The second shoe drops. Meet Deborah Ramirez - and this story is even more solid than the first:
The Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the incident and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.
But hey, why let that stop you? Ms Ramirez has now decided that, notwithstanding her doubts of a few days ago, the penis she was exposed to belonged to Judge Kavanaugh.
So, as Leah the Boss Tweets, the left's position is that, if you're in a middle-school girls' bathroom and li'l Jimmy is transitioning in there and you happen to be exposed to her penis, what's the big deal? Everyone knows penises are nothing to do with blokes anymore and, if you suggest otherwise, you'll be kicked out of every position you hold. But, if you graduate middle school and make it to Yale and you're exposed to Brett Kavanaugh's penis, or a doppelgänger for Brett Kavanaugh's penis ...whoa! That particular penis or doppelpenis will traumatize you for the next thirty years.
By the way, Brett Kavanaugh's doppelpenis is not to be confused under any circumstances with Bill Clinton's distinguishing characteristics. Gloria Steinem issued the definitive ruling on the 42nd President's executive branch two decades ago:
It's not harassment and we're not hypocrites.
In The [Un]documented Mark Steyn (personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available from the SteynOnline bookstore) there is an essay of mine from April 1998 on Gloria Steinem's New Clintonian Feminism, "The Audacity of Grope":
The founder of Ms magazine and the National Women's Political Caucus says 'for the sake of argument' she's willing to believe all the women. But, even so, what's the big deal? After considering both Kathleen (a 'reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life') and Paula ('he asked her to perform oral sex and even dropped his trousers'), Ms Steinem comes to the same conclusion: 'It never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took "no" for an answer.' He showed a fine understanding of 'the commonsense guideline to sexual behaviour that came out of the women's movement 30 years ago: no means no; yes means yes...'
For years, the more straightforward feminists have stomped around in fierce T-shirts demanding, 'What Part of NO Don't You Understand?' Quite a big part, it seems. I didn't realise no includes one complimentary grope with optional pants-drop and positioning of feminist hand on aroused male genital area. If she doesn't go for it, well, no hard feelings (except on your part): just extricate your fingers from her underwiring and move on to the next broad. Your feminist credentials are impeccable: you didn't rape her, so give yourself a pat on the back and the next one a pat on the butt.
Frankly, I was sceptical. 'It's too easy,' I said to the guys after reading Ms Steinem's column. 'There must be a catch.'
But we went through it again, and there isn't. If this is feminism, hey, let's have more of it!
Ah, but there is a catch. Because under the constitutional right to inequality before the law, your penis might have an "R" on it rather than a "D".
Creepy porn lawyer Michael Avenatti claims to have further evidence from the Eighties. Oh, my! Did Kavanaugh gate-crash an early Stormy shoot? Stormy Does Preppies? Seersuckers Gone Wild? Another day or two and it'll be: "Oh, did I say Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer assaulted me? I meant Brett Kavanaugh. Slip of the tongue. My bad."
Democrats are already using the second accuser to argue that it's totally unreasonable to expect the first accuser to testify this Thursday, if ever. This Kavanaugh guy spent the Eighties stalking Democrat women like a one-man Rotherham gang-rape posse. He's the Jimmy Savile of the DC Court of Appeals.
The Aussies and various of their Commonwealth cousins have the blunt expression "soft cock" for a weak-willed and indecisive man: There is a lot of that in the Judiciary Committee and throughout the "Republican Congress". So it requires a perverse kind of genius for a party of soft cocks to be damned as insatiable priapic beasts violating the maidenhood of the nation. One day in the very near future a Republican who has taken the precaution of never having any sexual contact with anyone ever will nevertheless find that's no obstacle to being America's most notorious serial rapist.
~A decade or so back I chanced to be with Lally Weymouth, daughter of The Washington Post's longtime proprietor Katharine Graham. And I mentioned that the following day I was off to the Middle East because I wanted to "take the pulse of the Arab Street". And Lally said breezily, as one who's in and out of palace drawing rooms every other week, "Oh, are you going to see King Abdullah? He's marvelous."
And I laughed involuntarily. But, in fact, this actual Washington Post headline, to Fareed Zakaria's column, is way funnier and blissfully un-self-aware:
I wanted to understand Europe's populism. So I talked to Bono.
Because Barbra Streisand was too busy explaining Brexit to NPR?
~On Friday I mentioned casually that the "close allies" that had asked President Trump not to declassify the various "Russia probe" docs were the United Kingdom and Australia. I was just winging it, but two days after Steyn The New York Times has now identified Britain as one of the foreign governments. They're urging Trump to reconsider because of "grave concerns" over "direct references to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher Steele."
Officially Christoper Steele is "ex-MI6". No one's really ex-MI6, but let that pass. Quite why HMG should be so concerned about a former employee now working for Fusion GPS is a mystery ...unless that's merely the tip of the iceberg. As I wrote back in the spring, in "Tinker, Tailor, Carter, Clapper, Downer, Halper, Spy":
The best way to turn nothing into something is to plant it somewhere far away and wait for it to work its way back to you:
'Britain's spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump's campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told.'
Golly, you don't say! I wonder who "told" The Guardian that. A conference here, a speech there, a cocktail round the corner, and pretty soon you have the simulacrum of 'counterintelligence' concerns from America's closest allies:
'According to one account, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, passed material in summer 2016 to the CIA chief, John Brennan. The matter was deemed so sensitive it was handled at "director level". After an initially slow start, Brennan used GCHQ information and intelligence from other partners to launch a major inter-agency investigation.'
Er, wait a minute. If it's 'so sensitive' it's being handled 'director-to-director', why isn't the head of GCHQ meeting with his opposite number at NSA? Why's he meeting with Brennan?
Hey, don't get hung up on details.
Mr Hannigan subsequently took sudden and "early" retirement. I regret that the President has succumbed to Theresa May's "grave concerns". This stuff should all be out in the open. The best justification for ordering the FBI to go chasing Brett Kavanaugh's penis through Eighties frat parties is that it would give the Deep State marginally less time to continue subverting the 2016 election.
~We had a busy weekend at SteynOnline starting with a brand new video edition of Mark's Mailbox. Our Saturday showbiz feature celebrated the life of the man who gave us the all-time greatest Carry On line and the plot of a global phenomenon. Our Sunday Song of the Week figured out how Romeo and Juliet, Captain Smith and Pocohontas, Beyoncé and Mrs Krabappel all got "Fever". But our big programming event was the continuation of The Mark Steyn Club's latest audio adventure - my serialization of John Buchan's classic and highly pertinent tale of great-power maneuvering and Islamic insurrection, Greenmantle. Click to hear me read Part Eight, Part Nine and Part Ten - or settle in for a good old binge-listen right from Part One here. If you were stricken by fever this weekend, we hope you'll want to check out one or two of the foregoing as a new week begins.
For more information on The Mark Steyn Club, see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership. Catch you on the telly tonight with Tucker live across America at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific - and just before that for Part Eleven of Greenmantle.