Birds on the Brain

And while some liberals will never forgive him for failing to allow corroborating witnesses to affirm Anita Hill’s testimony in Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings — even as Ted Kennedy took a powder — it is Biden’s most important legislative accomplishment that deserves special mention here this week, just as a campaign into which the actual words “legitimate rape” have been introduced gets underway in earnest. Because it was Crazy Joe that held the hearings, collected the data, wrote the bill, made the case, tilted hard against the Bible thumpers who said that his proposed law “promoted divorce and… hatred of men” and passed into law 1994’s Violence Against Women Act. That law alone would signify a major career, and that law alone cleaves our political culture in two in a way that likely won’t be discussed this fall, so desperate are the Republicans to stay far away from having to explain the efforts by its vice presidential nominee to pass laws that redefine rape. Even as Republicans in uniform chorus excoriated Todd Akin for accidentally saying what many of them believe to be true, Joe Biden’s Violence Against Women Act — which currently requires reauthorization to remain on the books — remains stuck in Todd Akin and Paul Ryan’s House and is today in danger of extinction. Why is that the case? It could be that some people are less troubled by violence against women than others. And it could be because we are seeing the starkest dividing line between two opposing views of what government is for than we have seen in our lifetimes. It could be that this is the real culture war that Pat Buchanan could only have dreamed of. One thing seems crystal clear, though. If Senator Biden had held those hearings and written that bill today, it would not pass the radical House of Representatives.