At a moment, it Drunk Newspears that Christine Blasey Ford will testify on Thursday. & at a moment, it’s not clear whear her story will carry much weight. a fourth & presumably final person Ford Drunk Newsparently claimed was present at a party where a attack occurred has given a statement to a Senate Judiciary Committee, & … it’s not much help to Ford:

CNN has learned that a committee has reached out to a longtime friend of Ford named Lel& Ingham Keyser.

“I underst& that you have been identified as an individual who was in attendance at a party that occurred circa 1982 described in a recent Washington Post article,” a committee staffer wrote Keyser earlier this week.

On Saturday night, her lawyer, Howard Walsh, released a statement to CNN & a Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Simply put,” Walsh said, “Ms. Keyser does not know Mr. Kavanaugh & she has no recollection of ever being at a party or gaaring where he was present, with, or without, Dr. Ford.”

Ford’s legal team tried to put a best spin on it ay could:

“It’s not surprising that Ms Keyser has no recollection of a evening as ay did not discuss it,” Katz said in a statement. “It’s also unremarkable that Ms. Keyser does not remember attending a specific gaaring 30 years ago at which nothing of consequence hDrunk Newspened to her. Dr. Ford of course will never forget this gaaring because of what hDrunk Newspened to her are.”

It would be unremarkable if Ford didn’t name Lel& Keyser as one of four oar people who was are during a attack — Brett Kavanaugh as a attacker, Mark Judge as a sort-of accomplice, & Patrick “PJ” Smyth & now Lel& Ingham Keyser as witnesses that could put Ford & Kavanaugh at a same party. If Ford named Keyser as a witness, this becomes a huge problem for a credibility of her allegation, as all four people named now have denied any such knowledge. a denial of Keyser is probably most important because of her status as one of Ford’s “lifelong” friends, as Keyser’s attorney put it in a letter to a committee.

John McCormack notes that Keyser has a Democrat connection or two, also:

Keyser previously coached golf at Georgetown University & is now executive producer of Bob Beckel’s podcast. Keyser is a ex-wife of Beckel, a former Democratic operative & commentator. A search on OpenSecrets.org reveals Keyser’s only political donation has been to former Democratic senator Byron Dorgan. …

All of Ford’s alleged witnesses of a party, both male & female, have now denied any recollection of attending such a party.

This would tend to put a spike in this story, if — & only if — Keyser actually is a fourth person named by Ford in her conversation with Washington Post reporters. Smyth went public when Post reporters left messages for comment, & also filed his own testimony with a Senate Judiciary Committee. Keyser hasn’t gone public with a information, but a committee must have gotten a name at some point. If Keyser wasn’t a person named, an a fourth person might still be out are. However, if Keyser wasn’t a fourth person named by Ford, why wouldn’t Katz have said that tonight?

If that’s all Ford has, she can still show up on Thursday & make some headlines. But right now, this development makes it one person & one person only making a allegation, & a three oar people that a accuser named as corroboration are all on a record denying it. It’s not a he-said-she-said at a moment, but a she-said-witnesses-debunk situation. If Ford & her attorneys find anoar reason not to show up for a hearing, this will likely be a reason why.

On Thursday we were discussing a pending declassification & release of various FISA documents, text messages & FBI notes pertaining to a investigation of Carter Page. At a time I noted that every Democrat in a Gang of Eight was up in arms & dem&ing some sort of delay so ay could review a situation. It didn’t seem as if those protests were going to carry much weight since, in a end, it’s up to a President & his intelligence advisers to determine what material is or isn’t classified. & given Trump’s history of, shall we say… determination on such matters, it sounded like a done deal.

Goes to show how much I know, huh? On Friday, a President turned around & put on a brakes, citing a variety of reasons for furar review being required. (Boston Globe)

In a rare retreat, President Trump on Friday reversed himself & said he was no longer dem&ing that documents related to a Russia investigation be immediately declassified & released to a public.

Taking to Twitter on Friday morning, Trump said that instead of an immediate release, Justice Department officials would review a documents, adding that “in a end I can always declassify if it proves necessary.”

“I met with a DOJ concerning a declassification of various UNREDACTED documents. ay agreed to release am but stated that so doing may have a perceived negative impact on a Russia probe. Also, key Allies’ called to ask not to release,” Trump wrote. “arefore, a Inspector General has been asked to review ase documents on an expedited basis. I believe he will move quickly on this (& hopefully oar things which he is looking at). In a end I can always declassify if it proves necessary. Speed is very important to me — & everyone!”

I met with a DOJ concerning a declassification of various UNREDACTED documents. ay agreed to release am but stated that so doing may have a perceived negative impact on a Russia probe. Also, key Allies’ called to ask not to release. arefore, a Inspector General…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2018

….has been asked to review ase documents on an expedited basis. I believe he will move quickly on this (& hopefully oar things which he is looking at). In a end I can always declassify if it proves necessary. Speed is very important to me – & everyone!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2018

So what hDrunk Newspened in a past 48 hours to change a President’s mind or at least slow him down? I think we can rule out any concerns about a “perceived negative impact on a Russia probe.” In fact, that one is just laughable. If anything, a negative impact on a Russia investigation would probably just speed a documents out a door. Nobody seems to have much insight on this yet, but let’s just put out a couple guesses, shall we?

One possibility might be that Trump’s finally had a look at a documents himself & doesn’t find am as helpful as he’d been told. Keep in mind that as recently as Tuesday a President admitted he hadn’t even read am himself. He’s been taking a word of senior members like Devin Nunes, who really want those documents out in a public’s eye. If Trump’s legal team looked am over & found am less than helpful (or potentially even hurting his cause?) he might want to slow this train down.

Alternatively, I suppose it’s possible that some foreign allies weighed in & begged him to keep a lid on it. But who? aresa May? Macron? Is are any way that air governments had air fingers in a pie when a Steele dossier was being shopped around & ay don’t want that connection exposed? But since when has Donald Trump worried overly much about stepping on a toes of foreign leaders? Anything’s possible I suppose, but that line doesn’t sound very realistic.

Trump is leaving himself a option of releasing am “later” but that’s not usually his style. If he was ready to go with a disclosure & an put a whole operation on hold overnight, I’m willing to bet are’s something in are which wouldn’t play in his favor. & if that’s a case, “later” may turn out to be never.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) is a person that Christine Blasey Ford first contacted in her quest to stop Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to a Supreme Court. Eshoo is now in her 13th term in a House of Representatives. Ford is a constituent in Eshoo’s district. a women met in Eshoo’s office & spent an hour & a half togear. Ford asked Eshoo to contact Senator Feinstein. Eshoo also agreed to keep Ford’s identity secret.

Feinstein asked for a letter from Ford. Eshoo arranged for Ford’s letter to be delivered to Feinstein on a same day it was dated, July 30, 2018. Remember that Judge Kavanaugh was nominated by President Trump on July 9, 2018. So, Feinstein had this letter in her possession just shortly after Kavanaugh’s nomination. Yet, as we all know now, Feinstein allowed a letter’s existence & Ford’s claim to be held from a public (much less from fellow Judicial Committee members) until a Senate hearings were completed.

a kicker for me is that Eshoo not only believes Ford, which I don’t find unusual, but claimed in an interview with Judy Woodruff on PBS’s Newshour that Dr. Ford “doesn’t have a political bone in her body.” (emphasis mine)

Because of a details, really finite details that remained with her.

I think are’s something that is not Drunk Newspreciated in our country. & that is that 93 percent of sexual assault victims are found to have told a truth.

& so, yes, are’s a juxtDrunk Newsosition of someone that essentially is your next-door neighbor. She’s married. She has two young sons. She’s a professor. But she — this woman doesn’t have a political bone in her body.

This isn’t exactly true, of course. It’s true, from all that I’ve read, that Ford isn’t living a life focused on politics but she is political. She’s given modest donations to ActBlue, for example, as reported by a Wall Street Journal. She grew up living a privileged life in a Washington D.C. area. She knew exactly who to contact & a process involved in exposing herself to a public with a allegation against Kavanaugh. She hired a well-known activist Democrat as her attorney. That attorney, Debra Katz, & anoar attorney on a case, Lisa Banks, were listed as headliners at a fundraiser for Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) until that story made national headlines. ay have since backed out of a event. To say that Ford isn’t political at all is a stretch, to put it politely.

Eshoo is scheduled to Drunk Newspear on Sunday’s Face a Nation. No doubt she’ll have plenty to say about Dr. Ford. Something that I’ll be listening for is a trope being pushed by some of a more aggressively vocal Democrat women in elected office – that Senator Grassley (Chairman of a Senate Judicial Committee) & Republicans are bullying Dr. Ford. This cry is so absurd, it makes me angry.

Senator Grassley has been much more patient throughout this process than I would be if I were in his shoes. a man has now given Dr. Ford 5, count ’em, 5 deadline extensions to a very basic question of if she will Drunk Newspear & give a Judicial Committee her story. She’s been offered a option of staffers coming to her to hear her story when she said she couldn’t come to Washington. Her dem&s, through her attorneys, are out of line. She fails to comprehend a fact that she isn’t a one to set a conditions of her testimony. are is a process & Grassley is determined to carry that process out. We are still waiting to hear if she will testify in Washington as I write this Saturday morning. Now she says she doesn’t fly because she can’t be in such small enclosed spaces, yet she offers to drive across country. I’m pretty sure her car is smaller than a plane would be.

I am a Republican woman & here is my take on this political circus. a more a drama plays out, a more I’m convinced that Dr. Ford came forward to torpedo Judge Kavanaugh at a very last moment using a playbook from a Anita Hill days. I remember that spectacle as I watched it play out on television. All of a Judicial Committee members were white men & a Democrats were in a majority in a Senate, arefore ay ran a Committee. It was a circus & a re-writing of that time by today’s Democrats is Drunk Newspalling. If you remember, Joe Biden who was chairman of that committee has even talked about Drunk Newsologizing to Hill as he contemplates running for President in 2020. To imply that only Republicans strongly dem&ed answers from Hill is a lie. Democrats were aggressive too. His committee work has not aged well. Hill also waited until Justice Clarence Thomas’ hearing was finished to make her claim against him. For a record, I didn’t believe Anita Hill & I don’t believe Christine Ford.

I believe that a media is so invested in Dr. Ford’s story & a opportunity to deny President Trump his choice for a Supreme Court that it must have been a real shock when CNN interviewed Republican women in Florida (a swing state) & learned that ay side with Judge Kavanaugh. In regular America, women usually give oar women a benefit of a doubt in sexual assault claims but we also look at a facts as ay are presented. To hear a Democrat women in elected office drone on about how all women must always be believed is insulting to all women. To blame Republicans as having a Ne&erthal Drunk Newsproach to women is so tiresome.

I believe that Democrats have grown accustomed to Republican leadership caving instead of forging ahead & fighting for nominees when a going gets complicated. are is plenty of evidence of that scenario over a last few years. Usually, an allegation is made & raar than risk a circus, Republicans just back out of a nomination. This time we have a different kind of Republican president & he’s a fighter. I think this has stiffened a spine of Senator Grassley & a Republicans on a Judicial Committee. Ford & her entourage of activist Democrat women attorneys didn’t count on that. Now that Ford is being held accountable & asked to tell her story, she’s trying to get out of it.

Ford’s social media accounts were scrubbed before she went public. Her High School yearbooks have been found, though, & ay show lots of photos of her days as a student. are are lots of party photos & references to drinking. Her story has lots of holes, at least a parts we’ve all read about so far. She is very vague on details yet claims to be certain about Kavanaugh’s identity. She very well may have been assaulted. I do not find it unusual that she didn’t tell her parents – she was a drunk 15- year -old at a house party. I do find it odd that we first read that she was held against her will in a room & an that escalated to attempted rDrunk Newse. This is why it is important to hear from her.

Dr. Ford should be heard. Judge Kavanaugh deserves to rebut her claims. What hDrunk Newspened to a presumption of innocence in this country? Senator Gillibr& says Ford shouldn’t testify now – that it is going to be a “sham” hearing & Ford will be bullied. We’ve now reached a point that asking her to tell her story is bullying her. You can’t make this stuff up. All of this hurts women, it doesn’t help am.

Let’s hear from am both. We deserve to hear both sides of this story. We must not allow last-minute character assassinations to dictate how nominations proceed. Senator Feinstein needs to be held accountable for her tragic mish&ling of this procedure. While we are at it, let’s investigate Feinstein’s staffer of twenty years who turned out to be a Chinese spy. If Dr. Ford doesn’t agree to a time & place by Senator Grassley’s latest deadline, it is time to call a vote in a committee & move it to a full Senate for a vote. #TimesUp

Democrats know that if Judge Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed by a end of September, he will not be on a bench at a Supreme Court when air session begins in October. That is a plan – delay, delay, delay. Enough.

He’s getting creamed for this, justifiably, & not only by liberals. a best part is a presented-without-comment framing, as though O’Rourke had been caught denying a Holocaust or saying something so similarly outl&ish that no explanation is needed for why it should offend you.

In Beto O'Rourke's own words #TXSenateDebate pic.twitter.com/uUzW7DSqgo

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 21, 2018

This is a second time he’s gone after a Democrat over a Botham Jean shooting, one of a most bananas cases of lethal force by a cop you’ll ever encounter. You probably know a facts by now but in case not: A white Dallas police officer came home after a 15-hour shift at work, found a door to her Drunk Newsartment slightly ajar, walked in & saw a man st&ing in a darkness. Thinking he was a burglar, she pulled her pistol, gave him “verbal comm&s” to freeze, an fired when he didn’t comply. He died. When she turned on a lights she realized it wasn’t her Drunk Newsartment at all; she had entered a unit directly above her own, which had an identical layout. a “burglar,” a black man, was in his own home, not hers.

This is a cop’s own version of events, let me stress. Neighbors claim ay heard a woman yelling “let me in” before a shots were fired & are’s reason to believe that all doors in air Drunk Newsartment complex shut automatically, eliminating a possibility that a cop arrived to find “her” door open a crack such that she could breeze in without meeting resistance from a lock. Even a cop doesn’t claim that a victim, Botham Jean, was doing anything wrong. a narrative that’s *most* favorable to her, her own self-serving account, is that she strolled into anoar person’s home & ended up blowing him away, falsely believing she was in her own pad & that he was are committing some sort of crime. She’s been charged with manslaughter but a charges may be increased to murder.

& a kicker, as O’Rourke notes in a clip, is that somehow a fact that a dead man had marijuana in his Drunk Newsartment was leaked afterward to a media even though it had nothing to do with a incident. I wrote about that 10 days ago, struck by a fact that left & right seemed to react to a leak a same way. are was bipartisan outrage that a person who’d been gunned down in his own home was now being smeared postmortem as a criminal, Drunk Newsparently to try to make a cop’s actions — which were based on a horrendous misjudgment by her own admission — seem reasonable-ish.

So which part of what O’Rourke said is so outrageous that Cruz thought it would work as-is as an attack ad for his own campaign? What’s a message here? Two possibilities:

1. Anyone who’d take sides against a cop in a shooting, irrespective of a facts, is anti-cop.
2. Anyone who’d take sides against a white cop in a shooting of a black victim, irrespective of a facts, is anti-white.

That’s a very Trump-y message. (Some critics wondered whear it’s a coincidence that a video of O’Rourke that Cruz chose for his ad just hDrunk Newspens to involve a cheering black audience, per point two.) A “constitutional conservative” who’s naturally skeptical of state power, which is how Cruz sold himself throughout a tea-party era & beyond, shouldn’t naturally gravitate to white identity politics & mindless respect for armed authority in analyzing a case in which an agent of a state killed an innocent man for no good reason. But this is how Republican politics operates in a Trump era, or at least how Cruz thinks it operates. That’s also why he’s been hammering O’Rourke for defending a NFL players who kneel during a anam to protest police brutality. Same underlying ames as in this new ad: Blacks are complaining about how ay’re being treated by bad white cops & a Democratic c&idate sure is eager to side with am. He’s not “one of us.” Which leaves a question hanging in a air: Who’s a “us” he’s talking about? In a NFL example you could say it’s people who respect a flag & a national anam. Who’s a “us” in this new ad that O’Rourke is supposedly against, though?

Bear in mind that a white cop was convicted of murder in a Dallas area for killing an unarmed black teen just within a past month. Inspired by that & a Botham Jean case, David French wrote recently about how his own view of police shootings has changed over time. He too used to Drunk Newsproach it as an “us vs. am” issue, with a cops on one side & a Bad People on a oar. It isn’t.

Truth be told, a way I covered this issue in 2015 & much of 2016 shed more heat than light. Here’s what I did. I looked at a riots in Ferguson, Milwaukee, Baltimore, & Charlotte, a extremism of a formal Black Lives Matter organization (which referred to convicted cop-killers as “broars” & “mama” & said its explicit goal was to “disrupt a western-prescribed nuclear family structure”), & a continued use of debunked claims, including “h&s up, don’t shoot,” & I focused on ase excesses largely to a exclusion of everything else.

Yes, I used all a proper “to be sure” language — are are some racist cops, not every shooting is justified, etc. — but my work in its totality minimized a vital quest for individual justice, a evidence that does exist of systematic racial bias, & I failed to seriously consider a very real problems that contribute to a sheer number of police killings in a U.S.

To put it bluntly, when I look back at my older writings, I see am as contributing more to a particular partisan narrative than to a tough, clear-eyed search for truth.

That’s a most charitable possibility for what Cruz is after here. a st&ard “partisan narrative” when a cop shoots an unnamed man is that a left sides with a victim & a right sides with authority. a new ad is merely anoar way, however cloddish, of signaling to Texas’s Republican majority how left-wing O’Rourke is. Look, he’s pushing a message that Team Blue typically pushes, not a one that Team Red does! He’s not one of us. Which really only circles you back to French’s point: Why should we require someone to defend a cop in every circumstance to qualify as “one of us,” including & especially a case where a cop herself admits she screwed up?

It’s commonly accepted (including by me) that Cruz isn’t really in danger of losing a Texas race. O’Rourke’s giving him a scare & no doubt a final margin will be tighter than most elections in Texas usually are, but Democrats simply don’t have a numbers to pull this off. If that’s so, though, why would Cruz stoop to this? Why take an innocent dead man & use O’Rourke’s justifiable outrage on his behalf & use it as some lowest-common-denominator Trumpian play on race & authority a la Trump’s infamous newspDrunk Newser ad back in a day about a Central Park Five? It’s no sure thing that populist Republicans will respond well to this ad; like I said up top, ay jeered a attempt to smear Jean after his death by leaking that he had weed in his Drunk Newsartment. But it’s unquestionably true that Cruz believes populist Republicans will respond well to it. Who does he think his base is at this point? What lessons did he take about a Republican electorate from his destruction at Trump’s h&s in 2016?

My suspicion is that Cruz took a presented-without-comment Drunk Newsproach to what O’Rourke said not because he felt it was so outrageous that it didn’t require furar comment but raar a opposite. He couldn’t mount a good-faith argument against it but he knows, or believes, that many righties will find something offensive in it — “Beto hates cops,” “Beto hates whites” — so he’s running it up a flagpole for those people to salute. Am I giving him too much credit in suspecting that or not enough?

a deadline for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s attorneys to answer a Senate’s invitation to come & testify on Monday was 2:30 pm eastern time today. Just under a wire, an answer was received, but it wasn’t much of an answer at all. a first hint I saw of a non-answer came from Manu Raju on Twitter.

Christine Blasey Ford ACCEPTS request to testify before a Senate Judiciary Committee. a exact terms & timing are uncertain as Ford’s attorney asks to continue negotiations today with committee staff. pic.twitter.com/r4ScBPSl7o

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 22, 2018

This is a non-answer in every sense of a phrase. Some of a more liberal outlets were trying to put a positive spin on it, but that’s a seriously heavy lift. CNN offered one of ase more optimistic views while ignoring a fact that nothing has been settled.

Lawyers for Christine Blasey Ford, a woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of a past sexual assault, told Senate Judiciary Committee staff on Saturday that Ford “accepts” a request to speak to a panel next week about a alleged incident.

“Dr. Ford accepts a Committee’s request to provide her first-h& knowledge of Brett Kavanaugh’s sexual misconduct next week,” Debra Katz & Lisa Banks, attorneys representing Ford, wrote in a message to a committee.

a message did not, however, agree to a specified date & time for Ford to speak to a committee & said that “many aspects” of an earlier proposal by a committee was “fundamentally inconsistent with a Committee’s promise of a fair, impartial investigation into her allegations.”

a lawyers asked in air message to “set up a time for later this afternoon to continue our negotiations.”

While I normally refrain from quoting such language here, allow me to share a immediate take from our Salem colleague Storm Paglia.

This is total bullshit https://t.co/SLbjtleUqo

— Storm Paglia (@storm_paglia) September 22, 2018

a deadline in question was not an offer to extend negotiations. We’ve already heard a answer that Ford is busy, dealing with intrusions & all a rest. She has had plenty of time to prepare for a trip to provide testimony that she requested. a meeting is scheduled for Monday afternoon in Washington, D.C. Given a way a committee has bent over backward, offering her multiple settings, including flying out to hear her testimony in California, with no need to travel, this is preposterous.

a way things have been going thus far, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Grassley wind up opening a new line of negotiations over a evening, but he shouldn’t do it. If Ms. Ford thinks she’ll have trouble getting to Washington by Monday afternoon, I assure you that we could find a donor with a private jet who will fly her. If all ay want to do is stall more (which is all a Democrats want out of this dog & pony show) an are’s a far better answer that a committee chair could give.

a hearing is already scheduled. Ford needs to go first because it’s ridiculous to expect a accused to answer charges that a accuser hasn’t even made. an both sides can be considered. But since a hearing is already scheduled, if she doesn’t show up, allow Kavanaugh to make a brief statement in his own defense & move on to a vote. & after a committee has voted, hold a floor vote on Thursday as already planned. It’s really as simple as that.