RALPH NADER: Hillary Tried to ‘Overcompensate’ for Gender with ‘Shocking’ Militarism.

So does that mean she might be the most uncompromising wartime President in American history?

FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? Glaciers on ice — for now: Rise in carbon emissions is delaying Earth’s next icy era. “Earth’s next big chill may be on hold. Earth should be nearing another frosty period — with a year-to-year expansion of polar and mountaintop ice. But that is not happening. And the reason seems to be a growing buildup of chemicals that warm the atmosphere, the so-called greenhouse gases. Chief among them: carbon dioxide, better known as CO2. . . . ‘Most probably, the next glaciation should have already started,’ says coauthor Paul Renne. He is a geoscientist at the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California. (Geo means of or relating to the Earth. Chronology refers to the order and timing of past events.) ‘We are experiencing a climate that has been modified by human activity,’ Renne says.”

So should we regard the discovery of massive new stores of fossil fuels via fracking at this very point as some sort of Divine Providence? . . .

DEBRA SAUNDERS: The Four Stages Of 21st Century Childhood.

CIVILITY, OPEN CARRY, AND THE OVERTON WINDOW.

ROGER SIMON IN IOWA: 5 Presidential Candidate Interviews in One Day!

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): After a shocking confession by a colleague a former teacher asks: Why ARE so many women teachers seducing boy pupils? I blame our pervasive modern culture of female sexual entitlement.

FAN FILM: Some Hero Pitted the Knights Templar Against Predator. “Called Predator: Dark Ages, it’s a 27-minute fan-made film that sees a handful of Knights Templar attempt to rid medieval England of a mysterious blade-wielding, fire-breathing ‘demon.'”

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Home Improvement.

Plus, shop the Home & Kitchen Outlet Sale.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: ‘New York Times’ shows its ‘gotcha’ colors: Rubio’s four traffic tickets aren’t news, unless you’re publishing political hit-pieces.

JOURNALISM: ‘Dear Reader, The Editor Hates Your F—ing Guts.’

THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS: Bridget Johnson: Something Marvelous Happened at the Turkish Ballot Box Today: Islamists Lose Parliament. “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been counting on the continued rule of his AKP party to change the country’s constitution after these elections, consolidating his already increasingly authoritarian rule into something even more dastardly. But a 2/3 majority of AKP in parliament is needed to change the constitution. Today, the Islamist party walked away with only 41 percent of seats.”

THIS DAVID BROOKS COLUMN ON “CAMPUS CRUSADERS” misses a key point. These aren’t good, well-meaning people who have just gone a bit too far. They’re awful, nasty people using the excuse of “social justice” to justify indulging base desires of power and control. Awful, nasty, horrible people who should be recognized for what they are, denounced for what they are, and shamed for what they are. Because what they are is evil.

THOUGHTS ON POETRY AND WHITE PRIVILEGE.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: 8 Must-Have Implants for the Cyborg Patient.

AT AMAZON, deals galore at the Men’s Denim Store.

Plus, deals on Hunting & Tactical Knives.

And please remember: InstaPundit is an Amazon affiliate. When you do your shopping through the Amazon links on this page, including the “Shop Amazon” tab at the top or the searchbox in the right sidebar, you support this blog at no cost to yourself. Just click on the Amazon link, then shop as usual. I very much appreciate it when you do.

CALLING “CAITLYN” JENNER A “HE” IS A MICROAGGRESSION: A member of the Hitler Youth student at Ithaca College writes a letter to the editors of the Pittsburgh-Gazette to complain about a column by Jennifer Graham,who had the audacity to refer to “her” as “Mr. Jenner” since he/she does, after all, still have the full array of male, er, parts (not to mention chromosomes).  In the eyes of the delicate snowflake student:

Repeatedly, Ms. Graham refers to Caitlyn Jenner as “him,” and the subheadline “he/​she” not only is a microaggression but also likens the former Olympian’s personal struggle with becoming herself as an interchangeable joke, instead of courageous.

Every time someone misappropriates the gender of a transgender person, it’s a microaggression. Every time a media source refers to Caitlyn as “Bruce,” it’s a microaggression.

By publishing this column, the Post-Gazette is responsible for propagating transphobia as socially acceptable. . . .

Fifty percent of transgender teens will attempt suicide, and 40 percent of all homeless youth identify on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. That’s not some liberal-media exaggeration, that’s the truth. We never hear about this because the LGBTQ+ community has yet to be given a voice — we’re drowned out by people like Ms. Graham, demonizing us for our sexuality.

So it is inexcusable for newspapers, like the Post-Gazette, to give a voice to a bully to further propagate the hate crimes perpetrated against our community. We did not make an active choice to be LGBTQ+, but Ms. Graham made an active choice to be offensive. As journalists, you must do better.

Oh dear. Where to begin? The poor little flower apparently cannot handle anyone disagreeing with him/her (he/she signed his/her name “Christopher Kelly,” but who am I to assign a gender–that would be so aggressive of me). Such disagreements are likely not tolerated in the progressive/liberal “safe space” of Ithaca College, where this larval stage human has been brainwashed instructed.

And if Mr./Ms. Kelly is truly concerned about the high suicide rates of transgendered individuals, he/she should consider the opinion of psychiatrists such as Paul McHugh (former chief psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Hospital), who wrote an oped explaining that the available data suggests that undergoing transgender surgery does not improve psychiatric outcome, and that those undergoing the surgery actually have suicide rates 20 times higher than the non-transgendered population. Psychiatric treatment for body dysmorphic disorder can be beneficial for such individuals.

Mr./Ms. Kelly, I don’t know if you are making an “active choice” to be LGBTQ+ (whatever the “+” means). But I do know that if an individual wishes to refer to an individual with XY chromosomes and male genitalia as “he,” it is not an “offensive” “microagression” against you. It is scientific fact, unlike global warming climate change, which I rather suspect you defend as “scientific fact” on a regular basis. Grow up.

HEALTH: South Korea Reports Nine New Cases in MERS Virus Outbreak.

ROAD & TRACK: Peter Egan meets the wicked TVR Griffith. I miss his regular columns, but this bit is a nice taste:

As we hummed along the four-lane highway at 75 mph or so, I looked around myself at the Miata and said, “This thing is really running nice. Still feels like a new car. How many miles do you have on it?”

“Just turned 140,000,” Chris said.

“Any trouble with it?”

“No.”

After a while I started chuckling to myself, and Chris asked what was so funny.

“I was thinking about my first TR-3…” I told him.

Then Chris started to grin, and pretty soon we were both chuckling. The concept of 140,000 miles without trouble is always a source of mirth to British car guys.

Yeah, you could knock a zero off that. Perhaps one day I’ll write about how my brother drove a Sunbeam Rapier across the Sahara Desert. Well, most of the way across.

A LINE SEPARATING THE SMART FROM THE NOT-SO-SMART: Fracking divides red, blue states.

MY UT COLLEAGUE ROSALIND HACKETT PREDICTED THIS YEARS AGO: Are Evangelicals Winning the World? “Let me just suggest that to be a Saxon Evangelical is not as much of a contradiction as it may seem, and that such an individual can find congenial places of worship from Sao Paulo, to Lagos, to Seoul (not to mention Dallas).” Most people would rather believe in something than in nothing.

ANOTHER ISRAEL AND AMERICA-HATING PRESIDENT: Former President Jimmy Carter spoke recently to an AARP group, telling them, “Americans still have racist tendencies or feelings of superiority to people of color.”  Nice to hear such pro-American words from a former President.

Carter’s other recent gems include an oped last August in which Carter accused Israel of committing war crimes against Palestinians.  He also defended Obama’s decision to miss the unity rally in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo shootings, saying, “President Obama’s just come back from vacation, and I know how it is when you’ve been gone for a week or two.”

The similarities between Carter and Obama are growing day by day– although a poll last summer had Obama beating Carter for the title of “worst President since World War II” by five percentage points.  I suspect Obama’s lead in that poll would be much higher today. 

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 759.

HEY, REMEMBER PEAK OIL? Britain’s Underground Elephant Gets Bigger.

Two months ago, a small British oil exploration firm shocked the world when it announced a massive new oil discovery in southeast England, describing the site underneath Gatwick airport as a “world class potential resource.” The lucky firm, UK Oil & Gas Investments, estimated that the region’s Weald basin held as many as 158 million barrels of oil per square mile, which extrapolated out could mean a grand total of more than 100 billion barrels. Now, an outside assessment estimates the basin to contain 271 million barrels per square mile—72 percent more oil than was initially reported.

Quick, Vladimir — fund some more anti-fracking protesters in the West!

DISPARATE IMPACT STRIKES AGAIN: A federal judge in New York, Kimba Wood (a Reagan appointee), has thrown out New York’s teacher exam as racially discriminatory under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The reason? Black and Hispanic applicants had passage rates only 54 to 75 percent that of white applicants. The exam, called LAST-2, was administered from 2004 to 2012. According to the New York Times:

“Instead of beginning with ascertaining the job tasks of New York teachers, the two LAST examinations began with the premise that all New York teachers should be required to demonstrate an understanding of the liberal arts.”

Joshua Sohn, a partner at the firm Mishcon de Reya, who represents the prospective teachers in the case, echoed the that sentiment.

“They started with the conclusion, without any support, that this is what you actually needed to know to be an effective teacher,” Mr. Sohn said.

With this ruling, the LAST-2 meets the same fate of the LAST-1, an earlier version of the test, given from 1993 to 2004, that was also found to be discriminatory. . . .

Neither version of the exams is still in use in New York. Instead the state administers a new test called the Academic Literacy Skills Test, or the ALST, along with a slate of other assessments. The fate of the ALST, however, was recently called into question as well. This spring, Judge Wood began questioning whether that test, too, was racially discriminatory. A hearing is scheduled on the issue for later this month.

So having a well-rounded understanding of liberal arts is no longer  a reasonable indicia of a qualified teacher any longer.  But if  a well-rounded education isn’t an appropriate assessment of teacher qualification, what is? Breathing? Holding a (worthless) degree? Counting to 100? How far we have come–which just goes to show that the progressive motto “forward” isn’t always a positive thing for society. No wonder public schools generally are such cesspits of ennui and incompetence.

The outcome of this case illustrates the problem inherent in disparate impact theory, in which a plaintiff alleging discrimination is allowed to win under the statute without any proof of intentional discrimination.  So long as the action taken–in this case, an employment test–has a disparate statistical impact on a protected class (such as race), the burden will shift to the defendant. At that point, of course, the incentive to settle is strong, and shifting the burden of proof is often the death knell of the challenged practice.

The bottom line is that disparate impact theory allows many, many innocuous practices to be labeled as “discriminatory” merely because they “impact” races at a different rate. As I’ve pointed out before, this is a horrible way to run a diverse society, as the races do not participate in the same activities at the same rate, nor do they generally perform the same on standardized tests, as the recent racial discrimination lawsuit by Asian-Americans against Harvard University shows.