Good word. UD thinks that word is exactly right.

Of the many anti-FGM bills in the Michigan package, UD finds most intriguing and encouraging the one that “allows for victims to file civil lawsuits.” There are a lot of victims, and it’s time for them to get compensation.

And after all, the world can call FGM despicable until the end of time, but until you not only start locking people up, but also making them pay out large sums of money, you’re not going to get very far.

There’s a great, all-American saga playing out at that already-notorious campus, Penn State.

With multiple layers of monitoring (cameras, a live-in chaperone, a security firm), this alcohol-free frat went out and spent $2,000 on liquor and proceeded to haze to its heart’s content.

As everyone now knows, one of its pledges slowly and hideously, on camera, drank himself to death – all under the watchful yet indifferent eyes of the frat guys.

Watchful yet indifferent eyes – that seems the general theme, no? Was anyone monitoring what the cameras recorded? There are allegations at the hearing that the chaperone simply advised the guys to destroy some incriminating evidence. The security firm dropped in for a pointless cursory visit; it found no kegs because they were upstairs and the security people didn’t bother going upstairs for their three-minute stay (nice work if you can get it).

Are you, like UD, putting this picture together?

1.) An approved Penn State fraternity — Penn State, a university desperately needing to repair its public reputation — under three layers of surveillance because it’s so irresponsible.

2.) A night of total, unchecked, fatal debauchery.

3.) Defense lawyers blaming it on the victim, the national fraternity, and Penn State.

4.) A protracted and very ugly trial looming.

Ask yourself: What the fuck does Penn State think it’s doing?

With the latest European Court of Human Rights ruling, bans on this “symbol of female enslavement” are now everywhere, with challenges to them going nowhere.

This was no half-hearted endorsement.

The unanimous decision held that the ban — which, in the court’s words, specifically barred “the wearing in public of clothing that partly or totally covers the face” — aimed to “guarantee the conditions of ‘living together’ and the ‘protection of the rights and freedoms of others.’ ”

The court also determined that the ban was “necessary in a democratic society.“

UD might be wrong, but she thinks that voices in opposition to the ban are rather quiet lately. UD has become accustomed over the years to people telling her that only a reactionary would fail to support a woman’s freedom to annihilate herself as a public being. Where are those people now?

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

UPDATE: I found one, and her tired language tells you all you need to know about the vitality of her position:

More countries are following Belgium’s ban across Europe, reflecting the lack of tolerance there is in society today.

If I found the lack of tolerance there is in society today in a student paper, I’d run a thick red line through it and write empty next to it. I always tell my students to avoid the word “society” unless it seems really necessary, since in actual use it’s often a vague and lazy generalization, and therefore a hint that as a polemical writer you’re not really giving it your all.

But since this writer wants to talk Islamophobia, here’s the reality in France, which has for quite some time, with little blowback, banned burqas and niqabs:

Most of the population – including most Muslims – agree with the government when it describes the face-covering veil as an affront to society’s values.

There’s that lazy use of society again. Yet it is easy to find muscular accounts of what is meant here.

Beyond accusing everyone around her in Europe (including every one of the European Court of Human Rights justices) of being Islamophobic, the author also puts the banning-veils trend down to sexism:

We are entering into dangerous territory when we allow parliaments – mostly male dominated – to start legislating for what women can wear.

There’s no indication that women support the ban in smaller numbers than men do.

Women, after all, have far more at stake than men in all of this, since their gender alone is the gender of people who graphically reject the public realm.

Finally, there’s this familiar argument:

Critics will say the veils are forced upon women by oppressive men. If that is the case then those poor women will not be able to go outside again because their husbands will not allow it.

Husbands and fathers, she should have said. Because children are also put inside the burqa, or kept imprisoned in their fathers’ houses.

So. As democracies, what are we to do about this practice? Well, first of all we are to note that it is illegal to hold someone prisoner, to never allow them to walk outside in the sunlight or be in the world of other human beings. What is going on in a house where people are “not able to go outside” is something in which the legal institutions of a free country must take an immediate interest. Other institutions – the mosque where the husband worships, for instance – must also become involved.

This writer is telling countries that they must collude with vicious practices because if they fail to collude with them the perpetrators of the practices threaten to engage in even more vicious practices. That calculus makes the state the same terrified victim of these men that their wives and daughters are.

Countries don’t make deals with sadists. They use their laws to punish men who imprison their wives and daughters.

Social service agencies exist to discover domestic abuse. Since we know that this form of abuse will emerge to some extent once a ban is enacted, European countries must use these agencies with determination.

Tate High Athletic Director Mitch Ashford won’t face disciplinary action from the Escambia County School District despite being arrested this week on charges of larceny and fraud.

Ashford was arrested Wednesday morning by the Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office, who executed a warrant on behalf of Escambia County. It was the third time in four years that Ashford has been arrested on various charges related to contracting work.

… “We had our attorneys look at it, it’s a civil matter that is not connected to the students or the school district,” said Escambia County School Superintendent Malcolm Thomas. “From what I can see, it’s a non-disqualifying offense. The only way I can suspend an employee is if the offense is a disqualifier.”

Preliminary results from this Johns Hopkins experiment are beginning to come in.

Make next year’s reservations now.

… not to use their hands.

But the beauty of it is that she has both. Capulet, Montague, Smith, and Wesson – they’re all there now at the University of Kansas:

It’s [now legal] to walk down the middle of Kansas’ serene Midwestern campus with a hidden firearm. The carrier will need neither a permit nor training.

Coaches are being real wussy about it.

“It is a deal that I will be very adamant about in a way of banning [guns],” [a] Kansas third-year coach said. “I don’t want weapons around for our team. I know it’s a bad, bad deal for us. I understand the politics involved in it. I get that. But we’re talking about kids with lives and kids getting pissed with each other and kids that are highly competitive with each other. I fear what it could blow into.”

You can’t ban guns for the team, dummy! That would be illegal.

“It’s a little scary,” said Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor.

Ooh, little Genie’s scared…

So is Oklahoma State’s coach:

“I was in college, been to a bunch of parties, been around a lot of football players,” the coach said. “Moderation that should have been part of what we did, wasn’t. It was college, we were dumb. If you throw a gun in the mix, it’s not good. You make poor decisions. When you have a gun there, you have a chance to make a decision you can never make up for.”

And back in Kansas:

Kansas basketball coach Bill Self called the law “unbelievable.” He did not elaborate.

Who needs to elaborate? You bring a bunch of big macho guys to a college campus. You pump them up to be even more macho, more violent, on the field. If you’re the University of Oregon, you put up signs in their cafeteria that say EAT YOUR ENEMIES. You and everyone else treat the guys like kings, giving them free muscle cars, willing “hostesses” among the coeds, tutors to write their papers for them. The local cops look the other way when the guys do bad stuff. The guys learn that they can get away with anything because they play the game really violently.

Doesn’t it stand to reason that giving them a concealed weapon can only be for the best?

When you’re an Ivy League professor who writes a sloppy, error-ridden, yet prize-winning book, you don’t expect a bunch of nonentities to crawl out of the woodwork and call you on it. It won a prize, after all.

Thus, Charles Armstrong, author of Tyranny of the Weak (a book about North Korea) was clearly caught off guard when some dude with some weird Hungarian name who teaches at Korea University complained that Armstrong seemed to have made up some of his sources and plagiarized parts of his text and other stuff like that. Armstrong went right on the attack:

I have, as far as I know, never offended him. I’ve known him for years, and appreciate the work he’s done. His book appears in my bibliography. I don’t understand why he would come after me this way.

Must be professional jealousy.

Plus it’s all the nonentity’s fault because he didn’t follow proper academic protocol:

Dr. Szalontai never communicated his concerns or criticisms directly to me prior to these various posts on different blogs. Why direct communication, a common professional courtesy and practice in academia, was not the preferred form of expression remains a mystery.

Another scholar, commenting on this response, noted:

The Columbia professor attributes improper academic conduct to Szalontai. That tells you all you need to know. … [N]o honest scholar who had accidentally lifted dozens of items from a colleague would dream of scolding him for not complaining courteously enough.

But Armstrong is not through transferring blame to others. He also – like so many haughties before him – blames the servants.

The book’s narrative was constructed through multiple transfers of notes, some made by my research assistants and others done by myself. This too, in retrospect, may have resulted in some inaccuracies.

You just can’t get good help these days!

Armstrong tried most of the traditional techniques people try when they get themselves into his position: He painted himself as a victim of mysteriously malign forces; he attacked the messenger; he attacked his research assistants. The only (very popular) move he didn’t try was the bit where you reveal that while writing the book your wife died, your cat died, you suffered recurrent bouts of impotence, and you developed a drug addiction. He didn’t go for that one.

Anyhoo. He just gave back the prize.

Some commentary from one of his colleagues at Columbia.

Norway’s state-funded Islamic Council

used state funds intended for “bridge-building and enhanced communication” to hire an office administrator who uses a niqab that covers everything but her eyes.

Home from Ireland for a brief visit.

Lexus-on-Lexus violence.

His comments are here.

The reporter reminds us that in a presidential debate Perry famously could not remember the third federal agency he planned to shut down. (“The third agency of government I would do away with — the education, uh, the, uh, commerce and let’s see… I can’t — the third one. Sorry. Oops.”)

Here’s the tweet:

Andrew Hess‏
@AndrewHess77

The third agency he was going to shut down was the Department of Basic Fucking Economics.

… days.

The chair of the board of trustees at Baylor University who wrote a now nationally notorious email calling women students who drink alcohol “perverted little tarts” has done his bit to help Baylor know when to fold ’em. Why bother resisting the zillion sex discrimination lawsuits from women students with which that school is now dealing, when every day another high-ranking sexist asshole on campus gets, er, exposed?

People like good ol’ boy Buddy Jones are making these women’s arguments for them, and ain’t nothin Baylor can do but cough up the cash. Again and again and again. There are many of these lawsuits, and Baylor’s almost certainly going to have to settle every one of them.

Why?

Because the claims in them are jaw-droppingly legitimate. And because even if they’re not, Baylor University can’t afford the optics of going to court.