June 2, 2025

MONEY MATTERS:  If you read my Roots of Wokeness article a few years ago, you might have come away thinking that it would make a bad situation worse for Congress to increase the amount of money a plaintiff can get for a Title VII violation.  Well, I just learned this was actually proposed in 2024.  From what I can tell, the bill was not re-introduced this year.  Maybe that’s the Trump effect.  I prefer to think that the Progressive Caucus Member who sponsored the bill read my article and that it completely changed her outlook on life.  I like to think all my law review articles do that.  On a more realistic note, if it does get filed again and makes it to a vote, please make sure your Congress critter votes no.

Posted at 8:29 am by Gail Heriot

ROGER KIMBALL: ‘Snitch’ rewards for college whistleblowers are a reckoning for woke weenies: A new day is dawning in academia.

If you look it up, though, you will discover that “Qui tam” is shorthand for “Qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur,” which makes much more sense: “Who prosecutes in this matter both for the King and for himself.” . . .

‘Snitch’ rewards for college whistleblowers are a reckoning for woke weenies

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Roger Kimball
“Snitch” rewards for college whistleblowers are a reckoning for woke weenies

A new day is dawning in academia
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Pam Bondi
Donald Trump (L) watches as Pam Bondi speaks (Getty)

Like Papal encyclicals, many statutes are known by the opening words of their Latin formulation. One that I just learned about is known as a “Qui tam” action. By itself, it is an enigmatic expression, since it just means “Who so” or “Who as.”

If you look it up, though, you will discover that “Qui tam” is shorthand for “Qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur,” which makes much more sense: “Who prosecutes in this matter both for the King and for himself.” That tam, as is often the case, is balanced with quam, “as x, so y.” Spinoza contains a famous example toward the end of the Ethics: “Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt”: “For all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.” And then there is sequitur. I remember when I learned that the deponent verb sequor, “I follow,” also means “prosecute,” as in the motto of the Department of Justice: “Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur,” “Who prosecutes for Lady Justice.”

But I digress…

The origins of “Qui tam” statutes are ancient. Noting that they were intended to “enlist the public to sue to recover civil penalties and forfeitures from those who have defrauded the government,” one historical overview cites King Wihtred of Kent who in 695 declared that “If a freeman works during the forbidden time [i.e., the Sabbath], he shall forfeit his healsfang [fine, mulct], and the man who informs against him shall have half the fine, and [the profits arising] from the labour.”

Nota bene: “The man who informs against him” profits.

How do you spell “incentive”?

This aspect of the procedure – what we might call the “snitch provision” – has always attracted criticism. Because they rewarded private individuals for informing against their fellows, qui tam actions were long ago castigated as a “breeding ground for ‘viperous vermin’ and parasites.” Nevertheless, English law sometimes resorted to qui tam actions when the enforcement of certain statutes appeared “beyond the unaided capacity or interest of authorized law enforcement officials.”

It was the same in America. The colonists frequently employed qui tam actions to curb instances of fraud, rewarding an informer with some portion of the funds recovered from his revelation.

Modern instances of qui tam center around so-called “False Claims” actions. In 1863, in the Civil War, an act was introduced by Senator Jacob Howard to address a spate of “false claims, false vouchers, false oaths, forged signatures, theft, embezzlement, and conspiracy.” The act, Howard explained, deliberately employed “the old-fashion idea of holding out a temptation, …‘setting a rogue to catch a rogue.’”

The False Claims Act has been revised several times in the succeeding century an a half, most recently in 2010. Its provisions are set forth in 31 U.S. Code § 3729.

All this might seem like an arcane bit of legal history. In fact, false claims actions, especially against defense contractors and the health industry, have been something of a growth industry in recent year. In 2024, such actions quietly brought in more than $2.9 billion. And the Trump administration, as part of its effort to purge American colleges and universities of illegal and discriminatory practices, has just turned up the volume to 11 and brought the False Claims Act back to center stage of public consciousness.

On May 19, Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General issued a memorandum announcing that the administration would begin employing the False Claims Act to investigate those “who defraud the United States by taking its money while knowingly violating civil rights laws… and falsely [certifying] compliance with such laws.”

Have you ever witnessed verbal dynamite being detonated? Here is an example:

“Accordingly, a university that accepts federal funds could violate the False Claims Act when it encourages antisemitism, refuses to protect Jewish students, allows men to intrude into women’s bathrooms, or requires women to compete against men in athletic competitions. Colleges and universities cannot accept federal funds while discriminating against their students. The False Claims Act is also implicated whenever federal-funding recipients or contractors certify compliance with civil rights laws while knowingly engaging in racist preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities, including through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that assign benefits or burdens on race, ethnicity, or national origin. While racial discrimination has always been illegal, the prohibition on such policies became clear after the Supreme Court stated that “[e]liminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

Make them pay.

Posted at 8:13 am by Glenn Reynolds

FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY, THE PIVOT BEGAN: ‘Did I miss the memo?’: Hospital workers in full PPE applaud George Floyd protesters as they march past.

As Greenwald writes in his follow-up tweet, “That episode single-handedly destroyed trust in public health officials, proving they’d politicize their expertise when convenient. Corporate media celebrated a douchebag-lawyer shaming families at deserted beaches, then — overnight! — cheered densely packed street protests.”

QED: Shot: Grief and COVID-19: Mourning our bygone lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic is an epidemiological crisis, but also a psychological one. While the situation provokes anxiety, stress and sadness, it is also a time of collective sorrow, says Sherry Cormier, PhD, a psychologist who specializes in grief and grief mentoring. “It’s important that we start recognizing that we’re in the middle of this collective grief. We are all losing something now.”

Many people are reckoning with individual losses, including illness and death due to the novel coronavirus, or loss of employment as a result of economic upheaval. But even people who haven’t lost anything so concrete as a job or a loved one are affected, Cormier says. “There is a communal grief as we watch our work, health-care, education and economic systems — all of these systems we depend on — destabilize,” she says.

—The American Psychological Association, April 1st, 2020.

Chaser: APA’s action plan for addressing inequality.

Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to you while still reeling from the tragic murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the ongoing protests, which are reverberating in a shockwave throughout our nation and around the world.

These recent events present us with an urgent challenge—as an association, discipline and profession, and individual psychologists—to bring our expertise to bear to address the range of underlying problems these events represent from discrimination to racism, which have resulted in long-standing social, economic, and political inequalities, from police brutality, to the disproportionate spread of the coronavirus among black and brown people, to the soaring unemployment rates among communities of color.

APA is urging psychologists to share their thoughts and recommendations for using the power of psychology to address the “pandemic of racism,” both in the short and long term. As part of that process, we must also examine our role as a field and as an association in perpetuating these ills.

—The American Psychological Association, June 2nd, 2020.

Note the photos atop those Webpages. The April 1st post is illustrated by photos of an elderly white woman looking frustrated in her apartment, and a young black woman staring wistfully into the distance outside the window of her apartment, with the photos separated by a white dividing line to emphasize both persons’ isolation from the world. Contrast that with the photo of the massed protestors carrying “Black Lives Matter” placards atop the June 2nd post.

NPR also pivoted on June 2nd, 2020:

The DNC-MSM and local mayors turned on a dime from enforcing hard-line lockdown rules and shaming anyone who went to church or got a haircut, to letting rioters congregate with impunity. Bill de Blasio was quoted five years ago today, “When you see…an entire nation, simultaneously grappling with an extraordinary crisis seated in 400 years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services.”

Flashbacks:

● After telling GOP to downsize convention due to COVID-19, N.C. governor marches in crowded protest.

● NJ governor admits COVID-19 double standard, says recent protests are different from business owners’ complaints.

● De Blasio: Large Group Protests Are Acceptable, Religious Observances Are Not.

● NPR: Dozens of public health and disease experts have signed an open letter in support of the nationwide anti-racism protests. “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,” they wrote.

● The Suicide of Expertise.

● Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

ROTUND BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU: Smartphone smuggled out of North Korea reveals the insane things Kim Jong Un does to control his ‘suffocated’ people.

A smartphone smuggled out of North Korea has revealed the astonishing levels of control the secretive dictatorship is exercising over its people.

The phone, which from the outside appears no different from a normal device, issued warnings about using South Korean slang words to users, and auto-corrected “South Korea” to read “puppet state,” an investigation from the BBC found.

It would also covertly take a screenshot every five minutes, storing the images in a secret folder which the user couldn’t access, but which presumably were accessible to North Korean authorities.

To be fair, I’m not sure how much worse that last item is in practice than the backdoor the FBI wanted built into every smartphone, or similar requirements in effect now in the UK.

Posted at 7:32 am by Stephen Green

YES.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

GARBAGE CAUSE, GARBAGE SUPPORTERS, BOOSTED BY GARBAGE MEDIA:

Posted at 7:25 am by Glenn Reynolds

ICYMI: CHANGE: “Learn to Code” Backfires Spectacularly as Comp-Sci Majors Suddenly Have Sky-High Unemployment.

It looks like the “learn to code” push is backfiring spectacularly for those who bought in.

As Newsweek reports, recent college graduates who majored in computer science are facing high unemployment rates alongside the increasing probability of being laid off or replaced by artificial intelligence if and when they do get hired.

In its latest labor market report, the New York Federal Reserve found that recent CS grads are dealing with a whopping 6.1 precent unemployment rate. Those who majored in computer engineering — which is similar, if not more specialized — are faring even worse, with 7.5 percent of recent graduates remaining jobless. Comparatively, the New York Fed found, per 2023 Census data and employment statistics, that recent grads overall have only a 5.8 percent unemployment rate.

While folks who majored in fields like anthropology and physics fared even worse, with unemployment rates of 9.4 and 7.8 percent respectively, computer engineering had the third-highest rate of unemployment on the New York Fed’s rankings, while computer science had the seventh — a precipitous fall from grace for a major once considered an iron-clad ticket to high earnings and  job security.

(Those numbers, notably, are worse even than the outcomes for journalism grads. Despite being accurately advised that their chosen field is dying, recent grads who majored in journalism are only experiencing unemployment at a rate of 4.4 percent, per the NYFR’s analysis.)

The first line of the above Newsweek article links to a 2019 New Republic article with the headline, “The Fetid, Right-Wing Origins of ‘Learn to Code.’ How an online swarm has developed a sophisticated mechanism to harass and gaslight journalists—and to get mainstream media outlets to join in.”

Yes, that “fetid right-wing origin” of paying attention to and quoting the things that leftist politicians and journalists were telling Americans. Or as Matt Vespa wrote in January of last year at Townhall: They Created This Term to Smear Average Americans. Now It’s Come Back to Haunt Them.

Liberal media outlets are starting to get pinched. While it’s sad when anyone gets fired, these folks were at the forefront of shaming those whose employment they determined was less-than, archaic, or not in keeping with the ways of the new world, whatever that means. In other words, if it required manual labor, the media, Democrats, and the coastal elite viewed it as a state of serfdom. Coal miners were a popular target. Whole communities that dot Appalachia were subjected to what some would call a regional genocide under the Obama presidency. His agenda took a hatchet to coal jobs, and most of these towns seldom recovered.

That’s when the “learn to code” smear was tossed into the mix by liberal reporters to coal miners and other workers who lost their livelihoods. The labor was viewed as inferior if it didn’t require a college education. Even worse, reporters mocked these newly unemployed workers, blaming them for being uneducated. The job retraining programs were a publicity stunt. Even labor unions knew this was a ruse. So, it was delicious revenge to see LA Times employees essentially saying that “learn to code” is heartless and unoriginal amid the layoffs. No, you don’t get to play that game. You created it. Now, sit there like good children, be wrong, and shut up. You lost your job—you don’t have a right to say anything.

And right around that time: Ex CNNer Chris Cillizza Community Noted AND Ratioed After Denying Biden Ever Said This.

Flashback: Then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Defends Twitter’s #LearntoCode Purges. As Steve noted in 2019, “Dorsey claims that #LearnToCode is coded language for some kind of threat, when in fact it originated with asshole members of the press who somehow didn’t get purged when they used it against ordinary Americans who had lost their jobs to Obama’s anti-coal regulations.”

QED:

And Frank J. Fleming’s irony is going right over the heads of the many Twitter users who would love to use journalistic tools to destroy someone for having different political beliefs:

In January of 2023, Glenn warned: The Coming ‘Symbolic Analyst’ Meltdown.

And thus:

(Original post by Ed.)

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds