Memory and witnesses/victims

The New Neo Posted on by

There are a lot of problems with the Kavanaugh accuser’s story, including the fact that she may be deliberately lying for political reasons.

But even if she’s not purposely lying, there are many problems connected with the phenomenon of memory itself, particularly after all these years.

In other words, even if she truly believes it happened just the way she says it did:

It may not have happened at all.
It may not have happened in that particular way.
It may have happened, but the perpetrator was someone else.

Juries set great store by eyewitness testimony of all kinds, and in particular by that of victims. But victims—bona fide victims—can be very wrong, and in sex crimes there have been many imprisoned men convicted by witness/victim testimony who have later been exonerated by DNA testing. It is very troubling indeed.

Research tells us about it [emphasis mine]:

The uncritical acceptance of eyewitness accounts may stem from a popular misconception of how memory works. Many people believe that human memory works like a video recorder: the mind records events and then, on cue, plays back an exact replica of them. On the contrary, psychologists have found that memories are reconstructed rather than played back each time we recall them. The act of remembering, says eminent memory researcher and psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, is “more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.” Even questioning by a lawyer can alter the witness’s testimony because fragments of the memory may unknowingly be combined with information provided by the questioner, leading to inaccurate recall.

Many researchers have created false memories in normal individuals; what is more, many of these subjects are certain that the memories are real. In one well-known study, Loftus and her colleague Jacqueline Pickrell gave subjects written accounts of four events, three of which they had actually experienced. The fourth story was fiction; it centered on the subject being lost in a mall or another public place when he or she was between four and six years old. A relative provided realistic details for the false story, such as a description of the mall at which the subject’s parents shopped. After reading each story, subjects were asked to write down what else they remembered about the incident or to indicate that they did not remember it at all. Remarkably about one third of the subjects reported partially or fully remembering the false event. In two follow-up interviews, 25 percent still claimed that they remembered the untrue story, a figure consistent with the findings of similar studies.

More here [emphasis mine]:

The process of interpretation occurs at the very formation of memory—thus introducing distortion from the beginning. Furthermore, witnesses can distort their own memories without the help of examiners, police officers or lawyers. Rarely do we tell a story or recount events without a purpose. Every act of telling and retelling is tailored to a particular listener; we would not expect someone to listen to every detail of our morning commute, so we edit out extraneous material. The act of telling a story adds another layer of distortion, which in turn affects the underlying memory of the event. This is why a fish story, which grows with each retelling, can eventually lead the teller to believe it.

I will add here that many of us “tell” stories of our memories over and over to ourselves, and that affects the story as well.

Continued [emphasis mine]:

Once witnesses state facts in a particular way or identify a particular person as the perpetrator, they are unwilling or even unable—due to the reconstruction of their memory—to reconsider their initial understanding. When a witness identifies a person in a line-up, he is likely to identify that same person in later line-ups, even when the person identified is not the perpetrator. Although juries and decision-makers place great reliance on eyewitness identification, they are often unaware of the danger of false memories…

Bias creeps into memory without our knowledge, without our awareness. While confidence and accuracy are generally correlated, when misleading information is given, witness confidence is often higher for the incorrect information than for the correct information. This leads many to question the competence of the average person to determine credibility issues. Juries are the fact-finders, and credibility issues are to be determined by juries. The issue then arises whether juries are equipped to make these determinations.

At least in a court of law there are various protections built in to help the defendant. The Kavanaugh accuser’s story—as it stands now, without important details, and of such antiquity—could not stand in a court of law even if a statute of limitations weren’t operating and it could be brought to trial. But even if, between now and some hypothetical trial, the accuser managed to flesh out more of those details (in the law biz it’s called having your memory “refreshed”), she would be harshly criticized by a defense attorney for having suddenly “remembered” the details she couldn’t come up with years ago or even a few months ago. That would be highly suspect.

However, in testimony before Congress, there are no such protections for the accused, and people tend to see what they want to see. The standard of proof and the burden of proof is very different than the legal standards, and are more likely to favor the accuser. That’s one of many reasons why this particular situation is so pernicious.

As for false memories that emerge in therapy:

Some memory errors are so “large” that they almost belong in a class of their own: false memories. Back in the early 1990s a pattern emerged whereby people would go into therapy for depression and other everyday problems, but over the course of the therapy develop memories for violent and horrible victimhood (Loftus & Ketcham, 1994). These patients’ therapists claimed that the patients were recovering genuine memories of real childhood abuse, buried deep in their minds for years or even decades. But some experimental psychologists believed that the memories were instead likely to be false—created in therapy. These researchers then set out to see whether it would indeed be possible for wholly false memories to be created by procedures similar to those used in these patients’ therapy.

In early false memory studies, undergraduate subjects’ family members were recruited to provide events from the students’ lives. The student subjects were told that the researchers had talked to their family members and learned about four different events from their childhoods. The researchers asked if the now undergraduate students remembered each of these four events—introduced via short hints. The subjects were asked to write about each of the four events in a booklet and then were interviewed two separate times. The trick was that one of the events came from the researchers rather than the family (and the family had actually assured the researchers that this event had not happened to the subject). In the first such study, this researcher-introduced event was a story about being lost in a shopping mall and rescued by an older adult. In this study, after just being asked whether they remembered these events occurring on three separate occasions, a quarter of subjects came to believe that they had indeed been lost in the mall (Loftus & Pickrell, 1995). In subsequent studies, similar procedures were used to get subjects to believe that they nearly drowned and had been rescued by a lifeguard, or that they had spilled punch on the bride’s parents at a family wedding, or that they had been attacked by a vicious animal as a child, among other events (Heaps & Nash, 1999; Hyman, Husband, & Billings, 1995; Porter, Yuille, & Lehman, 1999).

More recent false memory studies have used a variety of different manipulations to produce false memories in substantial minorities and even occasional majorities of manipulated subjects…

Some people resist false memories, but a “substantial minority” are vulnerable to them. It’s a very troublesome phenomenon. And a substantial number of that substantial number emerge in the context of therapy. In order to judge the likelihood of a memory of trauma being a false memory, one would have to know many details of the therapeutic sessions to see how much leading was done by the therapist, how the story emerged, and in what initial detail. It is literally impossible to judge the veracity of any story that comes out in a therapeutic session unless there’s a lot of independent corroboration.

The Kavanaugh accuser’s story came out in marital therapy. We know nothing about the dynamics of the revelation and no details whatsoever, except that the therapist’s notes did not include any names of the alleged perpetrators, and differed from the accuser’s current story as to the numbers.

This is telling, and suggests at the very least a mutable, changeable memory.

Is a Congressional hearing any way to discuss these very important and very troubling issues? I can’t imagine that it would be. For one thing, questioning the veracity of the memory opens the questioners up to the charge of “disbelieving and re-traumatizing the victim.” But alleged victims lie—sometimes without even knowing it.

And lie detector tests don’t do a particle of good. They are notoriously unreliable. And furthermore, if a person believes a false memory is true, that person would be likely to pass a lie detector test with flying colors.

I want to ask you…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the following question:

Why should I, or anyone else, care what the 53-year-old Brett Kavanaugh did in high school, short of a criminal act?

And even certain criminal acts would be okay—for example, Obama’s doing coke—if the person has reformed in adulthood.

Let me make it clear that I do not think Kavanaugh is actually guilty of what Christine Blasey Ford has alleged. But if he is, I don’t much care. And I would say that no matter what his political persuasion, left or right. It wasn’t rape. It wasn’t even attempted rape. It’s the sort of thing that happened quite a bit when I was a girl (especially when people were drinking, which teenagers often do), and although it’s not a good thing or an admirable thing, there’s no reason it should matter any more if there is no pattern of such behavior in adulthood.

I think our current puritanism is absurd. Teenage indiscretions are just that. People grow up—at least, most people do. It’s the American public that’s becoming more and more juvenile.

But as I said before, the anti-Kavanaugh forces will not stop here. If Ford’s accusations don’t work, they’ll come up with others. And if old accusations don’t work, they’ll find someone who has worked with Kavanaugh more recently who can tell some sort of story a la Anita Hill.

Speaking of Hill, now may be the time to say that back then—1991—I was a liberal Democrat. I watched some of the hearings concerning her accusations against Clarence Thomas, and whether or not she was telling the truth (I didn’t know), and despite my liberal political persuasion, I wondered exactly why we should care if Clarence Thomas (or any other justice) had told a bad joke about a pubic hair on a Coke.

[NOTE: Just to let you know that I feel this way no matter what political persuasion the supposed perpetrators belongs to, please see what I had to say about Al Franken.]

Now it seems that the Kavanaugh accuser will be testifying

The New Neo Posted on by

This seems to be the strategy:

President Donald Trump’s senior advisor Kellyanne Conway told Fox & Friends that the president supports Ford testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Conway also said that the accusation should not disrupt Kavanaugh’s nomination and the confirmation schedule.

WAJ adds: This appears to be the emerging strategy, let she said/he said play out quickly in public, then declare that it is disputed and the decades of Kavanaugh’s excellent public service weigh in his favor. That said, expect deep digging into the accuser’s past.

Prior to the Roy Moore accusations, as well as the #MeToo movement, accusers usually seem to have thought they had to come up with relatively recent offenses. For example, Anita Hill’s allegations were “only” ten years old, and involved interactions between two adults at work. Although it was basically a “he-said/she-said” story, at least there was a specified time frame in which the two had worked together, and other people in the office who might or might not have witnessed something, as well as the evidence of Hill’s subsequent work history (she followed Thomas to a new job despite his supposedly offensive behavior, which cut into her credibility).

Clarence Thomas was confirmed anyway, and became one of the most reliably conservative justices on the Court. Interestingly enough, in contrast to the way things are today, 11 Democrats voted “yes” on Thomas, even after the Hill hearings. The final vote was 52 to 48, so without those Democrats he never could have been confirmed. You may remember the Hill testimony as “a high-tech lynching,” but at least there was still a modicum of bipartisanship back then. Those days are gone.

In particular, the enormous success of the Roy Moore allegations in destroying Moore’s candidacy made it clear that it was now possible to mount more vague accusations that were much further back in time and therefore even more impossible to check, and that this could be particularly effective. But at least they were about Moore’s alleged behavior as an adult, although with young women or in one case an underage teen.

Now, with the Kavanaugh accuser, the Democrats have gone even further down the road of ancient and vague. If this works to derail his nomination, it will be possible for anyone who ever knew a person, or even lived in the same area, to successfully mount an unanswerable, unprovable, but destructive accusation.

This is very very dangerous. But the Democrats only see the advantages, which to them are great. SCOTUS has been trending liberal since the FDR administration, and a conservative Court would be a disaster for them, because the courts are one of the primary ways the liberal agenda is advanced.

So, why are Republicans suggesting that hearings should be held? One reason, I suppose, is that the Hill hearings ended up in Thomas’ confirmation. Maybe they think history will repeat itself in that regard. But my best guess is that they are in a bind. Once such accusations are made, they open the GOP up to the charge of “you don’t care about women; you’re a bunch of rapist-protectors” if they deny her the right to speak. And if they give her the sort of attention that comes with a public hearing, they run the huge risk of legitimizing her claims and making it easy to see her as a brave hero.

So perhaps it is best to let the testimony happen, but to do it relatively briefly. It is a risky approach, but it’s all risky at this point.

[NOTE: As for the charges themselves, I see many people saying things like “well, there’s only a single accuser,” or “she didn’t even tell a friend for all those years.” The problem with relying too much on the fact that there’s a single accuser or that she didn’t tell girlfriends is that it is fairly easy to dig up a girlfriend who will suddenly say she told her, or a new accuser. People on the left are motivated to do almost anything to stop Kavanaugh. Lying in order to prevent what they think is a great evil (conservative control of SCOTUS) is considered justified, in many people’s minds, for what they think is the greater good.]

So, the anonymous Kavanaugh accuser reveals herself

The New Neo Posted on by

[Scroll down to see UPDATE below.]

Slowly, with exquisitely perfect timing, the news reveals itself, in order to give strength to the cries to delay the vote on Kavanaugh. The entire idea is to delay it long enough to get the thing to build—perhaps with more suddenly-surfaced accusers who were in the general right place at the general right time and have the right political leanings, with fuzzy stories that skip certain important details so they cannot be fact-checked or disproved.

There is nothing surprising about any of this; it’s the scorched earth policy I wrote about yesterday, and it will not end because it has worked in the past. I don’t know if it will work this time, but it is part of a dangerous and pernicious trend that’s been going on for a long time but is getting worse.

The more the Senate GOP caves to this, the more it will happen.

I may write about this tomorrow, as well; it’s Sunday, and I like to take Sunday off. But the breaking of the accuser’s identity and story moved me to write a brief post just to say a couple of things.

The first is to reiterate that there are reasons—very very good reasons—for the rules of evidence in our legal system, and for statutes of limitations. The longer the time between a supposed offense and the accusation, the more impossible it is for the accuser (or the accused) to remember correctly, and the more other memories and motivations can intervene. And that’s assuming good faith on the part of the accuser, because memory is very mutable even when someone is making a bona fide effort to remember correctly. There’s no reason to assume good faith here, of course, but even with it, a memory this old has no probative value. And a memory that surfaces in a therapist’s office is especially suspect.

The vagueness of the details—the accuser doesn’t know when or where this supposedly happened, except it was in high school at some get-together—makes it even more suspect. It also makes it impossible—literally impossible—for the accused to refute.

And that’s the beauty and the value of it, to the left.

Long-time readers here know I’ve been skeptical of all such accusations. I don’t care who makes them and I don’t care whether they are made towards people I agree with politically or people I disagree with politically.

If this sort of thing can hurt Kavanaugh, or anyone else, then no man is safe. There is always someone who can come out of the woodwork and say that something like this happened. Always. And it cannot be refuted.

And to my fellow women who disagree, or don’t care, think again. Some day it may be your son, your husband, your friend who is accused. And you know what else? Some day it may be women who are accused. Don’t think you’re safe, either.

[ADDENDUM: See also this as well as this.]

UPDATE 10:34 PM:

Jeff Flake is saying the following:

Flake (R-Ariz.) said he needs to hear more about the allegations raised publicly by Christine Blasey Ford on Sunday in a Washington Post article, and said other Republicans share his view. Flake is one of 11 Republicans on the narrowly divided panel and without his support, the committee cannot advance his nomination. However, GOP leaders could try to bring Kavanaugh‘s nomination directly to the Senate floor.

“If they push forward without any attempt with hearing what she’s had to say, I’m not comfortable voting yes,” Flake said. “We need to hear from her. And I don’t think I’m alone in this.”

Asked if the committee vote should be delayed to hear out Ford, Corker replied: “I think that would be best for all involved, including the nominee. If she does want to be heard, she should do so promptly”…

Flake declined to address whether Kavanaugh should withdraw his nomination: “I’m not responding to that question at all.” The retiring Arizona Republican has long been a thorn in the side of President Donald Trump, refusing to support his campaign in 2016 and often critiquing his policies and rhetoric. In return, Trump has repeatedly mocked Flake.

It’s not clear if this is will end up being a tempest in a teapot and the vote will ultimately go forward, or even whether Kavanaugh’s accuser wants to testify and would do so if given the opportunity, or how quickly that could be arranged.

But it’s pretty clear to me that she had hoped to derail Kavanaugh and at the same time remain anonymous. So the first step was taken, Feinstein dropped the news, and it didn’t have the desired effect. It wasn’t taken seriously enough by the Republicans, and it was the Republicans whose cooperation was necessary if the goal of delay and maybe even jettisoning the whole process was going to be reached.

Therefore it was decided that the accuser had to go public. That’s where we’re at now.

If Flake et al decide to stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation, mission accomplished by the left. If not, the ante will have to be upped. New accusers will come forward—or rather, they will be brought forward.

The world’s most positive voice teacher

The New Neo Posted on by

I love this guy. Love, love, love.

I once took about eight voice lessons before I quit in despair, and maybe if he’d been my voice teacher I would have improved rather than gotten worse over the course of my study.

Talk about accentuating the positive! This guy doesn’t seem phony about it at all, either. And his message isn’t just empty “everyone should get a medal” feel-good praise. It’s that just about anyone can learn to sing with the right instruction, and that insults don’t help.

Here’s my favorite segment of the video:

My ex-husband was a terrible singer for much of his life, and had been told as much as a small boy. He was often off-key, for example, and he knew it. He only would sing when totally fooling around, and not in his real voice. But a few years ago I caught him singing for real, just a few notes, and I noticed something I’d never noticed before: his singing voice had quite a beautiful tone and timbre. Really really pleasant, strong and resonant.

I was stunned. It occurred to me that the only thing he needed was a little training to help him stay on key—and apparently, practicing singing would have helped with that, because one of the reasons he ordinarily didn’t sing was that he could hear that he wasn’t on key and he would stop before he got far at all. It turns out that that meant he wasn’t the least bit tone-deaf, and all he needed was to keep singing with a helpful teacher.

In fact, as I reflected on it, my ex had always been a fabulous whistler, and completely on key when he whistled. So it made sense that he’d be able to learn to sing on key once he practiced enough with his real voice. But despite my encouragement, he backed off from trying to learn.

Anyway, I’d love to meet some teacher like the guy in the video and give it a go myself.

Will John Kerry ever find himself in trouble for his foreign meddling?

The New Neo Posted on by

I doubt it, actually.

Here’s Michael Rubin at the Washington Examiner on the subject:

Kerry is personally invested in the Iran nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), from which President Trump walked away. The wisdom of Trump’s action is open to debate, but what is not is this: Trump won the 2016 election. He made clear during his campaign that he opposed the JCPOA, just like Obama made clear during his campaign that he supported outreach to Iran. There was no deception on either man’s part. And Trump’s decision to walk away from the JCPOA is not illegal. Julie Frifield, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs under Kerry, acknowledged the JCPOA was unsigned and “neither a treaty nor an executive agreement.” In other words, it had the same status as the Bush-era agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland for anti-missile defenses which Obama voided when he came to office.

There has been a temptation among polemicists on both the Right and Left to criminalize the policy debate, and this is unfortunate. But that does not mean anyone should get a free pass for what appears to be criminal activity. If Kerry wants to criticize Trump for walking away from the JCPOA, he is free to do so. And if he wants to plot and plan with Zarif, he can register as a foreign agent on behalf of Iran. But he should not remain above the law. To allow him to do so sets a horrible precedent for any future administration, for American democracy, and for coherence of U.S. policy. It is time both Kerry and the Justice Department understood that.

Michael Rubin was born in 1971. So perhaps he can be forgiven for not mentioning that this action of Kerry’s doesn’t set any precedent. Kerry set the precedent already, back in 1970 and 1971.

One of the many things that fuels Kerry’s arrogance is the idea that he can do this sort of thing and (at least in his own mind) be regarded as a hero.

I must say that John Kerry is one of the people in the Democratic Party I detested back when I was a Democrat. I have never seen a single reason to change that opinion of Kerry in all the years he’s been in public life.

ADDENDUM: Kerry seems to think the whole thing is good for some yuks, plus a book plug.

The new trend: socialism with a pretty face

The New Neo Posted on by

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez was the first, but not the last: a very young, female, attractive socialist ousting an incumbent Democrat in the primaries. And these nominations are more than nominations, because in the particular deep-blue districts in which these women are running, winning the nomination in the Democratic Party is tantamount to winning the election. Therefore, Ocasio-Cortez is almost certain to be headed for the US Congress.

Ocasio-Cortez’s ignorance of certain basic things economic has been rather thoroughly covered in the news (see this to take just one example). But Julia Salazar—who won a nomination for NY state senate—may represent an even more curious case than Ocasio-Cortez. Simply put, Salazar isn’t just an attractive young socialist, but she appears to have misrepresented much of her personal history, and the voters knew that before they gave her the primary victory. They must have liked her narrative anyway:

Salazar described herself as an “immigrant from Colombia” in interviews…and in campaign speeches and literature…[then] she explained that she was born in Miami at a time when her parents were living part of the time in Colombia, and made clear that she was an American citizen.

Salazar has described herself as Jewish, and said her father was a Colombian Sephardic Jew descended from the medieval community that was expelled from Spain, and that she started to explore Judaism in college. Rosen said these claims could not be verified, and [Salazar’s] brother said their father “never mentioned” any Sephardic heritage to him; Salazar’s mother said that, although the family was Catholic on both sides, Julia’s father’s family had a Sephardic background, saying “that’s where her interest stems from. This is not something that was invented for the purposes of this campaign.” Salazar said Rosen was engaging in “race science” and said he had “threatened to publish her mother’s personal information if she didn’t cooperate.” In college, she studied Jewish texts and observed kosher food rules, and was involved with the Jewish organization Hillel.

Salazar has also described her family and upbringing as “poor” and “working class”. Her brother said their family was “upper-middle class” while Salazar’s mother said the family was “a little bit of both worlds”; Salazar had a trust fund of approximately $685,000 in her name, left by her father.

But that’s not all. There’s also a convoluted story of accusation and counter-accusation involving ballplayer Keith Hernandez. Too complicated to go into here, but this is the NY Times’ take on the subject, and this is the NY Post’s, which makes a pretty convincing case that Salazar was guilty of attempted identity theft, although the evidence wasn’t strong enough for a trial and it remains unclear.

Salazar will be running unopposed by any Republican; that’s how deep blue the district is. Here’s a photo of Salazar compared to a photo of her 68-year-old opponent, who’s been in office as the representative of his Brooklyn district for about 15 years:

Would either Ocasio-Cortez or Salazar have won their respective primary races had they not been beautiful young women? I have no way of knowing, but I think it sure didn’t hurt. Then again, Bernie Sanders—not young, not beautiful, not even a woman—did pretty darn well. So perhaps it’s just that socialist magic.

Why everyone should be angry at what Feinstein did re Kavanaugh, and why everyone is not

The New Neo Posted on by

There are many things wrong with the accusation against Brett Kavanaugh that Diane Feinstein publicized recently. The vagueness of the charges, their antiquity, and the suspect timing, to name a few.

But the one I want to focus on now is the anonymity of the accuser,

There is a reason why one of the pillars of our legal system is that the accused—in a court of law—is given the right to face his or her accuser. This is true not just in sexual crimes but in others as well, and it’s even true when a child is the purported victim, although sometimes there are special ways in which children are protected from having to face their alleged perpetrators.

Anyone who bears legal witness against someone is identified and subject to cross-examination and the other tools in the lawyers’ kit. The purpose is not to be mean to victims, although the process can indeed be very stressful. The purpose is to protect the rights of the accused, which is considered (or used to be considered) one of the most important principles of American law.

I’m old enough to remember when even rape victims in cases that went to trial had their names published in the newspapers, which is a different but related issue. Then, in the 1970s, the movement to pass rape shield laws came to fruition with the passage of a host of such laws by the 1980s. These laws protected alleged rape victims in trials from having their own sexual history dragged out and used against them except in limited circumstances.

However, when these laws tried to make it a violation for newspapers to publish the names of victims, they ran afoul of the courts who mostly considered such laws unconstitutional. However, to this day, newspapers are reluctant to publish such information, as a courtesy, although they sometimes do. Of course, the scandal sheets and internet sites are not so reluctant, if they can manage to find out the information.

But all of that is about legal proceedings and rapes or sexual assaults that meet the criteria for court proceedings. The accusations against Kavanaugh very clearly do not. So why is Feinstein protecting the accuser’s identity?

Because PC practice now dictates it, as a mark of great sensitivity. That’s pernicious, because it elevates anonymous gossip to the status of news. Not only is the accused unable to confront the accuser, but the public is unable to evaluate a single thing connected with the incident. That leaves the space wide open for people to project whatever they wish onto the story, and for politics to rush in to fill the gap.

That’s Feinstein’s intent, of course. And everyone—right or left, man or woman, Democrat or Republican—should be calling her out for it. But of course they are not.

But this isn’t just a case of someone publicizing this story. This is the case of a United States senator of great seniority (in every sense of the word) using anonymous gossip as character assassination for political purposes.

Or trying to use it; we’ll see if it has any effect. So far it doesn’t seem to have derailed anything. But as I wrote yesterday, that’s probably not her intent. Her intent was to delay the hearings if possible (that doesn’t seem to be happening), or at the very least to taint Kavanaugh’s reputation forever and to rally Democrats to even greater fury for the 2018 elections.

But there’s even more behind it. It’s a warning to any future appointee of Trump’s, just as the Manafort and Cohen and Flynn prosecutions are warnings to anyone who might associate with him in business or government: beware!! It’s scorched earth, and we will use every method we can think of to destroy you.

This one speaks for itself

The New Neo Posted on by

Why does it take for a NY teacher to lose her teaching license?

Not this, apparently:

In August, Dori Myers, 30, who was arrested in January 2018, pleaded guilty to a criminal sex act for performing oral sex on the [14-year-old male] student in November 2017 at the New School for Leadership and the Arts in Kingsbridge where she taught social studies…

The school then fired her.

On Wednesday, the court labeled her a Level 1 sex offender, but the plea agreement that was struck jettisoned prosecutors’ request for a minimum of two years in prison.

As part of her plea agreement, Myers also got to keep her teaching certificate. Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration, stated, “Each case is decided on its own merits. Whatever the negotiated plea entailed, all parties agreed to it.”

This was the argument used to ask that she keep her license:

Defense lawyer Andrew Stoll said Myers will be fired by the city Department of Education “and won’t be working for them anymore,” but asked the judge not to make her give up her license, according to a court transcript obtained by The Post.

“There is a possibility that she could teach adults now or in the future and we want to preserve that possibility,” Stoll said. “She still is a talented teacher and has those skills, and I don’t see any reason to destroy her ability to make a living and to contribute to society in a positive way.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that a license is a license is a license. I don’t think that New York issues “adults only” teaching licenses, nor is it alleged that Myers has one.

And there are ways other than teaching for her to earn a living and “contribute to society in a positive way.” As far as I’m concerned, she’s clearly forfeited her right to teach.

Allan Dershowitz continues being fair

The New Neo Posted on by

Fairness is so unusual these days, especially among Democrats (which Dershowitz still is), that it is worthy of special note. I’ve become more and more respectful of Dershowitz in recent years for his devotion to principles over party, as in his latest efforts at correcting falsehoods:

Before this claim [that Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator with Cohen, a claim that has been stated by many Democrats] is repeated so often that people assume it is true, let me state categorically that Trump is not an unindicted co-conspirator and that it is wrong to characterize him as such. An unindicted co-conspirator is someone against whom a grand jury has found probable cause, on the basis of evidence, that he or she is guilty of being a co-conspirator in a crime. But as far as we know there has been no grand jury indictment in this case, because Cohen waived the grand jury and pleaded guilty to “an information” prepared by a prosecutor, not a grand jury…

Unlike President Richard Nixon, who had been named an unindicted co-conspirator in an indictment handed down by a grand jury, Trump has not been accused by a grand jury indictment of anything thus far. Cohen’s guilty plea and allocution cannot turn the president into an unindicted co-conspirator. Only a grand jury can.

The following in particular is one of the reasons I admire Dershowitz—his consistency:

When President Nixon was named “unindicted co-conspirator” in 1974, I yelled foul, even though I voted against Nixon and was critical of most of his policies. I thought it was unfair to designate the president as an unindicted co-conspirator since a person in that status has no right to defend himself, because he is never brought to trial. I urged the ACLU, on whose board I then served, to challenge this misuse of the grand jury and to protect our political enemy’s civil liberties.

So Dershowitz isn’t some recent convert to defending the rights of accused presidents, he’s been doing this for at least 44 years. It’s somewhat of a mystery why Dershowitz is still a Democrat, but I believe it has something to do with what Zell Miller once likened to a birthmark—an identity that for some people is so deep that it would take something truly cataclysmic to change it.

Dershowitz adds:

In the rush to weaponize the law against a president they despise, too many Democrats and liberals are becoming incautious about improperly throwing around the loaded accusation of unindicted coconspirator against Trump. Unless and until Trump is named or identified in a grand jury indictment as an unindicted coconspirator, he should not be so characterized.

Are becoming incautious? That’s where Dershowitz needs to take a good long look at his own party and recognize that they’re not just becoming anything; they’ve been this way for a long time.

And “incautious” is way too mild a word for it. The “unindicted co-conspirator” accusation is a premeditated misstatement with malice aforethought. Some ignorant people may indeed play along with it, but many of those who perpetrate it know full well what they’re doing.

Dershowitz is foolish if he thinks they will listen to him. He’s a pariah at this point for stating the truth and defending people they consider the enemy.

Dianne Feinstein accuses Brett Kavanaugh of having f***ed a pig in high school

The New Neo Posted on by

[See UPDATE below]

Did you know that somebody told somebody who told Dianne Feinstein something about something really bad or at least sort of bad that happened to somebody somewhere at the hands of Brett Kavanaugh sometime a long time ago?:

“I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court,” Feinstein said in her surprise statement. “That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.”…

According to a report by The Intercept, the letter was relayed to lawmakers by an individual affiliated with Stanford University and concerns an incident involving the 53-year-old Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school. According to two officials who spoke anonymously with the New York Times, the incident involved possible sexual misconduct between Kavanaugh and the woman…

Two sources familiar with the matter tell Fox News that Feinstein has had possession of the letter regarding Kavanaugh since July. Feinstein met privately with Kavanaugh on August 20 and also questioned him repeatedly in open and closed session during the Judiciary Committee hearings on his nomination last week. There is no indication that the matter came up in either the private meeting or the closed committee session.

The FBI has declined to investigate.

Feinstein’s move is the old LBJ rumor ploy (a perhaps apocryphal story about LBJ), minus the specificity:

Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.

“Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-fucker,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”

By the way, for those who think Trump is coarse, they should study LBJ. He was protected by the press for the most part, though. We didn’t learn about most of his salty sayings till much much later.

I don’t know whether this one really happened, but if so it’s a doozy:

President Lyndon B. Johnson was rather blunt when confronted by the Greek ambassador, who opposed a plan to split the small island of Cyprus between Greece and Turkey.

“Fuck your parliament and fuck your constitution,” said the 36th president of the United States. “Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If these two fellow continue itching the elephant, they just might get whacked by the elephant’s trunk.”

If Feinstein’s allegation isn’t LBJesque, it’s certainly Kafkaesque.

At least when the late Senator Ted Kennedy was borking Bork, he made some actual accusations (although absurd ones) in a public speech.

UPDATE 12:07 PM:

I just noticed that Ronan Farrow claims to have some of the details of the allegation:

The allegation dates back to the early nineteen-eighties, when Kavanaugh was a high-school student at Georgetown Preparatory School, in Bethesda, Maryland, and the woman attended a nearby high school. In the letter, the woman alleged that, during an encounter at a party, Kavanaugh held her down, and that he attempted to force himself on her.

She claimed in the letter that Kavanaugh and a classmate of his, both of whom had been drinking, turned up music that was playing in the room to conceal the sound of her protests, and that Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand. She was able to free herself. Although the alleged incident took place decades ago and the three individuals involved were minors, the woman said that the memory had been a source of ongoing distress for her, and that she had sought psychological treatment as a result.

No man is safe from this kind of garbage. Of course, entering public life as a Republican puts a person more at risk.

And no one should be surprised at this sort of thing, because in the past such accusations have worked—not necessarily to block nominations (although it certainly worked to defeat Roy Moore, for example, as well as others), but to taint the person nominated (Clarence Thomas, for example) and offer opportunities for future accusations that the party supporting that person is defending woman-abusers.

I have been consistent in saying that, whoever is the accused, these ancient accusations that are completely unprovable, but also completely impossible to defend oneself against (“make the sonofabitch deny it”) are pernicious and should be ignored and/or condemned. But unfortunately they will continue to occur as long as they are rewarded—and human nature being what it is, they will almost certainly continue to be rewarded.

[NOTE: It occurs to me that someone, somewhere, may read the title of this post and get the idea that I’m calling Kavanaugh’s nameless accuser a pig. No, I’m not. The reference is to the LBJ story, and the commonality between the two is a charge involving sex that cannot be proved or disproved, but is unsavory.]