Senator Susan Collins {R, Me.}

Senator Susan Collins’ remarks on the presumption of innocence in the context of Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to become a justice of the Supreme Court deserve some comment.  The presumption of innocence is a rule of law applicable in a criminal trial for the protection of the accused.  In that context, the law says that the prosecution must prove its case against the defendant by clear and convincing evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt.  The jury is such a criminal trial is presumed to be impartial, and the procedures at trial are intended to make the production of evidence full, fair and open.  Turning now to the treatment of the allegations made against Judge Kavanaugh, I put aside, for the moment, the impartiality of the decision makers – the members of the United States Senate.  Looking, instead, at the production of evidence concerning the allegations, the inquiry into the facts of the matter was not, to any degree, full, fair or open.

The members of the United States Senate are not impartial decision makers.  In respect of the confirmation of a presidential nomination to a seat on the Supreme Court, the decision is political.  The senators are not bound by any rule of law, unlike a jury, and are free to vote for any reason or variety of reasons – other than that an individual’s vote must not be cast for a corrupt reason, which is notoriously difficult to prove.


In her remarks, Senator Collins reduce the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh to a he-said she-said dispute between two fine young people, but given the presumption of innocence, she prefers to believe the nominee.  Inasmuch as the facts have not been explored and tested in the crucible of public view in the rigors of a criminal trial, the presumption of innocence normally due to an accused is far from persuasive.  This seems to me a weak means to hide the true motives for Senator Collins’ decision.  For all its pretention, Senator Collins’ remarks do not, in my view sustain the dignity of her office.

I believed Vladimir Putin when he told President Trump that the Russians did not attempt to influence the 2016 election.  I also believed Michael Corleone when he told Kay Adams that he didn’t have Connie’s husband killed.

Comment on Peggy Noonan's Column of 8/17/2017

Peggy is conflating the role of history with the role of government.

The function of history is to preserve, explore, analyze and explain the past with the varnish off and with the aim of determining the truth in the context of the past for the present and the future.

Monuments erected by governments and public and quasi-public institutions do not preserve the past; rather they lionize the past as an example for the present and the future.  What business does government have in lionizing people who rejected the peaceable transition of the Federal government mandated by the Constitution to establish a regime that existed for the primary  purpose of protecting racial-based slavery?

History is not your plaything.

I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the "obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "utopian" artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and, if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned in their own lives, as casualties.

The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson

At the outset of his Presidency, Eisenhower was cautiously optimistic that he could rely on the Joint Chiefs to play a major role in national security affairs, from participating in crisis management to meeting the ' 'long haul" needs of the Cold War by developing a defense posture that would not cripple the economy. But by the end of his administration, he had practically given up using the JCS for those purposes. Increasingly, he turned elsewhere for politico-military advice and assistance that the JCS should have rendered. One side effect was to nudge the administration toward covert operations and the use of surrogates, recruited and organized by the CIA, in lieu of regular military forces and military planners. Though the chiefs had some notable successes (e.g., Lebanon), they were too few and far between to alter the overall picture. Far more typical were the fractious debates that accompanied the Joint Chiefs' deliberations on the guided missile program and related issues like nuclear targeting. The reforms of 1953 and 1958 notwithstanding, there was more dissatisfaction with the Joint Chiefs' performance by the end of the Eisenhower administration than at any time to that point in their history.

Council of War, Steven L. Rearden

"Leave the gun.  Take the cannoli."

Peter Clemenza, played by Richard S. Castellano in The Godfather.

For fifteen years Lanny and his old friend had been watching the experiment in the Soviet Union and arguing about it. Johannes, taking the negative, had delighted himself by collecting ironical stories, to be repeated to the credulous Lanny, and over Lanny's shoulder to Johannes's two misguided sons. One such story had to do with two German business men, one of whom was going to make a trip into the proletarian paradise, and promised his friend to write a full account of what he found there. "But," objected the friend, "you won't dare to write the truth if it's unfavorable." The other replied: "We'll fix it this way. I'll write you everything is fine, and if I write it in black ink it's true, and if in red ink the opposite is true." So he went, and in due course his friend received a letter in black ink, detailing the wonders of the proletarian paradise. "Everybody is happy, everybody is free, the markets are full of food, the shops well stocked with goods—in fact there is only one thing I cannot find, and that is red ink." 

Dragon's Teeth, Upton Sinclair 1942