Former attorney general and US District judge Michael Mukaseyexplodes James Comey's arguments that no reasonable prosecutor would bring the case against Hillary Clinton.
It is a felony for anyone entrusted with lawful possession of information relating to national defense to permit it, through “gross negligence,” to be removed from its proper place of custody and disclosed. “Gross negligence” rather than purposeful conduct is enough. Yet Mr. Comey appears to have based his recommendation not to prosecute on the absence of “clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information”—though he did say in the same sentence that there was “evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
....To be “extremely careless” in the handling of information that sensitive is synonymous with being grossly negligent.
And what of the finding that the investigation did not disclose “clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information”? Even the felony statute requires no such evidence, and no such intent.
But she did have an intent - the intention to break the law. As the WSJ editorializes,
Yet the recent State Department Inspector General report disclosed emails showing that Mrs. Clinton and her staff were warned by State officials that her private email was vulnerable to hackers. She willfully and intentionally ignored those warnings. Mr. Comey knows that many federal employees have been prosecuted for mishandling classified information despite no evidence of ill intent. They were prosecuted merely for recklessly handling secrets. (See Michael Mukasey nearby.)
By a reasonable person’s standards, Mrs. Clinton’s decision to use a private server, to give her aides access to it, to email classified information on it, to fail to secure it, and to use it in hostile territory was grossly negligent. We can’t wait for the next minion prosecuted for mishandling secrets to invoke the “extremely careless” defense.
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As I wrote yesterday, Comey's decision conflicted with the desire of the Founders to have a government of laws to which everyone, no matter of how high in the government, would be subject. Jon Gabriel expounds on that theme.
Hillary ClintonAmerica is a banana republic, but without bananas — only the peels.
When FBI Director James Comey announced Tuesday morning that he won’t pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton’s “extremely careless” handling of classified emails, he reinforced a truth most Americans feel in their bones. Well connected Americans are no longer subject to the laws of the land and can do however they please.
John Adams called for “a government of laws, and not of men,” but today’s decision has officially reversed this quaint republican ideal. Hillary Clinton can repeatedly compromise national security and aggressively cover it up, yet still be cleared of any legal repercussions in a live press conference.
Louis Beckett lists questions that are still open despite Comey's statement and Loretta Lynch's agreement not to prosecute. What about her lawyers' actions in going through her emails?
it is very unusual for Clinton’s lawyers to have decided to permanently delete the remaining 30,000 emails that they collected but did not produce to State.
Lawyers and potential witnesses have an obligation to take reasonable steps to retain all information potentially relevant to an ongoing government investigation. It is stunning that Clinton’s lawyers were not advised at the time and not now deemed to have been under that continuing obligation as it relates to the 30,000 emails they did not produce after an initial search term/header review. It is even more stunning that her lawyers actively took steps to permanently delete and scrub such data so that it became unrecoverable. After the FBI pursued other sources (e.g., officials Clinton corresponded with) to collect “several thousand” work-related emails unique from the 30,000 emails Clinton’s lawyers first turned over, the FBI could have asked Clinton’s lawyers to use new, broader search terms to re-review the 30,000 emails not produced. But that set was “deleted as ‘personal'” by Clinton’s lawyers and is now lost forever.
Why did Clinton’s lawyers feel free to permanently delete potentially relevant evidence? Did the FBI or State Department give them the OK to do so? We can get answers to these questions, though we will never know whether the deleted evidence contained damning material.
Comey should have to explain why he used "intent" as his standard for recommending prosecution when "intent" isn't mentioned in the federal penal code. The only mention of intent is in federal penal code section 1924(a) which refers to "the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location." That is exactly what Clinton did.
t is incomprehensible that Clinton’s personal email system does not meet this basic intent requirement, even under the facts as presented by Comey yesterday. As many have noted, the government’s 2015 prosecution of Bryan Nishimura, a Naval reservist deployed in Afghanistan, shows that a case can be successfully brought under section 1924(a) for the willful removal of “several” classified files from authorized government computers and storage on unauthorized “personal” electronic devices. Nishimura was sentenced to two years probation and permanent revocation of his security clearance.
Note also that the misdemeanor statute does not specify that the material has to be marked classified (as Clinton has cleverly said in her defense) or that the person must know that the information is classified. Instead, the intent element is limited to a knowing removal and retention of classified information (as was the case here with the 110 Clinton emails containing information classified at the time they were removed to and retained on Clinton’s servers).
Clinton's evasion of the secure State Department system wasn't a mistake or accident; it was a deliberate choice.
What we can observe is that the Clinton template for scandals to deny and stall long enough so that those who are still troubled by whatever Bill or Hillary has done will be ridiculed as being partisans who can't just "move on" has succeeded yet again.
Hillary learned her lessons well. If Bill Clinton had told the truth the instant the news broke of his suspected affair with Monica Lewinsky, he would have likely been forced to resign. Instead he fought – transforming a battle over perjury and basic moral decency into just another partisan squabble and ultimately co-opting the Democratic Party into defending unconscionable conduct.
What’s old is new again. If Hillary had told the truth when news broke of her homebrew server, she would have been shoved aside by other Democrats. Instead she fought – transforming a battle over the most obvious mishandling of classified information into just another partisan squabble and once again co-opting the Democratic Party into defending unconscionable conduct.
Honest liberals weep and Sanders supporters should justifiably rage. But with Obama campaigning with Clinton, there’s no prospect for a Dump Hillary movement. The party establishment is just too far gone to care.
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Now Donald Trump with his extraordinary ignorance of this history of Saddam Hussein and terrible timing has brought Saddam's name back into the news. Jay Nordlinger writes,
No one wants to remember Saddam Hussein and Baathist Iraq — because everyone prefers to denounce George W. Bush and the Iraq War — but let’s review, just a little.
Saddam Hussein was a shelterer and funder of terrorists. Abu Nidal was in Iraq. So was Abu Abbas, the leader of the Achille Lauro hijacking. (This was the episode in which a wheelchair-bound American, Leon Klinghoffer, was shot in the head and dumped into the sea.) Zarqawi, of al-Qaeda, was in Iraq.
So was Khala Khadr al-Salahat, believed to have made the Lockerbie bomb. (More than 250 people were killed in that act of terror.) So was Abdul Rahman Yasin, a 1993 World Trade Center bomber. So, in all likelihood, was another 1993 bomber, Ramzi Yousef.
Saddam supervised terror training camps in his country. And, famously, or infamously, he paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers 10 grand. Later, feeling more generous, he upped the reward to 25 grand.
I concede that not many care about this, because what’s important is to denounce Bush and the war. But listen: It’s possible to oppose the Iraq War, and Bush, without defending and praising Saddam Hussein. But this, the Republican presidential nominee can’t do.
Nordlinger concludes,
The Republican party is nominating for president someone who claims that George W. Bush lied us into war; says that Bush ought to have been impeached; and defends and praises Saddam Hussein. This is why I can’t belong to that party anymore.
I agree that Trump's speech is one more reason why the man is unfit for the presidency. Those who held out hope that he would switch to being more presidential once he wrapped up the nomination must wake up every day, read the news, and be disappointed once again. The man doesn't have it in him to "be more presidential." He's 70 years old; he's not going to suddenly change and become dignified.
But I don't get the decision of Nordlinger and George Will to trumpet how they are leaving the Republican Party. Maybe they felt more attached to the party than I ever have. When I say I'm a Republican, all it means to me is that I am registered to vote in the Republican primaries. In general elections I usually vote for Republicans, but I don't have to and have voted for Democrats in state elections. Being a member of the party for me is a preference since usually the GOP candidate, in my opinion, is less objectionable than the Democratic candidate. But I'm not a public official so being a member of the party doesn't mean anything. So why brag about leaving the party? Just write about what you don't like about Trump and how disappointed or disgusted you are with Republican politicians who actively support him. Does that mean Will and Nordlinger are not going to vote for Republicans for the House, Senate or county commission just because you're upset about Donald Trump? I just don't get what it means to say you're leaving the party.
Jonathan Rauch writes in The Atlantic about how America's politics has gone insane.
Trump, however, didn’t cause the chaos. The chaos caused Trump. What we are seeing is not a temporary spasm of chaos but a chaos syndrome.
Chaos syndrome is a chronic decline in the political system’s capacity for self-organization. It begins with the weakening of the institutions and brokers—political parties, career politicians, and congressional leaders and committees—that have historically held politicians accountable to one another and prevented everyone in the system from pursuing naked self-interest all the time. As these intermediaries’ influence fades, politicians, activists, and voters all become more individualistic and unaccountable. The system atomizes. Chaos becomes the new normal—both in campaigns and in the government itself.
Our intricate, informal system of political intermediation, which took many decades to build, did not commit suicide or die of old age; we reformed it to death. For decades, well-meaning political reformers have attacked intermediaries as corrupt, undemocratic, unnecessary, or (usually) all of the above. Americans have been busy demonizing and disempowering political professionals and parties, which is like spending decades abusing and attacking your own immune system. Eventually, you will get sick.
Political analysts have long been talking about the negatives of having weak parties. When I discuss this concept in my AP Government classes, I ask them, if the parties had the strength to determine the candidates, do they think Donald Trump would be the nominee or that Bernie Sanders would have made it past the first few weeks of the nomination campaign? If the parties were strong in controlling their members once they were elected, would Ted Cruz been able to filibuster in the Senate? Rauch thinks that the Founders would have done well to have included some sort of intermediary control over members of Congress. Of course, the Founders didn't anticipate parties or factions having such a role in politics. Back in the 19th century, the parties had the sort of influence Rauch recommends, but the 17th Amendment and popularization of primaries to choose nominees as well as campaign finance reform laws ended that.
They were visionaries, those men in Philadelphia, but they could not foresee everything, and they made a serious omission. Unlike the British parliamentary system, the Constitution makes no provision for holding politicians accountable to one another. A rogue member of Congress can’t be “fired” by his party leaders, as a member of Parliament can; a renegade president cannot be evicted in a vote of no confidence, as a British prime minister can. By and large, American politicians are independent operators, and they became even more independent when later reforms, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, neutered the Electoral College and established direct election to the Senate.
We've come full circle now with Rauch bemoaning the demise of the proverbial smoked-filled rooms. We bot rid of pork which could be used to lubricate deals. Rauch discusses the collapse of a grand budget bargain in 2011 which perhaps might have reformed entitlements. Rauch blames the GOP House members who refused to support the deal. I might question Rauch's assignment of blame in the deal, but he is making a larger point.
When Boehner was asked by Jay Leno why he had permitted what the speaker himself called a “very predictable disaster,” he replied, rather poignantly: “When I looked up, I saw my colleagues going this way. You learn that a leader without followers is simply a man taking a walk.”
Boehner was right. Washington doesn’t have a crisis of leadership; it has a crisis of followership. One can argue about particulars, and Congress does better on some occasions than on others. Overall, though, minority factions and veto groups are becoming ever more dominant on Capitol Hill as leaders watch their organizational capacity dribble away.
The inability of Congress to accomplish much that the president will sign aggravates the public. People just become disgusted with Washington because they don't want to disentangle the blame.
Being a disorder of the immune system, chaos syndrome magnifies other problems, turning political head colds into pneumonia. Take polarization. Over the past few decades, the public has become sharply divided across partisan and ideological lines. Chaos syndrome compounds the problem, because even when Republicans and Democrats do find something to work together on, the threat of an extremist primary challenge funded by a flood of outside money makes them think twice—or not at all. Opportunities to make bipartisan legislative advances slip away.
And new media exacerbates the entire problem. The result is chaos and this circles back to George Will and Jay Nordlinger's complaints about the Republican Party.
Nearly everyone panned party regulars for not stopping Trump much earlier, but no one explained just how the party regulars were supposed to have done that. Stopping an insurgency requires organizing a coalition against it, but an incapacity to organize is the whole problem. The reality is that the levers and buttons parties and political professionals might once have pulled and pushed had long since been disconnected.
Rauch has some reasonable proposals, but they'll never be adopted.
In March, a Trump supporter told The New York Times, “I want to see Trump go up there and do damage to the Republican Party.” Another said, “We know who Donald Trump is, and we’re going to use Donald Trump to either take over the G.O.P. or blow it up.” That kind of anti-establishment nihilism deserves no respect or accommodation in American public life. Populism, individualism, and a skeptical attitude toward politics are all healthy up to a point, but America has passed that point. Political professionals and parties have many shortcomings to answer for—including, primarily on the Republican side, their self-mutilating embrace of anti-establishment rhetoric—but relentlessly bashing them is no solution. You haven’t heard anyone say this, but it’s time someone did: Our most pressing political problem today is that the country abandoned the establishment, not the other way around.
It seems hard to believe that, in this political environment, an agenda to strengthen the parties' power would ever go over.
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C. Boyden Gray, who used to be the US ambassador to the EU (Quick, did you know that was a position and could you have named another one?), points to how the EU has been treating Poland as an example of why the British voted to exit the EU.
At issue is a standoff between Poland’s new center-right governing coalition and its Constitutional Tribunal—akin to the U.S. Supreme Court—regarding the validity of appointments to the Tribunal. The new governing coalition believes its appointees should be seated, while the Tribunal believes the seats should go to the appointees of the outgoing center-left government. Which side is correct under Polish law is less important than the complete lack of evidence that the impasse cannot be resolved politically within Poland, to say nothing of the lack of evidence that the dispute threatens the “rule of law” values enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (updating the 1992 Maastricht Treaty).
No matter. Instead of directing its energies to resolving the refugee crisis, calming the turmoil surrounding the Brexit referendum or revitalizing its moribund economy, the EU is flexing its muscle to dictate its preferred result for Poland’s internal dispute. This would be cause for concern were the EU’s actions within the scope of its governing treaties. But in this case, the EU is inserting itself into Polish affairs because it sees an opportunity to institute its Framework, an authority that it simply conjured out of thin air.
Those with power, even bureaucrats, seek to expand their power. This is what we see with almost any story about the EU.
In case you needed any more reasons to be doubtful of Donald Trump on foreign policy, now we're hearing this about his plans.
A top foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump says in a new interview that the billionaire would not scrap the Iran nuclear dear if his presidential bid is successful.
“No, he’s not going to get rid of an agreement that has the institutional signature of the United States,” Walid Phares told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“He is a man of institutions. But he’s going to look back at it in the institutional way. So he is not going to implement it as is, he is going to revise it after negotiating one on one with Iran or with a series of allies.”
Phares said Trump dislikes the current diplomatic agreement, but believes it can improve with input from lawmakers.
What does that mean to say he's not going to scrap it, but revise it? The Iranians aren't going to agree to any substantive revision. They're already violating the deal.
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Ashe Schow ponders what our fragile college "snowflakes" are going to demand next. She goes through a whole litany of the shameful attitude of college students to stifle speech and discussion on any topic they feel might offend someone somewhere. It's a dismaying list. So what will we see next year? Is there any reason to hope that common sense will prevail?
"I think it's going to get much worse," Dershowitz said of the campus protests, adding that campus administrators "don't have the courage to stand up to spoiled student brats."
Dershowitz said the only encouraging thing he's seeing on campuses these days was that liberals and centrists are coming together to condemn the behavior. He warned current student protesters that they were "shooting themselves in the foot" with their ever-more ridiculous demands, because "when the pendulum swings, it will swing back."
I'm not optimistic. These social justice warriors have tasted blood and they'll be back for more. Unless there has been a miraculous spinal implantation among college administrators across the country, I am not very hopeful.
We may have seen an increase in campus silliness in the past year, but things are likely to get worse. Student protests achieved multiple victories — from getting presidents and administrators to resign to getting their schools to commit millions more to "diversity training."
They've found a way not only to make elite universities grovel and accept the ridiculous idea that they are hotbeds of racism and sexism, but they've also figured out how to make the universities pay for it. Why would the activists stop when they keep winning?
If we want to see this trend change, administrators, professors, and students will have to stand up to the Brave New World the college snowflakes are seeking to impose.
The answer is simply that those who disagree with the prevailing narrative that America's most privileged and progressive environments are awash with racism and sexism must stand up to the bullying, and insist on keeping universities free, open and liberal (in the classical sense) places of discussion and learning.
"On most campuses, most faculty members are not sympathetic to the fascistic elements who want to crack down on, and even shut down, dissenting speech," said Robert P. George, McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University.
"Too few, however, have the courage to stand up to them. Until they muster that courage, the forces of illiberalism will be conditioned by the success of their intimidation tactics in silencing dissent to keep it up."
FIRE's Ari Cohn said students can help the situation by standing up for free speech — especially speech they disagree with. Students can also engage in the marketplace of ideas and participate in robust but respectful debates in order to prove the value of free speech. Cohn said faculty and administrators also had a role to play in ending the wave of immaturity on campuses.
"First, they must stop acquiesc
If you want an example of how Bias Response Teams play out in real life, read this transcript that an anonymous professor recorded of his conversation with the ethics officer for Title IX, affirmative action and opportunity at the University of Northern Colorado after a student complained about a discussion in the professor's writing class of transgender issues when the professor dared to present the counter arguments to the positions of transgender activists. It's quite clear from the professor's description of all that was said in class that the professor bent over backwards to stress to the students that they should be open to hearing other sides of arguments and that he was just playing devil's advocate in order to help them see things from a different side. But the school's official basically told him/her to avoid discussing transgender issues in any class. Read what this official told the professor and judge whether professors at this university have the freedom to discuss controversial issues in their classes.
By Jillian Kay Melchior | 2:27 pm, July 5, 2016
Last fall, a transgender student complained of being “very offended and hurt” to University of Northern Colorado’s Bias Response Team. The offending incident: An English professor had asked his students to discuss transgender rights, among other social issues, weighing opposing viewpoints.
The professor, who does not have tenure and asked to remain unnamed for fear of being blacklisted in higher education, secretly recorded his conversation with Marshall Parks, the university’s ethics officer for Title IX, affirmative action and equal opportunity.
“We had a cordial visit, but Parks definitely used the ‘velvet glove’ approach, where he managed to threaten without using a threatening tone,” the professor says. “But threatening tone or not, I can certainly tell you that I felt that I had no academic freedom.”
University Administrator Marshall Parks
This is the transcript of their conversation:
PARKS: Thanks for coming in. So we’ve got the student’s perspective, kind of the the topics and what happened. Does anything ring a bell does it sound like what you thought happened? Usually there’s more than one story.
PROF: Let me give you this. I printed this off for you. In the syllabus, the first couple of class periods, a big portion talks about the purpose of higher education, academic discourse, So I make a huge– it’s like one of these soap box, rah-rah things, day one saying, and we talk about the attendance policy– I say, the main reason why you should be here is because you all have a unique perspective to share.
Seven billion people on the planet, no one like you, and if you’re not here, you can’t share that with us, and so I have them read this article, and that’s just part of it, but essentially the article says– and it’s written by college professors– but the article says, too often college students, any time they hear a topic that they’re uncomfortable with, instead of wanting to discuss it, they just wanna say, “I’m uncomfortable, we can’t talk about that,” right?
So we were talking in class about, these are the kind of things–
PARKS: That make you uncomfortable–
PROF: — in the academic world, instead of if, I said for example, you should all be here, you may be a liberal Democrat and you hold all those typical… someone might be a conservative… and both views are valid, both views deserve to be aired.
And in the non-academic world what happens is, this guy talks, and she says, “Well, you’re just a bigot,” and now suddenly it’s over, and now I’ve won the discussion.
And so I said there’s gonna be lots of things that you might even find personal, and I actually told the students that if there’s something that is so amazingly personal that you can’t discuss it, you can either, if you know we’re going to talk about it, you can tell me, “I can’t be there that day,” or if we’re into it unexpectedly, you can leave and then tell me later and I won’t be against you.
So we talked about what kind of things are they. And one someone brought up the transgender thing, and so, and this is like a whole discussion over two days not condensed into–
PARKS: — yeah, and that’s why I had you come in–
PROF: — and I said so, what you hear a lot in the media especially is that, we should support transgender, Caitlyn Jenner, all these kind of things, we’re all good, we’re all nonjudgmental, I said, but there are people that hold radically different views than that.
There are people who think that there is no such thing as transgender, that you can’t– the argument was, “If I’m a man I can’t say I feel like a woman because as a man I can’t know what it is to be a woman, I can only say, ‘I feel like I imagine a woman feeling.’”
And so what about those people, right? They have a valid view that should be aired and discussed.
And then, later on, we went into, there was an article I think I posted it to our Blackboard page because [unintelligible] a Blackboard page, because students participate in that more– not Blackboard, Facebook, a Facebook page. All our courses have Facebook pages because students will participate more in that than they will in Blackboard.
PARKS: We pay a lot of money for Blackboard. That’s too bad.
PROF: So, I shared an article about a student. It’s a high school student who’s male but identifies as female and wants to able to use the girls locker room, and the parents, in fact, Lance Berkman, who was a baseball player, a player for the Astros, I think– he did a public service announcement thing saying, “Don’t let this happen, don’t let boys go on girls lockers.”
And I said, “We all, you know, most people, or we think most people, a lot of people are saying, ‘We shouldn’t judge if he identifies as whatever.’”
But what about those parents who say, “I don’t want a boy [in there].” And what a guy who says, “Hey man, I’ll just say, I identify as a girl and I’ll be able to watch a girl shower naked.” What about that? How do you take that into account?
And so it was in fact a very nice discussion of seeing other perspectives, but it was early in the term, and the funny thing is that this would be hilariously ironic if it wasn’t kind of sad that the article says, what students do is that they run right to people and complain and so professors are afraid to talk about things for fear that they’re going to have this meeting right here, and then that’s exactly what the student did, was, did exactly what the article talks about.
PARKS: But I think one of the concerns, I think the student does identify as transgender, and so she’s hearing what I heard you say, an argument that people could make is, [but] she is hearing that as your personal opinion, and that’s where the difference is.
PROF: And I understand that if it’s something that’s close to home to you, you are hypersensitive to it, and it’s easy to hear something that’s not there.
PARKS: And providing obviously that we want to have the discourse, we want to have this sort of discussion– I mean that’s value for all of us being here, that part.
I think that the piece that we have to be sensitive of in this case too is that certainly Title VII and Title IX, gender discrimination issues– if someone were to say, ‘This is my opinion,” that someone perceiving that comment as discriminatory is possible.
I mean you presenting that as something someone might think, not as something you think, is a big distinction here, so I think the way you present it, the way you describe it to me makes perfect sense. Again, you’re approaching the topic in a sensitive and appropriate manner.
I think the framing in things that people see as (inaudible) on specifically Title IX, right now, in the gender-based discrimination of any type, which this falls roughly into that category has been– you know, we’re getting 20, 30 complaints a semester, whereas we didn’t used to get that in 10 years, right? So I mean part of it has been positive because I think there’s an awareness of a real discrimination that’s occurring, and I think that’s a positive thing. People coming forward but I think that (inaudible) I think that you’ve handled it very well.
Not everybody’s got that figured out yet. So I appreciate you coming out and describing it to me.
I think that the student, to be fair, was also not out to get, you know, someone who’s “Bring the torch, burn down the–,” The student is not that way at all, the student just struck a cord and the student, and once it strikes the cord, how we hear and process things changes.
It’s just being filtered in all kind of strange ways so, the topic I can suspect, you can avoid throughout the entire semester, because it is one of those topics (inaudible).
I don’t know if throughout the course of your curriculum if it’s going to pop up, but if it does, just you know make sure to handle it in a sensitive way, and if you believe there’s something that has to be part of an ongoing discussion, or part of this class, I would like to reach out to the student or have the student (inaudible) but I’d have them reach out to the student and say, “This is going to be a necessary part of an additional discussion, it’s going to be Tuesday,” because organic things happen, too, but I mean if you know the topic has to be part of what you’re doing in your class, let me know so I can reach out to the student, just like you described to them before–
PROF: And I would hope, you know, we’re in week six now, and you know, I’ve reminded them constantly that I will say things, that I’m putting out there as a hypothetical. People think this, and it’s not my perspective.
I would bet, not that I would want to see this happen, but I would bet that if you ask a student now, if you still hold the same view, she would go, “I get it now,” you know what I mean? And transgender is—
PARKS: But the student’s not there yet. But the student’s not the pitchfork student. I mean this is just a student that just says, “This is challenging the way I think, and in addition, it’s hitting a personal button.”
PROF: See the goal is, let’s get you past the button so that it can challenge you because you know, because, you know, you’re the perfect person to talk about this. If you’ve got someone in the corner [who says], “Transgender is whacko,” if it’s beyond what you can do, fair enough.
PARKS: So I mean I think as long as we, we don’t put them in that position.
I mean I think, they can take this to the EEOC and you guys spend a lot of time writing documents, getting other students to say, “I heard them say it this way.” Last place we want to go. I mean it’s just—it’s not productive. (Inaudible) and your intent is not to discriminate against this student or make them feel uncomfortable, I mean, not to make them feel uncomfortable about this but to make them feel uncomfortable about how they think, and that’s a positive piece.
Spending a lot of energy explaining that subtlety to a whole lot of administrative logjam is not the best use of our time.
So if you can avoid the topic for the rest of the semester, that’s our ideal place, so then we don’t have to [inaudible] the exciting, positive part of what you are doing.
If you think it’s a topic we need to retouch on again, let me know so I can work with you and in student’s office, work with the student, keep the student where they are, which is in a pretty good place. And I just want to keep them that way.
PROF: Let me ask you this. Essentially, and the syllabus says this, that the topics are class-generated, which is what it should be. What do you guys care about? I try to keep them away from Justin Beiber– but, if you like it, why? That’s fair enough. You can like anything.
I never intended to come in at all this semester and talk about transgender. It came up as a discussion in class, which is what I love. So, what is your recommendation then, if at some point in the future someone says, “Did you read that article about this?” Should I say, “We can’t talk about that?”
PARKS: We talked about that a little bit earlier.
I mean: “There are other topics you can work on today. I mean, you can talk about that one, and it’s, that’s an interesting topic, and it’s still evolving, and it’s really cool in culture and society today, but what else cool could we talk about today?” That little arabesque.
I mean it’s not ideal, it’s not perfect, it doesn’t fit in with what you like to do, but I mean if we go back there again, we have another discussion and the student perceives it that you’re again saying a personal opinion, I got three investigators, and you and I are wasting a ton of time, and they have to talk to every student in the class. So, if the topic’s worth that, it’s your call.
I’ve never once been able to tell a faculty member or another employee frankly what to do. But I think just from a personal perspective, I think it’s a topic that is more central to the course, we have to find a better way to work this.
Meanwhile, the crime wave by migrants in the EU continues to threaten others, particularly women. Here is a sampling of news just from this past week.
At a couple of music festivals in Sweden, the police are investigating allegations of rape and "groping" that made the experience a nightmare for young women.
olice in Sweden are investigating five reported rapes and nearly forty instances of groping at two music festivals over the weekend.
“Foreign young men“ were blamed by police for the attacks at one of the festivals and at least two unaccompanied migrant youths were under arrest.
Police recorded five reports of rapes and 12 of sexual molestation at Bravalla, Sweden's biggest music festival, and 35 reports of sexual molestation at Putte i Parken, a free festival in Karlstad, where the youngest victim was just twelve years old.
Two of the seven young men suspected of mounting a campaign of aggressive groping at the second festival were unaccompanied refugee youth, reportedly living at a nearby accommodation centre.
IN Germany, it is becoming dangerous for females of all ages and young boys to go swimming in public pools.
German police have quietly conceded that the influx of Middle Eastern and African migrants into the country has led to a spike in grisly rapes at public swimming pools.
Officers in the nation – under strain from some 1 million new arrivals welcomed in by Chancellor Angela Merkel – warned of the surge in a private briefing.
But the message was leaked to German tabloid Bild, seeming to confirm fears that violent and sexual crime are tied to Europe’s migrant crisis.
An internal memo created by officers in Dusseldorf read: “The K12 can confirm a surge in sex crimes at these establishments.
“In particular rape and the sexual abuse of children in bathing establishments have given us grave cause for concern.
“The perpetrators are, for the most part, immigrants.”
Fears of the crisis getting worse will only intensify as swimming pool use in general increases for the summer....
Individual reports of rapes at swimming pools – including an Iraqi man sexually abusing a 10-year-old in Austria then brazenly continuing with his swim – have emerged, and resulted in criminal proceedings.
But no public data suggested that the problem went beyond isolated incidents.
However, the leaked police report implies that there is indeed reason for broader concern.
The fact that it was not shared with the public is only likely to increase tensions in an already-fraught environment.
Ya think?
The rapist in the Austrian incident had a unique excuse for raping the 10-year old.
The asylum seeker, who had not had sex for four months, said it was a medical emergency when he raped the boy in a swimming pool changing room.
The 20-year-old, who had been taken to the Austrian swimming pool Theresienbad, pictured, to be taught how to integrate into his now community, was found guilty of serious sexual assault and rape of a minor and was sentenced to six years in jail.
The man, who had fled to Austria through the Balkan refugee route in September last year, hung his head in shame before he was sentenced for the horrific crime which left his victim suffering post-traumatic stress.
The migrant had been taken to the pool in December 2015 with a 15-year-old helper and translator who was helping him to integrate into life in the Austrian capital Vienna.
But while there, the 20-year-old man dragged a boy, 10, into the change rooms and attacked him.
The boy, known only as Goran, was also the son of an immigrant family from the Balkans who grew up in Austria with his Serbian mother.
The horrific attack was so violent that the young boy needed to be treated at the Children's Hospital, and is now plagued by massive post-traumatic stress disorder.
Goran went to a lifeguard in tears after the attack but the Iraqi involved in the attack was so brazen that he had not even left the swimming pool.
Instead, he was jumping off a three-metre diving board when police arrived to arrest him.
He told police the attack was a sexual emergency as he had not had sex for four months after leaving his wife behind and coming to Austria as an asylum seeker in September 2015.
He was given a lower sentence than the 15 years he might have gotten because of his young age and "previous good behavior." If he just arrived in December, how does the judge know that his previous behavior was good?
