WHO WANTS TO TELL HIM? In the early 20th century, we not only did not have pre-Reagan tax rates, until 1913 we had no federal income tax at all, and the original NYC subway lines, the BMT and the IRT, were built by private companies, and operated privately until 1940.

YOU CAN SAY THAT, BUT YOU CAN’T DO THAT! I’m a longstanding critic of allowing hostile environment complaints based on offensive political speech. But I also think that Jewish students at many universities where Hamasniks were chanting “globalize the intifada” and whatnot have a viable hostile environment case. Why? Because liability doesn’t attach for the speech endorsing violence, but this speech provides context for why universities were obligated to crack down on illicit behavior by Hamansniks that they instead tolerated and even encouraged.

This unprotected behavior includes violence, intimidation, threats, classroom disruptions, vandalism, and other acts that created a hostile environment for Jewish students. In isolation, these actions might not create a hostile environment, but when the students engaging in illicit acts are also endorsing violence, a reasonable Jewish student could feel concern for his safety, to the point where it meets the legal standard of interfering with his educational opportunities. This is especially true given that there have been dozens of incidents of violence against Jewish student on campus since Oct. 7, 2023, and also, unfortunately, several murders of Jewish people by Hamasniks in society at large. Certainly courts should not be, as several have, dismissing these cases without giving the plaintiffs the opportunity to even get discovery from the defendants (for the legally literate, on 12b6 motions to dismiss).

I explain it all in this forthcoming article, which also has, I believe, the most comprehensive documentation yet published of incidents of violence, threats, and intimidation against Jewish students, almost none of which have been covered by the MSM.

I EXPECT A LAWSUIT FOR VIOLATING CALIFORNIA’S DRACONIAN PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS LAW IS COMING: You can’t make this stuff up: “we aren’t political, and we don’t ask our performers their political views, but we won’t let an Israeli Jew perform unless he denies absurd libels against Israel. But that’s not political, and we don’t ask our performers their political views.”

CHECKMATE:

SUDDENLY, THE MAN WITH OPINIONS ON EVERYTHING DOESN’T HAVE ONE: If world events can’t be used to bash the US government or Israel, Glenn Greenwald suddenly has very meticulous criteria for offering an opinion. Not knowing Hebrew or Arabic certainly hasn’t stopped him from expressing (admittedly ignorant) opinions on the Gaza war. But he can’t even bring himself to give well-wishes to Iranians fighting their tyrannical theocracy, which hardly requires a degree in Persian politics.

IGNORANCE, THY NAME IS TUCKER: In a segment of his interview with Ted Cruz last summer since deleted from his platforms, Tucker Carlson expresses incredulity when Cruz notes that Iran was trying to assassinate Trump (X link).
Well, it’s not like Biden-appointed prosecutors indicted an Iranian agent, who is still at large for trying to murder Trump, and Biden AG Merrick Garland announced this with great fanfare. Oh, wait, it’s exactly like that. Somehow, this very public (and important) story either eluded Tucker’s attention, or he purposely chose to mock it, knowing that it’s true. Neither speaks well of Tucker.

EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.:

CHOOSING POORLY:

YE PROPHETS OF DOOM: The Economist 2 years ago:

The Economist this week:

And who can forget, from March:

CARLSON GOES FULL CANDACE OWENS: Appealing to low-IQ credulous conspiracy theorists is a sure way to destroy a political movement, and Tucker seems to be giving it the old college try. Here’s the background: The communist anti-American government in Venezuela naturally hates Israel, while the opposition leadership is friendly. This is hardly a secret. The Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom has a story about this. A nutty anti-Israel leftist posted an excerpt from the story, with the caption, “Israeli publication, Israel Hayom, says it was ISRAEL that pushed Trump to bring about regime change in Venezuela.” Except that the story does not say anything remotely like that. Which didn’t stop Tucker from going into his “just asking questions mode,” to provide more oxygen for this non-story.

FIRE THEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT IT OUT: Columbia University Faculty Behaving Badly.

EVERYTHING I DON’T APPROVE OF IS GENOCIDE: Members of a right-wing Israeli party wore pins shaped like nooses to advocate the death penalty for terrorists convicted of murder. Naturally, this is genocide.

ABOUT THE BBC: The BBC did some minor housecleaning, which will surely not resolve its broader problem of being hostile to capitalism, the US, the West, and especially Israel. But I’ve noticed in social media that all manner of British leftists are now arguing that the BBC is actually not just less unfriendly to capitalism, the US, the West, and especially Israel than they are, but that its actually “right-wing” on all things, and especially biased in favor of Israel.

Do they really mean it? No, of course not, as not a single one of them has called for defunding the BBC and allowing a private news market to arise in its stead. They know the Beeb is a huge asset to the Left, but that doesn’t stop them from gaslighting about it to try to get it to move even further left.

HE’S AS PHONY AS A THREE-DOLLAR BILL: I was poking around the internet tonight, and discovered that during Zohran Mandami’s rap career as “Young Cardamom,” he pretended to have grown up in and still live in Kapmala, Uganda. In fact, his family left Uganda for New York when Mamdani was six.

Article 1: “Young Cardamom & HAB are both Ugandans with roots that reach far beyond their borders. Though they represent the sound of their city, Kampala, the duo’s tracks also blend several influences from South Sudan, India, Atlanta, and Lahore.”

Article 2: “HAB and I are both Ugandans with roots abroad, with HAB’s in South Sudan and mine in India…. Our lyrics and choice of language are rebuttals of what Ugandan society expects of us.” “The two grew up in the same part of Kampala, called Buziga, and last year they released ‘Kanda (Chap Chap),’ a song celebrating the East African street food chapati and using it as a way to discuss identity, migration and pride.”

WHY SHOULD NYC VOTERS CARE THAT MAMDANI SUPPORTS HAMAS, AN ISLAMIST TERRORIST GROUP?: I can think of 9112001 reasons.

STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE IS A DOMESTIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATION: Man who attacked Jews in NYC becomes cause célèbre for anti-Israel activists: “Anti-Israel activists [led by SJP] in the US have rallied behind Tarek Bazrouk, a New York resident who confessed to carrying out antisemitic attacks against three Jews. In June, Bazrouk, 20, pleaded guilty in a federal court in New York to attacking the individuals because of their Jewish or Israeli identity.”

And he doesn’t seem to have been just the ordinary violent antisemite: “When investigators searched Bazrouk’s room, in an apartment he shared with his family, they found an airsoft gun that appeared to be an actual firearm, bullet casings, brass knuckles, four knives, including a switchblade and $750,000 in cash, the source of which remains unclear.”

HYPROCRISY, THEY NAME IS GREENWALD: Quite a remarkable thing to see “free speech absolutist” Glenn G. calling for journalists he disagrees with to face criminal charges. But I’ve never been fooled by Greenwald’s civil libertarian act, he’s a leftist authoritarian at heart, he just also hates the US government.

UPDATE: By the way, the Free Press is an American publication run by Bari Weis, and Greenwald referring to it as Israeli is his snide way of suggesting that the writers’ loyalties lie elsewhere. Which in turn is quite strange for someone who abandoned his home country of the US to live in Brazil and become a citizen there. But again, don’t expect any consistency from Greenwald.

EVERYTHING I DON’T APPROVE OF IS A “GENOCIDE”: Having spent the rhetorical force of the charge of “genocide” with a phony charge against Israel, henceforth everything the left doesn’t like will be a genocide, replacing racism as the go-to accusation.

IT HELPS THAT THE TRUMP JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, UNLIKE BIDEN’S, IS COMMITTED TO ENFORCING THE LAW: Free Speech and Jewish Safety on Campus Aren’t Incompatible. It’s Time Universities Take Columbia’s Lead and Act Like It.

SPEAKING OF SATIRE BEING DEAD…: Here’s Candace Owens, maybe the dumbest antisemite with any sort of mass audience, denying that Jews were victims of the Spanish Inquisition.

SATIRE IS DEAD, KILLED BY REALITY:

Link to original.

THE ABSURD AMERICAN POLITICS OF RACE: I wonder if I’m the only one who noticed that the “candidate of color,” Mamdani, in the NYC mayoral Democratic primary seems to be (from pics, haven’t seen them in person) significantly fairer-skinned than the “white candidate,” Andrew Cuomo?

THE SILENCE THAT NEVER SHUTS UP: Generally speaking, antisemites aren’t the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but I nevertheless find it remarkable how often they say that “no one is allowed to say “X” about something related to Jews,” even though there they are, saying it, and no one is arresting or murdering them. It’s particularly illogical when it comes from someone with an audience of millions, like Tucker Carlson. The notion that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent is a baseless conspiracy theory, but yes, Tucker, you are allowed to promote it anyway, because there isn’t some international Jew police stopping you, and it’s not the least bit brave for you to go down this particular road to perdition.

CAMPUS ANTISEMITISM HAS THE SAME ROOTS AND SHOULD BE FOUGHT WITH THE SAME MEANS AS OTHER MANIFESTATIONS OF INTERSECTIONAL WOKENESS: Free speech, antisemitism and the fight for America’s campuses: “What we are witnessing on campus is not just a wave of anti-Israel sentiment. It is part of a larger assault on liberalism [in the broad sense] itself.”

FINAL VERSION PUBLISHED: Supporting Free Speech and Countering Antisemitism on American College Campuses.

My coauthored article makes a number of contributions to the relevant debate, but let me highlight one of them. Many “pro-Palestine” activists have been gaslighting us regarding what’s been happening on campus, portraying it as a conflict between between freedom of expression and censorship attempts by “Zionists.” In fact, as we discuss, most of the controversy over antisemitism has arisen because of violence, threats, intimidation, trespass, assault, disruptions of classrooms and other campus spaces, harassment of individual students, discrimination by university bureaucrats, and other actions that do not reasonably come within a sound definition of “freedom of expression.”