THE ABA JOINS THE EFFORT TO CRIMINALIZE DISSENT: A speech code for lawyers, banning viewpoints that express ‘bias,’ including in law-related social activities.
Archive for 2016
August 11, 2016
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ANN ALTHOUSE ON THE MEDIA, and priming unbalanced people to assassinate Donald Trump.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF VIOLENCE AND RACISM? Baltimore cops ‘are racist, violent and lawless’: Report claims city’s police discriminate against blacks and aren’t held accountable when they use excessive force.
Reminder: Baltimore last elected a Republican mayor over 50 years ago. As Kevin Williamson noted last year, “Riot-Plagued Baltimore’s Catastrophe Is Entirely Of The Democratic Party’s Own Making.”
BURIED LEDE: “It’s not like it didn’t happen at CNN.”
ASHE SCHOW: Affirmative consent is a failure, but it still has defenders.
Requiring college students – but not the general population – to adhere to an affirmative consent, or “yes means yes” standard for sexual consent, has been a disaster. It has sent frivolous accusations flying, as well as lawsuits from students who were disciplined, claiming a lack of due process. But that hasn’t stopped supporters from claiming the policy is necessary.
Take the Monday editorial from the Daily Bruin, the student newspaper of the University of California-Los Angeles. In it, the editorial board points out that research has shown the policy to be out of touch with reality, but argues anyway that it should remain in place because it has made it “much easier for California law enforcement officials and judges to evaluate sexual assault cases and make less ambiguous, yet more ethical rulings.”
In fact, it has made it much easier for school administrators to kick accused students out based on an accusation even when there is evidence to the contrary. This doesn’t exactly fall under the heading of “more ethical rulings.” That’s why judges in California are halting the expulsion of students who have been railroaded since the adoption of the policy. One judge even called the current campus kangaroo courts “unfair.”
The problem is that affirmative consent defines nearly all sex as rape, since there are very few ways to safely to navigate the policy. It’s nearly impossible under affirmative consent to prove that any act of sex was not rape, short of making a video recording. By defining consensual sex so narrowly, all sex that is still consensual but not in the way the policy claims makes much of consensual sex a disciplinary matter, should an accuser want to make it one for whatever reason — revenge, hurt feelings, social pressure, etc.
It’s meant to treat all sex as rape, because that’s what feminists think.
SOMETHING THAT CAN’T GO ON FOREVER, WON’T: California’s Six Figure Pension Club Has More Than 20,000 Members.
Of course, California isn’t the only state with runaway public pensions. As Betsy Newmark writes, “One day, citizens will wake up to learn that their community or state can’t fund basic programs and expenses because too much of their budget is tied up with paying pensions for retired public employees. And they’ll learn that the blame lies with politicians who traded long-term concerns for short-term political gains from union workers.”
Curious that the left is obsessed with the word “sustainable,” when so many of their fiscal policies aren’t.
QUESTION ASKED: Is Trump Wrecking Both Parties?
At the very least he’s exposing the rot underneath.
UNEXPECTEDLY: Scientist Predicts ‘Little Ice Age,’ Gets Icy Reception From Colleagues.
Shades of the story of Julian Simon versus the enviro-doomsday religious left. As Jay Nordlinger once wrote, “Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute tells a story about Julian Simon, the late and great economist. He was at some environmental forum, and he said, ‘How many people here believe that the earth is increasingly polluted and that our natural resources are being exhausted?’ Naturally, every hand shot up. He said, ‘Is there any evidence that could dissuade you?’ Nothing. Again: ‘Is there any evidence I could give you — anything at all — that would lead you to reconsider these assumptions?’ Not a stir. Simon then said, ‘Well, excuse me, I’m not dressed for church.’ I love that story, for what it says about the fixity of these beliefs, immune to evidence, reason, or anything else.”
AND WITH THE ABA, WE KNOW WHICH ONE WILL WIN: ABA’s Proposed 75% Bar Passage Requirement Underscores Tension Between Consumer Protection, Diversity Concerns.
KURT SCHLICHTER ON THIS ’70S SHOW: Liberals Are Neidermeyer and That Team the Bad News Bears Played.
ELITES DON’T LIKE IT BECAUSE IT IMPLIES ACCOUNTABILITY: Michael Barone: Nationalism Is Not Necessarily A Bad Thing. “An elite globalist may scoff at the arbitrariness of national borders and style himself ‘a citizen of the world,’ as President Obama described himself before a massive crowd in Berlin in 2008. But most people don’t think of themselves that way. Nation-states inspire loyalties in a way the United Nations or the European Union have failed to do.”
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: So, it’s OK to warn people about the dangers of drinking too much soda, but not about risky sexual behavior? Welcome to the strange world of cultural Marxism.
Related: “In California, with No Real Opposition Left, LGBT Activists Target Religious Colleges — If you’re trying to make a Catholic college accept married gay couples, maybe just accept that you’ve won this war and stand down.”
ISIS INTEL WAS COOKED, HOUSE PANEL FINDS — A leading U.S. general pressured his intelligence analysts into playing down the ISIS and al Qaeda threats, according to a congressional task force.
As John Schindler of the New York Observer tweets in response, “I recall skewing intelligence to benefit the White House was a once a Very Bad Thing, but that was pre-Jan 2009.”
A LITTLE PIECE OF POLAND, A LITTLE PIECE OF FRANCE: Russia Accuses Ukraine Of ‘Terrorist’ Attack In Crimea.
The Federal Security Service, the FSB, said that teams of commandos from Ukraine’s defense forces made two attempts to enter the Black Sea peninsula, with the intention of sabotaging vital infrastructure. The FSB said Ukrainian forces attempted to cover the infiltration by directing heavy fire at the Russian side, killing two Russian servicemen.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko dismissed the Russian claims, calling them “fantasy” and a “provocation.” Poroshenko issued a statement saying that Ukraine would never use terrorism to regain its occupied territory.
The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, said the U.S. “has seen nothing so far that corroborates Russian allegations of a Crimea incursion.”
And:
For the better part of a year, the war in Ukraine, has been “frozen but oven-ready,” as former NATO press officer Ben Nimmo once put it, with regular upticks in violence and provocations not quite leading to full-scale melt-downs.
That changed over the last week, however, with whispers inside Ukraine and among the foreign press corps that another big clash may be in the final stages of preparation with the locus of unusual activity in, yes, Crimea. Tatar activists on the peninsula noted that Russian military hardware had been moving towards the northern towns of Dzhankoy and Armyansk, near the frontier with Ukrainian-controlled territory.
At the same time, verifiable video evidence emerged of large quantities of Russian military hardware on the move in the south of Crimea.
Either war is about to resume or Putin wants Ukraine to think war is about to resume.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: The Hill: Critics see signs of improper ties in new Clinton emails.
Republicans are seizing on a new collection of emails from senior aides to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, which they say show signs of corruption between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.
At least three of the 44 new email exchanges released by conservative group Judicial Watch this week show a potentially inappropriate connection between senior State Department officials and people with ties to the Clinton family.
In one case from early 2009, the former “body man” to ex-President Bill Clinton who helped to create the Clinton Global Initiative asked Hillary Clinton’s State Department aides to “take care of” an unidentified associate as a “favor.”
In another message, the same man — Doug Band — asked Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills to connect a foundation donor and Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire with the State Department’s “substance person” on Lebanon.
And in the third case, the chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia sent Clinton a copy of testimony he was due to provide to Congress, and asked to help with her work “in any way I can.” The next day, Clinton asked Abedin about “connecting” with him in Beijing, either at the “embassy or other event.”
The “newest email scandal exposes pay for play connections,” GOP nominee Donald Trump’s campaign blared to reporters on Wednesday.
“Republicans are seizing on” — “Trump’s campaign blared.” This is how they — in this case, The Hill’s Julian Hattem — spin it when a Dem gets caught red-handed.
CRONY CRIMINALS: DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BLOCKED ANY FBI INQUIRY INTO CLINTON FOUNDATION. “By the way: CNN buried the lede at the end of their story. Drudge had to elevate it to the actual headline news it is.”
As Iowahawk would say, “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”
Because, privilege – DNC-MSM media privilege.
CNN’S STELTER TOUTS DISGRACED RATHER’S REBUKE FOR TRUMP WITHOUT MENTION OF ‘MEMOGATE.’
To be fair, Brian Stelter was 19 when Memogate happened. Based on his comments during Brian Williams’ similar anchor-de-fe last year, I’m not sure if Stelter is aware of any media history prior to his replacing Howard Kurtz at CNN in 2013.
WHY ARE LEFTIST INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF FINANCIAL FRAUD? MIT, NYU, Yale Sued By Faculty, Staff Over Excessive 403(b) Retirement Account Fees.
BURYING THE LEDE: Saudi Losses in Yemen War Exposed by US Tank Deal.
Read the whole thing.
EVERYBODY LOVES A MYSTERY: Mystery object in weird orbit beyond Neptune cannot be explained.
I’m not going to say it, but…
AND I THOUGHT OUT HAVEY WAS BIG AT 16 LBS! Cat Surprises His Humans with His Sheer Size, Larger Than Most Bobcats
IN EVERY CUCUMBER A LITTLE WORM MUST DIE: Man Finds Dead Worm In His Cucumber, Tesco’s Response Is Brilliant.