List Grows of Cancelled Graduation Speakers — #LiberalFascism

Wow.

The further closing of the American collegiate mind --- and this is leftism in all its inglorious shame.

And the IMF? Really? We've come to this?

At the Wall Street Journal, "IMF's Lagarde Won't Speak at Smith, Part of a Growing List: Protests by Students, Faculty Have Derailed Several Commencement Addresses This Spring":

The head of the International Monetary Fund on Monday joined an elite group—those whose plans to give commencement addresses this graduation season were derailed by student or faculty protests.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, was scheduled to speak this coming Sunday at Smith College, but she withdrew her name after nearly 500 people signed a petition objecting to the policies of the IMF. Similar outcries foiled speaking engagements by former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at Rutgers University and human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Brandeis University, among several others.

"I call it disinvitation season," said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a free-speech advocacy group. "Not everyone gets disinvited, but there is such consistent effort to get rid of people."

Mr. Lukianoff said the trend is clearly growing. According to a tally by his group, between 1987 and 2008, there were 48 protests of planned speeches, not all for graduations, that led to 21 incidents of an invited guest not speaking. Since 2009 there have been 95 protests, resulting in 39 cancellations, according to Mr. Lukianoff's group.

Earlier this month at Rutgers, students and faculty protested Ms. Rice's involvement in the Iraq war, prompting her to pull out of her scheduled address at the New Jersey school. In April, Brandeis withdrew an honorary degree for Ms. Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch lawmaker who has spoken out forcefully against Islam. At Haverford College, the commencement selection of Robert J. Birgeneau, a former university administrator at Berkeley, also has drawn fire.

"There are serious implications for what is going on here; universities are becoming havens of the closed minded," said Anne Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which says it promotes academic standards and accountability. "What we are beginning to see is a heckler's veto."

Rudy Fichtenbaum, president of the American Association of University Professors, defended the rights of students and faculty to protest, petition and otherwise make their voices heard.

"There's a long history of protests in the United States; that's what we were founded on, and I think student protests are partially an introduction to democracy," Mr. Fichtenbaum said.

The disputes can put schools in a difficult spot. At Brandeis, officials found much to laud in Ms. Hirsi Ali before withdrawing her honorary degree, citing "certain of her past statements that are inconsistent" with the school's values.

The controversies haven't been limited to colleges. Last month, the White House said Michelle Obama would deliver the commencement address to graduating seniors in the Topeka, Kan., school district. But after parents complained about limited seating for family and friends and about the first lady's distracting from the celebration of seniors, the plan was retooled. Mrs. Obama now is scheduled to speak a day earlier—this coming Friday—at a "senior recognition day" in Topeka.

Protesting commencement speakers isn't entirely new. In 1987, Jeane Kirkpatrick, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, withdrew from delivering the commencement address at Lafayette College, where she also was to get an honorary degree. In 1993, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell weathered activists' ire and delivered Harvard University's graduation speech...

Actually, students and parents opposed the First Lady's speech because it was going to detract from the kids' celebrations, not because they opposed her politically. Indeed, the students themselves said the loved the First Lady.

Not so with the rash of liberal fascist attacks on conservatives. It's intolerance. And leftist totalitarianism. Recall Stephen Hayes on that, "'It's really a pathetic statement about the state of higher learning in America today...'"

Staff Sergeant Old School

Via This Ain't Hell..., "I’m With Staff Sergeant on #bringbackourgirls."

Donald Sterling Slams Magic Johnson, Cites HIV Status

Hey, considerable developments surrounding liberal Beverly Hills racist Donald Sterling.

He goes off on Magic. Man, talk about stop digging when you're in a hole.

At the Los Angeles Times:

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling lashed out at Magic Johnson during a CNN interview  broadcast Monday night, alluding to the NBA’s great’s HIV-positive diagnosis and saying, “I don’t think he’s a good example for the children of Los Angeles.”

Sterling’s comments came as he addressed racial remarks he made that prompted the NBA to ban him for life. In a recording released by TMZ two weeks ago, Sterling tells a female friend, V. Stiviano, not to associate with black people, including Johnson.

"What kind of guy goes to every city, has sex with every girl, then catches” HIV, Sterling told Anderson Cooper. “I think he should be ashamed of himself.”

Sterling also questioned whether Johnson has made a positive contribution to the African American community in Los Angeles. He then pointed to his own charitable work.

“Jews, when they get successful, they will help their people,” he said.

At one point Cooper asked if he apologized to Johnson.

"If I said anything wrong, I'm sorry," Sterling responded. "He's a good person. I mean, what am I going to say? Has he done everything he can do to help minorities? I don't think so. But I'll say it, he's great. But I don't think he's a good example for the children of Los Angeles."

Sterling apologized for what he said on the tape...

More.

And here it comes, "Gloria Allred slams Donald Sterling's 'pathetic' CNN interview."

RELATED: "Donald Sterling flatly denies harboring racist views," and "Wife would lose share of team if Donald Sterling is voted out, NBA says."

Harvard's Black Mass Cancelled

I called this evil over the weekend.

And Harvard must have agreed.

At the Boston Globe, "Harvard Black Mass, First Moved, Then Cancelled, May Have Happened in Chinese Restaurant."

And at Twitchy, "Satanic mass at Harvard canceled; Catholic event standing room only [pic]."

Black mass is canceled at Harvard but Catholic event is standing room only. See photo http://t.co/AhmgJgRvij pic.twitter.com/UZcMs7ylkT

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) May 13, 2014

Gay #NFL Draftee Becomes Sacred Cow

At Power Line. (And follow the links there to the analysis at Hot Air.)

Also at Twitchy, "‘What a circus’: Miami Dolphins send player to ‘educational training’ following comments about Michael Sam."

If #DonJones had said "OMG" about #Tebow would he have been fined or suspended? NO! #LiberalTolerance #DoubleStandard #CommunistNFL #tcot

— Tweet Slinger (@TheTweetSlinger) May 12, 2014

And USA Today, "Dolphins' Don Jones fined for tweets about Michael Sam."

Why Won't the Obama Administration Identify Boko Haram as Islamic Terrorists?

This is exactly what Robert Stacy McCain was talking about the other day, "Boko Haram and the Jihad in Africa."

Here's the lead discussion from today's "The Five":

Video Shows Kidnapped Nigerian Schoolgirls — #BokoHaram

At London's Daily Mail, "Paraded by a blood-crazed fanatic, the terrified schoolgirl captives: Boko Haram release chilling videos of missing Nigerian girls as they reveal they have all been forced to convert to Islam."

Angelina Jolie Talks Tough on #BokoHaram — Tougher Than President Obama

Obama talks all "warm and fuzzy" about evil in the world.

Angelina Jolie says we must bring the perpetrators to justice.

At News Corp Australia, "Angelina Jolie: Nigerian schoolgirls’ kidnappers are evil."

And at Independent UK, "Angelina Jolie on Nigerian schoolgirl kidnapping: ‘It’s because of this culture of impunity’."

And at the video, "We have to start arresting people for this..."

The Closing of the Collegiate Mind

From Ruth Wisse, at the Wall Street Journal:

There was a time when people looking for intellectual debate turned away from politics to the university. Political backrooms bred slogans and bagmen; universities fostered educated discussion. But when students in the 1960s began occupying university property like the thugs of regimes America was fighting abroad, the venues gradually reversed. Open debate is now protected only in the polity: In universities, muggers prevail.

Assaults on intellectual and political freedom have been making headlines. Pressure from faculty egged on by Muslim groups induced Brandeis University last month not to grant Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the proponent of women's rights under Islam, an intended honorary degree at its convocation. This was a replay of 1994, when Brandeis faculty demanded that trustees rescind their decision to award an honorary degree to Jeane Kirkpatrick, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In each case, a faculty cabal joined by (let us charitably say) ignorant students promoted the value of repression over the values of America's liberal democracy.

Opponents of free speech have lately chalked up many such victories: New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly prevented from speaking at Brown University in November; a lecture by Charles Murray canceled by Azusa Pacific University in April; Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state and national-security adviser under the George W. Bush administration, harassed earlier this month into declining the invitation by Rutgers University to address this year's convocation.

Most painful to me was the Harvard scene several years ago when the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, celebrating its 50th anniversary, accepted a donation in honor of its former head tutor Martin Peretz, whose contributions to the university include the chair in Yiddish I have been privileged to hold. His enemies on campus generated a "party against Marty" that forced him to walk a gauntlet of jeering students for having allegedly offended Islam, while putting others on notice that they had best not be perceived guilty of association with him.

Universities have not only failed to stand up to those who limit debate, they have played a part in encouraging them. The modish commitment to so-called diversity replaces the ideal of guaranteed equal treatment of individuals with guaranteed group preferences in hiring and curricular offerings...

More.

So far my campus has been spared a roiling debate on leftists suppression, although the mere mention of a talk by Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist a few years back brought out the thought police --- and a "no" vote from the college administration on the grounds of "campus security." (So, yeah, we basically experienced the heckler's veto once in recent memory.) Recall back in 2006, Gilchrist was attacked at Columbia, rousted off the stage and beaten by a gang of leftist thugs. So it's been at least a decade of this kind of leftist fascism, which according to Wisse dates back the left's Vietnam-era generation.

RELATED: At Vassar, at least one faculty member called for a boycott of William Jacobson, who spoke recently against the BDS movement. See, "“One responded, actually calling for a boycott of Professor Jacobson”."



Video here: "Vassar College Wins (Update – Video added)."

No Dads in Google Mother's Day Doodle — #MothersDay2014

On Twitter:

Dear @Google, why is there No 'Dad' in your Mothers' Day pic⁉️ pic.twitter.com/IWIlAmKmBS
— CMOrtolani (@cmortolani) May 11, 2014

@cmortolani @Josh_Painter @google The #ObamaDemocrats don't like intact homes - they prefer dependency at any price.
— Middlepeople - David (@dmc2et) May 11, 2014

Word.

More: "The Next Step to Marxism? The Abolition of the Family."

#BokoHaram and the Return of the Nigerian Slave Trade

At Blazing Cat Fur.

Barack #Obama Shrinks in Face of Evil

From Michael Goodwin, at the New York Post, "Obama shrinks away in the face of evil":

As Barack Obama enters the twilight of his tenure, the ­debate over his legacy is ­beginning, but one conclusion already seems certain. It can best be described as “Honey, I shrunk the presidency.”

Not since Jimmy Carter was held hostage by Iran has the Oval Office seemed so inconsequential against the forces of international darkness. The mismatch is particularly striking because smallness has been Obama’s choice.

Although he is guilty of executive overreach at home, that bully behavior only sharpens the contrast with a foreign policy that is feeble when it is not comatose. The president’s estrangement from the demands of global leadership is giving a green light to tyrants and malevolent opportunists everywhere...

Keep reading.

Goodwin cites Obama's cowardly comments at Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation Dinner. There's the video and text:

We cannot eliminate evil from every heart, or hatred from every mind. But what we can do, and what we must do, is make sure our children and their children learn their history so that they might not repeat it. (Applause.) We can teach our children the hazards of tribalism. We can teach our children to speak out against the casual slur. We can teach them there is no “them,” there’s only “us.”

And Goodwin replies:

There you have it. We can teach our children warm and fuzzy things — assuming they and we are not killed by madmen first. In which case, there’s nothing we can do.

There’s nothing we can do?

Maybe in Barack Obama's America. But that's not my America. I refuse to stand on the sidelines while evil triumphs.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

Also at Randy's Roundtable, "Friday Nite Funnies," and Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES."



Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – It Made a Difference."

Why Tina Brown Must Cry

At Althouse, "You Won't Believe These Mockups of How Websites Today Would Have Reported the Monica Lewinsky Scandal."

The last one's not a mockup: "And that's why we have the websites we have, and Tina Brown must cry."

Eastern #Ukraine Votes in Independence Referendum

At the Wall Street Journal, "Pro-Russian Separatists Hold Referendum in Eastern Ukraine: Ukrainian Government in Kiev Says Vote Is Illegitimate":

DONETSK, Ukraine—Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine appeared to be on track to declare victory in a referendum Sunday that Kiev and the West say is illegal and riddled with irregularities.

The vote ratchets up tensions between the Kremlin, which may recognize the vote, and the nascent government in Kiev, which is struggling to regain control of the two provinces that it says Moscow is destabilizing through support of rebels.

Heavy turnout suggested that weeks of instability and violence in the region had helped turn simmering anger against Kiev into open defiance and separatism that polls showed barely existed earlier this year.

Separatist leaders said they opened more than 1,500 voting stations across one province alone. In the coastal city of Mariupol, the scene of deadly clashes last week between separatists and Ukrainian soldiers, thousands of people turned out to join lines that stretched for city blocks, with some residents bringing lawn chairs to rest their legs as they waited.

Amid an absence of electoral observers and a heavy presence of separatist gunmen patrolling the streets, the government in Kiev said the results of the vote are certain to be rigged.

One Donetsk electoral official, Mikhail Samolenko, said Sunday there were no real safeguards to keep people from voting several times, but that it didn't matter "because everyone is voting yes" for independence. Separatists said they may release results as early as this evening.

More.

Plus, Maria Bartiromo interviews Kori Schake of the Hoover Institution (video), who indicates that recent polls found that 70 percent of residents in the eastern region would vote to retain membership with Ukraine. No outside election observers are on the ground. It's a sham, rigged election, which only strengthens Putin's claims to territorial revisionism.

And at Euronews, "Ukraine: voters in Donetsk participate in disputed poll."

No More Excuses for Islamic Monsters — #BokoHaram

From Ralph Peters, at the New York Post, "Stop making excuses for Islamist extremist monsters."

And Peters interviewed on Fox News, "Hillary Clinton Refused to Put Boko Haram on Terror List."

The Obama administration's engaged in "deceit, deception, and outright lies."

Who knew?!!

The New #Fascism Rolls On

More on the Benham brothers, from Charles Cooke, at National Review.

Veterans' Benefits Live On Long After Bullets Stop

A great piece, at WSJ, "Still Paying for the Civil War":

WILKESBORO, N.C. — Each month, Irene Triplett collects $73.13 from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a pension payment for her father's military service—in the Civil War.

More than 3 million men fought and 530,000 men died in the conflict between North and South. Pvt. Mose Triplett joined the rebels, deserted on the road to Gettysburg, defected to the Union and married so late in life to a woman so young that their daughter Irene is today 84 years old—and the last child of any Civil War veteran still on the VA benefits rolls.

Ms. Triplett's pension, small as it is, stands as a reminder that war's bills don't stop coming when the guns fall silent. The VA is still paying benefits to 16 widows and children of veterans from the 1898 Spanish-American War.

The last U.S. World War I veteran died in 2011. But 4,038 widows, sons and daughters get monthly VA pension or other payments. The government's annual tab for surviving family from those long-ago wars comes to $16.5 million.

Spouses, parents and children of deceased veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan received $6.7 billion in the 2013 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. Payments are based on financial need, any disabilities, and whether the veteran's death was tied to military service.

Those payments don't include the costs of fighting or caring for the veterans themselves. A Harvard University study last year projected the final bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would hit $4 trillion to $6 trillion in the coming decades.

Eric Shinseki, the secretary of Veterans Affairs, often cites President Abraham Lincoln's call, in his second inaugural address, for Americans "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan."

"The promises of President Abraham Lincoln are being delivered, 150 years later, by President Barack Obama, " Secretary Shinseki said in a speech last fall. "And the same will be true 100 years from now—the promises of this president will be delivered by a future president, as yet unborn."

A declaration of war sets in motion expenditures that can span centuries, whether the veterans themselves were heroes, cowards or something in between...

RTWT.

Mose Triplett switched sides, joining the Union Army so he'd qualify for veterans' bennies after the war. And boy did he ever, lol.

Decaying Newfoundland Whale

At Toronto's National Post, "Decaying blue whale towed from Trout River and will be de-blubbered before the bones shipped to Toronto."

Boko Haram and the Jihad in Africa

At the Other McCain.

And First Street Journal, "Telling half the truth, the half-truth, and nothing but half the truth."

Also at Atlas Shrugs, "#BringBackOurBalls."

Hashtags don't save people.