BLOWN TO HELL: On the morning of March 6, 1970, members of the Weather Underground terrorist group were busying themselves with plans to set off a large bomb. Their intended target was a dance for non-commissioned officers scheduled for that night at Fort Dix, New Jersey.   Something went wrong and the bomb went off prematurely, completely destroying the Greenwich Village townhouse the Weathermen were occupying at 18 W. 11^th Street.

That was good news. It meant that the lives of the Fort Dix non-commissioned officers and their dates were spared.

Instead, the bodies of Weathermen Diana Oughton and Terry Robbins, who had been working in the basement on the bomb, were blown to pieces. Member Ted Gold, who was just arriving at the house when it blew up, was also killed.

Upstairs were members Cathy Wilkerson (whose wealthy father owned the townhouse) and Kathy Boudin.   Though dazed and bloodied, they managed to escape.

Cathy Wilkerson was a fugitive from justice for a decade. She finally surrendered to the police, was convicted of illegal possession of dynamite, and sentenced to three years. When a judge ordered that she be released after serving only 11 months, it caused something of a scandal. New York State’s Commissioner of Correctional Services argued that many inmates had better disciplinary records and that Wilkerson simply had good lawyers.

Kathy Boudin was on the run for 11 years. But unlike Wilkerson she didn’t surrender. Rather, she was arrested shortly after her participation in the notorious Brink’s robbery in which three innocent men were killed.  In other words, she was still at it all those years later.

Boudin was eventually sentenced to 20 years to life for her role in the Brink’s robbery/triple murder. She was paroled in 2003 and later hired by Columbia University, where she is now an assistant professor and co-founder/co-director of Columbia’s Center for Justice.

There is evidence that the Weathermen had planned to bomb Columbia University’s administrative building too. But Columbia fell all over itself to hire Boudin anyway. Go figure.

I HOPE IT’S TRUE: Donors don’t take kindly to political correctness at Yale.

YES, YOU DO HAVE TO HUG YOUR GREAT AUNT HEDWIG: I guess I asked for this: As a law professor I was curious, so I ordered from Amazon several books about “consent.” One is called Consent on Campus: A Manifesto; another is The Consent Guidebook: A Practical Approach to Consensual, Respectful, and Enthusiastic Interactions. (Yes, I’ve been accused of being a masochist.)

But when they arrived on Saturday I just didn’t have the energy to sit down and study them. I figured the easiest one to get through was C is for Consent, which is 14 pages long (with pictures!) and aimed at young children, so I decided to look first at it.

The book tries to instill in children the attitude that nobody can touch them without their explicit consent. It includes a drawing of a perfectly pleasant looking grandmother who wants nothing more in the world than a hug from her little grandson. Alas, the grandson doesn’t feel like it.

“That’s okay,” says Dad. “You don’t have to give hugs if you don’t want to!”

Yes, you do. If prune-faced, slightly smelly grandma, who never hurt a fly and remembered your birthday last month, wants a hug, dammit, hug her. Not feeling like it is no excuse.  She loves you, and one day you’ll realize that you can use all the love you can get, maybe especially the unconditional kind you’re getting from grandma.

Increasingly, I don’t fit into the world.

AT FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING OF THIS DAY IN 1801, JOHN ADAMS QUIETLY LEFT THE WHITE HOUSE AND HEADED HOME TO MASSACHUSETTS: It was a significant moment in American history—the first time a sitting President had lost a bid for re-election. Jefferson was to be inaugurated later that day. It was hardly obvious and inevitable that the transition would go smoothly after the bitter contest that preceded it.

Several historians have suggested that Adams left early because he believed his presence might provoke violence; others reasoned that Jefferson never invited him to attend the ceremony and Adams, too proud to ask his successor, departed as a courtesy. One scholar even speculated that Adams simply needed a full day’s time to make the forty-nine mile trip to Baltimore [on the public coach] before heading home to Massachusetts. Regardless of the motive, Adams’s decision to accept the election results and yield power peacefully set an important precedent for future presidential transitions.

Thus a tradition of a dignified transition was firmly set. I hear there is a rumor afoot that Trump will stage a military coup rather than yield power if he is defeated in 2020. It’s remarkable what idiocy folks on the Left will believe these days.

I’ll let others judge how dignified the transition from Obama to Trump has been.

LOCAL CONTROL: Now that the Trump Administration has rolled back the Obama Administration’s effort to control school discipline issues from inside the Beltway, school districts are finally in a position to listen to parents and teachers and establish the policies they think best for their students.  If you want to understand how the Obama Administration managed to wrest control of discipline from local schools, why is was a bad idea and why is was contrary to law, try here.

MOE BERG REMEMBERED: Hardcore baseball fans tell me that Moe Berg was never more than a middling major league baseball catcher, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers (then called the Robins), the White Sox, the Indians, the Washington Senators, and the Red Sox.  But Berg, who was born on this day in 1902, was many other things too … a coach for the Red Sox, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly, a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton, a graduate of Columbia law school, and a quiz show phenomenon. He was also fluent in six languages and had some knowledge of a dozen others.

But the most astonishing role Berg ever played was that of spy. It started innocently enough. During the early 1930s, Berg was selected to go to Japan twice to promote the game of baseball. On the first trip, he stayed longer than the other players and got to know something of the country and the language. The second trip was supposed to be for all-star types—including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. But Berg got to go along, because he could give speeches in Japanese. While there, he bluffed his way up the top of one of Tokyo’s tallest buildings with a movie camera hidden under his kimono and shot film footage of the city, including extensive shots of its industrial areas and its harbor. That footage was later a valuable contribution to the war effort.

During WWII, Berg joined the Office of Strategic Services Special Operations Branch (what is now the CIA’s Special Activities Division). Among his exploits, he was parachuted into Nazi-dominated Yugoslavia to assess the various resistance groups operating within that area and to make recommendations to the U.S. government about which group or groups to support. Oh … and he was a trained assassin.

The CIA displays Berg’s baseball card at its headquarters.  And Hollywood recently made a movie about him (though, alas, you can’t make a movie these days about a historical figure without speculating about your subject’s sexuality.)

EVEN THE TREES ARE HATEFUL IN SOUTH CAROLINA: In early February, the mayor of Lamar, South Carolina observed a sticky, yellowish substance on her car and her husband’s car. Believing it to be spray paint, she reported it to the police and issued a statement that “my husband and I refuse to be intimidated by those who perpetrated this act of vandalism which I classify as an act of hatred.” Police, however, have determined that the substance was likely pollen.

YES, I TOLD YOU THIS WAS TRUE ALREADY: Inside Higher Education reported yesterday that African American and Hispanic students abandon STEM majors at much higher rates than white students. But it didn’t explain how that wouldn’t happen as often if under-represented minority students attended schools where their entering academic credentials matched those of their fellow students.

If you haven’t done so already, please read Want to Be a Doctor? A Scientist? An Engineer? An Affirmative Action Leg Up May Hurt Your Chances.  (Or, better yet, read this longer version.)

DEAR HARVARD STUDENTS: EVEN HARVEY WEINSTEIN DESERVES A LAWYER: Students at Harvard’s Winthrop House are upset that their faculty “overseer,” law professor Ronald Sullivan, has undertaken to represent Harvey Weinstein. Some have demanded Sullivan’s resignation as faculty overseer as the ground that he is making them feel unsafe. Harvard appears to be taking the students’ unhappiness seriously and investigating Winthrop House’s climate.

Someone needs to remind these kiddies that Ronald Sullivan is a lawyer. This is what lawyers do. They represent people who are in trouble. Harvard grad John Adams, who represented the British soldiers accused of murder in connection with the Boston Massacre, would not be amused by such idiocy.

HAVE YOU HAD YOUR KELLOGG’S CORN FLAKES TODAY?: On this day in 1852, Progressive nutritionist John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of corn flakes, was born. His goal was to create something that would deaden your sex drive. I’m not kidding.  Stay away from this dude. He was big on enemas too. Maybe all Progressives are …

GIDDY UP, TRIGGER, LET’S GET OUT OF THIS CRAZY PLACE:  Student in cowboy outfit causes Wake Forest University to go bonkers.

THE HEROES ARE THE ONES RUNNING TOWARD THE CATASTROPHE: In 1941, Lois Gunden was 26 years old and had a job as French instructor in Indiana. But when the Mennonite Central Committee needed a French speaker to go to Vichy France to help Spanish and Jewish child refugees, she went. In France, it was Lois versus the Nazis. And at least sometimes the indefatigable Lois won, thus saving the lives of children for whom deportation would have meant death.

After the United States entered the war, Lois was interned and eventually repatriated to the United States, where she spoke little of her experiences. But Lois’s courage and resolve were not forgotten by at least one of those whose life she saved. In 2013—eight years after her death—Lois was recognized as “Righteous among the Nations.” Today would have been her birthday.

FEMINISM: YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY… AND BACK: Friday’s briefing before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on “Women in Prison” was about how “women are different” from men. The message that they should therefore be treated more leniently was sometimes explicit and sometimes merely implicit, but it seemed to always be there. One of the public commentators declared her goal to be the end all imprisonment for women (but apparently not for men). It was a bit like the 19^th century.

THE TRANSGENDER BATHROOM WARS CONTINUE IN VIRGINIA: Meanwhile, if you are looking for a legal explanation of why Title IX does not require schools to allow transgender students to use the showers of the sex they identify with, here is my amicus brief (with Peter Kirsanow) in the G.G. case.

One thing has changed since that brief was written.  When the Trump Administration withdrew the Title IX guidance on the use of bathrooms, showers and locker rooms by transgender students, the part about deference to agency guidances became outdated.  But the basic argument pushed by the now-withdrawn guidance remains–that Title IX demands that transgender students be assigned to the facilities of the sex they identify with.

EXCESSIVE FINES: Don’t get too excited about the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday. All that was decided was that the Constitution’s Excessive Fines Clause applies to the states. The ramifications of that decision must wait for another day.

For more on how some municipalities may rely too heavily on fines and fees for their budgets, you might want to look at my Commissioner Statement in the Commission on Civil Rights’ report entitled Targeted Fines and Fees Against Communities of Color: Civil Rights and Constitutional Implications. It doesn’t cover every angle of the problem of excessive fines and fees, but I hope it makes a few useful points. Among other things, it argues this is not a race issue (though most of my colleagues seemed to think it was).

There are lots of tough issues in this area of the law (and the debate doesn’t always fit the usual left/right paradigm).  (Full report here.)

NORMALLY I DON’T CELEBRATE “DEATH DAYS,” BUT …: Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist, orator and advisor to Presidents, was born a slave and never knew his exact birthday, so his death day is the only thing we have.  It was on this day in 1895.

Among his many insightful statements:

“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”

“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”

“Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, ‘What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.”

He was probably 77 when he died.

IT FEELS WEIRD THAT I HAVE TO KEEP SAYING THIS, BUT I GUESS I DO, SINCE PEOPLE KEEP GETTING IT WRONG: A fairly recent report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights asserted that schools in poor and minority neighborhoods receive less money than other schools.  As I think I showed in my dissent to the report, the truth is different: Schools at both the high and low ends tend to get more resources; it’s those in the middle that tend to get less.

One could argue that schools with low-income students need more resources than schools with middle-class students. But it would be nice to have an honest debate about that rather than one full of misinformation designed to outrage people.

DID PAT CADDELL FORESEE TRUMP’S VICTORY?:  We are in “pre-revolutionary moment,” he said in 2015.

THE AURORA, ILLINOIS SHOOTINGS: Some have complained that shooter Gary Martin should never have been able to acquire a gun given his prior conviction and numerous arrests. (His Mississippi conviction for aggravated assault evidently failed to come to light at the time he purchased his gun (i.e. an existing law failed). Interestingly, he was later denied a concealed carry permit on account of his record ….)  I’ll leave it to others to sort out the facts here.

Here’s an issue I haven’t seen discussed yet: The EEOC discourages employers from conducting criminal background checks on job applicants and requires employers to hire felons unless they can show “business necessity” for not doing so. Under the agency’s logic, the refusal to hire a felon is a form of race discrimination, since such hiring practices have a “disparate impact” on African Americans.

Many employers have been bullied, against their better judgment, into taking a chance on a job applicant with a criminal record. I don’t know whether the EEOC’s policy had anything to do with the Henry Pratt Company’s decision to hire Martin. What I do know is that the EEOC’s policy is wrongheaded. Yes, integrating ex-convicts back into the economy is important.  But there are better ways to do it than coercing employers into hiring someone they would prefer not to hire.

DON’T WORRY, THEY CAN CITE OTHER CASES FIRST: A Washington Post writer is concerned that, in the future, Smollett’s will be “the first example skeptics cite when they say we should be dubious of victims who step forward to share their experience of racist hate crimes or sexual violence.” This, she argues, will cause “irreparable damage” to the “communities most affected.”

She needn’t worry. Alas, skeptics have many examples to choose from: Tawana Brawley, the Duke lacrosse team, the University of Virginia fraternity, the Covington boys, the University of Michigan woman who claimed a man threatened to burn her hijab. Here’s another one and a few more.    Here’s a bunch more. And still more. I am sure that with minimal effort you can find others.

Somebody needs to start worrying about a different kind of “irreparable harm”–that being done to our social fabric by false accusations—especially those that aren’t found out … or those that receive huge publicity in the media until it turns out that they are false and then are quietly forgotten.

We are not a perfect country. Now and then ugly things will happen in 2019—though knock me over with a feather if they involve nooses, the KKK, or screams of “This is MAGA country.” But impressionable young people and immigrants are being convinced that Americans are far worse people than we actually are. Without a more realistic sense of the dangers of ordinary American life, we will all eventually lose our freedoms and our fortunes. Public trust is a precious thing.

THE JUSSIE SMOLLETT STORY: CNN reports the latest in the unraveling.  UPDATE:  Here’s the Daily Mail story.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Kurt Schlichter brings perspective:

OH DEAR:  OCASIO-CORTEZ THINKS NEW YORK SHOULD TAKE THE “$3 BILLION” IT WAS “WILLING TO GIVE AMAZON” AND INVEST IT IN THE LOCAL COMMUNITY.  She doesn’t realize that was money Amazon was going to bring to the area.  New York was simply agreeing not to take it away.

CORNELL STUDENTS SCANDALIZED BY 90-YEAR-OLD’S USE OF WORD “NEGRO”: This is the kind of stuff that makes me wish it were legal to spank the little brats.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS CONSIDERING CUTTING BACK ON DISPARATE IMPACT LIABILITY: That’s good news. If you want to understand how Title VII got “interpreted” to prohibit disparate impact liability—despite overwhelming evidence that Congress did not intend such a result when it passed Title VII—read this amicus curiae brief. I am working on a more comprehensive article on the subject … but it’s not ready yet.

IS IT STILL THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION OVER AT THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR?:  Paul Mirengoff discusses.