ASHE SCHOW: When Safe Spaces Become Segregation:

There’s a “fine line between safe space[s] and segregation,” writes the Atlantic’s Emily Deruy.

And she’s right, as demonstrated by recent backlash aimed at universities that have suggested or instituted policies that would separate minority students from white students. But Deruy’s article points out just how nuanced this issue is, and how difficult it is to create a college experience that is inclusive and supportive yet still requires students to interact with those who are different in order to make them more well-rounded.

There’s also the question of whether a college should be focusing on any of this rather than devoting time and resources to, you know, education.

Yeah, that’s not at the top of the priority list, it seems.

ANALYSIS: NOT EVEN CLOSE. Clinton: I followed Colin Powell’s advice on personal email.

Here’s how closely Clinton followed Powell’s example.

Clinton vs. Powell's use of email pic.twitter.com/KtRklq3KUm

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) August 19, 2016

NO NUKES: Romania Denies Accepting US Nuclear Weapons.

The Romanian foreign ministry, MAE on Thursday dismissed claims that the US has started transferring nuclear weapons from Turkey to Romania amid tensions in relations between Washington and Ankara.

“The MAE firmly rejects these pieces of information,” the ministry said in a press release, without elaborating.

Defence Minister Mihnea Motoc said that such media reports were just speculation and “so far there have not been any plans or discussions [among NATO members] on this topic”.

The statements came after website Euractiv reported on Thursday morning that more than 20 B61 nuclear weapons were being moved from Turkey’s Incirlik air base to the Deveselu base in Romania.

According to one of the two anonymous sources quoted by Euractiv, “US-Turkey relations had deteriorated so much following the [recent attempted] coup that Washington no longer trusted Ankara to host the weapons”.

You couldn’t blame us for moving the weapons, or Romania for officially denying that they were the new host.

AS GAWKER LEARNED, MEDIA CORPORATIONS AREN’T ABOVE THE LAW, Jonah Goldberg writes:

Gilles Wullus of the group Reporters Without Borders told the BBC that the Gawker case poses a dire threat to press freedom. “Journalism ethics should be taken care of by journalists themselves,” he said. “In case they do not, we think that nobody else can do it in their place, neither states nor governments; especially not wealthy individuals.”

What nonsense. Yes, a free press is an important institution in a democracy (and even more important in non-democracies), but journalists don’t have any rights the rest of us don’t. A reporter has the right to free speech, and so does a plumber.

Indeed, in the era of smartphones, it has never been more true: We all have the right and ability to commit journalism. That right manifests itself in people, not corporations. The New York Times, to the extent that it is a “corporate person,” should have no more (and no fewer) rights than Exxon Mobil. Imagine the outrage if I said, “Petroleum-industry ethics should be taken care of by petroleum industry executives themselves.”

It’s certainly fair to argue against the merits of the verdict. But no one is above the law. Not even journalists, never mind corporations in the journalism business.

Read the whole thing.

UNEXPECTEDLY: One in Five Manufacturers in NY Cutting Jobs Due to Obamacare.

Related: “New York is again the least free state in the country,” the Cato Institute reports in its annual survey of “Freedom in the 50 States,” adding, “Its huge, glaring weakness is fiscal policy. If New York were to adopt a fiscal regime closer to that of California, New Jersey, or Connecticut, its overall economic freedom score would be close to theirs. As it is, New York looks set to remain the least free state for many years to come.”

What’s the second least free state in the country? Let’s just say you can’t spell the phrase “Catch-22” without the letters CA.

THE WAR ON COLLEGE MEN (CONT’D): Will UC-San Diego keep hiding witnesses that could prove accused students innocent?

The University of California-San Diego routinely hides the identity of witnesses that could help students accused of wrongdoing exonerate themselves, departing from its own rules on who is “relevant” to an investigation.

This policy, which has been applied against accused students for at least the past five years, was not publicly known until 11 months ago. A state appeals court fleshed out its existence in a due-process lawsuit against the school by a student who was found responsible for cheating and expelled.

That court struck down UCSD’s ruling against Jonathan Dorfman, saying it had no legal reason to withhold the identity of “Student X” – whose test answers Dorfman allegedly copied – from him.

Arguing before the court, the UC System’s own lawyer admitted that the school had never bothered to ask Student X where he was sitting in class that day in 2011 – potentially preempting its case against Dorfman.

It was the second time in just a few months that a California court had found UCSD denied an accused student basic fairness in an adjudication.

Why are lefty institutions such cesspits of unfairness, secrecy, and dishonesty?

BUSH DERANGEMENT SYNDROME STRIKES AGAIN IN NEW BIO OF 43rd PRESIDENT:

[Jean Edward Smith] has written critically acclaimed biographies of FDR, Eisenhower, Ulysses Grant and John Marshall. Now he’s published one of George W. Bush.

It’s so replete with factual errors and baseless assertions that it should call Smith’s credibility into question, make us reexamine his previous work and confront the crisis that the left’s politicization of history has brought about.

At Foreign Policy’s Web site, Will Inboden does a mammoth fact-check and concludes, as the headline has it, “It’s Impossible to Count the Things Wrong With the Negligent, Spurious, Distorted New Biography of George W. Bush.” Inboden worked at the State Department and National Security Council for five years during the Bush administration, so he isn’t neutral, but he is in a position to know what Smith got wrong.

And it’s a lot.

Read the whole thing.

You may need to go in through Google to read Inboden’s fact-check at Foreign Policy, but it’s worth it to see how just how badly BDS derailed Smith’s account. There’s a reason why the article is headlined “It’s Impossible to Count the Things Wrong With the Negligent, Spurious, Distorted New Biography of George W. Bush.”

YOU KEEP USING THAT WORD: U.S. Concedes $400 Million Payment to Iran Was Delayed as Prisoner ‘Leverage’

For months the Obama administration had maintained that the payment was part of a settlement over an old dispute and did not amount to a “ransom” for the release of the Americans. Instead, administration officials said, it was the first installment of the $1.7 billion that the United States intends to pay Iran to reimburse it for military equipment it bought before the Iranian revolution that the United States never delivered.

But at a briefing on Thursday, John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said the United States “took advantage of the leverage” it felt it had that weekend in mid-January to obtain the release of the hostages and “to make sure they got out safely and efficiently.”

Perhaps on the way to work this morning, your ATM card could provide you with enough leverage to secure breakfast at the drive-thru.

FIGHTING INTENSIFIES IN EASTERN UKRAINE: Meanwhile, the Kremlin has moved at least 40,000 soldiers up to the Russia-Ukraine border. My Creators Syndicate column this week discussed Putin’s creeping war of aggression in Ukraine and the possibility he might escalate. The guns of August.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot: How to rein in drone nightmares.

—Headline, CNN.com, August 21st, 2015.

Chaser: CNN Launches Drone Operations To Film Americans.

—Headline, the Daily Caller, yesterday.

PRESIDENT CHAOS UMPIRE: The Hill: Obama’s foreign policy worsened Eastern European chaos.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: GOP preps tough perjury case against Clinton.

GOP lawmakers have claimed that the Democratic presidential nominee broke the law by lying under oath about her private email setup during her marathon appearance in October.

Next month, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee plan to make the issue a central part of a hearing with senior officials from the FBI, a committee aide said on Thursday.
Legally, the GOP faces a tough case. Politically, however, raising the perjury allegations would be a way to keep the issue of Clinton’s truthfulness in the public eye throughout the fall as she battles Republican nominee Donald Trump for the White House.

Proving that someone committed perjury means overcoming a high hurdle: that the person knowingly told a falsehood under oath.

Convincing lawyers at the Department of Justice to take the case would also be difficult because prosecutors would have to prove that what the former secretary of State said during the 11-hour hearing was directly at odds with the truth.

Most popular phrase in the Clinton Family Vernacular? “I did not knowingly.“

IF SOMEONE DID THIS TO HILLARY IT WOULD BE A SIGN OF SOCIETY’S HOPELESS MISOGYNY: Naked Donald Trump statues pop up in several cities.

The group named the political art project “The Emperor Has No Balls,” inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen tale of an overly confident ruler titled “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” according to The Washington Post.

“Like it or not, Trump is a larger-than-life figure in world culture at the moment,” an Indecline spokesperson told the newspaper Thursday.

“Looking back in history, that’s how those figures were memorialized and idolized in their time — with statues,” he added.

The artist behind the project, who posted a video of the process, is a Las-Vegas sculptor who goes by Ginger and has extensive experience in creating and designing monsters for horror films and haunted houses.

“When the guys [from INDECLINE] approached me, it was all because of my monster-making abilities,” he told the Post.

“Trump is just yet another monster, so it was absolutely in my wheelhouse to be able to create these monstrosities.”

Also, calling someone a “monster” is eliminationist rhetoric that might lead to violence. Well, unless the target is a Republican, anyway.

BEEN DAZED AND CONFUSED AND CONFUSED FOR SO LONG IT’S NOT TRUE: A media analyst emerges from the media jungle.

CHANGE MORE OF THE SAME: Unhappy 25th Anniversary of the Al Sharpton-Led Crown Heights Pogrom.

DROIT DE SEIGNEUR: Wonkette dismisses Bill Clinton’s alleged rape of Juanita Broaddrick as “alpha sex,” because, hey, it was the ‘70s, man: “I can absolutely see Bill Clinton doing this (then, not now) and not even thinking of it as rape, but thinking of it as dominant, alpha sex. I can see a LOT of men doing that during that time period, before we started telling them in the ’80s, ‘hey, that is rape, do not do that,” Rebecca Schoenkopf, editor of Wonkette sniffs.

As Betsy Newmark responds, “Well, alright then. Now we know. If you raped a woman in the 1980s and then apologize, that’s okay. You were just being an alpha sort of guy. Right. I’m sure that is what any feminist would have believed about any man, Republican or Democrat. But if that’s true, why get so upset about the accusation that Clarence Thomas once made a joke in the 1980s about a public hair on his can of coke? That was regarded as a major transgression. Rape by Bill Clinton? Not so much.”

But that was pretty much a feminist leitmotif of the 1990s, as they pivoted overnight, Oceania-style from attacking Thomas, John Tower, and Bob Packwood in the early 1990s to defending Bill Clinton and his scandal-plagued trousers during the rest of the decade.

SHOT: WaPo: I Don’t Need Air Conditioning And Neither Do You.

Chaser: The Inferno: Summer Heat Batters Public Housing Residents.

So nobody needs A/C — except prisoners and welfare recipients. Got it.

I say, ban A/C in DC!

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Biden’s remark on Japan Constitution raises eyebrows.

A recent remark by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that America wrote Japan’s Constitution is raising some eyebrows in Japan.

A popular front-page column in the national Asahi newspaper said this week that the comment “was unprecedented in its insensitivity” and “could even be considered arrogant.”

Biden, appearing Monday with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, attacked Republican candidate Donald Trump for saying that Japan might need to consider obtaining nuclear weapons in the future.

The vice president said, “Does he not understand we wrote Japan’s Constitution to say that they could not be a nuclear power?”

It’s no secret that U.S. forces occupying Japan after World War II drafted the constitution, though Japanese scholars were involved in reviewing and modifying it before adoption.

Nice.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Michael Moore on Donald Trump, then and now.

It’s like the man just makes things up for a living or something.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: The US is promoting war crimes in Yemen: The humanitarian disaster there is, by some measures, greater than that in Syria. Why is Obama continuing to enable the Saudi bombing campaign?

WHAT WAS IT HEINLEIN SAID?  Something about “more holes than there are bastards in an European royal family? Ancient human discovered in South African cave.  PRECISELY how it connects to us is up for grabs.

YEP: Brexit Vote Represented Will of the British People.

LIKE AN ABUSIVE PARENT WHO WON’T LET THE KIDS GROW UP: The Government’s War on Fun.

THIS WAS ALWAYS THE PLAN: Coming to an ObamaCare market near you: fewer plans, higher costs.  The idea is to sell us single payer…

THAT IS NOT MALE PRIVILEGE: Penis crushes pole vaulter’s Olympic dream.