Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Hit the road, Jack! Three anti-Semitic Columbia deans 'were resigned'

The First Street Journal previously reported on three anti-Semitic deans at Columbia University being permanently removed and placed on indefinite leave from their administrative jobs over offensive texts during an alumni weekend event about Jewish life on campus. An audience member, who was seated behind one of the deans took photos of the administrators’ texts and first shared them last month with the Washington Free Beacon.

Well, the indefinite suspension is now over. From The New York Times:

3 Columbia University Deans Who Sent Insulting Texts Have Resigned

The deans were put on leave earlier in the summer after sending messages that disparaged Jewish panelists. A fourth dean, who is tenured, will remain at the university.

by Sharon Otterman | Thursday, August 8, 2024

Three Columbia University deans who exchanged disparaging text messages that the university president said “touched on ancient antisemitic tropes” during a forum about Jewish issues in May are resigning, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

The deans, who had responsibility for undergraduate student affairs, sent the biting and sarcastic messages as they reacted in real time to Jewish speakers expressing concern about antisemitism on campus during the two-hour event.

In June, Nemat Shafik, the university president, placed the three deans on indefinite leave as an investigation proceeded.

In the texts, one dean suggested that a Jewish speaker was playing up concerns for fund-raising purposes. Another sent vomit emojis in reaction to the mention of a college newspaper opinion piece written by one of the school’s rabbis.

So, they’ve ‘resigned.’ The Times subtitle tells the reader everything that he needs to know: a fourth dean, who has academic tenure, did not resign, which means that the three who did leave resigned ahead of being fired. Firing a tenured person is much more difficult, so professor Josef Sorett, a scholar on religion and race, who did not participate to the same extent as Susan Chang-Kim, vice dean and chief administrative officer, Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life, and Matthew Patashnick, associate dean for student and family support, gets to keep his job. Dr Sorett, who publicly apologized, stays while the other three are wailing at the song “Hit the Road, Jack“.

If it took over a month to force the three to resign, one thing is obvious: there were lawyers involved. The only question not answered by the Times is: how much of a golden parachute were the three given?

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Man, that Larry Krasner and his office are really stupid!

This site has previously noted the charges against former Philadelphia Police Officer Mark Dial. Officer Dial shot and killed criminal Eddie Irizarry when he believed that Mr Irizarry was reaching for a weapon.

The city’s George Soros-sponsored, police-hating and criminal-loving District Attorney charged Officer Dial with “first-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, and related offenses,” though, as you can see from Pennsylvania Title 18 §2502 above, first-degree murder was never an appropriate charge.

An at least reasonable case could be made for charging PA Title 18 §2503 Voluntary Manslaughter, a first degree felony, but there’s a high bar for the prosecution to surmount.

  • 18 §2503(b) Unreasonable belief killing justifiable. — A person who intentionally or knowingly kills an individual commits voluntary manslaughter if at the time of the killing he believes the circumstances to be such that, if they existed, would justify the killing under Chapter 5 of this title (relating to general principles of justification), but his belief is unreasonable.

Mr Krasner would have to prove that Officer Dial had an “unreasonable” belief that he was justified in shooting Mr Irizarry. Mr Irizarry had been driving erratically, and when he finally pulled over, he kept the car window up, was non-compliant, and raised his hand while holding a knife.

A Philadelphia judge dismissed all charges against Officer Dial, ruling that the prosecution had not presented evidence that a crime has been committed, so naturally the Usual Suspects decided that a riot was in order. Naturally, Mr Krasner refiled the charges, including first degree murder, and Mr Dial was rearrested, and denied bail.

Now, after nearly a year in prison, without having been convicted of anything, the former Officer is once again free on bail.

Mark Dial was released on bail after the Philly DA’s office dropped his first-degree murder charge

Dial had been in custody since last fall after he was charged with fatally shooting Eddie Irizarry in a traffic stop in Kensington.

by Chris Palmer, Ellie Rushing, and Rodrigo Torrejón | Thursday, August 9, 2024 | 10:50 AM EDT

The District Attorney’s Office has withdrawn a charge of first-degree murder against former police officer Mark Dial, a decision that prosecutors were effectively forced to make by a judge after failing to tell Dial’s attorneys about a key piece of evidence they intend to use against him at trial.

The decision, made Thursday, allowed Dial to be released from jail on bail to await a new trial date, now with a lead charge of third-degree murder. His case — which had been scheduled to begin in September — will now go before a jury in May 2025.

Dial’s bail was set at $200,000, and he paid the required 10% to secure his release shortly after noon Thursday, court records show.

The development served as the latest twist in the high-profile case, one that has taken an unusually circuitous path through the courts. Dial is accused of fatally shooting Eddie Irizarry during a traffic stop in Kensington last year, and his prosecution has now been tossed out, reinstated, and downgraded over the last 11 months.

Just what kind of ineptitude infests the District Attorney’s Office that they first made a mistake which got the charges dismissed, and now, if the first paragraph in the Inquirer’s story is accurate, they f(ornicated) up again. “(A)n unusually circuitous path”? That’s a polite way of saying that the DAO has been completely inept.

What was this whole charade other than an effort by Mr Krasner to punish Mr Dial pre-emptively, in case he couldn’t actually win a conviction?

Prosecutors months ago had hired an expert to prepare a report on whether Dial violated Pennsylvania’s use-of-force law for police when he shot Irizarry, a question that goes to the heart of the case and will determine whether Dial should be convicted. But prosecutors told Dial’s attorneys about the expert’s report only this week — something Dial’s lawyers said was unreasonable, and didn’t give them enough time to prepare a rebuttal.

Common Pleas Court Judge Glenn B. Bronson agreed, and said he did not want to delay the case and keep Dial incarcerated for months over an issue that prosecutors had effectively created.

“Why didn’t you tell them you were hiring an expert?” he said in court this week, later adding: “You sat on this for 10, 11 months.”

Judge Bronson offered the compromise, to reduce the top charge to third degree murder, which made Mr Dial eligible for bail. Prosecutors then urged the judge to restrict Mr Dial to house arrest, to punish him further, but the defense noted, to the judge’s satisfaction, that Mr Dial did not pose a flight risk.

All of the charges should be dropped, and Mr Dial compensated for the time he spent behind bars unjustly, and that compensation should come from Mr Krasner’s personal wealth.

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Democrisy: the leftists who loved outside money in their campaigns hate it when Other People use it to defeat Democrats

When she first moved to the Bluegrass State, my younger daughter was employed by the United States Postal Service, working out of the Post Office in Versailles. One thing about which she complained was the huge volume of mail sent out by Amy McGrath Henderson[1]Even though she did not respect her husband, Erik Henderson, enough to have taken his last name, I shall not show similar disrespect to him. during her campaign, first for the Democratic nomination and then the general election in 2018 for the Sixth Congressional District seat held by Representative Andy Barr (R-KY). Overall, Mrs Henderson wound up spending $8,274,396 to Mr Barr’s $5,580,477, but she still lost, 51.0% to 47.8%. Much of Mrs Henderson’s money came from outside of the Sixth District, and outside of Kentucky altogether.

Amusingly enough, Mr Barr’s campaign found a video of Mrs Henderson fund raising . . . in Massachusetts! It was there in which she uttered those unforgettable words, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky.” Perhaps, just perhaps, that didn’t help her much in the Bluegrass State. Including mostly liberal Lexington, the Sixth District is less solidly Republican and conservative than the rest of Kentucky, but she still couldn’t win here. And yes, I live in the Sixth District.

Undeterred by her defeat, Mrs Henderson decided to challenge Senator Mitch McConnell in 2020. In her Senate campaign, Mrs Henderson raised $94,120,557 and spent $90,775,744 compared to Mr McConnell’s $71,351,350 and $64,787,889, only to lose 38.2% to 57.8%. As it happens, Mrs Henderson had the lowest percentage total against Mr McConnell of any of his opponents save sacrificial lamb candidate Lois Combs Weinberg in 2002.

$90+ million is a huge amount to spend in a conservative state like Kentucky:

An analysis of the money raised in the Kentucky race shows much of it is coming from people who live outside the state.

The Metro areas that have contributed the most to both campaigns are from New York City, Washington DC and Los Angeles California, according to the non-partisan website Open Secrets.

I thought of that as I read with amusement how Representative Cori Bush Merritts[2]Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Cortney Merritts, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect. (Hamas-MO) and her supporters whined about outside money following her primary loss. This is from the far left magazine, Mother Jones:

One of the Most Vocal Proponents of a Ceasefire in Gaza Just Lost

First, it was Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York. Now, it is Rep. Cori Bush in Missouri. In a race with a lot of AIPAC money, another member of the Squad is defeated.

by Sophie Hurwitz | Tuesday, August 6, 2024

In one of the most watched primaries this year, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) — among the first members of Congress to call for a ceasefire — lost to St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who jumped into the race late, and with the backing of millions of dollars from pro-Israel groups. The Associated Press called the race for Bell around 10:00 PM local time.

“Organized people beat organized money,” Bush’s campaigners have repeated. This race, however, has tested whether that’s true: as of election day, it is the second-most expensive Congressional primary in American history — and the money has, indeed, made a difference.

Bell dropped out of his bid to dethrone Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and chose to challenge Bush soon after the war began in Gaza. Bell has benefited from an incredibly well-funded advertising campaign since then.

Over half of all the outside money spent on the race came from the United Democracy Project (UDP), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)’s electoral arm. The money UDP spent here is second only to that which they spent on a successful campaign to defeat Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York. In total, UDP spent nearly 9 million dollars in MO-01, bolstered by $1.5 million from the crypto PAC Fairshake. Bush and her backers also attracted some outside spending: Justice Democrats, a progressive PAC founded by former campaigners for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), sent $2 million her way.

Then comes the author’s major complaint:

Bell’s choice to take that money has been divisive. Mike Jones, a 75-year-old former alderman and Board of Education member with a long career in St. Louis politics put it this way: “I think everybody knows that the race is not about the issues that have surfaced. It’s about the issue nobody’s talking about.” On most issues, Bell and Bush’s stances are near-identical. “So, literally, the only reason for this campaign, at a political level, is AIPAC money,” Jones said.

It doesn’t take much perusing of Sophie Hurwitz’s Mother Jones author page to see that she’s totally in the bag for the ‘Palestinian’ cause. Her article on the defeat of Mrs Merritts’ fellow squadristi,[3]I use the term ‘squadristi,’ the singular of which is ‘squadrista,’ to mock the so-called ‘squad.’ ‘Squadristi‘ was the Italian nickname for Benito … Continue reading Jamaal Bowman (Hamas-NY) noted that he “did not back away from pro-Palestine rhetoric” and that he lost to “a lot of AIPAC money”. Of course, the editorial slant of the entire magazine is pro-‘Palestinian’.

Shockingly enough, American Jews mostly support Israel, the officially Jewish state. Is it any surprise that, when Israel is locked in an existential struggle against Hamas terrorists, that American Jews would support Israel? American Jews are mostly politically liberal, and normally give about ¾ of their votes to Democrats, but I have heard it said before that while support for Israel and Zionism is far from universal among them, there is a bare minimum requirement that candidates support the survival of Israel. Squadristi like Mr Bowman, Mrs Merritt, and the rest have threatened that bare minimum of support. Add to that the anti-Semitic demonstrations on so many college campuses, on which this site has frequently reported, and it’s no wonder that so many American Jews are concerned.

The truly laughable part is how the same Democrats who used outside money in 2018 and 2020 are so very upset about other people marshaling outside money to defeat certain candidates. Perhaps Mrs Merritts and Mr Bowman would not have lost their elections without outside money, but it’s just as probable that the Democrats wouldn’t have seized control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections without it.

References

References
↑1 Even though she did not respect her husband, Erik Henderson, enough to have taken his last name, I shall not show similar disrespect to him.
↑2 Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Cortney Merritts, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect.
↑3 I use the term ‘squadristi,’ the singular of which is ‘squadrista,’ to mock the so-called ‘squad.’ ‘Squadristi‘ was the Italian nickname for Benito Mussolini’s fascist paramilitary Black Shirts, and today’s American far-left are nothing if not fascist themselves. As I have said many times before, they are pro-choice on exactly one thing, prenatal infanticide, and support government control over every other choice Americans have.
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Cori Bush Merritts continually trashed Israel, but she thinks it’s wholly unfair that she gets called to account for it She lost, and she is royally pissed!

Paul Szypula tweeted out the outraged rant of Representative Cori Bush Merritts[1]Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Cortney Merritts, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect. (Hamas-MO) after she realized that she had been defeated in the Democratic primary for renomination to Missouri’s 1st congressional district. Perhaps she realized that, serving four full years in that seat does not make her eligible for a congressional pension. 🙂

So, who needs to be afraid? Why, the Joooos, of course!

Squad Member Bush Vows to Fight Pro-Israel Group After Loss

by Christian Hall and Bill Allison | Wednesday, August 7, 2024 | 3:06 PM EDT

(Bloomberg) — US Representative Cori Bush said that she will go after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee after she lost a bitter and expensive primary battle driven by Democratic divisions over the war in Gaza.

“AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down,” the Missouri Democrat said in a fiery speech following her defeat to local prosecutor Wesley Bell.

Wesley Bell is hardly a great guy, himself a ‘progressive’ prosecutor, but he apparently isn’t an anti-Semite like Mrs Merritts, and he’s not completely insane. In 2020, he decided that he would not press charges against Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who justifiably shot and killed Michael Brown Jr, the oversized thug who roughed up a bodega owner half his size in a robbery. He didn’t say that such exonerated Mr Wilson, but said he could not prove murder or manslaughter beyond a reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, he is a liberal, and will almost certainly win the general election in the one-sided first district.

The loss is the second for a member of the “squad” — an informal group of progressives in the US House. Just weeks earlier, Representative Jamaal Bowman, another Israel critic, lost a primary in the New York suburbs to George Latimer, who was also backed by AIPAC.

I refer to them as the squadristi, the Italian nickname for Benito Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Today’s far left are every bit as fascist as the Italian dictator. I’ve said it many times before: today’s left are pro-choice on exactly one thing.

Bell, who benefited from $9.5 million in ad spending from pro-Israel groups, according to AdImpact, had implored voters to “stand with Israel,” drawing a sharp contrast with the two-term Democrat who has accused Israel of committing war crimes in its response to the Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas. The US and European Union deem Hamas a terrorist organization.

Mrs Merritts refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization.

Next up is squadrista Representative Ilhan Omar Mynett[2]Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Tim Mynett, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect. (Hamas-MN), who is facing a primary election next week.

Progressives argued that the massive amounts raised by Israel supporters are intrusive in local races.

“This would not be a race without AIPAC lifting up this man,“ said Usamah Andrabi, the communications director of Justice Democrats, a PAC that supports Bush and other squad members.

How odd. I can’t seem to recall “progressives” complaining when they spent multiple millions of dollars of ‘outside’ money propping up Democratic candidates in the 2018 and 2020 congressional elections. In Kentucky, my home state, they helped make the 2018 sixth congressional district race extremely expensive, propping up Amy McGrath Henderson[3]Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Erik Henderson, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect. in her nevertheless losing general election campaign against Representative Andy Barr (R-KY), or the same Mrs Henderson in her nevertheless losing general election campaign against Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a race into which the left pumped $100 million.

Sauce for the goose, Mrs Merritts.

References

References
↑1 Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Cortney Merritts, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect.
↑2 Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Tim Mynett, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect.
↑3 Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Erik Henderson, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect.
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Dead man walking: Hamas declare Yahya Sinwar as their new political leader

Following the extermination — I will not use the word assassination to reference the killing of a cockroach — of Ismail Haniyeh as the political leader of Hamas, the leadership of the terrorist group decided that Yahya Sinwar should be their new Fearless Leader.

Israel had long ago declared that that Mr Sinwar is a dead man walking.

Middle East Crisis: Hamas Names an Architect of Oct. 7 Attacks as New Political Leader

Tuesday, August 6, 2024

Hamas announced on Tuesday that it had chosen Yahya Sinwar, one of the masterminds behind the deadly Oct. 7 attack, as the next head of the group’s political office, consolidating his power over the militant group as it continues the 10-month war with Israel.

Mr. Sinwar, who spent two decades in Israeli prisons, has been long viewed by Israeli officials as a sophisticated strategist with a keen understanding of their society. He has been Hamas’s leader in Gaza since 2017. But he will now also replace Ismail Haniyeh, the group’s top political leader, who was a key liaison in the indirect cease-fire talks with Israel.

As The New York Times pointed out on May 12th, Mr Sinwar was among 1,027 ‘Palestinian’ prisoners traded for one Israeli soldier, Staff Sergeant Galid Shalit, in 2011. It is the sad irony of the Middle East that Mr Sinwar planned what turned out to be the deaths of more than 1,027 innocent Israelis on October 7th, along with the capturing of roughly 250 hostages.

In saving one soldier, Israel paid the price of over a thousand innocent non-combatants, plus over 600 soldiers and policemen killed in the current war. I understand the tremendous pressure on the government concerning the return of the remaining hostages, an unknown number of whom are already dead, just as there was during the five-year captivity of Staff Sergeant Shalit, but at some point Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have to realize that releasing multiple numbers of ‘Palestinian’ bad guys in exchange for a few surviving Israelis is not a wise trade.

The Times reported:

While the talks are mediated in Egypt and Qatar, it is Mr. Sinwar — believed to be hiding in a tunnel network beneath Gaza — whose consent is required by Hamas’s negotiators before they agree to any concessions, according to some of those officials.

The psychopath Yahya Sinwar. You can see the crazy in his eyes.

Due to Mr Sinwar’s concealment, it takes considerable time to get any new negotiations communicated to him, and time to get his responses back. If his consent has been required in the past, while Mr Haniyeh was still alive, how much more so is that true now?

He is supposedly hiding in a deep, deep tunnel network, protected by several captured Israelis being used as human shields.

The decision to appoint Mr. Sinwar is an indication that, ten months into the war, the Palestinian group’s leaders remain firmly behind the decision to attack southern Israel on Oct. 7, analysts said. And it signals that Israeli efforts to try and cripple the group by killing off its leaders may have only entrenched the hard-line position Hamas has taken, they said.

Gaza has been, if not completely destroyed, heavily damaged. Whatever jobs they had, whatever infrastructure they had, are gone now.

“This is more about the overall vision for what Hamas wants, which is focusing more on liberation and less on being a governing power,” said Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, the official body representing Palestinians internationally.

Israel’s current military campaign in Gaza has driven the Islamist group underground, but Hamas had ruled over the enclave since 2007, fashioning itself into the new government of Gaza and exerting oppressive control over the enclave’s people.

Under Mr. Sinwar’s leadership, Hamas, designated by many Western governments as a terrorist group, had sought to free itself of the challenge of running a civilian government in Gaza, while remaining the ultimate power through its military might.

Mr. Sinwar’s selection was an affirmation of that vision, one that aims to put a greater focus on confronting Israel.

After the Oct. 7 attacks, Hamas leaders said they wanted to ignite a permanent state of war with Israel on all fronts to revive the Palestinian cause, knowing Israel’s response would be aggressive.

In other words, they’re fanatics.

As much as they might have thought the Arab or Muslim nations would come to their aid, that hasn’t been the case. Some Islamist groups like the Houthis and Hezbollah have tried to bring the battle to Israel, none of the Arab nations have done so, because Arab governments have a responsibility to their nations and people, and the last thing they want is another devastating war with Israel. Iran, which is Persian, not Arabic, and Turkey, which is Turkish, not Arab, have made threatening noises, but Iran is 1,000 miles away from Israel, and Turkey 500 miles away.

Hamas would prefer death before surrender, and Israel just might give it to them.

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Hoist by their own petard

The expression “hoist by his own petard” comes from the Bard himself, in Hamlet:

There’s letters sealed; and my two schoolfellows,
Whom I will trust as I will adders fanged,
They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work,
For ’tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard; and ‘t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.

— Prince Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 3, scene 4

Wikipedia notes:

The phrase’s meaning is that a bomb-maker is blown (“hoist”, the past tense of “hoise”) off the ground by his own bomb (“petard”), and indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice.

A shorter version might just be one word: karma. And so we have a major dose of karma on the campus of Temple University.

A Temple student pleads to sexual abuse, burglary. Questions arise on whether Temple should let him stay

The incident occurred in October 2022 at American University and led to student protests.

by Susan Snyder | Monday, August 5, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

The 2022 case made headlines and led to student protests at American University: A male student entered two female students’ dorm rooms without permission on Oct. 31, took underwear, and touched one woman on the inner thigh while she was sleeping.

The man, David Kramer-Fried, fled the room when the woman awakened, according to court documents. Police later found a pair of women’s underwear in the front pocket of a hoodie that Kramer-Fried was seen wearing that night on security video, the documents said. The university eventually barred him from campus.

He was arrested last December and on June 14 of this year, Kramer-Fried pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary and misdemeanor sexual abuse — charges that don’t require him to register as a sex offender.

Upon reading this story, I tried several searches, but was unable to find a photo or mugshot of Mr Kramer-Fried with which to illustrate this article, and I do so love including mugshots. Even the American University notification that he had been barred from their campus didn’t include his photo, which seems odd: how can Mr Kramer-Fried be barred if other students and staffers do not know what he looks like? There’s nothing I could find which would even tell readers whether he is black or white. From his name, I suspect that he’s white, but have no way of knowing. All that left me was a stock image of crime scene tape to use to illustrate this article.

About the time of his plea, his public defender noted he was enrolled full time as a student at Temple University, while also having to regularly report electronically to the court’s pretrial services. Kramer-Fried, now 21, awaits sentencing scheduled for Aug. 23.

It’s unclear at what point after his arrest Kramer-Fried was accepted to Temple, but the situation around his case raises the question of whether, when and what kind of criminal records or activity of potential students should be considered in the college application process — a subject of intense scrutiny in recent years.

The sentencing scheduled for August 23rd might answer the question as to whether he should be allowed on Temple’s campus, as he could get several years on the burglary charge. Me? I have to wonder how anyone as boneheadedly stupid — if you break into someone’s dorm room, you are automatically stupid — as Mr Kramer-Fried could have been admitted to any college; American University is a private school which has an acceptance rate of 40.6%. Temple’s acceptance rate is much higher, in the lower 80% range, but who’d really want to go to college someplace where random bullets may fly?

The article continues to tell us that the group Student Activists Against Sexual Assault believe that Mr Kramer-Fried should not be allowed on campus, a position with which I agree. Several paragraphs follow to tell readers of the opposition to allowing him to be a student at the University.

But then we get to the “hoist by his own petard” part:

In 2019, Common App removed the criminal history questions from the “common” portion of its application “to provide members with the greatest flexibility to determine how best to comply with their local requirements and institutional policies.”

A year later, it stopped asking applicants to include school disciplinary violations after finding that Black applicants reported incidents at more than twice the rate of white students.

“Requiring students to disclose disciplinary actions has a clear and profound adverse impact,” Jenny Rickard, the group’s president and CEO, said at the time. “This is about taking a stand against practices that suppress college-going aspiration and overshadow potential.”

There’s a lot more at the original, telling us how the left pushed to not have questions about past criminal arrests and convictions become a bar to admissions, though some wanted to make an exception for sex offenses. Mr Kramer-Fried didn’t plead guilty until a couple of months ago, and his acceptance at Temple may have predated his conviction; we’re not told about that, either.

But I am amused how the attempts by the left to not penalize applicants who are black for previous criminal history — no one seems to ask why black applicants might have a higher rate of criminal accusations and convictions — might have allowed a possibly white applicant with charged sex offenses to be accepted, and now people are up in arms about it. Mr Kramer-Fried was only arrested last December, despite having been identified much earlier.

There’s a lot of fault here. Temple didn’t do enough due diligence to reveal that he’d been barred from another university, and apparently knew nothing of his at-the-time alleged offenses. Some of that stems from not wanting to spend much money on due diligence, but it also stems from the leftist mindset that such things shouldn’t be investigated because it might disproportionately affect minority applicants.

Mr Kramer-Fried might be stupid, but so are the liberals who handle cases like this.

 

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Nooo, not anti-Semitism at all!

Back in the days of not-so-long ago, American history teachers used to assign The Diary of a Young Girl, the writings of Anne Frank as her Jewish family and she hid from the Nazis in an attic in Amsterdam, after the Germans occupied it.

Born on June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany, under the Weimar Republic, her family emigrated to the Netherlands in 1934, after Adolf Hitler and the Nazis took power. Germany invaded Holland and the Low Countries on May 10, 1940, and the Dutch government fled in just a few days. The Netherlands surrendered on May 15th. As the Reichskommissariat Niederlande, the Nazis civilian occupation government, began increasing oppression of the Jews in 1942, the Frank family went into hiding in a concealed room of a larger house, where they remained until August of 1944, when they were arrested by the Gestapo. They were sent to the concentration camps, and Anne died somewhere between February and March of 1945.

The recovery of her diary writings were published in 1947, and quickly became famous. And so we come to this:

Statue of Anne Frank in Amsterdam defaced with pro-Palestinian graffiti

Story by CBSNews | Sunday, August 4, 2024

The statue commemorating Anne Frank, one of the most famous victims of the Holocaust, was defaced with pro-Palestinian graffiti for the second time on Sunday.

The statue is located in Merwedeplein, near the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

According to images published on X, the base of the statue was spray-painted with the slogan “Free Gaza” while the girl’s hands were painted with the same red color, AFP reported.

Sunday was the 80th anniversary of the August 4, 1944 capture of the Frank family by the Gestapo.

Miss Frank had nothing to do with the war in Gaza, or the extermination of Ismail Haniyeh, or anything else. The restoration of the nation of Israel had not occurred when she was captured, and eventually died in the Bergen-Belsen camp. So I really don’t want to hear that defacing her statue was some sort of anti-Zionist and anti-Israeli protest without being anti-Semitic as well.

Anti-Semitism in Europe did not begin with Adolf Hitler. Theodor Herzl wrote The Jewish State in 1896, in response to the anti-Semitism in Europe, in Christian Europe, where Jews had been pushed into ghettos, faced serious restrictions in society, and were occasionally the victims of pogroms. Mr Herzl claimed that the only solution to anti-Semitism in Christian Europe was for Jews to get out of Europe, and set up an independent state just where Israel is now. But it wound up taking the Nazis and the Shoah to make Israel a reality.

At the end of the war, half of the Jews in Europe were dead, and almost all of them had been completely dispossessed of their homes, their professions, their property. They quite literally had no place to go, no homes to which to return.

Think of what had happened. Though Germany had been completely under the Nazis’ control, most Germans weren’t Nazis. Yes, every German had been under twelve years of Josef Goebbels’ propaganda, something which told the German people that the Jews were their mortal enemies, that they were a tremendous danger, but if the non-Nazi Germans nevertheless cooperated with the Nazis in rounding up the Jews, so did the French, the Dutch, the Belgians, and the Poles, the vast majority of whom were (supposedly) Christian, and who did not spend a dozen years being indoctrinated by the Nazis.

Even if the Jews could have returned to their pre-war homes, that would have left them living side-by-side with the very people who turned them over to the Nazis! 

Anne Frank? She had nothing to do with any of that. Her statue is a symbol of the plight of the Jews wrought by the Nazis and their collaborators in the lands they occupied. Yet now some anti-Semitic thug or thugs have chosen to vandalize her statue.

Let’s not kid ourselves: while the war in Gaza might have made it more newsworthy, anti-Semitism is the bottom cause, not some distinction between hating Jews and opposing Zionism. The Germans exposed the fact that the Christian Europeans really didn’t want the Jews living among them, and now it seems that they don’t want the Jews living anywhere else.

 

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Don’t blame Other People if your neighborhood is a mess

Our good friends on the left like to tell us that the plight of poor people is the result of systemic racism, redlining, poor schools — though never to say that vouchers for private schools or school choice could help! — and disinvestment in poorer communities, basically blaming all of their travails on greedy capitalists, and really anybody other than the poor themselves.

Then I found this, in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Residents welcome Philly’s citywide cleanup, but complaint data show trash quickly returns

Mayor Parker’s Office of Clean and Green aimed to deep clean every Philly neighborhood this year. Halfway through the program, Philly 311 data show that trash complaints have not receded.

by Saara Ghani and Ximena Conde | Tuesday, July 30, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

My Nguyen and Cloud, her big and fluffy dog, walk through their Kensington neighborhood every day. She worries that Cloud will rifle through the garbage on the sidewalk and get dirty — or worse, choke on something.

Just a week before, the area had been swarmed by city crews armed with leaf blowers, street sweepers, and water trucks — part of a citywide summer cleanup targeting every corner of Philadelphia.

“It doesn’t last, because people keep littering,” Nguyen said.

From Kingsessing to Kensington, residents have welcomed the added investment but said it is not a long-term solution. Garbage complaints keep rolling in to Philly311, the city’s reporting system for nonemergency complaints.

I certainly appreciate the alliteration the Inky’s reporters used, but it’s worth noting here that Kingsessing and Kensington are two of Philly’s poorer neighborhoods.

The story included a photo by staff photographer Tom Gralish that could be somewhat deceiving, showing the intersection of South 55th and Elliot Streets in Kingsessing, with a bunch of litter and trash in the street, but also six city workers equipped with leaf blowers, and it appears that they were blowing the trash into a smaller area for easier pick up. Nevertheless, there was a lot of trash!

Some of the problems are caused not by the residents just littering the streets, but illegal dumping, presumably from other neighborhoods, but that happens because people know that they can get away with it. Yet, just two weeks after the city cleanup crews have gone through, the system receives more complaints about trash than before the cleaning. Some of that can be attributed to people seeing that hey, someone did clean up the mess, people who might not have complained before because they thought it a waste of time and effort. I suppose that, under previous Mayor Jim Kenney, who mentally checked out of his job long before his term ended, very little got done, so almost anything getting done under the new administration is an improvement.

But, to me, it’s pretty simple: if you don’t want your neighborhood trashed, don’t trash your neighborhood. If you have some garbage in your hands, carry it with you until you get to a trash can; how hard is that? The above linked picture shows dozens of scraps of paper, some soda bottles and drink cups, the kind of thing you’d have after a trip to McDonald’s or a corner bodega. If you’re walking up to your house, and you see little stuff like that littering the sidewalk or the gutter, pick it up and take it in to your trash can. I can understand if the garbage is a used drug needle that no decent person would want to pick it up with his bare hands, but a sandwich wrapper or a drink cup? Just pick it up!

You don’t have to be wealthy to pick up a piece of trash. Just because there are a lot of poor people in the City of Brotherly Love does not mean they can’t try to keep their neighborhoods clean.

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Apparently your Freedom of Speech is dependent upon which side you support

Many on the left decried efforts to curtail anti-Semitic and pro-Hamas demonstrations, and backed the not-so-peaceful demonstrations by Black Lives Matter and Antifa during the 2020 Summer of Hate, shouting about freedom of speech. But now we have the amusing spectacle of The New York Times fretting about how cities can fight “hateful speech” when it comes from the right.

What Can a City Do When Neo-Nazis Start Marching Down Its Streets?

The brazen appearance of white supremacist groups in Nashville left the city grappling with how to confront hateful speech without violating First Amendment protections.

by Emily Cochrane | Thursday, August 1, 2024

They first arrived at the beginning of July: dozens of masked white supremacists, shuffling out of U-Hauls, to march through Nashville carrying upside-down American flags.

A week later, members of a separate neo-Nazi group, waving giant black flags with red swastikas, paraded along the city’s famed strip of honky-tonks and celebrity-owned bars. The neo-Nazis poured into the historic Metro courthouse to disrupt a City Council meeting, harassed descendants of Holocaust survivors and yelled racist slurs at young Black children performing on a downtown street.

The appearance of white nationalists on the streets of a major American city laid bare the growing brazenness of the two groups, the Patriot Front and the Goyim Defense League. Their provocations enraged and alarmed civic leaders and residents in Nashville, causing the city to grapple with how to confront the groups without violating free speech protections.

“I can’t imagine having a mimosa on Fifth and Broadway, and 400 Patriot Front members walk out of a U-Haul — it has to be one of the most jarring experiences as an American and as a tourist in the city,” said State Representative Aftyn Behn, who represents the city’s downtown. “Nashville is a microcosm of the greater country, and we are at a moment where we have to decide who we are.”

I’m not sure how 400 Patriot Front members would fit in “a U-Haul,” but whatever. But it seems to me that the best response to groups advocating things you hate is to ignore them, at least as long as they aren’t setting buildings on fire or physically assaulting people. These groups usually demonstrate with well-disciplined and orderly marches, then get back in their vehicles, and return to their homes.

Both of the groups that visited Nashville this summer have become more visible since the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va, and are now among the top sources of white supremacist propaganda. At the same time, the leadership of the other far-right groups like the Proud Boys has been disrupted by prosecutions over their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

White supremacists have appeared in Nashville before and have increasingly promoted racist and antisemitic messages across the country. Those include plotting to riot at a Pride event in Idaho, disrupting city council meetings in New England and protesting at the opening New York performances of “Parade,” a musical about the 1915 lynching of a Jewish man in the South.

Did you catch that? They were “plotting to riot,” not that they actually started a riot. According to the embedded Times story, police “received a tip that a group of people had jumped into a U-Haul van near a Pride event.”

Many of the men also had shields and wore shinguards, and the police recovered one smoke grenade, they said. They did not mention other weapons.

So, other than a “smoke grenade,” something which could be used to have a group of marchers emerge from a cloud of smoke, the 31 arrested men were unarmed. That Times story concluded with this gem:

The action in Coeur d’Alene was not the only threat that involved a far-right group and an L.G.B.T.Q. event on Saturday. In San Lorenzo, Calif., members of the Proud Boys disrupted the “Drag Queen Story Hour,” a reading event at the San Lorenzo Library that was attended by children, parents and other community members, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook.

The men shouted homophobic and transphobic slurs at the event organizer and were described as having a violent demeanor, authorities said. Deputies arrived and de-escalated the situation, but a hate crime investigation is underway, the sheriff’s office said.

So, the men in that protest “shouted” mean things at the organizers of the event, and “were described as having a violent demeanor,” but the story does not say that they actually committed any violent acts.

Back to the article originally cited:

(Nashville) City officials said they were reviewing ordinances related to face coverings, littering and permit requirements for parades, as well as consulting a First Amendment expert to ensure that any crackdown would withstand a legal challenge.

The white supremacist groups, city officials said, strategically navigate city regulations to avoid arrest or police interference. Often, they are penalized with littering citations for distributing antisemitic pamphlets; in one instance, a leader of the Goyim Defense League spent a few weeks last fall in a Florida jail.

If you follow the last link, which is behind a paywall, you’ll see that the man listed as having spent a few weeks in jail was sentenced to thirty days for littering. From what little I could see before the paywall blocked everything, there were no charges against him of any violent crimes.

Today’s left in America very much support protests and rallies by the far left, cheering on the Black Lives Matter and Antifa demonstrations which caused multiple millions in damage in break-ins and arson, and they still call Kyle Rittenhouse a murderer for having defended himself against three previously convicted criminals assaulting him during that famous “Fiery but mostly peaceful protest” in Kenosha, Wisconsin. But when a group of men, in “which members generally wear masks and ‘khaki pants and a blue or white polo shirt,’ and sometimes employ smoke bombs,” for dramatic effect, and even have an operational plan consisting of marching in an orderly column until they reach barriers are encountered, and disengage and march back to a pre-arranged spot “once an appropriate amount of confrontational dynamic has been established.”

They might be confrontational, and they might be unpleasant, but they proceed without weapons to exercise their freedom of speech and peaceable assembly. Liberal urban governments really hate that, but let’s tell the truth here, American liberals really do hate the freedom of speech when it isn’t speech they like.