Archive for 2014

A RESPONSE TO FALSE SEX-ASSAULT CLAIMS: New Startup Connects Students With A Lawyer The Minute They Get In Trouble.

As colleges and universities revise their sexual-assault policies and California considers applying the “affirmative consent” standard statewide, many more students could find themselves accused of sexual misconduct in campus disciplinary proceedings without traditional due-process protections.

A Boston-area startup aims to make sure that students accused of anything don’t have to play legal roulette or rely on a shoddy lawyer.

Seems like a booming market.

JUST THE SORT OF POLITICIAL JIU-JITSU I’VE ENCOURAGED: Republicans Strike Mark Begich Where He’s Strongest.

Earlier Thursday, American Crossroads launched an ad attacking Mr. Begich on women’s issues – the core of the argument he’s made for months against Republican nominee Dan Sullivan, who won Tuesday’s Senate primary. The Crossroads ad attacks Mr. Begich for gender pay disparity on his Senate staff: Women in his Senate office, the ad says, earn 71 cents for every dollar men do.

“Tell Senator Begich to end unequal pay for women,” states the Crossroads ad. Crossroads spent $1.25 million to air the ad through Sept. 3.

Heh. They should be doing this everywhere it applies, which is most places. It’ll suppress Dem turnout, and it’s just well-deserved payback for that imbecilic “War On Women” meme.

LOYALTY QUESTIONS: ‘Twice as Many’ British Muslims Fighting for ISIS Than in UK Armed Forces.

There are now more than twice as many British Muslims fighting for Islamic State than there are serving in the British armed forces, according to a British Member of Parliament (MP).

Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Perry Barr in Birmingham, estimates that at least 1,500 young British Muslims have been recruited by extremists fighting in Iraq and Syria in the last three years. . . .

The role of British jihadists fighting in the Middle East has been brought into sharp focus after Islamic State released a video showing the apparent beheading of US journalist James Foley by a masked jihadist who spoke with a British accent.

That whole Labour immigration-surge thing isn’t looking so smart.

ASHE SCHOW: Fallout from campus sexual assault hysteria: College men now suspicious of women.

Thanks to an increased focus on sexual assaults on college campuses – mostly due to an overblown statistic claiming 20 percent of college women have been sexually assaulted – young college men are starting to rethink how they talk to women.

At first glance that might seem like a good thing – men learning to be more respectful of women and not be so rapey – but that’s not what this is.

This is about men actually avoiding contact with women because they’re afraid a simple kiss or date could lead to a sexual assault accusation.

Bloomberg reporters John Lauerman and Jennifer Surane interviewed multiple men from colleges like Harvard and Stanford who expressed concern over what was once known as a “hook-up culture” but is now labeled by feminists as “rape culture.” The change in terminology ensures that all responsibility is placed on men, just because of their gender.

Take Malik Gill of Harvard University, who said he wouldn’t even give a female classmate a beer.

“I don’t want to look like a predator,” Gill told Bloomberg. “It’s a little bit of a blurred line.”

Gone are the days of buying a woman a drink – even if it’s just to be nice.

Gill also told Lauerman and Surane that after he passed on the contact information of a woman who said she was interested in his fraternity brother, his friend was hesitant to call her.

“Even though she was interested, he didn’t want to pressure her,” Gill said. “He was worried about making her feel uncomfortable.”

William Pollack, a Harvard Medical School psychologist, told the Bloomberg reporters about a patient who was kissing a girl during a party and began thinking about what would happen if things went further.

“‘I want to go to law school or medical school after this,’” the student said, according to Pollack. “‘I said to her, it’s been nice seeing you.’” . . . We’re facing a cultural shift where soon men might be afraid to talk to women at all for fear of being labeled rapists. Without presumed innocence on college campuses, the only way this will be fixed is after universities have to start paying out millions of dollars to students after being sued for denying them due process.

And with the current landscape – that might not be too far in the future.

At least in the original version, people got to have a lot of sex.

Next question: How many women will want to attend in such an environment?

REVOLVING DOOR UPDATE: The Hill: The Rise Of ‘Obama, Inc.’

The presidency of Barack Obama has catapulted a network of former advisers into lucrative positions.

Members of the president’s brain trust have steadily moved outside the administration in recent years, capitalizing on their association with the Obama brand to launch careers as advisors, consultants and hired guns.

“You see people not only serving as representatives of a lobbying firm but taking these very high-profile corporate jobs. I think that is becoming more common,” said Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University. “Businesses understand that this is a great opportunity for them.”

I’m sure it is. It’s also another argument for my revolving-door surtax.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: 1,461 Days of Summer: Obama’s endless second-term vacation. He is like Cosmo Kramer of Seinfeld. ‘His whole life is a fantasy camp,’ George Costanza says of his friend. ‘People should plunk down $2,000 to live like him for a week.’ Imagine what they would pay to live like Obama. . . . In the 1990s, we heard about the all-night delivery-pizza brainstorm sessions in the Clinton White House. In the teens, we hear about the soporific, self-congratulatory gourmet dinner parties where Obama is the star. . . . In the 1990s, America had a holiday from history. Today, it has a president on holiday. The boundary separating vacation from vocation has disappeared. The party won’t end for years. And the hangover will be severe.”

REMEMBER THE VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM. “On this 75th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, we recognize the morally reprehensible nature of the totalitarian ideas of Nazism and Stalinism, of fascism and communism. We also recall the historical fact that regimes dedicated to these deadly ideologies worked together to start World War II, and aided each other in murdering millions of innocent men, women, and children. We remember those victims on this Black Ribbon Day.”

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: “Median household net worth decreased by $5,046, or 6.8 percent, between 2000 and 2011. … Between 2000 and 2011, experiences of households varied widely depending on their net worth quintile (See Figure 1). Median household net worth decreased by $5,124 for households in the first (bottom) net worth quintile, $7,056 (or 49.3 percent) for the second quintile, and $5,072 (or 6.9 percent) for the third quintile. Median household net worth increased by $18,433 (or 9.8 percent) for households in the fourth quintile, and by $61,379 (or 10.8 percent) for households in the highest (top) quintile.”