Caitlyn Jenner is Cliché

From Christopher Knight, at the Los Angeles Times, "Caitlyn Jenner's courage is bold, Annie Leibovitz's portrait cliched":

Everybody is required to play along in the game of Celebrity Fantasy Dress Up With "Caitlyn" or else you're a HATER!

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) June 2, 2015

I'm happy to call Bruce Caitlyn because people can switch names. I will not call him a woman because he isn't one.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 2, 2015

In recent years, the LGBT civil rights movement has been making huge strides. It has taken decades, but transgender men and women are now an essential part of the necessary equality mix. Jenner, by effectively stage-managing her transition, has largely avoided what could have been a cruel and ugly scenario.

Yet the Vanity Fair photograph seems a missed opportunity — a picture from the past rather than the present. Maybe that's because all its conventional, glamour-girl signals weigh down the lively fluidity swirling at the center of gender identity.

Leibovitz and Jenner, photographer and subject, are both 65. They were raised in an era when gender ideas were more stable, fixed and binary than they are today.

In 1991, Los Angeles photographer Catherine Opie blew up those inflexible conventions in a now famous suite of 13 color photographs titled "Being and Having." The artist shot tight, close-up portraits of lesbian friends against screaming yellow backgrounds. Each suddenly ambiguous face sports an exaggerated mustache, beard, sideburns or other masculine props — tattoos, piercings, a do-rag or shades.

Fakery and play mingle with authenticity and solemnity. In these iconic images, identity is a question, not an answer. Homosexuality unfolds as something marvelously heterogeneous.

By coincidence, the series followed the 1990 publication of "Gender Trouble," the landmark book by UC Berkeley philosopher Judith Butler pointedly subtitled "Feminism and the Subversion of Identity." In it, she persuasively argued that gender is not rooted in biological fact but in culturally determined symbols, signs and images.

Butler's trailblazing notion is that gender isn't natural — it's a performance. But Jenner's performance on the cover of Vanity Fair is predictable.

During her celebrated career, Leibovitz has made many photographs that skillfully represent popular symbols. She has pictured dozens of celebrity subjects as visual puns.

The New York artist Christo stands in Central Park wrapped up like one of his sculptures, mummified in his art. Paralyzed Marine Corps veteran and antiwar activist Ron Kovic is seated in his wheelchair at the shallow edge of the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica — a man of peace "walking" on water.

Lauren Hutton is sprawled naked in the Mississippi mud, an all-American Earth mother. Bette Midler, publicizing her Oscar-nominated role as a doomed pop star in 1979's "The Rose," lies sprawled beneath a dense tangle of crimson buds — life is a bed of roses, albeit hiding thorns.

Leibovitz's Caitlyn Jenner is a newfangled Vargas girl, one of those airbrushed cuties from the old pages of Playboy. Is that all there is?

RTWT.

Terror Suspect Usaama Rahim Killed by FBI in Boston

At Jihad Watch, "Boston: Jihad terror suspect shot after threatening cops with military knife," and "Slain Boston jihadi “radicalized by ISIS,” part of terror network."

Usaama Rahim allegedly wielded large, military knife before he was shot, killed in Roslindale http://t.co/Bjm5RLXBYE pic.twitter.com/nPLvfsbRTC

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) June 3, 2015

'He was someone we were watching for quite a time,' police said of man who was shot and killed in Roslindale http://t.co/zs9AQOj78I

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) June 3, 2015

Man shot and killed by police in Roslindale was under 24-hour surveillance http://t.co/nGhwCKnVju pic.twitter.com/nm5DFMNxAS

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) June 2, 2015

Darla Renee Jackson, Suspect in San Diego Road Rage Death, Pleads Not Guilty

This case is freakin' hardcore.

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "DA: Road-rage death was 'intentional act': Woman accused of running over a motorcyclist on I-5 in Chula Vista":

CHULA VISTA — A 25-year-old Imperial Beach woman deliberately ran over over a motorcyclist on a South County freeway "in a purposeful and intentional act”, a prosecutor told a judge Tuesday.

Darla Renee Jackson pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder in the hearing.

Jackson was in her Nissan Altima Thursday when she and motorcyclist Zacharias Buob, a 39-year-old chief petty officer in the Navy, got into a dispute on north Interstate 5 near E Street about 5:30 p.m. Thursday, California Highway Patrol officers said.

Deputy District Attorney Laura Evans described it in court as “some sort of back-and-forth altercation” between the two.

The dispute continued as the two vehicles transitioned from I-5 to state Route 54, where Jackson chased the victim, crossing into all lanes of traffic, and then hit the back of his Ducati, Evans said. Jackson is accused of pushing the bike some 300 feet until both Buob and the motorcycle went down. Her car then ran Buob over, the prosecutor said. He died at the hospital.

Evans told the judge witness accounts indicated “this was a purposeful and intentional act.”

“She endangered the life of herself, other motorists and ultimately killed the victim in this case,” Evans said.

The prosecutor argued for $3 million bail, citing the danger Jackson poses to the community, but Chula Vista Superior Court Judge Patricia Garcia said $1 million bail was sufficient.

Defense attorney Stephen Cline said Jackson’s version of events differed from that of authorities, saying after the hearing that she told him Buob kicked her car and they later collided.

Jackson, her hands shackled at her waist, trembled and rocked in her chair as she cried during the short hearing.

“She’s very sorry, she’s very upset and she’s very traumatized,” Cline said outside the courthouse.

More.

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New #ObamaCare Rate Hikes On the Way — Insurers Seek Massive Increases!

Hey, it's working just as critics said it would!

At WSJ, "More Health-Care Insurers Seek Big Premium Increases":

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration published more information Monday about hefty premium increases for 2016 sought by large insurers selling plans under the health law.

Major carriers from around the country are proposing big increases in the premium rates paid by consumers who buy insurance policies on their own.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois is looking to raise rates by averages of 29% or more. In Pennsylvania, Highmark Health Insurance Co. is asking for 30%, according to proposals submitted by insurers for the year ahead. Around the country, some of the main market leaders are looking for double digit increases.

The new requests for premiums come at a time when the political and legal future of the law hangs in the balance. The Supreme Court is set to issue a decision later this month on the validity of the law’s tax credits to offset the cost of premiums for lower-income consumers in most states in the country.

Republicans opposed to the health law still plan to make it part of their 2016 election campaign, and for the law’s Democratic supporters, the proposed rate increases mean a tough conversation about how the law is working.

Some of the significant increases being sought were first reported in The Wall Street Journal.

As part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, insurers must justify increases of 10% or more to the Obama administration, which published those explanations online Monday. The administration cannot force insurers to reduce rates, but many state regulators can negotiate with health plans, and the rates could come down.

The Obama administration sought to emphasize that point on Monday.

“The rate review process kicks off an important set of steps designed to provide consumers and others the opportunity to weigh in on proposed rate increases of 10% or more,” said Andy Slavitt, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the health law’s implementation. “These specific rates will be subject to vigorous rate review and revision.”

Some of the insurers couldn’t immediately be reached for comment following the Department of Health and Human Services’ publication of the data Monday.

But Greg Thompson, a spokesman for the Illinois insurer, said rate proposals reflected the health plan’s medical claims, and noted provisions in the health law that require insurers to spend the vast majority of premium income on claims or refund the difference to consumers.

Other insurers also have said their rates for the year ahead reflect the impact of the law’s sweeping changes to the way health insurance is sold and priced.

Under the health law, plans have to sell coverage to everyone, regardless of their medical history, and can’t charge people who are more seriously ill higher rates. Health-plan officials say that means they are bearing bigger medical claims than they had expected.

Moreover, insurers have said they face substantial pent-up demand for health-care services from the newly enrolled, including for expensive drugs.

Consumer groups contend they want state and federal regulators to be as tough as they can on insurers’ requests to raise rates...

More.

Dick Cheney Ramping Up New Policy Push

I mentioned the new book coming out previously, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

I'm looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, at the Wall Street Journal, "Former vice president to release book and mount lobbying campaign that is likely to play into 2016 presidential election":

CASPER, Wyo.—Few people noticed the 74-year-old in the tan Stetson at a high-school rodeo here. Dick Cheney was happy to blend in.

That is about to change. The former vice president is looking to make a splash on the national stage with a new book to be published in September and a group he and his daughter Liz launched to advance their views.

The effort is sure to play directly into the 2016 presidential debate, in which national-security policy is already a point of difference between the Republican candidates, many of whom are looking to turn the page on George W. Bush’s administration.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds, Mr. Cheney previewed some of his likely positions:

• He characterized one leading GOP contender, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, as an isolationist. “He knows I think of him as an isolationist, and it offends him deeply,” Mr. Cheney said. “But it’s true.”

• An early critic of nuclear talks with Iran, he thinks the U.S. should be prepared to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. He also favors additional arms shipments to U.S. allies in Eastern Europe and further military exercises in Poland to send a signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• And he scoffed at the debate that tripped up Mr. Bush’s brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, over whether or not he would have invaded Iraq with the virtue of hindsight. (Mr. Bush, after some back and forth, eventually said he wouldn’t). Mr. Cheney instead said Republicans should scrutinize the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq under President Barack Obama.

Mr. Cheney’s overarching message, and the theme of the book he is co-authoring with his daughter Liz Cheney, is that the U.S. needs to assert itself more on the world stage. “We thought, looking forward to 2016, it was very important to make sure those issues were front and center in the campaign,” he said.

By weighing in, Mr. Cheney is bound to make himself a flash point in the 2016 debate, stoking further questions about which policies of the George W. Bush administration Republicans embrace and which they reject, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the bulk collection of phone records and interrogation policy. That could prove particularly uncomfortable for Jeb Bush, who has struggled to define himself apart from his brother.

Mr. Cheney already exerts quiet influence over his party, making semiregular trips to the Capitol to address House Republicans and advising some GOP White House hopefuls. He wouldn’t discuss those conversations. Two of his top foreign-policy aides have signed on with Jeb Bush. And he is headlining donor events all over the country for the Republican National Committee.

“The party is very fortunate to have an active and engaged Dick Cheney for this upcoming political cycle,” said Reince Priebus, the party’s chairman, noting the number of candidates and elected officials who turn to the former vice president for advice. “He’s a top fundraising draw, in high demand.”

Holly Shulman, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said “there’s no one happier about Dick Cheney becoming a foreign policy surrogate than we are…If he needs any assistance getting out his message, our team would be happy to help book him for interviews.”

Keep reading.

Blacks 75 Percent More Likely to Get Pulled Over in Missouri

Blah, blah, blah.

After everything else in Ferguson has turned sour for the race-baiting left, here's the ho-hum racial "disparity" statistics on Missouri traffic stops.

At the New York Times, "Missouri Reports Wide Racial Disparity in Traffic Stops."

And at 41 Action News Kansas City, "Report: Major racial disparity in Missouri traffic stops."

RELATED: For common sense perspective, see Heather Mac Donald, at City Journal, "Ferguson’s Unasked Questions: In the Missouri city and elsewhere, the media clings to predetermined conclusions."

Albert Pujols Homers Twice, Mike Trout and David Freese Also Go Yard, in #Angels 7-3 Victory Over Tampa Bay

The boys are on fire, finally.

At the O.C. Register, "Final: Trout and Pujols homer to lead Angels over Rays, 7-3."

#HaloRecap: #Angels keep their bats hot with home runs from @PujolsFive, @MikeTrout & @Freeser6 in tonight's victory! pic.twitter.com/BrIQeyHrh0

— Angels (@Angels) June 2, 2015

Introducing Caitlyn Jenner

The obligatory Caitlyn Jenner transgender debut post.

See the reactions at Memeorandum.

I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can't wait for you to get to know her/me.

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) June 1, 2015

Another Jenner world record, and at 65? Who'da thought! Humbled & honored to have reached 1M followers in 4 hrs. Thank you for your support.

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) June 1, 2015

I'll call you Caitlyn but you're still just a dude who tucks his dick between his legs😂😂😂 #CaitlynJenner pic.twitter.com/z1QzmUjQaT

— The Anti-Feminist (@FemsHaveBallz) June 1, 2015

What is it with trannies that they feel they have to dress like sluts? For God’s sake, you’re 65 years old. Decency! https://t.co/lerU80YnoC

— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) June 1, 2015

'Some of us now struggle to recognize the culture we live in...'

From Quin Hillyer, at National Review, "Where 'Normal' is Defined as 'Deviant'":

At Sea in an Alien Culture, Where ‘Normal’ Is Defined as ‘Deviant’ http://t.co/Qz8XRxs1kc pic.twitter.com/6ZbRzkPgdz

— National Review (@NRO) May 25, 2015

Elderly Man Accidentally Runs Over Wife in Studio City

Man, that's heartbreaking.

At CBS News Los Angeles, "Husband Accidentally Runs Over, Kills Wife In Studio City Crash."

Country Music Consultant Wants Fewer Women on Radio

Hey, it's just good business!

At WaPo, "One industry expert offers his plan to help country radio: Fewer songs by women."

And at CBS This Morning, "Miranda Lambert lashes out at radio exec."

California's Mandatory Water Restrictions Take Effect

At LAT, "As California drought worsens, experts urge water reforms":

As mandatory water restrictions took effect Monday across California, a panel of experts called upon the drought-plagued state to upgrade its water infrastructure and reform its antiquated water rights system.

"The reservoirs we built in California over the 20th century were designed for a climate with extensive snowpack, and frequent wet periods," said Juliet Christian-Smith, a climate scientist with the California office of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"We know that this drought is a bellwether of future conditions," Christian-Smith said. "This year's record-low snowpack is projected to be close to normal by the end of the century."

Christian-Smith was one of a handful of experts who spoke to reporters during a telephone news conference organized by the science group.

With droughts in California and other western states likely to grow more frequent because of global warming, planners needed to explore new methods of water conservation, they said.

Among the solutions was devising new ways to capture rainwater runoff so that it could be stored in soils, floodplains and groundwater basins.

"It's not about building bigger and higher dams," said Joseph McIntyre, president of the not-for-profit food sustainability organization Ag Innovations.

Instead, McIntyre said the state should focus on "capturing and storing water everywhere in the system -- on small ponds, on farms, in urban rainwater harvesting projects and in small-scale reservoirs. The future is small and distributed."

Michael Hanemann, a professor of environmental and resource economics at UC Berkeley, said also that the state's system of water rights was in serious need of updating.

However, he said the Legislature has showed "no appetite" to make reforms.

Among the most senior water rights holders in California are those who hold riparian rights -- that is, the right to siphon water from a river or stream that runs through or along a property owner's land. Those rights date back to the founding of the state in 1850.

Also, from Joel Kotkin, at the O.C. Register, "Why California's salad days have wilted."

The Soft-Soaping of Socialism in the U.S.

At IBD:

Bernie Sanders is coming on as a presidential contender, while polls show surprisingly large parts of the public look favorably on the socialism he espouses. The public apparently has forgotten socialism's record.

For years, Sanders, an avowed, unapologetic socialist, was viewed as an anomaly of U.S. political life, an eccentric whose atypical ideology reflected the supposed quirkiness of his home state of Vermont.

Now that's changed, and with Democrats worried about the scandals surrounding their top candidate, Hillary Clinton, Sanders is attracting ever-bigger audiences on the campaign trail. Polls show him at 15% of the Democratic tally.

Maybe that's because Sanders is portrayed in the media as "a normal guy" — as a Washington Post headline put it — while liberal media doyen Bill Moyer headlined a [news item "Despite What Corporate Media Tells You, Bernie Sanders' Positions Are Mainstream."
In the Huffington Post, Distinguished Professor Peter Dreier of Occidental College, one of Barack Obama's alma maters, declared, "Bernie Sanders' Socialism Is as American as Apple Pie."

Such is the new narrative about Sanders, 73, whose ideology grew out of the same 1930s roots as all past socialist movements, even as America since the Reagan era has moved toward free markets and taken much of the world with it.

Sure, Sanders calls himself a "democratic socialist" and says that his model is the all-encompassing welfare state of Sweden, not the Soviet Union. No comment from him, however, about the reforms that Sweden has made over the last decade to rid itself of the state embrace that's choked economic life or the demographic losses endured as the young move out or lose interest in forming families.

Also under the democratic socialist banner is Venezuela, where citizens have lost not only all their prosperity and access to goods but their civil freedoms as well.

Every last government agency there has been politicized since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, ending civil society, while the separation of powers has been rubbed away in the name of "the revolution."

As a result, political dissidents have been thrown in prisons without trial. Others have lost the right to leave the country. Still more have had their businesses expropriated. More still have been victims of political thuggery from government-sponsored private goons.

Like Sweden, Venezuela is no country for young men. A study of professors at Gervasio Rubio Rural Pedagogic Institute reported last week in El Universal showed that large numbers of Venezuela's young would rather deal drugs than go to school.

More.

We're surrounded by leftist idiots. But I repeat myself.

Elon Musk Defends $4.9 Billion in Government Subsidies

Background at Instapundit, "ELON MUSK’S BUSINESS STRATEGY: Take full advantage of government subsidies."

And see the Los Angeles Times, "Elon Musk defends $4.9 billion in government money for his companies."

Imagine the National Economy with a $15.00 Minimum Wage

I suspect if local governments, like Los Angeles, phase in the $15.00 minimum wage over a few years, the negative economic repercussions will be minimized. Still, once businesses relocate to more competitive cities and states, it's hard to get those enterprises back.

And as always, huge numbers of workers are going to be displaced as businesses shift to increasing automation and flexible (shorter), non-benefit, hours.

At the Los Angeles Times, "A new dawn for the minimum wage":

What has long been a hypothetical question may soon become a real one: What would the national economy look like with a $15-an-hour minimum wage?

Community activists and politicians see a $15 minimum wage as the antidote to the ills of rising inequality, a way to reduce poverty and stimulate the overall economy. Business owners warn it will tie their hands in downturns, drive small employers out of business and lead to millions of layoffs.

The reality is not that simple: An increase to $15 an hour would ripple through the U.S. economy in some unexpected ways that are, generally, not as bad nor as beneficial as each side claims.

The push for a higher minimum wage has gained momentum over the past few years. Seattle, San Francisco and most recently Los Angeles have adopted a floor of $15 an hour to take effect over the next few years. That's more than double the current federal minimum-wage law of $7.25.

Other cities such as Chicago. Oakland and Washington, D.C., have raised the minimum wage, but not as much. At least a dozen other cities and states, including New York and Oregon, may soon follow.

The recent movement is rooted in years of stagnant wages and a general disaffection from the slow and uneven recovery since the Great Recession officially ended in 2009. Like the Gilded Age in the late 1800s, the last quarter-century has seen fabulous income gains for corporations and individuals at the top, but very little for everybody else.

It's true that higher minimum wages would address some of that inequality, lifting many Americans from poverty.

Almost 60% of workers who are paid on an hourly basis — some 44 million people — currently make less than $15 an hour, Labor Department figures show. If the minimum went up to $15 tomorrow, nearly half of those workers would get at least a 50% bump in pay.

And it's not just teenagers and young adults who would benefit. More than 8.4 million people earning less than $10 an hour today are in the prime of their work life, between ages 25 and 54. About 62% of these workers are women, many with children.

Yet the benefits from higher wages would be offset for many by a reduction in government benefits that low-wage workers now receive, such as child-care subsidies or public aid for food, housing and medicines.

Millions of workers would have more money in their pockets to spend, boosting demand for goods and services. But they would also likely face increased prices in the marketplace as retailers, restaurants, child-care centers and other businesses that employ low-wage workers shift the higher labor costs to their customers.

When Oakland's minimum wage jumped from $9 an hour to $12.25 in March, residents noticed many stores tacked on a dime or a quarter to an assortment of items. Creole food caterer David Smith went further, jacking up the price of his dishes by $2 to $3 a plate. "I had to," says Smith, 35, who has three employees.

Longer term, many low-paid workers could lose their jobs or find fewer openings as employers cut back to cope with the higher wage requirements.

An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office last year estimated that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, which some lawmakers had proposed, would result in a half-million jobs lost. At $15 an hour, the hit would likely be in the millions.

"Fifteen dollars still scares me," says Harry Holzer, a Georgetown University economist, adding that what might be doable in high-priced cities like Seattle and San Francisco could prove more difficult in other areas...

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Businesses Will Raises Prices and Cut Employee Hours Under Obama Minimum Wage Hike," and "$15 Minimum Wage Will Hurt Workers."

Drake Bell Disses Caitlyn Jenner

It's been awhile since "Drake and Josh" was topping the charts, so I guess fading actors take to Twitter to stay relevant, or something.

Still, the responses are pretty hysterical.

At Twitchy, "‘Burn in hell': Drake Bell branded ‘transphobic idiot’ after posting ‘still calling you Bruce’."

George Will: The Commencement Speech Every College Graduate Needs to Hear (VIDEO)

Old George is going to ruffle some super-sensitive feathers, via Prager University:



BONUS: At the Washington Post, "A summer break from campus muzzling":

Progressives frequently disparage this or that person or idea as “on the wrong side of history.” They regard history as an autonomous force with its own laws of unfolding development: Progress is wherever history goes. This belief entails disparagement of human agency — or at least that of most people, who do not understand history’s implacable logic and hence do not get on history’s “right side.” Such people are crippled by “false consciousness.” Fortunately, a saving clerisy, a vanguard composed of the understanding few, know where history is going and how to help it get there.

One way to help is by molding the minds of young people. The molders believe that the sociology of knowledge demonstrates that most people do not make up their minds, “society” does this. But progressive minds can be furnished for them by controlling the promptings from the social environment. This can be done by making campuses into hermetically sealed laboratories.

In “The Promise of American Life” (1909), progressivism’s canonical text, Herbert Croly said, “The average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.” National life should be “a school,” with the government as the stern but caring principal: “The exigencies of such schooling frequently demand severe coercive measures, but what schooling does not?” “Unregenerate citizens” can be saved “many costly perversions, in case the official school-masters are wise, and the pupils neither truant nor insubordinate.” For a survey of today’s campus coercions, read Kirsten Power’s “The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.”

In “Kindly Inquisitors” (1993), Jonathan Rauch showed how attacks on the free market in speech undermine three pillars of American liberty. They subvert democracy, the culture of persuasion by which we decide who shall wield legitimate power. (Progressives advocate government regulation of the quantity, content and timing of political campaign speech.) The attacks undermine capitalism — markets registering the freely expressed choices by which we allocate wealth. And the attacks undermine science, which is how we decide what is true. (Note progressives’ insistence that the science about this or that is “settled.”)

For decades, much academic ingenuity has been devoted to jurisprudential theorizing to evade the First Amendment’s majestic simplicity about “no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” We are urged to “balance” this freedom against competing, and putatively superior, considerations such as individual serenity, institutional tranquillity or social improvement.

On campuses, the right of free speech has been supplanted by an entitlement to what Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education calls a right to freedom from speech deemed uncongenial. This entitlement is buttressed by “trigger warnings” against spoken “micro-aggressions” that lacerate the delicate sensibilities of individuals who are encouraged to be exquisitely, paralyzingly sensitive.

In a booklet for the “Encounter Broadside” series, Lukianoff says “sensitivity-based censorship” on campus reflects a broader and global phenomena. It is the demand for coercive measures to do for our mental lives what pharmacology has done for our bodies — the banishment or mitigation of many discomforts. In the social milieu fostered by today’s entitlement state, expectations quickly generate entitlements. Students are taught to expect intellectual comfort, including the reinforcement of their beliefs, or at least those that conform to progressive orthodoxies imbibed and enforced on campuses. Until September, however, the culture of freedom will be safe from its cultured despisers.

The New Nationwide Crime Wave

From Heather Mac Donald, at WSJ, "The consequences of the ‘Ferguson effect’ are already appearing. The main victims of growing violence will be the inner-city poor":

@SykesCharlie @WSJ Libs don't care. This was never about Black lives mattering. It is about energizing the Black base for 2016 election.

— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) May 30, 2015

The nation’s two-decades-long crime decline may be over. Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America. In Baltimore, the most pressing question every morning is how many people were shot the previous night. Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.

In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing.

Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.

Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.

By contrast, the first six months of 2014 continued a 20-year pattern of growing public safety. Violent crime in the first half of last year dropped 4.6% nationally and property crime was down 7.5%. Though comparable national figures for the first half of 2015 won’t be available for another year, the January through June 2014 crime decline is unlikely to be repeated.

The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.

Since last summer, the airwaves have been dominated by suggestions that the police are the biggest threat facing young black males today. A handful of highly publicized deaths of unarmed black men, often following a resisted arrest—including Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., in July 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 and Freddie Gray in Baltimore last month—have led to riots, violent protests and attacks on the police. Murders of officers jumped 89% in 2014, to 51 from 27.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, before he stepped down last month, embraced the conceit that law enforcement in black communities is infected by bias. The news media pump out a seemingly constant stream of stories about alleged police mistreatment of blacks, with the reports often buttressed by cellphone videos that rarely capture the behavior that caused an officer to use force.

Almost any police shooting of a black person, no matter how threatening the behavior that provoked the shooting, now provokes angry protests, like those that followed the death of Vonderrit Myers in St. Louis last October. The 18-year-old Myers, awaiting trial on gun and resisting-arrest charges, had fired three shots at an officer at close range. Arrests in black communities are even more fraught than usual, with hostile, jeering crowds pressing in on officers and spreading lies about the encounter.

Acquittals of police officers for the use of deadly force against black suspects are now automatically presented as a miscarriage of justice. Proposals aimed at producing more cop convictions abound, but New York state seems especially enthusiastic about the idea.

The state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, wants to create a special state prosecutor dedicated solely to prosecuting cops who use lethal force. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo would appoint an independent monitor whenever a grand jury fails to indict an officer for homicide and there are “doubts” about the fairness of the proceeding (read: in every instance of a non-indictment); the governor could then turn over the case to a special prosecutor for a second grand jury proceeding.

This incessant drumbeat against the police has resulted in what St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson last November called the “Ferguson effect.” Cops are disengaging from discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,” Mr. Dotson reported. Arrests in St. Louis city and county by that point had dropped a third since the shooting of Michael Brown in August. Not surprisingly, homicides in the city surged 47% by early November and robberies in the county were up 82%.

Similar “Ferguson effects” are happening across the country as officers scale back on proactive policing under the onslaught of anti-cop rhetoric. Arrests in Baltimore were down 56% in May compared with 2014...

Keep reading.

And at Twitchy, "‘The New National Crime Wave’ explores the consequences of the ‘Ferguson effect’."

Today's Feminists Are Too Fragile to Read

From Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today, "When a professor criticizes equal rights law, it is not a violation of equal rights":

They told me that if I voted for Mitt Romney, campus witch hunts would leave professors afraid to write about feminism. And they were right!

Barack Obama is the president, of course, not Mitt. But Obama's Department of Education has taken such a broad view of the federal Title IX antidiscrimination law ("No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.") that we have reached the ultimate in absurdity: Feminist students silencing feminist professors in the name of equality.

Feminist professor Laura Kipnis of Northwestern University published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education in February, decrying "sexual paranoia" on campus and the way virtually any classroom mention of sex was being subjected to an odd sort of neo-Victorian prudery: "Students were being encouraged to regard themselves as such exquisitely sensitive creatures that an errant classroom remark could impede their education, as such hothouse flowers that an unfunny joke was likely to create lasting trauma. ... In the post-Title IX landscape, sexual panic rules. Slippery slopes abound."

This article sat poorly with campus activists, who in response reported her for sexual harassment, on the theory that this article (and a follow-up tweet — yes, that's right, a tweet) somehow might have created a hostile environment for female students, which would violate Title IX as interpreted by the Education Department. Because, you see, female students, according to feminists, are too fragile to face disagreement. And they'll demonstrate this fragility by subjecting you to Stalinist persecution if you challenge them, apparently...

More.

Read about the professor (me) brought up on Title IX charges over an essay. My Title IX Inquisition https://t.co/7arRrbuUv6 via @chronicle

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 29, 2015

TITLE IX Update: After 72 days it turns out that a preponderance of the evidence doesn't support the allegations. https://t.co/EmIdJEWhYK

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 31, 2015

"My Title IX Inquisition." Here's a link to a PDF version. http://t.co/aaR3ZgjxaT

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 31, 2015