FAST TAKES
Campus watch: Accused Students Deserve a Fair Hearing
Decisions by the federal Sixth and Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals have sided with accused students and stressed the notion that all students are entitled to a “fair” hearing in campus sexual-assault cases, reports KC Johnson at City Journal. That includes giving the accused the right to cross-examine the accuser and others “in the presence of a neutral fact-finder.” With appeals in other districts pending, it may fall to the Supreme Court to decide whether “colleges are constitutionally obligated to give accused students a fair shake in Title IX hearings.” Yet the issue needn’t be “politicized,” insists Johnson. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said, “the person who is accused has a right to defend herself or himself . . . Everyone deserves a fair hearing.”
Liberal: Hey, Dems, Spare Me the Revolution
“A lot of Americans were shocked by some of the things they heard” at the Democratic debates, notes The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman. That includes him: “I was shocked that so many candidates in the party whose nominee I was planning to support” want to get rid of private health insurance, “decriminalize illegal entry into our country” and provide “comprehensive health coverage to undocumented immigrants.” He was also “shocked by how feeble was front-runner Joe Biden’s response to the attack from Kamala Harris.” Implores Friedman: “Dear Democrats: This is not complicated! Just nominate a decent, sane person, one committed to reunifying the country and creating more good jobs.” And “spare me the revolution!” — talk that will only lead to “four more years of Donald Trump.”
From the right: ‘Magical Thinking’ on Energy
“The physics and economics of energy” make it clear that there’s “no possibility of anything resembling a radically ‘new energy economy’ ” anytime soon, concludes Mark Mills at economics21, citing backup from his report, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise Magical Thinking.” For example: A 2 percent dip in “the hydrocarbon share of world energy” would cost over “$2 trillion in cumulative global spending.” Renewables “would have to expand 90-fold to replace global hydrocarbons in two decades,” though it took a half-century for oil production to expand just tenfold. And replacing US hydrocarbon-based electricity in 30 years “would require a construction program building out the [electric] grid at a rate 14fold greater than any time in history.” As Bill Gates puts it: “We need to bring math to the problem.”
From the left: The Squad Is Blowing It
The back-and-forth between President Trump and “the four freshmen Congresswomen of color” is “a battle in which there are no clear winners or even a side to support,” notes Mediaite’s Colby Hall. The “publicity-seeking reaction” from “The Squad” has “turned what should be a clear win” for each of its members “into political losses.” They lashed out at criticism and “sprayed Speaker Nancy Pelosi with friendly fire,” accusing her of racism for her attempts to manage “her own caucus.” The “smarter move” would’ve been to “unite with the speaker against Trump,” “take the high road and move on.” That would have been “exactly the transcendent movement we sorely need.”
Conspiracy beat: A Fake Moon Landing Goes Too Far
At Slate, Mark Jacobson admits he’s “a sucker for a well-turned conspiracy theory” but wonders why some still believe the Apollo 11 mission was fake. “In the current age of mistrust,” he notes, “the urban legend puissance of the notion remains formidable.” The deniers’ tropes? NASA lacked “the technical chops”; Apollo couldn’t survive the Van Allen radiation belt; the American flag planted on the moon seemed to wave, though there’s no wind on the airless moon. But the prize goes to “seminal” conspiracist John Lear, who believes “ETs” purposely placed the radiation belt above the Earth to make sure humans didn’t get far off their planet because the species is “morally unfit.” Jacobson rejects that last bit of moral pessimism. Instead, he tips his hat to our ingenuity and “that not-so-distant past when space was the place.”