CAMPUS FREE SPEECH FLASHBACK: Thoughts On Tolerance, Virtue, and Failure.

IT IS UNWISE TO DISPLEASE COMRADE XI: Missing Chinese Foreign Minister Died by Suicide or Torture. “The report, based on interviews by Politico Europe with unnamed sources who have access to top Chinese officials, spotlights what Politico says was a campaign to dislodge allegedly disloyal officials by Chinese President Xi Jinping — one with echoes of the sweeping purges carried out by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.”

That’s old school.

ABOUT DANG TIME: This CNN Reporter Just Had a Come to Jesus Moment About Hamas.

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CATCH ME ON REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER TONIGHT: 10pm ET / 7pm PT
More details in my “shot for the road” at the end of latest Substack post. We’ll be talking about my new book, cancel culture, and the congressional hearings on antisemitism.

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: California’s budget deficit swells to record $68B as tax revenue falls. “California’s budget deficit has swelled to a record $68 billion after months of unexpectedly low tax revenues, a shortfall that could prompt the state’s deepest spending cuts since the Great Recession.”

The smartest people keep assuring me that the economy is doing well and yet tax receipts are falling everywhere from Sacramento to Washington, DC.

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER: MIT president defends blacks-only dorm: ‘Positive selection,’ not ‘exclusionary.’

BIDEN’S EVEN WORSE VERSION OF ‘FREE COLLEGE.’ Surprise, he’s spending money without Congressional approval to make sure colleges feel no pressure to educate rather than indoctrinate.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: 12,000 Illegals Cross While Mayorkas Says Building Border Wall Limits Asylum.

MARTIN HACKWORTH: The Road to Hell Is Paved with Entitlement. “When I was lecturing at the university, I encountered legions of students who were convinced that the college experience consisted of four or more years of minimal effort in required courses, collecting a diploma, and then entering the workforce with high compensation based solely on the acquisition of a degree that was often of dubious merit. The fact that one might be expected to actually know something or have developed a work ethic somewhere along the way wasn’t a consideration.”

PROMOTING GENOCIDE IS OKAY, THOUGH: Flashback: Students caught using wrong pronouns at Harvard may violate harassment policies.

A LOT OF PLACES ARE ROTTING: A Moral Rot at Rice University. “While Haniyeh might have been pleased to learn about the support Hamas is getting from Rice faculty and students, the truth is that no one in the Middle East is paying any attention whatsoever to Rice University. Such petitions and resolutions are meant to send a message on the Rice campus. Rice colleagues and students, I hear your message loud and clear. I am a second-generation Holocaust survivor. I recognize antisemitism when I see it. You do not need to be a user of derogatory epithets to be antisemitic; using double standards qualifies.”

The derogatory epithets — and outright support of genocide — are there, though, and increasingly common.

Related thoughts from Eugene Volokh: “No-one likes rude awakenings, bitter lessons, and situations with which one is not quite sure how to cope. But they are tremendously useful. Many of us have indeed been rudely awakened to the magnitude of hostility in many American universities to Israel, Israelis, and Jews. But that’s not because there has been a surge of such hostility: It’s because the existing hostility has revealed itself.”

“INVESTS”: Biden Invests $3 billion in California’s High Speed Rail.

The money will help buy six electric trains and bankroll construction and design of a train station and other facilities and projects along a 171-mile stretch of rail line in California’s central valley—far from either Los Angeles or San Francisco. So far this year the California bullet train project has also received nearly $230 million in U.S. taxpayer money through the 2021 federal infrastructure bill.

Biden’s fresh money infusion comes as the high speed rail project already has a projected $100 billion deficit after spending more than $11 billion. California Democrats and Republicans alike have blasted the enterprise as costly with little to show for the time and money spent so far. California governor Gavin Newsom (D.) has criticized the project as overly expensive and time-intensive and proposed a scale-back—an idea he later said was taken out of context by the media.

“Only the Biden administration would look at a project that’s years behind schedule and tens of billions over budget and think ‘that’s a good place to invest another $3 billion,’” said Republican assemblyman James Gallagher, the state assembly’s minority leader.

Somebody’s getting the money but, judging by the zero miles of track laid, it sure isn’t people with any genuine interest in building railroads.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems Won’t Be Able to Sweep Hunter Biden Under the Rug Next Year. “The longer Hunter stays in the news, the more difficult it is for the Dem water-carriers in the media to keep up the ruse that President LOLEightyonemillion was never involved in any of his little boy’s questionable side hustles.”

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Reverse Speech Codes Aren’t the Answer: Fighting Campus Hate and Anti-Semitism at the Roots of the Problem.

I also note how much easier the lives of the embattled Ivy League presidents would be if they had just had some principles all along.

And as always, if you like this, please sign up for a paid subscription.

JOHN LUCAS: Biden/Buttigieg DEI Policies Endanger the Country. They Don’t Care. The FAA is seeking people suffering from “severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities” to be air traffic controllers.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY, IVY LEAGUE EDITION: Prediction: Harvard Will Have a New President Next Year.

Related: UPenn’s President Magill Is Probably Toast.

REAL MONEY: Elon Musk’s SpaceX is now valued at $175 billion in the private market—that’s larger than any IPO valuation in history. “Musk is in talks to sell between $500 million and $750 million of SpaceX stock at a valuation of $175 billion or more, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing unnamed sources. The figures mean the private space giant, which still hasn’t announced plans to go public, is more highly valued than any initial public offering in U.S. history, topping Alibaba’s $169 billion IPO valuation from 2014.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY IN JOE BIDEN’S AMERICA: Drug Shortages Hit Record High. “Why is it in Biden’s America that we always run out of stuff we need most, like prescription drugs, baby formula, and gasoline, but never the junk that is bad for us, like porn, marijuana, public school teachers, FBI agents, CNN contributors, alcohol, Indian casinos, and college?”

DELUSIONAL: More Democrats say Biden is ‘better’ than George Washington.

THIS IS THE CLIMATE OF ANTI-SEMITIC HATE THAT THE LEFT HAS BUILT: Shots Fired at Albany (NY) Synagogue, Suspect Shouted ‘Free Palestine:’ No one has said anything about the suspect “because he has not been charged.”

THE TIKTOK GENERATION: That Sound You Hear Is Gen-Z Voters Running Into the Arms of the Democrats.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Elite Universities Attempt Damage Control After Anti-Semitism Backlash.

ALEX BERENSON: Genocide and Jews at Harvard: The double standards and triple speak that have overrun elite academia showed their truest colors yesterday; and the firestorm that has followed may actually matter.

And the universities themselves have made ever-clearer that they don’t care about protecting free speech. They FEAR free speech. They care about protecting minority rights and creating safe spaces.

That’s why misgendering pronouns is “abuse.” That’s why they fell all over themselves to proclaim their solidarity with the George Floyd protests and protestors.

Except when the minority is the Jews.

Then their attackers deserve the fullest possible speech protections.

Then, and only then.

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