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Author: New Neo

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New Neo

Neo is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at the new neo.

I wish I could say it is a shock that Rolling Stone would publish the inadequately-researched UVA rape story, or that a journalist with supposedly strong investigative credentials such as Sabrina Rubin Erdely would write it. No, the bigger shock is that the WaPo decided to challenge the Rolling Stone story by fact-checking the allegations of UVA-accuser "Jackie." If Erdely herself had tried a little harder to corroborate Jackie's story, she would have found more or less what the WaPo discovered---that Jackie's rape story didn't hold up under close scrutiny---and Erdely's sensational Rolling Stone article would probably never have been written. But Erdely chose not to do her job, no doubt because the story was just too good to not be true. Everyone involved in this story was primed to believe it: Erdely, the assault awareness advocates at the university to whom Jackie told the tale, and Rolling Stone. The reporter and the paper should have known better and approached it more objectively. The assault awareness students to whom Jackie spoke, on the other hand, are in a different position: they are younger people who have been brainwashed to believe they should always trust the woman who tells the story. But a certain amount of skepticism is always warranted, unfortunately: trust, but verify. The facts have to check out, and the truth is that some people lie about this sort of thing. For accuser Jackie, her story began to get out of hand when Erdely came to the campus seeking someone to tell her such a tale [emphasis mine]:
Jackie told the Post that she had not intended to share her story widely until the Rolling Stone writer contacted her. “If she had not come to me I probably would not have gone public about my rape,” said Jackie...
There are many such quotes in the WaPo article that are very telling about Jackie's state of mind. She wanted to tell her story, but was reluctant to give out too many facts or to go to authorities, because she knew her veracity would be challenged. In fact, she even asked Erdely to leave her out of the article, but Erdely insisted on keeping her in [emphasis mine]:

Rolling Stone has gotten a lot of attention with a controversial article alleging a rape occurred in 2012 at the University of Virginia, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely and featuring some harrowing and disturbing details. The victim was identified only as "Jackie." Almost as soon as the story was published, doubts arose about its veracity, or at least about the journalistic standards of its author, who did not manage to interview the alleged perpetrators even though it would seem there were ways to have contacted them. Even worse, Erdely has not been forthcoming about the extent of her efforts to find them, and did not include any mention of any of this in the article. It has become evident that not only did Erdely demonstrate slipshod journalistic standards, but that the story itself could possibly be a fabrication by the alleged victim. This could be wrong, of course; there's no way to know at this point. But it seems fairly clear that Erdely did not fact check the story properly, and neither did Rolling Stone. Their excuses as to why seem inadequate, self-serving, and obfuscating. The article was not only about the alleged rape; it was critical of the UVA administration. But what did the administrators do wrong, exactly? They outlined all of Jackie's choices, and left it to her to decide what to do. Also, Jackie had only come forward to the administration close to a year after the rape supposedly occurred, and it's not clear from the article whether she named any names. But here's what is purported to have occurred when she did report it to the official in charge of such incidents:

John McWhorter's Time essay on Ferguson demonstrates his graceful way with words, and his struggle to fight the truth about Ferguson. The only bit of truth that survived McWhorter's preferred narrative is this:
I’m not sure that what happened to Michael Brown — and the indictment that did not happen to Officer Darren Wilson — is going to be useful as a rallying cry about police brutality and racism in America.
McWhorter recognizes that, yet it is instructive to see the mental gymnastics he performs in order to stay with the liberal line:
The key element in the Brown-Wilson encounter was not any specific action either man took — it was the preset hostility to the cops that Brown apparently harbored.
So far, so true---although Brown's hostility, and the acting-out of that hostility, seems hardly to have been limited to cops. But then McWhorter writes this:
And that hostility was key because it was indeed totally justified.
So, despite the fact that McWhorter goes on to agree that Wilson's actions were not necessarily motivated by racism, and despite the fact that he even acknowledges that Brown had just robbed a convenience store, and despite the fact that McWhorter knows nothing---absolutely nothing---of Brown's actual attitudes towards police, why he might hold those attitudes, and what his previous encounters with police had been, he claims that this supposed attitude of Brown's was not merely justified, but totally justified.

Let's take a look at the classic depiction of Justice: justice She wears a blindfold. And not because it's Halloween. It's because:
Lady Justice (Latin: Iustitia, the Roman goddess of Justice, who is equivalent to the Greek goddesses Themis and Dike) is an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems. ...Lady Justice is most often depicted with a set of scales typically suspended from her right hand, upon which she measures the strengths of a case's support and opposition. She is also often seen carrying a double-edged sword in her left hand, symbolizing the power of Reason and Justice, which may be wielded either for or against any party. ...Since the 15th century, Lady Justice has often been depicted wearing a blindfold. The blindfold represents objectivity, in that justice is or should be meted out objectively, without fear or favour, regardless of identity, personal wealth, power, or weakness; blind justice and impartiality. The earliest Roman coins depicted Justitia with the sword in one hand and the scale in the other, but with her eyes uncovered. Justitia was only commonly represented as "blind" since about the end of the 15th century.
Reason. Justice. Objectivity. Laudable and important goals.

For months Obama has been saying, "I'm gonna do it, I'm really gonna do it---unless of course you give me what I want." He even told us the timing; it would be after the election. In doing so, he will be keeping a promise to his radical base (Hispanic and otherwise), issuing a threat to the Republicans in Congress, and thumbing his nose at the American voters who expressed disapproval of him on November 4. You don't get a trifecta like that every day from a president. I just wrote that what Obama is about to do constitutes a threat to Republicans in Congress. But actually, it's a threat to Congress itself. Democrats should be just as disturbed as Republicans by it, because it's not the ends that are as important here as the very dangerous means. But if you've listened to a great many Democrats talk about it, you'd think ends are all they care about---and you might just be correct for most of them. Obama has the strong support of leading Democrats, who seem only too happy to cede the power of Congress to the president to get something they think will benefit the Party. Of course, they don't state that it's a dangerous executive power overreach; they say this is just like what other presidents have done when they used their executive discretion to tweak immigration laws. Surely they must be aware of the differences. But being aware has nothing to do with it; ideologues of the left have no trouble telling themselves that 2 + 2 = 5, and that what Reagan and Bush did was just the same as what Obama is poised to do now, even though only political junkies have even heard of the former actions before because they were relatively non-controversial. Frum summarizes the differences here, and they are substantial:

When I heard that Dr. Martin Salia, a Sierra Leone native who is married to a US citizen and who contacted ebola while treating patients in his native country, had been flown here for treatment and was in "very critical" condition, I thought "if we can cure him, then American medicine is really onto something in the treatment of ebola." Sadly, it was not to be: Dr. Salia has died of the disease. He was very very far gone when he arrived:
"He was placed on dialysis, a ventilator and multiple medications to support his organ systems in an effort to help his body fight the disease. He also received a dose of convalescent plasma and ZMapp therapy was initiated on Saturday," the hospital said in a statement. "We used every possible treatment available to give Dr. Salia every possible opportunity for survival," Smith said. "As we have learned, early treatment with these patients is essential. In Dr. Salia's case, his disease was already extremely advanced by the time he came here for treatment."
There are two very salient facts about the case of Dr. Salia. The first is that he never knew how he got the disease; he was a general surgeon in Sierra Leone and was not specifically treating ebola patients. This reflects the fact that ebola is not always easy to spot, even for medical personnel who are well-versed in its diagnosis and are treating patients in areas where it is endemic, and therefore would be on high alert for it. That is one of the many many dangers of the disease, and you may recall that the same thing happened with Dr. Rick Sacra, who was treated here much earlier in the disease's course than Salia and has survived. The second thing I'd like to highlight is that it took four (or five; I've read differing accounts) full days after Dr. Salia first showed ebola symptoms for his blood test to become positive for the disease. By that time he was extremely sick indeed. The loss of those days of possible treatment here may have made a big difference. Here is the story:

A constitutional crisis may loom on the horizon if President Obama follows through on his threats of executive action on immigration reform. So it might be a good time to revisit what the Founders had to say about protecting future generations from the kind of tyranny that could occur even in a democracy. When the Founders set up our government the way they did, it was not because of any sort of naiveté or vague hopefulness about government or its leaders in general. They realized that there is no way to protect people who have lost their own wisdom and judgment about these things. The Founders tried to put in all the built-in, automatic stops to tyranny they could devise, and they were tremendously clever and creative about it. But they also realized that the task of protecting people was impossible, and that the temptation to go the way of tyranny would be great. Perhaps even unstoppable. But they tried their best. Maybe even the best anyone could have done. Let's hear John Adams:
I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.
From the same letter:

Amidst all the good news from election 2014, the victories of Tim Scott, South Carolina's Senator, and Mia Love, new Representative from Utah's 4th District, are especially noteworthy. There's no way to deny that their race becomes important, if only because Democrats have emphasized race so very much. Sadly, these usually-baseless accusations of Republican racism have become more frequent, not less, since the administration of Barack Obama. Scott and Love are living, breathing refutations of that rhetorical approach, and proof that conservative black candidates can win even in a place like Utah, which is one of the whitest areas in the US. Here's an example of Scott's approach to answering questions about his race and his conservative politics: The Democratic Party must be shaking in its shoes worrying that the black community might actually start listening to someone like Scott or Love.

A District Court judge in Maine has overturned a lower court ruling that restricted Kaci Hickox's movements, which means that the formerly-quarantined nurse is now free to go about her business. The reason? The science on ebola transmission is apparently settled:
Judge Charles C. LaVerdiere ruled Hickox must continue daily monitoring and cooperate with health officials if she chooses to travel. The judge said there’s no need to restrict her movements because she’s not showing symptoms of Ebola. In his ruling, the judge thanked Hickox for her service in Africa and wrote that “people are acting out of fear and that this fear is not entirely rational.” Maine Gov. Paul LePage disagreed with the judge’s decision, but said the state will follow the law... The judge...acknowledged the gravity of restricting someone’s constitutional rights without solid science to back it up. “The court is fully aware of the misconceptions, misinformation, bad science and bad information being spread from shore to shore in our country with respect to Ebola,” he wrote. “The court is fully aware that people are acting out of fear and that this fear is not entirely rational.”
No doubt the judge is also fully aware of certain statements made by Nobel-prize-winning immunologist Dr. Bruce Beutler:
It may not be absolutely true that those without symptoms can’t transmit the disease, because we don’t have the numbers to back that up,” said Beutler, “It could be people develop significant viremia [where viruses enter the bloodstream and gain access to the rest of the body], and become able to transmit the disease before they have a fever, even. People may have said that without symptoms you can’t transmit Ebola. I’m not sure about that being 100 percent true. There’s a lot of variation with viruses.”
On the subject of possible further court action by the state:

The senior official in the Obama administration who referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as "chickshit" probably has much more courageous things than Operation Isotope on his resume. Operation Isotope was a raid involving the rescue of hijacked Sabena Flight 571, and Netanyahu was a participant, along with another Israeli Prime Minister-to-be, Ehud Barak:
On 9 May 1972 at 4:00 p.m. the rescue operation began: a team of 16 Sayeret Matkal commandos, led by Ehud Barak and including Benjamin Netanyahu, both future Israeli Prime Ministers, approached the airplane. The commandos were disguised as airplane technicians in white overalls, and were able to convince the terrorists that the aircraft needed repair. The commandos stormed the aircraft and took control of the plane in ten minutes, killing both male hijackers and capturing the two women. All the passengers were rescued. Three of the passengers were wounded, one of whom eventually died from her wounds. Netanyahu was wounded during the rescue, presumably by friendly fire. The two female surviving terrorists were eventually sentenced to life imprisonment, but were freed as part of a prisoner exchange after the 1982 Lebanon War.
[caption id="attachment_104421" align="alignnone" width="550"]Benjamin Netanyahu is congratulated by former Israeli President Zalman Shazar during a ceremony honoring the elite commandos who rescued the hostages from the Sabena Flight 571. [Benjamin Netanyahu is congratulated by former Israeli President
Zalman Shazar during a ceremony honoring the elite commandos who
rescued the hostages from the Sabena Flight 571. (via Maggie's Notebook)][/caption] To paraphrase Winston Churchill: some chicken, some shit.

Kaci Hickox is back home in Maine. But she's as defiant as ever:
Kaci Hickox, the nurse who was quarantined at a New Jersey hospital despite exhibiting no Ebola symptoms after arriving from West Africa, won't follow the quarantine imposed by Maine officials, her attorney said tonight. "Going forward she does not intend to abide by the quarantine imposed by Maine officials because she is not a risk to others," her attorney Steven Hyman said. "She is asymptomatic and under all the protocols cannot be deemed a medical risk of being contagious to anyone." Hickox will abide by all the self-monitoring requirements of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state of Maine, Hyman said.
But I wonder how many people in Fort Kent, Maine are going to be eager to attend her "Welcome home, Kaci" party? Now that Christie has washed his hands (metaphorically speaking) of Hickox---which is beginning to look more and more like a savvy decision---what will LePage of Maine do? Treat her with kid gloves, perhaps:
Maine requires that health care workers such as Hickox who return to the state from West Africa will remain under a 21-day home quarantine, with their condition actively monitored, Gov. Paul R. LePage said in a statement. "We will help make sure the health care worker has everything to make this time as comfortable as possible," he said.
The comments to the linked article are uniformly angry. Typical is this: "She makes it REALLY easy to hate her." And that's among the nicer ones. From some of the statements in this article, however, it sounds like Maine may be ready for a legal battle with Hickox:

There has been a fatal school shooting in Marysville, Washington. Here are some of the details:
What [a student in the school cafeteria] saw was freshman Jaylen Fryberg go up to a table with students, "came up from behind ... and fired about six bullets into the backs of them," Luton told CNN. "They were his friends, so it wasn't just random."... The shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Marysville police spokesman Robb Lamoureux told reporters. Two girls are in the intensive care unit at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, and two boys are in ICU at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Providence spokeswoman Erin Al-Wazan said. Three are "very critically ill" with "very serious" injuries, she said. One is in serious condition. One of the boys, age 14, suffered a jaw injury. The other, age 15, was critically injured in the head.
The shooter and his victims are members of the Tulalip Native American tribe, and the two boys mentioned in the above quote are relatives of his:

Yesterday was the opening of controversial opera "The Death of Klinghoffer" at New York's Lincoln Center. The occasion was marked by turmoil:
Demonstrators, primarily associated with Jewish groups, plan to rally outside Lincoln Center with 100 wheelchairs, in honor of the slain handicapped Leon Klinghoffer, on whom “The Death of Klinghoffer” is based. Klinghoffer was hurled from the Achille Lauro cruise ship by PLO terrorists in 1985 after it was hijacked. The opera, which centers on the terrorists who perpetrated the murder, has been accused of glorifying terrorism and incorporating anti-Semitic tropes.
The Klinghoffer opera is not new; it was first produced in 1991, and has drawn protests wherever it goes. I recall hearing the news of the hijacking and the shocking manner of Klinghoffer's death at the time it occurred. But back then I was unaware of the almost immediate post-modern interest of some in understanding---empathizing with, and even sympathizing with---Klinghoffer's murderers. In the years since, and especially post-9/11, such enabling attitudes have become only too common. "The Death of Klinghoffer" is an example of the genre. In the olden days, an opera on such a theme might have featured the terrorists as traditional villains steeped in evil, with thunderous and dissonant music to signify the horror of what they did. But in this version they are given sonorous and lovely melodies to sing and sympathetic words to utter. But it wasn't enough to portray the murderers in a sensitive light; the Klinghoffers and their associates are portrayed less nobly:
More than 20 years ago, in his review of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's premiere of the opera, The New York Times chief music critic, Edward Rothstein, questioned the presentation of Jews and Palestinian Arabs as "symmetrical victims of each other's hatreds." Rothstein later wrote that the opera's depiction of its Jewish characters reduced them "to petty triviality" compared to their Palestinian counterparts.
The opera's librettist, Alice Goodman, is an interesting tale herself. Born and raised as a Jew in Minnesota, educated in literature at Harvard, married to a British poet, she became an Anglican priest and opera librettist.

Ouch, this must hurt:
President Obama delivered a blow to Democratic Senate candidates looking to distance themselves from his flagging approval ratings Monday... “The bottom line is though, these are all folks who vote with me; they have supported my agenda in Congress; they are on the right side of minimum wage; they are on the right side of fair pay; they are on the right side of rebuilding our infrastructure; they’re on the right side of early childhood education.” Obama went on to say that his feelings weren’t hurt by Democrats who were reluctant to campaign with him. “These are folks who are strong allies and supporters of me, and I tell them, I said, ‘You know what, you do what you need to do to win. I will be responsible for making sure our voters turn out.’” The president’s remarks appear tailor-made for Republican attack ads in states like Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Kentucky and Alaska, where GOP candidates have painted their Democratic opponents as rubber stamps for the administration’s policies.
What's going on here? Does Obama want those Democrats to lose? There are three possibilities. The first is that he doesn't realize how toxic he's become. He's isolated in the White House with his devotees, and that plus the depth of his narcissism protect him. Long story short, he actually thinks these sorts of statements are helpful. The second is that he's just trying to rally his base and get them to vote, saying (wink, wink) that these candidates distancing themselves from him is just a ruse, and that they'll be good and loyal liberals once they're safely elected.

Hey, that'll work:
President Obama has asked Ron Klain, who served as chief of staff to both Vice President Biden and former vice president Al Gore, as his Ebola response coordinator, according to a White House official. "He will report directly to the president’s homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, and the president's national security adviser, Susan Rice, as he ensures that efforts to protect the American people by detecting, isolating and treating Ebola patients in this country are properly integrated but don’t distract from the aggressive commitment to stopping Ebola at the source in West Africa," a White House official wrote in an e-mail. Klain, a longtime Democratic operative, served as Biden's chief of staff from 2009 to 2011 and as Gore's from 1995 to 1999. He helped oversee the Democratic side in the 2000 presidential election recount as its lead lawyer, a role that Kevin Spacey portrayed in the HBO film "Recount."
Klain has virtually no experience except for the political and the legal. He's another Harvard Law graduate, and briefly clerked for SCOTUS Justice Byron White, but after that there's mostly a long string of Democratic political positions, including a stint as debate prepper. The following [emphasis mine] is really a masterpiece in gracefully laconic understatement by the WaPo. My hat is off to the article's authors:

What the first cases transmitted in the west might be telling us...