TRUTH IN LABELING: Berkeley Mayor Wants Antifa Classified as a Gang After Assaulting Trump Supporters.
Last night’s flashback from Glenn might just become evergreen: Berkeley Mayor Is Member of Antifa Facebook Group that Organized Riots.
Democrats must have gotten the word that the party’s vigilante wing is polling terribly.
SCOTT GREER: It’s Not Trump Supporters Who Are Beating Journalists.
At two different demonstrations in the California Bay Area, Antifa made sure that anyone who recorded their activities and looked like “Nazis” would face serious consequences.
On Saturday, a man simply recording a demonstration by leftists against a cancelled pro-Trump rally resulted in protesters surrounding him and forcibly taking his phone from him.
He had to plead he was just a reporter and that he was definitely not a Nazi in order to persuade organizers to try to retrieve his phone.
Worse things happened for a photographer at the Antifa riot in Berkeley the following day. As black-clad anarchists swarmed the city to attack anyone they thought might be a Trump supporter, they set their sights on a cameraman for the offense of taking their picture.
Antifa chased the man down and beat him bloody with clubs. Police eventually came to his aid and had to help him stand up and walk after the thrashing.
The two incidents both arose over the fact that the target of abuse was recording Antifa. That alone justified violence against both reporters.
Democracy dies in darkness, I’m told.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: EXCLUSIVE: Emails Show Obama-Era FCC Gave Special Treatment To Liberal Groups.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Newly hired dean was chastised by judge for hiding evidence from accused in Title IX case.
Ignored his accuser’s retraction, led a ‘nonsensical’ investigation
Pitzer College is a member of the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of five elite private schools in Southern California that is struggling to mollify racial-grievance activists.
It may have a new fire to put out when those activists learn the background of its new dean of students, who is also a Title IX coordinator.
The Claremont Independent uncovered a March court order that found Sandra Vasquez hid “material evidence” from an unnamed male falsely accused of “relationship violence” when she was associate dean of students and director of judicial affairs at the University of California-Santa Barbara.
The Independent said it also learned the Department of Education is investigating Vasquez’s alleged discrimination against the “low-income, minority student” as potential Title IX and Title VI violations.
Superior Court Judge Thomas Anderle’s order against UCSB makes Vasquez and other officials who handled the “John Doe” case sound almost like cartoon villains.
Almost.
GOOD QUESTION: For years, engineers have warned that Houston was a flood disaster in the making. Why didn’t somebody do something?
Harvey poured as much as 374 billion gallons of water within the city limits, exceeding the capacity of rivers, bayous, lakes and reservoirs. Experts said the result was predictable.
The storm was unprecedented, but the city has been deceiving itself for decades about its vulnerability to flooding, said Robert Bea, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and UC Berkeley emeritus civil engineering professor who has studied hurricane risks along the Gulf Coast.
The city’s flood system is supposed to protect the public from a 100-year storm, but Bea calls that “a 100-year lie” because it is based on a rainfall total of 13 inches in 24 hours.
“That has happened more than eight times in the last 27 years,” Bea said. “It is wrong on two counts. It isn’t accurate about the past risk and it doesn’t reflect what will happen in the next 100 years.”
The city chose to spend its money… poorly.
KEN MASUGI: Trump’s Coming Victory over Identity Politics.
KTVU ANCHOR: ‘I experienced hate firsthand’ at Berkeley rally.
And as you’re reading this keep in mind that they were yelling at me and their words were filled with venom, anger, hate and intolerance. There’s just no other way to describe it. I was stunned.
Them: Hey! No pictures or we’ll take your phone!
(At that point I’d already taken these shots)
Me (In calm voice): You’re on public property and I can take a picture if I want to.
Them: Oh, so you’re a big man with a camera?
Me: No I just wanted to take a picture and talk with you.
Them (rushing toward me): We outnumber you and we will take your camera!
Socialism, distilled.
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STANDING UP TO SEXISM: Melania Trump’s office slams media for focus on her shoes during Harvey trip. Why are the news media such cesspits of superficial sexism, stereotyping, and misogyny?
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Harvey Storms On, Melania’s Shoes, Transgender Military Ban and Much, Much More.
PENTAGON: U.S. warship successfully shoots down missile in test off Hawaii.
Nice practice. Time for the real thing.
JOEL KOTKIN: Trump Damaged Democracy, Silicon Valley Will Finish It Off: Donald Trump’s rise is, in a sense, just one symptom of the damage the tech oligarchs are doing to America. I think the latter formulation is more accurate.
Plus: “The Silicon Valley and its Puget Sound annex dominated by Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft increasingly resemble the pre-gas crisis Detroit of the Big Three. Tech’s Big Five all enjoy overwhelming market shares—for example Google controls upwards of 80 percent of global search—and the capital to either acquire or crush any newcomers. They are bringing us a hardly gilded age of prosperity but depressed competition, economic stagnation, and, increasingly, a chilling desire to control the national conversation.”
SULTANS GOTTA SULTANATE: Erdogan Expands Powers over Intelligence Agency.
Ankara- President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tightened his grip on Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization on Friday after issuing a decree that said the MIT, which was previously under the prime minister, would now report to the president.
The decree gave the Turkish intelligence agency the power to investigate the defense ministry and Turkish armed forces personnel.
I can’t imagine Erdogan won’t find spies, traitors, and coup-plotters everywhere he looks.
DAILY CALLER EXCLUSIVE: Imran Awan Has Still-Active Secret House Account, And It’s Tied To An Intelligence Staffer.
Imran Awan’s still-active email address is linked to the name of a House staffer who specializes in intelligence and homeland security matters for Indiana Democratic Rep. André Carson. Court documents and emails obtained by TheDCNF show Awan used the address in addition to his standard account.
He and two of his Pakistani-born brothers, as well as his wife, are at the center of an FBI investigation over their IT work with dozens of Democratic congressional offices. Authorities shut down Awan’s standard email account Feb. 2, and he was arrested by the FBI at Dulles International Airport trying to board a flight to his native Pakistan on July 25.
Authorities apparently did not realize Awan has a second account that is not linked to his identity. While his main email address began rejecting mail after it was shut down, the 123 address was still accepting mail Tuesday.
Mail sent via Gmail fills in the name of the account-holder of 123 as Nathan Bennett, whose LinkedIn profile says his individual legislative portfolio covers “national security and foreign affairs” and includes work on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Well.
AN IDEA SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT WORK: Ivy League Scholars Urge Students: ‘Think for Yourself.’
Fifteen highly accomplished scholars who teach at Yale, Princeton, and Harvard published a letter Monday with advice for young people who are headed off to college: Though it will require self-discipline and perhaps even courage, “Think for yourself.”
The “vice of conformism” is a temptation for all faculty and students, they argue, due to a climate rife with group think, where it is “all-too-easy to allow your views and outlook to be shaped by dominant opinion” on a campus or in academia generally.
They warn that on many campuses, what John Stuart Mill called “the tyranny of public opinion” doesn’t merely discourage students from dissenting from prevailing views:
“It leads them to suppose dominant views are so obviously correct that only a bigot or a crank could question them. Since no one wants to be, or be thought of, as a bigot or a crank, the easy, lazy way to proceed is simply by falling into line with campus orthodoxies. Don’t do that. Think for yourself.”
I’m gratified to see some real leadership in support of free expression and free thought on campus, something that was missing last year. Yesterday I told a colleague that I think we may have passed the high-water mark of PC bullying. He thought I was optimistic. . . .
HENCE THE IMPORTANCE OF DELETING HISTORY: Modern Liberalism’s False Obsession With Civil War Monuments. Black accomplishments in the ’40s and ’50s prove that today’s setbacks are not due to slavery.
WHEN ACADEMICS DON’T KNOW MUCH: “My first question is: Plato orated in a toga? The toga is the distinctive garment of ancient Rome (not Greece).”
Plus: “So the modern word ‘candidate’ derives from the Latin candidatus, which means ‘whitened’…. Perhaps we should eschew the whiteness-infected word ‘candidate.'”
FROM MY COLLEAGUE BRADLEY AREHEART: The Top 100 Law Reviews: A Reference Guide Based on Historical USNWR Data. You won’t believe #27!
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? NASA wants to prevent the Yellowstone super volcano from destroying the US.
SWAMP DEFENSE SYSTEM KICKS INTO HIGH GEAR: FBI claims public isn’t interested in Hillary’s emails.
Total BS. Many of us are very interested in her crimes.
The FBI says it will only release records from its files if a subject consents, is dead, or is of such public interest that it overrides privacy concerns.
Mr. Clevenger said he thought it would have been clear why Mrs. Clinton’s case was of public interest, but he sent documentation anyway, pointing to a request by members of Congress for an investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton perjured herself in testimony to Capitol Hill.
“I’m just stunned. This is exactly what I would have expected had Mrs. Clinton won the election, but she didn’t. It looks like the Obama Administration is still running the FBI,” Mr. Clevenger told The Washington Times.
“How can a story receive national news coverage and not be a matter of public interest? If this is the new standard, then there’s no such thing as a public interest exception,” he said.
The FBI didn’t return a message seeking comment Tuesday on how it balances public interest versus privacy in open-records requests.
Great line: Obama Administration still running the FBI. This must change — now.
Lock her up.
A FEW BRAVE PROFS (VERY FEW): Fifteen professors at Harvard, Yale and Princeton have written an open letter urging students to resist campus orthodoxy. “Think for yourself,” they urge. James Freeman at the WSJ calls this good news, and I guess it is these days. But why does this even need to be said? And what about the rest of the professoriate? There are at least 3,000 faculty members (and as many as 8,000, depending on who’s counting whom as faculty) at these three universities, which means the 15 signatories represent, at most, one-half of one percent of the faculty. Maybe the other 99.5 percent could not be reached for comment in their safe spaces.
Meanwhile, Yale’s president, Peter Salovey (definitely not a signatory), has found yet another way to beclown himself and his school. It was bad enough when Yale covered up a Puritan’s musket in a stone carving on the wall of its library (at the behest of a committee of censors responsible for shielding students’ eyes from art that was “not appropriate”). Yale was widely mocked for this vandalism, and even Salovey managed to be embarrassed. ““Such alteration represents an erasure of history, which is entirely inappropriate at a university,” he proclaimed.
His brilliant solution: Take down the whole piece of art! It will be moved (with the musket brazenly uncovered) to “an as-yet-undecided location where it will be available for study and viewing,” the Yale Daily News solemnly reports, without a hint that anyone at the newspaper realizes what a farce this is. Maybe they’ll get the joke when they see it on a future episode of “The Simpsons,” whose writers are in deep debt to Salovey and his sensitive students.
WELL, THEY’VE SEEN A LOT: Elderly just as streetwise as young adults, research shows.
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