PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: I watched a lifeguard quickly and efficiently scoop a drowning boy of our local public pool today. This pool has excellent, well-trained life guards. But not all pools do, and even excellent life guards can miss things. The kid was with a county camp group, and clearly shouldn’t have been in deep water. I know this pool gives the camp kids a swim test and then tells them where they are allowed to go, but no one is really watching them, given maybe 2 or 3 counselors and 18 or so kids. In short, if your kid doesn’t know how to swim, don’t let him go on a day camp trip to a public pool that has water over his head. And btw, this wasn’t the first camp kid I’ve seen fished out of the deep (i.e., 3.5 feet) water by a lifeguard over the years.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I post this every summer, but one more time: Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning. “Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for is rarely seen in real life.”

IT’S ALMOST LIKE THEY HAVE AN AGENDA OR SOMETHING: Since its founding in 1998, Birthright has sent approximately six hundred thousand young Jews to Israel on free ten-day tours to connect them with their Jewish heritage. Other than a couple “stranded or brave tourists during wartime” type stories, the Times has covered these trips exactly twice. Once in 2000, when the focus was on a controversy over the costs of the trip and who, if anyone,  should be paying for them, and once in 2007, albeit relegated for some reason to the “New York region” section of the paper.

Over the past year, several groups on the left have protested Birthright, on the typical leftist theory that any nonprofit organization must have a left-wing agenda or die. As a result, the Times has run no less than two anti-Birthright stories, one in June focusing on protests against Birthright for not focusing on “the occupation,” the second yesterday on a politicized “alternative” trip sponsored by the left-leaning JStreet.

It doesn’t take a news maven to see what is objectively the bigger story: Birthright itself, with its 600K participants and one of the most innovative and successful religious/ethnic programs in recent American (most participants are American, as are most diaspora Jews) history, or the handful of activists protesting Birthright plus the forty participants on the “alternative” tour. But the Times has determined that the latter is actually the more important story, because it fits their agenda of hostility to the mainstream Jewish community’s support for Israel.

This is less interesting as a comment on the Times and Israel, and moreso, in my opinion, as an excellent example of how the Times and other MSM outlets don’t simply report the news, they actually shape it by deciding based on their own agendas what to cover and how much.

NOTICE ANYTHING MISSING?: Latest Suicide Data Show the Depth of U.S. Mental Health Crisis.

Mental health problems manifest in a number of ways and encapsulate a wide range of conditions, including substance abuse disorders, crippling anxiety, schizophrenia, and suicidality. A person’s susceptibility depends on genetic, social, and environmental factors. These contributors are believed to be intertwined; psychological stressors can activate a genetic predisposition, so life circumstances matter a lot. And the U.S. is home to some particularly challenging ones: stagnant wages; rising health-care costs; the proliferation of highly addictive opioids after a marketing push from major drug companies; the disappearance of well-paid blue-collar jobs and the emergence of the gig economy; the lack or limited availability of treatment and services. The destructive powers of technology, be it in the form of social isolation or cyberbullying, have been cited in the rising number of teens killing themselves. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for 10- to 34-year-olds. Then there’s the prevalence of guns, which are used in half of all suicides. 

These articles (this one is from Bloomberg Business) almost always leave out the most obvious psychological stressor in the U.S., the breakdown of the family.  We have a 40% divorce rate and a 40% out of wedlock birth rate, each significantly higher among those with fewer economic resources. There seems to be a tacit conspiracy of silence among the journalistic elite and the “experts” to not mention that this may have something to do with the feelings of desperation of loneliness and desperation that could lead to mental health crises (including substance abuse).

SJW LOGIC VS. COMMON SENSE: No wonder Oberlin got socked with a huge punitive damages award for libeling a local bakery as racist after detaining students who wound up pleading guilty to shoplifting. Here’s Oberlin’s litigation position, from its court filings: “Gibson bakery’s archaic chase-and-detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests. The guilt or innocence of the students is irrelevant to both the root cause of the protests and this litigation.” Get that? Whether the students accused of shoplifting had actually been shoplifting or not was irrelevant to whether it was fair to accuse the store of racism etc for detaining the students as shoplifters. The fault lay with the bakery owners for daring to actually stop and prosecute shoplifters!

This is the kind of b.s. that gets you A’s at Oberlin with a certain type of SJW professor, but that normal people rightly think defies common sense. But it can pay off in academia. A very prominent law professor got an Ivy League job after writing a silly book which, among other things, argued that whether the Al Sharpton-promoted Tawana Brawley hoax was true or not was besides the point, because the real issue was whether society was silencing African American girls like her who surely had something bad happen to them.

BARGAIN ALERT: Amazon has my book Lawless, with a foreword by Senator Cruz, for only $5.24 with free Prime shipping, which I believe is the lowest price it’s ever sold for.

UPDATE, 6:48 pm: Well, that was quick, Instareaders bought up all of Amazon’s copies, and now it’s only available from third-party sellers for $13.00. You can still get the Kindle for $5.22, though.

THE IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL WAS BASED ON LIES AND MISREPRESENTATIONS: Iran-linked terrorists caught stockpiling explosives in north-west London. But this was hidden from the public, lest opinion turn against the nuclear deal, then pending, which was based on false representations of cooperation with Iranian “moderates.” I have what I think is the most comprehensive (and footnoted) collection of the lies, misrepresentations, and illegal activities undertaken by the Obama administration in support of the nuclear deal in Part III of this paper.

WHY BUREAUCRATS TEND TO IGNORE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITS ON THEIR POWER: A Skeptic’s Look at Administrative Constitutionalism. Now a Notre Dame Law Review article, by yours truly.

HISTORIANS HAVE ADOPTED AN INACCURATE, POLITICIZED PRISM THROUGH WHICH TO UNDERSTAND AMERICAN ETHNIC HISTORY? SAY IT AIN’T SO!: The Weakness of the “Whiteness” Literature.

WHEN YOU CAN’T TELL THE KKK FROM THE “PROGRESSIVES” PROTESTING IT: Israeli Flag Burned At KKK Rally…By The Counterprotesters.

MORE ON BOGREN VS. HAWLEY: Ed Whelan at NRO:

With all respect for Senator Hawley, I am less enamored than others are of his criticism of Bogren.

For starters, from my review of the exchange, Bogren was making exactly the point of principle that I have made: To argue that a principle that applies to A also applies to B is not to “compare” A and B or to assert that they are equivalent.

Further, Bogren made it clear that he was advancing legal arguments on behalf of his client, not expressing his personal views. (Hawley seems to have understood the exchange otherwise.) Bogren’s arguments strike me as exactly what you’d expect from someone representing his client.

Do conservatives really want to embrace the general proposition that arguments that a lawyer makes on behalf of a client should, without more, be held against the lawyer? That’s a proposition that, apart from being unsound, could redound to the detriment of conservative nominees who have defended religious liberty or pro-life legislation in unpopular contexts.

And here’s the link to my Volokh post on Hawley’s demagoguery.

IT’S ONE WAY FOR A FRESHMAN SENATOR TO GET ATTENTION FOR HIMSELF, BUT NOT  A GOOD WAY: Senator Josh Hawley is becoming a first-class demagogue.

ARE YOUNG AMERICAN JEWS MORE SUPPORTIVE OF TRUMP THAN YOUNG AMERICANS IN GENERAL?: Some surprising news from the world of politics: An outfit called the Jewish Electorate Institute conducted a survey of American Jews’ attitudes on politics. The resulting headline was that American Jews prioritize domestic issues over Israel, which wasn’t a surprise to anyone who pays attention to such things.

Much more surprising, and not in the headlines, was that the survey found that 31% of Jews under 30 (and at least 18) approve of President Trump, higher than any other Jewish age demographic except for slightly higher approval among millenials. But wait, there’s more.

The summary published by the JEI mysteriously excludes Orthodox Jews from its data on Trump approval by age group, but only from the younger cohorts. Thanks to high Orthodox birth rates, Orthodox outreach efforts, and widespread assimilation among the non-Orthodox, Orthodox Jews are a much larger percentage of the younger Jewish cohort than of older Jewish cohorts. 20% is a reasonable estimate of the percentage of American Jews under 30 who are Orthodox. And 57% of Orthodox Jews approve of Trump, but let’s round that up to 60% for the younger cohort, since younger Jews in general are more approving of Trump. That means approximately 37% of American Jews under 30 approve of Trump. By contrast, a recent poll showed that only 33% of Americans ages 15-34 approve of Trump.

If true, this would be especially remarkable because young American Jews tend to not be “religious” and live in coastal urban areas, two demographic indicators that strongly predict hostility to Trump.

Of course, the JEI poll needs to be confirmed by other data. But I should note that JEI hired the Greenberg firm, a liberal Democratic polling outfit, to do its polling, so there was no incentive to exaggerate support for Trump.

WILLIAMS COLLEGE STUDENTS PUT DAVID IRVING TO SHAME: Holocaust Revisionism at Williams College. Williams students are quoted as claiming that the Palestinians are facing worse oppression than Jews during the Holocaust, because “unlike the seemingly unending Israeli occupation of the West Bank, ‘the purpose of these [World War II] ghettos were basically to control, segregate, and separate the Jewish people for short periods of time.'” Apparently, having even a modicum of knowledge of twentieth century history, or the ability to put current events in a reasonable context, are not prerequisites for admission this “elite” college.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Former associate White House counsel Ian Bassin suggests that people harass a law firm’s clients because a partner at the law firm is zealously protecting client confidentiality. It’s amazing the extent to which Democrats are willing to tear down the system to get at Trump and his associates. Just for fun, someone with the power to do so should subpoena Bassin regarding his work at the White House counsel’s office, and see whether he immediately complies and cooperates.

IT’S NOT AN “OPEN AIR CONCENTRATION CAMP” IF YOU CAN’T BLAME ISRAEL: Hamas said to impose restrictions after young, educated Gazans exited for ‘vacations’ through reopened Rafah Crossing to escape and seek better lives in Europe.

What percentage of those who complain about Israel imposing restrictions on Gaza for security reasons are going to complain about Hamas imposing further restrictions to prevent people from escaping Hamas rule? An initial estimate of “zero” seems right.

GENEALOGY BLEG: In building a family tree I’ve been frustrated by my inability to find any record of my great-grandfather’s family from Kėdainiai [Keidan] Lithuania. His name was Yehuda Stravinsky (phonetic), his father was Koppel and his mother Raisza (Rose). Stravinsky was a very unusual name for Jews, so you would think it would be easy to track down, but I haven’t had any luck. I’ve been told that given the vagaries of dialect, the name could have been spelled in different ways–Stravunsky, Strawinksy, Strapinsky, etc. Yehuda was a shoemaker, and came to the U.S. in 1887, owned a shoe store, and at some point the family’s name was changed to Stein. In English, he was variously known as Louis, Edward, or Julius Stein. According to an interview I did with my great-grandmother, he had eight siblings, all or most of whom also came to the U.S. I don’t know whether they all also became “Steins.” I have DNA samples at several genealogy websites, but no unknown Steins or Stravinksys have come up. The Ellis Island records are no help, because his arrival was before Ellis Island opened. And his citizenship card lists an arrival date into the U.S., but it doesn’t match records on that date. Anyway, given the rarity of the surname, perhaps by posting this some distant cousin will get in touch. The only other clue I have is that my great aunt once told me that some of her cousins immigrated to South Africa, though I’m not sure if that was on the Stein side.

SOVIET COMMUNISM–THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING: Soviet Anti-Zionism and Contemporary Left Antisemitism:

The messaging emanating from today’s far-left anti-Zionist camp is strikingly similar to the messaging of the Soviet anti-Zionist campaigns. From the claims of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis in the Holocaust, to the idea of Zionism as an inherently racist and oppressive ideology, to the concept of Israel as a settler-colonialist state that engages in genocidal behavior and apartheid – all of these ideas were part and parcel of the Soviet anti-Zionist narrative.

An important essay on a much-neglected topic. Read the whole thing.

ASIDE: When I was a senior in college in 1988, a classmate went to the USSR on a peace tour. When he came back, he wrote an essay about the trip for the school paper. He mentioned that he had met with “Soviet Jewish leaders” and that while some reform was in order, the Jewish population of the USSR was generally content and didn’t want to leave. Within three years, given the opportunity, over a million of them left. This particular useful idiocy has stayed with me…

“CLEARLY ANTISEMITIC” STATEMENTS MADE AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE STUDENT GOVERNMENT MEETING: As I noted previously, the Williams College student government denied official recognition to a pro-Israel student group, Williams Initiative for Israel, even though the group met all criteria for recognition. The decision had obvious antisemitic undertones, but a source just sent me the minutes of the next student government meeting (which I also found online here). At that meeting, a student named Lance acknowledged that when he took the minutes of the previous meeting, he didn’t “type down” “clearly anti-Semitic things.” Open antisemitism at an elite college. Why is the college administration silent?

Lance: Hi there, I’m the minutekeeper. My name is Lance. Anyways, thank you so much for your thoughtful email. If you’d like to tell me… so, just a procedure from CC, because I want to be done with it too, I understand. If you say that a certain thing was misattributed to the wrong person, I was handling 12 different guests that were sitting in geographically different locations, I had to look down while typing, right? So it is a bit challenging, but for instance, I don’t remember which guest number you were and I don’t remember which guest number you were. I also don’t know which guest number I attributed your guest number to, right? But if you want to send me a quick correction, because clearly you know which ones are misattributed, I can easily change those numbers real quick. That is always how we do it, that is why we approve them in the next week’s minutes. As for ‘in shambles’, I only didn’t type down two things: 1) personally identifying information – if someone who said something that was deeply personal, I tried to limit that to preserve anonymity; 2) clearly anti-Semitic things I didn’t type down. I want [sic, won’t?] repeat them, but I didn’t type those things down. So those are the only two things I didn’t type. If that is a mischaracterization that you are uncomfortable with, I don’t know what to tell you. Those are the only two things I didn’t type. Again, there is an audio recording. I can’t actually, accurately 100% transcribe things, though I do try my best. But that is really all I can say. If there are specific edits, I’d love to hear them. I can just edit them real quick, we can vote on it, and we can move on to this training.

THE POWAY SYNAGOGUE MURDERER ALSO MADE CRAZY CLAIMS OF JEWS ENGAGING IN GENOCIDE: Williams College Students: Why we opposed WIFI [Williams Initiative For Israel]: Challenging WIFI’s complicity in state violence.

There are few nuttier claims out there than the allegation that Israel, with one of the strongest militaries in a world, that could easily wipe out tens of thousands a in few hours, is engaging in genocide against an ever growing Palestinian population that has never suffered anything like tens of thousands of deaths, even over the course of a decades-long conflict with Israel. In the bloodiest years of Palestinian-Israeli conflict since the 1948 partition, 2000-2014, which included the Second Intifada and two wars in Gaza, a grand total of around seven thousand Palestinians were killed (and over 1,000 Israelis), mostly terrorists on the Palestinian side, mostly civilians on the Israeli side.

Nevertheless, the Williams students in question–Yousef Al-Amassi, Joseph Moore, Omar Kawam, Jesus Payan, Soban Mehmood, Kai Soto-Dessen, Mohazzab Abdullah, Ted McNally, Max Wu, Eliza Klein, and Seynabou Diop, for the record–double and triple down on the allegation of genocide, putting them in the intellectual company of the Poway murderer, who complained of Jews’ alleged propensity for “genocidal” behavior.

I’m guessing, perhaps charitably, that these students have no idea that are mimicking centuries of antisemitic blood libels against Jews, including among those from contemporary violent white nationalists. But with Yom HaShoah just ending, someone ought to let them know.

WILLIAMS COLLEGE HAS A “STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE” BUT: CC [Student Council] rejects Williams Initiative for Israel. “WIFI was the first club in over a decade that complied with all CC bylaws for recognition but failed to gain RSO status, according to archived CC minutes.”

A special award for spouting nonsensical propaganda goes to Williams student Joseph Moore. Anti-Israel activists frequently claim that Israel has engaged and is engaged in “genocide” against Palestinians, despite the fact that Arabs in Israel and the contested territories  have had among the fastest population growth rates in the world for many decades straight. Moore’s response to this irrefutable retort to the charge of genocide:

“Even when you consider the fact that the Palestinian population is rising, it’s because they have a high fertility rate,” Moore said after the meeting. “Generally, populations in war zones have higher fertility rates because they don’t know if all of their children will make adulthood.”

It should be noted that the total number of Palestinians who have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces since 1967 is somewhere in the high four figures, mostly terrorists, amounting to maybe a week’s worth of killing from the recent Syrian civil war. If Moore doesn’t understand that a massively rising population combined with a few thousand killed during armed hostilities doesn’t add up to anything remotely like genocide, then it’s remarkable if he got into Williams. If he does understand it, then he’s just malevolent for claiming otherwise.

Relatedly some other Middle Eastern populations have in fact declined rather dramatically since Israel was established:

HERO OF THE DAY–OSCAR STEWART: From a paywalled Wall Street Journal article about yesterday’s synagogue shooting: “Mr. Stewart, 51 years old, said he shouted and charged at the shooter. ‘As he saw me, he dropped his weapon, turned and ran,” Mr. Stewart said. “He may have been trying to change a magazine, or he just panicked….’ Mr. Stewart and a Border Patrol agent who is a member of the congregation were pursuing the shooter… As the gunman got into his car, Mr. Stewart heard the agent shout for everyone to clear away…. and the agent fired five shots at the car, hitting it four times.” Every mass shooter eventually pauses to switch weapons or reload. Few have the presence of mind and guts to take advantage.

UPDATE: Some reports of the incident suggest that a female congregant, Lori Kaye, was killed when she stepped between the rabbi and the gunman to protect the rabbi, but other accounts, including the rabbis, differ. Either way, my heartfelt condolences to Ms. Kaye’s family. May her memory be for a blessing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Get down!” Stewart yelled, according to his wife and others who were at the scene. “You motherfucker! I’m going to kill you!” The heroic border patrol agent’s name is Jonathan Morales.

Daily Caller:

Stewart said he chased him all the way out to his car, and began pounding on it — the shooter had managed to lock himself in. When Stewart saw him reach for a rifle, he punched the side of the car as hard as he could, intending to figure out a way to drag him out of the car — that’s when a Border Patrol agent  who attends the synagogue came running out to the parking lot, yelling for Stewart to get down because he had a gun.

Stewart says this man may have saved his life, and pointed to his use of a civilian gun — he was off-duty and was apparently handed the weapon by someone else on the scene — as evidence that gun control isn’t the answer to these kinds of tragedies.

EVER NOTICE THAT STUDENTS WHO SPEND THEIR TIME ON SJW PROTESTS TEND TO BE THE STUDENTS IN NEED OF SPENDING MORE TIME ON THEIR EDUCATION?: Consider this gobbleygook from students at Williams College protesting the potential adoption of the pro-free speech Chicago Principles:

In their rebuttal, the students, who called themselves the Coalition Against Racist Education Now, or CARE, wrote that the faculty petition “prioritizes the protection of ideas over the protection of people  [because ideas come from animals? plants?] and fails to recognize that behind every idea is a person with a particular subjectivity [what?]. Our beliefs, and the consequences of our actions, are choices we make [umm, no, many consequences of our actions are unintended and unpredictable]. Any claim to the ‘protection of ideas’ that is not founded in the insurance [assurance?] of people’s safety [you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means] poses a real threat — one which targets most pointedly marginalized people. An ideology of free speech absolutism that prioritizes ideas over people [again: because ideas come from animals? plants?], giving ‘deeply offensive’ language a platform at this institution, will inevitably imperil marginalized students.”

A greater threat to these students’ future than the imagined threat from having the occasional “offensive” (read: conservative?) speaker on campus is that they are going to one of the best colleges in the United States, where tuition costs almost $57k  a year plus room and board, and yet can’t competently write and edit several sentences of argument.

PEOPLE WITH GLASS INHERITANCES SHOULDN’T THROW STONES: Roy Disney’s granddaughter thinks Bob Iger’s paycheck is ‘insane’.

Iger is rich because he creates wealth for Disney shareholders, and creates value for the public at large. Roy Disney’s granddaughter is rich ($500 million net worth!) because she’s Roy Disney’s granddaughter. I know who I think is less deserving of the money.

UPDATE: The fact that Iger, unlike the Disney granddaughter, actually worked for his money doesn’t necessarily mean that he “deserves” his full and immense salary. But it’s worth noting that since Iger took the helm at Disney in 2005, its stock has beaten the (tech-heavy!) S&P 500 by about 50%, or an extra $80 billion or so for Disney shareholders.

ILYA SOMIN SAYS NO, BUT I’M NOT SO SURE: Does Yale Law School’s Antidiscrimination Policy on Subsidies for Student Employment Discriminate on the Basis of Religion?

Here’s the thing: a neutral antidiscrimination rule that happens to impinge on religious organizations isn’t “discrimination” against religion. However, its is religious discrimination when you are enforcing or expanding such a rule because of hostility to religion (as may be the case at Yale), and being deliberately indifferent to the interests of religious people in a way that you wouldn’t be for any other group with a minoritarian perspective also would be (as may be the case at Yale). Yale hasn’t provided detailed guidance on how it’s going to apply its antidiscrimination policy and what exceptions if any will be made, so we will just have to see how it works out. Meanwhile, the Law School, like all law schools, discriminates on the basis of race in admissions, so I’m not buying the line that principled opposition to discrimination allows for no accommodations for perceived social needs.

DON’T WORRY, HE’S JUST “ANTI-ZIONIST”: New Mexico coffee shop closing after backlash to owner’s anti-Semitic rant.  “Michael Palombo, owner of V Roast Bistro, admitted to writing a since-deleted Facebook post in which he referred to Jews as ‘f–king animals that deserve everything that has happen to them and don’t deserve our sorrow for what has happen to them.'”

Then there’s this: “Palombo’s Facebook page shows that he’s not shy about his political opinions and he does have opinions about Israel. ‘I haven’t spoken out against Jews but I’ve spoken out against Israel and their occupation of Palestine,’ he said.”

It’s a remarkable coincidence how many people who hate Israel turn out to also be raging antisemites. Which is one reason why very few people who claim to be pro-Palestinian actually seem to care about the welfare of actual Palestinians, but only in using them as a propaganda tool against Israel.