SURPRISED? FORD ALREADY REJECTS ONE-WEEK CAP ON FBI PROBE: The sun was not yet set before Christine Blasey Ford issued a statement through one of her lawyers saying she opposes any “artificial limits as to time or scope.”
In other words, Sen. Jeff Flake’s deal Friday morning to delay Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation process one week was worthless, as surely all of his Republican colleagues on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary knew it was when they agreed to it.
YES, YES IT COULD: 100 years ago, influenza killed as many as 50 million people. Could it happen again today?
Over a decade ago, Bill Frist and I were calling for an intense program to develop rapid vaccine-production. It hasn’t happened.
BUT IT WAS REPORTED EVERYWHERE AT THE MOST IMPACTFUL MOMENT: It turns out the American Bar Association story on Brett Kavanaugh was FAKE NEWS. “The Senate Judiciary Committee released this letter on Friday from the ABA stating that Robert Carlson, the President of the American Bar Association who wrote the letter, didn’t get the it approved by the committee that actually votes on this sort of thing and that the ABA’s rating of Judge Kavanaugh “’is not affected’.”
For this abuse of power, Robert Carlson should resign from the ABA presidency immediately.
A LONG-TIME FRIEND AND ASSOCIATE OF BRETT KAVANAUGH SPEAKS: M. Todd Henderson and the Brett Kavanaugh He Knew
(Bumped, by Glenn.)
THIS IS INTERESTING: Study supports oxygen therapy for sudden hearing loss.
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FROG MEETS SCORPION: Women’s March thanks Sen. Jeff Flake by calling him a ‘rape apologist.’
A LESS ROMANTIC END, AND A DISEASE LESS PLEASANT TO ACQUIRE: Renaissance Master Caravaggio Didn’t Die of Syphilis, but of Sepsis.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: New Dem Strategy on Kavanaugh: ‘U Mad?’
If they can do this to Brett Kavanaugh, they can do it to anybody. And if the Republicans reward these remorseless charlatans for this orchestrated smear campaign by capitulating to the whims of the Democrats, the voters are going to remember.
You think Kavanaugh is angry? Just wait until November 6.
Read the whole thing.
YOU CAN SEE SOME EVIDENCE OF THIS OUT ON THE STREETS: Low testosterone, or ‘male menopause,’ no longer just for older men.
And at Buzzfeed, natch.
ANDREW SULLIVAN: If everything were fair game in public life, none of us would survive.
To the extent that the hearing went beyond the specifics of Ford’s allegations and sought to humiliate and discredit Kavanaugh for who he was as a teenager nearly four decades ago (a dynamic that was quite pronounced in some Democratic questioning of the nominee), it was deeply concerning. When public life means the ransacking of people’s private lives even when they were in high school, we are circling a deeply illiberal drain. A civilized society observes a distinction between public and private, and this distinction is integral to individual freedom. Such a distinction was anathema in old-school monarchies when the king could arbitrarily arrest, jail, or execute you at will, for private behavior or thoughts. These lines are also blurred in authoritarian regimes, where the power of the government knows few limits in monitoring a person’s home or private affairs or correspondence or tax returns or texts. These boundaries definitionally can’t exist in theocracies, where the state is interested as much in punishing and exposing sin, as in preventing crime. The Iranian and Saudi governments — like the early modern monarchies — seek not only to control your body, but also to look into your soul. They know that everyone has a dark side, and this dark side can be exposed in order to destroy people. All you need is an accusation.
The Founders were obsessed with this. They realized how precious privacy is, how it protects you not just from the government but from your neighbors and your peers. They carved out a private space that was sacrosanct and a public space which insisted on a strict presumption of innocence, until a speedy and fair trial. Whether you were a good husband or son or wife or daughter, whether you had a temper, or could be cruel, or had various sexual fantasies, whether you were a believer, or a sinner: this kind of thing was rendered off-limits in the public world. The family, the home, and the bedroom were, yes, safe places. If everything were fair game in public life, the logic ran, none of us would survive.
Spot on. If only Andrew had remembered that in 2008.
ROGER SIMON: Can We Trust the FBI?
Joe Biden doesn’t seem to have a very high opinion of them.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A journalist friend texts: “Most corrupt, discredited, politically tainted Democratic-leaning law enforcement agency in America to investigate Dems’ evidence-free sex assault claims. What could possibly go wrong?”
Yes, the FBI hasn’t exactly covered itself with nonpartisan glory, has it? And merely assigning this investigation is an implicit statement that it botched the 6 prior background investigations it did on Kavanaugh. I think they should go ahead and vote — this is probably just a stall so that the Democrats’ Avenatti-types can gin up more bogus accusations.
Plus, George Korda comments on Facebook: “If Republicans, with a Senate majority, fail to deliver an affirmative Supreme Court justice vote in the face of allegations without evidence, many in the Republican base will drop GOP incumbents like a molten rock. I suspect that is part of the Democratic political calculus concerning Kavanaugh.”
Yep.
MICHAEL WALSH ON YESTERDAY’S HEARINGS: The ‘Two Americas,’ Face to Face and Belly to Underbelly.
FOUR WAYS GOP COULD HAVE AVOIDED KAVANAUGH DEBACLE: Hoo-boy, what a circus Democrats have staged in the Senate Committee on the Judiciary against Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby points to four things GOP Senate leaders could have done differently to short-circuit Spartacus and the Nine Cohorts.
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FASTER, PLEASE: Vaccine, drug combo promising against HPV-related cancers.
CHANGE: CDC Issues New Vaccine Guidelines for Adults. Okay, but what I’d really like are some new and better vaccines.
FRIES ARE DELICIOUS, AND “NUTRITION GROUPS” ARE OFTEN PEDDLING BOGUS SCIENCE ANYWAY: Apples Or Fries With That? When It Comes To Kids Meals, Fries Are Hard To Beat. If these advocacy groups were held responsible for their prescriptions the way pharma companies are for their products, they’d all be in jail.
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