Yes!

False Rape Accusations Are Common

From WTNH TV, the story of a woman who made a false rape accusation:

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - A young woman accused of making up rape allegations against two college football players to gain the sympathy of another student she wanted to date is going on trial this week, and claims that she was pressured into confessing are expected to play a key role.

Jury selection in the case of Nikki Yovino, 19, of South Setauket, New York, is to begin Tuesday in Bridgeport Superior Court in Connecticut, and testimony is expected to start June 18. Prosecutors and defense lawyers will be in court Monday to argue over whether some evidence and testimony should be excluded from the trial.

Yovino was a student at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield when police say she reported being raped by two Sacred Heart football players at an off-campus party in Bridgeport in October 2016.

Authorities say she later admitted that she had consensual sex with the players and told them her motive. She was charged with evidence tampering, a felony, and falsely reporting an incident, a misdemeanor. The evidence tampering charge carries as many as five years in prison.

So her fake story fell apart, and she was charged. Justice was done, right? Not really. The story continues:

Yovino withdrew from Sacred Heart. The football players were never criminally charged, but both withdrew from the school as they faced possible disciplinary action based. One player lost a football scholarship, his lawyer said.

The football players’ names have not been released by police but are expected to be disclosed when they testify at the trial, their lawyer said.

“Her actions have seriously affected them,” attorney Frank Riccio II said. “They’re no longer in school. The loss of their education and the college experience has certainly affected them greatly. And this is all because of a very serious lie.”

One case, of course, doesn’t prove much of anything, but it does underline the problem with the feminist notion that women would never (well, they have to admit, hardly ever) lie about rape.

How Common are False Rape Accusations?

Quoting from Stuart Taylor, Jr. and KC Johnson, Until Proven Innocent, 2007, pp. 374-375.

The standard assertion by feminists that only 2 percent of rape claims are false, which traces to Susan Brownmiller’s 1975 book Against Our Will, is without empirical foundation and belied by a wealth of empirical data. These data suggest that at least 9 percent and probably closer to half of all rape claims are false:

1. FBI statistics say conservatively that about 9 percent of rape reports are “unfounded” in the sense of being dismissed without charges filed, usually because the accuser recants or because her account is contradicted by other evidence.
2. Forty-one percent of 109 rape complainants eventually admitted to police that no rape had occurred, according to a careful, highly regarded 1994 study of all rape reports in a midwestern town of about 70,000 between 1978 and 1987, by Purdue sociologist Eugene J. Kanin, Ph. D. The recantations made irrelevant the claims of many feminists that police often discount valid rape claims. And because there is no reason to suppose that all false accusers recanted, the total number of false reports probably exceeded 41 percent. The police in the study made serious efforts to polygraph both the accused and the accuser; it is now much more rare for police to polygraph rape accusers, due to pressure from feminist and victims’ rights groups more interested in convictions than in truth.
   
   Kanin also concluded that “these false charges were able to serve three major functions for the complainants: providing an alibi, a means of gaining revenge, and a platform for seeking attention/sympathy. This tripartite model resulted from the complainants’ own verbalizations during recantation and does not constitute conjecture.” Other experts note other motives for false rape claims; they include remorse after an impulsive sexual fling and escaping accountability when caught in an embarrassing consensual encounter.
3. Fifty percent (32) of accusers recanted their rape charges in a study by Kanin of campus police reports on sixty four rape claims at two large, unnamed Midwestern universities. In both universities, the taking of the complaint and the follow-up investigation were done by a ranking female officer. “Quite unexpectedly then” Kanin wrote, “we find that these university women, when filing a rape complaint, were as likely to file a false as a valid charge. Other reports from university police agencies support these findings.”
4. False rape accusations occur with scary frequency and “any honest veteran sex assault investigator will tell you that rape is one of the most falsely reported crimes,” Craig Silverman, a former Colorado prosecutor known for his zealous pursuit of alleged rapists, said in 2004 as a commentator on the Kobe Bryant case for Denver’s ABC affiliate. Silverman added that a Denver sex-assault unit commander had estimated that nearly 50 percent of reported rape claims are false.
5. Fraudulent rape complaints were perceived as a problem by 73 percent of the women and 72 percent of the men in a survey of students at the Air Force Academy, West Point, and the Naval Academy, according to a March 2005 Defense Department report.
6. One in four rape reports was unfounded in a 1990-1991 Washington Post investigation in seven Virginia and Maryland counties. When contacted by the Post, many of the alleged victims admitted that they had lied.

The presumption, driven by the political power of feminists on college campuses, that any accusation of rape must be true is a classic case of ideologically driven “justice.”

The campus leftists would loudly support the presumption of innocence, and full due process rights, for a black defendant accused of robbery, or a Muslim accused of conspiring with terrorists. But since the stereotypical campus rapist is a white male, these principles go out the window.

Liberals: Trump Supporters Are Racist

The fundamental problem is simple: liberals (whom we don’t like to call “liberals” since they have ceased to have any connection with tolerant classical liberalism) tend to live in a narrow, insular little world. A narrow and insular social world (in enclaves like the East Side of Milwaukee, Manhattan, Madison and Berkeley) and in professions like journalism, academia, government bureaucracies and so on.

And in a narrow media world, where the narratives of the mainstream media are accepted as gospel.

In such an environment, it’s easy to believe that all the good people agree with you, and all those people who don’t are evil.

In such a world, it becomes acceptable to attack people who disagree, to deny them service in a restaurant, to get them fired from their jobs, to harass them, and to demonize them.

Quite simply, bigotry on the right is idiosyncratic, the product of a few deranged souls.

But bigotry on the left is social, the product of a deranged and intolerant culture.

The Political Game

More Fake News About Donald Trump: A Compliation

From the blog of Sharyl Attkisson, a post titled “52 Media Mistakes in the Trump Era: The Definitive List.” A “mistake” might imply normal human fallibility, but the overwhelming majority of the mistakes are in an anti-Trump direction. They are not random incompetence. They are the result of a pervasive bias against Donald Trump.

We can’t repeat them all here (please read the entire list), but we can mention a few of the most serious ones.

1. Aug. 2016-Nov. 2016:
The New York Post published modeling photos of Trump’s wife Melania and reported they were taken in 1995. Various news outlets relied on that date to imply that Melania—an immigrant—had violated her visa status. But the media got the date wrong. Politico was among the news agencies that later issued a photo date correction.

7. Jan. 20, 2017:
Zeke Miller of TIME reported that President Trump had removed the bust statue of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. The news went viral. It was false.

8. Jan. 26, 2017:
Josh Rogin of the Washington Post reported that the State Department’s “entire senior administrative team” had resigned in protest of Trump. A number of media outlets ranging from politically left to right, including liberal-leaning Vox, stated that claim was misleading or wrong.

12. Feb. 2, 2017:
AP reported that Trump had threatened the president of Mexico with invasion to get rid of “bad hombres.” Numerous publications followed suit. The White House said it wasn’t true and the Washington Post removed the AP info that “could not be independently confirmed.”

14. Feb. 14, 2017:
The New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo reported about supposed contacts between Trump campaign staff and “senior Russian intelligence officials.” Comey later testified “In the main, [the article] was not true.”

15. Feb. 22, 2017:
ProPublica’s Raymond Bonner reported CIA official Gina Haspel—Trump’s later pick for CIA Director—was in charge of a secret CIA prison where Islamic extremist terrorist Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in one month, and that she mocked the prisoner’s suffering. More than a year later, ProPublica retracted the claim, stating that “Neither of these assertions is correct…Haspel did not take charge of the base until after the interrogation of Zubaydah ended.”

17. May 10, 2017:
Multiple outlets including Politico, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, AP, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported the same leaked information: that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey shortly after Comey requested additional resources to investigate Russian interference in the election. [. . .] The Justice Department, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said the media reports were untrue and McCabe added that the FBI’s Russia investigation was “adequately resourced.”

18. June 4, 2017:
NBC News reported in a Tweet that Russian President Vladimir Putin told TV host Megan Kelly that he had compromising information about Trump. Actually, Putin said the opposite: that he did not have compromising information on Trump.

22. June 22, 2017:
CNN’s Thomas Frank reported that Congress was investigating a “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.” The report was later retracted. Frank and two other CNN employees resigned in the fallout.

23. December 2, 2017:
ABC News’ Brian Ross reported that former Trump official Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was going to testify that candidate Trump had directed him to contact “the Russians.” Even though such contact would not be in of itself a violation of law, the news was treated as an explosive indictment of Trump in the Russia collusion narrative, and the stock market fell on the news. ABC later corrected the report to reflect that Trump had already been elected when he reportedly asked Flynn to contact the Russians about working together to fight ISIS and other issues. Ross was suspended.

27. Sept. 5, 2017:
CNN’s Chris Cillizza and other news outlets declared Trump “lied” when he stated that Trump Tower had been wiretapped, although there’s no way any reporter independently knew the truth of the matter—only what intel officials claimed. It later turned out there were numerous wiretaps involving Trump Tower, including a meeting of Trump officials with a foreign dignitary. At least two Trump associates who had offices in or frequented Trump Tower were also wiretapped.

29. Nov. 6, 2017:
CNN’s Daniel Shane edited excerpts from a Trump event to make it seem as though Trump didn’t realize Japan builds cars in the U.S. However, Trump’s entire statement made clear that he does.

35. Dec. 8, 2017:
CNN’s Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb reported that Donald Trump Jr. conspired with WikiLeaks in advance of the publication of damaging Democrat party and Clinton campaign emails. Many other publications followed suit. They had the date wrong: WikiLeaks and Trump Junior were in contact after the emails were published.

40. March 8, 2018:
The New York Times’ Jan Rosen reported on a hypothetical family whose tax bill would rise nearly $4,000 under Trump’s tax plan. It turns out the calculations were off: the couple’s taxes would go actually go down $43; not up $4,000.

44. April 30, 2018:
AP reported that the NRA had banned guns during Trump and Pence speeches at the NRA’s annual meeting. AP later corrected the information because the ban had been put in place by Secret Service.

46. May 7, 2018:
CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger reported that Trump’s personal lawyer, Cohen, paid $1 million in fines related to unauthorized cars in his taxi business, had been barred from managing taxi medallions, had transferred $60 million offshore to avoid paying debts, and is awaiting trial on charges of failing to pay millions in taxes. A later correction stated that none of that was true.

47. May 16, 2018:
The New York Times’ Julie Hirschfeld Davis, AP, CNN’s Oliver Darcy and others excerpted a Trump comment as if he had referred to immigrants or illegal immigrants generally as “animals.” Most outlets corrected their reports later to note that Trump had specifically referred to members of the murderous criminal gang MS-13.

48. May 28, 2018
The New York Times’ Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein and CNN’s Hadas Gold shared a story with photos of immigrant children in cages as if they were new photos taken under the Trump administration. The article and photos were actually taken in 2014 under the Obama administration.

49. May 29, 2018
The New York Times’ Julie Davis reported the estimated size of a Trump rally to be 1,000 people. There were actually 5,500 people or more in attendance.

51. June 21, 2018
Time magazine and others used a photo of a crying Honduran child to illustrate a supposed Trump administration policy separating illegal immigrant parents and children. The child’s father later reported that agents had never separated her from her mother; the mother had taken her to the US without his knowledge and separated herself from her other children, whom she left behind.

Conclusion

A few of the items on Attkisson’s list are fairly trivial, such as 16. (“An article bylined by the New York Times’ graphic editors Karen Yourish and Troy Griggs referred to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, as Trump’s wife.”)

One or two others represent honest assessments that turned out to be wrong, for example 3. (“In a Washington Post piece not labelled opinion or analysis, Stuart Rothenberg reported that Trump’s path to an electoral college victory was ‘nonexistent.’”). Rothenberg, a relatively sober analyst, was probably fairly describing the data he had at the time.

But the vast majority of examples Attkisson cites are not random errors, the result of the fact that journalists are fallible. They are evidence of a mainstream media keen to find, and disinclined to check out, anything that reflects badly on Donald Trump.

Goodbye Miss America

Obama Lied About the Iran Deal

From columnist Marc A. Thiessen in the Washington Post: a blow by blow account of how the Obama Administration allowed Iran access to international financial markets, contradicting terms of the deal, and then lied about it to Congress. You can read the blow-by-blow, but here is the summary:

In other words, the Obama administration: (1) told Congress it would not allow Iran access to U.S. financial institutions; (2) issued a special license allowing Iran to do exactly that; (3) unsuccessfully pressured U.S. banks to help Iran; (4) lied to Congress and the American people about what it had done; (5) admitted in internal emails that these efforts “exceeded” U.S. obligations under the nuclear deal; (6) sent officials, including bank regulators, around the world to urge foreign financial institutions to do business with Iran; and (7) promised that they would get nothing more than a slap on the wrist for violating U.S. sanctions.

But even before this:

First, President Barack Obama failed to disclose to Congress the existence of secret side deals on inspections when he transmitted the nuclear accord to Capitol Hill. (They were only uncovered by chance when then-Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) learned about them during a meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency officials in Vienna.) Then, we learned that the Obama administration had secretly sent a plane to Tehran loaded with $400 million in Swiss francs, euros and other currencies on the same day Iran released four American hostages, which was followed by two more secret flights carrying another $1.3 billion in cash.

The fundamental problem here, aside from the fact that liberal Democrats like Obama take a tolerant attitude toward America’s enemies, is they desire to get an “agreement” that can be touted as “fixing the problem” and draw plaudits from the goody-two-shoes internationalists.

Obama’s Paris Climate Accord is a classic example.

Let’s hope that Trump doesn’t get subverted by the same mentality in dealing with Little Rocket Man.

Bill is Disappointed

Chris Matthews: Democratic Party is Elitist

Sometimes a buffoon, Chris Matthews sometimes seems to “get it” as a Democrat who remembers a time when working class people identified with and voted with Democrats.

Bogus Racial Grievance at Portland Bakery

Bogus racial grievance. Black women claims she was not served because of her race. She walked in after the place was closed, and after two white women were refused service on the grounds that the place was closed.

This being Portland, the two employees involved were fired, and the very politically correct coffee shop abases itself and kowtows to the activists.

Catholic Schools are Better at Instilling Self-Discipline

From Right Wisconsin, an article on the ability of various kinds of schools to engender self-discipline in student. Will Flanders, policy wonk at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, explains:

In the last several months, WILL has argued that currently popular systems of discipline in American public schools are problematic from the standpoint of promoting a good learning environment. Perhaps in reaction to the overzealousness of the “Zero Tolerance” policies of the late 90s and early 2000s, many school systems have gone the opposite direction, promoting “feel good” discipline policies that result in worsened academic outcomes and reports of unsafe conditions for teachers and students.

But, like in many other contexts, private schools may offer an alternative solution on school discipline. A new study by the Thomas Fordham Institute examines student behavior in Catholic schools compared to other private and public schools. They argue that Catholic schools, far more so than other schools, focus on the notion of self–discipline. Self-discipline, in general, is an intrinsic motivation to engage in positive behavior. In the context of the classroom, this can be exhibited by properly dealing with anger, or avoiding impulsive behavior without the teacher having to intervene. It is a regular point of emphasis for Catholic schools around the country. Indeed, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee lists “self-discipline” as one of the core meanings of a Catholic education. But does this emphasis manifest in better behavioral outcomes?

Using rigorous methods to create comparable samples of students, the study’s authors found that students in Catholic schools were more likely to exhibit self-disciplined behavior. This finding held in comparison to both public schools and other private schools. It also held for students of different races and income levels.

Flanders asks whether this result could be generalized to other religious schools, and even to secular private schools. The Fordham study lumps “non-religious” schools with “other religious” schools, leaving unanswered the question of whether religious schools, per se, conduce to self-discipline.

Further, so far as we can tell, the study does not preclude the possibility that Catholic schools have more latitude to impose discipline — defined a punishing bad behavior. Simply being isolated from Obama Administration policies that make it hard to discipline may be a huge advantage. Letting kids learn that bad behavior produces no consequences (or trivial consequences) is a dandy way to discourage self-discipline.

Indeed, some of the “mission statements” of Catholic schools imply their staff think this way. For example:

In 2012 Chilton Area Catholic School adopted the “Discipline With Purpose” program. This program helps children learn to become self-directed adults. It helps teach responsibility and respect in language children can understand. It also encourages educators to rethink their role as disciplinarians to teachers of self-discipline.

This sounds like pious rhetoric describing the fact that you discipline to teach self-discipline.

Regardless, Catholic schools have long provided both a congenial choice for practicing Catholic parents and a valuable refuge for kids (many non-Catholic) from dysfunctional inner city public schools.