LIFE (AND DEATH) BEFORE THE FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION: Pearl Harbor vets ‘Never took a knee. Never failed to stand during national anthem.’ Colin Kaepernick zinged by Admiral Harry B. Harris, Jr. at Pearl Harbor.
Archive for 2016
December 8, 2016
December 7, 2016
I’M GOING WITH GUN LAWS: Video: Which laws shouldn’t apply on campus?
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NEWS FROM THE STUDENT BODY AT HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE, PROBABLY:
SORRY, JILL: Federal Judge Kills Recount Effort In Michigan.
DAVID BERNSTEIN: The Supreme Court oral argument that cost Democrats the presidency.
According to exit polls, Trump received 81 percent of the white evangelical Christian vote, and Hillary Clinton only 16 percent. Trump did significantly better than the overtly religious Mitt Romney and the overtly evangelical George W. Bush. He likely over-performed among other theologically conservative voters, such as traditionalist Catholics, as well. Not bad for a thrice-married adulterer of no discernible faith.
To what can we attribute Trump’s success? The most logical answer is that religious traditionalists felt that their religious liberty was under assault from liberals, and they therefore had to hold their noses and vote for Trump.
Let’s focus on one of these incidents, the time the solicitor general of the United States acknowledged that religious institutions that oppose as a matter of internal policy same-sex marriage may lose their tax exemptions. At oral argument in the Obergefell same-sex marriage case, there was the following colloquy:
Justice Samuel Alito: Well, in the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to taxexempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same sex marriage?
Soliticitor General Verrilli: You know, I , I don’t think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is it is going to be an issue.
With the mainstream media busy celebrating the Supreme Court’s ultimate recognition of a right to same-sex marriage, this didn’t get that much attention in mainstream news outlets. But in the course of researching my book, “Lawless,” I noticed that Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr.’s answer was big news in both the conservative blogosphere and in publications catering to religiously traditionalist audiences. . . .
In short, many religious Christians of a traditionalist bent believed that liberals not only reduce their deeply held beliefs to bigotry, but want to run them out of their jobs, close down their stores and undermine their institutions. When I first posted about this on Facebook, I wrote that I hope liberals really enjoyed running Brendan Eich out of his job and closing down the Sweet Cakes bakery, because it cost them the Supreme Court. I’ll add now that I hope Verrilli enjoyed putting the fear of government into the God-fearing because it cost his party the election.
Well, that’s how things are supposed to work.
APPARENTLY, THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE PEOPLE WHO RUN THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS IS “SNITCHES GET STITCHES:” When a University Regent Tries to Blow the Whistle: The Wallace Hall Case.
It wasn’t long before he began to suspect corruption and mismanagement.
First, there was a scandal involving a large slush fund run by the dean of the law school, allowing him to hand out “forgivable loans” to select faculty members. The university’s president, William Powers, promised an investigation by an in-house lawyer, who dutifully produced a “nothing to see here” report. Hall argued that the matter required a more objective assessment, but his complaints were ignored.
Quoted in this piece, Hall said, “I was overruled. That’s when I first felt like, one, there’s a problem at UT, and, two, the system has set up a scheme that gives the opportunity for a less than robust investigation.”
But Hall kept pushing the Board to insist that the Texas attorney general’s office dig into the matter. It did, and then the truth finally came out that the dean of the law school was using the fund simply to hand out favors, including a $500,000 “loan” to himself. The AG’s report brought down the house of cards. The dean resigned and the scandal contributed to the pressure on president Powers to choose between resigning and being fired.
That fight was just a minor skirmish compared with the coming war over the secret, back-door admissions process at UT-Austin.
In 2013, Texas media began running articles such as this, suggesting that some students, despite their low scores and grades, were being admitted to UT as a favor to influential people.
In response, then-chancellor Francisco Cigarroa asked university general counsel Dan Sharphorn to investigate. The result was a mild report saying that the study had found “no evidence of overt pressure on Admissions Office staff to admit applicants based on the recommendations of persons of influence.” Sharphorn’s findings were accepted by president William Powers, who said that the report would be helpful.
Powers hoped that would be the end of the matter, but shortly afterward, Hall announced that he had found evidence in internal UT emails of blatant admissions favoritism at UT’s law school. That led to furious demands for his removal from office by Texans who didn’t like the way he kept turning over rocks. Several members of the legislature called for Hall’s impeachment and the Board of Regents formed a committee to see if there were legal grounds for doing so. When the lawyers it hired concluded that there was no ground for impeaching Hall, the committee voted to censure Hall for “disloyalty.”
We need more activist trustees at universities all over the country. There are a lot of rocks to turn over.
MATT RIDLEY: Global Warming vs. Global Greening.
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HONESTLY, I’M WONDERING IF “FAKE NEWS” ISN’T AN IMPROVEMENT OVER THE “REAL” THING: NYT Reporter: Why Can’t We Assassinate Conservatives? “Cool down, Gardiner! You can’t kill American citizens who say things you don’t like with drones. You know you are in trouble when it takes Josh Earnest to explain the First Amendment to you. . . . I’m so old, I can remember when reporters not only had heard about the First Amendment, but were in favor of it. But I guess the ‘fake news’ crisis is so acute that the Left can’t let such niceties get in the way.”
CONDESCENDING, CERTAIN, AND INCOHERENT:
What gets to me, and what made this minor argument indicative of something far broader, was that the internal contradictions and lack of clear theoretical footing were packaged with the aggressive presumption that the conclusions were obvious.
This is a constant condition for me: interacting with liberals and leftists who affect a stance of bored impatience, who insist that the answers to moral and political questions are so obvious that every reasonable person already agrees, who then lack the ability to explain the thinking underlying their answers to those questions in a remotely compelling way. Everything is obvious; all the hard work is done; only an idiot couldn’t see what the right thing to do is. And then you poke a little bit at the foundation and it just collapses. I suppose the condescension and the fragility are related conditions, the bluster a product of the insecurity at the heart of it all. You act like everything is obvious precisely because you can’t articulate your position.
Plus:
I’ve been asking my friends on the academic left what rights conservative students have, in an era of a university culture obsessed with trauma. Two things are broadly true: one, they think that it’s ridiculous to suggest that there’s any reason to worry about what conservative students can and can’t say – there’s no questions here, no conflicts, nothing even to discuss. Two, despite the mutuality of this dismissal, no two of them have the same idea about what answers are stunningly obvious, only that they are. I am told that of course students can support Trump and say so, but that “Make America Great Again” is hate speech, despite simply being the slogan of the campaign that they just said students have the right to support.
Bear in mind that this is from Freddie de Boer, a lefty.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Students Name the Most Insanely PC College Courses in America. These 5 Are Truly Absurd…
SHOULD A PORK LOVER GO VEGAN: Heaven forbid, but there is bacon-flavored seaweed.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-DOMINATED MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS SO RACIST? Black employees file class-action lawsuit against CNN, Turner.
PAUL KRUGMAN ON ELECTION NIGHT: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”
Wall Street Journal today: U.S. stocks charged to fresh highs Wednesday, with major indexes logging their biggest one-day rally since the election.
UPDATE: Heh.
THE SOURCE IS UNIMPEACHABLE: Incredible aerial timelapse reveals how the mysterious Area 51 has expanded over the last 30 years. But, you know, we have to get ready for the alien invasion.
CHANGE: Trump taps Oklahoma attorney general to lead EPA. “President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Scott Pruitt, the Republican attorney general of Oklahoma and a frequent legal adversary to President Obama, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a transition official told The Hill. If confirmed by the Senate to oversee the 15,000-employee agency, Pruitt would take the lead on dismantling the EPA regulations that Trump targeted throughout his campaign as job killers that restrict economic growth.”
TALK ABOUT BURYING THE LEDE. WaPo: Trump Was Right About Overwhelmingly Negative Press Coverage.
Well yes. Real story here though: The WaPo actually gets one right for a change.
ARSON: Two juveniles charged in Smokies wildfire investigation. “Authorities have charged two juveniles in connection with the fires that started last month in the Chimney Tops area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and swept through Sevier County, killing 14 and injuring more than 130. The juveniles were charged with aggravated arson, but could face additional charges later.”
BLACK DEMOCRAT ALABAMA STATE SENATE LEADER ENDORSES JEFF SESSIONS FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL. “We’ve spoken about everything from Civil Rights to race relations and we agree that as Christian men our hearts and minds are focused on doing right by all people.”
Say, what if a lot of black Christians start thinking of themselves more significantly as Christians than as black Democrats? Could that happen?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Who Is To Blame For UC-Hastings ‘Horrific’ 51% Bar Pass Rate?
THEY’RE VERY FATTENING, THOUGH: A Handful of Nuts Is Good for Your Health.
A handful of nuts a day may be enough to reduce the risk for death from heart disease and other ills.
In a review combining data from 20 prospective studies, researchers found that compared with people who ate the least nuts, those who ate the most reduced the risk for coronary heart disease by 29 percent, for cardiovascular disease by 21 percent and for cancer by 15 percent.
There was also a 52 percent reduced risk for respiratory disease, 39 percent for diabetes and 75 percent reduced risk for infectious disease in those who ate the most nuts.
Most of the risk reduction was achieved by eating an average of about one ounce of nuts a day, the amount in about two dozen almonds or 15 pecan halves. There was little decrease in risk with greater consumption.
I love almonds.