PUSHBACK WORKS: ATF Backs Down (For Now) on Big Ammo Ban: Agency admits “the vast majority of the comments received to date are critical” of the plan.
March 10, 2015
CAMP OF THE SAINTS ISN’T JUST A NOVEL: Senior Greek Official Threatens To ‘Flood’ Europe With Migrants, Jihadists If Bailout Ends. Just treat them as invaders, because that’s the truth.
YES, BUT FEMINISTS ALWAYS CLAIM “SPECIAL VICTIM” STATUS. IT HELPS DISGUISE THAT MOST OF THEIR COMPLAINTS ARE FUNDAMENTALLY TRIVIAL, AND ACTIVATES MALE WHITE KNIGHTS. Cathy Young: All writers, not just feminists, are targets on the Web.
Internet harassment of women, especially feminists, has emerged as a major cause for concern in the past year. Last month, Brooklyn-based writer Michelle Goldberg published an op-ed at washingtonpost.com whose headline speaks for itself: “Feminist writers are so besieged by online abuse that some have begun to retire.” But is this a genuine issue that disproportionately affects feminist women, or a plea for special sympathy and privilege? . . .
It is true that cyberspace can be a toxic environment. Political arguments easily turn to nasty personal attacks — and in some cases, to harassment and threats. Whether any of this is specific to women or to feminists is another question. Women are more likely to be targeted for sexualized threats (and more likely to perceive them as frightening). However, a Pew Research Center study last year found that online threats of physical violence are more often directed at men, and both sexes are equally likely to report experiencing “sustained harassment” on the Internet.
Yeah, but pointing that out blows the narrative. Plus: “Feminist complaints about online abuse often seem to conflate stalking and threats with general nastiness, or even harsh criticism. This is especially ironic given that the same feminists often engage in online behavior that qualifies as verbally abusive.” Yes, even not-so-harsh criticism gets called “harassment.”
THE MILLENIAL’S GUIDE to reaching adulthood. Shouldn’t this have come out a decade or so ago?
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Quincy, Illinois, September 11, 2009. Taken with the Panasonic Lumix LX-3.
HILLARY’S STORY DOESN’T ADD UP: Hillary said she emailed with Bill, but the thing is … Bill Clinton doesn’t use email.
Plus, a reader writes: “Hillary said that server was first made for President Clinton and that it’s being guarded by the Secret Service. That sounds like the taxpayers funded its purchase, which makes it public property, and they are certainly paying for its protection.”
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE: Man Cleared of Rape Charge Speaks in NC9 Exclusive. “Bradshaw said it was tough for him to be away from those family members who supported him while he was incarcerated for eight months. His attorney Brandy Spurgin said it was a good feeling to hear the evidence exonerated her client. Both said it was important for both sides of the story to be heard.” 8 months in jail on a made up charge. Plus, problems for the believe the women argument:
“We did open records requests. There was a false report conviction where she had been convicted of filing a false rape report before. There was also a tampering with evidence conviction,” said Spurgin about the woman’s convictions in Florida. “When we got the reports and talked to officials in those jurisdictions, we realized that she left a trail of chaos everywhere she went.”
For Bradshaw, it’s now about focusing on his family and moving forward.
“I would like to explore possibilities into what I could do to make sure this doesn’t happen again to somebody,” said Bradshaw. “I feel a little nervous for anyone that honestly bumps into her, simply because this isn’t a one-time thing, history has shown.”
Bradshaw said that he is now applying for jobs to help support his family, but he won’t be going back into the bar-tending business.
His attorney said they will discuss the possibility of filing charges against his accuser. The accuser said Bradshaw was impersonating a Marine, but Bradshaw said he actually served in the U.S. Marine Corps for three years.
Given this history, charges probably should never have been brought.
FASTER, PLEASE: Protection Without a Vaccine.
Last month, a team of scientists announced what could prove to be an enormous step forward in the fight against H.I.V.
Scientists at Scripps Research Institute said they had developed an artificial antibody that, once in the blood, grabbed hold of the virus and inactivated it. The molecule can eliminate H.I.V. from infected monkeys and protect them from future infections.
But this treatment is not a vaccine, not in any ordinary sense. By delivering synthetic genes into the muscles of the monkeys, the scientists are essentially re-engineering the animals to resist disease. Researchers are testing this novel approach not just against H.I.V., but also Ebola, malaria, influenza and hepatitis.
I wonder if resistance will develop?
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Liberalized Gun Laws Coming To Tennessee? I still want campus carry.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Obama Has a $100M Plan to Fill the Tech Talent Shortage.
At its core, TechHire aims to convince local governments, businesses, and individuals that a four-year degree is no longer the only way to gain valuable tech skills.
“It turns out it doesn’t matter where you learned code, it just matters how good you are at writing code,” Obama said. “If you can do the job, you should get the job.”
That’s an idea that training startups like Codecademy and General Assembly, as well as online course companies like Coursera, have been pushing for years. Now, the White House is urging businesses and local governments to embrace that concept, as well.
In Silicon Valley, the idea of non-traditional training as a viable alternative to college is a familiar concept. In the rest of corporate America, not so much.
All is proceeding as I have foreseen. And this is terrible news for four-year institutions if it takes off. Kind of ungrateful of Obama, since higher ed was his biggest source of donations and manpower, but hey, expiration dates. . . .
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IF REPUBLICANS WERE SMART, THEY’D RUN AGAINST THE MPAA AND THE RIAA: MPAA Abusing DMCA Takedowns To Attempt A Poor Man’s SOPA.
The old guard in Hollywood, so frightened of an internet they don’t understand, tends to be rather transparently buffoonish in its strategies to try to break the internet. For a few years, the MPAA was totally focused on a “three strikes” strategy — believing that if people were getting kicked off the internet, that it would lead them to stop file sharing and go back to paying large sums of money for bad movies. That plan failed miserably. The followup idea was even worse: known as full site blocking, the idea was to convince countries to pass laws that would force ISPs, search engines, domain registrars and others to completely block access not just to infringing content, but to entire sites that the legacy copyright industries deemed “bad.”
I say, repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts, crack down on Hollywood Accounting, and force record companies to pay musicians what they owe them. Play your cards right and you can even split the talent from the money men on these issues. Is the GOP that smart? I’d have to say . . . clearly not.
ELIZABETH PRICE FOLEY AND DAVID RIVKIN: Arizona Redistricting Case Could Signal The Future Of Legislative Standing.
VIDEO: Watch The Trailer For ‘Tomorrowland.’
Related: Moe Lane: So, the new ‘Tomorrowland’ Trailer. It’s very… Bob Heinlein. “In fact, the entire thing looks pretty damned Heinleinian, mid-Campbell era: heroic engineers, technophilia, and the primacy of competence. Whether it also shares in Heinlein’s characteristic optimism remains to be seen. I certainly hope that they can manage the trick. Also: giant fighting robots. They really should have put that in the first trailer.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Emory Provost: Law Schools Are in a Death Spiral. Well, we’re having a good year at the University of Tennessee College of Law. But that’s not reflective of the general trend.
ROBERT SHIBLEY: Censorship can’t cure racism of Oklahoma frat: OU must rely on marketplace of ideas over mandates for addressing race, religious issues.
Related: Two Oklahoma Students Expelled For Racist Chant. Well, to be fair, OU President David Boren is a former Democratic Senator, so you can’t expect him to understand the Constitution.
DO NOT RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. EMBRACE THE MACHINE: Philip K. Dick’s Androids: The blurry line between men and machines.
I SUSPECT THE REAL QUESTIONS WILL BE SOFTBALLS, CAREFULLY PRE-WRITTEN BY HILLARY’S STAFF: Ashe Schow: 18 questions for Hillary Clinton at her press conference. But these will provide a good comparison.
UPDATE: Politico: Clinton press conference threatens to be a media fiasco.
RICHARD EPSTEIN: ObamaCare’s Tangled Web. “The hard question is whether it is the job of a court to ratify the sins of a government agency, given the dreadful precedent it would create for all future cases. The better choice, on balance, seems for the Court to strike down the IRS regulation and for Congress to work out some fix.”
EUGENE VOLOKH ON THE OKLAHOMA FRATERNITY SCANDAL: No, a public university may not expel students for racist speech. This should be obvious, but I’ve been surprised how few people have been pointing it out.
IN THE MAIL: From Jim Robbins, The Man Who Planted Trees: A Story of Lost Groves, the Science of Trees, and a Plan to Save the Planet.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 670.
IN THE WASHINGTON POST, some thoughts on my USA Today column on prosecutors from Radley Balko.
SOCIALISM ALWAYS STARTS WITH THE SAME PROMISES, AND ENDS WITH THE SAME EXCUSES AND ACCUSATIONS: Kevin Williamson: The Left’s Mess In Venezuela:
Venezuela had a good run of it for about five minutes there, at least in public-relations terms. When petroleum prices were booming, all it took was a few gallons of heating oil from Hugo Chávez to buy the extravagant praise of House members, with Representative Chaka Fattah (D., Philadelphia) issuing statements praising Venezuela’s state-run oil company “and the Venezuelan people for their benevolence.”
Lest anybody feel creeped out by running political errands for a brutal and repressive caudillo, Joseph Kennedy — son of Senator Robert Kennedy — proclaimed that refusing the strongman’s patronage would be “a crime against humanity.” Kennedy was at the time the director of Citizens Energy, which had a contract to help distribute that Venezuelan heating oil — Boss Hugo was a brute, but he understood American politics.
Celebrities came to sit at his feet, with Sean Penn calling him a “champion” of the world’s poor, Oliver Stone celebrating him as “a great hero,” Antonio Banderas citing his seizure of private businesses as a model to be emulated in the rest of the world, Michael Moore praising his use of oil for political purposes, Danny Glover celebrating him as a “champion of democracy.” His successor, Nicolás Maduro, continued in the Chávez vein, and even as basics such as food and toilet paper disappeared the American Left hailed him as a hero, with Jesse Myerson, Rolling Stone’s fashionable uptown communist, calling his economic program “basically terrific.”
Some of the more old-fashioned liberals at The New Republic voiced concern about Venezuela’s sham democracy, its unlimited executive authority, political repression, the hunting down of government critics, the stacking of elections and the government’s perpetrating violence inside polling places — but Myerson insisted that Venezuela’s “electoral system’s integrity puts the U.S.’s to abject shame.” Never mind that opposition leaders there are hauled off to military prison after midnight raids. Vice President Biden, who can always be counted on to cut straight to the heart of any political question, ran into Maduro in Brazil and, noting the potentate’s thick mane, commented: “If I had your hair, I’d be president of the United States.” Tragically for the Sage of Delaware, hair transplants don’t work that way.
That is all going down the memory hole. The Obama administration has announced economic sanctions on Venezuela’s rulers and its intelligence agents, citing the “erosion of human-rights guarantees” – erosion, as though this were something new, as though Hugo Chávez hadn’t been a tyrant back when President Obama’s ally Representative Fattah was carrying his political water all over the eastern seaboard. In the New York Times’ account of Venezuela’s woes and Maduro’s misrule, there is no mention at all of the critical role the American Left played in lending legitimacy to Chavismo, of the so-called liberals and progressives who denounced legitimate protests against Maduro’s brutality as nefarious U.S.-backed coup attempts, who remained — and remain — silent on the regime’s censorship, political repression, torture, and economic incompetence.
Memory holes go with leftism, too.
TRUESBURY: Regrets, I’ve Had A Few. . .
CAROLINE GLICK: Why It’s Foolish To Trust The US Security Umbrella. It’s more like one of those gauzy parasol-things nowadays.
SOME GOOD NEWS: Tennessee shoots up 20 places in U.S. News law school rankings. Honestly, I think the main difference is that they’ve cracked down on cheating by other schools. When they started cheating, we dropped, relatively. Now that they’ve (mostly) stopped, we’ve rebounded.
Still, together with our explosive increase in applicants, this is good news.
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ED DRISCOLL: Apocalypse Newark.
ASHE SCHOW: Hillary Clinton tries to reverse history and be seen as women’s champion.
It took awhile, but it appears people are coming around to the fact that even though Hillary Clinton is trying to position herself as a defender of women’s rights, she really is no champion.
Two weeks ago, Hillary revealed that her presumed 2016 presidential campaign would be based on the fact that she is a woman. Almost no one seemed to notice.
Now, after three weeks of bad headlines involving donations from foreign governments with abysmal human rights records, gender pay gaps and an e-mail scandal, some in the media appear to be second-guessing her woman card credentials.
Amy Chozick of the New York Times published an article that appeared online Sunday titled “Hillary Clinton faces test of record as women’s advocate.” Her point is that as Clinton tries to “reintroduce” herself to voters as a champion of women’s rights, her namesake foundation takes money from foreign governments that deny women basic human rights.
Saudi Arabia, for example, has given the Clinton Foundation $10 million since 2001. In 2011, the State Department — still under Hillary — denounced Saudi Arabia for its “lack of equal rights for women and children.” As Chozick noted, common abuses against women in Saudi Arabia include “violence against women, human trafficking and gender discrimination.”
Hey, nobody’s perfect, and with the Clintons forgiveness is always available for a fee. Related: Does Hillary think America-bashing is necessary to discuss global women’s problems? Whatever brings in the foreign money.
Plus: Hillary Clinton is not as strong as media, Democrats would have you believe. Well, to be fair, she’s probably strong enough to beat Jeb.
CROWDFUNDING SITES SEEM PRETTY QUICK TO CENSOR: Challenge to California Prostitution Law Banned by Crowdfunding Site GoFundMe. Though “Operation Choke Point,” the illegal Justice Department assault on businesses that it dislikes, may be at fault.
NEWS FROM MY BACKYARD: Young Republican Explores Primary vs. Scott DesJarlais.
Tennessee Rep. Scott DesJarlais was an unlikely survivor in his 2014 Republican primary, but his next electoral challenge may already be on the horizon.
Grant Starrett, a young aide on both of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns, is contacting donors in advance of a potential run in the 4th District, according to a GOP insider.
DesJarlais was first elected in 2010 when he defeated Rep. Lincoln Davis, a Democrat, in the GOP wave. Accusations about DesJarlais having affairs with patients and encouraging a now ex-wife to have an abortion surfaced prior to his 2012 re-election, which he won with 56 percent.
Last cycle, state Sen. Jim Tracy was a credible threat to DesJarlais in the primary, the congressman’s first since the revelations. But Tracy failed to close the deal with Republican voters. DesJarlais portrayed Tracy as too moderate, then the dynamics of the race changed less than a month before the August primary when he revealed he had cancer. DesJarlais won the primary by less than 50 votes.
Starrett, 27, is vice president and special counsel for Lion Real Estate Group, according to his LinkedIn profile, and former president of Tennesseans for Judicial Accountability. The Stanford and Vanderbilt law school graduate worked on coalitions for the Romney campaign in 2012 and was chairman of Students for Mitt in 2008. (Starrett offered his advice to Republicans in a post-election piece in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.)
Against DesJarlais, Starrett would try and bridge the conservative and establishment camps within the Republican Party. Starrett founded the Stanford Conservative Society, was president of the Federalist Society at Vanderbilt and was an early contributor to Texas Republican Ted Cruz in his competitive 2012 GOP Senate primary with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. But Starrett also has a foot in the establishment camp after two Romney campaigns.
It remains to be seen whether the first-time candidate can raise the money necessary to defeat an incumbent. But Starrett could also attract outside help.
I met Starrett some years ago when I spoke at Vanderbilt. He seems like a good guy, but this is the first I’ve heard of this campaign getting underway.
UPDATE: From the comments: “I went to Paul Ryan’s 29 birthday party on the hill in 1999. He told me he had trouble getting in the house gym b/c nobody believed he was a Congressman. Starrett will be the same age as Mr. Ryan was then.”
AND THIS IS WHY SERIOUS PROBLEMS SHOULD BE HANDLED BY OUTSIDE LAW ENFORCEMENT, NOT CAMPUS AUTHORITIES: UT athletics accused of influencing student discipline.
ROLL CALL: Republicans Not Rushing to Criticize Menendez.
Sen. Mark S. Kirk became the latest Republican to suggest reports of corruption charges against Sen. Robert Menendez are the result of “politically motivated” leaks by the Justice Department.
Echoing speculation from Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Kirk told reporters Monday night that timing of the news about a pending indictment for the New Jersey Democrat could be related to efforts by Menendez to rally support within his party for an Iran sanctions bill.
“Bob Menendez has been an excellent partner for me on the Iran stuff, and I’m worried now by leaking stuff [from] Justice it’s politically motivated to silence Bob for his work on Iran, which he should be praised for,” said Kirk. The pair introduced the Iran Nuclear Weapon Free Act of 2015, a measure that would impose sanctions on Iran only if the nation fails to reach an agreement by deadline.
Asked if he suspected political motivation, Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain said, “I’d love to assume it, but I really don’t know it. I honestly don’t know enough, I just can’t comment on it.”
The Arizona Republican said he admires and respects Menendez for the way he conducted his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. McCain said the leak reminded him of the scandal that forced decorated Gen. David Petraeus to resign as head of the CIA.
When you’ve got a politicized Department of Justice, everything about the Department of Justice is political.
DON’T LIKE NEWS? Crowdsource your own. Ezra Levant is the Andrew Breitbart of Canada. “All of this should scare the heck out of the mainstream media, in any country. Here in America, we are seeing the dinosaur media with record low viewership, while alternative online news sources are thriving. No longer do people have to rely on the traditional gatekeepers of media. And as The Rebel in Canada is showing, people will help pay for quality, accurate journalism. This is a fantastic thing that should, and will, be replicated, a lot.”
YA THINK? Poll: Voters see Hillary and Jeb as old hat. And some GOP news:
The poll also showed largely positive perceptions of Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Fifty three percent of voters said they could back Walker, compared to only 17 percent that said they could not. Fifty six percent said they could support Rubio, while 26 percent could not.
Those two candidates sported the largest margins of potential support. Bush had only seven percentage points between those who said they could support him and those who couldn’t. Donald Trump, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) all had significantly more voters say they could not back them.
Stay tuned. And, of course, all is proceeding as I have foreseen.
March 9, 2015
WHEN THEY WROTE CALIFORNIA MAN, I DON’T THINK THIS GUY WAS WHO THEY HAD IN MIND: Calif. man arrested after reportedly seeking entry at Y-12, ORNL.
A 24-year-old California man was arrested Friday evening after reportedly seeking entry to a Y-12 facility and then later at a security portal at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
According to a report released by the Oak Ridge Police Department, Rishi Chatterjee Malakar of Fremont, Calif. was detained by police for investigation and subsequently interviewed by special agents of the FBI and the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General. He was arrested on a charge of driving on a suspended license.
Police responded to a call at Y-12’s New Hope Center at about 6:22 p.m. Friday “after a male was found attempting to enter the building via a rear door,” the report stated.
Though to be fair, Oak Ridge is a place where the jive is really cool.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE NARRATIVE: NBC News Reporter Maria Shriver Lies about Lack of GOP Leadership at Selma.
HE’S WHERE BUSH WAS IN 2007, BASICALLY: Even a plurality of Democrats want to move on from Obama. By 2023, will the New York Times be cropping Obama out of front-page photos? “Democrats ages 18 to 29, surprisingly, tend to disagree that the next Democratic nominee must pledge to continue down the course set by Obama. Those ages 30 to 44 strongly disagree with this assertion. Only 33 percent of Democratic voters in their 30s and early 40s think the next Democratic nominee must be an Obama Democrat. Similarly, voters who make less than $50,000 are not thrilled about a third term for Obama.”
CHRIS WALLACE TO LANNY DAVIS: Do You Ever Get Tired Of Cleaning Up Clinton Messes?
IT’S A POTEMKIN CANDIDACY ALL THE WAY DOWN: “She took no questions. When she sat down to lead more informal conversations with invited speakers, participants appeared to be reading from teleprompters.”
Where’d she get the Chairman-Mao-Meets-Star-Trek outfit?
UPDATE: From the comments:
Hillary Clinton and Melinda Gates are giving advice to young girls on how to become successful, independent women?……
So, did they make a joking reference to “Marry the right guy” or did everybody just agree to totally ignore that, and how could anyone read the teleprompters with that giant elephant in the room blocking the view?
Heh.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: The Law Schools That Most Goosed Their U.S. News Ranking With School-Funded Jobs.
HE’S SO UNHIP, WHEN YOU SAY DYLAN, HE THINKS YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT DYLAN THOMAS. Whoever he was.
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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: States Are Slashing College Budgets and Raising Tuition.
The proposals are part of a decades-long shift of making students pay for an increasing share of postsecondary education, leading to tuition increases at public institutions that outpace those at private schools. They come as a diploma, a driver of social and economic mobility that fueled the country’s post-war boom, is more important than ever to both individual and state prosperity.
“When we’re saying more and more Americans need to have this education, we’re pricing it so that the vast group that has never had it before can’t afford it,” said George Pernsteiner, president of the State Higher Education Executive Officers association.
Two-thirds of the 165 million U.S. jobs in 2020 will require education beyond high school, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. In 1973, fewer than a third did.
Students and families are shouldering a bigger share of the burden. Tuition accounted for about 48 percent of public higher-education revenue in 2013, the latest year for which data are available, according to Pernsteiner’s organization, which is based in Boulder, Colorado. That’s double what it was in 1988.
The process has gone on for decades, driven largely by the fact that entitlement and wealth-transfer programs (ironically, overwhelmingly supported by the professoriate) get higher priority with politicians than higher education spending because they’re more effective vote-buying tools. By supporting a welfare state, academics created budgetary competition that they can’t beat.
FASTER PLEASE: Arming the Immune System Against Cancer.
21ST CENTURY HOUSING: Stylish Low-Cost Houses Designed for Singles.
ONE REASON WHY SUPERBUGS ARE OUTRUNNING ANTIBIOTIC DEVELOPMENT: “In 2002, the FDA established new rules for the clinical trials used to test new antibiotics—doubling the number of patients required, thus making drug development harder and more expensive.”
FASTER, PLEASE: Peer-to-Peer Wireless Is Increasing Competition Worldwide.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: An Easier Way to Brown Meat.
WEAPON OF MASS INSTRUCTION: A Bookmobile Tank.
WELL, IT’S A BETTER FACE THAN RON PAUL’S, YOU HAVE TO ADMIT: Will Belle Knox really be the face of Libertarian victory? “I, for one, would be interested to hear her thoughts on Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek.”
CRONY CORPORATISM: Mark Cunningham: Clinton, Inc. Is What’s Wrong With America. “It’s about getting stinking rich from the inside connections forged in a life of public service. It’s about using your ‘charity’ and your high government office as adjuncts of your political machine. It’s about refusing to play by the rules even as you want to set the rules for everyone else. . . . The great irony here is last month’s news from the Washington Post: Hillary’s consultants are busy working out her themes for 2016. Apparently, a big one is going to be ‘pushing for economic fairness.’”
IN THE MAIL: From Vincent L. Inserra, C-1 and the Chicago Mob.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 669.
BYRON YORK: Does Hillary email flap mean trouble ahead for White House? “So: Obama didn’t know, even though White House officials exchanged emails with Clinton. Is that possible?”
WELL, YES: The Modern Education System is Anti-Boy:
Perhaps because they can be so insufferable, teenage boys are often marked down. The OECD found that boys did much better in its anonymised tests than in teacher assessments. The gap with girls in reading was a third smaller, and the gap in maths—where boys were already ahead—opened up further. In another finding that suggests a lack of even-handedness among teachers, boys are more likely than girls to be forced to repeat a year, even when they are of equal ability.
What is behind this discrimination? One possibility is that teachers mark up students who are polite, eager and stay out of fights, all attributes that are more common among girls.
That’s why we need my proposed Title-IX-style legislation to impose gender parity among K-12 teachers.
IT’S POTEMKIN BIOS ALL THE WAY DOWN: Flashback: Obama claims 1965 Selma march led to his birth . . . in 1961. My dad was there marching at Selma in 1965. Mitt Romney’s dad was there too, marching alongside MLK. Where was Barack’s dad in 1965?
And for that matter, why were Bill and Hillary Clinton no-shows at Selma this weekend, choosing instead to party with Pussy Riot in Miami?
FOLLOWING OBAMA’S LEAD BY IGNORING LAWS THEY DON’T LIKE: Sledding as a Revolutionary Act: The children who defied the rules to play in the snow on Capitol Hill stand in a grand American tradition. Actually, of course, it’s different when people entrusted with political power break the laws.
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KURT SCHLICHTER TO UNHAPPY REPUBLICANS: Knock Off The Loser Talk. This Fight Hasn’t Even Begun.
RELAX. WE HAVE TOP MEN ON THIS. TOP. MEN. Austria is fast becoming Europe’s latest debt nightmare. No problem. Just kick that can down the road again.
#WARONMEN: Prof. Starr’s research shows large unexplained gender disparities in federal criminal cases.
If you’re a criminal defendant, it may help—a lot—to be a woman. At least, that’s what Prof. Sonja Starr’s research on federal criminal cases suggests. Prof. Starr’s recent paper, “Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases,” looks closely at a large dataset of federal cases, and reveals some significant findings. After controlling for the arrest offense, criminal history, and other prior characteristics, “men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do,” and “[w]omen are…twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted.” This gender gap is about six times as large as the racial disparity that Prof. Starr found in another recent paper.
You would have thought that such a huge gender disparity would have gotten more attention. Well, no, not really . . .
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Banning the American flag? Why UC Irvine flap might be glimpse of future.
A decision by the student body government of the University of California at Irvine to ban the display of all flags – including the United States flag – has been vetoed.
According to the Associated Press, the university’s executive cabinet has voted to overturn the ban, which prompted outrage nationwide and led one state legislator to consider an amendment to the California constitution to ensure the American flag could be flown on the campuses of state schools.
On one hand, the now-vetoed decision to ban the American flag had the feel of student government run amok, as budding iconoclasts tried to make a statement about the moral complexities they’re learning in History 101. Flags are “flown in instances of colonialism and imperialism” and they “serve as symbols of patriotism or weapons for nationalism,” the statement explaining the original ban noted.
Yet the move, short-lived though it was, speaks to more than an only-in-California spasm of 20-something intellectual angst. More broadly, it points to a generational shift in the notion of what patriotism is.
To the extent — probably small — that this is true, it’s the Gramscian Long March bearing fruit. But I think that when people don’t like things that happen on campus, they should feel free to go to the campuses and protest them. Burst the bubble: The protest thing works both ways. I think a nice Rolling Thunder-style flag-decked motorcycle protest through the UC Irvine campus would send the message that there are a lot of people who feel differently than the SJW-dominated student government. As our President says, get in their face.
FRONTIERS IN GENDER FLUIDITY: Planet Fitness cancels woman’s membership after her complaints of transgender woman in locker room.
A Midland County woman’s gym membership was canceled after she refused to stop telling fellow gym members “a man” was using the woman’s locker room.
Yvette Cormier said the incident occurred Saturday, Feb. 28, when she entered the women’s locker room at the Planet Fitness location at 701 Joe Mann Boulevard in Midland.
“I was blocked, because a man was standing there,” Cormier said. “It freaked me out because, why is a man in here?”
Cormier said an employee at the front desk told her that the individual identifies as a woman.
After taking her complaints to Planet Fitness’ corporate office, Cormier said she was told that the gym was a “no judgement zone” and they would not tell the individual in question to stay out of the women’s locker room. The person has not been identified.
The slogan “Judgement Free Zone” is regularly used by Planet Fitness.
A statement released by McCall Gosselin, public relations director for Planet Fitness, states that members can use the locker room corresponding with their personal gender identity.
Since gender identity is fluid nowadays, I guess I’ll just use the women’s locker room on days when I feel like a woman, and the men’s on days when I feel like a man. Who are you to question me, bigots?
THE HILL: 2016′s most vulnerable senators. Most of them are Republicans, which is why the GOP is playing it so safe now. Not clear, though, that playing it safe is smart.
AMY OTTO ASKS THE KEY HILLARY QUESTION: “What glass ceiling did she crack?”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: ABA May Prohibit Reporting Law School-Funded Jobs as Full-Time, Long-Term Bar Passage-Required Jobs. That makes sense, though I’m sure people will find another way to cheat.
March 8, 2015
STEALTH GUN CONTROL: LaPierre: ‘Next 700 days are the most dangerous’ for 2nd Amendment.
Maybe we should all just do like Obama — ignore laws we don’t like, and then viciously attack anyone who tries to enforce them.
UH OH: Did Attorney General Eric Holder Use Personal Email Address? Much more here.
WHY DOES SENATOR KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND hate young men?
ED DRISCOLL: Peak Millennial Narcissism Reached. That said, it’s a pretty good diagnosis of current media culture. . . .
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Judge Denies Request to Remove DA From Rape Case Over Allegations of Bias.
Allegations of bias and misconduct on the part of Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller have not convinced a judge to remove her from a felony rape and trespassing case.
In court documents filed yesterday, defense attorney Sean McGraw accused Parks Miller of creating “a grave appearance of bias” by exchanging hundreds of text messages with Centre County Judge Bradley Lunsford over the past several months. He claimed the texts reflect an unprofessional relationship that prejudiced the court against his client Justin Blake, who faces felony charges of rape, assault, trespassing and burglary.
McGraw asked visiting Clinton County Judge J. Michael Williamson (who is now presiding over the case) to remove Parks Miller as the lead prosecuter, to force Lunsford and Parks Miller to have their phones inspected to determine the contents of the text messages, to dismiss the rape and sexual assault charges, to lower Blake’s bail and to allow Blake a new preliminary hearing. . . .
In an unrelated story, Parks Miller has been accused of forging a judge’s signature on a fake court order, which she denies. The forgery allegations were made through an affidavit signed by Michelle Shutt, a former paralegal to Parks Miller. McGraw, in addition to his role in the Blake case, also serves as one of Shutt’s attorneys.
Multiple sources say the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General is investigating the forgery allegations, but the OAG has repeatedly declined to comment on the status or existence of any investigation.
I’m beginning to feel skeptical of our justice system.
2016: Former IRS Commissioner Mark Everson Enters the 2016 Presidential Race. “Mr. Everson will have to overcome a tawdry sex scandal that resulted in his firing from his position as President and CEO of the American Red Cross.”
I’m waiting for the Ross Perot-type who’s supposed to siphon off votes from gullible disenchanted Republicans and hand the election to Hillary, but I don’t think this is the guy.
WELL, THAT’S WEIRD. I WONDER WHAT COULD EXPLAIN IT? An incredibly shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status. “Just two weeks after Mozilla’s top Firefox executive said that rumors of its demise were “dead wrong,” the iconic browser dropped another three-tenths of a percentage point in analytics firm Net Applications’ tracking, ending February with 11.6%. That was Firefox’s lowest share since July 2006, when the browser had been in the market for less than two years. . . . In the last 12 months, Firefox’s user share — an estimate of the portion of all those who reach the Internet via a desktop browser — has plummeted by 34%. Since Firefox crested at 25.1% in April 2010, Firefox has lost 13.5 percentage points, or 54% of its peak share.”
It’s a mystery, I guess.
SILICONE: A SAFER ALTERNATIVE TO WEDDING RINGS?
AT AMAZON, deals galore in Training & Fitness.
And shop the Amazon Emergency Prep Store. Plus, Emergency & Long-Term Storage Food Deals.
Plus, Generators and Portable Power for Storm Season. I’m happy to have my generator.
WELL, YOU KNOW, NOT EVERY STARTUP WORKS OUT. First Groupon Founder, Now Tour Guide.
ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: A Better World, Run by Women: Male biology has brought the world war, corruption and scandal. Women are poised to lead us to a better place.
I know this is just more pro-Hillary battlespace prep — but Hillary herself is the best argument against this gauzy, dishonest thinking. And for that matter, it takes a peculiar sort of person to look at America today and conclude that its problem is too much testosterone.
READER BOOK PLUG: From John Reisinger, The Confessions of Gonzalo Guerrero, based on the true story of the first European to “invade” Mexico.
BUT CAN YOU FIGHT WITH IT? What are the benefits of practicing tai chi?
“NEW MODEL” MENTORING: I think the drinks and the cigars are key.
IN THE MAIL: Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Mohu Leaf 50 Amplified Indoor HDTV Antenna. With one of these you can actually watch TV for free! What will they think of next? Also handy when your cable or satellite goes out in a storm, which is why I ordered one.
And, also today only: 70% Off Lightweight Coats & Jackets.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 668.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:
And don’t forget the self-described “bacon-eating vegan” who was left shocked and tearful upon discovering that her degrees in “social justice studies” and “gender studies” have zero value in the job market. “My degrees mean NOTHING,” tweeted she. “I don’t even know how to process the reality that is my life now.”
Sorry, they took your money and left you with nothing. It happens.
Think stocks haven’t gone high enough? Then you perhaps you should consider becoming one of the dwindling number of regular CNBC viewers, the network that’s never met a bubble it thought it couldn’t pump just a little bit more (and there’s a political component- see below).
Flying in the face of NBC’s frenzied buying panic push is a new warning from billionaire Mark Cuban: he sees the current situation as “worse than the tech bubble of 2000.”
That’s why yesterday’s segment imploring consumers to take out seven-year auto loans instead of a more typical duration and use the down payment to instead buy stocks seems especially brazen. Are there enough suckers willing to take this “advice”?
Well, we’ll know that there aren’t when the market starts to plunge.







