Kavanaugh and the Crisis of Legitimacy
Column: Why the Supreme Court justice became a symbol of polarization
It is impossible to separate the latest attack on Justice Brett Kavanaugh from the political strategy of the Democratic Party. On September 16, two days after the New York Times “Sunday Review” section told of another allegation of sexual misconduct during Kavanaugh’s college years, “Axios AM” described Democratic plans “to portray President Trump, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as the three villains defining the three branches of government for the 2020 campaign.” The reasoning: “Each of these white men, they will argue, symbolizes Republican corruption and rule-bending.”
Because opinions of Trump do not change, the Democrats have decided to rally their base against the two other “white men.” That is why all of the major Democratic presidential candidates except for Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar called for Kavanaugh’s impeachment after the publication of the Times essay. It is why the media gave the accusation, heard by reporters second-hand, saturation coverage. And it is why Ayanna Pressley, member of the Squad, introduced a resolution to start an impeachment investigation.
Democrats are not dissuaded by the fact that Kavanaugh and the Court unite the conservative movement and Republican Party like no other figure and issue. What counts to them is the Democratic base, not the Republican one. Anger, outrage, and animosity whip up voters, boost enthusiasm, and drive people to the polls.
Nor does it matter to the activist left if the source of the allegation did not speak to the Times; if the alleged victim does not recall the incident; if the Times accompanied its story with a weird and gross tweet that it later deleted; if everyone involved in the publication of the essay turned on each other in an orgy of blame-shifting and buck-passing; if one of the authors resorted to sharing Vox articles on social media to rationalize her behavior. The goal is neither objectivity nor factuality. It is de-legitimization.
All of the Kavanaugh coverage for the last year has been intended to undermine his confirmation and subsequent rulings and lay the predicate for structural reform of the U.S. judiciary if the Democrats win the presidency and Senate. The disastrous rollout of this latest smear has had the ironic effect of highlighting the weakness of the original charges against him. Author Ryan Lovelace uncovered footage of Christine Blasey Ford’s attorney, Debra Katz, saying that the desire to put “an asterisk” next to Kavanaugh’s decisions “motivated” her client to come forward. Authors Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino report that Blasey Ford’s friend Leland Keyser did not believe her story and does not recall meeting Kavanaugh. Blasey Ford’s father, who along with Blasey Ford’s mother was noticeably absent from last year’s hearing, is reported to support Kavanaugh. There is not a single corroborating witness to Blasey Ford’s account, and the “seven witnesses” to Deborah Ramirez’s story are less than they seem.
The Kavanaugh controversy is not, as one reporter for the Washington Post described it, a “journalistic mishap.” It is a case of Democratic activists and lawmakers using journalists precisely as intended: as instruments of a political agenda. Democrats are much more aware than Republicans that the very survival of their party depends on the maintenance of the “Living Constitution” as opposed to the Constitution as written and subsequently amended. The courts have been the Democrats’ backstop. If Donald Trump transforms them, liberals would have to reckon with the voting public. Things could get ugly.
If the judiciary were to overturn Roe, end affirmative action, roll back the administrative state, protect the Second Amendment, and limit congressional power to regulate interstate commerce, American politics would look vastly different, and the constituent groups of the Democratic Party would be radically disempowered. That is why the Democrats have responded so fiercely to nominations of conservatives to the bench, beginning with Judge Robert Bork in 1987. They know the stakes.
They also understand that sentiment and social position matter much more to the new woke progressivism than fact, evidence, and due process. For the left, Kavanaugh is a symbol of structural racism and the patriarchy, the cool kid in high school envied and loathed by outsiders. Accusations against him are “credible” simply because he is the target. Only by confessing his privilege and repenting for his beliefs would Kavanaugh gain absolution and relief. The high price he and his family have had to pay for replacing Justice Anthony Kennedy also acts as a deterrent. Some judges may now think twice before accepting a nomination to the Court.
“Mankind is an incorrigibly myth-making species,” wrote James Burnham in 1958. “It is marvelous to observe how, in the history of great struggles that seem too complex for rational understanding, the participants invariably find an outward and visible symbol by which to express the essential meaning.” Brett Kavanaugh has been put in such a position. He is a stand-in for the crisis of legitimacy that is coursing through our institutions, as an emboldened cultural progressivism seeks to upend traditional understandings of American history and citizenship.
The irrepressible conflict over his office testifies to the overwhelming power of the judiciary, and to the tenuous nature of the rights the Court has invented over the last 50-odd years. Kavanaugh matters because he is a living reminder that the threat to the Founders’ Constitution comes from a left willing to break rules, and lives, to achieve social transformation.
Matthew Continetti is co-founder and editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon and a fellow at the National Review Institute. The author of The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine (Doubleday, 2006) and The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Elite Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star (Sentinel, 2009), his articles and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic, and Wall Street Journal. He lives in Virginia. He can be reached at comments@freebeacon.com.
Holocaust Denial Center Runs Ad on Yale Student News Site
Anti-Semitic hate group advertises to Ivy League students
The Institute for Historical Review, a major outlet for Holocaust denial, placed an ad on the website of the Yale Daily News, the nation’s oldest college newspaper.
The banner ad was still available Friday afternoon, at least two days after the ad was first posted. The ad linked to the IHR’s website, as well as the slogan, “for a more just, sane and peaceful world.”
(Ed. Note: as of 4:05 EST, Friday 9/20/19)
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the IHR is a “pseudo-academic organization that claims to seek ‘truth and accuracy in history,’ but whose real purpose is to promote Holocaust denial and defend Nazism.” Founded in 1978 by Willis Carto—whom the Anti-Defamation League called “one of the most virulent anti-Semitic propagandists in the United States”—the IHR has historically held conferences centered around denying the extent and even existence of the Holocaust. Today, according to the SPLC, it primarily operates its website and distributes “extremist books.”
The IHR’s website—to which the ad redirects—features articles with titles such as “Top Ten Things the Nazis Got Right,” “Biden Acknowledges ‘Immense’ Jewish Role in American Cultural Life and Mass Media,” and information about British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley.
The IHR touted the advertisement on its own website. A Wednesday posting said that “A banner display ad of the Institute for Historical Review is appearing on the website of the Yale Daily News, the student newspaper of Yale University. The public service advertisement began appearing this morning, and is set to remain in place for a week. A viewer who clicks on the ad is taken to the home page of the IHR website.”
This is not the first time in recent years that the group has placed advertisements publicly. In 2018, citing free speech requirements, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system permitted the IHR to advertise at two stations.
The News, founded in 1878, bills itself as “the nation’s oldest college newspaper.” It serves the students and faculty of Yale University, as well as New Haven, Conn. The paper is operated by students on a volunteer basis, but retains a full-time general manager of its business office, which is responsible for the outlet’s advertising.
Phone and email requests for comment directed to the editor, publisher, and business office of the Yale Daily News went unanswered at press time.
The IHR’s Yale incursion may reflect growing anti-Semitism on campuses more broadly. According to a recent report from campus anti-Semitism watchdog the AMCHA Initiative, harassment of students who expressed pro-Israel ideologies rose an estimated 70 percent between 2017 and 2018.
Charles Fain Lehman is a staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon. He writes about policy, covering crime, law, drugs, immigration, and social issues. Reach him on twitter (@CharlesFLehman) or by email at lehman@freebeacon.com.
Dem Rep Invited #AbolishICE Radical to Immigration Town Hall
Mucarsel-Powell said ‘Abolishing ICE is not the answer’ during her campaign
Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D., Fla.) invited a panelist to an immigration town hall this July who is an #AbolishICE stalwart and is also an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) political party.
The invitation came despite her opposition to socialism and the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a position increasingly embraced by the far Left.
Mucarsel-Powell came out against abolishing ICE during her 2018 campaign to represent a South Florida district that houses many Latino voters who have fled or are descendants of those who have fled socialist or communist regimes in Central America. And socialism has already taken center stage for Republicans hoping to flip the seat red in 2020.
One announced challenger, Irina Vilariño, is primed to run a campaign targeting socialism.
“I am running for Congress because I want to set the record straight that under socialism there is only an equal opportunity to achieve poverty, and I want to remind the liberal extremists that in freedom, every person has the opportunity to achieve the American Dream,” Vilariño said in April to Florida Politics.
Mucarsel-Powell took a more moderate stance on immigration in 2018.
“Abolishing ICE is not the answer,” Mucarsel-Powell told the Miami Herald. “I believe the agency must correct its abuses and should dedicate its staff to protecting the country from actual threats, like child exploitation, human trafficking, and drug-related crimes, instead of attempting to induce fear in immigrant communities.”
But several of the photos Murcasel-Powell tweeted of the town hall held at Florida International University on July 2 show the socialist #AbolishICE activist, Thomas Kennedy, seated at the panelist table just one seat away from the freshman congresswoman.
Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell✔@RepDMP
Truly enjoyed our #immigration town hall @FIU tonight with members of the Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and other Latin American communities. We have such a diverse community in #FL26, and I will continue to work hard in Washington to represent everyone.
Kennedy was invited as part of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, where he is a political director, but he is shown on social media as a vocal activist for socialism and the abolishment of ICE. Roughly a year before the event, the Miami DSA Facebook featured a posted picture of Kennedy at an #AbolishICE protest.
“At this moment our comrade Tomas is putting his body on the line at Abolish ICE: Florida outside the #Miami ICE facility in #Miramar, to demand an end to the abuses, raids, and deportations that ICE is responsible for in our community. #AbolishICE,” the Miami DSA Facebook page read in July 2018.
Seventeen people were arrested that day, and Kennedy boasted on his own Facebook page of being among that group.
Kennedy has been called “comrade” on the Miami DSA Facebook page, and appeared in a group photo of other DSA members captioned, “Badasses of the Revolution.”
Requests for comment to Kennedy were either not returned or unsuccessful.
Other elements of the Miami DSA Facebook webpage voice support for the abolition of prisons, support for the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and “national rent control.”
Both the national and Miami DSA webpages give a nod to one of the socialist party’s key ideas: eliminating capitalism.
“As we are unlikely to see an immediate end to capitalism tomorrow, DSA fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people,” both organizations say.
Rep. Mucarsel-Powell did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Free Beacon, which asked whether she has shifted her position on abolishing ICE or if she shares any sympathies with the Democratic Socialists of America Party.
According to her campaign website, Mucarsel-Powell is a first-generation American having emigrated from Ecuador. Socialism remains a top concern for many Latino voters in the district she represents.
“In and around Miami, seven hundred thousand Cubans are eligible to vote, along with a hundred and sixty thousand Colombians, eighty thousand Nicaraguans, and some fifty thousand Venezuelans,” a recent report from the New Yorker noted. “Republicans, and especially Trump, have seized on this fact to relentlessly attack left-wing populists in Central and South America.”
The article also quoted an anonymous State Department official as saying, “The Trump Administration’s Latin America policy has become all about Florida.”
On the presidential campaign trail, Vermont socialist senator Bernie Sanders (I.) recently said he is not in favor of abolishing ICE. Sanders has received heavy support from the DSA.
Todd Shepherd is a staff writer at the Washington Free Beacon. He began his reporting career in radio, working as an anchor and reporter for KOMA in Oklahoma City and KOA in Denver. He spent eight years as the investigative reporter for the Independence Institute in Colorado, a free-market-based think tank. Campaigns and Elections magazine named him a “Top Colorado Influencer” for his reporting and news blog. He’s a graduate of the media studies program from Oklahoma Baptist University.
Tlaib Defends Anti-Israel Activist Who Was Voted Off Women’s March Board
She previously took picture with pro-Palestine activist who called Israel a ‘terrorist entity’
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) on Friday came to the defense of an anti-Israel activist who was voted off the Women’s March board earlier in the week, telling her, “we have the truth on our side.”
Tlaib took to Twitter to defend Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Billoo, who was voted off the board after serving for two days, sent out a 25-tweet thread about the vote, where she blamed an “Islamophobic smear campaign” and “right-wingers” for the scrutiny she and her colleagues received.
“#FreePalestine always sis! They won’t silence us for speaking out against human rights violations,” Tlaib tweeted. “They will lie, smear our names and call us anti this and that, but we always be pro- humanity & we have the truth on our side. Stay strong @ZahraBilloo.”
Rashida Tlaib✔@RashidaTlaib
#FreePalestine always sis! They won’t silence us for speaking out against human rights violations. They will lie, smear our names and call us anti this and that, but we always be pro- humanity & we have the truth on our side. Stay strong @ZahraBilloo https://twitter.com/ZahraBilloo/status/1174579933642756097 …
Zahra Billoo✔@ZahraBilloo
Since this is going to be in your newsfeeds in the morning – here’s a thread about me being voted off the board of @WomensMarch tonight 1/
Billoo, who has been a vocal supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), said the campaign against her was “driven by people who oppose me and my work challenging the occupation of Palestine, our country’s perpetuation of unjust and endless wars, and law enforcement operations targeting the American Muslim community.”
She has sent out several controversial tweets over the last decade, including tweets attacking U.S. troops, Memorial Day, and Israel. Back in 2016, she quote-tweeted a Twitter user asking her whether she believes it’s “wrong” for the United States to honor soldiers on Memorial Day. She replied, “You think we should honor people who commit war crimes?”
She also refers to Israel as “Apartheid Israel” multiple times on her Twitter account and claims Israel “commits war crimes as a hobby” and “kills children as a hobby.”
This isn’t the first time Tlaib has sided with someone vehemently opposed to Israel. Tlaib met with anti-Israel activist Joe Catron during American Muslims for Palestine Advocacy Day back in April. Catron and the New Jersey AMP chapter support the the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement which wages economic boycotts on the Jewish state.
The Anti-Defamation League previously stated the BDS movement is “the most prominent effort to undermine Israel’s existence” and has been critical of AMP for helping promote anti-Semitism.
Tlaib also took a picture back in January with Abbas Hamideh, a “Palestinian right of return” activist with a history of calling Israel a “terrorist entity.” He attended Tlaib’s swearing-in ceremony and a private dinner afterwards.
Abbas Hamideh@Resistance48I was honored to be at Congresswoman @RashidaTlaib swearing in ceremony in #Detroit and private dinner afterward with the entire family, friends and activists across the country. #Palestine #TweetYourThobe #RashidaTlaib
Cameron Cawthorne is a Media Analyst for the Washington Free Beacon. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 2013. Prior to joining Free Beacon, Cameron was a Legislative Assistant in the Virginia General Assembly and a War Room Analyst at America Rising.
Washington Post: Elizabeth Warren Is a Modern-Day Frederick Douglass
Because of her ‘selfies’
The media are rather obsessed with Elizabeth Warren’s obsession with taking “selfies” (NB: they’re not actually selfies) with supporters at campaign events. The Washington Post has taken that fixation to a whole new level by publishing an article that earnestly considers the question: Could Elizabeth Warren be the next Frederick Douglass?
The headline reads: “Frederick Douglass photos smashed stereotypes. Could Elizabeth Warren selfies do the same?” The article itself, published in the paper’s “Retropolis” section (Tagline: “The past, rediscovered”), expends more than 1,000 words, bolstered by “expert” testimony, in an effort to answer this question in the affirmative:
The two are separated by race, gender and more than 100 years of history that forged an America that would probably be unrecognizable to Douglass. Still, experts say, their use of photography collapses the distance: Douglass sat for scores of pictures to normalize the idea of black excellence and equality, and Warren’s thousands of selfies with supporters could do the same for a female president.
“It is cognitively harder for people to think about women in the role of political leader because we haven’t seen a lot of women in political leadership,” said Nichole Bauer, a professor of political communication at Louisiana State University. “With this selfie factory, she’s normalizing that image — in the same vein that Douglass used photography.”
Douglass, one of the most influential intellectuals in American history, is considered by some historians to be the most photographed American of the 19th century. He posed for more than 160 pictures as “a means of spreading influence” and combating the racist notion of black inferiority, according to Yale professor David Blight.
Warren’s “selfie lines” are basically the same. “I think the comparison is really good,” Alexander Alberro, a Columbia University professor who studies the history of photography, told the Post. The nearly 60,000 photos she’s taken with supporters, according to her campaign, are “confronting another harmful myth” about women in politics, the paper argues.
“She’s showing she’s warm and thoughtful and interested in people through these really direct personal interactions and pictures,” said Bauer, the Louisiana State professor. “It overcomes that image that women in leadership roles are cold, they’re unfeeling, they’re not kind.” And even if she doesn’t win the nomination or become president, Warren’s legacy as a media influencer will live on, her thousands of “selfies” amounting to “just a little bit more of a crack in that glass ceiling.”
Whether or not the comparison is offensive to Frederick Douglass is an open question, but it’s certainly offensive to ignore the contributions of 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in combating stereotypes of female leaders as cold and unfeeling. She also knew how to use a cell phone.
Andrew Stiles is senior writer at the Washington Free Beacon.
Abortion Doctor: Planned Parenthood Abortion Methods Induce ‘Live Birth’
‘Very few people in abortion, outside of Planned Parenthood, do that’
Longtime abortion doctor Forrest Smith testified Wednesday that some of the abortion procedures recommended by Planned Parenthood in 2015 videos released by a pro-life group would have resulted in “live birth.”
Smith suggested to a San Francisco court the videos confirm that Planned Parenthood recommends abortion methods that would allow for harvesting fetal tissue and organs for sale to medical researchers. Smith’s testimony agreed with accusations made by Center for Medical Progress founder David Daleiden and member Sandra Merritt.
After reviewing a presentation given by gynecologist Alisa Goldberg at a 2014 Planned Parenthood conference, Smith said the abortion methods Goldberg described would force a woman into “tumultuous labor.” The process would end in “fetal expulsion,” in which “the fetus comes out without any assistance from the abortion doctor, no instrumentation.”
“Very few people in abortion, outside of Planned Parenthood, do that,” Smith said. “There’s no question in my mind that at least some of these fetuses were live births.”
“No question it’s alive,” he added.
These procedures, Smith said, result in death “by neglect” if doctors do not “institute promptly all resuscitative care” to the fetus. Still practicing abortions himself, Smith said he believes abortions should be performed in the “fastest, safest way” possible and only after informing the woman exactly what would happen.
Daleiden and Merritt are currently facing charges for allegedly invading Planned Parenthood’s privacy by making and releasing videos of the abortion provider’s employees discussing the sale of fetal tissue and organs. The two have argued the videos were filmed legally, under a clause allowing the covert collection of evidence in the investigation of violent crimes.
Daleiden told LifeSiteNews Smith’s testimony was “powerful.”
“I think it was very clarifying for everyone in the courtroom to understand how Planned Parenthood in their fetal organ and tissue harvesting programs are violating all kinds of medical ethics, laws and standards of patients care,” he said.
Partial-birth and post-partum abortions became a national issue when Democratic lawmakers in the Virginia House of Delegates attempted to pass a bill in January that would allow abortions up to the moment of birth.
Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D.) appeared to extend that position, seemingly endorsing infanticide in a radio interview on Jan. 30.
“If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother,” Northam said.
Nic Rowan is media analyst at the Washington Free Beacon. His work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, First Things, and The New Criterion. Follow him on Twitter @NicXTempore.
Pelosi: Congress Needs To Pass Laws Allowing Indictment of Sitting President
‘I do think that we will have to pass some laws that will have clarity for future presidents’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said Congress will need to pass a law to allow for the indictment of a sitting president during an interview on Friday.
“I do think that we will have to pass some laws that will have clarity for future presidents. [A] president should be indicted, if he’s committed a wrongdoing—any president. There is nothing anyplace that says the president should not be indicted,” she told NPR.
“The Founders could never suspect that a president would be so abusive of the Constitution of the United States, that the separation of powers would be irrelevant to him and that he would continue, any president would continue, to withhold facts from the Congress, which are part of the constitutional right of inquiry,” she continued.
Pelosi’s comments come in the midst of an intra-party fight over whether or not to impeach President Donald Trump. Earlier this week, Pelosi blasted House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) for pushing too far, too fast on conducting an impeachment probe.
Nadler has been open about the fact that his committee is currently conducting an impeachment probe. However, Pelosi criticized opening an impeachment inquiry because the Democrats do not yet have the support within the party to vote to impeach the president, according to Politico.
A spokesman for Nadler told Politico Pelosi has been supportive of the committee’s work.
Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski testified earlier this week in front of the Judiciary Committee, but provided no new details about potentially impeachable action on the part of President Trump.
Current Justice Department guidance prohibits the indictment of a sitting president. “The indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions,” the Department of Justice’s website states.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller told Congress he did not make a decision on whether to indict Trump during the course of his Russia investigation due to the guidelines.
Graham is a media analyst at the Free Beacon. He graduated from Georgetown University in 2018 and was a staff reporter for the College Fix. Follow him on Twitter at @graham_piro or reach him at piro@freebeacon.com.
