NANOSATELLITES HEADING FOR MARS.

EUGENE VOLOKH STANDS UP TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA STASI: UC teaching faculty members not to criticize race-based affirmative action, call America ‘melting pot,’ and more.

One of the latest things in universities, including at University of California (where I teach) is condemning “microaggressions,” supposed “brief, subtle verbal or non-verbal exchanges that send denigrating messages to the recipient because of his or her group membership (such as race, gender, age or socio-economic status).” Such microaggressions, the argument goes, can lead to a “hostile learning environment,” which UC — and the federal government — views as legally actionable. This is stuff you could get disciplined or fired for, especially if you aren’t a tenured faculty member.

But of course this concept is now being used to suppress not just, say, personal insults or discrimination in hiring or grading, but also ideas that the UC wants to exclude from university classrooms. . . .

Well, I’m happy to say that I’m just going to keep on microaggressing. I like to think that I’m generally polite, so I won’t express these views rudely. And I try not to inject my own irrelevant opinions into classes I teach, so there are many situations in which I won’t bring up these views simply because it’s not my job to express my views in those contexts. But the document that I quote isn’t about keeping classes on-topic or preventing presonal insults — it’s about suppressing particular viewpoints. And what’s tenure for, if not to resist these attempts to stop the expression of unpopular views?

The people promulgating these policies are just more evidence that universities have too many administrators. Let the layoffs commence.

CIVIL FORFEITURE: Police seized his life savings without charging him for a crime. Now he’s fighting back. It’s unAmerican, and there seems to be pretty strong left/right agreement that it’s wrong. So how come there’s been so little progress in banning it?

READER BOOK PLUG: From reader David Welch, The Gods’ Day To Die.

THIS WILL KEEP EUROPE ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: Shock European court decision: Websites are liable for users’ comments. As with universities’ dislike of Yik Yak, the goal is to ensure that the unmoderated voice of the people is never heard.

EXERCISE: Stop Killing The Elderly With Kindness. “Picture the healthiest older adult that you know – do they spend their day sitting down, or do they spend their days walking, skiing, or dancing? It’s not a coincidence. If I were to take a healthy 20 year-old, force them to sit all day, and refused to let them do any physical labour out of fear they might hurt themselves, I would cause them to ‘age’ extremely rapidly.”

WHY DOES THE WASHINGTON POST HATE COLLEGE MEN? K.C. Johnson Discusses. “To get its large number, the Post included alleged assaults that occurred off-campus by non-student perpetrators. It led with a story that doesn’t appear to have been a sexual assault at all, and in which the alleged attacker wasn’t a student at the same college as the alleged victim.”

BERNIE CLOSES THE GAP: The two most recent New Hampshire polls have Bernie Sanders within striking distance of Hillary Clinton, trailing by 10-12 percentage points. The Suffolk University poll shows a clear gender gap, with Clinton trailing Sanders among white men, with Sanders receiving 35 percent support versus Clinton’s 32 percent.

With such poor numbers against a relatively unknown socialist, Clinton’s candidacy is looking mighty shaky. It’s New Hampshire, of course, but it’s still not as left-leaning as its neighbor, Vermont, according to Gallup. And let’s not forget that, in 2008, Hillary Clinton upset Obama in the NH Democratic primary, 39 to 37 percent, despite losing independents by a significant margin. Her 2008 victory was attributed to her significant margin among women.

As recently as late April, Clinton enjoyed around a 20-40 point advantage over Sanders, so clearly something is shifting.

JOEL KOTKIN: Democrats Now The Party Of Plutocracy. Ya think?

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 769.

DARN RIGHT IT WAS A “TAKING”: A federal judge has ruled that the federal government’s forcible multi-billion dollar bailout of insurance giant AIG constituted a “taking” of private property without just compensation to its shareholders, in violation of the Fifth Amendment. The bailout required AIG to turn over 80 percent of its stock to the US Treasury. After an 8-week bench trial, Judge Thomas Wheeler of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims concluded:

[T]he Federal Reserve Bank of New York had the authority to serve as a lender of last resort under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act in a time of “unusual and exigent circumstances,” 12 U.S.C. § 343 (2006), and to establish an interest rate “fixed with a view of accommodating commerce and business,” 12 U.S.C. § 357. However, Section 13(3) did not authorize the Federal Reserve Bank to acquire a borrower’s equity as consideration for the loan. . . .

[T]here is nothing in the Federal Reserve Act or in any other federal statute that would permit a Federal Reserve Bank to take over a private corporation and run its business as if the Government were the owner. Yet, that is precisely what FRBNY did. It is one thing for FRBNY to have made an $85 billion loan to AIG at exorbitant interest rates under Section 13(3), but it is quite another to direct the replacement of AIG’s Chief Executive Officer, and to take control of AIG’s business operations. A Federal Reserve Bank has no right to control and run a company to whom it has made a sizable loan.

Despite agreeing with the takings claim, Judge Wheeler denied the plaintiffs’ request for $40 billion in damages, concluding that “if not for the Government’s intervention, AIG would have filed for bankruptcy. In a bankruptcy proceeding, AIG’s shareholders would most likely have lost 100 percent of their stock value.” The lead plaintiff, former AIG CEO Maurice Greenberg, has stated he will appeal the denial of damages.

RELATED: Seth Lipsky cogently argues that the decision illustrates the need for Congress to enact tougher restrictions on the Federal Reserve:

[T]he Fed handed over to the Treasury $22.7 billion in profit it made selling the equity it illegally seized in an AIG that supposedly was without value. That’s quite an incentive for the government to break the law.

All the more reason for Congress to address the larger questions raised by this astonishing case. Who watches the watchman? If ever a case put that question into sharp relief, this is it. And who better to answer than the Congress that created the Fed and has the formal oversight of the nation’s central bank?

It’s not as if the press has been on the job. It spent this trial down at the local bar having a drink with Marx and Engels—and laughing at the Bill of Rights. At the center of this case is a violation of the Fifth Amendment, the Constitution’s bedrock protection for private-property rights. It requires due process and just compensation before property can be taken for public use.

This seemed almost to offend the press. One dispatch in the Times called the case “ludicrous,” another “asinine.” The New Republic called it “mostly insane,” the New Yorker “absurdist comedy.” A headline in The Week called it “comically despicable.” A Bloomberg piece likened it to the slapstick courtroom classic “My Cousin Vinny.”

It strikes me that even the richest of Americans deserve more than such cynicism. How could the governors of our central bank, all of whom are bound by oath to support the Constitution, be so oblivious—or even hostile—to the parchment’s central protection of the property right?

Answer: because it was convenient for them to do so. As for Lipsky’s lamentations about the media’s cheerleading over the bailout’s terms. the mainstream media knows so pitifully little about the Constitution that they would cheer the forced quartering of troops in private homes next week if they thought it served some liberal/progressive cause.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Putin’s Nuclear Megaphone:

Yesterday, Putin was rattling the nuclear saber by threatening to put Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, on the Baltic, in response to the U.S. plan to put armor in the region. . . .

This week’s escalating rhetoric about nukes is a new low, and one that demonstrates how far south the relationship between Russia and the West has gone under a U.S. President who rose to fame and Nobel laureate status based on his nonproliferation chops and amid promises of a “reset” with Russia.
It’s now more than fair to call the reset an abject failure, not least because this is hardly the first time Russia has pulled out the nuclear blackmail trick. In March, the country’s ambassador to Denmark threatened nuclear strikes on Danish warships if Copenhagen signed on with a NATO missile defense shield—a move that, like this latest threat, was aimed at driving a wedge between NATO member countries. As we wrote at that time, the Kremlin is keenly aware of the billions it spends on Russia’s massive nuclear arsenal. Since Putin can’t actually use the things as weapons, and he can’t get rid of them, he can at least use them as a megaphone. That seems to be what he is doing now—but that, of course, doesn’t make the threat that nuclear standoffs pose to the world any less real.

Just 20 miles or so from my house, we’re disassembling 9 megaton B53 warheads. We could just give ’em to Poland. . . .

DEBT SLAVERY: More young people picked paying off student loans than completing high school or even college as the sign of advancing to the next stage of life.

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NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Russia to increase nuclear arsenal as U.S. plans more firepower in Europe.

NO, BUT IT’S SHAMEFULLY SLOW: Is the FDA sexist? The Agency’s delay in approving the “female viagra,” flibanserin, highlights the FDA’s frustrating, seemingly perpetual sluggishness:

So why the delay? For the most part, flibanserin isn’t a great medicine. Across three randomized clinical trials, the drug shows modest benefits while producing side effects such as low blood pressure, drowsiness, fainting and nausea. As many as 60% of women in those studies said they benefited from more sexually satisfying events, but the FDA says to adjust for the placebo effect the true number is merely 10%. . . .

[A] feminist pressure group called Even the Score—funded in part by Sprout—besieged the FDA with accusations of sexism. Other political organizations like NOW and NARAL joined in, while Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other Democratic Congresswomen accused the FDA of perpetuating “a gross disparity” of 24 approved treatments for male sex disorders and zero for women. . . .

But the real problem is that the FDA (whose former commissioner and pharmaceuticals division chief are both women) isn’t so much sexist as it is sociopathic. The paternalists who run the FDA are far more obsessed with phantom risks and protecting their own bureaucratic control over health care.

In this case they are instructing adult women that they should not be allowed to make their own informed choices about whether flibanserin is worth the potential side effects. If the drug is marginal, it is still better than the status quo and will help some subset of women. Feminists are right to be indignant about the delay, even if the FDA blockade is far worse morally in similar cases involving terminal or rare diseases.

I wrote about the need to privatize the FDA’s drug review process back in 1996. But absent privatization, there are numerous ways to break the FDA’s monopoly that would benefit patients waiting for access to new drug therapies, particularly drugs for terminal diseases and conditions such as cancer. A female viagra, even if only beneficial for 10 percent of women, would improve many lives.

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ASHE SCHOW: Another problem with that WaPo campus sexual assault poll.

On Monday I detailed how the Washington Post’s survey claiming that one in five women have been sexually assaulted in college is deeply flawed. But there was an aspect of the survey I didn’t get to, one that does not bode well for the future of relationships among students.

Deep in the poll, respondents were asked to decide whether a particular action “establishes consent for more sexual activity.” They were given five examples. The only example that fell clearly in the “yes” category among men and women respondents was “nods in agreement.”

To the example “takes off their own clothes,” men and women were split on whether that established consent. Fifty percent of men said “yes,” while 45 percent said “no.” For women, 52 percent said “no,” while 44 percent said “yes.”

For the example “gets a condom,” men and women agreed that it does not establish consent for further action, although the margin was wider for women than for men.

As for the examples “engages in foreplay such as kissing or touching” and “does not say ‘no,'” the vast majority of men and women said neither action established consent.

This finding (though, to be clear, I question the validity of the whole document) indicates that the future of sex must contain a strict format for establishing consent. Nothing except a question-and-answer session will do, as actions such as foreplay and getting a condom no longer count.

No one actually has sex this way, as I argued in a recent article about attempts by two law professors to criminalize sexual contact that doesn’t follow the Q-and-A format.

I’d like to know the back stories on those responses. Did men say those actions didn’t establish consent because they fear a campus hearing wouldn’t accept them? Or are the behavior police starting to get through?

I remember when college was fun.

Related: Megyn Kelly blasts Amherst College over campus sexual assault ‘injustice.’

Kelly, speaking with author K.C. Johnson (who first broke the story), described how a woman accused a young man of sexual assault nearly two years after the encounter.

“The injustice of the process that happened at Amherst once her ‘case’ went through the authorities is where things get really awful,” Kelly said, before prompting Johnson’s response.

Johnson explained how the deck is stacked against accused students from the beginning, and how they are denied basic due process rights like an attorney or cross-examination.

“You’re done. Once you are accused, you’re done,” Kelly said.

After explaining that the accused student is now suing, under the pseudonym John Doe, Amherst and has discovered text messages strongly suggesting his innocence — which the school refuses to accept.

“This cannot stand. It cannot stand,” she said. “This does violence to the justice system that is set up to protect victims and the accused — the unfairly accused — who have rights as well.”

Remember when Democrats told college students that Republicans were a bunch of sour prudes who hated the idea of people having sex?

Plus: K.C. Johnson & Stuart Taylor: More College Rape Hype — This Time from the Washington Post.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Ex-Ravens cheerleader Molly Shattuck pleads guilty to rape. “Shattuck, 48, the former wife of former Constellation Energy CEO Mayo A. Shattuck, was accused in November of sexually abusing one of her son’s classmates, including performing oral sex on him in a rented vacation house in Bethany Beach.”

WHILE THEY CHARGE YOU FOR CHECKED BAGS AND THEN LOSE THEM, airlines want to make your carry-on bags smaller.

Just when you thought flying couldn’t get any more annoying, some major international airlines and their trade association have decided your carry-on bag is too big for their overhead bins. They’d like you to buy a new, smaller one.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced new bag-size guidelines last week that would make most existing carry-on bags oversize, presuming airlines formally adopt the change.

With the kind of reassurance that should make you check your wallet, IATA says this is “designed to make things easier for … the passenger.” That bag you paid $100 or $200 or more for? You could still bring it aboard, but now it could be the first to be gate-checked and put in the cargo hold when the bins fill up.

Let’s break this down. When airlines started charging for checked luggage, they created a land rush for overhead bin space. Carriers made the battle worse by rarely enforcing the bag-size standards they had already imposed. That’s why that “carry-on” the size of Montana is already occupying most of the bin above your seat when you get there. Airlines then found a way to profit from the inevitable bin anxiety by selling the right to board early and get to the bins quicker.

It’s a vast experiment to see how miserable they can make flying without people just quitting.

IT’S COME TO THIS: “Welcome to 2015: College kids have forgotten how to fornicate.” Really, what’s the point of college anymore?

IT KEEPS GETTING WORSE: OPM Breach Includes Congressional Staffers. “The notices likely came as a surprise to the House and Senate staffers affected by the breach, because they were previously informed that only those with executive branch experience were likely affected.”

Next we’ll discover that the IRS has been hacked, and the Chinese have all the info on every American taxpayer. . . .

JUSTICE: Male Teen Has Consensual Sex with Female Teen. He Gets 25 Years as Sex Offender, Banned from Internet. Girl admits he did nothing wrong, has asked prosecutor to drop the case. “Now, in addition to registering as a sex offender, Anderson will spend five years on probation, during which time he will not be allowed to live in a home where there is internet access or a smart phone. He will obviously have to change his major. And he is forbidden to talk to anyone under age 17, except his brothers.”

If the DOJ is wondering why people online are talking smack about judges, maybe it’s because more people are noticing what judges actually do.

MAYBE IT’S JUST ME, BUT I DON’T RECALL THE GOP BEING SO ASSERTIVE WHEN THEY WERE THE SENATE MINORITY: Senate Dems give GOP 45-day highway deadline.