Senator Feinstein's BS attack on Judge Kavanaugh

15 September 2018

Update

Two days after my original (below) take on this subject, the initially anonymous victim, Professor Christine Blasey Ford, revealed herself.

This does not change my view of Feinstein's initially unethical behavior. An anonymously delivered accusation of this kind (as Feinstein did it) was not ethically reasonable.

Conveniently, now that purported victim Professor Ford has come forward — very probably as the result of loads of political pressure, feigning great personal concern — Feinstein's action loses some of its then anonymously delivered sting.

I still quarrel with the Senator's "go public" timing. She would have looked more professionally honorable, and less like a political weasel, had she waited until Professor Ford expressed a willingness to identify herself. In my still held view, Feinstein jumped the tactical gun.

So, I leave my original comment in place. It still seems an accurate summation of our intentionally trashy, and mostly ineffective, political climate.

Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, is law's loathsome rat — but . . .

I do not think that ethically excuses Senator Dianne Feinstein's underhanded attack on him.

Here is what she did:

The New Yorker published an explosive report on Friday about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, saying that a woman has accused him of trying to force himself on her when he was in high school.

The letter, as reported by the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer, is from a woman who described an encounter with Kavanaugh at a party in high school. He held her down and tried to force himself on her, covering her mouth. She was able to escape, but the encounter was “a source of ongoing distress for her” . . . .

Kavanaugh has denied the incident ever took place . . . .

[R]eporting suggests that Feinstein had known of the allegations for some time:

She . . . obtained the letter in late July and held off on sharing it more publicly out of concern for the privacy of the accuser . . . .

According to The Intercept, she didn’t even fully disclose the information to other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.

According to The New Yorker, the woman involved in the incident had said the announcement of Kavanaugh’s nomination for Supreme Court had spurred her recollection of the painful memory.

She first . . . reached out to her congresswoman, Rep. Anna Eshoo . . . and also contacted Feinstein’s office directly.

After repeatedly talking with both offices about the matter, the woman decided not to go public . . . .

Feinstein, too, remained intensely private about the letter, an approach that baffled some of her Senate colleagues.

Feinstein sought to focus on Kavanaugh’s legal record and was worried that publishing the letter could expose the woman involved to partisan attacks . . . .

Feinstein's solution?

She turned the letter over to the FBI.

What else — (after all!) — would you do when:

(a) the accuser wants to remain anonymous

but

(b) you (we can hypothesize) want to smear the Judge and drag that accusation out for months?

Keep a couple things in mind

Sexual assault is a local crime. Not initially, a federal matter.

Second, assault victims can have their day in criminal, as well as civil court. The accuser wanted neither. Then and mostly since.

However, this moment — decades later — the same allegedly assaulted dear thinks that someone in authority should know what Kavanaugh did during his adolescence.

She appears to surmise that Kavanaugh's childhood record does have bearing upon his credentials to be on the Supreme Court — but did not — regarding his appointment to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

Given the weight of both judicial positions, that is hard-to-parse logic.

"Emotion, Pete — it's the effect of emotional injury on her thinking."

I am not attacking the purported victim. Although I question her common sense.

Why would you contact two high level politicians, relaying an incendiary allegation of national scope, and expect to stay out of the limelight?

I do slam Senator Feinstein

Who should know better.

This is all stale bullshit. It's unprovable. It is not going anywhere. An anonymous complaint almost certainly will not move any Senate confirmation votes away from Judge Kavanagh.

Feinstein's arguably unethical (and unnecessary) stunt is just going to piss everyone off:

Anger some Democrats — because Kavanaugh is indeed unsuited to the Court, and Feinstein selfishly would not share the scuttlebutt.

And irritate all Republicans — because Senator Feinstein's ploy is so Machiavellianly nasty.

The moral? — This is our perfidiously useless Congress in action

I close with this legislative news:

The House of Representatives just passed a "y'all can't eat cats and dogs" bill.

Yes!

This is the House's vitally necessary response to the concerning disappearance of cats and dogs across the United States.

Americans, we must presume, eat our pets on a daily basis.

That, along with our penchants for casual abortion and institutionalized murder.

Taking care of business, Congress is.

Praise the Lord.

PeteFree.com

Senator Feinstein's BS attack on Judge Kavanaugh