Friday, September 28, 2018

Call the Vote on Kavanaugh

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Delaying the Senate vote has not helped anyone except those smearing the good man nominated to the Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seems to have lost his way in supporting delay after delay on an up-or-down vote for Brett Kavanaugh.

McConnell promised that Kavanaugh will be confirmed, but his strategy has kicked away Democrats who might have supported the nominee. By giving a platform to Kavanaugh’s accusers, McConnell has merely provided political cover for every Democrat in the chamber, such as Claire McCaskill who is in a tight race in Missouri.

McConnell should call the vote on Kavanaugh, and let the chips fall where they may. Delay simply facilitates more false accusations, embellished to an obscene degree.

It was a mistake to pander to Kavanaugh’s accusers by extending the deadline and begging them to show up to tell their coached narratives in the most damaging way that liberals can imagine. No court of law allows a witness to completely take over the scheduling as Kavanaugh’s opponents have.

Kavanaugh would have been confirmed by now if the Senate had simply called the vote. Never-Trump Republicans and even a few Democrats would have fallen in line and voted the right way, or gone down in history as a mob who hangs an innocent man.

But like the failure of a superior army to advance to win a battle, the dilly-dallying by the Republican leadership has led to disarray and lost opportunity. The delay allowed the politically motivated opponents of Kavanaugh to practice and embellish, divide and conquer.

Some hope that vigorous cross-examination of Kavanaugh’s accusers will prove to the world that Kavanaugh has the stellar character that all who know him describe. There are, of course, good questions about political motivation and the orchestration of this smear that should be asked.

But relatively few Americans will watch the hearing, contrary to what the Senators may think, and Abraham Lincoln-style moments on cross-examination are rare. The more that a witness is coached, the less likely a breakthrough at the hearing.

Instead, the vast majority of Americans will see only the headlines and selective sound bites, as spun by a media determined to sink Kavanaugh. The testimony itself is immune from defamation lawsuits, and news outlets will repeat the false accusations without including the cross-examination.

This is fake news in its worst form. Sexually explicit allegations are politically deadly, no matter how false and implausible they are, and the GOP-controlled Senate errs in giving the other side a platform.

“I think it’s horrible what the Democrats have done,” President Trump said on Tuesday. “It is a con game; they really are con artists … playing a con game and they are playing it very well, much better than Republicans.”

President Trump’s instincts have been right on target, as usual, in speaking out against the smear of Kavanaugh. McConnell reportedly telephoned Trump to tell him that his tweets critical of a Kavanaugh accuser were not helpful, but it is McConnell’s delay in the vote that has been unhelpful.

Trump is right that Senate Republicans have given far too many concessions to Kavanaugh’s opponents than they should have. No one was preventing accusers from telling their stories, and the Senate is mistaken to think that its committee hearing procedures will add anything to the equation.

The Senate committee lacks fundamental rules of evidence that any civilized judicial proceeding would have. Unreliable testimony that is more likely to create prejudice than aid in a genuine search for truth is not allowed in most courts of law, but is allowed by the Senate.

Sexually obscene testimony that is uncorroborated should not be allowed and given credibility by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Moreover, false descriptions like “attempted rape” should be ruled out of order and prohibited.

Refreshed recollections about something more than 30 years ago by someone who was drunk at the time, as Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate was, is not evidence that satisfies any reasonable standard of reliability. Most courts of law would prohibit repetition of sexually graphic allegations of such an unreliable nature to a jury.

Instead, advisers have mistakenly relied on administration of an oath as though that will protect Kavanaugh against false accusations. Republicans have underestimated the depth of deceit on the other side, even harboring hope that the accusers will not show up.

Senator Susan Collins and other fence-sitters can sit down to have chit-chats with accusers all they want. No one is interfering with any fact-finding, or falsehood-finding, that any senator wants to engage in.

The U.S. Senate prides itself on open debate, but in every assembly there comes a time when further debate is unproductive. A motion to “call the question,” first used in the British Parliament more than four centuries ago, is overdue to confirm Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Too Little, Too Late in Ambushing Kavanaugh

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly

Statutes of limitations are necessary, because memories fade and it is pointless to consider a “he said, she said” dispute decades later.  No one should give credence to a new accusation about something minor that supposedly occurred more than three decades ago, and the Senate embarrasses itself by holding a hearing to do just that.

Brett Kavanaugh fully denies the allegation of misconduct by him at a party 36 years ago, when he was merely 17 years old, and this issue is not something that Senators should be taking seriously today.  On the verge of his confirmation to the Supreme Court, this politically motivated, last-minute smear against him should be laughed off the stage.

Only in the fantasyland of the U.S. Senate, where Clarence Thomas had to endure a similar ordeal in 1991, does fiction replace fact so easily.  Accusations about teenage conduct in 1982, even if Kavanaugh was at the party, should not change anyone’s vote concerning his confirmation to the Supreme Court. 

The confirmation process for Supreme Court Justices should have sensible limits on irrelevant testimony when considering nominees.  It is time to repudiate untestable #MeToo allegations that were never reported within the statute of limitations, and it is time to draw the line before politics descends further into the theater of the absurd.

If Senators fail to establish reasonable rules of evidence, then it becomes a matter of how clever an accuser is at lying.  Courts of law do not allow spectacles of irrelevant, unprovable accusations, and the Senate should not have a standard that is lower than that of traffic court.

Supposedly a 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, or someone having a similar name, was drunk and had party-like contact with a fully clothed girl who had also been drinking.  At the time, no crime was reported, no adult was told, nothing was prosecuted, and no discipline of any kind was ever sought or obtained.

Most schools would not even punish a student for such behavior at a party, even if true, let alone expel someone for it.  It is beneath the dignity of the Senate to give credibility to an accusation about silly teenage behavior at a drinking party, as though that has any bearing on the abilities and character of an adult more than three decades later.

President Trump was elected to blow the whistle on this kind of circus that too often dominates D.C.  Trump brought some grown-up relief to this crisis on Monday by rejecting a reporter’s question as ridiculous in asking whether Kavanaugh might be replaced as the nominee because of this farcical accusation.

Allowing this ambush of Kavanaugh feeds the chicanery of the Left, and encourages similar antics against future good nominees.  Three Republican nominees to the Supreme Court have been confirmed in a row since liberals unsuccessfully attempted their last-minute smear of Clarence Thomas, and the GOP majority should not allow regression to that low point in the history of the Senate.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) probably dislikes allowing a hearing on this smear against Kavanaugh, but the Republican majority in the Senate is hostage to a handful who pander to the media.  Never-Trumper Jeff Flake, who is an example of someone who does not belong on the Judiciary Committee, was elected by pretending to be pro-life but spends much of his time trying to defy Trump instead.

In court, scandalous testimony that is irrelevant is excluded without futile attempts to determine its truthfulness.  The Senate should likewise exclude testimony by Christine Blasey Ford about isolated teenage partying which has no relevance to the fitness of the nominee Kavanaugh.

The oath does not have a magical effect in converting lies to the truth, and cannot establish relevancy.  Long-ago high school partying is irrelevant to the important work the Senate and the Supreme Court should be doing.

Even worse is speculation about what a teenage Kavanaugh, or someone who looked like him, might have wanted to do.  Teenagers are wrong about many things, even when trying to tell the truth, and the Senate should not allow such speculative testimony.

The high-tech lynching of Clarence Thomas, as he described it, failed when an accusation was discovered to bear an uncanny resemblance to a line in the book The Exorcist.  This time the allegations may be inspired by a book by Mark Judge concerning his own drinking binges at the same high school Kavanaugh attended.

But Mark Judge himself described the accusations against his classmate Kavanaugh as “absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way.”

It was a mistake to schedule a special hearing, and delay it by a week, which gives the story-tellers more time to practice and embellish.  Allegations about the distant past which lack details are not credible, and the Senate should proceed to vote on Judge Kavanaugh.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Obama’s Tired Rhetoric Is a Flashback to Globalism

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Barack Obama’s return to the campaign trail is a violation of tradition and common sense.  His tired rhetoric on globalism is a powerful reminder of how fortunate we are without him and the Clintons in power.

“Global governance” was the pejorative title of a video produced by Phyllis Schlafly in the ’90s that successfully converted the concept into an object of scorn.  Yet here is Obama recycling Bill Clinton’s discredited push for world government at a time which most nations are rejecting it.

Even in the liberal bastion of Sweden, the electorate delivered a mortal blow to globalism there on Sunday by voting in record numbers for an anti-immigration party.  In Italy, the globalists were voted out of office earlier this year.

Perhaps it is too much work for Obama to update Bill Clinton’s speeches to keep up with the times.  Obama spoke within the safe space of a liberal university campus, where few of the attendees were likely aware of the widespread repudiation of globalism.

The liberal college audience rewarded Obama with applause for every vacuous, anachronistic statement that he made.  He flattered his academic sounding board by complaining that “demagogues promise simple fixes to complex problems.”
Obama had eight long years to fix the problems of a broken economy, a North Korean dictator with nuclear weapons, ISIS terrorists, and the perpetual war in Afghanistan.  He fixed none of those problems, but he did enact an incredibly complex scheme for health care.

Due to Obama’s refusal to support simple solutions, like tax cuts, he was the only president in American history to fail to achieve at least 3% annual growth in GDP.  The economy took off like a rocket the day after Trump was elected and hasn’t stopped since.

Obama’s sleep-inducing platitudes tried to rehabilitate the discredited idea of globalism that is in retreat across the world.  He praised a “bipartisan leadership” (otherwise known as the Deep State) which developed “norms” and a “consensus” that “extended beyond our borders.”

“From the wreckage of World War II,” Obama continued, despite being born in 1961, “we built a postwar web, architecture, system of alliances and institutions.”  He left out how European countries are trying to unwind and disentangle that failed system, and how Europe lags the U.S. economically.

Obama’s backward-looking speech was a rehash of his Democratic predecessor in the White House, Bill Clinton, who spoke of a “web of institutions and arrangements” that set “the international ground rules for the 21st century.”  Clinton urged Americans to support what he called “the emerging international system,” such as the International Criminal Court.

Mercifully, the Obama-Clinton claptrap received a rip-roaring response Monday from President Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton.  In a powerful speech to the Federalist Society, Bolton took aim at “the global governance dogma,” picking up where Phyllis Schlafly left off.

Two decades ago, when few stood up against Bill Clinton on this issue, Phyllis was delivering speeches to packed hotel ballrooms lambasting Clinton’s globalist agenda.  With her witty play on Hillary Clinton’s book that it supposedly takes a village to raise a child, Phyllis asked a crowded Louisiana audience in 1998, “Is it the global village that’s supposed to raise your child?”

No, it’s not, and she urged the United States to repudiate the International Criminal Court after Bill Clinton signed us up.  In 2002, Bolton persuaded President George W. Bush to unsign what Clinton had signed, to keep us out of that anti-American institution.

In his landmark speech on Monday, Bolton called the repudiation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) his “happiest day in government.”  Now he will take steps to prevent American servicemen from being prosecuted by the rogue tribunal masquerading as a court.

Bolton issued a stern warning that judges and prosecutors of the ICC would themselves be prosecuted, sanctioned, and have their travel restricted by the United States if they dare investigate American citizens, particularly our soldiers.  For once Americans have an administration protecting them, as Obama and Clinton should have done while they were president.

Bolton spoke to preempt threatened action by the ICC against Americans.  With all the good that the United States brings to the rest of the world, it is disgraceful that the ICC would even think about bringing politically motivated charges against American citizens.

Bolton indicated that he may not stop there, but is also considering freedom for the United States from other institutions of global governance, such as the World Trade Organization.  President Trump has stated his interest in withdrawing us from that international group, and the sooner the better.

We applaud Bolton's statement that his and the Trump Administration’s “view is that Americans govern Americans.  How’s that for a radical thought?” he humorously added as Phyllis Schlafly might have.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

California versus Trump on Phony Net Neutrality

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
by John and Andy Schlafly

As part of its never-ending resistance to the Trump agenda, the California legislature has just passed a bill to reinstate the discredited concept of “net neutrality” for access to the internet. A bill described as the nation’s strongest form of net neutrality awaits the signature of lame duck Governor Jerry Brown.

Net neutrality is as phony as “free trade,” in that both are wonderful only for those getting the better end of the deal.  Google, Facebook, and other California companies have been getting a free ride on net neutrality because it enables them to avoid paying their enormous share of internet traffic.

Net neutrality is a fiction invented by Silicon Valley monopolies to stop cable companies from charging them for their huge amounts of traffic.  Yet these same monopolies do not believe in neutrality in how they conduct business, by censoring political content they dislike.

The many billions in profits flowing to the Silicon Valley companies is partly due to how they hog traffic on the internet for free, without paying their full costs.  They avoid paying, for example, the many billions of dollars needed to bring internet service to people’s homes.

Imagine a toll road where big trucking companies did not have to pay a dime.  This would result in overuse of the toll road by trucks, and underfunding of road improvements.

The free market would be far superior to the phony net neutrality that enriches only Silicon Valley, because the free market enables the owner to charge fees based on use of its property.  Free enterprise is also better in protecting free speech and preventing censorship.

Once the favoritism is ended, whether on the internet or roads, then better facilities would be built and more efficient usage would occur.  The internet could be light years ahead of where it is now, if net neutrality stopped giving billionaire companies a free ride.

Without net neutrality, the public would have far better and faster internet service than we have today, because cable companies could raise money from the traffic hogs to improve the service.  Instead, billions of dollars line the wallets of Silicon Valley executives who invest very little of it in improving internet service.

Under the superior, free-market-based approach adopted by President Trump, companies that carry internet traffic would be able to negotiate with the traffic hogs to compel them to pay their fair share of costs rather than freeload off others.  Google and Facebook would then no longer be able to discriminate against conservatives and shift their costs to us too.

The public who pays the cable costs could then insist on access to the content that they want, which they cannot do now as Silicon Valley censors it.

The Silicon Valley companies do not want any rules of neutrality to apply to them, of course, as they exclude conservatives to appease their liberal base.  They demand net neutrality only when it favors them, and oppose any requirement that they be fair to content with which liberals disagree.

The California legislators know who butters their bread, and their Democrat majority just passed a bill that interferes with President Trump’s better approach of allowing competition to rule the internet.  SB 822 is being sent to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk, and he has not yet said whether he will sign it by his deadline of September 30.

This new California law would prohibit cable companies and other internet service providers from charging high-traffic users more.  This ban is an encroachment on the rights of private property, because the owner of the internet service should be able to require traffic hogs to pay rather than freeload on the private property.

Under the California law, cable companies and their millions of customers could not tell Google and Facebook to stop discriminating against content that people want.  The California law inverts the internet by allowing Silicon Valley to dictate content on the internet, when internet users and internet providers should be able to tell Google to stop discriminating against Dennis Prager and other conservatives.

It is Google and Facebook that block access, and they want leverage to continue doing so.  That is backwards as Trump and his Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recognize, and hopefully they will sue in federal court if California Governor Brown signs this ill-advised bill into law.

Meanwhile, Congress is holding a hearing this week to review San Francisco-based Twitter’s bias against conservatives.  The FTC could be investigating Google’s unfair business practices, Sen. Orrin Hatch points out.

Internet service providers may sue to overturn the California law, which would establish one system in that State which is different from most other States.  California is essentially trying to force its self-interest on the rest of us with respect to the internet, to which California has no special claim of right.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work. These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.