J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Left Transforms America By Transforming the Rules.
Read the whole thing.
Archive for 2018
May 23, 2018
OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE MAY SOON BE OVER: NFL Teams Will Be Fined If Players Kneel During National Anthem.
NFL owners agreed Wednesday to a new policy governing player’s behavior during the pre-game national anthem ceremony. Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that the owners voted to fine teams if their players are on the field or sideline during the national anthem but refuse to stand. Players will be allowed to remain in the locker room if they so choose.
“This season, all league and team personnel shall stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem,” Goodell said in a statement. “Personnel who choose not to stand for the anthem may stay in the locker room until after the anthem has been performed.”
Related: “The NFL players’ union is reviewing the policy to see if it violates the collective bargaining agreement, but they’re not happy about it… And as you might expect, SJW Twitter is not happy.”
The NFL Players’ Association is led by DeMaurice Smith, who served “as counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder and was a member of Barack Obama’s transition team,” as the American Thinker reported in 2009, after Smith helped to blow up Rush Limbaugh’s effort to be part of the team purchasing the St. Louis Rams.
NEWSBUSTERS: What Changed? The Same Media Who Excuse Bob Mueller Abused Ken Starr.
I’m guessing the “What changed?” is purely rhetorical.
WEIRD, AND JUST A FEW YEARS AFTER THEY DE-EMPHASIZED PSA SCREENING: Cancer deaths in U.S. decline again, but prostate cancer death rate creeping up.
THIS IS NOT A GOOD LOOK FOR HOUSTON’S POLICE CHIEF: Remember Who Works for Whom, Chief Acevedo — Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo ‘Is Not Interested in Your Views’ on Gun Control.
After the school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, Houston police chief Art Acevedo took to Facebook to share his thoughts.
“I know some have strong feelings about gun rights,” he wrote, “but I want you to know I’ve hit rock bottom and I am not interested in your views as it pertains to this issue.”
I’ve met Chief Acevedo, and he seems to me a good guy with a tough job, but he’s out of bounds here. Like a great many police chiefs and other civil servants in this ailing republic, he could stand being reminded of who works for whom.
Police chiefs are not lawmakers. It is not Chief Acevedo’s job to decide what kind of gun laws Texas—or the United States—has or does not have. Like any citizen, Chief Acevedo is entitled to his opinion, but he doesn’t have any special competence or standing to speak on the issue of gun control. What he has is only a point of view.
Of course, he doesn’t have to be interested in anybody’s views on the issue. That’s one of the nice things about being an appointed official rather than an elected one. But what Chief Acevedo is engaged in here isn’t law enforcement—it’s politics. He went on Face the Nation and insisted: “We need to start using the ballot box and ballot initiatives to take the matters out of the hands of people that are doing nothing that are elected into the hands of the people to see that the will of the people in this country is actually carried out.”
When reminded of “who works for whom,” Acevedo lashed out on Twitter: Dana Loesch fires back at Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo after legal threat.
NO, BECAUSE SMOKERS WOULDN’T STAND UP FOR THEMSELVES BUT GUN OWNERS WILL: Petula Dvorak: Can Americans ditch guns the way we ditched cigarettes?
MICHAEL CAPUTO: Former Government Official Offered Me Hillary-Related Emails in May 2016. “It was frightening to me.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, GET-WOKE-GO-BROKE EDITION: Rough Social Justice at Evergreen State: The Washington college’s enrollment plummets as even the left sours on protest-mob politics.
Here’s the math behind an academic hemorrhage: Between 500 and 600 fewer students will attend Evergreen State College next fall than in 2017, according to internal estimates. That means projected full-time enrollment is down as much as 17% from 3,500 last fall. When President George Bridges saw an internal email outlining these numbers, his impulse was to get the public-relations department to finesse them. Otherwise, he wrote, they “might end up appearing elsewhere in ways that will be used against us.”
Mr. Bridges has himself to blame. Nationwide, after administrators have capitulated to disruptive student activists, colleges have lost the support of donors, alumni, parents and prospective students. If there was one school you’d expect to defy this trend, it would be Evergreen, in Olympia, Wash. Founded in 1967, the college is proudly to the left of Berkeley and Middlebury. Its motto is literally “let it all hang out”—omnia extares—and radical activism has always been part of the pitch. But new records show that Evergreen hasn’t been spared the backlash that has plagued schools like the University of Missouri. This time, it’s coming from the left.
Applications for fall 2018 are down 20%. Sandra Kaiser, Evergreen’s vice president for college relations, claims the low application and enrollment numbers may not be as bad as they look because many students commit to Evergreen “at the last moment.” She added that “we normally expect enrollment to decline in a full-employment economy,” given that working adults, veterans and community-college transfers account for about half the student body.
At least someone is sick of all the winning. But an independent report on the protests, commissioned by Evergreen last October, reached a different conclusion. Published in April, it said that the declines in applications and enrollment were indeed “understood to be at least in part the result of the disruptions of last spring.” Moreover, current students were fleeing. Retention rates had long been “relatively stable,” the report said, but after the protests, undergraduate retention “reached its lowest performance in over a decade.” Only 60% of first-time, first-year students who enrolled last fall stayed through the end of the school year, “a full 8 percentage points below the prior year,” the report said.
All of this to placate a small group of students and faculty and “student life” administrators who will never be placated. A few firings and expulsions early on, coupled with strong statements about free speech, would have prevented this debacle.
BLUE WAVE? 48 Hours Later, Media Still Keeps Dems’ Total Collapse in Reuters Poll a Secret.
Nice polls, kid. Don’t get cocky.™
HOPE: House overwhelmingly passes bipartisan prison reform bill. “The House by an overwhelming 360-59 vote passed a bipartisan reform bill Tuesday that provides more education for federal prisoners and gives them a second chance after their release. . . . The legislation is a priority for the White House, thanks to the advocacy of Jared Kushner, who saw how his father, Charles, was treated in federal prison. The president’s son-in-law worked closely with the bill’s authors and helped host a prison reform summit at the White House last week with President Trump.”
Change: “A new report shows that the median household income has climbed 3% since President Trump took office. It’s another sign of a strong economy, and at least one poll shows the public credits Trump for the good news. . . . This is a sharp turnaround from the Obama years. Sentier data show that median household income was the same when President Obama left office as when he arrived. Under Obama, household incomes continued to fall steeply for two full years after the recession officially ended, and then took four years to make up that lost ground. Incomes then flatlined again, posting no overall gain between August 2015 and December 2016.”
GORDON CHANG: Trump Blames China’s Xi Jinping for Sabotaging the Kim Jong Un Summit.
Last week, the North Koreans, who this year gave the impression they had turned over a new leaf, began acting like North Koreans again. They abruptly canceled high-level talks with Seoul, scheduled for last Wednesday, and cast doubt on their willingness to meet with Trump in Singapore on June 12. They cited their displeasure with long-scheduled joint military exercises and with John Bolton, Trump’s new national security adviser.
Moon has since tried to alleviate Kim Jong Un’s concerns, withdrawing, for instance, from the Blue Lightning air-training exercise with the United States and Japan this month. Seoul’s tactics have not worked to mollify the Kim regime, however.
Now, analysts want to know what caused the North’s return to the dark side, which took senior Trump officials by complete surprise. But the new hostility should have been anticipated. It was evident that Xi Jinping, whom Trump called a “friend” yesterday, put the North Koreans up to their new bristling posture.
Just last month it appeared as thought Xi had yanked Kim’s chain hard enough to force him to the negotiating table. But now this:
Xi obviously has been up to no good. In addition to openly violating U.N. sanctions in recent months, Xi has undoubtedly been schooling Kim in the art of defiance of the international community, especially the United States. That second Xi-Kim meeting—held May 7 and 8 in the Chinese city of Dalian—preceded North Korea’s return to bad behavior.
Stay tuned…
BRE PAYTON: James Clapper Just Lied Again About His Previous Lies About NSA Spying.
Meghan McCain confronted Clapper about a statement he made while testifying before Congress five years ago, when he was asked whether or not the NSA was spying on Americans.
“In 2013 when you were asked about it, you said ‘no,’” McCain said. “So that is a lie.”
“I made a mistake,” Clapper said. “I didn’t lie. I was thinking about something else, another program.”
Clapper then proceeded to prattle on about two different surveillance programs in an attempt to obfuscate his answer.
Our intel and counterintel chiefs can’t seem to remember which side they’re supposed to lie to.
MOGADISHU, MINNESOTA: Powerline’s Scott Johnson is your tour guide.
FEEL LUCKY TODAY? BOY, DO THE CLINTONS HAVE A DEAL FOR YOU! Got a spare $100K lying around? Buy tickets to Thursday’s Clinton Foundation Gala. Sure, it won’t buy you influence in a future Clinton presidency, but, not to worry because, hey, Bill and Hillary are never without new angles to monetize their public “service.”
On the other hand, over at LifeZette, Charles Ortel lays out the other side to keep in mind with any gamble on the Clintons, including the prospect of being fitted with an orange jump suit. Trust me, folks, that’s not a long shot.
BUT OF COURSE: After Santa Fe Shooting, Houston’s Police Chief Plays Politics.
Jack Dunphy has the story.
MCCARTHY ON THE CHARLES: Harvard professes to be so concerned about discrimination that it has literally set up a blacklist for students found “guilty” of joining off-campus single-sex social groups such as sororities, fraternities, and “final clubs,” making a mockery of freedom of association. The Harvard Crimson today reports on efforts in Congress to preserve this freedom, and Harvard’s counter-effort. This after Harvard blacklisted gays in the 1920s (driving one student to suicide) and Communists in the 50s. Now that institution, whose wealth would embarrass Scrooge McDuck, demands the right to continue to receiving federal funding while persecuting sorority girls. Have you no sense of decency, Harvard, at long last?
POSTMODERN PARENTING: Parents win suit to kick 30-year-old deadbeat son out of their house.
Mark and Christina Rotondo were forced to the extreme-parenting measure after giving their layabout millennial boy Michael cash for moving expenses, pleading with him to get on with his life and finally sending written legal notices demanding he grow up and move out.
“Michael, After a discussion with your Mother, we have decided that you must leave this house immediately,” reads the first letter, dated Feb. 2.
It concludes: “You have 14 days to vacate. . . We will take whatever actions are necessary to enforce this decision.”
When my boys are finished with school, I probably won’t change the locks… but we’ll see.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Sociology prof convicted for smearing fake blood on NRA lobbyist’s home. “A professor of sociology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln was convicted of vandalizing the home of a National Rifle Association lobbyist this week, with the judge ordering her to pay $500 in fines and stay away from the home in question.” Her name is Patricia Hill. And what gives with the University of Nebraska at Lincoln? It’s been one crazed-PC thing after another lately.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Kent State Admits Grad’s Open AR-10 Carry On Campus Was Perfectly Legal. “The statement strongly implied, however, that Kent State would prohibit all firearms if it could, noting that state law only allows it to regulate the ‘privileges’ of those affiliated with the university.”
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CLUE? Wynton Marsalis: Rap Is More Damaging Than Confederate Statues. A friend of mine from the Bahamas says that youth culture there fell apart when MTV came in and brought rap/hip hop with it.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Election Results, ZTE, NorK Summit and Much, Much More. “The documents in question have to do with the origination of the investigation into Trump. When did it start? The story keeps changing. Early spring? July? What evidence was presented to the FISA court FOUR TIMES to continue surveillance on the campaign, even after Trump was elected and serving as president? It’s obvious the DOJ and the FBI don’t want you or me to know. Why?”