July 5th, 2023
‘The genuinely radical Ivy League option — spending their vast endowments to sharply increase student numbers — is unlikely to be entertained. The key to the Ivy League is exclusivity; a big expansion in intake would dilute that premium. We are thus likely to continue with a situation in which universities such as Harvard, with a $53bn endowment, or Princeton with $36bn, continue to get richer. Each of these fortunes could revolutionise financial aid at dozens of public universities.’

The second most radical option would be for the Ivy League to abolish what is called “ALDC” — athletics, legacy, dean’s list and children of faculty and staff. Forty-three per cent of Harvard’s intake come from one of these groups. The first, athletics, includes sports that can only be learned by the privileged, such as lacrosse, sailing and rowing. The generous athletics intake by universities is why so many recent admission corruption scandals, such as the FBI’s Varsity Blues sting operation, involved athletics directors. Contrary to popular opinion, most athletics scholars are not black basketball players. Sixty-five per cent are white. 

This is in the Financial Times, all of whose readers, one assumes, passionately disagree with these options.

And then there’s the author, Edward Luce himself!

June 25th, 2023
Oh, and…

If the California bar court finds [John] Eastman culpable of the alleged violations, it can then recommend to the California Supreme Court that Eastman’s law license be suspended or revoked. The outcome of this proceeding is surely of less importance to Eastman than his likely forthcoming indictments in Atlanta and Washington as a Trump co-conspirator.

June 24th, 2023
‘Among all Americans, abortion and women’s rights (19 percent) ranked third behind freedom of speech (26 percent) and gun rights (21 percent) when asked about the specific types of rights they worry about losing. But for Democrats, abortion and women’s rights (36 percent) was far and away the rights they see as most under threat, easily ahead of freedom of speech (14 percent) and voting rights (12 percent).’

Women’s rights. Democrats seem rather fired up about them. That’s because the Supreme Court took important women’s rights away.

We’ve already seen this fervency play out in various states. We’ll see much, much more.

********************

According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 62 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, [which represents] the high-water mark for legal abortion in Pew’s polling, which dates back to 2007.

… Gallup — which has some of the longest trendlines when it comes to issues like abortion — asked Americans to choose between “pro-choice” and “pro-life” after asking about views on the legality of abortion. They found these numbers to be higher than any other annual recording dating back to 1996: 52 percent picked “pro-choice” this May and 55 percent picked “pro-choice” last May…

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll last month found that nearly three-in-four Americans, 72 percent, think abortion pills should be legal in all or most cases. 

****************

Of course, none of this bothers the Catho-Falangists (‘Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.’) or the Pencerian Evangelicals, since these sects possess divine moral truth and will happily shove no abortion/no porn/no contraception/forced reproduction onto the American population whether we like it or not. But it turns out that Americans are pretty ornery about people trying to destroy their basic liberties; and since current attacks blatantly go after American women‘s liberties, we can now watch in real time as American women rear up to become a most fearsome voting bloc.

*****************

Another poll.

June 22nd, 2023
 ‘[A]fter one of the most disruptive Supreme Court decisions in generations, many Americans — including women, young people, and Democrats — are reporting more liberal views on abortion than major pollsters have seen in years. Even conservatives, although the changes are slight, are increasingly supportive of abortion rights.’

Details here.

June 22nd, 2023
‘As [he] caught [his] breath and awaited direction from police, [White House attorney Greg] Jacob typed out one furious final line [in an email exchange with John Eastman]: “Thanks to your bullshit we are now under siege.”’

It’s the rare academic who sees his research implemented on a grand scale right in front of his eyes; and on Jan. 6 John Eastman’s mind must have been racing – as a mob enabled by his, er, bullshit attacked the Capitol – at the thought of the massive raise his university would be giving him to reward his remarkable research productivity. He imagined the school’s admiring pr write-up: “The John Eastman Theory of Vice-Presidential Powers is now routinely taught in jurisprudence classes across the nation, and indeed across the world.” Jacob could call it bullshit all he liked, but the shattered windows and bloodied police just down the street signaled a hugely important turn in human history, and he, John Eastman, had single-handedly made it happen. Forget his dinky academic gig – we’re looking at Attorney General… Supreme Court Justice…

June 20th, 2023
‘The content [of John Eastman’s emails] is appalling. To suggest that people should riot to intimidate the Supreme Court and get it to act is just insane.’

As the mad Constitution-bomber’s disbarment proceeding gets underway today, let us recall exactly what he said about overthrowing the Republic.

One charge alleges Eastman violated California Business and Professions Code Section 6068(a), failure to support the US Constitution and laws. 

I assume the proceeding is private; here’s hoping we have access one way or another to testimony.

June 12th, 2023
Disquisition Upon The Commode

This is the nature of bathrooms: They are inherently intimate and embarrassing places. I have always regarded the human acts that occur behind their doors to be the great equalizer, a moment of parity for our species. There, every king and queen, every president, every rock star, every billionaire who has been to space and the rest of us mere mortals behave in the exact same, unspeakably disgusting human way. They are one of the places we are most vulnerable; this is why so many of them have locks. The chandelier hanging in [Donald] Trump’s toilet was his dynasty in a microcosm: something opulent and gaudy, a caricature of wealth that screamed for our attention, while hoping we would not notice any potentially dirty deeds happening below.

May 23rd, 2023
Making the World Safe for DeSantis

As long as fools like the people who used to run Hamline University are around, we will need to keep worrying about assholes like DeSantis running the country. Places like Hamline write his The Woke are Destroying Us scripts for him.

The now-deposed prez of that school – taking a page from the idiots at Oberlin – reflexively attacked a professor for showing students images of Mohammed. A theocrat in the class squawked; the school verbally attacked/fired/ruined the career of the prof; the rest of us, who understand democracy, rose up as one and made all the idiots go away; and now it’s all over but the school-crushing legal settlements (Oberlin’s attack on an innocent party cost it thirty six mill).

The AAUP really went after them. Good.

May 14th, 2023
La Lutte Commence

Commencement at MAGA takeover site New College, Florida will be… interesting. Student response to having a MAGA maniac shoved down their throats as speaker has been to organize an altogether alternative event.

Students seem to have hoped for $20,000 or so in donations toward renting a space, catering, etc., but in only a few days the number has zoomed to over $122,000 (note that I have to keep changing this number; nothing like theocrat bullies to get the bucks flowing), so they are now collecting not just for the event but for other fuck DeSantis activities.

UD donated $100… I can’t think of a purer act of local democratic/intellectual resistance than this ingenious counter-staging. Here’s hoping the representative from Hillsdale College will be speaking his lies into a void.

Or, even better, to a bused-in crowd of not-yet-jailed January 6 insurgents who will hoot and holler throughout, and then – cuz it’s a college – set all the school’s books aflame in an enormous bonfire.

May 4th, 2023
Trump’s Heroes Found Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy.

[A]ny other trial outcome would have emboldened the nation’s militia movement and congressional firebrands like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green and Jim Jordan. To date, Jordan’s attempts as House Judiciary Committee chair to attack prosecutors and the FBI have flopped. Had the Proud Boys been acquitted, however, those previous political stunts would have looked like warmup acts for future theatrics alleging the Justice Department was prosecuting innocent Americans.

***************************

How cool for Green and Jordan to be mentioned in the same sentence with the militia movement!

And don’t forget the capo di tutti capi!

With these latest foot soldiers’ convictions, the baton now passes to special counsel Jack Smith and to Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis to complete the task by bringing accountability to the very top. 

April 28th, 2023
“A near-total ban on abortion failed Thursday in South Carolina, just hours before a six-week ban fizzled in Nebraska. Abortion remains legal in both states until 22 weeks of pregnancy.”

“Fizzled” is nice.

April 23rd, 2023
‘The proponents of illiberal democracy in Israel want to turn the Jewish state into a theocracy, and will continue strengthening their political power in the coming years, particularly if, as expected, the percentage of ultra-orthodox in the country increases and the [progressive] residents of … Tel Aviv become a minority.’

[Current] legislation weakens the current civil rights safeguards and allows the government to keep public transportation closed on the Sabbath and separate men and women in educational and public institutions. Not to mention that the religious parties are continuing to press for an ultra-nationalist agenda, including the building of new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, which they want to annex to Israel…

[The] growing influence of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox and ultra-nationalists could lead at some point to the annexation of the occupied Arab territories, with Arabs constituting at least 50 percent of the population in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. That raises the specter of Israel turning into a third-world Middle Eastern country, that, like Lebanon would be ravaged by ethnic and religious wars.

Israel’s shocking disintegration proceeds apace.

April 22nd, 2023
‘If more than half of currently unenrolled adults, and higher percentages of current students, say it is at least somewhat important that the college they attend is in a state that does not restrict access to [abortion] services — and the vast majority of these would prefer to attend college in a less restrictive state — schools in states that have adopted or are considering adopting restrictive abortion policies may be at risk of even greater enrollment declines.’

A recent Gallup poll gives greater detail to a back and forth UD and her buddy Rita had not long ago about whether college applicants might begin avoiding schools in states with medieval abortion laws. Looks as though they well might.

“The fact that 74% of Republican unenrolled adults say, ‘I would consider enrolling [in] a state that had greater access’ is, I think, a really impressive number,” [an official at the Lumina Foundation, which cosponsored the poll,] said.

And, you know, it ain’t just abortion. Some representatives in zero-abortion, lock ‘er up, execute her, states are now moving on to trying to ban non-standard sexual practices, contraception… And what sort of … emotional reality do you suppose pertains in campus health clinics in the nation’s Junior Anti-Sex League territories? Many students show up with an STD now and then – or maybe anxiety about an STD – and I wonder how comfy they’ll be discussing such matters with whatever medical crew hasn’t yet run off to New York? With a crew that thinks zygotes have voting rights and unmarried women who aren’t virgins are sinners? This isn’t about abortion only; it’s about sex, sexual ethics, sexual ethos, sexual conversation, sexual atmosphere. “[T]he University of Idaho [has warned] employees that promoting abortion while on the job could be viewed as a felony offense.”

“If you go to a state that doesn’t allow you to have autonomy over your body, then that is not only not appealing, that is offensive to many women,” [the Lumina official] said.

UD ain’t denying that there’s a minority of women who’d revel in the repression of their bodily autonomy, who’d get off on lectures from campus doctors about the importance of keeping their legs clenched. But she thinks it’s a very small minority.

[C]ollege applicants are looking closely at the cultural climate of places where they could spend four—or likely more—years studying and exploring their lives as young adults. Red states were already having a tough time attracting talent among students and professors alike, and veering to the right on abortion is only going to make retaining their rankings and prestige more difficult.

******************

[An] exodus of college students from states with abortion bans could join a string of other consequences that abortion bans have brought, amid reports the laws have also driven physicians out of states where they face the threat of felony charges for providing care, impacted recruitment and training at medical schools and caused employees to seek transfers to different states.

April 5th, 2023
Pro-Life vs. Pro-Tasiewicz:

The result shouldn’t surprise anyone. Just ask most Americans, and they’ll tell you.

March 27th, 2023
‘[The Israeli right] declared a dramatic change to Israel’s constitutional order as one declares a war. It advanced in a blitzkrieg through a deeply divided country, while signaling at full volume that it intends to do away with basic liberal protections. It started with a radical version of its own reform which some its own advocates now claim was a mere tactic, but which in practice would have gutted the Supreme Court and dismantled most of the political system’s checks and balances.’

The unbelievable events in Israel continue.

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