Archive for 2018

LEFTWING EXPERTS AGREE, WE MUST CLOSE THE BORDER — FOR THE WOMEN: “The United States must immediately close its border for the benefit of women in nearby countries, who, if allowed in, will face more dangerous conditions than they did in the countries they left. Now that we know what we know, it’s the only humanitarian option.”

Last month, Heather Mac Donald explored the left’s paradoxical views on immigration at City Journal in a piece titled, “America the Horrible?” “Progressives say that the United States is racist and misogynist, but they still want everyone in the world to come here.“

TONI AIRAKSINEN: UW science school dismisses science on sex differences.

“If men and women are different, then we should expect them to make different choices,” Reges wrote, going on to summarize the findings of a University of Pittsburgh study, a study published by the National Academy of Science, and one from Leeds Beckett University.

These studies discovered, respectively, that women have broader academic interests due to their higher verbal ability, that women are choosing not to enter STEM fields, and that countries with the most gender equality have the least women entering STEM.

Reges concluded that “Women can code, but often they don’t want to. We will never reach gender parity,” though he did concede during an interview with Campus Reform that parity might be reached in the case of Orwellian social engineering.

Four days after the article was published, UW School of Science Director Hank Levy emailed the campus to say that “We disagree with the conclusions drawn in the article.”

When reached by Campus Reform, however, Levy would not say whether he had actually read Reges’ article, nor whether he reviewed the research Reges cited within. Spokeswoman Kristin Osborn replied on his behalf, and similarly declined to clarify if the research had been reviewed before it was condemned.

Science, in the modern vernacular, is the study of anything which supports your predetermined narrative and the rejection of everything which doesn’t.

NPR SAYS “MAGA” TWEET A FAKE: 24 hours after posting and going viral, NPR finally responded to inquiries and says it was a fake, also adding that Boise police never said the stabbist was yelling “Maga!”

COUNTING THE CARS ON THE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE, THEY’VE ALL COME TO LOOK FOR AMERICA:

● Shot: The America We Thought We Knew Is Gone.

—Headline, Slate, owned by the Graham family, June 28th, 2018.

● Chaser: We Are All Socialists Now.

—Cover story of Newsweek, then-owned by the Graham family, who also owned the Washington Post at the time, February 9, 2009.

Found via Philip Terzian of the Weekly Standard, who tweets, “To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, it would take a heart of stone to read Lili Loofbourow’s despairing words without laughing.” But what on earth happened in the years between to cause the disparity between those two headlines?

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Left’s Spite Against Justice Kennedy Should Warn Anyone Who Tries To Please Them.

The highest-profile complaint comes from Jim Obergefell, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case legalizing same-sex marriage, in an opinion authored by Kennedy. Writing for Time magazine, Obergefell seems to think Kennedy owed people a duty beyond the oath of his office: “I struggle to understand how Justice Kennedy can look at our current environment and retire, knowing that his legacy of compassion and dignity, not to mention the civil rights of millions of people, are in serious risk.”

He adds: “Before his retirement announcement, as a member of the LGBTQ community, I saw Kennedy as something of a hero,” with the implication that he is not now. That’s some way to thank Kennedy for his service.

In a column at Slate, “Anthony Kennedy Just Destroyed His Legacy as a Gay Rights Hero,” Mark Joseph Stern makes overt what Obergefell implies: if Kennedy wanted to protect his legacy, he had a duty to retire while a Democrat occupied the White House.

At The New Republic, Andrew Cohen begrudgingly acknowledges that Kennedy’s decisions on LGBTQ preferences, abortion, and criminal procedure “did deliver votes on occasion to progressive causes.” But Cohen’s main thrust is that “these liberal ‘victories’ are far overshadowed by all the heavy lifting Kennedy did on behalf of conservative causes over the decades.”

Similarly sour sentiments run through the reactions of a number of prestigious law professors Politico surveyed, including Geoffrey R. Stone, Sanford V. Levinson, Corey Brettschneider, Michael Waldman, Robert Post, Barry Friedman, and John Culhane.

“How dare an old man enjoy a well-earned retirement before I’m done with him?” isn’t the sentiment of someone who can long be pleased by anything or anyone.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Let’s Talk About All Those Electric Scooters. “If we think of these scooters (or little vehicles in general) as part of a transportation system and not toys, then they exist in an established, fairly rigid environment. They’re part of a transport system just like a subway — the difference being that no one can raise venture money, contract with a Chinese manufacturer and flood a city with subways overnight! The only thing that’s faster to deploy than scooters and bikes are ride-hailing companies, because they needn’t provide any hardware at all.”

PUT NOT YOUR FAITH IN JUSTICES: Conservatives, Don’t Put Too Much Hope in the Next Justice. “Even if Justice Kennedy is replaced with an actual conservative, as we hope and expect, the Supreme Court cannot save a degraded culture, nor can it degrade a virtuous one — not too much in either direction, at least. Conservatives seeking lasting change are better advised to attend to our failures in the broader culture than to prepare the way for our Supreme Court savior.”

This is undoubtedly true. But control of the Court is a very useful defense against things the Court might do to you.