Archive for 2016

FINALLY, AN ADULT IN THE ROOM: Federal judge rebukes lack of due process in campus sex assault procedures.

Finally, a federal judge has strongly condemned the lack of due process and fairness that students accused of sexual assault face on college campuses.

Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that Brandeis University “failed to provide a variety of procedural protections to [the accused student], many of which, in the criminal context, are the most basic and fundamental components of due process of law.”

In his 89-page decision, Saylor criticizes Brandeis for a number of due process violations, including denying the accused student access to the evidence against him or even a detailed explanation of the charges against him.

For example, Brandeis’ “special examiner,” who investigated the accusation, determined that the accuser, known as J.C. in the lawsuit, was more credible than the accused, because he provided consistent statements while the accused couldn’t remember certain events. Saylor concluded that the discrepancy between the two parties was “exactly what one would expect where one party is fully informed of the subject matter of the inquiry and the other remains ignorant, and has to surmise the specifics of the charges over the course of the investigation.”

Further, once the accused, listed under the pseudonym John Doe, was notified that he had been sanctioned for sexual assault, he asked the special examiner for a copy of her report to use in his appeal. The school refused, meaning Doe was denied access to the evidence against him. Saylor described Brandeis’ procedure for investigating sexual assault “a secret and inquisitorial process.”

From the very beginning, the deck was stacked against Doe, as his accuser — a former boyfriend with whom he had a 21-month committed relationship prior to the accusation — submitted two sentences as to the accusation and was not required to provide a full account of the alleged sexual assault. As Saylor wrote in his decision, even if the accuser had provided such a statement, the accused was not entitled to see it.

“Indeed, the accused was required to provide his or her own detailed response without an opportunity to see or know the details of the accusation,” Saylor wrote. “There was likewise no requirement that copies of any ‘substantiating materials’ submitted by the accuser, or the names of any witnesses, be provided to the accused at any time.”

Saylor noted that school disciplinary hearings like the one Doe faced are not criminal proceedings, yet administrators essentially conducted the hearing like a criminal trial.

Cost of attending Brandeis University: $69,187.

EVER GET THE FEELING YOU’VE BEEN CHEATED?

Shot:

Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I’ve heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

“Obama’s Gift,” as divined by current GE spokesman Ezra Klein, then age 23, in the American Prospect, January 4th, 2008.

Chaser: Peace out, fools! Obama plays the clown by flashing the peace sign for nuclear security summit ‘team photo’… and gets a very unimpressed look from David Cameron and bemused world leaders.

— The London Daily Mail, yesterday.

You’re only a semi-retired lame duck POTUS counting down the days of your last year of office once — why bother with dignity?

(Classical reference in headline.)

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN! Wall Street’s latest dirty word—stagflation:

A tightening labor market and rising inflation against a backdrop of slowing overall growth are painting an increasingly stagflationary picture for the U.S. economy.

Stagflation, or conditions in which costs are rising but growth is not, last was seen in the 1970s, before then-Fed Chair Paul Volcker had to push the economy into recession to slay the inflation dragon.

Now, with a variety of factors coming together to show inflationary-deflationary cross currents, Wall Street is bracing for another battle.

Welcome back Carter! Although as someone once warned, when it comes to foreign, domestic, and economic issues, “at this point a Carter rerun is probably a best-case scenario.”

(Incidentally, note that CTL-F “Carter” brings up zero returns in the above CNBC article. “Unexpectedly.”)

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Clinton Email Scandal: How A Biased Press Tried To Ignore It.

The Washington Post led its Monday paper with a story titled “How Clinton’s Email Scandal Took Root.” What it revealed was that, left to the mainstream press, the story might never have hit the ground.

No one reading the Post’s 5,000-word account can come away thinking that the Clinton email scandal is unimportant.

The FBI now has 147 agents chasing down leads. A key person involved in the scandal has been granted immunity. Hillary Clinton — who has already been caught in several lies — might be questioned by federal agents. There are fairly obvious violations of the law, even if it’s just those governing record-keeping. And there were, and continue to be, concerns that national security secrets were compromised, or at least casually disregarded.

The story details, for example, the many high-level security concerns that officials had about her use of a private BlackBerry to do her emailing, to say nothing of her homebrew email server.

Clinton got a warning from a State Department security official in March 2009 that “any unclassified BlackBerry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving emails, and exploiting calendars.”

Clinton responded that she “gets it,” but as the Post reports, she “kept using her private BlackBerry — and the basement server.”

The Post deserves credit for devoting so much space to summing the entire saga up. And for exposing something the reporter and his editors probably never intended: The media’s negligence as the scandal unfolded.

While the New York Times was the first national media outlet to write about Clinton’s use of a private email account last March, the Post summation makes clear that the mainstream press had almost nothing to do with uncovering the truth or advancing the story.

The press knows that you don’t advance your career by taking down Democrats.

EIGHT YEARS LATER, THE FEDS DECIDE TO CLOSE A HUGE SECURITY GAP IN GOVERNMENT BUILDINGS: It took nearly a decade, a critical inspectors general report and a Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group story but the federal house-keeping agency is now going to close a major anti-terrorist security gap.

A 2008 Homeland Security directive ordered federal agencies to stop using easily counterfeited ID badges for employees and contractors. The General Services Administration oversees thousands of federal facilities, including courthouses, laboratories, ports of entry and data centers, and is responsible for ensuring such directives are observed. But nothing changed for eight years.

Then TheDCNF posted a story Thursday reporting a watchdog report that noted the eight-year delay and pointed out that having thousands of easily counterfeited badges “increases the risk of a security event, such as an active shooter, terrorist attack, or theft of government property, as well as exposure of sensitive and proprietary information.”

On Friday, GSA Administrator confirmed late in the day to TheDCNF that her agency is now moving on “discontinuing the practice of issuing building-specific local badges.” She declined to say if anybody at GSA would be disciplined or fired for the eight-year delay. And no, this is NOT an April Fool’s Day joke.

 

 

JOURNALISTS AND PUNDITS THINK IT’S A BIGGER DEAL THAN IT IS, BECAUSE OF WHERE THEY LIVE: The surprisingly narrow reality of America’s urban revival.

Census population data show that suburban America is, once again, outgrowing central cities. Even exurban counties, those beyond suburban areas, are gaining population faster than urban ones, for the second year in a row. And the growth that the densest places in the country have enjoyed since the housing bust is actually slowing down.

If there’s a back-to-the-city renaissance underway in America, it’s hard to find in these broad population trends — which doesn’t make much sense if you live in the middle of Washington.

Clearly, something big has been happening in the District. The construction cranes prove as much. Whole neighborhoods have been redeveloped, and urban housing prices have skyrocketed. Demographics have perceptibly shifted in the blocks right around the city’s metro stops. The District’s population has grown by about 90,000 people in the last decade.

If there is an urban revival anywhere, it’s happening here.

The issue is that it’s happening almost nowhere else in this very big country.

Well, the Capital City in The Hunger Games was doing pretty well, too. Also, urban growth depends more than anything else on perception that crime is under control. Two years of Black Lives Matter theatrics, coupled with hapless mayors ike De Blasio in New York or Emanuel in Chicago, and the suburbs look pretty good.