JOHN FUND:  Bernie Bros. say Bernie will win by boosting turnout.  That plan may backfire.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:  My colleague Maimon Schwarzschild and I recently signed a contract with Encounter Books to edit a volume of essays on how race-preferential admissions policies have (and continue to) undermine higher education.  An updated version of this essay will be among them.  Plus several new essays from authors to be announced. Look for it in early 2021!

IF YOU’RE IN THE PHOENIX AREA: Here’s an worthwhile way to spend the upcoming weekend: Arizona State University’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership is holding a conference on Citizenship and Civic Leadership in America from Friday, February 28^th to Saturday, February 29^th. The keynoters will be Rich Lowry, who will speak on “Nationalism and America” and Yascha Mounk, whose talk will be “The Decline of Democracy Standing Up for Liberal Democratic Values.” Panel speakers will include Christopher Caldwell, Shikha Dalmia, Kurt Lash, Glenn Loury, Henry Olsen, and Wilfred McClay. It should be an interesting weekend. I’ll be there too (as a panel moderator, so I’ll have an easy job).

THE CANDIDATES COMPARED: Bernie Sanders may be a disaster for the Democratic Party.  But it isn’t clear that the other candidates are preferable on the crucial issues.  For example, Sander proposes to cut the number of people incarcerated at both the federal and state level by a whopping 50%.  Alas, that’s absurdly unrealistic.  But Pete Buttigieg has made the same proposal.

Since some people have the idea that Buttigieg is a moderate, my friend Barry Latzer’s discussion of the candidate’s criminal justice proposals may be worth a look.

(My own thoughts on crime—and in particular the racial aspect of it—are here.)

THE LARGELY FORGOTTEN BOMBARDMENT OF ELLWOOD: On this day in 1942, less than three months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese submarine bombarded an oil field near Santa Barbara. Panic ensued.

It’s not surprising that Californians were on edge. In the weeks following Pearl Harbor, a number of Japanese submarines had been patrolling the American West Coast. They had sunk two merchant ships and damaged several more. Although the submarines had left the area, everyone knew they could come back.

In February at least one of them did. The 365-foot long I-17 submarine with a crew of 101 was commanded by Commander Kozo Nishino. Under orders from his superiors, Nishino had his men fire repeatedly. Mercifully, little damage was done. A derrick and pump house were destroyed, but it could have been much worse.

Santa Barbarans had no way of knowing what would come next. Fearing the attack was a prelude to an invasion, hundreds fled.

Some reported that they had seen individuals signaling the submarine (or several submarines) from the shore. This apparently false information caused pressure for the internment of Japanese Americans to mount. But such is war—false information is the norm, not the exception.

The panic didn’t end there. On the next night came the so-called Battle of Los Angeles—an epic false alarm in which a weather balloon was possibly mistaken for an air attack.

#NOTHARVEY:  IF THE NATION IS THINKING THIS, WHAT MUST THE JURORS THINK?:  “Why Harvey Weinstein Might Walk.”

CAN YOU HELP?: My friends at the National Association of Scholars are preparing a report on administrative bloat in higher education and the student debt crisis. As a part of their research, they’d like to interview a number of individuals about their post-high school choices and/or their experience with student loans.

Ms. Arnold, the NAS research associate working on this project, would like to interview individuals in the following broad categories:

• People who attended college in the past or who currently attend college.
• People who did not attend college.
• People who chose a non-traditional education path.
• Parents of college students or college-bound students.

(Yep, that’s everybody and then some.)

Interviews will be conducted via telephone (preferably) or via Google forms. Interviewees who don’t want their names used in the report can have their names “anonymized” for the final report.

Please contact Ms. Arnold at arnold(at)nas(dot)org if you are willing to be interviewed.

By the way, if would like to join the National Association of Scholars, that can be arranged. I am a proud member.

HOT, HOT, HOT OFF A VERY COLD PRESS!: Today the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released its long-delayed report on the conflict between the First Amendment and the Department of Education’s enforcement of sexual harassment law. At least that was what it was supposed to be about when the Commission undertook the report way back in 2013. Many delays followed. When, in December of 2016, President Obama appointed his out-going Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights to head the Commission, the report evolved into more of a defense of the Obama-Era Office of Civil Rights than a critique. My dissent is here. I hope to write much more on this topic in the future. Right now this little dissent will have to do.

THE WIZARD OF MENLO PARK STRIKES AGAIN:  On this day in 1878, Thomas Alva Edison was awarded a patent on the phonograph.  Altogether, Edison held 1,093 American patents (as well as numerous foreign patents).

I CAN’T IMAGINE ANY FAIR-MINDED PERSON IS SURPRISED:  Evidence that conservative students really do self-censor.  

THIS IS SERIOUS:  Trump hasn’t ended Obama’s War on the Suburbs.  He and HUD Secretary Carson have barely started to roll back Obama’s notorious Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing program.

THUG:  It’s another word you can use if you don’t want to be called a racist.  Just ask the Governor of West Virginia.

JOHN FUND: “There’s Zero Chance Bloomberg Would Pick Hillary.“

A HUGE POSTER OF HER ILLUSTRATIONS HUNG OVER MY BED FROM AGE 11 to 17:  Barbara Remington, illustrator of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Dies at 90.

OF COURSE THEY DO: Media largely ignore Jussie Smollett indictments, offer zero primetime coverage.

They wouldn’t want to hurt business for the Southern Poverty Law Center, now would they?

THE TERM “SACRED COW” IS NOW A SACRED COW: That’s how these “bias response web sites” work.  They encourage students to feel wronged by trivial things.

The author of that piece–Christian Schneider–sent a freedom of information act request to the University of Wisconsin-Madison asking for all the complaints filed with that university’s “Bias or Hate” reporting web site.  He got back 107 complaints.  One of them was a complaint by a student against a professor who had said in class that some theories and beliefs are “scared cows” that cannot be critiqued in academia.  The student, who wrote that he “grew up in India,” called the professor’s use of the term racist.

I’d like to see a lot more of these freedom of information act requests for complaints aimed at bias response web sites.  This stuff needs to be exposed.

MINNESOTA IS CONSIDERING A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT GUARANTEEING EVERYONE A “QUALITY EDUCATION”: But there’s a boatload of misunderstanding about what gets called “education inequity” these days.  Minnesota probably needs to work on understanding the facts a bit better before it goes off and amends its constitution.

MINNESOTA CONSIDERS MAKING A “QUALITY EDUCATION” A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT: Yeah, right, that’ll do it. Turning education over to the courts always works so well, doesn’t it?

TEACHERS IN SOUTH BEND MUST BE INCORRIGIBLY RACIST: Or maybe, just maybe, that isn’t the right explanation.

I GUESS THERE IS NO REAL CRIME IN HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, FLORIDA:  Undercover cops hired 118 handymen, then arrested them all for not having licenses.  If an elected official approved this, he would lose my vote for sure.

WHY DOES WASHINGTON STATE LOVE TO IGNORE ITS VOTERS?:  John Rosenberg writes on preferential treatment by any other name.

PELOSI ACKNOWLEDGES DEFEAT:  Yup.

LAWSUIT BY GROUP TARGETED BY SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER HAS GREEN LIGHT:  We need as many of these as possible (as well as more awareness of the fact that the SPLC is a revenue-raising factory not a serious civil rights organization).

#TomPerezResign:  It’s trending.  Sanders supporters aren’t happy.  And they can be rather unruly when they aren’t happy.

BRITS ARE FREE AT LAST:  I am very happy over Brexit–even downright jolly.  I’ve been bouncing around singing Rule Britannia, annoying my gentleman friend, and scaring the cat.

If the Brits can cast off the European Union, we Americans can get rid of some of our bureaucratic drag too.