Tag Archives: sexual assault

legal news

How would ‘Justice’ Kavanaugh handle this?

Brett Kavanaugh’s future as a possible U.S. Supreme Court justice is in doubt. However, his nomination to the court is far from a dead duck.

The FBI is conducting an investigation into at least two of the accusations that Kavanaugh assaulted women sexually many years ago. The U.S. Senate will then get to vote on whether to confirm him.

Suppose, then, he becomes Justice Brett Kavanaugh. What happens when the court gets a case involving the constitutionality, say, of a court ruling involving a case involving sexual assault?

Might that happen? Well, it damn sure could. Given all the attendant publicity that has erupted around Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation process, I doubt seriously anyone down the road is going to forget what we’ve heard about what allegedly occurred when Kavanaugh was a high school student. That he allegedly pinned a young woman to a bed, sought to disrobe her, sought to have his way with her sexually.

How does a Supreme Court justice with that kind of accusation hanging over his head rule on a future case involving a similar circumstance?

national news

Trump’s amorality on full display

Donald J. Trump has earned the title of Most Amoral President in U.S. History.

It is with that dubious distinction that I find it amazing, astonishing and altogether outrageous that this president can speak to any issue involving sex, sexual assault or sexual harassment.

It’s all on the front burner these days as the U.S. Senate considers whether to confirm a Trump nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Brett Kavanaugh is under some intense scrutiny these days as he seeks confirmation to the highest court after at least three women have accused him of assaulting them sexually.

I am left to wonder: What has become of our moral compass?

An admitted sexual assailant was elected president in 2016; he once bragged about grabbing women by their “pu***” because his “celebrity status” allowed him to get away with it. He acknowledged walking in on half-dressed women during his days as proprietor of a beauty pageant.

Now he has nominated someone to the high court who stands accused of attacking a woman when they were both teenagers. Judge Kavanaugh has denied the accusation in the most fervent manner possible. The FBI is now looking into the pending accusations before the Senate will consider voting on whether to confirm him.

I keep circling back to the president. He has attacked the credibility of one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, much as he has done with the many women who have accused him of groping them. He stands foursquare with men who have faced credible charges by women who accuse them of sexual misbehavior; he is doing so yet again with Judge Kavanaugh.

And then we have the likes of the Rev. Franklin Graham, one of Trump’s more ardent evangelical supporters, saying something truly astonishing, that what Kavanaugh allegedly did to Christine Blasey Ford doesn’t really matter because they were teenagers at the time.

What in the name of sexual assault is Rev. Graham talking about?

I’ve long thought of the Republican Party as an organization that stood tall and firm on the side of moral rectitude. Yet, Republican No. 1, the president of the United States, assumed office after blazing a career-long trail of sexual misconduct.

Dear reader, we have entered a strange new world. Man, oh man. I need to find a way out of here.

national news

Jeff Flake: profile in courage

Jeff Flake’s demonstration of political courage almost made me rethink my long-standing opposition to term limits for members of Congress.

I’ll reiterate: almost.

Flake is a Republican member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that on Friday recommended the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to a seat on the Supreme Court. Flake is not running for re-election this year. Thus, his lame-duck status has enabled him to grow a pair of, um, stones that he otherwise likely wouldn’t have grown.

You see, Flake — after announcing his decision to support Kavanaugh’s nomination — came back to the committee hearing room and asked that the Senate delay a full confirmation vote for a week to allow the FBI to do an additional investigation into some serious allegations leveled against Kavanaugh.

Christine Blasey Ford has accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her. They were teenagers when the even allegedly occurred. She presented a compelling case against Kavanaugh. Ford persuaded me that her allegation is credible enough to disqualify Kavanaugh from obtaining this lifetime judicial appointment.

Flake was cornered in a Capitol Building elevator by two women — sexual assault survivors, apparently — who demanded that he “listen” to the concerns of other victims.

Flake responded by making his request of the Senate. The Senate agreed. The president then called on the FBI to conduct a limited probe into the allegations. It should take about a week or so to complete.

I applaud Sen. Flake for his political courage, although the courage is watered down a bit by the fact that he isn’t facing Arizona voters this fall. He is free, therefore, to speak from his heart. He did so.

If only other members of the Senate and the House of Representatives could demonstrate such guts when they have to face the voters as they seek re-election.

Having said all that, I remain committed to the notion that voters in each state and House district have it within their power to boot out scoundrels at election time.

Flake, though, must have emerged as a GOP hero in this ongoing — and terribly frustrating — political battle of wills.

national news

‘Look at me when I talk to you!’

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake got a first-hand lesson today on the value of “constituent service.”

He walked into an elevator and was accosted by two women who just couldn’t understand why the Arizona Republican would support the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court.

They pleaded with Flake to stand up for the victims of sexual assault, which Kavanaugh has been accused of committing by Christine Blasey Ford.

Flake then came back to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room and, prior to voting “yes” on recommending Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the entire Senate, asked for a one-week delay on the full Senate vote, pending the outcome of an FBI investigation into the allegations leveled against Kavanaugh.

Now, I don’t know if the women who scolded Flake were actual Arizona constituents; they likely weren’t.

But … the point is that these women had something important to say to the lame-duck Republican senator and one of them implored Flake to “Look at me when I talk to you!”

Flake did look at her and he seemingly listened to what she had to say.

The Senate has agreed to hold off for a week before voting on whether to confirm Kavanaugh’s nomination. Donald Trump has issued an order to the FBI to conduct a limited investigation into the specific allegations leveled against the man he wants to seat on the nation’s highest court.

This is representative democracy at work!

national news

SCOTUS picks, then and now

Let’s review briefly the course that two U.S. Supreme Court nominations took.

In early 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia died. President Barack Obama not long afterward nominated Judge Merrick Garland to succeed the conservative judicial icon. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t wait for the nomination to come forward. He declared within hours of Scalia’s death that Obama would not replace Justice Scalia under any circumstance.

The SCOTUS seat remained vacant for the rest of that year. Donald Trump got elected president and then nominated Neil Gorsuch. The Senate heard from the nominee, then confirmed him.

It was the delay that enraged so many Americans.

The Republican Senate majority had no problem dragging its feet to await the outcome of the 2016 election.

What a change has occurred.

Justice Anthony Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court. The president then nominated Brett Kavanaugh to succeed him. Judge Kavanaugh went through the confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Then a woman came forward to allege that the nominee assaulted her sexually when they were in high school. Then we hear from two more women who said essentially the same thing.

The GOP majority was having none of it. The committee heard from one of the women and from Kavanaugh.

Now the Judiciary panel is going to vote today whether to confirm Kavanaugh’s nomination. The majority says it cannot wait. It has to rush this nomination forward. The questions about what happened in the early 1980s? Hey, minds are made up.

Let’s rush forward.

So … one president’s nomination gets stonewalled for a year. Another one’s selection hops on the fast track.

To think that Majority Leader McConnell has the gall to accuse the other side of “playing politics.”

national news

Strangest Senate hearing in history? Yep, it sure is

Congratulations, my fellow Americans.

We likely are witnessing the most bizarre Senate confirmation hearing in the history of the republic.

Brett Kavanaugh is trying to protect his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court against an allegation by a college professor that he assaulted her when they were both in high school.

Kavanaugh has denied the allegation vehemently; Christine Blasey Ford, the alleged victim, has just as vehemently asserted the veracity of the accusation she has leveled.

The weirdest part of this hearing has been the way the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted its questioning.

Republicans who support Kavanaugh didn’t question Ford directly. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley brought in a ringer, a sex crimes prosecutor from Arizona named Rachel Mitchell to speak on behalf of Republican senators. The panel’s Democratic members did question Ford directly.

When it was Kavanaugh’s turn to answer questions, he fielded them from senators from both parties.

I have drawn one conclusion from the tactic employed by the GOP side with regard to Ford. It is that the GOP senators — all of whom are men — don’t have the confidence to ask a female accuser intensely personal questions involving an alleged sex crime.

What might have spooked them? It must be that they couldn’t engage in a discussion without uttering something, anything that observers would deem offensive.

So they handed the heavy lift off to the prosecutor who, in my view, did a credible job on behalf of the Senate committee Republicans.

Still, it was downright weird to watch a surrogate do the work that should have been done by the men who comprise slightly more than one-half of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Indeed, this confirmation process is exhibiting signs that it is hurtling toward an equally weird conclusion.

legal news, national news

Is this confirmation turning into a stampede?

Well, here we are, ladies and gentlemen.

Brett Kavanaugh and a woman who has accused him of sexually assaulting her are going to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Kavanaugh has been nominated by Donald Trump to join to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The testimony will occur on Thursday. What happens the next day? Oh, the committee is scheduled to vote on whether to confirm Kavanaugh to the court.

Hey, it gets better. The full Senate, all 100 of ’em, then might get to vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination as early as next Monday!

Let us not forget that two more women have leveled similar accusations against the proposed justice to the nation’s highest court. The Senate is moving at breakneck speed on a matter that to my way of thinking needs a good bit more time.

Does this look as much to you like a stampede as it does to me?

Christine Blasey Ford, who will testify Thursday, has done a remarkable thing. She has dropped the name of Kavanaugh’s supposed good friend — Mark Judge — as a witness to what she alleged occurred in the 1908s at a high school party. Why in the world would she expose this friend to intense public scrutiny if she is making all this up?

I continue to believe there needs to be a thorough investigation by the FBI to determine the veracity of what Ford has alleged. The FBI also ought to look carefully at the accusations leveled by the two other women.

Will the world stop spinning if Kavanaugh’s confirmation is delayed while the FBI gumshoes do their job? Of course not!

I am trying like the dickens to avoid passing judgment on Judge Kavanaugh. I merely want these accusations to be examined fully and carefully.

I do not want to witness a Senate stampede.

entertainment news, legal news

The system worked: Cosby sent to prison

Many of us have griped on occasion about the occasional inequity of the U.S. criminal justice system.

I have to say, though, that today the system worked well.

A judge in Pennsylvania sentenced the man once known as “America’s Dad” to three to 10 years in a state prison and declared William Cosby to be a “violent  sexual predator.”

Bill Cosby’s status as a comic superstar, TV star, iconic figure didn’t matter as the judge sent Cosby to the slammer. What’s more, his name will be etched forever on a sex offender registry when and/or if he gets out of prison; the man is 81 years of age.

A jury convicted Cosby of drugging and raping Andrea Constand in 2004. Other women have come forward to allege that he had done the same thing to them.

I take no joy in applauding the sentence and Cosby’s new status as a prison convict. Some years ago, my wife and I attended an event at West Texas A&M University that featured Cosby, who brought the house down with a rip-roaring stand-up routine.

That was then. The here and now tells us something quite different about Cosby and what a trial jury determined him to be.

He is getting precisely what he deserves.

national news

‘No doubt’ Ford would have filed charges? Seriously?

Donald John “Stable Genius” Trump purports to know how women should react when they are attacked sexually.

They should go straight to the cops, file charges and then wait for justice to be done, he said in so many words in a Twitter message.

Sure thing, Mr. President. Except that’s not how too few of these cases play out.

The president is defending his U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh against charges brought by Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh attacked her 30-plus years when they were teenagers. Ford has accused Kavanaugh of trying to tear her clothes off of her. Kavanaugh denies the incident occurred. They’re both going to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a few days.

But back to Trump’s statement.

As the Los Angeles Times has reported:

Trying to discredit her story, President Donald Trump tweeted Friday that he had “no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents.”

But according to decades of social science, surveys of sexual assault victims and crime reporting data from federal government agencies, there is a lot of room for doubt.

Women have been fearful of recrimination, which is one reason many of them decline to report sexual assaults to the police.

More from the LA Times:

According to the Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey, 310 out of 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to authorities. Two out of 3 go unreported. The numbers were culled from data collected from 2010 to 2014 and include assaults against men.

Data from the Department of Justice also show that 20 percent of survivors do not report their assaults out of fear of retaliation, while 13 percent do not report because they think police will not be helpful, 13 percent believe their experiences are personal matters and 7 percent do not want to get perpetrators in trouble. Those numbers were collected from 2005 to 2010.

I am one American who is waiting to hear from both of these individuals before I make up my mind. I wish partisans on either side would do the same. To be candid, I am inclined to want to give Professor Ford the benefit of the doubt. However, I am reserving any judgment until I get to watch her and Judge Kavanaugh make their respective cases.

As for there being “no doubt” a teenage girl would have called the cops and filed charges when an attack allegedly occurred, the president needs to do yet another reality check before he pops off.

legal news

This accuser isn’t looking for publicity

Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against Brett Kavanaugh is beginning to sound more believable, at least to me.

Ford has accused Kavanaugh, a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, of sexually assaulting her when the two of them were teenagers 36 years ago. She said Kavanaugh was drunk, he took her into a room, covered her mouth to keep her from screaming and then groped her, seeking to have sex with her.

Kavanaugh denies the incident occurred.

But the question keeps popping into my noggin: Why would this woman, a university professor, level a charge she knows is false?

She wants the FBI to investigate the case. Does someone with a phony accusation insist on an FBI probe? Ford says she wants a third person to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering whether to recommend Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the nation’s highest court. Would a bogus accuser subject a third person to insult and possible emotional injury?

I still want to hear from Judge Kavanaugh and Professor Ford. I want them to speak to senators about the accusation that has been leveled against a man who wants to interpret the U.S. Constitution at the highest judicial level in the land.

Something tells me there might be more to this than we know.