THE SILICON VALLEY CROWD HAS MANAGED TO UNITE THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM AGAINST THEMSELVES: The Gravity Of Josh Hawley’s Culture War Against Big Tech.
I should send him a copy of my forthcoming book on the subject.
Archive for 2019
May 15, 2019
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY, PART DEUX: Harvard’s Insatiable Identity-Politics Cannibals.
SEEN ON FACEBOOK:
AIR PENIS UPDATE: The Legendary Saga of the Navy Sky Dong Concludes.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Kirsten Gillibrand Takes a Page Out of Hillary Clinton’s Book, Blames Sexism for Failing 2020 Campaign.
As with Obama calling Hillary-supporting moderate Pennsylvania Democrats bitter clingers (and his media enablers far worse), does Gillibrand know it’s still only the Democratic Party primary?
GENEALOGY BLEG: In building a family tree I’ve been frustrated by my inability to find any record of my great-grandfather’s family from Kėdainiai [Keidan] Lithuania. His name was Yehuda Stravinsky (phonetic), his father was Koppel and his mother Raisza (Rose). Stravinsky was a very unusual name for Jews, so you would think it would be easy to track down, but I haven’t had any luck. I’ve been told that given the vagaries of dialect, the name could have been spelled in different ways–Stravunsky, Strawinksy, Strapinsky, etc. Yehuda was a shoemaker, and came to the U.S. in 1887, owned a shoe store, and at some point the family’s name was changed to Stein. In English, he was variously known as Louis, Edward, or Julius Stein. According to an interview I did with my great-grandmother, he had eight siblings, all or most of whom also came to the U.S. I don’t know whether they all also became “Steins.” I have DNA samples at several genealogy websites, but no unknown Steins or Stravinksys have come up. The Ellis Island records are no help, because his arrival was before Ellis Island opened. And his citizenship card lists an arrival date into the U.S., but it doesn’t match records on that date. Anyway, given the rarity of the surname, perhaps by posting this some distant cousin will get in touch. The only other clue I have is that my great aunt once told me that some of her cousins immigrated to South Africa, though I’m not sure if that was on the Stein side.
HUGE: A Look At The Specific Intelligence Causing State Dept. Warning – Leave Iraq ASAP.
Investigative Journalist and Iran expert Ken Timmerman gave insight into the source of the Iranian threats last week. Timmerman explained there was recent intelligence that Iran was planning “imminent” attacks on U.S. persons or U.S. assets in Iraq. The intelligence came from an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) General in charge of information, who was fired by the supreme leader on April 19th and reacted to being fired by defecting to the west.
Iran Commentary, an online news portal that publishes information about Iran’s human rights abuses and illicit activity provided some of the details behind Timmerman’s Report. The defector, General Ali Nasir had a vicious argument with a superior officer, General Hossein Taeb. Nasari walked out of the meeting and left the country.
General Ali Nasiri (pictured above) is rumored to have taken refuge in a U.S. embassy or consulate in a nearby Persian Gulf state. And he brought gifts; including a large volume of documents recording the travels of senior IRGC commanders, intelligence personnel and operational units to foreign countries, all under cover of diplomatic missions. That intelligence information was given to the United States.
Developing…
HEADLINE OF THE YEAR: US Treasury To Accuse Vietnam Of Manipulating Its Dong.
SHE SEEMS NICE: NYU Journalism Teacher: The GOP Is “A Terrorist Organization.”
CONGO’S GLOBAL EPIDEMIC WAR: The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militia is a militant Islamist jihadist outfit that now links to the Islamic State. It is attacking Ebola clinics in eastern Congo.
ROGER SIMON: Blowhard Democrats Are Green Phonies.
TREY GOWDY: Emails Between Brennan and Comey Show One of Them Demanding that Dossier Be Put in Intel Assessment.
I’m starting to think the best thing the Democrats have going for them is that Americans might not be willing to accept the depth and breadth of Democratic corruption. Not yet, anyway.
ARE YOU A FED-UP FACULTY MEMBER? Given the shameful business over Ronald Sullivan (my take for FIRE here), you probably should be. Why not do something about it? Submit a paper proposal to FIRE’s faculty conference at Boston University this October and you could get a $3,000 honorarium for doing the research work necessary to advance academic freedom.
NEWS YOU CAN USE? 6 Things to Know About the Prosecutor Investigating Spying on Trump Campaign.
Durham’s resume includes investigating the mafia and crooked politicians.
Attorneys general from the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations all previously appointed Durham to lead special investigations.
Barr reportedly selected him to head the probe weeks ago, as the FBI came under intensified scrutiny for spying on one Trump campaign adviser and sending a confidential informant to talk to another.
In the aftermath of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report clearing the Trump campaign of conspiracy with Russia to influence the election, many Republican lawmakers called for an investigation into how the probe of Trump and his team commenced.
Two known incidents loom large: The FBI obtained a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to put Trump campaign aide Carter Page under surveillance. The FBI also sent a confidential informant to talk to George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign aide, in a bar. The woman told Papadopoulos that her name was Azra Turk, and he later described her as “flirtatious.”
Much more at the link.
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Protesters shut down Johns Hopkins building for a week. Here’s how students can sue them.
Activists chained all entrances shut and prevented anyone from entering. After ultimately breaching the building, authorities arrested five occupiers inside.
The private Baltimore university stated that the suped-up sit-in evoked “major safety risks” and “severely disrupted university services,” yet prosecutors have already ruled out charging those who were arrested or involved in the occupation.
When the state refuses to get involved, what’s the best way for a college community to discourage protesters from engaging in lengthy shutdowns? According to one law professor, community members should file civil lawsuits against them.
“The fact that the criminal actors are students, and that the criminal acts occurred on a college campus, should not alter the basic principles creating legal liability for engaging in a criminal act,” George Washington University’s John Banzhaf said in a phone interview with The College Fix.
The public interest lawyer, best known for his legal crusades against smoking and in favor of more public toilets for women, is floating the idea of filing a civil lawsuit on behalf of individuals negatively affected by the suped-up sit in.
Banzhaf has recent case law to cite. Last month a federal appeals court ruled that a Black Lives Matter organizer could be sued by a police officer who suffered injury during the illegal highway blockages he led.
There are a lot of civil rights lawsuits waiting to be filed.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, HOLOCAUST-REVISIONIST EDITION: Rep. Rashida Tlaib has 99 problems. Donations from faculty, admin. aren’t one.
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Beto’s Sorry, de Blasio’s Coming, and Biden’s Hiding Something on Ukraine. “While we’re talking about the 2020 Democratic primary, let’s take a look at the frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden. You see, Biden took the lead in Obama’s relationship with Ukraine (investing billions), and his son was making a killing with a certain company in that very country. As it happens, Ukraine dropped a criminal investigation into that same company for $1.8 billion in lost aid funding — days before Biden’s very last trip to Ukraine. What a coincidence! Or so Biden would have us believe.”
Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz this morning.
RANDALL KENNEDY: Harvard Betrays A Law Professor — And Itself.
I have been a professor at Harvard University for 34 years. In that time, the school has made some mistakes. But it has never so thoroughly embarrassed itself as it did this past weekend. At the center of the controversy is Ronald Sullivan, a law professor who ran afoul of student activists enraged that he was willing to represent Harvey Weinstein. . . .
The upshot is that Harvard College appears to have ratified the proposition that it is inappropriate for a faculty dean to defend a person reviled by a substantial number of students — a position that would disqualify a long list of stalwart defenders of civil liberties and civil rights, including Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall.
Student opposition to Mr. Sullivan has hinged on the idea of safety — that they would not feel safe confiding in Mr. Sullivan about matters having to do with sexual harassment or assault given his willingness to serve as a lawyer for Mr. Weinstein. Let’s assume the good faith of such declarations (though some are likely mere parroting). Even still, they should not be accepted simply because they represent sincere beliefs or feelings.
Suppose atheist students claimed that they did not feel “safe” confiding in a faculty dean who was an outspoken Christian or if conservative students claimed that they did not feel “safe” confiding in a faculty dean who was a prominent leftist. One would hope that university officials would say more than that they “take seriously” the concerns raised and fears expressed. One would hope that they would say that Harvard University defends — broadly — the right of people to express themselves aesthetically, ideologically, intellectually and professionally. One would hope that they would say that the acceptability of a faculty dean must rest upon the way in which he meets his duties, not on his personal beliefs or professional associations. One would hope, in short, that Harvard would seek to educate its students and not simply defer to vague apprehensions or pander to the imperatives of misguided rage. . . .
The central force animating the drama has been student anger at anyone daring to breach the wall of ostracism surrounding Mr. Weinstein, even for the limited purpose of extending him legal representation. They want to make him, a person still clothed with the presumption of innocence, more of an untouchable before trial than those who have been convicted of a crime. . . . Harvard officials are certainly capable of withstanding student pressure. This time, though, they don’t want to.
A friend on Facebook points out that every male student charged with sexual harassment can now claim discrimination: If Harvard will fire a Dean for simply acting as a defense lawyer for someone accused of sexual misconduct, how can anyone expect its own disciplinary procedures to be administered fairly?
MORE ON HARVARD’S DISGRACE: Harvard ditched US values of due process and diverse opinion in Harvey Weinstein case.
When I’m on the side of defending Harvey Weinstein, we are on all-new ground.
Yet I am, in the sense that I don’t think Harvard should have fired a faculty dean for providing legal counsel to this loathsome person.
Law professor Ronald S. Sullivan has lost his position at Winthrop House, where undergrads didn’t want to live and eat with, much less be mentored by, someone representing a world-class predator in court. (On Monday, Sullivan announced that he’s leaving Weinstein’s defense team anyway, because an upcoming trial would conflict with his class schedule — but he’s still available for advice and consultation.)
Yes, his former client has been credibly accused of serious crimes against generations of Hollywood actresses. The damage this one man has inflicted must make him a role model for psychopaths the world over.
But in our country, serial killers and terrorists and rapists, too, are entitled to the kind of defense that in theory separates us from, say, the Philippines, where Rodrigo Duterte has drug dealers murdered. Or from Saudi Arabia, where criticism is answered with assassination. In Hungary, you can be fired for dissenting views; in American academia, that’s not supposed to happen.
Well, it wasn’t supposed to happen. But we’re woke now.
EVERY DAY, THERE’S A STORY THAT MAKES THIS SOUND LESS CRAZY: Sir Roger Scruton: ‘Get Rid of Universities Altogether.’
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Byron York: Joe Biden and restoring the old (pre-Trump) order.
There was a school of thought that said former Vice President Joe Biden would begin to sink in the polls the moment he announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden’s first day in the race, the thinking went, would be his best day.
In fact, the opposite has happened. Since formally becoming a candidate on April 25, Biden has shot up in the polls. On announcement day, Biden held a 6.3-point lead over second-place Sen. Bernie Sanders in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Today, that lead is 23.5 points. That is a big change.
Polls do not tell us who will win an election months from now. But they do tell us what is happening at this moment. And at this moment, Democratic voters, who are sometimes said to be moving left and itching to transform the United States with a “Green New Deal,” “Medicare for All,” and through-the-roof taxes on the rich, are in fact responding to a decidedly more centrist appeal.
That appeal, from Biden, is a promise not to fundamentally remake American society but to restore things to the way they used to be. And “the way they used to be” means before President Trump.
Obviously, Democratic voters want to replace a Republican president with a Democratic president. But they are especially dismayed by Trump — and some, driven by increasingly strident news coverage, seem to have gone nearly ’round the bend about him.
But for some center-left Democrats, the solution to the Trump Problem — that is, the fact that Trump is president — might not be the “Green New Deal” or “Medicare for All.” It is to restore the pre-2017 order in American politics. And Biden, Barack Obama’s vice president from 2009 to 2017, is the physical embodiment of that old order.
That is what Biden promises. Nearly every day, he repeats some version of his core campaign pledge: “I want to restore the soul of this country.”
What Trump has done is expose how corrupt and inbred the establishment is, and how willing it has been to jettison all its supposed virtues to protect its power and — especially — its sense of self-importance. Biden can’t fix that, whether you call it “soul” or . . . something else.