UC Berkeley loses lawsuit over its policy of charging right-wing groups more money for security

December 4, 2018 • 1:30 pm

According to the Daily Californian and the Los Angeles Times, the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) has just settled a free-speech lawsuit involving discrimination against student groups that brought in conservative speakers. Click on screenshot below to see the Daily Cal piece (that’s the UCB student paper):

The first speakers at issue were Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos, and David Horowitz (invited as part of a mass event), with at least the first two, in my view, not even deserving an invitation. But they were invited by student groups—the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative student group, as well as the Berkeley College Republicans—and so deserved to speak. Because an earlier visit by Yiannopoulos led to rioting in the streets by his opponents, producing damages of several hundred thousand dollars, UCB decided to impose extra fees on groups who invited speakers thought to require extra security. This was codified in UCB’s “Major Events Policy“:

The first lawsuit maintained that UCB was violating students’ First Amendment Rights by imposing these extra fees (one could call them “a GOP tax”) on controversial speakers, who, of course, are most likely to be conservative.  This could be said to constitute a form of “viewpoint discrimination.”

That suit was dismissed in October of last year, but was refiled, including Ben Shapiro as another speaker for whom onerous protection fees were asked. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a “statement of interest” supporting the conservative plaintiffs, and, before the issue went to court, UCB agreed to settle the case.

Here are the settlement terms as reported by the Washington Examiner:

In the settlement, UC Berkeley agreed to the following terms set by YAF:

  1. Pay YAF $70,000. [JAC: I believe this is for lawyer’s fees]
  2. Rescind the unconstitutional “High-Profile Speaker Policy.”
  3. Rescind the viewpoint-discriminatory security fee policy.
  4. Abolish its heckler’s veto — protesters will no longer be able to shut down conservative expression.

Under these terms, UC Berkeley will no longer be allowed to place a 3 p.m. curfew on conservative events or relegate conservative speakers to remote or inconvenient lecture halls on campus while giving left-leaning speakers access to preferred parts of campus. [JAC: yes, they did this]

YAF and UC Berkeley also agreed to a “fee schedule” that treats all students, student groups, and speakers equally. Unless students are handling money or serving alcohol at an event, there will not be a need for security fees.

The “High-Profile Speaker Policy” was unwritten, but it was presumably UCB’s policy of raising security fees for “high profile” conservative speakers.

Although UCB denies that it engaged in any viewpoint discrimination, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a loss for UCB and a win for free speech. Even though I’m not a fan of any of the speakers the YAF and BCR invited, it’s hard to disagree with their lawyer’s statement, “This landmark settlement means that all students at UC Berkeley now have the exciting opportunity to hear a variety of viewpoints on campus without the artificial tax of security fees selectively imposed on disfavored speech.”

It’s ironic that UCB, where the Free Speech Movement started, was fighting this issue from the outset. It’s clearly wrong, and probably unconstitutional, to charge student groups more when a controversial speaker is invited, especially when those speakers are almost invariably conservatives. Strict application of that policy would have the effect of eliminating conservative speakers from campus, simply because campus and city security couldn’t control the rampages of those on the left who insisted in violent protests and “deplatforming” unwanted speakers.

h/t: Malgorzata

Victory! Charleston, Illinois cancels city-sponsored trip to creationist sites

December 4, 2018 • 12:15 pm

I’ve just heard from the FFRF that the City Attorney for Charleston, Illinois, to whom the FFRF wrote to about the unconstitutionality of their city-sponsored trip to the Ark Park and Creation Museum, has sent the following email. The city has bailed.

Thank you for your email below and letter attached dated December 3, 2018. The purpose of this email is to inform you that The Ark Encounter & Creation Museum trip has been cancelled. The trip has been removed from the City of Charleston’s website and online registration portal.

The attorney knew that the city was on the losing side of the issue, and I’m sure Charleston didn’t want to go to court about this. It’s a small town and couldn’t afford it.

Anyway, even though they had to be threatened, they did the right thing. The battle to keep religion out of government is never ending, but the FFRF has to keep it up, because this truly is a slippery slope. Each victory for the entanglement of religion and politics makes it easier to entangle them further.

 

 

Slate article takes us to task for being moved by a photo

December 4, 2018 • 10:45 am

The article below, which just appeared in Slate, seems better suited for the Pecksniffian Salon, famous for its authoritarianism and hatred of New Atheism. But let’s start with a viral tweet from Jim McGrath, who was a spokesman for G. H. W. Bush after he left the White House but before he died:

I don’t know if this was staged (I doubt it, because reliable media report that the dog spent Sunday night in front of Bush’s casket), but the picture of Bush’s service dog Sully touched the hearts of many people—including me (yes, I’m a cat lover, but I can be moved by the loyalty of a dog). The reasons why this went viral are many: its invocation of loyalty, the poignancy of what looked like the dog’s sadness, a connection between a former President and his dog, and so on.

So the photo was real, and what’s not to like about it? Well, read Slate‘s hectoring and repugnant piece below (click on screenshot), whose title tells it all:

 

Yes, you morons, Slate tells you not to waste “emotional energy” on the photo or the dog. How authoritarian can you get? The reason Graham is pecksniffing? Sully spent only six months helping Bush after his beloved wife Barbara died (they were married 74 years!). Six months, apparently, is not enough time for a dog to form a bond with a man, and therefore you shouldn’t act like Bush et chien were together for life. Stop tearing up and move on with your life, importunes Graham. I kid you not.  Here’s a quote:

There’s nothing wrong with applying sentimentality when it comes to family pets reacting to their owners’ deaths. There’s even some preliminary evidence from the small field of “comparative thanatology” that animals notice death, and that some may even experience an emotion we might compare to grief. But Sully is not a longtime Bush family pet, letting go of the only master he has known. He is an employee who served for less than six months.

. . . It’s wonderful for Bush that he had a trained service animal like Sully available to him in his last months. It’s a good thing that the dog is moving on to another gig where he can be helpful to other people (rather than becoming another Bush family pet). But it’s a bit demented to project soul-wrenching grief onto a dog’s decision to lie down in front of a casket. Is Sully “heroic” for learning to obey the human beings who taught him to perform certain tasks? Does the photo say anything special about this dog’s particular loyalty or judgment, or is he just … there? Also, if dogs are subject to praise for obeying their masters, what do we do about the pets who eat their owners’ dead (or even just passed-out) bodies?

The photograph, in other words, is not proof that Sully is a particularly “good boy” or that “we don’t deserve dogs,” as countless swooning tweets put it on Monday. On its own, it says almost nothing other than the fact that Sully was, at one point in the same room as the casket of his former boss. This is simply a photograph of a dog doing something dogs love to do: Lie down. The frenzy around it captures something humans love to do, too: Project our own emotional needs onto animals.

Demented? Good Lord! And notice the whataboutery: “what do we do about dogs who eat their owners’ bodies?” Who the hell cares? It’s not relevant.  And who is to say that Sully wasn’t sad in a dog-like way, or missed G. H. W.  We just don’t know, and being touched by that picture can indicate many things beyond “projecting our own emotional needs onto animals.”

It’s bad enough that the Authoritarian Left tells us what we should think. Now they tell us what we should feel. If this weren’t a family friendly site, I’d use a certain two-word phrase to show how I feel about this article and its author, a regular contributor to Slate.

Here’s what Grania, who sent me the link, had to say:

This sort of left-wing article is just embarrassing. It’s a response to a photo that was going around the internet yesterday of the dog curled up on the floor near the coffin with a “mission accomplished” slogan on it.
Much as I was not a fan of any of the Bushes and think that some of the recent eulogizing is a little over the top, all articles like this prove is that there are many on the left who are petty and spiteful.
Amen. I’ll leave the last word to John Passantino, the Los Angeles bureau chief for BuzzFeed:

How populist are you? A Guardian quiz

December 4, 2018 • 9:45 am

Greg Mayer sent me a link to this Guardian quiz, “How populist are you?”. Click on the screenshot to go to the 20-question quiz, which takes a bit of demographic information and then asks you to rank your views on various social, political, and economic issues.

 

Here are the positions of various leaders:

And my own position—on the line connecting Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders, on the populist left, firmly in the left, but close to the populist-nonpopulist line. I don’t know what this means except I’m on the right side (i.e., left side) of history.


 

Where do you fall? I’m sure some readers will have pungent remarks about the questions.

h/t: Greg

The Freedom From Religion Foundation intervenes in Charleston, Illinois’s entanglement with the Ark Park and Creation Museum

December 4, 2018 • 8:45 am

Yesterday I reported that the Parks and Recreation Department of Charleston, Illinois was sponsoring a trip for locals to visit Ken Ham’s Ark Park as well as his Creation Museum—both in nearby Kentucky. You don’t have to know much about the Constitution to realize that this is a violation of the First Amendment, as it puts government—in the case the city’s Parks and Recreation agency—in the position of promoting religion (literalist Christianity).

As an evolutionary biologist and an adherent to the First Amendment, I was incensed. I sent a message to the Parks and Recreation Department’s Facebook page, advising them that their sponsorship of this trip was most likely unconstitutional, and that they might face legal action if they persisted. Rather than replying, shortly thereafter they seem to have taken down their entire Facebook page, so that if you go to the former site you see this (apparently others get the same message, so it’s not just them blocking me):

I don’t know what this means, but of course I also sent a copy of the original FB event post and advertisement (I had taken screenshots) to the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF).  And boy, does the FFRF act quickly! Yesterday they fired off this “cease and desist” letter to the City Attorney of Charleston (you can see the letter here, too):

 

 

The letter enclosed the trip prospectus from Parks and Recreation, below. Note, with reference to visiting the Creation Museum, the preachiness: “Prepare to believe as you explore 75,000 square feet of state-of-the-art exhibits, full-size Allosaurus skeleton, stunning botanical gardens, petting zoo, and more.” Prepare to believe!

Yes, this is all endorsement of religion by the local government, and it’s illegal.

The FFRF also put an announcement of this action on their website (click on the screenshot):

As the FFRF notes,

Both attractions have an explicitly religious mission. The Ark Encounter, recently constructed in Kentucky, is a Christian ministry run by the creationist Ken Ham, who also built the Creationist Museum in Kentucky. Ham has been clear about the proselytizing nature of both attractions since their inception. In his June 27, 2016, letter entitled, “Our Real Motive for Building Ark Encounter,” he lays out an openly evangelical goal:

“The [Creation] Museum and Ark direct people to the Word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. . . . our motive is to do the King’s business until He comes. And that means preaching the gospel and defending the faith, so that we can reach as many souls as we can . . . .”

It is unconstitutional for the city of Charleston to endorse the religious mission of these attractions by organizing, sponsoring or funding a trip to the Ark Encounter or the Creation Museum, FFRF reminds the city.

Now this is a no-brainer, even in southern Illinois, and the city had best cancel that trip or completely eliminate any connection that they have with it. There’s no way that even a Republican judge can find this entanglement legal. I’ll let you know what happens.

***********

 

Some lagniappe: a kitty from Kristina, who works for the FFRF and sent me a copy of the official letter above. Kristina says this:
Here’s a very important contribution for your black cat parade: I call this “Lucille at breakfast.”

 

h/t: John

Readers’ wildlife photos

December 4, 2018 • 7:30 am

Reader Duncan McCaskill from Canberra, Australia sent a series of photos documenting a kerfuffle between ravens and barn owls. Ravens always win a confrontation like this if there are more than one of them. Duncan’s notes are indented:

Back in August, I heard a great commotion amongst the local birds around my home in Canberra. I went to investigate and found that the object of all the fuss was a Barn Owl (Tyto alba or Tyto javanica or Tyto delicatula depending on which authority you use). The poor owl was being mobbed by many birds, such as Pied Currawongs (Strepera graculina) and Australian Magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen), but the most vicious and persistent of the attackers was a pair of Australian Ravens (Corvus coronoides).
The mob forced the owl to the ground where I found it getting a brief respite from the attacks:

But as soon as it tried to fly away, the ravens forced it down again:

Barn Owl
It got another brief respite as I approached, but it was now showing quite a bit of feather damage:

Again it took flight, and was again driven to the ground:

The ravens were extremely vicious.

Above this scene, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos (Cacatua galerita) made their loud contribution to the racket:

After a few minutes the owl managed to fly away again, to sit completely exposed in the roof of a nearby house, where the ravens mostly left it alone, but Australian Magpies mobbed it:

Eventually it flew into a tree where it managed to find shelter from attack, and the mobbing birds mostly gave up. It stayed there till dark.

There was no sign of it next morning.

Barn Owls in Australia are irruptive. When conditions are good they breed up, then disperse and crash when a drought such as the one we are in hits. They don’t usually occur in the Canberra region except when they are dispersing from further inland. They are often harassed and injured to the point they can no longer fly. If they are lucky, a kind person will rescue it and take it to wildlife carer to rehabilitate. The local wildlife carers have been quite busy with injured Barn Owls.

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

December 4, 2018 • 6:30 am

It’s Tuesday, December 4, 2018, and National Cookie Day (it would be “National Biscuit Day” in the UK, except that this is an American holiday). There are only 21 shopping days left until Coynezaa, my personal holiday which extends over the six days spanning Christmas and my birthday. Don’t forget the presents (one per day, like Hanukkah, which, by the way, goes from December 2nd through the 10th this year).

On December 4, 1783, after an elaborate “turtle feast” (I don’t want to think what that means), General George Washington bid farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York City. The building still exists, having been extensively reconstructed in 1907:

Fraunces Tavern (54 Pearl Street) in New York City

On this day in 1791, the world’s first Sunday newspaper was published: The Observer in London. It’s still going, making it the world’s oldest Sunday paper as well. For you Canucks and hockey fans, today is the 109th anniversary of the foundation of the oldest surviving professional ice-hockey franchise, the Montreal Canadiens.

On December 4, 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sailed for Europe to attend the WWI peace talks in Versailles, making him the first U.S. President to travel to Europe while in office. On December 4, 1954, the first Burger King was opened in Miami, Florida. Did you know that Burger King also owns Tims Hortons? Perhaps that accounts for the decline in quality of their donuts in the past decade.

On this day in 1956, as Wikipedia reports, “The Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash) get together at Sun Studio [Memphis] for the first and last time.” What a meeting! Below is a recording of five of the songs produced on that day. Note the influence of black gospel music on early rock.

1. Peace In The Valley : Words & Music : Thomas A.Dorsey
2. Blessed Jesus (Hold My Hand) : Traditional
3. Farther Along : Traditional
4. Paralyzed : Words & Music : Elvis Presley and Otis Blackwell
5. Softly And Tenderly : Traditional

17 songs were laid down, and you can buy all of them on a single CD. (There’s also a play about the meeting, which I’ve seen in Chicago.)

Speaking of rock, it was on this day in 1965 that the Grateful Dead gave their first concert under the group’s new and final name. Thirteen years later, after the murder of mayor George Moscone, Dianne Feinstein became the first woman mayor of San Francisco. Finally, it was on this day in 1991 that Pan American World Airways, once my favorite international carrier from the U.S., ceased operating after 64 years—taking all my frequent-flier miles with it.

Notables born on this day include Thomas Carlyle (1795), Samuel Butler (1835), Edith Cavell (1865), Rainer Maria Rilke (1875), geneticist Alfred Hershey (1908; Nobel Laureate), Deanna Durbin (1921), Gary Gilmore (1940), Chris Hillman and Anna McGarrigle (both 1944), and Marisa Tomei (1964).

Those who “passed” on December 4 include Cardinal Richelieu (1642), Thomas Hobbes (1679), John Tyndall (1893), Drosophila geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan (1945; Nobel Laureate and my academic great-grandfather), Bert Lahr (1967), and Frank Zappa (1993).

Proof of my ancestry! Note that Morgan is in my lineage twice, as both Tim Prout (postdoc advisor) and Dick Lewontin (Ph.D. advisor) were students of Dobzhansky, who was a researcher in Morgan’s lab.

And the rest. I didn’t produce many students—the diagram includes my Ph.D. students as well as one postdoc, a technician who’s now a professor, and some who moved on without a degree—but my own offspring were fertile!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, as Malgorzata explains, “Hili is commenting on Andrzej’s new book, which has the self-explanatory title “Ateista” (that probably doesn’t need any translation).” She adds this:

You can interpret Hili’s words in two ways: one (more probable) is that she is sarcastic and really recommends the book warmly, or that she understands that faith is a “comfort blanket” for many and she is reluctant to deprive them of their faith.

The dialogue:

The holidays are coming, and this moggie is freaked out by a Christmas tree:

A picture shared by Moto:

And one shared by Diana MacPherson:

From reader Gethyn, two great boys rescue a kitten with an umbrella. That was a brave kitty to make the leap! This is the Tweet of the Week:

https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob1/status/1069280279024553985

From Grania, who says “this is the best thing HuffPo will ever write”. (In case you didn’t know, a “naturist” is a nudist.)

More tweets from Grania. In this one, Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal strip, shows his family’s nativity scene:

However controversial Marc Lamont Hill’s comments about Israel were, he still deserves the protection of the First Amendment:

I bet you had no idea that pufferfish had skeletons like this:

Tweets from Matthew.  If you’re going to Iceland soon, be sure to wear new clothes:

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/1069316650506235904

Okay, why did these people get a pass from the sharks?

https://twitter.com/thehumanxp/status/1068157686372597760

I love lists, and writer Elle Maruska (support her!) made a list of the 15 best antelope species in the world. Go look at the whole thread, but here are the first three. (Her other Twitter lists are hilarious.)