HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Title IX coordinators offered good, bad and ugly outlook for due process. I sense a diversity problem in the photo of Title IX coordinators. Can you spot it?
Archive for 2017
February 2, 2017
PUTINESQUE: Kremlin Critic Hospitalized With Similar Symptoms To 2015 Poison Scare.
A Kremlin critic whose sudden and severe illness in 2015 led to suspicions that he was poisoned has been hospitalized in Moscow with similar symptoms, his wife told RFE/RL.
Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr. was hospitalized early on February 2 and placed in an intensive care unit “with symptoms similar to those he had two years ago,” Yevgenia Kara-Murza said in a Facebook message.
“His doctors describe his condition as critical,” she said. “He has low blood pressure [and] respiratory insufficiency, and the reason for this is yet again unclear.”
Kara-Murza abruptly fell ill on May 26, 2015, and was in critical condition for several days. He spent about two months in hospitals in Moscow and outside Washington, D.C.
Kara-Murza’s wife says that he is just back from several weeks in Russia.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: When Normalcy Is Revolution. “For all the hysteria over the bluntness of the mercurial Trump, his agenda marks a return to what used to be seen as fairly normal, as the U.S. goes from hard left back to the populist center.” This is the left’s worst nightmare: All the mechanisms designed to keep the normals under control failed.
HOW IS IT I AM NEVER ON THESE FLIGHTS? Busty Woman Kicked Off Spirit Airlines for Showing Too Much Cleavage.
There’s video evidence at the link.
RIDE THE REUTERS RECURSION! Reuters Instructs Reporters To Cover Trump Like An Authoritarian Regime.
But on 9/11, when faced with an actual authoritarian regime? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Stephen Jukes, global news editor for Reuters, the British wire service, has ordered his scribes not to use the word terror to refer to the Sept. 11 atrocity, the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reports (second item). “We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the word terrorist,” Jukes writes in an internal memo. “To be frank, it adds little to call the attack on the World Trade Center a terrorist attack.”
Jukes tells Kurtz: “We’re trying to treat everyone on a level playing field.”
Yet another mile marker on the road to Trump.
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ANALYSIS: TRUE. Our Sore Loser Elites Are Losing Their Minds.
People are literally losing their minds over the mere thought of him sitting in the Oval Office.
A mental faculty failure that is driven, I fear, by sore loser syndrome.
The protestors wanted, and expected, Hillary Clinton to sweep this ghastly man to crushing defeat in the election two months ago and become the first female president.
When it didn’t happen, mainly because Hillary was a terrible candidate who fought a terrible campaign, they were collectively struck down by Post Trump Success Disorder.
This is an awful affliction that causes victims to lose the power of calm, rational thought and instead resort to uncontrollable, unrelenting outbursts of shrieking, screaming, wailing and teeth-gnashing.
Every single thing President Trump now does, says or tweets or is greeted by instant paralysis of perspective.
He is, and must remain, a ‘MONSTER!’
The author of this piece is Piers Morgan.
ROGER SIMON ON MILO AT BERKELEY: Looking for Mr. Good Anarchist.
“IT LOOKED UGLY”: Firm Tied to Clintons Lands First Day On Open Market, Tanks Immediately.
Laureate Education, Inc., which has close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, tanked on its first day in the stock market.
The for-profit firm’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) of stock to potential investors was put on the market Wednesday by KKR and other leveraged buyout owners in the hope of reducing a crushing $4 billion debt.
But even before the company was to go public as a NASDAQ traded firm, it was clear the stock price would not command the owner’s projected $17 to $20 price target. Late Tuesday before Wednesday’s opening, the market priced the Laureate IPO at $14, about 15% below Laureate’s estimates.
The Laureate IPO went nowhere during the day, went as low at $12.46 and closed at $13.25.
“There was no appetite for this stock. It looked ugly today,” Lon Juricic told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group (TheDCNF). Juricic is founder and president of StreetInsider.
“There’s just a lot of questions about the company. The private owners, they’re liquidating it. Investors don’t like it’s big debt. They weren’t biting,” Juricic said. But “people don’t like these deals.”
The Clintons just don’t have the juice they once did.
HOWARD FINEMAN: A last-minute Obama decision may empower federal authorities to run the “election infrastructure” in the name of national security.
At the time ― only about a month ago ― Obama administration officials thought the move was a swell idea; good for national security and a subtle way to twist the knife in the president-elect on the topic of Russian election hacking.
But it may have been the riskiest decision of the Obama years, opening a legal door to Donald Trump forces looking to control future access to the ballot box in the name of national security, and to a new president who decries millions of (phantom) “fraudulent” votes he claims were illegally cast against him.
Obligatory:
SUPREME COURT FUTURE: Gorsuch Fight Just The Beginning.
President Trump’s selection of Neil Gorsuch to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court is likely to produce a procedural frenzy in the Senate as Democrats try to show their base that they are “resisting” the new Administration as much as they can and taking revenge on the Republicans for holding up the Merrick Garland nomination during an election year. Nevertheless, the Democrats’ acts of resistance are unlikely to change much in the long run. Gorsuch, a respected conservative jurist, is expected make it through the Senate, filibuster or no, and his presence on the Court will not change the ideological balance that (as Scott Lemieux noted last year) has defined the institution for decades: a moderate Republican—currently, Anthony Kennedy—as the “median justice” and swing vote on high-impact questions dividing the court.
The real test of the strength of our constitutional system will most likely come when the next vacancy on the High Court is filled. If Donald Trump gets the opportunity to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Anthony Kennedy, or if Trump is succeeded by a Democrat who fills a vacancy left by Kennedy or Clarence Thomas, then we will be looking at an unprecedented transformation of the Court in the modern era. As FiveThirtyEight‘s Oliver Roeder has pointed out, either scenario could produce one of the most ideologically extreme median justices “in almost a century.”
Well, that depends on your measure of “ideologically extreme.” For example, if your basis for comparison is the electorate, then it will probably be one of the least such.
TIM ALLEN: ‘The Left Wants to Tell Everybody’ What to Do.
“I’m more of an anarchist because I’m a stand-up comic. I don’t like anybody telling me what to do and, lately, the left wants to tell everybody – it’s the ‘we all know this, you should, you should.’ Stop telling me what to do, you go do it. You want to support stuff that the government should stay out of? You go do it. No one is stopping you from paying more taxes. Then, that’s the attitude I get,” he told PJM after he left the Creative Coalition’s Inaugural Gala.
“You see my act on the road or in concert – I don’t do political stuff. I do anarchist stuff. I like making everybody laugh. Jokes should be – President Trump should laugh at it, so should Hillary – that’s the balance I like; the personal stuff is different,” he added.
There’s a lot less fun to be had, doing all that work of getting elected just to leave people alone — which is the sad reason Libertarians usually do so poorly.
UPDATE ON THAT CALL BETWEEN TRUMP AND TURNBULL:
Senior US officials told the Washington Post that Donald Trump abruptly hung up on Mr Turnbull after just 25 minutes – when the pair were meant to speak for an hour.
But an indignant Mr Turnbull returned serve, telling 2GB’s Ben Fordham: ‘As far as the call is concerned, I’m very disappointed, the report the president hung up is not correct, the call ended courteously.’
Emphasis added.
I’m curious about the identities of those “senior U.S. officials.”
AT SOME POINT, I THINK YOU’VE MADE ENOUGH MONEY: Desperate for Cash, Hillary Clinton to Write Another Memoir, Paid Speaking Tour.
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CLAIM: Border wall should be finished in two years.
In his first television interview as Homeland Security secretary, retired four-star Marine Gen. John F. Kelly told Fox News he wants the U.S.-Mexico border wall finished in two years – setting an ambitious schedule for the project ordered last week by President Trump.
“The wall will be built where it’s needed first, and then it will be filled in. That’s the way I look at it,” Kelly said. “I really hope to have it done within the next two years.”
As Bill Whittle noted on Right Angle yesterday, if you don’t patrol the border then people will demand a wall.
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: GOP Uses Schumer’s Words Against Him:
Senate Democrats are in a rough spot.
It’s embarrassing enough that they have to fight Neil Gorsuch, a Supreme Court nominee whom they once unanimously supported. But now they must defend a position they spent all of last year blasting as indefensible.
Now Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has the unfortunate task of explaining his double standard. Somehow, he must show why leaving a Supreme Court seat vacant was wrong for Republicans but suddenly right for Democrats. It’s a tough job.
And Republicans aren’t making it any easier. They’ve launched a new supercut video of Democrat statements, interviews, and speeches protesting the way Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., treated Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.
It’s a good primer on the strategic dangers of invoking principle in defense of naked politics.
Here’s the video:
HMM: Pundits Stunned After Trump Hangs Up On Australia Prime Minister, Slamming “Dumb Deal”
It said the call had been scheduled to last an hour but Trump cut it short after 25 minutes when Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull tried to turn to subjects such as Syria. Turnbull told reporters the call with Trump at the weekend had been frank and candid but refused to give further details.
“I do stand up for Australia. My job is to defend Australian interests,” the former Goldman employee said in Melbourne. Turnbull refused to confirm the Post report that Trump, who had earlier spoken to world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, had angrily told him that the call was “the worst so far”.
Political analysts were dumbfounded and said such acrimony was unprecedented, surpassing even the difficult relations between former U.S. President Richard Nixon and then Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who pulled Australian troops out of the Vietnam War. “Even that was always done in the language of foreign policy niceties,” said Harry Phillips, a political analyst of 40 years experience at Edith Cowan and Curtin universities in Perth.
As reports of the conversation hit headlines on both sides of the world, Trump tweeted shortly before midnight in Washington: “Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal.”
Boy, that escalated quickly.
NO FREE SPEECH, NO MONEY: Trump Threatens No Federal Funds for Berkeley.
UPDATE (From Glenn): You want more Trump? Because Berkeley is how you get more Trump.
ANOTHER UPDATE (from Steve): Judd Apatow is also how you get more Trump..
Apatow has since bravely deleted his tweet.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: After 58% Enrollment Decline And 46% Faculty Reduction Through Voluntary Buyouts, Seton Hall Adjusts To ‘New Normal.’
TO PUNISH TRUMP, MAKE LIFE HARD ON PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR HILLARY: NYC bodegas to shut down to protest Trump immigration ban. Between that and Democratic women doing their best to look ugly, and depriving their husbands of sex, lefties are really putting Trump in his place.