I think Ann Coulter ought to give up her law degree. The woman clearly doesn't know evidence rules.
Saw someone share an Ann Coulter piece on my Facebook page today. It was published on Breitbart (of course), so I'm not going to give them the satisfaction of linking to it, but if anyone wants to go there to verify what I'm saying here, be my guest. Bring disinfectant.
Anyways, the gist of the entire piece was her getting herself into an excited little tizzy because she thought she had caught Hillary in a huge, tremendous, incredibly enormous, devastating, campaign-ending earthshattering lie. And where was this dastardly malicious warping of the truth from Ms. Clinton? Why, it was on the Humans of New York piece, of course.
Basically (and please verify if you don't believe me), good old Ann thought that the illusion that we know Hillary Clinton was completely shattered because in the HoNY piece, she talks about when she took her LSAT exam in her senior year (presumably from Fall 1968-Spring 1969), a male student told her that she would be taking her place at a law school and he wouldn't be able to get a graduate draft deferment. And in true Scooby Doo detective fashion, Ann was quick to point out that in fact LBJ had ended graduate draft deferments in February 1968, presumably before Ms. Clinton took her LSAT. So of course that means Hillary just made all of that story up and it never happened.
Here's the problem, Ann.
Let's look at Hillary's story, in full:
“I was taking a law school admissions test in a big classroom at Harvard. My friend and I were some of the only women in the room. I was feeling nervous. I was a senior in college. I wasn’t sure how well I’d do. And while we’re waiting for the exam to start, a group of men began to yell things like: ‘You don’t need to be here.’ And ‘There’s plenty else you can do.’ It turned into a real ‘pile on.’ One of them even said: ‘If you take my spot, I’ll get drafted, and I’ll go to Vietnam, and I’ll die.’ And they weren’t kidding around. It was intense. It got very personal. But I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t afford to get distracted because I didn’t want to mess up the test. So I just kept looking down, hoping that the proctor would walk in the room. I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional. But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that’s a hard path to walk. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you don’t want to seem ‘walled off.’ And sometimes I think I come across more in the ‘walled off’ arena. And if I create that perception, then I take responsibility. I don’t view myself as cold or unemotional. And neither do my friends. And neither does my family. But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I can’t blame people for thinking that.”
http://www.humansofnewyork.com/post/150127870371/i-was-taking-a-law-school-admissions-test-in-a
Now, might want to try a little bit of basic reading comprehension, Ann. No where in Hillary's story did she actually say the law of the land was that the graduate draft deferment was still in effect from late 1968-early 1969. She wasn't using her colleague's verbal statement to prove that fact. The only she uses that statement for was to claim that it was said to her, not that it was true.
Think back, Ann. Think way back to your Evidence 101 course where they taught you about hearsay and when statements are and aren't being used for the fact of the matter being asserted. Absent a legal exception (excited utterance, statement under oath, etc.), you typically can't use a second hand recollection of someone else's verbal statement to prove a specific fact. That's called hearsay. Have you heard of the term hearsay? It's called hearsay. Repeat it with me. Hearsay. Got it? Good.
However, if you are using your recollection of a verbal statement not for the purposes of proving its truth, but rather simply that it's being said, guess what? That's not hearsay! Wow Ann! Wow!
Allow me to show you Federal Rules of Evidence 801, Subsection (c):
https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_801
c) Hearsay. “Hearsay” means a statement that:
(1) the declarant does not make while testifying at the current trial or hearing; and
(2) a party offers in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement
And as the notes in the Rules clearly point out:
If the significance of an offered statement lies solely in the fact that it was made, no issue is raised as to the truth of anything asserted, and the statement is not hearsay.
So, Ann, what we have here is your basic failure to comprehend both what you read, and an inexcusable breakdown in the legal reasoning logic in which you have been trained in and about which you claim to be an expert.
In other words, you fail. Please surrender your law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, as you have clearly demonstrated yourself to be completely incompetent in the art of basic legal reasoning and comprehension.
Also, fuck you, as you continue to be an utterly horrible person.
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