Olson, Barbara

<h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">=</h1><h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">3 barbs? killed 911
</h1><div>see Ted (dunn crutcher chevron donziger fuskery</div><div>see vast RW conspir</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div><img src="https://imgv2-1-f.scribdassets.com/img/word_document/380583665/original/216x287/bfac31785b/1684159344?v=1" alt="Hillary by David N. Bossie - Ebook | Scribd" /></div><div>
</div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div>=</div><div>omg</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/i-knew-brett-kavanaugh-during-his-years-republican-operative-don-ncna907391" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/i-knew-brett-kavanaugh-during-his-years-republican-operative-don-ncna907391</a></div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>I knew Brett Kavanaugh during his years as a Republican operative. Don't let him sit on the Supreme Court.</div><div>We were part of a close circle of cynical hard-right operatives being groomed for much bigger things.</div><div>
</div><div>Sept. 7, 2018, </div><div>By David Brock</div><div>I used to know Brett Kavanaugh pretty well. And, when I think of Brett now, in the midst of his hearings for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, all I can think of is the old "Aesop's Fables" adage: "A man is known by the company he keeps."</div><div>
</div><div>And that's why I want to tell any senator who cares about our democracy: Vote no.</div><div>
</div><div>Twenty years ago, when I was a conservative movement stalwart, I got to know Brett Kavanaugh both professionally and personally.</div><div>
</div><div>Brett Kavanaugh proves the Supreme Court swing vote is dead</div><div>SEPT. 4, 2018]</div><div>
</div><div>Brett actually makes a cameo appearance in my memoir of my time in the GOP, "Blinded By The Right." I describe him at a party full of zealous young conservatives gathered to watch President Bill Clinton's 1998 State of the Union address — just weeks after the story of his affair with a White House intern had broken. When the TV camera panned to Hillary Clinton, I saw Brett — at the time a key lieutenant of Ken Starr, the independent counsel investigating various Clinton scandals — mouth the word "bitch."</div><div>
</div><div>But there's a lot more to know about Kavanaugh than just his Pavlovian response to Hillary's image. Brett and I were part of a close circle of cold, cynical and ambitious hard-right operatives being groomed by GOP elders for much bigger roles in politics, government and media. And it’s those controversial associations that should give members of the Senate and the American public serious pause.</div><div>
</div><div>[Related OPINION</div><div>GOP's maneuvering during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings will seriously damage the Supreme Court's legitimacy]</div><div>
</div><div>Call it Kavanaugh's cabal: There was his colleague on the Starr investigation, Alex Azar, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Mark Paoletta is now chief counsel to Vice President Mike Pence; House anti-Clinton gumshoe Barbara Comstock is now a Republican member of Congress. Future Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson were there with Ann Coulter, now a best-selling author, and internet provocateur Matt Drudge.</div><div>
</div><div>At one time or another, each of them partied at my Georgetown townhouse amid much booze and a thick air of cigar smoke.</div><div>
</div><div>In a rough division of labor, Kavanaugh played the role of lawyer — one of the sharp young minds recruited by the Federalist Society to infiltrate the federal judiciary with true believers. Through that network, Kavanaugh was mentored by D.C. Appeals Court Judge Laurence Silberman, known among his colleagues for planting leaks in the press for partisan advantage.</div><div>
</div><div>[Related OPINION</div><div>Tom Steyer and Ron Fein: Stop Kavanaugh's confirmation until Mueller's investigation is done]</div><div>
</div><div>When, as I came to know, Kavanaugh took on the role of designated leaker to the press of sensitive information from Starr's operation, we all laughed that Larry had taught him well. (Of course, that sort of political opportunism by a prosecutor is at best unethical, if not illegal.)</div><div>
</div><div>Another compatriot was George Conway (now Kellyanne's husband), who led a secretive group of right-wing lawyers — we called them "the elves" — who worked behind the scenes directing the litigation team of Paula Jones, who had sued Clinton for sexual harassment. I knew then that information was flowing quietly from the Jones team via Conway to Starr's office — and also that Conway's go-to man was none other than Brett Kavanaugh.</div><div>
</div><div>[Recommended OPINION</div><div>What could be Florida Gov. DeSantis’ undoing on the national stage? HBCUs.</div><div>
</div><div>OPINION</div><div>Trump's election plot was eye-opening. And the Senate is finally paying attention.]</div><div>
</div><div>That critical flow of inside information allowed Starr, in effect, to set a perjury trap for Clinton, laying the foundation for a crazed national political crisis and an unjust impeachment over a consensual affair.</div><div>
</div><div>But the cabal's godfather was Ted Olson, the then-future solicitor general for George W. Bush and now a sainted figure of the GOP establishment (and of some liberals for his role in legalizing same-sex marriage). Olson had a largely hidden role as a consigliere to the "Arkansas Project" — a multi-million dollar dirt-digging operation on the Clintons, funded by the eccentric right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife and run through The American Spectator magazine, where I worked at the time.</div><div>
</div><div>Both Ted and Brett had what one could only be called an unhealthy obsession with the Clintons — especially Hillary. While Ted was pushing through the Arkansas Project conspiracy theories claiming that Clinton White House lawyer and Hillary friend Vincent Foster was murdered (he committed suicide), Brett was costing taxpayers millions by pedaling the same garbage at Starr's office.</div><div>
</div><div>A detailed analysis of Kavanaugh's own notes from the Starr Investigation reveals he was cherry-picking random bits of information from the Starr investigation — as well as the multiple previous investigations — attempting vainly to legitimize wild right-wing conspiracies. For years he chased down each one of them without regard to the emotional cost to Foster’s family and friends, or even common decency.</div><div>
</div><div>[Related OPINION</div><div>Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination is the result of years of unopposed conservative organizing]</div><div>
</div><div>Kavanaugh was not a dispassionate finder of fact but rather an engineer of a political smear campaign. And after decades of that, he expects people to believe he's changed his stripes.</div><div>
</div><div>Like millions of Americans this week, I tuned into Kavanaugh's hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee with great interest. In his opening statement and subsequent testimony, Kavanaugh presented himself as a "neutral and impartial arbiter" of the law. Judges, he said, were not players but akin to umpires — objectively calling balls and strikes. Again and again, he stressed his "independence" from partisan political influences.</div><div>
</div><div>But I don't need to see any documents to tell you who Kavanaugh is — because I've known him for years. And I'll leave it to all the lawyers to parse Kavanaugh's views on everything from privacy rights to gun rights. But I can promise you that any pretense of simply being a fair arbiter of the constitutionality of any policy regardless of politics is simply a pretense. He made up his mind nearly a generation ago — and, if he's confirmed, he'll have nearly two generations to impose it upon the rest of us.</div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div><div>=<div><a href="https://truthout.org/articles/the-not-so-independent-women-s-forum-was-born-in-defense-of-clarence-thomas-and-the-far-right/">https://truthout.org/articles/the-not-so-independent-women-s-forum-was-born-in-defense-of-clarence-thomas-and-the-far-right/</a></div><div>
</div><div>hBO’s new film on demand, <a href="https://www.hbo.com/movies/confirmation" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">Confirmation</a>, revisits the painful battle over the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court in spite of the testimony of Anita Hill that he sexually harassed her.</div>Some pundits have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/arts/television/hbos-confirmation-revisits-anita-hill-clarence-thomas-and-drama-in-the-senate.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">attempted</a> to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llfrAg207KU" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">disparage</a> the film, even though it has several scenes that portray Thomas and his wife Ginny as quiet, sympathetic figures and not as the outspoken right-wing political activists that they were and are.One of the harshest critics of the film is a group that calls itself the “Independent Women’s Forum” (IWF).<div>IWF is hardly independent though, despite its name.</div>It is deeply imbedded in the right-wing political infrastructure.In fact, IWF began as part of the coordinated effort to get Thomas confirmed so he could advance the right-wing’s legal agenda on the courts, in the face of deep fears by many that he would limit individual rights as a judge—fears later validated by his rulings and extreme dissents as a Justice.As Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson wrote in their book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Justice-Selling-Clarence-Thomas/dp/0395633184" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">Strange Justice</a>: “the falsehoods and distortions involved in the selling of Clarence Thomas to the American people neither started nor ended with the treatment of Anita Hill’s accusations. From the beginning, the placement of Thomas on the high court was seen as a political end justifying almost any means.”Central to the efforts to get Thomas confirmed were not only the attacks on Hill by GOP Senators but also <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?21511-1/thomas-confirmation-hearing-reaction" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">press</a> <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?19896-1/support-judge-thomas-nomination" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">outreach</a> used to discredit her that was orchestrated by a small group of powerful right-wing women.That confirmation battle put one of the most reactionary judges in modern history on the Court, and it also led to the creation of IWF, an ultra reactionary women’s group opposing women’s rights in numerous ways.IWF’s creators defended Thomas, despite the detailed evidence against him, and the organization they founded has defended him and continued to attack Hill since 1991.The Thomas hearings also led to a backlash from voters to a US Senate that had 98 men and only two women as Senators.In spite of a temporary majority supporting the confirmation of Thomas based on the incomplete information provided in the Senate hearings, American voters resoundingly rejected the idea of an all-white male Senate Judiciary Committee examining a woman’s testimony about sexual harassment.The 1992 election that followed swept out President George H.W. Bush and swept in four women as new Senators and more women in other offices, making that election “the Year of the Woman.”Today, 20 US Senators are women; and IWF leaders and alums have regularly attacked the most powerful woman elected Senator since the Thomas hearings, Hillary Clinton.IWF — which has had close ties to the billionaire Koch Brothers, before they were infamous, and to other rightwing donors — has used its well-funded platform to secure numerous press appearances without much scrutiny of its record and sometimes because of its reactionary positions.That’s in part because media outlets have defaulted to point-counterpoint “reporting” that gives equal weight both to facts IWF opposes and to outlier claims that are IWF’s stock in trade.Part of the playbook was set as IWF came into being, as its founders deployed women in the press to counter a fellow woman whose testimony threatened their political agenda and ally.Much of that claim boiled down to denying her experience as inauthentic and deceitful because Thomas had not sexually harassed them. It was a brutally effective tactic.This is the story of IWF’s roots.IWF: Born to Give a Woman’s Voice to Defending Clarence ThomasOn June 28, 1991, the first black man to serve on the US Supreme Court, Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall — an icon to the civil rights community — announced his retirement.Ten days later, President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, a 43-year old African American judge who had a controversial tenure as President Reagan’s Chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where he challenged core ideas about equal economic opportunity for women, such as equal pay and comparable worth.Although it was only 16 months before the next presidential election and even though the choice of a young right-winger like Thomas to fill the beloved Justice Marshall’s seat was a lightening rod for controversy, the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled hearings on his nomination for September.As the controversy over Thomas’ nomination grew, a small group of right-wing women began meeting for lunch to discuss the nomination at the offices of Ted Olson in the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.One of the women at those lunch meetings was Barbara Kay Bracher, a lawyer who married Olson in 1996.Following the Thomas confirmation, she would go on to staff investigations of the Clinton Administration as a congressional aide and to write a diatribe called “Hell to Pay: the Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” which was published by the right-wing bookseller Regnery shortly before Olson perished on a plane in the 9/11 attacks on her way to a taping for Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” TV show.(Ted Olson became famous for taking the Bush v. Gore case to the US Supreme Court, where Justice Clarence Thomas sided with him and four other GOP Justices in stopping the Florida recount in 2000, making Republican George W. Bush president despite Democrat Al Gore winning the popular vote. Bush then named Ted Olson Solicitor General of the United States.)The driving force at those pro-Thomas strategy sessions in Olson’s office back in 1991 was Rosalie “Ricky” Silberman, who had worked with Thomas as Vice-Chair of the EEOC and was one of his confidantes.Before that, Silberman had worked as the press secretary for GOP Senator Bob Packwood, who later resigned in 1995 in the wake allegations that he harassed and assaulted numerous women he worked with.(Ricky Silberman was also married to Thomas’ mentor from Thomas’ brief time as a judge on the DC Circuit: Judge Laurence Silberman, a very political judge who among other things later tried to clear George W. Bush of culpability for lying about Iraq’s weapons and was later given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by Bush.)The third major figure in these lunches was Anita K. Blair, who was a lawyer who became General Counsel for IWF. President George W. Bush made her Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and in 2011 she was hired as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department on human resources in the Obama Administration.In the later 1990s during the Republican effort to impeach Democratic President Bill Clinton, Blair <a href="https://www.iwf.org/news/2432467/Playing-Trivia-with-Sexual-Harassment/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">claimed</a> on behalf of IWF that:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2rem 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3rem; border-left: 0.5rem solid rgb(159, 161, 164); line-height: 2;">“nothing ever did more to trivialize sexual harassment than the sorry spectacle surrounding Anita Hill … Given prime-time exposure on national television Hill told a bizarre, uncorroborated story about Thomas, her boss at two federal agencies. Hearing her belated complaints about off-color jokes allegedly told about 10 years before, millions of Americans wondered, ‘What on earth does this have to do with sexual harassment?’ Americans learned the answer from Hill and her supporters: ‘Sexual harassment isn’t about sex, it’s about power.’ The Anita Hill spectacle wasn’t about sexual harassment; it was about the exercise of pure partisan political power. The media circus surrounding Hill and Thomas was produced and directed by liberal operatives, including fifth-columnists like NPR’s Nina Totenberg.” [jewish?]</blockquote>Those three right-wing politicos—Silberman, Olson, and Blair—formed an ad hoc committee called “Women for Judge Thomas,” which ultimately became a non-profit group dubbed the “Independent Women’s Forum.”The Clarence Thomas Nomination Begins and IWF’s Founders Step ForwardBut even before Anita Hill was in the picture — discovered by Senate Judiciary Committee staffers vetting the Bush nominee — allies of Thomas knew his controversial record as President Reagan’s chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) could play poorly with many women and others concerned about equality.The Women for Judge Thomas committee began holding press conferences the month President Bush announced Thomas’ nomination to a lifetime position on the Court in July.Thomas was in his early 40s and had never argued a case before the US Supreme Court, and he had only had 16 months of experience as a sitting judge on any court.His selection was considered a tactical masterstroke by C. Boyden Gray, President Bush’s White House Counsel, who had been criticized for letting the first vacancy in Bush’s term go to New Hampshire Justice David Souter, who was considered by the far right to be not “conservative” or activist enough to deliver judicial votes to change the law in the ways they wanted.By putting forward an African American with right-wing bona fides, at Gray’s urging the Bush White House sought to mute Democratic objections for fear of offending a major constituency over fighting a nominee with a rags-to-riches life story.(Gray is the grandson and also the nephew of three presidents of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. After President George H.W. Bush lost his bid for another term in the 1992 “Year of the Woman” election, Gray became chairman of David Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy, which would later officially join forces with IWF.)But Thomas’ limited judicial experience and the hearings on his nomination deepened concerns of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.As the New York Times reported: “‘Judge Thomas lacks the experience and qualifications that a Supreme Court Justice ought to have,’ said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. ‘He fled from his record and he refused to answer legitimate questions.'”Leahy also noted: “‘Nothing in Judge Thomas’s record or testimony suggests the level of professional distinction or constitutional grounding appropriate for a Supreme Court nominee. His legal and judicial experiences are limited. His speeches and writings have shown little in the way of analysis or scholarship.'”So, when his nomination was considered, the Committee deadlocked 7-7 on his nomination but then voted to send the nomination to the full Senate for a vote without a recommendation for or against confirmation. Although the Democrats had a 57-43 majority, a number of Southern Democrats had already pledged to vote for Thomas to be confirmed.Hill Comes Forward and IWF’s Founders Step Up to Counter Her in the PressBefore the Senate vote could be held, however, National Public Radio’s Nina Totenberg broke the story that the Senate investigation had uncovered allegations that Thomas had made unwanted advances toward some of his subordinates in his leadership positions in the Reagan Administration.Totenberg received a tip that Professor Anita Hill, a conservative black law professor, had told the Senate that Thomas had made sexual comments to her when he was her supervisor when they both worked for the Reagan Administration.This shocking development increased the volume of concern about confirming Thomas to a lifetime job on the highest court in the land, and the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled another round of hearings to examine the allegations.Under the guidance of Ricky Silberman, the Women for Judge Thomas Committee identified women who worked with Thomas who said they had not been sexually harassed by him and that he had behaved professionally toward them.Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigators—including a Democrat named Ricki Seidman—identified another staffer who said she had been subject to sexual advances in the workplace by Thomas and also interviewed colleagues of Professor Hill, whom she confided in about the inappropriate things she said Thomas said.As Steve Kornacki noted in <a href="https://www.salon.com/2010/10/27/anita_hill_clarence_thomas/" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">Salon</a>:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2rem 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3rem; border-left: 0.5rem solid rgb(159, 161, 164); line-height: 2;">“Three Hill friends — Susan Hoerchner, Ellen Wells and John Carr — testified under oath that she had told them about Thomas’ conduct as it happened between 1981 and 1983. ‘Anita said that Clarence Thomas had repeatedly asked her out … that he wouldn’t seem to take ‘no’ for an answer,’ Hoerchner told senators. ‘The thing Anita told me that struck me particularly and that I remember almost verbatim was that Mr. Thomas had said to her, “You know, if you had witnesses, you’d have a perfect case against me.”‘”</blockquote>On October 11, 1991, in nationally televised hearings, Hill testified in detail about things Thomas had said to her when she worked for him. While many observers were shocked by the graphic details, the Republicans on the Committee and other Thomas proxies strongly attacked Hill’s character and her decision to continue working for Thomas rather than file a legal complaint, despite her concerns that doing so would destroy her career and her future.Hill had explained on NPR that her decision to testify was a difficult one, and was made on moral grounds because Thomas, as Chair of the EEOC, the agency that enforces federal workplace discrimination laws, had been “in charge of protecting rights of women and other groups in the workplace” but instead was “using his position of power for personal gain.”Simply put, by sexually harassing her as she described, Thomas was alleged to be engaging in the kind of workplace discrimination that his agency was tasked with stopping.Many women believed that such behavior demonstrated that Thomas was unfit for a position of power and a lifetime position on the nation’s highest court.But the Senate’s hearing about her allegations morphed into an inquisition of her, much like how criminal defense attorneys attempt to discredit rape victims in order to prevent the conviction of their clients.What people saw on TV was an all-white Senate Judiciary Committee filled with several men who impugned Hill’s character, doubted her intelligence, and attacked her motives — despite her conservative credentials — instead of treating her with respect and giving any credit to her eye-witness accounts of Thomas’ behavior. The attack on Hill was led by Republican Senators Arlen Specter, Orrin Hatch, and Alan Simpson on the Committee, and by Missouri’s John Danforth, Thomas’ champion in the Senate.More than 20 million American households tuned in to watch Hill testify at hearings chaired by then-Senator Joe Biden, who is now Vice President.As Politico noted last fall when Vice President Biden was considering running for president: “Biden’s done a lot over the past 24 years, including authoring the landmark Violence Against Women Act … But that hasn’t erased the memories of how Biden presided over those hearings … blamed for doing little to stop the attacks on Hill.”He has also been criticized for opting not to call Angela Wright, an African American who worked in the press office at the EEOC, whose testimony would have echoed Hill’s charges of sexual harassment.Wright had “detailed a pattern of harassing behavior, including an instance in which Thomas asked her what her bra size was.” Wright had also told her colleague, Rose Jourdain, at the time that Thomas made comments about “her figure, her body, her breasts, her legs, how she looked in certain suits and dresses.”Wright’s statement was allowed to go into the official hearing record but she was not allowed to testify to help rebut Thomas’ denial.In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, another Thomas aide “Sukari Hardnett wrote that many black women at the agency felt they were ‘an object of special interest’ to their boss. ‘If you were young, black, female and reasonably attractive,’ her letter read, ‘you knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as a female,'” as noted by Kornacke.But the Senate and the country did not get to hear from these women.When Mayer and Abrahamson conducted a full investigation for their book, rather than the rushed examination that occurred in the Senate, they also discovered that classmates of Thomas reported:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 2rem 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 3rem; border-left: 0.5rem solid rgb(159, 161, 164); line-height: 2; background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248);">“that he often recounted sexually explicit films in lurid detail. Kaye Savage, a former colleague, reports that the walls of his bachelor apartment were covered with Playboy nude centerfolds. The owner of a video store near the EEOC [called Graffiti] said Thomas was a regular customer for pornographic movies.”</blockquote>This evidence would have corroborated Hill's testimony and refuted Thomas’ denial, but none of this was part of the Senate’s hearings.Years later, another woman “Lillian McEwen, who had dated Thomas in the 1980s and who was promoted by Thomas backers as something of an alibi during his confirmation hearings, spoke publicly about her relationship with him for the first time [in 2010]. Now retired, McEwen said that ‘Hill’s allegations that Thomas had pressed her for dates and made lurid sexual references rang familiar,’ as the [Washington] Post put it—as detailed by Kornacke in Salon.Kornacke added: “McEwen said that Thomas had been ‘obsessed with porn’ and ‘would talk about what he had seen in magazines and films, if there was something worth noting.’ She also said that Thomas would tell her about the women he worked with — even commenting to her about one’s bra size. ‘He was always actively watching the women he worked with to see if they could be potential partners,’ McEwen told the Post. ‘It was a hobby of his.'”That information was not known to the Senate at the time Clarence Thomas’ nomination was being considered, but none of that has changed IWF’s line of attack against Hill.Thomas Fires BackIn response to Hill’s testimony, Thomas attacked the Senate for what he flamboyantly described as a “high-tech lynching” of an “uppity” black man who dared to be conservative.He used the televised broadcast of the hearings to portray the Senate’s consideration of Hill’s allegations against him as racist and as promoting racial stereotypes—even though his accuser was also a conservative African American.GOP senators like Arlen Specter were given wide leeway to attack Hill with incredibly derogatory and personal claims such as suggesting she had “fantasies about sexual interest in her” and that she “was having a problem being rejected by men she was attracted to.”Hill took and passed a lie detector test, but Republican Senators smeared her further claiming she passed because she believed her “fantasies” about Thomas pursuing her.Many women were disgusted by the way the Senate treated Hill and by the words and actions of Thomas, but not Silberman and her committee of Women for Judge Thomas, which held press conferences and other outreach buttressing the Republican attacks on Hill.The IWF predecessor did so by pressing the claim that because he had not harassed the women they assembled he could not have harassed Hill and by arguing that she had “other” motives, which fueled the right-wing narrative that she had made up the allegations supposedly because she wanted to be with Thomas.Meanwhile, the Judiciary Committee hearings ended by effectively giving Clarence Thomas the last word, as Hill did not testify again to rebut Thomas’ denial of her allegations.Thomas Was Confirmed in One of the Closest Votes in HistoryGiven how forcefully the GOP Senators sought to discredit Hill and the deployment of women in defense of Thomas, perhaps it should come as no surprise that the public remained divided over Thomas’ confirmation. Several <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/15/us/the-thomas-nomination-most-in-national-survey-say-judge-is-the-more-believable.html/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">polls</a> indicated that a majority favored his confirmation, while the remainder were split between opposing and being undecided.In a contest of he-said-she-said, it appeared that a majority of those polled believed Thomas, who had so evocatively taken umbrage at the allegations against him. Having other women, like Ricky Silberman, defend him certainly helped his case.And, at the same time, the public was denied the chance to hear from another woman willing to testify that she had also been sexually harassed by Thomas.Also lost in the hot-button national conversation was the message that no one is entitled to a lifelong job on the US Supreme Court.So, on October 15, 1991, the Senate handed Thomas a lifetime job on the Court, with narrow 52-48 vote (with 11 Democrats joining 41 Republicans and 2 Republicans — Senator Jeffords (R-VT) and Senator Packwood (R-OR) — joining the Democrats).Hill was home in Oklahoma, and Thomas, after he was confirmed for the lifetime post at the youthful age of 43, reportedly swore he would stay on the Court for 43 years to get his <a href="https://articles.baltimoresun.com/2001-07-01/news/0106300203_1_clarence-thomas-anita-hill-david-brock/" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">revenge</a> on his enemies.It was out of the ugliness of the Clarence Thomas nomination fight that the “Independent Women’s Forum” was born.IWF Continued to Fight Hill Even After Thomas Was ConfirmedIf the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee had sought to incapacitate Anita Hill with an array of punches at her reputation, Ricky Silberman seemed determined to throw the knockout blow.A year to the day after her senate testimony, Hill returned to Washington DC to recount her experience. At a conference at Georgetown Law, she spoke in academic terms while analyzing the structures that had colluded against her, and received a standing ovation for her bravery.Across the city on that same day, Ricky Silberman held a counter-conference at the Federalist Society.Speaking to that audience, Silberman accused Hill of being a liar, labeled the assembled group of academics at Georgetown “the extreminists,” and proclaimed that Hill’s “unsubstantiated charge of sexual harassment launched the mother of all gender wars.”Later that year, in 1992, Silberman formally founded IWF with Barbara Bracher (Olson), Anita Blair and Lynn Cheney to fight that so-called “gender war.”However neither Silberman nor IWF would let the Anita Hill testimony rest.In 1993, David Brock published the book “The Real Anita Hill,” an alleged investigation into the “true motives” of Hill’s testimony.Silberman helped Brock edit, assemble, and advertise the book, which by all accounts was an orchestrated hit piece.Brock, who had repeatedly referred to Hill in the media as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty,” would later apologize for his actions, and label himself as a “witting cog in the Republican sleaze machine.” (Brock has disavowed his past as a political hit man for the right-wing and now leads groups challenging the right-wing and is also now aligned with Hillary Clinton.)Silberman, who passed away in 2007, never apologized. The IWF tribute to her included a tribute from her memorial by Clarence Thomas.Beyond Attacking Anita Hill, IWF Routinely Peddles Reactionary ClaimsAs <a href="https://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/04/clarence_thomas_female_supporters_in_the_iwf.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">documented</a> by Barbara Spindel in Slate, five years after Hill’s testimony, IWF ran a cover-story in its 1996 “Women’s Quarterly” magazine where Elizabeth Larson, an IWF staffer, speculated that women were “spurred on by Anita Hill’s example” and now found “it more profitable to litigate than to work.”In that article, Larson also suggested that women should simply “deal with” sexual harassment, a position the organization would advocate for in the 1990s time and again.As <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=t7ucdUw7iKQC&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq=" lee="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">detailed</a> by researcher Lee Cokorinos in his book, “The Assault on Diversity: An Organized Challenge to Racial and Gender Justice,” IWF received substantial financial underwriting by right-wing funders like the Scaife Foundation and the John M. Olin Foundation to focus many of its efforts on Silberman’s “gender war.”In the words of Anita Blair, who served as an IWF leader from 1992 until 2000, “it was in 1977 or 1978 that feminism should have declared victory and gone home… All that was needing to be done had been done.”In keeping with this fictitious worldview, IWF opposed a host of women equality initiatives throughout the 1990s using misleading data and taking some extreme positions:<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1rem 1.25rem; padding: 0px; list-style-position: outside; line-height: 2;"><li style="background-color: rgb(248, 248, 248); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">when lobbying against the Senator Biden’s “Violence Against Women Act,” IWF claimed “wives instigate violence, including severe violence, against husbands more often than husbands do against wives.”</li><li style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">IWF argued that gender integration of the Virginia Military Institute would cripple national defense,</li><li style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">IWF asserted that the problem of sexual assault on college campuses was overblown, since it is “inherently incredible” that female college students “are unable to report assaults to authorities,”</li><li style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">and much more, including assailing key Title IX protections for female athletes.</li></ul>Like every GOP-aligned group in the 1990s, IWF also supported efforts to impeach President Clinton, reaching out to Kenneth Starr for legal assistance as early as 1994. Barbara Olson and other IWF-ers helped carry the torch against Bill and Hillary Clinton.IWF also provided Republicans in Congress with women’s voices to testify against affirmative action, social safety net programs, and gun violence mitigation measures.As a whole, IWF was focused on combatting a caricature of what it described as “radical feminism.” [strict fr vs nurture mo?]Over the past 25 years since the Clarence Thomas hearings, IWF has given a female face and voice to opposing almost every mainstream and common sense protection for equality that’s been advanced — opposing equal pay, paid sick leave, increasing the minimum wage, and protecting women’s reproductive privacy and freedom, and much more — many of which Thomas has also sought to weaken or strike down from the Supreme Court.Over the years, IWF has not lost its interest in attacking Hill, even though its latest spin is about its supposedly “family-friendly” policies that put Wall Street in the driver’s seat and would take away responsibilities from employers regarding maternity leave, despite overwhelming business <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13072/chamber-commerce" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">support</a> for expanding employer-paid maternity and family leave, as the Center for Media and Democracy recently <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13074/luntz-poll-american-ceos-shows-deep-support-progressive-policies" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">documented</a> in a story broken by Lydia DiPillis in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/04/leaked-documents-show-strong-business-support-for-raising-the-minimum-wage/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; cursor: pointer;">The Washington Post</a>.IWF’s kind of outlier, free-market fundamentalist approach should come as no surprise since IWF and David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity have been close partners—even sharing space and leadership for a number of years—and because the Koch network of billionaires uses an array of vehicles to push an anti-government, anti-science, anti-worker agenda.But the claim that IWF is merely a “right-leaning think tank,” given its legacy and extreme positions, ignores the history of a group that began with efforts to discredit Anita Hill and that continues to traffic in denial and disdain, despite the evidence that has mounted against so many of its claims.<div>
</div><div>=</div></div><div><div>=<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB861917340688900500" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB861917340688900500</a>
clinton jihad:
<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">no lnx<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">By Edward Felsenthal and David Rogers Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">April 25, 1997 <p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">WASHINGTON -- Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had to force herself to be pleasant when she met Hillary Clinton for the first time four years ago.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Mrs. Clinton had been an outspoken supporter of Anita Hill, the woman who had famously accused Mr. Thomas of sexual harassment during his 1991 confirmation hearings. Ms. Thomas couldn't get the association out of her mind.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">"For me, it was, 'Wow, now I have to, in my role, be respectful and cordial and courteous,' " Ms. Thomas recalls thinking as she moved through a receiving line toward the new first lady. Although the brief encounter was awkward for her, Ms. Thomas says she was proud of how she handled it. She gave Mrs. Clinton some verses from the Bible, along with a warning about how tough this city can be.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Today Ms. Thomas feels a kinship with Mrs. Clinton. Like the first lady, she is best known as the spouse of a prominent man. But also like Mrs. Clinton, she has become a controversial political player and has been the subject of vigorous public criticism for her partisan activities.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Although she takes pains to carve out her own identity, Ms. Thomas, 40 years old, is inevitably linked with her husband in much of what she does. "A lot of people treat her a certain way ... because of who she is married to," says radio-host Armstrong Williams, a former close aide and a friend to Justice Thomas.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Awkward Predicament<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Ms. Thomas says there are challenges that come with "being a Supreme Court spouse, as opposed to just a lawyer working in Washington." Her dual role highlights an increasingly common political phenomenon: Now that many political partners are professionals themselves, they face an awkward predicament. Many find they have to struggle to avoid being used as political tools or being perceived as benefiting from their spouse's position.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-image="background-image" initial="initial" background-position="background-position" background-size="background-size" background-repeat="background-repeat" background-attachment="background-attachment" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Barbara Olson, an aide to the Senate leadership who has worked in congressional investigations of the Clinton administration, has been a target of Democratic sniping that she is a proxy for her husband, Theodore Olson, a prominent lawyer who has represented one of the president's accusers in the Whitewater affair. Republicans in the last Congress delighted in cutting money for a small anticrime program that paid consulting fees to Sylvia Panetta, wife of then-White House Chief-of-Staff Leon Panetta. That put Mr. Panetta in the uncomfortable position of having to fight to get the money back.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Ms. Thomas had already made a name for herself as an activist in conservative circles before Republicans took over Congress in 1994. But her influence grew after that election when her boss, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, became House majority leader.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Ms. Thomas operates much as an eager young administrative officer back at the base camp for the Republican infantry. She works behind the scenes, serving as part strategist and part cheerleader for the leadership's effort to beef-up the GOP's ability to investigate and oversee the White House and executive agencies.[benghazi much later?] <p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Partisan Battles<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">It is a role that takes her from dry, detailed General Accounting Office reports to the higher-profile and more partisan-edged investigations of administration scandals. She has assisted with the investigations of White House ethics, Whitewater, the firing of the White House travel staff, and the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's financial dealings. When Republicans approved an expanded budget for House committee investigations last month, the move partly reflected Ms. Thomas's influence.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">She has figured in several high-profile fights involving the House Appropriations Committee. Over the objections of some Republicans on the committee, she pressed hard for deep cuts in funding to Legal Services Corp., a provider of legal aid to the poor that she viewed as using federal money to advance liberal causes.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">And in a stormy panel meeting in 1995, she stood watch on behalf of Mr. Armey as Republicans reluctantly lined up behind a leadership attempt to bar funding for nonprofit organizations that engage in advocacy, in many cases for poor constituencies. The measure ultimately failed because of opposition in the Senate.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">During this Congress, Ms. Thomas has stepped back, as the leadership has relaxed its efforts to control committee chairmen. But she is still a force behind continuing investigations, and before last year's election she helped gather information on White House scandals for Republicans to use on the campaign trail. (That project was abandoned after word of its existence leaked, prompting concern that it would make Republicans look like scandalmongers.)<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">A memo this past January titled "Foreign Money Contributions Scandal" illustrates Ms. Thomas's style. Throwing as wide a net as possible, she addressed it to Republican staff on 19 committees, including the sensitive Intelligence panel. In it, she cited statutes or regulations that might have been violated by overseas contributions to Democrats. She urged staff directors to be "watchful" for administration efforts to dismiss problems as just "campaign finance." Ms. Thomas wrote, "what we don't know is how much was for sale in the Clinton presidency."<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Though Ms. Thomas is good-humored and engaging, her writing sometimes gets her into trouble. Much of her job is simply informational: She helps produce a biweekly "Oversight Bulletin" publicizing current investigations. But when she pens strategy, she betrays a partisan edge that makes experienced staff directors blanch.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">A case in point is an April 1996 memo she wrote for Republican congressmen Bob Walker and Jim Nussle and sent to House committees, asking for "examples of dishonesty or ethical lapses in the Clinton administration" and "anecdotes that amplify these areas." The memo requested that all such materials be sent to her as quickly as possible and reminded committee chairs that "you are a tremendous resource for this project."<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Democratic Backlash<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Democrats quickly turned Ms. Thomas's memo on the Republicans, claiming it proved that the investigations were partisan. During one hearing, Democrats blew up the memo and posted it on an easel to suggest that the proceeding was part of a GOP plot to denigrate the administration.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Even some Republican staff members complained that it went too far. "It didn't dawn on her that in Congress, things aren't supposed to appear politically driven," even if they are, says a senior GOP aide who has worked with her.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">In May, two weeks after the memo was distributed, Democratic Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia spotted Ms. Thomas in the audience at a hearing on the White House travel-office firings. In a rare public attack on a congressional staffer, he demanded to know why "Mrs. Clarence Thomas in that bright blue dress" was present. "I really smell a political witch hunt," he said.<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Ms. Thomas didn't endure the attack silently. Later that day, she confronted Mr. Moran on a House elevator and showed him a copy of a book, "Everything Men Know About Women," in which all the pages are blank. "This book is about you," she said. Justice Thomas later left his wife a voice-mail message in which he teasingly sang verses of the song, "Devil With a Blue Dress On."<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Spousal Conflict?<p times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" rgb="rgb" padding="padding" px="px" border="border" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" line-height="line-height" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" break-word="break-word" style="margin: 0px 0px 17px;">Democratic Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, who also questioned Ms. Thomas's role at the travel-office hearing, believes it is a conflict of interest for her to be involved in disputes between Congress and the White House that the Supreme Court might be called on to settle. "We may have a problem here where the marital relationship confuses the constitutional intent" of the separation of powers, Mr. Kanjorski says. Ms. Thomas laughs when told of Mr. Kanjorski's statement, but declines to comment....[much more]</div><div>=</div></div><div>==origin of IWF [trump, kavanaugh?] --> killed Roe
<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/04/clarence_thomas_female_supporters_in_the_iwf.html">http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/04/clarence_thomas_female_supporters_in_the_iwf.html</a>Confirmation Bias

How “Women for Judge Thomas” turned into a conservative powerhouse.
By Barbara Spindelclarence thomas anita hill.
Anita

Hill’s televised testimony that Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her

is credited for ushering in the Year of the Woman. But it also has

another, less visible legacy.

Right on the heels of FX’s The

People v. O.J. Simpson, the HBO film Confirmation offers another

opportunity to relive a depressing ’90s spectacle—in this case, Clarence

Thomas’ Supreme Court hearings. Anita Hill’s televised testimony that

Thomas sexually harassed her, and her poor treatment at the hands of the

all-male Senate Judiciary Committee, are often credited with raising

awareness of the issue of workplace sexual harassment and ushering in

the so-called Year of the Woman, the 1992 election of four women to the

Senate. (Confirmation premieres April 16 and stars Scandal’s Kerry

Washington as Hill and The Wire’s Wendell Pierce as Thomas.)

But

the Thomas hearings have another, less visible legacy. A small group of

prominent Washington women rallied around the nominee; they were headed

by the late Ricky Silberman, a friend of Thomas’ who, like Hill, had

worked with him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Calling

themselves Women for Judge Thomas, they pointedly demonstrated that not

all women, simply by virtue of their sex, were ready to don an “I

Believe Anita Hill” pin. This ad-hoc bunch—which included Anita Blair,

Barbara Ledeen, and the late Barbara Olson—went on to form the

Independent Women’s Forum, a D.C. nonprofit devoted to waging war on

mainstream feminism. 

Back

in the 1970s, Phyllis Schlafly and her allies had whipped up fears of

unisex public bathrooms and female military conscription in order to

help kill the Equal Rights Amendment. After that, groups such as

Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and Beverly LaHaye’s Concerned Women for America

railed against reproductive rights and gay rights and championed

traditional gender roles. But among conservative women’s groups, the IWF

was something new. If you squinted, its members—enterprising, educated

professionals—looked like they could belong to the National Organization

for Women. Instead, they had an extreme loathing for the feminist

movement. 

The IWF argued that second-wave feminism had solved

the problem of sex discrimination. In a 1997 interview with now-defunct

conservative magazine Insight, Blair, who was by then IWF president,

said that current feminists were “playing out their own Freudian drama

on the policy stage, saying, ‘Well, my first husband walked out on me,

or I never had dates in high school, so all men are bad.’ ” A 1997 IWF

press release called National Pay Inequity Awareness Day “a cruel hoax …

designed to brainwash girls and young women into believing that they

are victims.” The IWF’s Elizabeth Larson, in the organization’s Women’s

Quarterly magazine, called sexual harassment an issue drummed up by “a

growing number of women, many spurred on by Anita Hill’s example … [who]

find it more profitable to litigate than to work.” After the 1994

passage of the Violence Against Women Act—spearheaded by then-Sen. Joe

Biden in what was widely seen as atonement for his mishandling of the

Thomas hearings—the IWF argued that the legislation should be repealed

or receive zero funding; IWF spokeswoman (and ’90s right-wing It Girl)

Laura Ingraham referred to VAWA as feminist “pork” with a “tear-jerker”

title. The group also took on affirmative action, headlining a Women’s

Quarterly article on the topic “That’s No White Male, That’s My

Husband”—a phrase that revealed a lot about IWF constituents’ racial

identities and loyalties. (“You can’t have white guys saying you don’t

need affirmative action,” Ledeen told the Washington Post when asked why

the anti-feminist IWF had organized as women in the first place.)

[Laura Ingraham appears with Sen. George Allen at a fundraiser on Oct. 7, 2006, in Maidens, Virginia.

In

1995, NOW President Patricia Ireland, in a considerable understatement,

called it “a little startling” that the new and tiny conservative

upstart IWF, with fewer than 2,000 members, was garnering media coverage

to rival that of Ireland’s mass-membership organization. It surely

helped that stalwart right-wing donors including Richard Scaife and the

Koch brothers were funding the IWF, and that its well-connected roster

included former National Endowment for the Humanities chairwoman (and

wife of Dick Cheney) Lynne Cheney, Who Stole Feminism? author Christina

Hoff Sommers, neoconservative writer (and wife of Norman Podhoretz)

Midge Decter, and Wendy Lee Gramm and Mary Ellen Bork, married,

respectively, to Texas Sen. Phil Gramm and rejected Supreme Court

nominee Robert Bork. 

Hill was often dismissed as overreacting to a joke about a pubic hair on a Coke can.

While

much of the IWF’s campaign against feminism was waged in the media, the

group also took the fight to Capitol Hill; the IWF testified before

Congress against the Violence Against Women Act and affirmative action,

and filed amicus briefs opposing the enforcement of Title IX and the

coeducation of the Virginia Military Institute.
After the election of

George W. Bush, the IWF’s clout grew as its members received posts

within the new administration, among them Elaine Chao as labor

secretary, Diana Furchtgott-Roth as chief of staff of the White House

Council of Economic Advisers, and Blair as deputy assistant secretary of

the Navy. Most absurdly, two IWF members, then-president Nancy

Pfotenhauer and board member Margot Hill, were appointed to the

administration’s National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women.

Despite

engaging in serious business, the IWF’s spokeswomen never appeared to

take themselves too seriously; they loved to bait feminists but always

with a smile. Blair said, “There’s a telltale way to find a liberal

feminist: It’s the nasty wrinkles around her mouth that she gets from

frowning. You’ll probably find my side with laugh lines.” “We have no

angry agenda,” Grace Paine Terzian, then publisher of Women’s Quarterly,

told a journalist in 1995. When Wendy Kaminer wrote on right-wing

challenges to feminism in the American Prospect the following year, the

IWF’s Elizabeth Lurie responded in a letter to the editor that she had

found the piece “howlingly funny.” All of this forced cheer was intended

to highlight the contrast between the IWF’s anti-feminism and its

caricatured version of feminism, which, according to Hoff Sommers in a

1996 60 Minutes profile of the IWF, had come to mean “that you’re

chronically offended, that you’re looking for oppression and bias under

every tree.” 

Plenty of people still see Hill as fitting this

description, even 25 years after the Thomas hearings. Although she

accused Thomas of repeated graphic descriptions of pornographic films,

including scenes of rape and bestiality, and of detailed boasts about

his own sexual prowess, Hill was and is often dismissed as overreacting

to a joke about a pubic hair on a Coke can. Indeed, IWF managing

director Carrie Lukas recently described Hill’s allegations against

Thomas as “rather PG-rated.”

Of course, the IWF exists not

because its founders thought Hill was overreacting but because, as

friends of Thomas, they thought she was lying. In the years since—when

downplaying the existence and impact of sex discrimination and of

gender-based crimes such as harassment, rape, and domestic violence—the

IWF doesn’t suggest that all women are lying. The group has frequently

suggested, however, that women who speak out about these issues are

whining, and should stop playing the victim, and ought to pull

themselves up by their bootstraps. In that sense the IWF, whose current

mission is to “improve the lives of Americans by increasing the number

of women who value free markets and personal liberty,” has ties to

Thomas that are not merely personal but philosophical as well.

The

women of the IWF continue to stand by Clarence Thomas, and he by them.

After Silberman’s 2007 death, Thomas sat down with the group’s Michelle

Bernard and Charlotte Hays to talk about his friend for the IWF

newsletter. “Sometimes at IWF we are accused of being anti-women and

anti-feminist, because our mantra is that all issues are women’s

issues,” his interviewers noted. “I wouldn’t worry about that too much,”

Thomas responded, proceeding to describe his own experiences being

called “traitor” and “Uncle Tom.” “When I am criticized, I take it as a

compliment,” he said. “If I weren’t relevant, they wouldn’t talk about

me. Don’t worry about it. You just wish them good health and do it with a

smile.”
----whopper of wk
wish to apologize to President Clinton and his family for my insensitivity. My choice of words was very unfortunate. I did not intend to demean Virginia Kelley or her memory [italics Chatterbox’s] and I regret having done so.”

–Republican activist Barbara Olson, as quoted by Lloyd Grove in his July 31 “Reliable Sources” column in the Washington Post.

“Look at Bill Clinton’s mother, as opposed to George W.’s mother. Is your mother a barfly who gets used by men? [Italics Chatterbox’s.] Or is your mother a strong woman who demanded respect for her ideas and always received it?”

–The statement Olson was apologizing for, quoted approvingly by Toby Harnden in the July 25 London Telegraph and disapprovingly by Grove in his July 27 column.

Commentary: This is a superb example of the Insincere Apology. Barbara Olson said something deeply unkind (though fairly accurate) about Bill Clinton’s late mother in order to make a specious comparison between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The context in which she did so was an outburst of naked class snobbery. Olson had no option but retreat. But she couldn’t say, “I’m sorry that I said something gratuitously mean about Bill Clinton’s mother.” That would acknowledge previous malign intent and might damage the reputation of her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson. Instead, Olson took the common dodge of stating that her intent was misconstrued. She meant well; clumsily, she just chose words that failed to convey her true feelings. But of course, it simply isn’t possible that Olson meant well, since there is no nice way to say that someone is “a barfly who gets used by men.
=

wsoc hmmn: Barbara Olson was the lead counsel to the Government Oversight committee which investigated the "Filegate" and "Travelgate" affairs--both matters referred to Starr's office. Mrs. Olson recently discussed her relations with the Independent Counsel, revealing that the Olsons still socialize regularly with the Starrs, although they--of course not--never discuss the Clinton investigations.
=
<div>----who killed BO? you did, asshole when you gave stinger missles to proto-al queda<div class="post-date" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2rem 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">September 13, 2001</div><div class="the-content post-max-width" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 5rem; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; max-width: 960px;"><p class="report-fields italic" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6;" />Day before yesterday there were three Barbaras, close as sisters, joined by their zest for life, their volcanic passions, their total commitment to their loved ones, their fearless work for freedom. Barbara Olson, Barbara Comstock, Barbara Ledeen. All three chose to fight for their convictions.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6;">All three were singled out by the Left for slanderous attacks, dehumanizing slogans, the usual stereotypes. Had there been a feminist movement worthy of the name, they would have been its heroines; instead, because they rejected the fashionable causes, insisted on traditional virtue, fought limits on real choices, and relentlessly exposed the emptiness of the Leftist slogans, they became the feminists’ targets.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6;">Now there are two. And what a loss we have suffered. Barbara Olson was a life force, a protean woman who lived life as it is supposed to be lived, celebrating the good times to the full, enduring its worst moments with grim resolve, supporting her friends and allies at all times, taking the fight to her enemies with joyful enthusiasm. She had one of the quickest and finest minds in Washington. Married to one of the greatest attorneys of our time, she was the equal of anyone in legal and political debate. But above all, she was our Braveheart, leading us into battle with the cry of “Freeeeeedom,” carrying the flag of proud independence.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6;">Braveheart to the end, fighting to the last. She had the presence of mind and the force of will to call Ted from her doomed aircraft to ask, “What should I tell the pilot to do?” Unwilling to go quiet into the dark night she wanted marching orders, for herself and for the people around her. She would not cow in the rear of the plane and submit to the murderous instructions of her captors; she wanted to go down fighting.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6;">Perhaps she did. A person from the White House told me that there is reason to believe that plane/bomb was intended for the presidential residence, not the Pentagon, and that something happened to make it swerve suddenly. I like to think that at the last, Barbara charged the cabin, survived the knife thrusts of the monsters, and hurled herself at the kamikaze pilot, putting the plane into a loop toward Virginia.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6;">A great woman, a woman of immeasurable valor, who brought a singular light into our lives. To see Ted with her was to understand the power of an enduring love. He was so proud of her, so delighted by her, so totally overcome with her love for him, that he knew he was the luckiest of men.The death of such a person cannot be accepted, cannot be digested and must be avenged. Her killers are many, from the evil men on the plane to their supporters and Svengalis around the world, to all those among us who dehumanize their political opponents and thereby facilitate the transition from the politics of personal destruction to the physical destruction of their opponents. She was killed by a fraudulent and arrogant establishment that pretended it was capable of providing our people with good security [BUSH WAS GIVEN  REPORT?!] and our leaders with good intelligence. Why are they permitted to remain at their posts? And not least of all, she was killed by a corrupt elite that celebrates murder, provided that the killers hold the right views and slaughter those who are political lepers. “No Regrets for a Love of Explosives” babbles the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;">New York Times headline atop a disgraceful puff piece on Weathermen killers that appeared on the day of Barbara Olson’s murder.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6;">My America, the real America, abhors these people, as Barbara did and as the two surviving Barbaras do. And, in the course of our revenge against the physical killers, the state sponsors, the sources of the money, the dance masters in the streets of the Middle East who reveled in our misery, the leaders of the Hate America and Kill the Jews crowd, we must retain our capacity for righteous indignation against those among us who bear a heavy moral responsibility for it.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6;">If she were still here, Barbara would have led that charge. But there are plenty of us left.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" /><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6;">Michael A. Ledeen is a resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at AEI.</div></div><div>=</div></div><h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">===</h1><h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">wsoc hmmn: Barbara Olson was the lead counsel to the Government Oversight committee which investigated the "Filegate" and "Travelgate" affairs--both matters referred to Starr's office. Mrs. Olson recently discussed her relations with the Independent Counsel, revealing that the Olsons still socialize regularly with the Starrs, although they--of course not--never discuss the Clinton investigations.</h1>

<h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">Barbara Olson</h1>

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<table class="infobox biography vcard" style="width: 22em; text-align: left; line-height: 1.5em;" cellspacing="5"><tbody><tr><th colspan="2" class="" style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">Barbara Olson</th></tr><tr class=""><td colspan="2" class="" style=" text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Olson.barbara.jpg" class="image"><img src="/9037c5d5-a1cf-54e4-993d-5950675d01d8.jpg"/></a></td></tr><tr class=""><th scope="row" style=" text-align: left;">Born</th><td class="">Barbara Kay Bracher

December 27, 1955 (1955-12-27)

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston" title="Houston">Houston</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas" title="Texas">Texas</a></td></tr><tr class=""><th scope="row" style=" text-align: left;">Died</th><td class="">September 11, 2001(2001-09-11) (aged 45)

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington,_Virginia" title="Arlington, Virginia" class="mw-redirect">Arlington, Virginia</a></td></tr><tr class=""><th scope="row" style=" text-align: left;">Cause of death</th><td class=""><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_77" title="American Airlines Flight 77">Plane crash into the Pentagon, 9/11</a></td></tr><tr class=""><th scope="row" style=" text-align: left;">Known for</th><td class="">Fox News and CNN commentator</td></tr><tr class=""><th scope="row" style=" text-align: left;">Home town</th><td class=""><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston" title="Houston">Houston</a></td></tr><tr class=""><th scope="row" style=" text-align: left;">Spouse</th><td class=""><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Olson" title="Theodore Olson">Theodore Olson</a></td></tr></tbody></table>

Barbara Olson (December 27, 1955 – September 11, 2001) was a lawyer and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism" title="Conservatism">conservative</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" title="United States">American</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television" title="Television">television</a> commentator who worked for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN" title="CNN">CNN</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel" title="Fox News Channel">Fox News Channel</a>, and several other outlets. She was a passenger on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_77" title="American Airlines Flight 77">American Airlines Flight 77</a> en route to a taping of the television show <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politically_Incorrect" title="Politically Incorrect" style="">Politically Incorrect</a> when it was flown into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon" title="The Pentagon">the Pentagon</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks" title="September 11 attacks">September 11 attacks</a>.

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#Early_life">1 Early life</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#Career">2 Career</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#Death">3 Death</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#Memorial_lectures">4 Memorial lectures</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#Books">5 Books</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#Notes">6 Notes</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#External_links">7 External links</a></li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2>[ Early life</h2>

Olson was born Barbara Kay Bracher in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston" title="Houston">Houston, Texas</a>. (Her older sister, Toni Bracher-Lawrence, has been a member of the Houston City Council since 2004.) She graduated from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltrip_High_School" title="Waltrip High School">Waltrip High School</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_note-0">[1]</a> and earned a Bachelor of Arts from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_St.Thomas%28Houston%29" title="University of St. Thomas (Houston)" class="mw-redirect" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">University of Saint Thomas</a> in Houston.

Olson became a professional dancer, performing with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Ballet" title="San Francisco Ballet">San Francisco Ballet</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harkness_Ballet" title="Harkness Ballet">Harkness Ballet</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City" title="New York City">New York City</a>. She switched careers and went to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood" title="Hollywood">Hollywood</a> to work as an assistant producer for television and movies.

<h2> Career</h2>

As a newcomer, she achieved a surprising measure of success, working for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBO" title="HBO">HBO</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stacey_Keach_Productions&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Stacey Keach Productions (page does not exist)">Stacey Keach Productions</a>. She earned a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Doctor" title="Juris Doctor">Juris Doctor</a> degree from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshiva_University" title="Yeshiva University">Yeshiva University</a>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_N.Cardozo_School_of_Law" title="Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law">Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law</a>. In the early 1990s, she worked as an associate at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmer_Cutler%26_Pickering" title="Wilmer Cutler & Pickering" class="mw-redirect">Wilmer Cutler & Pickering</a> where she did civil litigation for several years before becoming an assistant U.S. attorney.
In 1994, [NEWT REVO?] she left to work for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives" title="United States House of Representatives">United States House of Representatives</a>, becoming chief investigative counsel for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=House_Government_Reform_and_Oversight_Committee&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="House Government Reform and Oversight Committee (page does not exist)">House Government Reform and Oversight Committee</a>. In that position, she led the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelgate" title="Travelgate" class="mw-redirect">Travelgate</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filegate" title="Filegate" class="mw-redirect">Filegate</a> investigations into the Clinton administration. She co-founded the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Women%27s_Forum" title="Independent Women's Forum">Independent Women's Forum</a> with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalie_Silberman" title="Rosalie Silberman" class="mw-redirect">Rosalie Silberman</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_note-1">[2]</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_K.Blair" title="Anita K. Blair">Anita K. Blair</a>. She was later a partner in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,D.C." title="Washington, D.C.">Washington, D.C.</a> office of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham,Alabama" title="Birmingham, Alabama">Birmingham</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama" title="Alabama">Alabama</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_firm" title="Law firm">law firm</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balch%26_Bingham" title="Balch & Bingham">Balch & Bingham</a>.

Her support of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas led to the formation of the Independent Women's Forum, which had its origins in 1991-92, when Mrs. Olson and friend "Ricky" Rosalie Gaull Silberman started an informal network of women who supported the Thomas nomination despite allegations of sexual harassment by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Hill" title="Anita Hill">Anita Hill</a>, a former colleague at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Mrs. Olson also had worked with Thomas at the commission and was a close friend. During his contentious confirmation, she spoke out on his behalf and helped edit <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Anita_Hill" title="The Real Anita Hill">The Real Anita Hill</a>,a book by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brock" title="David Brock">David Brock</a> that savaged Hill and portrayed her charges as a political dirty trick (Brock later recanted his claims and apologized to Hill). The idea for the Independent Women's Forum was to create a high profile group of women who advocated economic liberty, personal responsibility, and political freedom.

She married <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Olson" title="Theodore Olson">Theodore Olson</a> in 1996. He went on to successfully represent presidential candidate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush">George W. Bush</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States" title="Supreme Court of the United States">Supreme Court</a> case of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v.Gore" title="Bush v. Gore">Bush v. Gore</a>, which effectively determined the final result of the contested <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000" title="United States presidential election, 2000">2000 Presidential election</a>. He subsequently served as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Solicitor_General" title="United States Solicitor General" class="mw-redirect">United States Solicitor General</a> in the Bush administration.

She was a frequent critic of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Bill_Clinton" title="Presidency of Bill Clinton">Bill Clinton administration</a> and wrote a book about then <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Lady" title="First Lady">First Lady</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton" title="Hillary Rodham Clinton">Hillary Rodham Clinton</a>, Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton (1999). Olson was working on her second book, The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House (published October 2001) at the time of her death. She was a resident of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Falls,_Virginia" title="Great Falls, Virginia">Great Falls, Virginia</a>.

<h2> Death</h2>

Olson was a passenger on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_77" title="American Airlines Flight 77">American Airlines Flight 77</a> on her way to a taping of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politically_Incorrect" title="Politically Incorrect">Politically Incorrect</a> in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles" title="Los Angeles">Los Angeles</a>, when it was flown into <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon" title="The Pentagon">the Pentagon</a> in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks" title="September 11 attacks">September 11 attacks</a>.

Flight 77 was hijacked at 8:54. At some point between 9:16 and 9:26, Olson called her husband. She reported that the flight had been hijacked, and the hijackers had knives and boxcutters.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_note-report-2">[3]</a> She further indicated that the hijackers were not aware of her phone call, and that they had put all the passengers in the rear of the plane.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_note-report-2">[3]</a> About a minute into the conversation, the call was cut off.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_note-report-2">[3]</a>

Shortly after, Barbara reached her husband again. She reported that the "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hani_Hanjour" title="Hani Hanjour">pilot</a>" had announced that the flight had been hijacked, and asked her husband what she should tell the captain to do. Ted Olson asked for her location and she replied that the aircraft was then flying over houses. Another passenger told her they were traveling northeast. Ted Olson informed Barbara of the two previous hijackings and crashes. She did not display signs of panic at the time. At that point, Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.

Politically Incorrect host <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Maher" title="Bill Maher">Bill Maher</a> left a panel seat vacant for a week following her death.

<h2> Memorial lectures</h2>

The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society" title="Federalist Society">Federalist Society</a> has established the Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lectures, "an annual lecture on limited government and the spirit of freedom",<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_note-3">[4]</a> held every November. The first lecture was a eulogy for her by her husband.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_note-4">[5]</a> Subsequent speakers have included <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associate_Justice_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States" title="Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States">Supreme Court Associate Justice</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin_Scalia" title="Antonin Scalia">Antonin Scalia</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_President_of_the_United_States" title="Vice President of the United States">Vice President</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney" title="Dick Cheney">Dick Cheney</a>,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_note-5">[6]</a> and Chief Justice <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Roberts" title="John G. Roberts" class="mw-redirect">John G. Roberts</a>.

<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barbara_Olson&action=edit&section=5" title="Edit section: Books">edit</a>] Books</h2>

<ul>

<li>Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton (November 1999; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0895262746" class="internal mw-magiclink-isbn">ISBN 0895262746</a>)</li>

<li>The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House (October 2001; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0895261677" class="internal mw-magiclink-isbn">ISBN 0895261677</a>)</li>

</ul>

<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barbara_Olson&action=edit&section=6" title="Edit section: Notes">edit</a>] Notes</h2>

<li id="cite_note-0"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_ref-0">^</a> "<a href="http://hs.houstonisd.org/WaltripHS/TriviaFolder/trivia.htm" class="external text" rel="nofollow">Waltrip Trivia Page</a>," <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltrip_High_School" title="Waltrip High School">Waltrip High School</a></li>

<li id="cite_note-1"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_ref-1">^</a> <a href="http://www.iwf.org/articles/article_detail.asp?ArticleID=372" class="external text" rel="nofollow">"Remembering IWF Founder Barbara Olson"</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalie_Silberman" title="Rosalie Silberman" class="mw-redirect">Rosalie Silberman</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Women%27s_Forum" title="Independent Women's Forum">Independent Women's Forum</a>, December 1, 2001</li>

<li id="cite_note-report-2">^ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_ref-report_2-0">a</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_ref-report_2-1">b</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_ref-report_2-2">c</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission_Report" title="9/11 Commission Report">The 9/11 Commission Report</a>, Official Government Edition, July 22, 2004.</li>

<li id="cite_note-3"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_ref-3">^</a> <a href="http://www.fed-soc.org/resources/id.62/default.asp" class="external text" rel="nofollow">Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society" title="Federalist Society">Federalist Society</a> website</li>

<li id="cite_note-4"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_ref-4">^</a> <a href="http://www.fed-soc.org/resources/id.63/default.asp" class="external text" rel="nofollow">First Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Olson" title="Theodore Olson">Theodore Olson</a>, November 16, 2001</li>

<li id="cite_note-5"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Olson#cite_ref-5">^</a> <a href="http://www.fed-soc.org/resources/id.64/default.asp" class="external text" rel="nofollow">Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture — Past Lecturers</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society" title="Federalist Society">Federalist Society</a> website</li>

</ol>

<h2>[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barbara_Olson&action=edit&section=7" title="Edit section: External links">edit</a>] External links</h2>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6048175&ptBarbara%20Olson" class="external text" rel="nofollow">Barbara Olson</a> at findagrave.com</li>

<li><a href="http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/" class="external text" rel="nofollow">Wife of Solicitor General alerted him of hijacking from plane</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A37063-2001Sep15&notFound=true" class="external text" rel="nofollow">Barbara Olson Mourned at Arlington Service</a></li>

<li><a href="http://cf.newsday.com/911/victimsearch.cfm?id=65" class="external text" rel="nofollow">Barbara Olson: A Sparkling Celebrity 'Full of Energy'</a> Newsday.com-Victims Search</li>

<li><a href="http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200109/ai_n8954773" class="external text" rel="nofollow">Barbara Olson, RIP</a> Memorial essay by Alfred S. Regnery, president of Regnery Publishing</li>

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