ABOLISH THE IVY LEAGUE: Antisemitic Left-Wing Activists Are Showing Who Is Really in Charge on Ivy League Campuses.

PLAUSIBLE:

Ilhan Omar Paraglides Into Columbia Campus To Lead Protests https://t.co/dw9VL2IkzE pic.twitter.com/0xXer2c974

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 27, 2024

A SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: Court Upholds #TheyLied Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress Award Against Student Who Accused Professor of Sexual Assault.

OPEN THREAD: I do it all for you.

BACK WHEN I WAS ON THE NASA PLANETARY DEFENSE SUBCOMMITTEE, THIS WAS PART OF OUR PURVIEW: ‘Astrobiodefense:’ Thinktank calls for defending Earth from space bugs.

WELL, GOOD: Common Blood Pressure Drug Increases Lifespan And Slows Aging in Animals. I hope it works in humans.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA Astronauts Gear Up for Boeing Starliner’s Groundbreaking Test Flight.

THIS IS HARDLY NEWS: Taking the stairs may up the odds for a longer life. “Folks who regularly climb stairs have a 24% reduced risk of dying from any cause, and a 39% reduced risk of dying from heart disease, compared to those who always take the elevator, researchers found. Stair climbing also is associated with a lower risk of developing heart disease or suffering a heart attack, heart failure or stroke, results show.”

Of course, healthier people are more likely to take the stairs to begin with.

THE EV BUBBLE DEFLATES: Hyundai will build more hybrids to supplement slowing EV demand.

SECRET BALLOTS ALLOW THE SILENT MAJORITY TO SPEAK: Israeli student elected by Columbia for role of student president as protests surge. “Columbia University has elected Israeli student Maya Platek as Columbia student government president for the 2024-2025 school year, the organization Students Supporting Israel (SSI) announced Friday. The election of an Israeli student for the role comes as the Columbia campus experiences an overwhelming wave of anti-Israel protests and encampments. Platek has been determined to speak up for Jewish students on campus as a member of SSI, an organization that, according to its website, aims to allow for a pro-Israel voice on college campuses.”

Bullying is much harder when you can’t identify targets. And the left’s power on campus — and most everywhere else — is based on bullying.

SPACE: Falcon 9 launches Galileo navigation satellites.Falcon 9 launches Galileo navigation satellites.

HMM: Ron Baron Describes Unreleased Tesla FSD.

ROGER KIMBALL: Uncharted territory in court and on campus: The current of viciousness and unthinking sloganeering, so at odds with the stated purpose of these pampered institutions, is breathtaking.

The two big stories du jour are 1) the continuing campus assault on sanity, brought to you by the pro-terrorist “death-to-America-Death-to-Israel” lobby, and 2) the circus of the nationwide legal manhunt against the once and future president of the United States, Donald Trump.

Regarding the former, this video showing two Columbia students displaying their solidarity with brave protestors at NYU sums up one portion of the insanity:

Interviewer: Why are you protesting?
Protester #1: I don’t know. I’m pretty sure there’s something about Israel [turns to friend] Why are we protesting?
Protester #2: I wish I was more educated.
Protester #1: I’m not either.

File that under “Clueless Overprivileged College Ignoramuses” or (apologies to Tennyson) “In the Spring a Young Girl’s Fancy Lightly Turns to Thoughts of Protest.”

Much darker is the current of — well, I was going to say “antisemitism,” but really it is snarling, anti-civilizational hatred, the objects of which are incidentally Jews and Israel, but more broadly are America and “the West” generally. Emblematic was the mob of Yale students on Beinecke Plaza shouting “Viva, Viva Palestina” as they tore down an American flag and cheered when it hit the ground. . . .

Also breathtaking is the whole-of-government assault on one man, Donald Trump. As I write, two big cases are before the Supreme Court. One, hailing from ashes of Enron’s collapse, has to do with whether a statute devised to criminalize the willful destruction of documents can be deployed against people like the January 6 protesters, many of whom were accused of “obstructing an official proceeding,” just as those Enron executives were accused of doing. Except, of course, the cases are wildly different. Many observers expect the Court to find for the defendant, in which case, Donald Trump, too, will see some of the charges against him evaporate.

The other case has to do with presidential immunity. When the issue was raised by Trump, people tended to scoff. But then people began to speculate about what might happen if presidential immunity were circumscribed. Would Barack Obama, say, be open to prosecution for killing two Americans in a drone attack? Would Joe Biden be liable for the murder of Laken Riley, who was killed by an illegal immigrant, present in the country only because of his administration’s border policies? Wouldn’t every past president be open to prosecution by his successor? And would that transform the presidency into a ceremonial office, whose occupants would be overcautious to the point of timidity?

Most observers believe that the Court will find for Trump by a 5-4 or possibly a 6-3 margin. But it will not necessarily be smooth sailing then. It seems likely that the Court will say that the president has immunity — but only for his official acts. Were Trump’s actions with respect to the January 6 jamboree official acts or private acts? Any bets?

Since the case is likely to go back to the Obama-appointed DC judge Tanya Chutkan, we can bet that she will say “private acts” and endeavor to convict him. Trump would than appeal, but the appeal, I believe, would go to a three-judge panel in Washington, i.e., to another thoroughly biased left-wing kangaroo court. Trump could then appeal to the Supreme Court again, but the Court might well refuse to revisit the case. That would bring us well into the fall, maybe past the election. What happens then?

It’s Civilizational Jenga all the way down.

But:

I have a suggestion, though. Why doesn’t the Supreme Court contrive some way to short circuit this appalling vendetta, this unprecedented political persecution of a popular presidential candidate who has the enmity of the regime the the love of the common people? How could they do this? Easy. Impose the world’s greatest change of venue. Be creative. In order to save “Our Democracy,” let the people be the jury. Let the voters decide. It’s a novel idea, I admit, but nothing else has worked.

An idea so crazy, it just might work.

HMM: CNN Poll: Trump maintains lead over Biden in 2024 matchup as views on their presidencies diverge.

TO BE FAIR, IF YOU’RE LIVING NEAR GREEN SPACE YOU’RE PROBABLY RICHER: Study suggests that living near green spaces reduces the risk of depression and anxiety.

But it does suggest that advocates of high-density urban living may be in effect advocating for depression and anxiety. Of course, maybe that’s not a bug, but a feature: Neurosis and the Curley Effect.

Reading all of these pieces I’m seeing a story that goes something like this: Depressed, neurotic people (especially single women) are more likely to support Democrats. Democrats support policies and messaging that produce more depressed, neurotic people, especially single women.

Now maybe this is an accident, but maybe it isn’t. Enter the “Curley Effect.” As this Harvard paper notes, “James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. As a consequence, Boston stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections. . . . We call this strategy—increasing the relative size of one’s political base through distortionary, wealth-reducing policies—the Curley effect. But it is hardly unique to Curley.”

Making the populace (especially women) more fearful, depressed, and neurotic is undoubtedly bad for societal wealth and happiness. But does it yield votes for Democrats? Clearly yes. Are they doing it on purpose?

Cui bono?

HMM: Component of keto diet plus immunotherapy may reduce prostate cancer.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA seeks help from private companies for expensive Mars Sample Return mission.

DOGS ARE THE 21ST CENTURY SUBSTITUTE FOR KIDS: Emotional toll of a stolen dog similar to losing a child, study shows.

THE ATLANTIC:The Unreality of Columbia’s ‘Liberated Zone:’ What happens when genuine sympathy for civilian suffering mixes with a fervor that borders on the oppressive?

Yesterday just before midnight, word goes out, tent to tent, student protester to student protester—a viral warning: Intruders have entered the “liberated zone,” that swath of manicured grass where hundreds of students and their supporters at what they fancy as the People’s University for Palestine sit around tents and conduct workshops about demilitarizing education and and fighting settler colonialism and genocide. In this liberated zone, normally known as Furnald Lawn on the Columbia University quad, unsympathetic outsiders are treated as a danger.

“Attention, everyone! We have Zionists who have entered the camp!” a protest leader calls out. His head is wrapped in a white-and-black keffiyeh. “We are going to create a human chain where I’m standing so that they do not pass this point and infringe on our privacy.”

Privacy struck me as a peculiar goal for an outdoor protest at a prominent university. But it’s been a strange seven-month journey from Hamas’s horrific slaughter of Israelis—the original breach of a cease-fire—to the liberated zone on the Columbia campus and similar standing protests at other elite universities. What I witnessed seemed less likely to persuade than to give collective voice to righteous anger. A genuine sympathy for the suffering of Gazans mixed with a fervor and a politics that could border on the oppressive.

Alternative hypothesis: The sympathy isn’t all that genuine, and the anger isn’t all that righteous.

LATE TO THE PARTY: MIT President’s Statement on the Anti-Israel Students’ Encampment. “Here’s the transcript; on balance, the message seems to me to be correct (though I would be inclined to say that such encampments, if they violate content-neutral rules—as they usually do—should be removed more promptly).”

IT’S A START: Iowa State to close DEI office, eliminate five positions.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Columbia says student who made comments about ‘murdering Zionists’ to administrators has been ‘banned from campus,’ won’t say if he is expelled. That means he wasn’t.

NOTHING SAYS NOTHING TO HIDE LIKE THREATS TO DISCIPLINE WHISTLEBLOWERS: UCLA Med School Launches Review Of ‘Health Equity’ Course But Warns That Whistleblowers Could Be Disciplined.

AMERICAN REFUGEES, TO COIN A PHRASE: Annual Massachusetts Outmigration Hits 39,000, Up 1,100% Over The Last Decade.

HEH:

you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me. pic.twitter.com/hkhdRlBCkj

— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) April 25, 2024