Civility

Congressman Andy Harris (R, MD) had an op-ed in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal in which he decried the quality of current discourse and its lack of basic norms of decency. He closed his piece with a bit of naïve hope:

We must return to civility. We need to be able to agree to disagree, and express our disagreements through the democratic process.

That would be nice. However, notice that it was persons of the Left attacking Conservatives and people of the center right whom he described. The Progressive-Democratic Party has become the party of character assassination and destruction.  While they are not—yet—antifa dominated, the Party’s methods are those of the worst of the Left’s thugs.

It isn’t possible merely to agree to disagree with those who would destroy.

There’s a parable about a mouse and an owl. The mouse thinks the owl is mistaken. The owl thinks the mouse is lunch.

In Other Parts of the World….

A man in Austria was shocked to be handed a bill from a debt collection agency for €10,365 ($12,000) after misplacing his hotel key….

After all,

the key was a skeleton key for the entire building, and now the owner is claiming all of the hotel’s intricate locks must be replaced.

So—a hotel is careless of its security setup, and that makes its customers responsible for any potential breach.

Hmm….

A Response

Recall Senator Richard Blumenthal’s (D, CT) sly innuendo about Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh during last Thursday’s (has it been only a week?) Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to receive testimony from Dr Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Kavanaugh:

As a federal judge, you’re aware of the jury instruction falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus [false in one thing, false in everything], are you not? You’re aware of that jury instruction.

Where Blumenthal was being legally pedantic, Victor Davis Hanson has an idea of an entirely appropriate response by Judge Kavanaugh, a broader, literary one, from Horace:

Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur [change only the name, and the story is about you]

Indeed.

Commitments

Recall the deal brokered by Senators Jeff Flake (R, AZ) and his BFF Chris Coons (R, DE) wherein Flake would sell his vote for confirmation of Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh in return for a new, week-long FBI investigation specifically into Dr Christine Blasey Ford’s (and one other woman’s) accusation of sexual assault against Kavanaugh.  Recall further that, no sooner had the Senate Judiciary Committee completed its committee vote on the confirmation, Coons was talking to the press about how the FBI should not be limited; the agents should be free to investigate any further allegations that might be generated come up during that week.

But that deal which, as The Wall Street Journal put it in Sunday’s edition,

was intended to satisfy concerns that allegations against Judge Kavanaugh weren’t being fully vetted before the full Senate took up his nomination[,]

is subject to further welshing by Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Senator Dianne Feinstein (D, CA):

The FBI’s hands must not be tied in this investigation….

This just confirms how worthless commitments made by Progressive-Democrats are. Feinstein was a participant in the Flake-Coons negotiations; she knew the parameters of the agreement when she agreed to it. Now she’s busily reneging.

Remember the trustworthiness of Progressive-Democrats as you contemplate your vote next month.  And do go vote.

Accusations

On Chris Wallace’s Fox News Sunday last weekend, Mo Elleithee, 20 years a communications strategist for the Progressive-Democratic Party, said he had a daughter and a son. Then he said that if her daughter were assaulted and named her assailant, even if she couldn’t corroborate, if her claim were merely plausible (for instance, firm evidence that she had been assaulted), she should be believed and her assailant jailed.

His statement was just that broad.  He left no room for the possibility that his daughter might have named the wrong guy. His statement completely rejected any possibility of beseech[ing], in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that she may be mistaken.  It’s perfectly appropriate to put the wrong man in jail while the perpetrator continues to run free, free to assault others’ daughters.

This of course, also means that if some other woman is assaulted and then wrongly accuses his son, he must support putting his son, innocent of the charge, son in jail because a woman’s uncorroborated accusation must be believed.

There is no room for Elleithee misunderstanding here. Words are Elleithee’s stock in trade. He knew how all-inclusive his statement was. He knew when he composed his statement before he uttered it that he was subjecting his own son to his preferred outcome even if wrongly accused.

This is a key part of the Left’s ideology: accuse, hang, go to trial. And that first step can be waived if it proves inconvenient.  Even when it’s their own sons.

Keep this in mind next month.