Celebrate God's Blessings on America

Celebrate God's Blessings on America

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COMMENTARY BY

Genevieve Wood@genevievewood

Genevieve Wood advances policy priorities of The Heritage Foundation as senior contributor to The Daily Signal. Send an email to Genevieve.

What’s the difference between a conservative and a progressive?

Here are three examples.

No. 1: Conservatives and progressives have different views about individuals and communities.

Conservatives ask: “What can I do for myself, my family, my community, and my fellow citizens?”

Progressives ask: “What is unfair?” “What am I owed?” “What has offended me today?” “What must my country do for me?”

The traditional American ethic of achievement gives way to the progressive ethic of aggrievement.

As opposed to a variety of individuals making up one American community, progressives seek to place individuals in a variety of competing communities. The first creates unity. The second, identity politics.

No 2.: Conservatives and progressives have different views about diversity and choice.

For progressives, different ethnicities and gender identities are welcomed but a variety of opinions and ideas are not.

Just look at two areas of public life dominated by the left. On college campuses free speech is under attack. If you’re a conservative working at a social media company or using one of their platforms to share your views, you may find your job eliminated or your account deleted.

And when it comes to choice, progressives love the word, but they don’t want it to apply to our decisions on education, health care, and even how and where we live out our religious faith.

Conservatives take a different approach.

Parents, not the zip code they live in, should choose the school that is best for their child.

We all need health care, but we don’t all need the same kind or same amount. And while people should be free to live as they choose, no one should be forced to endorse or celebrate those choices if it violates their religious beliefs.

Conservatives say people should have choices. Progressives say one political solution fits all.

No. 3: Conservatives and progressives have a different view of “We the People.”

Whether it’s the Second Amendment, immigration, or putting limits on abortion, if we the people don’t pass laws progressives approve, they turn to judges, executive orders, and government bureaucrats behind closed doors to overturn the will of voters.

Whatever one may think about the wisdom of hiking the minimum wage, banning plastic straws, or removing controversial historical monuments, conservatives believe voters closest to the issues should be the ones making such decisions for their communities—not lawmakers in Washington or a panel of judges fives states away.

To sum it up, conservatives believe in individual rights, not special rights. Conservatives believe in allowing Texas to be Texas and Vermont to be Vermont. And conservatives believe we the people can vote with our feet about where we want to live and what laws we want to live under.

The Storm Brewing at the Border

Originally published at Fox News  By Newt Gingrich

A perfect storm is brewing in the Southern Hemisphere and making its way north to the United States.

Heroin, fentanyl, and other opioids already pour through America’s southern border and this infiltration is one of three elements that will feed the perfect storm. Every day, 115 Americans die from opioid overdoses and tainted drugs passing through our southern border.

The second element is MS-13, the brutal gang that is a drug courier of choice to the Mexican drug cartels for distribution of these drugs within the United States.

When these two elements are mixed with the third element – the caravan of 7,000 to 10,000 people, mostly men, seeking to break through our southern border – you complete a toxic combination leading to a perfect storm. MS-13 gang members have already been found in the mass migration (although some have claimed they are no longer affiliated with the gang). It is not hard to spot them with their MS-13 tattoos. It is only a small leap in logic that MS-13 will be using the caravan as a cover to increase their drug and human trafficking operations.

This combination magnifies the threat to America’s national security. A border wall is needed more than ever. This must not be the partisan issue that some have made of it. Saving our children’s lives from the scourge of deadly drugs is not a partisan issue. Imagine one airliner crashing every day and killing 115 passengers. This would be a national emergency that would eclipse partisanship. The death of 115 Americans by overdose every day should also eclipse partisanship.

As Marlon Miller of the Department of Homeland Security explained to the House Committee on Homeland Security on June 19, “[a] significant quantity of bulk Mexico-sourced heroin, and Chinese-sourced fentanyl transiting through Mexico, . . . is smuggled across the shared border with Mexico via the land border ports of entry.”

According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, in March 2017, 18 kilograms of fentanyl hidden in a semi-truck load of bell peppers was seized at a checkpoint in Sonora, California. Later that year, another semi-truck traveling to Tijuana from Mexico City was seized carrying 30,000 fentanyl-laced pills and 63 kilos of powder containing the drug. U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized 355 kilograms of fentanyl in fiscal year 2017 at San Diego ports of entry alone. In April of this year, Nebraska state troopers seized 118 pounds of fentanyl, enough to kill more than 26 million people, during a routine traffic stop.

To have lasting effects against the opioid crisis, we must cut off the supply chain — and this means securing our borders. But it’s not the drugs alone we need to stop. The criminals who control this drug trade are some of the worst, most brutal gangsters ever to come into our country. MS-13 and drug cartels are made up of violent criminals who are not striving to achieve the American dream — they are trying to kill it. It is widely reported that members of these gangs rape, behead, and bury their victims. These gangs move into a neighborhood or city and take control. They get their victims hooked on drugs and keep them coming back for more.

MS-13 has roughly 10,000 members in at least 42 states and the District of Columbia, according to the most up-to-date FBI estimates. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has even asked for the gang to be labelled a terrorist group, with polling suggesting that the American public supports this reclassification.

Of course, securing the border, alone, will not solve the opioid crisis. This is why President Trump recently took an important step by signing the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act. This is a bipartisan piece of legislation that passed the Senate 99-1. It takes a multi-faceted approach that is necessary for solving this crisis, one that deals with treatment and recovery, interdiction, and deterrence.

Yet, securing our border remains the biggest step we can take to ensure that illicit opioids never enter our communities in the first place. I am not talking about completely shutting down immigration for all refugees, migrant workers, and other people who try to immigrate legally. In fact, I have championed legislation to welcome such hardworking and law-abiding immigrants. I am talking about keeping out gang members and criminals who want to destroy lives and entire communities. If we are serious about this issue, we need to stop talking about abolishing ICE and start securing the border.

We need to stop the caravan. We need to build the wall.

Why Every Tesla on the Road Today Is Already Obsolete

Why Every Tesla on the Road Today Is Already Obsolete By Alex Koyfman Bombs in the mail... Dow down another 600 points... Michael Moore publicly proclaiming that Donald Trump is outsmarting everyone... With all these stories making headlines in the span of 24 hours, one could be forgiven for thinking the sky is falling.  Unless one is a Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) shareholder, that is, in which case yesterday was just about the best day ever.  In what must have been a shock to fans and detractors alike, the electric carmaker announced earnings of $2.90 per share, flying in the face of analysts' expectations of a $0.19 loss.  After-hours trading immediately responded, sending shares up as much as 11%.  Musk haters were left scratching their heads, while his fans, who have stuck by him through every globally televised joint puff, every stutter-ridden public address, and every loopy promotional stunt, were running to the bathroom to clean themselves up. As a neutral observer of Tesla, I have to say I'm both impressed and hopeful that this success continues because, let's face it, this country could use a world-beating automotive brand.  Which makes it all the more difficult for me to say this: Within the next few years, Tesla will need to redesign its electric motors, which will mean substantial retooling in its fabrication plants and very likely a substantial redesign of all of its models.  And because this redesign will be based on technology Tesla does not own, not only will Tesla have to spend billions modernizing the heart of every vehicle it produces, but it will also have to either pay billions in royalties to the company that does own the technology or buy the company outright.  Wait... What? You read that right. Tesla's electric motors are all hopelessly out of date and effectively obsolete. But this isn't a problem that's localized to Tesla products.  Just about every electric motor in the world today suffers from the same design failure that plagued the very first electric motors, built way back in the first half of the 19th century.  Every single electric motor, from the tiny one that makes your phone vibrate all the way up to the giant, 40,000-horsepower monsters that propel seagoing vessels, has the same defect.  The problem relates to efficiency and is actually fairly easy to explain. Electric motors are built to function at a single, optimal speed, measured in revolutions per minute.  Any deviation from that set speed and the amount of energy going into the motor no longer produces the same amount of mechanical motion.  Think of it as a bicycle with just one gear: It only really works well under a very limited range of external conditions.  The same holds true for electric generators, which are really nothing more than electric motors operating in reverse. Instead of putting charge in to get the shaft to spin, you apply an external force to spin the shaft, and charge is produced.  With today's generators, spinning that shaft at a specific speed is necessary to take maximum advantage of the production capacity. Go too fast or too slow, and you're wasting your effort.  The amount of wasted effort this creates globally is staggering, because our reliance on electric motors and electric generators is even more staggering.  It's the Most Important Mechanism Known to Man. Period.  More than half of the energy mankind produces is consumed by some form of electric motor. That energy, in dollar terms, is worth more than $3 trillion — which surpasses the annual GDP of the UK.  On the flip side, the numbers are even more dramatic, as 99% of the energy we produce comes from electric generators.  Every coal-powered plant, every nuclear plant, every hydroelectric dam, and every wind turbine employs these generators and therefore wastes billions of dollars per year running them at speeds it cannot control, or resorts to big, heavy, energy-sapping gearing mechanisms to achieve the ideal spin rate.  Like I said earlier, this is a problem that's been with the electric motor since literally the first one ever created, back in the 1820s.  It took nearly 200 years for the flaw to get ironed out, but today, for the first time ever, we have a solution.  The company that made this discovery has on its hands an innovation worth tens of billions, but because it's a tech startup, nobody even knows its name... Not yet, anyway.  Well, almost nobody. Thanks to some recently sealed collaboration agreements with some mid-sized North American partners, the first products incorporating this revolutionary patent are already finding their way into the market in the form of retrofitted wind turbines and high-speed train motors. The results have been extremely impressive, which means fairly soon, you're going to start seeing major companies falling in line as well. The Biggest Names in the Business Are Watching Closely I'm talking about the likes of General Electric (NYSE: GE), Honeywell (NYSE: HON), Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC), and yes, Tesla itself.  There is simply no way around it. Just think about it: If your business literally revolved around electric motors and generators and you suddenly got the opportunity to get 6%, 8%, even 10% more bang for your buck, while enhancing service life and substantially decreasing maintenance costs, wouldn't you do it?  In all likelihood, you wouldn't even have a choice, because if you didn't do it, your competitor would, and sooner or later, you'd be out of business.  The company behind all of this is small, but it's already well on the road to flipping the industry upside down.  Today, its market cap is well below $50 million. A few years from now, if things continue down the path they're on today, it could be 200 times as big.  When I learned all of this just a few weeks back, it took about half an hour for all of the implications to sink in.  And then I got to doing more research on what the company does and what it could mean.  If you want to read more about this, click here. Within that link you'll get the rest of the story, including the company's name and ticker symbol (yes, it's publicly traded).

Invasion, USA

Invasion, USA 

An army is marching on us. Right now, somewhere beneath the line that separates the United States from the Third World, a massive force approaches, intent on pouring into America like the Spaniards did in Mexico. They rolled across Mexico's southern frontier — and Mexico's finest — liketoros over juevos. While the arena-sized crowd contains many men, women and children whose dreams of life among the gringos are filled with champagne and caviar — or at least potable water and edible food — many among them are thinking more "Grand Theft Auto" than "America the Beautiful."
The latest estimates place the size of the mobs around 10,000. Even if only 1 percent of them aspire to an American nightmare instead of an American dream, that's 100 new rapists, murderers, MS-13 narcoterrorists or garden-variety thugs who are making a run for our border. While the overwhelming majority might never do worse here than overstaying the time on the parking meter, I would be remiss if I did not note that nearly all of them illegally crossed the border separating Guatemala and Mexico, and say they plan to do the same when they reach the border separating us from them. Whatever they intend, from day labor to drug dealer, they intend to do it here. And somehow, despite the danger unfettered illegal immigration presents to any nation which allows it — I'm looking at you here, pretty much every country in Europe — we're actually embroiled in a debate over what to do.

While Americans who think America is worth protecting have expressed alarm, the Democrats are acting like little kids on the night before Christmas. While conservatives see people, some of whom are intent on doing serious harm to the Union, liberals see potential voters to be purchased with taxpayer-funded entitlements. While I suggest we consider combing the mob for malefactors, the pro-amnesty crowd wants to show them where we keep the valuables. While we call for action to preserve the country, they act on what the country should call illegal aliens.

Moreover, they don't even like the place. Even at the heights of the Obama regime's war on liberty, liberals never stopped shrieking about their grievances. Since Hillary Clinton came up one burrito short of the El Presidente Special, they've yammered about the racism and sexism which define everyone and everything. The same people who insist we should let every Tomas, Ricardo and Jorge crash on our national couch despise everything about America. Imagine how disappointed our newest residents will be when the liberals who rolled out the red carpet have turned the house into a replica of the crappy haciendas they fled. Eventually, we will have imported enough of what makes Latin America such a party that we'll be drinking ourselves under the same table.

The cohort bearing down upon us like Cortez on the Aztecs won't be the last. But rather than build up the battlements, we're yelling at each other about whether to build them at all. Someone should tell the pro-amnesty crowd how well that worked out for the Aztecs. 

Federal Judge ‘Shocked’ Clinton Aide Granted Immunity by Justice Department

Court Criticizes State Department for Providing False Statements on Clinton Emails

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that in his opening remarks at a Friday, October 12 hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth strongly criticized the U.S. Department of State, stating, “The information that I was provided was clearly false regarding the adequacy of the [Clinton email] search and… what we now know turned out to be the Secretary’s email system.”

Turning his attention to the Department of Justice, Judge Lamberth said that he was “dumbfounded” by the agency’s Inspector General report revealing that Cheryl Mills had been given immunity and was allowed to accompany former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to her FBI interview:

I had myself found that Cheryl Mills had committed perjury and lied under oath in a published opinion I had issued in a Judicial Watch case where I found her unworthy of belief, and I was quite shocked to find out she had been given immunity in — by the Justice Department in the Hillary Clinton email case. So I did not know that until I read the IG report and learned that and that she had accompanied the Secretary to her interview.

(In an April 28, 2008, ruling relating to Mills’ conduct as a White House official in responding to concerns about lost White House email records, Judge Lamberth called Mills’ participation in the matter “loathsome.” He further stated Mills was responsible for “the most critical error made in this entire fiasco … Mills’ actions were totally inadequate to address the problem.”)

Lamberth also complained that the Justice Department attorney representing the State Department was using “doublespeak,” and playing “word games.”

The hearing had been ordered by Judge Lamberth regarding a request from Judicial Watch for testimony under oath from Clinton, Mills and several other State Department officials regarding the State Department’s processing of Judicial Watch’s FOIA request and Clinton’s emails. The State Department still opposes all of Judicial Watch’s requests for additional discovery into the Clinton email scandal.

Judge Lamberth said he was relieved that he did not allow the case to be shut down prematurely, as the State Department had requested:

The case started with a motion for summary judgment [seeking to close the case] here and which I denied and allowed limited discovery because it was clear to me that at the time that I ruled initially, that false statements were made to me by career State Department officials and it became more clear through discovery that the information that I was provided was clearly false regarding the adequacy of the search and this – what we now know turned out to be the Secretary’s email system.

I don’t know the details of what kind of IG inquiry there was into why these career officials at the State Department would have filed false affidavits with me. I don’t know the details of why the Justice Department lawyers did not know false affidavits were being filed with me, but I was very relieved that I did not accept them and that I allowed limited discovery into what had happened.

Judge Lamberth also said the State Department was using “doublespeak” and word games:

THE COURT: The State Department told me that it had produced all records when it moved for summary judgment and you filed that motion.  That was not true when that motion was filed.
MR. PRINCE: At that time, we had produced all –
THE COURT: It was not true.
MR. PRINCE: Yes, it was – well, Your Honor, it might be that our search could be found to be inadequate, but that declaration was absolutely true.
THE COURT: It was not true.  It was a lie.
MR. PRINCE: It was not a lie, Your Honor.
THE COURT: What – that’s doublespeak.

***

PRINCE: There’s strong precedent saying that items not in the State’s possession do not need to be searched….
THE COURT:  And that’s because the Secretary was doing this on a private server?  So it wasn’t in the State’s possession?… So you’re playing the same word game she played?

In March 2016, Judge Lamberth granted “limited discovery” to Judicial Watch:

Where there is evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith, as here, limited discovery is appropriate, even though it is exceedingly rare in FOIA cases.

***

[Judicial Watch] is certainly entitled to dispute the State Department’s position that it has no obligation to produce these documents because it did not “possess” or “control” them at the time the FOIA request was made. The State Department’s willingness to now search documents voluntarily turned over to the Department by Secretary Clinton and other officials hardly transforms such a search into an “adequate” or “reasonable one. [Judicial Watch] is not relying on “speculation” or “surmise” as the State Department claims. [Judicial Watch] is relying on constantly shifting admissions by the Government and the former government officials.

The development comes in Judicial Watch’s July 2014 FOIA lawsuit filed after the U.S. Department of State failed to respond to a May 13, 2014 FOIA request (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). Judicial Watch seeks:

• Copies of any updates and/or talking points given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency concerning, regarding, or related to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
• Any and all records or communications concerning, regarding, or relating to talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack given to Ambassador Rice by the White House or any federal agency.

This Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit led directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015.

In May 2016, Judicial Watch filed an initial Proposed Order for Discovery seeking additional information. The State Department opposed Judicial Watch’s proposal, and in December 2016 Judge Lamberth requested both parties to file new proposed orders in light of information discovered in various venues since the previous May.

The full transcript of the hearing is available here.

“President Trump should ask why his State Department is still refusing to answer basic questions about the Clinton email scandal,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Hillary Clinton’s and the State Department’s email cover up abused the FOIA, the courts, and the American people’s right to know.”

Watch additional comments from Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton here.

###

Tom Fitton’s statement on the hearing:

Victims of False Accusations of Rape Need to Be Heard, Too

Victims of False Accusations of Rape Need to Be Heard, Too

 

BY D. C. MCALLISTER PJ Media

(Tom Williams/Pool Image via AP)

False accusations ruin lives and bring indescribable heartache. We hear a lot about rape and sexual assault victims, but rarely do we hear of the injustices and pain endured by those falsely accused of such crimes, the silent sufferers of cruelty and malice.

The confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh have brought into focus a great divide in this country between those who choose to believe any allegation a woman makes and those who value presumption of innocence when a man is accused of rape. Many of us aren’t willing to discard due process simply because feminists demand it — we have experienced firsthand the devastation that follows in the wake of false accusations, particularly regarding rape, sexual assault, and molestation.

After America was subjected to the insanity surrounding the Kavanaugh hearings, I posted on Twitter a call to hear the stories of the falsely accused, voices that are rarely heard or respected. You can scan the many responses I received in the thread to that tweet.

DC McAllister

✔@McAllisterDen

I want to hear from victims of false accusation. Their heartbreaking stories need to be heard.

2:40 PM - Oct 7, 2018

• 2,607
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These aren’t cases in which the accuser was credible but the allegations simply could not be proved, something that happens in our courtrooms across the country, to the frustration of accusers who know they are telling the truth but the perpetrator walks free. Justice is sometimes elusive despite our best efforts. The stories I’m hearing are about lies told to exert control — they’re about evil.

As we have seen, there are cases when a woman is automatically believed simply because she is a woman, despite having zero corroborating evidence. One such account in the news is that of Gregory Counts and VanDyke Perry, who were sentenced to decades in jail on rape and other charges despite the investigators having no physical evidence.

Welcome to the Destructive Age of Male Guilt

This lack of physical evidence sometimes happens in trials like these, but there must be some kind of supporting evidence. They didn’t have any. The prosecution’s case mostly relied on the woman’s testimony, which, as with Christine Blasey Ford’s against Kavanaugh, was full of inconsistencies.

Several years ago, my husband was a juror in a rape trial held in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. When the jury started deliberating, only two jurors found him not guilty — my husband and another man. The other jurors were incensed and pressured them to change their verdict. My husband refused, saying the prosecutor simply had not proved her case and relied on the woman’s incoherent testimony. He was horrified when most of the other jurors said, “That’s true, but the risk is too high — we simply can’t let a potential rapist back on the streets.”

The angry jurors pummeled them for hours to change their minds, and finally the man who had stood with my husband succumbed and agreed to cast a guilty verdict. All eyes turned on my husband. He was the one holdout. The pressure was intense, but he refused to budge. He went through the case with them, pointing out holes in testimony, inconsistencies in the timeline, and the overall lack of evidence. In light of little evidence, my husband had to presume innocence and vote not guilty. He understood that, as frustrating as it might be, it is better to let a guilty man go free than put an innocent man behind bars and ruin his life forever.

We’ve heard such cases shrugged off by the media as they claim that only 2 percent of rape allegations are false, but Brent Turvey, an expert in criminal law, disagrees. In his 2017 book on the topic, he cited research, police reports, and studies to show that the number is much higher. One study even had false “sexual assault” allegations as high as 40 percent. Turvey wrote that in the 1990s, the FBI registered false accusations of “rape or attempted rape” at 8 percent. As cited in the Washington Examiner,

“There is no shortage of politicians, victims’ advocates and news articles claiming that the nationwide false report for rape and sexual assault is almost nonexistent, presenting a figure of around 2 percent,” writes  Mr. Turvey, who directs the Forensic Criminology Institute. “This figure is not only inaccurate, but also it has no basis in reality. Reporting it publicly as a valid frequency rate with any empirical basis is either scientifically negligent or fraudulent.”

By downplaying the number of false accusations, the media allow victims of this heinous act to be ignored and silenced, their reputations ruined with no recourse to find redemption. The result is depression, anger, disrupted relationships, and even suicide.

One man who was falsely accused of rape told me he felt hopeless after being grilled by the police: “I left the station in emotional shambles. In the following days my depression sunk to depths as far as considering taking my own life. This was something I was completely innocent of, yet my life was about to be ruined.”

Women to Crazed Feminists: We Will Fight You to Defend Our Men

Another man said he felt shut down, defenseless before a false accusation of rape: “Aside from the right to make a statement, I was denied all of my legal rights—my employer lied about it, broke laws, and threw me out the door. Feminists claim employers don't take allegations seriously. They're lying. I attempted suicide and spent a week hospitalized.”

Other men, several in the military, have described the anguish of facing false sexual assault and rape charges — police showing up at their workplace, employers treating them as if they were guilty, onlookers believing the accusation and treating them as an outcast despite being found innocent.

A typical place in which false accusations occur, besides the workplace, is the home, especially when separated or divorced parents are fighting for custody rights. While there are many instances of actual abuse that are never proven — to the frustration of mothers or fathers who have to continue to send their children into a threatening situation — family law is rife with false allegations.

One father who contacted me shared a horrifying account that haunts his family to this day. The mother of his son accused him of sexually molesting the 4-year-old boy. She coached the child to say things the father couldn’t bear to repeat even after all this time. The allegations were found to be false, fabricated by a mother bent on manipulation and control.

“I am the ‘survivor’ (if you can call it that) of horrible, malicious, and ‘conveniently timed’ accusations of sexual assault,” he told me. “Those accusations and the storm they wrought were the most painful and traumatic events of my life, and the lives of my family. It changed us forever, and will haunt us in ways I’m sure we will never be able to fully see or understand for the rest of our lives.”

Why a Rape Victim Defends Men and Criticizes the #MeToo Movement

The circus of the last few weeks brought up painful memories for him: “Watching what is happening to Brett Kavanaugh and his family has been traumatic, especially for me, and has brought so many old feelings and pain to the surface. And watching those carry it out, and the millions of people and hundreds of media personalities simply stand by and cheer it on, is so deeply hurtful I cannot adequately find the words to explain.”

Listening to people claim that women just need to be believed is not just silly, it’s dangerous. Ask the Duke Lacrosse team. Listening to people claim that women (or men for that matter) don’t lie about such things is such a lie in and of itself that should be patently obvious.

Listening to people claim that since this is not a court of law, and there is somehow a different standard that needs to be applied when it comes to allegations such as this is so enraging I could barely sit and listen to it without screaming at my TV or cell phone when reading it. No one who has ever been publicly accused of such things will ever believe that [sic]

Listening to people claim that Brett Kavanaugh’s anger was a sure sign of his guilt was galling. No person who has ever been falsely accused of sexual assault, especially so publicly, would be anything BUT enraged and indignant, and in particular, at those they believe are guilty of orchestrating it.

He said he didn’t know if Ford believes what she alleges or not:

How could I? But I saw that look in Brett’s eyes—I saw the way he looked at those Democratic Senators—and I felt every ounce of his rage just the same way I felt mine years ago. I recognized it because I have been there. I lived it. I saw the pain in his wife’s face as he testified. I have seen that too. I saw his mother weeping. I saw that too. He was telling the truth and it’s the very nature of his anger and indignation, the way he expressed it, and the way he directed it to those he knew were responsible that reveals it. It is EXACTLY the way one would respond to such false accusations. My heart aches for him, his family, his friends and colleagues who all know the truth.

All false accusations of criminality are wrong, but especially when they are made public. The painful effects are imprinted on the victim’s life as others have already made judgments about him. Many people speak of the bravery of Ford and how she will leave a legacy that will encourage all women to come forward with their accusations of abuse. Sadly, this isn’t her legacy. Her legacy is carved into the hearts of the Kavanaugh family — it’s a legacy of grief and unwarranted shame.

The greatest gift America can give the Kavanaugh family is to stop saying Ford is credible and to remove all shame by believing his innocence because he was never even remotely found guilty.

Ford’s allegations might be a case of simply not being able to prove something that actually happened, but given the orchestration, conflicting testimonies, contact with senators and the press instead of law enforcement, political game-playing, zero corroborating evidence, and emotional display that reeked of fakery and inauthenticity, it seems more like false accusation than failure to prove. This possibility should be further investigated to find out if she lied.

While we should have empathy for victims, that empathy does not stop with those who suffered rape and sexual assault. It should extend to the falsely accused, because to be forced to prove that you didn’t do such an evil thing is another kind of rape — it’s rape of the soul.

Gillibrand: Kavanaugh Doesn't Deserve 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty' Because 'This Is Not a Court'

We want victims of rape to feel free to come forward, but we also need to hold those who knowingly bring false accusations to account. We can all learn wisdom from ancient religious writings on this subject. One such text is from Deuteronomy:

If a false witness testifies against someone, accusing him of a crime, both parties to the dispute must stand in the presence of the LORD, before the priests and judges who are in office at that time. The judges shall investigate thoroughly and if the witness is proven to be a liar who has falsely accused his brother, you must do to him as he intended to do to his brother.

You must purge the evil from among you. Then the rest of the people will hear and be afraid, and they will never again do anything so evil among you. You must show no pity (Deuteronomy 19:16-21).

Dem. Senator: Kavanaugh Doesn't Deserve 'Presumption of Innocence' Because I Disagree With Him