What a weekend!
My San Diego State Aztecs traveled to the famous blue football field in Boise, Idaho, and defeated the hardly-ever defeated Boise State there while a couple hundred septuagenarians joined me at the U.S. Navy golf course in the San Diego River bed just yards from where California began when Father Junipero Serra build the first of 21 California missions in 1769.
My fellow old guys and “gals” and I were celebrating our graduation from high school 60 years ago. While eating and talking with people we hadn’t seen for 60 years, our favorite for the U.S. Supreme Court was being approved by 50 U.S. Senators — Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Saturday’s Senate vote confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court obviously was more important than football and celebrating the miracle of my high school graduation six decades before (I was the first in the family to graduate from high school, the first to attend college), it was amazing.
Considering (a) that I live and breathe politics and (b) that I experienced the Clarence Thomas “hi-tech lynching” and the “Borking” of a fine man, Robert Bork, watching the public political assassination of a 12-year veteran of the second most important court in the country, Washington’s 2nd Circuit Court, enraged me. Watching the testimony of a Psychology PHD about something she claimed happened 35 years ago without key details like where and when the alleged crime took place was interesting. How did she, a fifteen-year-old without a driver’s license, arrive at the alleged party and how did she leave to travel miles to her home? Who was there? Why did no one whose name she mentioned as witnesses remember the party? Her best friend told us that she never met Brett Kavanaugh.
Her ambulance-chasing lawyers (who should be disbarred) apparently didn’t tell her the Republican Chairman of the Judiciary Committee offered to interview her wherever she wanted including privately in California. Those lawyers refused to turn over critical notes allegedly taken by the witnesses’ unnamed therapist that the Washington Post says it saw; those notes allegedly state the witness told her therapist about the alleged assault of the court nominee in 2012, but, no name.
Those bottom-feeding lawyers tried to con the country with -- she “passed” a lie detector test they paid for that was “administered” by a former FBI agent. But, it turns out he only asked her two (2) questions. What?
We were expected to suspend belief in facts and accept her story hook, line and sinker. Not me. I have some experience in this field.
Out of the blue forty years ago, my ex-wife, who bailed on our seven-year marriage when we encountered a dip in economics, accused me of molesting our five year old daughter.
I found out when police detectives showed up at my door to question me about the alleged incident. “Sex Crime detectives” defined what the allegations were and I politely refused to answer their questions. I called my lawyer, we made an appointment with the detectives. But first the lawyer hired an EX-CIA agent to conduct a lie detector test for us. Scared the hell out of me. Result, didn’t do it. But, he asked me 20-25 questions of which 10 were key to the test, not two like in this case.
We then went to the police station to view a video of an interview with my five-year-old daughter conducted by a social worker. In the video, after much prompting by the social worker, my daughter picked up a wash cloth and rubbed it in the genital area of a life-like doll. She wiped it one time, slowly. The social worker kept prompting her to rub it more than once. Finally, my daughter curtly told the social worker, “No,” one time, that’s all.
Two weeks later, the police detectives were at my door. Four years of supervision by social workers, court appearances, a probation officer that told the court I did the crime and, fortunately for me, a judge who didn’t believe the charge because he knew me. I walked out of court un-arrested but without my daughter.
Didn’t see her again until she was 21 when she called me and we met like strangers. I cried. I could never ever make up for those lost years.
So, when Judge Brett Kavanaugh blasted United States Senators who assumed him guilty of sexual assault on a teenaged girl 35 years before, I understood; I cheered him on.
On Friday, I fell in “love” with United States Senator Susan Collins. Her measure of potential guilt was brilliant and, I felt, applied to me some 40 years ago; to wit: Not guilty because the charges by the alleged victim did not meet this test – is it more likely that the assault took place or not.
Anyone that applied that test to my case 40 years ago did not believe I was even capable of such a “crime.” Period. Ditto Brett Kavanaugh.
Raoul Lowery Contreras is a conservative columnist. His column appears on Fridays in The Recorder. He can be contacted at hispaniccommentator@gmail.com.