Victor Davis Hanson // National Review
The likely justification of the Republican majority for agreeing to a rehearing of the Kavanaugh nomination was political, not legal: Senate Republicans apparently worried that in-party potential No-voters on Kavanaugh, such as Senators Corker, Flake, or Collins, might become emboldened by an outright refusal to hear Professor Ford’s narratives or that independent women voters would be alienated by “silencing” the accuser.
Otherwise, a constitutional state with an independent judiciary, cannot long continue if it institutionalizes the idea that an accuser can raise charges of 36 years past, without current knowledge when or where the alleged crime took place, without consistent accounts of how many males were allegedly involved, without any witnesses that might contradict the denials of the accused, and without either physical evidence or any proof of a pattern of subsequent such violent behavior from Kavanaugh.
No district attorney would consider pursuing such charges, because to do so would mean that we no longer live in a lawful society but have so politicized the legal system that anyone at any time can prompt criminal investigations without any evidence other than one’s incomplete or indeed faulty memory of something that happened 36 prior.
