Shifty:
A college-age changer mugged by the reality of COVID restrictions and the narrowness of “liberal” schools
This change story is worth reading. Like so many, it’s not really about someone who changed his or her mind in terms of the basics. It’s about someone who realized that those basic principles couldn’t be found where he or she had thought they were.
A few excerpts:
Those two semesters at home hadn’t been kind to me. I didn’t really keep in touch with my Bryn Mawr friends; gazing at their mansions through a glitchy Zoom made me feel like an outsider. When we did talk, they obsessed over how scared they were of the virus and how many precautions they were taking, as though it was some kind of competition. Instead of sharing my thoughts and experiences, I stayed silent because I feared their criticism and eventually dropped off…
The stakes of leaving were high. I had to walk away from my $75,000 scholarship, my friends—everything. After a few weeks of being overcome with uncertainty, I started looking for schools that were more aligned with my values.
I quickly discovered that almost every school that was operating even remotely normally was overtly religious. That was really hard for me to wrap my brain around given I had a somewhat fixed view of conservatives being rigid and intolerant. Yet, here I was, confronted with the fact that these religious institutions were, in practice, far more aligned with my values like individual liberty, critical inquiry, and diversity of thought than the place that explicitly claimed to be those things…
[Now at Hillsdale] I went to office hours—in person—the other day for one of my new classes, a required course about classic literature and I got into an interesting debate with a professor. Upon sharing an idea that directly refuted his interpretation of a line from Genesis, which I had never read before, he said, “That’s a great point. Why didn’t you share that in class?” “I didn’t want to be argumentative,” I told him. “Be argumentative,” he said emphatically.
Diversity and Biden’s SCOTUS nominee pledge
Biden pledged that his first nominee to SCOTUS would be a black woman. He did exactly the same with his vice president spot, and see how that’s turned out. Kamala Harris’ performance as Veep has been so abysmal that it’s set back the cause of black women, if anything.
And if I were a black man I’d be spitting angry. What are they, chopped liver? How many black men have there ever been on the Court? I count two: pioneer Thurgood Marshall and reviled-by-the-left Clarence Thomas (who doesn’t even count as black in the left’s playbook because he’s conservative). Ah, but Joe wants firsts.
By the way, Scalia was the first person of Italian descent on the Court. Alito is the second. And lest you think that people of Italian ethnicity haven’t been long-term victims of discrimination, think again.
Or what about that grab-bag combination category, Asians? That would be a first. Hispanics already have Sotomayor (Cardozo didn’t count, being Jewish-Spanish). There have been no Slavs whatsoever, either – I hereby suggest Rod Blagojevich, of Serbian and Bosnian ancestry, and he’s a lawyer as well.
And speaking of diversity, nineteen states have never produced a SCOTUS justice. One of them is Delaware, and so I hereby propose that Biden appoint himself (he moved there at the age of ten, anyway, and has been based there). He did go to law school, didn’t he?
But alas, whatever Joe Biden identifies as, it’s not a black woman. And so he’s about to fulfill the pledge that actually seems to have gotten him elected:
At President Joe Biden’s lowest moment in the 2020 campaign, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn came to him with a suggestion: He should pledge to put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
After some cajoling, Biden made the promise at a Democratic debate, a move Clyburn credits with turning out the Black support that helped Biden score a resounding victory in the South Carolina primary and ultimately win the White House.
I actually think that although Clyburn’s support was indeed a major turning point, it was also a reflection of a turning point that had already occurred within the Democratic hierarchy, whose members realized with panic that the less-electable Bernie Sanders might just win the nomination, and that everyone needed to back off so pretend-moderate Joe could make it. I believe Clyburn’s support was a step – probably the first step – in the execution of that plan.
All of that is secondary to the question of what this sort of pledge means. An approach that designates and narrows the possibilities leads almost inevitably to the perception that the person is less qualified and was only chosen because of his/her group identity. That’s not good. It’s not necessarily true, either, but it’s a perception that is unavoidable.
But actually, these days the Court is so political that – except for “swing” justices – members of the Court are overwhelmingly defined by their politics and judicial philosophies, irrespective of race. In other words, I suspect that any Joe Biden pick of any ethnicity would vote just like any other. The rest is optics.
Those Spotify would-be censors, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell
Yes, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and whoever else has joined their cause have the right to threaten to leave Spotify if the platform doesn’t boycott Joe Rogan. But they would serve their cause better if they just state clearly what bothers them about Rogan or his guests, and then try to prove it wrong by arguing against it and marshaling some facts to prove their thesis.
Ah, but they’re musicians, see, and what’s more they’re famous ones. A lot of people are joking about how their time is long past and much of the Spotify listening public hasn’t a clue who they are. There’s no doubt their time in the sun has gone by. But their music is still better than almost everything new that’s more popular on today’s streaming platforms.
That’s my opinion; make of it what you will. “Heart of Gold” and “Both Sides Now” are great songs, whatever the present-day political idiocies or even self-righteously tyrannical dreams of their creators.
I’m used to ignoring, or at least getting past, the politics of artists whose work I admire. It helps in the case of Joni Mitchell or Neil Young that listening to them doesn’t automatically involve buying anything. YouTube’s free, for example – although, like everything else, listening on that platform has its political problems for me as well.
Commenter “SHIREHOME” asked this question:
Wouldn’t you think that musicians that are “passed it” (classical reference) would like that Rogan is bring[ing] listener[s] to the music?
My answer is that it’s my hunch that both Young and Mitchell think that in the Venn diagram of “Young fans,” “Mitchell fans,” and “good people,” there’s a huge amount of overlap – and that in the Venn diagram that adds “Rogan listeners” to the mix, the “Rogan listener” circle is way off somewhere – overlapping greatly with a “bad people” circle.
Young and Mitchell also most likely thought their threat would work, and that Spotify would choose them over Rogan. So far, it hasn’t. But I’m not sure how much they care. They can now wrap themselves in a mantle of sanctity with the people they believe constitute almost all of their fans, and certainly all of their virtuous fans. How many fans do they need, at this point?
[NOTE: I will add that so far, Spotify was initially hurt financially in terms of the value of its stock (which had been falling somewhat even before Young’s announcement), but it seems to have recovered to its pre-announcement levels. At least, that’s how I read this graph. From what I gather, Young made his announcement last Monday.]
[ADDENDUM: Here’s Rogan’s reply. And here’s Spotify’s statement. Seems to me that Young and Mitchell were at least partially successful in achieving their goals in terms of policy.]
Open thread 1/31/22
The war against police: we’ve learned more about Oscar Rosales…
…and it’s absolutely no surprise. I previously wrote about Rosales here; he is the suspect in the killing of Houston police officer Charles Galloway. The term “cold-blooded murder” seems to fully apply in this case.
Now more facts about Rosales have been revealed, and as I guessed (and as almost anyone would have guessed), he’s not a US citizen. Rosales is apparently a citizen of Guatemala with possible cartel connections. It is unknown when he came to this country or how he came, but a good bet would be across the Mexican border. However, he’s apparently been here a long time – perhaps around twenty years, working as an auto mechanic.
Rosales has been wanted by the police since 1996:
“He was arrested for aggravated assault with a knife back in 1995,” she said. Rosales pled guilty and was given probation, which Ogg said he promptly jumped.
This sounds like a violent crime – perhaps even an attempted murder, although he pled to a lesser charge – and he was given probation. In Texas? Were the prisons that full back then? We can’t blame Soros-funded prosecutors, back in 1996.
“He absconded [in 1996] and literally evaded detection and capture by law enforcement on that open warrant for 25 years,” [DA Ogg] said.
Rosales has gone by multiple identities prosecutors said, and had been wanted on the aggravated assault charge under a different name.
So they weren’t looking for “Rosales,” they were looking for someone with a different name. They certainly knew what he looked like, though. But how hard were they trying to find him? Maybe not all that hard; after all, he was just a probation jumper – at least in the US (he’s wanted for a later murder in El Salvador, apparently). And he had a different name, or several different names – they’re not sure even now what his real name is.
Yet another question I have: he’s an illegal alien, so why on earth would they just give him probation for a crime like that? Especially way back in 1996, long before Obama and Biden? Was there ever an attempt to deport him (not that it would have kept him out of this country permanently, because he would have just kept coming back illegally if he felt like it)? It was Mexican authorities who apprehended him in Mexico, where he (predictably) fled.
I have a feeling there are an awful lot of Oscar Rosaleses out there. Note, also, that he had at least four helpers after the fact, who have now been charged with assisting him afterward.
I’m also curious whether Rosales was ever stopped by the police before, or whether the unfortunate officer Charles Galloway, whom Rosales murdered, was the first to try to do so.
Rosales himself has been heard from now:
Rosales was brought before a Harris County magistrate Wednesday night for a probable cause hearing. Appearing in court in a yellow jumpsuit, Rosales was recorded by OnScene TV speaking out during proceedings and accusing the seven police officers surrounding him of deadly inclinations.
“I know you don’t speak Spanish and I want to say whatever I think,” Rosales was recorded saying. “All the officers and the security guy, they want to, like, try and kill me right here, they can do it. Whatever I don’t care. Everybody in this room has waited for this chance to hurt me.”
So he’s the big victim. Everyone’s against him. Which they no doubt are, for very good reason, but they’re not going to kill him in a courtroom. He’s committed a capital offense, so he might end up losing his life at the hands of the law; they’re seeking the death penalty. When he says at this point he doesn’t care, he may be telling the truth, or part of the truth. On the other hand, he’s a high risk for flight, even in prison. He probably has connections that could help him do just that, and he could get “lost” again.
“The first thought that came to my mind was, is how many other Rosales’ are out there that are wanted?” Andy Kahan, director of Victims Services for Crime Stoppers, said.
He says we saw a similar story play out in 2019 with the murder of Harris County Deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal. The man accused of shooting him during a traffic stop was also a wanted fugitive for violating his parole.
“We got to a get a grip on this issue or you are going to continue to see people, especially in law enforcement, pay the ultimate price, by losing their life,” said Kahan.
Indeed. In fact, I found this video which features an interview with a woman who had been previously involved with Dhaliwal’s killer, and she had some interesting things to say about that:
And what of DA Ogg? She’s got a very interesting history (this is from 2016):
Billionaire financier George Soros is putting a half-million dollars toward an advertising campaign on behalf of the Democratic nominee for Harris County district attorney.
Soros is a longtime backer of liberal causes who’s trying to boost the efforts of challenger Kim Ogg to unseat Republican incumbent Devon Anderson.
Ogg won, and she’s the current prosecutor. But although Ogg ran as a Soros-type reformer, she’s performed in a less radical way than that, and was subsequently challenged from the left in her re-election bid in 2020:
Jones and Cloud believe Ogg has been far too timid in pursuing criminal justice reform. They question her decision to continue seeking the death penalty in some murder cases. They say her much-hyped reforms, including marijuana and mental health diversion programs, aren’t doing enough to stop low-level arrests. And they criticize her for rallying last-minute, and unsuccessful, opposition to a legal settlement that eliminated cash bail for most low-level offenses—a major step toward ending mass incarceration—despite saying she supported bail reform while campaigning in 2016. The county is now facing another lawsuit challenging its practice of jailing felony defendants, many of them charged with nonviolent drug crimes, for weeks or months if they can’t afford bail. With the county currently in negotiations to settle the lawsuit, Ogg has remained publicly noncommittal other than to say she has “concerns about the public safety impact.”
Time was when a Harris County DA would think twice about adopting even the most modest reforms for fear of being tarred by conservatives as soft on crime. But thanks to changing demographics and an anti-Trump backlash, the local Republican party is on the ropes…
“The sands continue to shift in the politics of the Democratic party,” said University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus. “A platform that seemed progressive four years ago now seems outdated and not ambitious enough.”
I wonder whether those sands have shifted again. Ogg certainly seems to be coming down hard on Rosales:
“We will do all we can to ensure the defendant never again breathes free air, never again steps foot in society as a free man and never again harms the people of Harris County,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a tweet.
[NOTE: In New York, police line the streets in a huge show of solidarity for murdered Officer Jason Rivera, 22 years old:
The widow of slain NYPD officer Jason Rivera ripped Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in her husband’s eulogy at his funeral Friday morning, as she described the gut-wrenching moment she found out he’d been killed.
“Although you won’t be here anymore, I want you to live through me. This system continues to fail us. We are not safe anymore, not even the members of the service. I know you were tired of these laws, especially the ones from the new DA. I hope he’s watching you speak through me right now,” Dominique Luzuriaga told mourners at St. Patrick’s Cathedral as they gave her a standing ovation.
They were newlyweds.
Rivera and another young officer, Wilbert Mora, 27 years old, were killed. Here are the circumstances:
The cops responded to the domestic disturbance call at 119 W. 135th St. shortly after 5 p.m. Friday. McNeil, 47, ambushed the two cops before he was shot and wounded by a third officer at the scene, police said.
The rookie cop who shot McNeil, Sumit Sulan, was hailed as a hero but is still struggling with the nightmarish experience, his parents said this week…
Mora and Rivera, who were assigned to the 32nd Precinct stationhouse, had responded to the Harlem apartment after a woman reported that her “distorted” son was threatening her. The caller told the dispatcher that no one in the home was armed. The mother did not know her son had a gun, law-enforcement sources have told The Post.
“He is threatening to do things to her,” according to a police log of the 911 call by Shirley Sourzes. “He is in the house now.”
Isn’t that the sort of thing that police “reformers” think should be handled by social workers? Any volunteers for that job?
More:
The two officers questioned the woman and her other son but were ambushed by McNeil when they began walking toward a rear bedroom. He burst through the door and opened fire with an illegally modified Glock handgun.
McNeil has also died of his wounds. Some of his criminal history:
According to police, McNeil had been arrested five times before the deadly encounter and was on probation after being convicted on a felony drug charge in New York City in 2003.
McNeil was arrested four times outside the city on various charges, including assault on an officer and weapon possession.
Sources tell CBS2 McNeil also has a history of posting anti-police and anti-government messages on social media.
There are a lot of McNeils out there, as well.]
The Canadian freedom convoy
Truckers of Canada, unite! You have nothing to lose but your vaccine mandates.
Or maybe your jobs.
Thousands of truckers and others opposed to cross-border vaccine mandates and other public health restrictions have rolled into Ottawa on Saturday for a rally on Parliament Hill.
For the past week, several teams of truckers and supporters across the country have been making their way to the nation’s capital as part of the “freedom convoy,” raising more than $8 million from more than 101,000 donations on GoFundMe along the way, as of midday Saturday. Some convoy participants have already been in the city since Friday, lining the streets and waving flags in front of the Hill.
It’s an impressive demonstration.
A great many people are fed up with the two years’ of COVID restrictions and in particular with mandates. It’s not that they don’t have respect for the damage COVID can do; most people are well aware of that. It’s just that the response of many governments, both local and national, has been to grab more power and control (and then to flout their own rules in private, but that’s another story) without much thought of a meaningful cost/benefit analysis.
Here’s a video by Viva Frei, who is Canadian. It’s from two days ago, and he talks about how the Canadian media was first covering (or not covering, in some cases) the story:
I still have power – for now
It’s definitely a formidable storm out there, but I’m safe and warm.
Open thread 1/29/22
Remember how Holden Caulfield wondered what happened in wintertime to the ducks of the Central Park pond? This may answer the question. It also will give new meaning to the phrase “eat like a bird”:
And now for something completely different: snow and Frost
A large swath of New England is expecting a big snowstorm this weekend, and that includes me. I’ve got a lot of food in the fridge, my place is warm, and I’m hoping for no power outage so that it stays warm.
I’m tired of politics right now. I’m not tired of snow, because we haven’t had much yet this year. This weekend may change that, but maybe not.
By the way, unlike that interviewer, I wouldn’t apply the adjective “charming” to the poem “Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening.” It has a surface charm and simplicity, I suppose, but a much deeper meaning.
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Too little, too late, and not over yet: Pennsylvania voting law change found unconstitutional
There were a great many rule changes in Pennsylvania prior to the 2020 election that were challenged in court by Republicans, but in most of the cases the higher courts declined to hear them. Now, way after the fact, one of those rule changes has been declared unconstitutional by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court.
I think we can safely predict that the decision will appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a strongly leftist institution, which will reverse it. I may sound too confident in that prediction, and of course nothing is absolutely certain, but this particular result is highly likely. Then I believe it will go to SCOTUS, and if previous experience is any guide, the Court will decline to hear it. [CORRECTION: It may be that it will never go to SCOTUS, because the case concerns the interpretation of the state constitution.]
I don’t know the details of the case, so maybe that part of my prediction is wrong and something distinguishes this election law case from the others they first declared unready and then declared moot. I wrote about one example in this post from February of 2021, when SCOTUS dismissed a similar challenge (on a slightly different topic) as moot. Here is some of what dissenting Justice Clarence Thomas had to say back then:
The Pennsylvania Legislature established an unambiguous deadline for receiving mail-in ballots: 8 p.m. on election day. Dissatisfied, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline by three days. The court also ordered officials to count ballots received by the new deadline even if there was no evidence—such as a postmark—that the ballots were mailed by election day. That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election. But that may not be the case in the future. These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.
One wonders what this Court waits for. We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections.
And Justice Alito had this to say back then:
…[T]he cases now before us are not moot. There is a “reasonable expectation” that the parties will face the same question in the future, see Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U. S., at 463, and that the question will evade future pre-election review, just as it did in these cases. These cases call out for review…
The present Pennsylvania case cries out for SCOTUS review as well. More here [my additions in brackets]:
The court’s decision essentially made the case that any law to make mail-in ballots universal versus only being allowed in defined circumstances needed to come via an amendment to the state’s constitution, given the current [narrow language of the state constitution on the matter]. That was the same case former President Donald Trump’s legal team attempted to make. Unfortunately, the courts at the time brushed off their challenge. Now, though it’s far too late to change things, there is some vindication happening on that front.
As I noted, the vindication is only in this lower court. The decision of the highest Pennsylvania court is almost a foregone conclusion. What really matters is whether SCOTUS will accept this case, and if so what it will rule. [CORRECTION: Same as in paragraph 2; it may be that it can’t be appealed to SCOTUS.] I think the rule change was clearly unconstitutional due to the language of Pennsylvania’s constitution – but then again, I’m not a SCOTUS justice.
[ADDENDUM: Note the corrections. It makes sense to me that the case will never go to the Supreme Court, because any ruling rests on an interpretation of the Pennsylvania constitution, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would seem to be the final arbiter of that. I’ve searched to find a definitive answer but have been unable to locate one. However, I did find this article which indicates the following:
The Commonwealth Court ruling Friday is likely to fuel momentum among Republicans to enact more restrictive voting laws. [Democrat Governor] Wolf’s term ends in January 2023, and the Republicans running to succeed him have vowed to repeal Act 77 and described election security as a top priority — including enacting stricter voter ID requirements and abolishing no-excuse mail voting.
What I infer from that is that the Pennsylvania legislature could enact stricter requirements, but that until the post of governor is in Republican hands, such as effort would be futile because it would be vetoed. So they’re setting their sights on the 2022 election and hope to get a Republican governor in there starting in January of 2023.]
Elastic sentencing guidelines in felony murder
Here’s a Minneapolis case originating in the post-Floyd riots of 2020:
Lee came up to the Twin Cities from Rochester to get in on the action on May 28. Lee was part of a small group that broke into the Max It Pawn Shop on East Lake Street in Minneapolis, home to many minority-owned businesses. The pawn shop was looted. Lee poured out a can of gasoline and ignited a fire that consumed the shop.
Videos captured the action. Lee was proud of it. Filmed outside the shop as it burned, Lee commented: “Fuck this place. We’re gonna burn this bitch down.”
Bystanders knew someone had been caught in the fire. Two months later the authorities found Oscar Lee Stewart, Jr. in the charred remains of the pawn shop…
Lee thereafter pleaded guilty to the arson charge. He committed felony murder in the process of the arson. Federal sentencing guidelines strongly suggested that a sentence of 20 years was appropriate, but the prosecutor argued for 12…
…[T]he prosecutor’s rationale for leniency is, shall we say, troubling:
“The Guidelines state that departure below this range is not ordinarily appropriate. However this is an extraordinary case. The United States therefore seeks a downward variance, and a sentence of 144 months.
“Mr. Lee’s motive for setting the fire is a foremost issue. Mr. Lee credibly states that he was in the streets to protest unlawful police violence against black men, and there is no basis to disbelieve this statement. Mr. Lee, appropriately, acknowledges that he “could have demonstrated in a different way,” but that he was “caught up in the fury of the mob after living as a black man watching his peers suffer at the hands of police.”
Lee’s sentence was ten years. Note that it was the prosecution from the DOJ asking for leniency.
Compare that to the sentence given to William “Roddie” Bryan for felony murder in the Arbery case, which was life imprisonment. Bryan was a participant in the chasing of Arbery but not in his actual shooting, but since Bryan was found guilty of false imprisonment for the chasing, that constituted the felony which set the stage for a felony murder conviction despite the fact that Bryan’s participation appears to have amounted to chasing (his claim is that their motive was the citizen’s arrest) and videoing with his cellphone.
I’ve explained in several posts that the crime of felony murder has always troubled me, because it can so easily be applied to someone who is not really guilty of murder, and the penalties can be extremely harsh. In the case of Lee, I don’t think he is guilty of murder, but arson of a building is a crime that is so reckless that the perpetrator should assume that someone might be killed. Bryan’s chasing of Arbery in his vehicle in order to make a citizen’s arrest (I don’t think even the prosecution claimed their motive was to murder Arbery) doesn’t seem to be of that same inherent dangerousness. The disparity between the extreme severity of Bryan’s sentence and that of Lee seems especially egregious, given those facts.