There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head (1961).
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Iris Murdoch
Author: Redactor
On May 31, 455 A.D., Emperor Petronius Maximus was stoned to death by an angry mob while fleeing Rome.
On that date in 1578, King Henry III laid the first stone of the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), the oldest bridge of Paris, France.
In other rock history, May 31, 2013, marked the closest approach to Earth that the asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon will get until two centuries hence.
Next time you’re being operated on, you probably don’t want your doctor to be someone trained and hired solely because he satisfied affirmative-action criteria.
We’ll have to especially worry about this possibility, though, if trends at certain institutions continue — including at universities such as UCLA Medical School. There, up to half the students are now flunking basic tests of medical knowledge.
By design.
In November 2021, a new dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, “exploded in anger” because an admissions officer had doubts about admitting a black applicant whose academic credentials were way below the average of other students at the school.
“Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” she wanted to know, demonstrating a capacity for non sequiturs. Forget scores: “we need people like this in the medical school.”
The time for UCLA professors and admissions officers to raise hell about Lucero’s illegally race-conscious admissions policies was then, or sooner. At least now, though, many are speaking out.
“I don’t know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors,” one instructor tells the Free Beacon. “Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students.”
“I wouldn’t normally talk to a reporter,” says another. “But there’s no way to stop this without embarrassing the medical school.”
Well, word is out now — and in abundant detail. Let’s hope it’s not too late to set this school and others back on the right track.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John Updike
I love my government not least for the extent to which it leaves me alone.
John Updike, testifying before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, Boston, Massachusetts (January 30, 1978).
On May 30, 1989, student demonstrators unveiled a 33-foot high “Goddess of Democracy and Freedom” statue in Tiananmen Square.
Whistleblowers and unclassified emails inform us that when he was the secretary of state under Obama, John Kerry thwarted arrests of Iranians illegally acting on behalf of the Iranian state.
While in the United States.
According to Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, “whistleblower disclosures” reveal that while the Obama administration was negotiating with Iran to “prevent” it from acquiring nuclear weapons, “then-Secretary of State John Kerry actively interfered with [the FBI’s executing of arrest warrants] on individuals in the U.S. illegally supporting Iranian efforts . . . to develop weapons of mass destruction and its ballistic missile program.”
FBI agents were frustrated because, they said in emails, they had to ask field agents “to stand down on a layup arrest . . . and wait until the U.S. and Iran negotiations resolve themselves.”
At least one of the protected suspects was on a terrorism watch list.
Seriously?
We need John Kerry to play the bad guy in a revival of 24, trying to stop super-agent Jack Bauer from taking out terrorists because the U.S. is in the middle of shipping pallets of cash to the terrorism-sponsoring government. A very delicate operation that must be executed with hair-trigger precision and without antagonizing the terrorism-sponsoring recipients.
Kerry’s most recent job: Weather Envoy. He retired from it this year. Apparently, tweaking global climate isn’t as easy as he’d thought.
Could have been worse. This dour, long-faced pillar of pretense, Kerry, almost became President of the United States.
We must keep reminding ourselves of this.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Murray Leinster
There are some people so stupid you have to show them everything. I didn’t realize that there are people so stupid you can’t show them anything.
Murray Leinster, The Pirates of Zan (1959).
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Rhode Island, Rite & Riot
On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the last of North America’s original Thirteen Colonies-turned-states to ratify the Constitution.
On the same in 1913, Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score The Rite of Spring received its premiere performance in Paris, France, provoking a riot.
After telling Meet the Press viewers that non-citizen voting is “exceedingly rare” and “already against the law,” NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger what he thought about “efforts to prevent non-citizens from voting.”
“I believe only American citizens should be voting in our elections,” replied Raffensperger. “I’m the first secretary of state in Georgia to ever do 100 percent citizenship verification,” adding that Georgia officials discovered “about 1600 people that attempted to register, but we couldn’t verify citizenship, so they weren’t put on the voter rolls.”
The Secretary also explained that his office “just won a court case which came from the left, the Coalition of the People’s Agenda and the New Georgia Project, which was founded by Stacey Abrams.”* Raffensperger points out that the lawsuit “tried to stop us from doing citizenship verification before people were put on the voter rolls.”
“Good news, good news for everyone,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson chided, dismissively. “All of us want to make sure only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections. And all of us follow the law, ensure the federal provisions are protected, and that we’re ensuring that only valid votes are counted in our state.”
Democrat Benson reiterated that “regardless of our party affiliation, we’re doing all that we can and more to ensure, as the facts show, in all of our states, that only U.S. citizens are voting.”
“What you just said there was ‘federal provisions,’” responded Raffensperger, noting that non-citizens have been given the vote — legally — at the local level in a number of states.
He argued that states should place in their constitutions “that only American citizens are voting in any election in your state.”**
Still, Welker inquired, “Is it a red herring?”
No, Raffensperger answered, arguing that “already there’s the left-wing groups trying to get noncitizens voting in local elections in Washington, D.C., New York City and in other places.” And he asked, “Why are we getting sued by the left to stop us from doing citizenship verification?”
Many Democrats and much of the media continue to dodge such questions.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
*In her first run for Governor, Abrams said her “blue wave” was “comprised of those who are documented and undocumented” and specifically acknowledged that she “wouldn’t oppose” allowing non-citizens to vote at the local level.
** Americans for Citizen Voting has worked closely with the Georgia Secretary of State to place such constitutional amendments on six state ballots this November: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. North Carolina may soon become the seventh state to do so.
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Gore Vidal
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992).