Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

HE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW:

Related:

JOSH BLACKMAN: President Lyndon B. Johnson’s TV Station and the “Blind Trust.” “I recently wrote about the purportedly ‘blind’ trust created for President Jimmy Carter’s peanut business. President Lyndon B. Johnson also had a “blind” trust created for his television station. . . . There are no perfect solutions when a successful business person becomes President, and has only two months between election day and inauguration day to settle his affairs. And to demand that a president sell off his business holdings is to in effect create a new qualification outside the text of the Constitution.”

IS ANYONE SURPRISED THAT VALERIE PLAME’S HUSBAND IS A GRIFTER? A University President Accused of Squandering Public Money Resigns in Exchange for a $2 Million Payout. He even gave her a university credit card, although she was not a university employee, which she used for “high end” purchases. The severance deal was bad enough that the Governor of New Mexico has asked the Board of Regents to resign.

As I always say, if you get crosswise with a university administrator, examine their travel expenses.

YES:

HAS ANYONE ON THE RIGHT DEFIED ANY FEDERAL COURT DECISIONS? Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts issues warning on ‘judicial independence’ weeks before Trump inauguration: Roberts says officials ‘from across the political spectrum’ have shown ‘open disregard for federal court rulings.’

And did Trump disregard any federal court rulings? Note that criticism is not disregard. And that Roberts is being Roberts here, which is no compliment.

WHY, INDEED? THEY SHOULD LET HIM OUT, AND PUT SOME GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS IN THOSE CELLS INSTEAD.

WHEN POLICING FAILS: The Angel of Death Wears Granny Glasses. “Anne Kirkpatrick has been a police executive for a long time, proudly fighting to remove machismo from policing, and she’s bounced from high-profile job to high-profile job. Among many other jobs, she was the police chief in Oakland, California for three years, until she was fired. . . . You can’t exaggerate the failure of policing in Oakland, in the wake of an effort to, you’ll never guess, re-imagine policing and shift police funding to social justice. The city is notorious for shuttered businesses, driven out by daily crime. . . . Back when Kirkpatrick was the police chief, Oakland had a reputation for unanswered and slowly answered 911 calls, and new stories described 911 calls that were finally answered by an operator but never actually produced a police response. And of course, as I’ve said many times, Oakland’s best-known community activist makes videos in which he just walks around to show what a disgraceful shithole the city has become. So how does this person get to New Orleans? Let’s look at the hiring announcement from the mayor’s office.”

Plus: “Rises to management on limited experience. Bounces from job to job. Fails then gets hired again elsewhere. It’s a whole cultural story in a single lifetime. . . . Much respect to the NOPD officers on duty in the French Quarter this morning for handling a horrifying act of violence with courage, despite the quality of their leadership.”

True: “In New Orleans this morning, a terrorist attacked a crowd with his truck, then tried to get out of the car and start shooting — and New Orleans cops, working for a department that has an old reputation for troubling behavior, stopped him instantly. We have footage on social media that shows a bunch of NOPD officers sprinting straight into the attack, and choppy, broken footage that maybe sort of shows the edges of the gunfight. The attacker appears to have died right next to his truck, a fact that suggests courage and seriousness in the police response.”

BTW, don’t invite Kirkpatrick to be your designated driver.

FLASHBACK: Blow Up The Administrative State.

Title IX simply reads: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” That’s all.

But from this small, simple statement — there shall be no discrimination on the basis of sex — has been created a regulatory Tower of Babel governing sports teams, student discipline and even, and most dubiously, sexual consent.

One doubts that the members of Congress who drafted Title IX intended to produce what Harvard Law School professors Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk have called ”bureaucratic sex creep,” in which colleges — allegedly to ensure compliance with Title IX’s non-discrimination mandate — micromanage the sex lives of students, and subject them to Orwellian levels of surveillance, investigation and supervision. In essence, students now risk being kicked out of school for not getting express consent for every sexual act, all based on a law that was intended, four decades ago, to end discrimination in college athletics.

This has been done not because Congress ordered it, or even because the Education Department promulgated regulations with notice to the public and an opportunity for comment. Instead, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has issued “guidance,” in the form of letters to colleges and universities stating its opinion as to what the law required. And its opinion represents quite a stretch from what Congress intended, and wrote.

And this happens all over. Time to put it to an end.

A WEEK AGO HE WOULD HAVE BEEN ARRESTED FOR THIS:

OPEN THREAD: How’s your New Year going so far?

I WONDER WHAT DATA THEY WERE ABLE TO GET FROM THE TESLA REGARDING WHO DROVE IT AND WHERE?

Nonetheless, one person was killed — but it was the bomber/driver — and several more injured.

NOT TOO LONG AGO THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN RIOTS. AND THERE SHOULD BE.

THE REGIME IS MORE AFRAID OF ITS OWN CITIZENRY THAN OF ITS NOMINAL ENEMIES:

SO RACIST:

TERRORISM: