Archive for 2016

REST IN PEACE: Don Kates, the father of the modern Second Amendment revival, has died. I’ve known Don for over two decades, as a friend and as a coauthor. When he started with his seminal Michigan Law Review article in 1983, the “revival” seemed unlikely to happen. He made it happen — not single-handedly, perhaps, but as the indispensable first mover. He was also a wonderful, funny, very smart person.

His health was never good — when I’d call him 20 years ago and say “how are you?” he’d respond “I’m old, Glenn, and sick, and I don’t have long on this earth.” It was schtick, but with a basis in truth. If you say that long enough, of course, it eventually comes true, and I’m sorry to say it finally did. I’m honored to have known him, and few men have had anything like his impact on society, or on constitutional law.

AS THE CAMPAIGN ENDS: Hillary’s spewing last-minute promises, left and left and did I say left.

I’m waiting for the mainstream media to confess she has public and private positions.

…I know. I’ll be waiting to 3037, when the Chicago Cubs beat Alpha Centauri Bb in the All Habitable Worlds Series…

WHY IS THE IVY LEAGUE SUCH A CESSPIT OF SEXISM? Harvard Cancels Rest Of Men’s Soccer Season Over Sex Ratings Of Women Players. “Harvard University suspended its first-place men’s soccer team Thursday for the rest of the season after discovering that players’ crude sexual comments about the women’s team persisted for years, the Harvard Crimson reported.”

Question: Is there any imaginable kind of speech a women’s team could engage in that would result in such a punishment?

UPDATE: The Harvard Men’s Soccer Team is the Latest Victim of Fainting Couch Feminists. “This outrage is all over a list. Not actions. But a list.”

MESSAGING: Trump’s two-minute final ad: “The Argument for America.”

This plays now like a more generic populist attack on “the system” and its corrupt self-dealing administrators, embodied most notably by Hillary Clinton. This is exactly how you should frame your closing argument if you’re a candidate like Trump, who’s carting around tons of baggage. It’s not about electing him, supposedly, it’s about stopping them. His voters already tend to view their vote less as support for Trump than as opposition to Clinton. He’s encouraging that impulse here: Go to the polls and vote against business as usual in Washington. In the end, the candidate who wins will probably be the candidate who succeeded more at turning the vote into a referendum on his or her opponent’s fitness for office. This is Trump’s last, best effort.

CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS IF HILLARY IS ELECTED?

Donald Trump on the campaign trail:

If Clinton wins the election, Trump told his supporters at a rally near the Massachusetts border, “it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis. What a mess.” Referring to the continuing investigation of emails to and from Clinton during her time as secretary of state, Trump asserted, “She’s likely to be under investigation for a long trial, concluding in a criminal trial. … America deserves a government that can go to work on Day 1.”

THIS AGGRESSIVENESS IS ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED: FIRE to ‘Red Light’ Public Universities: Revise Your Unconstitutional Speech Codes.

Yesterday, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) sent a national certified mailing to 111 of the country’s largest and most prestigious public colleges and universities. The colleges receiving the mailing earn FIRE’s poorest, “red light” rating for clearly and substantially restricting student and faculty speech on campus. The list of letter recipients includes Clemson University, the University of Oregon, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Georgia, and the University of Kansas.

FIRE’s mailing reminds recipient institutions of U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Representative Bob Goodlatte’s August 2015 letter urging administrators at red light schools to revise policies that violate the First Amendment. Further, as yesterday’s mailing warns, university administrators who continue to violate clearly established law with respect to expressive rights risk losing their “qualified immunity”—meaning they could be held personally liable for monetary damages in a student or faculty member’s lawsuit.

Personally liable. Who wants to be the academic world’s version of Gawker?

IT’S THE DEEP SEVENS EMERGING AT LAST, ISN’T IT? Canada investigates mysterious ‘pinging’ sound at bottom of sea in Arctic. “The Department of National Defence has been informed of the strange noises emanating in the Fury and Hecla Strait area, and the Canadian Armed Forces are taking the appropriate steps to actively investigate the situation.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Rutgers student fired from campus newspaper after writing ‘illegal alien’ in column.

“College: an oasis of totalitarianism in a desert of freedom,” as Iowahawk would say.

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