More Lessons from the Kavanaugh Hearings

Like many, I had the hearings late last week on TV in my office.  Those hearings were, of course, the ones of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be a justice of the Supreme Court.

Like many, the whole charade disgusted me.  In an attempt to be fair, the chairman (Chuck Grassley, R-IA) had allowed the testimony of a psychology professor who claimed to have been -- well, it's not really clear exactly what all was done except that it stopped short of actual rape -- so let's say attacked, by the nominee back in the early 1980s, or the mid-1980s, depending on which of her statements was to be believed.

This testimony could have been delivered many weeks earlier, except that the letter from the professor was held from the committee by the ranking Democrat, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who is not coincidentally running for re-election, even though she would be 91 at the end of her term if elected. 

Why she sat on the letter for so long, not airing it until after the full hearings concluded, and why she did not even raise the issue with Judge Kavanaugh during her private meetings with him is apparently never going to be answered.  How the letter came into the hands of the press, although it was only in the possession of Feinstein's staff (and that of the California congressman it was also provide to), is also unknown.

But we know.

Christine Ford, the professor in question, is at best a pawn in an ugly game of chess being played by Democrats in a bizarre attempt to forestall a non-existent attack on Roe v. Wade, the SCOTUS ruling effectively legalizing abortion.

In other words, in an effort to defend the killing of hundreds of thousands of unborn babies a year, the destruction of a man who has an exemplary 30-year record of service to his nation is apparently collateral damage.  That is so, even though there is almost no chance that Kavanaugh would vote to overturn Roe, since he has testified to his opinion that it is, at this point, settled law.

But that is not enough.

I truly detest when people talk past each other, let alone doing so for hours at a time.  And yet that is what went on last week as senator after senator on the Democrats' side went on about how wonderful Dr. Ford was, even though she was not able to testify specifically to anything identifiable in regard to the event, and everyone she named as having been there denied that the event occurred.

She was not able to identify the location, nor was she able to explain how she got home from the event, although at 15 she would have had to have arranged for a ride -- and could not name who had taken her home, let alone from where, when the driver would certainly have seen and remembered her alleged distress.  Not a single element provided by Dr. Ford would have been enough for a prosecutor to bring a case to a grand jury, let alone to expect charges to have been filed.

Now we have the FBI doing yet another investigation, although it will take next to no time to do so, given that there is no physical evidence to examine, and only a handful of people to interview.  As I write this, I believe that the interviewing is about done.

The FBI will almost assuredly come back with a report that changes nothing, that will state that no corroboration was able to be found for anything Dr. Ford alleged.  She might have been attacked, but if it was by Kavanaugh, it cannot remotely be shown by either evidence or corroborating testimony that it was.  And in this country, we require that, before we think about punishing anyone.

When the FBI does come back with that finding of nothing more than was "known" before, not one senator on the Democrats' side will change their vote, because they're not interested in supporting Dr. Ford; they're interested in stopping President Trump from appointing a Supreme Court justice.  And it is all about abortion, lest there be any doubt.

And Judge Kavanaugh and his family will continue (as, it should be known, is to some extent the case with Dr. Ford) to be the target of threats and vituperation from social media.  Given that Maxine Waters, a Democrat congressman, has encouraged physical confrontation with Republicans, it is not inconceivable that those threats to the judge may become physical.

Collateral damage, in the interest of killing unborn babies.  This is the lesson of the Kavanaugh hearings, and it is beyond unfortunate that we have come to this contemptible practice, the politics of personal destruction, on the part of the Democrats.  And I really don't have that much concern about the abortion issue myself; certainly not with much passion compared to most.

They don't care.  They have no "envelope" to regard their actions as being outside, because the left has no guidance, no morals, no sense of decency.  No constraints.  Extremism in the defense of abortion is, apparently, no vice to them.

We pray that the voters this November reject that notion in the best way possible.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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