BAFFLING: Two of the state advisory committees to the Commission on Civil Rights have recently issued reports arguing that the special “sub-minimum” wage for workers with Down Syndrome and other developmental disabilities should be abolished. Maybe I’m getting a touch of paranoia in my old age, but I can’t help but wonder who is funding all the interest by disability advocates in this idea. It’s very fashionable right now.  But it would obviously throw many of these workers out of their jobs. Is this something the SEIU is pushing? Are they hoping their low-skilled members will get the jobs instead?

One of the advocates I once spoke to in 2020 admitted that many Down Syndrome workers will end up jobless if the sub-minimum wage is abolished. Her attitude was that the state can come up with other ways to keep Down Syndrome individuals off the streets. They don’t need jobs.

The Commission itself issued a report on this issue in 2020. I dissented and pointed out that the parents and family caretakers of Down Syndrome workers overwhelming urged the Commission to support the continuation of the sub-minimum wage. That should count for something.

ARE YOU A NON-WOKE MIT ALUM?  STUDENT?  JUST A SMART STEM NERD WHO HAS NEVER SET FOOT ON MIT’s CAMPUS?:  If so, the Babbling Beaver is the satire site for you.  Saith the Beaver (with due homage to the Babylon Bee):  “Fake News you can trust from transgressive nerds at MIT.”

If the world’s leading STEM university is going to go down the drain, we might as well get a laugh watching it happen. You can subscribe to the Babbling Beaver here.

SUPREME COURT HAS AGREED TO HEAR THE HARVARD CASE ON DISCRIMINATION AGAINST ASIAN AMERICANS:  A few of my preliminary thoughts are on the Volokh Conspiracy.

(I’ve noticed sales of A Dubious Expediency:  How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education picked up the day the Supreme Court announced its decision.)

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Asians Get The Ivy League’s Jewish Treatment.

I’M LUCKY I’M ALREADY TENURED:  “The Toxic Absurdity of “Diversity Statements.”

IS ANYONE SURPRISED?:  “Racially Sensitive “Restorative” School Discipline Isn’t Behaving Very Well.”

I DON’T MISS THE 1970s: On this day in 1974, members of an urban guerrilla group calling itself the “Symbionese Liberation Army” dragged 19-year-old Patty Hearst from her Berkeley apartment. Ms. Hearst was tossed into the trunk of a car; her fiancé, who may have tried to prevent the kidnapping, was left beaten and bloodied.

The SLA members had learned of the young heiress’s whereabouts by reading the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Society” page. In announcing her engagement, it listed her address—2603 Benvenue Avenue, Apartment 4—which happened to be not far from SLA headquarters. What could be more convenient?

The original plan was to use Hearst to gain the release of two SLA members who had been arrested for the notorious murder of Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster. That didn’t work.

Plan B was to press the Hearst family to give millions to feed California’s poor. That did work … initially at least. The Hearst family donated $2 million worth of food to an operation dubbed “People in Need.” Alas, that project descended into chaos, with more not-so-well-behaved people showing up for free food than had been anticipated. Dissatisfied, the SLA declined to release Ms. Hearst.

During this period, Ms. Hearst was being kept in a closet. When she was let out to eat, she was blindfolded.

But a funny thing happened. The SLA periodically released tape recordings that included statements from Ms. Hearst. In these “communiqués,” Hearst began sounding increasingly sympathetic to her captors. In one early message, she said, “I’m not being starved or beaten or unnecessarily frightened.” (This didn’t match up well with her later testimony that she had been repeatedly sexually abused and threatened with death during her captivity.)

A few more weeks into her ordeal, she became critical of her family.   She even complained about the food her father had provided to “People in Need”: “It sounds like most of the food is low quality. No one received any beef or lamb. Anyway, it certainly didn’t sound like the kind of food our family is used to eating.”

Finally, after about two months, she recorded a rant in which she claimed that “the corporate state” is about to murder Black and poor people “down to the last man, woman, and child.” The “corporate state” was “about to totally automate the entire state industrial state” and remove “unneeded people.”

“I have been given the choice of one: being released …, or two: joining the forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army and fighting for my freedom and the freedom of all oppressed people. I have chosen to stay and fight. I have been given the name Tania after a comrade who (more…)

WHAT’S SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE ISN’T SAUCE FOR THE GANDER:  The Biden Administration’s Department of Education doesn’t seem to be all that interested in enforcing Title IX–at least not if the complaint concerns obvious discrimination against men.  For example, the University of New Mexico has a specific “Women in STEM” program.  The university publicly states that the program is “open for women faculty,” that “eligible applicants include tenure-track and tenured women faculty members,” and that the program was “supported by an anonymous gift … to support research by and professorships for women faculty.”  Yet the Department of Education dismissed a complaint filed by the American Enterprise Institute’s Mark Perry on the ground that he could point to no specific male faculty member who had been denied the benefits of the program.  As far as I’ve been able to to tell this is a new policy for facial discrimination.  Would the Department have done the same for a “Men in STEM” or a “White People in STEM” program?  It seems unlikely.

“I CAN THINK OF NOTHING ELSE BUT THIS MACHINE”: On this day (N.S.) in 1736, James Watt was born. He did not invent the steam engine. But the improvements he made on Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine were so significant that the invention of the Watt Steam Engine was arguably the act that began the Industrial Revolution.

P.S. Heriot-Watt University in Scotland has forever linked Watt’s name with mine … or, more accurately, with somebody else with a first initial G and the surname Heriot.

SUPREME COURT AGREES TO TAKE HARVARD ADMISSIONS CASE:  Here’s one thing I hope they keep in mind:  The public is sick and tired of this stuff.

USA TODAY SEEMS DISAPPOINTED IN THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS’ UNWILLINGNESS TO SUPPORT THE PROGRESSIVE LINE:   “60% of People Awaiting Trial Can’t Afford Bail.  A Civil Rights Commission Can’t Agree on Reform.”

The article laments the Commission’s failure to agree on “findings and recommendations” for its bail reform report and extensively quotes my colleague, Michael Yaki:

“We find ourselves in a position where we lack a majority to continue our mission,” wrote Commissioner Yaki, a Democrat. . . .

. . .

Yaki placed the blame at the feet of the newly Trump-appointed commissioners.

“The first action that the conservatives took was to kill a report–much less findings and recommendations–on voting rights that took over a year and a half of investigation and testimony,” Yaki wrote in an email to USA TODAY.

Alas, the killed voting rights report was killed for a reason.  It was a partisan screed.  The bail reform report released yesterday wasn’t exactly brilliant either, but it made more sense to let it go, so long as the Commission was willing to allow the conservative to include their own (dissenting) statements as part of the reports.  Here’s mine.

Prior to Trump’s appointment of Stephen Gilchrist and Christian Adams to the 8-member Commission, my long-time colleague Peter Kirsanow and I could only dissent from reports, since we didn’t have the votes to actually stop a report (or even to affect them much).  Even clear errors in the reports often went through without correction.  We had to content ourselves with writing dissents.

Some of those dissents include this one on immigration detention centers, this one on environmental racism, and this one on jobs for individuals with Down Syndrome. And don’t forget this one on school discipline.  In each case, the Commission’s report had major flaws that in a sane world would have required the draft to be extensively rewritten.

Now that the Commission is split 4-4, you’d think everyone would understand that compromise is necessary to get anything done.  Some members of the progressive caucus, however, don’t seem to have noticed how the situation has changed.  Even small proposals for improving the Commission’s output are often ignored.

JOHN FUND:  Biden won’t fire his Master of Disaster, Chief of Staff Ron Klain …

GOOD TIMING:  On this day in 1981, approximately 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th President of the United States, Iran released the 52 American hostages it had been holding for over a year.  That same day, the United States “unfroze” $8 billion in Iranian assets.

HOT! HOT! HOT!: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is releasing its report on bail reform today–two months after its originally scheduled release date.  Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know.  My Dissenting Statement, which was written several months ago, is here.

I have some sympathy for the notion that we could improve our current pretrial detention practices. But, alas, nothing good will come from attempting to negotiate reform with “defund the police” advocates (or similar loons). Improvements to the system, if they are possible, will have to wait until more of our political leaders start taking crime seriously again.

CONFLICT OVER SCHOOL DISCIPLINE:  There’s a good chance Tennessee’s new law empowering teachers to keep order in their classrooms will come into conflict with the Biden Administration, which has made noises about reviving the Obama Administration’s race-based school discipline policy.  (See my article:  The Department of Education’s Obama-Era Initiative on Racial Disparities in School Discipline:  Wrong for Students and Teachers, Wrong on the Law.)  After nearly two years of zoom classes, the last thing students need is to spend the rest of their school years in a chaotic classrooms.

TODAY IN HISTORY:  On this day in 1807, a certain general who we’re not supposed to have statues of anymore was born at Stratford Hall in Westmoreland County, Virginia.

ON THIS DAY IN 1911: NAVAL HISTORY IS MADE: Eugene Burton Ely loved fast cars.   One of his first jobs was as a chauffeur for a Catholic priest, who is said to have been enough of a kindred spirit to enjoy Ely’s bat-out-of-hell driving.  But as much as Ely loved cars, he loved airplanes even more. When he got his first opportunity to fly one, he leapt at the chance, figuring that flying was a lot like driving. Naturally, he crashed. But to his credit, he took responsibility for the crash, purchased the wrecked plane from its owner, and got it flightworthy again. From there, he began a career as a daredevil aviator.

Ely is credited with the first shipboard take off—on November 14, 1910, from the U.S.S. Birmingham at Hampton Roads, Virginia. It wasn’t quite the success the Navy had been hoping for. Part of aircraft dipped briefly into the water before rising into the air. Ely’s goggles got covered with ocean spray, and he opted to land the damaged plane on the beach, rather than follow the plan to circle the harbor and land triumphantly at Norfolk Navy Yard.

Two months later, on January 18, 1911, he performed the opposite trick—the first successful shipboard landing—by flying from the racetrack at San Bruno onto the U.S.S. Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay.   (And yes, a tailhook was employed.)

Ely told a reporter, “It was easy enough. I think the trick could be successfully turned nine times out of ten.” That was good enough for the Navy. The first naval aircraft was requisitioned roughly four months later. The rest is naval history.

Meanwhile, Ely was asked by the Des Moines Register whether he would ever retire from his high-risk career. “I guess I will be like the rest of them,” he said, “keep at it until I am killed.” That turned out to be soon. On October 19, 1911—two days shy of his 25^th birthday—he lost his life in a crash at an exhibition in Macon, Georgia.

In 1933, Congress posthumously awarded him the Distinguished Flying Cross.

A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO PROTECT NINE:  If there is still a threat of court packing …    

ONE MORE REASON TO READ MY BOOK:  Larry Purdy reviews A Dubious Expediency:  How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education.  Thanks, Larry!

HANS BADER:  Federal agency penalizes states that arrest African American juveniles at higher rates than they arrest white juveniles.

ACTUAL SCIENCE THWARTED AGAIN:  “The Campaign to Thwart Paleogenetic Research into North America’s Indigenous Peoples.”

MORE PROBLEMS WITH EMORY LAW SCHOOL:  “Citing the ‘harm’ of open discussion, Emory Law’s student government denies recognition to student free speech group.”  (Here’s last week’s Emory problem.)

THE GUARDIAN’S PUFF PIECE ON THE CALIFORNIA SLAVERY REPARATIONS TASK FORCE:  “‘If Not Us, Then Who?’: Inside the Landmark Push for Reparations for Black Californians.”

FOR RED-STATE UNIVERSITIES, I’M READY FOR LEGISLATION ON THIS TOPIC:  “From Hiring to Admissions, Universities Seek Ideological Conformity in Applicants.”

THIS IS REALLY GETTING OUT OF HAND: Jill Su’s Life Mattered.

THEY SEEM TO HAVE LOTS OF SCHEMES:  The Left’s Latest Political Scheme:  Let Noncitizens Vote.