THAT WOULD BE NICE: 70% of N.J. gun laws could go away if SCOTUS takes up this case on May 23rd.
Archive for 2019
May 16, 2019
WASHINGTON WHODUNIT: Who Pushed the Dossier, Brennan or Comey?
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is fear behind decisions about nuclear power?
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Republican senators introduce Equal Campus Access Act to protect students’ religious freedom.
Three Republican senators have proposed legislation in an effort to protect college students’ freedom of religion on campus.
The Higher Education Act of 1965, which sets many of the federal government’s policies on higher education, is currently up for renewal.
With that, U.S. Senators James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) and Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), introduced in April the Equal Campus Access Act of 2019 as an amendment to the HEA.
The proposed amendment states: “None of the funds made available under this Act may be provided to any public institution of higher education that denies to a religious student organization any right, benefit, or privilege that is otherwise afforded to other student organizations at the institution (including full access to the facilities of the institution and official recognition of the organization by the institution) because of the religious beliefs, practices, speech, leadership standards, or standards of conduct of the religious student organization.”
Sen. Lankford said the measure aims to force administrators to respect students’ religious beliefs and their right to choose their group’s leaders.
Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, told The College Fix in a phone interview that while the bill is a good first step they would like to see expanded protections.
“FIRE is happy to see the Senate is considering adding protections for student organizations,” but the group would like to see lawmakers’ efforts “expanded to protect all belief or advocacy-based organizations,” Cohn said.
I agree.
HANGAR FULL OF TRAINERS: USN Training Air Wing 4 secures its fleet of T-6B Texan II and T-44C Pegasus trainers in a hangar to protect them from severe weather at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas. Photo taken May 10, 2019.
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Justice Department urges Supreme Court to overturn NYC gun law. I’m on an amicus brief — along with Randy Barnett, Bob Cottrol, et al., — in support of overturning this law, filed earlier this week. You can see it here, as the brief of Professors of Second Amendment Law.
PUNISHING LAWYERS FOR THEIR CLIENTS. WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE, HARVARD? Iranian lawyer who defended women’s right to remove hijab gets 38 years, 148 lashes.
PUT THE WOKE WARRIORS IN THEIR PLACE: Trinity Univ. serves up spicy response to student gov’s call for Chick-fil-A ban.
Tess Coody-Anders, the Texas Christian school’s vice president for strategic communications and marketing. stated, “We do not make vendor decisions based on their political or religious beliefs,” in an email to students obtained by Campus Reform, adding that the school considers “utilization, variety of options, vendor performance, and campus-wide feedback.”
“We do not make vendor decisions based on their political or religious beliefs…” Tweet This
“Based on these criteria, Chick-fil-A appears to be a preferred vendor by students and the broader Trinity community,” the email continued.
Trinity’s student government previously passed a resolution to remove Chick-fil-A from the school’s dining hall because of its stance on LGBT issues. The body took issue with the restaurant chain’s donations to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Salvation Army, and the Paul Anderson Youth Home.
As always, the woke yammerers are a small minority who should be ignored and mocked. When they’re listened to, it’s not because they reflect the views of students in general, but rather because they’re saying what administrators want said.
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: SPY vs. SPY as Comey, Brennan Point Fingers. “OH SNAP. They are turning on each other! Also notice how the statement says the dossier wasn’t corroborated? That further screws Comey because the FBI are the people who presented the dossier to the FISA court, swearing it was true. Ouch.”
I MENTIONED TRUMP’S PARDON OF CONRAD BLACK LAST NIGHT, but it’s worth noting that — though deserved in its own right — this is also preparing the ground for a bunch of future Trump pardons, which will likely issue after it’s made public just how dirty the Russia “collusion” investigation was.
RESURRECTION: A B-52H Nicknamed “Wise Guy” Becomes The Second To Ever Come Back From The Bone Yard.
When the 5th Bomb Wing sent Wise Guy to the Bone Yard in 2008, it seems that the personnel from the unit may have a nagging feeling in the back of their minds that the bomber might not be done with its service just yet. Someone left a note on a panel inside the plane that reads as follows:
“AMARG, this 60-034, a Cold Warrior that stood sentinel over America from the darkest days of the Cold War to the global fight against terror. Take good care of her… Until we need her again.”
It may be of interest to note that the “60” in Wise Guy’s serial number is the fiscal year in which the Air Force bought her. The very last of the B-52Hs rolled off Boeing’s production line in 1962.
That’s nearly 60 years ago.
NOT NICE: Woman, 25, shoves elderly man off bus so hard it killed him after he asked her to be nicer. “Serge Fournier was reportedly telling a fellow passenger on the bus to be politer to others when he was pushed by a woman, landing head first on the pavement. The woman, Cadesha Michelle Bishop, is facing a murder charge for the fatal shove on March 21 this year in Las Vegas.”
ANYTHING BUT ACTUAL JOURNALISM: Study: Media shifts to opinion, advocacy, ‘personal perspective.’
That shift many have sensed from hard news to opinion and advocacy in the media, especially on cable TV, is real, according to a new and authoritative report from research giant Rand Corporation.
In a study of trends from before 2000 to 2017, it found a big shift in how news is presented on TV and in online reports that means more “personal perspective,” issue advocacy, and opinion.
Rand, in its report News in a Digital Age, compared the periods for newspapers, broadcast TV, cable, and online. It looked at the words used, but did not analyze the politics of the stories, reporters, or outlets.
Newspapers, it said, have shifted in how they tell their stories, away from the old who, what, when, where, why and how approach to storytelling and personal perspective.
Broadcast has shifted to offering more opinions and arguments.
Cable TV has gone all in on opinion over news.
And online has become opinionated and advocacy based.
Well, actual journalism is work, and if you do it honestly the stories may not turn out as your politics require. Opinion and advocacy are cheap, and always match your . . . opinions.
UGH: Before Ethiopian Crash, Boeing Resisted Pilots’ Calls for Aggressive Steps on 737 Max.
The F.A.A. had already issued one directive after the Lion Air crash, instructing airlines to revise their flight manuals to include information on how to respond to a malfunction of the anti-stall system known as MCAS. But Mr. Michaelis pushed Boeing to consider calling for an additional one to update the software.
Such a procedure would have required Boeing and airlines in the United States to take immediate action to ensure the safety of the Max, and would have likely taken the jet out of service temporarily.
“My question to you, as Boeing, is why wouldn’t you say this is the smartest thing to do?” Mr. Michaelis said. “Say we’re going to do everything we can to protect that traveling public in accordance with what our pilots unions are telling us.”
Mr. Sinnett didn’t budge, saying that it remained unclear that the new software, which automatically pushes the plane’s nose down, was responsible for the Lion Air crash. He added that he felt confident that pilots had adequate training to deal with a problem, especially now that pilots — who were not initially informed about the new system — were aware of it.
“You’ve got to understand that our commitment to safety is as great as yours,” Mr. Sinnett said in the meeting. “The worst thing that can ever happen is a tragedy like this, and the even worse thing would be another one.”
The pilots expressed frustration that Boeing did not inform them about the new software on the plane until after the Lion Air crash.
“These guys didn’t even know the damn system was on the airplane, nor did anybody else,” said Mr. Michaelis, the union’s head of safety.
Another American pilot, Todd Wissing, expressed frustration that no mention of the system had been included in the training manual for the 737 Max.
What a mess.
CONRAD BLACK: Democrats Begin to Perceive the Debacle They’ve Created.
Given how verbally accident-prone Mr. Biden has been throughout his nearly 50 years of public life, his present formidable lead in the polls against an immense field of candidates should be seen as the fulfilment of Democratic yearning for someone who would not alarm the voters in policy terms. The only other such candidate is the relatively unknown Amy Klobuchar.
All Americans, even the president’s most strenuous supporters, should be comforted that the majority of Democrats can still think and count. It is a party infested with lunatics, but not controlled by them. This is in the same reassuring category as the Mueller investigation’s conclusion that no one in the United States colluded with Russians to influence the result of the 2016 election.
Beneath the initial success of the Biden campaign, the Democrats are sharply divided between those who are still trying to place their bets on the presidential unsuitability of the incumbent, those who seek a radical démarche to the left and over the political cliff, and those trying to get back to essentially the old slightly-left-of-center coalition of Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson.
President Clinton, and even, with a stretch, Mrs. Clinton, were also in that tradition, but the ominous approaching clouds of investigative curiosity about the Clinton Foundation and the malodorous ethics of the 2016 Clinton campaign have caused the Clintons’ party to stampede from under them.
Even Barack Obama, who was cozily settling into a good 30 years as a respected ex-president, is already in the crosshairs of the investigation, conducted against the Clinton campaign, of illegal espionage on the Trump campaign through fraudulently obtained FISA warrants and planted agents and sting operations. The rabidly Trumpophobic texting between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page reveals that “the White House” was closely monitoring the investigation of the Trump campaign, which raises the question of the involvement of the former president in illegal surveillance.
Mr. Obama’s name is still bandied about with respect by most of the Democratic candidates, especially Mr. Biden (“Barack and I . . .”), and he is still better esteemed by most Americans than the other ex-presidents. But apart from the admirable and necessary shattering of the bar of color, his entire legacy has been discredited.
Harsh, but fair.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO DO ANY OF THAT: She Didn’t Get An ‘A’ So She Accused Professor Of Sexual Harassment. Then She Held Ex At Knifepoint To Destroy Evidence.
REKT:
ARTHUR CHRENKOFF remembers Bob Hawke.