The rank politicization surrounding the Supreme Court nomination is a shameless showcase of why so many Americans are so fed up with D.C. swamp-dwellers that any candidate considered an outsider holds appeal.
Democrats didn't learn a thing from their loss in the 2016 presidential election, and Republicans learned precious little from their victory.
My press deadline precluded any report of Thursday's hearing, but chances are the circus continued full force. The ocean of ink and trillions of pixels in news coverage are overwhelming evidence of self-serving sensationalism run completely amok.
The "elder statesmen" (and I use the term with the utmost derision) of the Democratic Party began the practice of turning advise and consent hearings into nominee destruction campaigns back in the 1980s. It has subsequently tainted and defiled all generations of both parties.
Supreme Court justices aren't supposed to make laws. But after decades of calculated, deliberate and partisan political abuse of the court system as a substitute for impotent legislative ideas, unilaterally opposing the president's nominees before they're even identified seems perfectly rational.
That idiotic attitude thrives nowhere except politics, where it is proudly proclaimed with the straightest of faces. No wonder 62 million people decided a non-politician--any non-politician--was more preferable.
And, just like 2016, most of the political powers-that-be are missing the grass-roots disgust as they posture narcissistically for the midterms.
Here's the reality about witnessing any "he said, she said" argument among 50-somethings about an alcohol-infused incident during their high school years: We will never know the truth. That unknowability is what makes it valuable as a political weapon, wielded in a partisan battle whose desired outcome is to cast doubt and suspicion.
Most repugnant of all, this engineered beltway tempest does an egregious disservice by demeaning the tragic problem of domestic violence that affects almost every American community.
Instead of screen-to-screen coverage of talking heads regarding the latest contortions at the Senate judiciary sideshow, the nation and its women would be infinitely better served by the repeated airing of a recently released video of domestic assault in Michigan.
Most domestic violence is perpetrated privately, behind the closed doors of a couple's home.
A security camera in the living room of the rented house in Mount Clemens, Mich., offers a rare and disturbing glimpse of what violence against women truly looks like.
Reading a news account, often written from a "just the facts, ma'am" affidavit, in a domestic-assault case can have a sanitizing effect on the crime. Actually seeing an attack unfold, essentially as a vicarious eyewitness, is shocking and sickening. It's sobering to mentally multiply those images as happening every day, all across the country.
Indeed, in this incident, the judge increased the bond from $750,000 to $5 million after learning of the video and its visual documentation of the attack.
The silent film footage begins with 35-year-old Paul Bashi, a beefy, muscular bodybuilder wearing only underwear, standing alone and looking through his girlfriend Kristina Perry's phone. When 22-year-old Perry opens the front door, Bashi immediately steps toward her and knocks her to the ground. Over the next 40 minutes, as she lay on the floor lodged between the door and the sofa, he beats, bludgeons and stabs her.
Investigators counted more than 100 kicks, 50 punches and two dozen stabs in addition to multiple pummels using a picture pulled from a wall, and a chair.
Bashi repeatedly goes back and forth into the kitchen, coming out with different knives, canisters and other objects with which to batter his girlfriend. He even throws a couple of large, lit jar candles at her. After the assault, he drags Perry out on the front porch. An outdoor security camera records neighbors cautiously approaching her motionless form as Bashi peels out in his car, spewing gravel as he speeds away.
"She was beaten within an inch of her life," a Macomb County prosecutor said, adding he didn't know how she wasn't killed.
The July 29 attack left Perry in a coma, but earlier this week she was in court at her boyfriend's hearing, claiming to be uninjured and accepting blame for the incident. She asked that his bond be voided, the no-contact order removed and the charges against him (which include attempted murder and torture) dropped.
The judge took the matter under advisement, acknowledging that Bashi is a felon with at least two previous domestic-violence charges, two drunken-driving charges and five failure to appear citations.
Prosecutors say the video evidence is strong enough on its own for the state to bring charges, without having to rely on victim testimony, and they intend to continue the case.
With the passage of Laura's Law in 2015, Arkansas took strides toward protecting women and improving our poor state ranking.
But there's still a long way to go. More than half of all murdered women are victims of domestic homicide.
Marginalizing the momentum gained with the Me Too movement to serve partisan smear purposes doesn't help us get there. As usual with caustic Washington political infighting, it sets things back.
Next election, the credo might be: The swamp can wait. Drain the Senate.
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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 09/28/2018