The New American ‘Justice’

Constitution, Justice, Law, Republicans

“… never in our lifetimes have sitting members of Congress attacked our justice system as they now are. Lawmakers had never mocked the idea of due process, called for the collective punishment of American citizens or declared that the burden of proof is on the accused.“—Tucker Carlson.

“… Elected officials have announced they no longer believe in our Western understanding of justice … We accuse you of a felony. Your job is to show you’re innocent. You’re a sex criminal, prove you’re not. …”

… Senate Republicans declared in effect that all allegations against Brett Kavanaugh must be heard no matter how frivolous or obviously fraudulent they are. We can’t control the Senate Republicans, obviously. They exist in their own world. But we can remind them what is at stake here.

… You wanted secure borders. You wanted an end to ObamaCare and you wanted non-crazy people on the Supreme Court of the United States.

You didn’t get the first two. You’re starting to realize you probably never will, because Republicans in the Senate don’t care enough to protect you.

Don’t feel too bad: They don’t care enough about Brett Kavanaugh or our Constitution to protect them, either.

MORE: “If you’re a Republican, you may be wondering why should I bother to vote?”

UPDATED (12/12/-18): On The Pseudo-Science of Violence Against Women: Judge Napolitano Takes The Left’s Perspective

Canada, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Gender, libertarianism, Old Right, Pseudoscience, Sex

Speaking to Arthel Neville, left-libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano repeated old feminist canards about sexual assault: It’s allegedly an under-reported, ever-present crime in American society.

This misrepresentation is predictable, coming from Napolitano (a creedal left-libertarian).

Find the truth in “Sub-Science Bolsters Violence-Against-Women Claims” (1999). I wrote it in… 1999 for the Calgary Herald:

Moreover, take into consideration that Canada’s Violence Against Women industry (addressed in the column) takes direction from its American sisterhood. In the War On Men, Canada follows, America leads.

The research on violence against women amounts to mostly:

… single sex survey with no input from men. It reflects an exclusive ideological focus on female victimization and excludes, conveniently, violence females incur from other females. Neither were women asked about their own acts of violence towards the man in the relationship even though dozens of two sex surveys conducted in Canada and the U.S. confirm “that women in relationship with men commit comparatively as many acts of violence as men do, at every level of severity,” as Fekete writes.
Developed at the height of the post-Lepine “war against women” panic, the VAW questionnaires are the product of a collaboration with advocacy groups and feminist stakeholders. They are fraught with problems of unrepresentative sample, lack of corroboration, a reliance on anecdotes, and a use of over inclusive survey questions.
Undergirding the promiscuous statistics yielded in the survey is a reliance on prevalence figures. When claims makers say a third of all women have been assaulted in their lifetime, they refer to the prevalence of assault over a life-time, instead of the incidence of assault over, say, a 12-month period (that being approximately 3 percent). Lifetime rates inflate outcomes considerably and make for good copy. “What existential meaning,” wonders Prof. Fekete, “can be attached to a report that once in an entire lifetime someone that a woman knew touched her knee without an invitation?” ….

READ: “Sub-Science Bolsters Violence-Against-Women Claims.”

As to my Judge Andrew Napolitano archive: it’s  here. It’s mostly BAD, if you’re a libertarian on the hard Right:

UPDATED (12/12/018):  And note, these were finer points of law that Judge Napolitano fudged, not uncharacteristically. The guy is reliably clueless.

See: “Andrew McCarthy BLASTS Judge Napolitano’s Accusations of Trump Campaign Violations : “That’s Not What Happened at All!” (Video)”

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UPDATES (9/26): Christine Blasey Ford’s Contempt For Kavanaugh’s 6th Amendment Confrontation Rights

Constitution, Criminal Injustice, Feminism, Gender, Justice, Law, Morality, Sex

A family member of Christine Blasey Ford told a friendly network that Ford was a serious person, a scientist, no less.

For one thing, Ford is a psychologist. As such, she can only be a social scientist, not a scientist.

For another, if Ford’s “science” is anything like her callous attitude toward the rights of the accused in our adversarial understanding of the law—then she is not  a”scientist,” and most definitely no “serious person.” She might even be legitimately considered a bit of a menace.

One item on Blasey Ford’s long list of demands to the US Senate Judiciary Committee, before she relents and goes away, is that “Brett Kavanaugh should be questioned first, before he has the opportunity to hear Ford’s testimony.”

Kavanaugh goes first and is denied the opportunity to hear the accusations against him, confront his accuser, and fashion a response to her accusations.

Make no mistake, Blasey Ford is submitting Kavanaugh to a public lynching, a trial by any other name, except that this trail is without protections such as the presumption of innocence.

And certainly without the 6th amendment constitutional protections:

The 6th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution sets out many rights for defendants during a criminal prosecution, including the right of the accused to confront their accusers. The relevant text of the Confrontation Clause of the 6th Amendment reads as follows: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him.

Impotent Republicans are incapable of standing up for anything. GOP Chairman Chuck Grassley JUST caved again to Blasey Ford, giving her Highness still more time to decide on yet MORE conditions for her appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

UPDATES (9/26):

Why not Harmeet K. Dhillon?

A sex-crimes prosecutor? What on earth for?

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NEW COLUMN: U.S. Business Itching To Import Cheap Labor

Business, Donald Trump, IMMIGRATION, Labor, Outsourcing

“U.S. Business Itching To Import Cheap Labor” is the current column. It’s now on Townhall.com, the Unz Review and WND.com.

Adroitly, President Trump has optimized outcomes for the American Worker. His is a labor market like no other.

Long overdue in the U.S., a labor market is one in which firms compete for workers, rather than workers competing for jobs.

“For the first time since data began to be collected in 2000, there are more job openings than there are unemployed workers.” By the Economist’s telling (Jul 12th 2018), “Fully 5.8 million more Americans are in work than in December of 2015.”

Best of all, workers are happier than they’ve been for a long time.

Not so business. For American business, it’s never enough.

Big or small, business is focused on elephantine-like expansion.

Big and small, business is nattering about labor shortages: “Ninety percent of small businesses which are hiring or trying to hire workers report that there are few or no qualified applicants, according to the National Federation of Independent Business.”

With blaring headlines, the megaphones in the financial press are amplifying a message of dissatisfaction:

“The shortage is reaching a ‘critical point’ … A lack of applicants for blue-collar jobs such as trucking and construction has received particular scrutiny, as have states like Iowa where the unemployment rate is especially low (it is just 2.7 percent in the Hawkeye state).”

August 31 saw President Trump sign an executive order meant to further boost small businesses. These will be permitted “to band together to offer 401(k)s.”

Again, nice, but not enough. It never is. A businessman present piped up about “a very tight labor market … causing us a little bit of a problem.”

Contrast this gimme-more-forever-more attitude, with the patriotic perspective of your average Trump supporter: “I’m willing to take my lumps for the good of the country,” a farmer told broadcaster Laura Ingraham. “The Scottish in me says to the death.”

Look, a labor market allows wages to rise and productivity to grow, for unprofitable firms will soon fold when they find they can’t pay enough to attract workers. Scarce resources—labor and capital—are then “put to better use.” …

… READ THE REST on Townhall.com. On the Unz Review and WND.com, too.