#HIMTOO? Smokey Robinson accused by former housekeepers of sexual assault and rape.

Four former housekeepers of Smokey Robinson allege in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that the Motown music luminary repeatedly sexually assaulted and raped them while they worked for him.

The suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court seeks at least $50 million in damages over the alleged assaults, which the women say took place between 2007 and 2024, and labor violations including a hostile work environment, illegally long hours and lack of pay.

A message seeking comment from a representative for the 85-year-old Robinson was not immediately answered.

The four women each say that Robinson would wait until he was alone with them in his Los Angeles house then sexually assault and rape them over their objections.

“We believe that Mr. Robinson is a serial and sick rapist, and must be stopped,” the women’s attorney John Harris said at a news conference.

All said they eventually quit over the assaults, though in some cases it took several years. And all said they feared coming forward over fears of retaliation, public shame and possible effects on their immigration status.

Really? Even at the peak of the #MeToo era during Trump’s first term? (Before it was jettisoned in 2020 to clear the decks for Bad Touch Biden.)

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Harvard hostility makes it clear – it’s been Corbynised.

Forget micro-aggressions. In the wake of 10/7, Harvard University’s multiple schools have subjected Jews and Israelis to ongoing macro-aggressions.

The festering hostility is clear, even amidst significant “context” in the university’s 311-page antisemitism report. In between helpfully presenting university-wide statistics and first-person anecdotes, the authors underplay the university’s self-sabotage.

The framing is decidedly left-wing and Harvard protective. Anti-Israel students are “pro-Palestinian.” Their encampment is called “generally . . . clean and orderly.” Authors adopt no official antisemitism definition and embrace being paired with an Islamophobia task force. They detail problems at only four of Harvard’s 12 graduate and professional schools, concentrating “on patterns of experiences” and possibly omitting individual horror stories.

Backstory matters here. This report wouldn’t exist if Harvard had summarily implemented the private recommendations of President Claudine Gay’s respected Antisemitism Advisory Group. President Alan Garber hand-picked the Antisemitism Task Force’s co-chair, whom former President Larry Summers tweeted “has publicly minimised Harvard’s anti-Semitism problem, rejected the [IHRA] definition . . . of anti-Semitism . . . invoked the need for the concept of settler colonialism in analysing Israel, referred to Israel as an apartheid state and more.” And this is a public relations document. It opens by insisting on internally-driven reform and closes without recommending Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion’s elimination.

Related: Trump tells Harvard: No more money without antisemitism crackdown.

WELL, GOOD: New Molecules Target Root Cause of Chronic Pain Without Opioids.

WAR AND RUMORS OF WAR: India fires missiles into Pakistani territory in response to Kashmir militant attack.

STAY HOME? How cruise ship passengers can stay safe from the latest version of norovirus.

MORE WINNING? China May Cave to Trump on Tariffs Soon.

Something that will be important in this is that China and Xi must do what they can to preserve mianzi 面子 — “face”. A successful negotiation is going to need to have some way for Xi to gain mianzi, and not just lose it.

I LIKE TIM SCOTT, BUT YEAH:

Oh, Kemp gets plenty of blame for being, but Tim Scott had a job and he hasn’t got it done. I don’t care about excuses. I don’t care about reasons. You either get it done, or you suck.

If you’re satisfied with excuses, that your problem https://t.co/F2U6NbG04t

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) May 6, 2025

INDIA LAUNCHES STRIKES ON TERRORIST CAMPS IN PAKISTAN.

THANKS TO MANOSPHERE HIGHLIGHTS DAILY for featuring my interview with the Atlas society in their YouTube video.

HIPSTER MOMS AS URBAN HEALTH HAZARD? New salmonella outbreak is linked to backyard poultry, CDC says.

DECOUPLING: Mattel CEO says toy manufacturing won’t come to America, but price hikes will.

“We don’t see that happening,” Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday, less than a day after the company withdrew annual financial targets.

“We need to remember that a significant part of toy creation happens in America,” he said. “Design, development, product engineering, brand management all happens in America. Making product, producing product in other countries, allows us to create quality products at affordable price points.”

Mattel has been diversifying its global manufacturing for nearly a decade in an effort to reduce its dependence on China. By the end of the year, less than 40% of Mattel’s product will be sourced from the country. Kreiz noted that in two years, no country will represent more than 25% of Mattel’s sourcing.

Reducing dependency on China is good, at least.

BREAKING: SCOTUS Allows Trump to Enforce Ban on Transgenders in the Military.

MAHA: How Eating Healthy Became Right-Wing. At the Corner, Jack Butler writes that in the Obama era, “‘preoccupation with health’ was mostly understood as left-wing:”

That began to change for many reasons. Probably the two biggest are “the rise of intersectionality on the left, a framework of victimology into which the overweight fit nicely” (with the approval and sometimes the promotion of food and beverage companies); and the overwhelmingly right-wing opposition to the Covid-19 response regime. The latter, especially, inspired a skepticism of the public health apparatus and certain of its pronouncements regarded as consensus, including on such matters as dietary fat, carbohydrates, and seed oils. That begins to explain how the partisan valence of healthy food has changed since 2008.

At some point, thanks in part to intersectionality, everything became right-wing: How Did Having Babies Become Right-Wing?

—Madeleine Kearns, The Free Press, April 26th.

Isn’t everything these days?

According to the Grauniad, fitness is definitely right-wing:

Flashback: ” Increasingly, every male interest, from going to the gym, apparently a fascist recruiting ground, to playing video games is decried as right-wing by the left. If you tell young men that everything they like is right wing, you shouldn’t be surprised when they start to believe you.”

And as a result, last year after the presidential election, we immediately entered into some sort of bizarre hell-world in which Van Jones was a voice of sanity:

“If progressives have a politics that says all white people are racist, all men are toxic, and all billionaires are evil it’s kinda hard to keep them on your side. If you're chasing people out of the party, you can't be mad when they leave.”

— Van Jones

pic.twitter.com/6sWJD5Pw6e

— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) November 7, 2024

MEANWHILE I’M HORRIFIED THAT A FREE COUNTRY WOULD HAVE A “GUN CONTROL INDUSTRY:” Gun Control Industry Horrified by Removal of ATF’s ‘Gun Violence’ Exhibit.

CHANGE: FDA’s top inspector abruptly retires. “Rogers has had a challenging tenure atop the agency’s inspections workforce. He was the top official overseeing food inspections during the infant formula crisis in 2022, when the agency mishandled whistleblower complaints about a troubled formula plant linked to a deadly recall. He also oversaw a resulting reorganization of the FDA’s inspections office in 2024.”

NICE: Majority of American Muslims DON’T Oppose Trump’s Gaza Plan; Take Anger Out on DEMOCRATS!

I’m a big fan of Trump’s two-track peace plan.

STAY COOL: FrSara Portable Handheld Fan Rechargeable. #CommissionEarned

SUPREME COURT STAYS LOWER COURT RULING, ALLOWING TRUMP TRANSGENDER BAN TO PROCEED.

TIME TO PAY UP: Federal student loans are due again. A record percentage of borrowers are seriously delinquent.

FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists edge closer to affordable superconductors: Novel materials could eventually power electric vehicles and more.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Columbus Didn’t Sail for Spices — He Was on a Secret Mission Against Islam!

I’ve been getting a lot out of Raymond’s video podcasts.

NOT AN IMPOSSIBLE SHOT: SpaceX pushed “sniper” theory with the feds far more than is publicly known.

As part of my book on the Falcon 9 and Dragon years at SpaceX, Reentry, I reported deeply on the loss of the Amos-6 mission. In the weeks afterward, the greatest mystery was what had precipitated the accident. It was understood that a pressurized helium tank inside the upper stage had ruptured. But why? No major parts on the rocket were moving at the time of the failure. It was, for all intents and purposes, akin to an automobile idling in a driveway with half a tank of gasoline. And then it exploded.

This failure gave rise to one of the oddest—but also strangely compelling—stories of the 2010s in spaceflight. And we’re still learning new things today.

The lack of a concrete explanation for the failure led SpaceX engineers to pursue hundreds of theories. One was the possibility that an outside “sniper” had shot the rocket. This theory appealed to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who was asleep at his home in California when the rocket exploded. Within hours of hearing about the failure, Musk gravitated toward the simple answer of a projectile being shot through the rocket.

This is not as crazy as it sounds, and other engineers at SpaceX aside from Musk entertained the possibility, as some circumstantial evidence to support the notion of an outside actor existed. Most notably, the first rupture in the rocket occurred about 200 feet above the ground, on the side of the vehicle facing the southwest. In this direction, about one mile away, lay a building leased by SpaceX’s main competitor in launch, United Launch Alliance. A separate video indicated a flash on the roof of this building, now known as the Spaceflight Processing Operations Center. The timing of this flash matched the interval it would take a projectile to travel from the building to the rocket.

The FBI investigated, but with the FAA concluded there was no gunman.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Merit pay is coming to Houston under Mike Miles’ go-big-or-go-home plan.

ED MORRISSEY: Could ‘President’ Boasberg Pick His Own US Attorney for DC?

Donald Trump — who last I checked was the duly elected president of the United States — nominated Ed Martin to serve as US Attorney for Washington DC, and also has him serving as interim US Attorney. With only a simple majority needed for confirmation, there should have been no problem getting Martin in place before the May 20 expiration of his interim appointment. However, Martin apparently got sloppy with his disclosures, and some Senate Republicans are now balking:

As CNN previously reported, Martin failed to disclose nearly 200 media appearances in his initial disclosures last month, and claimed under oath he did not recall some of his most controversial past statements in response to a series of questions put to him by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Apparently, the big worry is around Sen. Thom Tillis, and not for the first time this year, although he may not be the only worry:

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN last week he has “serious questions” about Martin, given his previous comments denigrating police officers who defended the US Capitol during the January 6, 2021, attack.

“I don’t talk about that stuff,” Tillis said when asked if the president had reached out to him.

GOP Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, who also serve on the panel, have also privately expressed concerns about supporting Martin, a source familiar with the process told CNN. Cornyn told CNN on Monday that Trump had not reached out to him, and he declined to say how he would vote on the nomination.

Normally, we could chalk this up by saying nominate in haste, repent at leisure. Trump simply needs to go back to the drawing board and find a new nominee. However, this situation has a complication, thanks to the decision to have Martin serve as interim US Attorney. If that position is not filled within 120 days by a Senate-confirmed appointment, the chief judge of the circuit can appoint an interim US Attorney to serve until that confirmation takes place.

And guess who is the current chief judge of the DC Circuit?

Old and busted: 867-5309. The new hotness:

BOOM: Megaquake could trigger land drop, spike flood risk along West Coast, study says.