Tuesday Reads: GOP Anxious About Upcoming SCOTUS Decisions
Posted: June 9, 2015 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, Republican politics, SCOTUS, U.S. Politics | Tags: Affordable Care Act, same-sex marriage, Supreme Court decisions 57 Comments
Good Morning!!
The Supreme Court is in the news today, as its current session approaches its end.
The two most consequential decisions to be announced will have serious implications for the health care system and settle the question of same sex couples should have equal rights to marry and have the same benefits of marriage as heterosexual couples. Some other important decisions have already been announced.
The Obamacare case is the one making news today, after President Obama spoke publicly about the upcoming decision on the Affordable Care Act yesterday at the G7 Conference in Germany.
Politico reports, Obama: Supreme Court shouldn’t have heard Obamacare challenge.
President Barack Obama expressed deep frustration with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, questioning why justices even took up a case that imperils his signature health insurance reform plan.
The high court is set to issue a decision on the case, known as King v. Burwell, by the end of the month. A ruling against the government would mean that 6.4 million people in the 34 states relying on the federal Healthcare.gov website would be at risk of losing subsidies that make their insurance affordable.
“This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn’t even have been taken up,” Obama said at a news conference after the G-7 summit in Krun, Germany. “Since we’re going to get a ruling pretty quick, I think it’s important to assume that the Supreme Court’s going to do what legal scholars would expect them to do.”
Obama repeated the administration’s contention that there’s no contingency plan or fix to keep insurance markets from going into a tailspin, predicting that the justices would decide in his favor. And in any case, he added, Congress could fix the ambiguous phrasing of the health law “with a one-sentence provision.”
But Republicans made it clear that they aren’t going to allow an easy fix. From Bloomberg, GOP Swiftly Rejects Obama’s ‘One-Sentence Fix’ to Obamacare If Supreme Court Voids Subsidies.
“Let’s be clear: if the Supreme Court rules against the Administration, Congress will not pass a so called ‘one-sentence’ fake fix,” Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, who is leading Republican efforts to craft a contingency plan, said in a statement.
At issue is whether a handful of words in the Affordable Care Act mean the government cannot provide insurance tax credits for millions of Americans in 34 states enrolled through HealthCare.gov, rather than a state exchange. Without the subsidies, insurance will become unaffordable to many and premiums are almost certain to skyrocket across the board. Even so, Barrasso and his fellow Republicans say Obama acted illegally by doling out the subsidies. A victory in the case King v. Burwell would probably create chaos, and ironically put Republicans on the hook for resolving it.
In his statement, Barrasso accused Obama of “bullying the Supreme Court” and said the Republican-led Congress is “prepared to help” Americans who may be harmed.
But is it? Republicans have struggled to coalesce around a contingency plan if the ruling goes their way. A victory could backfire on the GOP without a viable response, as Democrats would be armed with attack ads accusing them of pushing for a ruling that threw millions of Americans off their health care plans without a plan to help them.
Even a simple fix is dangerous for Republicans. Conservative lawmakers in the House worry that a such a move to clarify that the subsidies are available in all 50 states would be attacked by their base as a vote for Obamacare.
According to The Hill, Republicans fear they will win ObamaCare court battle.
Republicans in Congress are worried the Supreme Court will hand them a major headache this month if it rules against the federal health insurance exchanges in more than 30 states, ending subsidies for millions of people.
While the Affordable Care Act remains broadly unpopular, two new polls show a majority of Americans don’t want to do away with its subsidies, a core component of the law.
This poses a conundrum for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). They are under pressure from colleagues up for reelection in swing states and districts to extend the subsidies, at least temporarily, if the court strikes them down. But doing so would risk a backlash from the conservative base.
The Supreme Court is expected to hand down its decision in King v. Burwell, which could strip 6.4 million people of health insurance subsidies, in late June.
States that would be hardest hit by a ruling against the law include the Senate battlegrounds of Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.
REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Greg Sargent at Morning Plum: In battleground states, voters don’t want Supreme Court to gut subsidies.
As your humble blogger has tirelessly reiterated, the states with the highest numbers of people who stand to lose subsidies if the Supreme Court guts them also happen to be the main presidential and Senate battleground states. That overlap could increase the political stakes in the battle that will follow any Court ruling against the ACA.
Now a new Washington Post poll confirms the stakes here. It finds that in many key battleground states, a majority says the Court should not end subsidies for those on the federal exchange.
The Post poll finds that among Americans overall, 55 percent oppose a Court decision killing the subsidies, while only 38 percent support it. Independents oppose such a decision by 57-36, while Republicans are alone in supporting a decision against the ACA by 55-34.
Among the states in which the largest numbers of people may lose subsidiesare Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin and Ohio. Those are key presidential battlegrounds, and Republicans are defending Senate seats in five of them.
The upcoming marriage equality decision could also backfire on Republicans:
The LA Times: GOP’s same-sex marriage trap: Conservatives oppose it intensely.
The Supreme Court may be just weeks away from declaring a nationwide right to same-sex marriage with a ruling likely to trigger public opposition — and private sighs of relief — from most Republican presidential hopefuls.
Why relief? The marriage issue increasingly has become a trap for Republicans, and a Supreme Court decision that takes the matter out of the political process would provide the easiest exit. The court is expected to rule this month on whether the Constitution protects marriage rights for gay couples.
A new poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center highlights Republicans’ predicament. By 57% to 39%, Americans favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally. But among Republicans, only about one-third agree.
Moreover, among those who describe themselves as conservative Republicans, 40% say the issue is “very important” to them, and they overwhelmingly oppose marriage rights for gay couples.
Overall, the poll found, opponents of same-sex marriage are more likely than supporters to describe the issue as “very important.” In part, that may be because about two-thirds of white, evangelical Protestants, who make up a large share of the opposition, say there is “a lot” of conflict between homosexuality and their religious beliefs.
For would-be Republican presidential nominees, that sets up a difficult problem. Support for same-sex marriage rights would put a candidate at odds with a huge bloc of voters in GOP primaries on an issue they deem “very important.” But vocal opposition to those rights would put a candidate out of step with a large and growing majority of the public.
Recently announced SCOTUS decisions:
Yesterday the Supreme Court decided that U.S. citizens who were born in Jerusalem cannot list their birthplace as Israel on their U.S. Passports. Richard Wolfe at USA Today:
The Supreme Court declined Monday to insert itself into the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by second-guessing U.S. policy on Jerusalem.
Ruling just a few months after a feud between President Obama and Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu, the justices refused to allow Americans born in Jerusalem to have their passports changed to reflect Israel as their birthplace, as Congress demanded more than a decade ago.
In denying the challenge waged by the Jewish parents of a 12-year-old almost since his birth in 2002, a majority of justices heeded the State Department’s warning that a simple passport alteration could “provoke uproar throughout the Arab and Muslim world.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the 6-3 decision for the court, which needed more than seven months following oral arguments in early November to decide the congressional law was unconstitutional. It was the longest-pending high court decision.
“The power to recognize or decline to recognize a foreign state and its territorial bounds resides in the president alone,” Kennedy said, citing examples from the French Revolution in 1793 to President Jimmy Carter’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1979.
Lyle Denniston has a detailed analysis of this decision at SCOTUSblog.
In another interesting decision, the Court let stand a San Francisco gun control law. NPR reports, Supreme Court Rejects NRA Challenge To San Francisco Gun Rules.
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to block two San Francisco gun control measures that were fiercely opposed by the National Rifle Association. At least one veteran court observer says the high court’s decision raises questions about how the justices interpret the Second Amendment.
First, the basics: A 2007 San Francisco ordinance requires residents to keep handguns under lock and key or to use trigger locks when they are not carrying their weapons. Another law, dating to 1994, bans the sale of ammunition that expands on impact, or hollow-point bullets.
Plaintiff Espanola Jackson and seven other petitioners, including the NRA, filed suit in 2012. They sought an injunction to keep the lockbox law from being enforced. But in March 2014, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the City and County of San Francisco and left both measures intact.
Read more at the link.
Finally a new CNN poll shows that Americans don’t trust the current Supreme Court on “key issues.”
With major Supreme Court decisions on health care and same-sex marriage expected this month, many lack trust in the Supreme Court’s handling of those two issues, according to a new CNN/ORC poll.
Yet most approve of the way the court is handling its job generally.
A majority, 52%, say they approve of the way the court is handling its job, while 41% disapprove. That’s an improvement from an even 48% to 48% split two years ago. Still, when Americans are asked how much they trust the court on a range of issues it will be considering this term or the next, the worst ratings come on health care and same-sex marriage. Only about half say they have at least a moderate amount of trust in the court on health care (50%) or same-sex marriage (49%). There is more faith in the Supreme Court on other key issues on the docket, with most saying they trust the court at least a moderate amount on freedom of speech (69%), voting rights (65%) and the death penalty (60%).
Read the rest at CNN.
What else is happening? As always, this is an open thread, so please post your thoughts and links on any topic in the comments.
Lazy Saturday Reads: D-Day Edition
Posted: June 6, 2015 Filed under: Civil Rights, Crime, Criminal Justice System, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Adolf Hitler, D-Day 71st anniversary, Dennis Hastert, Josh Duggar, Jr., Lonnie Franklin, sexual molestation, Tales of the Grim Sleeper, The Longest Day, World War II 38 Comments
Allied ships, boats and barrage balloons off Omaha Beach after the successful D-Day invasion, near Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France on June 9, 1944. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)
Good Morning!!
Today is the 71st anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. I found some stunning original color photos at The Denver Post, and I thought I’d share a few of them here. Go to the link to see the entire collection. I’ve also gathered some interesting articles on the “longest day” along with remembrances from survivors.
From The Charlotte Observer: D-Day: Only the beginning – with the end nowhere in sight, by David Perlmutt.
With Saturday comes another anniversary of D-Day as the light continues to dim on the generation that fought it.
Seventy-one years have passed since Carolinians such as Andy Andrews of Black Mountain and Walter Dickens of Monroe got their first taste of combat when they rushed ashore at Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, the pivotal day historians tag as the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
It was more of a beginning than an end. Long after D-Day’s first anniversary, the bullets would continue to fly in the Pacific theater and other parts of the world.
A year ago, I wrote a series of stories to honor the 70th anniversary of D-Day through the eyes – and distant memories – of Andrews, Dickens and others like paratroopers Harold Eatmon of Mint Hill and E.B. Wallace of Waxhaw. The fighting took another 11 months and horrific losses during battles in countries such as France, Holland, Belgium and ultimately Germany before the Germans surrendered.
Planes from the 344th Bomb Group, which led the IX Bomber Command formations on D-Day on June 6, 2014. Operations started in March 1944 with attacks on targets in German-occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. After the beginning of the Normandy invasion, the Group was active at Cotentin Peninsula, Caen, Saint-Lo and the Falaise Gap. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)
Fighting continued in the Pacific, where my Dad was stationed, for a long time after June 6, 1944. He was on a ship traveling to Japan when the U.S. dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He said they celebrated–not knowing the horror the bombs would unleash–they were saved. My Dad might not have come home if those bombs hadn’t been dropped.
A year after D-Day, thousands of U.S. Marine and Army troops were still two weeks away from capturing Okinawa, the last in a hopscotch of islands that Allied forces needed for a plan to force Japan’s unconditional surrender. Offshore, U.S. Navy ships absorbed daily attacks by Japanese kamikaze (suicide) planes as their guns pounded hills above the landing beaches. Army Air Forces planes bombed targets inland to soften the Japanese defense.
As they fought to take control of Okinawa, hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers, Marines and sailors prepared to take part in what would have been history’s greatest battle – Operation Olympic, code-named Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese homeland.
They knew the fighting would be fierce.
Much more at the link. It’s a very good piece.
British Navy Landing Crafts (LCA-1377) carry United States Army Rangers to a ship near Weymouth in Southern England on June 1, 1944. British soldiers can be seen in the conning station. For safety measures, U.S. Rangers remained consigned on board English ships for five days prior to the invasion of Normandy, France. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)
CNN: He got to witness ‘The Longest Day,’ by Val Lauder.
Cornelius Ryan was a 24-year-old war correspondent when he had a chance to see a defining moment in the defining event of the 20th century — the Allied landings on the coast of France to retake France and bring down Hitler.
Ryan at first witnessed the invasion from a bomber that flew over the beaches. Then, back in England, he scrambled to find the only thing he could that was going to Normandy. A torpedo boat that, he learned too late, had no radio. “And if there’s one thing that an editor is not interested in,” he said, “it’s having a reporter somewhere he can’t write a story.”
Recalling those five hours off the coast, watching the struggle on the beaches, he remembered “the magnitude of the thing, the vastness. I felt so inadequate to describe it.”
But today, as the 71st anniversary of D-Day approaches on June 6, Ryan is most likely to be remembered for being the one who did describe it, who told so many millions the real story of what happened that day, in his book which became the famous movie, “The Longest Day.”
Lauder was a young woman headed to journalism school at Northwestern when the invasion took place.
In September 1962, I interviewed Cornelius Ryan before the New York premiere of the film. Ryan had become the authority on the events of June 6, 1944, following publication of his book. And as he himself noted, in the 10 years it took him to research and write the book, he became “a veritable depository of D-Day memorabilia.”
He shared some of what he’d learned as we talked in the study of his home in Ridgefield, Connecticut, that Sunday afternoon.
Read her remembrances at the CNN link.
The 1st Infantry Division of the United States Army (The ‘Big Red One’) in Dorset, United Kingdom on June 5, 1944 before departing for Omaha Beach. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)
The Christian Science Monitor: D-Day June 6, 1944: How did Hitler react?
Considering the pivotal nature of June 6, 1944, how did Hitler react to the attack? Did he rant, did he rail? Did he move with focused calm to try and repel the invaders? [….]
In the early days of June Germany’s Fuhrer was at The Berghof, his residence in the Bavarian Alps. Everyone there knew an invasion was likely in the near future, but the atmosphere was not nervous, according to contemporary accounts. To the contrary it was relaxed, and in the evening, almost festive. A group of guests and military aides would gather at the complex’s Tea House and Hitler would hold forth on favorite topics, such as the great men of history, or Europe’s future.
On the evening of June 5, Hitler and his entourage watched the latest newsreels, and then talked about films and theater. They stayed up until 2 a.m., trading reminiscences. It was almost like the “good old times,” remembered key Hitler associate Joseph Goebbels.
When Goebbels left for his own quarters, a thunderstorm broke, writes British historian Ian Kershaw. German military intelligence was already picking up indications of an oncoming Allied force, and perhaps landing troops, in the Normandy region. But Hitler wasn’t told. The Fuhrer retired around 3 a.m.
German headquarters confirmed that some sort of widespread attack was in progress shortly thereafter. At sunrise, around 6 a.m., the defenders knew: Allied ships and planes were massed off the French beaches in astounding strength, and men were beginning to come ashore. It was a sight many would never forget.
But the German reaction was slow and befuddled. Was this the real thing, the main invasion? Or was it a feint, with the real force to land elsewhere, probably Calais?
Read more at the link.
A U.S. Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) filled with invasion troops approaches the French coast from the sea in June of 1944. The GIs wear life vests in preparation for the landing. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)
More D-Day stories:
The Daily Mail, D-Day heroes’ courage remembered.
AP via The Miami Herald, Vets, visitors return to Normandy to mark D-Day anniversary.
Constitution Daily, Ten fascinating facts on the 71st anniversary of D-Day.
The Daily Beast, The Stacks: A D-Day Vet Shows Normandy to His Son.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Veterans of D-Day mark 71st anniversary: 4 will be honored today at Heinz History Center.
The Nation on what was happening in Congress on D-Day–a bunch of nonsense, just like today. June 6, 1944: D-Day Invasion of France.
Heavy, D-Day Invasion: Top 10 Best Quotes & Sayings.
A Recommendation
Before I get to the rest of the news, I want to highly recommend an HBO documentary I watched a few days ago called Tales of the Grim Sleeper. It’s the story of how serial killer Lonnie Franklin, Jr. murdered as many as 100 African-American women in South Central LA over more than 20 years while the LAPD ignored what was happening.
This isn’t the story of a serial killer–it’s about police attitudes toward the poor and people of color; and it fits right in with recent events in places like Ferguson, Cleveland, Staten Island, and Baltimore and with the Black Lives Matter movement.
This story could have happened in a poor neighborhood in any major American city. In fact, there was a similar case in Cleveland where Anthony Sowell murdered poor black women for years without getting caught because the crimes weren’t taken seriously.
If you have HBO or can get access to it, please watch this outstanding film.
Other News, links only
News News
Brian Beutler at The New Republic, Hillary Clinton’s Grand Strategy to Beat the GOP: Take Bold Positions Early and Often.
Politico, 2016 field descends on Iowa for Joni Ernst shindig.
New York Times, Beau Biden Funeral Draws Many Mourners, Including Obama.
LA Times, LAPD finds officers were justified in fatal shooting of mentally ill man, sources say.
Politico, Anti-war activist confronts Sen. Tom Cotton.
Paul Krugman, Lone Star Stumble.
Voice of America, Death Toll Jumps to Nearly 400 in China Ship Sinking.
BBC News, President Vladimir Putin tells West not to fear Russia
Sexual Molestation News
AP, via AOL, Sister: Brother had sexual relationship with Hastert.
NBC News, Dennis Hastert Case: Abuse Group Wants Congressional Portrait Removed.
Huffington Post, Dennis Hastert Hid His Skeletons As He Helped Push GOP’s Anti-Gay Agenda.
Fox News, Jessa: Josh Duggar was ‘in puberty and a little too curious about girls.’
ABC News, Duggars Put Locks on Doors as a Safeguard Following Alleged Molestation.
Is a crime still “alleged” after the perpetrator and his parents acknowledge that he did it? Just asking.
Time, Josh Duggar’s Sister on Molestation: ‘It Wasn’t Like a Horror Story.’
Yibada, Josh Duggar’s Sister Jill Dillard: My Parents Did Such An Amazing Job.
Gawker, The Truth About Josh Duggar’s Sham Cult-Center “Counseling.”
What else is happening? As always, treat this as an open thread.
Friday Reads: As the world–and my stomach–churns (e.g. Dugger Excuse Fest)
Posted: June 5, 2015 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Four out of 19 Victims and Counting, Juvenile sex offenders, The Duggar Cult 36 CommentsGood Morning!
I want to talk about the ridiculous Duggar interview on Fox but really hate to hit you with that first thing since it’s just another example of the perps calling themselves innocent victims of the liberal media. So, there’s some Hillary news this week that’s worth sharing. I’ll do that and then dissect the Duggar debacle downpost.
First, Hillary has come out front and center for voting rights and for enfranchisement.
Saying there is a sweeping effort underway across the country to disenfranchise people of color from voting, Hillary Clinton called for universal, automatic voter registration for every citizen when they turn 18, at a speech at Texas Southern University in Houston, one of the largest historically black colleges in the nation.
“I think this would have a profound impact on our elections and our democracy,” she said.
People would be able to opt out of being automatically registered under the proposal, Clinton said. She also called for the adoption of an early voting standard of at least 20 days before an election across the country, along with increased availability to online voter registration and reduced waiting times on election day.
She spoke to the largely black crowd after receiving the Barbara Jordan Public-Private Leadership Award and recalled coming to the area after Katrina with her husband “and a young senator from Illinois by the name of Barack Obama,” she said to cheers.
But Clinton also sought to connect the life of Barbara Jordan, who was the first woman and first African American woman ever elected to represent Texas in the House of Representatives, and her fight for the Voting Rights Act, to the current climate, where she said the law has had its “heart ripped out.”
And she called out former Texas governor Rick Perry, as well as Scott Walker, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush — all for their actions on voting rights.
Clinton pointed to a law passed in Oregon in March that registers everyone who visits the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to vote as a model for the country to look towards.
Cynical wingers are calling this a way for Clinton to shore up the black vote. Increased voter participation always favors the Democratic party so Republicans are thwarting the voting process all over the place. However, the right of one person to one vote is a pretty sacred idea in the US unless the Surpremes go all plutocracy as they have been known to do recently.
In 2012, Republicans won a majority of seats in the House even though more people voted for Democratic candidates over all. This is because of structural biases, factors that allow a party to outperform its share of the popular vote. The Republicans are expected to again have a big advantage in 2016 because of such factors, which include gerrymandering and the tendency of Democratic voters to be concentrated in cities.
But not all structural biases favor Republicans, and one that doesn’t will be the subject of a Supreme Court case connected to the question of what “one person, one vote” really should mean. If the court overturns current law, it will probably make the composition of Congress even more biased and lengthen the odds for Democrats to retake the House.
Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, Evenwel v. Abbott. It’s about whether voting districts need to have equal populations (as they do today), or whether they need to have equal numbers of eligible voters: adults who are citizens and who haven’t been disenfranchised as a result of imprisonment or felony convictions.
Equal population districts have been taken for granted; every state draws its districts in this way, and it was surprising to see the court even consider the question. But it’s a system that has been an advantage for Democrats for a long time. If the court requires that districts have equal numbers of eligible voters, it will make the elections of representatives to Congress even more biased toward Republicans.
That case may be the reason Clinton is coming out strongly for universal voter registration. We know of at least two Supremes that are basically Right Wing Political Operatives.
The misogyny machine is gearing up and Lady Lindsey Graham is the latest gear in the gasbaggery. Question. How is Hillary Clinton like the infamous North Korean Dictator? No clue? That’s because you’re not delusional and living a life that’s a public lie.
Presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) took a swipe at Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton during a Thursday appearance on Fox News, comparing her to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
“Well, it’s easier to talk to the North Korean guy than it is her,” Graham said on “Fox & Friends,” referencing Clinton’s refusal to take questions from the press in the past several weeks.
“I think it’s the lack of confidence in her ability to distinguish herself from Barack Obama,” he said.
Graham was on message throughout, telling the hosts that he was committed to sending American troops back to Iraq to destroy the Islamic State.
Co-host Steve Doocy had to cut in.
“It’s a tough message,” Doocy said. “A lot of people are just worn out by war.”
“Well, don’t vote for me,” Graham said.
“Don’t vote for me, because I’m telling you what’s coming. Barack Obama’s policies of leading from behind are going to allow another 9/11,” he said.
I’m not sure who exactly Graham believes will be voting for him but I certainly wouldn’t want to meet those folks. I can’t imagine what those ten or twenty people might be like frankly. Probably a few of them are self-loathing closet cases and defense contractors. I can’t imagine any other following.
Okay. NOW, I’ve come to the long part of the post. BB did a great job of covering the start of the Duggar scandal. I’m going to follow up her work here and hope she can add to some of the research I found on juvenile sex offenders.
As usual, Fox News did something to really piss me off. It provided a platform to air Duggar Excuse Fest. Yes, the Duggar dig out continues with the fallout from the Megyn Kelly interview. They are now doing the usual thing of pointing to the press and every one else and claiming they’re the real victims. They’ve even sunk so low they’ve trotted out their abused daughters. It should be clear by now that the Duggar parents are not victims. They are perpetrators. The interview may not have had its intended goal. They seem generally confused that no one sees them as doing the right thing.
The Duggar sexual philosophy is that girls’ bodies never belong to the girls themselves. They’re under the authority of their father or another male figure, and then they belong to their husbands. There is no individual right of female sexual pleasure. There is no value placed on female bodily autonomy or ownership or control. Instead, the message is that girls’ bodies are never their own, that the girls themselves are simply vessels for male pleasure, male desires, and male authority, and the girls’ job is to preserve their bodies to hand over to the appropriate man.
It’s the same mentality — male authority over and right to female bodies — that begets sexual assault in the first place.
Compounding the sexual abuse and then the raising of their girls to believe that sexual touch sullies them was the Duggar parents’ decision to put the whole family on TV and turn their then 16 kids into a cash cow.
“They’ve been victimized more by what has happened in these last couple weeks than they were 12 years ago,” Michelle Duggar told Megyn Kelly about her daughters, “because they honestly they didn’t even understand or know that anything had happened until after the fact when they were told about it. In our hearts before God, we haven’t been keeping secrets. We have been protecting those who honestly should be protected. And now what’s happened is they’ve been victimized.”
Now, Michelle says, the Duggar daughters have been victimized — not when their brother was sneaking into their bedrooms to molest them or when he was molesting them on the couch or when their parents never actually got him professional help. It’s now that the story is public. And surely this is awful and traumatizing for them. Surely they do feel victimized.
But who put them on TV in the first place? Who turned them into public figures? Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar invited cameras into their home to put their family in the public eye, both so they could make money and so they could spread their religious beliefs (evangelism is part of the requirements of their religion, and what better way to spread the word than a television show beamed into households across the country). They believe their way of living — the woman at home and subservient to her husband, girls not pursuing higher education, forgoing contraception, and having as many children as God gives you even if it kills you — is not just right for them, but the only righteous, acceptable, moral way to live. They presented themselves as living examples of a particularly strict, misogynist, and retrograde sexual morality. They made their many children into minor celebrities. They wanted the public to be interested in them, because that interest meant cash and it meant influence.
They did that knowing their own family’s history. They sold a narrative of sexual restriction as noble, of sexuality as shameful, knowing their daughters were sexual abuse victims and that being publicly identified as such would be, to use their word, “devastating.”
They did that. That was a choice. The tabloid media may have also behaved poorly, but if the Duggars were just another big family in Arkansas, no one in the national media would have cared.
Many key points made by the Duggars in the interview were not only delusional, they were out-and-out lies. The Duggar parents are basically unrepentant felons that did everything to avoid the consequences of their actions and their son’s actions.
When discussing the legal situation surrounding Josh’s confession of molestation, Jim Bob told Fox News that he and Michelle were “not mandatory reporters, the law allows parents to do what they think is best for their child.” Not so. While they are not mandatory reporters, the law does not allow them to do what they think is best for their child in this situation, multiple legal experts tell In Touch.
By not reporting the at-least SEVEN instances of abuse on at least THREE occasions during a period of more than a year, they could have faced felony charges for child endangerment, with a six-year prison term.
Law professor Michael Johnson, a former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, tells In Touch: “It is possible that investigators looking into this case could have cited the parents Jim Bob Duggar and Michelle Duggar with Arkansas Code 5-27-221 ‘Permitting Abuse of a Minor.’ Having once learned of the behavior, they recklessly allowed it to continue. This crime is a class D felony because the abuse consisted of sexual contact with a minor. The maximum penalty for permitting this type of abuse under Arkansas Code 5-4-401 is six years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.” The new issue of In Touch magazine has complete details on the Duggars’ cover-up and how it could have landed them in prison.
Also, they’ve consistently stated that the police reports were made public illegally. Not so. Arkansas has its own version of FOIA and every release was in keeping with its law. This was not some little adolescent curiosity at work given the time period and the number of victims.
Jim Bob suggested the records of Josh’s crimes were released because the Springdale police chief, Kathy O’Kelley, may have taken a bribe. The records were obtained through Arkansas’ Freedom of Information Act, which is one of the most liberal open records laws in the country, according to the state’s attorney general.
In Touch has a paper trail that proves city attorneys reviewed the FOI request and approved the records’ release. Further, Jim Bob’s “bribe or personal agenda” explanation for the records’ release loses all credibility in light of the fact that a SECOND police report detailing Josh’s crimes was obtained by In Touch magazine through FOIA.
That second report comes from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, and the Springdale police chief has no involvement in deciding if those records can be released.
It does appear that Huckabee is ready to throw them under the bus. He’s removed all evidence of their endorsements from his website. He got an earful from potential voters after his May 22nd defense. Now, he’s sent them to byte heaven.
Endorsements from Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, of TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting,” have disappeared from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s (R) presidential campaign website.
The Duggar endorsements enjoyed top billing on the campaign site’s “I Like Mike” sidebar on May 22, the day Huckabee issued a full-throated defense of the family following the publication of a 2006 police report that showed the Duggar’s eldest son, Josh, was investigated for molesting five underage girls when he was a teenager. Parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar said that four of the victims were Josh’s sisters, while the fifth was a babysitter, during an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly that aired Wednesday night.Jim Bob, a former Arkansas state representative, and Michelle Duggar endorsed Huckabee both for his 2008 and 2016 presidential campaigns. Their endorsements did not appear in the “I Like Mike” section of the site Thursday morning. Archived versions of the campaign site show that the endorsements were removed sometime Monday night.
USA Today has a tick tock up on the Duggar antics releated to Josh’s sexual assaults on the five young girls. However, this is the thing that’s interested me. The new police report has information that shows exactly how delusional the Duggar family have become in order to protect themselves, their financial interests, and their cult.
Josh Duggar confessed to his father Jim Bob Duggar on THREE separate occasions to multiple acts of sexual molestation against his sisters and a family friend, according to a new police report obtained exclusively by In Touch magazine.
The document also makes clear that Josh was 15 years old when he molested his 5-year-old sister and committed at least SEVEN acts of sexual molestation.The new report is from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and was obtained by In Touch using the Freedom of Information Act. In Touch broke the story about Josh’s dark past and previously obtained and published a Springdale Police Department report about the molestations, also by using FOIA.
With fewer redactions than the first report, the Washington County Sheriff’s document makes it clear that despite Josh’s chilling confessions the Duggars waited at least 16 months before contacting authorities about the molestations, even though the behavior was continuing and growing worse. During that period they did not get professional counseling for Josh or his victims. Legal experts tell In Touch that Jim Bob and Michelle could have faced six years in prison for their inaction, if the statute of limitations had not expired.
“James said that in March of 2002 [redacted, Josh] who had just turned 14, came to him very upset and crying,” the new report reads. “James said that [redacted, Josh] had told him that he had been sneaking into [redacted, his sisters’] room at night and had been touching [redacted, his sisters] on the breasts and vaginal areas while they were sleeping.”
The report details that Josh went from sister to sister, stating, “Apparently all of the girls were sleeping in a common room at this time.”
The sheriff’s document also shows the extent of Josh’s abuse. “[Redacted, Josh] told James that this had occurred 4 to 5 times and had occurred as [redacted] was sleeping on the couch.”
We probably won’t fully understand the nature of their crimes until one of the Duggar girls breaks free from the cult. This admission from the police report is the most chilling to me.
A 15-year-old Josh Duggar confessed to molesting his 5-year-old sister while he held her on his lap and read her stories, according to a newly released police report obtained by In Touch Weekly.
That confession alone would make any aware person realize Josh has issues. Here is an extremely interesting report/study on Juvenile Sex Offenders.
In addition to a diversity of backgrounds, diversity in motivation is evident. Some juvenile sex offenders appear primarily motivated by sexual curiosity. Others have longstanding patterns of violating the rights of others. Some offenses occur in conjunction with serious mental health problems. Some of the offending behavior is compulsive, but it more often appears impulsive or reflects poor judgment (Becker, 1998; Center for Sex Offender Management, 1999; Chaffin, 2005; Hunter et al., 2003).
Similarly, clinical data point to variability in risk for future sex offending as an adult. Multiple short- and long-term clinical followup studies of juvenile sex offenders consistently demonstrate that a large majority (about 85–95 percent) of sex-offending youth have no arrests or reports for future sex crimes. When previously sex-offendingyouth do have future arrests, they are far more likely to be for nonsexual crimes such as property or drug offenses than for sex crimes (Alexander, 1999; Caldwell, 2002; Reitzel and Carbonell, 2007).
These empirical findings contrast with popular thought and widely publicized anecdotal cases that disproportionately portray incidences of sex crime recidivism. Nevertheless, a small number of sex-offending youth are at elevated risk to progress to adult sex offenses. To identify those who are more likely to progress to future offending, researchers have developed actuarial risk assessment tools that have demonstrated some predictive validity; efforts to refine these tools are underway (Parks and Bard, 2006; Righthand et al., 2005; Worling, 2004).
This fact sheet comes from the National Juvenile Justice Network.
Youth Sexual Offending Behavior Is Different from Adult Sex Offending Behavior The scientific literature on this issue distinguishes the behavior of juveniles from adults. • Youth sex offenders engage in fewer abusive behaviors over shorter periods of time and have less aggressive sexual behavior. (National Center on Sexual Behavior of Youth (NCSBY) • Juveniles are not fixed in their sexual offending behavior. Juvenile offenders who act out sexually do not tend to eroticize aggression, nor are they aroused by child sex stimuli. Mental health professionals regard this juvenile behavior as much less dangerous. (NCSBY) • More than nine out of ten times the arrest of a juvenile for a sex offense is a one-time event, even though the juvenile may be apprehended for non-sex offenses typical of other juvenile delinquents. (Zimring, p. 66) • Only 8% of the incidents leading to juvenile arrests for sexual offenses would be eligible as evidence of a pedophilia disorder under American Psychiatric
The information and studies seem to indicate that providing Josh with an evaluation and proper counselling at the time might have been enough to head off any future problems. However, the Duggars have not been forthcoming about what exactly they did for the son other than to send him off to a friend to build things and keep his hands otherwise occupied. They also have not been open with the HHS evaluation done in 2006. The incidences with Josh occurred over a period of time and to five separate little girls. It’s really a shame that this family seems to have a more vested interest in denying and downplaying the incidences rather than investigating the possibility that their son may truly have an issue.
This may come from a lot of their own issues but certainly the views of their religious cult played a role. How any one can accuse a five year old of immodest behavior or excuse the abusive 15 year old as just being curious is beyond me. But, some of these beliefs contribute to the idea that men basically own women’s bodies and lead them into sin. Yes, that good old Adam and Eve story strikes again. When do we get to leave the iron age mythology in the proper receptacle like a library.
The Duggars frame dysfunction, abuse, and psychopathology in terms of sin, repentance, forgiveness, and grace … oh, and DEMONS.
I’ve written before about the way popular Christian teachings about love and relationships actually provide chapter and verse justification for “dysfunctional game playing and crazy-making head trips.”
Like the majority of fundamentalist Christians, JimBob and Michelle harbor a grave mistrust of pretty much every respected, evidence-based approach to behavioral issues: secular psychology is “spiritually dangerous,” modern medicine, therapy, and pharmaceuticals are equated with “witchcraft,” and abusive, criminal behavior is often attributed to “a heart issue,” or even demonic influence or possession.
The sad fact is, the Duggar family called Josh’s sexual abuse of minor girls a “teenage mistake” and they naively believe that because the boy repented, humbled himself before God, and asked forgiveness, God’s “grace, mercy, and redemption” have changed Josh into a new man who can be trusted not to molest minor children.
Anna Duggar, Josh’s wife and mother of his three young children (with another baby on the way), is standing behind her husband, calling him, “a man who knows how to be a gentleman and treat a girl right.” Apparently, her immersion in Christian culture influenced Anna to interpret the revelation of Josh’s “past mistakes” (which she says he confessed to her and her parents two years before he proposed to her) through the “sin, forgiveness, and redemption” narrative rather than giving credence to the prevailing understanding that sex offenders rarely (never?) change.
Christians who trust in repentance and forgiveness of sins when it comes to abusive situations will PRAY for the abuser rather than PROTECT the abuse victim.
Whatever the issues, TLC should insure that this cult is not fetishized ever, ever again.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: GOP Clown Car Update and Other News
Posted: June 4, 2015 Filed under: 2016 elections, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Beau Biden, GOP Clown Car, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Joe Biden, Lincoln Chafee, Lindsey Graham, Martin O'Malley, Ted Cruz 41 Comments
Good Morning!!
I can’t believe I have a cold in June–sore throat, stuffy nose, and a cough. Ugh. Plus the town is working the water pipes on my street, and they are right in front of my house for the second day. This morning they have shut off my running water. I don’t know how long it will be, because I wasn’t even warned they were going to be digging a giant trench that would keep me from getting my car out of the driveway for two days straight. What if I had to get to a job?
There is a huge digger machine in front of the house, men all over my yard and driveway. Occasionally there are loud thumps that shake the house. Late yesterday they filled in the trench temporarily, but I still wouldn’t have dared drive my car out because there was a depression at the end of the driveway that looked like it would be difficult to get past.
I just hope they finish up today. I have known for a long time that they were going to do this, but I expected to be told when they would be shutting off my water and blocking my driveway. Oh well . . . fortunately I don’t need to get out.
I had something really interesting that I wanted to write about today, but I’m going to postpone that until Saturday when I hope I’ll be feeling more like myself. This post will be basically a link dump.
Here’s the latest on the GOP clown car.
We all knew that Ted Cruz was a giant a-hole, but this is really beyond the pale. From David Nir at DailyKos,
Joe Biden has suffered far, far more tragedy than anyone should ever have to endure in a lifetime. In 1972, just weeks after he first won election to the Senate, Biden’s wife and one-year-old daughter were killed in a car accident. Last week, his 46-year-old son Beau, who survived that same accident, died of brain cancer.
As Biden’s son Beau’s body awaited burial, Cruz decided to tell a “cruel joke” about his grieving father.
“You know, Vice President Joe Biden,” he said as a few chuckles emerged from the crowd, setting up the joke for him.
“You know the nice thing. You don’t need a punchline. I promise you it works. At the next party you’re at, just walk up to someone and say, ‘Vice President Joe Biden,’ and just close your mouth. They will crack up laughing.”
Afterward reporter Chad Livengood asked Cruz about the death of Biden’s son. Cruz’s response was telling.
Q: Could you talk about the vice president losing his son this week?
A: Heartbreaking and tragic, and our prayers are very much with Vice President Biden, with Jill. It’s a tragedy no one should have to endure.
Q: Why’d you tell a joke about the vice president tonight?
A: Uh …. [walks away]
Cruz later “apologized,” according to The Detroit News:
“It was a mistake to use an old joke about Joe Biden during his time of grief, and I sincerely apologize,” Cruz said in a statement. “The loss of his son is heartbreaking and tragic, and our prayers are very much with the Vice President and his family.”
Biden’s eldest son, Beau, died Saturday of brain cancer. Beau Biden was a former two-term attorney general of Delaware and is to be buried Saturday in the Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
Cruz used the joke to talk about Biden’s past comments about firing off a double-barrel shotgun to ward off intruders — one of several stump-speech jabs at Democrats.
“That is very, very good advice — if it so happens that you’re being attacked by a flock of geese,” Cruz said….
Cruz was the keynote speaker for the Livingston County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner at Crystal Gardens banquet center in Howell.
I thought Jeb Bush was already running for president, but apparently he’s still playing games in an attempt to get media attention. From the AP, via Huffington Post: Jeb Bush Teases Presidential Announcement On June 15.
The former Florida governor, widely expected to run for the GOP nomination, tweeted “coming soon” with a link to the website jebannouncement.com. On that page, the date 06.15.15 was listed, followed by the tease, “BE THE FIRST TO KNOW. RSVP NOW!” Visitors to the site could enter their name and email address. Bush also tweeted it in Spanish, “Próximamente 6.15.15.”
Boooooorrrrrrringggggg . . .
And then there’s the scandal-ridden former governor of Texas.
USA Today: Rick Perry launches 2016 presidential campaign.
ADDISON, Texas — Former Texas governor Rick Perry will announce Thursday that he’ll make a second bid for the White House.
The campaign’s new website went up early in the day, saying that Perry offers “tested leadership” and “proven results,” particularly in job creation.
Perry, who served as Texas governor for 14 years, plans to stress his experience, saying in a campaign video: “It’s going to be a show-me, don’t-tell-me, election.”
Yawn . . . .
Politico reports that Lady Lindsey “compare[d] Hillary Clinton to Kim Jong Un.”
Lindsey Graham says Hillary Clinton is avoiding media questions on the campaign trail because she lacks confidence in her own foreign policy record.
“Well, it’s easier to talk to the North Korean guy than it is her,” the Republican senator from South Carolina said in a “Fox & Friends” interview Thursday, an apparent reference to dictator Kim Jong-un.
“I think it’s the lack of confidence in her ability to distinguish herself from Barack Obama,” he added.
Clinton will be speaking on voting rights this afternoon at Texas Southern University, whose press guidance for the speech circulated Wednesday stipulated that there will be “NO opportunities to interview Hillary Clinton; her speech will be her interview.”
Hahahahaha! Now why wouldn’t Hillary want to talk to the media? Here are a few clues:
Josh Rogin at Bloomberg View: Why Hillary Can’t Run on Her State Department Record.
Washington Post: Clinton rivals pounce as her ratings fall.
Business Insider: There’s only one thing Wall Street hates about Hillary Clinton, and it has nothing to do with all the scandals. This one is incredible. according to author Linette Lopez, Wall Street insiders think the Clintons are “so shady, but Wall Street is a shady business.” And If supporting Clintons makes someone more money or gives them more power, they will instantly overlook their incessant corruption,”
At least the media wants to talk to her, unlike some of her competitors.
So far no one is reporting that Martin O’Malley is largely responsible for the policing problems in Baltimore. Maybe it’s because O’Malley has no chance in hell to beat Hillary.
And then there’s former Republican Lincoln Chafee, who would probably fit in pretty well in the clown car.
Business Insider: A Democrat just launched his presidential campaign in a ‘half empty’ school auditorium.
Politico: Lincoln Chafee can’t win his local paper.
Moving on to other news . . . .
I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but Boston Police shot a man on Tuesday. He was a suspected terrorist.
From The Boston Herald: Roslindale man killed in showdown with anti-terror task force.
An armed 26-year-old man under constant surveillance by an anti-terrorism task force was shot and killed by an FBI agent and a Boston police officer in Roslindale this morning after he came at them with a military-style knife, authorities say.
The suspect was identified by police as Usaama Rahim of Roslindale.
“He was on foot, under surveillance,” Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said. “The officers have been surveilling him and again they wanted to speak to him … and he turned and our officers gave several commands for him to drop the weapon and unfortunately he came at the officers and they did what they were trained to do and that’s never an easy decision for any officer to make.”
One FBI agent and one BPD officer fired, FBI Special Agent in Charge Vincent B. Lisi said.
Evans said “the level of alarm” had them want to question Rahim today.
Lisi added task-force members — who had Rahim under 24-hour watch — wanted to “interview him and talk to him about his intentions and some other matters.” At the time, Lisi added, Rahim was considered armed and dangerous.
Evans said a video shows Rahim “coming at the officers” as police retreated telling him to “drop the knife!” They then shot him twice, once in the torso and abdomen.
(Boston, MA, 06/02/15) A picture of the military style knife that was used to threaten officers during a police involved shooting this morning at 4600 Washington St. in Roslindale, during a press conference at Boston Police Headquarters on Tuesday, June 02, 2015. Staff Photo by Matt Stone
The Christian Science Monitor: After terror shooting, Boston police choose transparency over tradition.
As US police officers acknowledge feeling under siege by public unrest over deaths at the hands of police, the city of Boston, for the second time in just over a month, tried a new strategy – sharing grainy video of a police shooting with civic and religious leaders.
The new video involved a terrorism suspect, Usaama Rahim, who authorities say threatened retreating officers with a military-style knife on Tuesday before being fatally shot. The footage, community leaders said a day later, contradicted the contention by Mr. Rahim’s brother, an imam named Ibrahim Rahim, that he was shot in the back while talking to his father on the phone.
Darnell Williams, CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, declared after watching the video that Rahim “was not on a cellphone and was not shot in the back.”
Quickly releasing video to community leaders, acknowledges Daniel Conley, district attorney for Suffolk County in Massachusetts, goes against a long-held policing tradition in which investigative details are kept under wraps until a trial. The strategy stands in sharp contrast to how officers acted after last year’s shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. There, days after violent protests had already erupted, police revealed only piecemeal and contradictory information….
Boston’s strategy is an attempt at transparency – to reach out to those who may have questions and concerns about what happened, and whose views can be influential in the community.
We’ll see if that holds up after further investigation, but so far it sounds somewhat positive.
According to The Boston Globe, Rahim planned to behead police officers. He was overheard talking about it on phone taps. I don’t know how he thought he’d accomplish that goal even though he had a very scary looking knife.
Usaama Rahim had been plotting for days, officials said. He bought three long-bladed fighting knives — “good for carving,” he said — and confided to his nephew and another man that he would travel to another state to commit a beheading.
But at 5 a.m. Tuesday, the plan abruptly changed, according to a federal affidavit. Rahim would murder police officers in Massachusetts.
“I’m just going to, ah, go after them, those boys in blue,” Rahim allegedly told his nephew David Wright, in a phone call recorded by an anti-terrorism task force.
Two hours later, when members of that task force approached him in a Roslindale parking lot, Rahim allegedly brandished one of his military knives. They told him to drop his weapon. “You drop yours,” he allegedly replied, before a Boston Police officer and an FBI agent shot him to death.
The details emerged as Wright, Rahim’s nephew and alleged conspirator, appeared in federal court on a charge that he obstructed the investigation by encouraging his uncle to destroy his cellphone to hide evidence.
I don’t know. It still sounds like one of those FBI sting operations . . . .
A few more links:
This sounds like another Freddie Gray incident. From Raw Story: ‘Nobody knows what happened’: Florida inmate mysteriously dies after ride in sheriff’s van.
Vox: I’m a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me.
Rhonda Garelick in an op-ed at the New York Times: The Price of Caitlyn Jenner’s Heroism. It’s not what it sounds like. Heroism should have been in quotes. Please read this one.
Eric Boehlert at Salon on why Hillary won’t talk to the media: GOP’s obscene sex-cop hypocrisy: Dennis Hastert, Hillary and the absurdity of the Clinton impeachment.
Why won’t Hillary Clinton open up to the press? Why can’t Bill and Hillary handle the media? Why has she ”withdrawn into a gilded shell“? Why does she wear media “armor“? Those questions have been rehashed in recent months as journalists focus on themselves and what role they’ll play in the unfolding nomination contest.
A suggestion: Follow the path back to Dennis Hastert’s impeachment era for clues to those Clinton press questions.
AP via the WaPo: Co-owner of Four Seasons charged with sex abuse in New York.
Think Progress: Jim Bob Duggar Repeatedly Minimizes The Sexual Molestation Of His Own Daughters.
Pop Crush: Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar Defend Son: ‘He Was Just Curious About Girls.’
Good Morning America: Duggars Say Son Josh ‘Improperly Touched’ 4 of Their Daughters.
Gawker: Gawker Media Votes To Unionize.
What else is happening? Please post your thoughts and links in the comment thread and have a nice Thursday.
Tuesday Reads: Emily Yoffe and the Problem of Sexual Assault on College Campuses
Posted: June 2, 2015 Filed under: Crime, Criminal Justice System, morning reads, Women's Rights | Tags: binge drinking, Emily Yoffe, rape, sexual assault on college campuses, Slate Magazine 34 Comments
William W. Churchill, Woman Reading on a Settee
Good Morning!!
This morning I read a long article by Emily Yoffe at Slate about The Hunting Ground, a documentary about rape on college campuses, How The Hunting Ground Blurs the Truth. I haven’t seen the film, but Yoffe says that CNN plans to show it in the future so maybe we’ll all get to see it eventually. Anyway, I thought I’d present Yoffe’s arguments and some of the responses to her previous posts on the subject and see what you think.
In the article, Yoffe focuses one of the cases presented in the film, listing a number of facts and inconsistencies that she says were ignored by the filmmakers. She also demonstrates a great deal of sympathy for the man who allegedly committed the sexual assaults.
Arthur M. Hazard, Woman Reading in an Interior
Some excerpts:
The recent documentary The Hunting Ground asserts that young women are in grave danger of sexual assault as soon as they arrive on college campuses. The film has been screened at the White House for staff and legislators. Senate Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, who makes a cameo appearance in the film, cites it as confirmation of the need for the punitive campus sexual assault legislation she has introduced. Gillibrand’s colleague Barbara Boxer, after the film’s premiere said, “Believe me, there will be fallout.” The film has received nearly universal acclaim from critics—the Washington Post called it “lucid,” “infuriating,” and “galvanizing”—and, months after its initial release, its influence continues to grow, as schools across the country host screenings. “If you have a daughter going to any college in America, you need to see The Hunting Ground,” the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough told his viewers in May. This fall, it will get a further boost when CNN, a co-producer, plans to broadcast the film, broadening its audience. The Hunting Ground is helping define the problem of campus sexual assault for policymakers, college administrators, students, and their parents.
The film has two major themes. One, stated by producer Amy Ziering during an appearance on The Daily Show, is that campus sexual assaults are not “just a date gone bad, or a bad hook-up, or, you know, miscommunication.” Instead, the filmmakers argue, campus rape is “a highly calculated, premeditated crime,” one typically committed by serial predators. (They give significant screen time to David Lisak, the retired psychology professor who originated this theory.) The second theme is that even when school administrators are informed of harm done to female students by these repeat offenders, schools typically do nothing in response. Director Kirby Dick has said that “colleges are primarily concerned about their reputation” and that “if a rape happens, they’ll do everything to distance themselves from it.” In the film, a former assistant dean of students at the University of North Carolina, Melinda Manning, says schools “make it difficult for students to report” sexual assault in order to avoid federal reporting requirements and to “artificially keep [their] numbers low.”
One of the four key stories told in the film illustrates both of these points. It is the harrowing account of Kamilah Willingham, who describes what happened during the early morning hours of Jan. 15, 2011, while she was a student at Harvard Law School. She says a male classmate, a man she thought was her friend, drugged the drinks he bought at a bar for her and a female friend, then took the two women back to Willingham’s apartment and sexually assaulted them. When she reported this to Harvard, she says university officials were indifferent and even hostile to her. “He’s dangerous,” she says in the film of her alleged attacker, as she tries to keep her composure. “This is a rapist. This is a guy who’s a sexual predator, who assaulted two girls in one night.” The events continue to haunt her. “It’s still right up here,” she says tearfully, placing a hand on her chest.
William W. Churchill, Leisure
You’ll probably have to read the entire article to get a full understanding of this case, but this should give you a sense of where Yoffe is coming from:
I looked into the case of Kamilah Willingham, whose allegations generated a voluminous record. What the evidence (including Willingham’s own testimony) shows is often dramatically at odds with the account presented in the film.
Willingham’s story is not an illustration of a sexual predator allowed to run loose by self-interested administrators. The record shows that what happened that night was precisely the kind of spontaneous, drunken encounter that administrators who deal with campus sexual assault accusations say is typical. (The filmmakers, who favor David Lisak’s poorly substantiated position that our college campuses are rife with serial rapists, reject the suggestion that such encounters are the source of many sexual assault allegations.) Nor is Willingham’s story an example of official indifference. Harvard did not ignore her complaints; the school thoroughly investigated them. And because of her allegations, the law school education of her alleged assailant has been halted for the past four years.
Yoffe has a history of denying the seriousness of the problem of campus rape (even though in this article she twice *says* it’s a serious issue). Her position seems to be that if college women just stopped getting drunk, rape on campus would be a minor or nonexistent problem.
I found it interesting that she refers to David Lisak’s research on campus rapists as a “theory,” and characterizes his work as “poorly substantiated.” The link to her evidence that Lisak’s work is somehow problematic goes to another article written by Yoffe in which she cites Lisak and another researcher explaining that it’s important to be aware that the (pretty large) sample of UMass students that Lisak used may not be typical of all college populations. This is a standard caveat given in most psychology research papers, because studies on human beings can rarely be representative of the population as a whole. The results need to be considered in the light of other studies and studies of varied populations. That doesn’t invalidate the findings.
Here’s the article in which Yoffe finds fault with Lisak’s research: The College Rape Overcorrection. Again, you probably should read the whole thing, because I can’t represent her arguments in a brief excerpt. Still, here’s a bit of it:
In recent years, young activists, many of them women angry about their treatment after reporting an assault, have created new organizations and networks in an effort to reform the way colleges handle sexual violence. They recognized they had a powerful weapon in that fight: Title IX, the federal law that protects against discrimination in education. Schools are legally required by that law to address sexual harassment and violence on campus, and these activists filed complaints with the federal government about what they describe as lax enforcement by schools. The current administration has taken up the cause—the Chronicle of Higher Education describes it as “a marquee issue for the Obama administration”—and praised these young women for spurring political action. “A new generation of student activists is effectively pressing for change,” read a statement this spring announcing new policies to address campus violence. The Department of Education has drafted new rules to address women’s safety, some of which have been enshrined into law by Congress, with more legislation likely on the way.
Unfortunately, under the worthy mandate of protecting victims of sexual assault, procedures are being put in place at colleges that presume the guilt of the accused. Colleges, encouraged by federal officials, are instituting solutions to sexual violence against women that abrogate the civil rights of men. Schools that hold hearings to adjudicate claims of sexual misconduct allow the accuser and the accused to be accompanied by legal counsel. But as Judith Shulevitz noted in the New Republic in October, many schools ban lawyers from speaking to their clients (only notes can be passed). During these proceedings, the two parties are not supposed to question or cross examine each other, a prohibition recommended by the federal government in order to protect the accuser. And by federal requirement, students can be found guilty under the lowest standard of proof: preponderance of the evidence, meaning just a 51 percent certainty is all that’s needed for a finding that can permanently alter the life of the accused.
More than two dozen Harvard Law School professors recently wrote a statement protesting the university’s new rules for handling sexual assault claims. “Harvard has adopted procedures for deciding cases of alleged sexual misconduct which lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process,” they wrote. The professors note that the new rules call for a Title IX compliance officer who will be in charge of “investigation, prosecution, fact-finding, and appellate review.” Under the new system, there will be no hearing for the accused, and thus no opportunity to question witnesses and mount a defense. Harvard University, the professors wrote, is “jettisoning balance and fairness in the rush to appease certain federal administrative officials.” But to push back against Department of Education edicts means potentially putting a school’s federal funding in jeopardy, and no college, not even Harvard, the country’s richest, is willing to do that.
Again, Yoffe focuses sympathetically on one case involving a male student at the University of Michigan, Drew Sterrett. She also cites research by Callie Marie Rennison and Lynn Addington, who found that non-college women are in greater danger of rape than college women. She doesn’t address the issue that universities are entrusted by parents with protecting young people who may be away from home for the first time.
In an article from October 2013, Yoffe really gets to the point: College Women: Stop Getting Drunk. It’s closely associated with sexual assault. And yet we’re reluctant to tell women to stop doing it. Again, just a brief excerpt:
Let’s be totally clear: Perpetrators are the ones responsible for committing their crimes, and they should be brought to justice. But we are failing to let women know that when they render themselves defenseless, terrible things can be done to them. Young women are getting a distorted message that their right to match men drink for drink is a feminist issue. The real feminist message should be that when you lose the ability to be responsible for yourself, you drastically increase the chances that you will attract the kinds of people who, shall we say, don’t have your best interest at heart. That’s not blaming the victim; that’s trying to prevent more victims.
Experts I spoke to who wanted young women to get this information said they were aware of how loaded it has become to give warnings to women about their behavior. “I’m always feeling defensive that my main advice is: ‘Protect yourself. Don’t make yourself vulnerable to the point of losing your cognitive faculties,’ ” says Anne Coughlin, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, who has written on rape and teaches feminist jurisprudence. She adds that by not telling them the truth—that they are responsible for keeping their wits about them—she worries that we are “infantilizing women.”
So perpetrators are “responsible for committing their crimes,” but women are the ones who should change their behavior. Why not keep criminals off college campuses and try to prevent both male and female students from drinking so much? Yoffe explains her reasoning at the end of the article:
I’ve told my daughter that it’s her responsibility to take steps to protect herself. (“I hear you! Stop!”) The biological reality is that women do not metabolize alcohol the same way as men, and that means drink for drink women will get drunker faster. I tell her I know alcohol will be widely available (even though it’s illegal for most college students) but that she’ll have a good chance of knowing what’s going on around her if she limits herself to no more than two drinks, sipped slowly—no shots!—and stays away from notorious punch bowls. If female college students start moderating their drinking as a way of looking out for their own self-interest—and looking out for your own self-interest should be a primary feminist principle—I hope their restraint trickles down to the men.
If I had a son, I would tell him that it’s in his self-interest not to be the drunken frat boy who finds himself accused of raping a drunken classmate.
She is correct that women are affected more quickly by alcohol than men, but is that a reason to focus only on college women’s responsibility for preventing sexual assaults? She actually believes that we should just hope that if women drink less, men will emulate them? Good luck with that.
I’ve found several responses to Yoffe’s previous articles. I’ll watch to see the reactions to the latest one which came out yesterday. Here are some links you can check out if you’re interested.
Emma Gray at Huffington Post: What Slate Gets So Wrong About College Women And Sexual Assault.
Alexander Abad-Santos in The Wire: Slate Forgot That the One Common Factor in Rapes Are [sic] Rapists.
Kate McDonough at Salon: Sorry, Emily Yoffe: Blaming assault on women’s drinking is wrong, dangerous and tired.
Erin Gloria Ryan at Jezabel: How To Write About Rape Prevention Without Sounding Like An Asshole.
Jennifer Baker at Psychology Today (also cited in the main post): Campus Rape Skepticism. How Not to ‘Debunk’ Research.
Josh Beitel at Medium: A Rebuttal to Emily Yoffe’s College Rape Overcorrection.
As always, this is an open thread, so feel free to post your thoughts and links on any topic in the comment thread.
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