It was sadly predictable, but another woman has now come forward to accuse Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual improprieties at some point in the distant past. During an interview with The New Yorker, Deborah Ramirez alleges that Kavanaugh exposed himself at a party during their freshman year at Yale. Senate Democrats are demanding that the Kavanaugh hearings be suspended.
Here’s what you need to understand about this latest charge:
- The New Yorker acknowledges in its reporting that it was not able to confirm “with other eyewitnesses that Kavanaugh was present at the party.”
- The New York Times investigated the story and determined that it was not credible. The Times reports that it also “could find no one with firsthand knowledge.” In addition, some of the people the Times interviewed said that Ramirez told them she “could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.”
- Multiple people who were friends of Ramirez and Kavanaugh at Yale say they never heard of this incident.
- Judge Kavanaugh categorically denies it, calling the accusation, “a smear, plain and simple.” Kavanaugh also vowed that he would not be “intimidated into withdrawing,” adding that “The last-minute character assassination will not succeed.”
- The White House remains firmly behind Judge Kavanaugh. President Trump said this morning, “Judge Kavanaugh is an outstanding person. I am with him all the way.”
By the way, yet another alleged witness is also refuting Dr. Christine Ford’s recollection of events. So just to be clear, there is no one publicly confirming that either incident actually happened.
Nevertheless, the left’s strategy is transparent. It is using the successful template developed against Judge Roy Moore during last year’s Alabama Senate race in which one accuser after another was trotted before the media and the conservative candidate was convicted in the court of public opinion.
Chairman Charles Grassley needs to move Kavanaugh’s nomination forward or this nominee will die a death of a thousand cuts.
And it won’t be just Kavanaugh dying, but some percentage of future nominees who will refuse to serve. The standard is no longer whether you have ever done something wrong. It now seems to be whether you are willing to subject yourself and your family to the inevitable left-wing smears.
A final thought. Many in the liberal media lack credibility on this issue given that they turned a blind eye to the “well-known” behavior of their left-wing colleagues: Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves, Matt Lauer, Glenn Thrush, Charlie Rose. I could go on and on and on.
Breaking The Rules
As I wrote last week, to the left the ends justify the means. And when it comes to maintaining control over the courts, there is nothing the left won’t do.
When senators receive any information about a judicial nominee, they are supposed to immediately give that information to the chairman of Judiciary Committee so it can be independently evaluated by committee staffers and without the inevitable media circus.
But for the second time, first on Dr. Ford’s letter and now on the Ramirez accusation, committee liberals have withheld information only to drop bombshell accusations in the press to smear the nominee before they shared it with the committee.
This is clearly an attempt by the left to preserve its control over the Supreme Court, which has been doing the left’s bidding for decades.
I don’t think we fully appreciate what progressives are willing to do before this is all over.
Fundamentally Transforming America
During the Obama years, the left bragged about fundamentally transforming America. We repeatedly saw the left’s contempt for the First and Second Amendments.
We saw the left’s contempt for democracy when progressive politicians refused to defend marriage laws and even widely popular state constitutional amendments they disagreed with.
As a recent Wall Street Journal editorial notes, the left is now dangerously close to turning “due process upside down,” leading us away from the presumption of innocence and toward a new standard — the presumption of guilt. Consider this excerpt:
“The [liberal] standard for sexual-assault allegations is that they should be accepted as true merely for having been made. . . The burden is on Mr. Kavanaugh to prove his innocence.
“This turns American justice and due process upside down. The core tenet of Anglo-American law is that the burden of proof always rests with the person making the accusation. An accuser can’t doom someone’s freedom or career merely by making a charge. . . Otherwise we have a Jacobin system of justice in which ‘J’accuse’ becomes the standard and anyone can be ruined on a whim or a vendetta.”
Sadly, the left demands more due process for accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay than for well-qualified Supreme Court nominees.
LifeNews.com Note: Gary Bauer is the president of American Values, a national pro-family organization and is the former president of the Family Research Council. Bauer ran for the Republican nomination for president and appears frequently on radio and television programs.
