When asked the same question, 54 percent of Republican respondents said they are more likely to vote in November.
Getting there.
When asked the same question, 54 percent of Republican respondents said they are more likely to vote in November.
Getting there.
Trump’s coterie of dishonest legal advisers — John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, Jenna Ellis and [Jeffrey] Clark — weren’t careful. In their attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, they said things that were demonstrably false and were personally involved in lies told to government officials. If prosecutors can prove that one or more of them created the false certificates, and knew that doing so was illegal, they may have criminal liability. If they knew about the false statements and advanced the scheme to transmit them to the U.S. Senate, that may also be enough. Clark is facing the same criminal liability for writing false statements in a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch…
As attorneys, it will be hard for Eastman, Giuliani and Ellis to claim that they had no idea that they were acting outside the four corners of state law by convening “alternative” electors and submitting them to the Senate even though the state had already submitted official electors. It will also be hard for Clark to argue that he had no idea that what he was doing was illegal, given that his superiors forcefully told him so.
… Any prosecution of Trump would not be easy. But the committee has made DOJ’s job easier by developing evidence of a straightforward, readily provable crime and revealing how careless dishonest lawyers like Giuliani, Eastman and Clark were, making them ripe targets.
… established by UD‘s Montgomery County.
“… Congress can impeach and there has to be a basis to do so… Justice Thomas, who is now saying that marriage equality, that birth control, that all these rights suddenly are at risk, should be impeached for his involvement in election-related cases. He has breached the public’s trust. His wife literally was involved in the attempted violent overthrow of the U.S. government.”
— Jena Griswold, Colorado Secretary of State
Sign here.
Discussion. This article was written a week ago and noted that there were 236,000 signatures. There are now 248,205.
… Five minutes later: 248, 337.
… Five minutes later: 248, 437.
***************************
Later, that same day: 251,075.
This blog has long argued the importance of rescinding honorary degrees from, er, some of their recipients. Examples:
Bernard Madoff
Theodore McCarrick
Bill Cosby
Lance Armstrong
Sepp Blatter
Donald Trump
Sheldon Silver
James Levine
Almost all of these sex and/or money scumsters eventually lost the honor aura conferred upon them by America’s debauched universities (debauched because, in almost every case, a touch of due diligence would have uncovered enough rumors to stay their hand, but these schools apparently didn’t care).
But what about, say, a law degree? An actual degree you work for and pay for? Is there behavior dishonorable enough to justify rescinding a BA or a JD?
What about an MD? UD has argued that Jumana Nagarwala, who put her Hopkins MD to use allegedly slicing off the genitals of little girls all over the midwest, should have that degree rescinded under… call it the Mengele Rule. It’s pretty easy to argue that people who got BAs under false pretenses (as in the Varsity Blues case, where rejects took the place of qualified applicants because their parents faked their applications and paid various well-connected criminals enormous sums of money to help them) should have their degrees revoked. The principle here is that a legitimate university has a reputation to defend, and when it harbors filthy crooks it should formally, publicly, expel them.
And a lawyer? A student who attends your school in order to learn the laws of our land in order to use those same laws to destroy it? This is much like the 9/11 pilots who attended flight school here solely in order to crash their planes into buildings. It would seem to be rather at odds with the purpose of a legal education, a serious education in the rule of law in our democracy. If I were Chicago I’d be pretty fucking embarrassed to be the school that taught John Eastman the law solely in order for him to twist it to destroy the country. I mean, is my face red!
It’s not too early for UD‘s beloved U of C to start considering a process by which they can cleanly disassociate themselves from this piece of shit.
Epstein’s famous for a WSJ column pouring contempt on Jill Biden, a Ph.D. holder, for using the title “Dr.” He directly entreated her, an Ed degree grad from a state school, to cut out the pathetic vainglory. He directly entreated his readers also to drop her doodoo, stupo, pseudo, honorific, and admit her degree’s embarrassing worthlessness.
The column went over like a lead balloon. A really big, international, lead balloon. The WSJ was forced to issue – not a retraction, no sir. An editor there felt compelled, given all the hoohah, to double defensively down, endorsing Epstein’s titular rigor. (Here are all my Epstein/Biden posts.)
But Joe. Have you watched any of the January 6 hearings? Have you noticed how scrupulous the committee is in referring to John Eastman as Dr. Eastman? He is, like Jill, a Ph.D. holder. He is, unlike Jill, a traitor. But in this generous country, we not only refer to graduates of the University of Delaware grad school, like Jill Biden, as Dr. We even extend the courtesy to traitors. Here in the US, if you have a doctorate, even if you have conspired to destroy the country, we will respect your title. Think about that, Joe.
… the insane clown posse. Update here.
[O]fficial organs of the Republican Party [see] their job as covering for Trump, even as evidence [has] emerged that he literally suggested that a Republican vice president should be lynched. The lessons of the interwar period, and indeed the long history of mainstream conservative parties’ dalliances with radicals, seem entirely lost on the Republican leadership.
And this, in the end, is why using fascism as a framework for understanding January 6 is worthwhile. This explicit alliance of political violence to an effort to seize power through force is shocking — so shocking that it deserves comparisons to what’s universally seen as the darkest moment in the history of Western democracy.
******************
The more details emerge, the more ashamed I am as an American. At some point, faced with our nation having made DT president, evasion, irony, and humor all fail, and what one feels – what I feel – is shame.
******************
The sheer scale of Donald Trump’s’ depravity is unmatched in the history of the American presidency, and the Republican party made it possible.
Pence’s attempt to salvage the Republican Party won’t succeed. It will fail not because of any intrinsic problem with the party itself—political parties are merely vessels for the will of the people—but because the problem with the Republican Party is Republican voters. They’re the ones who wanted Trump. They’re the ones who approve of January 6. They’re the ones who insist that Trump actually won in 2020. They’re the ones who are clamoring to nominate him again in 2024.
Republican voters view all of the terrible outcomes from the first Trump administration—the political violence, the white nationalism, the fiscal irresponsibility, the COVID death tolls—not as bugs but as features.This is what they want.
Oh. And here’s where UD gets all excited:
He’s more scathing about the “postliberal” intellectuals of the American right, with their admiration for Hungary’s Viktor Orban, like the legal scholar Adrian Vermeule (whom he describes as having “flirted with the idea of overtly authoritarian government”) and the political scientist Patrick Deneen.
The more high-profile outing of our enemies, the better. Bravo, and keep bashing.
Sam, Sam
The No-Roe man
Writes his big opinion
Now he’s on the lam.
Fences up at SCOTUS
Catch us if you can!
Clerks are put on notice
Sam the No-Roe man
My representative, Jamie Raskin:
The leaked Alito draft opinion “would apply also to the right to privacy in contraception… [It’s] an invitation to a Handmaid’s Tale-type legislation all over the country… [It] makes us in the image of Hungarian illiberal democracy… [It will] carve out and destroy the rights and freedoms of the people.”
Mr. Orban found support from Mr. Trump, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and from the Italian populist leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. But they are all gone, as Mr. Jansa is expected to be…
For UD’s completely bored take on Hungary, go here.
Oh, and note to Vermeule and the brethren: Reserve your Budapest Baptismal Blowout today! While you still can.
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte