Muffin Ponders: What To Do About Nigel?

Pressure: The effect of this tidal change in British politics is that without some sort of accommodation with Ukip, the Conservatives haven't got a prayer of winning the next General Election

By Simon Heffer

With characteristic obstinacy, David Cameron refused over the past few years to react to the defection of thousands of natural Tories to Ukip.

He wouldn’t change his wrong-headed, irrelevant and in some cases poisonous policies that drove them away. So what happened in Thursday’s elections was not so much a defeat as a self-inflicted wound.

The effect of this tidal change in British politics is that without some sort of accommodation with Ukip, the Conservatives haven’t got a prayer of winning the next General Election.

But there will be no accommodation while Mr Cameron — whose disastrous, Left-leaning brand of leadership I have criticised since he stood for leader of his party in 2005 — remains in charge.

In any case, why should Ukip leader Nigel Farage strike a deal? Both in private and public, Ukip has offered many olive branches to the Tories, for example asking for the public to be offered a swift in-out EU referendum.

Yet it has been snubbed by an arrogant, out-of-touch leadership that believed the policies popular with the so-called ‘Notting Hill Set’ would resonate with the rest of the country.

They were wrong, and Thursday’s disastrous results prove it.

Ukip advocates ideas that were once championed by the mainstream Tory party before it alienated itself from its traditional voters so spectacularly, such as lower taxes and the creation of more grammar schools

The Tories’ hapless chairman, Grant Shapps, tries to be humble in saying: ‘We get the message. We heard you.’

But they don’t, and they haven’t.

Tory ministers think the message is about tougher immigration controls and faster economic growth.

But that is only part of it.

The truth is that the Farage Factor consists of a lot more. Of course, these include an immediate EU referendum — not one in 2017 or 2018. The Tories still don’t offer that.

And Ukip advocates other ideas that were once championed by the mainstream Tory party before it alienated itself from its traditional voters so spectacularly.

It wants lower taxes, the creation of more grammar schools, withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, freedom from the tyranny of the EU and the bolstering of Britain’s depleted Armed Forces.

Any rapprochement between a party with such priorities and one obsessed with legalising marriage between same sex couples and spending billions on overseas aid is impossible to imagine.

Mr Farage is a Technicolor man in a monochrome political class. To the chattering classes, his brash, confident, matey, plain-spoken persona makes him something of a demon. But to millions of voters he’s someone with whom they can identify, and who avoids the nuanced language of almost all other politicians.

When attacked for having few detailed policies, Mr Farage points out that other opposition parties lack them, too. When stuffy pundits sneer at his saloon-bar-and-fags image, he chuckles with the confidence of a man who knows that he, and not they, is in tune with the British people.

Tories must decide whether to let Ukip continue its inexorable progress under the charismatic and popular Mr Farage, or whether they will fight to regain the support of disaffected natural Tories

There is wishful thinking among some Tory strategists, who feel Ukip will evaporate like the SDP (which was formed as a breakaway party in 1981 by those in Labour fed up with the party’s domination by the hard-Left). I am afraid they are utterly wrong.

Mr Farage argues that the SDP ultimately resulted in Tony Blair leading the Labour Party. But I believe it disappeared because it was almost a carbon copy of the Liberal Party, with which it merged.

Subsequently, the Liberal Democrats failed to challenge either Labour or the Tories because Mr Blair turned Labour into an imitation of the Lib Dems — but with a machine capable of delivering a party of government.

The only way in which Ukip will be neutralised is for the Tories to follow a similar path.

In any case, Ukip cannot be compared with the SDP. There has been nothing quite like it since Margaret Thatcher was ditched as Tory leader.

There will be one certain result of its success on Thursday. The party will attract more supporters and more money. This will allow stricter vetting of candidates, and better policy research. By next year’s Euro elections, Ukip should be well positioned to win more seats than any other party.

For their part, the Tories must decide whether to let Ukip continue its inexorable progress under the charismatic and popular Mr Farage, or whether they will fight to regain the support of disaffected natural Tories.

In sum, the Conservatives must wake up to reality.

Their core vote has defected to Ukip and their current leadership doesn’t seem to have a clue how to win it back.

Yes, that might mean getting a new leader, and it would almost certainly involve breaking the Coalition.

SoRo:  Britain's Tea Party moment has arrived and it has stunned the Establishment.  What Mr Heffer didn't address in his article is that Ukip isn't just pulling in Conservatives, it is also attracting disaffected and neglected Labour voters, who have had it with immigration, EUSSR tyranny, ridiculous political correctness, high taxation and regulations, etc., - in other words, Reagan Democrats, if you will.  Also, Thursday's election saw the complete collapse of the LibDems.  Nick Clegg:  One-Hit Wonder.

Now, ROCK ON, Nigel!

 

'Toon of the Day: Priorities

What Austerity?

By J.T. Young

The emperor’s new clothes were invisible; in Washington’s fiscal fairy tale, austerity is too. Although an increasing number of people are expressing concern that federal spending cuts are endangering the economy, it begs a fundamental question: What austerity?

It is understandable why last week’s 2.5 percent real GDP growth figure troubled many. First, it was below the consensus 3 percent expectation. More importantly, the economy has been dismal for so long that America’s conditioned reflex is despondency.

Even though America’s last negative growth quarter was 2009’s Q2, the economy’s annual real growth rate has underperformed thusly: 2009, minus-3.1 percent; 2010, 2.4 percent; 2011, 1.8 percent; and 2012, 2.2 percent. If the Blue Chip consensus forecast is correct, this year growth will also be just 2.2 percent -- something last week’s figure made much more likely.

After four-years-going-on-five of such economic anemia, liberals sorely need a new culprit -- especially with their favorite whipping boy, George W. Bush, now far removed from office. Enter Europe, stage left. Or rather, Europe’s “austerity,” to be more precise.

That a continent of countries, spinning like a roulette wheel of fiscal failure, now could be suddenly afflicted by austerity -- after over-spending for decades -- is a puzzler in its own right. This is to misdiagnose cure for problem -- not unlike an addict blaming detox for the shakes.

Of course, such a move by America’s liberals serves two purposes. It shifts focus away from the $620 billion tax hike slapped on the nation at year’s beginning. And even more, it protects the sizable and sudden spending surge to which they have become quite accustomed.

How sizable and sudden has it been? From 2007 to 2008, when the economy first felt the recession’s effects, federal outlays jumped 9.3 percent, from $2.729 trillion to $2.983 trillion. In 2009, they jumped another 18 percent, to $3.518 trillion -- a 29 percent leap in two years.

And there, despite the fact that the economy has not had a negative growth quarter in almost four years, they have stayed -- estimated by the Congressional Budget Office at $3.553 trillion this year.

Juxtaposed with this profligacy, we find the following spending “austerity”: an $85 billion sequester that took effect just two months ago. That spending cut represents a 2.3 percent reduction from where spending otherwise would have been. In our $16 trillion economy, it is only a 0.5 percent slice.

So where is the “austerity” part of this austerity?

Using CBO’s assumption that this year’s federal outlays will equal 22.2 percent of GDP (which will be the lowest in five years), federal spending as a percentage of GDP has averaged 23.7 percent after 2008. That compares with a 40-year average of 21 percent.

Only one other post-WWII period, 1982-1986’s 22.8 percent federal spending average, even comes close. While still a full percentage point lower, the earlier five-year period’s economic results are far stronger. Despite the economy falling 1.9 percent in 1982, it averaged 3.5 percent annual growth from 1982-1986. In comparison, if Blue Chip’s 2.2 percent projection for 2013 is correct, today’s economy will have averaged 1.1 percent growth over the last five years. Even dropping the negative growth years (1982 and 2009) from both, the discrepancy is dramatic: 1983-1986, 4.8 percent; 2010-2013, 2.2 percent.

As bad as that looks, the comparison really is even worse. During 1982-1986, America had to painfully wring out inflation, interest rates were sky-high, and the U.S. faced down the USSR in its death throes. Today, instead of taking money out of the economy, the Fed is pumping it in with a fire hose and interest rates are historically low.

So despite these comparative advantages, currently America’s federal budget is overspending, while its economy is underperforming.

Only in Washington, and to liberals, could the slightest step toward spending normalcy be misnamed “austerity.” Only if Europe -- which taxed to the verge of bankruptcy everything hinting at success, and then sought to subsidize its failures into perpetuity by borrowing to square this impossibility -- is the model, could this pass as austerity. Of course, if Europe is to be America’s model, then as bad as our economic and budget problems have been, they are just beginning.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

 By Richard Fernandez

While the US is focused on its own domestic dramas, Europe as the Economist puts it, “is bleeding out.” Silently, exsanguinating below the fold, but bleeding all the same.

It is a car crash of a data release. One simply can’t look away. Hard to know precisely which part of the euro area’s latest unemployment report is the most grimly compelling. …

Individual country numbers inspire their own brand of horror. Greek joblessness topped 27% in January (the most recent month for which data there are available), while Spanish employment has risen to 26.7%. Joblessness in France rose by slightly more in the year to March than it did in Italy. And did you know that Dutch unemployment rose by 1.4 percentage points over the past year? German unemployment, of course, has held steady at 5.4% since last summer.

It is the youth figures that are most remarkable, however: 59.1% of those under 25 are unemployed in Greece, 55.9% in Spain, 38.4% in Italy, 38.3% in Portugal, 26.5% in France—3.6m youths in all.

Yet that would not appear remarkable to anyone who understands what state-controlled economies really are. Hope and Change economies are crony capitalist systems which pick winners and losers. They maintain the status quo at all costs — and reward those who have captured government over those who innovate. Thus the Reuters headline “Banks saved, but Europe risks ‘losing a generation’” is perfectly comprehensible.

What else would happen but that?

Naturally this plight is explained to the desperate voters as the consequence of the remaining vestiges of capitalism. The growing impoverishment, we are told, is occurring because socialism hasn’t gone far enough.  Only give the government more power and all will be well. And so the low information voters turn out in the streets offering to exchange what little freedom they have left for some low paying jobs and a little welfare.  The poorer they are the more eager they become to trade their last liberties for one more benefits check.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way.

The ability of young people to study and work anywhere in Europe as part of the EU’s single market ideal was also supposed to deliver vastly improved opportunities for all.

But instead, as a result of the banking and debt crisis that has cast a shadow over Europe since 2008, those sunny prospects never materialized for millions of young people.

“Greece, Spain and Italy have perhaps the best educated generations they have ever had in their countries, their parents invested a lot of money in the education of their children, everything they did was right,” said Schulz.

“And now they are ready to work the society says, ‘No place for you’. We are creating a lost generation.

May Day rallies erupted all over Europe with a single resounding message: end “the excesses of reckless capitalism”, put a stop to the abuses of the “laissez-faire parties on the European right” and in their place implement more “tax and spend”. And whatever the shortcomings of that approach, the Left will surely insist on that solution.  They will insist on even more progressives being appointed. And when these numerous icons of the left worsen the plight of the “lost generation” it will still be capitalism’s fault.

Making official what many Democrats have expected for weeks, President Obama plans to nominate Chicago business executive Penny Pritzker, a longtime political supporter and heavyweight fundraiser, as his new Commerce secretary on Thursday morning.

Pritzker’s nomination could prove controversial. She is on the board of Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her family and has had rocky relations with labor unions, and she could face questions about the failure of a bank partly owned by her family.

With a personal fortune estimated at $1.85 billion, Pritzker is listed by Forbes magazine among the 300 wealthiest Americans. She is the founder, chair and CEO of PSP Capital Partners, a private equity firm, and its affiliated real estate investment firm, Pritzker Realty Group. She played an influential role in Obama’s rise from Illinois state senator to the nation’s 44th president, serving as Obama’s national finance chair in his first campaign for the White House and co-chair of his reelection campaign.

The entrepreneur has now inherited the mantle of the European Jew. He has become the designated scapegoat of the cabal in power. Heads socialism wins. Tails the entrepreneur loses. There doesn’t have to be a reason why. Society doesn’t do reasons any more.  Donald Kagan who has just retired from Yale ruefully contemplated the possibility that “democracy has had its day” because the academy is now churning out low-information graduates. It teaches “cool” because it’s too dangerous to teach anything else.

“The tendency in this century and in the previous century at least has been toward equality of result and every other kind of equality that could be claimed without much regard for liberty. Right now the menace is certainly to liberty. … Democracy may have had its day. Concerns about the decline of liberty in our whole polity is what threatens all of the aspects of it, including democracy.”

But I think Kagan is wrong. The impulse for freedom never dies simply because, as I pointed out in the post Freedom, free societies are more information rich than collectivist, statist hives. There is no escape from poverty, stagnation and tyranny except through the information, technology and innovation that liberty brings. So  however much they march, however many Penny Pritzkers they nominate the only way the Lost Generation will ever see a job again in their lifetimes is to repudiate the Mayday nonsense.

Freedom is the only way out. The last exit.

The Left has now set the fuse for its own demise. Like Kim Jong-un of North Korea it can do anything but produce. The bureaucracy it generates can do everything but govern. And therefore the poverty will deepen.

Democracy may have had its day, but tomorrow eventually comes, and when the sun rises the Left will have had its day. Ironically the public will never see the shift coming until it is right upon them. Until almost the end the acolytes of the establishment in the media will push the Narrative until it finally goes up in smoke.

The great hope for America, ironically, is Europe. It is further along the glorious road that President Obama seeks to tread than America. And its fortunes — or misfortunes —  will serve, just as in the 1940s, as a kind of tragic morality play to illustrate where certain tendencies lead. Truth comes hard, but it comes.

RICK: Sam, if it’s December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?

SAM: Uh, my watch stopped.

RICK: I bet they’re asleep in New York. I’ll bet they’re asleep all over America.

The fundamental things apply, as time goes by.

The Benghazi Talking Points

By Stephen Hayes

ven as the White House strove last week to move beyond questions about the Benghazi attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2012, fresh evidence emerged that senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what had happened in the days following the assaults. The Weekly Standard has obtained a timeline briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing the heavy substantive revisions made to the CIA’s talking points, just six weeks before the 2012 presidential election, and additional information about why the changes were made and by whom.

As intelligence officials pieced together the puzzle of events unfolding in Libya, they concluded even before the assaults had ended that al Qaeda-linked terrorists were involved. Senior administration officials, however, sought to obscure the emerging picture and downplay the significance of attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. The frantic process that produced the changes to the talking points took place over a 24-hour period just one day before Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made her now-famous appearances on the Sunday television talk shows. The discussions involved senior officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the White House.

The exchange of emails is laid out in a 43-page report from the chairmen of five committees in the House of Representatives. Although the investigation was conducted by Republicans, leading some reporters and commentators to dismiss it, the report quotes directly from emails between top administration and intelligence officials, and it includes footnotes indicating the times the messages were sent. In some cases, the report did not provide the names of the senders, but The Weekly Standard has confirmed the identities of the authors of two critical emails—one indicating the main reason for the changes and the other announcing that the talking points would receive their final substantive rewrite at a meeting of top administration officials on Saturday, September 15.

The White House provided the emails to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees for a limited time and with the stipulation that the documents were available for review only and would not be turned over to the committees. The White House and committee leadership agreed to that arrangement as part of a deal that would keep Republican senators from blocking the confirmation of John Brennan, the president’s choice to run the CIA. If the House report provides an accurate and complete depiction of the emails, it is clear that senior administration officials engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments about Benghazi in order to mislead the public. The Weekly Standard sought comment  from officials at the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but received none by press time. Within hours of the initial attack on the U.S. facility, the State Department Operations Center sent out two alerts. The first, at 4:05 p.m. (all times are Eastern Daylight Time), indicated that the compound was under attack; the second, at 6:08 p.m., indicated that Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating in Libya, had claimed credit for the attack. 

According to the House report, these alerts were circulated widely inside the government, including at the highest levels. The fighting in Benghazi continued for another several hours, so top Obama administration officials were told even as the fighting was taking place that U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives were likely being attacked by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists. A cable sent the following day, September 12, by the CIA station chief in Libya, reported that eyewitnesses confirmed the participation of Islamic militants and made clear that U.S. facilities in Benghazi had come under terrorist attack. It was this fact, along with several others, that top Obama officials would work so hard to obscure. 

After a briefing on Capitol Hill by CIA director David Petraeus, Democrat Dutch Ruppersburger, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, asked the intelligence community for unclassified guidance on what members of Congress could say in their public comments on the attacks. The CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis prepared the first draft of a response to the congressman, which was distributed internally for comment at 11:15 a.m. on Friday, September 14 (Version 1 at right). This initial CIA draft included the assertion that the U.S. government “know[s] that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.” That draft also noted that press reports “linked the attack to Ansar al Sharia. The group has since released a statement that its leadership did not order the attacks, but did not deny that some of its members were involved.” Ansar al Sharia, the CIA draft continued, aims to spread sharia law in Libya and “emphasizes the need for jihad.” The agency draft also raised the prospect that the facilities had been the subject of jihadist surveillance and offered a reminder that in the previous six months there had been “at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy.” 

After the internal distribution, CIA officials amended that draft to include more information about the jihadist threat in both Egypt and Libya. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy,” the agency had added by late afternoon. And: “The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al Qaeda in Benghazi and Libya.” But elsewhere, CIA officials pulled back. The reference to “Islamic extremists” no longer specified “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda,” and the initial reference to “attacks” in Benghazi was changed to “demonstrations.”

The talking points were first distributed to officials in the interagency vetting process at 6:52 p.m. on Friday. Less than an hour later, at 7:39 p.m., an individual identified in the House report only as a “senior State Department official” responded to raise “serious concerns” about the draft. That official, whom The Weekly Standard has confirmed was State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, worried that members of Congress would use the talking points to criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.”

In an attempt to address those concerns, CIA officials cut all references to Ansar al Sharia and made minor tweaks. But in a follow-up email at 9:24 p.m., Nuland wrote that the problem remained and that her superiors—she did not say which ones—were unhappy. The changes, she wrote, did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership,” and State Department leadership was contacting National Security Council officials directly. Moments later, according to the House report, “White House officials responded by stating that the State Department’s concerns would have to be taken into account.” One official—Ben Rhodes, The Weekly Standard is told, a top adviser to President Obama on national security and foreign policy—further advised the group that the issues would be resolved in a meeting of top administration officials the following morning at the White House.

There is little information about what happened at that meeting of the Deputies Committee. But according to two officials with knowledge of the process, Mike Morrell, deputy director of the CIA, made broad changes to the draft afterwards. Morrell cut all or parts of four paragraphs of the six-paragraph talking points—148 of its 248 words (see Version 2 above). Gone were the reference to “Islamic extremists,” the reminders of agency warnings about al Qaeda in Libya, the reference to “jihadists” in Cairo, the mention of possible surveillance of the facility in Benghazi, and the report of five previous attacks on foreign interests.

What remained—and would be included in the final version of the talking points—was mostly boilerplate about ongoing investigations and working with the Libyan government, together with bland language suggesting that the “violent demonstrations”—no longer “attacks”—were spontaneous responses to protests in Egypt and may have included generic “extremists” (see Version 3 above).

If the story of what happened in Benghazi was dramatically stripped down from the first draft of the CIA’s talking points to the version that emerged after the Deputies Committee meeting, the narrative would soon be built up again. In ensuing days, administration officials emphasized a “demonstration” in front of the U.S. facility in Benghazi and claimed that the demonstrators were provoked by a YouTube video. The CIA had softened “attack” to “demonstration.” But as soon became clear, there had been no demonstration in Benghazi.

More troubling was the YouTube video. Rice would spend much time on the Sunday talk shows pointing to this video as the trigger of the chaos in Benghazi. “What sparked the violence was a very hateful video on the Internet. It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States.” There is no mention of any “video” in any of the many drafts of the talking points.

Still, top Obama officials would point to the video to explain Benghazi. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even denounced the video in a sort of diplomatic public service announcement in Pakistan. In a speech at the United Nations on September 25, the president mentioned the video several times in connection with Benghazi.

On September 17, the day after Rice appeared on the Sunday shows, Nuland defended Rice’s performance during the daily briefing at the State Department. “What I will say, though, is that Ambassador Rice, in her comments on every network over the weekend, was very clear, very precise, about what our initial assessment of what happened is. And this was not just her assessment, it was also an assessment you’ve heard in comments coming from the intelligence community, in comments coming from the White House.” 

It was a preview of the administration’s defense of its claims on Ben­ghazi. After pushing the intelligence community to revise its talking points to fit the administration’s preferred narrative, administration officials would point fingers at the intelligence community when parts of that narrative were shown to be misleading or simply untrue.

And at times, members of the intelligence community appeared eager to help. On September 28, a statement from ODNI seemed designed to quiet the growing furor over the administration’s explanations of Benghazi. “In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo. We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available.”

The statement continued: “As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized attack carried out by extremists. It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate. However, we do assess that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al Qaeda.”

The statement strongly implies that the information about al Qaeda-linked terrorists was new, a revision of the initial assessment. But it wasn’t. Indeed, the original assessment stated, without qualification, “we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.”

The statement from the ODNI came not from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, but from his spokesman, Shawn Turner. When the statement was released, current and former intelligence officials told The Weekly Standard that they found the statement itself odd and the fact that it didn’t come from Clapper stranger still. Clapper was traveling when he was first shown a draft of the statement to go out under his name. It is not an accident that it didn’t.

The revelations about exactly how the talking points were written, revised, and then embellished come amid renewed scrutiny of the administration’s handling of Benghazi. Fox News spoke to a Special Ops soldier last week who raised new questions about what happened during the attack, and the State Department’s inspector general acknowledged that the office would be investigating the production of the Administrative Review Board report on the attacks because of concerns that investigators did not speak to a broad spectrum of individuals with knowledge of the attack and its aftermath. On May 8, the House Oversight and Government Reform committee will hold another hearing on the matter. And Republicans in Congress have asked the administration to release all of the emails, something that would further clarify how the changes came about.

Here's Ms Nuland lying to the media - a reporter from Fox News - in the State Department's Daily Briefing asserting that the talking points spouted by Susan Rice on 5 Sunday talk shows were an accurate representation of the government's 'initial assessment' even though she had, PERSONALLY, changed the 'initial assessment' to alleviate the political concerns and worries of her 'superiors': 

Hello, She Lied

By Walter Russell Mead

In a better world, the horrible travails of the Duke lacrosse team would have led colleges and universities across the country to do more to protect young men from having their reputations destroyed and their lives ruined by false accusations of sexual misconduct. But if anything, young men have been losing procedural safeguards and the presumption of innocence since then as poorly designed programs aimed to deter unwanted sexual advances and contacts on campus spiral towards the surreal.

If anybody still doubted that false accusations can and do happen, this week’s story from the University of Wyoming should make it clear. An anonymous note, posted to Facebook group “UW Crushes” and threatening sexual violence against University of Wyoming senior Meg Lanker-Simons, was determined by police to have been written by Simons herself.

The Billings Gazette reports:

“I want to hatef— Meg Lanker- so hard,” the Facebook post read. “That chick that runs her liberal mouth all the time and doesn’t care who knows it. I think its hot and it makes me angry. One night with me and she’s gonna be a good Republican b—-.”

The post sparked a fairly typical frenzy of controversy on the UW campus, as students gathered to protest on campus and police quickly began an investigation to locate the author. Police cited Lanker-Simons for a misdemeanor interference with a police investigation after examining her computer and determining that she herself had written the post. Lanker-Simons denies the charges and we wish her all the best in court… and we wouldn’t deny her the presumption of innocence and all the procedural safeguards our legal system affords. Perhaps she’s been falsely accused of lying about sex, or perhaps she’s made a false accusation that something occurred. We don’t know, we don’t think a young man accused of something wrong should have less protection than Lanker-Simons deserves.

If this were a typical case of a young man being accused by a young woman at many colleges, the accuser would only need to show, for example, a “preponderance of evidence” (50.01 percent) that the accused committed the crime. And standard procedures of discovery and evidence gathering are also removed from the process, so the accused has less ability to mount a defense as well as facing a lower threshold for a determination of guilt. These university hearings aren’t legal proceedings and nobody goes to jail as a result of them… but the impact on young lives can be as severe as that resulting from a misdemeanor conviction.

As we’ve said before, this is tricky territory. There is a legitimate concern about inappropriate sexual behavior on American campuses, and late adolescence is not in any case the time of life when most of us are at the peak of our moral development. In the old days university administrators went to great lengths to guard against inappropriate sexual behavior, keeping the sexes in separate dorms, limiting visiting hours, treating alcohol abuse or even use as grounds for expulsion and limiting even consensual sexual behavior among students.

For a variety of reasons, mostly good but some perhaps less wise, society has been moving away from this approach to undergraduate sex. That’s a choice students, parents and administrators should be free to make, but it is morally wrong and educationally unwise to base the new policy on a system that is fundamentally unfair to half (or slightly less, as young men these days are not going to college as often as young women) the student body.