ANOTHER dumb McCarthyish political decision at the University of California. “After a group of UC Davis women faculty began circulating a petition, UC regents rescinded an invitation to Larry Summers, the controversial former president of Harvard University, to speak at a board dinner Wednesday night in Sacramento.” First Chemerinsky, now this. People are going to be a lot slower to accept invitations from the University of California in the future, I think. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, I could carve a better backbone out of a banana.