Believing the Alleged Sexual Assault Victim Unconditionally

This notion that a woman's accusation of rape must be believed because of the trauma and difficulty of coming forward and that therefore they couldn't be wrong is deeply unjust.
Tell me what government agency the Duke Lacrosse Team can go to have their names and lives restored! Their trauma reversed. [1]
A woman who reports a sexual assault should be respected and have the evidence gathered. But that evidence must be objectively evaluated to see if it meets the burden of proof. To say we must believe whatever the woman says even in the face of unsubstantiated allegations is to say justice does not matter.  It's not enough to say I believe her or I believe him.  Your belief must be grounded in and supported by the evidence. Anything less is evil. =======
[1] Mary Katherine Ham, "Fantastic Lies: 10 Appalling Moments from the Duke Lacrosse Case", The Federalist; March 16, 2016; Last accessed 9/28/2018. 

The Not So Fine Stain of Senator Feinstein

Reluctant admission is a concept of logic where in the process of denying one fact in an area, one reluctantly admits to important facts that eventually undermine his support of that area.

For example, take a suspect who denies committing a murder yet his DNA is found at the crime scene. To explain the DNA, the suspect claims that the victim asked him to help move some furniture that day but still insists he didn't commit the murder.  As J. Warner Wallace writes in Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates The Claims of the Gospels,

"The suspect now admitted to the fact that he had been in the room where the murder occurred and on the vary day when the victim was killed.  While he still denied the fact that he committed the crime, he reluctantly admitted important facts that would eventually be assembled with other pieces of circumstantial evidence to form the case against him."[1]

Since the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh first broke, the Left has demanded an FBI investigation.  But the Left isn't interested in an investigation.  They don't care about Dr. Ford.  They want Kavanaugh's confirmation delayed or scuttled. And Diane Feinstein reluctantly admitted it.

1. Senator Diane Feinstein received an allegation of sexual assault. 
2. She didn't turn over the information to the FBI which could have investigated it and kept Ford's identity confidential; confidentiality which Feinstein says she was trying to honor.
3. Nor did Feinstein turn the information of an alleged crime over to the authorities who had actual jurisdiction to investigate.
4. She kept it hidden from the Senate Judiciary Committee for at least 6 weeks.
5. She kept it hidden during the entire confirmation process; a process designed to vet that very kind of information.
6. In her public comments during the hearing, she said nothing of the allegation.
7. During her private interviews with Kavanaugh, she said nothing of the allegation.
8. During the September 27th hearing, Feinstein claimed that her staff didn't leak the allegation and Ford's name; that it must have been Ford and her friends:

"Let me be clear: I did not hide Dr. Ford's allegations. I did not leak her story. She asked me to hold it confidential and I kept it confidential as she asked."

That last point is Feinstein's reluctant admission.  If Feinstein truly didn't leak the allegation then she intended to keep it confidential. In other words, according to Feinstein herself, she wasn't going to call for an investigation.

Yet, Feinstein prodded Kavanaugh during the hearing that if he was innocent, why isn't he calling for an FBI investigation.

My question to Feinstein is if the allegation against Kavanaugh was so meritorious, why didn't you turn it over to the authorities? Instead you hid it!

That is, of course, if you really didn't leak the allegation.  If you did leak it then that is even more damning that you used Dr. Ford as a tool for your political agenda.

Either way, Feinstein's and the Democrats calls for an FBI investigation had nothing to do with Truth, with Dr. Ford, or in defending an alleged abuse victim.  

The priority was political expediency.

Anyone who does not condemn Feinstein is condoning the use of Dr. Ford as a tool.

Feinstein and the Democrats are engaged in a vile, despicable act.  

They have left a not-so-Fine Stain on America's soul.

======

[1] J. Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates The Claims of the Gospels, (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2013), p. 195.

[2] Grace Panetta, Sen. Diane Feinstein denies withholding Christine Blasey Ford's allegations against Brett Kavanaugh for political reasons, Business Insider, Sept 28, 2018.

Media's Use of Euphemisms Creates Fake News

Last week, I countered two editorials in the Camas Post-Record corresponding to the coordinated journalistic response across the nation to President Trump’s charges of fake news.

As I noted, an illegal alien, wanted for murder in Mexico, was arrested as he drove his wife to the hospital to deliver their baby.  My post addresses the specific examples of this misreporting by the media.[1]  In addition, I highlighted another method in which the media engages in fake news – the use of euphemisms:

“How many times does the media employ euphemisms? An ‘undocumented immigrant’ doesn’t sound as bad as ‘illegal alien’.”[2]

On August 22, the following report appeared on Good Morning America’s website:[3] 

Why is the phrase “Undocumented immigrant” inappropriate?  Because the phrase manipulates language to sanitize and misrepresent reality.  Let’s analyze the two phrases.

The term “alien” simply means foreign, i.e. from another place.[4]  The term tells us nothing except the person is from another country.  The adjective “illegal” describes an act that circumvents an enacted law. [5]   So, an “illegal alien” is someone from another country who is in this country without proper legal authorization.

An “immigrant” is someone or something that comes from elsewhere to take up permanent residence in a new place.[6]  The adjective “undocumented” describes something or someone that doesn’t have the supporting evidence to support their claim.[7]  So, an “undocumented immigrant” is someone from another country that doesn’t have the paperwork to affirm their presence within the United States.

See, the “undocumented immigrant” isn’t a bad person.  He’s no different from all the immigrants that make up this country’s population.  After all we are a nation of Immigrants.  He just doesn’t have some paperwork. That’s all.

But why doesn’t he have his paperwork?  Because he circumvented the very legal process that would provide him with the proper documentation!  Thus, the euphemism “undocumented immigrant” sanitizes the truth.

As I stated in my previous post:

“The media are professional journalists.  They make their living in the use of language. And they know when they manipulate that language.”[8]

If there was no difference between “undocumented immigrant” and “illegal alien”, then the media would have continued using the latter.  The fact that they changed shows the media understands very well that there is a significant difference.

Every media outlet that uses the term “undocumented immigrant” is not reporting, at least on this subject, in a manner that corresponds to the Truth.  They have manipulated language to further an agenda.

---

[1] Larry Rambousek, “US Newspapers Coordinate Response to Trump's Charge of Fake News and Provide Evidence of Fake News”, https://ncontx.blogspot.com/2018/08/us-newspapers-coordinate-response-to.html

[2] Ibid.

[3] Good Morning America, ABC, “Undocumented migrant charged with murder of missing Iowa woman”,https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/news/video/undocumented-immigrant-charged-murder-missing-iowa-woman-57328557.

[4] Merrian-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alien.

[5] Merrian-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/illegal.

[6] Merrian-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immigrant.

[7] Merrian-Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/undocumented.

[8] Rambousek, ibid.

US Newspapers Coordinate Response to Trump's Charge of Fake News and Provide Evidence of Fake News

Recently newspapers around the country joined together criticizing President Trump’s “relentless ‘fake news’ attacks on our constitutionally protected free press”.[1]

The Post-Record joined their “brothers and sisters in journalism”[2] with an editorial [3] by Post-Record managing editor, Kelly Moyer and a guest column [4] by Fred Obee, the Executive Director of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association (WNPA).

These columns actually provide examples of “fake news”.

Obee leads off with six reports from papers around the state including: "a grieving orca … carrying her dead calf", an attempt to “exempt [state] lawmakers from portions of the Public Records Act”, and how to support a Port Townsend firefighter “following his heart surgery.”[5]

Obee then asks “Is this fake news?”  But Obee’s examples are not the type of news stories in which Trump criticizes as fake news.

Similarly, Moyer’s defense references stories with emotional content: a stepmother who learns her son died on 9/11, a USS Indianapolis survivor who watched shipmates be “picked off by sharks”, and Paralympic athletes.

She claims “these stories happened”.  But the real question is did the story happen in the way it was reported?  For example,

On August 18, an illegal alien wanted for murder in Mexico was arrested driving his wife to the hospital to deliver their baby.  Media outlet headlines proclaimed:

·         “ICE arrested a man driving his pregnant wife to give birth. She drove herself to the hospital” (Washington Post)[6]

·         "ICE detains man driving pregnant wife to hospital to deliver baby" (CBS News)[7]

·         "Ice Agents, Part Of Trump Crackdown, Detain Husband Driving Pregnant Wife To Deliver Baby” (Newsweek)[8]

Neither did the actual reports mention the man was wanted for murder.  That absence of these facts mislead on what actually happened?  That false narrative then fuels outrage for those already protesting the Trump administration’s separating children from their families at the border and calls to abolish ICE. 

To their credit, NBC News did report the man was wanted on an outstanding murder warrant in both the headline and in the report: “ICE arrests murder suspect as he takes pregnant wife to the hospital”.[9] Few followed suit.

In addition, how often does the media employ euphemisms? An “undocumented immigrant” doesn’t sound as bad as “illegal alien”.  Opposition to illegal immigration is labeled as hostility to immigration implying disapproval of the legal form also.  This manipulates language creating a reality that doesn’t exist. The media are professional journalists.  They make their living in the use of language. And they know when they manipulate that language.

The same day the editorials appeared, the Post-Record printed a News Brief about a Resolution co-sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray condemning the White House’s attempts to restrict media access and affirming the importance of a free and unfettered press”[10] because the White House banned “CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins from a press event after she questioned President Trump on his relationship with his former attorney Michael Cohen.”

The brief ignores the fact that Collins shouted six questions AFTER the Oval Office event ended.  When asked to leave she refused.  She was barred from only one event, an event at which other CNN reporters were invited.  

Does barring one reporter from one event “violate the spirit of the First Amendment” as claimed in the Resolution?  The reader isn’t given the facts that lead to that question.

Did the media coordinate a defense against the Obama Administration for seizing the private emails of Fox News reporter James Rosen or wiretapping the Associated Press thereby treating the media as an actual “enemy of the people”?  Or is coordination only warranted when a President utters that phrase?

Moyer provides another example: “When they hear scientists saying climate change is destroying us and we must make changes right now if our children are to have a future on this planet, they don’t believe it.”[11]

Except that a vigorous scientific debate does exist on the impact of climate change. Two, the climate is extremely complex with many variables. Any computer model is only as good as its underlying algorithms and the data being processed.  We cannot correctly predict a 10-day forecast let alone accurately forecast 5, 10, 70 years out.  Third, “climate change” is a euphemism that hides the real issue: Is man’s use of fossil fuels causing global warming?

Yet, Moyer uses emotionally-charged language: 

• “climate change is destroying us”, 
• need to “make changes right now” for our children “to have a future on this planet”. 
• “The dangers of not believing factual information is going to bring us all down”.  

Can Moyer be trusted to accurately report opposing factual information that she believes will destroy us? 

Several years ago, the LA Times said they wouldn’t publish claims of climate skeptics.  Clearly the LA Times doesn’t share Obee’s view that “Our free press supports the rights of people expressing every imaginable political viewpoint”?

A “constitutionally protected free press” has no constitutional protection from criticism when they abuse the power of the pen.

Misleading headlines, euphemisms, factual omissions, equivocation are routinely employed by and undermine today's media.

The national media bears the brunt of the fake news blame. But their culpability is also “settling even on small newspapers”.  A free people needs a free and honest press.  To truly serve “as watchdogs to protect the public interest”, the media needs to police themselves and eradicate misleading information. This will also “protect the public interest” and, as Moyer writes, “create a richer, more sustainable community.”

---

[1] Kelly Moyer, “Will you believe the propaganda or fight ‘fake news’ attacks?”, Camas-Washougal Post-Record, August 16, 2018. https://www.camaspostrecord.com/news/2018/aug/16/will-you-believe-the-propaganda-or-fight-fake-news-attacks/

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Fred Obee, “No excuse for fake news rhetoric”, Camas-Washougal Post-Record, August 16, 2018. https://www.camaspostrecord.com/news/2018/aug/16/no-excuse-for-fake-news-rhetoric/

[5] Ibid.

[6] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/08/18/ice-arrested-man-driving-his-pregnant-wife-give-birth-she-drove-herself-hospital/

[7] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-detains-joel-arrona-lara-driving-pregnant-wife-hospital-deliver-baby-san-bernardino-california-2018-08-18/

[8] https://www.newsweek.com/ice-arrest-husband-driving-preganant-wife-hospital-birth-1079380

[9] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/ice-arrests-murder-suspect-he-takes-pregnant-wife-hospital-n901926

[10] “Sen. Murray condemns Trump’s escalating attacks on the media”, News Brief, Camas Post-Record, p. A5

[11] Moyer ibid.