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VIRGINIA CLOWN SHOW UPDATE: Insane Summer 2019 Response From Terry McAuliffe on Ralph Northam Blackface Scandal Resurfaces.

Maximum. Cringe. I am not exaggerating in the slightest. Watch:

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I wrote yesterday about how even if Terry McAuliffe bought a new cringe-meter to replace the one that already exploded, the new one likely would have exploded by now, too. Well, I think it’s safe to say that it has indeed exploded.

I don’t know who dug up this video (likely Youngkin’s campaign) but in my opinion, the release of it was brilliant and perfectly timed. This potentially could be the next pivotal point in this race and further turn the tide against McAuliffe.

Though black voters in the state, for the most part, appear to have forgiven Northam and have moved on, seeing McAuliffe so casually dismissive of Northam’s most shameful moment as his state’s CEO and then proclaim that there were no racism issues in Syracuse when he was growing up when we know that’s not true could have the effect of rubbing just enough black voters the wrong way. This could prove catastrophic for McAuliffe considering this race is coming down to the wire.

Will McAuliffe be asked about his comments by local reporters? If so, will he stomp off in a huff as he did earlier this week when he cut an interview short because he thought the reporter “should have asked better questions”?

While McAuliffe is defending governors who dress in blackface and say that parents have no role in their kids’ education, Barack Obama, campaigning for him, is his usual tone-deaf self: Obama tells Virginians we don’t have time for ‘trumped up culture wars’ and ‘fake outrage.’

A GOOD MOVE FROM KENT SYVERUD: A Good Statement on Faculty Speech from Syracuse. “I’m a believer in positive reinforcement, and when university leaders do the right thing they should get credit for doing so. Kent Syverud, the president of Syracuse University and a former law professor, did the right thing. Other university presidents should take notes.”

I note, though, that it takes criticism of leftist faculty to produce such statements. And so does Keith Whittington here:

Syverud was much less vocal when a professor was targeted by campus activists and denounced by members of his senior administration for calling COVID-19 the “Wuhan Flu or the Chinese Communist Party virus.” On that occasion, FIRE had to remind Syracuse about its obligations when professors say controversial things. Far from vocally defending that professor, Syracuse instead suspended him and launched an investigation over whether he should be further sanctioned and perhaps fired, contributing to FIRE awarding Syracuse a “Lifetime Censorship Award.” That professor’s case dragged on for months before Syracuse finally reinstated him.

One hopes that Syracuse has learned its lesson and will now aggressively defend free speech regardless of whether it is off-campus right-wing activists or on-campus left-wing campus activists attacking it.

If you want free speech on campus, it’s sadly probably necessary to attack leftist professors’ statements. The idea of academic freedom basically originated as a means of protecting leftist faculty from the angry bourgeoisie. For a while leftists thought they’d silenced the angry bourgeoisie and could do without academic freedom. I think it’s necessary to remind them that they’re not as safe as they thought. Hey, I don’t make these rules. They did.

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY HAS A PROBLEM: NY Supreme Court judge overturns suspension of Syracuse fraternity, says they ‘did nothing wrong.’

A New York State Supreme Court judge has reversed Syracuse University’s suspension of a fraternity who was initially punished because a guest yelled a racial slur after being at the fraternity house.

According to Syracuse.com, when the fraternity, Alpha Chi Rho, was suspended in 2019, the chancellor for Syracuse University, Kent Syverud said that “substantial evidence” existed which proved that members and guests of the fraternity engaged in racist activities.

Initially, the Syracuse University Appeals Board reversed the decision to suspend the fraternity, but their ruling was invalidated by E. Dolan Evanovich, SU’s senior vice president of enrollment and the student experience.

However, New York Supreme Court Judge Scott DelConte said in his opinion that Syverud was wrong, and Alpha Chi Rho “did nothing wrong.”

“The record is clear: Alpha Chi Rho did nothing wrong,” DelConte wrote in his opinion.

According to DelConte, only one person yelled a racial slur, and that person was not a member of the fraternity, but rather someone who was a guest of a member at the fraternity on the day he made the racial slur. In addition, the remark occurred off-campus.

As I say, there’s something seriously wrong with the administration at Syracuse, which has featured a series of absurd decisions on race- and sex-related issues.

RANKED: THE TOP COLLEGES FOR FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS, ACCORDING TO STUDENTS: Glenn beat me to this (BTW, Tennessee is #11 overall, Go Vols), which is unforgivable since I helped put them together, but this is a HUGE DEAL. 20,000 students surveyed on 55 campuses, with statistically significant samples on all of them. For 17 years people have asked me “so really, where should I send my kid if I care about free speech on campus?” Finally, there’s an objective answer! The top 5:

1. The University of Chicago (no surprise there!)
2. Kansas State University (the sleeper hit)
3. Texas A&M University (ranked best by conservatives, not so well for liberals)
4. University of California, Los Angeles (this one surprised me; I guess I credit Eugene Volokh)
5. Arizona State University (these guys have been getting serious about free speech for a while now)

Bottom 5 shameful dungeon of disgrace:

51. Syracuse University (this is the college I have always told people to avoid if they like free speech)
52. Dartmouth College (alums have cult-like devotion to this school, which is not returned by the administration)
53. Louisiana State University (threw out a female prof for using occasional profanity with grad students, ludicrously calling it “sexual harassment.” Stay far away.)
54. University of Texas – Austin (dedicated to messing with Texas for decades now)
55. DePauw University (ranked #52 by liberals and #55 by conservatives, has somehow created an equal-opportunity nightmare of censorship in rural Indiana)

BOB MCMANUS: Welcome to the Summer of Slay, America.

Shootings in Gotham were running at the rate of one an hour for much of the weekend, with final numbers up in the air. Upstate, 18 people were shot in Albany, two fatally, over three days; 12 hit in Syracuse, including nine at a single party; 10 in Buffalo.

Appalling? Sure. But think of it as the first fruits of criminal-justice “reform.”

To be sure, the Empire State wasn’t unique. In Chicago, police reported 102 shootings over the Father’s Day holiday — 14 fatal, including a 3-year-old boy. But you need a mechanical clicker to keep track of Chicago, so the weekend toll is likely to be higher.

Elsewhere, 11 were reported shot, with one fatality, in both Minneapolis and Detroit — and bullets were flying around Philadelphia, Baltimore and most of the rest of urban America.

While each state is unique, it is fair to look at New York as a laboratory, with Albany’s utterly otherworldly surrender to public-safety nihilism exacerbated by timorous, low-impact policing policies ­embraced at the local level.

Whether the new ways are working depends on your perspective: If the point is to keep the anarchists and activists quiet, in a cynical sort of way, they are. But if they are meant to keep citizens safe, it’s all an ­absurd charade.

Where’s Charles Bronson when you need him?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, STASI EDITION: Syracuse invented evidence to find fraternity guilty of racial slur after investigation cleared them: lawsuit.

When Syracuse University found Alpha Chi Rho collectively responsible for shouting a racial slur at a black female student, it not only ignored the woman’s family but overruled its own appeals board, according a lawsuit by the fraternity last week. . . .

The allegations would mean the administration had continually defamed AXP going back to last fall, when Chancellor Kent Syverud said four members had been placed on interim suspension for “a verbal assault.”

The suit provides details from the past several months that Syracuse does not appear to have previously acknowledged, including that the members were quickly exonerated back in December, owing to video evidence and “consistent” testimony.

Make ’em pay. Also, why is it only fraternities and sports teams that are subjected to collective punishment?

MASKED RACIAL GROUPS IN THE STREETS OF SYRACUSE.

SYRACUSE REMAINS A MESS.

CHANGE: Trump Is Quietly Winning Bigly At The Border.

Before this policy went into effect, illegal immigrant families knew that if they crossed the border and claimed asylum, they’d effectively get a free pass. Immigration officials would release them into the U.S. within 20 days, on the promise that they would show up for their court date months in the future. Few bother to return. This policy was dubbed “Catch and Release” for a reason.

Now, they must wait in Mexico while immigration judges review their cases.

What “Remain in Mexico” revealed is how few asylum seekers have legitimate claims. In fact, judges granted asylum in less than 1% of the more than 10,000 MPP claims resolved so far, according to TRAC Research Center at Syracuse University.

The impact of this program has been little short of profound.

The number of apprehensions at the southwest border plummeted from 144,000 in May 2019 to just 42,649 in November – the last month for which the government has data. The number of families caught crossing illegally went from 84,486 in May to a mere 9,000 in November.

As the El Paso Times put it, “the policy has proved to be a virtual wall.”

But the real wall is quietly going up at a mile per day.