There as been a lot of self-righteous nonsense, to say nothing of race-baiting malevolence and sclerotic liberal hand-wringing, over the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. John Hinderaker at Powerline posted a thoughtful and balanced column the other day, and now Thomas Sowell weighs in with his usual laser-like beam of common sense and wisdom.

Remember the hysteria that greeted  Geraldo Rivera when he said on Fox News  that “I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was”? Some said Geraldo should be fired, demoted, reprimanded, tarred and feathered, etc. for expressing that opinion. But Sowell saw that Geraldo was right: “It is not often,” he wrote at NRO,  “that I agree with Geraldo Rivera, but recently he said something very practical and potentially life-saving, when he urged black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies.”

The point at issue: “There is no point in dressing like a hoodlum when you are not a hoodlum, even though that has become a fashion for some minority youths.”

The Narrative says George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, followed Martin “because he was Black.”  I submit that, based on everything we know about Zimmerman, it is more likely that he followed him because he was wearing a hoodie and acting in a threatening manner. (Just how threatening he was  Zimmerman discovered when Martin slugged him, bringing him to the ground, and than sat atop him, smashing his head repeatedly into the sidewalk.)

I am not asserting that Zimmerman is innocent of wrong doing; nor am I suggesting he is guilty.  What we do know is that the local police, on a preliminary review, decided not to charge him. It was the President of the United States who, displaying his usual post-partisan, post-racial instincts, brought George Zimmerman before the kangaroo court of inflamed public opinion and cynical operators like “Rev.” Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, clowns that the former head of the NAACP accused of acting like “buzzards circling the carcass of this young boy.”

Once again, Thomas Sowell has it exactly right:

The man who shot the black teenager in Florida may be as guilty as sin, for all I know — or he may be innocent. We pay taxes so that there can be judges and jurors who sort out the facts. We do not need Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or the president of the United States spouting off before the trial has even begun. Have we forgotten the media’s rush to judgment in the Duke University “rape” case that blew up completely when the facts came out?

I am glad to see that there is some high-profile and articulate push back in this depressing episode. Thanks to folks like Thomas Sowell, it is reasonable to hope that a dispassionate application of the law will eventually triumph over the atavistic passions and partisan, race-based politics that the President of the United States helped unleash in our national conversation.

Also read:

How Many Crimes Did the New Black Panthers Commit in Florida?

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William Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection drew my attention yesterday to “Sex Week at Harvard.” I tweeted about it then (@rogerkimball), but the true awfulness of the phenomenon cannot be captured in 140 characters.

According to its web site, the event was organized by “Sexual Health Education & Advocacy throughout Harvard College (SHEATH), a recognized student-run organization at Harvard.” The organization is “dedicated to empowering the Harvard community to explore their experiences with love and sex by providing comprehensive programming addressing a wide range of issues relating to sex, relationships, dating, sexual health, and sexuality.” All the important subjects a well-rounded college student would wish to master.

Are you feeling a little shiver of cognitive dissonance, a slight frisson of surrealistic displacement?  There’s a lot more where that came from. Here’s the description of sex week:

Sex Week at Harvard intends to promote a week of programming that is interdisciplinary, thought-provoking, scholastic, innovative, and applicable to student experiences in order to promote a holistic understanding of sex and sexuality. Our goal is to connect diverse individuals and communities both within and beyond Harvard through common human experiences with love, sex, sexuality, and relationships.

“Interdisciplinary,” eh? “Scholaistic”? “Innovative”? “Diverse individuals”? I also liked this little advisory: “All of the events will be designed to be welcoming to anyone, regardless of their personal identities, practices, and preferences.”

They’re just joshing, of course. The program is designed to be welcoming only to a couple narrow slivers of the population. Curiously, they are slivers that overlap only slightly.  “Sex Week at Harvard” is “designed to be welcoming”  to the feminist-inspired PC sexual police who are always advising you to “take back the night” and natter on endlessly about protecting women even as they advocate “empowering” them sexually. “Sex Week” is also “designed to be welcoming” to certain species of sexual adventurer, not your traditional Don Juan, of course — he was a patriarchal sexist pig — but other, more florid blossoms on the tree of sexual obsession

Are you in Cambridge, Massachusetts, today? You’re in luck!  Here are some of the “innovative,” “thought provoking,” “scholastic” entertainments you can sample:

 Hooking Up on Campus
8PM, Science Center D

Hooking up is happening at Harvard–at least, so it appears from I Saw You Harvard.But what is the hook up culture all about, and what is it really like? Popular sociologist Dr. Lisa Wade shares her scholarly work on hook up culture on college campuses across this nation. College students are having sex, it’s true–but the details might surprise you! Lisa will use survey data and first-person stories to reveal the real hook up culture, arguing that we should be worried about the sexual culture on college campuses, but not for the reasons you might think.

Nota bene: this exploration of “the real hook up culture” is sponsored by the “Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response.”

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The most effective form of censorship is also the quietest. It operates not by actively proscribing speech but by rendering certain topics hors de combat, literally undiscussable. It does this by propagating an atmosphere of revulsion and taboo. Ordinary censorship prohibits the dissemination of particular opinions or bits of information. The more subtle engine of silence I have in mind goes further. It stanches not only the flow of speech but also the flow of thought. Ordinary censorship occupies itself with the results of human curiosity. What I am talking about attacks human curiosity itself.

One example would be the genetic basis of human intelligence.  It’s not simply that, in many walks of life, you cannot express certain opinions about that subject; you are not even allowed to raise any questions about it.  Questions admit doubts; and about certain subjects doubts are tantamount to heresy.  This is something that Larry Summers discovered when he had the temerity to suggest that maybe, just possibly, there were fewer women than men at the pinnacle of mathematical achievement because women as a group were less adept at mathematics than men. Mr. Summers asserted nothing: he merely raised it as one hypothesis among many. That was his tort, for which he paid, and continues to pay, dearly.

Another example concerns the nativity of Barack Hussein Obama.  It’s not just that you are not allowed to express certain opinions about the subject. You are not even allowed to publicly entertain any questions about it.  This is something that Diana West has explored with her customary force and insightfulness in a disturbing column called “Silence of the Lapdogs.” “Have you, “ Ms. West asks,

read in your local paper about the technical evidence that led . . .  three retired criminal investigators and two attorneys to conclude that the birth certificate image White House officials uploaded at the White House website on April 27, 2011, did not originate in a paper format, but rather was created (forged) as an electronic file on a computer?

Have you seen on network or cable news the video clip (one of six . . . at YouTube) re-creating exactly how an additional fraud might have been committed to forge the president’s Selective Service registration card? Heard even conservative talk radio discussing the posse’s discovery that immigration files in the National Archives recording overseas arrivals into Hawaii are missing from the week of Obama’s 1961 birthday?

The answer, as she points out, is no, of course not.  You have heard nary a peep because the subjects themselves are verboten. “1984-style,” Ms West observes, “we mustn’t question. We mustn’t look. We certainly mustn’t look at questions that cross the narrative of authority.”

Ms. West predicted that many of her usual outlets would refuse to run her column. Apparently, she was right. Fortunately a few stalwart web sites have bucked the trend and have risen up against the conspiracy of silence that has surrounded the subject of the President’s place of birth. As Thomas Lifson noted yesterday on American Thinker “One does not have to believe that Obama was born in Kenya to be disturbed by the evidence of a digitally-constructed birth certificate being passed off as authentic by a president. Those who are more worried about their public image and about being attacked by the media and political establishment than about getting at the truth will in the end be judged  by their actions.”

Ms. West alluded to 1984. There is something Orwellian about the hear-see-and-speak no evil consensus that has been silently promulgated and enforced on this subject. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the whole spectacle is that we have, most of us, subconsciously internalized O’Brien: its not what is done to us that keeps us silent. It’s what we’re doing to ourselves.

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What do you think of this little tidbit from the Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration is offering to cede some control over nighttime missions into Afghan village homes, U.S. officials say, in a bid to ease tensions with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. . . .

The administration’s most significant proposed concession on night raids would subject the operations to advance review by Afghan judges, U.S. military officials said. One option under discussion in U.S.-Afghan talks would require warrants to be issued before operations get the green light.

Come again? Our soldiers will have to go to Afghan, i.e. Muslim, judges to get warrants to conduct nighttime raids against Taliban and al-Qaeda cells? How’s that going to work out? How, in other words, does this “concession” differ from a capitulation?

Here are a couple of possible scenarios:

1. Marine infidel goes to local imam judge and says: “We think some baddies are hiding out in cave number 276 just behind that pack of dusty lean-tos off the second dirt path on your right.  Can we raid ‘em tonight?”  Imam judge says, “By all means, but give it a few hours, will you, so I can tip off my cousin and he and the boys can round up some more AK 47s and be waiting to ambush you when you come?”

2. Marine infidel goes to local judge (there must be one or two) who is not part of the Islamist network.  He says “OK, good to go,” but winds up like that horse’s head in the first Godfather movie.

The Obama administration is worried about “tensions with Afghan President Hamid Karzai,” especially after Sgt. Bales lost it last week and shot up the joint. Here’s my advice: If President Karzai doesn’t like the  way the U.S. military does business, fine: we should pull out and leave him to his Korans, beheadings, and primitive misogynistic dustbowl. It’s become pretty clear that we are not in Afghanistan to win, but merely to help manage Obama’s political capital. If dozens of U.S. soldiers have to be sacrificed along the way, well, you know the story about making an omelet without breaking eggs. (Though as Orwell asked: where’s the omelet?)

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I am slowly getting my head around today’s technology. Facebook is still mostly a mystery to me (though I am beginning  to figure out how to use it) but I became Twitter conscious a week or so ago and have been purveying witty and informative tweets to a grateful world ever since. I didn’t see the point of Twitter, either, until some patient colleagues took me through it. I’m sure this is old news to many of my readers, but for those of you who are innocent of this awesome little app, check it out. Give it a try for a few days.  (It’s like broccoli when you’re a kid: most people have to try it a few times before they see the point of it. You need to give it a real chance: just looking at it once won’t wow you.)  You might be like me and find that it is a useful way to keep abreast various topics that you are interested in. The key is to follow people who are linking to things you are interested in. And since you are this, I presume you may be interested in following yours truly. My Twitter handle is @RogerKimball.  The full URL is

https://twitter.com/#!/rogerkimball

Click “Follow” and Bob’s your uncle!

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In the course of an article about the dispute between Ed Crane, President of the Cato Institute, and founding directors Charles and David Koch, Washington Post author Tevi Troy presents readers with a delicious couple of sentence that speak volumes about the nature of liberal presumption.

I’ll leave aside the details of Tevi’s argument about why this dispute is bad for Cato and bad “for think tanks in general.”  It’s this little gem I want you to ponder:

In recent decades, however, think tanks — like much of our culture — have become increasingly political. This trend began after the emergence of the Heritage Foundation, which was the first think tank to embrace advocacy as a goal.

Here’s a social problem; you think you have a potential solution to the problem; therefore, you advocate that solution. Is that a bad thing? Only if, like the Heritage Foundation, you happen to advocate conservative solutions.  Then your ideas are “increasingly political,” “partisan,” a matter of “advocacy” not “objectivity.”

Tevi speaks kindly of the Brookings Institution, which helped frame the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II. But that wasn’t advocacy because we approve of spending billions of dollars rebuilding Europe. It’s only when people with conservative ideas have the temerity to advise folks like Ronald Reagan  that we’re allowed to accuse think tanks of abandoning the search “to find solutions to some of our nation’s most serious problems” for the sake of political activism.

The moral: if you are a liberal think tank, advocacy is OK because you are advocating the right ideas. If you are a conservative think tank, advocacy is not OK because it is “divisive,” “partisan,” and lacks “objectivity.”

Rush Limbaugh calls a repellent feminist activist a “slut” and the sky falls in.  Bill Maher calls Sarah Palin a “twat,” a “c___,” and says unbelievably callous things about her children, and that’s different (according to David Axelrod, anyway).

I hope I’ve cleared that up for you.

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How do you spell desperation? Looking at the Obama fundraising machine, I spell it m-o-n-e-y. He’s not bringing in enough of it. Forget about the fat cats who rode the Hope-n-Change express in 2008 but got off somewhere between the GM bailout and the Fast-and-Furious scandal. It’s the rank and file that’s gone missing.

As Karl Rove points out,where the “post-partisan” candidate was pulling in $50 million a month in 2008, he’s now averaging $24 million. Not chicken feed, but you’ve got right big mess to distract people from and that takes mucho pesetas. How bad are things? Did you hear about that expensive fundraiser—er, State Dinner Obama just threw to fête Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife. Gone are the days of sending the Queen an iPod with your speeches and treating the Prime Minister of England as if he were a special envoy from Nigeria (not that there is anything wrong with special envoys from Nigeria: heavens no!). As ABC news pointed out, it was packed to the gills with Obamas top campaign “bundlers,” the folks who shovel the big money to Democrats in order to help them make sure that there is no one (except themselves) with big money left to throw around.

I was talking about that with a friend who pointed out that, tucked in among the usual list of major donors and bundlers, tort lawyers, lefty Hollywood stars and aging New York celebrities, was one Hamilton E. James, Jr., the president of Blackstone. What made this billionaire stand out was not that he seemed out of place in the White House in this age of Occupy Wall Street but that, according to the paper of record, “Obama allies have been courting him as a potential fund-raiser.” It used to be that you had to give money before you had your picture taken with the president or the night in the Lincoln Bedroom or whatever but now it seems they are so desperate that the goodies come first.

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As regular readers know, I admire the headlines Matt Drudge chooses for the articles he links to on the Drudge Report. He is especially cunning, I think, in the way he juxtaposes headlines:

* Michelle Obama Cites “Remarkable Progress” On Economy…

* AMERICAN AIRLINES to cut 13,000 jobs…

* NYC goes on hiring spree — for people to work its welfare offices…

Nice, eh?

I was disappointed, though, with today’s featured headline:

SHOCK POLL: ROMNEY 48% OBAMA 43%

The link is to a Rasmussen poll,  and the implication, I believe,  is that readers will be shocked at the news that  Mitt Romney is ahead. (In fact, Rasmussen reports that Rick Santorum also leads Obama, though he trails Romney.)

What is really shocking, though, is that the difference is so small. By any rational metric, Obama has presided over a national disaster. Consider how he has mishandled

* the economy (real unemployment north of 9%)

* the deficit ($1.6 trillion annually)

* the prestige of the Untied States abroad

* our national security

Consider also

* the looming train wreck that is ObamaCare

* Solyndra and kindred adventures in crony capitalism, emetic utopianism, and fiscal irresponsibility

* The GM “bailout,” coming to a tax bill near you (buy a Volt, get a taxpayer-subsidized break of $7000)

* the regulatory nightmare that Obama’s EPA has foisted upon American business

* the malevolent joke that is the Obama Department of Justice (Fast and Furious, the Black Panther case, etc.)

And this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. What’s shocking is not that Mitt Romney is ahead. A syphilitic camel should be ahead. What’s shocking is that the distance is only 5 points.

Assuming Mitt can hold it together, his advantage should widen. He is, after all, running against one of the most vulnerable presidents with one of the worst records in American history.

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Jon Corzine, epitome of the .01%, former head of Goldman Sachs, former U.S. senator and governor of New Jersey: why is he still at liberty? Why is he padding about dispensing ridiculous economic advice to terminally credulous politicians like Joe Biden (“The first thing we did was call Jon Corzine,” said our vice president within weeks of taking office). Have an air sickness bag handy? When you’ve attended to that, take a look at this YouTube video.

Who is more repulsive, Senator Corzine or Vice President Biden? I’m not sure we have instruments accurate enough to measure that. But at least the vice president has not, as far as I know, presided over an entity that lost $1.6 billion of its clients’ money, as Jon Corzine did as head of MF Global, another item on his resume. (I know, I know, Biden is helping to run an administration that loses $1.6 trillion annually, but let’s leave that to one side.) The Corzine story is old news, sort of.  It’s been reported, but not quite savored; there hasn’t been the gleeful handwringing on the part of the legacy media.  The New York Times, for example,  has not gone into hysterical overdrive, running front-page stories and blistering editorials every day as it would had Jon Corzine been a Republican malefactor.

Still, the outline is clear.  Here’s a tidbit from a February 28 story in the Huffington Post, bold face courtesy your humble reporter:

The $1.6 billion belonged to MF Global’s clients. Officials say it apparently went to cover MF Global’s short-term financial needs as investors and trading partners lost confidence in the firm, punishing its stock price and causing a severe cash shortage.

Client money is supposed to be held separately from corporate cash to protect investors in case a firm fails. MF Global’s misuse of client money would violate a fundamental investor-protection for people who trade options and futures.

Corzine, who hired a criminal lawyer last fall, told Congress he did not know what happened to the money.

Gosh, where did that money go? It must be around somewhere. It was here just a minute ago!

It’s appropriate that Jon Corzine has hired a criminal lawyer. I wonder whether the government will freeze his assets, as it froze Conrad Black’s in an ex parte proceeding, making it impossible for him to pay the multi-million-dollar retainer that top lawyers demand. Probably not. Jon Corzine, after all, is one of them. He’s the sort of chap Joe Biden turns to for advice about fixing the U.S. economy.  That’s worked well, as anyone who has looked at the unemployment figures can see.

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Bill McGurn wrote a typically splendid piece for The Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago called “Reagan was a Sure Loser Too.” He begins with this ominous bulletin from a news story:

Not since Herbert Hoover has a party out of power had such an opportunity to run against everything that troubles the American family—prices, interest rates, unemployment, taxes, or the fear for the future of their old age or the future of their children—than is now presented to the Republican Party.

The Republicans, however, haven’t figured this out. This is their basic problem. They have no strategy for defeating an Obama administration that is highly vulnerable on both domestic and foreign policy.

It’s from a February 29 column in The New York Times, but the date was 1980, not 2012. And in place of “Obama” James Reston, the author, had written “Carter.” As Bill notes, “It appears the conventional wisdom hasn’t changed much. Today’s narrative holds that however weak President Obama’s hand, Republicans find themselves in no position to capitalize on it. A glance back to where we were at this exact point in the 1980 primaries suggests otherwise.”

Consider:

— Then, as now, the Republican primaries opened with a bang, when George H.W. Bush upset Ronald Reagan in the Iowa caucuses.

— Then, as now, Republicans feared that an unhappy contender might bolt the party to mount an independent campaign. In 1980, that was liberal John Anderson, not libertarian Ron Paul.

— Then, as now, the chattering classes wondered aloud whether a candidate who could win the Republican nomination could prevail against President Carter in November. On March 1 [1980], former President Gerald Ford amplified that view when he told a New York Times reporter, “Every place I go and everything I hear, there is the growing, growing sentiment that Governor Reagan cannot win the election.”

— Then, as now, some put their hopes on a late entry, in the same way that some now pine for Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels or Chris Christie to enter the race.

Food for thought, this. And yet, as Bill also notes, “the parallels to 1980 take you only so far, and Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan.”  Indeed. Bill hastens to add that “at this same point in his campaign for the GOP nomination, neither was Reagan.”

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