A National Disgrace

So I watched the "hearings" if you want to call it that. What they were consisted of Senators largely making campaign speeches. Democrats, Booker and Harris in particular, were particularly hostile to the presumed innocent Kavanaugh as if they were personal witnesses to what allegedly transpired over 30 years ago.

I watched because I also so distrust media that I did not want second or third hand reports. Here are a couple of things that stood out to me:

1) To Fly or Not To Fly.

When this whole thing came to public light, Ford refused to come to DC because she claimed she was afraid of flying. We now know that not only did she fly to the area in late July, but that she also has traveled extensively, by plane to various vacation locations. You'd think that someone who thought her "civic duty" to report would have mustered up the courage to take THAT flight. Are flights to Tahiti more important than "civic duty"? I wouldn't think so.

Ford also stated that she had no knowledge of the offer to either interview her remotely OR for members of the committee to come to her location. This offer was known on the internet within an hour of it being made. So if Ford is not lying, then her council did not inform her of this offer. If not, why not?

Well; the obvious answer is the reason for this entire disgrace in the first place. Democrats have wanted to stall this hearing from the get go. The plan is and has been to push this nomination past the mid-terms. Democrats expect to take up majorities in both the House and Senate (something that happens often when the presidency switches parties). Once that has happened they would plan on stalling or not approving of any nominee that is, in their opinion, "extreme". That's the plan. That is what is underlying everything we are witnessing.

In a court of law, under rules of evidence, the plane trips and lack of knowledge of the "come to you" offer, would be used by the defense to great effect. But that's not even the worst of it.

2) Not A Care About Other Women:

Let's assume for a minute that Ford's story is 100% accurate. Let's assume she was in fact assaulted by Kavanaugh at the house, in the manner that she says. She stated that she was so traumatized by the experience that it gave her PTSD, which she apparently has not healed from. Under questioning, she said that there was no other "environmental" cause for her PTSD and that everyone has underlying biological factors. Since this event was SO traumatic, we should be asking why, as an adult, it took her until late July to come forward.

By her own admission and testimony of her husband, she knew that Kavanaugh was a judge and may have known he was involved in high levels of government by at least 2012. That's 6 years ago. Having revealed to her husband and therapist that Kavanaugh assaulted her, why didn't she do her "civic duty" and inform her congressperson? Why didn't she inform the Bar Association? Had she seen fit to do her "civic duty" and report a man who had so egregiously assaulted her as to cause 30 years of PTSD, Kavanaugh wouldn't have even been on the SCOTUS shortlist in 2018.

The only logical reason for her not reporting then, is that she didn't see the assault as badly as she now says. If Kav had put a knife to her throat and attempted to kill her would she have sat on that? What if he had burned down her house? No the reason is she had politics on the brain and she admitted as such. She said that she was OK with sitting on the claim so long as it seemed that Kavanaugh was going to fail during the hearings or the Democrats would have succeeded in delaying the vote until after the mid-terms. She said that once she saw that he was highly likely to get past the hearings that she decided to move.

After that May 2012 therapy session, I did my best to ignore the memories of the assault, because recounting them caused me to relive the experience, and caused panic and anxiety. Occasionally, I would discuss the assault in an individual therapy session, but talking about it caused more reliving of the trauma, so I tried not to think about it or discuss it. But over the years, I went through periods where I thought about the attack.

FORD: I do not recall each person I spoke to about Brett’s assault. And some friends have reminded me of these conversations since the publication of the Washington Post story on September 16th, 2018. But until July 2018, I had never named Mr. Kavanaugh as my attacker outside of therapy.

This changed in early July 2018. I saw press reports stating that Brett Kavanaugh was on the shortlist of a list of very well-qualified Supreme Court nominees. I thought it was my civic duty to relay the information I had about Mr. Kavanaugh’s conduct so that those considering his nomination would know about this assault.

On July 6th, I had a sense of urgency to relay the information to the Senate and the president as soon as possible, before a nominee was selected. I did not know how, specifically, to do this.

Her own words. She did not feel a "sense of urgency" until July 2018. She didnt' feel that someone she thinks is a rapist should be reported before then. She wasn't bothered by his government work, where he would be in contact with women, be judging women was important enough to report.

This stinks. It stinks. And this is assuming her claims to be 100% true. And we don't even know that.

Previously I posted about the innocence project. I quoted from a case where the witness was 100% sure that her attacker was a particular man:

On February 7, 1978, a 19-year-old student at the College of William and Mary was sexually assaulted at gunpoint. As soon as the rapist left, the victim called the police. When investigators arrived, the victim told them that her assailant weighed 145 pounds and was 5’6” tall. There had been a number of other rapes in the area during this time.

One week after the attack, the victim was shown a photo array. The victim picked Barbour’s photo out of the lineup, and then picked him out of two live lineups (consisting of the same people in different orders). The next day, Barbour was arrested.

At the trial, the principal evidence against Barbour was the eyewitness testimony of the victim, though he did not match the victim’s initial description, and no physical evidence tied him to the crime. His alibi, that he was watching television with his family and neighbors that night, was corroborated by three witnesses at trial. In spite of all of this, Barbour was convicted of rape on April 14, 1978 and sentenced to ten years in prison. According to the post-sentence report, the investigators from the case still had doubts about Barbour’s guilt, and were reportedly continuing investigation.

Here is a victim. Who reported right after the event and yet still she picked the wrong man. This is just one example of many where the victim or alleged victim was "100% sure it was him" and the facts and the evidence showed that it was 100% NOT HIM.

This is why we have courtrooms and trials held by legal professionals rather than approval seeking politicians like Booker, Harris, Flake and Hinosa.

How bad can "victim testimony" be? Check this Ted Talks video:

So we have people who are induced to believe they have had traumatic events that did not happen. We have people who were assaulted under stressful situations who fail to identify who actually attacked them. We have professionals who just by using certain words can get people to "remember" details that never happened or things that were never present. Yet if you were to hook them up to a lie detector, they would pass because they believe 100% in what they said they saw, heard and felt.

This is why you don't simply believe a claim made by anyone.

This whole shit show is a disgrace. It shows clearly that Democrats are only concerned with power. They don't care about Ford. They don't care about Kavanaugh. They don't care about you either. As I've said before, the very principle of innocence until proven guilty was tossed aside by every Senator in that room who failed to use the word "alleged". By every senator who spoke to Kavanaugh as if he was guilty and had to prove his innocence. They repeatedly claimed, correctly, that the hearings were not a trial. Well since it wasn't a trial, then it wasn't about getting to the truth was it? No. It was not. This was a smear campaign that made the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings look like an episode of Mr. Rogers.

"Plain Meaning Arguments"

Allow me to present a thought argument. Imagine if you will that you have a child in school and they had a test. A math test. Say that little junior said that two plus two equals three. imagine that the teacher marked the answer correct. Imagine that for every question that junior answered incorrectly, the teacher actually marked it correct. You'd be very concerned right? Concerned enough to go to the school (or at least call) to find out what's going on right? Because since we all know that two plus two equals four, why would any teacher mark any other answer as correct??!! How would you feel if upon asking about the clear discrepancy the teacher told you:

"Although in plain meaning, your argument that two plus two is four are quite strong the context and structure of the problem as well as a desire to not have a calamity lead me to just mark the answer correct."

If you are a sane person your next move would be to the principals office to have the teacher removed.

Lets try another one. imagine you are on trial for murder. And you're in a death penalty state. Say we have an expert witness who is supposed to testify as to the time of death of the person you are accused of murdering. Your alibi is that you couldn't have done the crime because you were too far away to have possibly made it to the crime scene, committed the crime and then arrive back at the location where you said you were. Say that the expert witness had data that showed that the body's drop in temp showed the murder took place 2 hours [ago] but on the stand said it was something like 7. That time difference puts you in the execution chamber. Upon cross examination your attorney challenges the clearly wrong interpretation of the data and the prosecution objects saying that though the plain meaning of the argument is strong, the context and structure of the testimony as well as a desire to not have to go find another witness or are more likely suspect which would be calamitous means we should just let that testimony stand.

Yeah. me too.

Now imagine that there is no appealing this objection, which of course was granted. Well you're dead.

This my friends is what the Supreme Court of the United States did yesterday. In their ruling in favor of the Obama administration we find the following in the summary:

(e) Petitioners’ plain-meaning arguments are strong, but the Act’s context and structure compel the conclusion that Section 36B allows tax credits for insurance purchased on any Exchange created under the Act. Those credits are necessary for the Federal Exchanges to function like their State Exchange counterparts, and to avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid. Pp. 20–21.

I haven't read past that. It is unlikely I will because the statement here is so powerful that it will undoubtedly have a profound effect on future courts and the nation as a whole. How is it that "plain meaning arguments" in a court of law be less important than congresses duty to write law properly and for the courts to enforce the laws as written? Consider the recent case in Mass. where a man was caught filming up women's skirts in a store. He was arrested and prosecuted based on what the state thought was the law. They thought that surely the statute meant to include that kind of behavior. The judge in that case read the law and saw that whether the intention was there or not, the law as written did not criminalize the actions of that person. The Mass. legislature did what they are constitutionally bound to do: legislated and created a law that added upskirting as a crime.

This is exactly what the courts are supposed to do. If the legislature wrote a law in a manner that excluded something they may have wanted to included, the legislature must amend that law. It is not for the courts to change the "plain meaning" of the laws to fit whatever views that the justices may have. This is what is meant to be governed under LAW and not men. Consider their very brief explanation for dismissing the "plain meaning" argument:

Petitioners’ arguments about the plain meaning of Section 36B are strong. But while the meaning of the phrase “an Exchange established by the State under [42 U. S. C. §18031]” may seem plain “when viewed in isolation,” such a reading turns out to be “untenable in light of [the statute] as a whole.” Department of Revenue of Ore. v. ACF Industries, Inc., 510 U. S. 332, 343 (1994). In this instance, the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.

Reliance on context and structure in statutory interpretation is a “subtle business, calling for great wariness lest what professes to be mere rendering becomes creation and attempted interpretation of legislation becomes legislation itself.” Palmer v. Massachusetts, 308 U. S. 79, 83 (1939). For the reasons we have given, however, such reliance is appropriate in this case, and leads us to conclude that Section 36B allows tax credits for insurance purchased on any Exchange created under the Act. Those credits are necessary for the Federal Exchanges to function like their State Exchange counterparts, and to avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid.

I would agree with this IF the "context" was that there was only that one statement. However I wrote extensively on the subject and showed that the term "state" was used a number of times in relation to Fed and that the paragraph in question, not just the quote in contention clearly never mentions the federal government even though in the context of the legislation, when they wanted to put the federal government on the hook, they were not shy about doing so. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that these justices, like many of the congresspeople who voted for the ACA didn't actually read the document.

But here's another thing with the statement by the court. If the "context of the entire document" is going to be the standard then it's probably time to let the gun control people have a go at the second amendment. It has been pointed out by many that the second amendment's right to bear arms is in the context of a well maintained militia.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

So it is veryeasy with the context argument to say that individuals not connected with a militia have no right to keep and bear arms. It's an easy argument to make on both "plain meaning" and "context" grounds. But perhaps they don't want to in order to avoid "calamity".