RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
June 28 to July 4, 2020 Monuments and places named for famous people tied to racism are being erased across the country. So why does the late Democratic powerhouse Sen. Robert Byrd escape virtually unscathed -- even though he was once a Ku Klux Klan organizer? Reporting for RealClearInvestigations from Byrd's native West Virginia, Steve Miller encounters much silence on the matter, but identifies three factors to explain Byrd's absolution: politics, pork, and penitence. - Politics: Unlike long-dead figures whose honors have been assailed lately, Byrd served recently enough that many still active in politics worked alongside him. Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well as former Vice President Joe Biden, all delivered eulogies at his funeral in 2010.
- Pork: During his record-setting Senate tenure (from 1959 until his death in 2010), Byrd brought an estimated $1 billion to his home state. State lawmakers' enduring gratitude is expressed with his name on over three dozen public works projects, including two federal courthouses, a dam on the Ohio border, libraries, roads and more.
- Penitence: Byrd's legacy is tempered by the fact he spent the latter part of his life apologizing for his past.
- Of course there's also this: the double standard for Democrats that many perceive.
- In 2003, GOP Sen. Trent Lott was forced to step down as Senate minority leader over the way he praised onetime segregationist Dixiecrat-turned-Republican Strom Thurmond at a birthday celebration.
- Yet Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was able to cling on in power despite a racist image found in his 1984 medical school yearbook. Here again politics were decisive: Northam kept his job due to political calculations of the unappealing alternatives.
As concern grows over "cancel culture" and the spread of campus intolerance in wide civil unrest, statehouses are mounting a quiet counterrevolution through campus free-speech and "intellectual diversity" laws, Mark Hemingway reports for RealClearInvestigations. Hemingway reports: - Texas last year became the 17th state since 2015 to enact legislation protecting First Amendment rights on campus.
- There are moves afoot in four states - Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Arizona - to go further: enact laws to increase "intellectual diversity" at public universities.
- South Dakota has already done so, and the law's requirements amount to the most sweeping campus reforms in the country.
- Under intellectual diversity laws, not only must dissenting views be tolerated, but college administrations are required to actively take steps (yet to be specified) to ensure that students are exposed to competing cultural and political viewpoints.
- Reaction is predictably polarized. Joan Wink of the South Dakota Board of Regents says intellectual diversity requirements are "code speak" for hiring more "right-leaning, ideologically grounded" professors and administrators.
- But Patrick Garry of the University of South Dakota School of Law welcomes campuses becoming "like the southern states under the Voting Rights Act" because the rights of all need to be protected.
- At the federal level, President Trump last year issued an executive order making research funding contingent on universities having adequate free speech protections.
- David Randall of the National Association of Scholars says higher education today "aims at creating activists who are out protesting on the streets. I mean, look around - this is what's happening."
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Officials: Trump Got February Report on Possible Russian Bounties
New York Times
The latest iteration of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory should seem familiar: anonymous sources sharing classified information with the New York Times to suggest the president is soft on Russia (didn't that used to be called red-baiting?) In this case the Times is reporting that Trump was told months ago that a Russian military intelligence unit may have offered and paid bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan - and then took no action. The president and the Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe deny the claim. The administration says the bounty claim was not shared with the president because it is unverified. The Times followed up with a highly detailed article on the small-time Afghan businessman who became a key middleman for bounties on coalition troops his country. In a separate article, The Federalist deconstructs the Times article while reminding readers how anonymous sources have been a weapon of choice for the anti-Trump resistance. China Forces Birth Control on Uighurs to Suppress Population
Associated Press
The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, the AP reports, even as it encourages some of the country's Han majority to have more children. While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to the AP investigation. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of "demographic genocide." The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands. The population control measures are backed by mass detention both as a threat and as a punishment for failure to comply. Having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, the AP found, with the parents of three or more ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines. Police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children. How Dollar Stores Became Crime Magnets
ProPublica/New Yorker
In some of the nation's poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods, outlets of the discount chains Family Dollar and Dollar General are often the only place to buy basic items - frozen foods, canned goods, snacks, detergent, toys and other sundries. This article reports that since 2017, there have been more than 200 violent incidents involving guns at the 8,000 Family Dollar or 16,000 Dollar General stores across America - nearly 50 of which resulted in deaths. Since the beginning of 2017, employees have been wounded in shootings or pistol-whippings in at least 31 robberies; in at least seven other incidents, employees have been killed. Judges Broke Laws, 90% Stayed on Bench
Reuters
Thousands of state and local judges across America are allowed to keep positions of extraordinary power and prestige after violating judicial ethics rules or breaking laws they pledged to uphold, a Reuters investigation found. Judges have made racist statements, lied to state officials and forced defendants to languish in jail without a lawyer - and then returned to the bench, sometimes with little more than a rebuke from the state agencies overseeing their conduct. All told, 9 of every 10 judges were allowed to return to the bench after they were sanctioned for misconduct, Reuters determined. They included a California judge who had sex in his courthouse chambers, once with his former law intern and separately with an attorney; a New York judge who berated domestic violence victims; and a Maryland judge who, after his arrest for driving drunk, was allowed to return to the bench provided he took a Breathalyzer test before each appearance. How Ghislaine Maxwell Evaded Capture for a Year
E! News
What took them so long? That was the question left hanging when the feds announced Thursday that they had arrested Ghislaine Maxwell - the woman widely believed to have pimped young girls for Jeffrey Epstein. This article reports that federal prosecutors address that question in their indictment, claiming Maxwell deployed numerous strategies to avoid detection from investigators, including moving to different hideouts on at least two separate occasions. They also say she changed her email, phone number and used a different name when having packages shipped. The article also speculates that Maxwell was likely able to remain at large, and live on the 56-acre New Hampshire estate where she was arrested, "partly because of the millions of dollars that Epstein had given her in the years before his death. Prosecutors claimed that the late convicted sex offender transferred over $20 million to some of Maxwell's 15 bank accounts from 2007 to 2011." Read the indictment here. The Secret History of the Rape Kit
New York Times
This fascinating article uncovers the story of Marty Goddard, a surprisingly forgotten figure who began a revolution in forensics in the 1970s by envisioning the first standardized rape kit, containing items like swabs and combs to gather evidence and envelopes to seal it in. Pagan Kennedy reports that "Goddard would go on to lead a campaign to treat sexual assault as a crime that could be investigated, rather than as a feminine delusion." That dismissive attitude was reflected in a 1973 Chicago police training manual that declared, "Many rape complaints are not legitimate," and added, "It is unfortunate that many women will claim they have been raped in order to get revenge against an unfaithful lover or boyfriend with a roving eye." And yet, Kennedy writes, in many ways Goddard "and her invention shared the same fate. They were enormously important and consistently overlooked," as evidenced by the shocking backlog of "unexamined rape kits piled up in warehouses around the country." Trump-Russia/2020 Election News Sources: Trump Was Told of Russian Bounties Over a Year Ago AP
Secret Service Security for Hunter Biden on 400+ Flights Just the News
'PizzaGate' Theory Thrives in TikTok Era New York Times Coronavirus Investigations Did World Military Games Spread the Coronavirus? American Prospect
Virus Autopsies: Story of 38 Brains, 87 Lungs, 42 Hearts Washington Post
Unsparing CEO Leads Covid Vaccine Quest Wall Street Journal
The Tricky Math of Herd Immunity for COVID-19 Quanta Magazine
How the Virus Puts the U.S. Public Health System on the Critical List AP |
