Pipe bomb update

In related news, Michael Avenatti announced today that Julie Swetnick saw Brett Kavanaugh and a gang of his friends make bombs by the punchbowl at parties when they were both young.

The pipe bombs are the work of Democratic agents provocateurs

Were the pipe bombs sent out by Fusion GPS, with payment coming from the DNC and funneled through Perkins, Coie?

And is Corey "Spartacus" Booker pissed off because he didn't get one, since it would have ratified his membership in good standing as a member of the "Resistance?"

Seriously, take a look at this photo and ask yourself if this is the work of someone with a serious intent to harm a political figure. Rather, these bombs have all the earmarks of the work of agents provocateurs.

Timothy McVeigh rescued a floundering Bill Clinton by bombing the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

I'm betting that now some crazy member of Antifa is trying to create a "McVeigh effect" right before the mid-term elections to boost flagging Democratic polling numbers.

Muori, Donaldo damnato!

Nancy and I saw Puccini's Tosca at SF Opera tonight. I enjoyed it tremendously. My admiration for Puccini grows and grows. Verdi is God, but, with Tosca, Puccini approaches Verdi. And Puccini does it in such a different way. Puccini is so much more modern than Verdi. With Tosca, the music and the drama are inextricably intertwined in a way they never are in Verdi. As you listen to the music of Tosca, mirroring the dramatic action and accentuating the moods of the characters (so unlike the arias in Verdi, those complex and highly structured exercises in musical-beauty-existing-for-its-own-sake), you understand why every great movie has a great soundtrack.

And then, there is the thoroughly modern flavor of the role of Scarpia, the Chief of Police in Tosca, whose greatest pleasures in life are torture, rape, and endless, shameless, perfidious chicanery and manipulation. Scarpia is the prototype of every fascist, SS officer, and secret policeman of the 20th century. The entire opera can be viewed as an extended musical reflection on fascism and "The Resistance" to it. I don't think any other music has ever been written that captures as effectively as the End of Act II the desperate resolve to which a person can be driven when cornered by fascism. Tosca has agreed to surrender to Scarpia's lust in exchange for Scarpia freeing Tosca's lover, Cavaradossi. But, then the music grows dark, sad, and tortured as Tosca sees a knife lying on the table and realizes she has made a compact she can never keep. She conceals the knife in her clothing, and, as Scarpia triumphantly approaches to deflower her, plunges it into him, and then stands over him and exclaims "Questo è il bacio di Tosca! Ti suffoca il sangue? Muori, damnato! Muori! Muori! Muori!" ("There's Tosca's kiss for you! Are you choking on your blood? Die, damn you! Die! Die! Die!").

The only downside to the evening was the thoroughly predictable Director's Note in the program, which attempted in veiled terms to draw a comparison between Scarpia and Trump. One gets the impression that San Francisco views this year's production of Tosca as its own contribution to the Trump-as-Tyrant-being-assassinated genre. You could almost hear the audience members hissing to themselves "Muori, Donaldo damnato!" Even so, a thoroughly enjoyable evening with Puccini.

Females and Indians on corporate boards

Jeff Harding has written an excellent blog post on California's recently enacted Senate Bill 826, which mandates that publicly-held corporations put females on their boards.

One thing Jeff does not discuss is how the term "female" is defined in the bill:

“Female” means an individual who self-identifies her gender as a woman, without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.

Does that mean that I, who, last time I looked, have all the "earmarks" of a male, can count as one of the women on a board if I simply choose to self-identify as a woman? But, if the only logical qualification for being defined as a "female" is that I self-identify as such, then isn't the entire purpose of the bill, which is to add to boards the different perspectives and management approaches of females, vitiated?

Here is a related question: If California should ever mandate that other groups, such as "blacks" or "latinos," be represented on corporate boards, then, would it be enough for me to self-identify as black or a latino to qualify? Alternatively, how much "black or latino dna" (if there is such a thing) would I need to have in order to qualify? For example, if the California legislature required American Indians to be represented on boards, would Elizabeth Warren, whose DNA shows evidence of Native American DNA from six to 10 generations ago, qualify as an American Indian?

These are examples of the ludicrous questions that this kind of identity politics leads us to.

As an aside, there was one sentence from Jeff's blog post that struck me in particular, a quote from an abstract of an article by Alice Eagly, a professor of psychology at Northwestern:

Rather than ignoring or furthering distortions of scientific knowledge to fit advocacy goals, scientists should serve as honest brokers who communicate consensus scientific findings to advocates and policy makers in an effort to encourage exploration of evidence‐based policy options.

Amen! If only we all would adopt this sentence as a foundational principle, the world would be a much better place. Of course, a second foundational principle would need to be that advocates and policy makers should follow and be guided by "consensus scientific findings."

Affirmative consent in Victorian times

This evening I was reflecting on the concept of affirmative consent and on how much energy is being spent these days on devising mechanisms whereby partners can signal their affirmative consent to a sexual liaison. I found it interesting to learn that there are even suggestions that sex education classes include instruction on how partners may obtain affirmative consent from each other.

Suddenly, the following proposal for a foolproof 3-step mechanism for obtaining affirmative consent sprang into my mind:

1. the young man seeks the hand of the young woman from her father (this step is perhaps optional);
2. if the father approves, the young man proposes to the young woman;
3. if the young woman accepts, the young man and young woman engage in a public ceremony, presided over and sanctioned by a respected member of the community, whereby they officially signal to the general public that they consent to engage in exclusive sexual relations with each other.

Oh wait! Silly me! This mechanism for obtaining affirmative consent is called "marriage" and it's just how things used to work in the old days before we all became sexually enlightened and liberated.

The only reason why we need to devise mechanisms for signaling affirmative consent and to teach them in sex education classes is because we have discarded the traditional mechanisms that used to work so well.

Perhaps those Victorians weren't so benighted after all.

UPDATE:

Heather Mac Donald has assessed the situation correctly. In a recent interview in WSJ with Jillian Jay Melchior, Mac Donald discussed the topic of affirmative consent:

She similarly thinks conservatives miss the point when they focus on the due-process infirmities of campus sexual-misconduct tribunals. She doesn’t believe there’s a campus “rape epidemic,” only a lot of messy, regrettable and mutually degrading hookups. “To say the solution to all of this is simply more lawyering up is ridiculous because this is really, fundamentally, about sexual norms.”

Society once assumed “no” was women’s default response to sexual propositions. “That put power in the hands of females,” Ms. Mac Donald says. “You didn’t have to bargain every time you didn’t want to have sex. The male had to bargain you into yes. But you could say no, and you didn’t have to exhaust yourself.” Sexual liberationists claimed men and women were alike, and chivalry and feminine modesty were oppressive. “Now, the default for premarital sex is yes,” Ms. Mac Donald says. “That gives enormous power to the male libido” at the expense of women.

The #MeToo movement is one reflection of this reality, but so is the growing realization that consensual sex isn’t always healthy sex. To get back to the “no” default, students are “inviting adults back into the bedroom to write rules that read like a mortgage contract,” Ms. Mac Donald says. Young women, meanwhile, are learning “to redefine their experience as a result of the patriarchy, whereas, in fact, it’s a result of sexual liberation.” [emphasis added]

Burke recognized the same destructive forces at work in the French Revolution as have been at work in our sexual revolution:

All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the super-added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion ... When antient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us; nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer.

The traditional prohibitions against casual, pre-marital, promiscuous sex -- prohibitions that constituted the decent drapery of life, furnished from the wardrobe of the moral imagination -- were exploded by the sexual revolution as so much ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion. But, once these prohibitions had been eliminated and a new age of "sexual liberation and enlightenment" had dawned, men and women found that they no longer had any moral compass to guide them and women were left exposed, naked and shivering and without defense, in the face of the enormous power of the male libido. Unsurprisingly -- almost necessarily -- what has ensued are the messy, regrettable and mutually degrading hookups that are the defining characteristic of life on our campuses today. To remedy this situation, we now have calls for the new rules of affirmative consent to be re-introduced, which conceptualize sex not as a romantic and erotic act, but as a business contract. But, these contractual rules would never have been needed if the traditional prohibitions and the practice of such cultural norms as modesty, chivalry, and shame had not been jettisoned.

Ms Ford's second front door

FEINSTEIN: “I see. And do you have that second front door?”

FORD: “Yes.”

FEINSTEIN: “It…”

FORD: “It — it now is a place to host Google interns. Because we live near Google, so we get to have — other students can live there.”

I love the fact that she uses the terms "hosting" and "living there," when what she is really referring to is "renters." In other words, the real reason why Ms Ford and her husband added the second front door was to create an addition to their house that they rent to Google interns or Stanford students.

I have two sons, one a grad student at Stanford living in Mountain View, and one in Berkeley who just finished his Masters degree at UC. They are both currently being "hosted" in apartments, to the tune of over $2000 a month each.

Falsa in uno, falsa in omnibus

So we now learn from Christine Blasey Ford's longtime old boyfriend two new facts:

1. He personally witnessed Ms Ford coaching a friend on polygraph examinations. This, after Ms Ford in her testimony before the Judiciary Committee had explicitly denied ever having given anyone tips or advice on how to pass a polygraph examination.
2. She had deceived that boyfriend and fraudulently charged his credit card.

Applying the standard falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal insisted should be applied to all of Mr Kavanaugh's testimony, we are now justified in ignoring all of Ms Ford's testimony as false since she obviously told a bold-faced lie in one statement.

A row of threes

My wife Nancy and I just returned from a marvelous 18 day vacation in Ireland. Nancy is of Irish extraction on her deceased father's side and we raised many an Irish whiskey to him while we were there.

One of the distinctive things about the Irish accent is that they pronounce "th" as a hard "t" sound.

When she was a girl, Nancy attended a Catholic grammar school. One day in first grade, the students were practicing writing their numbers. The old Irish nun stood over them and commanded "OK, class, now I want you to write a row of threes." While all the other students were busily writing down rows of the numeral, Nancy dutifully followed Sister's instructions and drew a row of trees.

I love my wife.

Benjamin Wittes' unfair and naive attack on Brett Kavanaugh

Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institute has written a a grossly unfair attack on Brett Kavanaugh disguised as the reluctant condemnation of a dear friend. Democrats are laughing up their sleeves. Wittes writes:

His opening statement was an unprecedentedly partisan outburst of emotion from a would-be justice. I do not begrudge him the emotion, even the anger. He has been through a kind of hell that would leave any person gasping for air. But I cannot condone the partisanship -- which was raw, undisguised, naked, and conspiratorial -- from someone who asks for public faith as a dispassionate and impartial judicial actor. ... Can anyone seriously entertain the notion that a reasonable pro-choice woman would feel like her position could get a fair shake before a Justice Kavanaugh? Can anyone seriously entertain the notion that a reasonable Democrat, or a reasonable liberal of any kind, would after that performance consider him a fair arbiter in, say, a case about partisan gerrymandering, voter identification, or anything else with a strong partisan valence? Quite apart from the merits of Ford’s allegations against him, Kavanaugh’s display on Thursday -- if I were a senator voting on confirmation -- would preclude my support.

I am astonished that Mr Wittes so completely misunderstood Judge Kavanaugh's opening remarks. My response to Mr Wittes is: yes, I do feel that a reasonable party to litigation could be confident that a Justice Kavanaugh would be a fair arbiter. This is because Mr Kavanaugh's opening statement was anything but partisan. Rather, it was a passionate rejection of partisan prejudice and closed-mindedness; for example, of the prejudgement of a Democratic senator who labeled him as "evil" before the hearings even started and of the ludicrous hyperbole of a former head of the National Democratic Committee who claimed that Kavanaugh "would threaten the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come." His opening statement was likewise a passionate defense of the principle that due process must be accorded to all and that the accused should be convicted only by the force of factual evidence, the testimony of witnesses, and rational argumentation rather than because of blind faith in the uncorroborated accusations of an accuser. So, yes, if a party to litigation were to present factual evidence and testimony and logical argumentation to a Justice Kavanaugh (rather than bald assertions), I am fully confident that he would listen with an open mind, not prejudge the case, and give that party a fair hearing.

After all, many parties to litigation have received a fair hearing before Judge Kavanaugh over many years, as was testified to by the ABA, which assigned to Judge Kavanaugh the rating of "well-qualified." As the ABA states in its backgrounder to its Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary:

In evaluating “judicial temperament” the Committee considers the nominee’s compassion, decisiveness, open-mindedness, courtesy, patience, freedom from bias and commitment to equal justice under the law. ... To merit the Committee’s rating of “Well Qualified,” a Supreme Court nominee must be a preeminent member of the legal profession, have outstanding legal ability and exceptional breadth of experience, and meet the very highest standards of integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament. The rating of “Well Qualified” is reserved for those found to merit the Committee’s strongest affirmative endorsement." [emphasis added]

For Mr Wittes to question Judge Kavanaugh's fairness and impugn his judicial temperament because of one occasion on which he expressed righteous and fully justified anger at a smear campaign directed against him after his fairness and judicial temperament had been judged by the ABA to have been unimpeachable over a period of many years is simply grossly unfair. Keep in mind that the temperament and fairness of Judge Kavanaugh had never been called into question before the vicious attacks on him started to accumulate during his confirmation hearings. As I wrote the other day:

[A]fter doing everything in her power to antagonize the man, our noble California Senator, Dianne Feinstein, now has the temerity to complain that he has become antagonistic. It is as if she had beaten a dog with a stick repeatedly and then, when it snarled at her in its anguish, she said “You see? You see how vicious and rabid it is? That's why we must put it down.”

Wittes continues:

I fear the evidence is not ... quite in equipoise, even if one believes that a senator should confirm a justice on the basis that the presumption of innocence should break the tie between two equally compelling testimonies. At least as I read it, though it pains me to say so, the evidence before us leans toward Ford.

The experienced sex crimes prosecutor, Rachel Mitchell, on the other hand, has indicated that Ms Ford's allegations do not even meet the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard used in civil lawsuits:

In the legal context, here is my bottom line: A “he said, she said” case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that. Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them. For the reasons discussed below, I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the Committee. Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard

It is presumptuous, to say the least, for Mr Wittes to consider his ability to assess Ms Ford's testimony superior to that of a seasoned sex crimes investigator with many years of experience.

Wittes goes on:

Kavanaugh’s testimony, whatever one makes of his impassioned claims of innocence on the specific charge, is not credible on the more general issue of his drinking habits. ... His apparent lack of candor on the culture of drinking at Georgetown Prep and later is a problem of its own, quite apart from what it may indicate about the truth of Ford’s story. ... I don’t believe in white lies from anyone else either in sworn congressional testimony

Regarding Mr Kavanaugh's drinking habits in high school and college, the Democrats and their allies in the media are applying a standard to Judge Kavanaugh that they have never applied to Democrats. For example, the drinking habits of Teddy Kennedy were never considered to be disqualifying. Even now, Beto O'Rourke, the current Democratic senatorial candidate from Texas, has himself admitted to being so drunk while driving as a young man that he crashed his car; police records indicate that he tried to flee the scene of the accident; and yet, none of this is judged by either his fellow Democrats or the media as even remotely disqualifying (after all, he's so cool he skateboards). Likewise, Barack Obama himself admitted to using marijuana and even cocaine in the period "before he entered politics" (a convenient phrase, which conceals exactly when he stopped using) and it was never considered disqualifying for him. As I wrote the other day:

[W]here were all these critics of substance abuse when Barack Obama admitted to smoking marijuana and snorting cocaine when he was a young man? Back in 2006, the NYT reported:
Obama had written in his first book, "Dreams From My Father" (1995), before entering politics, that he had used marijuana and cocaine ("maybe a little blow"). He said he had not tried heroin because he did not like the pusher who was trying to sell it to him. ... "It was reflective of the struggles and confusion of a teenage boy," he said. "Teenage boys are frequently confused."

Ah, I see: Barry's cocaine use was the confusion of a teenage boy, but Brett's drinking is an unforgivable crime. And "maybe a little blow?" This is the very definition of a white lie. There is no "maybe" about it, Barack: either you did or you did not snort cocaine. And, if you did, you know exactly how much you did. In other words, Obama was never entirely truthful in his characterization of his embarrassing youthful drug habits, but this was never seen as disqualifying for him. (For a lot more on Barry's pot smoking habits with the "Choom Gang" in Hawaii, see here.)

It is simply unfair for Mr Wittes to apply one standard to those who are the darlings of the Democrats and the media and another, far more priggish, standard to those who are not.

So come on, Ben, get off your high horse and realize that your delicate moral sense is being manipulated by a bunch of shameless Dems and their media lackeys who afterwards are simply going to laugh at how completely they hoodwinked you. Do not allow the Democrats to add the verb "kavanaugh" to the verb "bork."

Expel Feinstein from the Senate

In her testimony, Ms Ford said:

Sexual assault victims should be able to decide for themselves when and whether their private experience is made public.

A noble sounding platitude. But, there was also a responsibility to make the accused aware of Ms Ford's accusation. That is, there was also an obligation to make Mr Kavanaugh aware of the fact that Ms Ford had gone so far as to send a letter to her United States Senator alleging that he had assaulted her. To neglect this obligation was grossly unfair to Mr Kavanaugh and reveals clearly how this episode was handled without any regard whatsoever to Mr Kavanaugh's right to due process.

Ms Ford had sent a letter to her official representative alleging that Mr Kavanaugh had committed a very serious crime, maintaining that she felt it was her "civic duty" to do so; but, at the same time she insisted that letter be kept confidential, essentially denying the accused the right even to know that he had been accused and the ability to confront his accuser and defend himself.

Senator Feinstein, the senior Democratic member on the Judiciary Committee, should have appreciated the gross injustice such a secret agreement constituted and informed Ms Ford that, if she was going to press this charge, she needed to press it publicly. That Senator Feinstein did not do this, thereby depriving Mr Kavanaugh of his right to due process, was a gross dereliction of her duties, an action for which Senator Feinstein, whether she acted out of malice or only because she has become a doddering old fool, should be expelled from the Senate.

Brett = angry drunk; Barack = confused youth

As Fox reports, the attempt to smear Brett Kavanaugh because he drank in college and allegedly lied about it is now officially in full swing:

In a statement released Sunday, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s said he is “deeply troubled by what has been a blatant mischaracterization by Brett himself of his drinking at Yale.” Charles “Chad” Ludington, who now teaches at North Carolina State University, said he was friend of Kavanaugh’s at Yale and that Kavanaugh was “a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker.”

“On many occasions I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption, not all of which was beer. When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive,” Ludington said. While saying that youthful drinking should not condemn a person for life, Ludington said he was concerned about Kavanaugh’s statements under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Note Ludington's careful effort to frame the issue not as a question of whether Kavanaugh was guilty of excessive youthful drinking, perhaps a pardonable indiscretion, but as a question of whether Kavanaugh lied to the Judiciary Committee, presumably a disqualifying offense. This has become a favorite tactic of investigators, including Robert Mueller: attack the victim not because of the seriousness of the crime he allegedly committed (if there even was a crime committed), but because he lied about it to the investigator. For example, as I have pointed out elsewhere, Mueller charged Mike Flynn not because he had spoken with the Russian ambassador (presumably part of his duties), but because he had lied about it to the FBI.

In other words, Ludington's statement has all the earmarks of a document that has been carefully formulated by lawyers so that it has the maximum potential to damage Kavanaugh, which is to say that this fucking prig, Mr Charles Ludington, is just another Democratic partisan working together with Democratic lawyers to defeat the confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice with whose judicial philosophy they all disagree.

And where were all these critics of substance abuse when Barack Obama admitted to smoking marijuana and snorting cocaine when he was a young man? Back in 2006, the NYT reported:

Obama had written in his first book, "Dreams From My Father" (1995), before entering politics, that he had used marijuana and cocaine ("maybe a little blow"). He said he had not tried heroin because he did not like the pusher who was trying to sell it to him. ... "It was reflective of the struggles and confusion of a teenage boy," he said. "Teenage boys are frequently confused."

Ah, I see: Barry's cocaine use was the confusion of a teenage boy, but Brett's drinking is an unforgivable crime. And "maybe a little blow?" This is the very definition of fudging. There is no "maybe" about it, Barack: either you did or you did not snort cocaine. And, if you did, you know exactly how much you did. In other words, Obama was never entirely truthful in his characterization of his drug habits, but this was never seen as disqualifying for him. (For a lot more on Barry's pot smoking habits with the "Choom Gang" in Hawaii, see here.)

In sum, the only reason why NYT did not go crazy about Barry's drug use was because they liked his politics. NYT and the Dems don't like Kavanaugh's judicial philosophy or the politics of the President who appointed him, so now, they are suddenly shocked, yes shocked, that Kavanaugh drank in college.