State rep deserved due process

To steal a phrase from Emma Gonzalez, the public face of the Parkland students, let me say this: I call BS. I call BS on the people who denied Nick Miccarelli, a personal friend and a man who I have admired for at least a decade, the due process to which he was entitled.

I call BS on the GOP leadership who, scared of its own shadow in this dicey #Metoo environment, abandoned the long-term legislator who had served the party well over many years with its calls for his resignation. Shame on all of them, too many to name.

For that reason alone, I am myself abandoning the party and becoming an independent (not that they’d notice or care.)

I call BS on the Democrats, relatively quiet during the Miccarelli witch hunt, who sat back and smiled as the GOP cannibalized one of its own, even those members who might have thought that in the wake of what was done to Sen Daylin Leach, it might be the time to stage a bipartisan attack on “impeachment by innuendo.”

I actually spoke about the Leach case on my radio show a few months back, and while I am no fan of the most liberal legislator in Harrisburg, I do think that he was treated horribly by people with both a personal and partisan ax to grind.

I call BS on the accusers of Miccarelli, who channeled the fury of the #Metoo moment into an undeserved victory, one that was obtained through public sentiment and not evidence.

I won’t name them either, especially since one of them has chosen to hide behind the cloak of anonymity, because their identities are less important than the movement they represent: a total annihilation of due process and fairness in the name of generational and historic payback.

I call BS on the journalists who wrote stories with such a biased perspective that they seemed to be well-oiled arms of the accusers. Only one journalist, to my knowledge, even acknowledged that Nick Miccarelli deserved a fair hearing, and that was our own Chris Freind last week. Kudos to him for even suggesting that the hysteria of the moment be tempered by common sense and, shockingly, constitutional protections.

A judge, even, seemed to believe that he was a menace to one of the most vocal accusers, a fellow state legislator who once dated Miccarelli. I am not privy to what went down in that courtroom, and none of us will ever have the whole story, but I do know how easy it is to get Protection from Abuse Orders in my own practice, and I know that they are often used for more than just protection.

They are a powerful weapon, pun intended, against the accused.

The reason that I call BS on myself is due to my naivete. After after having dealt with people who have been falsely accused of abuse, and after having worked with women who were abused, after having seen how the system has been gamed by both sides, and after having watched as man after man has fallen on the altar of the goddess #Metoo, I should have suspected that this would end badly for Nick, and that he would have to give up his seat in the Legislature.

But I did hope that this time would be different, not because I like the accused and know him personally but because the allegations seemed to be so outlandish and out of character, and because they were being made so many years after the fact, and because Miccarelli had never exhibited any bad conduct in office, or out of it, and because even if he had, the accounts were all “he saidshe said.”

I really thought that at the very least, this case would be litigated in the open air, where we could all assess the credibility of the accusers and the accused, and the accusations.

But I was an idiot to believe that in this era, where we are so interested in swinging that pendulum against men because they had it in their corner for so many decades before, that we could ever look at a case on its own merits, and not as an example of “Justice for Women!”

I am bitter as I see yet another person taken down without a fair hearing, and through a methodology that makes “Lord of the Flies” look like a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court.

I call BS on all of it.