By David French
Monday, November 27, 2017
Last month Nancy Pelosi took her star turn as House
Democratic Leader at an event unveiling the so-called Title IX Protection Act,
an effort to codify in federal statutes Obama-era guidance on adjudicating
sexual-assault cases in higher education. This Obama guidance famously resulted
in the creation of a national network of campus kangaroo courts that
systematically and comprehensively denied male students the most basic
due-process protections in the face of serious charges of misconduct.
Campus after campus — responding to the Obama
administration’s dictates — set up tribunals that denied male students access
to the evidence against them, denied them the opportunity to fully and fairly
cross-examine accusers, placed them in double jeopardy, and often created
definitions of “sexual assault” or “sexual misconduct” that were utterly at
odds with prevailing law. Dozens of federal judges from across the political
spectrum have ruled against these college processes, sometimes finding not only
that they strip accused students of their constitutional rights, but also that
they’re so biased that they potentially
represent a form of gender discrimination against male students.
With that in mind, watch Pelosi respond to NBC’s Chuck
Todd about the political fate of John Conyers, a long-serving and powerful
Democratic representative from Michigan. Three women have accused him of sexual
misconduct, two in formal complaints. The most recent filing came this year but
was voluntarily dismissed after a federal court denied the plaintiff’s request
to seal the case. Here’s Pelosi, responding:
WATCH: Rep. @NancyPelosi
(D-Calif.): Accused Congressman Conyers is an “icon” in our country. #MTP pic.twitter.com/qko01yRqXj
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress)
November 26, 2017
What are the first words out of her mouth? “We are
strengthened by due process.” What’s next? “John Conyers is an icon in our country.”
She expressed confidence that Conyers would “do the right thing.” Later that
day Conyers stepped down from serving as ranking member of the House Judiciary
Committee. He remains in Congress.
That sound you hear is the legion of non-iconic, vulnerable
college students (who at many schools are disproportionately black) wondering
why due process strengthens Congress but not the campus. In reality, however,
the hypocrisy is even deeper than you think. Members of Congress enjoy
due-process protections so extensive and so biased against accusers that if
they were applied to student accusers at college, they’d be considered a
civil-rights violation.
An accuser has 180 days to bring her complaint to
Congress’s Office of Compliance and then is subject to 30 days of mandatory
counseling. She then has 15 days to decide whether to mediate the case. If she
doesn’t mediate, the case is closed. If she does mediate, the member is
provided legal counsel at taxpayer expense while the accuser has to foot the
bill for her own lawyer. If mediation fails, the accuser then has 30 days to
file her lawsuit. It’s an extraordinary system, one that should shock the
conscience of American citizens who face completely different rules in their
own workplaces.
To be fair to Pelosi, she does favor reforms to
strengthen protections against harassment by members of Congress, but her
response still reminds us how politicians’ extraordinarily inflated sense of
importance insulates them from accountability or even from the most casual demands
of consistency. From Ted Kennedy to Bill Clinton to now John Conyers it appears
that the “icon” defense is alive and well. It’s a virtual mathematical formula,
power versus progressivism equals immunity plus praise.
Trump is mocked for claiming that he could shoot a man on
Fifth Avenue and not lose support from his base. Well, Kennedy proved he could
drown a woman in Massachusetts and still be one of the most beloved liberals in
the Senate. Bill Clinton got his “one free grope” and perhaps even one free
rape. John Conyers and Al Franken are less powerful but still progressive. Thus
they survive and soldier on when virtually any other “icon” in Hollywood, the
media, or corporate America would be long gone — especially now, in
post-Weinstein America.
Not to be outdone, the Alabama GOP establishment — with a
huge assist from President Trump — is applying its own version of the “icon
rule.” Power plus conservatism (or, more precisely, power plus liberal tears)
grants its own sort of immunity — one that applies not just to the GOP’s own
roguish POTUS but also to a man facing multiple credible claims of sexual
misconduct with teenage girls. Time and again both parties are propping up men
you wouldn’t hire to manage the local fast-food joint, much less run a
corporation of consequence.
None of this should be hard. Due process applies when the
government attempts to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property. Thus,
when the government initiates an effort to deprive a person of a liberty or
property interest (such as a college education), then the requirements of fair
notice and a fair hearing lock into place. When voters are weighing candidates
— or when politicians are deciding whether to publicly call for the resignation
of a colleague or the withdrawal of a candidate — then due process is
irrelevant. They make their judgment on a case-by-case basis weighing the
available evidence and information. Pelosi, by contrast, is seeking to strip
due process from young, non-iconic men when their liberty interests are at
stake while at the same time rigorously and wrongly applying due process to her
mere opinion about Conyers’s political fate.
At this moment our nation’s political establishment faces
a stern test. Can it apply to itself the same standards it punitively imposes
on the rest of America? Can it defend the Constitution while maintaining high
standards for personal conduct? Nancy Pelosi is failing her test. Will anyone
pass?
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