YALE LAW FAILS THE KAVANAUGH TEST: Conor Friedersdorf is right that neither the law school’s official fawning press release nor the literally hysterical response from left-wing law school affiliates puts the law school in a particularly good light. But law school officials, at least, really had no choice; the school put out an equally fawning press release the last time a Yale alum was nominated to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor. The school would have faced credible charges of partisan discrimination if it had been less effusive about Kavanaugh.

REMINDER: IF PROGRESSIVES HAD BEEN MORE TOLERANT OF RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES HILARY CLINTON WOULD BE NOMINATING HER SECOND SUPREME COURT JUSTICE NOW: The Supreme Court oral argument that cost Democrats the presidency.  The key point here is that religious conservatives felt sufficiently under threat that they gave Trump a record percentage of their vote. White evangelicals voted for Trump in a higher percentage than even for fellow evangelical Christian George W. Bush, despite, shall we say, Trump’s less-than-perfect modeling of traditional Christian values. (And while Kennedy might not have retired while Clinton was in office, Ruth Bader Ginsburg would have.)

UPDATE: For some reason, the link above keeps disappearing from the post. Here it is.

UPDATE ON THE BIGGEST ACADEMIC SCANDAL OF THE YEAR: Duke University History Professor Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains has received a tremendous amount of fawning attention from the left, including some of her fellow historians. She was even selected to be the plenary speaker at this year’s American Association of University Professors conference.

The book posits that the late Nobel-winning prize economist James Buchanan, resentful of the Supreme Court’s racially egalitarian jurisprudence in Brown v. Board of Education, invented public choice economics as a means of undermining American democracy. Charles Koch later stumbled upon Buchanan’s work, and used it to mastermind his own well-funded assault on everything good liberals hold dear.

The book is wrong in its general thesis, and in almost all of its particulars, as various reviewers and bloggers, myself included, have pointed out in excruciating detail. When asked about allegations of error and misrepresentation, instead of responding substantively MacLean has claimed that her critics haven’t read the book, and accused her critics of being part of a Koch-funded conspiracy to undermine the book’s “revelations.”

Until now, it’s been difficult to point the curious and non-closed-minded to a single source that summarizes the range of mistakes and fabrications in the book. Fortunately, Phil Magness has posted a spreadsheet listing these, the relevant page numbers, the sources that demonstrate the relevant problems, and a somewhat subjective ranking of the importance of each error to the book’s overall credibility. Historians and others who continue to defend MacLean will show themselves to either lack an interest in truth, or to be incapable of seeing it. Here’s one hint for her fans: whether a statement in a book is true or false has nothing to do with the identity of the individual who has alleged falsity.

BUYER BEWARE (AMAZON.COM SERVICES): So back in February I bought a new garbage disposal from Amazon.com. Amazon.com Services offered a reasonable price for installation at the time of purchase, and I thought I’d try it rather than use my regular plumber. After all, it’s Amazon! Great customer service! What could go wrong? Well, ninety-five days after installation, I noticed water under the sink. The unit had obviously been leaking for a while, because there was some mildew, too. Contacted Amazon, but they would do nothing because their 90-day “happiness guarantee” had expired. They did give me the contact info for the contractor, who responded that they only warranty work for Amazon for 90 days. The fact that it’s obvious the leak had been going on for a while meant nothing to either party, though it surely would have to a contractor with whom I have an ongoing relationship. So, lesson learned. That was my first and last Amazon.com Services experience.

ROSA PARKS, THIS AIN’T: Portland bakery fires employees for denying black woman service after closing.

In one statement, “Back To Eden Bakery” says that according to its own surveillance video, a black woman named “Lillian”, who is well known in the area as a “professional equity activist”, entered at 9:06 p.m., after the bakery’s closing time. Employees had also turned off the “Open” sign, but several customers (all white) who had already ordered were still inside. Two other white women who went to the bakery two minutes before “Lillian,” and were also informed that the business was closed for the night.

The bakery says “Lillian” left the store briefly and began recording video.

The bakery’s statement says that even though it does not consider the employees to be racist and that they were following the business’s protocol of closing at 9 p.m., they were fired because “sometimes impact outweighs intent.” The bakery also says in the statement that the way the employees went about denying the woman service, “lacked sensitivity and understanding of the racial implications at work.”

In the statement “Back To Eden” says the employees were fired because the woman and the “clamoring public” demanded they be fired.

In one statement, the bakery admitted that the employees did not necessarily do anything wrong, “this is more about how a black woman was made to feel” at the business.”

I had a hard time believing a story this stupid actually happened, but it seems to check out.

UPDATE: The bakery owners seem to have modified their story a bit in a new Facebook post. They now claim that the fired workers served the two white women who came in slightly earlier, but only if they took their order “to go,” and that one employee was probationary, and the other had been warned about poor customer service in the past. That would make a certain amount of sense, and yet it doesn’t explain why the owners decided to scrub their earlier posts on the subject.

DOWNLOAD IT WHILE ITS HOT: Prevailing Wage Legislation and the Continuing Significance of Race. My latest academic article:

Since the early twentieth century, labor unions have lobbied federal and state governments to enact and enforce laws requiring government contractors to pay “prevailing wages” to employees on public works projects. These laws, currently active at the federal level and in approximately thirty states, typically in practice require that contractors pay according to the local union wage scale. The laws also require employers to adhere to union work rules. The combination of these rules makes it extremely difficult for nonunion contractors to compete for public works contracts.

Meanwhile, construction unions have been among the most persistently exclusionary institutions in American society. Not surprisingly, in many cases, the history of prevailing wage legislation has been intertwined with the history of racial discrimination. Economists and others argue that prevailing wage legislation continues to have discriminatory effects on minorities today. Union advocates, not surprisingly, deny that prevailing wage laws have discriminatory effects. More surprisingly, they deny that the granddaddy of modern prevailing wage legislation, the federal Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, had discriminatory intent.

Part I of this Article discusses the discriminatory history of the most significant of all prevailing wage laws, the Davis-Bacon Act. As discussed below, Davis-Bacon was passed with the explicit intent of excluding African American workers from federal construction projects, and its discriminatory effects continued for decades.

Part II of this Article discusses the controversy over whether prevailing wage legislation continues to have discriminatory effects. The section begins with a discussion of the empirical literature on the effects of prevailing wage discrimination on minority employment. The section next presents evidence that construction unions continue to discriminate against members of minority groups, albeit much more subtly than in the past. The section concludes by recounting allegations that prevailing wage legislation serves to exclude minority contractors from obtaining government contracts.

HOW TO GET THE LEFT TO CONDEMN HAMAS: (1) Charter a flight to Charlottesville for Hamas’s leaders; (2) Give them a march permit; (3) Have them say what they always say about Jews. Because apparently shouting anti-Semitic slogans in Charlottesville is far more egregious than running a terrorist army in Gaza dedicated to genocidal anti-Semitism.

THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES AND THE BIKINI WAX: Transgender woman files human rights complaint against Windsor spa:

The owner of a local waxing spa is mounting a public campaign to clear the name of his business after he was served a human rights complaint for denying service to a transgender woman.

Jason Carruthers, the president of Mad Wax on Walker Road, said he was surprised at the legal move since he had explained to the complainant that the spa did not offer Brazilian wax services on male body parts.

“I have no male wax staff,” Carruthers said Friday. “We are not able to provide that service.”

A local transgender woman claims she was denied services based on her gender identity and gender expression and is seeking $50,000 for “immense harm to my dignity.”

The good news, such as it is, is that this is Canada, and the hierarchy of intersectional harm is a bit fuzzy in this case: “the female employee working that day was a practising Muslim who refrains from physical contact with males outside of her family.” And in an age of Me Too!, are we really arguing about whether a woman should be forced to groom the male genital area?

BOYCOTT NOT, LEST YE BE BOYCOTTED: Did Columbia Law Dean Gillian Lester Troll Professor Katherine Franke? Me at Volokh: “Dean Lester’s critique of trying to constrain the ‘global exchange of ideas’ applies to Franke herself and her support of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI)…as much as it does to Israel’s refusal to admit her.”

WHY DO AMERICAN INDIANS JOIN THE ARMED FORCES?: Adventure? Patriotism? Remunerative employment? In other words, the same reasons as everyone else? Not according to this ridiculously PC and condescending exhibit at the Smithsonian.

TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, JOHN BRENNAN EDITION: Have you ever see an ex-CIA director attack the United States and its allies, and express sympathy with America’s enemies? Well, you have now.

I’ve never been a Trump fan, but I try to judge his policies based on whether I think they are good or bad policies, not whether I’m a Trump partisan. And I acknowledge that overall his policies have been far better than what I expected in most areas. But there is a whole coterie of people out there who will take the opposite position of Trump just because its Trump. People who, for example, were in favor of moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem when Rubio promised to do it, but suddenly turned against it when Trump moved it, or who suddenly changed their position on the Iran deal when Trump chose to end it. Brennan is just an example of a troubling phenomenon where people are saying and doing things they would never otherwise, simply to oppose Trump.

EMPTY  VIRTUE-SIGNALING, GAZA EDITION: My Twitter yesterday and today:

They: Israel is using excessive force against Gaza protesters.

Me: What level of force should Israel use to protect against breach of its borders by violent Hamasniks, and what expertise do you have to determine that?

They: Israel is using excessive force against Gaza protesters.

THE STRATEGIC CASE FOR MOVING THE U.S. EMBASSY TO JERUSALEM IS VERY SIMPLE: Since Oslo  in 1993, Israel has allowed Palestinian terrorists to set up a government in Ramallah, made three peace offers within internationally-accepted parameters, withdrawn from Gaza and parts of Samaria, suffered an intifadah, and in return has gotten… a worldwide Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign? The Palestinians have believed that they could win by stalling, waiting until the world’s impatience forced Israel to concede. Moving the U.S. Embassy without a peace agreement demonstrates to the Palestinians that things can and will move on without them, as do the growing ties between Israel and the Sunni powers. Either accept that Israel is here to stay and make the necessary accommodations, or be left in the dustbin of history.

BECAUSE LEFTIST POLITICS HAS BECOME A RELIGION: Two thousand years waiting for a restoration of Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem, and for some American Jews, today’s significance is that it gives them a chance to emote their hostility to Trump. Sad!

ADVENTURES IN PROGRESSIVE LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS: Michelle Goldberg: How the Online Left Fuels the Right.

What Goldberg essentially says is “instead of trying to silence conservatives, let’s be incredibly condescending to the point where we *might* be willing to debate some of those we consider to be sufficiently intelligent. And let’s throw in some largely irrelevant contempt for Israel too, because I need to virtue-signal my Progressive bona fides before I can mildly criticize Progressives.” Yep, columns like this will certainly stop the online left from fueling the right. Not. How about taking serious ideas seriously?

WHEN YOUR POLITICAL VIEWS BECOME POLITICALLY CORRECT ORTHODOXY, FREE SPEECH SEEMS LIKE A THREAT: Law Professor Ronald Collins: Abandoned? The Liberal Flight from the First Amendment. This process of abandonment has been going on for decades, especially when the First Amendment conflicts with antidiscrimination laws, as I documented in my 2003 book You Can’t Say That!

ANALYSIS–TRUE: Antonin Scalia Law School Is Under Attack for Being Successful and Different.

Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University has a very highly cited faculty, showing that it has a relatively large impact on the world of legal ideas. It is ranked as the 21st, just after the University of Texas. This ranking is an extraordinary achievement, given that it was a young school with a small endowment, not at all comparable to long established schools like Texas. As is clear from objective data, Antonin Scalia Law School’s faculty is also unusual in having a faculty that it is right of center in a profession where every school with a higher citation count is left of center, sometimes far to the left of center.  For instance, schools in the top twenty citations regularly have less than ten percent conservatives and frequently less than five percent.

The existence, much less grand success, of my law school is a minor miracle in today’s academic climate, especially since we’ve been grossly underfunded for almost our entire existence. This success, moreover, belies the notion that the dominance of Progressives in academia is primarily the result of lack of interest by non-Progressives, as opposed to viewpoint discrimination (which we often are able to take advantage of by hiring non-Progressives overlooked by other law schools). Unfortunately, there are certain organizations that are not satisfied with Progressives holding 90+% of faculty positions at law schools and elsewhere, they want to stamp out all right-of-center dissent.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE TRUMP, REMEMBER THE JEWS AND THE BICYCLISTS ARE TO BLAME: Women’s March leader blames Trump Muslim ban, Mexican border wall on Israeli PM.

“PEACE PARTNER”: Abbas says Jews’ behavior, not anti-Semitism, caused the Holocaust.

Yair Rosenberg comments,  “It’s almost like he thinks there is no international accountability for open anti-Semitism.” Shh, Yair, you are disturbing the Narrative.

Related: Abbas–“Israel has imported frightening amounts of drugs in order to destroy our younger generation.”

MY GRANDPARENTS CRIED WHEN FDR DIED–THAT WAS THE WRONG REACTION: The Tablet: “While [FDR] was uncertain about whether [Jewish refugees] would be better off on the slopes of the Andes or the savannahs of central Africa, there was one place he knew he didn’t want them: the United States of America.”

I’M EMBARRASSED FOR THE AUTHOR: USC lawprof Michael Simkovic: A well-organized campaign to bait, discredit, and take over universities is exploiting students and manipulating the public.

Here’s a taste:

Recently, the Federalist Society invited South Texas College of Law Houston’s Josh Blackman to lecture at CUNY law school.  Professor Blackman’s sparsely attended lecture drew protestors because of Blackman’s previous criticism of an amnesty program for undocumented immigrants and his use of language the protestors interpreted as racial dog whistling.

A university official asked the students to be respectful, defended Blackman’s right to speak, and admonished the students “please don’t take the bait.”  One student noticed Blackman recording himself and asked Blackman, “You chose CUNY didn’t you? Because you knew what would happen if you came here.”  (CUNY, like Vassar, has a reputation for left-wing student activism).  Blackman deflected the question.  One protestor used an expletive, which Blackman repeated.

According to both Blackman and CUNY, the protestors were non-violent.  Security was present to maintain order.  Blackman—tall and muscular—towered over the students and appeared calm throughout the exchange.

(1) Josh Blackman is an incredibly mild-mannered, polite, nice guy. The protesters didn’t identify any “dog whistle” language; they just called him a racist because that’s their default criticism of anyone they don’t like. Simkovic should be ashamed of himself for suggesting that the students may be correct in asserting Blackman has actually indulged in racism, which is a kiss of death in academia. A public apology should be forthcoming.

(2) Josh hasn’t criticized the amnesty program per se, which he supports, he’s criticized its implementation by executive order, which he believes is unconstitutional. The fact that neither the students nor Simkovic can appreciate the distinction doesn’t speak well of either.

(3) Josh is, I believe, the most prolific speaker for the Federalist Society in the country. He has spoken at dozens of schools. By Federalist Society rules, the students at each chapter have to invite him, he can’t invite himself. In short, the idea that he somehow chose CUNY to provoke a reaction is ridiculous, and the notion that presenting an anodyne talk on free speech, which Josh had presented at several other law schools without incident, should provoke any sensible, mature person is ridiculous.

(4) Josh is certainly reasonably tall, but when a security guard comes to you before a talk and asks if you have an “exit strategy” and gives you suggestions about various emergency routes out of the law school, even a six-footer might feel a bit threatened. I wonder how Prof. Simkovic would feel if a security guard came to him before one of his classes, and suggested he needed an “exit strategy” in case the protesters intent on disrupting his class and chanting expletives outside his classroom turn violent?

The whole piece is like this, full of illogic and innuendo, suggesting that the fault with the threats to free speech on campus lies with those who engage in and defend free speech, rather than those bent on suppressing it. Read it and weep.

UPDATE–ADL APOLOGIZES: ADL regrets calling group that targets anti-Israel students Islamophobic and racist. Background here.

ANOTHER “TRUMP-INSPIRED HATE CRIME” BITES THE DUST: Suspect admits to toppling more than 100 headstones in St. Louis Jewish cemetery.

In 2017, large swathes of the American Jewish community were in the throes of what I termed The Great Anti-Semitism Panic of 2017. The last few years have seen an increase in visible anti-Semitism among alt-right trolls, but the panic that ensued with the election of Donald Trump was bizarrely and extremely disproportionate to any actual threat to the safety or standing of American Jews. (For noting this, one Jewish newspaper editor, Rob Eshman, called me an “apologist for anti-Semitism.”)

One incident that received disproportionate attention was the vandalism of a St. Louis Jewish cemetery. Even though some of us cooler heads noted that similar incidents of vandalism occurred with some frequency during the Obama and Bush years, many so-called Jewish leaders were quick to cast blame on the atmosphere allegedly created by Trump. St. Louis police arrested the perp, a thirty-four year old African-American man, yesterday, and announced “[t]here is no evidence to indicate the incident was racially, ethnically or religiously motivated.”

Those who participated in creating and spreading the panic should be ashamed of themselves, and heads should roll at certain organizations. But they aren’t, and they won’t. Heck, I still haven’t gotten an apology from Eshman.

MAYBE THEY SHOULD JUST LEAVE “ANTI” OFF OF THEIR NAME: Defamation by the Anti-Defamation League:

The ADL’s national office tweeted, “thank you to @umich student leaders for exposing Canary Mission’s Islamophobic & racist rhetoric as ‘antithetical and destructive to supporting Israel and eliminating anti-Semitism on campus.'”

I googled ADL and Canary Mission, and could not find any ADL report analyzing or condemning Canary Mission. So I emailed ADL’s media folks yesterday morning, and asked if they could “please point me to the underlying evidence that ADL has relied on in support of it accusation of racism and Islamaphobia?” I sent a follow up email six hours later, and received this response: “Our research team is pulling together examples for you, so please stand by.”

It’s now the next morning, and still nothing. One would think that the ADL, an organization whose reputation depends on correctly identifying anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry, wouldn’t accuse a fellow Jewish organization, or anyone for that matter, of racism without having the research on hand to support it. It shouldn’t take a post hoc research effort, much less one that hasn’t borne fruit more than twenty-four hours after an initial inquiry.

BETTER TO REMAIN SILENT AND BE THOUGHT A FOOL: CUNY Law Students Explain “What We Mean When We Say ‘Fuck the Law.'”

Spoiler: They mean “Fuck the Law.” A good dean would not only have cracked down on these students’ bad behavior in disrupting Josh Blackman’s talk, she would have strongly suggested that they keep quiet to avoid embarrassing themselves and their law school even more.