Jeh Johnson, the Kerry point man on TV to refute the Swiftvets, is using the "I am a former prosecuting attorney and I know how to tell when someone is lying," approach. Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has a great answer for that.
I don't see where legal standards enter the picture here. But I'll give it a try. If I were in court and saw a defendant who made inconsistent statements about what happened that were contradicted by others who were there, and when the defendant's response was ad hominems and generalities, I think I'd be entitled to be skeptical. Juries are entitled to draw inferences from a witness's demeanor.
And while I agree with Welch that I'd rather be talking about other stuff, it's Kerry who has built his campaign around his four months in Vietnam (and, he says, Cambodia!) rather than, say, his record in the Senate. We can draw inferences from that, too.
Hannity mentioned this. "Kerry has changed his story over the last 35 years, and Reynolds, the author, never has." |
