiations for a Goodell contract extension, Mr. Jones has in recent weeks stepped up efforts to halt the process. He hired one of the country’s most prominent litigators, Mr. Boies, and threatened to sue the league and its owners over the issue. That resulted in his banishment from the compensation committee, where he served as an ad hoc member.

Mr. Jones has said he isn’t out for vengeance, but rather has been concerned about the structure of the contract and the rush to get it done when there is still about a year and a half left on Mr. Goodell’s current deal.

Isn’t there anybody left to cheer for in the NFL?

MINE: “DO THE LETTERS F.O. MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU?”* I’ve been accused of white, male privilege. Here’s my response.

* Classical reference.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Moore, Moore, Moore and Much, Much Moore.

BOOTS ON THE GROUND BATTLING THE ISLAMIC STATE: A U.S. Army artillery unit shells Islamic State fighters in positions near al-Qaim, Iraq. The U.S. unit is supporting Iraqi forces. Obama said he wouldn’t put American boots on the ground in his coalition war against the Islamic State. Obama lied. The artillerymen are wearing boots.

RELATED: As this StrategyPage update notes, the Islamic State pulled out of the town of al-Qaim in late May. (See the May 22 post.)

TRUTH:

Virtue-signalling and accepting personal responsibility are mutually exclusive.

NEO-NEOCON: On unverifiable sexual allegations about political figures.

Why do I call such accusations of sexual misconduct “unverifiable”? Because ordinarily there’s no evidence whatsoever except the accuser’s words. Usually the closest we come to getting evidence is the unsealed divorce record (which usually merely contains the allegations of the accuser) or a settlement by a business (which is not an admission of guilt or even of a good case). But it’s not at all unusual to have no evidence at all, except that of proximity and opportunity (and sometimes not even that).

It’s quite different with incidents such as Trump’s “pussy” remarks, or Weiner’s penile emails, or anything with real evidence or physical evidence or documentary evidence rather than the unsubstantiated word of the accuser. In contrast, the unverifiable stories rest mostly on our evaluation of the veracity of the person making the allegations and whether their accusations are “believable” or “credible” based on what we know of the person being accused. In the case of Mitt Romney, for example, there were plenty of allegations but no sexual ones, and if there had been I doubt they would have gotten much traction (although in the current climate, they might have).

The accuser is generally someone we’ve never heard of before. How can people decide if that person can be trusted to tell the truth? Well, some listeners (way too many, actually), use the rule: “if the accused person is in my party, then the accuser is lying; if the accused person is in the opposition party, then the accuser is telling the truth.” Other observers try to look deep into the accuser’s eyes and decide if he or she (it’s ordinarily a “she” accusing a “he”) is telling the truth or is lying. In the law business, that’s called evaluating “demeanor,” and it’s always something that juries must take into account when a witness testifies.

Read the whole thing.

FEMALE PRIVILEGE: Fired Assistant DA Jody Warner Accuses Uber Driver of Scaring Her. Oh, Please.

The way the news is these days: In the middle of a storm of disgusting national stories about male sexual predators, we get our own local countercase — a fired Dallas County assistant district attorney, sobbing on camera, offering every conceivable excuse in the book for her terrible behavior with a young Uber driver.

District Attorney Faith Johnson fired Jody Warner, 32, an experienced assistant prosecutor, on Monday after Johnson reviewed an audio recording of Warner drunkenly threatening and abusing 26-year-old Uber driver Shaun Platt over the weekend. . . .

Through tears and much wiping of the nose, Warner made a completely off-the-wall gratuitous suggestion that Platt, the driver, was some kind of sexual predator and that’s why she got upset. That would have been like Trump saying he had to grab women there in order to proactively protect himself from personal violation.

“Oh my God, you’re an idiot. You are a legitimate retard,” Warner told Platt on a recording he made after he called the cops because she refused to haul her drunken self out his car. “We can hang out. I’m not scared,” she says.

Plus, get this: Warner, an experienced prosecutor of crimes, cried all the way through her press conference, but she also brought along Elizabeth Frizell, an ex-judge who will oppose Faith Johnson in the next election. So this was like a crying, confessional, tragic campaign event.

At the press conference, the candidate, Frizell, also piled on with the lurid sexual innuendos. The Dallas Morning News quotes Frizell as saying, “When you have a prosecutor who has tried sex assault cases for almost a decade, you know the signs. Her concern was heightened.”

No, her drunk-ass horrible behavior was heightened. She is on the audio recording telling Platt, “You’re so stupid I want the cops to come so they can fuck you up.”

He is on the recording he made saying “I am asking you politely to please …”

But she cuts him off: “Now I’m pissed the fuck off.”

See. This is why younger men are afraid to come forward when powerful women abuse them. Powerful women don’t know how to swear. . . .

But I do know this: A man in your position would not get away with your behavior at the press conference. He would not be able to stand in front of the cameras, wipe away tears and make all kinds of simpering little-boy-lost sexual suggestions about the woman he had just drunkenly and verbally abused on tape.

You abused your office that night, and it got way worse later when you did your press conference after you got canned. You exploited your status as a woman in a way that I suspect was cynical and calculated.

Read the whole thing.

HMM: A notorious far-right blogger may have provoked WikiLeaks’ outreach to Donald Trump Jr.

I’d be wary of any report involving Charles Johnson or Julian Assange, and this one involves both of them.