The Ivies took a pounding, and New York Representative Elise Stefanik received a publicity boost more valuable than gold, and it couldn’t have come to a less deserving person.1 The supposedly brilliant scholars heading Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and M.I.T. came across as scripted robots, not responding actively to Stefanik’s leading questions—that “intifada”, which…
Search Results for: BDS
Many Jewish University of Pennsylvania alumni are angry, and most of the time they have the right to be.
I will confess up front that this is a “yes but” story, but I would like to emphasize that the “yes” is just as strong as the “but”, if not stronger. A story in the New York Times by Stephanie Saul, Who Decides Penn’s Future: Donors or the University? gives us the backstory: the decision…
Meet the New Anti-Semitism, Same as the Old Anti-Semitism. Or is it worse?
Peter Beinart has a characteristically excellent post in Jewish Currents, Antisemitic Zionists Aren’t a Contradiction in Terms, explaining why, both historically and today, many anti-Semites around the world praise and admire Israel—because they want their countries to be as ethnically “pure” as they imagine Israel to be, and because they wish “their” Jews would get…
Passive-aggressive hypocrisy hath made its masterpiece: The Volokh Conspiracy’s conspiracy against the rule of law
The Volokh Conspiracy is a website that describes itself as “Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent”. They forgot to add “Frequently Lukidist”. The eponymous founder of said conspiracy is Eugene Volokh. To call Gene’s c.v. “glittering” is probably the understatement of the decade. A bona fide mathematical genius, he…
Iron Dome Phonus Balonus: The New York Times hopes its readers are stupid—and damn well wants them to stay that way!
By now you may have heard about the ruckus in the House of Representatives about two weeks ago over funding for the Israeli anti-missile “Iron Dome” program, which eventually passed, after protests from the Democrats’ “progressive” (sometimes) wing disrupted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to slip $1 billion in funding for the Dome into an…
Peter Beinart tries harder. Much harder.
In a recent post, Try harder, Mr. Beinart,1 I subjected Peter Beinart to brief ridicule for perpetuating now ancient myths from John F. Kennedy’s half-forgotten “New Frontier” when he expressed the wish, in a column for the New York Times, that more Republican senators would present “profiles in courage”, so to speak, and vote the…
Old Man War Machine, he jes’ keep rollin’ along
(Editor’s Note: I wrote this piece to describe the military intellectual complex’s endless search for a new Cold War. But Donald Trump seems to be looking for a hot one.) The Washington Post’s recent release of the “Afghanistan Papers”, which reported at least a significant portion of the near-infinite number of lies told to justify…
Aaron Diehl Trio—“Round Midnight”
Aaron Diehl with David Won, bass, and Quincy Davis, drums, live at the Players Club, New York City, 2010. Posted by Aaron Diehl
Uh, so I guess it was just LARGELY about the Benjamins
Last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, which I did not know really still existed, had an impressive article by Nathan Thrall, “How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics”, which, shockingly enough, confirms about half of what the notorious Ilhan Omar had to say about Jews, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee…
Ilhan Omar: The strange case of the little girl in the headscarf who noticed that the emperor has no clothes
Oh, Ilhan Omar, what have you done? Yes, speaking the truth in the halls of Congress has always been hazardous to your health, but when little Ilhan, newly elected representative for the fifth district of Minnesota (basically Minneapolis and environs), remarked that “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says…