October 2, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

       Latest on the Kavanaugh Process,                Plus Articles on the Special Counsel’s Report                and the Latest by Pat Buchanan

Friends,

The last five installments of MY CORNER have dealt with, in some way or another, the implications and background of the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. And by now I believe many of us are filled to the saturation point, just tired out by the whole incredibly sordid business.

But the continuing drum beat, the all-consuming mania of the feminists and the Left to find “evidence” to disqualify the nominee goes on and on and on. As we turn on our television sets there it is for us to see and hear, the frenetic efforts to miraculously discover something, anything, some event, any event that might have occurred thirty-five or so years ago. It doesn’t matter how minor, how minuscule….how dubious, how outlandish.

“Kavanaugh drank too much beer back in 1985!” screams a leftist professor at NC State University. “I saw him…well, I’m pretty sure it was him! He threw his beer at somebody! Well, maybe it was ice cubes!”  And at that point, very conveniently, that paragon of moral virtue Bernie Sanders jumps in to demand another investigation…of Kavanaugh’s drinking “problem” and whether he threw ice at someone, and whether he might have “perjured” himself about how many beers he might have drunk when he testified last week before Congress!

This is actually happening…and I doubt any of us could have come up with anything more bizarre…but this is where we have arrived.

Damn! How many of us can remember how many beers—or Coca Colas, or wine coolers—we might have consumed back four decades ago?  And this, dear readers, is enough—say Sanders and frenzied Democrat politicians—this is enough to disqualify Kavanaugh.

Boy, am I glad I am not up for some high Federal appointment!  But, you see, I recall exactly that at 9:45 p.m. (and 19 seconds), on December 31, 1965, I began drinking exactly four Michelob Lights in rapid succession (it took 21 minutes), and my potential and “cry-to-Heaven” criminality was witnessed by four friends…who I am prepared under oath to name right here and now. My memory, despite the years, is crystal clear, you see!  The temperature was exactly 54 degrees Fahrenheit, I had two slices of pepperoni pizza (partially consumed), and I remember that a re-run of Gunsmoke was on the tele….Miss Kitty was giving Marshall Dillon a beer, too!

Of course, what I just wrote in the above paragraph is rubbish, what in layman’s parlance one would call that fetid matter scattered around a pasture! If you get my drift….

But this is where we have arrived in the decrepit geographical expression called “the United States of America”: No God, nothing much left of our old Republic, honesty a rarity, the Constitution shredded, and with nearly half the nation crazy like the Gadarene swine in the New Testament into which Our Lord cast the Demons who had earlier taken possession of a man. And you know what happened to them? Their possession was fatal as in their mad frenzy those pigs plunged into the Sea of Galilee.

The difference is that today’s lunatics, those psychologically cultic feminists and their brethren (or should they be called “sisteren”?) will take much of America with them as they burn up, self-incinerate, and flame out in their unleashed fury and insanity.

But one question:

Senator Sanders, think back very, very carefully…did you ever drink more than, say, three beers at one time in December 1959, when you were eighteen years old? I think I know an old codger—er, I mean elder gentleman—who says he knew you in high school (well, he says he knew people who knew you), and that you—quick, call The New York Times—drank “too much” and, I hate to report this sordid fact, actually threw up! 

O tempora! O mores!

So I am seriously concerned about your service in the United States Senate and your ability to cast an informed vote on…anything. Perhaps the Vermont voters need to demand a recall election?

I pass on two items printed by Breitbart, both relating in detail the report of the special counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee from last week, you remember Mrs. Rachel Mitchell? Her report clearly states that Dr. Ford’s testimony and accusations can in no way be considered evidence of sexual assault.  And, as well, a column by Pat Buchanan on just how wimpy and cowardly the Republicans have been—something I’ve been saying for far too long.

Prosecutor’s Senate Report Outlines 9 Reasons Why Christine Blasey Ford Not Credible

https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/10/01/christine-blasey-ford-not-credible-prosecutor-mitchell-senate-report/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20181001

By John Nolte    1 Oct 2018

Rachel Mitchell, the veteran sex crimes prosecutor chosen by Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh, has filed a report that points out Ford’s inconsistencies and apparent deceptions.

“In the legal context, here is my bottom line,” she writes. “A ‘he said, she said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that. I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence.”

She adds, “Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.” This means Ford’s story does no reach the 50-50 level of more likely than not.

Read the full report:

Mitchell Memo by on Scribd

On Sunday, Breitbart News published an extensive list of Ford’s inconsistencies, including the fact she told the Committee she is afraid to fly when the truth is that she flies frequently for both business and pleasure. Mitchell’s report is even more comprehensive, with nine different general objections (marked with underlined text) substantiated by dozens of contradicting claims and unanswered questions.

Ford’s deviations in her timeline about when the assault occurred are important. Did the event occur in the “mid-eighties” or “early-eighties,” was she in her “early teens” or “late teens,” and why did she cross out the “early” in “early 80s” in the statement for her polygraph report?

Mitchell lays it all out:

• “In a July 6 text to the Washington Post, she said it happened in the ‘mid 1980s.’”
• “In her July 30 letter to Senator Feinstein, she said it happened in the ‘early 80s.’”
• “Her August 7 statement to the polygrapher said that it happened one ‘high school summer in early 80’s[.]’”
• “[Then] she crossed out the word ‘early’ for reasons she did not explain.”
• “A September 16 Washington Post article reported that Dr. Ford said it happened in the ‘summer of 1982.’”
• “The Washington Post “article reported that notes from an individual therapy session in 2013 show her describing the assault as occurring in her ‘late teens.'”
• “But she told the Post and the Committee that she was 15 when the assault allegedly occurred.”

Ford’s timeline of the trauma she claims the event left her raises questions:

• “She alleges that she struggled academically in college, but she has never made any similar claim about her last two years of high school.”

This is relevant because her final two years of high school were the two years immediately after the event.

Mitchell moves on to lay out how Ford’s version of what happened has been every bit the moving target as the timing of the event. “When speaking with her husband,” Mitchell writes, “Dr. Ford changed her description of the incident to become less specific.”

• “Dr. Ford testified that she told her husband about a ‘sexual assault’ before they were married.”
• “But she told the Washington Post that she informed her husband that she was the victim of ‘physical abuse’ at the beginning of their marriage.”
• “She testified that, both times, she was referring to the same incident.”

Now it is an attempted sexual assault.

Mitchell explains that Ford’s “inability to remember” where the house where the event took place “raises significant questions.” As does her inability to remember how she “got from the party back to her house.”

• “She told the Washington Post that the party took place … more than 7 miles from her childhood home … that it was a roughly 20-minute drive from her childhood home.”
• “She also agreed for the first time in her testimony that she was driven somewhere that night, either to the party or from the party or both.”
• “But she has no memory of who drove her or when. Nor has anyone come forward to identify him or herself as the driver.”
• “Given that this all took place before cell phones, arranging a ride home would not have been easy.”
• “Indeed, she stated that she ran out of the house after coming downstairs and did not state that she made a phone call from the house before she did, or…”
• “…that she called anyone else thereafter.”
• “Dr. Ford testified that her friend Leland, apparently the only other girl at the party, did not follow up with Dr. Ford after the party to ask why she had suddenly disappeared.”

In other words, how did Ford get home? She had no cell phone. She testified that she did not call anyone to pick her up while she was in the house. She testified that she ran out of the house without telling anyone, so no one in the house gave her a ride home. How did she arrange a ride home?

Mitchell moves on to Ford’s “account of the alleged assault,” and how she “has not offered a consistent account[.]”

• “According to her letter to Senator Feinstein, Dr. Ford heard Judge Kavanaugh and Mark Judge talking to other partygoers downstairs while she was hiding in the bathroom after the alleged assault.”
• “But according to her testimony, she could not hear them talking to anyone.”
• “In her letter, she stated, ‘I locked the door behind me. Both loudly stumbled down the stairwell, at which point other persons at the house were talking with them.’”
• “She testified that, after the incident, she ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and heard them going downstairs. But she maintained that she could not hear their conversation with others when they got downstairs.”
• “Instead, she testified that she ‘assum[ed]’ a conversation took place.”

In the Feinstein letter, though, Ford makes it sound as though hearing the conversation downstairs was her signal that it was safe for her to leave the bathroom.

Mitchell then points out the glaring inconsistencies in Ford’s account of who and how many people attended the 1982 house party.

• “According to the Washington Post’s account of her therapy notes, there were four boys in the bedroom in which she was assaulted.”
• “She told the Washington Post that the notes were erroneous because there were four boys at the party, but only two in the bedroom.”
• “In her letter to Senator Feinstein, she said ‘me and 4 others’ were present at the party.
• “In her testimony, she said there were four boys in addition to Leland Keyser and herself.”
• “She could not remember the name of the fourth boy, and no one has come forward.”
• “Dr. Ford listed Patrick ‘PJ’ Smyth as a ‘bystander’ in her statement to the polygrapher and in her July 6 text to the Washington Post, although…”
• “…she testified that it was inaccurate to call him a bystander.”
• “She did not list Leland Keyser even though they are good friends.”
• “Leland Keyser’s presence should have been more memorable than PJ Smyth’s.”

Why would Ford fail to note in her polygrapher statement that her best friend Leland Keyser was at the party, a woman who is still a lifelong friend.

Despite their friendship. Keyser maintains (under penalty of a felony) she has no memory of this house party and that she has never even met Kavanaugh.

Mitchell also focused on Ford’s memory of recent events.

• “Dr. Ford struggled to remember her interactions with the Washington Post.”
• “Dr. Ford could not remember if she showed a full or partial set of therapy notes to the Washington Post reporter.”
• “She does not remember whether she showed the Post reporter the therapist’s notes or her own summary of those notes.”
• “The Washington Post article said that “portions” of her “therapist’s notes” were “provided by Ford and reviewed by” the Post. But…”
• “…in her testimony, Dr. Ford could not recall whether she summarized the notes for the reporter or showed her the actual records.”
• “She does not remember if she actually had a copy of the notes when she texted the Washington Post WhatsApp account on July 6.”
• “Dr. Ford said in her first WhatsApp message to the Post that she ‘ha[d] therapy notes talking about’ the incident when she contacted the Post’s tipline.”
• “She testified that she had reviewed her therapy notes before contacting the Post to determine whether they mentioned anything about the alleged incident, but…”
• “…could not remember if she had a copy of those notes, as she said in her WhatsApp message, or merely reviewed them in her therapist’s office.”

Ford claims she cannot even remember crucial events around her polygraph test, which she took in August, less than 60 days prior to her Committee testimony:

• “Dr. Ford could not remember if she was being audio- or video-recorded when she took the polygraph. And…”
• “…she could not remember whether the polygraph occurred the same day as her grandmother’s funeral or the day after her grandmother’s funeral.”

Mitchell adds that “It would also have been inappropriate to administer a polygraph to someone who was grieving.”

Mitchell reminds the Committee that “Dr. Ford refused to provide any of her therapy notes to” them, which means we will never know the truth of anything, not only because Ford will not provide the notes, but because she claims she cannot recall if she showed the Post the actual therapist notes or her version of them.

Mitchell lays out Ford’s comments about her claim she is afraid of flying, a fear that delayed everything for a full week.

• “The date of the hearing was delayed because the Committee was informed that her [PTSD] symptoms prevent her from flying.”
• “But she agreed during her testimony that she flies ‘fairly frequently for [her] hobbies and … work’.”
• “She flies to the midAtlantic at least once a year to visit her family.”
• “She has flown to Hawaii, French Polynesia, and Costa Rica.”
• “She also flew to Washington, D.C. for the hearing.”

Mitchell goes on to not only lay out the facts that again point to a delaying tactic, but undercut Ford’s claim she wished to remain anonymous:

• “Note too that her attorneys refused a private hearing or interview.”
• “Dr. Ford testified that she was not “clear” on whether [Committee] investigators were willing to travel to California to interview her.”
• “It therefore is not clear that her attorneys ever communicated Chairman Grassley’s offer to send investigators to meet her in California or wherever she wanted to meet to conduct the interview.”

Elsewhere in her report, Mitchell points out the inconsistencies in Ford’s repeated claim she wished to remain anonymous and would have preferred a private interview:

• “She claimed originally that she wished for her story to remain confidential, but…
• “…the person operating the tipline at the Washington Post was the first person other than her therapist or husband to whom she disclosed the identity of her alleged attacker.”
• “She testified that she had a ‘sense of urgency to relay the information to the Senate and the president.’ She did not contact the Senate, however, because…”
• “…she claims she ‘did not know how to do that.'”
• “She does not explain why she knew how to contact her Congresswoman but not her Senator.”

Ford’s team turning down the Committee’s offer to have her give testimony privately, at her home in California, also delayed things.

Finally there is the issue of Ford’s three “witnesses,” all of whom refute her account.

• “Dr. Ford has named three people other than Judge Kavanaugh who attended the party— Mark Judge, Patrick ‘PJ’ Smyth, and her lifelong friend Leland Keyser.”
• “Dr. Ford testified to the Committee that another boy attended the party, but that she could not remember his name.”
• “No others have come forward.”
• “All three named eyewitnesses have submitted statements to the Committee denying any memory of the party whatsoever.”
• “Most relevantly, in her first statement to the Committee, Ms. Keyser [Ford’s lifelong friend] stated through counsel that, ‘[s]imply put, Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh and she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gathering where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.’”
• “In a subsequent statement to the Committee through counsel, Ms. Keyser said that ‘the simple and unchangeable truth is that she is unable to corroborate [Dr. Ford’s allegations] because she has no recollection of the incident in question.’”
• “Moreover, Dr. Ford testified that her friend Leland, apparently the only other girl at the party, did not follow up with Dr. Ford after the party to ask why she had suddenly disappeared.”

Before attaching a detailed timeline, Mitchell concludes with, “The activities of congressional Democrats and Dr. Ford’s attorneys likely affected Dr. Ford’s account.”

--------------------------------------------

Prosecutor: Christine Blasey Ford Doesn’t Know if Polygraph Was on Day of Grandmother’s Funeral

https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/10/01/prosecutor-christine-blasey-ford-doesnt-know-if-polygraph-was-on-day-of-grandmothers-funeral/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20181001

by Joshua Caplan   1 Oct 2018

The final Senate report from Rachel Mitchell, the sex crimes prosecutor who interviewed Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser Christine Blasey Ford, questions Blasey Ford’s “struggle to recall important recent events” such as whether she took her polygraph test the same day as her grandmother’s funeral.

Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, Blasey Ford — the California professor who brought forth an allegation of teenage sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee — said she did not know whether her polygraph examination less than two months ago occurred on the same day her grandmother was buried. This discrepancy is listed among nine categories of strikes against Blasey Ford’s testimony which led Mitchell to conclude her account did not meet the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.

When asked why Jerry Hanafin, the polygraph administrator, conducted the examination at a hotel near the Baltimore–Washington International Airport, instead of his Virginia office, Ford revealed time constraints left her unable to travel far for the test.

“I had left my grandmother’s funeral at that point at Fort Lincoln Cemetery that day and I was on a tight scheduled to get to make a plane to Manchester, New Hampshire,” the 51-year-old professor told Mitchell. “He was willing to come to me, which was appreciated.”

“So you were administered a polygraph on the day that you attended your grandmother’s funeral?” Mitchell asked.

“Correct, or it might have been the next day,” Ford responded.

She then turned to her attorney, Debra Katz, and said she did not remember the exact day the test was taken.

“Dr. Ford could not remember if she was being audio- or video-recorded when she took the polygraph,” the memo reads. “And she could not remember whether the polygraph occurred the same day as her grandmother’s funeral or the day after her grandmother’s funeral.”

According to Mitchell, administering a polygraph to an individual who is “grieving” is “inappropriate.”

As Breitbart News has previously reported, Blasey Ford was only asked two broad questions during her polygraph exam: “Is any part of your statement false?” and “Did you make up any part of your statement?”

“Ford was not asked any specific questions about the specific allegation,” Breitbart’s John Nolte pointed out — no questions to name Kavanaugh as her attacker or about the details of her story. “There are also no test or baseline questions where the subject is intentionally asked to lie.”

The memo’s release comes after the White House ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to launch a week-long investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh, a request made by Jeff Flake (R-AZ) moments before the committee was slated to vote that Kavanaugh’s confirmation be sent to the full Senate for a vote.

”I think it would be proper to delay the floor vote for up to but not more than one week in order to let the FBI do an investigation, limited in time and scope to the current allegations that are there, limited in time to no more than one week,” Flake said. “And I will vote to advance the bill to the floor with that understanding.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders would announce hours later that President Donald Trump would accommodate the request and asked the FBI to probe the claims. “I’ve ordered the FBI to conduct a supplemental investigation to update Judge Kavanaugh’s file,” President Trump said in a statement. “As the Senate has requested, this update must be limited in scope and completed in less than one week.”

In a separate statement released through the White House, Kavanaugh said he stood ready to cooperate in the investigation. “Throughout this process, I’ve been interviewed by the FBI, I’ve done a number of ‘background’ calls directly with the Senate, and yesterday, I answered questions under oath about every topic the Senators and their counsel asked me,” said Kavanaugh. “I’ve done everything they have requested and will continue to cooperate.”

---------------------------------

Are Republicans Born Wimps?

http://buchanan.org/blog/are-republicans-born-wimps-130269

By Patrick J. Buchanan  Tuesday - October 2, 2018

Republican leaders are "a bunch of wimps," said Jerry Falwell Jr.  Conservatives and Christians need to stop electing "nice guys."  "The US needs street fighters like Donald Trump at every level of government because the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps."

So tweeted the son and namesake of the founder of the Moral Majority, and he has here a self-evident point.

Thursday, 11 GOP senators on the judiciary committee freely forfeited to a female prosecutor their right to cross-examine Christine Blasey Ford, the accuser of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

The Republicans feared that televised images of 11 white men, sharply questioning the credibility of Ford's claim to be a victim of Kavanaugh's sexual assault, would be politically lethal. So, while the Republicans mutely abstained from challenging her, Ford was treated by the Democrats as the reincarnation of Joan of Arc, though not a single witness has corroborated her story.

Friday, Sen. Jeff Flake caved to Democratic demands for another weeklong FBI investigation of the judge. The Republicans, egg visible on their faces, endorsed their colleague's capitulation. Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham had been the Republican lion of the hearing, indicting Democrats for the moral atrocity they had deceitfully and dishonorably perpetrated against the judge.
By Friday, our Cicero was reaching out in collegiality to the same senators he was castigating 24 hours before.

Falwell's point: Democrats fight savagely and for keeps, while Republicans — street-fighter Trump excepted — are wimps, often bewailing any loss of camaraderie with their colleagues across the aisle.

As my late friend Sam Francis said in the title of his book, many Republicans are perfectly content with being "Beautiful Losers."

Yet the stakes here are immense. Consider how the Supreme Court has remade the America we grew up in. Since World War II, the court has de-Christianized all public schools and the public life of a land Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman called a "Christian nation." It has established secularism as our state religion.

Despite civil right laws declaring race discrimination illegal, the court has given its blessing to affirmative action, deliberate discrimination in favor of peoples of color against white men in the name of diversity and equality.

The court has declared that what were once crimes, abortion and homosexuality, are now constitutional rights all Americans must respect.

These changes were not legislated democratically, but imposed dictatorially by the high court. While a Senate confirmation of Kavanaugh would not reverse these mandated changes, it might halt any further imposition of this radical social revolution by unelected judges.

But while the Democratic left, understanding the stakes, is fighting bare-fisted, Republicans are sparring with 14-ounce gloves and seeking to observe Marquess of Queensberry Rules.

In other ways as well America has been remade. Not only has Christianity, and all its symbols and expressions of faith and belief, been removed, but also a purge is underway of monuments and statues of the explorers, colonists and statesmen who, believing in the superiority of their religion, culture and civilization, set out to create the county we inherited.

And William Frey, resident demographer at the Brookings Institution, writes about how America is being changed — without the consent of the people. "Since 2000, the white population under the age of 18 has shrunk by seven million, and declines are projected among white 20-somethings and 30-somethings over the next two decades and beyond. This is ... a trend that is not likely to change despite Mr. Trump's wish for more immigrants from Norway. The likely source of future gains among the nation's population of children, teenagers and young working adults is minorities — Hispanics, Asians, blacks and others."

When we are all minorities, and all behave as minorities, making our separate demands upon the country, what then holds America together?

In Federalist 2, John Jay famously wrote:

"Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion ... very similar in their manners and customs...

"This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties."

Yet, each decade, less and less are we descended from the same ancestors. Less and less do we speak the same language, profess the same religion, share the same manners, customs, traditions, history, heroes and holidays.

Does America look today like the "band of brethren united to each other" of which Jay wrote, and we seemed to be as late as 1960?

Or does not the acrimony attendant to the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh suggest that we have already become a land "split into a number of unsocial, jealous and alien sovereignties."

With all our new diversity, whatever became of our unity?