Category Archives: Political Commentary

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The War Against Science

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Here’s an example of it by the Left, or rather, the loss of one of its battles. Yes, women really are less predisposed to go into science. The Left opposes on principle the notion that many human traits are born, not made, because to admit that environment isn’t all is to concede defeat on their continual project to fight human nature. And it leads to absurdities like affirmative action demands that blacks, women, etc., must be represented in all endeavors in proportions equivalent to their proportions in the general population, and any deviation from this is prima facie evidence of racism and sexism. Larry Summers was famously bitten by this phenomenon a few years back.

Political Commentary

Won’t Get Fooled Again

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Stanley Kurtz explains why yesterday’s New York election is so devastating to the Democrats’ hopes for next year:

Koch stands for those traditionalist Democrats who enthusiastically supported Barack Obama in 2008, sincerely believing his claim to be a post-partisan pragmatist and friend of Israel. These are the Democrats who discounted warnings based on Obama’s radical past, and put faith in his smooth assurances. Now that the mask has slipped, it will be tough to get it back on.

He’s lost them, and he’s not going to get them back. They may not necessarily support the Republican, but they’re not going to be sending any money to Obama, and they’re not going to work to reelect him.

Education, Political Commentary

Campus Lunacy In Flagstaff

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Students at Northern Arizona University had the police called on them by the administration for handing out American flags to commemorate 911:

The first administrator was followed by another administrator, who told the students that the university could use “time, place and manner” rules to determine that they were not allowed to pass out flags there without a permit. This administrator was followed by yet another administrator who claimed that the First Amendment meant “free speech in a designated time, place, and manner.”

That’s a reading of the First Amendment that only a bureaucrat could love. The Supreme Court has indeed determined that the government may enforce time, place and manner restrictions on expression, but these restrictions must be reasonable, content-neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest and must leave open ample alternative means of communication. So when the expression consists of a couple of people handing out flags while standing against the wall of a large room, one wonders what “governmental interest” is involved in telling students they can’t do so.

The fourth administrator to confront the students repeated “time, place and manner” four times when the students challenged her on how the university could stop its own students from standing around and passing out flags. After that, NAU called the cops. A police officer (who looked like she’d rather be somewhere else) came and took the names of the two remaining participants, saying that it wasn’t a legal matter but a university code of conduct matter.

Until Monday evening, when NAU most likely realized how bad punishing people for this was going to look, the students faced charges of “failure to comply with a university official” and “interfering with university activities.” The first charge only made sense if “Hey, you two, stop passing out flags to commemorate 9/11” is the sort of order you think university officials should be giving, while the second only made sense if “not observing the anniversary of 9/11” counts as a university activity.

These are the people who should be first to go when the bubble pops.