Netanyahu’s prosecutor-persecutors – sound familiar?
Please read this article by Caroline Glick about recent developments in the Netanyahu trial. Whether or not you’re especially interested in Israel or in Netanyahu himself, you will probably be impressed by the similarities to the actions of Donald Trump’s prosecutors in this country. In some ways, what they tried to do to Netanyahu may even be worse – although we have yet to see the full flowering of what is to come for Trump.
All of it is disturbing and chilling, although in Netanyahu’s case there seems to be a major pause in the proceedings for now, because the case is so very weak. But his enemies are very very determined, so don’t count them out, not by a longshot.
Here’s an excerpt from the beginning, but I suggest you read the whole thing:
On Thursday night, with sunken faces, Channel 13’s legal correspondents delivered the news: The judges presiding over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial for bribery and breach of trust had told the prosecutors and defense attorney last week that the prosecutors have not proven their charge of bribery, and are unlikely to succeed in doing so, since all their major witnesses have already testified.
The implications are earthshattering. For the past seven years, two forces—the state prosecution and the media—have pushed Israel to the brink of civil war in their effort to criminalize Netanyahu and demonize his supporters.
Their goal was never hidden. They seek to oust Netanyahu from public life and disenfranchise his voters by disqualifying and demonizing their elected leader.
Beginning in 2016, through criminal leaks to reporters from every major newspaper, radio station and television channel, state prosecutors, police investigators, journalists and editors invented and shaped a narrative of criminality surrounding Netanyahu and sold it to the public on a daily basis.
Is France burning?
Much of France is a mess right now, and there is that déjà vu feeling from memories of the US during the George Floyd summer of 2020 [comments in brackets are mine]:
Paris and other French cities resemble war zones, with burnt homes and streets littered with charred cars, as the nation reels under the sixth night of violence triggered by last week’s police shooting that killed a 17-year-old boy of Algerian descent.
“In just six nights, over 5000 vehicles were set on fire, whereas around 3300 persons were arrested, according to a report from the Ministry of Interior on Monday,” French newspaper Le Parisien reported. Rioters damaged more than 1,000 buildings, the daily added…
The establishment media in the U.S. and Europe tried to pin the entire blame on French police for causing the riots, first by shooting an innocent teenager and then using “heavy-handed tactics” against protesters.
“The shooting of the teenager, identified only as Nahel, bears some similarity to traffic stop deaths involving people of color in the United States,” USA Today concluded.
If you are only following the mainstream media, you won’t know that the 17-year-old victim of a tragic police shooting reportedly had prior convictions…
The big media seems to have great sympathy for these marauding gangs of migrant [that is, people from predominantly Muslim countries] men ‘trapped’ in a lifestyle financed by a generous welfare system. “Many of the very young rioters may have a sense of besieged Muslim identity,” Politico commented. “Young men of African and North African origin are much more likely to be stopped by French police than young white men,” the U.S. news outlet complained.
Perhaps there’s a reason for the difference in rates of traffic stops, and perhaps that reason is not racism.
From what I’ve read about the killing of Nahel, it seems that he was almost certainly driving a stolen car and trying to evade the stop. But it also seems that he was not in the act of threatening or attacking the officers, nor was he brandishing a weapon, when he was shot and killed. Therefore I’m with Theodore Dalrymple on this:
The pretext for the mayhem was the shooting dead by a policeman of a young man named Nahel. It seems likely that the officer was unjustified in his action, though the president of the republic has in effect abrogated the presumption of innocence by all but pronouncing him guilty…
Because Nahel was perhaps unjustifiably killed by an agent of the state, he is already in the process of secular canonization, à la George Floyd. The French press has been remarkably reticent in emphasizing or enquiring into certain of the circumstances before the killing. Nahel was driving a stolen car without a license and therefore without insurance; he had been admonished several times before for doing the same thing; the car had Polish number plates, and it is well known that cars stolen in Germany, taken to Poland, and given such plates, are used by drug dealers in France…
Of course, Nael was only 17 and did not deserve to be shot dead just because he was driving a stolen car and was an admirer of and participant in one of ugliest subcultures known in the world. He might well have grown out of this subculture that glorifies criminality and violence, especially toward women.
Dalrymple adds that the seriousness of the rioting in city centers “implies a weakening of the state’s capacity to control and repress.” The rioters seem to have become more emboldened, and why not?
So, now it’s time to get serious about Biden’s brain?
If the MSM ever does decide it’s finally “time” to get serious about Biden’s brain, it would be because (a) the fear that the public will reject Biden as obviously suffering from dementia has increased, and (b) the left has decided on his replacement and is satisfied with the prospects of that person.
At any rate, here’s the reasoning, as stated by a guy on the right:
…[T]he Iraq/Ukraine gaffes were not an isolated series of incidents. They are simply the latest in a string of bizarre, confused and mostly unintelligible statements from Biden in the much longer string of bizarre, confused and mostly unintelligible statements that have come to define the Biden presidency…
Yet, despite the press’s normal reflex to ask whether the president is up to the demands of the office, we in the media have responded to Biden’s bizarre presidency with little more than a bored shrug…
But if ever there was a time to snap back to attention, to engage on the issue of “presidential fitness,” this is it. There’s a presidential election just around the corner. The time to get serious about “fitness,” and to address it fairly and seriously, is now. Not for the sake of the media’s credibility, but for the sake of the public, which has every right to know whether the leading candidates for president are actually capable of carrying out their dutie
Good luck with that.
When Adams writes that Biden’s recent “gaffes” are “simply the latest in a string of bizarre, confused, and mostly unintelligible statements that have come to define the Biden presidency,” I beg to differ. They also defined his campaign. What’s more, they defined his vice presidency under Obama – and the MSM likewise ignored them, covered them up, and/or rationalized them even back then.
One example you might recall was his debate in 2008 with Sarah Palin. Here’s Jonah Goldberg on the matter, back in the days before he fell prey to Trump derangement syndrome:
But what about Biden? Overwhelmingly, the professional political class proclaimed that he blew her away on “specifics” and “knowledge” and “seriousness.” The New York Times said Biden avoided making any gaffes, “while showing a clear grasp of the big picture and the details.” The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald Seib proclaimed on ABC’s “This Week” that Biden avoided any “verbal excesses or rhetorical flourishes.”
The Associated Press called Biden the “master senator … rattling off foreign policy details with ease.”
And that’s true in a sense. Biden was at ease; he easily rattled off a string of falsehoods and gasbaggeries.
According to the master senator, the U.S. and France “kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.” Afterward, according to Biden, “I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.’ ” Perhaps Biden meant to say the U.S. and France kicked Syria out of Lebanon. But even this is woefully glib. Syria never fully abandoned Lebanon. And there was no “vacuum” for Hezbollah to fill. The terrorist group was already firmly in control of southern Lebanon and part of the government. No one remembers Biden and Obama fighting for the stupidly impossible NATO move either.
That Lebanon claim of Biden’s was a serious “gaffe” (otherwise known as an error or a lie) – and recall that, at the time, Biden was widely billed by the MSM as some sort of foreign policy expert.
I remember this one:
The [incorrectly self-proclaimed] constitutional law professor [Biden] scornfully mocked Dick Cheney because the vice president “doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president. That’s the executive branch.” Wrong. Article I defines the Legislature, Article II the executive branch. Both define the role of the VP.
The article by Goldberg goes on for some time listing these errors, lies, gaffes, what have you. Towards the end, he writes this:
Biden has no excuse. He’s been in the majors for nearly 40 years, and yet he sounds like a bizarro-world Chauncey Gardner. The famous simpleton from Jerzy Kosinski’s “Being There” (played by Peter Sellers in the film) offered terse aphorisms that were utterly devoid of specific content but nonetheless seemed to describe reality accurately. Biden is the reverse: He offers a logorrheic farrago of “specifics” that have no connection to our corner of the space-time continuum.
In short, he just makes stuff up. But he does it with passionate, self-important intensity. He’s like a politician in a movie with a perfect grasp of a world that doesn’t exist. He’s not an expert, he just plays one on TV.
No one seems to care. He convinced the focus groups he’s an expert. The media, with a few exceptions, let it all slide.
That was in 2008, fifteen years ago. Biden was 65 years old. The media was already “letting it all slide,” because Biden was Obama’s VP, and therefore he had to be defended and protected. But he was already – what? Stupid? Mendacious? Suffering from mild dementia? All of the above? Whatever it was, it should have been cause for alarm even on the left and the MSM (but I repeat myself) back then but of course it wasn’t. They protected him even better twelve years later, in 2020, and they will protect him now until it no longer serves the left to protect him. Then and only then will they abandon him.
Open thread 7/3/23
Plisetskaya’s jump
By popular demand, I’m going to try to explain Plisetskaya’s jumping ability as shown in a recent open thread.
Here’s the video again:
You won’t see other women in ballet jumping like that. You’ll see a few men getting that kind of height, but not women. But Plisetskaya was undoubtedly a woman – and quite a woman – and she could jump like that. How did she do it?
Some of it cannot be explained, like all greatness. But there’s quite a bit that can be explained about her superior jumping ability, and it boils down to strength and what’s known in ballet as attack.
You can find plenty of instructional videos on the basics of the step, which is called grand jeté en tournant (see for example this one). But they won’t tell you much about what Plisetskaya did to create such a dramatic effect.
Why could Plisetskaya do this and almost no other ballet dancers – except quite a few men, who don’t tend to kick the preparation leg up so high at the end? Plisetskaya had a very unusual combination of flexibility and strength, even among dancers, who must have both. Most female dancers today sacrifice jumping strength to flexibility. They are very hyper-flexible and develop that flexibility even further – to the detriment of the beauty of their lines, I think, although today’s audiences seem to love and require it. But that emphasis weakens their jumps and also slows them down. Ballet dancers today generally have more trouble moving fast than olden-day dancers.
They also have different body shapes and proportions. They are longer and thinner, more ectomorphic than mesomorphic. You will notice that Plisetskaya is slender but not very thin, and her limbs – though longish – are not very long. Simply put, she has a more normal body type than today’s female ballet dancers. She carries more strength and bulk in the all-important jumping muscles of the glutes and thighs, more like a man although she’s all woman. She was a ballet dancer with unusual sex appeal, but she never was the fragile type.
And she had the preparation of an athlete in terms of what this man explains with the example of the javelin thrower. Plisetskaya covers a tremendous amount of ground in her set-up steps. Boy, does she move, and there’s nothing delicate about it. That gives her tremendous lift because of her momentum. It’s partly a matter of timing in addition to strength.
Take a look at his tutorial on how to do the step, and I think you’ll see how it relates to what Plisetskaya does, although he doesn’t mention her (plus, I would say that all of her preparation steps are very big and strong, not just the last one or two):
Jonas Salk and merit
[NOTE: Because of the Gilot open thread earlier today, I decided to look up Jonas Salk and get up to speed on some of the details of his life. What I found was interesting enough, and relevant enough to today, that I decided on a post about it.]
I thought the story of Jonas Salk might make a nice contrast to today’s war on merit. For example:
Jonas Salk was born in New York City to Daniel and Dora (née Press) Salk. His parents were Jewish; Daniel was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents, and Dora, who was born in Minsk, emigrated to the United States when she was twelve. Salk’s parents did not receive extensive formal education…
When he was 13, Salk entered Townsend Harris High School, a public school for intellectually gifted students.
Surprisingly, this school is still in operation – and even more surprisingly, it still seems to base its enrollment on merit:
Well over 15,400 students compete for approximately 270 seats in the freshman class each year based on their middle school grades, standardized test scores and even attendance records. Admission is available to all New York City residents in 8th grade. A minimum grade point average of 91 is required of all applicants to be considered for admission. Minimum standardized reading and math scores at the 90th percentile are also required (4.3 on both English and Math)…
In sharp contrast with the original school which was open to male students only, the new school has been dominated by female students from its inception, today comprising approximately 70% of the student population.
As of 2019, the school’s minority population is largely Asian, with the New York City Department of Education’s “Asian and other” category making up 44% of the student body total, comprising the largest segment of the school’s population. White students comprise 37% of the population, Hispanic students 12% and black students 7%.
48% of students at Townsend Harris are from an economically disadvantaged background.
The school maintains a 100% graduation rate.
But back to Salk:
Salk enrolled in CCNY, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1934. Oshinsky writes that “for working-class immigrant families, City College represented the apex of public higher education. Getting in was tough, but tuition was free. Competition was intense, but the rules were fairly applied. No one got an advantage based on an accident of birth.”…
After graduating from City College of New York, Salk enrolled in New York University School of Medicine. According to Oshinsky, NYU based its modest reputation on famous alumni, such as Walter Reed, who helped conquer yellow fever. Tuition was “comparatively low, better still, it did not discriminate against Jews… while most of the surrounding medical schools—Cornell, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale—had rigid quotas in place.” Yale, for example, accepted 76 applicants in 1935 out of a pool of 501. Although 200 of the applicants were Jewish, only five got in.? During his years at New York University Medical School, Salk worked as a laboratory technician during the school year and as a camp counselor in the summer.
That probably was enough to pay his tuition.
As for what happened to CCNY later on, there’s this:
Additionally, as the population of New York grew, CUNY was not able to accommodate the demand for higher education. Higher and higher requirements for admission were imposed; in 1965, a student seeking admission to CUNY needed an average of 92 or A-. This helped to ensure that the student population of CUNY remained largely white and middle-class…
Calls for greater access to public higher education from the black and Puerto Rican communities in New York, especially in Brooklyn, led to the founding of “Community College Number 7,” later Medgar Evers College, in 1966–1967. In 1969, a group of black and Puerto Rican students occupied City College and demanded the racial integration of CUNY, which at the time had an overwhelmingly white student body…
Under pressure from community activists and CUNY Chancellor Albert Bowker, the Board of Higher Education (BHE) approved an Open Admissions plan in 1966, but it was not scheduled to be fully implemented until 1975. However, in 1969, students and faculty across CUNY participated in rallies, student strikes, and class boycotts demanding an end to CUNY’s restrictive admissions policies. CUNY administrators and Mayor John Lindsay expressed support for these demands, and the BHE voted to implement the plan immediately in the fall of 1970.
The doors to CUNY were opened wide to all those demanding entrance, assuring all high school graduates entrance to the university without having to fulfill traditional requirements such as exams or grades. This policy was known as open admissions and nearly doubled the number of students enrolling in the CUNY system to 35,000 (compared to 20,000 the year before). With greater numbers came more diversity: Black and Hispanic student enrollment increased threefold. Remedial education, to supplement the training of under-prepared students, became a significant part of CUNY’s offerings.
Additionally, ethnic and Black Studies programs and centers were instituted on many CUNY campuses, contributing to the growth of similar programs nationwide.
However, retention of students in CUNY during this period was low, with two-thirds of students enrolled in the early 1970s leaving within four years without graduating.
Two-thirds did not graduate during that era.
There’s much more at the link, but note this:
In 1999, a task force appointed by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani issued a report that described CUNY as “an institution adrift” and called for an improved, more cohesive university structure and management, as well as more consistent academic standards. Following the report, Matthew Goldstein, a mathematician and City College graduate who had led CUNY’s Baruch College and briefly, Adelphi University, was appointed chancellor. CUNY ended its policy of open admissions to its four-year colleges, raised its admissions standards at its most selective four-year colleges (Baruch, Brooklyn, City, Hunter and Queens), and required new enrollees who needed remediation, to begin their studies at a CUNY open-admissions community college…
CUNY is the fourth-largest university system in the United States by enrollment…
The university has one of the most diverse student bodies in the United States, with students hailing from around the world, but mostly from New York City. The black, white and Hispanic undergraduate populations each comprise more than a quarter of the student body, and Asian undergraduates make up 18 percent. Fifty-eight percent are female, and 28 percent are 25 or older.
This was the dropout rate in 2015:
12% of the cohort completed their degree in four years, 47% in six years, and 51% in eight years.
The official graduation rate of CCNY is 47%. This is the percentage of students who completed their degree within 150% of the published time. That means six years for a standard bachelor’s degree program.
I couldn’t find any data on the dropout rate when Salk was getting his education, but it’s interesting that at his specialized high school, the dropout rate was said to be quite high during his time there. At present, the graduation rate there is 100%.
College loan forgiveness: Democrats campaign on “Republicans are mean”
“Republicans are mean” is pretty much the story told by Democrats, and has been for a long time, and it’s often very successful. I don’t think there’s a Democrat I know – and I know plenty of them – who doesn’t think it’s true. And, particularly for those who don’t feel like getting into the details of the actual effects of policies proposed by each party, it’s a shorthand way of simplifying politics in a reductionist manner and of allying themselves with the Good Guys.
Joe Biden has been a Democratic politician for most of his long life, and if there’s one thing he knows, it’s this fact. He may be cognitively challenged, but the habits and instincts of a lifetime are still present. And so we have the following:
Biden spoke at the White House hours after the court struck down his student loan scheme in Biden v. Nebraska. He announced he will try a new path for student loan forgiveness, using the Higher Education Act of 1965. His most shocking comments came in response to a brave reporter who asked whether he had given borrowers “false hope.”
“I didn’t give any false hope,” the president said. “But the Republicans snatched away the hope they were given, and it’s real—real hope … . I think the court misinterpreted the Constitution.”
Earlier in his remarks, Biden attacked the six Republican attorneys general for suing to block his student loan scheme.
“These Republican officials just couldn’t bear the thought of providing relief for working-class, middle-class Americans,” he said.
The Great Uniter strikes again. Also, the great constitutional scholar.
But Joe knows what works and he knows that, for a lot of people, “Republicans are mean and they’re out to get you, whereas I’m from the government and I want to help” rings true.
The article goes on to state this:
Yet Biden, a longtime politician, must have known from the beginning that it was an extreme stretch to argue that the 2003 Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act justified canceling about $430 billion in debt for borrowers across the U.S. He must have known that this scheme would almost certainly never hold up, so it was indeed the falsest of hopes…
Yet Biden must also have known that it would take some time for the policy to fall apart.
If Biden did know such things – and we can differ about how much he “knows” at this point and how much he doesn’t know – that knowledge was and is quite irrelevant to him. What matters is what works in the political and tactical sense. Yes, he would have been happy had SCOTUS let this debt forgiveness proposal stand. But he’s got another trick up his sleeve – or, someone in his administration does:
President Joe Biden said Friday that he will pursue canceling student loan debt through an alternative legal authority after the Supreme Court blocked his signature program to eliminate up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of Americans.
Biden said his administration will work to forgive student loan debt through the Higher Education Act of 1965, which authorizes the education secretary to modify, waive or compromise federal student loan under certain circumstances…
“President’s Biden [original] plan was a historic action that would have provided life-changing relief to young people,” said Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a progressive advocacy group for young voters. “Instead, Republican and partisan forces worked to obstruct this relief – and we know that young voters will remember this come 2024.”
Indeed, they do know – and they will do their best to amplify that turnout by young voters eager to get their debts cancelled. So the SCOTUS decision, although a loss, is only a temporary one, and could lead to a greater win.
Never mind wonky stuff like this:
Loan cancellation transfers the debt of an individual who freely agreed to repay a loan onto other individuals (through higher taxes and inflation) who did not agree to take out that loan. Many individuals made a conscious decision not to attend college in order to avoid debt. Loan cancellation foists someone else’s debt onto them.”
Others worked their way through college or duly paid off the debt that they voluntarily took on, after graduation. “The Biden debt transfer punishes the 240 million Americans who do not hold college degrees, who constitute more than half of the population ages 25 and above and are less able to bear this new burden.”
“Mean Republicans” works so much better.
Open thread 7/1/23
Françoise Gilot, an artist who had a ten-year-long relationship and two children with Pablo Picasso and later was married to Dr. Jonas Salk for 25 years, died on June 6, 2023 at the age of 101. In this 1998 interview, Gilot tells the story of how she and Salk met:
SCOTUS rules on free speech as well as Biden’s debt forgiveness
SCOTUS is on a roll, with two more decisions in which the justices have voted 6-3, with all the Republican-appointed justices in the majority and the Democrat-appointed justices dissenting. The first case defends free speech:
The Court held 6–3 that “[t]he First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees.”…
Petitioners Lorie Smith and her company, 303 Creative LLC, challenged the application of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) against Smith, whose religious beliefs prohibit her from crafting some custom messages. Smith is a website designer who wants to expand her company’s offerings to include custom wedding websites.
While Smith and her company will serve any customer regardless of sexual orientation, she could not, consistent with her Christian faith, create a custom wedding website celebrating a same-sex wedding. Smith also wishes to post a notice that she will not create these custom websites for same-sex weddings.
The second decision – which actually involved two cases – says “no” to Biden’s debt forgiveness program:
Cardona announced on August 24, 2022, a plan to use the HEROES Act as the basis for executive action to discharge up to $20,000 in student-loan debt for qualifying borrowers.
In both cases, the Court was called on to decide whether the states and borrowers had standing to sue. In Nebraska, the Court needed to determine “whether the plan exceeds the Secretary’s statutory authority or is arbitrary and capricious.” In Brown, the Court needed to determine “whether the department’s plan is statutorily authorized and was adopted in a procedurally proper manner.”…
In Nebraska, the Court held 6–3 “[a]t least Missouri has standing.”…
Finding standing, the Court addressed the merits of the challenge to the plan. The Court accepted Cardona’s authority “to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions” for student loans under the HEROES Act but rejected the argument that this authority extended to “canceling $430 billion of student loan principal”…
In Brown, the Court, in an opinion by Alito, unanimously held the borrows lacked standing to challenge plan “[b]ecause respondents fail to establish that any injury they suffer from not having their loans forgiven is fairly traceable to the Plan.”
In a deft touch, the opinion cited a quote from none other than Nancy Pelosi, as follows:
Roberts quoted in the majority opinion comments that Pelosi gave during a press conference in July 2021, in which she said Biden did not have the authority to cancel student loans by executive order, only delay it.
“People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress,” Pelosi said at the time.
But of course she later changed her mind.
More of the Court’s reasoning can be found here. Suffice to say the decision doesn’t rest on the quote from Pelosi as some sort of legal authority.
Colleges, affirmative action, and the quest for cosmic justice
Affirmative action is a subset of what the brilliant Thomas Sowell called The Quest For Cosmic Justice (and if you’ve never read that book I highly recommend doing so). Here’s Sowell:
Cosmic justice is not about the rules of the game. It is about putting particular segments of society in the position that they would have been in but for some undeserved misfortune. This conception of fairness requires that third parties must wield the power to control outcomes, over-riding rules, standards, or the preferences of other people…
In short, all are not to be judged by the same rules or standards within the given process; pre-existing inequalities are to be counter-balanced. Note also that…the quest for cosmic justice focuses on one segment of the population and disregards the interests of others…
Implicit in much discussion of a need to rectify social inequities is the notion that some segments of society, through no fault of their own, lack things which others receive as windfall gains, through no virtue of their own. True as this may be, the knowledge required to sort this out intellectually, much less rectify it politically, is staggering and superhuman. Far from society being divided into those with a more or less standard package of benefits and others lacking those benefits, each individual may have both windfall advantages and windfall disadvantages, and the particular combination of windfall gains and losses varies enormously from individual to individual. Some are blessed with beauty but lacking in brains, some are wealthy but from an emotionally impoverished family, some have athletic prowess but little ability to get along with other human beings…and so on and on. Add to this the changing circumstances of each individual over a lifetime – with relative advantages and disadvantages changing with the passing years – and the difficulties of merely determining the net advantages increase exponentially.
There’s much much more, but the point is that assessing advantages and disadvantages and portioning out rewards based on balancing the two is a literally impossible task, and will lead to miscarriages of actual justice in the quest for justice of the cosmic kind. Human beings are incapable of dispensing cosmic justice.
But that doesn’t stop them from trying – oh, how we try, especially the left, who plug in various kneejerk formulas such as race in order to reward their constituents and cloak themselves in supposed virtue, while castigating the right for being both mean and unfair and racist into the bargain.
Which brings us to colleges and yesterday’s affirmative action ruling. It will stop the kneejerk use of race as a category that ignores individual differences, but there are plenty of other ways to attempt to allot cosmic justice, and race can easily slip in the backdoor as well. Using race as a category by which to discriminate is forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment, but colleges are allowed to discriminate in other ways as long as they supposedly tailor that discrimination to individuals and don’t overtly base it on racial categories.
The real question is what a college is for: to select the smartest and most able people, and educate them further in order to take their places as leaders in various fields? To create well-rounded individuals? To redistribute wealth? To further cosmic justice, as defined by the left?
The reality is that colleges can select whomever they want as long as they follow the new rules – which allow for plenty of attempts to dispense a cosmic justice that cannot really be just, not on this earth.
RIP Alan Arkin
Alan Arkin has died at 89. His brand of comedy didn’t quite click with me, but it sure did with a lot of people. He was a Hollywood staple for many years, and had a wide range of roles. RIP.
ADDENDUM: A comment jogged my memory into recalling that I really liked Arkin in the movie “The In-Laws,” in which he was linked in a kind of Odd Couple with a zany Peter Falk. A sample: