Month: May 2019

James Comey Named As Defendant In Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Against FBI

A female group of former FBI recruits filed a lawsuit against the bureau this week alleging that a “good-old-boy network” at its 20-week training academy which discriminated against women. In addition to gender discrimination, race and diabilities are alleged to be a factor in setting candidates up for failure. 

The training involves firearms, academics, defensive tactics and navigating high-risk situations. And, according to the women, tons of sexism. 

Male instructors at the academy in Quantico, Va., exposed the women beginning in 2015 to a hostile work environment, sexual harassment and inappropriate jokes, according to the lawsuit. One woman said that an instructor referred to an African-American female trainee as “spaghetti head,” a reference to her braids. The woman also said training agents made repeated sexual advances.

In particular, the lawsuit takes aim at the tactical training that plays out Hogan’s Alley, the academy’s mock town where hired actors play terrorists and criminals. Trainees practice making dangerous arrests where they use weapons. Many of the female agent recruits were kicked out of the academy during this phase more quickly and more often than men were. –New York Times

Named in the lawsuit is former FBI Director James Comey, who has been accused by one of the plaintiffs of dismissing her complaint. Also named is Mark Morgan, President Trump’s nominee to lead ICE. Morgan oversaw the academy as a former top FBI official. 

When Comey was approached by FBI employee Lauren Rose in a 2015 email concerning discriminatory practices, Comey gave her a virtual pat on the head and told her to use her “pain” to reflect on strengths and weaknesses, whatever that meant. 

Of note, last February we reported that the DOJ’s internal watchdog sanctioned at least 14 FBI agents and officials over a five-year period for sexual misconduct – most of which occurred under Former FBI Director James Comey’s leadership. Prior to Comey’s tenure as director, which began in September 2013, there had been no sexual misconduct charges. 

What’s more, Comey attempted to thwart the internal investigation according to IG Michael Horowitz, per the Daily Caller. 

As Horowitz explained in his March 2015 final report on how law enforcement agencies handle sexual-misconduct complaints, his office’s ability “to conduct this review was significantly impacted and delayed by the repeated difficulties we had in obtaining relevant information from both the FBI and DEA as we were initiating this review in mid-2013.” –Daily Caller

In total, sixteen women have sued in this week’s lawsuit – several of whom are current FBI employees. They’ve asked for $300,000 each for emotional distress and have demanded that the agency review their training process, as well as hire more female training instructors. 

Attorney General William P. Barr said last month that he had directed the Justice Department to investigate accusations of discrimination, including claims that the F.B.I. academy forced out male potential agents for not being “masculine enough.”

The lawsuit comes as the F.B.I., historically a male-dominated law enforcement agency, is trying to increase its ranks of female agents. Women made up only a fifth of the bureau’s 13,500 agents as of October, and few women work in the agency’s top echelons. –New York Times

According to the lawsuit, training instructors penalized and dismissed female trainees at a “rate significantly and disproportionately higher than their male counterparts,“ who were allegedly allowed to retake tactical exams that the women were not. 

One of the women, Clare Coetzer, washed out of training in June 2018 after passing all the previous required courses. During training, she was written up four times and given a warning that the F.B.I. calls a “suitability notice,” which put her in jeopardy of being kicked out of the program.

But, Ms. Coetzer said, a male instructor rescinded two such notices that male colleagues received. She said she performed well on future tests but was still bounced from training. –New York Times

Another woman, Erika Wesley, was a former FBI employee for six years in Baghdad before leaving the agency in 2010 to have her first child. She returned to the agency in 2018, where she attended training to become an analyst. She claims she was subjected to “inappropriate sexually charged commentary” by male instructors. Some of them, she claims, suggested that women should take birth control to control their moods. 

Some trainees say they were “forced to take positions several grades lower than their previous grade or experience justified” after washing out of training. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JPiOkK Tyler Durden

Big Win For Tax-Hikes; Big Trouble For Middle-Class Illinoisans

Authored by John Klingner via WirePoints.org,

On Monday, the Illinois House of Representatives voted to amend the Illinois Constitution by adding progressive income tax language. The amendment passed 73-44-1 on party lines. It will now end up on the ballot next year for all Illinoisans to vote on.

Politico Illinois described the House vote as “Pritzker’s big win.” The better way to describe it is “big trouble” for Illinois’ middle class. But you wouldn’t know that from what tax hike proponents say.

Gov. Pritzker went on record saying:

“The commitment is to vote for rates that do in fact protect the middle class and those striving to get there.”

House Speaker Madigan echoed Pritzker:

“Middle-class families bear too much of the burden under the current tax system, and a ‘fair tax’ will enable us to make the wealthy pay their fair share.”

Their rhetoric about protecting the middle class falls short once you look at the math behind the tax. The reality is Pritzker and Madigan are going to come after middle-income residents. Here’s why:

1. Amendment now, rates later. The vote for/against a constitutional amendment will only determine whether a progressive tax structure is allowed or not. The actual progressive tax rates will come later. Support for the amendment means entrusting politicians with what amounts to a blank check. Illinois politicians don’t deserve that trust.

2. Taxing only the rich won’t work. There’s little incentive for wealthy residents to stay if they get stuck with a 60 percent increase in their income tax rates. The 20,000 Illinoisans who make $1 million-plus currently provide more than 16 percent of the state’s revenues. Only a few of the wealthiest have to leave to wreck Pritzker’s plans.

3. Pritzker’s “Fair Tax” isn’t a real plan. The governor’s low introductory rates raise just $3.4 billion in new revenue, only a fraction of the $10 billion-plus in new spending promises he’s made. It’s much like a cable company offering an “introductory” deal just to rope you in. And remember, Pritzker’s plan does nothing to fix Illinois’ structural problems, which means the state’s fiscal holes will only get bigger.

4. The middle class will be targeted. The governor will eventually need more money to fulfill his spending promises. But there are simply not enough wealthy people for Pritzker to tax. To get the funding he wants, Wirepoints calculated Pritzker will raise taxes on the middle class, starting on incomes of $50,000 and above.

It’s now up to ordinary Illinoisans to stop the progressive tax. Learn why the tax is such a bad idea by reading the pieces below:

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JVDIPB Tyler Durden

Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions

Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature from the Institute for Justice.

IJ’s Center for Judicial Engagement is hiring. We are looking for someone who will focus on content production (such as op-eds, blog posts, the occasional longer article), as well as assisting with yours truly – the Short Circuit newsletter and podcast. You will also attend events to network with allies and other organizations as well as host and plan conferences, symposia, and other public events aimed at inspiring others to recognize the important of judicial engagement. Come work with an amazing team advocating for judges to do their jobs by engaging critically in the legal issues brought before them.

  • The Public Records Act creates a number of requirements for preserving presidential records. Does the use by administration officials of apps that automatically delete messages once they have been read by the recipient violate the PRA? D.C. Circuit: Although “Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of the technology at issue in this case,” the White House Counsel sent a memo to staff telling them not to use those apps, and that’s good enough for us.
  • The DEA classifies marijuana as a drug with no accepted medical use, akin to LSD and ecstasy (among others). But many turn to it for medical reasons, as do plaintiffs (a group of children and adults suffering from life-threatening medical problems), who sue the DEA to challenge its classification. Second Circuit (over a dissent): Alas, we cannot hear the case until you first ask the DEA to review it. But because the DEA is notoriously slow in reviewing classifications (petitions average nine years each), we will retain jurisdiction of this case so we can ensure speedy review.
  • The ACLU seeks a series of documents about national security programs, but the feds decline to hand them over on the grounds that they include attorney-client and deliberative, pre-decisional communications. Fair enough, says the Second Circuit. While the gov’t can be forced to disclose if they adopted the information in those documents as their policy, the guvvies didn’t expressly do so here. So they can keep the docs to themselves.
  • Following the 1979 rape and murder of a mother of two, Forrest County, Miss. police arrest three suspects, threaten to kill them, and beat confessions out of them. After serving a collective 83 years in prison—during which they suffered numerous assaults by other prisoners—DNA exonerates them. One of the men died in prison, another shortly after release, and the third died after only three years as a free man. Fifth Circuit: With that background, let us explain why well established law requires these insurance companies to pay for the county’s legal defense in the families’ civil rights lawsuits.
  • Acting on a tip, DEA agents in wait for a black Toyota Camry, said to contain oodles of heroin. They spy the Camry and also notice a RAV4 that appears to be driving in tandem with it. So they pull over the RAV4 too. And find two kilograms of heroin. Jackpot! District court: There was no reasonable basis to stop the RAV4, so evidence of the heroin must be suppressed. Sixth Circuit: To the contrary, the DEA agents reasonably suspected that the two cars were working in concert, which was enough to justify stopping both of them.
  • “Where is the treasure? Where are the assets? Where’s the loot?” Avast, ye readers, and attend the tale of Thomas Thompson, treasure hunter. After Thompson recovered gold coins from a sunken ship, he refused to pay his co-salvagers, absconded to Florida, and hid the coins (possibly in a trust in Belize). The district court locked him up for contempt. Can he get out now that he’s been incarcerated for the last year and a half? Sixth Circuit: He stays in the brig!
  • Medically disoriented man is driving erratically at night. Police impound the car, but the man refuses treatment, so they drop him off at a Georgetown, Ky. restaurant to wait for a ride home. The man wanders away on a nearby road, where he is killed by a passing car. Sixth Circuit (over a dissent): Tragic facts but no legal remedy.
  • The Sixth Circuit rejects challenges to a suite of Kentucky campaign finance and ethics rules and, in so doing, teaches us all about “the infamous … Operation BOPTROT,” which was a real thing involving actual grownups.
  • Undercover agent accepts a fully nude lap dance from a dancer at “Cheeks,” a West Carrollton, Ohio strip club. With the agent’s extraordinarily thorough investigation (see pages 5-6 of the gov’t’s brief) completed, the state revokes the club’s liquor license, but gives it the option to pay a $25K fine instead. The club sues. Sixth Circuit: Most claims were correctly dismissed, but the district court erred in saying that the $25k fine is not subject to the Excessive Fines Clause. The Commission conceded that the fine is a penalty. So the district court must determine whether that penalty is an excessive one.
  • Man serves 19 years for Peoria, Ill. home invasion, sex assault. He’s innocent. Can he sue the city and four officers for using coercive interrogation to elicit a false statement from an alleged accomplice and for suppressing impeachment evidence? The Seventh Circuit says no. The man failed to present evidence to show that the officers knowingly violated the law. “[A] vacated criminal conviction does not automatically establish an individual’s constitutional rights were violated, or that police officers and prosecutors are necessarily liable under Section 1983.”
  • If you file an ethics complaint against a public official in Montana, you’re prohibited from disclosing the complaint until the Commission on Political Practices makes a decision on whether to pursue it. You can disclose the fact that you filed a complaint and all the facts in the complaint—just not the complaint itself. Ninth Circuit: Well, that sounds like the law accomplishes nothing, which is generally not a sufficient reason to ban speech.
  • After a 13-year-old reportedly danced at a Miami strip club, the city cracked down with new laws. The club then challenged the laws in a 16-count complaint. And according to the Eleventh Circuit, many of those counts are ripe for adjudication. Come for pleading “that might inspire a law-school professor writing a final exam,” stay for the cutesy lede that has divided appellate Twitter.

Ouch. It’s been a tough couple of weeks for food truck freedom. This week a Maryland appeals court reinstated Baltimore’s ban on mobile vendors operating within 300 feet of stores selling similar food, which was passed at the request of the retail-business lobby. And last week, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Chicago’s 200-foot ban and requirement that trucks install GPS tracking devices. Which is a darn shame, says IJ attorney Robert Frommer. These “rulings sharply break with decades of precedent that protects the right to earn an honest living. There is nothing reasonable about the government prohibiting you from operating near your competitors, or tracking you like a criminal out of fear you may sell delicious food to willing customers. By failing to stand up to the powerful on behalf of ordinary folks, these courts have done a profound disservice to the constitutional rights of everyone in their states.”

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2Z1gZoG
via IFTTT

David French Is Right: Classical Liberalism Is the Best Framework for Protecting Religious Freedom

A serious intellectual dispute broke out this week between different factions of the conservative punditocracy. On one side is the Catholic conservative Sohrab Ahmari, who is advancing a line of attack from a recent First Things manifesto titled “Against the Dead Consensus.” The dead consensus is a pre-Trump conservatism that operated within a broad framework of individual liberty and thus “failed to retard, much less reverse, the eclipse of permanent truths, family stability, communal solidarity, and much else. It surrendered to the pornographization of daily life, to the culture of death, to the cult of competitiveness. It too often bowed to a poisonous and censorious multiculturalism.”

Now Ahmari has given this failure a name and a face. You will be surprised to learn that it is David French.

French is a well-liked National Review writer who received some national attention in the 2016 election when the neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol, another avatar of this dead consensus, recommended him as a potential Never Trump presidential candidate. He was formerly president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom. As such, he has an extensive history of defending the First Amendment rights of students and religious groups. The American Conservative‘s Rod Dreher notes, “I have banged out acres of prose over these years about religious liberty, and I can’t imagine that any of that holds a candle to what David French, as a lawyer, has actually done for religious liberty.”

But for those lining up on the Ahmari side of this conflict—or at least displaying a degree of sympathy for it—French is too civil. He’s too polite. He can’t stomach President Trump’s personal moral failings. He plays by the rules, and he vows to work within them to advance the conservative cause. He thinks, foolishly, that there is room for conservative values to compete in the marketplace of ideas. As the manifesto indicated, and Ahmari has further clarified, the First Thingsers don’t like marketplaces, which promote “the soulless society of individual affluence.”

Given these declarations, it would not be a stretch to describe the First Thingsers as anti-libertarian. They’re nationalist, they’re skeptical of immigration and markets, and they want the government to actively promote conservative religious social values.

French is not a libertarian either, but he’s on the side that’s more closely aligned with a libertarian approach. And in his rebuttal to Ahmari, he defends civil liberties as good in and of themselves, which is something that libertarians should applaud:

A core tenet of Frenchism (I still can’t believe that’s a thing) is the consistent and unyielding defense of civil liberties, including the civil liberties of your political opponents—both in law and in culture. That means defending the legal rights of a radical leftist professor with the same vigor that you defend an embattled Christian conservative. And if you despise corporate censorship and corporate efforts to punish dissent, that means supporting not just libertarian Googlers who question Silicon Valley orthodoxy but also kneeling football players who use the national anthem as an occasion for public protest.

So, yes, I do want neutral spaces where Christians and pagans can work side by side. I’ve helped create those spaces, and lived in them alongside Christians and atheists, traditionalists and LGBT Americans alike. In fact, those spaces are the rule, not the exception, everywhere in this nation, and thank God for that.

The First Thingsers evidently believe this approach is bad, subscribing to a sort of Anton Chigurhian logic: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, then what good was the rule?”

French’s National Review colleague, Charlies C.W. Cooke, makes another good point about the abandonment of a classical liberal framework: It actually has worked, in practice, to protect the kinds of things that cultural conservatives are so worried about. Noting that Ahmari cites the attacks on Brett Kavanaugh as the source of his radicalization against classical liberalism, Cooke writes:

I have heard from a lot of people that the [Brett] Kavanaugh affair “snapped something in” them. That’s understandable. Indeed, if you look back at my writing at the time, I was absolutely outraged by what happened—and how. But the thing is, we won the Kavanaugh fight. And, crucially, the supposedly supine David French was unsparing in his defense of Kavanaugh. If that was the moment that Ahmari resolved to don a pith helmet and run to the barricades, he shouldn’t have shunned David French for his uselessness, but immediately linked arms with him. I can’t think of an incident that provoked behavior in David that was further from Ahmari’s straw man. He was unblenching.

Moreover, I struggle to remember an incident that better highlighted the need for (classical) liberalism. Ultimately, it was precisely the insistence upon classically liberal values such as cross-examination, hard evidence, and the presumption of innocence that won the day for Kavanaugh, against the sort of ends-oriented illiberalism that Ahmari seems increasingly to admire. The person who secured Kavanaugh’s confirmation, remember, was…Susan Collins, and the (correct) reason she gave for her vote was that nothing had been proven and that that was unacceptable to her.

The Kavanaugh case wasn’t about civil liberties, of course—there is no constitutional right to a Supreme Court post—but the broader point stands. If this is what aggravated Ahmari, it makes little sense for him to invoke it as an argument against classical liberalism.

Time and again, classical liberalism has provided the tools for defending conservatives’ rights. It is the First Amendment, Enlightenment values, and the liberal principles undergirding the marketplace of ideas that have empowered conservatives to defend conservative students’ right to speak and organize on college campuses. The Reason Foundation (which publishes Reason magazine) and the Cato Institute both filed amicus briefs in support of Masterpiece Cake Shop’s religious liberties, and owner Jack Phillips won an important (albeit limited) victory at the Supreme Court.

The First Thingsers believe conservatives should take a different approach and…do what, exactly? Start punching leftists? Form some sort of theocratic street squad that terrorizes librarians who invite drag queens to read to kids? (I’m not kidding: This is the apparently unthinkable horror that kicked off the French fight.)

There’s something childishly immature but deeply emotionally satisfying about standing up and declaring that everyone who disagrees with your worldview is either a moron or evil, and that you are against them and all they stand for. Notice that both the manifesto and the anti-French piece are titled “against X.” It’s fun to be against things, and to profess epistemic certainty that the thing is bad. Post-Trump social conservatism is certainly enjoying its shouty tantrum moment. So, too, is woke progressivism, which evinces the same with-us-or-against-us militancy. That the new right and the new left simultaneously despise each other, yet completely depend upon each other to make absurd leaps that fire up the other side and prompt similar overreaches, is a central theme of my book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump.

With woke scolds on one end and devout scolds on the other, this can be a frustrating time for those of us who are still committed to an open and free society that places individual rights on the very highest philosophical, moral, and legal pedestal. But defending individual rights remains the best way forward.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2wuSYtN
via IFTTT

Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions

Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature from the Institute for Justice.

IJ’s Center for Judicial Engagement is hiring. We are looking for someone who will focus on content production (such as op-eds, blog posts, the occasional longer article), as well as assisting with yours truly – the Short Circuit newsletter and podcast. You will also attend events to network with allies and other organizations as well as host and plan conferences, symposia, and other public events aimed at inspiring others to recognize the important of judicial engagement. Come work with an amazing team advocating for judges to do their jobs by engaging critically in the legal issues brought before them.

  • The Public Records Act creates a number of requirements for preserving presidential records. Does the use by administration officials of apps that automatically delete messages once they have been read by the recipient violate the PRA? D.C. Circuit: Although “Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of the technology at issue in this case,” the White House Counsel sent a memo to staff telling them not to use those apps, and that’s good enough for us.
  • The DEA classifies marijuana as a drug with no accepted medical use, akin to LSD and ecstasy (among others). But many turn to it for medical reasons, as do plaintiffs (a group of children and adults suffering from life-threatening medical problems), who sue the DEA to challenge its classification. Second Circuit (over a dissent): Alas, we cannot hear the case until you first ask the DEA to review it. But because the DEA is notoriously slow in reviewing classifications (petitions average nine years each), we will retain jurisdiction of this case so we can ensure speedy review.
  • The ACLU seeks a series of documents about national security programs, but the feds decline to hand them over on the grounds that they include attorney-client and deliberative, pre-decisional communications. Fair enough, says the Second Circuit. While the gov’t can be forced to disclose if they adopted the information in those documents as their policy, the guvvies didn’t expressly do so here. So they can keep the docs to themselves.
  • Following the 1979 rape and murder of a mother of two, Forrest County, Miss. police arrest three suspects, threaten to kill them, and beat confessions out of them. After serving a collective 83 years in prison—during which they suffered numerous assaults by other prisoners—DNA exonerates them. One of the men died in prison, another shortly after release, and the third died after only three years as a free man. Fifth Circuit: With that background, let us explain why well established law requires these insurance companies to pay for the county’s legal defense in the families’ civil rights lawsuits.
  • Acting on a tip, DEA agents in wait for a black Toyota Camry, said to contain oodles of heroin. They spy the Camry and also notice a RAV4 that appears to be driving in tandem with it. So they pull over the RAV4 too. And find two kilograms of heroin. Jackpot! District court: There was no reasonable basis to stop the RAV4, so evidence of the heroin must be suppressed. Sixth Circuit: To the contrary, the DEA agents reasonably suspected that the two cars were working in concert, which was enough to justify stopping both of them.
  • “Where is the treasure? Where are the assets? Where’s the loot?” Avast, ye readers, and attend the tale of Thomas Thompson, treasure hunter. After Thompson recovered gold coins from a sunken ship, he refused to pay his co-salvagers, absconded to Florida, and hid the coins (possibly in a trust in Belize). The district court locked him up for contempt. Can he get out now that he’s been incarcerated for the last year and a half? Sixth Circuit: He stays in the brig!
  • Medically disoriented man is driving erratically at night. Police impound the car, but the man refuses treatment, so they drop him off at a Georgetown, Ky. restaurant to wait for a ride home. The man wanders away on a nearby road, where he is killed by a passing car. Sixth Circuit (over a dissent): Tragic facts but no legal remedy.
  • The Sixth Circuit rejects challenges to a suite of Kentucky campaign finance and ethics rules and, in so doing, teaches us all about “the infamous … Operation BOPTROT,” which was a real thing involving actual grownups.
  • Undercover agent accepts a fully nude lap dance from a dancer at “Cheeks,” a West Carrollton, Ohio strip club. With the agent’s extraordinarily thorough investigation (see pages 5-6 of the gov’t’s brief) completed, the state revokes the club’s liquor license, but gives it the option to pay a $25K fine instead. The club sues. Sixth Circuit: Most claims were correctly dismissed, but the district court erred in saying that the $25k fine is not subject to the Excessive Fines Clause. The Commission conceded that the fine is a penalty. So the district court must determine whether that penalty is an excessive one.
  • Man serves 19 years for Peoria, Ill. home invasion, sex assault. He’s innocent. Can he sue the city and four officers for using coercive interrogation to elicit a false statement from an alleged accomplice and for suppressing impeachment evidence? The Seventh Circuit says no. The man failed to present evidence to show that the officers knowingly violated the law. “[A] vacated criminal conviction does not automatically establish an individual’s constitutional rights were violated, or that police officers and prosecutors are necessarily liable under Section 1983.”
  • If you file an ethics complaint against a public official in Montana, you’re prohibited from disclosing the complaint until the Commission on Political Practices makes a decision on whether to pursue it. You can disclose the fact that you filed a complaint and all the facts in the complaint—just not the complaint itself. Ninth Circuit: Well, that sounds like the law accomplishes nothing, which is generally not a sufficient reason to ban speech.
  • After a 13-year-old reportedly danced at a Miami strip club, the city cracked down with new laws. The club then challenged the laws in a 16-count complaint. And according to the Eleventh Circuit, many of those counts are ripe for adjudication. Come for pleading “that might inspire a law-school professor writing a final exam,” stay for the cutesy lede that has divided appellate Twitter.

Ouch. It’s been a tough couple of weeks for food truck freedom. This week a Maryland appeals court reinstated Baltimore’s ban on mobile vendors operating within 300 feet of stores selling similar food, which was passed at the request of the retail-business lobby. And last week, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Chicago’s 200-foot ban and requirement that trucks install GPS tracking devices. Which is a darn shame, says IJ attorney Robert Frommer. These “rulings sharply break with decades of precedent that protects the right to earn an honest living. There is nothing reasonable about the government prohibiting you from operating near your competitors, or tracking you like a criminal out of fear you may sell delicious food to willing customers. By failing to stand up to the powerful on behalf of ordinary folks, these courts have done a profound disservice to the constitutional rights of everyone in their states.”

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2Z1gZoG
via IFTTT

David French Is Right: Classical Liberalism Is the Best Framework for Protecting Religious Freedom

A serious intellectual dispute broke out this week between different factions of the conservative punditocracy. On one side is the Catholic conservative Sohrab Ahmari, who is advancing a line of attack from a recent First Things manifesto titled “Against the Dead Consensus.” The dead consensus is a pre-Trump conservatism that operated within a broad framework of individual liberty and thus “failed to retard, much less reverse, the eclipse of permanent truths, family stability, communal solidarity, and much else. It surrendered to the pornographization of daily life, to the culture of death, to the cult of competitiveness. It too often bowed to a poisonous and censorious multiculturalism.”

Now Ahmari has given this failure a name and a face. You will be surprised to learn that it is David French.

French is a well-liked National Review writer who received some national attention in the 2016 election when the neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol, another avatar of this dead consensus, recommended him as a potential Never Trump presidential candidate. He was formerly president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom. As such, he has an extensive history of defending the First Amendment rights of students and religious groups. The American Conservative‘s Rod Dreher notes, “I have banged out acres of prose over these years about religious liberty, and I can’t imagine that any of that holds a candle to what David French, as a lawyer, has actually done for religious liberty.”

But for those lining up on the Ahmari side of this conflict—or at least displaying a degree of sympathy for it—French is too civil. He’s too polite. He can’t stomach President Trump’s personal moral failings. He plays by the rules, and he vows to work within them to advance the conservative cause. He thinks, foolishly, that there is room for conservative values to compete in the marketplace of ideas. As the manifesto indicated, and Ahmari has further clarified, the First Thingsers don’t like marketplaces, which promote “the soulless society of individual affluence.”

Given these declarations, it would not be a stretch to describe the First Thingsers as anti-libertarian. They’re nationalist, they’re skeptical of immigration and markets, and they want the government to actively promote conservative religious social values.

French is not a libertarian either, but he’s on the side that’s more closely aligned with a libertarian approach. And in his rebuttal to Ahmari, he defends civil liberties as good in and of themselves, which is something that libertarians should applaud:

A core tenet of Frenchism (I still can’t believe that’s a thing) is the consistent and unyielding defense of civil liberties, including the civil liberties of your political opponents—both in law and in culture. That means defending the legal rights of a radical leftist professor with the same vigor that you defend an embattled Christian conservative. And if you despise corporate censorship and corporate efforts to punish dissent, that means supporting not just libertarian Googlers who question Silicon Valley orthodoxy but also kneeling football players who use the national anthem as an occasion for public protest.

So, yes, I do want neutral spaces where Christians and pagans can work side by side. I’ve helped create those spaces, and lived in them alongside Christians and atheists, traditionalists and LGBT Americans alike. In fact, those spaces are the rule, not the exception, everywhere in this nation, and thank God for that.

The First Thingsers evidently believe this approach is bad, subscribing to a sort of Anton Chigurhian logic: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, then what good was the rule?”

French’s National Review colleague, Charlies C.W. Cooke, makes another good point about the abandonment of a classical liberal framework: It actually has worked, in practice, to protect the kinds of things that cultural conservatives are so worried about. Noting that Ahmari cites the attacks on Brett Kavanaugh as the source of his radicalization against classical liberalism, Cooke writes:

I have heard from a lot of people that the [Brett] Kavanaugh affair “snapped something in” them. That’s understandable. Indeed, if you look back at my writing at the time, I was absolutely outraged by what happened—and how. But the thing is, we won the Kavanaugh fight. And, crucially, the supposedly supine David French was unsparing in his defense of Kavanaugh. If that was the moment that Ahmari resolved to don a pith helmet and run to the barricades, he shouldn’t have shunned David French for his uselessness, but immediately linked arms with him. I can’t think of an incident that provoked behavior in David that was further from Ahmari’s straw man. He was unblenching.

Moreover, I struggle to remember an incident that better highlighted the need for (classical) liberalism. Ultimately, it was precisely the insistence upon classically liberal values such as cross-examination, hard evidence, and the presumption of innocence that won the day for Kavanaugh, against the sort of ends-oriented illiberalism that Ahmari seems increasingly to admire. The person who secured Kavanaugh’s confirmation, remember, was…Susan Collins, and the (correct) reason she gave for her vote was that nothing had been proven and that that was unacceptable to her.

The Kavanaugh case wasn’t about civil liberties, of course—there is no constitutional right to a Supreme Court post—but the broader point stands. If this is what aggravated Ahmari, it makes little sense for him to invoke it as an argument against classical liberalism.

Time and again, classical liberalism has provided the tools for defending conservatives’ rights. It is the First Amendment, Enlightenment values, and the liberal principles undergirding the marketplace of ideas that have empowered conservatives to defend conservative students’ right to speak and organize on college campuses. The Reason Foundation (which publishes Reason magazine) and the Cato Institute both filed amicus briefs in support of Masterpiece Cake Shop’s religious liberties, and owner Jack Phillips won an important (albeit limited) victory at the Supreme Court.

The First Thingsers believe conservatives should take a different approach and…do what, exactly? Start punching leftists? Form some sort of theocratic street squad that terrorizes librarians who invite drag queens to read to kids? (I’m not kidding: This is the apparently unthinkable horror that kicked off the French fight.)

There’s something childishly immature but deeply emotionally satisfying about standing up and declaring that everyone who disagrees with your worldview is either a moron or evil, and that you are against them and all they stand for. Notice that both the manifesto and the anti-French piece are titled “against X.” It’s fun to be against things, and to profess epistemic certainty that the thing is bad. Post-Trump social conservatism is certainly enjoying its shouty tantrum moment. So, too, is woke progressivism, which evinces the same with-us-or-against-us militancy. That the new right and the new left simultaneously despise each other, yet completely depend upon each other to make absurd leaps that fire up the other side and prompt similar overreaches, is a central theme of my book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump.

With woke scolds on one end and devout scolds on the other, this can be a frustrating time for those of us who are still committed to an open and free society that places individual rights on the very highest philosophical, moral, and legal pedestal. But defending individual rights remains the best way forward.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2wuSYtN
via IFTTT

2020 Presidential Candidate Blowout!

Election season is heating up, which means Republicans and Democrats are ready to sell you the candidate of your dreams. Whether it’s government intrusion into your private life or government intrusion into your economic life, they’ve got you covered.

Written by Austin Bragg. Starring Andrew Heaton and Bragg. Video produced by Bragg.

Happy Happy Game Show Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://bit.ly/oKTIFM

Photo credit: Richard B. Levine/Newscom

Subscribe at YouTube.

Like us on Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter.

Subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts.

 

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2HNSGER
via IFTTT

Heineken Balks After Baseball Team Depicts AOC As “Enemy Of The People” In Patriotic Ad

A second major sponsor has dropped the Fresno Grizzlies after the team aired a Memorial Day video during a recent game which compares Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to other “enemies of freedom” such as Antifa, Kim Jong Un and Fidel Castro. 

The Netherlands-based Heineken International told the Fresno Bee on Thursday that both Dos Equis and Tecate – brands it owns, will no longer sponsor the team following the broadcast. 

“Both Tecate and Dos Equis were sponsors of the Fresno Grizzlies,” said the company, adding “We do not support those views expressed in the video, that was aired during the Fresno Grizzlies game on Memorial Day. For that reason, we have ended this relationship, effective immediately and have let the team know of our decision.” 

The first sponsor to drop the Grizzlies following the video was Sun-Maid, which said in a statement: “We are deeply disappointed by the Memorial Day tribute video the Fresno Grizzlies aired on Monday,” adding “Sun-Maid does not support the views or sentiments expressed in the video, nor does it condone the airing of it.” 

Grizzlies president Derek Franks said in a Wednesday statement that the employee responsible for the montage was reprimanded, but declined to say what the punishment was. Franks also said that an incorrect tribute video was downloaded, and that nobody from the team’s front office actually watched the whole thing before it aired. 

“Based on their investigation, it is clear to us that this was an honest mistake by a long-time employee and was not politically motivated,” said Nationals VP of communications, Jennifer Giglio. “They have put processes in place to ensure it does not happen again and we are comfortable with those procedures.” 

The Grizzlies are a minor league Pacific Coast League team and Triple-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JP9a1E Tyler Durden

Professor Accused Of “Hostile Learning Environment” For Assigning Male Authors

Authored by Christian Schneider via The College Fix,

A 22-year old female University of Utah student reported her business professor to campus administrators for, among other things, assigning too many historical texts written by influential male economists of the past.

“I understand the importance of studying the work of those before us and the importance of context,” wrote the student in a complaint to the university’s bias reporting system, where she labeled the professor’s transgressions “derogatory,” “degrading,” and “intimidating,” thereby causing a “hostile learning environment.”

The report also accused the professor of frequent sexist language, but the bulk of the complaint centered on his assigned readings for the business course.

“I believe it to no longer be necessary when teaching the foundations of our country’s economic system and those who helped build [its] ideals to be presented in conjunction with their sexist beliefs that have already planted their roots within our global and local communities,” the student stated in her complaint, filed in December 2018 and recently obtained by The College Fix through a public records act request.

The complaint was among 27 bias reports lodged at the public university in the Fall 2018 semester, according to the results of the request. The documents provided by the University of Utah redact all personal identifying information.

In the female student’s bias report, she stated that while her professor “never applauded these philosophers on their sexist beliefs,” he “never outright said they were wrong” and “continued to place them upon a pedestal.”

The report does not cite the scholars assigned in the business course, although typical economists discussed in such a class might include Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.

The student continued: “Many of these figures are of great importance. But at what cost do we continue to plant the seed of sexism in the minds of individuals? But especially in a course and college that is already deemed to be a ‘boys club’, continuing those teachings, and those teachings being delivered by a professor of [his] character is dangerous.”

“As a top university in the nation, I believe we have a duty to lead by example. Pave a new path and right the wrongs of those before us. Some may argue enduring this type of behavior is what needs to be done to play in the ‘big leagues’ of male-dominated fields, such as business. And I can agree to play the game to some degree, but if an opportunity to help change the game presents itself, you take it. [My] professor’s behavior and certain choice of text have greatly affected me both emotionally and academically.”

She continued that she began to “fear” his sexist banter and said she “also began to fear the readings and I could not even finish one assigned reading due to its clear sexist message.”

According to the complaint, the student was especially disturbed by a conversation that took place on the last day of class about robots taking jobs from working Americans. The professor allegedly claimed that “while all our jobs will be taken by robots,” he will be “retired living in Tahiti surrounded by 40-45 beautiful women feeding him grapes.”

When a student asked why he chose Tahiti, he allegedly responded: “That’s where most of the available women are, at least from what I’ve heard. I also don’t like the competition on the other islands.”

“Not only did Professor willingly and openly objectify women,” complained the female student, “but he also objectified women of color. Women of another culture.”

This conversation became even more problematic after the professor told the class he became a vegan at age 30 because he couldn’t stomach the idea of killing another sentient being.

“I sat in my class yesterday, a class I had tried my best to endure and keep my head up as I know myself to be a strong, intelligent, woman entrepreneur,” reported the student. “But I sat there in shock as I had just witnessed a man in a position of power at an educational facility, give more respect to animals that he refers to as sentient beings than women. As though animals are the only sentient beings, and a woman’s purpose is to satisfy his taste buds.”

“I would be lying if I said this experience hasn’t left me with a bad taste in my mouth and utterly exhausted,” wrote the student in her summary. “I’ve debated coming back to the University of Utah next semester largely due to this experience and other personal reasons including finances.”

In addition to her complaint, other bias incidents reported last semester include:

· A student in the College of Social Work complaining about racial bias by a professor who indicated students of color should be able to speak first in class in order to “decenter the whiteness” of the classroom.

· When a black male student walked into the student union office, an employee appeared “visibly taken aback” and called out, “can we help you?” The student responded he had a meeting scheduled there, and he had never had to explain himself when he previously walked into the office.

· A Utah alumnus witnessed the owners/managers (a man and a woman) of a campus coffee/snack shop bullying an employee, calling their actions “horrifying and disrespectful.” The alum reported the managers were “treating their employee like a slave,” calling it a “Shameful spectacle.” The color of the employee is not disclosed, although the complaint is classified as bias against “race and ethnicity.”

· A female student complained about a professor singling her out in class as needing special help. The same day, the student’s parents also filed a complaint, replicating the daughter’s report almost verbatim.

· A communications professor discussing concealed-carry of weapons likened the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to the First Amendment, arguing that since a university can set up “free speech zones” on campus, he would be setting up a “Second Amendment zone” in his classroom. The professor had taped off a three-foot by three-foot square in the back of the room that he said students can “share with all other gun carriers.”

“As a person who has my CCW and carries a weapon daily, this is discriminatory and illegal under Utah Code 76-10-500,” wrote the student.

· On September 7, a group of four male students were sitting at a table studying. A female student just finishing up a group project noticed the table of male students being “loud and distracting.” At one point, a young man wearing a black shirt and khaki shorts complained that his laptop computer battery was dying. One of the other men at the table offered his charger to the student but he says the charger is incompatible with his laptop. The student offering the charger says it will definitely work if you “just force it.” The student put his hands around his mouth and loudly whispered, “That’s rape. I’m not raping my computer.”

According to the university’s Office of Inclusive Excellence website, an act of “bias” is “any act of intolerance, motivated wholly or in part by bias or prejudice against an individual’s race, color, ethnicity, age, religion, size, disability, national origin, language, gender, veteran status, identity expression, sexual orientation or age—regardless of severity.” The university’s bias reporting system was initially created in 2013, and the Office of Inclusive Excellence is currently assigned one permanent staffer.

“Each incident is handled on a case-by-case basis depending on the type of incident that was reported and any specifications made by the person who submitted the report,” said university spokesperson Annalisa Purser in an e-mail to The Fix. “These may include following up directly with individuals involved, developing trainings, working with the department or office’s leadership, partnering with other campus offices and resources, etc.,” she said.

“Ultimately, The Office for Inclusive Excellence does not have authority to conduct investigations or uphold sanctions. Instead, it is focused on professional development around creating inclusive spaces,” said Purser.

Of the 27 reports filed with the university, eight were redacted in their entirety when provided to The Fix.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Xj5rMO Tyler Durden

Deadwood Returns for More Violence, Cussing, and Mayhem Amid a Changing World

Deadwood: The Movie. HBO. Friday, May 31, 8 p.m.

Thirteen years after it last aired, HBO’s revisionist Western Deadwood has returned for an encore. Any fears that creator-writer David Milch or his characters may have mellowed during the hiatus are assuaged in the first moments, when arch-villain mining magnate George Hearst rides into town to the heartfelt greetings of the local citizenry. “You murdering, thieving cocksucker!” calls out one, while another salutes him as “You bald-pated cunt.”

And, yes, murder is still the leading strategic tool for mergers and acquisitions in Deadwood, and the town’s pigs still the most popular recourse for the disposal of inconvenient corpses. The whores still outnumber the preachers, the language is still a mixture of the oddly baroque and the profoundly obscene, and most importantly, Deadwood: The Movie is as a provocative, intelligent, and funny place to visit as the series ever was.

That said, Deadwood: The Movie is not really a movie at all, at least in the sense of being a self-contained production. It will be practically incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t watch the original series, which ran for 36 episodes from 2004 to 2006. HBO’s abrupt and unexpected cancellation left a number of dangling threads, and this edition is best understood as an attempt to snip them.

The series was set during the late 1870s during the Black Hills gold rush, when Deadwood was a lawless boom town. The movie picks up 10 years later, as South Dakota is becoming a state, but in many ways, it might as well be the next day.

Hearst has just come riding back into town, to stir up trouble by acquiring land—by fair means or foul—for the telephone lines he wants to run into Deadwood. He succeeds effortlessly at the stirring-up-trouble part, not so much at getting the land. And, soon enough, those hungry pigs are back at work.

Virtually all the characters who were still alive at the end of Deadwood‘s final season season—and even some who were dead, via flashbacks—return for the movie. (Notable exception: cold-blooded casino owner Cy Tolliver, who was played by the late Powers Boothe.) Rage-prone Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) is still sheriff, thoughtful prospector Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie) still his deputy. And though Bullock’s former illicit lover, the twice-widowed businesswoman Alma Ellsworth (Molly Parker) has moved away, she’s returned to tend to her bank.

Another recent returnee is the drunken frontierswoman Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert), back to mourn her murdered pal, Wild Bill Hickock, and seek reconciliation with her old girlfriend, moody madame Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickerson).

Murderous but somehow lovable saloonkeeper Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), though he’s nearly obliviated his liver, is still running whores in his upstairs rooms, though he leaves most of the details to his aide-de-coitus Trixie (Paula Malcomson).

The only significant newcomer on the scene is a mysterious woman named Caroline (Jade PettyJohn), who may or may not be the daughter of a hooker Al Swearengen murdered to pass her corpse off as that of Trixie, who George Hearst wanted badly to kill.

Though Swearengen was the one who actually cut the hooker’s throat, practically all the main Deadwood characters knew of the murder and gave tacit approval by not giving it away to Hearst. The arrival of Caroline, the victim’s maybe-daughter, sends a collective spasm of guilt through the town elders. “Make friends with her ghost,” Swearengen urges Trixie. “It ain’t fuckin’ going anywhere.”

His remark is just one element of the hazy streaks of nostalgia and regret that inhabit Deadwood: The Movie. The future is inexorably arriving in Deadwood—Hearst’s telephones being the literal incarnation—and most of the characters are closer to the ends of their chapters than the beginnings. Says Swearengen, vowing that no phone will ever darken his place: “A saloon is a sanctuary. Any man worth the name knows the value of being unreachable.” Increasingly, the world is too much with the citizens of Deadwood.

This engaging and melancholy farewell to them has long been rumored, and even longer denied. Milch supposedly had a deal for two films to wrap up Deadwood, but every time he was reported ready to begin production, he forged into some other project: the inscrutably weird theological ramblings of John from Cincinnati, or the ill-fated horse-racing drama Luck, canceled after three horses died during the shooting of its first nine episodes.

The report of a two-movie deal may have been true. The final moments of Deadwood: The Movie are ambiguous and indecisive and could easily lead to a second film. But if so, it won’t be with Milch, who is drifting into the mists of Alzheimer’s disease. Like Al Swearengen, he’ll soon be unreachable. His last words to us were fine ones.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2JQnJSO
via IFTTT