Brett Kavanaugh has been libeled and slandered. For that the law offers redress. He should sue Ford and the Washington Post. For $20 million. Each.
Republicans have to realize that henceforth for all their nominees to the Supreme Court, there’s a Ford in their future.
The battle over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation was the Second Battle of Tours. At the first battle, just 1,286 years ago (around October 10-11), Christian Europe decisively defeated a massive invasion that would have destroyed Europe’s civilization and changed the course of history.
Now the Democrats are the invaders, come years ago to spoil our culture. That’s what their opposition to Kavanaugh is all about. They are willing — no, eager — to discard the presumption of innocence, a hallmark of Anglo-American jurisprudence and of Western Civilization. “Off with his head,” said these modern-day zealots wielding their high tech media scimitars — and who cares about rules of procedure?
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D–CT), who famously (but not famously enough) lied about serving in Vietnam, was quite explicit in an interview during a break in the Ford-Kavanaugh hearings. He actually said the issue was actually about abortion, and he was right. That’s the major cultural issue of our time.
Kavanaugh’s confrontation with Ford was an extension of the Me Too movement. It is now enough, or almost enough, just to make a charge of inappropriate behavior against a man to get him convicted in the leftwing fever swamps. Men, especially white men, are presumed guilty — at least, by Democrat senators and their allies in the press.
But perhaps this is not yet so in the law courts of this country. Our law provides a remedy for the nightmare Judge Kavanaugh has been through. Sue!
Kavanaugh has been libeled and slandered. For that the law offers redress. He should sue Ford and the Washington Post. For $20 million. Each.
If he thinks it unseemly for a judge to sue, he can donate his cause of action to a trust. The beneficiary of the trust could be his favorite charity — perhaps the Catholic Church, perhaps a group of Western Civ charities. But they would be beneficiaries only; they would not have the right to manage the suit, because they might decide to cave under pressure from the usual scimitar-wielding lefties.
Ford has clearly libeled Kavanaugh. Libel is a published false statement that is damaging to a person’s reputation. Ford gave uncorroborated information to the Washington Post, which published it and damaged Kavanaugh’s reputation.
In a court of law, unlike in a court of Democrat senators, the burden of proving the truth of a derogatory statement is on the defendant. Ford would have to prove that her charges were true. We know now that she can’t.
Of course, Ford may not have $20 million handy, or even the few hundred thousand she’d need to defend herself (libel suits are cheap to bring, expensive to defend). But perhaps her supporters in liberal land can run a crowd-funding operation for her.
The Washington Post would rest its defense on New York Times Company v. Sullivan, a 1964 case which held that for a public figure to be successful in a libel suit he must show actual malice on the part of the defendant, i.e., that the defendant acted in reckless disregard of the truth of the published claim.
New York Times Company v. Sullivan is ripe for being overruled. Yes, the Supreme Court can overturn prior cases. See Plessy vs. Ferguson.
Justice Antonin Scalia said he abhorred the New York Times case: “You can libel public figures at will so long as somebody told you something, some reliable person told you the lie that you then publicized to the whole world — that’s what New York Times v. Sullivan says.”
A court should hold that Ford, dredging up a 36-year-old uncorroborated claim, is guilty of constructive malice — reckless disregard of the truth. She is, at best, a vigilante. But we have to remember that vigilante justice works in the movies only because we know the bad guy did it.
It would be poetic justice if Justice Kavanaugh could be the deciding vote — on his own case! Well, okay, maybe not. Poetic justice is no more just than vigilante justice is. He, and we, will have to wait for President Trump’s next Supreme Court justice. If you wonder why you should have voted for Donald Trump in 2016, now you know.
Could the next Senate confirmation hearing of a Supreme Court nominee be worse than the Kavanaugh-Ford hearing? Who would have thought that a hearing could be worse than Chappaquiddick Teddy Kennedy’s attack on Judge Bork, or the “high tech lynching” of Clarence Thomas?
Here is what ordinary Americans have to understand: It can always get worse, and it will, until we change the culture. Until then, there’s a Ford in all our futures.
