30 December 2007 @ 3:35PM >> Assuming the last few details get worked out in time, sometime in January, Indoctrinate U will be offered as a web download. At some point after that, DVD sales will begin as well.

Prices have not yet been set for either the download or the DVD. More details will follow when they become available.

In the meantime, happy New Year!

29 December 2007 @ 1:13PM >> How did this Photoshopped picture make it from a satirical website run by some friends of mine to the Iranian Press TV website? For the hilarious story, visit The People’s Cube.

18 December 2007 @ 9:55AM >> A student who was dissatisfied with one of his professors has been found guilty of hazing, among other things, simply for e-mailing fellow classmates about his intention to withdraw from the class. The “verdict” was a summary decision by a lone administrator and was issued without a hearing. When the student recognized that his due process rights were violated, he appealed the decision. His appeal was denied, by the very same administrator who found him guilty in the first place.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports:

As we report in our press release today, St. Louis Community College at Meramec (STLCC) has placed a student on disciplinary probation and found him guilty of hazing and several other offenses simply for e-mailing other students about his plans to withdraw from his Organic Chemistry I course. He invited others to do likewise and later invited his classmates to join him in taking Organic Chemistry II at another college.

The student, Jun Xiao, holds a Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has postdoctoral training from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University. He enrolled at STLCC to satisfy the prerequisites for medical school. Dissatisfied with one of his professors, he started looking for other options. When he found some, he invited his classmates to join him. On October 23, 2007, two days later, Xiao received e-mails and phone calls requiring him to meet immediately with Acting Vice President of Student Affairs Daniel R. Herbst. One letter, from Herbst’s assistant, cryptically stated, “Your academic career rests on your meeting with him.” Another, from Herbst himself, stated, “Please note, that until you have a meeting with me, that you are prohibited from sending any emails to students in any of your courses. Violation of this directive, can and will result in your immediate suspension from St. Louis Community College.”

On October 24, Herbst gave him a letter informing him that he had been placed on “Disciplinary Probation” for the 2007-2008 academic year and that he was prohibited from contacting other STLCC students by e-mail. The letter also stated that Herbst—without any hearing—had already found Xiao guilty of hazing, disorderly conduct, breach of the peace, and failure to comply with the directions of a college official. But when Xiao later asked for a written clarification of the complaints and charges against him, Herbst refused to provide any such information. Xiao’s first appeal of Herbst’s decision was denied by Herbst himself.

Xiao then appealed again, this time to STLCC’s Student Appellate Hearing Committee. That committee, which is required to hold a hearing “within 15 calendar days from the date of notification to the student,” has refused even to set a hearing date, instead informing him that the “15-day clock has not begun to tick because you have not yet received official notification,” and that he could “expect” to receive such notification in January 2008. In the meantime, Xiao remains on disciplinary probation and may not contact other students by e-mail.

[...]

As Samantha [Harris] said in our press release, “Punishing a student for e-mailing his classmates about the possibility of enrolling in a different course is a shamefully transparent attempt to suppress criticism of the college.” She added, “STLCC must either rescind the punishment it arbitrarily meted out to Xiao or, at the very least, provide him with reasonable notice and a fair hearing so that he may defend himself against what appear to be wildly inappropriate charges.”

16 December 2007 @ 5:05PM >> One of my favorite writers is in trouble for speaking his mind—and speaking the truth—in Canada:

Celebrated author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian judicial panels on charges linked to his book “America Alone.”

The book, a No. 1 bestseller in Canada, argues that Western nations are succumbing to an Islamist imperialist threat. The fact that charges based on it are proceeding apace proves his point.

Steyn, who won the 2006 Eric Breindel Journalism Award (co-sponsored by The Post and its parent, News Corp), writes for dozens of publications on several continents. After the Canadian general-interest magazine Maclean’s reprinted a chapter from the book, five Muslim law-school students, acting through the auspices of the Canadian Islamic Congress, demanded that the magazine be punished for spreading “hatred and contempt” for Muslims.

The plaintiffs allege that Maclean’s advocated, among other things, the notion that Islamic culture is incompatible with Canada’s liberalized, Western civilization. They insist such a notion is untrue and, in effect, want opinions like that banned from publication.

Two separate panels, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, have agreed to hear the case. These bodies are empowered to hear and rule on cases of purported “hate speech.”

Of course, a ban on opinions - even disagreeable ones - is the very antithesis of the Western tradition of free speech and freedom of the press.

Indeed, this whole process of dragging Steyn and the magazine before two separate human-rights bodies for the “crime” of expressing an opinion is a good illustration of precisely what he was talking about.

It doesn’t matter whether Steyn and Maclean’s win the case. The mere fact that they are forced to go to court to defend their free speech rights is punishment enough, and it will encourage others in Canada to keep quiet.

Not everyone who runs afoul of the Speech Police will have the time, resources or resolve to fight for what is an obviously basic right in any truly free society. So this action will immediately silence an unknowable number of people whose opinions run the risk of offending Members of an Anointed Group.

Whatever the outcome, Canadians shouldn’t fear that they might lose their right to think freely. They should mourn, because that right is long gone.

16 December 2007 @ 10:36AM >> If Muslims like Hassan Askari and Mansoor Ijaz got more attention from the media—and more support from their fellow believers around the world—we would have much less reason to worry about the future of humanity.

13 December 2007 >> An “honor” killing among our neighbors to the north:

A 16-year-old girl died in hospital late Monday night, hours after police in Mississauga received a call from a man saying he had killed his daughter.

Muhammad Parvez, 57, has been charged with murder in connection with the death of his daughter, Aqsa Parvez. He will appear Tuesday in a Brampton court.

The victim’s 26-year-old brother, Waqas Parvez, has been charged with obstructing police.

Students at nearby Applewood Heights Secondary School in Mississauga said the teen had recently clashed with her family after ceasing to wear a hijab and adopting a more Western style of dress.

According to police, the chain of events began yesterday morning with a phone call from a home near Hurontario Street and Eglinton Avenue.

“At 7:55 a.m., we received a 911 call from a man claiming that he had just killed his daughter,” Constable J.P. Valade of Peel Police said.

12 December 2007 @ 8:32AM >> Celebrities are frequently mocked for making political statements that yield applause on Hollywood back lots, but that sound tone-deaf to the rest of America. So it’s refreshing to hear a little common sense from a source I didn’t expect:

During a discussion of Republican Presidential candidates on ABC’s “The View,” which the comedian co-hosts, [Whoopi] Goldberg said, “I’d like somebody to get rid of the death tax. That’s what I want. I don’t want to get taxed just because I died.” The studio audience started applauding, but she wasn’t done. “I just don’t think it’s right,” she continued. “If I give something to my kid, I already paid the tax. Why should I have to pay it again because I died?” (Watch the video here.)

[...]

When another co-host, Joy Behar, responded to Ms. Goldberg’s remarks by asserting, “Only people with a lot of money say that,” Ms. Goldberg shot back, “No, I don’t think so. . . . It doesn’t matter if you have or don’t have money. Once you paid your taxes, it should be a done deal. You shouldn’t have to pay twice.”

Death should not be a taxable event.

11 December 2007 @ 6:56PM >> The headline above can be parsed in two different ways. A court in Iraq will soon try to determine which is more accurate.

Jim Hanson of Pajamas Media reports:

AP photographer Bilal Hussein was on the radar screen of US forces prior to his being detained in a chance encounter April 12, 2006. He was a stringer working in Fallujah who filed numerous reports and photos that seemed to need a high degree of cooperation from the terrorists. He has been in custody for 19 months and will soon face trial by the Iraqi government on charges related to his activities with Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and Ramadi. Evidence against him is expected to be given to the Iraqi government this week.

Hussein was in his house with Hamid Hamad Motib, a known al-Qaeda leader, last year when Marines wanted to use the house as an observation point. They determined Motib’s identity and status as a wanted terrorist and took both him and Hussein into custody. They also recovered a number of items that led them to believe that Hussein was involved in insurgent activities. The US will now provide the evidence it has to the Iraqi government.

[...]

Bilal Hussein had free reign [sic] to be anywhere and was often taking pictures in the company of insurgents and terrorists. He and the other stringers who made up AP’s Pulitzer Prize winning photo team managed to capture assassinations as they happened. They were on site at bombings within seconds to capture the carnage almost as it happened.

This access and the number of false reports of civilian deaths led the information operations staff to take note. They began monitoring Hussein more closely for two reasons: one they were tasked with countering or debunking false claims of civilian casualties and atrocities, second because Hussein’s very tight relations with the insurgents could be used against the Marines themselves.

The photo to the right was taken by Balil Hussein. It appears to show Italian hostage Salvatore Santoro shortly before he was executed. The Associated Press tries to defend Hussein by copping to a different journalistic no-no: that the photo was staged after Santoro’s execution.

Either way, Hussein had remarkable access to terrorists, and he routinely supplied photographs to AP that were useful propaganda for insurgents. By AP’s own admission, he dutifully waited while insurgents staged an execution scene, proving that he was an active participant in generating their propaganda.

So even if you give the Associated Press the benefit of the doubt, the best you can say is that their own evidence shows that Hussein was a willing tool of the insurgents.

Was he more than that?

Iraqi authorities will be seeking a verdict on that question soon enough.

11 December 2007 @ 5:49PM >> Perhaps due to the relative speeds of e-mail and snail mail, I wasn’t aware of this until reading James Taranto’s column today (scroll down), but apparently Indiana University has dropped their demand that On The Fence Films hand over what remains in our depleted coffers. In other words, it looks like they’ve backed off their threatened legal action.

Thanks to Indiana University for resolving the matter so quickly after it became public. We acted in good faith, and we appreciate that it was reciprocated.

Update: A statement has been posted on the Indoctrinate U website, which reads in part:

Being employed by a school with an endowment of over $1 billion might give him a different financial perspective, because Mr. MacIntyre refers to the amount of money the school was demanding ($1,500) with a dismissive “That’s it.”

For an independent production company like ours, that small amount of money is the difference between making the final payment to our sound engineers and producing promotional DVDs. Being bankrupted by a bogus demand didn’t seem inconsequential to us.

Nevertheless, we are of the philosophy that all’s well that ends well. And in the end, we’re happy with Indiana University’s final decision.

Given the experiences we had with other college administrators, the folks at Indiana have been among the better ones to deal with.

Indeed that’s true. Thanks to Mr. MacIntyre (and everyone else involved at Indiana University) for helping bring this matter to a speedy and amicable resolution.

10 December 2007 @ 8:41AM >> In the Washington Post, a Villanova professor discusses the intellectual decay within academia:

At a Harvard symposium in October, former Harvard president and Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers argued that among liberal arts and social science professors at elite graduate universities, Republicans are “the third group,” far behind Democrats and even Ralph Nader supporters. Summers mused that in Washington he was “the right half of the left,” while at Harvard he found himself “on the right half of the right.”

I know how he feels. I spent four years in the 1990s working at the centrist Brookings Institution and for the Clinton administration and felt right at home ideologically. Yet during much of my two decades in academia, I’ve been on the “far right” as one who thinks that welfare reform helped the poor, that the United States was right to fight and win the Cold War, and that environmental regulations should be balanced against property rights.

All these views — commonplace in American society and among the political class — are practically verboten in much of academia. At many of the colleges I’ve taught at or consulted for, a perusal of the speakers list and the required readings in the campus bookstore convinced me that a student could probably go through four years without ever encountering a right-of-center view portrayed in a positive light.

A sociologist I know recalls that his decision to become a registered Republican caused “a sensation” at his university. “It was as if I had become a child molester,” he said. He eventually quit academia to join a think tank because “you don’t want to be in a department where everyone hates your guts.”

[...]

Unfortunately, subtle biases in how conservative students and professors are treated in the classroom and in the job market have very unsubtle effects on the ideological makeup of the professoriate. The resulting lack of intellectual diversity harms academia by limiting the questions academics ask, the phenomena we study, and ultimately the conclusions we reach.

There are numerous examples of this ideological isolation from society. As political scientist Steven Teles showed in his book “Whose Welfare?,” the public had determined by the 1970s that welfare wasn’t working — yet many sociology professors even now deny that ’70s-style welfare programs were bad for their recipients. Similarly, despite New York City’s 15-year-long decline in crime, most criminologists still struggle to attribute the increased safety to demographic shifts or even random statistical variations (which apparently skipped other cities) rather than more effective policing.

[...]

All this is bad for society because academics’ ideological blinders make it more difficult to solve domestic problems and to understand foreign challenges. Moreover, a leftist ideological monoculture is bad for universities, rendering them intellectually dull places imbued with careerism rather than the energy of contending ideas, a point made by academic critics across the ideological spectrum from Russell Jacoby on the left to Josiah Bunting III on the right.

[...]

Ultimately, universities will have to clean their own houses. Professors need to re-embrace a culture of reasoned inquiry and debate. And since debate requires disagreement, higher education needs to encourage intellectual diversity in its hiring and promotion decisions with something like the fervor it shows for ethnic and racial diversity. It’s the only way universities will earn back society’s respect and reclaim their role at the center of public life.

9 December 2007 >> An imam in Great Britain is attempting to impose Sharia law—through the execution of his own daughter:

The daughter of a British imam is living under police protection after receiving death threats from her father for converting to Christianity.

The 31-year-old, whose father is the leader of a mosque in Lancashire, has moved house an astonishing 45 times after relatives pledged to hunt her down and kill her.

The British-born university graduate, who uses the pseudonym Hannah for her own safety, said she renounced the Muslim faith to escape being forced into an arranged marriage when she was 16.

She has been in hiding for more than a decade but called in police only a few months ago after receiving a text message from her brother.

In it, he said he would not be held responsible for his actions if she failed to return to Islam.

[...]

Hannah was born in Lancashire to Pakistani parents who raised her and her siblings as strict Sunni Muslims.

She prayed and read the Koran, wore traditional Muslim clothes and was sent to a madrassa, a religious Muslim school.

She ran away from home at 16 after overhearing her father organising her arranged marriage.

[...]

But when she opted to get baptised, while studying at Manchester University, her family were incensed and the death threats began.

Her father arrived at her home with 40 men and threatened to kill her for betraying Islam.

“I saw my uncle and around 40 men storming up the street clutching axes, hammers, knives and bits of wood,” she said.

“My dad was shouting through the letter box, “I’m going to kill you”, while the others smashed on the window and beat the door.

“They were shouting, ‘We’re going to kill you’ and ‘Traitor’.

And if that weren’t troubling enough, a significant share of young British Muslims apparently believe that this is entirely appropriate:

A study this year found that 36 per cent of British Muslims between 16 and 24 believe those who convert to another religion should be punished by death.

7 December 2007 >> As promised, the Indoctrinate U website came back online last week, and we’ve now posted a statement explaining why the site was taken down in the first place.

James Taranto’s “Best of the Web Today” covers the story.

Sorry for any inconvenience, and thanks a lot for all the supportive e-mails. It’s good to be back!

6 December 2007 @ 8:36AM >> Did you know that the radical left-wing group ACORN has its own taxpayer-financed public high school in New York City? I didn’t, until it was reported today that some parents are unhappy with the principal.

Going unasked in all the coverage, of course, is why the City of New York would hand the reins of a public school over to a political organization?

People need to start demanding answers.

4 December 2007 >> There’s a little scandal brewing within Wikipedia.

The free online encyclopedia editable by anyone prides itself on being a meritocracy. The site successfully harnessed the wisdom of crowds to build what’s probably the largest, most quickly-constructed body of knowledge ever assembled in human history. Not bad for something that didn’t even exist when the decade began.

For much of its content, the Wikipedia model seems to work pretty well. Easily-verifiable facts like names, places and dates tend to be rendered accurately. And when they’re not, they’re easy to fix. With millions of eyeballs scanning everything, errors can be caught quickly.

But when the topic is a subject of debate or controversy, the natural human tendency to want to convince others of one’s rightness can lead to some nasty behavior. And when that happens in Wikiland, not only is the quality of the product degraded, so is the trust people place in the collaborative editing process.

A spat between contributors that recently became public demonstrated this weakness in the Wikipedia model, The Register reports (in a somewhat sensationalist tone):

Controversy has erupted among the encyclopedia’s core contributors, after a rogue editor revealed that the site’s top administrators are using a secret insider mailing list to crackdown on perceived threats to their power.

Many suspected that such a list was in use, as the Wikipedia “ruling clique” grew increasingly concerned with banning editors for the most petty of reasons. But now that the list’s existence is confirmed, the rank and file are on the verge of revolt.

Revealed after an uber-admin called “Durova” used it in an attempt to enforce the quixotic ban of a longtime contributor, this secret mailing list seems to undermine the site’s famously egalitarian ethos. At the very least, the list allows the ruling clique to push its agenda without scrutiny from the community at large. But clearly, it has also been used to silence the voice of at least one person who was merely trying to improve the encyclopedia’s content.

“I’ve never seen the Wikipedia community as angry as they are with this one,” says Charles Ainsworth, a Japan-based editor who’s contributed more feature articles to the site than all but six other writers. “I think there was more hidden anger and frustration with the ‘ruling clique’ than I thought and Durova’s heavy-handed action and arrogant refusal to take sufficient accountability for it has released all of it into the open.”

Kelly Martin, a former member of Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, leaves no doubt that this sort of surreptitious communication has gone on for ages. “This particular list is new, but the strategy is old,” Martin told us via phone, from outside Chicago. “It’s certainly not consistent with the public principles of the site. But in reality, it’s standard practice.”

[...]

If you take Wikipedia as seriously as it takes itself, this is a huge problem. The site is ostensibly devoted to democratic consensus and the free exchange of ideas. But whether or not you believe in the holy law of Web 2.0, Wikipedia is tearing at the seams. Many of its core contributors are extremely unhappy about Durova’s ill-advised ban and the exposure of the secret mailing list, and some feel that the site’s well-being is seriously threatened.

In a post to Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales says that this whole incident was blown out of proportion. “I advise the world to relax a notch or two. A bad block was made for 75 minutes,” he says. “It was reversed and an apology given. There are things to be studied here about what went wrong and what could be done in the future, but wow, could we please do so with a lot less drama? A 75 minute block, even if made badly, is hardly worth all this drama. Let’s please love each other, love the project, and remember what we are here for.”

But he’s not admitting how deep this controversy goes. Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation came down hard on the editor who leaked Durova’s email. After it was posted to the public forum, the email was promptly “oversighted” - i.e. permanently removed. Then this rogue editor posted it to his personal talk page, and a Wikimedia Foundation member not only oversighted the email again, but temporarily banned the editor.

Then Jimbo swooped in with a personal rebuke. “You have caused too much harm to justify us putting up with this kind of behavior much longer,” he told the editor.

If there’s a flaw in the Wikipedia model, it isn’t that the site relies on the wisdom of crowds too much, it’s that the site’s highest-volume contributors and editors—the people who effectively run the place—could succumb to the gravitational pull of groupthink.

The problem is that it’s difficult to engineer a way to allow for group-driven creation of content while dispersing certain responsibilities and decision-making tasks among the masses. It’s impossible to create a system that’s completely open to everyone without getting overrun by malicious vandals, so it’s hard to see how the site could avoid issuing bans or using some other form of group-imposed censorship.

But, to whatever extent is possible, Wikipedia would be wise to avoid greater centralization of power. Otherwise, it could lead to problems that could cause Wikipedia’s well-earned goodwill is going to melt away just as quickly as it was built.

3 December 2007 @ 10:19AM >> BBC reporter Andrew Mynott exhibits the suicidal political correctness so common in the West. In describing the angry mobs that recently called for the execution of a teacher who committed the heinous crime of being present as her young students named a teddy bear Mohammed, Mynott characterizes the death mobs as “good natured.”

Yes, they were “good natured” as they marched for the execution of this teacher. (I’d hate to think of what a bad natured Jihadist mob would look like.)

Of course, according to the rules of Multicultural Hierarchy, using a negative term is a no-no when describing members of an Approved Group. So this reporter from the BBC is forced to tie himself into a logical pretzel to avoid violating the tenets of the Church of Multiculturalism.

I wonder how he would have described the mob if it had been his wife they wanted to kill.

1 December 2007 @ 2:54PM >> I just found the perfect stocking stuffer!

There are a few items listed under “customers also bought,” however, that might not make such great gifts.

30 November 2007 >> Vincent Carroll in the Rocky Mountain News:

“The U.S.A. spends more on higher education, as a percentage of gross domestic product, than any other industrialized country, according to the Education Department.” —USA Today

Bet you didn’t know that. On the other hand, you very likely did know - because it’s mentioned repeatedly - that this country spends more on health care, as a percentage of gross domestic product, than every other advanced country.

Why is spending so much on health care considered a national scandal by many commentators but the outsized spending on higher education is not?

Could part of the answer be that the health-care system is studied, analyzed and dissected by a scholarly community that simply isn’t willing to apply the same critical perspective toward the institutions that sign its checks?

To the contrary: The self-interested consensus among academics is that this country needs to spend far more on higher education.

29 November 2007 >> Last week, I linked to a Denver Post story detailing the ordeal of Don and Susie Kirlin, a Boulder couple who’ve been living in the city for 27 years. The Kirlins recently had a substantial chunk of their land taken away from them by the legal maneuverings of their well-connected politician neighbors, Richard McLean and wife Edith Stevens. You see, McLean and Stevens wanted that land for themselves. And thanks to a friendly judge and an obscure legal doctrine called “adverse possession,” they were able to seize the land from the Kirlins.

A reader wrote in with a little more background about this case:

Evan,

Just some notes I found while poking around on the internet about this case. I don’t know anyone involved, everything I know came from Google searches. It just infuriates me that someone could do this.

1) The Kirlins claim that they have satellite photos proving that the paths that McLean “developed” didn’t exist until a year ago.

2) Edith Stevens is a former Chairwoman of the Boulder Democratic Party and is still active in local politics. In fact, one of the claims that she uses to justify the land grab is that she used the land to stage political fundraisers. I’d be interested to find out which politicians benefited from her land grab.

[Link]

Edith Stevens has resigned as campaign treasurer for State House Representative Claire Levy (Democrat).

[Link]

3) Levy appears to be yet another trial lawyer turned politician. From her website:

[Link]

“I also worked with legislators on bills related to local government land use authority. Our goal was to retain flexibility for local governments to address their unique problems during a time when the state legislature wanted to take tools away from local government in favor of developers.”

Presumably Don and Susie Kirlin, in this case, are the developers. They’re a family trying to build their dream home. “Local government” in this case are the courts and politicians. This isn’t eminent domain or overzealous land use regulation, but it’s all part of the same picture— usurping property rights in the name of “public good”. After all, where would we hold our democratic fundraisers if Don and Susie build their house?

4) Two points seem to be getting lost in the comment threads on the sites I’m reading. First, this is NOT an open and shut case. Apparently, the Kirlins claim to have convincing evidence that key facts were misrepresented (that is, aerial photography disputing when the footpaths were created). Second, over and above the legal question is the ethical question. The Kirlins aren’t 17th century English barons, fencing off the commons and evicting the commoners. They’re neighbors. McLean and Stevens might win in the courts—in fact with their political clout it seems likely they will—but that doesn’t make taking what isn’t theirs morally right.

Rob in Atlanta

26 November 2007 >> “The dogma of multiculturalism holds that all cultures are equal, except Western culture, which (unlike every other society on the planet) has a history of oppression and war is therefore worse. All religions are equal, except Christianity, which informed the beliefs of the capitalist bloodsuckers who founded America and is therefore worse. All races are equal, except Caucasians, who long ago went into business with black slave traders in Africa, and therefore they are worse. The genders, too, are equal, except for those paternalistic males, who with their testosterone and aggression have made this planet a polluted living hell, and therefore they are worse.” More >>

22 November 2007 @ 12:04PM >> ...to some selfless Americans who deserve it.

21 November 2007 >> An example:

[Don and Susie Kirlin] moved to the city in 1980. A few years later, the Kirlins purchased a plot of land near their residence, hoping to someday build a “dream home.”

“We took advantage of the market in the early ’80s,” says Susie Kirlin, almost apologetic for making a smart investment.

Children interfered slightly with the master plan - three of them in the next few years - postponing any development of the property.

As the children began to make their own way in life, the couple decided it was time to finally develop the property in late 2006.

By then, it was too late.

Despite owning the land, despite living only 200 yards from the property, despite hiking past it every week with their three dogs, despite spraying for weeds and fixing fences, despite paying homeowner association dues and property taxes each year, someone else had taken a shine to it. Someone powerful.

Former Boulder District Judge, Boulder Mayor, RTD board member - among other elected positions - Richard McLean and his wife, attorney Edith Stevens, used an arcane common law called “adverse possession” to claim the land for their own.

All McLean needed was to develop an “attachment” to it.

Undoubtedly, his city connections couldn’t have hurt, either.

In the court papers, McLean and his family admit to regularly trespassing on the Kirlins’ property.

They created paths. They said they put on a political fundraiser and parties on it (though not a single photograph of these events surfaced in court documents).

This habit of trespassing developed into an affection.

If we take McLean at his word, he should have been treated appropriately: like a common criminal. Instead, the former judge demanded a chunk of the land for himself - and implausibly he got it.

[...]

When the couple began building a fence on the land - which is within Boulder city limits, not out in the wilderness - McLean was able, according to the Kirlins, to obtain a restraining order in an exceptionally speedy 2 1/2 hours.

Boulder District Judge Morris Sandstead, who served with McLean, issued the restraining order quite swiftly.

Serendipity, I guess.

All of this adds up to District Judge James Klein ordering the Kirlins to sign over about 34 percent of their 4,750-square-foot lot to McLean and his wife last month.

“Now the lot is just about worthless,” explains Don Kirlin. “We estimate the land was worth about $800,000 to a million dollars. Now, we can’t build anything on it.”

Update: A reader wrote in with some additional background about this case.

20 November 2007 >> The New York Post reports on the educational ramifications of being born to parents from out-of-favor ethnic categories. Apparently, it is the official position of the City of New York to sort citizens into different visual groupings and dole out the government spoils accordingly:

Three Chinese parents in Brooklyn are expected to file a federal lawsuit today challenging a popular city-run tutoring program on the grounds it discriminates against Asians, The Post has learned.

The Specialized High School Institute preps gifted but “underrepresented” minorities to ace the competitive exam to get into top city high schools like Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech.

But the parents say it is unfair - and illegal - for the Department of Education to limit eligibility to blacks and Latinos.

“The program only selects certain kinds of minorities and unfortunately my daughter didn’t fall into that category,” said Peggy Foo-Ching, 47, a mom from Bensonhurst who said her 12-year-old daughter’s application last year was ignored.

[...]

A Department of Education internal memo obtained by lawyers trying the case indicated that eligibility criteria excludes whites and Asians.

“What this memo reveals is blatant and categorical discrimination by race. If you are white or Asian, you’re not supposed to get an application,” said Christopher Hajec, an attorney with the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative advocacy group.

“It’s not the business of the government of New York City to be counting up the Asians or whites in, say, Stuyvesant High School and concluding there are too many of them.”

[...]

The father who initiated the suit, Stanley Ng, said he understood how controversial his challenge may be viewed.

“It’s not something that I take lightly,” he said. “There are many Asian and white kids in this district who can’t pay for tutoring. What is their recourse?”

19 November 2007 @ 9:17AM >> On a recent airing of CNN’s The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer attempts to explain why good news out of Iraq—such as the sharp decreases in violence seen over the last few months—goes unreported:

[TERRY] JEFFREY[, CYBERCAST NEWS SERVICE]: You know, there’s sort of a catch-22. As the war starts to succeed, as the surge is working, violence is going down, U.S. casualties are going down in Iraq, it’s not news.

When Americans aren’t killed there, it’s not on the front pages of the newspaper. It’s not heavily in the cable news coverage. And people start to forget about it. They don’t realize necessarily that things are going well.

But to the degree that it’s not an issue, it’s good politically for Republicans.

[WOLF] BLITZER[, CNN CORRESPONDENT]: You know, I’m — I’m always reluctant to say things are going well. I hope they are going well in Iraq. Always reluctant to even say it, because I’m afraid of a jinx, because, the next morning...

[DONNA] BRAZILE[, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST]: Absolutely.

BLITZER: ... you could wake up and there could be a horrible, horrible disaster over there.

(Emphasis added.)

Blitzer’s admission came up in a discussion of poll numbers, which he kicked off by asking, “How are things going for the U.S. in Iraq? Thirty-four percent say it’s going well. Sixty-five percent say it’s going badly.”

The polls largely reflect the media’s reporting, so if positive trends go unreported—and by Blitzer’s own admission, they do—then those positive trends will not be reflected in the polls.

It’s really laughable that good news goes unreported because it might jinx the war effort. If that were the case, one would expect the media to hold back on bad news, too; after all, bad news has the effect of driving down public support for the war, which also damages the war effort.

But, of course, the media’s newfound reporting restraint only seems to apply when discussing positive developments out of Iraq.

18 November 2007 @ 12:26PM >> Jared Lapidus, who got his start in professional filmmaking shooting footage for Indoctrinate U, has just released a short film he directed called The Libel Tourist.

The film covers the abuses of exceedingly loose, plantiff-friendly libel laws in Britain, where American authors can now be sued for books never published there.

As long as a single after-market copy of a book is sold in Britain—such as on eBay or Amazon’s used books section—British courts can claim jurisdiction and rule against authors for things that would be protected First Amendment speech here in the U.S.

The Libel Tourist covers an issue that’s going to become increasingly important in a world where it’s next to impossible to contain the written word within a single country’s borders.

15 November 2007 @ 10:00AM >> “Ho, ho, ho” from Santa Claus is no longer politically correct, at least according to one company in Australia. Depending on which excuse you believe, it’s either because the fragile children can’t handle loud bellows from Santa, or because the term “ho” is offensive to women:

THERE’LL be no ho, ho, ho this Christmas. Aspiring Santas have been told not to use the term “ho” because it could be seen as derogatory to women.

Thirty trainees at a Santa course in Adelaide last month, held by recruitment company Westaff, were urged to replace the traditional festive greeting with “ha, ha, ha”.

A Santa veteran of 11 years who attended the course told the Sunday Mail the trainer was very clear in spelling out no to “ho”.

Two Santa hopefuls reportedly left the course after the trainer’s edict.

The term “ho” is also American slang for a prostitute. “We were told it (ho) was a derogatory term for females and can upset people,” said the Santa, who did not want to be identified publicly.

[...]

Westaff national operations manager Glen Jansz said the company’s Santas had been urged to “tone down” their use of the “ho, ho, ho” phrase - but he said it wasn’t for fear of offending women.

“The reason behind that is we find that in some cases the little kids can get a little bit scared of the deep ho, ho, hos and we ask them to be mindful of keeping their voices to a lower level,” he said.

“And kids are probably more inclined to understand ‘ha, ha, ha’, than ‘ho, ho, ho’.”

Whatever the excuse, it still seems lame.

14 November 2007 @ 7:43AM >> Proposed speech regulation in Great Britain:

The right to crack jokes or be rude about homosexuals could fall victim to new government laws to stamp out “homophobic” behaviour, Rowan Atkinson, the Blackadder star warned yesterday.

Atkinson, who mounted a successful campaign in 2004 to water down legislation aimed at criminalising expressions of religious hatred, has returned to the fray to defend the art of gay leg-pulling.

His concern is that Labour ministers are so obsessed with creating laws to stop people being rude about each other that they are putting in danger the right to free speech and, equally dear to his heart, the comedian’s craft.

In a letter to a newspaper he accused ministers of filling their legislative programme with measures that have “serious implications for freedom of speech, humour and creative expression”.

[...]

Atkinson added: “The devil, as always, will be in the detail but the casual ease which some people move from finding something offensive to wishing to declare it criminal - and are then able to find factions within government to aid their ambitions - is truly depressing.”

The problem with regulating speech is, an awful lot of power is placed in the hands of the people charged with deciding what is and is not within bounds. Given how speech codes have been abused to punish political speech on college campuses, it’s even more chilling to think of government, with all of its various powers, trying to make these distinctions.

Do you trust that the right decision—as opposed to the politically expedient decision—would always be made in these cases?

If so, you have a hell of a lot more confidence in government than I do.

12 November 2007 @ 10:04AM >> Due to a threatened lawsuit from a major taxpayer-funded university, the Indoctrinate U homepage has been taken down temporarily. On The Fence Films LLC is deciding how best to proceed, and we will not be commenting on anything until after our final response has been executed.

Don’t worry, though, this will not derail the film.

Indoctrinate U will be back.

---

Update: The site is now back online, along with an explanation of why it was taken offline temporarily.

9 November 2007 @ 2:24PM >> The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education announces another victory:

[A] federal judge has ordered San Francisco State University (SFSU) and the California State University System (CSU) to stop enforcing several unconstitutional speech codes. The codes were challenged in a lawsuit filed by attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) in cooperation with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

“This decision is a vital step in the fight against unconstitutional campus speech codes,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “The court’s decision frees hundreds of thousands of students throughout the CSU System from unlawful restrictions on their expression.”

The lawsuit—brought by the SFSU College Republicans and two of the group’s members—came after the SFSU College Republicans were put on trial by a campus tribunal for stepping on makeshift Hamas and Hezbollah flags as part of an anti-terrorism rally they held in October 2006. Despite having the power to dismiss the charges at any time, SFSU dragged the plaintiffs through a five-month investigation and hearing before ultimately clearing the group of baseless “harassment” charges. The plaintiffs’ lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, asks the court to hold SFSU accountable for unlawfully mistreating the plaintiffs on the basis of their constitutionally protected expression and to strike down several unconstitutional speech codes at SFSU and in the CSU System.

Burning the American flag is protected First Amendment speech, on the grounds that actions intended to convey a political message should be treated no differently than actual speech. The Supreme Court made that decision in the 1980s. So it’s good to know that, decades later, stepping on the flags of two terrorist organizations is also protected speech.

But it’s troubling that administrators at a taxpayer-funded university—an entity legally prohibited from punishing students for protected political expression—are so ignorant of the basic parameters of their students’ rights that the school needed to be brought to court in the first place.

You shouldn’t need to hire a lawyer in order to exercise rights enumerated in the Constitution.

6 November 2007 @ 1:56PM >> Glenn Reynolds has an essay at TCSDaily that highlights the growing numeric disparity between male and female students in academia. He cites a USA Today article stating, “135 women receive bachelor’s degrees for every 100 men. That gender imbalance will widen in the coming years, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Education.”

Reynolds writes:

[I]t seems to me that there are three possible ways of looking at the growing higher-education gender imbalance.

One would be to treat it the way we treat other “underrepresentation” issues in higher education: By wondering what universities are doing wrong. There seems little doubt that universities have become less male-friendly in recent decades, to the point of being downright unfriendly in many cases. The kind of statements that are routinely made about males and masculinity in classrooms and hallways would get professors fired if they were made about blacks, gays, or many other groups. Sexual-harassment policies start with the presumption that men are guilty, and inherently depraved. And colleges now come at the tail-end of an educational system that is (compared to previous decades) anti-male from kindergarten on, meaning many males probably just want to get out as soon as they can.

The remedy, in this view: Affirmative action for male candidates, re-education for faculty, campus “men’s centers” to match the womens’ centers that were created when women were an underrepresented group on campus (and which still remain today almost everywhere), and efforts to make curricula, dormitories, and recruiting more male-friendly. (Right now, though we see lots of courses on literature by and about women, courses on literature by and about men are regarded as too narrow.”) There seems little doubt that if any other group were suffering similar declines in college attendance, this is precisely the approach we’d be seeing, and some schools have already been trying this to some degree.

The second approach would be to shrug the problem off. Men aren’t going to college as much? Big deal. Maybe it’s because women are smarter, or better suited to such things.

Harvard President Larry Summers got his head handed to him when he raised similar factors as an explanation for why women are underrepresented in the hard sciences. But genetic explanations of gender differences are always socially acceptable so long as they posit male inferiority, so I suspect we’ll see somewhat more people offering this sort of explanation — though it may prove awkward when people point out the contradictions.

In one scene from Indoctrinate U, I noted this gender imbalance and wondered: given the fact that men were now in the minority, would they be rewarded with the spoils that identity politics practitioners typically bestow upon underrepresented groups?

To find out, I went searching for the Men’s Resource Centers and Men’s Studies Departments at various schools around the country. Needless to say, I didn’t find them, but I had a few laughs along the way.

5 November 2007 @ 10:04AM >> Cigarettes, trans-fats, aluminum baseball bats, and now bottled water. Is this the latest frontier in political correctness? Drink up now while you still can...it won’t be long before Michael Bloomberg tries to outlaw it.