NICK GILLESPIE: Libertarianism 3.0: Koch and a Smile. “The visionary brothers’ new paradigm will frustrate the left and alter the right by fusing social tolerance with fiscal responsibility.”
Plus: “Whose heart flutters at the sight of John Boehner or Eric Cantor?”
MORE MEN ARE SUING OVER SEXIST CAMPUS POLICIES: Duke, Grossly Unfair Again, Is Back in Court.
To defend its actions, Duke sent to court Dean Sue Wasiolek, a figure who had a somewhat checkered record in the lacrosse case. Wasiolek lacked the almost casual disregard for due process of one of her superiors, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta, or the personal cravenness of Duke president Richard Brodhead. On the other hand, she urged the lacrosse captains not to tell their parents about the incident, advice that helped explain why they didn’t seek attorneys for several days.
Independent reporter John Tucker covered the hearing, and it seemed as if Wasiolek’s testimony didn’t go very well for the school. She admitted that Duke had never placed the presumption of expulsion in its published student handbook—but suggested this didn’t matter. “It is an understood practice. … We didn’t feel the need to make it public.” How something that’s not public can be an understood as standard must remain a mystery.
And she appeared to concede that Duke doesn’t take seriously Title IX’s promise of not discriminating on the basis of gender. Noting Duke’s finding that a rape occurs when a panel concludes based on 50.01 percent probability that a student had reached an incapacitating level of intoxication that rendered the student unable to give consent to sex, McLeod’s lawyer asked Wasiolek what happened if both students were drunk. In that case, presumably, “they have raped each other and are subject to expulsion.” Not so, stated Wasiolek: “Assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of the male to gain consent before proceeding with sex.” How this policy can be reconciled with Title IX must remain a mystery.
I got a press release from legal entrepreneur John Banzhaf on this yesterday, which suggests to me that the Title IX lawsuits are on the way.
HILLARY CLINTON goes on offense on Benghazi.
THUGGERY: ‘Operation Choke Point’ Details Disclosed in Government Memos. “The release of the documents comes amid a battle between the Justice Department and congressional Republicans, who argue the government is trying to intimidate legal businesses, including short-term lenders that operate online. Republicans say the government has pressured banks to stop handling payments for merchants deemed as high risk—including gun dealers, short-term lenders and credit-repair programs—punishing good actors along with bad ones.”
MICHAEL BARONE: Despite Thomas Piketty, voters reject economic redistribution.
JAMES TARANTO ON OBAMA’S SPEECH: No Point at West Point: A foreign policy of cliché and equivocation.
Even the New York Times found President Obama’s speech at West Point yesterday wanting: “The address did not match the hype, was largely uninspiring, lacked strategic sweep and is unlikely to quiet his detractors, on the right or the left.” According to the Times, the president “provided little new insight into how he plans to lead in the next two years,” instead “falling back on hackneyed phrases.”
The editorial itself concludes with the hackneyed observation that only time will tell what the future holds: “This was far from Mr. Obama’s big moment. But since he has no office left to run for, what matters ultimately is his record in the next two and a half years.”
Obama framed the speech as follows: “The question we face, the question each of you [newly graduated Army officers] will face, is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead–not just to secure our peace and prosperity, but also extend peace and prosperity around the globe.”
Not whether, but how. That raises, perhaps even begs, the question: What about where? In a subsequent interview, NPR’s Steve Inskeep put the question directly, invoking two of Obama’s predecessors: Reagan, who “wanted to roll back communism by whatever means,” and Lincoln, who was determined to save the Union. “As you look at the moment of history that you occupy,” Inskeep asked, “do you think you can put into a sentence what you are trying to accomplish in the world?”
Obama answered in the negative.
For someone who’s supposed to be really smart, he doesn’t seem especially bright.
Plus: “So America isn’t in decline, contrary to Obama’s critics, and Obama’s critics are making America weak. Can he really have it both ways?” As long as the press lets him.
GOOGLE, DIVERSITY-TALK, and how the Asians became White.
There’s a sinister aspect to this as well. To begin with, calling Asians “non-minorities” or even “white” is an error, and is a denial of their heritage. Asians have succeeded even though they are a racial minority — this fact deserves to be acknowledged. It redounds to the credit of the many Asians who worked terribly hard against often overwhelming odds. And it’s evidence of the essential fairness of the American capitalist system, which has rewarded this hard work even though many people, including many government officials, tried to penalize it.
Calling Asians white also creates new lines, possibly very dangerous ones. “White” has stopped meaning Caucasian, imprecise as this term has always been, and has started to mean “those racial groups that have made it.” “Minority” has started to mean “those racial groups that have not yet made it.” (A recent San Francisco Chronicle story even excludes non-Mexican-American Latinos from the “minority” category.) This new division is as likely as the old to create nasty, corrosive, sometimes fatal battles over which racial groups get the spoils. So long as we think in terms of “white” and “minority,” we risk disaster, no matter which races are put in which box.
Long-term damage to the body politic is no big deal for our elites, so long as short-term political gain can be wrung out of racial polarization.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: In New Orleans, major school district closes traditional public schools for good. “With the start of the next school year, the Recovery School District will be the first in the country made up completely of public charter schools, a milestone for New Orleans and a grand experiment in urban education for the nation.”
Who could have seen this coming?
CONVICTIONS OVERTURNED AS JUDGE CHARGES ATF WITH CREATING “FICTITIOUS CRIMES.”
Each of the men admitted to charges that would put them in prison for seven years or more. But instead of sending them there, U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real declared that federal agents had “created the fictitious crime from whole cloth” and that their conduct was unconstitutional. Then he dismissed the charges and ordered that all three be set free.
Real’s unusual decision this month is the latest and most pointed indication yet of a growing backlash against undercover operations that have become a central part of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ efforts to target violent crime. Until now, federal courts have largely signed off on the practice, if not always enthusiastically. As the stings proliferate across the United States, an increasing number of judges are offering new resistance to the government’s tactics.
“Judges are getting really frustrated with not hng sufficient answers on how these people were targeted or how they came to be the subject of the sting,” said Katharine Tinto, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law who has studied government stings. “There’s a real discomfort that we’re turning people into more serious criminals.”
Nowhere has that frustration played out more dramatically than in Los Angeles, where Real is the second judge in two months to throw out charges in a stash-house case after concluding that the scheme violated suspects’ constitutional due process rights. Another judge there, Otis Wright, dismissed a similar case in March, concluding in a scathing order that a “reverse-sting operation like this one transcends the bounds of due process and makes the Government the oppressor of its people.”
We need more criminal law pushback like this, in more areas. Law enforcement agencies, especially at the federal level, have gotten out of hand.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Rising College Costs, Politics, and Tax Reform.
All is proceeding as, well, you know. . . .
GOOD QUESTION: Say, Where’s Hillary On The VA Scandal? “The debate in the 2008 presidential cycle over long wait times and access to care at the VA wasn’t just limited to Barack Obama and John McCain. Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski adroitly used his Wayback Machine to find this clip of once and future candidate Hillary Clinton scoring points off of the Bush administration for the VA’s woes. Kaczynski notes too that the presumed Democratic frontrunner for 2016 has been curiously quiet about the explosion of fraud, deceit, and death at the VA.”
LED LIGHTBULB UPDATE: So, today I installed some of these Cree 100-watt equivalent LED bulbs in a couple of fixtures that need more oomph. They’re only rated for 60-watt incandescents, and I really want a little more light. One is in a bathroom (really, the water-closet part of the master) and the other is in an overhead fixture in the media room. In both cases, the spaces were brightened up nicely by the brigher LEDs compared to the 60-watt bulbs they replaced. Quality of light is . . . decent. Not as good as a standard incandescent, but better than a CFL. Now to see if they’ll live up to their projected 20+ year lifetime.
I WITHDRAW MY EARLIER SPECULATION THAT DONALD STERLING WAS SUFFERING FROM DEMENTIA: Sources: Ballmer agrees to buy Clippers for record $2 billion. In fact, now I wonder if he set the whole thing up. He bought the team for $12 million.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS:
There’s nothing lesbians hate more than women like me. I know, because back when I was a lesbian, I hated me. Or at least I empathized with my ex-girlfriend when she talked about hating who I’ve become. Bisexuals, she said, glommed onto lesbians because they feared their fathers, or had been devastated by ex-boyfriends. For them, lesbianism was a vacation from the pressures of heterosexuality. Even feminine lesbians were to be regarded with healthy skepticism. You never knew when one might turn.
To me, this sounded a bit alarmist.
One must remain loyal to the herd-mind.
WHY AREN’T THERE more black libertarians?
HOW TO KNOW when you’re lying to yourself.
AT AMAZON, take an extra 15% off SOG Knives and Tools. Never have too many knives and tools. . . .
Plus, up to 87% off on magazines. I still like real magazines, personally.
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