Columnist: Treat Kavanaugh As If Convicted
USA Today's Erik Brady symptomatic of larger disease
UPDATE, 9/30 4:37 AM: After considerable backlash, USA Today editors scissored-out of Erik Brady's rancid essay the character-destroying smear against Judge Kavanaugh. Among critics who'd condemned the column, its author, and the paper's editors were Laura Ingraham. Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit, American Thinker, and this blog. (I also posted the below writing at Medium.com.) I am proud to have been in their company.
And do not be too quick to forgive the USA Today editors. They'd revealed their genuine attitudes toward fairness and journalistic propriety by running and Twitter-advertising Brady's garbage in the first place.
USA Today columnist Erik Brady isn't among the better-known slurrers of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. But he is one of the more contemptible.
"Is Brett Kavanaugh right that he can no longer coach girls basketball?" Brady asked in a Sept. 28 essay. That no one ever, anywhere, in any medium now existing or yet to be invented, accused the judge of pedophilia is of no matter whatsoever to USA Today's odoriferous muck-man.
Getting immediately to his foul point, Brady insisted in paragraph two that Judge Kavanaugh be officially barred from coaching girls basketball until the conclusion of some investigation or other. (And, as recent days have taught, the end of one formal inquiry only brings demands for others.)
The underhanded columnist never explicitly said "pedophilia." To do so would be crude, and perhaps even make his dirty work more legally actionable than it may already be. Instead, he stealthily implied that unnatural nastiness. Surely, no reader missed his between-the-lines message.
Brady cited the US Center for SafeSport. He wrote that though it doesn't cover Catholic Youth Organization teams (which the judge has coached and is still approved to do), "it's policies are nevertheless instructive."
By that, he presumably meant items he saluted in the column: investigative processes not bound to actual legal charges, a lower burden of proof standard, and no statutes of limitation.
Those last acknowledge that memories fade and other evidence may not be available into perpetuity. (And then there is the Sixth Amendment's "speedy trial" guarantee.)
The policies Brady advocated are by design less protective of the accused. Sound familiar? Think of campus kangaroo courts ejecting male students accused of improprieties with no innocence presumed, no defense cross-examining of accusers allowed, and no fairness of any sort provided in the rigged process.
How many times of late have Judge Kavanaugh's opponents curled their lips disdainfully when the presumption of innocence principle is cited?
This is about power. Liberals look to the Supreme Court to advance authoritarian propositions voters reject, like prohibiting free expression; social engineering schemes blueprinted in Washington; governmental regulation of private businesses; erasing national borders; and throwing open voting booths to anyone and everyone who requests a ballot. No questions asked.
They see the option of exploiting courts to force terrible fancies on the entire country slipping from their clutches. And they are more than willing to subvert any claimed ideal and sell out any legitimate citizen interest to keep hold of it.
We just saw that on TV.
Erik Brady's stomach-turning column is of a part with something much larger: A fascistic inclination that despises individualism, democracy, liberty, and ideological diversity.
The new 'guilty until proven innocent' standard he and others endorse meshes with multinational banks denying accounts for reasons of political philosophy; the Big Tech barons of Silicon Valley enforcing speech suppression; masked Antifa terrorists physically stifling speakers, assaulting passersby, and destroying property; and raggedy wretches thronging down night streets chanting 'Not my president' like pathetic robots incapable of living harmoniously in a democratic society, or even of reasoning autonomously.
Free and strong America has withstood past challenges. And it will survive contemporary seditious calls. In the meantime, we can all ask: What the hell were Erik Brady's USA Today editors thinking?
USA Today's Erik Brady symptomatic of larger disease
(From USA Today page)
And do not be too quick to forgive the USA Today editors. They'd revealed their genuine attitudes toward fairness and journalistic propriety by running and Twitter-advertising Brady's garbage in the first place.
USA Today columnist Erik Brady isn't among the better-known slurrers of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. But he is one of the more contemptible.
"Is Brett Kavanaugh right that he can no longer coach girls basketball?" Brady asked in a Sept. 28 essay. That no one ever, anywhere, in any medium now existing or yet to be invented, accused the judge of pedophilia is of no matter whatsoever to USA Today's odoriferous muck-man.
Getting immediately to his foul point, Brady insisted in paragraph two that Judge Kavanaugh be officially barred from coaching girls basketball until the conclusion of some investigation or other. (And, as recent days have taught, the end of one formal inquiry only brings demands for others.)
The underhanded columnist never explicitly said "pedophilia." To do so would be crude, and perhaps even make his dirty work more legally actionable than it may already be. Instead, he stealthily implied that unnatural nastiness. Surely, no reader missed his between-the-lines message.
Brady cited the US Center for SafeSport. He wrote that though it doesn't cover Catholic Youth Organization teams (which the judge has coached and is still approved to do), "it's policies are nevertheless instructive."
By that, he presumably meant items he saluted in the column: investigative processes not bound to actual legal charges, a lower burden of proof standard, and no statutes of limitation.
Those last acknowledge that memories fade and other evidence may not be available into perpetuity. (And then there is the Sixth Amendment's "speedy trial" guarantee.)
The policies Brady advocated are by design less protective of the accused. Sound familiar? Think of campus kangaroo courts ejecting male students accused of improprieties with no innocence presumed, no defense cross-examining of accusers allowed, and no fairness of any sort provided in the rigged process.
How many times of late have Judge Kavanaugh's opponents curled their lips disdainfully when the presumption of innocence principle is cited?
This is about power. Liberals look to the Supreme Court to advance authoritarian propositions voters reject, like prohibiting free expression; social engineering schemes blueprinted in Washington; governmental regulation of private businesses; erasing national borders; and throwing open voting booths to anyone and everyone who requests a ballot. No questions asked.
They see the option of exploiting courts to force terrible fancies on the entire country slipping from their clutches. And they are more than willing to subvert any claimed ideal and sell out any legitimate citizen interest to keep hold of it.
We just saw that on TV.
Erik Brady's stomach-turning column is of a part with something much larger: A fascistic inclination that despises individualism, democracy, liberty, and ideological diversity.
The new 'guilty until proven innocent' standard he and others endorse meshes with multinational banks denying accounts for reasons of political philosophy; the Big Tech barons of Silicon Valley enforcing speech suppression; masked Antifa terrorists physically stifling speakers, assaulting passersby, and destroying property; and raggedy wretches thronging down night streets chanting 'Not my president' like pathetic robots incapable of living harmoniously in a democratic society, or even of reasoning autonomously.
Free and strong America has withstood past challenges. And it will survive contemporary seditious calls. In the meantime, we can all ask: What the hell were Erik Brady's USA Today editors thinking?
posted by DC Larson at
September 29, 2018
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