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Bill McGurn knows why some Dems are getting upset with Weiner.
Amid the spectacle that has become Anthony Weiner’s campaign for mayor, New Yorkers have heard many arguments calling for him to withdraw. Surely the least persuasive of these is the one advanced on national TV by Dee Dee Myers: that Bill and Hillary find his continued candidacy distasteful.
Like so many others statements that involve the name Clinton, Myers later “clarified” her comments by saying she hadn’t actually spoken to the Clintons before saying they wanted Weiner out. Her remarks, however, fit with all the other anonymous complaints we hear that the Clintons are “livid” over the comparisons between Anthony and Bill — or Hillary and Huma.
And here we have Weiner’s real sin: It’s not that he’s treated women shabbily. It’s that the national focus on Carlos Danger is an uncomfortable reminder of Bill Clinton’s own antics in office — and the way those around him fought to help him remain in office.
On the material facts, it’s easy to understand why Weiner is resisting calls to step down. For every argument against Anthony applies even more forcefully to Bill: …
Turns out Lois Lerner doesn’t waste any time siccing attorneys on free market groups. Kimberley Strassel has the story about the ties between the IRS and the FEC.
Congressional investigators this week released emails suggesting that staff at the Federal Election Commission have been engaged in their own conservative targeting, with help from the IRS’s infamous Lois Lerner. This means more than just an expansion of the probe to the FEC. It’s a new link to the Obama team.
In May this column noted that the targeting of conservatives started in 2008, when liberals began a coordinated campaign of siccing the federal government on political opponents. The Obama campaign helped pioneer this tactic.
In late summer of 2008, Obama lawyer Bob Bauer took issue with ads run against his boss by a 501(c)(4) conservative outfit called American Issues Project. Mr. Bauer filed a complaint with the FEC, called on the criminal division of the Justice Department to prosecute AIP, and demanded to see documents the group had filed with the IRS.
Thanks to Congress’s newly released emails, we now know that FEC attorneys went to Ms. Lerner to pry out information about AIP—the organization the Obama campaign wanted targeted. An email from Feb. 3, 2009, shows an FEC attorney asking Ms. Lerner “whether the IRS had issued an exemption letter” to AIP, and requesting that she share “any information” on the group. Nine minutes after Ms. Lerner received this FEC email, she directed IRS attorneys to fulfill the request. …
Benno Schmidt, former president of Yale and CCNY board chair, defends Mitch Daniels in the squabble over Zinn and his book.
Most Americans would agree that academic freedom is a sacred right of the academy and crucial to the American experiment in democracy. But what is it really?
That’s the question raised by the Associated Press’s July 16 release of emails between Mitch Daniels, when he was the governor of Indiana, and his staff concerning Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” The emails were written in 2010 and Mr. Daniels, whose second term as governor ended this January, is now president of PurdueUniversity in Indiana.
Published in 1980, Zinn’s “A People’s History” (the author died in 2010 at age 87) has been a staple of Advanced Placement courses at the high-school level and omnipresent in college syllabi for decades. Praised by some for focusing on American history from the ground up, the book has been condemned by others as emblematic of the biased, left-leaning, tendentious and inaccurate drivel that too often passes as definitive in American higher education.
Mr. Daniels falls squarely among the critics. Zinn’s history, the then-governor wrote in February 2010, “is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page.” Then Mr. Daniels asked: “Can someone assure me that it is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before any more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?” …
The Center for Investigative Reporting provides more proof you can get well by doing good.
Thirteen years ago, the University of California changed its ban on flying business or first class on the university’s dime, adding a special exception for employees with a medical need.
What followed at UCLA was an acute outbreak of medical need.
Over the past several years, six of 17 academic deans at the Westwood campus routinely have submitted doctors’ notes stating they have a medical need to fly in a class other than economy, costing the university $234,000 more than it would have for coach-class flights, expense records show.
One of these deans, Judy Olian of the Anderson School of Management, has at least twice tackled the arduous 56-mile cycling leg of the long course relay at Monterey County’s Wildflower Triathlon, according to her expense records and race results. She described herself in a 2011 Los Angeles Times profile as a “cardio junkie.”
With a medical waiver granted by UCLA, however, she has an expense account that regularly includes business-class travel. She spends more on airfare and other travel expenses per year than any other UCLA dean or the chancellor, and she also far outpaces her counterpart at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Olian’s travel is part of a pattern of lavish spending at the public university, which routinely bends its rules for its top academic officials, according to an analysis by The Center for Investigative Reporting of documents obtained through the state Public Records Act.
Officials have taken flights costing more than $10,000, taken chauffeured town cars to the airport and spent nights at a Four Seasons hotel at university expense.
The UCLA officials added luxury and comfort to their travels while the UC system underwent one of the worst funding crises in its history. Undergraduates have seen tuition and fees increase nearly 70 percent since the 2008 school year.
Overall, Chancellor Gene Block and 17 deans who oversee the schools of business, film and theater, law, medicine and others spent about $2 million on travel and entertainment from 2008 to 2012. About half a million went to first- or business-class airfare for the six deans with medical exemptions, according to documents. …
Pickings from August 1st was delighted to run an editorial from Chattanooga’s Times/Free Press. Now we learn the author has been fired. James Taranto with the story.
President Obama gave a speech about jobs in Chattanooga, Tenn., this week, and left a job opening in his wake–though he couldn’t save the job of the man who formerly held the position. Drew Johnson is now using Twitter to advertise his availability: “I need a job. Resume: Columnist & opinion pg editor, founded thriving free market think tank, exposed Al Gore’s home electricity consumption.”
What better way to end the week–assuming you’re not Drew Johnson–than with a journalistic kerfuffle? In an unsigned statement his former employer, the Chattanooga Times Free Press, explains why he is no longer the Tennessee newspaper’s editorial page editor: …