CLERY ACT AND CAMPUS CRIME NUMBERS ARE A MESS. This is a quick look at the UNC system, but it’s the same everywhere, thanks to dueling definitions, confusion about meanings, and attempts to reconcile the minuscule crime reporting numbers with the repeated insistence that there is an epidemic of sexual violence on campus so bad that you’d have to be flatly insane to send your daughters there.
Archive for 2022
October 24, 2022
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Polls Look Great for Republicans but Can They Be Trusted? “People on both sides of the aisle tend to have a love/hate relationship with election polls. When they look good for our side, we can’t shut up about them. When they don’t, we scream to the heavens that polling is mierda del toro.”
SO ON THE SAMPLE BALLOT FOR THE TENNESSEE ELECTIONS is a constitutional amendment that I worked on, now up for popular ratification as Amendment #2. Summary:
This amendment would add to article III, section 12 of the Tennessee Constitution a process for the temporary exercise of the powers and duties of the governor by the Speaker of the Senate–or the Speaker of the House if there is no Speaker of the Senate in office–when the governor is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office of governor. While a Speaker is temporarily discharging the powers and duties of the governor, the Speaker would not be required to resign as Speaker or to resign as a member of the legislature; but the Speaker would not be able to preside as Speaker or vote as a member of the legislature. A Speaker who is temporarily discharging the powers and duties of the governor would not get the governor’s salary but would get the Speaker’s salary. The amendment would also exempt a Speaker who is temporarily discharging the powers and duties of the governor from provisions in the Constitution that would otherwise prohibit the Speaker from exercising the powers of the governor and from simultaneously holding more than one state office.
I was on the committee that drafted this, along with former Tennessee Gov. (and Speaker of the House) Ned Ray McWherter, back when Phil Bredesen was governor. Searching my archives, that was 15 years ago. Well, these things move slowly through the legislative pipeline. I’d have to check my files, but the language seems to be unchanged as far as I can tell.
The problem came up when Bredesen was bitten by a tick and laid out with some mysterious illness for a couple of months. In Tennessee, the Speaker of the Senate is also the Lieutenant Governor. But if he/she succeeds to the Governorship, he/she becomes ineligible for the Senate and loses the seat. This amendment would change that to allow a fill-in period for an incapacitated governor.
BIG LESSON IN THREE SMALL WORDS: I don’t normally link to HillFaith posts that are scriptural exegesis intended for folks who are, like many here on Instapundit, already Christians.
But everybody can get down from time to time, especially about things in this country these days, as well as difficulties we face in our personal lives. This post today speaks to that reality. So here goes …
GLEICHSCHALTUNG: New California Laws Will Create ‘Ideological Purity Test’ for Police by Banning Ties to ‘Hate’ and ‘Bias,’ Critics Say.
Newsom on Sept. 30 signed AB 655, which bars Californians who previously had been members of a “hate group” or involved in “hate group activity” (in the past seven years) from police service. It remains unclear when the law will go into effect.
The governor also signed AB 2229, which requires applicants to be screened for “bias” before they can join a police force force. The “bias” requirement had been enacted previously in 2020, but mistakenly was stricken from the law in 2021, according to a legislative analysis. According to the law’s text, it went into effect immediately upon signing.
Although AB 655 uses a strict definition for the term “hate group” tied directly to “genocide,” critics note that the new law also requires agencies to investigate “a complaint made by the public that alleges, as specified, that a peace officer engaged in membership in a hate group, participation in any hate group activity, or advocacy of public expressions of hate.”
Safer just to keep your mouth shut about everything if you ever want any government work — which is the whole point.
TO BE FAIR, THAT’S ONLY BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE LEARNING STUFF ABOUT HIM: Warnock’s Negatives Skyrocket in Georgia, Poll Shows: Warnock faces increased scrutiny over church-owned apartment evictions.
OUT OF 27,884 KNOWN CASES: At least six more people who tested positive for monkeypox have died in U.S.
FROM A FRIEND: “Don’t look at the midterms as an election; it’s more like a restraining order.”
As Harvard prepares to defend its race-conscious admissions program at the Supreme Court this month, a federal judge in Boston is considering a related dispute arising from a fumbled insurance filing, one that could cost the university $15 million.
Harvard failed to file a timely formal claim with one of its insurance companies for its expenses in defending the lawsuit challenging its admissions policies. That company, Zurich American Insurance, refused to pay, and Harvard sued. In the process, the university disclosed that its legal fees and expenses in the admissions lawsuit and a related Justice Department investigation had topped $27 million.
“One of the nation’s top universities is apparently not great about doing its homework,” said David Lat, a legal commentator.
Days after Students for Fair Admissions sued Harvard in 2014, arguing that its practice of taking account of race in its undergraduate admissions decisions was unlawful and harmed Asian American applicants, the university formally notified its primary insurance carrier to seek payment of its defense costs. That policy had a $25 million limit, after Harvard paid $2.5 million.
But Harvard did not alert Zurich, its excess insurer, which was meant to cover the next $15 million, until long after the policy’s deadline had passed.
That additional money is at issue in the case before the federal judge in Boston.
“Somebody seriously messed up,” said Tom Baker, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “I teach about this stuff. One of the things you teach people about claims-made policies is that you’ve got to provide notice early and often.”
Make them pay. Plus:
U.N.C.’s own litigation expenses have exceeded $24 million as of July, according to a response to a public records request from the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a nonprofit group that says it seeks to broaden the diversity of ideas taught at universities.
“No state-appropriated or tuition dollars are being used,” U.N.C. told the center.
Uh huh.
ROGER KIMBALL: Not Consensus, But Truth.
Perhaps the most popular meme floating about in polite society today is the contention that any hint of the 2020 presidential election being tainted is a “Big Lie.” It is so popular, in fact, that some journalists and politicians appear to present themselves to the Office of Acceptable Propaganda each day before setting off on their rounds. They collect their allotted quota of different ways of ridiculing and dismissing those imprudent enough to suggest that, as a matter of fact, there were lots of problems with the 2020 elections.
It is important that these approved scribes and politicians engage in this ritual because there are many different ways in which this rhetorical epithet needs to be expressed if it is to achieve its goal: to silence debate by intimidating people.
To this end, a number of different rhetorical registers must be sounded. Some are blunt and angry, as for example this tweet from a writer for The Bulwark, a marginal NeverTrump site supported by leftist billionaires: “Chris Sununu, Doug Ducey, Brian Kemp, and Glenn Youngkin . . . every single one of them is campaigning either for or with an election-denying lunatic.”
The obloquy is directed not simply against certain ideas, but also against the people who express, or might express, them. Thus we find Michael Steele, an anti-Trump Republican and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, castigating supporters of the former president as “lice, fleas, and blood sucking ticks.” The formula does have the advantage of clarity: I mean, partly because of its unsavory historical echoes, you know where you stand with Steele.
The left views all of its opponenets as vermin to be exterminated. They say that routinely. Believe them.
I’M NOT PLEASED: How Worried Should We Be About Boston University’s Gain-of-Function Covid Virus That Kills 80% of Mice? “Thus restated, it becomes difficult to ascertain the genuine need for doing this experiment (whose results seem obvious, predictable and axiomatic). Einstein favored Gedankenexperimente (‘thought experiments’) using conceptual rather than actual experiments in creating the theory of relativity. There’s nothing like the ‘real thing’, but I’m imagining 99% of virologists could have foreseen a conclusion similar to this without having done any of the study. Moreover, most would not have seen a real point in doing this study in the first place. Of course, getting paid and churning research grants can help provide motivation.”
Plus: “By focusing so intently within the micro-world, it’s perhaps forgivable virologists lose sense of the macro. Conversely, the general public has earned every right to be twitchy and tetchy over ‘gain of function’ engineered augmentations to SARS-CoV-2 after the many millions of excess deaths following what many suspect was a Wuhan lab leak.”
It might be “forgivable,” but they should expect the predictable shitstorm. And they haven’t done a lot to earn the public’s trust lately.
DEAL OF THE DAY: DEWALT DXAEJ14 Digital Portable Power Station Jump Starter. #CommissionEarned
PELOSI: ‘Nobody Said We’re Doing Abortion Rather Than The Economy, It’s About Both.’
Really?
• Sen. Bernie Sanders tells Democrats to focus on economy, not just abortion.
• Focus on abortion rights may not be enough to save Democrats in the face of economic concerns.
• Biden, in speech, aims to keep abortion top of mind for voters as midterms near.
• Democrats focus on abortion ahead of US midterms, spending shows.
• Republicans regain momentum despite Democrats’ push on abortion, democracy.
“Despite.”
ICYMI: THIS IS BULLSHIT: Ejaculate Responsibly?
Responsibly? Men are so responsible, they’re charged with child support when the ejaculation occurs when they’re raped while unconscious, when it occurs into a condom that is later salvaged from a trash can, or when they’re pubescent boys molested by adult women. See this: Fatherhood by Conscription: Nonconsensual Insemination and the Duty of Child Support.
Nathaniel was a California teenager who became a father in 1995. The mother of Nathaniel’s child was named Ricci, and at the time of conception, she was thirty-four years old. Nathaniel, however, was merely fifteen. Although Nathaniel admitted to having sex with Ricci voluntarily about five times, the fact that he was under sixteen years of age at the time made it legally impossible for him to consent to sexual intercourse. In other words, under California law, Nathaniel was not only a new father, but was also a victim of statutory rape. Nonetheless, in a subsequent action for child support, the court held that Nathaniel was liable for the support of the child who was born as a result of his rape. According to the court, “Victims have rights. Here, the victim also has responsibilities.”
Post-Dobbs, I can see the appeal of trying to shift responsibility for pregnancy to men, but the fact is men have never enjoyed “reproductive rights” as women have known them. If anything, Dobbs narrows that gender gap a bit. The notion that it’s only men who resist condom use because it interferes with sexual pleasure is also a fiction.
But post-Dobbs there’s a market for attacks on men and their sexuality, so this should do well.
But it’s not really new: “The rise of personal genomics has not created this phenomenon, of course. Nonpaternity results can arise even in the course of routine medical testing. What happens if a doctor sees that a baby’s blood type could not have come from its father? (If the baby’s is AB and the father’s turns up O, the doctor knows that something is amiss.) In the last few decades, the medical establishment has decided that these findings should be concealed, to protect the mother’s privacy and avoid unnecessary harm.”
“Unnecessary harm” to whom?
JEFFREY CARTER: Rigging Markets: Washington Seems To Be Pretty Good At It. “Over the years I have written a lot about how people in Washington DC take advantage of inside information and trade the market. If you were a corporate executive you would go to jail for the same actions. This is not a new issue. It’s a recurring issue. . . . There will be no high crimes and misdemeanor Congressional hearings on this since they often are in on the game. I will tell you that if I was in office, I would put a stop to it once and for all. Rigging markets is one of the worst things that can happen in a capitalistic society.”
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Trump’s Greatest Achievement That No One Is Talking About: Flushing Out the Swamp Commies. “The Democrats didn’t go to war with Trump simply because they might have to endure four more years of prosperity if he won; they did it because their careers and bolshie plans for the United States were on the line.”
