STEPHEN PRESSER: Swan Song of a Great Colossus: The Latest from Richard Posner.

I think it’s been good to have Posner on the bench. I also think it’s good that the bench hasn’t been made up of Posners.

THIS IS A SOLID EXPLAINER FROM LOREN THOMPSON on the F-35’s under-appreciated electronic warfare capabilities.

TYLER COWEN: China Loses More From This Trade War. “It is vulnerable because it is a much poorer country with more fragile political institutions.”

To see why the full picture is more complicated, let’s say the U.S. slaps tariffs on the industrial inputs (whether materials or labor) it is buying from China. It is easy to see the immediate chain of higher costs for the U.S. businesses translating into higher prices for U.S. consumers, and that is what the afore-mentioned studies are picking up. But keep in mind China won’t be supplying those inputs forever, especially if the tariffs remain. Within a few years, a country such as Vietnam will provide the same products, perhaps at cheaper prices, because Vietnam has lower wages. So the costs to U.S. consumers are temporary, but the lost business in China will be permanent. Furthermore, the medium-term adjustment will have the effect of making China’s main competitors better exporters.

Obviously, no final long-run estimates are possible right now. But it is quite plausible that China will bear the larger costs here, not the U.S.

Another risk for China is this: As its access to U.S. markets becomes more difficult, China may be tempted to look to Europe. It remains to be seen whether the European Union will adopt additional protectionist measures, but China must consider that the possibility is more than zero.

Beijing has been enjoying the benefits of free trade with the West and the domestic political fruits of an increasingly anti-Western foreign policy. It’s time they were made to pick one.

MARK PULLIAM: Harvard’s Disgrace.

Utopian social movements often degenerate into unruly—and sometimes vicious—mobs. During the French Revolution, the slogan “liberty, equality, fraternity” quickly led to the guillotine as the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror. We are witnessing a softer version of this at Harvard, America’s most elite university, where Ronald Sullivan, an African-American law professor, faces professional retribution for the sin of representing a (presumed innocent) client (Harvey Weinstein) accused of sexual assault. Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz denounced the incident as “The new McCarthyism comes to Harvard.”

Capitulating to the noisy complaints of a small number of undergraduates, and a sit-in protest at the dining hall, the Harvard administration recently announced that, effective June 30, Sullivan and his wife, Stephanie Robinson (who likewise teaches at Harvard Law School), would be removed as “faculty deans” at the school’s Winthrop House—a student residence where Sullivan and Robinson also lived. (Sullivan remains as a law professor.) When appointed as residential deans in 2009, Sullivan and Robinson were the first African-Americans to hold that position at Harvard, according to The Harvard Crimson. The decision to remove Sullivan and Robinson was made by Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana, who had reportedly joined the students’ sit-in protest, dubbed “Reclaim Winthrop.”

Students absurdly charged that Sullivan’s representation of a criminal defendant charged with sexual assault—by itself—made them feel upset, and contributed to an unsafe and hostile educational environment. Never mind that procedural due process (including the right of criminal defendants to zealous representation) is a critical tenet of the Anglo-American legal system, and that criminal law professors have long practiced criminal defense on the side, without controversy. Never mind that Sullivan previously represented other high-profile clients without incident, including accused terrorists and former New England Patriots tight-end Aaron Hernandez in his 2017 double murder trial. That was then.

The #MeToo movement sweeps away such precedents as inconvenient impediments to achieving a higher state of virtue, just as the Robespierre-led Committee of Public Safety eliminated many “enemies of the people.” It is tempting to ignore the horrors of the French Revolution, or to dismiss them as an aberration of history, but then—as now—idealistic reformers believed with moral certainty in the righteousness of their cause.

I know that some people on the right want to simply laugh while respected lefty institutions devour themselves, but the poison will not stay contained.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Conlawprof, the Sandbox, and Orangeman Bad.

SO HE SHOULD FIT RIGHT IN WITH THE FIELD:

Democrat Montana Governor Steve Bullock struggles to name a single achievement he is proud of as governor during his 2020 presidential campaign launch pic.twitter.com/5fyTtN9j81

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) May 14, 2019

A MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: Bush Official Predicts Spy Indictments. “John Yoo was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General under Bush 43. Yoo told Fox News that by appointing a U.S. attorney to the Spygate case, Bill Barr told the world to expect indictments. . . . Most conservatives have a wait-and-see attitude because we know that Washington takes care of Washington, first, last, and always. After watching Hillary not only go unindicted but had the FBI destroy the evidence as well, I realize Comey is about as high as they will go. Still, I believe President Trump will exact a price for this that is high enough to prevent another attempted coup.”

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Sharyl Attkisson:

THE LONESOME LOSER: Sen. Mitt Romney votes against Trump judicial pick over comments he made about Obama.

NONSENSE, THE MEDIA WOULD NEVER LIE TO US! The media is lying to you about Trump’s China tariffs: The hysteria must have a political agenda because the amount that’s being charged is peanuts.

HOW’M I RIDIN’? Private Plane Allegedly Carrying Two Billionaires, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and 5,000 Cannabis Plants Grounded in St. Kitts.

PUNDIT MAKES SHOCKING DISCOVERY THAT TRUMP IS GOOD AT POLITICS, AND THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT HAS LEARNED SOME LESSONS TOO:

But once Trump had prevailed in the primaries, the nominee’s campaign presented conservative evangelicals and Catholics with a deal: Throw your full and unrelenting support behind the party’s standard-bearer and he will vow to be your unstinting defender. No, he wouldn’t give eloquent and moving speeches in favor of building a “culture of life” in which every child is “welcomed in life and protected in law,” as President Bush had done throughout his eight years in office. But he would do something far more valuable: He would act, appointing hardline social conservatives to the federal courts and the Supreme Court at an unprecedented rate, and doing everything within the power of his office to advance the aims of the religious right on other fronts as well.

Social conservatives accepted this blatantly transactional arrangement — and the result has been striking. Loyalty to the president has translated into unceasing efforts on the part of the administration to win concrete victories for the religious right. At the state level, the support and encouragement of the White House has emboldened social conservatives to push their agenda faster and farther than ever before, especially when it comes to criminalizing and restricting access to abortion. And those restrictions will soon make their way to the nation’s highest court, where the president’s two appointees could well help to form a conservative majority in favor of gutting Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the landmark decisions that established a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

On one level, this is a dream come true for the religious right — the prospect of it achieving a long-sought victory on an issue that helped to galvanize the social-conservative movement more than 40 years ago. Yet on a deeper level, it represents a retreat from the high hopes that originally inspired that movement. Those hopes were rooted in a vision of politics as a form of proselytizing.

Like I said, the religious right has learned something, too.

IT’S AS IF LEFTY POLICIES PROMOTE POVERTY AND IGNORANCE: California Has the Highest Poverty Rate in America. Why?

KRUISER: SJW Scolds at Nike Step In It with Un-Woke Maternity Policy.

That’s right: no paid maternity leave for the athletes it sponsors.

Nike is the company that went all “Yay girl power!” over the hijab, which has become a social justice warrior fetish item in the United States and other free countries. In Muslim countries, it’s still a symbol of oppression. Women in Iran are prosecuted for removing them, and a female attorney who fought for them was recently sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes.

That’s what Nike celebrates for women. Not the faces of its company who are having babies.

Read the whole thing.

TRUMP KNOWS THIS. Tyler Cowen: China Loses More From This Trade War. It is vulnerable because it is a much poorer country with more fragile political institutions.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Former teacher charged for sexual encounter with teen in Seneca Falls.

“Twenty-nine-year-old Lindsey M. Halstead is charged with sexual misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child.”

STABBING IN SCHOOL? WHAT STABBING?  Schools don’t like the public to know all the gory details about school violence.

Since the Trump Administration (unlike the Obama Administration) is allowing schools to set their own school discipline policies, maybe more problem schools will be able to get a handle of this sort of stuff.  That’s the plan anyway.  (For my discussion of the very misguided Obama Era policy, you can go here.)

REMEMBER THE WOMAN WHO THREW SARAH SANDERS OUT OF THE RED HEN RESTAURANT?:  She’s not sorry.  She’s bragging about it in the Washington Post.

MITT CONTINUES TO EMBARRASS: Romney casts lone GOP vote against Trump judicial pick because of a ‘disparaging’ comment about Obama.

OPEN THREAD: Comment at will.

DO ASTRONOMERS KNOW ABOUT SHRINKAGE? NASA: Lunar shrinkage may be causing moonquakes.

THE STUDENTS ARE IGNORANT AND VICIOUS, THE ADMINISTRATION SPINELESS AND INCOMPETENT: The Damage That Harvard Has Done: The institution removed Ronald Sullivan as faculty dean after students criticized his decision to help mount Harvey Weinstein’s legal defense.

Defense attorneys often arouse what John Adams called a “clamor of popular suspicions and prejudices” when representing reviled clients. Just last week, the attorney Christopher Darden stopped representing a California man charged with killing the rapper Nipsey Hussle because people were so upset with his choice of client that they demanded to know his fee and threatened the safety of his children.

The vital work of criminal defense has managed to endure in spite of such attacks, thanks to a core of sober-minded citizens in each generation who know better than to pile on. They understand that to defend an accused criminal is not to defend his or her alleged crime—and that conflating the two by imposing social sanctions on attorneys would make criminal trials more like popularity contests.

Educational institutions ought to teach young adults this justice-enhancing logic. Harvard is now teaching its undergraduates how to undermine it.

Its shameful capitulation to popular passions began earlier this year when Ronald Sullivan, an African American law professor and faculty dean with a long history of freeing marginalized innocents from prison, announced that he would be working as a defense attorney for the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. “Many students expressed dismay, saying that his decision to represent a person accused of abusing women disqualified Mr. Sullivan from serving in a role of support and mentorship to students,” The New York Times reported.

Sullivan was verbally abused, and the residence where his family lives was vandalized with graffiti. A survivor of sexual assault whom Sullivan helped in the past spoke out to The Boston Globe in his defense, as did many of his colleagues at Harvard Law when I contacted them for an article I wrote on the matter. . . .

That’s what happened on Saturday: A Harvard administrator announced that Sullivan and his wife, Stephanie Robinson, would not continue as faculty deans.

The reasons offered were vague and euphemistic.

“Over the last few weeks, students and staff have continued to communicate concerns about the climate in Winthrop House,” wrote Rakesh Khurana, dean of Harvard College. “The concerns expressed have been serious and numerous. The actions that have been taken to improve the climate have been ineffective, and the noticeable lack of faculty dean presence during critical moments has further deteriorated the climate in the House. I have concluded that the situation in the House is untenable.”

Sullivan remains a law professor.

It’s just perfect that his wife is booted, too — in the name of protecting women.

Rakesh Khurana should resign in disgrace. I hope that the American Bar Association will publicly denounce Harvard for this action.

Alternatively, if we see popular crusades against lawyers who represent leftist defendants, well, good luck with that.

Related:

IT’S NOT LIKE YOU OWN IT, JUST BECAUSE YOU BOUGHT IT: Adobe Tells Users They Can Get Sued for Using Old Versions of Photoshop: “You are no longer licensed to use the software,” Adobe told them. “Gilbert noted that consumers now live in a world in which consumers almost never actually own anything that contains software. In this new reality, end users are forced to agree to ‘take it or leave it’ end user license agreements (EULAs), in which the licensor can change its terms of service without notice.”

IT’S TIME TO PROSECUTE SOME RUSSIA HOAXERS: Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton views Durham appointment as a positive, but tells The Epoch Times: “How much more investigating is needed here? We just need decision-making on prosecutions.”