April 27, 2025

LET’S FACE IT, THE PLACE IS A CESSPIT OF BIGOTRY: Racism At Harvard. “In thinking about the current battle between the Trump administration and Harvard University, fought over anti-Semitism and DEI, I recalled an earlier controversy in which Harvard–specifically, its law school–pled guilty to racism.”

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 41

DEMOCRATS: PEOPLE WHO MADE THINGS NOT NORMAL COMPLAINING ABOUT THE NOT-NORMAL RESPONSE TO THEIR NOT-NORMALITY:

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 117

THE IVY EXILE: Public Health’s Sacrificial Lambs.

In trying to wrap my mind around the self-inflicted catastrophe that was America’s COVID-19 lockdown regime, imposed five years ago this spring, I’ve been inclined to assume that public health leaders deserved something close to a free pass for those surreal first few months — that given the panic and the fog of war, people such as Anthony Fauci were entitled to some measure of grace as they adapted to a fluid situation. But in his harrowing and revelatory new book, An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions, journalist David Zweig details how swiftly national COVID-19 policies diverged from the broadly accepted protocols enshrined in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s pandemic playbook toward an indefinite lockdown model seemingly inspired by China’s heavy-handed mitigation efforts. “The arrival of a new infectious virus was not unprecedented,” he writes. “But the response to it was.”

Nor was it conducted in good faith.

Plus:

Though public health was no doubt a historically noble calling that had saved and improved countless lives over many decades of rigorous empirical and quantitative work, by the 1970s things had begun to go wobbly: More and more activists were tilting the field away from empirical rigor and toward lacquering a questionable scientific patina atop their political priorities. There were still top-flight epidemiologists and others working on challenges such as clean water and infant mortality, but more and more of the field consisted of laundering activism on issues such as gun control or gender norms into pseudoscientific “scholarship.”

Indeed.

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds 128

April 26, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Party on.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 1729

UNCONSTITUTIONAL:  “Prosecutors to Consider Race in Pleas Deals under New Policy Written by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.”  The policy was deliberately written in an effort to disguise its unconstitutionality.  It says both to consider the accused’s race and not to consider the accused’s race in offering plea deals.  But, despite the efforts to conceal it, the unconstitutionality of such a policy should be throbbingly obvious.

When someone tries to tell you that a particular instance of considering race is a cool idea, the best thing to do is “flip it.”  If prosecutors considered an accused’s whiteness in his or her favor as “part of the overall analysis,” but not necessarily as “controlling,” we would rightly be outraged.  It should be no different here.

Can’t this Soros-backed prosecutor be recalled?

Posted at 8:05 pm by Gail Heriot 181

BRIAN KRASSENSTEIN: Are We Going to Start Arresting Farmers Now Who Help Illegals Evade Arrest?

I hope so!

Such actions would be very much approved by leftist icon Cesar Chavez, a staunch foe of illegal immigration.

[H]is views on border control would be a perfect fit in the Trump administration.

As a child working with his family in the California fields, Cesar quickly learned the reason farmworkers were paid so little and treated so poorly: As his biographer Miriam Pawel writes, “a surplus of labor enabled growers to treat workers as little more that interchangeable parts, cheaper and easier to replace than machines.”

Chavez acolytes today try to explain away his hawkish pro-border views as coming from a different historical context, applicable only to specific strikes and the strike-breakers that farmers tried to import. But this is false.

In fact, even before he started the union and fought against illegal immigration, he was opposed to the bracero program, which legallyimported cheap, disposable labor from Mexico at the expense of American citizens (of Mexican and other origins) who had been working in the fields. Pawel quotes Chavez as saying, “It looks almost impossible to start some effective program to get these people their jobs back from the braceros.”

Congress ended the bracero program in 1964, and the next 15 years were the salad days, as it were, for farmworkers — until illegal immigration became so pervasive (despite Chavez’s efforts) that workers lost all bargaining power.

But during those 15 years, Chavez fought illegal immigration tenaciously. In 1969, he marched to the Mexican border to protest farmers’ use of illegal aliens as strikebreakers. He was joined by Reverend Ralph Abernathy and Senator Walter Mondale.

It’s time topple some statues, and rename many, many streets: The 21st-century left would view all of the above as quite fascist-y, Cesar, Ralph and Walter.

Posted at 6:55 pm by Ed Driscoll 183

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? ‘Sun-Dimming’ Aerosol Injections Into Atmosphere For Climate Change.

“Experiments to dim sunlight to fight global warming will be given the green light by the Government within weeks,” British outlet The Telegraph reports. “Outdoor field trials which could include injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, or brightening clouds to reflect sunshine, are being considered by scientists as a way to prevent runaway climate change.”

Don’t worry about the potential devastating and irreversible effects of blocking out the literal singular object that provides the basis for all life on Earth; the agency launching the project — the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) — assures the public its project will be “rigorously assessed.”

Related:

UPDATE (From Ed): That excess of sunlight could be put to great use in England. But to paraphrase the Gipper, sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the far left hand is doing:

Posted at 6:20 pm by Stephen Green 340

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: The Bay Area and Detroit rank similarly on a very unfortunate list.

Particle pollution, which includes dust, dirt, soot and smoke, “gets into your lungs because it’s so fine,” said Ruacho, adding that it can also end up in your bloodstream. The impact of particle pollution translates to asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes, with prolonged exposure increasing people’s likelihood of developing lung cancer.

In terms of ozone, the San Francisco Bay Area ranked 14 on the list of worst places in the country this year. “That’s an improvement,” said Ruacho, “because last year it was 12.” In the 2024 report, the Bay Area ranked fifth worst for particle pollution. This year, it improved slightly and ranks sixth, a spot it shares with the Detroit metro area.

The Frisco-Detroit singularity is proceeding apace.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll 57