eye on the news
The Dems “Anita†Brett Kavanaugh
How low will they go?
Myron Magnet
September 16, 2018 Politics and law
It’s uncanny how closely the Democrats are following the Anita Hill playbook as they try to “Anita†Brett Kavanaugh, looking to prevent his confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice. Like Hill, Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford is a professor who made her accusation in the expectation of anonymity, never dreaming that newspapers from coast to coast would blazon her name across Page One. Hill had received assurances from a Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee staffer that, in all likelihood, Clarence Thomas would quietly withdraw his name from consideration, to spare himself and his family embarrassment. After all, Hill’s friend, administrative law judge Susan Hoerchner, had reportedly sprung a similar surprise on a fellow judge, with complete success, and it may well have been she who urged Hill to try the same tactic with Thomas. But there’s nothing leakier than a politician’s office, and Senate Democrats plainly considered Hill as a mere tool to derail Thomas’s confirmation without any concern about what would happen to her.
I didn’t believe Hill’s accusations back then, and now, having a clear picture of Justice Thomas’s sterling character, and having just reread the transcript of the Hill-Thomas hearings, I believe them still less. What, then, would have been her motivation in accusing the judge? her supporters ask. Though Hoerchner and many of Hill’s allies wanted to bar Thomas from the High Court to ward off any threat to the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, Hill’s own motive may have been her strong disagreement with Thomas’s opposition to affirmative action, about which the Supreme Court would have much to say in the years ahead. Also, those who believe her ask, how would such a prim-seeming young lady know some of the very concrete salacious details of what she claimed Thomas had said to her a decade earlier? The answer: the most graphic detail, complete with photograph, is in a federal appellate case whose transcript was in the library of the federal agency where Hill had worked as a Thomas employee. The other lurid detail comes from The Exorcist, a bestselling book and hit movie during the 1970s. But even supposing that Hill was telling the truth—which I do not—the most you could say, as Judiciary Committee member Orrin Hatch commented, is that Thomas talked dirty to her. He never touched her.
more
https://www.city-journal.org/dems-anita-brett-kavanaugh-16173.html
