He wants a dramatic overhaul of labor laws. It’s long overdue. They’re a relic of the thirties.
I haven’t read the proposal, but it’s worth noting that he could eliminate public-employee unions with the stroke of a pen. That’s how Kennedy created them.
She must be apoplectic. Clinton scandals always go away. Why won’t this one?
Ashe Schow has a warning:
Students, especially male students, need to stop viewing sex merely as pleasure or as an expression of affection or love, and begin seeing it as a potentially life-ruining moment. And as someone who has never advocated abstinence, that is a painful thing to have to say.
The situation has gotten so bad that one parents’ group has begun distributing flyers on California campuses warning students of how easy it is to be accused and expelled.
The reality of it is this: There is little trust anymore between the sexes. Women are being told that men, especially men they believe are their friends, are waiting to get them drunk and rape them. This in turn is leading men to believe that women are going to accuse them of sexual assault for just about any reason, even for consensual sexual encounters.
I’m glad I’m not attending college these days.
[Update a few minutes later]
Defining deviancy up: Remarks about physical appearance now constitute “sexual violence.”
I’ll bet this IT guy is sorry he ever got involved with the Clintons.
The only reason I can think of to not give him use immunity is because the DoJ doesn’t want to hear what he has to say.
[Update a few minutes later]
Hadn’t noticed the whole story. Apparently he wasn’t just a hired IT guy — he worked on her campaign.
No sympathy, then. Anyone who voluntarily associates themselves with this long-time criminal syndicate deserves whatever they get.
It is becoming “extremely serious.”
Of course it is. Because it always was.
But remember, it's not really a "criminal" investigation. It's just an investigation into something felonious. https://t.co/WurgFqfBjC
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) August 28, 2015
And when I say "the rubes," I really mean the media.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) August 28, 2015
[Saturday update]
Hillary’s zone of maximum danger:
so now one of two things will happen. First, Clinton could keep the FBI at bay and sell the idea that this is all another partisan witch hunt. In this scenario, she scares off additional contestants for a short period of time-say, five weeks-at which point it becomes logistically impossible for someone to wage a serious campaign designed to beat her. If it’s just her, O’Malley, and Sanders in the ring by the end of September, then she’ll slug it out and probably win the nomination in a closer-than-expected fight. That’s one possibility.
The other is that one of the aforementioned big guns does get in, at which point things get interesting. Republican races always pit two basic political factions against one another: the GOP establishment against actual conservatives. Democratic races have three factions: the party’s establishment machine, ideological liberals, and people obsessed with identity politics.
The Democratic establishment isn’t as powerful as its Republican counterpart, but it’s plenty formidable. Howard Dean couldn’t beat it with his ideological liberalism. Barack Obama was able to merge liberalism with identity politics, and he still nearly lost to the establishment machine, winning only because of Clinton’s massive strategic error of not focusing resources on caucus states.
If Biden or Warren or Patrick gets in, then we could hae a three-way face off between each faction of the Democratic party – an epic, asymmetric showdown, like shark versus crocodile versus giant squid. At which point Clinton would step into the octagon with the outcome very much uncertain. And if Obama decides to weigh in and back one of the new challengers, things get even tougher for her.
Note, the Dems have no problem running a corrupt lying felon for president, as long as they're confident she can win.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) August 29, 2015
[Bumped]
Instapundit has some good advice for a fraternity under siege:
(1) Immediately complain to the Department of Education and the Department of Justice that you’re being targeted because of your race and sex, and denied your First Amendment rights. No, nothing will come of this, but that’s not the point. The process is the punishment. (2) Sue on the same grounds. (3) The real killer: Go to the Virginia Legislature and tell them they should cut Old Dominion’s budget. Come prepared with figures on the number of administrators on campus now, versus 10 and 20 years ago. File freedom of information requests and get the travel expense figures for the folks in the administration. Look over them for suspicious and large expenditures. (You’ll find them!) Make a big stink about those.
Administrative bloat leads to large numbers of “student life” educrats without enough to do, so they’ve created a quasi-police-state to fill the time. State legislators are looking for things to cut anyway, and higher ed doesn’t have the clout it used to have. This will hurt them more than anything else you can do.
I would love to see that happen.
In Detroit (as contrasted with murderous Chicago), the citizenry is legally arming itself, with the blessing of the chief of police.
It’s nice to see my home state at the forefront of the restoration of our rights. It will be very interesting to compare crime and murder rates to “gun-controlled” (where almost all the guns are in fact completely out of control) cities.
Here’s now to fly it by the FAA rules.
I’ve been thinking about picking up a cheap quadcopter just to play with, but probably not one big enough to require filing a flight plan.
[Late-morning update]
Man versus drone versus the law:
I personally like some of the quirkier aspects of old English law. I think limiting self-help against drones to thrown T-shirts would make a wonderful common law rule. If you can take it down by throwing a T-shirt at it, then it’s too damn close. If not, then tough luck.
“Excellent. We could call it the rule of ‘quod tangit tunicula.'”
Heh.
The policy continues its descent into madness in California:
A student found responsible for campus sexual assault is often branded a rapist in local (and often national) media, his transcript is forever marked and his reputation is forever tarnished. And let’s not forget that a finding of responsibility can be achieved on nothing more than an accusation, with exculpatory evidence and witnesses ignored and a complete lack of due process.
An expulsion with a mark on the transcript could keep him from continuing his education. When accused students have been suspended and allowed to return to campus, outrage has sometimes ensued. Colleges are now being pressured simply to expel. Expelled students — again, expelled based on nothing more than an accusation — find it nearly impossible to transfer to another school. Their education is halted, and if they can’t afford an attorney to sue the university for wrongful expulsion, their lives are put on hold.
As one male student told Buzzfeed: “At first I thought they didn’t want me to participate in campus activities. Then I thought they didn’t want me to graduate. Now they don’t want me to have a job or be part of society. Do they want me to commit suicide? Is that what they want me to do? What is the endgame?”
We need some lawsuits over this. If I had a son, I wouldn’t let him attend school in the state.
Do they all still exist?
The Denver based company that Hillary hired to watch over her server, Platte River Networks, says it is highly likely that a full backup of all of Hillary’s emails was made from her old server before it was wiped clean. This calls into question how truthful Hillary has been with the voters and law enforcement.
You don’t say.
Platte River networks is not a suspect in any crime and is cooperating fully with the FBI. Hillary must hate that.
Yes.
[Monday-morning update]
Just pardon Hillary now:
Not only would a pardon have legal consequences. It would have political ones. It would be a tacit endorsement of Clinton, a message to Biden not to run. Scrutiny of Clinton would fade. A few news outlets might continue to dig around—we at the Washington Free Beacon will never, ever stop—but most reporters, who’d rather not be writing about this scandal anyway, would turn elsewhere.
Obama would look magnanimous. The country would be spared years of Clinton drama it doesn’t want. A pardon would be a final display of Obama’s moral superiority to the woman he defeated long ago—exactly the sort of self-righteous gesture that most appeals to him.
As Elizabeth Price Foley notes, he’s not being serious, of course, but it is fun to tweak this gang of corrupt thieves and liars. As Nixon said, he gave his enemies the weapons they needed to destroy him. So has Hillary. And I suspect, at this point, one of those enemies is Barack Obama.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Former CIA operative: “You or I would be fired and maybe jailed for this.”
It’s almost as though, in these peoples’ minds, the greater the responsibility, the least the accountability.
[Update a while later]
Surprise! The discovery of thousands of emails that the State Department denied the existence of in 2013:
…this has to be either willful incompetence or a conscious effort to obstruct a court order. If they missed a few responsive e-mails, I’d chalk it up to incompetence; if they missed the most responsive e-mails in an avalanche of data, willful incompetence might still be a good explanation. This looks much more like obstruction of justice, and perhaps the judge in this case may be persuaded to haul State Department officials into court to testify under oath about it. The court can start with John Kerry and start working downward.
At least we still have a judicial branch. It doesn’t seem like we have a Justice Department any more.
If she’s not prosecuted for this, a lot of people who have been will have a good equal-protection case for clemency.
[Update a while later]
Who down-domained the information?
As noted, whoever it is should be questioned. Maybe with conditional immunity.