I’M SO OLD I REMEMBER WHEN DEMOCRATIC VP NOMINEES WOULD NEVER EVEN CONSIDER PRAISING PRO-TERRORIST, ANTI-AMERICAN FAR LEFTISTS AND ISLAMISTS: Tim Walz: Anti-Israel protesters ‘speaking out for all the right reasons’.

TAKE WAY THEIR FEDERAL FUNDING: Harvard University Not Cooperating With DA’s Investigation Into Students Charged With Assault of Jewish Classmate. Note, the assault in question occurred on campus, by Harvard students.

DOWNLOAD IT WHILE IT’S HOT: The Hewlett Foundation has spent over $100 million trying to create an ideological movement to counteract “neoliberalism,” a word that, on the left, seems to mean “anything not socialist that we don’t like.” In the legal academy, the Foundation’s funding has gone to something called the Law and Political Economy Project, based at Yale Law School. I eviscerate the project’s underlying assumptions and ideological conceits in a new article. One point I’d like to particularly emphasize is that while the authors bemoan a decline in government spending and regulation that never happened, blaming it for a rise in inequality, they say not a word about the breakdown of the traditional two-parent family, especially among among American with less wealth and formal education. If you purport to be concerned with inequality but focus on, say, antitrust enforcement rather than the 40% out of wedlock birthrate, much higher among the poor and working class, you are doing it wrong.

YOU CAN’T HATE THE MSM ENOUGH: Earlier today, the MSM repeated Hamas propaganda as fact, not bothering to note that “local health officials” in Gaz are Hamas. Here is CNN, just for example.

Besides repeating the casualty figures as presumptively accurate despite the source, CNN did not mention that the strike was at 5 AM, in the summer, on a Hamas HQ. And as happens so often, Hamas couldn’t keep the lie going, reducing the casualty count from over 90 to 40 within hours, and who knows if that is also exaggerated:

Meanwhile, Israel identified by name twenty wanted Hamas terrorists who were killed in the bombing.

UPDATE: Here’s a picture Palestinian sources are circulating purporting to show the victims of Israel’s strike. The women, children, and elderly victims the media was reporting based on “eyewitnesses” are conspicuous by their absence.

JEWISH LIVES MATTER?: A maniac shouting “Free Palestine” tried to stab a Hasidic Jew in Brooklyn to death early Saturday morning. Crickets from the MSM.

THE PRIDE OF CHADRON STATE: I remember vividly elite Democrats mercilessly mocking Sarah Palin after she was picked as the VP nominee because she had attended undistinguished colleges. So what do they have to say about Tim Walz, a graduate of the exceedingly obscure Chadron State College? (Note that personally I go with demonstrated performance over educational pedigree.)

HARSH BUT FAIR:

YOU REALLY CAN’T HATE THE MSM ENOUGH: Let’s see, Hamas is sworn to overthrow Israel, establish an Islamic dictatorship to replace it with the goal of expanding it to the entire Middle East and beyond, expel, murder, or enslave every Jew in Israel, but here is the New York Times’ take:

ALWAYS CHECK THE REVIEWS: @Osint613, which collects and reports on intelligence issues in the Mideast, adds on X: “One of my key sources in Iran just informed me that Ismail Haniyeh’s family just disputed the hotel stay charge.”

RANDOM THOUGHT: Some of the same atheist leftists who go nuts when they hear that Oklahoma wants to put the ten commandments on the wall of public schools, claiming it’s the first step in creeping theocracy, go out and wave the flags of Islamic *actual* theocracies Hezbollah and Hamas, without an ounce of self-awareness.

MORE FEEL—GOOD NEWS: Breaking: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah assassinated… in Tehran!

A JUDGE FROM AN ERA LONG GONE: Federal judge Richard Stearns, a Clinton appointee, has dismissed a discrimination lawsuit filed by Jewish students against MIT. Boston judges have a history of protecting the local elite institutions (MIT and Harvard) from lawsuits, so this isn’t a great surprise, though shows extremely dubious legal judgment to dismiss a case like this on a motion to dismiss before there has been any discovery. This is especially true given that Stearns acknowledges that MIT Jewish students have faced serious discrimination.

That aside, though, what really struck me about the opinion was why Judge Stearns determined that MIT could not be held responsible for the harassment and so forth that MIT students meted out on their Jewish classmates. I literally laughed out loud when I read this, and wondered whether Stearns was gaslighting, or whether he simply had a weirdly naive and outdated view of what elite universities have been like since the era of political correctness began in the late 1980s. So I looked up his bio, and discovered that he graduated college in 1968(!) So I will give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume he really believes that “tolerance and respect for others” are the value “that modern liberal university education seeks to instill,” and that MIT administrators therefore could not have been expected to anticipate that many of its students had not internalized those values.

YOUR FEEL-GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: The Israeli Air Force eliminated this guy in Beirut today.

THOSE WERE THE DAYS: I was looking through some online archives available through my university’s library, and noticed that there was a time in her political career that Kamala Harris talked a lot more about her Indian heritage.

For example, from 2009 (this was reprinted online in 2020): “One of the most influential people in my life, in addition to my mother, was my grandfather (TV Gopalan), who actually held a post in India that was like the secretary of state position in this country. My grandfather was one of the original independence fighters in India and some of my fondest memories from childhood were walking along the beach with him after he retired and lived in Besant Nagar in Madras.” I take it that she was exaggerating both his contribution to Indian independence and the post he held …

From a 2003 profile (similar to one available here):

A product of two cultures, Harris delights in her multiculturalism. Her grandfather was an Indian diplomat who served in posts in Delhi and Zambia, and an aunt, an obstetrician in Chandigarh, is so beloved by her patients that they often leave baskets of fruit on her doorstep after she delivers their babies. In the 1940’s, Harris told the San Francisco Examiner recently, her grandmother drove around India in a VW bug, urging village women through a bullhorn to use birth control. “Even though my grandma had an arranged marriage when she was 12, she and my grandfather were very open-minded people,” she said. [Though they were initially “not too happy” when her mother declined an arranged marriage and married a black man she had fallen in love with instead.]

By 2019, the Los Angeles Times reported: “She seldom delves into her Indian heritage, reflecting a broader reticence to share personal stories beyond a handful of well-worn anecdotes.”

I don’t think any of this is damning in any way, but it’s interesting to see how ambitious public figures curate their image over time. At some point in Harris’ political career, for example, she thought talking about her grandmother’s arranged marriage at age 12 and how that didn’t stop the grandmother from being an outspoken feminist was helpful, and at some point she decided it wasn’t.

[Cross-posted at the Volokh Conspiracy]

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION FOREVER: How did we get to the point where the campaign for maybe the most liberal presidential candidate ever is embracing and encouraging a group called “White Dudes for Harris?” In a forthcoming article I write about how the academic left increasingly “supports or adopts the notion that overcoming societal racism requires white American to adopt a white racial consciousness.54 Increased white racial consciousness will give white Americans an opportunity to acknowledge their ‘white privilege.’ In turn, this will allow white Americans to develop a collective critical consciousness, making them into antiracist allies.” But as I explain, the notion “that the primary effect of encouraging white racial consciousness will be to get white Americans to evolve into activists dedicated to combatting systemic racism is optimistic to the point of ingenuousness.” And “society will always be divided by race if our educational institutions and popular culture encourage, even demand, people divide themselves by race.” You can read the whole thing, at this link.

UPDATE: From perhaps the most viscerally annoying woman I have encountered, “influencer” Arielle Fodor, on a Zoom “White Women for Harris” call: “Learn from and amplify the voices of those who have been historically marginalized and use the privilege you have in order to push for systemic change,” she said. “As white people, we have a lot to learn and unlearn. So do check your blind spots.”

THERE’S A REASON I CALL IT AL JAZEERA ON THE POTOMAC: You really can’t hate the Washington Post’s coverage of the Middle East enough. The Post did not have a headline yesterday about the murder of 12 kids on a soccer field by Hezbollah. Today it has this headline, focusing on Israel’s “response,” with a picture that implies if you don’t look carefully that Israel killed the kid in the photo. Meanwhile, even though every Western government acknowledges that Hezbollah was responsible for the rocket that killed the kids playing soccer, the Post caption suggests that we might want to believe the Iranian-backed terrorist group’s denial.

RATHER CONVENIENT TIMING:

UPDATE (From Ed): Here’s the Politico article that the above Tweet references: Feds discover transcripts of Biden chats with biographer.

MORE: DOJ Magically Finds 117 Pages Of Biden Transcripts.

OUR TWO-TIER JUSTICE SYSTEM: Prosecutors drop charges filed by Northwestern police against educators involved in campus encampment. The Northwestern employees were charged with obstructing police, months after the encampment came down. Now the cases have been dismissed. This sort of thing is going on in Democrat-controlled jurisdictions all over the country. You are free to violate the law so long as you are doing for a cause the far left supports…

THERE ALSO SEEMS TO BE A CORRELATION WITH SIGNS OF GENERAL EMOTIONAL DISTRESS: Kate Hymowitz: The New Girl Disorder: Why are young women so prominent in anti-Israel protests? I found this essay especially insightful, read the whole thing, as they say.

PIC OF THE DAY: Hamas: We are going to liberate Jerusalem. Netanyahu: How about I destroy you and hang out with the IDF in Rafah instead.

ISRAEL TRIP REPORT [LINK FIXED]: Revisiting Hamas’s Barbaric Attack on Southern Israel. I just spoke to a friend of mine who volunteered that he’s read dozens accounts of what happened on October 7, but this is by far the most informative.

AND YET, IT’S CLEARLY ILLEGAL UNDER VIRGINIA LAW: Soros Prosecutor Won’t Shut Down Pro-Palestinian Encampment Outside Antony Blinken’s Home.

NO ONE COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS, EXCEPT FOR ANYONE WHO HAS PAID THE SLIGHTEST ATTENTION TO HOW THE PALESTINIAN POLITICAL CLASS CONSISTENTLY BEHAVES: In fact, rampant corruption and lack of concern for ordinary Palestinians is why Israel wrongly thought it could buy off Hamas’s leadership with Qatari money, allowing them to keep living the high life in their beachside villas. They just wildly underestimated Sinwar’s fanaticism.

WHAT DOES VANCE DO FOR TRUMP’S RE-ELECTION PROSPECTS? NOTHING OR WORSE: Sean Trende: Trump’s VP Pick Won’t Help Him Win Election. Trende is one of America’s most astute political observers. Perhaps his most pertinent point is that Vance was hardly an electoral juggernaut in Ohio:

His performance in the state has been underwhelming, to say the least. Consider his run in 2022 compared to the rest of the statewide Republican ticket. Mike DeWine won the governorship by 25 percentage points. Dave Yost won the attorney general race by 20 points. Keith Faber (auditor) won by 18. Frank LaRose (secretary of state) won by 21. Robert Sprague (treasurer) won by 18. The GOP Supreme Court justices won by between 12 and 18 points.

J.D. Vance won his Senate seat by six points. It’s unclear, then, how he might help Trump carry Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Michigan.

By contrast: “Kim Reynolds of Iowa might have helped to flip Minnesota or Wisconsin. Rubio probably would have put away Arizona and Nevada and potentially put New Mexico fully in play. Youngkin could have made Virginia fully into a swing state.”

UPDATE: When I was growing up in Queens, I was a Mets fan, while my friends were Yankees fan. I remember trying to persuade them that the Mets were better than the Yankees–Kingman better than Chambliss at first base, for example. My arguments weren’t irrational, but they were very wrong. But that’s what fans do. Similarly, you may like Vance as Trump’s VP on ideological grounds (and you may discount what seems to be a very opportunistic change of heart on MAGA on his part). And it’s very likely the VP choice won’t make a difference, unless the election is really close it won’t. But if you are arguing Vance is a better choice than, say, Youngkin, or Tim Scott, or several others, purely from perspective of who is more likely to help Trump on the margin win the election, you are doing the Kingman/Chambliss thing.

IT ONLY TOOK NINE MONTHS SINCE OCT. 7: Yesterday’s New York Times reports on how Hamas “blurs the lines” between civilians and combatants, as if this is somehow breaking news rather than the way the terrorist death cult has been operating in Gaza for decades. The good news is that this means that the Times’ sources think Hamas is on the verge of defeat and collapse, so there is no point in running interference for it anymore.