THE DEMOCRATS OVERPLAYED THEIR HAND, AS THEY HAVE BEEN DOING SINCE NOVEMBER 2016: John Podhoretz: Kavanaugh: The Surprise Ending

Ford’s testimony was powerful, and had she been able to surface a piece of evidence as insubstantial as a piece of down—but one with any substance whatsoever—Kavanaugh would not have survived it. But she didn’t. And she hasn’t. The entire planet knows who she is, knows her story, and knows her claims. Not a single piece of corroboration has emerged. It is fair to assume there isn’t any. We don’t destroy people when someone says “trust me, he’s bad.” We don’t … unless we want to destroy him anyway and are willing to use any piece of evidence to hand.

In addition to the folks who assumed Kavanaugh was guilty because he’s a “privileged white male” and presumptively anti-abortion (a non sequitur, I know), and those who didn’t care if we was guilty, there were those who really, really wanted him to be guilty because it would affirm some narrative or other. But what kind of people *want* a prominent federal appellate judge, former secretary to POTUS, to turn out to be a gang rapist?

WHY ARE FEMINISTS MINIMIZING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RAPE? Seen on Facebook: “I’m amazed at the progressives who argue that Kavanaugh should not have expressed anger that he has been accused of being a rapist, and that he shouldn’t have lashed out at such accusations even if they are entirely false. If being accused of being a rapist isn’t a big deal, then rape isn’t a big deal.”

SENATOR GRASSLEY DEMANDS THAT FORD TURN OVER THERAPY NOTES: Well, “demands” may be too strong, because presumably he could subpoena them, though he may hesitate to set a precedent that would undermine the doctor-patient privilege in other Congressional investigations. But he’s absolutely correct that Ford has no reasonable case for withholding notes that she and her supporters have relied on in support of her allegations. In related news, Grassley reveals that Ford’s ex-boyfriend states that contrary to Ford’s Senate testimony, Ford once helped a good friend prepare for a polygraph exam.

INTELLECTUAL BUBBLE-DWELLER REVEALS HE DWELLS IN A BUBBLE: The Brookings Institution’s Benjamine Wittes: “Yet few observers seem to dispute [Ford’s] credibility.”  There is Rachel Mitchell, for one, but my social media filled is filled with smart, skeptical individuals who dispute Ford’s credibility.

One problem with much of the commentary on Ford’s testimony is that people who should know better are using “credibility” as a synonym for “sincerity.” A credible accuser isn’t a “sincere accuser,” but a believable or trustworthy accuser. If Ford testified that Kavanaugh was possessed by demons, we wouldn’t find her “credible,” regardless of how “sincere” she is.  And so long as Ford refuses to produce her therapy notes, she isn’t a credible accuser.

ALL OF THESE HARVARD LAW STUDENTS SHOULD HAVE OBJECTIONS FILED WHEN THEY APPLY FOR BAR ADMISSION: Harvard Students Filed Multiple Title IX Complaints Against Brett Kavanaugh To Get Him Fired. To put it bluntly, these claims are legally absurd, and at best a publicity stunt. If these students are willing to abuse legal process for political reasons while still in law school, what can we expect of them as attorneys?

UPDATE: It’s not clear how many, if any, of the students filing the Title IX complaints are law students. It’s grossly unethical regardless.

SHORT ANSWER–YES: Is Ford’s Credibility Undermined by Her Refusal to Produce Her Therapy Records?

THIS SHOULD BE GETTING MORE ATTENTION: I had totally missed that Christine Blasey Ford was asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee to provide the notes of her therapy sessions, and refused to turn over any of them. I have explained in detail here why the credibility of her allegation against Judge Kavanaugh could not be accurately assessed without access to her therapy and psychiatric history in general, and especially much more information about the therapy sessions in which, by her own account, “she came to understand the incident as a trauma with lasting impact on her life.”

Now, I totally understand why someone would not want to turn over therapist records that undoubtedly discuss intimate details of one’s life. But if you are in the process of derailing a Supreme Court nominee based on otherwise unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct thirty-six years ago, and in that process giving the nominee a reputation as a rapist, it seems to me you have the moral obligation to either turn over all relevant evidence, or withdraw your allegation. In the absence of that evidence and any corroboration beyond her say-so, if I were a Senator I would ignore the allegations.

HERE’S A SOUND ARGUMENT: I was sexually assaulted over thirty years ago, and I never told anyone. Therefore, I can attest from personal experience that just because someone didn’t tell anyone for over thirty years about a sexual assault does not mean we should assume she is lying, exaggerating, or has a false memory.

Here’s an unsound argument: I was sexually assaulted over thirty years ago, and never told anyone. Therefore, anyone who alleges after thirty plus years that she was sexually assaulted is telling the truth. Therefore, I know that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Dr. Ford over thirty years ago.

Yet, I’ve seen people making the unsound argument, which really defies logic, over and over again over the last week.

THE NARRATIVE KEEPS CHANGING:

Oct. 2016: In a Time of Trump, Millennial Jews Awaken to Anti-Semitism Trump is forcing young Jews to confront anti-Semitism for the first time!

Sept. 2018: Trump embraces a dangerously broad definition of anti-Semitism Trump is trying too hard to protect young Jews from anti-Semitism!

THEY HAVE DESCENDED TO THIS LEVEL: A friend who wishes to remain anonymous, but whom I trust, informs me that a reporter from Politico called her today seeking dirt on Brett Kavanaugh based on vague rumors from Kavanaugh’s days as an attorney at Kirkland & Ellis. Then there is the request below, which rather tellingly asks for information on Kavanaugh, and not on the protagonist who actually attended Holton-Arms. The Senate needs to put an end to this farce as quickly as possible.

BAD NEWS FOR KAVANAUGH: So the Judiciary Committee is going to have Ford and Kavanaugh testify Monday. This puts Kavanaugh at a huge disadvantage, IMHO. His life history is public. In a normal litigation setting, Ford’s life history would be equally fair game, after being subject to discovery, deposition, and testimony. Indeed, when it comes to 30+ year old memories, it would be essential for an individual representing someone in Kavanaugh’s position to know whether an individual has undergone hypnosis (which can alter memories), has been diagnosed with particular psychiatric or other medical conditions that could affect memory, has suffered other traumatic events involving sex, has had a therapist who might have been suggestive, and so forth. Even if the Republicans had time to get all this information, which they don’t, in an area of “Me Too,” I doubt they would touch this stuff with a ten foot pole.

WHY PEOPLE DON’T TRUST THE MSM, PART 7 MILLION: Huffington Post (of all places): Bombshell Washington Post Story On Trump Passport Crackdown Withheld, Distorted Key Facts

THIS ISN’T HOW SERIOUS SCHOLARS RESPOND TO LEGITIMATE CRITICISM OF THEIR WORK: Narrator: Duke’s Nancy MacLean isn’t a serious scholar.

Steve Teles, by the way, is a liberal-leaning political science professor at Johns Hopkins. Geoffrey Kabaservice has a Ph.D. in History from Yale and is the author of two well-regarded books. I’m waiting to see how MacLean and her allies try to smear Stanford history professor Jennifer Burns, author of a devastating recent review of the book Teles and and Kabaservice also criticized, MacLean’s Democracy in Chains. MacLean also seems to think it’s a “conflict of interest” for anyone writing about her book to have any possible ideological priors that may color their views, which makes it odd that she never mentions her history of activism with the far-left International Socialist Organization.

COULD THIS BE WHY SENATOR FEINSTEIN DIDN’T PURSUE FORD’S ALLEGATIONS UNTIL THE BITTER END? It’s possible that it was a purely tactical decision. But now that I’ve read the letter Ford wrote to Feinstein about Kavanaugh, one line stuck out: “I have received medical treatment regarding the assault.” Reading that, I would naturally think that the writer saw some sort of medical doctor about the assault within some short time frame after the assault. If I were on Feinstein’s staff, I would have contacted her and asked if she could provide any reasonably contemporaneous medical records. The answer, “Well, I brought it up at a couples therapy session 30 years later, without mentioning Kavanaugh’s name, and I also mentioned it to a personal therapist the following year” isn’t what we normally mean by “receiving medical treatment” after an assault.

If the letter had been released, the first question from Republicans would have been about this “medical treatment.” Psychological counseling many years later, yes. Medical treatment, no. And Ford’s a psychology professor, so the difference shouldn’t be that obscure. Now, I’m not saying there aren’t plausible explanations for why she used the phrase “medical treatment” that would not undermine her credibility. But I am saying that if you allege sexual assault in the distant past against a Supreme Court nominee, and you claim in writing to have undergone medical treatment as a result of the assault, but you never saw a medical doctor, and didn’t even see a therapist for thirty-three years, a Senator might not want to stake her reputation on your claim.

REMINDER: WHILE YOU WERE CREATING A PHONY CONTROVERSY OVER ERIC TRUMP’S “SHEKELS” TWEET, the National Women’s Studies Association gave a book award to a blatantly anti-Semitic book.

A “PROGRESSIVE WAVE” OR “BLACK AND HISPANIC DEMOCRATS WON’T VOTE FOR WHITE LIBERALS RUNNING AGAINST A BLACK OR HISPANIC CANDIDATE?”: Josh Kraushaar: Identity, Not Ideology, Driving the Democratic Party. Or why did white progressive Cynthia Nixon run poorly against Andrew Cuomo, while black and Hispanic challengers to white incumbents have done so well?

THIS IS HOW THE LEFT ACTUALLY THINKS: Neoliberalism is an anti-democratic ideology. It takes decisions about the allocation of scarce resources out of the hands of public institutions and places them in the hands of private actors. Imagine the “anti-democratic” horror of letting “private actors” decide how to spend their money.

THIS MAY BE THE SINGLE DUMBEST CONTROVERSY OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: Eric Trump, a Gentile, accuses another Gentile, Bob Woodward,  of earning “extra shekels,” in a context having nothing to do with Jews or Israel. This is somehow deemed to be anti-Semitic. Yet if you Google “extra shekels,” as I did, you see the term in occasional use, and not by anti-Semites, at least not in the first 70 or so results that I perused. No matter how one feels about Trump and his family, this desperate need by some to depict them as anti-Semites based on the flimsiest of evidence is just that, desperate.

(UPDATE) RELATED: Blatantly anti-Semitic book wins Women’s Studies award.

WORST COLLEGE MAJOR EVER?: Beloit College, “Critical Identity Studies.”

Combining a variety of academic disciplines (gender and women’s studies, ethnic studies, queer studies, disability studies, postcolonial studies), Critical Identity Studies (CRIS) investigates the ways identities are shaped within structures of inequality and through systems and practices of power and resistance.

From the introductory course, “Sex and Power,” to the advanced theoretical courses which include “Whiteness,” “Masculinities,” “Gender Bending,” “Race and Culture,” “Feminism and Politics,” “‘Black Lives Matter,” and “Thinking Queerly,” CRIS courses are always interdisciplinary, intersectional, and oriented toward social justice.

Annual “direct cost” of attending Beloit College: $58,870

THERE ARE MANY, MANY JEWISH LAWS AND TRADITIONS THAT THIS RABBI VIOLATED: Stephen Miller’s childhood rabbi bashes the Trump adviser in his New Year’s sermon. 

But if your real religion is liberal politics, I guess it doesn’t matter.

WHITEWASHING PROGRESSIVE HISTORY: Euphemizing Eugenics. In some circles, Progressives’ support for forcibly sterilizing those deemed “unfit” becomes mere “collective action to control the birthrate.”

MAX BOOT: VICTIM OF IDENTITY THEFT?

IT’S 2018, AND HISTORIANS AREN’T EMBARRASSED TO WRITE ARTICLES LIKE THIS: An Exceptional Case? Problematizing Soviet Anti-Racism.

Apparently, all too many folks on the Left still believe that the USSR’s purported anti-racism was totally sincere. So this “revisionist” piece basically amounts to, “Maybe the Soviet propaganda that naive American Communists and fellow travelers ingenuously accepted wasn’t fully reflective of actual Soviet practice.”

As a Facebook friend, herself a refugee from the USSR, writes in response:

The Soviets were anti-racists only in the sense that they shouted about American racism whenever anyone mentioned mass murders conducted by the Lenin-Stalin regimes. Short of that hypocrisy, the Soviet government had no interest in anti-racism, mostly because it wanted to keep open the option of ethnically-based mass deportations and murders on its own soil. Stalin, after all, presided over the genocide of millions of Ukrainians, followed by genocide, forced deportations, and mass incarcerations of numerous ethnic and religious groups, from the Crimean Tatars to the Volga Germans to the Chechens to the Latvians, to the famed plot to deport all Jews to Siberia which was only thwarted by Stalin’s death.

One problem seems to be understanding racism from an American perspective. Having virtually no African-descended population, the Soviets could feign tolerance toward minorities while systematically oppressing domestic ethnic minorities. It’s the same sort of constricted perspective that leads woke millennials to dismiss the Holocaust as “white on white violence.”

IN TODAY’S EDITION OF “NOT THE ONION”: Vox.com: The new Nabisco animal crackers art doesn’t address any of the underlying issues about ethics, exploitation, and corporate greed.

“Yet the symbolic significance of changing the animal cracker box design does little to dismantle the elements of capitalism that exploit animals, people, and the environment.” You don’t say! I had thought this was magical animal cracker box design that would make every progressive fantasy come true…

WHEN A WATERGATE FELON FALSELY ACCUSES YOU OF DISHONESTY: I’ve been one of the louder critics of a terrible, inaccurate polemic posing as a work of history. The author’s defenders have resorted almost entirely to ad hominem, but none with as much irony as this: