UH HUH. SURE. WHATEVER. I see Elon has not turned off the “bald-faced propaganda” switch at Twitter (yet, hopefully?)

“Voting by mail is safe and secure.” Literally nobody believes this. And I am old enough to remember when it didn’t take days to count votes, because I am older than 20. Live not by lies.

“I’M SICK OF LOSING, I HOPE YOU ARE TOO.” We’re going to see a lot of this in the coming days, along with “how could the polls be so wrong?” But the GOP and conservatives should stop beating themselves up about “losing the election” and start beating themselves up about the fact they have done virtually nothing to ensure the election is legitimate and the votes are real. Meanwhile the Feds have been “fortifying” the crap out of them and refusing to give any details about it (which is totally what you would do if you were on the up-and-up). Consider this: after 2 solid years of nonstop “January 6! Death of democracy! Election denier!” propaganda and censorship, CNN’s exit poll finds that only 63% of voters thought 2020 was a legitimate election:

People know the system is total baloney. Yet the GOP does little or nothing to fix it, even to help itself! At some point, we have to assume this level of loserdom is deliberate.

WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT DIVERSITY ANYWAY? We have to acccept it for real if this country can be made to work. Same with free speech. The overclass is fooling itself by thinking that they can hold a country as diverse as this one together while also telling anyone with slightly different views that they have to shut up or face the consequences.

JON RALSTON: GOP INCREASES LEAD TO 16,000 IN CLARK COUNTY (LAS VEGAS). “I am really surprised by how this turnout is. It is really low…. Is it because it is really low or because the unions are pushing their members to use mail drop boxes? (They are, but it seems unlikely to offset the GOP surge, yes?)” Don’t worry, I am sure we will see a sudden spike in Democrat votes any minute now, probably in very large, round numbers.

Until we have an electoral system with non-laughable security and reliability, there’s no reason to believe the results of any election–not today’s, not 2020’s, and not those to come. (Have to say that here as saying it on social media would get me banned as a “denier.”) The fact that we don’t, even though it’s so easy that countries with far fewer resources do it all the time, proves that our political class doesn’t want honest elections.

DO 48% OF COLLEGE STUDENTS REALLY THINK SPEECH MIGHT SOMETIMES MERIT THE DEATH PENALTY? A recent McLaughlin poll suggests the possibility. On a closer look, probably not. Probably…

IS COLLEGE ACCREDITATION POINTLESS? It’s certainly not living up to its potential. But it may also be one of the few notional limits on abuses at private colleges.

“REPUBLICAN ELECTION PROSPECTS RISE AS INFLATION OVERSHADOWS ABORTION, WSJ POLL FINDS.” Judging by the ads running here in the Raleigh area, the Democrats are running a single-issue campaign, directed solely at women, about how the GOP is going to flatly ban abortion. I am not exaggerating when I say it’s the main focus of 95% of Democrat (and liberal–I was a bit surprised to see the ACLU directly paying for what appeared to be a Planned Parenthood abortion ad) messaging I have seen. I’ve never seen anything like it.

IMPROVING HIGHER ED THROUGH BETTER OPEN-RECORDS LAWS. Colleges too often make a joke of these, perhaps inspired to so do by the federal government, which never met a FOIA record it found inconvenient or embarassing that it couldn’t find a reason to redact or refuse.

ALL MAJOR U.S. COLLEGES TO SUPREME COURT: BANNING AFFIRMATIVE ACTION VIOLATES THE FIRST AMENDMENT. Colleges have finally discovered a policy with a “chilling effect” on speech that they DO think is unconstutional, and, bizarrely, it’s banning racial preferences. Their reasoning is… interesting.

COURT: LICENSE REQUIREMENT FOR SHORT-TERM RENTAL MANAGERS VIOLATES PENNSYLVANIA CONSTITUTION. Great win for the Institute for Justice, and I’m proud that my law firm colleague Samantha Harris (whom the court labeled “entirely credible” — a good quote for your business cards!) and her property manager, Sally Ladd, were the victorious plaintiffs!

“POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY VERSUS CAMPUS AUTONOMY.” Could as easily be put this way: without campus accountability, there will not be political autonomy for campuses. You only get poltical autonomy when everyone thinks you’re doing an OK job.

“PRACTICING WHAT WE PREACH.” “Those of us who believe in freedom and who defend the right of pro-Israel students to express their views must take the difficult tack of also arguing for the very same rights for those who criticize and even condemn Israel. If the principle of free speech is to survive, it has to be authentically applied to all sides.”

TWITTER EMPLOYEES WRITE LETTER TO ELON MUSK DEMANDING CONTINUED EMPLOYMENT, “SAFETY.” Ahahahahaha no.

MOST PLASTICS AREN’T RECYCLABLE, GREENPEACE FINDS. “The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill.” You know what were totally reusable and refillable? The old glass pop bottles you returned to the supermarket, 40 years ago. Plus, sometimes you’d get lucky and get a super old-timey one in the carton (like this).

SO, POLITICO SAYS STACY ABRAMS WAS MAKING UNFOUNDED ALLEGATIONS OF ELECTION FRAUD? SEEMS LIKE A BIG DEAL… “The original complaint included allegations that voting machines were vulnerable to hacking and were switching votes intended for Abrams into votes for Kemp. Fair Fight Action found two voters who said they had to select the button to vote for Abrams four times before the machine’s screen showed a vote for Abrams instead of Kemp. Fair Fight Action removed this allegation in December 2020 in a revised complaint, at the same moment then President Donald Trump was making similar unfounded allegations in his effort to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia.” (Emphasis mine.)

Do you think Politico actually meant to say that Abrams’ allegations were unfounded, or do you think it’s more likely that they so robotically demand fealty to the sacred principles of “Orange Man Bad” that you always have to say Trump’s allegations are unfounded regardless of context? (And yes, I know the story is mostly about funny business with legal fees, but isn’t that pretty much priced in to everything at this point?)

CLERY ACT AND CAMPUS CRIME NUMBERS ARE A MESS. This is a quick look at the UNC system, but it’s the same everywhere, thanks to dueling definitions, confusion about meanings, and attempts to reconcile the minuscule crime reporting numbers with the repeated insistence that there is an epidemic of sexual violence on campus so bad that you’d have to be flatly insane to send your daughters there.

PRIVATE HIGH SCHOOL FORCED TO RECOGNIZE STUDENT’S RIGHTS IN MASSACHUSETTS TITLE IX CASE. High schools and colleges are unanimous in their conviction that contracts are something that happen to someone else. You pay them money (holy crap that’s a lot of money for high school) and they owe you nothing. Too many states and courts allow this. Glad to see Massachusetts isn’t one of them.

CAN COLLEGE WORK WITHOUT TENURE? Cairn University’s president says yes. But would it work everywhere? Without strong protections against academic freedom abuses, I fear the cure might be worse than the disease.

FROM THE U. OF NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOLS: “UPDATED MISSION STATEMENTS, COMRADE!” Weirdly, though (for these days), the news is not uniformly bad, with Appalachian State actually reining in some DEI-speak. But the Board of Governors should really be asking pointed questions about this stuff.

VIRGINIA DEMOCRAT LEGISLATOR TO FLOAT BILL TO CRIMINALLY PROSECUTE PARENTS WHO DON’T AFFIRM THEIR KIDS AS TRANSGENDER. “It could be a felony, it could be a misdemeanor, but we know that CPS charge could harm your employment, could harm their education, because nowadays many people do a CPS database search before offering employment.”

At this point we’re in a race to see whether Russian nukes or deliberately turning the culture war hot destroys this country first.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: YOU CAN PLAY DOOM ON NOTEPAD.EXE NOW. Good, I was sick of playing it on my printer.

“RON SWANSON WOULD NOT BE IMPRESSED.” FIRE is demanding a Pennsylvania county parks & rec department allow a political candidate to collect ballot signatures in a public park or get sued. There is no more basic First Amendment right. The fact that such a threat is necessary is appalling, and is just another piece of evidence that at every level, too many government actors have become completely dismissive of even our most obvious rights.

TIME TO KILL THE LSAT? I have a hard time imagining that I did better on it after college than I would have before college, or that it measured anything different from the SAT – but with all the crummy lawyers out there, I am not sure making it still easier to become a lawyer is a great idea.

However, it’s undeniable that the law has become FAR too complicated for average people to navigate without constantly risking being totally bamboozled. It may be time for us to license a class of “lawyer techs” that can charge prices people will actually pay for routine yet complicated issues.

FIRE COMES OUT AGAINST (NOT SO) SOFT CENSORSHIP BY PAYMENT PROCESSORS. “When payment processing services act as political hall monitors or moral arbiters deciding what speech and viewpoints are out of bounds, they present a grave threat to free expression.”

I can tell you, from working there for 19 years (I was executive director, now I’m a Senior Fellow after moving to private practice), FIRE does not take positions like this lightly. We care deeply about private organizations’ right to expression, or we wouldn’t be free speech advocates. But the danger presented by the concerted efforts to choke off dissent in this nation, through means both private and public, is hard to overstate. When I started at FIRE in 2003, the only place Americans were likely to experience censorship was a college campus, and the victims were justifiably outraged about it. Thanks to Big Tech thought policing, hundreds of thousands (maybe millions?) of victims each year are added to that total. Those who think this can continue forever are fools who will drive us this country off a cliff if they don’t stop ASAP.

AT DAVIDSON COLLEGE: “FAILING INTRODUCTORY ECONOMICS.” Though given that not even Western governments can grasp supply and demand anymore, maybe the students are just following the trend.