The truth is, I don't know, and neither do you

Like nearly every single person in America, I do not know whether Christine Blasey Ford is telling the truth about an alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I do not know whether Kavanaugh is telling the truth when he categorically denies the accusations. Many people say they are certain, one way or the other, but their firm beliefs are only opinions. They do not know whether their belief is factually accurate.

That said, I am bothered by the accusations against Kavanaugh. They are either deeply disturbing peeks at some well-hidden character flaws or desperate attempts at character assassination. I don't know which is the correct judgment.

I am bothered by the lateness of the allegations, and the handling of Blasey Ford's accusation by Sen. Diane Feinstein. The timing, if not the accusations themselves, seems to be aimed at postponing Senate confirmation of Kavanaugh. The GOP, on the other hand, has been too eager to push the confirmation through before mid-term elections, which might make a Senatae confirmation more difficult. After the Senate Judiciary Committee held a week of hearings on the Kavanaugh nomination, the accusations of a 35-year-old sexual assault were tossed into the nomination process.

A great many women have come forward to say they believe Blasey Ford, but their confidence is based on their belief that women are frequently abused by powerful men. They do not have first-hand knowledge of the alleged incident at a teenagers' house party. Their cry of "Believe the Women" has been invoked as an axiom for sexual assault cases, and in the "Me Too" era of revelations of sexual misconduct that can even turn "America's Dad," Bill Cosby, into a perverted criminal, that mantra makes some sense. However, that mantra should be used carefully. Thirty years ago, advocates were urging America to "Believe the Children," who allegedly had been sexually abused in several day-care scandals across the country. The children offered details and seemed certain in their testimony. Day Care owners were convicted by juries who "believed the children," although the children had also testified to trips to outer space, savage murders of children at the day cares and "secret rooms" where abuse took place — none of which was true.

Politically speaking, ignoring for the moment the accusations of misconduct, I worry about confirming Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Although he was typically coy in responding to questions about judicial issues, Kavanaugh seems to be a proponent of nearly unlimited executive power. He doesn't seem bothered by assertions of presidential powers that are not mentioned in the Constitution and which seem to usurp Congress' legislative powers. If I were a senator, I would probably lean toward denying Kavanaugh's confirmation, not based on his personal conduct but on his judicial philosophy.

This week's upheaval in the Senate Judiciary Committee is a symptom of a wrecked confirmation process for federal judges. The Founding Fathers tried to insulate the judiciary process from politics, but the courts have grown more and more political over the past 30 years, and so has the confirmation process. We assume, even before a the nomination process begins, that the confirmation vote will be decided along party lines. That is not what the Founding Fathers intended, nor has it always been this way.

Many will point to the divisive 1991 hearings on nominee Clarence Thomas as a turning point in politicization of the judiciary, but I think the genesis of this new era was the 1987 Robert Bork hearings. Before the confirmation hearings began, Sen. Ted Kennedy proclaimed, "Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, and schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of Americans.”

Ted Kennedy was a smart, experienced senator. He knew very well that putting Bork on the Supreme Court would not — could not — bring about the nightmares he claimed. He also knew that Bork could be rejected if a grassroots hysteria succeeded in turning Bork into a pariah. Democrats organized opposition to Bork and succeeded in denying him a seat on the highest court. A new word was coined. He was "borked."

Since that time, most Supreme Court nominations have been political contests similar to elections. The Republican Party has even made the Supreme Court a key issue in presidential races and has allowed the refusal of the Senate GOP leadership to even acknowledge a legitimate nomination to the court by a Democratic president.

The courts, intended to be a sort of final arbiter of conflicts between the executive and legislative branches, has become too much a child of political confrontation. The Senate's duty is to "advise and consent" on judicial nominations, not connive for political advantage.

A hurricane prepared for; a flood that can't be avoided

A week after we completed our hurricane prep, the sky is blue, the yard is raked and the fallen limbs are picked up. City sanitation crews have collected our debris and appear to be back on a normal schedule.

Getting the deck furniture, the bird feeders, the wind chimes, the whirligigs and all the rest put away or lashed down was easier this time, the first hurricane since we both were retired. Two can do more than one. I made a quick (but crowded) run to the supermarket for non-perishable food, and we ate well last week as we finished off food from the freezer. We froze water bottles, repurposed juice jars, and food storage bags filled with water. They were never needed.

In 1996 (Fran) and 1999 (Floyd), we had lost hundreds of dollars worth of food when we were without power for more than a week each time. From Fran's devastation and the difficulty of cooking our own food and taking showers, we decided to switch to a natural gas hot water heater and a gas stove. Floyd was more tolerable three years later because we could cook and take showers, even though we had to do it all by battery-powered lights.

Nothing frustrated us more during those '90s hurricanes than being unable to read once the sun went down. A friend offered us a battery-powered lantern that gave off enough light for two people to sit close together and read from the same light source. This year, we invested in book lights — LED lights powered by a watch battery that clip onto a book. I was looking forward to using the book lights, but we never had a need.

The electricity NEVER FAILED. We waited, we worried, we fretted, but the worst never happened. We never lost power, no trees fell on our home. We could see flooded streets a block or more away, but floodwaters never reached our property. We feel incredibly blessed to get through this first major storm this year with so little damage or inconvenience.

Over the weekend, we unhitched the deck furniture and put the pieces in their places; we rehung the bird feeders, and we removed the collection of flashlights and battery-powered lanterns from the kitchen counter.

We're back to normal, but we're mindful of the thousands of others, not so far away, who are dealing with felled trees, loss of power, and flooded homes. We hope and pray that they will recover soon and that government agencies, nonprofits and individual donors will be sufficient to allow them to recover and be happy again.

Each time a hurricane strikes, some will warn that the weather is getting worse because of climate change resulting from human activities, such as burning fossil fuels. I don't know enough about it to blame fossil fuels for these hurricanes, but I can confidently see that man-made activities are causing increased flooding. Just look at the acres and acres of paved blacktop that we have added to our world in the past decade. While older shopping centers sit empty, newer, bigger shopping centers with even more blacktop parking areas are built.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust, the Bible says, but all of the rain that falls has to go somewhere, and all of the rain that falls on blacktop parking areas and on multi-lane highways runs off the blacktop, ultimately reaching small streams that feed mighty rivers. Waterways that could handle the runoff 20 years ago cannot handle the vastly increased runoff of today. The stream beds and creek banks that used to channel the water away can't handle the increased volume.

You don't need a degree in environmental science to see this happening, and to see that we need to find new strategies for reducing runoff before it ends up in somebody's home.

 

If you know about a hurricane, thank the news media

My wife and I have been closely monitoring Hurricane Florence the past several days. We have prepared ourselves and our home as best we could for the winds and rain that are forecast. I've used the weather app on my phone, the Weather Channel and a Raleigh TV station to keep informed about the storm.

During this time, I have heard two people tell me how "newspapers" or "the media" have exaggerated the dangers of the storm. They were both hard-core conservatives who blame "the mainstream media" for most everything they don't like and suspect government officials are deceitful. 

I wasn't going to argue with either of them, but it made me wonder what they thought they would do if there were no "mainstream media" to hire meteorologists, send reporters to impact areas, and provide maps and satellite photos showing where the storm is expected to go and when it is expected to arrive at various locations. Who would warn them of the approach of a dangerous storm so that they could prepare for threatening conditions, such as 100 mph winds or punishing rainfall that causes widespread flooding?

Demagogic politicians create a straw man and whipping boy of the news media, blaming them for misinformation, bias, conspiracy and even, yes, being an "enemy of the people." These critics had better hope they don't succeed in destroying the news media that use their revenue (mostly from advertising) to inform the public about things they need to know. Hurricanes are just one example of things the public needs to know.

Some news media-hating people say they'd still know all about hurricanes, tornadoes, elections, governmental decisions (from the courthouse to Congress), court decisions, crimes, new products and treatments for illnesses, and the availability of inoculations or low-cost medical care. But I doubt they've really looked into that.

News organizations are created to collect information such as this and distribute it to the public. A lot of work goes into just finding that information. Yes, there are governmental websites and some independent websites that post information about some government activities, but it takes a lot of work, especially for the untrained and unfamiliar, to find that information, understand it and pass it along.

I used to tell journalism students that one responsibility of news reporters is to be at the meetings, press conferences and events that voters, most of whom have full-time jobs, do not have the time to follow every meeting, conference or event. Reporters, who work full-time at collecting news, go where subscribers/voters don't have the time or inclination to go. Informing the public is the key responsibility of any news organization. It is what motivates newspaper people.

You don't like the "mainstream media"? OK. Unplug the TV, ignore the news websites on your computer or phone, don't heed the warnings, originated by government officials and passed along by the news media, to evacuate or prepare for the next storm on the horizon. See how that works out.

Anonymity is rare in newspaper columns

The New York Times last week published an op-ed criticizing the Trump administration. Nothing new there. Two factors set this one apart: It was published anonymously by the New York Times, and (2) the author claims to be a member of the Trump administration and a member of a secret subset of administration employees who are doing what they can to counter Trump's worst decisions.

The anonymous author claims to be doing right by the country by resisting Trump's bad behavior, but if anonymous thought the op-ed would change Trump, anonymous was wrong. If anything, the op-ed bolstered Trump's paranoid illusions about a "deep state" of career federal employees who "really" run foreign and domestic policy. Trump is well-known for punishing disloyalty in any form and for lashing out at even the slightest criticism.

As a former newspaper editor who spent years battling with people who wanted to write letters to the editor or op-ed columns anonymously, I am having a hard time getting over the fact that the sainted New York Times allowed someone to use its opinion pages without identifying himself or herself. I've read that an anonymous column is not unprecedented, but it surely is among the rarest of exceptions.

On a national scale, I can think of only one one exception to the generally accepted rule that opinion columns should be signed and usually include a brief bio of the author. The exception I recall came in March 1975, when a writer using the pseudonym of "Miles Ignotus" suggested in a Harper's article that the problem of the rising cost of oil and the growing power of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, could be solved by a quick, precise military strike on the Saudi Arabian oil fields. Miles suggested that Americans could produce oil at a cost of five cents a barrel (as best I remember), sell it at $5 a barrel, and give away the excess profit to the Saudis and others to placate Arab interests. Everybody would be happy except the Saudis!

Fortunately, no one followed Miles' advice, and it was another 28 years before the United States decided to invade another oil-producing Arab country, producing a hopeless war, thousands of deaths, a debacle aptly described in the book by Tom Ricks titled "Fiasco."

During my career as an editor, I encountered many people who wanted to run anonymous letters or columns, but my fading memory can recall just two extraordinary incidents in which I relented and ran an anonymous letter. One was written by a domestic violence victim who was commenting on the local effort to stem domestic abuse. The writer had been recently divorced from her abusive husband and was living somewhere that he was unaware of. To publish her name and address would have endangered her life, but what she had to say was worth reading. The second incident involved a letter from a college faculty member who was critical of the college administration (I don't remember the issue involved). I agreed to run the letter anonymously because to run the writer's name would have resulted in an immediate dismissal.

Would I have run Anonymous' op-ed about Trump if I were in the opinion editor's cubicle last week? I think not, but it's hard to say what one might decide in a theoretical case. I would have feared the column would have infuriated Trump and made him more paranoid, more unpredictable and more angry.

I'm confident that the New York Times knows the identity of Anonymous, just as nearly every American newspaper expects a verifiable name on every letter to the editor. I knew the identity of the writers of the two letters I can remember from a 33-year career that I agreed to publish anonymously. With all others, I would explain that the letters column was a public forum, and participants in that forum should be willing to stand behind their opinions, as they would in a public meeting. If you are ashamed of your opinion, don't send it to the newspaper editor.

 

Commanders in Chief without military experience

The Constitution sets relatively few requirements for holding the office of president of the United States: One must be a "natural born citizen" of the United States and must be 35 years old or older and must have resided in the United States for 14 years.

Few jobs in America have such a short list of job requirements, yet the country has survived for these 229 years since the adoption of the Constitution with presidents meeting only minimal job requirements. A college education is not required. Many of our most admired presidents — Lincoln, Washington, Truman, for example — would have been disqualified by such a requirement. No job experience is required, and the way we choose a president has little application to the overwhelming difficulty of managing a federal workforce in the millions, dealing with foreign countries, both friendly and adversarial, dealing with Congress, and serving as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. That's far different from traveling around the country asking people to vote for him/her.

A week of mourning for Sen. John McCain has brought to mind that last responsibility of the president. If military experience counted, McCain might have reached his dream of being elected president. He was the son and grandson of U.S. Navy admirals and had served with distinction as a Navy aviator.

For much of American history, service in the armed forces was a common trait among presidents. Washington, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Harrison, U.S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Franklin Pierce, William Henry Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt and others served in combat. In my own lifetime, Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush — every president until Clinton's election in 1992 — served in the military either in combat or stateside. Voters have not elected a military veteran, with the exception of George W. Bush, who only served in the Reserves and was never deployed, since the first President Bush lost the 1992 election to Clinton.

Although it's not a requirement for office, it's fair to ask what presidents without military experience are missing in their resumes. Military service teaches discipline, motivation, management, service, sacrifice and patriotism. It also exposes Americans to people with different backgrounds, advantages or disadvantages. In the years of a military draft, well-bred, well-connected college graduates rubbed shoulders with high school dropouts, and they learned to depend on these soldiers or sailors who were very different from themselves.

That experience would certainly enlighten the resident of the White House faced with a decision on military intervention or troop deployment. Presidents such as Washington, Jackson, Grant and others, who had experienced war up close and had been responsible for orders that resulted in deaths of brave, obedient soldiers, certainly would recognize the gravity of their actions in a way that someone without military experience would not.

In today's America, with only a small percentage of Americans voluntarily choosing a military career, it is difficult to find presidential aspirants with a military background. Veterans dominated the White House and congressional leadership from 1945 to the end of the century, but veterans are much rarer now in the halls of power.

Military experience does not inoculate presidents from bad decisions. George W. Bush foolishly ordered U.S. troops to invade Iraq in 2003 in search of non-existent "weapons of mass destruction." But President Kennedy, still scarred by injuries suffered when a Japanese ship sank his PT boat, rejected the advice of his generals and chose a successful blockade of Cuba in 1962 instead of an invasion to destroy Russian missiles there, a strategy that would result in high casualties and could escalate into nuclear war. Unlike the younger Bush, Kennedy had experienced combat and seen good men die all around him.