MATT LEWIS: Kavanaugh Killed the ‘Never Trump’ Movement.

Consider the dichotomy that has emerged in the last week: We saw people like Erick Erickson, who once wrote a piece headlined “I Will Not Vote For Donald Trump. Ever,” suggesting they will vote for Trump in 2020, and people like Tom Nichols, formerly of The Federalist, saying Kavanaugh’s confirmation was the final straw (he quit the GOP).

Nichols and Erickson reacted to the exact same news in exactly opposite ways.

The Kavanaugh hearing essentially radicalized Never Trumpers. Some—as part of the GOP base’s backlash against the left’s attacks—are coming home and supporting Trump. Others—perhaps because their hatred of Trump has only intensified—were pushed completely from the fold. This process has been going on for a long time, but one gets the sense that the fight over Kavanaugh was the end of the road.

Where you stand on this probably depends on where you sit. Personally, I see the group who submitted to their Trumpy fate as making an understandable submission to the inexorable forces of tribalism and partisanship. Consider Erickson’s plight. If you are a conservative, you, too, might well be repelled by the left’s behavior last week.

Might?

The allegations against Kavanaugh were never shown to have any merit — that is, those that weren’t debunked, refuted, or recanted. Nevertheless, the Left’s smear job was as nasty as it was vociferous, and amplified around the world, 24/7, by the Resistance-MSM.

So no matter what else anyone might think of President Trump, the fact that he stood by his nominee throughout this unprecedented savaging is itself unprecedented — and praiseworthy in the extreme. I can’t imagine how Trump’s selection and protection of a good man and a well-qualified jurist could cause any conservative or right-leaning libertarian to put more distance between themselves and Trump.

Except of course, for those whose iron rice bowls or NOKD-snobbery have become more important than their oft-stated principles.

“THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF ‘BAN THE BOX’: STATISTICAL DISCRIMINATION AND EMPLOYMENT OUTCOMES WHEN CRIMINAL HISTORIES ARE HIDDEN:” Research continues to show that laws prohibiting employers from asking about a job applicant’s criminal record encourage employers to discriminate against young African-American males. Here is the abstract:

Jurisdictions across the United States have adopted “ban the box” (BTB) policies preventing employers from asking about job applicants’ criminal records until late in the hiring process. Their goal is to improve employment outcomes for those with criminal records, with a secondary goal of reducing racial disparities in employment. However, removing criminal history information could increase statistical discrimination against demographic groups that include more ex-offenders. We use variation in the timing of BTB policies to test BTB’s effects on employment. We find that BTB policies decrease the probability of employment by 3.4 percentage points (5.1%) for young low-skilled black men.

The Obama-Era EEOC had a similar policy that it justified as an application of disparate impact liability. I wrote extensively about it in connection with a report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The policy hasn’t changed under Trump.  A good case can be made that the federal government should encourage employers to hire ex-offenders (for example, through the already-existing modest tax deduction program). But to do it by insisting that employers wear blindfolds has perverse consequences.  Young, law-abiding, low-skilled African American men end up paying for offenses they didn’t commit.

MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION EVER: CBS’ Garrett: More access to Trump than Obama, Bush, ‘we see him all the time.’

CBS White House correspondent Major Garrett doesn’t buy the portrayal of President Trump as an enemy of the media and a chief executive who has eliminated access for journalists.

“He loves us, and he hates us, and he loves us,” he said with a laugh.

“There is more access to this president than there was to Obama. We see him all the time. He takes questions a lot,” Garrett said. “We see him and interact with him and punch in questions with far more frequency than with Obama. Probably more so than for W. Bush,” he added.

Huh.

WAR ON REPUBLICANS: Senator Mike Lee tells Hugh Hewitt about being “doxed” during Kavanaugh confirmation.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Who Paid Jon Tester to Shoot Hundreds of Cows and Hogs, and Why, For the Love of God, WHY?

IF KAVANAUGH DID THIS IT WOULD BE ASSAULT: Wise Latina Privilege: “Alito asked if the ACCA’s definition of ‘violent felony’ reaches shoving, grabbing or pinching. Justice Sotomayor followed up on this point, turning to her right to pinch Justice Neil Gorsuch, who reacted with good-natured surprise.”

CRUEL, BUT FAIR: “The people who used to run the Democrat Party could have told them running out with ‘Believe All Women’ was a bad idea, and not just because it makes Bill Clinton look like a rapist.”

MIKE PENCE TO HUGH HEWITT: The Free World Deserves Answers on Khashoggi.

I’M SURE THIS WILL BE A BIG DEAL IN THE NEWS STARTING NEVER: Ariz. Dem Donor Charged with Felony Sexual Abuse. “There has been no documentation that any of the money has been returned by the Garcia campaign, which did not respond to a Free Beacon inquiry on what it planned to do with the money.”

PLEASE, RUN WITH THAT: Dems’ Midterm Message: White Women Are Rape Apologists.

Nothing can top the unhinged diatribe printed in the New York Times on Saturday night. Someone might want to perform a wellness check on Alexis Grenell, the author of an opinion piece titled, “White Women, Come Get Your People.” The column is a view into the tortured mind of the average American woman on the Left, a piece laced with so much puerile anguish, race-baiting and vulgar imagery that it would be a funny read if it wasn’t so disturbing. And it is another example of how major news organizations are fomenting hate among Americans. The loathsome column does not merit publication on the most angst-ridden teenage blog let alone in the nation’s “newspaper of record.”

Grenell, a Brooklyn-based public affairs consultant and alleged Democratic strategist, started out with a bang, venting about a confirmation process “where women all but slit their wrists, letting their stories of sexual trauma run like rivers of blood through the Capitol.” She referred to her “rage headache” and her “stupid uterus” and claimed there is a “blood pact between white men and white women.”

She babbled some nonsense about how “white women benefit from patriarchy by trading on their whiteness to monopolize resources for mutual gain,” and “support the patriarchy by marrying within their racial group, reproducing whiteness and even minimizing violence against their own bodies.”

We voted for Trump, according to Grenell, to “prop up our whiteness,” whatever that means. She claimed we care the same about men falsely accused of rape as women who are actually raped, but then accused White House advisor Kellyanne Conway of “weaponizing” her own sexual assault “in service to her boss by discouraging women from feeling empathy with Christine Blasey Ford or anger at Judge Kavanaugh.”

It was a grotesque, twisted tirade unfit for public consumption and it wasn’t the first time Grenell has rolled out the “Republicans-for-rape” narrative.

The Democrats have worked hard to lock down the Trigglypuff vote, but at what cost of even slightly more moderate voters?

THIS ISN’T GOING TO HELP PHIL BREDESEN, HEIDI HEITKAMP, ETC.: Speaking on MSNBC, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said “There are no moderate Democrats left…”

Hey, at least Tom Perez and Donald Trump agree on something.

THAT ESCALATED QUICKLY: Deadly Hurricane Michael now ‘extremely dangerous’ Category 4.

HOP TO IT: Mattis orders fighter jet readiness to jump to 80 percent — in one year.

In a memo issued Sept. 17 to the secretaries of the Army, Air Force and Navy, along with acquisition head Ellen Lord and acting Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness Stephanie Barna, Mattis acknowledges “budget constraints and shortfalls in aviation squadrons across the force” have led to “systemic underperformance, overcapitalization and unrealized capacity” in the fighter fleets.

“For change to be effective and efficient, we must focus on meeting our most critical priorities first,” Mattis wrote in the memo, obtained exclusively by Defense News.

Specifically, that means achieving a minimum of 80 percent mission capability rates for the Pentagon’s F-35, F-22, F-16 and F-18 inventories — a number well above the mission capability rates those aircraft now achieve.

A plane that can’t fly is as good as a plane shot down by the enemy, only the enemy didn’t even have to expend an pricey missile.

HOWIE CARR ON ELIZABETH WARREN’S TAXES: Elizabeth Warren’s return taxes imagination.

USA TODAY: Democrats have unleashed a red wave of Brett Kavanaugh-believing women voters.

IS THIS EVEN ALLOWED? I am a sexual assault survivor, and I don’t want you to just take my word for it: I was assaulted 14 years ago, but I’m thankful that I cannot condemn the man without evidence. The due process laws that protect him also protect me.

There must be a standard, otherwise no one is safe from having their life destroyed by a wayward accusation. Due process is not an obstruction to justice, it is a foundation of the American rule of law and was meant to be a barrier to hasty judgment and conviction by public opinion.

The Kavanaugh controversy has turned the world upside down. Talking heads and Twitter mobs have already dubbed him “the attacker” despite having seen no proof that the events described by Ford even occurred.

This sets a terrifying precedent for the future, no matter which side of the political aisle you find yourself on, especially in an age where victimhood is currency and everyone is buying.

Ford made allegations that deserved to be investigated, and while she may have had the right to be heard, she does not have the right to be blindly believed.

Nobody does.

Well said.

INNOCENCE IS NO DEFENSE: Two Students Hooked Up. It Was Clearly Consensual. He Still Spent $12,000 Defending Himself.

The email from the Title IX compliance officer went into great detail about the seriousness of James’s situation. He would be investigated in accordance with the university’s sexual assault and sexual violence policies, as well as the student code, which covers physical assault, threats of violence, and conduct that threatens health and safety. A finding of responsibility could result in suspension, or even expulsion.

But the email was short on details of the alleged misconduct. According to the Title IX office, a female student, Becky, had complained that James touched her “on her breasts and buttocks over and under her clothing without her consent.” (I am using pseudonyms for both James and Becky.)

James knew Becky. They had been classmates in a drama class, and, very briefly, friends. On the evening of October 20, 2017, they had met up with some other friends to play music. Eventually finding themselves alone in Becky’s dorm room, they kissed for a few minutes—and engaged in some light sexual touching—before other students interrupted them.

In James’s view, the encounter had not only been fully consensual, it was also mutual: Becky bore just as much responsibility for initiating it as James. And, as Becky would later make clear to the investigator, she had also touched him sexually—she explicitly described her own actions in her official statement.

If women can’t be accountable for their own actions, then what?

IT’S COME TO THIS: Washington and Lee renames buildings; orders portraits of Lee, Washington in military attire replaced.

STUDY: Media Devotes 0.7 Percent of Coverage to Booming Trump Economy. “Talk about burying the lede.”

Funny, but they sure seemed on board with trumping up Obama’s worst-postwar recovery as some kind of economic miracle.

TRUMP’S GREAT GIFT IS ENCOURAGING “NONPARTISAN EXPERTS” TO REVEAL THAT THEY’RE REALLY PARTISAN FOOLS: John O. McGinnis: The Professors’ Letter Against Kavanaugh Undermines the Legal Academy.

PRESIDENT TRUMP IN USA TODAY: “The truth is that the centrist Democratic Party is dead. The new Democrats are radical socialists who want to model America’s economy after Venezuela.”

REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: How Bloomberg Embeds Green Warriors in Blue-State Governments.

I THINK THE “PROGRESSIVE POLITICS” IS A SMOKESCREEN FOR BEING A LOUSY PERSON: Why Do Faculty Who Espouse Progressive Politics Behave So Regressively In Private?

As a rule of thumb, the more virtue-signalling, the less virtue.

DURING THE LAST HURRICANE, I REMINDED YOU: “It may be too late for Florence, but there will be more storms in the future.”

Now: Supplies low, anxiety high in Florida ahead of Hurricane Michael.