IT’S THE CULMINATION OF A LONGSTANDING TREND: Former ACLU leader Ira Glasser slams organization’s ‘progressive’ new agenda. During the ACLU’s heyday, from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, it was a liberal organization, but one with a genuine commitment to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and due process. It’s been on a long, gradual decline since then into just another lefty pressure group. In my 2003 book, You Can’t Say That!, I identified significant slippage in the ACLU's commitment to civil liberties. I heard through the grapevine that then-ACLU president Nadine Strossen said that my depiction of her organization was inaccurate. I sent word back through my source that if she could identify any factual errors, I would be happy to publicly apologize and correct them. I never got a response.

OUCH: Requiring anyone to swear an oath to anything beyond to tell the truth in a legal proceeding is unAmerican.

YOU CAN”T MAKE THIS STUFF UP: Amnesty International holds a press conference in Jerusalem, but hates Israel so much that it advertises “Beirut time.”

Two notable things about Beirut. First, it’s controlled by Hezbollah, a terrorist organization with no respect for human rights. Second, it’s the capital of Lebanon. For decades, where Palestinians are denied citizenship, and, per Wikipedia, “they are also legally barred from owning property or entering a list of desirable occupations. Employment requires a government-issued work permit, and, according to the New York Times, although ‘Lebanon hands out and renews hundreds of thousands of work permits every year to people from Africa, Asia and other Arab countries… until now, only a handful have been given’ to Palestinians.”

Not that Amnesty cares about this because it can’t bash Israel with that information, but you would think they would at least be sensitive to the optics of refusing to even acknowledge that its press conference is in Jerusalem and instead alluding to the capital of perhaps the most anti-Palestinian country in the Middle East.

“TOO MANY ASIANS”: University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Amy Wax is being threatened with sanction by her school for expressing opposition to immigration to the US from Asia. Wax did not suggest she has anything against Asians as such; she just does not want any more Democratic voters, and Asian Americans mostly vote for Democrats. I have a variety of objections to her argument, but that’s neither here nor there.

As Glenn pointed out, the irony here is that progressives are so up in arms about Wax’s remarks, which have no actual effect on public policy, but are silent or even supportive as top universities impose implicit quotas on Asians. The universities try to disguise this bias, but progressives have been explicit about their hostility to Asian American success for a long time. Consider this interview with Bill Clinton from 1995:

“Our diversity is our great strength,” [President Clinton] declared. “If a university says, ‘Look, we’re only going to let in qualified people, but we think that the life of the university will be strengthened if we had different kinds of people,’ then I think that’s a legitimate thing.” Otherwise, he added, “there are universities in California that could fill their entire freshman classes with nothing but Asian Americans.”

There is a right answer to that, and it’s “so what?” People don’t come stamped as “Asians” or “whites” or “Hispanics.” These are labels we impose on them. In the case of “Asians” we impose on people with ancestry in places as varied as India, Mongolia, and Indonesia. If people from these backgrounds excel academically, and collectively take up even the whole freshman class at Berkeley, *so what*?

But we know, “so what?” It’s a way of trying to rally whites to be for racial preferences by suggesting that otherwise their children will be displaced by “Asians.” (I can’t find a link, but I remember a Congresswoman making this argument explicitly back in the 90s.) In other words, “diversity” concerns become an excuse for quotas against Asians. It’s gross and it’s racist, and unlike what Wax said, it does suggest hostility to Asians, as such. And it’s high time someone called progressives on this sort of thing.

THEY PROBABLY THINK JEWS SHOULD MOVE TO BIRIBIDZHAN: A marketing firm that works with Jewish groups, Big Duck, has nixed a potential client because of its Israel ties. No self-respecting Jewish group would continue to work with Big Duck. Which unfortunately means that some left-leaning Jewish groups likely will continue to be its clients.
UPDATE: It’s worth noting that the organization Big Duck is boycotting, the Shalom Hartman Institute, is left-leaning, though not “anti-Israel.” Consider, for example, this seminar: “In November 2017, thirty leading theorists and practitioners convened for a day of thoughtful discussion on topics of power and privilege. The group, comprising academics, rabbis, Jewish communal leaders, philanthropists, activists and educators, explored crucial questions of how gender, class, and race impact the distribution of authority and influence in Jewish communal life.” When the revolution eats its own, Jews tend to be the appetizer.

NOW AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER: Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.

JAMIL DAKWAR, ACLU “HUMAN RIGHTS” PROGRAM DIRECTOR, CHANNELS DAVID DUKE: Thus demonstrating the confluence of two trends: the decline of the ACLU from a principled (if often wrong-headed) liberal civil liberties organization to far-left activism, and the normalization of antisemitism on the far left so long as it can be somehow tied to Israel.

THE REALITY-BASED COMMUNITY–NOT!: A Reality Check for Progressives on the Rittenhouse Case: “In these and many other instances [of armed self-defense during the summer 2020 riots], there is not a white nationalist, or a vigilante, in sight. Just people, usually local residents, trying to protect their neighborhoods from chaos and destruction while the police stood down, usually on orders from superiors.”

AMERICAN PARENTS ARE TERRORISTS, BUT PFLP FRONTS ARE NOT?:

WE LIVE IN ORWELLIAN TIMES:

Also:

IN FAIRNESS, THE PRESIDENT IS SAYING THE SAME THING; OTOH, HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE A *FACT-CHECKER,* AND THE IDEA THAT $3.5 TRILLION IN SPENDING ISN’T A COST IS AN EGREGIOUS ORWELLIAN LIE:

“INFLUENTIAL RABBIS” VERSUS “PRINCIPLED PROGRESSIVES”: The New York Times actually published the excerpt below, though they have since stealth-edited out the rabbis part. In 2021 America, it’s woke to portray a legislative battle in Congress as war between the principled and rapacious Jews. Note for the uninitiated: There is, in fact, no “rabbis lobby” of any consequence.

NOT THE BABYLON BEE: Scientific American: Why the term ‘JEDI’ is problematic for describing programs that promote justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.

This is stuff that would get a C- and an “oh, come on” comment from a professor even somewhere like Oberlin (I think): “Although they’re ostensibly heroes within the Star Wars universe, the Jedi are inappropriate symbols for justice work. They are a religious order of intergalactic police-monks, prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic lightsabers, gaslighting by means of “Jedi mind tricks,” etc.).”

.

BY AMAZING COINCIDENCE, BOTCHED MEDIA NARRATIVES ARE ALWAYS FAVORABLE TO THE DEMOCRATS: New York Times Botches the History of Budget Conflicts and Government Shutdowns.

EVER WONDER HOW FILIPINO AND PAKISTANI AMERICANS WOUND UP IN THE SAME “ASIAN AMERICAN” CLASSIFICATION, DESPITE HAVING NOTHING IN COMMON: If you would like to read a more academic and shorter preview of my forthcoming book on racial classification in the US, the final version of my article, The Modern American Law of Race, has been published and is available for download here.

By the way, the answer to the question above isn’t simply, “both groups are from Asia,” because Persians, Armenians, Turks, Arabs, and other “Asians” are classified as white, not Asian American.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Nevergreen, by my friend Andrew Pessin, a biting satire of woke campus life.

THE TALIBAN IS TREMBLING IN FEAR:

THEY ARE CONFUSING A HOLIDAY OF MOURNING WITH SOMETHING THEY WOULD LIKE TO CELEBRATE: Tonight marks the Jewish Holiday of Tisha B’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, the murder of tens of thousands of Jews in Israel in the course of putting down the Jewish Revolt, and the beginning of Exile, i.e., the almost two thousand year stretch in which Jews had no sovereign state in the Land of Israel. Jewish Voice for Peace, a small group of largely Jewishly unaffiliated, far-leftist Jews who hate Israel and get their funding primarily from non-Jewish far-left foundations, sees this as something to emulate rather than mourn.

JUST IN CASE YOU FORGOT DURING THE PANDEMIC HOW MUCH FUN IT IS TO DEAL WITH OUR AIRLINE MONOPSONY: Recently, I booked a last-minute ticket on Delta. I used flight credits from a pre-pandemic flight that was canceled, no new payment required. I rushed to the airport with my family, and tried to check in. No dice. I went to the counter. The man behind the counter told me that I need the credit card used to purchase the ticket. I explained that (a) I did not use a credit card to purchase the ticket, given that there was no charge; and (b) I don’t have the credit card the system is saying that I need to present (which I assume was saved in my Delta profile). Nevertheless, the Delta employee insisted that I needed to show the credit card I used to purchase the ticket. The ultimate resolution was that he had to cancel and then rebook the ticket, a process that required him to call into the Delta call center and which took almost an hour. We would have missed our flight but for a fortuitous weather delay–all because I couldn’t present the card I used to purchase the ticket, which never actually happened. I would have been mollified by an apology by Delta after I alerted them to what happened via their Twitter help handle, but nothing.

IF THIS IS SUCCESS, I’D HATE TO SEE WHAT FAILURE LOOKS LIKE: Chicago has been releasing accused murderers pretrial. Defending this policy in the wake of recent carnage on Chicago’s streets, the city’s chief judge notes that “out of 181 defendants charged with murder and released pretrial, only seven of them missed at least one court appearance, only 11 were charged with a new offense before trial, and of those 11, only two were charged with violent offenses.” Most criminal acts are never reported to police. Most that are reported to police never lead to criminal charges. So if 11 suspects were *charged* with a criminal offense after release, one can presume that the actual number of offenders was more like in the 50 to 100 range, or somewhere around one-third and one-half of those released. This is what passes for success in Chicago.

WAIT, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH CLAIMED THAT THESE VACCINES WERE NO GOOD AND THAT BY OFFERING THEM TO THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY ISRAEL WAS BEING RACIST: After Palestinians reject deal, Israel to send 700,000 vaccines to South Korea. Human Rights Watch and similar groups, which once had a proud history of standing up for human rights, have become propaganda factories for the far left. Here is Ken Roth of HRW, making up a phony obligation by Israel to provide the PA with vaccines, and then buying PA lies about why they wouldn’t accept vaccines when offered.

WHY DOES ISRAEL RECEIVE SUCH DISPROPORTIONATE ATTENTION, AND CRITICISM?: Israel’s Critics are Repulsed by Jewish Sovereignty and Military Power.

The most important conclusion from all this is that criticism of Israel’s use of military force cannot easily be reduced by Israel “behaving” differently. It’s not how Israel uses force that is the primary source of criticism, but ideologically based repulsion at Jews collectively exercising military power via their sovereign state, at all. This is why, in my experience, when critics of Israel claim that Israel is using “disproportionate” force, one can never pin down what level of force these critics would accept. If the IDF’s very existence is repulsive to them, and Israel is deemed inherently illegitimate, no amount of force can be acceptable.

IN SHORT, THEY SERVED AS WILLING PROPAGANDA AGENTS FOR HAMAS: The Spectator: The problem with the New York Times’ Gaza coverage. H/T Hans Bader.

IT’S THE WELL-BEHAVED KIDS WHO WILL PAY: Hans Bader: Education Department may encourage racial quotas in school discipline.

ALL THE FAKE NEWS FIT TO PRINT: Hans Bader: New York Times spreads propaganda from terrorist group Hamas.