Daily Digest |  |
- Assessing Andrew Cuomo
- Three blind mice
- Squaring the illegals circle
- Shapes of things (24)
- Venue and the mob
Posted: 02 Mar 2021 03:08 PM PST (Paul Mirengoff) It says a lot that Andrew Cuomo became a media darling even as his policies caused thousands of deaths in New York nursing homes, but now, suddenly, is the subject of impeachment talk because three women have accused him of mild or borderline sexual harassment. What it suggests to me is that our priorities are skewed and that our culture is becoming frivolous. The allegations of sexual harassment show Cuomo to be a boor, something many of us already suspected. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether the allegations are just cause for removing him as governor. The fact that Cuomo sent New Yorkers infected with the coronavirus back to nursing homes where, inevitably, they became super-spreaders is a far more serious matter. And if, as may well be the case, he committed federal crimes when asked by the Justice Department about this scandal, this is just cause for removal and for criminal prosecution. Let’s look at the three sets of sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo. The first came from former top staffer Lindsey Boylan. She claims that in December 2016, Cuomo told her he had a “crush” on her. In a separate incident, he allegedly alluded to a cigar box he had received from Bill Clinton. She understood this to be an allusion to Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. Her understanding was almost surely correct, but it’s not sexual harassment to make a joke about Clinton’s affair. Then, in October 2017, Cuomo allegedly suggested — maybe jokingly, maybe not — that he and Boylan play strip poker. Finally, in 2018, he allegedly gave her an unwanted kiss on the lips. If true, this scenario may present an actionable claim of sexual harassment in the legal sense. If so, it’s one of the mildest cases I’ve heard of, and I practiced law in this area. The second accuser, Charlotte Bennett, claims that last June, Cuomo asked her a number of questions about her personal life, including whether she had been intimate with older men. She also says he talked about being open to a relationship with a woman in her 20s. Bennett is 25. It doesn’t sound like Cuomo actually asked Bennett to enter into a sexual relationship with him, although that is probably where the conversations were headed. It certainly doesn’t sound like he conditioned her employment, or any term thereof, on such a relationship. Cuomo’s conduct was obviously inappropriate. However, it seems like, at best, a borderline case of sexual harassment in the legal sense. The third accuser, Anna Ruch, says that Cuomo placed his hand on her bare lower back at a September 2019 wedding and then, after she removed it, placed his hands on her cheeks and asked if he could kiss her. Ruch apparently had never met Cuomo before. Asking for a kiss from a stranger is boorish, but it’s not sexual harassment. Placing one’s hands on a woman is problematic, but apparently there is no allegation that Cuomo touched a private part. How much worse than Joe Biden’s hair sniffing, etc. is the conduct Ruch alleges? Additional allegations of sex-related impropriety by Cuomo may well emerge. The current allegations, even if true, are not sufficient reason to cut short the term of the voters’ choice for governor, in my opinion. If Cuomo seeks another term, voters can decide whether these allegations are a deal-breaker. As I said, reasonable people can disagree with me about this judgment. But I don’t consider anyone who gushed over Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic to be reasonable.     |
Posted: 02 Mar 2021 09:55 AM PST (Paul Mirengoff) Suppose six former Secretaries of State wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed discussing the urgent need to recognize and establish diplomatic relations with Communist China. Their op-ed might make you think the former secretaries were asleep at the switch during their time at Foggy Bottom. Unfortunately, six former Secretaries of Education have signed the rough equivalent of such an op-ed for the Journal. The six are: Lamar Alexander, Arne Duncan, John King, Rod Paige, Richard Riley and Margaret Spellings. The op-ed calls for the teaching of Civics along the lines set forth in the “Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy.” In support of doing so, the six former secretaries state:
The six former secretaries tell us that the Educating for American Democracy (EAD) roadmap “offers a new vision for history and civics” (emphasis added) — one that will facilitate the “grappling” with slavery, racism, etc. Do any of the six have a clue about what’s been happening in American classrooms for the past three decades? Thanks to Black History Month, students learn about slavery, segregation, and racism every year they are in school. They learn about these evils years before they learn about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and America’s triumph over Nazism and Soviet Communism. Indigenous removals? In the 1990s, my older daughter’s fifth grade class “tried” Christopher Columbus for crimes against Indians. A trial is nothing if not “grappling.” Internment of Japanese-Americans? In the 1990s, my younger daughter’s class read a novel about that. A novel goes well beyond ordinary instruction. It too constitutes “grappling.” Can the six former secretaries point to any widely used American History textbook that doesn’t adequately cover the events and phenomena they say need to be “grappled with” pursuant to their “new” vision of history instruction? I doubt it. These historical events and phenomena are old hat in our schools now. They are drummed into students all over America. Any further “grappling” would be overkill in the name of indoctrination. Indeed, these events and phenomena are already being treated not just as history, but as current reality that needs to be “grappled” with and overcome. Increasingly, students are instructed that “White Privilege” and White Supremacy” plague contemporary America. The teaching of History and Civics has been weaponized to promote the narrative, and hence the agenda, of BLM and the radical white left. The EAD roadmap endorsed by the six secretaries is the latest gambit in the drive to indoctrinate students in that narrative and agenda. As Stanley Kurtz puts it:
For a thorough and compelling analysis of what the EAD initiative is about, I strongly recommend this article by John Fonte. The article shows that the initiative is “a trojan horse for woke education.” Why did I call this post “Three blind mice” when the WSJ op-ed has six signatories? Because not all six are blind. I’m confident that the former secretaries who served in Republican administrations — Alexander, Paige, and Spellings — are clueless. It’s unlikely that any of them has heard of “action civics.” Arne Duncan is another matter. He’s a brilliant guy and certainly was not asleep at the switch during his time as Secretary of Education. Kurtz points out that Duncan helped popularize “action civics.” Among Duncan’s talents is this one — he can spot useful idiots a mile away. The Wall Street Journal op-ed testifies to that.   |
Posted: 02 Mar 2021 07:42 AM PST (Scott Johnson) As the Biden administration invites waves of illegal immigrants to come on up from points south, it has to square a few circles. One of them is the public health dimension of the influx. Politico reported a story yesterday that bears on the public health dimension of the invasion: “White House: Biden not considering sharing Covid vaccine with Mexico.” Think about it. Something’s gotta give. In the video below, Jill (“Dr. Edith”) Biden comes to the aid of Joe (“I’ve got half a mind to be president”) Biden’s aid when he forgets all his lines on the administration’s current approach to dealing with the invasion. This too is illustrative of the circle squaring effort. Something’s gotta give.
Tweet via Nick Arama/RedState.   |
Posted: 02 Mar 2021 06:40 AM PST (Scott Johnson) On Sunday, with CPAC’s permission, Minnesota’s scrappy Alpha News posted the video of President Trump’s CPAC speech on the Alpha News YouTube channel. (I am a member of the Alpha News board.) YouTube removed the video and called strike one on Alpha News for posting it. Below is a screenshot of the notice from YouTube. Alpha News filed this appeal with the powers that be at YouTube:
Early this morning YouTube denied the appeal. This means Alpha News can’t post any new content for 7 days and that it is two strikes away from being removed completely. The video posted on the Reuters YouTube channel is here. Below is a screenshot of YouTube’s disposition of the Alpha News appeal. Something here does not compute.   |
Posted: 02 Mar 2021 05:31 AM PST (Scott Johnson) Is it possible for any of the four former Minneapolis police officers charged in the death of George Floyd to receive a fair trial? In Minneapolis? If not in Minneapolis, anywhere else in Minnesota? Is it possible that a Hennepin County jury won’t have the secondary effects of not guilty verdicts in mind when they retire to deliberate? I’ve had those questions in mind since expedited criminal charges were filed following the arsons and riots that convulsed the Twin Cities following Floyd’s death this past May 25. In widely reported statements public officials including Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison repeatedly declared the officers guilty of murder. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey declared on May 27: “I’ve wrestled with, more than anything else over the last 36 hours, one fundamental question: Why is the man who killed George Floyd not in jail?” We are deep into a verdict first, trial later mode. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is not the man for the prosecutor’s job, but — bowing to the demands of the mob — he is the man whom Governor Walz asked to undertake it. Ellison made his name around town leading crowds chanting support for the (subsequently convicted) defendants charged in 1992 with the cold-blooded murder of Officer Jerry Haaf. Having teamed up with former Vice Lords gangbanger Sharif Willis, himself a suspect in Haaf’s murder — the murder had been planned at Willis’s house — Ellison led crowds in a chant of “We don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace.” In the context of Haaf’s murder, it was a credible threat. I wrote about Ellison’s unlikely background for the job of attorney general in the Weekly Standard column “Can Keith Ellison turn lawman?” Ellison himself has no experience as a prosecutor. He has assigned Assistant Attorney General Matthew Frank and others to try the cases brought against the four former Minneapolis police officers charged with responsibility for Floyd’s death. Frank is the lead lawyer from Ellison’s office prosecuting the cases. The four cases have been assigned to Hennepin County District Judge Pete Cahill for trial. This past September Judge Cahill held a hearing on pending motions that went on for some three-and-a-half hours. Cahill took up defendants’ motion for change of venue at the hearing. Defendant Tou Thao filed a memorandum of law in support of the change of venue motion. It is posted online here. After setting forth the governing law, the memo urged the court to adopt a new standard for change of venue. I inferred from the memo that the governing law didn’t strongly favor the change of venue motion. The law of venue seeks to protect a defendant’s right to an impartial jury. Pretrial publicity is the concern addressed in applicable venue law. Judge Cahill reportedly commented that the problem of pretrial publicity was inescapable in the four cases. The problem, however, isn’t just pretrial publicity. At the hearing Thao’s attorney cited his concern that Minneapolis residents fear the impact their verdict would have considering the then recent “lawlessness.” “If I lived in Moorhead I wouldn’t worry about the streets of Moorhead being burned” after a trial, Thao’s attorney argued. I would. I would worry about Moorhead, or Rochester, or Duluth, or St. Cloud, or Rochester. Wherever in the state the trial or trials are held, the mob will follow. Everyone knows it. One is left — I am left — with the thought that the judicial system is ill equipped to deal with cases holding the venue hostage to the jury’s verdict. In any event, Judge Cahill denied the change of venue motion in a “preliminary order” and memorandum dated November 5, 2020. The charges against the officers proceed in an atmosphere of mob justice. Perhaps Ellison is the man for the job after all. As I wrote in my preview of the trial yesterday, we are one step removed from the territory of The Ox-Bow Incident. TMZ covered this aspect of the case here in connection with the September motion hearing. The video provides a glimpse of the gauntlet defendants and their attorneys have walked so far. With the trial at hand the courthouse is to become an armed encampment. One can only imagine the impact on jurors.
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Reviewed by Diogenes
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March 02, 2021
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