Marquette Warrior

Marquette Warrior Harassed Over Debunking of Bogus Feminist Rape Claims: More

2012-02-02T15:30:00.007-06:00

We’ve blogged about the fact that one student on our fall American Politics class complained about “sexual harassment” because we, in class, debunked bogus statistics about date rape on campus.

Marquette Provost John Pauly insisted that the complaint be followed up, which resulted in our being summoned into the office of political science chair Barry McCormick to explain what we had said in class.

It was a clear violation of academic freedom, since the complaint didn’t allege we did anything more than debunk statistics that we judge to be bogus. The student who complained didn’t think such statistics should be debunked, apparently since campus rape is a serious problem (and therefore inflating the scope of the problem serves a good purpose).

This past Monday (January 30) McCormick came into our office, and explained that he and Pauly had decided that we were within our rights to say what we said.

So far, so good, it might seem. But not really.

No Written Explanation

McCormick informed us that Pauly was not willing to give us a written explanation of the case, or of the decision. That Marquette would not be willing to put the resolution of the case in writing raises the suspicion that campus bureaucrats might want to revive it in the future, or perhaps fear that it would create a precedent in favor of academic freedom that they might want to ignore at some future date.

Complaint Should Have Been Dropped

We told McCormick that the case should never have been pursued, since if the complaint was taken absolutely at face value, no sexual harassment happened. McCormick replied that he informed us during the office meeting why the case needed to be pursued. We asked him to repeat what his explanation was, and he refused.

In fact, he gave no such explanation. During the office meeting, he explained that perhaps a professor might ask a female student to take all her clothes off, and this would clearly need to be deal with. But nobody accused us of that. All we were accused of was debunking bogus statistics that feminists produce, and our comments were not even directed at a particular student.

Protect Academic Freedom in the Future

Marquette needs to provide a clear policy that complaints of sexual harassment will not be used in a way that infringes upon academic freedom. Simply saying something, relevant to the course material, that some feminist doesn’t want to hear is clearly protected by academic freedom. Pauly, and Marquette, are unwilling to provide any such statement, something that clearly implies they want to keep open the option of using “sexual harassment” in the future as a pretext to shut up faculty speech that the politically correct crowd does not like.

They doubtless find this option very desirable, especially for use against some faculty member less combative that we are.

Scurrilous Semi-Accusation

Finally, McCormick made a rather scurrilous semi-accusation. He suggested that perhaps we criticized feminists in an “uncivil” way in class. What evidence did he have of that? First, he said we “accused feminists of lying” in our office meeting. What we actually said was that feminists lie about the incidence of rape. That’s a much more limited (and entirely accurate) fact. Secondly, he took exception to the fact that we characterized the person who brought the complaint as a “prissy little feminist” and said that in a properly run university, “some administrator would sit this prissy little feminist down and explain to her ‘this is a university, you are going to hear things you disagree with. Live with it.’”

Of course, we said nothing remotely uncivil in class, and the student didn’t claim that we did.

Liberals, of course, have all kinds of tactics for shutting up speech they don’t like, and if they aren’t willing to escalate to shouting “racist” or “sexist” or “homophobe” will invoke “civility.” McCormick, who is extremely liberal and quite politically correct, seems excessively sensitive to unkind things said about his ideological cohorts.

Conclusion

So it seems that a faculty member can be called into the office of an administrator and required to explain his or her speech, even when nobody has claimed that the faculty member did more than say things that a politically correct student didn’t want to hear.

And while somebody who is willing to make an issue of it (as we were) can prevail, Marquette refuses to renounce the sort of attack on academic freedom.

After all, it’s often prudent for administrators to pander to politically correct faculty, given that they are very numerous, and very vociferous in wanting to shut up speech they dislike.

Thus nothing has been settled, and academic freedom is still in huge danger from Marquette officials.

Tonight! Liberty or Lies: Milwaukee Conservative Talk Radio

2012-01-30T07:21:00.003-06:00

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You can see the entire show here.

Gingrich and the Moon Base

2012-01-27T11:26:00.006-06:00

On the Issues at the Marquette Law School

2012-01-24T11:38:00.002-06:00

Just got this via e-mail:

February 2 — On the Issues with Mike Gousha: Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tommy Thompson. He was elected Governor of Wisconsin an unprecedented four times. He was Health and Human Services Secretary in the administration of President George W. Bush. Now, after a stint in the private sector, Tommy Thompson is running for public office again. What’s driving his decision, and what does he think about the current political climate in Washington and Wisconsin? Find out when the former Governor and current candidate joins us at the Law School. Marquette Law School, Eckstein Hall, 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. Reserve your spot.

February 16— On the Issues with Mike Gousha: Mark Block, Chief of Staff for former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain—Running for president is a long, tough, even strange journey. Nobody knows that better than Mark Block, Herman Cain’s top advisor. A longtime Wisconsin political operative, Block will share his stories from the campaign trail; the rise and fall of the Cain candidacy; and Block’s starring role in a low-budget campaign ad that went viral (remember the cigarette?). Block will also discuss the state of the GOP nomination battle and his role in Cain’s latest political project. Marquette Law School, Eckstein Hall, 12:15 to 1:15 p.m., Reserve your spot.

April 5— On the Issues with Mike Gousha: Vice Admiral James W. Houck, Judge Advocate General of the United States Navy—Vice Admiral Houck is the principal military legal counsel to the secretary of the Navy and Chief of Naval Operations. He leads the attorneys, enlisted legalmen, and civilian employees of the worldwide Navy JAG Corps community. Houck will discuss what he calls the Navy’s “global law firm” and the issues it faces today, including the handling of detainees, piracy on the high seas, and meeting the legal needs of sailors stationed around the world. Houck is a graduate of the Naval Academy and the University of Michigan Law School. He later earned a Masters of Laws from the Georgetown University Law Center. Marquette Law School, Eckstein Hall, 12:15 to 1:15 p.m., Reserve your spot.

April 9— On the Issues with Mike Gousha: Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin—Congresswoman Baldwin has represented Wisconsin’s Second Congressional District since 1999. Now, she’s trying to make history. Running as the lone Democrat in the race to replace retiring U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, Baldwin is seeking to become the first woman elected to the Senate in Wisconsin. Baldwin is a University of Wisconsin Law School graduate. She’ll address the major issues in this year’s campaign during her visit to Eckstein Hall. Marquette Law School, Eckstein Hall, 12:15 to 1:15 p.m., Reserve your spot.

May 9— On the Issues with Mike Gousha: Yale University Professor John Lewis Gaddis, author of George F. Kennan: An American Life—Born and raised in Milwaukee, George Kennan went on to become one of the preeminent diplomats of the Cold War era. He is credited with being the architect of the American policy of containment toward the Soviet Union. Now the story of his profound influence and his complicated life has been told in a book written by John Lewis Gaddis, the noted historian of the Cold War who is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of History and Political Science and Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy at Yale. Professor Gaddis knew Kennan for decades, and was granted full access to his personal papers. He has produced a remarkable biography praised by critics and diplomats alike. Henry Kissinger has called it “magisterial” and “seminal.” Professor Gaddis will reveal the Kennan he came to know during this appearance in his subject’s hometown. Cosponsored by the Marquette University Department of History. Marquette Law School, Eckstein Hall, 12:15 to 1:15 p.m., Reserve your spot.

Gay Censorship in Shawano

2012-01-17T12:04:00.011-06:00

From the Green-Bay Press Gazette:

SHAWANO — A gay couple with school-age children is outraged over a Shawano High School newspaper column that cites Bible passages and calls homosexuality a sin punishable by death.

The column ran on the editorial page of Shawano High School’s Hawks Post recently as part of an opinion package about gay families who adopt children. The other side said sexual orientation does not determine a person’s ability to raise kids.

“This is why kids commit suicide,” said Nick Uttecht, who is raising four children with his partner, Michael McNelly.

Uttecht told school district officials he thinks the piece opposing gays as parents is hateful and should not have run. He worries the strong language will hurt his children and could lead students to bully gay classmates.

School officials apologized and said they will review the process for editing and producing the paper.

“Offensive articles cultivating a negative environment of disrespect are not appropriate or condoned by the Shawano School District,” district Superintendent Todd Carlson said in a written statement.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, out of 17,019 households in Shawano County, 82 were same-sex households, and nearly half reported children in the home. In Wisconsin, 13,630 out of 2.28 million households in 2010 were same-sex, and 5,978 of those households had children.

A step back?

The student newspaper column against same-sex couples says: “If one is a practicing Christian, Jesus states in the Bible that homosexuality is (a) detestable act and sin which makes adopting wrong for homosexuals because you would be raising the child in a sin-filled environment.

“A child adopted into homosexuality will get confused because everyone else will have two different-gendered parents that can give them the correct amount of motherly nurturing and fatherly structure. In a Christian society, allowing homosexual couples to adopt is an abomination.”

Uttecht said his 13-year-old son, Tanner, who is in eighth grade, saw the article and asked about it.

“When I saw this I was in shock,” said Uttecht, who is raising four children, three who are his biological kids and the biological daughter of his partner. Three are in the Shawano school system; the youngest is 4.

“I talked to the school superintendent; he said he was shocked,” Uttecht said

Carlson told the Green Bay Press-Gazette “appropriate steps are being taken” to remedy the situation, but did not provide details.

He sent the following written statement:

“The Shawano School District would like to apologize for a recent article printed in the Hawks Post newspaper. Proper judgment that reflects school district policies needs to be exercised with articles printed in our school newspaper. Offensive articles cultivating a negative environment of disrespect are not appropriate or condoned by the Shawano School District. We sincerely apologize to anyone we may have offended and are taking steps to prevent items of this nature from happening in the future.”

Uttecht said he’s worried about the lasting impact of the column.

“I’m worried about how this is going to affect my kids,” said Uttecht, who also is an elected member of the Menominee Indian Head Start Policy Council. “And I’m worried how gay students in school will be treated. It took me a long time to come out, and I think this just really sets things back by being so closed-minded. This sets things back 20 or 30 years.

“I know there are at least three openly gay families in the district, there’s probably more. What effect is this going to have on my kids? And how are other people going to react?”

Free speech

David Hudson, an expert for the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group First Amendment Center, said the column may be distasteful to some, but student journalists were practicing their constitutional right to free speech.

“Bullying is a serious concern, and I don’t take it lightly. But I hope it doesn’t lead to squashing different viewpoints. I do think (gay adoption) is an issue people are deeply divided about. Hopefully student journalists don’t have to fear they’ll be squashed if they take a controversial view.”

Editors and advisers have the job of toning down language if it is too sensational, Hudson said.

“Freedom of speech includes speech about religious viewpoints,” Hudson said. “If you took that away, it could be seen as discrimination. Someone could have an atheist opinion, and that’s OK, too.

“Any controversial issue is a lightning rod for censorship.”

Although students have the right to voice their opinion, it doesn’t mean they should say it in a school paper, said Christine Smith, assistant professor of psychology, human development and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Her academic specialization, of course, makes it clear what she is going to say.

“High school students are at a time in their life when they are developing intellectually and socially,” she said. “To see something like this debated in the paper could be devastating. How would you feel if someone said your family is abnormal, is not acceptable, that your parents never should have been allowed to have you, that they’re not suitable to raise you?

“Of course, it’s got to be harmful. Kids this age are so worried about discovering who they are and what they are. To have them told their family is immoral and not suitable has to be devastating. To be told by your peers, people you see in the hallways, these people who clearly have passed judgment.”

This, of course, is the theory universial among politically correct people: you can’t say bad things about homosexuality, because that might make gays (or the children of gays) feel bad.

A consistent policy of not saying things that make people feel bad might have something to recommend it. Unfortunately, the people who want to censor anti-gay speech are quite willing to attack Christians who view homosexuality in a negative light.

They don’t at all mind if the open promotion of homosexuality by a school district tends to marginalize Christian students. In fact they want that to happen.

It’s interesting to see politically correct school bureaucrats talk about “a negative environment of disrespect” when they are in fact encouraging and promoting “a negative environment of disrespect” for Christian values and thus for Christian students.

If the school is worried about negative consequences of controversial columns in a student newspaper, they should refuse to run such columns, banning both sides of the argument. In fact, a large body of Constitutional law holds that any government-imposed restrictions on speech must be “content neutral.”

You can file this case under “gay fascism.”

Brits Used to Talk Like Americans

2012-01-16T20:55:00.003-06:00

From Life’s Little Mysteries:

In 1776, whether you were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your loyalty to King George III, your pronunciation would have been much the same. At that time, American and British accents hadn’t yet diverged. What’s surprising, though, is that Hollywood costume dramas get it all wrong: The Patriots and the Redcoats spoke with accents that were much closer to the contemporary American accent than to the Queen’s English.

It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly.

Traditional English, whether spoken in the British Isles or the American colonies, was largely “rhotic.” Rhotic speakers pronounce the “R” sound in such words as “hard” and “winter,” while non-rhotic speakers do not. Today, however, non-rhotic speech is common throughout most of Britain. For example, most modern Brits would tell you it’s been a “hahd wintuh.”

It was around the time of the American Revolution that non-rhotic speech came into use among the upper class in southern England, in and around London. According to John Algeo in “The Cambridge History of the English Language” (Cambridge University Press, 2001), this shift occurred because people of low birth rank who had become wealthy during the Industrial Revolution were seeking ways to distinguish themselves from other commoners; they cultivated the prestigious non-rhotic pronunciation in order to demonstrate their new upper-class status.

“London pronunciation became the prerogative of a new breed of specialists — orthoepists and teachers of elocution. The orthoepists decided upon correct pronunciations, compiled pronouncing dictionaries and, in private and expensive tutoring sessions, drilled enterprising citizens in fashionable articulation,” Algeo wrote.

The lofty manner of speech developed by these specialists gradually became standardized — it is officially called “Received Pronunciation” — and it spread across Britain. However, people in the north of England, Scotland and Ireland have largely maintained their traditional rhotic accents.

Most American accents have also remained rhotic, with some exceptions: New York and Boston accents have become non-rhotic. According to Algeo, after the Revolutionary War, these cities were “under the strongest influence by the British elite.”

Smug Liberals Demand “Civility” in Discourse

2012-01-16T13:31:00.008-06:00

Washington Post: Stop Electric Car Subsidies

2012-01-12T13:20:00.006-06:00

The Washington Post has a reputation as a liberal newspaper, and indeed that’s what it is.

But it has shown itself able to take a cold hard look at some of the programs that give liberals the warm fuzzies. One recent example dealt with one of the Obama Administration’s favorite class of subsidies.

THERE MAY NOT have been a party in Times Square to celebrate, but two of the most wasteful subsidies ever to clutter the Internal Revenue Code went out with the old year. Congress declined to renew either the 45-cent-per-gallon tax credit for corn-based ethanol or the 54-cent-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol, so both expired Dec. 31.

Taxpayers will no longer have shell out roughly $6 billion per year for a program that badly distorted the global grain market, artificially raised the cost of agricultural land and did almost nothing to curb greenhouse gas emissions. A federal law requiring the use of 36 billion gallons of ethanol for fuel by 2022 still props up the industry, but the tax credit’s expiration is a victory for common sense just the same.

Meanwhile, a lesser-known but equally dubious energy tax break also expired when the year ended Saturday: the credit that gave electric-car owners up to $1,000 to defray the cost of installing a 220-volt charging device in their homes — or up to $30,000 to install one in a commercial location. As a means of reducing carbon emissions, electric cars and plug-in hybrid electrics are no more cost-effective than ethanol. What’s more, only upper-income consumers can afford to buy an electric vehicle (EV); so the charger subsidy is a giveaway to the well-to-do.

The same goes for the $7,500 tax credit that the government offers purchasers of electric vehicles, a subsidy that, alas, did not expire at year’s end. The Obama administration says that the credit helps build a market for EVs, which helps create jobs. Given the price of eligible models, like the $100,000 Fisker Karma, that rationale sounds an awful lot like trickle-down economics.

Backers of the charger tax credit may lobby Congress to renew it when lawmakers tackle the payroll tax extension issue again in the new year. We hope that Congress says no. Not only is it a case study in upward income redistribution, it also would represent a deepening of the taxpayers’ commitment to what looks increasingly like an industry not ready for prime time.

Sales of electric vehicles were disappointing in 2011, with the Volt coming in below the 10,000 units forecast. In addition to its high price, the Volt brand is suffering from news that some of its batteries burst into flames after government road tests. Meanwhile, Fisker, the recipient of more than half a billion dollars in low-interest Energy Department loans, repeatedly delayed the introduction of its ballyhooed Karma — while repeatedly raising the sticker price. And now Fisker has announced a recall of the cars because of a potential defect in its batteries — made by A123 Systems, another large recipient of Energy Department support.

Evidence is mounting that President Obama was overly optimistic to pledge that there would be 1 million EVs on the road by 2015. Electric cars are not likely to form a significant part of the solution to America’s dependence on foreign oil, or to global warming, in the near future. They simply pose too many issues of price and practicality to attract a large segment of the car-buying public. More prosaic fuel-economy innovations such as conventional hybrids, clean-diesel cars and advanced gasoline engines all show much more promise than electrics.

The ethanol credit was on the books for 30 years before it finally died. Let’s hope Congress can start unwinding the federal government’s bad investment in electric vehicles faster than that.

The problem, of course, is that policies like this have nothing to do with a cool-headed policy analysis. Rather they are mostly symbolic. The liberals who favor them want the “committment to green energy” that these programs claim, and aren’t inclined to ask whether they are really “green” and if so whether they are green at any sort of reasonable price.

After all, they are paid for with other people’s money.

Easy To See Who the Real Bigots Are Here

2012-01-10T17:43:00.001-06:00

All You Really Needed to Understand About Federal Fiscal Policy

2012-01-10T14:52:00.003-06:00

Milwaukee Conservative Talk Radio to be Discussed on MPTV

2012-01-02T10:28:00.007-06:00

It’s official.

Brien Farley’s documentary “Liberty or Lies” will be aired on Milwaukee Public Television at the end of January.

We were Farley’s academic adviser on the project, although in fact Farley is a seasoned broadcast professional who needed little advice or guidance.

Farley is himself rather conservative and favorably inclined toward conservative talk radio, but his documentary gives both the defenders and supporters of the genre plenty of time to state their case. It includes extensive interviews with all the local conservative talkers (Belling being the only exception) and equally extensive interviews with journalistic critics (Bruce Murphy and the late Tim Cuprisin, for example). and local political activists (Jay Heck of Common Cause and Chris Kliesmet of Citizens for Responsible Government, for example).

This will be a “must watch” show for anybody interested in local politics.

California: Home of Locally Grown, Organic Food, Fruits and Nuts

2012-01-01T12:30:00.000-06:00

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education Takes Note of Harassment of Marquette Warrior

2011-12-29T15:54:00.006-06:00

From the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education: an article on the fact that Marquette has “investigated” a complaint from a student who accused us of sexual harassment based on gender for our debunking of feminists’ bogus statistics on campus rape.

FIRE notes that the incident:

. . . provides a good example of how unwarranted investigations of campus speech can cause a deeply problematic “chilling effect” at a university. Universities must not pursue investigations of protected expression just because someone submits a complaint; as soon as it is clear that the expression in question is protected speech, the inquiry must end, even if there are other factual disputes. Prolonging the investigation tells everyone on campus that the university will pursue charges against you no matter how frivolous or malicious the complaint. The likely result is that people self-censor and keep their mouths shut rather than risk such investigation and a possible punishment.

Of course, for the politically correct types on campus, this is the point. They are deeply hostile to free and open debate.

FIRE goes on the quote Marquette’s own Student Handbook on the legitimacy of differences of opinion:

It is clearly inevitable, and indeed essential, that the spirit of inquiry and challenge that the university seeks to encourage will produce many conflicts of ideas, opinions and proposals for action.

Of course, Marquette’s Student Handbook also includes several very dangerous and over-broad statements that could be used to stifle speech. For example:

Harassment is defined as verbal, written or physical conduct directed at a person or a group based on color, race, national origin, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation where the offensive behavior is intimidating, hostile or demeaning, or which could or does result in mental, emotional or physical discomfort, embarrassment, ridicule or harm.

Read at face value, this could mean that if a frank discussion of ghetto crime makes a black student feel “discomfort” that could be harassment. Of course, a feminist talking about the evils of male sexism could make a male student feel uncomfortable, but the odds of anybody seeing any problem with that are nil.

FIRE concludes:

Yet by pursuing this investigation, Marquette is letting a single student entangle a professor in disciplinary proceedings simply due to protected classroom expression. How many professors at Marquette are now going to steer clear of sensitive topics just to avoid an Ethics Point investigation?

The truth, of course, is that even without this kind of inquisition, any prudent junior faculty member, wanting to get tenure, better stifle any urge to say anything politically incorrect. And a lot of tenured people, not wanting to “make waves” or generate hostility, tend to “lay low” and keep their opinions to themselves.

Welcome to the modern politically correct university.

Wise Men Still Seek Him

2011-12-25T15:30:00.001-06:00

Mean Spirited Christmas Greeting from the Marquette Center for Peacemaking

2011-12-22T13:55:00.007-06:00

While some of their activities are bland enough, a Christmas e-mail from the Center for Peacemaking reminds us that, at root, they are mean-spirited leftists. Here is part of the text:

After four weeks of Advent awaiting the coming of the Savior, December 25th can leave us a bit puzzled, if not disappointed.

Because we need a savior. Doesn’t take much in the way of spirituality to figure that out. We just need to look at the “signs of the times.” With a government pledged to “perpetual war,” and more and more wealth (as the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations constantly remind us) taken from the needs of the many to benefit the very few (and yes, those two facts are related), with ongoing environmental degradation, and with over 17 million US households listed as “food insecure,” our world, our country needs some serious saving.

But what do we get on Christmas day? Not a team of expert economists, not a super committee of legislators, not a war council or a national security organization, but a baby – an infant (root meaning: “can’t talk”), someone insecure, vulnerable and needing assistance, not offering it. What was God THINKING?

So there is no “peace on earth, good will toward men.” Rather, there is class warfare and hatred of the military.

If the people associated with the Center for Peacemaking were morally serious, they might actually know that government in the U.S. spends over two trillion dollars per year to pay social welfare benefits.

If they were morally serious they would actually question why “over 17 million US households listed as ‘food insecure’” notwithstanding the fact that government spends 54 billion dollars per year on the food stamp program.

Morally serious people actually care about the details of public policy. Those who prance and preen and tout their concern for the poor in blissful ignorance of how public policy works are not morally serious. They are simply engaged in a kind of moral masturbation.

Marquette Warrior Harassed by University Over Debunking of Bogus Feminist Rape Claims

2011-12-21T11:43:00.017-06:00

Week before last, we dropped in to speak with Political Science Department Chairman Barry McCormick about a different matter, and were told he had something unpleasant to discuss.

It seems that Marquette has a whistle blowing website (Ethics Point) designed mostly to let employees rat out people who have been stealing money from Marquette, and such.

But somebody had complained that we said something that was “demeaning to rape victims.”

What in the world could be the basis of this?

What do we say about rape in our classes?

Debunking Feminist Rape Claims

We deal with the issue in our introductory American Politics class in the context of media bias, and how one can recognize media bias when the media accept bogus and inflated numbers as factual. This was the case in the 1970s with regard to the number of combat divisions the Warsaw Pact had threatening Western Europe, and in the 1980s with the number of homeless people in the U.S.

Then we get to a more contemporary example: one that the students have almost certainly been subjected to as part of their university indoctrination: the idea that 25% of all college women are victims of “date rape.”

The number is absurdly inflated. We point out that in the study most widely quoted (the Koss study) 73% of the women categorized as having been “raped” by a feminist researcher didn’t interpret what happened to them as rape. Indeed, 42% had intercourse again with the guy who supposedly raped them.

(Our analysis of another campus rape study is here.)

What is happening here? Feminists are defining rape far too broadly. Ambiguous sexual encounters, often fueled by alcohol, are defined as “rape” by feminist researchers, but not defined that way by purported victims.

We point out that feminists insist that if a woman consents to sex under the influence of alcohol, she has been raped.

(Feminists have gotten this definition written into law, a fact that helps women not at all, since these kinds of sexual encounters are virtually never reported to police and even less frequently prosecuted.)

Often, some guy who hasn’t yet learned that, in academia, he’s not supposed to question any feminist claim, will raise his hand in our class and ask “suppose the guy has been drinking too? Why didn’t she rape him?”

We always respond, sarcastically “you’ve got to look at this from the feminist point of view. Males are the oppressor class, and women the victim class. So of course the guy is responsible.”

We typically add “if you wake up in the morning and ask ‘what in the world did I do?’ you haven’t been raped. If you’ve been raped you feel violated. If it requires a feminist political activist to explain to you how what happened was rape, you weren’t raped.”

This past semester we piled on a bit by pointing out to our class that “this is yet another issue, like abortion, where academic feminists simply don’t think like real women in the real world.”

Marquette Responds

Upon hearing from McCormick about the charges, we contacted a lawyer we know – one who loves to sue Marquette – and were advised that we had a right to see the precise charges against us. We conveyed this to McCormick, and just yesterday he got back to us with this:

[T]he Provost [John Pauly] . . . presses me to move forward on the response to the Ethics Point complaint in a timely manner. University Counsel has determined that you may read the text of the complaint, but that I should not give a copy of the complaint to you.

So we meet with McCormick at 2:00 p.m. today. We will report on how the meeting goes.

That we should ever be required to defend to university bureaucrats what we say in class is a gross violation of academic freedom. Faculty have a right to disagree with any political movement – including feminists. And social science faculty have a right to debunk bogus social science statistics.

But this is Marquette in 2011. Timid bureaucrats are unwilling to defend the notion that faculty have a right to say things that feminists don’t like.

[Later, after the 2:00 p.m. meeting]

The meeting was a bit dull, with McCormick insisting that the only purpose was to get our story on what happened. This was simple, since our blog post contained everything we say about rape in class, virtually verbatim.

We did get to look at the student’s complaint, and it roughly accurately recounted what we said, then went into a rant about how rape is a serious problem on campus, and thus we were engaging in “harassment based on gender.” Apparently, in the mind of this feminist, you are “harassing” women if you refuse to accept bogus and inflated statistics on rape. She rapsodized about a dorm that put out blue ribbons to oppose rape, but didn’t explain how that justifies lying about the incidence of rape.

McCormick admitted that this Ethics Point site had never been used before to register a complaint about what a professor said in class. In essence, the university is making this up as it goes along.

But the complaint should have been dismissed immediately. Taking the complaint absolutely at face value, we did nothing but disagree with feminist claims about date rape, something clearly protected by the canons of academic freedom.

We will, of course, say exactly the same things about rape when we teach the same class next semester.

In a properly run university, some administrator would sit this prissy little feminist down and explain to her “this is a university, you are going to hear things you disagree with. Live with it.” But a timid administration, used to genuflecting to all the demands of political correctness, will never do that.

Marquette Political Philosopher in New Bluegrass Group

2011-12-20T13:00:00.006-06:00

We’ve blogged about our colleague Ryan Hanley, who until recently played in the band Cream City Bluegrass. Bluegrass bands, like other kinds of bands, often break up and reform with somewhat different personnel, and Hanley and one of the other members of Cream City Bluegrass are now with Freshwater Bluegrass.

Their music clips show the band to be accomplished, enjoyable and pretty mainstream (with the exception of an occasional cheesy cover of a 70s pop song).

You can read more in an article in the Racine Journal-Times.

Their next performance is this Friday (December 23rd) 9:00 p.m.-12:00 midnight at Paddy’s Pub, 2339 N.Murray, Milwaukee. We intend to be there.

Documentary on Milwaukee Conservative Talk Radio / More

2011-12-16T20:49:00.005-06:00

We’ve blogged about a project by Marquette’s Brien Farley: a documentary on Milwaukee-area conservative talk radio.

When we first blogged about it, only three of the six parts were available.

Now, part four is. We hope the rest appear soon.

This is an excellent opportunity to hear both the prominent Milwaukee talk radio hosts, and their critics, discuss this insurgent medium.

Climategate 2.0 / More E-mails

2011-12-03T23:05:00.004-06:00

From Forbes:

A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.

Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.

Regarding scientific transparency, a defining characteristic of science is the open sharing of scientific data, theories and procedures so that independent parties, and especially skeptics of a particular theory or hypothesis, can replicate and validate asserted experiments or observations. Emails between Climategate scientists, however, show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures.

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,”writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden,” Jones writes in another newly released email. “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

The original Climategate emails contained similar evidence of destroying information and data that the public would naturally assume would be available according to freedom of information principles. “Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]?” Jones wrote to Penn State University scientist Michael Mann in an email released in Climategate 1.0. “Keith will do likewise. … We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!”

The new emails also reveal the scientists’ attempts to politicize the debate and advance predetermined outcomes.

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.

“I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email.

“I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose” skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another newly released email.

These new emails add weight to Climategate 1.0 emails revealing efforts to politicize the scientific debate. For example, Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, authored a Climategate 1.0 email asserting that his fellow Climategate scientists “must get rid of” the editor for a peer-reviewed science journal because he published some papers contradicting assertions of a global warming crisis.

More than revealing misconduct and improper motives, the newly released emails additionally reveal frank admissions of the scientific shortcomings of global warming assertions.

“Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary,” writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.

“I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,” Thorne adds.

“Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive … there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC,” Wigley acknowledges.

More damaging emails will likely be uncovered during the next few days as observers pour through the 5,000 emails. What is already clear, however, is the need for more objective research and ethical conduct by the scientists at the heart of the IPCC and the global warming discussion.

So what we have here is a glimpse behind the façade of “science.”

Where “science” is a set of methods about how one knows about the natural world, it’s pretty good and extremely useful.

But when “science” is a social group, rather ingrown, with a distinctive political ideology and distinctive collective interests, no so much.

Here, sociology has trumped the supposed pristine virtues of “science.” We see human nature in full bloom.

Dutch Disillusioned With Windmills

2011-11-21T15:14:00.007-06:00

No, we are not talking about the picturesque old kind. We are talking about the kind that give the environmentalists the warm fuzzies, but cost way too much relative to the electricity they generate.

From Reuters:

When the Netherlands built its first sea-based wind turbines in 2006, they were seen as symbols of a greener future.

Towering over the waves of the North Sea like an army of giants, blades whipping through the wind, the turbines were the country’s best hope to curb carbon emissions and meet growing demand for electricity.

The 36 turbines — each one the height of a 30-storey building — produce enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 100,000 households each year.

But five years later the green future looks a long way off. Faced with the need to cut its budget deficit, the Dutch government says offshore wind power is too expensive and that it cannot afford to subsidize the entire cost of 18 cents per kilowatt hour — some 4.5 billion euros last year.

The government now plans to transfer the financial burden to households and industrial consumers in order to secure the funds for wind power and try to attract private sector investment.

It will start billing consumers and companies in January 2013 and simultaneously launch a system under which investors will be able to apply to participate in renewable energy projects.

But the new billing system will reap only a third of what was previously available to the industry in subsidies — the government forecasts 1.5 billion euros every year — while the pricing scale of the investment plan makes it more likely that interested parties will choose less expensive technologies than wind.

The outlook for Dutch wind projects seems bleak.

U.S. liberals and leftists like Europe for all the wrong reasons, seeing it as the home of secular views, the welfare state and (although they won’t admit this) the dominance of people who think like them.

But of course there are some policy lessons to be learned from Europe. Their system of tort liability is much more rational than ours — which is maintained by liberals and Democrats because it benefits a key element of the Democratic coalition, the trial lawyers.

And Sweden has the most extensive system of school choice in the industrialized world.

But if liberals don’t want to learn these lessons from Europe, they probably won’t learn anything from the failure of wind power either.

Is the Wisconsin Public Radio Audience Ideologically Balanced?

2011-11-19T14:41:00.008-06:00

The stereotype of public radio is that the audience skews left, and a fair amount of reputable polling supports that view.

Which is why it surprised us, when we just checked the web page of the Joy Cardin show to find two polls on the union issues that have roiled Wisconsin for months. One asked respondents whether they would sign a petition to recall Scott Walker. The other asked whether the Ohio voters “got it right” when they rejected a package of union reforms similar to those of Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

Interestingly, both polls show quite a balanced outcome.

Of course, polls where people self-select into the sample aren’t scientific. But when they have a bias, the bias is usually to over represent the people who feel most intense.

Maybe the WPR audience is not so much “union left” as the “yuppie left,” and not knee jerk in it’s support of a labor agenda. Or maybe there is some conservative campaign to pile onto this poll (although we haven’t heard of such).

Let’s just say this is a data point that conflicts with the stereotype.

Marquette College Democrats Not Allowed to Call Their Recall Walker Table a “Recall Walker” Table

2011-11-16T12:36:00.010-06:00

Just a couple of hours ago we were in the Union, and saw a table the College Democrats had set up to collect signatures on a petition to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

But no sign said “Recall Walker.” Marquette’s Student Affairs office won’t let the group call the table a “Recall Walker” table.

It has to be a “petition signing” table

Why? The College Democrats were a bit vague on the bureaucratic logic behind this, but we suspect it’s because Marquette, as an institution, can’t engage in “electioneering.” We have blogged about this, and how Marquette has taken an excessively narrow and risk averse position on the issue.

Of course, not calling the table a “Recall Walker” table doesn’t change the fact that that’s what it is.

And indeed, student organizations have often, on this campus, engaged in electioneering.

Ian Jamieson, the person at Student Affairs who is responsible for this restriction, was not immediately available to comment.

When he provides us with an explanation, we will post it here.

But we have a hard time seeing how any explanation will be plausible (other than from a very narrow bureaucratic perspective).

Hey Guys, Let’s Indoctrinate the Kids!

2011-11-14T17:00:00.002-06:00

Sexual Assault at Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-02T12:55:00.001-05:00

Colbert Sends Up Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-02T11:37:00.003-05:00

Not In This Case

2011-10-28T21:42:00.000-05:00

Michael Coren Tells Off the “Occupy” Crowd

2011-10-21T17:11:00.003-05:00

Marquette’s Education School Supports Terrorist, Anti-Private Schools Organization

2011-10-18T13:59:00.013-05:00

From Badger Catholic:

Marquette University, Alverno College, and Mount Mary College are listed as sponsoring the speaking engagement of terrorist Bill Ayers at Stonefly Brewery in Milwaukee.

The host group Rethink Education is like a socialist/communist/activist movement ostensibly for “better” schools (which I think we all agree we need) but that comes at the price of indoctrination; like what they wrote about a teacher coming out as a lesbian to her students.

It’s ironic that Milwaukee Catholic schools are in direct competition with public schools and yet all the Milwaukee Catholic colleges signed on to co-sponsor that event, when Rethinking Schools is anti-private-schools.

The real story here is a bit more complicated, but equally appalling.

The Marquette Education College as a whole did not support the event, but rather only the Educational Policy and Leadership program. Education College Dean William Henk disclaimed any knowledge of the sponsorship, but noted that a particular department or program might have sponsored the event.

Ellen Eckman, Chair of Educational Policy and Leadership, confirmed that her department had ponied up the $250 for the sponsorship.

Eckman, asked whether she was put off by the fact that Ayers is an unrepentant former terrorist, replied that “I see him as an educational professor dealing with reform.” She added “We use a tremendous amount of Rethinking Schools materials. . . .”

Asked whether she saw their agenda as hostile to choice schools or private schools or Catholic parochial schools, Eckman said she didn’t see this as being the case, and that they are “interested in creating really good thoughtful teachers.”

We decided to ask someone who is actually in favor of school choice about this, going to George Mitchell, formerly of School Choice Wisconsin and a long-time pro-school choice activist. His reply:

Rethinking Schools was founded by Bob Peterson, the current president of the MTEA. The publication has contained countless articles over the years condemning school choice. Peterson’s wife, Barbara Miner, has what sometimes seems like a permanent commission from the Crossroads section [of the Journal-Sentinel] for anti-choice articles.

So it seems we have Marquette’s College of Education contributing not merely to an organization that honors an unrepentant terrorist, but one that opposes any competition with government-run schools, including that from Catholic schools.

Welcome to our “Catholic university.”

Eckman said “we’re in there with Mt. Mary and Alverno . . . they sponsored them too.”

This of course, it the argument that no sensible parent will accept from a teenager: everybody is doing it, so it must be fine.

In fact, this just shows that the corruption that afflicts “Catholic” colleges is rather widespread.

Education schools have a symbiotic relationship with the government education monopoly. That monopoly creates a demand for the education credentials that the education schools produce. Deep down, the people who produce those credentials know that a free education market would not value those credentials to nearly the degree that the government monopoly does, and for good reason.

The credentials the education schools provide have little to do with teaching effectiveness.

So as is typical at places like Marquette, if there is a conflict between a Catholic perspective, and secular political correctness, secular political correctness wins. This applies to the gay lobby, and it applies to the Education College.

Ward Connerly, Affirmative Action Opponent, to Speak at Law School

2011-10-17T18:50:00.003-05:00

From Marquette News Briefs:

Ward Connerly, founder and president of the American Civil Rights Institute, will speak at the Law School on Thursday, Oct. 27, at 12:10 p.m. Connerly, who is speaking at the Law School at the invitation of the Federalist Society, will present “Affirmative Action: Is It Equality or Discrimination?” RSVP online by Thursday, Oct. 20. Space is limited.

Connerly is in fact an heroic figure, fighting to end racial discrimination in an era when the politically correct kinds of discrimination (anti-white, anti-male) are embraced (although heavily out of fear) by most powerful institutions in society.

Documentary on Conservative Talk Radio, With a Milwaukee Focus

2011-10-15T13:57:00.006-05:00

Marquette’s Brien Farley (an employee of University Advancement) has spent several months working on a documentary about conservative talk radio, and has interviewed all the top talk radio hosts in the market (with the exception of Belling) as well as the most visible local critics of the genre.

The entire thing will be six parts, but at the moment the first three parts are available as streaming video on his website.

These are an absolute “must see” for anybody interested in conservative talk radio, Milwaukee politics or indeed the media in general.

[In the interests of full disclosure: we technically “supervised” the project as a Marquette internship for academic credit. In fact, Farley needed virtually no “supervision” as he is quite media savvy and politically savvy.]

Your humble blogger is one of the people featured in the video.

College Republicans to Protest College Democrats Support of “Occupy Milwaukee”

2011-10-13T23:32:00.009-05:00

Earlier today, we blogged about a plan by the Marquette College Democrats to drum up support for an “Occupy” event tomorrow under the Bridge at the library.

The actual “Occupy” event, involving leftists from all over, will be Saturday.

The College Republicans will be staging their own counter-protest nearby.

From a press release from the College Republicans:

Milwaukee, WI – On October 14, the Marquette community will see that not all young people believe in the victim mentality of the Occupy protesters. Members of the College Republicans at Marquette will be hosting an information table outside Raynor Library from 10am through 2pm in an effort to drown out those attempting to occupy America. The students will be promoting free market values, limited government, and exposing the lackluster, job-creating performance of the Obama Administration.

Professional protesters and freeloaders that make up the Occupy Wall Street movement has spread to cities across the country. These out-of-touch demonstrators will be continuing their blitzkrieg on American values in Milwaukee on Saturday, October 14th. The College Republicans of Marquette will be making a stand to defend their turf.

So the College Democrats and the College Republicans will be simultaneously holding demonstrations a few paces apart next to the library.

Cool.

We expect everything to be perfectly civil, although a bit of good-natured badinage between the two groups would be entirely appropriate.

We would urge everybody who will be on campus tomorrow to drop by and offer your support to whichever side you happen to favor.

Even asking polite but pointed questions of the side you oppose is fine. But any incivility hurts whatever point you are wanting to make.

And besides, any uncivil behavior these days is invariably caught on video and shortly made visible on You-Tube.

But we don’t see any problems. We expect everybody to have a good time.

The Occupy Wall Street Protesters

2011-10-13T13:46:00.002-05:00

There are tons of videos on these folks, but this is pretty good, and probably fairly representative.

Marquette College Democrats Drink the Kool-Aid: Supporting “Occupy Wall Street” Event

2011-10-13T09:42:00.014-05:00

From an e-mail to members of the College Democrats:

From: Heffernan, Erin
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 5:13 PM
To: LS-CollegeDemocrats
Subject: Occupy Wall Street event

Hey MU College dems!

Several things are going on this week you all should know about:

1. The occupy Wall Street movement is growing and Occupy Milwaukee is having their first protest this Saturday.

The Occupy Milwaukee’ movement has been endorsed by figures like Russ Feingold, Rob Zerban, the New York Times, and Nancy Pelosi. It is a great movement and we hope many of you can come out for the protest.

Here is a link for more information: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143038022460557

2. We are having an informational table under the bridge this Friday to advertise for the Occupy Wall Street event and to promote general membership. We need people to sit at the table in one hour shifts from 10am until 3pm. If you can make anytime at all during that period, please email us at: marquettedems@gmail.com

3. Once again, our next meeting on October 18th at 7pm we are holding e-board elections. If you are interested in running or voting you must come to the meeting in person. If you would like to run for a position you should also email a paragraph describing why you would like that position and what makes you qualified to us at: marquettedems@gmail.com. These paragraphs will be sent to the club to inform our member’s about each person running.

Here is a link to RSVP for the meeting/elections: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=247051955337218

And if you haven’t already:

Like us on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Marquette-University-College-Democrats/168055839891684

Follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/MarquetteDems

Thanks and have a great week!

Erin Heffernan
College of Arts & Sciences, ‘14
Secretary, College Democrats
Marquette University
erin.heffernan@marquette.edu

Historically, this is out of character for the Marquette College Democrats.

The organization has traditionally been dominated by students who were moderate liberals, not given to anti-capitalist rhetoric. And the reason for that has been that the College Democrats have been students with an interest in real-world politics: working on campaigns, interning on Capitol Hill, and so on.

You can be liberal and do that, but you can’t be extreme.

But now they are associating themselves with a bunch of air-headed, supercilious, smug, spoiled and not-very-bright people.

To the extent that the movement has a coherent message, it’s socialist.

But mostly it’s whining about the trials of privileged kids who can skip class, and who got to go to an expensive college because daddy worked for one of those corporations they are demonizing.

They feel put-upon because their Women’s Studies major doesn’t get them a good paying job. And they think it’s unfair that they have to repay student loans.

Thus it seems the Marquette College Democrats have lurched to the left.

[Update]

Rick Esenberg nailed the issue of the protests in a recent blog post:

The occupation protests are straight up demagoguery. The protesters are either incoherent (rants about “corporations,” “we are the 99%”) or call for incredibly stupid and destructive things (guaranteed “living” incomes or debt forgiveness.)

The protests are less about a program than they are about a psychology. They are fueled by the frisson of opposition and manned by the usual suspects. To be sure, there is real economic uncertainty. If you borrowed $100,000 for a degree in Comparative Literature, the prospect of paying it back with your earnings at Noodles is frightening. Unemployment is scary. Underemployment is frustrating and there is too much of both.

But the protesters have no solution. The “movement” largely reduces to a claim that other people have something that I want and should be made to give it to me. It’s easy to rail about a few people who are very wealthy but the notion that the nation’s economic problems can be solved by taking their stuff away doesn’t bear the slightest scrutiny. You can’t balance the budget that way. You can’t solve sluggish economic demand. Maybe the world would be a better place if Steve Jobs and Bill Gates couldn’t become filthy rich by revolutionizing the way we live and work, but I don’t think so.

There is a reasonable critique of government bailouts and the overheated financial industry but it’s a complicated one that can’t be reduced to narratives about greed (although greed is certainly part of the story) or unfettered capitalism.

I think that the occupation protests will wither away but expect continued emphasis on the class warfare theme by the Democrats and their allies. Without an unexpected economic turnabout, the President can’t run for re-election based on his record. He needs a scapegoat - someone to blame and somebody to fear.

Move to Start a Libertarian Student Group at Marquette

2011-10-12T11:55:00.004-05:00

A Marquette student named Ryan Kulp wants to start an organization called Students for Liberty on the Marquette campus.

You can see the flyer here.

A lot of people call themselves libertarians, and we rather like some and aren’t a fan of some others. We think of Ron Paul as close to being a crackpot. And the Wisconsin Libertarian Party has had a badly misbegotten flirtation with 9/11 conspiracy theories.

On the other hand, the flyer associates Students for Liberty with the Cato Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies, two organization for which we have a great deal of respect.

Our view about speech and political discourse on campus is “the more, the merrier.”

Kulp only needs a small handful of students to sign on to begin the process of getting recognition as a student group at Marquette.

Any student who is a Ron Paul fan, or maybe not a Ron Paul fan but considers themselves a libertarian, would do well to contact Kulp and ask for more information.

Free Speech Wins Over Gay Political Correctness in Texas

2011-10-07T20:38:00.003-05:00

We blogged about this a while ago, and now we find that a student who offered the polite opinion that homosexuality is sinful has been vindicated, and the teacher who persecuted him has been put on administrative leave.

The problem with this, of course, is that for every conservative Christian kid who is willing to challenge the orthodoxy there are doubtless several who shut up rather than endure a hassle.

The gay lobby prates constantly about “bullying,” but in fact it’s the conservative Christian students who are most likely to be bullied by teachers and school officials.

This has certainly been the case at Marquette, where the gay lobby tried to get the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship thrown off campus.

The News Catches Up With The Onion

2011-09-29T21:54:00.004-05:00

An Onion video from April, 2009.

9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says

And a very recent headline in the Guardian.

Al-Qaida calls on Ahmadinejad to end 9/11 conspiracy theories

Terrorist organisation’s magazine reportedly says it is ‘ridiculous’ for Iran’s president to blame the attacks on the US government

Yahoo Professor Hates F-word, But Only if Directed at Obama

2011-09-24T17:23:00.005-05:00

Warning: Raw Language

From the Daily Caller:

Insulting the president and other government officials is practically a national pastime in the United States. This is a testament to the freedom of our society; in some parts of the world, insulting those who govern earns you swift punishment, or at least official censorship. That isn’t the case in America — unless you live on a college campus.

Students at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) in Texas found this out the hard way yesterday when they erected a “free speech wall” — a recently popular way for students to highlight the importance of free speech in which students put up a freestanding wall covered in paper, upon which anyone can write anything they want. Students jumped on the chance to participate. To cite a few examples: “Don’t hate against Gays . . .,” “If you make less than $200,000 Republicans don’t care about you,” “Life’s not a bitch, Life is a beautiful woman . . .,” “Han Solo Shot First,” “My boyfriend is a liar!,” “Legalize Weed!!!,” and “NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF!!!”

But just hours in, the free speech wall was vandalized by a professor — yes, a professor! — who was offended that someone had written “FUCK OBAMA” on the free speech wall. Students being students, the “F-word” was written on the wall many times about many different topics, but apparently the only expletive that offended this professor enough to take action was the one referring to President Obama.

The professor, whom students identified as Joe Kirk, demanded that the student groups sponsoring the wall — including Republicans, Democrats, libertarians and socialists — cover up only the Obama statement. They refused. He then told them that he would come back with a box cutter and cut it out of the wall himself, which he then did. You can see the before and after pictures at thefire.org.

Shocked that a professor would do this, the student organizers got in touch with the campus police. When the police arrived, they interviewed the students and the vandalizing professor. Then came the surprise: The police told the students that since Prof. Kirk was offended by some profanity on the wall, the students were engaging in “disorderly conduct,” a misdemeanor, and had to cover up all the swear words on the wall or take it down. Realizing that this would make a mockery out of the purpose of a free speech wall, the students simply disassembled the wall. Thus ended SHSU’s several hour-long experiment with free speech.

. . . the police, by threatening to charge the students with disorderly conduct rather than Prof. Kirk with vandalism, have established a “heckler’s veto” on SHSU’s campus. Institutions grant a “heckler’s veto” over expression when they allow the reactions of those who hear or see the expression to govern what might be said, creating an incentive for people to act disruptively or violently when confronted with speech they don’t like in the expectation that the police will shut it down. That’s precisely what happened in this case: Prof. Kirk’s destructive vandalism and claims of offense led the police to silence the expression of every student who wrote on the Free Speech Wall.

Of course, trying to use a “heckler’s veto” is a standard tactic of the campus left. Threaten disorder, and way too many college administrations will shut up the speech the left dislikes, rather than clamp down on the disruptors.

It will be interesting to see whether Kirk is subjected to any kind of punishment. We doubt it will happen, since most college administrators (and the loud leftist lobby on most campuses) see nothing wrong with shutting up speech.

Just how many Marquette professors would do this? Very few, if any.

How many Marquette professors would defend what Kirk did, and insist that the student didn’t really have the right to make a vulgar comment on Obama? Quite a lot.

Cultural Odd Couple

2011-09-24T15:06:00.006-05:00

From the Jewish website www.ynetnews.com, an account of something that looks like an interesting multicultural experience.

JNF looks to the future with MC Hammer

Jewish National Fund’s Future Party in Toronto features American rap musician, with proceeds going toward development of sports field in Israel’s Kibbutz Hahotrim

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) has come a long way since the days its Blue Box (pushke) was its most recognizable feature. While the JNF continues to build Israel today, it also continues to have an eye to the future.

So, it should come as no surprise that on Thursday, September 22, the JNF will be holding its Future Party – featuring a talented musical icon, and a man who made balloon pants look good, MC Hammer, at Toronto’s Corus Quay (25 Dockside Drive).

Proceeds raised from the Future Party will go toward the development of a sports field at the Yafit Park complex in Kibbutz Hahotrim in the northern Carmel coast. The project will be an additional element in the park – a multi-functional sports field where the kibbutz residents can enjoy games of football, volleyball and basketball.

Hip hop (even from a fellow who peaked two decades ago) might not seem to go with things Jewish.

But hey, why not?

Obama Hails America’s Building of the “Intercontinental Railroad”

2011-09-23T19:11:00.006-05:00

Yes, he said that.

The Harvard graduate (of course we all suspect he was an affirmative action admit) doesn’t know the difference between “intercontinental” and “transcontinental.”

Gay Fascism: In Texas This Time

2011-09-23T18:48:00.003-05:00

From Fox News:

An honors student in Fort Worth, Texas, was sent to the principal’s office and punished for telling a classmate that he believes homosexuality is wrong.

Holly Pope said she was “absolutely stunned” when she received a telephone call from an assistant principal at Western Hills High School informing her that her son, Dakota Ary, had been sent to in-school suspension.

“Dakota is a very well-grounded 14-year-old,” she told Fox News Radio noting that her son is an honors student, plays on the football team and is active in his church youth group. “He’s been in church his whole life and he’s been taught to stand up for what he believes.”

And that’s what got him in trouble.

Dakota was in a German class at the high school when the conversation shifted to religion and homosexuality in Germany. At some point during the conversation, he turned to a friend and said that he was a Christian and “being a homosexual is wrong.”

“It wasn’t directed to anyone except my friend who was sitting behind me,” Dakota told Fox. “I guess [the teacher] heard me. He started yelling. He told me he was going to write me an infraction and send me to the office.”

Dakota was sentenced to one day in-school suspension – and two days of full suspension. His mother was flabbergasted, noting that her son had a spotless record, was an honor student, volunteered at his church and played on the school football team.

Officials at the high school did not return calls for comment. However, the Fort Worth Independent School District issued a statement that read:

“As a matter of course, Fort Worth ISD does not comment on specific employee or student-related issues. Suffice it to say that we are following district policy in our review of the circumstances and any resolution will likewise be in accordance with district policy.”

After a meeting with Pope and her attorney, the school rescinded the two-day suspension so Dakota would be allowed to play in an upcoming football game.

“They’ve righted all the wrongs,” said Matt Krause, an attorney with the Liberty Counsel. “This should have no lasting effect on his academic or personal record going forward.”

Pope contacted the Liberty Counsel immediately after her son was punished.

It’s good that the intervention of the Liberty Counsel set this right. But the disturbing question is: how many students sit silently intimidated? How many accept punishment for their heretical opinions because they don’t want the publicity or hassle?

“I told the school that he should never have been suspended for exercising his Constitutional rights,” Krause told Fox News Radio. “The principal is sincere in trying to do the right thing and hopefully they will tell the teacher, ‘Do not do that anymore.’ He won’t be pushing his agenda.”

Krause called the incident “mind blowing” and said the teacher had frequently brought homosexuality into ninth grade classroom discussions.

“There has been a history with this teacher in the class regarding homosexual topics,” Krause said. “The teacher had posted a picture of two men kissing on a wall that offended some of the students.”

Krause said the picture was posted on the teacher’s “world wall.”

“He told the students this is happening all over the world and you need to accept the fact that homosexuality is just part of our culture now,” Krause said.

Of course, telling students they “need to accept” homosexuality is a clear violation of religious liberty. If a conservative Christian teacher told students that they “need to accept” that homosexuality is sinful, the teacher would quickly be in big trouble.

The school district would not comment on why a teacher was discussing homosexuality in a ninth grade German class.

“In German class there should be no talk of being pro-Gay or homosexual topics,” Krause said.

Dakota’s mother said she believes the teacher should apologize.

“He should never have been punished,” Pope said. “He didn’t disrupt the class. He wasn’t threatening. He wasn’t hostile. He made a comment to his friend and the teacher overheard it.”

“My son knows people that are homosexual,” she said. “He’s not saying, ‘I don’t like you.’ He’s saying, ‘I’m a Christian and I believe that being that way is wrong.’”

Krause said school leaders told Dakota that in the future he should be careful when and where he talks about his opposition to homosexuality – suggesting that he talk about such matters in the hallway instead of the classroom.

Of course, students wanting to insist that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle would never be told to be careful. Indeed, speaking up in class would be encouraged.

He said Liberty Counsel will monitor the situation to make sure there is no future retaliation. Meantime, Pope said her son will return to the teacher’s classroom.

“I’ve told him to treat this teacher with respect,” she said. “He is your elder. He is your teacher. What his beliefs are or what they are not – outside the school is none of our business.”

The teacher, quite simply, was engaged in indoctrination, and came down on a student who was resisting the indoctrination.

Award: Best Headline on an Opinion Column About Obama

2011-09-19T18:27:00.000-05:00

961 days in, Obama becomes sick and tired of someone dawdling about jobs

Arts & Sciences Dean Search Delayed a Year

2011-09-15T14:19:00.004-05:00

From an e-mail sent out to Arts and Sciences faculty by Marquette President Scott Pilarz:

The conversations with so many of you and my own conviction about the centrality of this college to the future of Marquette University have helped me to conclude that it is in the best interests of the college — and the university — to have Father Phil Rossi continue as interim dean through the 2012-2013 academic year. I am grateful to Father Rossi both for his past service and for his continuing leadership, and I have pledged my support to him as he continues to help the college move forward. Fr. Rossi’s leadership and the continued involvement of the Arts and Sciences chairs will be critical in our discernment and planning for a new dean.

I have asked Provost John Pauly to work with the college during the next eight months to identify the challenges and opportunities facing the college and what we should be looking for in a new dean. I intend to be part of that process as well, recognizing the importance of this hire. It is then my intent to launch a national search in fall 2012. This decision will be announced to the campus community in this afternoon’s News Briefs.

I want to thank you for the support I am confident you will continue to give Father Rossi and to urge you to be actively involved as we assess the future of the college. Thank you.

Scott Pilarz, S.J.

In the spring of 2010, the search to fill this dean position turned into a monumental fiasco when an outspoken lesbian was offered the job, and then the offer was rescinded when the nature of the things she has written (anti-marriage, discussion of sex toys) became known.

Pilarz apparently decided this entire issue is a hot potato, and that he needs to get his ducks in line before tackles it.

But what sort of ducks does he want to get in line? Among the numerous politically correct faculty and administrators at Marquette, hiring a gay or lesbian dean would be a dandy idea, and especially a way of making amends to the campus gay lobby. Make no mistake, most administrators at Marquette (at least those on the academic side, in Student Affairs and in Mission and Identity) are strong promoters of the gay agenda.

Pilarz himself, judging from the “inclusion initiative” he put in place at Scranton seems to be rather politically correct. But our guess is that he will not want to reopen the issue of a lesbian (or gay) dean.

One thing is sure: when the search takes place, all candidates will received vastly more scrutiny than they have been subjected to in the past.

College Republican’s 9/11 Memorial

2011-09-11T21:22:00.013-05:00

From a press release sent by the Marquette College Republicans:

This morning the College Republicans of Marquette placed 3,000 flags outside the Alumni Memorial Union as a memorial to every life lost ten years ago. Over 20 members of the club worked early to remember the lives and to place a temporary memorial for the Marquette Community to pay their respects to the victims. Passers by commended the club on their willingness to remember the anniversary in a big way.

In addition to the flag display, the College Republicans posted a memorial flag inside the Union. The flag consists of 3x5 pieces of construction paper with memories and thoughts,of the Marquette Community. Marquette’s Republicans collected the handwritten memories last week from both political parties at tables in the Union.

“We had some shocking memories,” said the clubs Chairman Ethan Hollenberger, “several people lost family members ten years ago. While the students at Marquette were only 8,9,10, and 11, the memories and the effects are strong. I think we have effectively recreated the patriotism spurred from ten years ago; however, nothing will replace the pain suffered by those who lost loved ones. The College Republicans are praying for the families of the 2,977 victims.”

The flag display will remain today until 9pm while the Memorial Flag will be up all week inside the Union. Those who have not placed a memory on the flag are encouraged to find an empty space.

Interestingly, events commemorating 9/11 have been pretty scarce on campus. This, in fact is the only one we know of.

(One program — not exactly a memorial but certainly related — is the speech at the Law School of Gordon Haberman, the father of a 9/11 victim.)

It seems odd that such a watershed event would not be the subject of multiple memorials, forums, speeches and discussions.

Is this the result of political correctness, since it is a hard sell to paint America as anything other than the victim of fanatical Muslim extremists? Some people at Marquette try, but it’s not convincing.

Of course, it’s early in the semester, and departments, schools and student organizations may simply not have gotten “up to speed” in programming.

Probably some of both factors are operating.

But kudos to the College Republicans for getting this organized.

[Update]

A couple of commenters have pointed out a worthy event held by the Communications College.

Kudos to the Communications College for that. But the video is a collection of inspiring personal stories, and not any sort of hard-edged political or geopolitical analysis. More of the latter was clearly called for on campus.

Marquette Backs Off: Reveals the Race of Armed Robbers

2011-08-30T08:48:00.006-05:00

After we publicized the fact that Marquette was concealing the race of people who robbed Marquette students with the use of a weapon, and after Charlie Sykes thoroughly chewed out the University on yesterday’s show, Marquette has apparently relented and decided its position is indefensible.

From a Public Safety Alert sent out shortly after midnight last night:

An armed robbery was reported at 11:50 p.m., August 30. An alumna and a student were in the 800 block of North 22nd Street when they were approached by two males who showed a weapon and demanded cash. One of the subjects took the alumna’s purse, then both fled northbound on foot on North 22nd Street then westbound on West Kilbourn Avenue. Both subjects are described as African American males in their late teens or early twenties, clean shaven with short hair. The first subject, who was armed, was described as wearing a gray hoodie with blue lettering and dark shorts. The second subject was described as wearing a dark hoodie and dark shorts.

It’s good that Marquette has backed off a silly, excessively politically correct policy.

But the University’s failure to honestly acknowledge the policy still leaves a bad odor.

Marquette Students Victims of Armed Robbery: University Conceals Race of Suspects

2011-08-28T19:22:00.018-05:00

Marquette routinely sends out “Public Safety Alerts” when there has been a crime near campus. Those alerts serve to warn members of the Marquette community to be careful. But also, the alerts virtually always include a description of the suspect or suspects. Presumably, some alert person might see and report the suspects.

Until just recently, the descriptions have included the one most useful piece of information: the race of the suspect.

A public safety alert in 2008, for example, described two armed robbery suspects as follows:

Subject 1: Black male, 18-20 years of age, 5’8”-5’10”, medium build, wearing a black-hooded sweatshirt and black jeans

Subject 2: Black male, 18-20 years of age, 5’8”-5’10”, medium build, wearing a black-hooded sweatshirt and black jeans

And as recently as July 1 of this year, a suspect in another armed robbery was described as:

The subject is described as a black male, 25 to 30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, slim build, dark complexion, short black hair, wearing a gray T-shirt and blue jeans.

But on August 1 of this year, another Public Safety Alert, described yet another armed robbery:

Marquette Public Safety responded to an armed robbery about 11:30 p.m. Sunday (July 31). An alumnus was approached by two suspects with a weapon in the 700 block of North 23rd Street. The victim surrendered his cell phone and some keys. The two suspects fled northbound onto North 23rd Street and then westbound onto West Wells Street. The victim was not physically injured during the incident. Both DPS and the Milwaukee Police Department searched the area and are still investigating.

What is missing? Any description of the robbers at all.

We thought this odd, and made an inquiry with Kate Venne, official spokeswoman for Marquette, and was told that the only descriptions available from the victim were too vague to be of any value. We called Public Safety, and an officer there told us they did not want to “profile” on the basis of race, and repeated that the descriptions were too vague.

The Pretense Blown

But then Saturday night, we got yet another Public Safety Alert, describing yet another armed robbery. The description of the suspect was given as follows:

A man, described as in his 40s, approximately 5’8” tall, wearing a white t-shirt, dark pants, a black baseball cap and a fanny pack, approached a student outside a residence in the 2100 block of West Michigan Avenue.

This isn’t vague. In fact it’s pretty precise. Yet there is no mention of the race of the robber.

We wrote Venne, asking why the race of the robber was not mentioned, and she responded that:

Hi John: Those decisions are made on a case by case basis in consultation with DPS.

Thanks.

This, of course, was an evasion, not an answer. So we e-mailed her back and asked:

Then perhaps you can explain why, in this case, there was no mention of race?

It’s not credible that the race of the offender was not known. It is also not credible that it would not be helpful in identifying the person, should he try to rob somebody again.

She has not responded.

Then very shortly thereafter, we received yet another Public Safety Alert, describing yet another armed robbery. The two suspects were described as follows:

The first man is described as between 22 and 25 years old, thin build and was wearing a black hoodie and blue jeans. The second man is described as approximately the same age, thin build, 6’0 tall wearing blue jeans and a grey t-shirt.

Again, we have two very specific descriptions, and no mention of race.

Venne’s claim that decisions to reveal the race of a robber are made on a “case by case” basis simply has no credibility. There is no conceivable justification for including a rather detailed description and omitting race.

What was have here is obviously yet another example of political correctness.

Ironically, failure to include race won’t stop people from concluding that the robbers were black. Given neighborhoods near Marquette, and the well-known fact that blacks in Milwaukee commit proportionally many more crimes than whites, everybody will assume that the offender whose race is concealed is black.

And this applies to people who are too politically correct to admit that they assume that.

What Should Parents Think?

We are sure that parents who pay good money to send their children to Marquette truly appreciate the fact that when their children’s safety conflicts with political correctness, the former is sacrificed to the latter.

And of course we all will draw certain conclusions when Marquette, through its spokeswoman, provides an evasive and disingenuous explanation.

Want a Resident Assistant’s Job? At Marquette You Must Submit to Thought Reform

2011-08-27T09:28:00.008-05:00

From MUScoop (which is mostly a sports discussion board, but which sometimes ventures into other campus issues):

An account of how the Office of Residence Life engages in indoctrination of students, and especially people who are Resident Assistants.

One person posted a link to an ORL event called Remove the Blindfold. This is described as:

. . . an annual event sponsored by RHA that promotes awareness about many social justice issues facing the world today. The experience of attending Remove the Blindfold should stimulate thoughts, feelings, and emotions around the issues and images presented. The hope is that through this experience, students will become more aware of social injustices and move toward positive change by taking action.

Such events, of course, are profoundly anti-intellectual. It’s assumed that there are no contentious issues about which there is a legitimate debate. Rather, there is only “injustice.” And it’s always obvious to those who have “removed the blindfold” what constitutes an injustice. For example, it’s assumes that a lack of affirmative action is an injustice. If you believe that having affirmative action is an injustice, you must be a racist.

And note the elitist assumption that people who don’t see the world the way ORL staff do are blinded. In fact, ORL staff live in the narrow and parochial world of student affairs bureaucrats, and lack both the competence and the open-mindedness to deal with serious public issues.

One might think that silly events like this aren’t of much import, but another poster explained something much more intolerant and insidious:

As an RA for 2 years, I was required to participate in this program, as well as numerous other “diversity” oriented programs. I can say with no amount of exaggeration that they were very anti-male, anti-white, etc. We were bussed to the LGBT Center on MLK Drive as part of our “sensitivity training,” and it was intimated that anyone whose personal beliefs contradicted their agenda was backward and bigoted.

This stuff is all over in MU’s administration. As an openly Evangelical Christian, there were numerous times when I was made to feel that my beliefs were not acceptable within ORL. The ironic thing about the PC movement is that everyone’s beliefs are acceptable unless you disagree with them...

This stuff is indeed “all over all over in MU’s administration.” Freshman orientation, for example, contains a heavy dose of politically correct indoctrination. And not only are freshman students indoctrinated, but students who work in orientation are subjected to what we described as Stalinist thought reform.

And at Marquette, as elsewhere in academia, these things are defended in terms of “tolerance” and “diversity.”

Feminism Explained

2011-08-26T14:22:00.002-05:00

Speakers at the Law School

2011-08-25T17:09:00.005-05:00

On the Issues with Mike Gousha

Tuesday, September 6—Gordon Haberman, father of 9-11 victim Andrea Haberman—On September 11, 2001, Gordon Haberman’s 25-year-old daughter was on a business trip to New York. Andrea Haberman was on the 92nd floor of the north tower of the World Trade Center when terrorists slammed a hijacked plane into the building. She and 3,000 others died in the series of attacks on America on 9-11. Just days before the 10th anniversary of the attacks, Gordon Haberman will share the story of his daughter and his family’s search for answers and justice. It’s a journey that has taken him from Washington County to Washington, D.C, and all the way to Guantánamo. What have we learned 10 years after 9-11? Marquette Law School, Eckstein Hall, 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. Registration link.

Friday, September 16—State Senators Dale Schultz and Tim Cullen—Senator Schultz is a Republican from Richland Center. Senator Cullen is a Democrat from Janesville. Together, they’ve launched what they’re calling their “Common Ground” tour. After a summer of bitter recall elections, Schultz and Cullen are pushing for a new era of bipartisan cooperation in Madison. They’re also introducing a constitutional amendment that would end Supreme Court elections in Wisconsin, and replace them with a merit-based selection program. Should justices be appointed rather than elected? Can Republicans and Democrats work together? Senators Schultz and Cullen will address those questions and more when they visit Eckstein Hall. Marquette Law School, Eckstein Hall, 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. Registration link.

Thursday, October 20—Wisconsin U.S. Representative Gwen Moore— After serving 16 years as a state lawmaker, Congresswoman Moore was elected to the House of Representatives in 2004. The Milwaukee Democrat represents Wisconsin’s 4th District, which includes Milwaukee and her alma mater, Marquette University. Moore is a member of the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Budget Committee. In addition to her committee work, Congresswoman Moore was elected Democratic co-chair of the Congressional Women’s Caucus by her female colleagues. She’ll discuss the critical issues facing this nation, and today’s political climate, during her appearance at the Law School. Marquette Law School, Eckstein Hall, 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. Registration link.

Tuesday, October 11—Abby Ramirez, Executive Director of Schools That Can Milwaukee—A former business executive, Abby Ramirez has quickly become a leading voice for education reform in Milwaukee. The goal of the organization she co-founded, Schools That Can Milwaukee, is to have 20,000 children in high-performing urban schools—public, charter, and choice—by 2020. To do that, Ramirez and her organization work to identify schools where children are succeeding, and then attempt to replicate those models across the city. In addition to her business background, Ramirez worked on public policy issues for a California-based foundation. A passionate believer in the power of education to transform, Ramirez received her B.S. in Commerce from the University of Virginia. She has an M.B.A. and M.A. in Education from Stanford University. Marquette Law School, Eckstein Hall, 12:15 to 1:15 p.m. Registration link.

We have long been a fan of Mike Gousha’s speakers series at the Law School. This is partly because it’s ideologically balanced, but also because Gousha has an excellent record of lining up the movers and shakers who matter in Wisconsin politics (and occasionally, in national politics). These aren’t the most profound intellectuals around, but you can’t really understand Wisconsin politics without hearing them and knowing how they think and what they say.

Obama on Bush Budget Deficit

2011-08-24T13:23:00.005-05:00

Warren Buffett is a Hypocrite in Three Ways

2011-08-24T11:32:00.008-05:00

From Jeff Jacoby, a discussion of multi-billionaire Warren Buffett, who thinks the rich should pay more taxes.

Jocoby makes a point that many others have made: if Buffett thinks he is under-taxed, he is perfectly free to make a voluntary contribution to the Treasury. It’s easy to do, and indeed the Treasury Department has a web page explaining how to do that.

But that’s just the beginning of his hypocrisy. As Jacoby notes:

Buffett isn’t greedy. He is an extraordinary philanthropist who has undertaken to give 99 percent of his immense fortune to charity, and who, with Bill Gates, actively encourages other billionaires to spend down half or more of their wealth in charitable donations.

And why is he giving all that money to charity instead of to Uncle Sam? Because, as he has said in interviews, he knows it will do more good that way and be used more effectively. Who would disagree? For all Buffett’s talk of being undertaxed, he believes what nearly everyone believes — that he can allocate his money more wisely than the government. And not just that he can, but that he should.

Indeed, Buffett has said:

Well, that’s a choice and it’s an option that... If I had to give it to a single individual, or make some young Buffett a multi-billionaire, or give it to the government, I’d absolutely give it to the government. I think that on balance the Gates Foundation, my daughter’s foundation, my two sons’ foundations, will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government.

Of course, there is one final form of hypocrisy that Buffett is engaged in.

By demanding that the rich be taxed at a higher rate, he becomes the darling of the liberals. The mainstream media dote over him. He is treated like some maverick who has put the interests of the country ahead of his own interests, and the interests of his social class.

Yet Buffett knows that Republicans in Congress will protect him (and other rich people) from the higher tax rates that he endorses! So he gets the best of both worlds: he is a hero to the liberals, and he still gets to keep his money — or dispose of it exactly as he chooses.

As Jacoby puts it:

When the Sage of Omaha calls for higher taxes, his words get plenty of attention. But his actions speak louder, and convey a markedly different message.

Buffett, in other words, is an example of the corruption that ensues when class warfare becomes a normal sort of politics.

More Gay Fascism: Teacher Suspended for Anti-Gay Marriage Views

2011-08-19T21:23:00.003-05:00

From Fox News:

A former “Teacher of the Year” in Mount Dora, Fla. has been suspended and could lose his job after he voiced his objection to gay marriage on his personal Facebook page.

Jerry Buell, a veteran American history teacher at Mount Dora High School, was removed from his teaching duties this week as school officials in Lake County investigate allegations that what he posted was biased towards homosexuals.

“We took the allegations seriously,” said Chris Patton, a communication officer with Lake County Schools. “All teachers are bound by a code of special ethics (and) this is a code ethics violation investigation.”

Patton said the school system received a complaint on Tuesday about something Buell had written last July when New York legalized same sex unions. On Wednesday, he was temporarily suspended from the classroom and reassigned.

Patton said Buell has taught in the school system for 22 years and has a spotless record. Last year, he was selected as the high school’s “Teacher of the Year.”

But now his job is on the line because of what some have called anti-gay and homophobic comments.

Buell told Fox News Radio that he was stunned by the accusations. “It was my own personal comment on my own personal time on my own personal computer in my own personal house, exercising what I believed as a social studies teacher to be my First Amendment rights,” he said.

The school system declined to comment on the specific Facebook messages that led to their investigation, but Buell provided Fox News Radio with a copy of the two Facebook messages that he said landed him in trouble.

The first was posted on July 25 at 5:43 p.m. as he was eating dinner and watching the evening news.

“I’m watching the news, eating dinner when the story about New York okaying same-sex unions came on and I almost threw up,” he wrote. “And now they showed two guys kissing after their announcement. If they want to call it a union, go ahead. But don’t insult a man and woman’s marriage by throwing it in the same cesspool of whatever. God will not be mocked. When did this sin become acceptable?”

Three minutes later, Buell posted another comment: “By the way, if one doesn’t like the most recently posted opinion based on biblical principles and God’s laws, then go ahead and unfriend me. I’ll miss you like I miss my kidney stone from 1994. And I will never accept it because God will never accept it. Romans chapter one.”

What is interesting about this is that if Buell had been a liberal teacher who lauded gay marriage, he would have no problem.

And if, instead of quoting the Bible, he had attacked the Bible as “homophobic,” that would be fine.

Quite simply, rejecting the Biblical view of homosexuality is now part of the official state religion, and heretics will be punished.

Buell’s attorney strongly disagreed and accused the school system of violating his First Amendment rights.

“The school district is being anti-straight, anti-First Amendment and anti-personal liberty,” said Horatio Mihet, an attorney with the Liberty Counsel. “The idea that public servants have to whole-heartedly endorse homosexual marriage is repugnant to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” Mihet told Fox News Radio.

“All he did was speak out on an issue of national importance and because his comments did not fit a particular mold, he is now being investigated and could possibly lose his job. What have we come to?”

Buell said he does not know the individual who filed the complaint, but the past week has caused his family “heartache.”

“To try and say you could lose your job over speaking about something in the venue that I did in the manner that I did is not just a knee-jerk reaction,” he said. “It’s a violent reaction to one person making a complaint.”

But Patton said the school system has an obligation to take the comments seriously. He said Buell will not be allowed back in the classroom “until we do all the interviews and do a thorough job of looking at everything – past or previous writings.”

Translation: Inquisition. Buell is charged with heresy, and the distinct will “investigate” whether he is indeed a heretic.

Buell believes the school system is trying to send a message to Christian teachers.

“There is an intimidation factor if you are a Christian or if you make a statement against it (gay marriage) you are a bigot, a homophobe, you’re a creep, you’re intolerant,” he said. “We should have the right to express our opinions and talk about things.”

Of course, voices representing the gay lobby simply don’t recognize any right to voice heresy.

Brett Winters, a former Mount Dora student, told the Orlando Sentinel he was disappointed about Buell’s comments. “This type of hateful language is dangerous not only to gay students, but also to anti-gay students,” Winters told the newspaper.

Michael Slaymaker, president of the Orlando Youth Alliance, told the newspaper that gay students might feel uncomfortable in Buell’s class.

“I would hope a teacher would be there to help them and not hurt them,” he told the Orlando Sentinel.

Of course, this reveals the crux of the issue.

Gay students are to be coddled and pandered to and never have to hear that their behavior is controversial. But Christian students have no such protection. One can’t imagine a liberal teacher who expresses support for gay marriage, either on a Facebook page or in the classroom, getting into trouble.

But of course Christian students would have an equal right to consider such a teacher hostile to them.

But their sensibilities don’t count among politically correct school bureaucrats.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people have joined at least two Facebook groups calling for the school system to reinstate the popular teacher. “He’s developed a reputation as being one of the most caring teachers in the school,” Mihet said.

Backing Away from the Brink: Marquette Will Not Suspend the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship

2011-08-09T12:31:00.003-05:00

[Originally posted 8/5/11, 10:14 a.m. Updated and moved to the top.]

It was an obvious outrage: two administrators in Marquette’s Office of Student Affairs (Ian Jamieson and Erin Lazzar) ruled that the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship would be suspended on the campus for a year because they dismissed an officer of the organization who “came out” as homosexual, said he was involved in a homosexual affair which he would continue, and rejected Christian teaching about homosexuality.

The decision was appealed to Dean of Students Stephanie Quade who just this morning (Friday, August 5) reversed the ruling and lifted the suspension.

The group will be on probation for a year for violating a narrow clause of their constitution specifying the procedures for dismissing an officer. The organization will also have to submit to a review of their constitution. It is unclear, at the moment, what changes (if any) might be required in that document.

It appears, however, that Marquette has conceded the right of a campus Christian organization to hold officers to Christian standards of sexual conduct.

The Intervarsity Christian Fellowship mobilized a campaign among alumni to write Marquette in support of the organization. Quade acknowledged receiving a large number of e-mails, but maintained that they had no role in her decision to reverse the suspension.

Still an Outrage

In spite of this about face on the part of Student Affairs, it is still an outrage that a Christian student organization should be threatened with suspension for merely insisting that officers in the organization must maintain Christian standards of conduct.

Not only did two Student Affairs bureaucrats rule against the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, a staffer with the Campus Ministry (Steve Blaha) according to a source close to the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship encouraged the gay student to make the complaint.

Neither Ian Jamieson nor Erin Lazzar nor Steve Blaha would comment on the situation. Jamieson e-mailed the Marquette Warrior stating that:

I have no comment to provide. I understand you’ve been in contact with Dr. Stephanie Quade who would be the best person to address specific questions about conduct cases or hearing processes.

Quade provided only a terse and evasive statement, as follows:

As you know, there was a student conduct case involving IVCF and an initial finding that was amended upon appeal. The group was found responsible for violating published policies and action was taken.

This action dealt with adherence to university policies and procedures governing student organizations, in this case the need to follow the procedures set forth in the organization’s constitution.

This, of course, entirely evades the fact that the result of the first adjudication was that the organization was guilty of discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” and given a stiff punishment (a years suspension).

We responded to Quade asking her to confirm that the initial decision (by Erin Lazzar and Ian Jamieson) involved a charge of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. She has not responded.

Erin Lazzar failed to respond to a voice mail request for an interview, and Blaha declined to comment on the grounds of student confidentiality.

Marquette did issue an official statement on the issue. Kate Venne provided us with a copy:

Marquette University has placed the campus chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship on probation for one year. The probation results from a finding that the chapter violated its own policies and procedures in dealing with a complaint.

This failure and the lack of clear communication regarding why action was taken caused significant personal hurt and resulted in allegations of discrimination.

No student conduct decision is final until the time in which to file an appeal has passed or an appeal is filed and decided. All students and student organizations have a right to appeal in accordance with the procedures outlined in the Student Conduct Code.

Marquette expects all student organizations to adhere to the university’s Statement on Human Dignity which “recognizes and cherishes the dignity of each individual regardless of age, culture, faith, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, language, disability or social class.” We want all students to be successful both academically and personally, and we are working with various groups on campus to ensure an inclusive and supportive institutional environment of all students, faculty and staff.

This evasive and disingenuous statement stresses the one procedural infraction of which the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship was guilty (lack of due process in bouncing the sexually active gay officer) and entirely evades the fact that the original finding was discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But the blather about “allegations of discrimination” and “inclusive environment” is an implicit admission that this is exactly what happened.

Conclusion

Marquette, in other words, acted like the politically correct institution it has become, siding with a sexually-active gay student who somehow thought he had a right to be an officer in the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, and in effect revoking the right of Christian student organizations to insist on Christian standards of conduct from their officers.

Pressure, including a letter writing campaign among the Intervarsity’s alumni and the outing of the action by radio host Mark Belling caused the university to back off. Now, of course, they won’t honestly admit a blunder.

John Kerry: Give Equal Time? Depends on Whether I Agree With the Viewpoint

2011-08-05T17:25:00.005-05:00

In the first clip, of course, he is referring to Tea Party people who didn’t want to increase the debt ceiling. But in the second, the context is a bit different.

Marquette Intervarsity Christian Fellowship Threatened With Suspension for Failure to Accept Sexually Active Homosexual Officer

2011-08-04T17:43:00.004-05:00

[Updated and Moved to the Top]

It was Mark Belling who first reported this at the very end of his show today, and we’ve been able to confirm some (but not all) of the details.

Apparently, an officer of the Marquette Intervarsity Christian Fellowship came “out of the closet” as gay. He made it quite clear that he disagreed with the organization’s interpretation of Christian teaching about homosexuality (which happens to be essentially identical to Catholic teaching about homosexuality).

He admitted to having a homosexual affair with another male, and made it clear that he did not intend to break it off. He was dismissed as an officer.

He complained to Student Affairs at Marquette, apparently claiming he was discriminated against because of his sexual orientation.

Belling reported that the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship has been suspended at Marquette on the basis of this complaint. According to Vice President for Student Affairs Chris Miller, this isn’t quite accurate. In fact, there was (within the past week) an adjudication of the issue, which upheld the complain of discrimination.

But the organization has not been suspended yet, since they have a right to appeal. The next step in the appeal process will be the Dean of Students, Stephanie Quade, who could, in theory at least, overturn the result of the adjudication.

Miller insisted on going on the record with some comments highly favorable to the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, calling them a “stellar student organization,” and a “great aspect” of student life at Marquette. He commended the interest that the organization’s alumni continue to take in the university.

Miller’s comments may signal that the Office of Student Affairs is willing to back down on this, but given Marquette’s recent record of caving in to each and every demand made by the campus gay lobby, one can’t be sure of that.

It’s clear that Marquette is not willing to stand up for Catholic teaching about homosexuality. The issue here is: are they even willing to tolerate it?

[Update 5:43 p.m. Thursday]

We just got this via e-mail from Stephanie Quade:

There was a student conduct hearing involving IVCF last week, the group appealed the outcome.

As I am the appellate officer in this matter, I cannot really comment on any of the specifics of the case while it is still pending, as I am sure you understand.

Hoping to have the appeal done by the end of the week.

We assume “end of the week” means tomorrow.

The original hearing was held by Student Affairs bureaucrats -- this being the summer, no students or faculty were involved.

Quade insists that her decision will be “final.”

It will be interesting to see how this turns out. We assume that the organization was charged with discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. But as we understand it, the problem wasn’t “orientation” but an actual homosexual affair, and the student’s outspoken rejection of Christian teaching about homosexuality.

So an interesting question is how this student differs from Jodi O’Brien, who had an offer to be Arts & Sciences Dean withdrawn because of her outspoken support for lesbianism.

Rape vs. Political Incorrectness on Homosexuality

Another interesting aspect of this is that the Office of Student Affairs, and specifically Stephanie Quade have created a lot of bad publicity for Marquette with their lackadaisical treatment of rape on campus.

So are they now going to get really tough on a Christian organization that insists its officers conform to Christian teachings on sexuality?

Might Satire Be More Accurate Than the Financial Columns of the New York Times?

2011-08-04T16:48:00.000-05:00

From The Onion:

Drunken Ben Bernanke Tells Everyone At Neighborhood Bar How Screwed U.S. Economy Really Is

More Sanctions Needed on North Korea

2011-08-04T16:02:00.002-05:00

Tensions Mount After North Korea Destroys All Of Asia

Walker’s Policies Are Working

2011-07-27T23:12:00.002-05:00

From the Weekly Standard:

Emily Koczela had been anxiously waiting for months for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s controversial budget repair bill to take effect. Koczela, the finance director for the Brown Deer school district, had been negotiating with the local union, trying to get it to accept concessions in order to make up for a $1 million budget shortfall. But the union wouldn’t budge.

“We laid off 27 [teachers] as a precautionary measure,” Koczela told me. “They were crying. Some of these people are my friends.”

On June 29 at 12:01 a.m., Koczela could finally breathe a sigh of relief. The budget repair bill—delayed for months by protests, runaway state senators, and a legal challenge that made its way to the state’s supreme court—was law. The 27 teachers on the chopping block were spared.

With “collective bargaining rights” limited to wages, Koczela was able to change the teachers’ benefits package to fill the budget gap. Requiring teachers to contribute 5.8 percent of their salary toward pensions saved $600,000. Changes to their health care plan—such as a $10 office visit co-pay (up from nothing)—saved $200,000. Upping the workload from five classes, a study hall, and two prep periods to six classes and two prep periods saved another $200,000. The budget was balanced.

“Everything we changed didn’t touch the children,” Koczela said. Under a collective bargaining agreement, she continued, “We could never have negotiated that—never ever.” Koczela, a graduate of Smith College and Duke University Law School, is no Republican flack. She says she’s a “classic Wisconsin independent. I vote both parties. I voted for Senator [Russ] Feingold but I voted for [Republican state] Senator Alberta Darling too.”

In Brown Deer and school districts across the state, Walker’s budget repair bill, known as Act 10, is working just as he promised. To make up for a $2.8 billion deficit without raising taxes, state aid to school districts (the largest budget line) was reduced by $830 million. Act 10, Walker said, would give districts “the tools” needed to make up for the lost money as fairly as possible.

But union leaders argued that the fight over the budget repair bill had nothing to do with balancing budgets. It was all about stripping public employees of their “collective bargaining rights.”

“We have said all along that this isn’t about pay and benefits,” Mary Bell, president of the state’s teachers’ union, said in February. “We are prepared to implement the financial concessions proposed to help our state in these tough times. But . . . we will not be denied our right to collectively bargain.”

Acceding, at least rhetorically, to higher benefit contributions—5.8 percent of salary for pension (up from nothing) and 12.6 percent of health care premiums—looked like a smart tactic. It made teachers seem reasonable and focused the fight on collective bargaining “rights.”

What few people may have understood, though, is that these are “rights” that most people, including federal employees, don’t have. But Americans don’t like taking away anybody’s rights. The polls in Wisconsin showed voters overwhelmingly opposed to “weakening” or “stripping” or “eliminating” collective bargaining rights. President Obama called the bill an “assault on unions.” Democratic state senator Lena Taylor compared Scott Walker to Hitler.

But as the abstract debate over collective bargaining collides with reality, it is becoming clear just how big a lie the Big Labor line was. Now that the law is in effect, where are the horror stories of massive layoffs and schools shutting down? They don’t exist—except in a couple of districts where collective bargaining agreements, inked before the budget repair bill was introduced, remain in effect.

In Milwaukee, nine schools are shutting and 354 teachers have been fired due to a drop in state funding and the end of federal stimulus funding. But if teachers there agreed to the 5.8 percent pension contribution, the school district says it would rehire 200 of those teachers. (Other changes could offset the rest of the layoffs.)

Despite the promise from Mary Bell that all teachers would contribute something toward their pensions, Milwaukee teachers’ union president Bob Peterson won’t agree to the change. In doing so he’s made it clear that “collective bargaining rights” is code for “union veto power.”

“You have a choice: layoffs or pension contributions. Do you see that choice?” a local Fox News reporter asked Peterson. “Why did you make a choice of layoffs?”

“I didn’t lay off anybody,” Peterson replied. He thinks Milwaukee teachers have conceded enough and blames Walker’s budget cuts for the layoffs. But a year ago—before Walker was elected and when Democrats controlled all branches of government—there were also layoffs.

Given the choice between fewer benefits and layoffs, the Milwaukee teachers’ union chose the latter. In 2010, 482 teachers, including Megan Sampson, a young educator named an “outstanding first year teacher” by the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English, got the axe. CNN reports that this year “Milwaukee teachers are offering meals and moral support to 354 fellow educators who will be laid off.” Meals and moral support? The union’s got your back. A job? Not so much.

The only other district seeing such massive layoffs is Kenosha, where 212 teachers will be fired this year. “Kenosha is in the same boat as [Milwaukee], with a collective bargaining agreement signed before Walker took office that lasts until June 30, 2013,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on July 16. “But most other Wisconsin districts have avoided layoffs and massive cuts to programs.”

One striking feature of Walker’s budget repair bill is the flexibility it has given school districts to balance their budgets. For example, things are looking up in the tiny town of Pittsville in the heart of the state, where the district balanced its budget mostly through increased pension contributions and not replacing four retiring teachers.

“We didn’t change anything in our health care at all,” Superintendent Terry Reynolds told me. “If Act 10 hadn’t passed,” he said, “I don’t think the teachers’ union would have wanted to approve the 5.8 percent contribution” to pensions. “That would have been a hard battle to fight. I’m not sure we would have saved dollars there.” Enough money was freed up that Pittsville property taxes will decrease by 9 percent next year.

While class sizes increased slightly in Pittsville, they’re going down in the Kaukauna school district, where the school board used the budget repair bill to turn a $400,000 deficit into a $1.5 million surplus. In addition to the 5.8 percent pension contribution, the board pared back personal days from ten to five, increased the deductible for a family health insurance plan from $250 to $500, and required middle school and high school teachers to teach six classes instead of five. Any or all of these changes could have been vetoed by the union under a collective bargaining agreement.

The reforms will allow Kaukauna to spend $300,000 in merit pay for teachers next year and offer more Advanced Placement classes and languages like Chinese or Arabic in the future, according to board president Todd Arnoldussen. Bringing down class sizes “was a win for the kids and a win for everybody,” he told me.

But as Patrick Meyer, the head union negotiator in Kaukauna, says in a video, “morale has been terrible” in the district. Might teachers be spread too thin now? “Elementary teachers already teach seven hours a day,” says Arnoldussen. “That’s a horrible argument. I mean, come on. Six classes at 50 minutes.”

If morale is down, interest in teaching at Kaukauna isn’t. An opening for an elementary teacher attracted “over 500 applicants,” says Arnoldussen. “So you obviously have a huge amount of people that really want to work for Kaukauna . . . under our noncollective bargaining agreement.”

Just three weeks after Walker’s budget went into effect, its sweeping success is already apparent. But will it be enough to spare the six Republican state senators who face recall elections on August 9? Whether or not the Democrats gain the three seats they need to take over the senate, Walker’s collective bargaining success won’t be undone anytime soon. But a victory could embolden Democrats, who are gearing up for a recall election against Walker as early as the spring of 2012.

“I don’t think they think the sky’s going to fall,” says Emily Koczela of Brown Deer residents, who will vote in the recall election of Republican state senator Alberta Darling.

As for the teachers, “some of them will feel better in a year or two.” Koczela says the union told them that “this is all a sham. There isn’t really a budget shortfall. If we just all stop giving tax breaks to wealthy corporations you’ll all be fine.”

“They didn’t know who was lying to them.” But soon enough they will.

Obama’s Pandering to the Muslim World Has Done No Good

2011-07-26T09:53:00.002-05:00

The idea that if we just are more “sympathetic to Arab concerns” and more “balanced in our approach to the Middle East” Arabs (and presumably, Muslims generally) will be more favorable to the U.S. has been shot to hell by a pollster of Arab heritage.

From the Arab American Institute:

With the 2008 election of Barack Obama, favorable attitudes toward the U.S. more than doubled in many Arab countries. But in the two years since his famous “Cairo speech,” ratings for both the U.S. and the President have spiraled downwards. The President is seen overwhelmingly as failing to meet the expectations set during his speech, and the vast majority of those surveyed disagree with U.S policies.

In five out of the six countries surveyed, the U.S. was viewed less favorably than Turkey, China, France—or Iran. Far from seeing the U.S. as a leader in the post-Arab Spring environment, the countries surveyed viewed “U.S. interference in the Arab world” as the greatest obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East, second only to the continued Palestinian occupation.

While the vehemence of Arab reaction to the U.S. was startling, the general sentiment echoed points made in AAI President James Zogby’s 2010 book Arab Voices, in which he reflected on Arab opinions of both the U.S. and our foreign policies. “American democracy [seems] a lot like damaged goods to many Arabs… U.S. policy in the region has increasingly undermined Arab attitudes toward America as a global model.”

Executive Summary

• After improving with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, U.S. favorable ratings across the Arab world have plummeted. In most countries they are lower than at the end of the Bush Administration, and lower than Iran’s favorable ratings (except in Saudi Arabia).

• The continuing occupation of Palestinian lands and U.S. interference in the Arab world are held to be the greatest obstacles to peace and stability in the Middle East.

• While many Arabs were hopeful that the election of Barack Obama would improve U.S.-Arab relations, that hope has evaporated. Today, President Obama’s favorable ratings across the Arab world are 10% or less.

• Obama’s performance ratings are lowest on the two issues to which he has devoted the most energy: Palestine and engagement with the Muslim world.

• The U.S. role in establishing a no-fly zone over Libya receives a positive rating only in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, but, as an issue, it is the lowest priority.

• The killing of bin Laden only worsened attitudes toward the U.S.

• A plurality says it is too early to tell whether the Arab Spring will have a positive impact on the region. In Egypt, the mood is mixed. Only in the Gulf States are optimism and satisfaction levels high.

You can read the full poll here.

And the following graphic makes the failure of the policy clear:

Obama, of course, it a standard liberal, and standard liberals believe that if people dislike the U.S., it must be our fault.

But sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it’s their fault. Those Muslims who sympathize with terrorism are at fault. Those Muslims who want Israel wiped off the map are at fault. Those Arabs who blame the failure of nations in the Middle East to create free and democratic governments are at fault. Those who blame the U.S. for their economic backwardness are at fault.

Sometimes, it’s best to take to heart Machiavelli’s famous dictim that “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

Thus we have trouble believing that killing Bin Laden really harmed attitudes toward the U.S. If it didn’t engender the warm fuzzies, it probably engendered attitudes a lot more beneficial to us.

Sometimes, of course, it doesn’t matter much whether a country is feared or hated. If you are big enough and powerful enough, they have to deal with you.

The bottom line of this issue is that America should be America: a friend of Israel, and an enemy of terrorism. Willing to intervene when vital national security interests are at stake -- and being a democracy, there will always be a vigorous debate about whether they are.

As for Arabs: if you insist on disliking us, so be it.

Sure, We Are Solving the Problem

2011-07-23T14:38:00.002-05:00

Yuppie Rap / Whole Foods Parking Lot

2011-07-17T21:23:00.001-05:00

Public Sector Unions Are a Bad Thing

2011-07-13T11:09:00.008-05:00

From a column by Jeff Jacoby, a discussion of why even very liberal Massachusetts has (if only half-heartedly) limited the power of public sector unions:

So unlike their counterparts in the private sector, public-sector unions are rarely constrained by market forces. There are limits to the wages and benefits that labor can demand from private employers. Corporations have to make a profit to stay alive, and both sides know that if costs rise too high, the results may be lost sales, eliminated jobs, or -- if worse comes to worst -- bankruptcy. Consequently, union negotiators cannot insist on the moon, and corporate managers dare not lose sight of the company’s bottom line.

But that check and balance doesn’t exist in public-sector collective bargaining. Teachers’ or firefighters’ or library workers’ unions don’t have to worry about jeopardizing the government’s profits or driving away its customers: Government agencies can’t go bankrupt, and their “customers” can’t switch to a cheaper brand. So why not insist on the moon? Especially when the government managers on the other side of the table generally have little incentive to keep costs down. After all, if the pay, perks, and pensions of public workers send budgets through the roof, what choice do taxpayers have but to foot the bill?

At bottom, collective bargaining in the public sector is profoundly antidemocratic: It denies voters final say over the public they must live under, by forcing their elected representatives to shape those policies in concert with unions. In effect, it transfers to union officials -- interested parties not chosen by the people -- decision-making authority that they have no legitimate right to. That is why until just a few decades ago, it was universally understood that collective bargaining was incompatible with government employment.

Gradually it is becoming clear that throwing the door open to public-sector unions was a serious and costly mistake. It will take years to undo that mistake, but the process has begun. Even, if ever so slowly, in Massachusetts.

This, of course, is why private sector unionization has been shrinking, while public sector unionization has prospered. Unions are simply what economists call “rent seekers,” parties which get money and goodies without giving something of commensurate value in return.

Of course, an increasingly globalized vigorously competitive market economy drives out rent seeking. But people who are comfortably ensconced in the public sector aren’t subject to market forces.

What Books Would People Like to Ban?

2011-07-12T15:37:00.002-05:00

James Harris: Telling the Truth About Riverwest Violence

2011-07-11T15:07:00.001-05:00

Marquette Students Attacked Last Night, One By a Mob

2011-07-11T11:55:00.009-05:00

From a “Public Safety Alert” time stamped Monday, July 11, 2011 1:58 AM.

Two robberies were reported to the Department of Public Safety tonight (July 10), both occurring around 11:30 p.m. July 10.

In the first instance, a student was approached near 17th and Kilbourn, where two males attempted to hit him and tried reaching into his pockets. The victim punched the perpetrator and flagged down a Milwaukee Police Department squad that was in the area. The perpetrators fled south on 17th Street and got into a dark-colored sedan driven by a third person. No weapons were used, and no property was obtained. The victim was not physically injured.

The second incident occurred near 18th and State. A Marquette student and a friend were approached by approximately 10-15 young males and shoved to the ground. A wallet was stolen from the student’s friend. The student suffered minor abrasions but declined medical assistance. The friend was not physically injured. No weapons were used during this incident, and the perpetrators fled the area.

Both DPS and MPD are investigating.

What is missing here? The race of the attackers. It is reported they were male, and even that they got into “a dark-colored sedan,” but nothing about the color of those guilty of the assault.

In the past, Marquette has reported the race of offenders who are still at large. We have a call in to Marketing and Communications asking whether this is a change in policy, or just an oversight.

Our suspicion is that it will be reported to be an oversight, but perhaps only because a source of ours noticed it.

[developing . . . ]

[Update]

We just got a call from Kate Venne of Marketing and Communications, who claimed that the reason the race of the offenders was not included was that they “didn’t have a very specific description.” Did the students fail to notice the race of their attackers? Did Public Safety fail to get a good description?

The argument seems to be this: if not enough information was available to identify a particular suspect, the race of the offender won’t be given. But of course, they gave the sex of the offenders (male) and an extremely vague description of the car (dark-colored sedan). This looks for all the world like back-door political correctness. They are unwilling to say that the attackers were black, although literally everybody reading the Public Safety Alert (even the most politically correct readers) would assume that.

Liberals Don’t Really Believe in a “Right to Privacy”

2011-07-11T11:33:00.003-05:00

From Front Page Magazine:

One of the great lies of the latter half of the twentieth century is that there is a Constitutional right to privacy. The right to privacy was established by the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), in which the Court ruled that the state could not restrict the use of contraceptives. That law hadn’t been enforced in nearly a hundred years when it was challenged, but that didn’t stop liberals from trying to strike it down.

Why? They wanted to make a point, and make it they did: according to the Court, the Constitution guaranteed a “right to privacy.” Where did this right to privacy come from? “[S]pecific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance,” wrote Justice William O. Douglas, in one of the silliest and least substantive lines of reasoning in legal history.

Later, the “right to privacy” would be extended to unmarried sexual activity in Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972); abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973); and homosexual activity in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). Justice Kennedy ’s opinion in Lawrence is one of the most insulting opinions ever, stating that just because a state legislature finds something immoral doesn’t mean it can ban it and that the Constitution requires that Americans “respect” the private lives of homosexuals. “The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime,” Kennedy wrote — announcing a bizarre standard if the Constitution is designed to prevent federal overreach.

Let’s leave aside Kennedy’s logic here — the state constantly demeans the existence of consensual bigamists, prostitutes, incestuous families, bestiality practitioners, and adulterers, and in most of those cases, controls the destinies of those involved in these activities. Let’s focus instead on the basic point, which seems intuitively right to so many Americans: what we do in the bedroom should be our business alone.

I agree with that. You agree with that. We all agree with that. Libertarianism’s impact has been felt by us all — we know that we don’t want cops knocking on our door based on what we do with our sexual partners.

There’s only one problem: the left isn’t truly interested in the right to privacy. What starts in the bedroom doesn’t stay in the bedroom for the left. It ends with government pushing their bedroom agenda-of-the-day.

Now, it’s not enough that a woman has a right to choose to abort her baby – we have to publicly fund it. Now, it’s not enough that people have the right to have unmarried sex – we have to pay taxes to fund their child-rearing.

In California the courts have recently ruled that the right to privacy now requires that the state make no distinction between heterosexual relationships and homosexual relationships. Marriage is not a privacy issue — it is an issue of people’s relationship with the state. But the radical gay movement has not restricted itself to worrying about non-interference in the bedroom. It wants societal acceptance and legitimacy. By the same token, homosexual adoption isn’t a privacy issue — it impacts a child. But the left has sought to extend the right to privacy to cover the right to raise children without a mother or father.

As if that weren’t enough, California, spurred by the powerful gay lobby, has passed legislation changing the Education Code to require that children be instructed “on the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.” This is privacy turned on its head. What particular figures do in the bedroom has nothing to do with their contribution to American society. What does Leonardo di Vinci’s preference for boys have to with his historical import? The answer: nothing. But that’s not what the left cares about. They care about exposing children to homosexuality as early as possible in order to legitimate their anti-traditional values morality.

So what happened to the “right to privacy”? It expanded to include public approval of private sexual activity – which returns us closer to the anti-libertarian mold than the libertarian mold. After all, what if society shifts and decides to change its relationship with certain sexual activity again? Libertarianism provides a bright-line: government shouldn’t be involved with sexual activity. By getting the two intertwined again, liberal sexual activists actually bring themselves closer to the brink. Government-sponsored libertarianism is no libertarianism at all.

A genuine libertarian, of course, would no more want to use government to impose on the citizens the idea that homosexuality is perfectly moral and acceptable than he would want to use government to impose on the citizens the idea that homosexuality is immoral and unacceptable.

But a lot of “libertarians” are not really libertarians. They are merely secular social liberals who happen to be economic conservatives. Human liberty, to them, does not include the right to opt out of the gay agenda.

That Gaza Flotilla

2011-07-06T12:02:00.008-05:00

From Slate, an informative article about who these folks are, and what they are really up to.

Of course, Marquette’s Center for Peacemaking is lobbying for these folks.

Calling flotilla people part of a “peace movement” is as much of a sham as saying organizations that have “peace” in their name actually believe in peace.

What they believe in is surrender for America and America’s allies, and war waged by America’s enemies.

Anti-Israel, Pro-Terrorist Lobbying From the Marquette Center for Peacemaking

2011-07-01T14:18:00.009-05:00

We are on the email list of the Marquette Center for Peacemaking, a leftist activist program at Marquette. We got an e-mail today from that organization that contained this message:

Senator Wants US-Israeli Op Against Flotilla

June 29, 2011
Military.com | by Bryant Jordanhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., says the United States should “make available all necessary special operations and naval support to the Israeli Navy to effectively disable flotilla vessels before they can pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives at risk.”

[Read More]

1.) Please call Senator Kirk’s office and encourage him to rethink his position regarding using US Navy forces to stop the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. Instead, ask him to protest the flotilla so they can deliver aid and goodwill to the people of Gaza.

Contact Senator Kirk

2.) Midwest activists please call and e-mail the Greek Consulate in Chicago at (312) 335-3915 and tell them (in a civil manner): LET THE BOATS IN THE FREEDOM FLOTILLA SAIL! If you do not live in the Midwest you can find the nearest Greek Consulate by doing a search on Google.

You may also send them an e-mail using this link

Of course, the purpose of the “flotilla” is to aid the terroist regime of Hamas, which controls Gaza.

Which shows something (not that this hasn’t been obvious for ages) about “peace” as a political slogan.

The people who cry “peace” really mean that the side they don’t like should quit fighting and surrender. During the Cold War, they wanted America to disarm, but showed only slight and pro-forma disapproval of Soviet arms buildups.

And here, “peace” is interpreted as support for Hamas. For these folks, peace does not mean that Hamas should stop lobbing rockets into Israel. To them, it has never meant that Palestinians should stop terrorist acts against Israel.

They aren’t about peace at all, but about leftist politics, and their use of the word “peace” is absurdly hypocritical.

No Free Speech in Canada

2011-06-30T17:23:00.000-05:00

Odd What You Will Find on the Shelves At the Wine Store

2011-06-30T15:31:00.005-05:00

It’s become common to find oddball names on the wine bottles at your local liquor store. Some vineyards seem convinced that if they can’t make better wine than competitors, they can at least give their wine a name that will provoke a bit of merriment when served to guests.

But it’s not often that one finds a moral dilemma on the shelves.

From the blog of Mark F. Johnson, Marquette theologian:

Marquette in the Spotlight for Handling of Rape Cases

2011-06-22T22:36:00.007-05:00

From yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, a longish article about the way Marquette has handled rape cases. We will excerpt key parts of it here, but you probably want to read the whole thing.

MILWAUKEE — On a chilly Sunday morning, a 19-year-old Marquette University student walked into the campus security office and tearfully reported being raped by an athlete just hours earlier.

She says two of the officers on duty that February day dismissed her claim, telling her they didn’t know whether it was a crime because she alleged the encounter began as consensual sex and ended as an assault.

No report was taken, and Milwaukee police were not notified by the university, which insists the woman said she did not want authorities involved.

The university now acknowledges that failing to notify police was a violation of state law, which requires campus security departments to report any possible crimes to local authorities. School officials also did not tell police about a sexual attack allegation involving four athletes in October.

In fact, Marquette administrators told the Tribune that they have violated their reporting obligations for the past 10 years. And in at least the two most recent cases, the lapse played a role in prosecutors declining to press charges.

The admission comes amid media inquiries into the Catholic college’s handling of those two cases and serves as a backdrop for the woman’s account of what happened after she reported being raped on Feb. 27.

Breaking her public silence, the woman described a university determined to bury her allegations and eager to insulate itself from criticism once her accusations became known. She has shared the same account with law enforcement, school officials and medical professionals, according to documents and multiple Tribune interviews.

And further:

Last week, a Tribune analysis of several major Midwestern universities found that few students who report sexual violence see their attackers arrested and almost none see them convicted.

The survey of six schools in Illinois and Indiana found that police investigated 171 reported sex crimes since fall 2005, with 12 resulting in arrests and four in convictions. Only one of the convictions stemmed from a student-on-student attack, the most common type of assault claim.

Marquette reported 16 forcible sex offenses on campus from 2001 through 2009 to the U.S. Department of Education, according to the university. The school declined to provide the Tribune with the disposition of those cases.

Fresh injuries

In repeated statements to authorities, the woman in the Feb. 27 incident described accepting an invitation to the athlete’s campus apartment that day. Though the two had a sexual relationship in the past, he suddenly had stopped calling or spending time with her, she said.

Once there, they began to have consensual sex, she said. However, the woman said, she tried to get off the bed and leave after he made disparaging comments to her and wouldn’t explain why he had stopped contacting her.

She said she told him to stop but that he refused. She said she fought back but that he was too strong for her and held her down.

The woman agreed to speak to the Tribune on the condition that her name not be used.

Neither the athlete nor his Milwaukee-based lawyer returned calls seeking comment. The athlete, whom the Tribune is not identifying because he has not been charged with a crime, has told authorities and school administrators that the sex was consensual, according to multiple sources.

After leaving the athlete’s apartment, the woman said, she returned to her dorm and tried to sleep. After a fitful few hours, she confided in a resident assistant about the previous night’s events. The RA sent her directly to the security department, where, the woman says, two on-duty officers told her they were not sure that the encounter could be classified as a crime.

So far, it looks like “he said, she said,” although it’s hard to see why she would lie about this. But there is further evidence.

Still, they promised that a security officer would call her within an hour, she said.

The woman then went to the hospital at the resident assistant’s urging. Medical reports from that visit show the woman had vaginal abrasions, in addition to fresh injuries on her face, hip, foot, knee and both thighs, according to documents obtained by the Tribune.

The following day, a security officer finally contacted her and asked her to come back to the department and give another statement, the woman said. She did, only to be told that police wouldn’t want to investigate her case and that the university’s internal discipline process would likely cause her more harm than good, she said. The officer did not take an official report, she said.

And more:

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm told the Tribune that the woman has given authorities the same account on several occasions. Once she shared the allegation with Marquette security, the officers were legally bound to call police — regardless of their interpretation of the incident, he said.

“Once they have reason to believe that a crime like a sexual assault has occurred, they have a mandatory obligation to report that to police, and that didn’t happen,” Chisholm said. “Everyone acknowledges that.”

Lt. Paul Mascari of the university’s security department disputed the woman’s account, saying officers always began their conversations with alleged victims by asking if they wanted police involved.

“I can tell you that, having talked to the officers afterward, it was never the intention of anyone in this department to discourage … victims from contacting the Milwaukee Police Department,” Mascari said.

No one, however, disputes that the university broke the law when it failed to report the woman’s allegation to city police.

Marquette’s security department has been required under Wisconsin law to report all allegations of campus sex crimes to Milwaukee police since it was licensed by the state in 2001, but university administrators acknowledge they historically have forwarded a case only at the complainant’s request. They declined to say how many cases went unreported to local law enforcement but said the majority of cases were sent to police at the women’s requests.

Marquette officials also contend they did not realize that they were in violation of the law until the woman in the October case went to police on her own.

Marquette officials first came under fire for their handling of sexual assault cases in late March, when a female student told Milwaukee police she had been sexually attacked by four athletes in a dorm room on Oct. 30. She reported the incident within hours to campus security officers, who informed the athletic department of the accusation but did not tell local law enforcement after she indicated she did not want police involved, officials said.

As reporters and television crews descended on the urban campus to cover that story, the woman in the February case received calls from Milwaukee police and school administrators inquiring about her allegation. It was the first she had heard from school officials in weeks.

The woman said she met with Quade, who encouraged her to focus on her schoolwork and mental health rather than pursuing charges, the woman said. Quade also asked if she had thought about praying about the situation, the woman said. She said she left the meeting in tears.

“I felt like they were trying to get me to be quiet and disappear,” she said. “I’ve never been made to feel so dumb, so stupid and so much like I didn’t matter.”

The woman in the October case could not be reached for comment. The Tribune is not naming the athletes because they have not been charged, and the newspaper is not disclosing their sport to avoid identifying them.

The four athletes accused in the October case were subject to team discipline, Deputy Athletic Director Mike Broeker said. He declined to provide further information about any punishment.

In the February case, the woman filed an official complaint with the university in March and participated in the athlete’s conduct hearing in April. She withdrew from classes shortly before the proceeding and plans to attend another college in the fall.

In an e-mail statement today, Marquette admitted to mishandling these cases.

Subject: Marquette University Message from President Robert A. Wild, S.J.
JUNE 22, 2011

Dear Marquette Faculty and Staff:

As you know, in the past month there has been much on-campus conversation and a number of media stories about two sexual assault cases on the Marquette campus involving student athletes. These are difficult, sensitive situations for all involved. We want all our students to feel cared for and supported; when that is not the case, we need to take action.

I have had blunt and very direct conversations with colleagues across the university as we work to improve our responses to these types of incidents, and I can assure you that everyone is committed to ensuring our campus culture emphasizes care and respect for each other. We have been working to address the issues raised, and I now have some substantive progress to report.

Any incident of sexual violence is reprehensible and in complete opposition to the values of Marquette University. While federal law protecting the privacy of students prohibits sharing the details of these incidents and the outcomes of any disciplinary proceedings, they were investigated by the university with action taken in accordance with our student conduct code. They were also investigated by Milwaukee law enforcement officials, and no charges were filed.

The university has publicly acknowledged that we made mistakes in dealing with these incidents. We worked quickly and proactively to correct those procedures, both to be sensitive to victims and to comply with Wisconsin state law. We now refer any reported incident of sexual assault to the Sensitive Crimes Unit of the Milwaukee Police Department. We have also added a victim advocate to the staff of our Student Health Service and have more tightly restricted who on campus has access to reports from the Department of Public Safety.

As you know, we have many resources on campus to both educate our students and to support those who are the victims of sexual violence. These include HAVEN, VOICES and the services of the Department of Public Safety, Campus Ministry, the Counseling Center and Student Health Service. In addition, we have very positive relationships with a number of community agencies. The Gender Resource Center, once operational, will also provide support in this area.

Upon hearing of the concerns involving these cases, I wanted to proactively address the issues and, thus, asked Janine Geske, distinguished professor of law and former
justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, to convene a group of campus and community representatives dealing with sexual violence. They have had conversations that have been very helpful to the university, and I am happy to report that considerable progress has been made, including:
As noted above, the Department of Public Safety has worked with the MPD Sensitive Crimes Unit to ensure that the reporting of any sexual assault both complies with state law and is sensitive to the needs of victims. DPS officers also participated in victim-centered training this summer.
The Office of Student Affairs, working with representatives from the district attorney’s office and our own law faculty, is re-writing our policies and procedures regarding sexual assault in light of what we’ve learned in these cases and the recently issued guidelines from the U.S. Department of Education. These policies and procedures will be in place for the 2011-12 academic year.
Marquette’s Counseling Center and Student Health Service are working with academic and other colleagues on a number of prevention and education programs. Every incoming freshman will receive sexual violence and prevention training. An online program on sexual assault awareness and prevention, Student Success, will be piloted with targeted groups of students and staff this fall. There is also training planned in Bystander Intervention, i.e., how to help ensure the safety of a friend in vulnerable situations.
Surely, there is more to be done, and this is a focus of concentration this summer. We will get this right, because we want any student who is a victim of sexual assault to be supported and to come forward so she or he can make use of the many resources the university and our community partners have to offer. You can be helpful in this regard – by encouraging any student who is a victim of sexual assault to report it, by taking the Bystander Intervention training once offered and by continuing to be a source of support and caring for our students on a daily basis.

I want you to know that student and staff safety and security have been and remain my number one concern. While I am retiring in just a few weeks, I have talked with my successor, Rev. Scott R. Pilarz, S.J., and know that he shares these concerns and will continue to move the university forward. In the meantime, if you have questions, please contact Dr. Chris Miller, vice president for student affairs.

I will continue to ask God’s abundant blessings on you and our entire Marquette community.

Sincerely,

Robert A. Wild, S.J.
President
Marquette University

Doing It Again: Aspin Center to Honor Pro-Abortion Politician Dick Durbin

2011-06-21T19:40:00.006-05:00

Here is something we got from a former student of ours:

Gentlemen -- I received a Save the Date card today for Thursday, Oct. 6, when the Aspin Center will present the Democracy Award to US Senator Dick Durbin at the National Press Club here in DC. Alas, apparently the Aspin Center is unaware of the Catholic Bishops’ policy against giving leadership awards and other honors to pro-abortion politicians.

Marquette’s Aspin Center, run by Fr. Tim O’Brien, has a history of honoring pro-abortion politicians. For example, Gwen Moore (see here and here), and John Lewis (see here and here).

Why would the Aspin Center do things like this?

Partly because it is run by liberals. But partly because it wants to be an important “player” in DC affairs, and pandering to pro-abortion liberals is one way of seeking that status.

Evangelical Protestant Men As Husbands and Fathers

2011-06-21T19:05:00.007-05:00

This is not a new study, but since we haven’t seen it before, probably a lot of our readers haven’t either. From the website of the University of Virginia:

Even though they favor a traditional, patriarchal family structure, Evangelical Protestant men make some of the best husbands and fathers, according to a recent study by W. Bradford Wilcox, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia.

“Theirs is a very soft patriarchy,” Wilcox writes in his new book, “Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands,” recently released in time for Father’s Day.

In his comparative study of American husbands and fathers — which focuses on mainline Protestants, Evangelical Protestants and religiously unaffiliated families Wilcox asks the question: How does religion influence the family attitudes and practices of married men with children?

To seek the answer, he examines data gathered by two well-regarded, national social surveys, the General Social Survey (1990-98), and the National Survey of Families and Households (1987-88 and 1992-94). His book addresses a neglected field – that of religious influences on social life, according to the University of Chicago Press, which brought out the book as part of its Morality and Society Series, edited by Alan Wolfe.

Wilcox’s findings include:
Evangelical Protestant family men who frequently attend church have the highest rates of involvement in one-on-one activities and youth activities of any major religious group in the United States;
Churchgoing Evangelical Protestant family men are more likely than any other major religious or secular group to know where their children are at all times;
Evangelical Protestant wives whose husbands attend church regularly report the highest levels of happiness with their husbands’ love and affection of any major religious or secular group in the study;
Evangelical Protestant wives whose husbands attend church regularly reported the lowest levels of domestic violence of any major religious or secular group studied;
Mainline Protestant family men who attend church regularly are also more involved and affectionate with their children than religiously unaffiliated men.

So does this study, in effect, dis Catholic men?

In reality Catholics are a very diverse group, including a lot of men who are only nominally Catholic and pretty secular. But Catholic men who take their religion seriously and try to live by the faith have to be pretty much like churchgoing Evangelical Protestant family men.

Liberals are always espousing this or that policy “for the children.” But their concern for the children never goes beyond wanting more and more government programs which rival or preempt the family, and are run (quite typically) by secular bureaucrats. A real concern “for the children” would involve support for the kinds of families that Christian men are part of.

Oxford Was a Hoot!

2011-06-21T10:13:00.008-05:00

We posted here that we were going to Oxford to debate the death penalty at the Oxford Union.

We are back, caught up on sleep and other pressing things, and finally getting around to report on the event.

First, there is no way that trans-Atlantic travel can be anything but an ordeal. One can’t sleep on the plane, and we took the bus to Chicago O’Hare, flew to Dublin, and then connected to a flight to Heathrow airport and then took a bus to Oxford. It was about 18 hours, arriving in Oxford about 1:00 p.m., with our body telling us it was 7:00 a.m. and we had not slept.

We stayed in Queens College, one of several colleges at Oxford. The building was charming and old looking on the outside, but the insides had been gutted and rebuilt as a pretty typical college dorm. But a pretty high class dorm, with oak floors.

Food was bland. We tried ordering things that would always be tasty here, like a panini or chicken pesto pasta. It seems it is possible to make both of those things in a bland style.

On the evening of the debate members of the Oxford Union, some guests and all the debaters had dinner before the debate. We toasted the Queen (your humble blogger rather likes Queen Elizabeth II, and was happy to do this) and before the meal a prayer was said in Latin.

The Debate

Our debate partner supporting the death penalty was one Peter Hitchens, a columnist for the Sunday Mail, and rather a conservative curmudgeon. He’s a charming guy, and a good debater, well-travelled and well informed on lots of things.

On the other side was Barbara Becnel, identified as “author, activist and film producer who was a close friend of Crips street gang founder Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams.” Williams, who brutally murdered four Asians with shotgun blasts a point-blank range, was executed in 2005.

The other debater on the anti-death penalty side, Lord Ken MacDonald, was unable to make it and was replaced by activist Julian Knowles.

All the debaters made pretty much the standard points. We stressed that the best, most recent studies in the U.S. show a deterrent effect of capital punishment, and that claims by death penalty opponents of a very large number of “innocent” people who have been put on death row are grossly inflated.

Knowles played the race card big time, saying that the people who are executed will always be those unpopular to society, and even compared the execution of murderers to the burning of witches!

Hitchens discussed the rising murder rate in the U.K., and countered Knowles’ playing of the race card by pointing out that Williams had killed Asians, whom he referred to as “Budda heads.”

Becnel simply insisted that he client was innocent, and gave a few anecdotal accounts of actions on the part of prosecutors that she viewed a racist.

Neither Becnel nor Knowles seemed to know that blacks are underrepresented on death row in the U.S. This is apparently the result of the fact that most murders by blacks occur in the central cities of metropolitan areas, where black juries are less likely to impose the death penalty, and where District Attorneys are likely to be heavily burdened and unwilling to expend the extra resources needed to get a sentence of death.

As Hitchens had warned would happen, our side lost the vote at the end, 97 to 54. The audience, of course, was not judging on debate points but simply saying which side they agreed with at the end. Of course, with virtually no exceptions, the side they agreed with at the end was the side they came in agreeing with.

It was a great experience, in the world’s classic debate venue.

Marquette Warrior in Oxford to Debate the Death Penalty

2011-06-16T05:05:00.003-05:00

Here is the event.

As you can imagine, it’s quite an experience to be in Oxford.

Among other things I’ve noticed: in any university town people jaywalk.

But jaywalking in the UK can be dangerous for an American, who is used to looking to the left at first when crossing the street, and then to the right. Probably a few Americans have been killed because the Brits drive on the wrong side of the road.

A Thought on the Presidency

2011-06-12T12:55:00.002-05:00

One reason why George Washington
Is held in such veneration:
He never blamed his problems
On the former Administration.

-- George O. Ludcke

Netanyahu Speaks to US Congress

2011-05-27T19:44:00.002-05:00

The most obvious thing about this speech is the contrast between the moral clarity of Benjamin Netanyahu and the equivocating, apologizing, half-hearted support for America and democracy that is the best that Barack Obama can produce.

Obama, in other words, is afflicted by all the moral and intellectual vices of liberal elites. The contrast to Netanyahu is stunning.

Iron Laws of Politics

2011-05-23T15:00:00.001-05:00

(1) The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.

(2) Citizens want honest politicians until they want something fixed.

(3) Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend military spending, and conservatives social spending in their own districts).

Stories of the Rapture: Media Bias, or Manipulation of the Media

2011-05-20T22:44:00.009-05:00

It really ought to be ignored: the claim by Oakland evangelist Harold Camping that the rapture will come tomorrow.

Rapture is a Christian concept that says that, during the End Times, Christian believers will be taken up to heaven while the godless will be left on earth to face a cataclysm.

The concept has a sound basis in the scripture, specifically in Matthew 24, in which Jesus tells his followers about the coming catastrophe:

Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

Exactly when this will happen is another matter. And of course, no Christian leader other than Camping has given the slightest bit of credence to his calculations.

So why pay any attention to Camping?

Our first inclination is to blame the secular bias of the media. Liberal and secular reporters like stories that make Christians look like idiots. A bunch of Christians going to volunteer in a homeless shelter doesn’t fit the template, but a rather cultish crowd with a crackpot eschatology is highly congenial.

Which has a corollary. Any publicity-seeking Christian evangelist can garner a huge amount of unmerited attention by doing something outrageous.

And indeed Camping has gotten a huge amount of attention. Here is a screen capture we did from Google News a few minutes ago. As you can see, there are 1,519 sources on this story.

Interestingly, Christian fundamentalists are often accused of the sin of taking the Bible literally. But Camping isn’t doing that.

Jesus was quite explicit about end times predictions:

“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

And of course, Paul told the Thessalonians:

Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

Both Jesus and Paul have essentially the same message: live as though the end could come at any time, since you are not going to be able to predict it.

Camping should take the Bible literally on this point.

And the media should ignore people like him.

Vatican Expands Opportunities for Latin Mass

2011-05-14T22:11:00.005-05:00

From Christian Century:

VATICAN CITY (RNS) The Vatican on Friday (May 13) broadened access to the old Latin Mass with a new rule that gives the Vatican the power to overrule bishops who fail to make the rite available in their dioceses.

The Vatican also said that Catholics who request celebrations of the old Latin Mass must not support or belong to groups that challenge either the pope’s authority or the “validity or legitimacy” of the newer Mass.

The announcement comes nearly four years after Pope Benedict XVI lifted most restrictions on the old Latin liturgy, also known as the Tridentine Mass, which had largely fallen out of use in favor of worship in local languages.

Celebrations of the older liturgy remain relatively rare. Few priests are qualified to celebrate its rites, and many bishops view the Latin Mass as a symbol of resistance to the church’s liberalizing reforms of the 1960s.

The Vatican on Friday said bishops should permit use of the old Mass for even small groups that request it, and said pastors should receive such requests in a “spirit of generous welcome.”

Bishops are also asked to offer instruction in the old liturgy to priests and seminarians, thus expanding the ranks of qualified celebrants.

“That really is basic to the pope’s thinking,” said the Rev. Joseph Kramer, a member of one such group, the Fraternal Society of Saint Peter, an order dedicated to celebrating the old Latin Mass. “He would like the old rite to take its place alongside the new rite in the mainstream of the church.”

Kramer called it an “important step,” that Catholics may now contest bishops’ decisions regarding the old rite before a Vatican commission, with the possibility of appealing to the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s supreme court.

On the Marquette campus, the St. Robert Bellarmine Society has fought for more than a year to get the Latin Mass celebrated on a regular basis on campus, to little avail.

The Campus Ministry, which would have to approve any such masses, has stonewalled, invoking a rather narrow reading of guidelines from the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

In reality, the Campus Ministry has been in the forefront of political correctness on campus, actively pushing a gay political agenda and even sponsoring demonstrations at the School of the Americas in Georgia.

So the problem seems to be the cultural ambiance of the Latin Mass, firmly at odds with the trendy and liberal outlook of the campus clerical bureaucrats.

This action of the Vatican straightens the hand of the Bellarmine Society, but resisting what the Pope wants and has clearly endorsed is an old tradition among liberal Catholics.

Playing the Race Card on a College Campus: Another Fake Hate Crime

2011-05-10T22:01:00.006-05:00

From Inside Higher Ed:

Many campuses experience bigoted incidents of various types, but for many years now, hoaxes have emerged as well. Typically these cases involve undergraduates who make charges and — after some period of time — are found to have faked whatever it is they said happened to them. The fake hate crimes tend to frustrate just about everybody on campus. Minority students worry that truthful complaints in the future will be doubted. College officials bemoan wasted time and money investigating a fake report, and damage done to the reputation of the institution or individuals.

When a fake report is filed with the police, it is also can be a violation of the law. A gay student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was charged last month with filing a false police report after authorities determined that he had made up his story of being attacked for being gay — a story that generated considerable concern on the campus.

Another hoax was uncovered last week at the University of Virginia — and in this case, the university is being criticized for opting not to press charges against the black law student who made up a story about police harassment in the form of apparent racial profiling. The student — Johnathan Perkins — is scheduled to receive his degree May 22.

Perkins made his allegations in a letter to the editor of the U.Va. law school’s student newspaper, Virginia Law Weekly. He sent a copy to the university’s police department, which treated the essay as a formal complaint. Perkins described walking home from a bar review session and being stopped by the flashing lights of a University of Virginia police car. Two white officers, he said, questioned him, told him that he “fit the description of someone we’re looking for,” made fun of him as a law student, frisked and searched him, refused to give their names and badge numbers, and then followed him home after saying he was free to leave.

Invoking the names of victims of police brutality, such as Abner Louima, Perkins wrote that he knew he could not resist. “I knew that there would be no remedy for the indignity that I suffered at the hands of two of the University of Virginia’s ‘finest.’” he wrote. “As I stood there, humiliated, with my hands on the police car, my only thought was: ‘There is nothing I can do to right this wrong. I have absolutely no recourse.’ I hope that sharing this experience will provide this community with some much needed awareness of the lives that many of their black classmates are forced to lead.”

As soon as the letter was published, the university’s police department began an investigation, bringing in some outside experts to assist. Perkins gave several interviews to local reporters, and many students said that they were outraged by the way he said he had been treated.

On Friday, however, the university released a statement announcing that the investigation found that Perkins had made up the story. The university’s statement (not available on the university’s website, but posted on the Virginia Law Weekly’s Facebook page) quoted Perkins (without naming him) as saying that he fabricated the story. “I wrote the article to bring attention to the topic of police misconduct,” he said in a written statement. “The events in the article did not occur.”

The university said that its investigation included a review of all relevant dispatch records, personnel rosters, police radio tapes, surveillance video from the university’s cameras and those of businesses near where the incident was alleged to have taken place, and interviews with Perkins. The university said that Perkins cooperated in interviews and admitted the fabrication as the “facts of his story came into question.”

The part of the statement that has attracted the most discussion was a quote from Michael A. Gibson, the chief of police at Virginia, who announced that he would not press criminal or other charges.

“I recognize that police misconduct does occur,” he said. “Pressing charges in this case might inhibit another individual who experiences real police misconduct from coming forward with a complaint. I want to send the message just how seriously we take such charges and that we will always investigate them with care and diligence.”

Of course, the message is also that playing the race card, even to the point about lying about an incident to the police, is excused if a politically correct minority does it.

None of this is new.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Several researchers say the liberal atmosphere at many of the nation’s colleges creates an environment ripe for deception.

“There’s the preconception that if a charge is made, it’s true,” said John Perazzo, author of “The Myths that Divide Us.”

“One common thread running through many such incidents is the accuser’s sense of victimhood.”

One can file this, of course, under “the corruptions of political correctness.”

Of course, bogus claims of victimization poison academia as much as genuine victimization would. Genuine victimization of minorities is everywhere met with condemnation — no excuses allowed. That’s the morally healthy response.

The Constitutionality of Obama Care

2011-05-09T11:28:00.008-05:00

William Neidhardt, undergraduate student in Political Science (and former student of ours) has published an article in the Pi Sigma Alpha Undergraduate Journal of Politics arguing that Obama Care is constitutional.

The issue is fairly simple: if the Court abides by the intentions of the Founders, there is no way that Obama’s policy is constitutional.

However, since 1937 the Court has largely given up on limiting the power of Congress when Congress claims to be regulating commerce. (Two somewhat minor exceptions have been United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison.) Neidhardt does a fine job of citing chapter and verse of cases where the Court has done this.

So if the Court decides that Obamacare is unconstitutional, it will mark a clear change of direction.

Environmental Hysteria: Top Five Cases

2011-05-05T18:58:00.001-05:00

Osama or Obama? Oops!

2011-05-05T17:22:00.003-05:00

Osama’s Last Facebook Post

2011-05-04T20:54:00.002-05:00

Click on the image to enlarge.

Movie About St. Josemaria Escriva, Founder of Opus Dei

2011-05-04T09:50:00.006-05:00

From Spero News, a review by Diane Thunder Schlosser:

There Be Dragons is creating quite a stir among moviegoers. The movie opened in Spain to a solid 300-theatre sellout crowd, and opens here in the United States the weekend of May 6th. (Check your local listings for specific theatres and dates.)

There Be Dragons is a powerful story of war, tragedy, love, forgiveness, and redemption. Set during the often overlooked horrors of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, it tells the story of two boyhood friends who enter the seminary, but when the war interrupts their lives, one leaves the seminary and chooses the life of a soldier though driven by jealousy and revenge. The other remains in the seminary and becomes a priest just when the provisional government of Spain is on the brink of murdering over 6,000 priests and religious. Each will struggle to find the power of forgiveness over the forces that tear their lives — and their friendship — apart.

Why the fascination with There Be Dragons? Because a self-proclaimed ‘wobbly’ agnostic and two-time Oscar nominee, Roland Joffe, (The Killing Fields and The Mission) writes and directs a movie that focuses our attention on faith of all things and the “turning points in our lives where we’re faced with…choices that are going to affect our future. . . and how hard it is to escape cycles of hatred, resentment, and violence.”

While Joffe may not be particularly religious, he presents a favorable portrait of Escriva. Schlosser asks:

When was the last time Hollywood produced a movie about a priest – a real priest?

Not a vampire-chasing vengeful priest. Not a sensationalized exorcist. Not a fictitious albino ‘monk’ or even a crooning Bing Crosby priest, but a real priest! This generation is privileged to know of a priest who lived in our lifetime and has been canonized in our lifetime, yet St. Josemaria is not just a saint for members of Opus Dei. He is not just a saint for the people of Spain. He has been raised to the high altars of the Church and canonized a saint for all of us as a model of heroic virtue for the 21st century.

Opus Dei, of course, is a conservative organization that Catholic liberals don’t like, but the director likes the organization, although not for political reasons. Quoting Joffe:

Josemaria also claimed that ordinary people were quite capable of being saints – and I think this kind of heroic forgiveness is what he was talking about . . . (it is) what offers room for hope. But the price is high: It takes a deep sense of what it is to be fully human . . . and, yes, heroic resolve not to be caught up in prevailing hatreds, but to fight them with unremitting love.

If all that sounds a bit syrupy in prose, don’t be put off. Film is different from prose, and often vastly more compelling.

In all fairness, we have to point out that the critics, so far, don’t much care for it. Whether that reflects on the movie, or the social values of the critics, is a question the reader will have to decide.

[Update: 5/13/11]

Although the critics continue to dislike the film, 81% of the audience members who have rated it on Rotten Tomatoes like it. Of course, there is a lot of self-selection here: the people who go to see it are those inclined to like it. But that means that if it sounds like the sort of movie you would like, you probably will.

The Feminists’ Bogus Rape Statistics

2011-05-03T14:23:00.015-05:00

We recently took the “anti-rape” activists on campus to task for the general lameness of demonstrating against something that everybody is against, and especially for their use of bogus statistics about the incidence of rape.

The activists cite a 2000 Justice Department report as showing that a quarter of American college women have been victims of rape. The study, of course, is online, and can be easily analyzed — at least by somebody used to the labyrinthine structure of reports like this.

The authors struggle mightily to jack up the numbers of women who have been victimized by rape, but end up far short of the numbers they need.

The report claims, for example, that 1.7% of college women had (as of the time of the survey) been victims of rape since the beginning of the school year. They then add another 1.1% who had been victims of attempted rape. Of course, attempted rape is a bad thing, but not nearly so bad as a completed rape. We would not like to be the victim of an attempted murder, but . . . well, you get the point.(See page 11 of the report.)

So the authors, by combining the two numbers, get 2.8%. They then note that this is for a period of (on average) 6.9 months and the extrapolate and say that this is really 4.9% per year, and that with five years (on average) needed to finish college, “the percentage of completed or attempted rape victimization among women in higher educational institutions might climb to between one-fifth and one-quarter.” (p. 10)

But of course, their own report admits that women in college are more likely to be raped than women who are not, and it seems questionable to assume that over the summer months, when many women are working, living with parents, away from the party atmosphere of the campus, etc. that they would face nearly the same threat of rape (or attempted rape, remember). The report concedes:

College campuses host large concentrations of young women who are at greater risk for rape and other forms of sexual assault than women in the general population or in a comparable age group.(p. iii)

Yet another problem is that multiplying the yearly victimization numbers by five makes sense only if no woman is a victim more than once. If particular women are victimized in the first year, and again in the following years, you have fewer new victims, and the total number of women who have been victimized is not so high as it would be if each woman had been victimized only once. Indeed, the study admits:

Consistent across the models, it was found that four main factors consistently increased the risk of sexual victimization: (1) frequently drinking enough to get drunk, (2) being unmarried, (3) having been a victim of a sexual assault before the start of the current school year, and (4) living on campus (for on-campus victimization only). (see page 23)

We might add dating frequently, dating scummy guys, and going to venues where the guys view the women as sexual prey.

But even worse, the authors do a comparison study, based on the National Crime Victimization Survey, and find that the rate of rape to be only 0.16% for completed rape, and 0.18% for attempted rape (see page 14).

The massive discrepancy between the two studies should create huge skepticism.

In the main study, women where asked why they did not report the rape (95% did not report it). A broad range of possible answers were suggested, most of them plausible and reasonably socially acceptable — for example “did not want other people to know” or “afraid of reprisal by assailant or others.” Yet 65.4% of the victims of “completed rape” and 76.5% of the victims of “attempted rape” said that they “did not think it was serious enough to report” (pp. 24-26).

Among the 86 incidents that the researchers classified as “completed rape,” the women, when asked “Do you consider this incident to be a rape?” answered “no” 48.8% of the time (p. 15).

Worse, the authors report that “Victims in the sample generally did not state that their victimization resulted in physical or emotional injuries.” (p. 22)

These findings suggest that the definition of rape used by the researchers was too broad. We can’t imagine results like this among women victimized by real rapes.

Findings like this ought to make any social scientist hesitate to make any strong assertions about the exact incidence of rape. But latching onto an outlier that produces the highest possible incidence of rape (but still not high enough to support feminist claims) is not responsible.

The On-Again/Off-Again French/Latin Mass

2011-05-03T13:30:00.009-05:00

We have heard for several days that the French Honor Society would be sponsoring a mass tomorrow night. It would be the “Latin Mass” we were told, but with parts in French.

It was to be led by Rev. Canon Olivier Meney, who is the “go to” guy for the Latin Mass in southeastern Wisconsin.

Indeed, just a few minutes ago we got the flyer for the event.

But now it has been cancelled. We confirmed that with Rev. Meney’s secretary, and with Emily Schumacher-Novak in Campus Ministry.

According to Schumacher-Novak, “the student organization wasn’t able to get the proper confirmations on the event in time to do it.” They were unable to get the proper information from Fr. Meney, and they didn’t have confirmation from the Office of Student Development. Further, “we thought let’s push it back a little bit so they can get the publicity out in time and do it correctly rather than haphazardly.”

More critically, Schumacher-Novak explained “I needed to check with Fr. Meney as to which form of the mass he was doing.” She explained that “we don’t have permission on the campus to do the Extraordinary Form [Latin Mass] at this point in time.”

But Meney’s secretary confirmed that part of the mass would indeed have been in Latin.

A student organization, the Robert Bellarmine Society, has been trying to get the Latin mass established on campus for most of this academic year, and has faced the resistance of the Campus Ministry.

No doubt, a narrow reading of the guidelines put forth by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee supports their refusal. But of course, if they really wanted too allow the Latin Mass, permission would not be hard to obtain.

What we appear to have from the Campus Ministry is a cultural aversion to the Extraordinary Form.

Protesting Against Something That Everybody’s Against

2011-05-02T18:44:00.014-05:00

[Updated to correct identity of organizers.]

Yes, just a couple of hours ago, we walked across campus and found a demonstration against rape. It was organized by students. On the scene: Prof. Nancy Snow, the lesbian philosopher with the bullhorn very much in view a year ago, protesting Marquette’s refusal to hire lesbian Arts & Science Dean candidate Jodi O’Brien.

A few photos (not our best work, since we were using a cell phone):

Why protest against something that everybody is against?

It’s a kind of superstition on the politically-correct left: all problems can be solved by “raising awareness.” If any social problems persist, it’s just because not enough people have had their “awareness” raised.

Of course, sometimes the simple fact is that there are evil people who will do evil things, and the way to deal with them is to deter them with the threat of punishment if possible, and if that doesn’t work lock them up for an extended period.

There is another reality that campus leftists don’t want to face, but before we get to that we need a reality check about the supposed 25% of college women who have been raped.

During the 1980s, feminist researchers committed to the rape-culture theory had discovered that asking women directly if they had been raped yielded disappointing results—very few women said that they had been. So Ms. [Magazine] commissioned University of Arizona public health professor Mary Koss to develop a different way of measuring the prevalence of rape. Rather than asking female students about rape per se, Koss asked them if they had experienced actions that she then classified as rape. Koss’s method produced the 25 percent rate, which Ms. then published.

Koss’s study had serious flaws. Her survey instrument was highly ambiguous, as University of California at Berkeley social-welfare professor Neil Gilbert has pointed out. But the most powerful refutation of Koss’s research came from her own subjects: 73 percent of the women whom she characterized as rape victims said that they hadn’t been raped. Further—though it is inconceivable that a raped woman would voluntarily have sex again with the fiend who attacked her—42 percent of Koss’s supposed victims had intercourse again with their alleged assailants.

All subsequent feminist rape studies have resulted in this discrepancy between the researchers’ conclusions and the subjects’ own views. A survey of sorority girls at the University of Virginia found that only 23 percent of the subjects whom the survey characterized as rape victims felt that they had been raped—a result that the university’s director of Sexual and Domestic Violence Services calls “discouraging.” Equally damning was a 2000 campus rape study conducted under the aegis of the Department of Justice. Sixty-five percent of what the feminist researchers called “completed rape” victims and three-quarters of “attempted rape” victims said that they did not think that their experiences were “serious enough to report.” The “victims” in the study, moreover, “generally did not state that their victimization resulted in physical or emotional injuries,” report the researchers.

So what is going on here? Why the discrepancy between what the feminists consider rape and real, clear cases of rape? According to Heather McDonald of the Urban Institute:

So what reality does lie behind the campus rape industry? A booze-fueled hookup culture of one-night, or sometimes just partial-night, stands. Students in the sixties demanded that college administrators stop setting rules for fraternization. “We’re adults,” the students shouted. “We can manage our own lives. If we want to have members of the opposite sex in our rooms at any hour of the day or night, that’s our right.” The colleges meekly complied and opened a Pandora’s box of boorish, sluttish behavior that gets cruder each year. Do the boys, riding the testosterone wave, act thuggishly toward the girls? You bet! Do the girls try to match their insensitivity? Indisputably.

But of course, one is not supposed to pass judgment on any sexual behavior. Unless you call it “rape.” Saying that one should exercise some sexual restraint is just so old-fashioned. But that attitude doesn’t help women who were not raped, but did things they were profoundly unhappy about in the morning.

Marquette’s Gay Honors Program End-of-Year Party

2011-05-02T15:40:00.003-05:00

From the Honors Program, a flyer saying:

Marquette Faculty, Administrators, and Staff,
you’re invited to…

End of Year LGBT & Allies at Marquette Celebration

But it was on April 15. Damn! We missed it!

It was hosted, of course, by the Honors Program.

The flyer tells people to “Spread the Word,” and then tells them the location:

Coughlin Hall 001 (enter through the south door)

The purpose:

In 2010-2011, the Marquette community has taken some important steps to affirm the dignity of our LGBT members. Let’s recognize and celebrate these accomplishments with good food and our fellow faculty, administrators, and staff!

And finally:

Unveiling of the “LGBT @ WGST” website
Recognizing Research Accomplishments in Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Studies
Celebrating the coming of partner benefits in 2012!

There is indeed a lot to celebrate when the Marquette administration has given you virtually everything you wanted.

The Perfect Song for Today

2011-05-02T15:22:00.006-05:00

We had some reservations of this song when it first came out. And not because of the bellicose tone (which we thought absolutely appropriate), but because we don’t think you should threaten things you can’t deliver.

But it turns out we could deliver.

Journal-Sentinel on BPA: Ideology, Ambition Trump Science

2011-05-01T23:15:00.008-05:00

Liberal reporters love the narrative in which the chemical industry is poisoning the American people, and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has adopted that narrative with regard to bisphenol A (BPA.

Unfortunately, the sound science is radically different from what the paper has said.

A smackdown has been administered to the Journal-Sentinel by no less an outlet than the very liberal Huffington Post.

One key graph:

“[Journal-Sentinel editor] Stanley appears to have thrown one of his reporters under the bus to protect what he believes is the sanctity of those journalism awards,” adds SPJ [Society of Professional Journalists] ethicist Smith. “He even says he’s quoting from the acknowledgments section of the German report, which makes it seem as if his columnist was sloppy for not alerting readers to the alleged biases of the scientists, when actually he was the biased one.” The editor, he suggests, appears heavily invested in the controversial endocrine disruptor hypothesis, which is gradually losing favor in the international science community. “If the Journal Sentinel was really committed to truth, it would welcome new data and just report factually on developments. That’s the way science and journalism should work. It seems the editor was more committed to presenting his version of the truth.”

College Course: How to Be a Union Thug

2011-04-29T16:34:00.000-05:00

Prominent Academics: Don’t Call Your Pets “Pets”

2011-04-29T15:26:00.005-05:00

You can file this under “there is nothing so stupid that a bunch of college professors won’t embrace it.” From the Telegraph:

Animal lovers should stop calling their furry or feathered friends “pets” because the term is insulting, leading academics claim.

Domestic dogs, cats, hamsters or budgerigars should be rebranded as “companion animals” while owners should be known as “human carers,” they insist.

Even terms such as wildlife are dismissed as insulting to the animals concerned – who should instead be known as “free-living”, the academics including an Oxford professor suggest.

The call comes from the editors of then Journal of Animal Ethics, a new academic publication devoted to the issue.

It is edited by the Revd Professor Andrew Linzey, a theologian and director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, who once received an honorary degree from the Archbishop of Canterbury for his work promoting the rights of “God’s sentient creatures”.

In its first editorial, the journal – jointly published by Prof Linzey’s centre and the University of Illinois in the US – condemns the use of terms such as “critters” and “beasts.”

It argues that “derogatory” language about animals can affect the way that they are treated.

“Despite its prevalence, ‘pets’ is surely a derogatory term both of the animals concerned and their human carers,” the editorial claims.

“Again the word ‘owners’, whilst technically correct in law, harks back to a previous age when animals were regarded as just that: property, machines or things to use without moral constraint.”

It goes on: “We invite authors to use the words ‘free-living’, ‘free-ranging’ or ‘free-roaming’ rather than ‘wild animals.’

“For most, ‘wildness’ is synonymous with uncivilised, unrestrained, barbarous existence.

“There is an obvious prejudgment here that should be avoided.”

Prof Linzey and his co-editor Professor Priscilla Cohn, of Penn State University in the US, also hope to see some of the more colourful terms in the English language stamped out.

Phrases such as “sly as a fox,” “eat like a pig” or “drunk as a skunk” are all unfair to animals, they claim.

“We shall not be able to think clearly unless we discipline ourselves to use less than partial adjectives in our exploration of animals and our moral relations with them,” they say.

Anti-Walmart Activists: Punishing Shoppers For Living in Liberal Cities

2011-04-28T21:25:00.002-05:00

Michael Coren: Catholics Are Right

2011-04-27T17:53:00.000-05:00

From Canadian author and journalist Michael Coren, a viewpoint that is rather uncommon around Marquette.

We happen to be Protestant, and so have no pressing need to defend the Catholic Church.

But fair is fair, and Coren debunks a variety of notions that are the stock-in-trade of anti-Catholic types, including a lot of people who call themselves Catholic.

Obama Budget Plan

2011-04-27T17:09:00.002-05:00

Understanding the Jesuits

2011-04-24T07:41:00.000-05:00

From the late Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. in First Things, a classic essay:

At a press conference one day last summer, a newspaper correspondent asked me how I could combine being a Jesuit with being a cardinal. I at first imagined that she might be alluding to the fact that as a cardinal I might have to compromise on my vows of poverty and obedience to my Jesuit superiors, but then the true meaning of her question became clear. She explained that cardinals are supposed to support the teaching of the Pope, while Jesuits belong to the intellectual opposition, secretly if not publicly contesting the official doctrine of the Church. Are they not cleverer and wiser than the hierarchical Church, the subversive vanguard of the future Church?

I replied that she had been guided by the chauvinist myth about the Society of Jesus, but not by the reality. The Jesuit order, I explained, has been from its origins at the service and disposal of the papacy. With its headquarters in Rome, it has a long and distinguished record of collaborating with the Holy See and of rendering assistance in the preparation of papal and conciliar documents....

Many of the works of the Jesuit order are prospering. Its universities in the United States have larger enrollments and more academic prestige than ever before, Jesuit high schools are attracting large numbers of excellent students, and some Jesuit publications and parishes are very successful. The quality of young men joining the Society is as high as ever, but the number of new recruits is dramatically down, and the decline is bound to have a negative impact on traditionally Jesuit apostolates.

Many blame the dominant “consumerist” culture for the downturn in vocations, which has in fact affected most religious orders and diocesan churches in Europe, North America, and Australia. But some religious orders, even in the United States, are increasing rapidly, and some dioceses are attracting large numbers of seminarians. The vocations seem to be there, but the Jesuits, at the moment, are getting too few of them....

If a wake-up call is needed, we have it in Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits, a new book by Peter McDonough and Eugene C. Bianchi. It contains an abundance of useful information, even though it is in many respects a flawed study.

The thesis of the book may be summarized roughly as follows. The Society of Jesus is caught in a bind. The hierarchical Church is a rigid institution striving in vain to bring the behavior and ideas of its members into line with traditional orthodoxy. Especially under the “restorationist” regime of Pope John Paul II the Church has stubbornly rejected the democratic reforms that are needed. The bishops are impotent creatures of the Vatican. Jesuits, for the most part, are to be praised for deploring the repressive structures but at the same time pitied for their inability to change the situation. As a religious order, the Society is bound to preserve at least the appearance of conformity. Even among Jesuits, therefore, dissent has for the most part gone underground.

For my part, I can say that I recognize among Jesuits, as among other priests and religious in the United States, the various trends reported in [the book’s] survey. The opinions of traditionalists, moderates, liberals, and radical reformers are dutifully recorded-even to the point of tedium. Some distinctions are made between older and younger Jesuits. But little light is thrown on the inner dynamics of recent decades, which have affected not only Jesuits but other religious orders, diocesan clergy, and laity.

The distinction, I believe, is not between older and younger Jesuits-the categories most often used by the authors-but rather between those whose attitudes were shaped by the ideological revolutions of the 1960s and the rest of the Society. For the most part, the Jesuits who had completed their formation before Vatican II have remained faithful to their previous vision of the Church and the Society, and were able to integrate Vatican II into that vision. But then came a group who belonged to the restless “baby-boom” generation. Like many of their contemporaries, they became wildly optimistic about secularization in the early 1960s, and then in the early 1970s deeply involved in protests against the Vietnam War and in fighting for various social causes. They interpreted Vatican II as a kind of “palace revolution” in which the bishops put limits on the papacy, decentralized the Church, and transferred to the laity many powers formerly reserved to priests. The Council, some believe, renounced the high claims previously made for the Church and put Catholic Christianity on a plane of equality with other churches and religions. It also ostensibly embraced the modern world and the process of secularization.

Armed with their “progressive” reading of Vatican II, American Jesuits of this transitional generation became more committed to the struggle for social reform than to the propagation of Christian faith. They saw little but evil in pre-conciliar Catholicism. Drifting from historical consciousness into historical relativism, some of this generation questioned the current validity of the accepted creeds and dogmas of the Church. At the present moment members of this intermediate age group hold positions of greatest power and influence in the Society, but they no longer represent the cutting edge. A younger group is arising, much more committed to the Church and its traditions.

It is, of course, the younger group that holds out the hope for a vital Catholicism among the Jesuits.

But it’s the “baby-boom” generation that has power today, especially in supposedly Jesuit universities like Marquette.

A few Jesuits in their fifties and sixties believe that the Church “as we know it” is destined soon to collapse. This group tends to be critical of Pope John Paul II and his alleged attempts to silence dissent. Some express perplexity about the sacerdotal aspects of the Jesuit calling. Especially in the theological schools, which have a large enrollment of women students, Jesuit faculty members are reluctant to bring up the topic of priestly ordination. Some formation directors seem to have been infected with a critical attitude toward hierarchy and priesthood. One is quoted as saying:
I see the hierarchical Church’s direction today as different from but not antithetical to that of the Society. The hierarchical Church is often concerned with orthodoxy, clerical advancement, maintenance of church power, univocal thinking, and being right. I think these concerns hurt the whole Church.
Ignatius might indeed want to restrain the craving for clerical advancement, but he could hardly be imagined making light of orthodoxy. He would have swiftly removed any formation director who showed hostility to the “hierarchical Church.”

A new generation of seminarians and religious is arising, not only in the Jesuits but in the nation at large. This generation is not interested in denigrating the past or in liberating itself from the shackles of orthodoxy. On the contrary, it consists of young men eager to retrieve the tradition of former centuries and to serve the hierarchical Church as it exists today. This generation receives little recognition in the McDonough-Bianchi study, but some indications are nevertheless given.

The testimonies of Jesuits under forty are encouraging. A thirty-seven-year-old Jesuit says, for instance, that “our order, by its very constitution, cannot ever separate itself from the Catholic Church.” It must always be in union with Rome. We cannot be a “church within the Church” or an “alternative church.” A thirty-six-year-old theology student has this to say: “I entered to help support the direction that Pope John Paul II has given the Church. The Society has a mixed response to this direction, and the confusion it causes will ultimately hurt the effectiveness of the Society.”

In the same vein a thirty-year-old student of theology is quoted as saying, very perceptively: “If the stance of the Society is widely perceived as anti-institutional hierarchy, anti-Vatican, anti-pope, and if political and politically correct norms are used to select candidates for the Society, most of those who wish to serve Christ’s Church will go elsewhere.” On reflection it should be evident that it makes little sense to take vows and seek ordination in a religious order unless one is committed to support and serve the hierarchical Church.

Besides the cancer of opposition to hierarchical authority, another disease that needs to be cured is the ambivalence about priesthood. A thirty-one-year-old Jesuit complains: “In the two theologates that I attended . . . I didn’t find anyone providing a cogent explanation of ordained ministry and its relation to lay ministry.” Still another, aged thirty-five and already ordained, writes:
I find much of our energy is spent in fighting the battles of the immediate fallout of Vatican II (battles which have left deep scars on many professors but which are not the pressing issues for Jesuits of my generation) or preparing for life in an idealized, politically correct church that does not exist now and is not likely to exist in my lifetime.

Tellingly, the word “priesthood” is rarely mentioned in our classes. In fact, this year when the third-year theologians . . . gathered in Boston, most men from all three centers reported that they had spent the last two years either ignoring or apologizing for the fact that they were preparing for ordination. Such is life in the ideologically insulated and trendy city-states on the self-proclaimed cutting edge of theology.
The authors of Passionate Uncertainty themselves recognize that “the gravest problem is almost certainly disarray over the role of the priesthood as it pertains to ministry. This is particularly worrisome for an activist, apostolic order.” Worry as they may, McDonough and Bianchi do not help to solve the problem.

In addition to the difficulties of some Jesuits with hierarchy and priesthood, a third problem is prominent. Jesuits are conscious of a displacement of religion by psychology and of a move from the apostolic to the therapeutic understanding of the religious life. At least some of the younger Jesuits seem to be more interested in personal fulfillment than in service to the Society and its mission. “Therapists,” one young Jesuit reports, “are accorded the kind of authority and deference that was once reserved for spiritual directors and superiors.” The recent turn toward human affectivity and personal fulfillment may be connected with the alleged increase of homosexual tendencies among younger members in the Society of Jesus as well as in other religious orders and diocesan seminaries.

You may wish to read the remainder of the essay, and Dulles’ rather optimistic conclusion.

Clearly, Dulles’ observations about the “baby-boom” generation of Jesuits explains a lot about Jesuit higher education today. A generation of largely-liberal priests, regardless of their rhetoric, is fundamentally more comfortable with secular norms about things like sexuality than with traditional Christian norms.

Happy Easter

2011-04-24T06:34:00.005-05:00

Embarrassed UN Panel Backs Away From Blundered Forecast on Global Warming Refugees

2011-04-19T23:49:00.009-05:00

From the German weekly, Der Spiegel:

Six years ago, the United Nations issued a dramatic warning that the world would have to cope with 50 million climate refugees by 2010. But now that those migration flows have failed to materialize, the UN has distanced itself from the forecasts. On the contrary, populations are growing in the regions that had been identified as environmental danger zones.

It was a dramatic prediction that was widely picked up by the world’s media. In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations University declared that 50 million people could become environmental refugees by 2010, fleeing the effects of climate change.

But now the UN is distancing itself from the forecast: “It is not a UNEP prediction,” a UNEP spokesman told SPIEGEL ONLINE. The forecast has since been removed from UNEP’s website.

Official statistics show that the population in areas threatened by global warming is actually rising. The expected environmental disasters have yet to materialize.

In October 2005, UNU said: “Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of ‘refugee.’”

It added that “such problems as sea level rise, expanding deserts and catastrophic weather-induced flooding have already contributed to large permanent migrations and could eventually displace hundreds of millions.”

In 2008, Srgjan Kerim, president of the UN General Assembly, said it had been estimated that there would be between 50 million and 200 million environmental migrants by 2010. A UNEP web page showed a map of regions where people were likely to be displaced by the ravages of global warming. It has recently been taken offline but is still visible in a Google cache.

It has since disappeared from the Google cache, but we have retrieved both the map and the web page from Archive.org.

‘What Happened to the Climate Refugees?’

The UNEP spokesman said the map had been produced for a newspaper “based on various sources.” He said the map had been taken off the UNEP website “because it was causing confusion and making some journalists think UNEP was the source of such forecasts.”

Given the UN’s warnings of a tide of environmental refugees, the Asian Correspondent, a news and comment website, published an article this month titled “What Happened to the Climate Refugees?”

Scientists have been claiming for years that some 25 million people have already been displaced by adverse environmental conditions. Drought, storms and floods have always plagued parts of the world’s population. The environmentalist Norman Myers, a professor at Oxford University, has been particularly bold in his forecasts. At a conference in Prague in 2005, he predicted there would be 50 million climate refugees by 2010.

“As far back as 1995 (latest date for a comprehensive assessment), these environmental refugees totalled at least 25 million people, compared with 27 million traditional refugees (people fleeing political oppression, religious persecution and ethnic troubles),” Myers said. “The environmental refugees total could well double between 1995 and 2010.”

“When global warming takes hold,” he added, “there could be as many as 200 million people overtaken by disruptions of monsoon systems and other rainfall regimes, by droughts of unprecedented severity and duration, and by sea-level rise and coastal flooding.” Myers’ report may have been the basis for the UN statements in 2005.

Forecasts in Doubt

But Myers’ forecasts are controversial in scientific circles. Stephen Castles of the International Migration Institute at Oxford University contradicted the horror scenarios in an interview with SPIEGEL in 2007. Myers and other scientists were simply looking at climate change forecasts and counting the number of people living in areas at risk of flooding, said Castles, author of the “The Age of Migration.” That made them arrive at huge refugee numbers.

Castles said people usually don’t respond to environmental disasters, war or poverty by emigrating abroad. That appears to be confirmed by the behavior of victims of last month’s devastating earthquake and tusnami in Japan. Many survivors are returning to rebuild their ruined towns and villages.

The UNU statement from 2005 highlights the difficulties involved in predicting the impact of global warming. The Yemeni capital Sanaa was cited as an example of the threat of climate migration. Sanaa’s ground water was falling “by 6 meters a year and may be exhausted by 2010, according to the World Bank,” the statement said.

In 2010, the IRIN news agency, a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reported that Sanaa “may run out of economically viable water supplies by 2017.” Meanwhile the city’s population has increased: between 2004 and 2010, it expanded by 585,000 people to almost 2.3 million. Nevertheless, there is no sign of an exodus resulting from a shortage of water.

The same applies to other nations that were classified as particularly endangered on the UNEP map of the world, such as Bangladesh, the Cook Islands and Western Sahara. In these countries and others, the population numbers have increased, according to official data. Even the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu still has its 10,000 inhabitants, even though their relocation had already been planned. The reason may be that many low-lying Pacific islands are actually increasing in size despite the rise in ocean levels, because of a build-up caused by coral debris eroded from reefs and deposited on the islands by storms and sea currents.

Outlook for 2020

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which regularly issues a report summarizing the latest research, is vague when it comes to diagnosing environmental change. For example, the change in precipitation in the African Sahel zone has so far shown no clear trend. But the forecasts based on climate simulations for the next 90 years indicate drought for the region.

The UNEP spokesman said land degradation, the loss of forests and other environmental changes were accelerating, and that UNEP was concerned about the “impact such trends will have on lives and livelihoods and movements of people.”

Meanwhile a new forecast is doing the rounds. At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in February, Cristina Tirado, an environment researcher at the University of California in Los Angeles, warned of 50 million environmental refugees in the future. That figure was a UN projection she said — for 2020.

True believers in anthropogenic global warming will insist that silly forecasts coming from a UN panel don’t really cast doubt on “the science” of the issue.

But of course, average citizens, even rather well-informed ones, don’t know the science, they only know the media hype, including media hype coming from the United Nations. Learning to discount this hype is an excellent first step toward sanity on the issue.

And unfortunately, the people who “know the science,” climate scientists, have shown themselves to be badly biased. Not only do they have a vested interest in global warming, they constitute a rather closed community with strong community norms. That’s what Climategate showed.

The fact that the true believers have acted like an Inquisition, threatening and punishing people who dissent, also does not engender confidence. Don’t people who are confident in their position usually seek to debate and engage, rather than stiffle opposing opinions?