Never fabricate a claim that 66.5 million eyewitnesses can refute

Did you see the second Presidential debate last Sunday?

Did you know that Donald Trump "stalked" Hillary Clinton during that debate?

No? Neither did 66.5 million eyewitnesses.

But, hey, I guess if a woman said it, it has to be true--eyewitnesses be damned.

All kidding aside, the fact that this allegation was lodged by Mrs. Clinton--even though a massive audience knows it wasn't true--and the fact that the allegation wasn't refuted by the mainstream media tells us everything we need to know this campaign.

Using sexual assault to further a political agenda

Donald Trump held a press conference before last Sunday night's debate with Bill Clinton's sexual assault accusers. Then he had the accusers sit in the audience and watch the debate--the same audience where Bill Clinton sat. It was an unprecedented political spectacle. Fox News Trump supporter Sean Hannity and others on Fox News have treated each of Bill Clinton's accusers as sexual assault victims.

The goal of many allied with Trump is to claim that Hillary Clinton hates women as shown by her actions in attacking her husband's accusers. We previously decried this tactic, noting that "the attacks on Mrs. Clinton for defending her husband echo the shrill siren of radical feminism" which assumes guilt on the basis of an accusation. While it is certainly fair to point out Mrs. Clinton's hypocrisy when she urges that women who cry rape "should be believed" while her husband's accusers should not, it is absurd to suggest that it's proper to assume rape on the basis of an accusation.

Ah, but the plot thickens--things just got a lot more complicated for Trump allies. Last Sunday, we wrote about Donald Trump's repulsive locker room bragging about sexual assault. We added this: "And I'm wondering when the women will come forward, a la Bill Cosby? Perhaps this disclosure will trigger women coming forward."

I didn't have to wonder long. The accusers have come out of the woodwork and, mirabile dictu!--they somehow found their way to the New York Times, less than four weeks before the election. The one accusation concerns an alleged event that occurred more than 30 years ago.  That's right--30 years ago. Chances are, Trump can't possibly prove he was somewhere other than where the woman claims he was because any evidence that could support an alibi is obviously long gone by now.

Trump claims his locker room bragging was all talk--that he did not sexually assault anyone. For the same reason that we should not assume Bill Clinton committed sexual assault based on accusations, we should not assume Donald Trump did so, either. Nor should we assume the accusers are liars. We should not take sides unless the claims have been subjected to a fair hearing.

Unfortunately, that's not how a lot of people will look at it.

The mainstream media--which has no use for Trump--will report these accusations 24/7 if possible in an effort to put the final nail in the coffin of the Trump campaign.

Trump supporters will take a different approach--and the real question is: how will Fox News treat these accusations against Trump? Will Sean Hannity et al. give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt--something they steadfastly refuse to do for Bill Clinton? Will they try to smear the accusers even after they treated Bill Clinton's accusers as if they were Mother Theresa's sisters? Or will they do the right thing and report the facts about these accusations without taking sides as to their veracity? And if Fox News does the right thing in this instance, will that expose its hypocrisy because Fox News has failed to do the same in Bill Clinton's case?

My guess: Trump supporters will try to make the case that the accusations against Bill Clinton are credible while the ones against Trump aren't. And my guess is that most objective people will see through that.

That's what happens when you use sexual assault accusations to further a political agenda. If you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

Off-topic: Americans are stupid

No one should complain about the outcome of this election, whatever it might be. Americans don’t deserve a good president because they don’t demand one.

Mrs. Clinton and her news media allies (pretty much the entire mainstream media) are only interested in talking about Donald Trump’s idiocy du jour. For his part, Donald Trump is primarily interested in attacking leaders of his own party who aren’t supporting him. The rest of the GOP and its media outlet, Fox News, are more interested in catching Clinton in lies about old emails or maybe even hoping she faints again.

The American people are even worse. We just witnessed the most dramatic presidential debate in history--and the most talked-about thing is what? A guy in a red sweater who asked a question that wasn’t important.

So what's so important that we should be discussing, you ask?

For one thing, Americans ought to be talking about Obamacare. Barack Obama considers it his signature accomplishment, and Mrs. Clinton is running as an Obama acolyte. Obama sold it to Americans with his Pajama Boy ad campaign and promises that it would “reduce the costs of most Americans” and that “no matter what you’ve heard, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor . . . .” In fact, Obama made those claims repeatedly.

The Pajama Boy campaign turned out to be a dud—akin to trying to peddle New Coke (younger readers may not know--in the mid-1980s, Coke changed the formula of its iconic drink--it didn’t last). And the promises turned out to be wrong, to put it charitably. An architect of Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber, later admitted in a moment of arrogant candor that the promises were deceitful—because “lack of transparency is a huge political advantage” in this instance. Health care premiums have skyrocketed to the point that Bill Clinton—the man Mrs. Clinton said would be “in charge of revitalizing the economy” in her administration--last week said this: "So you've got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It's the craziest thing in the world."

At this week’s debate, a questioner asked: “Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, it is not affordable. Premiums have gone up. Deductibles have gone up. Copays have gone up. Prescriptions have gone up. And the coverage has gone down. What will you do to bring the cost down and make coverage better?” Even Mrs. Clinton agreed with the questioner. “. . . I agree with you. Premiums have gotten too high. Copays, deductibles, prescription drug costs . . . .” And: “. . . we've got to get costs down. We've got to provide additional help to small businesses so that they can afford to provide health insurance.”

The most important accomplishment of the Obama administration is a mess, and you'd think this would be the principal issue in this campaign. So why aren’t we holding both candidates’ feet to the fire and insisting that they lay out detailed plans about how they’re going to fix Obamacare, or replace it?

Because we're too busy talking about a guy in a red sweater.

And . . . maybe we’re stupid?

Donald Trump's repulsive comments

[Edit: During the October 9, 2016 presidential debate, Donald Trump stated that his comments in 2005 were "locker room talk" and that he did not sexually assault women.]

Back in 2005, Donald Trump bragged, "I just start kissing [beautiful women] . . . . Just kiss. Don't even wait. And when you're a star, let you do it. You can do anything. Whatever you wait. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

Should we believe Donald Trump was telling the truth--that he would kiss women, and grab women "by the p**ssy," without waiting for anything, including the women's consent? Because that sure sounds an awful lot like sexual assault, doesn't it? Or maybe Trump thinks that the women's after-the-fact consent--because he's a "star" and all--could undo sexual assault?

If Trump grabbed women before the women manifested consent, that's sexual assault. The fact that the women didn't complain doesn't undo the sexual assault.

Pointing this out is not to condone Hillary Clinton's conduct or policies. Readers of this blog know that--just look at the link at the top left of this page. I am just asking if we should take Donald Trump at his word, because if we do, it sure sounds like he was bragging about committing sexual assault.

And I'm wondering when the women will come forward, a la Bill Cosby?  Perhaps this disclosure will trigger women coming forward.

One way or the other, this presidential election might just present the worst choice we've ever had.

Airline changes woman's seat to accommodate Pakistani Monks: discrimination. Muslim women get men kicked out of gyms: a reasonable request

When Pakistani monks--who are men--had United Airlines move a female passenger because their cultural beliefs forbade them from sitting next to her on a flight, the media gave voice to the woman, who felt she'd been discriminated. “We can’t discriminate against half the population,” the woman said, “for a belief from another nation.” The woman has demanded that United Airlines apologize to every female on that plane, including United employees, and change their policy. The woman said she was intent on protecting women’s rights. United said it regretted that the woman was unhappy and that it has "zero tolerance" for discrimination. See here

But when Muslim women insist that they can't exercise with men around at Harvard and a lot of other places, the men are often banned from the gym for hours each week. The women find it "awkward" working out in a co-ed gym--it makes them "uncomfortable." The communications director of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences called it a "reasonable request."

When Muslim men asked for a religious accommodation that, in truth, did not inconvenience a woman at all, the media gives voice to the woman who insists she was discriminated against. When women ask for a religious accommodation that indisputably does cause some inconvenience to men, it's a reasonable request.

Brown University--where hostility to the rights of accused men is routine

Innocence Project guru Prof. Mark A Godsey has explained that "the risk of wrongful conviction is the highest when there’s public outcry. Most of the exonerations and wrongful convictions have occurred in rape cases."

A federal judge has ruled that Brown University violated a student's rights when it expelled him for alleged sexual assault. The judge did not take sides as to the truth of the accusation, he merely took issue with the unfair process used to expel the young man. According to the Washington Post:

. . . at the time of the incident, in November 2014, the judge said the university’s code governing sexual misconduct contained no definition of consent. Brown formulated one after the fact, in 2015, and a decided the man had violated it, suspending him and barring him from campus until the woman graduates.

The retroactive punishment was sufficiently significant to have possibly made the difference between the man being found responsible or not.

The court found other flaws in the process as well, including the university’s failure to allow the man to introduce evidence that he believed was exculpatory.

The court also took issue with Brown students who tried to influence the judiciary:

After the preliminary injunction, this Court was deluged with emails resulting from an organized campaign to influence the outcome. These tactics, while perhaps appropriate and effective in influencing legislators or officials in the executive branch, have no place in the judicial process. This is basic civics, and one would think students and others affiliated with a prestigious Ivy League institution would know this. Moreover, having read a few of the emails, it is abundantly clear that the writers, while passionate, were woefully ignorant about the issues before the Court.

This isn't Brown's first brush with a controversial rape case. Do you remember the Adam Lack case? As Kathleen Parker wrote: "Despite any substantiating evidence, a disciplinary council at Brown University, where [Lack and his accuser, Sara Klein] were enrolled, found Lack guilty of sexual misconduct and suspended him for one semester."

Libertarian media gadfly John Stossel was sent to Brown University to cover the Lack case for 20/20. Stossel was surprised to discover that debate on the issue was not welcomed. At a rally against Mr. Lack, Mr. Stossel sought to question to protest leaders about their definition of "rape." Stossel described the scene in words that are a stinging indictment on the intoleance of activists who have politicized rape: "I've covered race riots in Portland, a birth-control riot in Mexico City, yet these privileged students at an Ivy League university were louder, and more intense." They shouted Stossel down, began chanting at him, and made it clear that there was only one side to the issue. In their world, Stossel explained, "any challenge to their thinking must automatically be hate-filled and sexist (or racist, classist, or homophobic)." J. Stossel, How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media at 275-77.

Several years before that at Brown, a ''rape list'' was famously scrawled on the wall of a library women's room -- it identified 30 ''men who have sexually assaulted me or a woman I know.'' As soon as janitors scrubbed the wall clean, someone would rewrite the ''rape list'' on it again. Women's groups defended the list and reacted angrily when the school's administration said it would no more tolerate anti-male graffiti than it allows misogynistic, homophobic or racist graffiti.

Another time, a Brown alumni famously applauded the fact that "[t]he woman's version of what happened will always be accepted over the man's account."

Maybe there's something in the water at Brown.

Surreal moment from debate

There were many surreal moments from the first presidential debate. Here's one:

CLINTON: . . . But this is a man . . . who has said...women don't deserve equal pay unless they do as good a job as men.

TRUMP: I didn't say that.

Okay: now, what am I missing here?

Is Clinton suggesting that it's wrong for Trump to say a woman should not be paid what a man is paid unless she does as good a job?

And Trump denied saying it, as if it's wrong?

The implications are staggering.

Criticizing Clinton's smugness is not "sexism"

This was Hillary Clinton much of the night whenever Donald Trump spoke--smug condescension oozed from every pore of her face. She donned this visage pretty much every time Trump talked about our broken system or lodged a criticism of her positions.

It was a look intended to derisively mock, belittle, and trivialize Trump. At one point, while laughing smugly, she actually said this to Trump, "You know, just join the debate by saying more crazy things."

Some pundits are claiming that any criticism of Clinton's smug demeanor is rank sexism--see, e.g., here and here. Of course, some of these pundits could find sexism in a ham sandwich.

If we can't criticize a candidate for her actions without being accused of being sexist, then America isn't ready for a woman president.

The problem with Clinton's smug attitude isn't that it mocked Trump--Trump is often an overbearing buffoon who deserves to be mocked in other settings. The problem is--like it or not--that Clinton's smugness in this setting implicitly disrespected and mocked Trump's many supporters and a lot of other people who are on the fence but who are sympathetic to his core message.

Trump gives voice to the frustrations of millions about a broken system--and the establishment that runs it--that has utterly failed them. Yet for too much of this campaign, Clinton and her ilk have disrespected these people and their concerns--and have dismissed Trump's movement as nothing more than a "basket of deplorables."

Clinton and her supporters, in and out of the media, dismiss--and mock--the millions who feel disenfranchised, and who look to Trump as their voice, at their peril.

And Clinton's media pom-pom girls do her no favors by dismissing criticisms of her smugness as "sexism." They need to urge her to ditch it next time around--or else maybe America really isn't ready for a woman president.

Who "won" the debate?

Who cares who "won" the debate? At least, who cares who "won" in any traditional sense--you know, "on points." The  political "experts" don't know what the hell they're talking about. A lot of them thought Jimmy Carter tied or beat Reagan in their October 28, 1980 debate.

Trump's pitch was Hillary et al. have made a mess of things for a long time, so why does anyone think it will improve by electing her? Hillary's pitch was, I'm not Trump.

Hillary was plastic, uninspiring, smug and condescending. Trump was angry, obnoxious, inarticulate and overbearing. But the only thing that matters is how it played to undecided voters who have paid little to no attention to the election until last night--almost everyone else has made up his or her mind. What they saw was a steamroller who manhandled the moderator and his opponent unlike anything in memory--it was absurd, shocking, and historic. It was typical of Trump's performance in debates throughout this election season.

As for Trump--he's not a conservative, of course. It would have been interesting to see a true conservative, like Cruz or Rand Paul, debate Clinton. Trump's primary issue in this campaign is and has been trade. When it comes to trade, his positions are a threat to free markets and global commerce--very anti-conservative. So are Hillary's, though a lot of people suspect her positions are designed to buy votes and that she wouldn't carry through on them. President Obama is much better on trade than either Trump or Hillary. Trump doesn't care much about any other issue--the "law and order" thing is a recent campaign strategy. And sometimes at his rallies, he almost forgets to mention "the wall." He's not articulate--a great friend of mine, who happens to be an expert on rhetoric, said this about the debate last night: "You’d think that someone who talks so much, who spews such an incredible, non-stop volume of verbiage, would eventually, even accidentally, answer a fucking question." Trump eschews serious study of the issues. The GOP got what it deserved when it nominated him. Any of the other GOP candidates would have been more articulate, more civil, and more knowledgeable about the issues than Trump--just as Mitt Romney was. Then again, Romney lost. And for the first time in a long time, a Republican wasn't pushed around by the moderator or his Democrat opponent. If Trump lost, he beat himself.

As for Clinton: aside from disdaining college men (any college man who would vote for her ought to have his head examined), she is perhaps the most unaccomplished major political figure of my lifetime. Her devotees typically don't really know where she stands on the issues. In the debate last night, she rushed to judgment and tied the Charlotte and Tulsa shootings to race, then she accused all of us as being "implicitly biased" when it comes to blacks, and in the same breath unwittingly contradicted herself by saying "too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other." She wants to deny anyone who's on a terrorist watch list from being able to buy a gun (Trump agreed--but, to his credit, added that if someone shouldn't be on the list, we should help them get off).

There are a lot of issues that are manufactured by the candidates and the news media. Does anyone care about Trump's tax returns, except Hillary supporters? Does anyone seriously think the nutty birther issue was related to race?

But even the issues that matter don't really matter. And that's the point. Politics has become a religion--facts don't matter, feelings do. We rationalize to deal with inconvenient truths. If you liked Clinton, you thought she "won" last night. If you liked Trump, you thought he "won" last night. If you are someone who paid no attention to this election until last night and think the system is broken and want someone to shake it up, you might have thought Trump "won." That doesn't mean those people are too stupid to understand what Trump really is.

I'll vote for one or the other--full disclosure, I've become one of those "undecideds." I am watching one particular issue that would impact me personally--depending on this issue, I might vote for Hillary.

As for last night, I, personally, don't know who "won." I can think of a nation that has lost.

Hillary Clinton's hostility to the community of the wrongly accused

The current administration has manifested an unprecedented hostility to due process for college men accused of sexual assault. We've written literally hundreds of posts about it since April 2011 when the the Department of Education issued its infamous "Dear Colleague" letter. For a long time, it was difficult to fathom that any administration could be worse on these issues, but we have every reason to believe that a Hillary Clinton administration would be worse.

Hillary Clinton has unequivocally expressed her hostility to college men accused of sexual assault: "I think that when someone makes the claim, they come forward, they should be believed . . . ."  She also said this: ". . . in our country and on every college campus . . . any woman who reports an assault should be heard and believed . . . ."  In a major address on the issue, she told survivors of sexual assault the following: "You have the right to be heard, You have the right to be believed. And we're with you as you go forward." Clinton made it clear she believes that men accused of sexual assault should be presumed guilty until they are proven innocent: ". . . everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence.” Clinton made that statement with a huge grin on her face, and the line drew applause.

Clinton has stated that the issue of college sexual assault is "deeply important" to her. She buys into the one-in-five canard. She has called campus sexual assault an epidemic, has pledged to "build on the progress" the Obama administration has made, and has made clear she wants a national conversation about it--as if the issue has been ignored until now. She plans to take the Obama administration's work to the next level: "The Obama administration has begun to shine a spotlight. I just want to make it a very broad and bright spotlight . . . ." She wants to "end" campus rape by broadening the war on sexual assault. She proudly admits that when she says this, she is "playing the gender card"  and "that's exactly where I want to be."

Clinton hired Zerlina Maxwell  to work for her. Maxwell has written this: “Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist.” Maxwell said that false accusations "can be undone by an investigation that clears the accused, especially if it is done quickly."

As Secretary of State, Clinton made one of the most heinous false rape claims imaginable. In 2011, Clinton was trying to justify regime change in Libya–a goal not authorized by either the U.S. Congress or the UN. "Clinton told the press that Gaddafi was passing out Viagra to his troops so they could go out and rape dissidents en masse, and that the troops were indeed engaging in mass rapes." The problem? Amnesty International later reported "that there was absolutely no factual support for these accusations. As Amnesty International reported, 'Not only have we not met any victims, but we have not even met any persons who have met victims.'”

It is ironic that Hillary Clinton has not always exhibited fidelity to the decidedly unAmerican principles she now espouses. Much has been written about Mrs. Clinton's two-facedness on this issue--she did not automatically believe her husband’s sexual assault accusers, and, in fact, she actively worked to destroy their credibility. We won't repeat those arguments as they could fill a book.

Mrs. Clinton is, sadly, a product of the modern Democratic Party, which foments division by playing a nasty game of group identity politics that trumps fidelity to due process.

'Will the Left Survive the Millennials?'

By LIONEL SHRIVER
NEW YORK TIMES
SEPT. 23, 2016

Midway through my opening address for the Brisbane Writers Festival earlier this month, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a Sudanese-born Australian engineer and 25-year-old memoirist, walked out. Her indignant comments about the event might have sunk into obscurity, along with my speech, had they not been republished by The Guardian. Twenty minutes in, this audience member apparently turned to her mother: “ ‘Mama, I can’t sit here,’ I said, the corners of my mouth dragging downwards. ‘I cannot legitimize this.’ ” She continued: “The faces around me blurred. As my heels thudded against the grey plastic of the flooring, harmonizing with the beat of the adrenaline pumping through my veins, my mind was blank save for one question. ‘How is this happening?’ ”

I’m asking the same thing.

Briefly, my address maintained that fiction writers should be allowed to write fiction — thus should not let concerns about “cultural appropriation” constrain our creation of characters from different backgrounds than our own. I defended fiction as a vital vehicle for empathy. If we have permission to write only about our own personal experience, there is no fiction, but only memoir. Honestly, my thesis seemed so self-evident that I’d worried the speech would be bland.

Nope — not in the topsy-turvy universe of identity politics. The festival immediately disavowed the address, though the organizers had approved the thrust of the talk in advance. A “Right of Reply” session was hastily organized. When, days later, The Guardian ran the speech, social media went ballistic. Mainstream articles followed suit. I plan on printing out The New Republic’s “Lionel Shriver Shouldn’t Write About Minorities” and taping it above my desk as a chiding reminder.

Viewing the world and the self through the prism of advantaged and disadvantaged groups, the identity-politics movement — in which behavior like huffing out of speeches and stirring up online mobs is par for the course — is an assertion of generational power. Among millennials and those coming of age behind them, the race is on to see who can be more righteous and aggrieved — who can replace the boring old civil rights generation with a spikier brand.

When I was growing up in the ’60s and early ’70s, conservatives were the enforcers of conformity. It was the right that was suspicious, sniffing out Communists and scrutinizing public figures for signs of sedition.

Now the role of oppressor has passed to the left. In Australia, where I spoke, Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act makes it unlawful to do or say anything likely to “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate,” providing alarming latitude in the restriction of free speech. It is Australia’s conservatives arguing for the amendment of this law.

As a lifelong Democratic voter, I’m dismayed by the radical left’s ever-growing list of dos and don’ts — by its impulse to control, to instill self-censorship as well as to promote real censorship, and to deploy sensitivity as an excuse to be brutally insensitive to any perceived enemy. There are many people who see these frenzies about cultural appropriation, trigger warnings, micro-aggressions and safe spaces as overtly crazy. The shrill tyranny of the left helps to push them toward Donald Trump.

Ironically, only fellow liberals will be cowed by terror of being branded a racist (a pejorative lobbed at me in recent days — one that, however groundless, tends to stick). But there’s still such a thing as a real bigot, and a real misogynist. In obsessing over micro-aggressions like the sin of uttering the commonplace Americanism “you guys” to mean “you all,” activists persecute fellow travelers who already care about equal rights.

Moreover, people who would hamper free speech always assume that they’re designing a world in which only their enemies will have to shut up. But free speech is fragile. Left-wing activists are just as dependent on permission to speak their minds as their detractors.

In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is the intention of the identity-politics cabal — and maybe my generation should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math.

But do we really want every intellectual conversation to be scrupulously cleansed of any whiff of controversy? Will people, so worried about inadvertently giving offense, avoid those with different backgrounds altogether? Is that the kind of fiction we want — in which the novels of white writers all depict John Cheever’s homogeneous Connecticut suburbs of the 1950s, while the real world outside their covers becomes ever more diverse?

Ms. Abdel-Magied got the question right: How is this happening? How did the left in the West come to embrace restriction, censorship and the imposition of an orthodoxy at least as tyrannical as the anti-Communist, pro-Christian conformism I grew up with? Liberals have ominously relabeled themselves “progressives,” forsaking a noun that had its roots in “liber,” meaning free. To progress is merely to go forward, and you can go forward into a pit.

Protecting freedom of speech involves protecting the voices of people with whom you may violently disagree. In my youth, liberals would defend the right of neo-Nazis to march down Main Street. I cannot imagine anyone on the left making that case today.

Man banished from college due to woman's claim of incapacitated sex--even though the school said there was no evidence of incapacity

A male student at the University of Michigan was accused of sexual assault by a female student who claimed that when they had sex, she was too intoxicated to consent.

A university investigator interviewed 23 witnesses and concluded that "there is no evidence of the complainant's outward signs of incapacitation that the respondent would have observed prior to initiating the sexual activity."

End of case--based on that finding of fact, there is no evidence to find the male student responsible for sexual assault. She reasonably appeared to him to have capacity, so her claim must be rejected. The accused cannot be expected to read his sex partner's inner thoughts--if she agrees to have sex and her outward manifestations reasonably suggest she has capacity, he's not guilty of sexual assault. Period.

The woman appealed. And somehow, the administrative appeal board overturned the investigator's findings and found the man had violated the sexual conduct code. In late June, he signed a resolution agreement agreeing to leave U-M.

He's changed his mind, and he's suing now. So is she. He's alleging that his due process rights have been violated. The same old-same old.

This case is not difficult. It doesn't present unique issues, nor does it raise matters worthy of any debate whatsoever. What the University of Michigan did here was grossly unjust to the male student, and its unconscionable decision appears to have been motivated by the accused's gender. All persons of goodwill should outraged--and alumni at U-M ought to demand justice for the young man.

End of story.

Colleges are nuthouses

More evidence: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439999/vanderbilt-share-and-ask-pronouns-when-making-introductions-even-familiar-colleagues

We are not allowed to offer support for our friends who've been accused of sexual assault

When it comes to sexual assault accusations, our moral superiors in the sexual grievance cartel tell us we must assume guilt based on an accusation, but that it is okay to automatically take the side of an accuser, even if we know absolutely nothing about the case or the parties involved.

We are not allowed to automatically support people accused of sexual assault, even if we know them and can vouch for their characters. Here's an example of the latter: http://sportsday.dallasnews.com/college-sports/collegesports/2016/09/21/baylor-qb-seth-russell-clarifies-previous-comments-regarding-ex-teammate-awaiting-trial 

If this is typical of college students, then college students . . . are nuts

Really scary: http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/15/watch-a-mob-of-yale-students-bully-a-professor-who-hurt-their-feelings/

"Colleges have 'created an environment where these male students ... are treated as guilty before innocent'"

Read the article here.

Feminists want to get rid of statutes of limitations for rape

Gloria Allred supports the sexual grievance industry's efforts to end the statute of limitations in California for rape. Her rationale underscores the injustice in this effort. Allred writes:

Those who represent defendants often oppose eliminating the statutes of limitations. The theory goes that the fairness of a trial is compromised by the passage of time, so prosecutors shouldn’t sit on evidence of a crime and wait to charge a person once memories have faded, documents have been thrown out and alibis get hard to prove. This is why other criminal charges — with rare exception — have time limits, they argue, and rape and sexual assault should not be treated differently.

Rape and sexual assault are different, however. Other crimes are much more likely to be reported quickly, but we know that victims of sexual violence often take years to come forward because they may feel ashamed, mistakenly blame themselves for what happened or fear they will not be believed. Police and prosecutors aren’t holding onto evidence; they haven’t been informed that there was a crime.

For constitutional reasons, the Justice for Victims Act would not be retroactive; it can’t re-open the door to criminal courts that statutes of limitations already have slammed shut. But it will help victims of rape and sexual assault in the future.

If Gov. Brown signs this bill into law, statutes of limitations no longer will be a sexual predator’s best friend and a victim’s worst enemy.

Statutes of limitations aren't designed to protect the guilty--though sometimes they do--they are designed to protect the innocent, the wrongly accused. Allred doesn't even bother to say how the wrongly accused should be protected against old claims they can't possibly defend against. By refusing to acknowledge that the wrongly accused are deserving of any such protections whatsoever, Allred underscores the injustice of the position she advocates.

If someone is accused today of committing rape 20, 30, or 40 years ago, there is no realistic way he will be able to defend against it. I can think of few things more frightening. It is almost certain he will not be able to establish an alibi. All witnesses, all documents showing, for example, he was somewhere else when the alleged crime occurred, will have been lost to the mists of time.

None of that is a concern to Allred or her ilk. All that matters is that it will be easier for women to get convictions many years after the rape.

“The statute of limitations is there for a reason,” said Natasha Minsker, director of the ACLU of California Center for Advocacy and Policy “When a case is prosecuted literally decades after the event, it becomes much more ... difficult to prove that you are wrongfully accused." See here.

The longer an accuser waits to bring a charge from the date it allegedly occurred, the more difficult it is to fairly defend against it. The horror stories of the repressed memories witch hunts are examples of what can occur. In rape cases, there is a national trend to lengthen or eliminate statutes of limitations entirely. This is a concern to the criminal defense bar, the ACLU, and many others. We write about it from time to time -- see e.g.: http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2011/12/assholez-who-despise-falsely-accused.html;  http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2008/07/alarming-trend-states-extend-statutes.html; http://www.cotwa.info/2011/12/feminist-legal-scholar-explains-need.html.

It is painful to see that so many in the progressive camp have become so terribly hostile to due process and basic notions of fairness. They've hitched their wagons to group identity politics and don't think that defendants accused of crimes involving a penis are entitled to any protections. I can't think of any other issue where self-professing liberals are happy to see due process rolled back for a particular group. For what other crime have liberals applauded eliminating statutes of limitations? A friend of mine recently said that he didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left him. Thank goodness for the ACLU and the defense bar, but the rest of the party seems to have forgotten how they once revered fundamental notions of justice.

Geraldo Rivera says sexual assault and harassment accusers deserve the 'presumption of credibility'

Geraldo Rivera--best known for a disastrous publicity stunt that involved opening gangster Al Capone's vault that was supposed to contain untold riches but that only contained a few empty bottles--has declared he was wrong for supporting ex-Fox News head Roger Ailes, recently accused of sexual harassment by ex-Fox News female personalities.

Rivera now says: "Like victims of sexual assault, those alleging harassment deserve the presumption of credibility.”

Rivera is suggesting that men accused of sexual assault or harassment and who deny the allegations lodged against them should be presumed to have lied.  After all, both parties can't have the presumption of credibility, can they?

The idiocy speaks for itself.

Feminists get what they want on campus: When it comes to rape, always believe the woman

His accuser said she'd made it all up, but he was dismissed anyway

'Do we really think our universities are full of sexual attackers?'

Great article--original found here: http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/sibley-do-we-really-think-our-universities-are-full-of-sexual-attackers

Students attending Carleton University this fall, women and men, will likely find themselves subject to propaganda aimed at convincing them the campus is rife with sexual predators.

Over the last few months a cadre of academics, outreach workers, student and union association members, and sexual assault survivors has been insisting that the university administration admit the campus is pervaded by a “rape culture.” They want that label included in policies the university is preparing as it tries to conform to the Ontario Liberal government’s diktats on sexual violence.

The province requires that, by the end of the year, Ontario universities and colleges establish policies to comply with Bill 132, the Sexual Violence and Workplace Harassment Action Plan. The intent, supposedly, is to end sexual violence and harassment in educational institutions.

The concept, which has it roots in 1970s feminist ideology, was deployed by the government in a report on sexual violence entitled “It’s Never OK” that called for an end to “rape culture on campuses.” Rape culture was defined as one in which “dominant ideas, social practices, media images and societal institutions implicitly or explicitly condone sexual assault by normalizing or trivializing male sexual violence and by blaming survivors for their own abuse.”

Nobody can deny the widespread sexual exploitation of women in our society. Think of all the magazine ads, Internet sites and TV shows that display women as objects for male pleasure. Nor is there a lack of examples where the justice system has failed women by effectively tolerating or excusing male sexual violence.


But is it reasonable – and responsible – to claim the “culture” at Carleton University is dominated by ideas, practices, imagery and institutional arrangements that condone sexual assault, trivialize sexual violence or blame the victim?

I have no special purchase on how women on campus perceive their circumstances. Some may well feel themselves under constant threat. But individual feelings, or even individual experience, don’t necessarily reflect collective reality.

Carleton’s safety department received 58 sexual assault reports in the nine years between 2007 and 2015. With three exceptions, they all fit the Criminal Code definition of level one sexual assaults; that is, assaults where the “sexual integrity” of the victim is violated whether through bodily contact or unwanted words or gestures of a sexual nature.

There were only two reports – one in 2010 and one in 2012 – of level two sexual assaults, in which the threat of bodily harm was involved.

The single reported level three sexual assault – aggravated sexual assault – involved a 23-year-old woman who suffered a broken jaw and a dislocated shoulder when she was beaten unconscious and raped in a science lab in 2007.

Of course, many sexual assaults go unreported – as many as two-thirds, by some estimates. In 2015, there were nine “reported” sexual assaults. But if all the unreported incidents had also been counted, that means there may have been as many as 27 sexual assaults on a campus with 30,000 students, more than half of whom are women.

Obviously, even a single sexual assault is one too many. Nor can there be any excuse – alcohol, drugs, cultural attitudes, misinterpreted signals – for sexual violence. But in light of the numbers, reported and estimated, it is an exercise in ideological extremism to suggest Carleton University condones rape culture, tacitly or otherwise.

Nevertheless, the ideologues denounce administrators for being in denial about the “problem with campus rape,” as one pundit recently put it. The charge is intellectually fraudulent and tantamount to moral blackmail. If the administration denies the “rape culture” label, it will be accused of putting the university’s reputation ahead of student safety. If it includes the label in its sexual violence policy, well, what parent would send a child to a school that effectively admits students aren’t safe?

The “rape culture” canard insults not only every man – students, teachers and staff – with its implicit message that they are to be regarded as potential sexual predators, but also every woman who has a father, husband, brother or son on campus.

Robert Sibley, a veteran Ottawa journalist, holds a PhD in political science from Carleton University, where he occasionally lectures on political philosophy.