Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been channeling his best Marie Antoinette this month in responding to widespread and growing hunger in the country. Maduro went on the news to told citizens to eat rabbits. The problem is that Venezuelans have been putting bows on the rabbits and adopting them as pets rather than eating them.
Category: Society
Below is my column in the Hill Newspaper on the allegations raised by the White House over the alleged misconduct of former FBI Director James Comey. It is clear that Comey violated FBI rules and regulations — offenses that would have likely cost any of his subordinates their jobs at the Bureau when he was director. However, there remains a virtual news blackout on the obvious violations and their implications.
Here is the column.
We have been discussing how faculty around the country are supporting the abandonment of free speech principles to bar speakers and speech with which they disagree. The most extreme form of this rejection of classical liberal values is the antifa movement. We have seen faculty physically attack speakers or destroy messages that they oppose. We have also seen faculty physically attacked and intimidated. In some of these incidents, other faculty have supported students in shutting down speakers or fellow academics (here and here). The latest example of faculty opposing free speech is a letter of over 200 University of California, Berkeley professors and faculty are calling for the shutdown of classes and activities during “free speech week.” To the dismay of these professors, free speech week will include speakers with whom they disagree. Thus, they have posted a letter that not only seeks a boycott of free speech but have proclaimed that certain speech (in this case speech they do not like) is unworthy of free speech protection. Note the faculty and Ph.D students are calling for a boycott of classes and all campus activities, not just the speeches themselves. Turning off the lights and fleeing the campus at the approach of opposing views hardly fits with the school’s motto of “Fiat Lux” (Let There Be Light).
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has become an international pariah for his orders to police to murder drug suspects and his bragging about his own killings. Thousands of suspected drug dealers have been killed under Duterte. For that reason, many of us were alarmed by President Donald Trump’s praise of Duterte as “a good man” and praising his crackdown on drugs. Duterte however shows no ability to control himself any more than his son (who has been implicated in drugs and corruption) or his henchman . . . or his mouth. Last week, Duterte was asked by the head of the country’s Commission on Human Rights (CHR) about the killing of teenagers by his police and supporters. Duterte’s response was to ask if CHR head Chito Gascon was a pedophile. It is the type of disgusting and dismissive attitude that Duterte has shown all notions of human rights or human decency.
By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
It comes with much personal reflection that after the United Methodist Church’s Annual Conference for the Pacific Northwest Conference area, encompassing where I live in Washington State, I decided to leave the church after seeing what I believe to be the church leadership moving away from spirituality and Christian teachings to a place where members of the hierarchy in our conference use the Church as a platform to pontificate a particular flavor of politics, aligning itself with an American political party, promoting organizations that provide legal advice to those who evade the law, and worst of all having members that promote an organization that advocates the killing of law enforcement officers. This is a sad outcome, but it represents an evolution of thinking becoming endemic to particular districts. I do not believe that most of the districts approve generally of these changes but unfortunately for me they encompass the area I reside. The best choice for me was to end my relationship.
Continue reading “The United Methodist Church And My Loss Of Faith In Its Mission”
Berkeley geared up for the arrival of a conservative speaker, Ben Shapiro, on campus yesterday with a huge police presence, closed buildings, and . . . counseling. The counseling is for students and employees whose “sense of safety and belonging” becomes compromised by having a conservative speaker like Shapiro speaking somewhere on campus.
Thomas Jefferson called an educated public as “the only safe depositories of their own liberty.” If so, a new poll conducted by the University of Pennsylvania suggests that we have a serious problem. The poll made a truly alarming finding that many Americans cannot name a single first amendment right. Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found 37 percent could not name any of the five rights protected by First Amendment and fewer than half (48 percent) could name freedom of speech.
The McDonald’s coffee cup case has become something of an urban legend as people continue to talk of the woman who supposedly made millions off the spilling of hot coffee. The case is wildly misrepresented and Stella Liebeck, 79, only walked away with an award of $640,000 — after eight days in the hospital for skin grafts and two years of medical recovery treatment. Starbucks is now facing a similar case, but the company is suggesting that Deanna Salas-Solano, 58, has misrepresented what actually occurred in a Denver drive through window.
Continue reading “Starbucks Sued In Spilled Tea Case That Left Woman With Burns And A Dead Dog”
How exactly does this help? Clowns are protesting the movie “It” as magnifying fear of clowns in society. Professional clowns are reporting sharp drops after the release of the blockbuster movie. However, I fail to see how having clowns outside of the movie theater will help . . . beyond being a truly outstanding advertisement and draw for the movie.
Continue reading “Clowns Protest Movie “It” In Effort To Get The Public To Like Them”
A couple of faculty members at the Elliott School of International Affairs sent me an email yesterday from their dean, former Ambassador Reuben E. Brigety, II that they found unsettling and unwise. The school has adopted a policy that all panels in the future at the school cannot be composed of a single gender and that “Non-adherence to this policy could result in cancellation of the event.” The policy raises serious questions of academic freedom and the subordination of intellectual content in favor of the diversity policies. No one has suggested that Dean Brigety is likely to impose mandatory quotas and disciplinary actions. He is an experienced diplomat at a nationally respected graduate school, though he has had controversial moments during this tenure as dean. However, there has been no real discussion of the implications of these policies and how they impact the academic mission of universities like George Washington.
Continue reading “GW International School Announces Policy Of Gender Diversity Of Panels”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy restored President Donald Trump’s travel ban after the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the admission of more refugees. With the Court set to hear arguments on the issue (after lifting prior injunctions placed on the Trump order), the decision of the Ninth Circuit seemed at odds with the prior ruling of the Court. The “Administrative Hold” will leave this matter to the Court for October arguments.
Continue reading “Supreme Court Restores Trump Travel Ban After Ninth Circuit Ruling”
As politicians celebrated the lifting of the debt ceiling in Washington, the United States hit the $20 trillion debt level for the first time in its history. At the same time, citizens are reaching their own personal milestone with $1 trillion in credit card debt alone. It is not hard to see this will end up given the trending lines of debts as we continue to spend wildly both publicly and personally.
Below is my column in the Hill Newspaper on why the legal challenge filed against the Trump Administration byNew York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (left) and others over the rescinding of DACA. As discussed in the article, I have been a long critic of the executive orders issued by President Barack Obama to achieved unilaterally what he failed to achieve legislatively. Notably, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has acknowledged that DACA was on shaky legal ground. Notably, CNN host Chris Cuomo observed:
“There’s no question it’s been legally dubious from jump,” Cuomo said at the end of their conversation. “Nobody’s going to argue with that in a very compelling fashion. At least not this morning, but it’s also about what are you going to do for these people. This is a moral argument, not just a legal one.”
However, it is a dangerous thing to take moral exemptions from the constitutional process because it leaves the question of who decides which issues will be given a constitutional pass. This is an argument that can be made to the legislature but it is important to maintain the clear lines of separation between the branches in the creation of new legislation. DACA was a legislative act done by executive order in my view.
Given the intense political dynamic that led to the issuing of the DACA order, the courts will be necessarily leery of a violation of the political question doctrine in being asked to intervene. The Complaint does contain a couple claims that a court could find compelling but these claims are at most likely to delay rather than prevent deportations. However, as I discuss, complaints like people are often painted by first impressions and the first impression in this complaint (which starts with an ill-supported equal protection claim) is not flattering.
Here is the column: