THINGS AREN’T THIS BAD: On this day in 1856, Rep. Preston Brooks (D-S.C.) beat Senator Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) nearly to death on the floor of the U.S Senate. As nasty as things are, they aren’t that nasty. (Not yet anyway.)

THE SECRET BALLOT WAS AN AUSTRALIAN INNOVATION:  It’s interesting that the polls for the recent election in Australia were wrong.  Maybe some voters felt uncomfortable telling pollsters whom they intended to vote for.  (Or maybe there were other reasons for the error.)  But it is worth pointing out that Australia was the home of the secret ballot in the 1850s.  Once commonly known in the USA as the “Australian ballot,” it was not the rule in this country until decades after that.

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME:  An old idea, wrong as ever.

OKAY, BUT TRY TO GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT: Tammy Duckworth, Corey Booker and Tom Carper have formed a Senate Environmental Justice Caucus aimed at eliminating racism in environmental protection. That’s fine. But note that when the Commission on Civil Rights tried to prove that coal ash dumps were disproportionately being located near African-American neighborhoods it ended up finding the opposite: The dumps were disproportionately placed near white neighborhoods.

ONE MORE REASON THAT CAMPUSES ARE A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT FOR MEN:  Study finds that 92% of sex-specific scholarships at colleges and universities are for women.

THIS ISN’T AN ISOLATED THING:  More than 75 universities now host a “blacks only” graduation ceremony.

QUIN HILLYER:  “On the crime bill, Biden is groveling when he should be boasting.”

(I’m inclined to agree that advocates of de-incarceration have become too enthusiastic.  We’ve gotten so used to low crime we don’t realize what a blessing it is.  It was not always thus.)

WORTH READING:  John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport bring peace to the warring factions of constitutional originalism.

SOMETIMES DEALS UNRAVEL: On this day in 1993, President William Jefferson Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act into law. It was supposed to be a compromise in which Democrats got some of what they wanted and Republicans got some of what they wanted. But for reasons I describe here, it hasn’t really turned out that way.

MOTHER WHO KEEPS WITHDRAWING HER AUTISTIC CHILD FROM SCHOOL GETS UPSET THAT THE CHILD ISN’T IN SCHOOL: If you want a window onto the complicated, over-lawyered world of special education, this article is worth a look. It’s not that the article really gets the story right. To the contrary, insofar as the article sheds light on the problems of special education, it does so by inspiring skepticism on the part of the reader.

We are introduced to 7-year-old Jazmiah, who has been diagnosed with autism and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.   In addition, she has a variety of other behavioral and motor skills problems. She lives in public housing with her mother and another disabled sibling. The key fact is that Jazmiah hasn’t attended school since 2017.

That’s an outrage, right? Why isn’t she at school? The article suggests it’s complicated, but it doesn’t really seem all that complicated. Jazmiah’s mother, who appears to have problems of her own, took her out of the award-winning Success Academy charter schools, despite assurances by the staff that Jazmiah was happy there and that her teachers loved her.

This was by no means the first time the mother had withdrawn her daughter from a school.

The article is vague about her motivation, but it appears she was upset that Success had held Jazmiah back a grade, which is hardly surprising given that the girl had been chronically absent from school during the period she was enrolled. The mother also believed that her daughter required a one-on-one teacher. After she withdraw Jazmiah from Success, she also wasn’t pleased with the schools the school district has suggested that her daughter attend instead.

At some point following the withdrawal from the Success Academy, Jazmiah’s mother evidently lawyered up with a 12-member law firm that specializes almost exclusively in representing parents against schools in connection with special education issues. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t realize there were whole law firms devoted to special education. The article is vague, but it seems that the law firm (or somebody) got some sort of “legal ruling” last October that somehow “faulted the [New York] education department for failing to find a school placement for Jazmiah.”

Whatever the nature of that ruling, it apparently did not result in any immediate action. Jazmiah is still at home playing with shaving cream and Elmer’s glue. Towards the end of the article, however, we learn for the first time that Jazmiah has been receiving individualized tutoring in reading and occupational and speech therapy at home at the school district’s expense. This was deemed insufficient by the mother, though we aren’t told much about why.

One thing that struck me is that a significant portion of the article is spent criticizing the Success Academy charter schools. The author of the article wrote to the head of the Success Academy asking for comment on Jazmiah’s mother’s various accusations against the school. Some of the accusations were provably false, and the Success Academy indeed was able to prove them false.

In a grand display of chutzpah, the author then criticized the school for disclosing the information. This was something I’d never seen before—a journalist attacking his own source for disclosing information to him. The article reads as if the author was angry at Success for messing up his preferred narrative. Without Success’s input, he could have characterized Success and charter schools generally as failing to educate students properly.

Under FERPA, schools do have a duty of confidentiality. On the other hand, under the doctrine of implied consent, most legal duties of confidentiality work the way the attorney-client privilege works: The duty doesn’t apply when the client is defaming the attorney in public. In general, the attorney is permitted set the record straight rather than have to sit back and be defamed.

I don’t claim to know whether FERPA has been held to contain such an exception, but if it hasn’t been it should. The alternative is to acquiesce to biased media coverage of this issue. Parents who are understandably upset that their children have problems tend lash out at schools. Sometimes they do so unfairly.  Schools, charter schools in particular, will be unable to defend themselves. The public will be left with the impression that it’s all the school’s fault. But it won’t be true.

AREN’T THE CRITICS ASSUMING THE ROBOT’S GENDER IDENTITY?:  Calvin Klein apologizes after critics argue he should have used a lesbian model instead of a heterosexual one in advertisement featuring a woman kissing a female-looking robot.

JOHN FUND ON THE AUSTRALIAN UPSET:  Hell hath no fury like a disappointed leftie.

ATTACKS ON SCHOOLS AREN’T NEW: On this day in 1927, at approximately 8:45 a.m., in Bath, Michigan, Andrew Kehoe, a 55-year-old school board treasurer, remotely detonated the dynamite he had hidden in the basement of the Bath Consolidated School. The explosion killed 38, mostly elementary schoolchildren. Little bodies were torn apart.

Frantic parents converged on the school, searching through the rubble for their children. Many lost more than one child.

Kehoe was on a rampage. Earlier that day he had blown up his own house and farm. And at some time earlier that day or the day before he had murdered his wife Nellie.

The rampage ended about a half hour after the school explosion when Kehoe drove back to the school grounds. After beckoning to the school superintendent to come near, he detonated the dynamite in his truck. The resulting explosion killed Kehoe himself, the superintendent, two other adults and eight-year-old Cleo Clayton, who had survived the school explosion.

I have a hard time asking why Kehoe acted as he did. It seems like a senseless question. The best that the townspeople could say was that Kehoe had always been a difficult man and that lately he had been angered by his defeat in the election for township clerk. Oh … and he was upset by a recent tax increase.

He was a loon … just like the rash of more recent killers.

STABBING IN SCHOOL? WHAT STABBING?  Schools don’t like the public to know all the gory details about school violence.

Since the Trump Administration (unlike the Obama Administration) is allowing schools to set their own school discipline policies, maybe more problem schools will be able to get a handle of this sort of stuff.  That’s the plan anyway.  (For my discussion of the very misguided Obama Era policy, you can go here.)

REMEMBER THE WOMAN WHO THREW SARAH SANDERS OUT OF THE RED HEN RESTAURANT?:  She’s not sorry.  She’s bragging about it in the Washington Post.

THE LAST WITCH TRIAL IN SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS: When do you figure the last witch trial in Salem, Massachusetts was held? 1693? 1695? Maybe as late as 1701?

Try 1878. That’s closer to our time than it is to the time of the original Salem witch trials. Just in case you ever doubted it, that’s evidence that really bad ideas come back over and over again.  Like socialism.

On this day in 1878, Lucretia Brown was given her first day in court against Daniel Spofford. Brown claimed that as a result of her adherence to the practices of Christian Science she had been cured of the spinal injury she had suffered as a child. But, she alleged, owing to the malicious intent of “mesmerist” Daniel Spofford, she had suffered a relapse. In other words, Spofford had intentionally destroyed her health by thinking malicious thoughts about her.

Like Brown, Spofford had been an early adherent to Christian Science. But he’d had a falling out with Mary Baker Eddy earlier in 1878. Some believe that Eddy was behind Brown’s lawsuit; others disagree. At this point, no one knows for sure.

What’s clear is that Eddy herself was a believer in what she called “malicious animal magnetism” or “MAM,” which was the ability to harm others using only one’s thoughts as a weapon. That’s what witches do, you know.

The newspapers of the day loved the story, especially the part about its being filed in (or rather very near) Salem.

Mercifully, the court did not have the same financial stake as the newspapers in keeping the story going. Brown’s lawsuit failed.

DION J. PIERRE:  “I wouldn’t participate in a blacks-only commencement.  No grad should.”

The Department of Education really should look into neo-segregration on campuses.  There is a lot of it.

“HARVARD CAVES TO STUDENT MOB, FIRES RONALD SULLIVAN FOR BEING HARVEY WEINSTEIN’S LAWYER“:  This story is almost unbelievable.  Does Harvard really want student mobs to decide whether an unpopular client gets an attorney?

If the ABA and the Massachusetts Bar Association don’t vigorously protest this, then they ought to be ashamed to call themselves lawyers.

MAYBE I SHOULD MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE:  California may go dark this summer on windy days.

And, of course, California with its many wind mills doesn’t do well on windless days either.

PERSUADING PARENTS BY BRAINWASHING THEIR CHILDREN WORKS:  Somehow that doesn’t fill my soul with joy.

RECORD NUMBER OF TEACHERS ATTACKED:  According to a recently released report, a record number of teachers (220,300) were physically attacked in 2015-16 (the most recent year for which data exists).

Given what I’ve written before about the (since withdrawn) Obama Era school discipline policy, I can’t claim to be surprised.

TRIGGER WARNING: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (of which I am a beleaguered member) held an all-day briefing yesterday entitled “Federal Me Too: Examining Sexual Harassment in Government Workplaces.” Over a dozen witnesses testified.

Posted on the wall was the following notice: “MENTAL HEALTH SPECIALIST ON-SITE TODAY: Persons who need assistance may go to the reception area and see persons wearing a badge or ask a Commission staff person. In addition, you may reach a mental health specialist by email, phone call, or text message ….”

All during the briefing two licensed therapists sat in the room waiting for somebody to have an emotional breakdown. We’ve had dozens of briefings like this during my tenure on the Commission. This is the first time we’ve brought in therapists. Not one, but two.

No one seems to notice the Commission is suggesting that female employees are a bunch of fragile neurotics. Why would anybody want to hire such a person?

A GHASTLY STORY: An East St. Louis 8^th grade boy, who was recently featured in Sports Illustrated as a potential NFL star of the future, has been killed. According to his mother, he was hit by a stray bullet when a fight broke out at a party. May God give her strength.

I’m not the type to believe that the police can do no wrong. But the notion that the police are the most significant threat to the safety of minority youths is very wrong. Crime itself is a much greater threat.

WHY DO BLACKS AND LATINOS LEAVE STEM MAJORS AT SUCH HIGH RATES? The Washington Post considers several alternatives, but seems unwilling to face up to the possibility that mismatch is the root cause.

This is one of the few problems in the world that I can actually help fix.  Alas, people seem to prefer to wring their hands and moan about micro-aggressions.

CASTER SEMENYA IS INTERSEX, WITH XY CHROMOSOMES:  Why can’t the media state this clearly?

Some are making it sound like Semenya is an ordinary woman from a biological standpoint with a condition that just happens to cause high testosterone levels.  If that were the case, refusing to allow her to compete as a female athlete would seem unfair.  If she happens to be blessed with a characteristic that helps her win, then more power to her.  Michael Jordan and other NBA players are taller than most men I know. That’s not unfair.

But it’s more complicated than that.  It goes to whether she is male or female for the purpose of athletic competitions.  To me at least the issue is more sympathetic to her than in the typical transgender case.  But it’s still difficult.

Semenya is not transgender–at least not in the usual sense.  Her body outwardly appears female.  Nevertheless, according to Robert Johnson at letsrun.com,  she is believed to have internal testes and to lack a womb or ovaries).  She has been viewed as female from birth, identifies as a lesbian female now and probably didn’t have any idea about her XY status until rather late in her life.  But at the chromosomal level she has always been male.

I have no opinion about how to treat such a rare case.  It is interesting that Johnson reports that all three of the medalists in the 2016 women’s 800 are believed to be intersex.  If intersex athletes are extremely rare and yet would dominate women’s world championships, maybe it makes sense to allocate them to the male side of competition.  Or not.  I plan to stay out of this.

What bothers me is that many in the media can’t seem to report it accurately.