You guys go ahead, I’m taking a knee!
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My learned, long time dear friend and fellow memo reader speaks out: "Here is my thinking on this sad, sad, state of affairs.
There are substantive issues at play here. One substantive issue is the role of the judiciary in the government of the United States. We have a President who believes that the judges he appoints should be strict constructionists, both in their interpretation of the Constitution and the law.
There is another side to that argument -- those who believe in a living, breathing Constitution that can be adapted (by judges, the legislature, or the President, as much as is required to fit the needs of the Republic.
You know which side I am on, but that debate is not being addressed.
There is a concomitant debate as to how much legislative authority can be delegated by the Legislative branch to the administrative agencies. Before the 1930s, and certainly before the first Cleveland Administration, the answer to that was "none, or only ministerial tasks." Today, there is a Supreme Court decision that holds that an administrative agency can determine the bounds of its own jurisdiction. Even FDR would not have gone so far, and he expressed concerns about the powers of his agencies.
That debate is not being addressed.
There is a legitimate question as to what the role of the Senate is and should be in advising the President and consenting to his appointment of a Supreme Court judge -- or any nominee. There is a question as to how much power a single citizen should have to interfere with the working of the Senate -- can a single unsubstantiated , partly redacted letter bring the World's Greatest Deliberative Body to a grinding halt? There are legitimate questions about how far the Senate can go in making rules that interfere with its Constitutional duties. There is a question as to how evidence should be treated when it is not being brought before a judicial body with rules of evidence. There is a question of whether a statute of limitations is a substantive or procedural right.
All these questions are not being addressed.
What is being addressed is, as the NY Times puts it this morning -- the "status of women" in society -- will they be slaves or free?
The media has pushed us all into looking at the world through their prism, rather than through the glass clearly, or even as Plato and the author of Hebrews would put it, the "shadow" reflecting reality. What is being debated is not substantive, and is not real. Most likely the substantive issues are not being debated because, as ever, the Republicans have the better arguments on all matters of substance, but the Dimocrats can make any issue into an emotional issue -- "you are starving the children and enslaving minorities and women."
Justice Clarence Thomas was supposedly taking a bath when he received notice that the Senate had confirmed him 52-48. He is supposed to have said, "Whoopity-damn-do." He had no respect for the Senate after the circus that he had been through with the unsubstantiated claims of a do-nothing professor. If they listen to a do-nothing professor again, the Senate will deserve the respect that Caligula showed the Senate when he appointed his favorite horses to be Senators. The fact that we have gone a week with no progress on the Kavanaugh hearing just shows how feckless the Senate is. Meanwhile real issues, such as those above, foreign policy issues, immigration issues, budget issues, administrative state issues, etc. are not being addressed by the legislative branch.
The media doesn't care. Dealing with real issues would take real work. But if you can make all this about The Handmaid's Tale or House of Cards or some other TV show, then they can put it on the front page of the NY Times and sell papers to their oblivious readers. Easy peasy. R-----."
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My view: All white, male Republican members of the committee have been frightened by charges on the part of the Democrats and they have allowed terms of the hearing to be dictated by the accuser. What nonsense. Ford has had over 30 years to prepare for this moment and she should be invited to testify Monday and Kavanaugh should be present. Then he can respond and then a vote.
Republicans have allowed themselves to be painted into a corner by Feinstein and Kavanaugh to be smeared. Me Too Rules the nation and certainly The Senate. The Republicans, led by Grassley, look like fools and act like wimps. It is past time to play hardball. If Republicans think they can pacify Democrats they are worse than "schmucks."
Biden and Ted Kennedy began by Borking , Hill carried Borking further into the forests and now Ford has been allowed to continue this charade.
I believe all the women "Ole Bill" besmirched should re-engage and let's spend the next four years preoccupied with the she said he said drama.
The mass media love entertaining mass voters and now that the Circus is no more, cowardly Republican elephants are running around making fools of themselves..
My wife is no pushover. She is a strong person and is disgusted by all of this. I suspect her view predominates among most strong, independent women. She sees through the charade and tactics on the part of Democrats and is disgusted by the way Republicans allow themselves to be played like strung up puppets.
What total nonsense.(See 1 below.)
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My view: All white, male Republican members of the committee have been frightened by charges on the part of the Democrats and they have allowed terms of the hearing to be dictated by the accuser. What nonsense. Ford has had over 30 years to prepare for this moment and she should be invited to testify Monday and Kavanaugh should be present. Then he can respond and then a vote.
Republicans have allowed themselves to be painted into a corner by Feinstein and Kavanaugh to be smeared. Me Too Rules the nation and certainly The Senate. The Republicans, led by Grassley, look like fools and act like wimps. It is past time to play hardball. If Republicans think they can pacify Democrats they are worse than "schmucks."
Biden and Ted Kennedy began by Borking , Hill carried Borking further into the forests and now Ford has been allowed to continue this charade.
I believe all the women "Ole Bill" besmirched should re-engage and let's spend the next four years preoccupied with the she said he said drama.
The mass media love entertaining mass voters and now that the Circus is no more, cowardly Republican elephants are running around making fools of themselves..
My wife is no pushover. She is a strong person and is disgusted by all of this. I suspect her view predominates among most strong, independent women. She sees through the charade and tactics on the part of Democrats and is disgusted by the way Republicans allow themselves to be played like strung up puppets.
What total nonsense.(See 1 below.)
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Dick
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1) Hold The Damn Vote Already
It was a week of pure political theater, a disgrace to everything this country used to stand for, and Democrats loved every minute of what they’d created. Between the faux outrage and the pearl-clutching across liberal Washington, there wasn’t a fainting couch that wasn’t engaged. It was all garbage.
We will never know happened to Christine Blasey Ford in the early 80s, even after she tells her story. Frankly, I don’t care anymore. When she first came forward I was willing to hear her out. It quickly became clear, whatever her story was, that her story didn’t matter. By Monday it was a liberal feeding frenzy and I was out.
In a country with more than a million lawyers, Ford ran into the arms of a liberal activist attorney you’d pick if you were looking for a political outcome, not justice. Maybe she was poorly advised by the Democrats she’d come out to months earlier, or maybe she was a willing participant. But people looking for justice don’t both want to remain anonymous and hire a lawyer, contact the media on background, take a polygraph test, and wipe clean their Internet footprint without some semblance of a plan.
Either Ford is a naïve 50-something woman with a Ph.D. or she’s a willing participant in this garbage show. It no longer really matters which.
If it did, if she were sincere, she wouldn’t be a willing participant in this circus.
As if it weren’t weird enough already, leftists issued more demands. She would tell the story she was supposedly itching to tell if, and only if, her wish list was granted. After days of liberals decrying the idea “a bunch of white men” asking her questions, she insisted that only those white men be allowed to ask her questions – none of this having a female staff lawyer ask her anything. Optics suddenly became more important than “her truth.”
She also wanted Judge Kavanaugh to testify first. While Kavanaugh has been unequivocal in his denials and never waived from his commitment to rebut any allegation, you can’t rebut allegations that haven’t been testified to. The accused never goes first, it’s un-American.
That didn’t matter, Democrats were immediately on board because they wanted anything to delay the process further. The concept of not allowing Ford and her team to dictate how the United State Senate conducts its business was irrelevant, and anything short of complete appeasement was declared “bullying.” In fact, everything was declared bullying. Every time Republicans agreed to what she wanted they were called bullies, chastised for “re-traumatizing” Ford for not agreeing to simply believe her.
Guilty was the only answer they’d accept, though they’d likely declare that not enough if they’d gotten it.
Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, kept setting deadlines for her to agree to testify or he’d call for a vote. She wouldn’t, then he’d change them. His leadership made Barack Obama look strong on chemical weapons use in Syria.
On Friday, Ford came up with a new excuse as to why she can’t testify on Monday – she’s uncomfortable with confined spaces, so she won’t fly to DC. She’ll drive, probably, but couldn’t possibly make it till Thursday. She’s had all week to decide this, but didn’t mention anything about this “phobia” until yet another deadline approached.
It worked, Grassley’s deadline was moved again.
After that, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who started all of this by hiding Ford’s letter for 6 weeks, had the nerve to say, “We must treat sexual assault survivors with respect, not bully or try to silence them.”
There was no bullying and there was nothing more Republicans could do to hear her story, her team was delaying again because delay was their only play.
Feinstein’s lies were not unique to her. Miraculously, every Democrat and journalist switched stories the way a baby has their diaper changed, and none of them missed a beat or were bothered by contradicting themselves, sometimes from just hours earlier. It was disgusting.
I don’t know what happened for Ford, but I do know she doesn’t want to talk about it under oath. In the past 2 months, she’s talked to probably dozens of Democrats at this point, elected and activist, the Washington Post on multiple occasions, a therapist, a polygraph operator, her husband, friends, but no one under oath.
Kavanaugh has submitted a statement that is subject to perjury laws, as have the others Ford said were at the party she can’t remember the location or year of, but she hasn’t. Her team is doing everything possible to avoid it, they want this hanging out there as long as possible to weaponize the charge without having it questioned. The Soviet Union used to do this, not America.
Facts no longer matter when the target is a conservative. Reality is whatever liberals want it to be at any given moment and whatever they declared it to be beforehand, even if it was the exact opposite of what they say it is now, doesn’t matter and it’s bullying to point it out.
It needs to stop. But Democrats won’t stop doing it because they pay no price for it, the “referees” in the media are wearing a blue uniform under their suits. The only way this madness stops is for it to stop working on Republicans. The “moderate” Senate Republicans need to choose to put the country over their re-election. They’d likely be surprised to find having a spine is good for job security. All Republicans would likely find the same thing.
Enough is enough, it’s time to stop begging Ford to testify and simply move on. When she shows up on 60 Minutes, telling her story in yet another venue that won’t question her in any serious way, it won’t be lost on the public that she was given more opportunities to testify than anyone in modern history yet always only ever chose partisan outlets. For someone uncomfortable telling her story, liberals seem to think she’d be willing to tell it just before the midterms. So what?
It’s time to hold the vote. It’s time to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. You can only give someone everything they want so many times before you have to accept that they really wanted something else, in this case it’s delay.
There will be another outrage, either way. The entire Democratic Party campaign strategy is to keep their base angry and afraid to motivate them to the polls. The only way to counter that outrage is to deliver on promises and stand up to it like that guy stood up to the tanks in Tiananmen Square, because it’s the same philosophy driving both.
Hold the damn vote already.
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1) Hold The Damn Vote Already
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
By Derek HUnter
We will never know happened to Christine Blasey Ford in the early 80s, even after she tells her story. Frankly, I don’t care anymore. When she first came forward I was willing to hear her out. It quickly became clear, whatever her story was, that her story didn’t matter. By Monday it was a liberal feeding frenzy and I was out.
In a country with more than a million lawyers, Ford ran into the arms of a liberal activist attorney you’d pick if you were looking for a political outcome, not justice. Maybe she was poorly advised by the Democrats she’d come out to months earlier, or maybe she was a willing participant. But people looking for justice don’t both want to remain anonymous and hire a lawyer, contact the media on background, take a polygraph test, and wipe clean their Internet footprint without some semblance of a plan.
Either Ford is a naïve 50-something woman with a Ph.D. or she’s a willing participant in this garbage show. It no longer really matters which.
If it did, if she were sincere, she wouldn’t be a willing participant in this circus.
As if it weren’t weird enough already, leftists issued more demands. She would tell the story she was supposedly itching to tell if, and only if, her wish list was granted. After days of liberals decrying the idea “a bunch of white men” asking her questions, she insisted that only those white men be allowed to ask her questions – none of this having a female staff lawyer ask her anything. Optics suddenly became more important than “her truth.”
She also wanted Judge Kavanaugh to testify first. While Kavanaugh has been unequivocal in his denials and never waived from his commitment to rebut any allegation, you can’t rebut allegations that haven’t been testified to. The accused never goes first, it’s un-American.
That didn’t matter, Democrats were immediately on board because they wanted anything to delay the process further. The concept of not allowing Ford and her team to dictate how the United State Senate conducts its business was irrelevant, and anything short of complete appeasement was declared “bullying.” In fact, everything was declared bullying. Every time Republicans agreed to what she wanted they were called bullies, chastised for “re-traumatizing” Ford for not agreeing to simply believe her.
Guilty was the only answer they’d accept, though they’d likely declare that not enough if they’d gotten it.
Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, kept setting deadlines for her to agree to testify or he’d call for a vote. She wouldn’t, then he’d change them. His leadership made Barack Obama look strong on chemical weapons use in Syria.
On Friday, Ford came up with a new excuse as to why she can’t testify on Monday – she’s uncomfortable with confined spaces, so she won’t fly to DC. She’ll drive, probably, but couldn’t possibly make it till Thursday. She’s had all week to decide this, but didn’t mention anything about this “phobia” until yet another deadline approached.
It worked, Grassley’s deadline was moved again.
After that, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who started all of this by hiding Ford’s letter for 6 weeks, had the nerve to say, “We must treat sexual assault survivors with respect, not bully or try to silence them.”
There was no bullying and there was nothing more Republicans could do to hear her story, her team was delaying again because delay was their only play.
Feinstein’s lies were not unique to her. Miraculously, every Democrat and journalist switched stories the way a baby has their diaper changed, and none of them missed a beat or were bothered by contradicting themselves, sometimes from just hours earlier. It was disgusting.
I don’t know what happened for Ford, but I do know she doesn’t want to talk about it under oath. In the past 2 months, she’s talked to probably dozens of Democrats at this point, elected and activist, the Washington Post on multiple occasions, a therapist, a polygraph operator, her husband, friends, but no one under oath.
Kavanaugh has submitted a statement that is subject to perjury laws, as have the others Ford said were at the party she can’t remember the location or year of, but she hasn’t. Her team is doing everything possible to avoid it, they want this hanging out there as long as possible to weaponize the charge without having it questioned. The Soviet Union used to do this, not America.
Facts no longer matter when the target is a conservative. Reality is whatever liberals want it to be at any given moment and whatever they declared it to be beforehand, even if it was the exact opposite of what they say it is now, doesn’t matter and it’s bullying to point it out.
It needs to stop. But Democrats won’t stop doing it because they pay no price for it, the “referees” in the media are wearing a blue uniform under their suits. The only way this madness stops is for it to stop working on Republicans. The “moderate” Senate Republicans need to choose to put the country over their re-election. They’d likely be surprised to find having a spine is good for job security. All Republicans would likely find the same thing.
Enough is enough, it’s time to stop begging Ford to testify and simply move on. When she shows up on 60 Minutes, telling her story in yet another venue that won’t question her in any serious way, it won’t be lost on the public that she was given more opportunities to testify than anyone in modern history yet always only ever chose partisan outlets. For someone uncomfortable telling her story, liberals seem to think she’d be willing to tell it just before the midterms. So what?
It’s time to hold the vote. It’s time to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. You can only give someone everything they want so many times before you have to accept that they really wanted something else, in this case it’s delay.
There will be another outrage, either way. The entire Democratic Party campaign strategy is to keep their base angry and afraid to motivate them to the polls. The only way to counter that outrage is to deliver on promises and stand up to it like that guy stood up to the tanks in Tiananmen Square, because it’s the same philosophy driving both.
Hold the damn vote already.
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