Quickies: Biter Bit Dept.

     According to Breitbart News, Hillary Clinton said the following in a promotional video:

     “You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed. We’re with you,” Clinton said in the video, which she addressed to “every survivor of sexual assault.”

     Leaving aside the ludicrous comparison of that statement with her husband’s several accusers, consider this: A right is a property that it’s moral to defend with force, including (if necessary) lethal force. Therefore, if Miss Smith, who alleges that she has been sexually assaulted, possesses “a right to be believed:”

• If I choose to disbelieve her, she has the right to use force to change my mind;
• Failing that, she can enlist helpers – most likely, policemen – to arrest me on the charge of violating her rights;
• If, upon indictment, trial, and conviction, I were to continue to assert my disbelief, my life would be forfeit for it.

     Mrs. Clinton was at one time a lawyer. Lawyers are supposed to be sensitive to the meanings and connotations of words. Somehow I don’t think she really means what she said – especially given her acceptance of Bill’s philandering, her dismissal of the accusations of Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Monica Lewinsky, and Juanita Broaddrick, and her defense, in 1975, of accused rapist Thomas Alfred Taylor:

     In 2008, during the height of her presidential primary campaign, Newsday published an in-depth story about Clinton's involvement with the trial. Newsday argued that Clinton's account in "Living History" left out "a significant aspect of her defense strategy - attempting to impugn the credibility of the victim." She reportedly sent an affidavit during the trial requesting the girl undergo a psychiatric examination at the university's clinic, and without offering any source, alleged that the victim had often sought older men. The case, Newsday claimed, "offers a glimpse into the way Clinton deals with crisis. Her approach, then and now, was to immerse herself in even unpleasant tasks with a will to win."

     My, my!