Posted on April 24, 2024 by Scott Johnson in Corporate America, Hamas, Law

A word from Obama’s wingman

We haven’t heard much from Barack Obama about the 10/7 massacre or Iran’s missile assault on Israel. Former Obama wingman Eric Holder gives us a taste of what we are missing in the Washington Free Beacon story “Eric Holder Says Columbia’s Campus Agitators Have ‘Legitimate Concerns.'”

Both Obama and Holder are Columbia alumni. Collin notes the contradiction between Holder’s defense of the pro-Hamas campers at Columbia and the stated position of the Covington & Burling law firm, where he is senior counsel charging up to $2295 an hour for “racial equity audits”:

Holder’s defense of the Columbia protesters, who were violating university policy and shouting anti-Semitic slogans including “Globalize the intifada” and “NYPD, KKK, IDF, you’re all the same,” does not square with his law firm Covington & Burling’s decision late last year to sign a letter, along with dozens of white shoe firms, expressing zero-tolerance for the disruptive, anti-Semitic protests taking place on college and law school campuses across the country.

“As employers who recruit from each of your law schools, we look to you to ensure your students who hope to join our firms after graduation are prepared to be an active part of workplace communities that have zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses,” the letter stated.

Chants calling for “the death of Jews and the elimination of the state of Israel,” Covington and other firms said, are “anti-Semitic activities” that “would not be tolerated at any of our firms.”

Neither Holder nor Covington & Burling responded to Collin’s request for comment. On that point will have to fill in the blanks yourself.

The Free Beacon story concludes with this disclosure:

The Washington Free Beacon is a Covington & Burling client. But the firm, which once represented the Free Beacon in matters of defamation and employment, no longer does so after Covington partner Lindsay Burke and Of Counsel Jason Criss cited a conflict of interest given their discomfort with the Free Beacon’s coverage of Holder’s practice.

Neither Burke nor Criss responded to a request for comment regarding whether they share Holder’s view that the Columbia protesters have “legitimate concerns.”

With respect to “the Free Beacon’s coverage of Holder’s practice,” the disclosure links to a July 2023 story by Aaron Sibarium: “Starbucks Hired Eric Holder To Conduct a ‘Civil Rights Audit.’ The Policies He Blessed Got the Coffee Maker Sued.” It may be for the best that the Free Beacon and Covington & Burling have gone their separate ways, at least on defamation and employment issues.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Anti-Semitism, Hamas, Higher education, Israel

Extension, Columbia style

The pro-Hamas kill the Jews crowd in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the heart of campus has received an extension. Not to get the campers’ term papers in, of course, but rather to vacate the encampment at the heart of the campus. The encampment is unauthorized and was supposed to be removed days ago. Columbia President Minouche Shafik then set a deadline of this morning at 8:00 a.m. She has now granted a further 48-hour extension.

After that, the boom may or may not be lowered. Shafik says she’s making progress with the pro-Hamas campers. However, the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine says it’s not standing down until there is “a written commitment that the administration will not be unleashing the NYPD or the National Guard on its students.” Who ya gonna believe?

In any event, it’s past time to call Ghostbusters. Shafik has canceled in-person classes as a result of serious safety issues related to the campers. The order that makes education possible must be restored. Shafik is conflicted. She must sympathize with the kill the Jews crowd among students and faculty, yet she knows Columbia is disgracing itself under her “leadership” among alumni, friends and supporters, and decent Americans throughout the country.

Shafik’s ambivalence is on display in the case of Aida Parisi. The Washington Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson reports:

For more than two weeks, Columbia University graduate student Aidan Parisi has defied the university’s suspension, refusing to vacate his dorm room on the school’s Manhattan campus.

The school announced Parisi’s suspension on April 4 following his participation in a pro-Hamas event. And while Columbia leaders have pledged to enforce the suspension, they have yet to follow through. In the meantime, Parisi has contributed to the mayhem that has engulfed the campus over the past several days, serving as a leader of the unauthorized encampment zone that has plagued the school for days.

Parisi has tweeted daily from what he calls Columbia’s “Gaza Solidarity Camp,” located on the university’s south lawn. Student activists set up the camp last week as Columbia president Minouche Shafik testified before Congress on the school’s response to campus anti-Semitism.

One day later, Shafik authorized the New York City Police Department to arrest students who had ignored warnings to leave the area and who were protesting in violation of university policy. But Parisi avoided arrest and went on to organize a “second camp” where students have remained ever since.

Parisi has emerged as a ringleader of student activists, leading chants such as, “Columbia, we see you, you imprison children too.” He’s used his social media account to solicit supplies for his “amazing comrades,” including blankets, tarps, and coffee.

Whole thing here (and all of it is of interest). As usual, the New York Post cuts through the fog on its cover today (below).

Posted on April 23, 2024 by John Hinderaker in 2024 Election, Crime, Democrats, Donald Trump

A Prosecution In Search of a Crime

Donald Trump is undergoing a criminal trial in Manhattan. He is charged with filing corporate records that included a false statement; namely, that payments to Michael Cohen that were described as being for legal services were, in fact, to reimburse Cohen for making one or more payments to Stormy Daniels in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. But those payments to Daniels were perfectly legal, and filing a false corporate document is a misdemeanor on which the statute of limitation has passed.

So in order to charge Trump, District Attorney Alvin Bragg had to allege that the false documents were filed in order to cover up another crime. That would make it a felony. But what is that other crime? Bragg has been coy about it. In truth, there was no other crime, and Bragg’s prosecution is election interference on behalf of the Democratic Party, plain and simple.

One would think that this case could not have gone to trial without a clear specification of that other crime and evidence in support of it. But that appears to be what has happened, courtesy of trial judge Juan Merchan, who is in on the scam.

Byron York points out this classic of obfuscation from the prosecutor’s opening statement:


Which means what, exactly? I suppose the translation is that Trump didn’t want voters to know about his fling with Daniels. But an “illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of a presidential election” does not define a crime. The “hush money” payment was legal, not illegal. And Trump’s desire that voters not know about his relationship with Daniels was no different from Biden’s desire, in the 2020 election, to prevent voters from learning that he was senile. Both candidates wanted to conceal something from voters, but neither candidate committed a felony to do it.

This is not actually hard to grasp, but reporters are commenting breathlessly on the trial as though there were something of substance to it. There isn’t. But if you want to talk about a “conspiracy to undermine the integrity of a presidential election,” one is unfolding before our eyes in a Manhattan courtroom.

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Democrats, Minnesota

“I know I did something bad”

The Democrats hold a one-vote majority in Minnesota’s state Senate. They used that advantage to pass an unprecedented barrage of far-left legislation in the 2023 session. Their skinny majority is now in jeopardy, however, because a DFL senator has been arrested for burglary.

This account is from a local news outlet in Alexandria, Minnesota:

A state senator from Woodbury, Minnesota has now been charged with burglary for breaking into her stepmother’s home in Detroit Lakes.

Nicole Mitchell, 49, told police that she broke into the house to retrieve some of her late father’s belongings, including his ashes.
***
Mitchell was dressed all in black and wearing a black hat, the complaint said. The officer said he discovered a flashlight near her that was covered with a black sock, apparently modified to control the amount of light coming from it.

The complaint, filed in Becker County District Court in Detroit Lakes, charges Mitchell with one count of first-degree burglary, a felony.

“I know I did something bad,” the complaint quoted Mitchell as saying after she was told of her right to remain silent.

The state senator broke in through a basement window and apparently stole her stepmother’s laptop, among other things, before being apprehended:

The senator acknowledged that she had entered the house through a basement window that had been propped open with a black backpack, the complaint said. Officers found her Minnesota Senate ID inside it, along with her driver’s license, two laptop computers, a cellphone and Tupperware containers, the complaint said. She indicated that she got caught soon after entering.

“Clearly I’m not good at this,” it quoted her as saying.

I suppose we should be glad to learn that one of our state senators doesn’t have a lot of experience as a burglar. Here’s the point, though: Republicans have called on Mitchell to resign. That would lead to a special election, which, if won by the GOP candidate, would flip control of the Senate. The Democrats’ leadership is determined to avoid any loss of power, so Mitchell is now changing her story. She put out this statement an hour or two ago:


The idea that Mitchell broke into her stepmother’s house via a basement window at 4:45 a.m. to carry out a wellness check is laughable. It is worth noting, in that context, that the stepmother says she is afraid of Mitchell and has applied for a restraining order against her.

This situation, and especially Mitchell’s just-issued statement, have been a source of local hilarity. Walter Hudson is a GOP representative and a rising star in the party:


My interpretation of these events is that the leadership of the DFL Party has decided to brazen it out. True, the facts are not good, and Mitchell’s admissions that she “did something bad” and “[is] not good at this” are hard to work around, as are the break-in and the stolen laptop. The arresting officers had body cams, and I am pretty certain those videos will not put Senator Mitchell in an innocent light.

But to Democrats, power is everything. They apparently don’t mean to give it up without a fight.

Instead of resigning, Mitchell apparently intends to continue voting. I am not sure whether she is still in the local jail in northern Minnesota, but the Democrats have, post-covid, adopted rules that permit remote voting, so that senators and representatives never actually have to be present in the Capitol. And some of them never show up. If Mitchell tries to vote from jail, it will test the limits of the Democrats’ new rules.

Behind the entertainment value of this bizarre episode is a deadly serious reality. Mitchell has two years to go on her term. If a special election puts that seat in Republican hands, control of the Senate will flip. That won’t enable the Republicans to do anything good, but it will allow them to stop the bleeding as Democrats propose one appalling bill after another. That, of course, is what we hope for.

Stay tuned.

Posted on by Lloyd Billingsley in Barack Obama

More Wisdom from the Book of Garrow

On August 2, 2023, Tablet editor David Samuels interviewed David Garrow, author of Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, a massive work that, as Scott explains, “puts every other biographer of Obama to shame.” This post reviewed Samuels’ statements in light of 10/7 and Iran’s more recent attack on Israel. In that context, Garrow’s comments are also of interest, particularly his outing of Dreams from My Father as a work of fiction. On page 538 of Rising Star, readers learn:

Dreams from My Father was not a memoir or an autobiography; it was instead, in multitudinous ways, without any question a work of historical fiction. It featured many true-to-life figures and a bevy of accurately described events that indeed had occurred, but it employed the techniques and literary license of a novel, and its most important composite character was the narrator himself.

“He wants people to believe his story,” Garrow told Samuels. “For me to conclude that Dreams from My Father was historical fiction – oh God, did that infuriate him.” Obama “doesn’t want his writerliness challenged,” Garrow told Samuels. “It’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The book is so fictionalized.”  Samuels agrees, “yet there was something about this fictional character that he created actually becoming president that helped precipitate the disaster that we are living through now.” As the Tablet editor explained:

Obama’s hostility to American exceptionalism also seemed linked to his hostility to Israel, or more specifically to America’s identification with Israel, which finally resulted in his determination during his second term to reach his agreement with Iran—an agreement with the main objective of integrating that country into America’s security architecture in the Middle East, while limiting Israel’s power in the region.

“I do find the Iran deal offensive and puzzling,” Garrow told Samuels. “I mean, it’s an explicitly anti-Semitic state.” The Rising Star author was also “puzzled at the Biden administration’s continuing attachment to the Iran deal.” For Samuels, “the easy explanation, of course, is that Joe Biden is not running that part of his administration. Obama is. He doesn’t even have to pick up the phone because all of his people are already inside the White House. They hold the Iran file. Tony Blinken doesn’t.” David Garrow did not challenge that reality, and his observations about the composite character take on new significance.

“He’s not normal – as in not a normal politician or a normal human being,” Garrow told Samuels, and “for Barack, everything has to be a success. Everything has to be a victory.”

When Joe Biden tells Israel not to retaliate, that’s Obama telling Iran to “take the win.” As John notes, it’s starting to look that way.

Posted on by Steven Hayward in The Daily Chart

The Daily Chart: Stagnating Regulation

As you may know, the supposed slow-growth of wages since the early 1970s has long been a cause-celebre among the left’s equity crowd. It is usually attributed to lower income tax rates, or the demonic powers of “neoliberalism.” One factor that is seldom considered, at least by the mainstream media and the celebrated egalitarian academics like Thomas Piketty, is the role the sharp rise of economy-wide government regulation that began at precisely the moment that wage growth flat-lined. Environmental regulations in particular have been highly effective at saying No to new projects of all kinds.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Anti-Semitism, Higher education

The trouble with Columbia

Columbia University presents an extreme case of the rot infesting our major institutions — elite organs of higher education, corporate America, the mainstream media, the entertainment business, the legal profession, the teachers’ unions, and so on. We can learn from Columbia’s extremity. It highlights elements of the phenomenon that otherwise remain beyond our view.

The rot at Columbia runs through the students, the administration, and the faculty of the university. Yesterday a group of Columbia professors held a rally Monday to express solidarity with the pro-Hamas/anti-Semitic students suspended for holding unauthorized protests on campus and to lambaste university president Minouche Shafik for cracking down on them. They called for Shafik’s resignation. In an ideal world, they would all resign and the students would be expelled.

The Washington Free Beacon’s Jessica Costescu was on the scene to cover the professors’ rally. She reports on it here. The Beacon also compiled the video below to accompany Costescu’s story. As usual: “Columbia did not respond to a request for comment.”

The New York Post makes the fallout from Columbia President Minouche Shafik’s continuing nonfeasance the subject of its cover story (cover below). The victims of Shafik’s nonfeasance aren’t happy with her either.

In today’s Wall Street Journal MEMRI executive director Steven Stalinsky looks at “Who’s Behind the Anti_Israe Protests.” He gets around to Columbia toward the bottom of his column:

On March 25, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest student group hosted an event called “Resistance 101” on campus. It featured leaders of the PFLP-affiliated Samidoun, Within Our Lifetime and other extremist organizations. At the event, former PFLP official Khaled Barakat referred to his “friends and brothers in Hamas, Islamic Jihad [and] the PFLP in Gaza,” saying that particularly after Oct. 7, “when they see students organizing outside Palestine, they really feel that they are being backed as a resistance and they’re being supported.” On March 30 on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV, Mr. Barakat said “the vast majority” of young Americans and Canadians now “support armed resistance” because of “the introduction of colonialism, racism, and slavery studies into history curricula.”

Stalinsky concludes on a portentous note:

The collaboration between senior terrorists and their growing list of friends in the U.S. and the West has real-world consequences. These groups are designated terrorist for a reason. They don’t plan marches and rallies—they carry out terrorist attacks. And when the U.S. and Western activists, including college students, see that their marches and protests aren’t achieving their goals, they may consider their next steps—which will be influenced by the company they have been keeping.

Whole thing here (behind the Journal’s paywall).