Inhuman mother pleads not guilty to bashing 6-month-old baby to death: http://t.co/ZEr4lCyeUV @StevenErtelt
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) April 23, 2014Mom Grabs 6-Week-Old by the Feet, Slams Her Head Into the Ground Killing Her
http://t.co/q5ZGW9Fm3A ht @AmPowerBlog pic.twitter.com/txuX3PbLIT
— Steven Ertelt (@StevenErtelt) April 23, 2014Like most professors, I hate doing administrative work. And since somebody has to do it, universities have increasingly built up a corps of full-time administrators. That's fine, but lately, the administrative class has grown too numerous and too heavy-handed. As colleges and universities increasingly face financial pressures, it's time to rethink.Keep reading.
Full-time administrators now outnumber full-time faculty. And when times get tough, schools have a disturbing tendency to shrink faculty numbers while keeping administrators on the payroll. Teaching gets done by low-paid, nontenured adjuncts, but nobody ever heard of an "adjunct administrator."
But it's not just the fat that is worrisome. It's administrators' obsession with -- and all too often, abuse of -- security that raises serious concerns. At the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Clyde W. Barrow, a leading professor, has just quit, complaining of an administration that isolates itself from students and faculty behind keypads and security doors.
Isolation is bad. But worse still is the growing tendency of administrators to stifle critics by shamelessly interpreting even obviously harmless statements as "threats." A recent example took place at Bergen Community College, where Professor Francis Schmidt was suspended, and ordered to undergo a psychiatric examination over a "threat" that consisted of posting a picture of his 9-year old daughter wearing a Game Of Thrones T-shirt. The shirt bore a quote from the show, reading: "I will take what is mine with fire & blood." Bergen administrator Jim Miller apparently thought the picture, which was posted to Schmidt's Google Plus account, was somehow intended as a threat to him. (Schmidt had filed a labor grievance a couple of months earlier.)
What kind of person claims that a picture of a 9-year-old girl wearing an HBO T-shirt is a threat? The kind of person who runs America's colleges, apparently. And Miller, alas, is not alone in his cluelessness and, apparently, paranoia.
Last year at the University of Wisconsin at Stout, theater professor James Miller had a poster from the television series Firefly on his door. It included a picture of Captain Mal Reynolds, a character played by Nathan Fillion, and a quote from the show: "You don't know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you'll be awake. You'll be facing me. And you'll be armed."
Campus police chief Lisa Walter removed the poster, regarding it as a "threat." After Stout complained to no avail, he replaced the poster with one reading: "Fascism can cause blunt head trauma and/or violent death. Keep fascism away from children and pets."
This poster, too, was interpreted as a threat, which led to a visit from the campus "threat assessment team." After nationwide mockery (Fillion, and fellow Firefly cast member Adam Baldwin, joined in, as did many of the show's fans), the university retreated, and promised to change its approach in the future. Presumably, Chief Lisa Walter carries a gun, and I wonder if that's a good idea in someone so skittish that she sees a movie poster as a "threat."
Meanwhile, at the University of Colorado, the American Association of University Professors has produced a report on the university's running "roughshod" over academic freedom as part of an anti-sexual-harassment campaign in its philosophy department and -- again -- using campus police to strongarm a faculty member over an obviously bogus threat...
Read Justice Sotomayor's dissent in today's #Schuette Supreme Court ruling http://t.co/oh4kk108hJ #AffirmativeAction http://t.co/Nxk0n16KEj
— PFAW (@peoplefor) April 22, 2014Ukraine’s interim President Oleksander Turchinov has called for an anti-terrorist operation to be re-launched on Tuesday, after he claimed that two bodies were found "brutally tortured by pro-Russian" militants near the eastern city of Slaviansk.Also at Telegraph UK, "Russia 'supported torture of Kiev politician’":
Mr Turchinov said in a statement that one of the bodies was that of Volodymyr Rybak, a member of the ruling Batkivshchyna party, who had recently been abducted by “terrorists.”
Local media said Mr Rybak was kidnapped in Horlivka, a nearby locality, on Wednesday last week.
Police from the regional headquarters in Donetsk said that the body of a man who died a violent death had been found in the Seversky-Donets river and that it resembled Mr Rybak, a local councillor in the town of Horlivka, near Donetsk.
They added that formal identification would require further work...
Ukraine’s acting president calls for 'anti-terrorist operation’ against pro-Moscow separatists after body of a murdered town councillor is found.
The acting Ukrainian president, Oleksandr Turchynov, said on Tuesday that Russia had supported the torture and murder of a local politician in the east of the country loyal to Kiev.Still more at NYT, "At Funeral, Expressions of Grief and Anger Toward Kiev Officials," and at the Times of Israel, "Ukraine relaunches operation after Biden leaves."
The president called for the re-launch of an “anti-terrorist operation” against pro-Moscow separatists that was suspended only last week.
The remains of Vladimir Rybak, a town councillor and member of Yulia Tymoshenko’s Our Ukraine Fatherland party, along with an unidentified body, were believed to have been found in separatist-held Slavyansk.
“These crimes are being carried out with the full support and indulgence of the Russian Federation,” said Mr Turchynov. “I call on the security agencies to re-launch and carry out effective anti-terrorist measures, with the aim of protecting Ukrainian citizens living in east [Ukraine] from terrorists.”
Ukraine’s security forces had largely suspended what was a fairly limited operation to respond to the takeover of the eastern town by pro-Russian separatists after an accord with Moscow last week to try to defuse the crisis...
Heh.Whether or not Krugman’s scholarship and teaching ability warrant such a superior salary is certainly worthy of debate, but the real issue for most commentators is not how much CUNY will pay Krugman, but how little they are asking him to do. CUNY is essentially offering him what used to be called a sinecure. Like ecclesiastical appointments “without the care of souls,” the terms of Krugman’s contract require him to do almost nothing his first year and then teach just one graduate seminar each year for as long as he would like to stay at CUNY. This required teaching in the second year is less than half of the usual course load for most distinguished professors at the Graduate Center, some of whom teach three classes per year and advise several dissertations at a time. Whether Krugman will advise or sit on any dissertation committees remains to be seen.So, kind of like his columns, then.
It is clear from his acceptance email however, that he is interested in doing as little work as possible.
http://t.co/vUPbMHFwaA pic.twitter.com/TIFbtl6K8N
— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) April 22, 2014
If Cold War-era fear mongering, our-stockpile-has-to-be-bigger-than-their-stockpile machismo and plain “might is right” male insistence as a path to unquestioned power is no longer the accepted in the living rooms and bedrooms and boardrooms and classrooms across America, let alone in the war room, what do Republicans have left? Put another way, through eras of women’s liberation and racial equality movements and calls for peace and justice over war and tyranny, the patriarchy has remained intact increasingly not because of its popularity nor long list of great achievements for society but out of sheer will—its tight grip not yet fully dislodged by the simple passage of time that plainly advantages these forces of change.Heh, that Sally Kohn's a regular laugh riot!
But when masculinity itself starts to transform, to acknowledge the problems and even shackles of such strict gender norms and embrace a more open and experimental version of itself, traditional masculinity is defeated from within. When masculinity transforms to become a tall, athletic, African-American liberal who achieves peace and prosperity through words rather than weapons, when the new generation of billionaires are not muscle-y factory men but geeky and somewhat effeminate tech entrepreneurs, and when there are strong and powerful women increasingly comfortably and populously mingled within and sometimes hard to distinguish from the back because both have buns on the tops of their heads … well, who the hell is going to vote for a political party not just predicated on but deeply invested in exactly the opposite, let alone embrace any of their machismo-fueled militaristic ideas?
BAMN says #Schuette is a "racist decision." They also argued that the 14th Amendment only protects some racial groups http://t.co/ZKGtQdCFMp
— XIV Foundation (@XIVFoundation) April 22, 2014Today’s Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on affirmative action in Michigan is a racist decision. It is this Court’s Plessy v Ferguson. The decision of the Court today makes clear that this Court intends to do nothing to defend the right to equality in politics, opportunity, rights, hopes and aspirations of its Latina/o, black, Native American and other minority citizens. At the very moment that America is becoming a majority minority nation this Court is declaring its intention to uphold white privilege and to create a new Jim Crow legal system.Remember, these people aren't too smart, lol.
.@JenGratz Wow, that "BAMN" group's a bunch of whacked open borders communists, lol! https://t.co/P6Tj9e0JDJ
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) April 22, 2014
PHOENIX — Depending on the point of view, Shanesha Taylor is either a negligent mom who deserves being charged with child abuse or an overwhelmed single mother who made a mistake while trying to provide for her children.Actually, no.
Taylor, 35, was charged last month with felony child abuse after leaving her two young boys in a hot car while she interviewed for a job.
Taylor's situation, and her tearful mug shot, moved 45,000 people to sign an online petition that calls for charges to be dropped. Her case even prompted a stranger to raise more than $100,000 on her behalf.
Her attorney, Benjamin Taylor, said Monday that he hoped a deal could be reached to reduce or drop the charges.
"You have a single mother with children who is trying to do her best to provide for her family," said the attorney, no relation to Taylor. "We all make mistakes and nobody is perfect and … she was doing her best. But now does she deserve two felonies on her record because she made a mistake? If she's convicted, it will ruin her life."
#SCOTUS upholds the right of citizens to ban preferential treatment based on race! http://t.co/5YWEJOZPyt #Schuette #equaltreatment
— Jennifer Gratz (@jengratz) April 22, 2014
Like the Fuller Court in the Lochner era, the Roberts Court in the #CitizensUnited era continues to plunder #Schuette pic.twitter.com/g5kVNLrg3M
— Calvin Sloan (@CalvinSloan) April 22, 2014
Thomas Piketty likes capitalism because it efficiently allocates resources. But he does not like how it allocates income. There is, he thinks, a moral illegitimacy to virtually any accumulation of wealth, and it is a matter of justice that such inequality be eradicated in our economy. The way to do this is to eliminate high incomes and to reduce existing wealth through taxation.Heh.
"Capital in the Twenty-First Century" is Mr. Piketty's dense exploration of the history of wages and wealth over the past three centuries. He presents a blizzard of data about income distribution in many countries, claiming to show that inequality has widened dramatically in recent decades and will soon get dangerously worse. Whether or not one is convinced by Mr. Piketty's data—and there are reasons for skepticism, given the author's own caveats and the fact that many early statistics are based on extremely limited samples of estate tax records and dubious extrapolation—is ultimately of little consequence. For this book is less a work of economic analysis than a bizarre ideological screed.
I’m sure that Cliven Bundy probably could have cut a deal with the Bureau of Land Management and should have. Of course, it’s never wise to let a federal court order hang over your head. And certainly we cannot have a world of Cliven Bundys if a legal system is to function.Keep reading.
In a practical sense, I also know that if I were to burn brush on a no-burn day, or toss an empty pesticide container in the garbage bin, or shoot a coyote too near the road, I would incur the wrath of the government in a way someone does not who dumps a stripped stolen auto (two weeks ago) in my vineyard, or solvents, oil, and glass (a few months ago), or rips out copper wire from the pump for the third time (last year). Living in a Winnebago with a porta-potty and exposed Romex in violation of zoning statutes for many is not quite breaking the law where I live; having a mailbox five inches too high for some others certainly is.
So Mr. Bundy must realize that in about 1990 we decided to focus on the misdemeanor of the law-abiding citizen and to ignore the felony of the lawbreaker. The former gave law enforcement respect; the latter ignored their authority. The first made or at least did not cost enforcers money; arresting the second began a money-losing odyssey of incarceration, trials, lawyers, appeals, and all the rest.
Mr. Bundy knows that the bullies of the BLM would much rather send a SWAT team after him than after 50 illegal aliens being smuggled by a gun-toting cartel across the southwestern desert. How strange, then, at this late postmodern date, for someone like Bundy on his horse still to be playing the law-breaking maverick Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) in (the David Miller, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Abbey effort) Lonely Are the Brave.
But the interest in Mr. Bundy’s case is not about legal strategies in revolving fiscal disagreements with the federal government.
Instead, we all have followed Mr. Bundy for three reasons.
One, he called attention to the frightening fact that the federal government owns 83% of the land in Nevada. Note that “federal” and “government” are the key words and yet are abstractions. Rather, a few thousands unelected employees — in the BLM, EPA, Defense Department, and other alphabet soup agencies — can pretty much do what they want on the land they control. And note, this is not quite the case in Silicon Valley or Manhattan or Laguna Beach. The danger can be summed up by a scene I see about once a month on a Fresno freeway: a decrepit truck stopped by the California Highway Patrol for having inadequate tarps on a trailer of green clippings, just as a new city garbage truck speeds by, with wet garbage flying over the median. Who will police the police?
Two, this administration has a long record of not following the law — picking and choosing when and how to enforce immigration statutes, depending on the particular dynamics of the next election; picking and choosing which elements of Obamacare to enforce, again depending on perceived political advantage; and picking and choosing when to go after coal companies, or when not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, or when to reverse the order of the Chrysler creditors, or when to allow Lois Lerner to destroy the credibility of the IRS for partisan advantage.
In other words, the Obama administration regularly breaks the law as it sees fit. So we wonder why a federal agency sends out swarms of armed security agents to the empty desert on behalf of a tortoise, when it could just as easily storm Jay Carney’s press conference and demand that the president promise to enforce the Affordable Care Act. Or start apprehending those who are not just violating immigration law, but also serially signing false federal affidavits or providing employers with fraudulent identities.
Finally, Bundy, for all his contradictions, is a throwback to a different age...
