SO OBAMA’S NOMINATED A GUY WHO CAN’T EVEN GET HARRY REID’S SUPPORT? Reid Opposes Boggs Nomination for Now, Will Consult John Lewis. Well, Obama was never vetted, so I guess it’s a shock that his nominees should have been.
Archive for 2014
May 15, 2014
BAD NEWS AT THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION: Cascade of scandals has Veterans Secretary Eric Shinseki fighting for his job.
This is how government-run healthcare works.
CATHY YOUNG: Colleges can’t play cop in sexual assault investigations.
At Yale, as an official memo released last summer reveals, the definition of “non-consensual sex” in disciplinary proceedings is so broad that it includes reciprocating a sexual act without an explicit signal to go ahead — even if you stop immediately when asked to stop. Ironically, this creates a Catch-22, as universities find themselves criticized for insufficiently harsh punishments for nonconsensual sex.
Universities are under strong pressure from activists, backed by the federal government, to use a “preponderance of the evidence” standard in adjudicating sexual assault complaints. This is the lowest legal burden of proof, often defined as meaning that it’s more likely than not that the assault occurred. (Traditionally, disciplinary charges by students have been judged by the higher standard of “clear and convincing evidence.”) But what does that mean in practice, especially in he-said/she-said cases? Since anti-rape activists insist that wrongful accusations are extremely rare (and demand that college investigators and “judges” be trained in that dogma), the goal seems to be a presumption of guilt for any accused student, unless there is strong proof of innocence.
Obviously, this is not a question of sending people to prison. Nonetheless, it means that a student may be expelled from college, with a black mark that will follow him to other schools and places of employment, and in some ways acquire the equivalent of conviction for a very serious crime without any of the safeguards of a trial.
And, of course, with a dramatically disparate impact on male students, which is not by accident but by design.
PAYING OFF THE BASE: Senate Dems Prepare Student Loan Push:
Senate Democrats are preparing a June offensive on student loans meant to bolster the party’s 2014 election message.
Democrats will push for a vote on legislation to allow people to refinance student loan debt at a lower rate.
The effort is part of of a broader messaging battle meant to portray Republicans as out of touch with the middle class. It goes part and parcel with the Democratic push to raise the minimum wage.
It also comes as Democrats seek ways to bolster turnout among their core supporters for the midterm elections, when an older and whiter electorate generally shows up to vote.
The new bill would allow borrowers to refinance their existing loans at at the rate of 3.86 percent. That’s the current rate for new loans under legislation Congress passed last year.
The bill would cover the costs of those refinancings by enacting the “Buffett Rule,” a Democratic policy prescription that would ensure the wealthy pay some minimum amount of tax.
The push to increase taxes on the wealthy has long been a non-starter with Republicans, but Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Democrats were willing to deal on the offset.
“We’re open. We welcome suggestions on how they would pay for it,” he said.
HEH: The Best Examples of NY Times’ ‘Wage Gap’ Hypocrisy.
Related: “There are now reports that the New York Times might have fired executive editor Jill Abramson in part because she confronted management over earning less pay than her male predecessor, Bill Keller. If true, this tale might just be every woman’s professional nightmare come to life.”
They told me if I voted for Mitt Romney, women would be paid less than men for the same work. And they were right!
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Tensions Rise at Albany Law School Amidst Faculty Buyouts.
Related: “You Can Do Anything With a Law Degree” — That’s what everyone says. Turns out everyone’s wrong. “It turns out there are better ways of figuring out what you want to do with your life than getting an outrageously expensive degree that detracts from your future employability. While unpaid internships suck, they suck approximately $50,000 a year less than law school. More importantly, internships will give you a better idea of whether a particular career is right for you than learning the rule against perpetuities ever will.”
COLLUSION: Is Higher Ed’s Common Application An Antitrust Violation? “The central allegations in the suit are that the Common Application uses pricing and membership rules that have the impact of squelching competition. Two policies receive considerable attention in the suit. One requires all members of the Common Application to promise not to offer any admissions option that costs less than what the college charges for a Common Application. The other offers a discount on the per-application fee paid by colleges to Common App for each application if the college exclusively uses the Common Application to process applications.”
BRAIN-DAMAGED: ABC News: Bill Clinton Says Hillary Took 6 Months To Get Over Concussion. “The former president revealed that his wife’s injury ‘required six months of very serious work to get over,’ he said during a question-and-answer session at the Peterson Foundation in Washington.”
May 14, 2014
TWEET OF THE DAY: “When I see modern feminism (Slate XX) I know what Yudkowski meant by ‘evaporative cooling’ … Most of the sane have left.”
“PHILOSOPHY IS USELESS, THEOLOGY IS WORSE.” Neil deGrasse Tyson Slammed For Dismissing Philosophy As ‘Useless.’ Okay, my quote is from Mark Knopfler, not from Tyson.
The Knopfler song about 1970s malaise seems curiously timely today.
FROM AMAZON, The Amazing Spiderman MoviePack.
Also, new markdowns in Spring Shoes & Handbags.
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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ‘Stripping Was the Easiest and Quickest Solution.’ “When I leave the club with $900, I feel valuable in a way that the cutthroat, ever-upward-struggling nature of academic life had never made me feel.”
SO THE GENDER PAY GAP’S A MYTH — EXCEPT, I GUESS. AT THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE AND THE NEW YORK TIMES: ‘Pass the popcorn’: Jill Abramson reportedly discovered pay ‘considerably less’ than male predecessor.
Related: ‘Need to follow some new people’: Jill Abramson’s NYT exit fills Twitter feeds with journo buzz.
REMINDER: Ayn Rand Was Not A Defender Of The Rich. “Ayn Rand, the famous novelist and free market advocate, is often caricatured as a defender of the rich or big business. But, as Steve Horwitz explains at the Bleeding Heart Libertarian blog, there are more wealthy villains in her books than wealthy heroes. And many of her heroes – including John Galt, whom Rand portrayed as the person best exemplifying her philosophy – are not particularly wealthy. Ultimately, Rand’s work praises producers, not wealthy people as such.”
In today’s America, as in that of Rand’s books, the two sets are increasingly distinct.
WORST HEALTH NEWS OF THE WEEK: Red Wine and Chocolate Do Not Have Health Benefits: Study. I think I’m going to wait for a bigger study before I change my behavior. . . .
TREATING SCOLIOSIS with an exercise regime.
BOB OWENS: An Open Letter To A Hack Journalist. More here.
FASTER, PLEASE: Mayo Clinic trial: Massive blast of measles vaccine wipes out cancer.
Stacy Erholtz was out of conventional treatment options for blood cancer last June when she underwent an experimental trial at the Mayo Clinic that injected her with enough measles vaccine to inoculate 10 million people.
The 50-year-old Pequot Lakes mother is now part of medical history.
The cancer, which had spread widely through her body, went into complete remission and was undetectable in Erholtz’s body after just one dose of the measles vaccine, which has an uncanny affinity for certain kinds of tumors.
Erholtz was one of just two subjects in the experiment and the only one to achieve complete remission. But the experiment provides the “proof of concept” that a single, massive does of intravenous viral therapy can kill cancer by overwhelming its natural defenses, according to Dr. Stephen Russell, a professor of molecular medicine who spearheaded the research at Mayo.
“It’s a landmark,” Russell said in an interview last week. “We’ve known for a long time that we can give a virus intravenously and destroy metastatic cancer in mice. Nobody’s shown that you can do that in people before.”
Until now.
We’re going to need a bigger trial.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Most Erogenous Parts of the Female Body, Ranked By Science.
JUST GIVE IT UP, IT’S LIKE TRYING TO BAN POT: ‘Unfinished receivers,’ a gun part that is sold separately, lets some people get around laws. “Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, it is illegal for an unlicensed person to make a firearm for sale or distribution. Vendors, however, say that because the receivers are not finished, they are not firearms and therefore are legal to sell and distribute.”
SPACE: Air Force to award ‘Space Fence’ contract to track orbital debris. “With a contract expected to be awarded in the next few weeks, the program is designed to be mankind’s best effort yet at tracking space pollution. But the new Space Fence still doesn’t provide what many think is the ultimate solution: cleaning up space.”
For cleanup, we need better law. And here’s a longer piece (PDF) that Rob Merges and I wrote for the Environmental Law Reporter.
THE PERILS OF ONLINE OVERREACH: How a mayor’s quest to unmask a foul-mouthed Twitter user blew up in his face. “Could your town’s mayor spark a police investigation into your activities that ends with town cops rifling through your mobile phone, your laptop, and the full contents of your Gmail account—all over an alleged misdemeanor based on something you wrote on social media? Not in America, you say? But you’d be wrong. Here, based on e-mail records provided by the city of Peoria to Ars Technica, is what that sort of investigation looks like.”
Tar. Feathers.
TECHNICALLY, THEY’RE ALL INTRA-GALACTIC: Intergalactic Entrepreneurs Prepare for Blast-Off: A unique gathering of 13 companies showcases a coming year of launches.