Op-Ed

– Senator Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican, September 28, 2018

This is so much bigger than Brett Kavanaugh, or the outcome of his nomination.

Women are suddenly opening their secret wounds. Their trauma — often many decades old — is becoming, for the first time, public. So are their tears.

Enduring a sexual assault is only the beginning of the journey through hell.

This is the awareness that has accompanied the Kavanaugh nomination and the politically motivated dismissal of Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against him, beginning with Donald Trump’s all-knowing tweet: “I have 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. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!”

It’s not easy being vulnerable!

But Trump’s callous ignorance has opened up the gates of grief and fury.

“I was watching CNN and I just broke down. I just lost it. I finally started experiencing the emotion.”

Any talk of a hearing on Monday, frankly, is premature, because she just came forward with these allegations 48 hours ago. And since that time, she has been dealing with hate mail, harassment, death threats. So she has been spending her time trying to figure out how to put her life back together, how to protect herself and her family. And there hasn’t been an investigation. And these are serious allegations.

– Attorney Lisa Banks, representing Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, September 18

You know your story is going badly when you’ve taken care to do it right in coming forward with a dark accusation against a powerful man and even your lawyer, a woman, misrepresents your reality in a way that favors the powerful man. What does it take to confront reality with care, accuracy, and integrity?

Let’s concede that at this point, nothing is proved. On balance, however, it’s fair to say that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s bona fides are significantly more credible than Brett Kavanaugh’s honesty, integrity, or fundamental decency.

Sexual assault is such a nuisance, not only, but especially, for Republicans.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal editorial board, attempting, with gentlemanly politeness, to dispense with Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh as quickly as possible:

“Yet there is no way to confirm her story after 36 years, and to let it stop Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation would ratify what has all the earmarks of a calculated political ambush.

“This is not to say Christine Blasey Ford isn’t sincere in what she remembers.” But . . .

Two time Medal of Honor recipient Marine Major General Smedley Butler once said “war is a racket.” He might have added that while enriching the few it victimizes and degrades everyone else who is caught up in the meat grinder, soldiers as well as civilians.

At least that’s the hope of those who elected Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka AMLO, aka Peje, on a platform of sweeping out the corruption — a platform promoted in Obrador’s book, A New Hope for Mexico. That Barack Obama did not permanently decommission the word “hope” for credible electoral campaigns on this continent may be the least of the book’s surprises.

Israel has

JULY 17, 2018 

The unproven allegation that the Russian government helped us find out how the DNC was screwing Bernie Sanders with his pants on is not actually a moral, legal, or practical reason to launch a spree of mass-killing of innocents, which is what every war since WWII has been.

The terrorist acts of 9/11/2001 were crimes to be prosecuted, but not a moral, legal, or practical reason to launch a spree of mass-killing of innocents, even if dark-skinned Muslim innocents were chosen over any of the “white” places that the criminals plotted their crimes.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was also not what you have been told.

JULY 10, 2018


The eternal question of U.S. politics rears its ugly ass again: “Why in the hell does anyone ever listen to Alan Dershowitz?”

No court can overturn a Congressional impeachment and conviction. Will somebody at Fox and CNN page the nearest genocidal torture-defending lawyer, who is either Alan Dershowitz or someone joining him on a search for the real O.J. Simpson killer at a five-star restaurant for lunch today, and get Dershowitz a copy of the United States Constitution?

The Constitution gives impeachment to the House and the trial to the Senate with the Chief Justice presiding. It gives the House the “sole” power of impeachment, and the Senate the “sole” power to try all impeachments. That means nobody else, least of all a different branch of government, gets to say anything at all.

The Constitution, pace Dershowitz, does not list all specific offenses that qualify for impeachment.

ICE has strayed so far from its mission. It’s supposed to be here to keep Americans safe, but what it’s turned into is, frankly, a terrorist organization of its own, that is terrorizing people who are coming to this country.