NCFM NOTE: Reporter James Taranto gets up close and personal discovering the naked truth about unwashed elitist feminists and their war on men. Now, as noted in Sex, Lies and the War on Men, “the rats are busying themselves to rob him of house and home,” and to have him “disciplined”.

Taranto rightly notes, “that is to say, they want a journalist to be punished for committing journalism–for accurately reporting the news and expressing an opinion contrary to feminist orthodoxy. It is a lovely example of the totalitarian mindset that is the core of contemporary feminism”.

Like a wooden spike to a vampire, the Wall Street Journal and reporter James Taranto continue to drive elitist feminists back into the dark with facts. In this episode of Feminist Fantasy and the Military Gone Wrong, Col. Andrew Williams defends Lt. General Susan Helms actions to grant clemency to a court-martial-ed officer for sexual assault, leaving little or no doubt about the correctness of her decision in the execution of her sworn duties as a commanding officer. Another nail in the coffin hammers home as Col. Williams risks his career by coming forward with the truth, something elitist feminists fear as much as facts.

This continuing drama and other recent events, like those at the University of Toronto, starkly reveal what elitist feminists dread, their hatred of anything connected to “the patriarchy” or being male; and, their ignorance about how the military justice system works. Worse, this series reveals how their disdain for one of their own, a woman — a highly decorated and accomplished Astronaut-General woman no less — for not adhering to their man-bad party line. The good general apparently erred when she did her job, upheld her sworn duties, and maintained gender impartiality, riling the feminist orthodoxy in the process.

Please go to the Wall Street Journal and support their effort to tell the truth. Taranto could use some support too. It’s not clear that he knows how dangerously spiteful and vindictive his opposition can become. I trust Col. Williams is near retirement since his military career is probably over for telling the truth. No matter, thank you both for standing up for what’s right.

Taranto says, the Ms. Foundation for Women, along with the Service Women’s Action Network, has started an online petition calling for him to be beaten with wet noodles and stoned into compliance by placard wielding students from Canadian women studies programs (see the video). They apparently avoided issues of facts and truth in favor of complaining about his correct “framing the campaign as a ‘war on men.'” We thinks they’re running out of gas and will soon go poof from to much sunlight…

Bottom Line:  What we have here is an angry elitist feminist mouthpiece (a.k.a. Sen. McCaskill) wrongly dropping the “glass ceiling” on a highly competent overachiever woman Lt. General Susan Helms. What women today have to fear is not the patriarchy but rather the matriarchy!  George Orwell was wrong when he warned about “Big Brother.”  What girls and women today should fear is “Big Sister,” who as Sen. McCaskill so ably demonstrates is far more vile and vindictive than any man could ever be. Be careful, they’re deadly in the dark.

Do any of McCaskill’s constituents have a solution for her?

Best of the Web Today: Meet Col. Williams

Gen. Helms’s legal adviser refutes a war-on-men propaganda point.

by JAMES TARANTO

One of the arguments supporters of Sen. Claire McCaskill have offered to defend her vendetta against Gen. Susan Helms is an appeal to authority–oddly enough, to a lower authority, which is to say a less-senior officer. As the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock put it in an outrageously one-sided news story earlier this month: “Court records show that Helms–who is not a judge and did not observe the trial–ignored a recommendation from her legal adviser to uphold the jury’s conviction.”

Meet Col. Andrew Williams, a judge advocate at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base. He was the legal adviser in question, and he would like to set the record straight. He asks that we include the disclaimer “that I am speaking in my personal capacity–not on behalf of the Air Force.” Here is his side of the story:

After James Taranto published his op-ed, ” General Helms and the Senator’s ‘Hold,’ ” he reported that a massive twit-storm had washed over him, since he infuriated hundreds of “feminists.” None of the comments, however, pointed to a single fact in the record of trial that Gen. Helms had overlooked. That confirms that Gen. Helms got it right.

Interspersed within the ad hominem attacks, a few persons also raised claims that deserve an answer: that Gen. Helms went against the advice of her lawyer, that she had no business exercising her “discretion” in a case like this one, and that she was not at the trial to see and hear the witnesses for herself. As the lawyer who advised Gen. Helms, I’d like to respond to them. But first I need to clarify a key difference between the military and the civilian justice systems.

Ever since it was adopted in 1775, the court-martial has been a tool for the commander. While the court-martial resembles a judicial proceeding, it is not part of the judicial branch of government. Whereas the jury’s verdict in civilian courts is considered final, the findings of a court-martial are not final until the commander approves them. By law, the commander must personally review the sentence before it can take legal effect. Congress provided for this review to safeguard against the occasional miscarriage of justice. The safeguard is needed, in part, because the military does not use juries.

A jury consists of 12 persons (in the federal system), randomly chosen from different walks of life, who must vote unanimously. The five-person court-martial panel that convicted Capt. Matthew Herrera was none of those things. The panel had features that, when found in a civilian jury, the Supreme Court is quick to condemn as unconstitutional. These features can diminish the quality of the deliberations, which can lead to unjust results. The Supreme Court has made clear that court-martial panels are not juries.

Now, to the advice I gave Gen. Helms. When I initially provided my written advice to her about the case, I had only looked for irregularities at the trial and assurance that the government had introduced some evidence to support the charged offense. My review involved traditional legal work. I did not independently assess the accused’s guilt or innocence. I was concerned solely with what we lawyers call the case’s legal sufficiency.

Gen. Helms’s review was for a very different purpose. She examined the case for its factual sufficiency. It was her statutory duty to do so. The fact that she was performing a statutory duty is important, because she has been unfairly criticized for exercising her “discretion” as if she had injected herself into a situation that was none of her business. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In performing her statutory duty, she carefully read all 1,054 pages of the record of trial. When she saw that the weight of the evidence supported Capt. Herrera and not the government on every material aspect of the case, she met with me repeatedly to express her concerns at what she was finding. After reviewing the entire record of trial, she was not satisfied that the government had met its burden of proving the charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Before Gen. Helms made her decision to set aside the conviction, I came to agree with her evaluation of the case. At that point my previous advice to her was irrelevant.

True, neither of us was present at trial. The dynamics of the courtroom, including the witnesses’ demeanors, could not be captured in the record of trial. But the nonverbals should not be given too much weight when they are not observed by a proper jury. It is here that the potential for error is at its greatest. Properly constituted juries can be trusted to make value judgments about witnesses; the same cannot always be said of court-martial panels, which is why Congress provided the safeguards it now threatens to take away. Gen. Helms exercised her independent, professional judgment in reviewing Capt. Herrera’s case. Her integrity–and the law–required she make the right decision as she saw it.

Perhaps some people do not know that the court-martial is a tool of the commander and not a regular court of law, or that the court-martial panel that convicted Capt. Herrera was not a jury. There are also other critical differences between military tribunals and civilian courts. All of these differences may explain why some have not understood General Helms’s actions. But members of Congress familiar with the case should know better.

Earlier this month Williams published a scholarly paper titled “Safeguarding the Commander’s Authority to Review the Findings of a Court-Martial,” available for download at SSRN.com. Gen. Helms’s memo, from which we quoted Tuesday, appears in full (with the accuser’s name redacted) as an appendix to the paper.

Meanwhile, the Ms. Foundation for Women, in cooperation with an outfit called the Service Women’s Action Network, has started an online petition “calling for the disciplining of” your humble columnist, whom they graciously describe as “prominent.” They find no fault with our account of the facts; they complain only of our “framing the campaign as a ‘war on men’ ” and of a few phrases they find neuralgic.

That is to say, they want a journalist to be punished for committing journalism–for accurately reporting the news and expressing an opinion contrary to feminist orthodoxy. It is a lovely example of the totalitarian mindset that is the core of contemporary feminism.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323393804578559583374805870.html

Not now just a war on men but a war on men in the military, the very ones who give life and limb to the same elitist feminists who in return make our soldiers’ lives more dangerous by ensuring false accusers of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse are rewarded rather than sanctioned.

Naked, this Empress with no cloths is nothing to see except for her indignant denial that she’s been exposed waging war on men.