Letter here.

'Congress should cut the budget of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, where I used to work. Contrary to Howard Kallem’s argument, it needs no budget increase (Letter to the Editor, “Office for Civil Rights Needs More Resources,” April 2).

Kallem cited the fact that more complaints have been filed at OCR recently. But that includes many copycat complaints that cost little to investigate. On March 18, The Washington Post quoted OCR’s head admitting that just “two individuals were responsible for filing more than 1,700 of those allegations.”

Three new book reviews from the executive director of Attorneys for the Rights of the Child, J. Steven Svoboda. I look forward to his book reviews. These cover the following:

Pleading here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'Mr. McLeod, 24 years old, is suing Duke for his diploma, arguing the university unjustly made him an example to show a get-tough approach. “I believe that I’m wrongfully accused,” he says. “I believe that it was an unfair process and I believe I had something I earned taken away from me.”

His case is part of a broad and rapid change in how U.S. colleges and universities deal with sexual-assault allegations. Campuses have rewritten policies to lower the burden of proof for finding a student culpable of assault, increasing penalties—sometimes recommending expulsion. In the process, schools find themselves in legal minefields as they try to balance the rights of accuser and accused.

Mr. McLeod’s suit is one of more than 30 that men have brought against U.S. campuses since January 2014 alleging due-process violations in sexual-assault cases, says A Voice for Male Students, an advocacy group.'

Link here. Excerpt:

'Chemicals that can cause adverse health effects are used in many settings, including manufacturing industries, water treatment facilities, food processing plants, schools, and homes. Because of this, chemicals are involved in tens of thousands of emergency incidents each year and lead to thousands of personal injuries and hundreds of deaths. In addition to physical injuries, persons exposed to chemical releases can experience long-lasting mental health effects (1–3), and communities where incidents occur can be strained (4).
...
The sex of 12,611 injured persons was known; 8,096 (64%) were male and 4,515 (36%) were female. The majority of responders (91%) and employees (70%) of the responsible party were male. More members of the general public who were injured in chemical incidents were male (54%), whereas more students injured at school were female (58%). The mean age was similar for employees (37 years), responders (36 years), and the general public (34 years). Students exposed at school were an average age of 13 years.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Forget Madonna, Marilyn, Liz and Oprah. While it may be a testament to those icons’ power and fame that they can be recognized simply by their first names, it’s apparently a sexist degradation to Hillary (does she still use “Rodham”?) Clinton to presume the same standard should apply to the former first lady.

Don’t let the fact fool you that there’s literally a “Ready for Hillary” PAC, either. The pros get to call this their way; the antis, not so much. If you don’t have anything nice to say about Hillary … Clinton … don’t say you weren’t warned if her supporters start calling out your overt sexism the next time you forget to use her full name.

“[S]ome Americans, mostly women, don’t think the former secretary of state, U.S. senator from New York and first lady should be called by just her first name,” McClatchy reported Tuesday in a story that made liberal use of the “some people say” journalistic device.'

Video here. Right on target. Description:

'Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather MacDonald on the magazine's errant reporting on an alleged rape, elite opinion and statistics.'

Story here.

'One of two former high school teachers accused of having sex with a 16-year-old student has agreed to a plea deal that will allow her to avoid prison time or having to register as a sex offender.

The deal was announced in Hahnville at a Thursday hearing in the case of 32-year-old Shelley Dufresne (doo-FRAIN'). The deal avoids a May 20 trial.

The New Orleans Advocate reports that Dufresne pleaded guilty to one felony count of obscenity. She received a $1,000 fine, but a three-year prison sentence was deferred on the condition that she complete 90 days of mental health treatment.'

She and another former teacher at the school have been arrested, but not yet formally charged, in a Jefferson Parish case involving the same student.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'If you hug your boyfriend and as a result your clothed body (including your breasts) touches him, you could be accused of “sexual assault” through “sexual contact” under the University of Virginia’s broad new “sexual assault” policy adopted to appease the Office for Civil Rights, where I used to work (assuming you do it without explicitly agreeing on the details of the hug). Because U.Va. lumps together touching, “however slight,” and intercourse when it comes to sexual assault, requiring “affirmative” consent for both.  (“Affirmative consent” is a misleading term, and does not include many forms of consent that occur in the real world, and are recognized by the courts, as I explain at this link. The new policy further warns that “Relying solely on non-verbal  communication before or during sexual activity can lead to misunderstanding and may result in a violation of this Policy.” Portions of U.Va.’s policy are reprinted below.).

This is an outrageous violation of students’ privacy rights.

Article here. Good for him. He's moving on to sue the bejeesus out of the Jane Does, too. Excerpt:

'Congratulations to Professor Dershowitz and Kendall Coffey on the good news. As noted Miami defense lawyer and former Dershowitz student David O. Markus told the AP, “Judge Marra saw through all the noise and correctly found that this is a court of law, not a tabloid which prints first and looks for evidence later. These absurd allegations have no place in our legal system.”

This isn’t the end of all Epstein-related litigation for Professor Dershowitz. He’s still a defendant in that libel action filed against him by Paul Cassell and Bradley Edwards, counsel to Jane Doe #3 aka Virginia Roberts. But Professor Dershowitz might actually welcome the continuation of that case. With his involvement in the Jane Doe case now over, the defamation case may be the best avenue for completely disproving the allegations against him.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'From the Duke lacrosse team, the Columbia mattress girl and the University of Virginia, the left has not been able to produce one actual rape on a college campus. It’s beginning to look as if the rape of the Sabine women never happened, either. Someone’s going to have to go back and investigate.

The big finale to the latest college rape fable, Rolling Stone’s whimsical “A Rape on Campus,” about a fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia that never happened, is the Columbia Journalism Review’s “investigation” of the story, released Sunday night. It’s more of a house of mirrors than a finale, inasmuch as CJR’s report is so preposterous that it demands its own investigation.

The CJR treats “reporting” as if it is some sort of learned craft, requiring years of study, as opposed to basic common sense. For example, if someone has an incredible story that he’s dying for you to publicize, but loses interest every time you try to confirm any of the facts, a normal person would say: Oh, that’s because it’s probably a lie.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A top-ranking official at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has emerged as a potentially key figure in Rolling Stone’s false article, “A Rape on Campus.”

Catherine Lhamon, who heads the Department’s civil rights wing, was identified in a letter sent last month by University of Virginia Dean of Students Allen Groves to Steve Coll and Sheila Coronel, the two Columbia Journalism School deans who conducted a review of the Nov. 19 article, written by disgraced reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

Groves’ letter was included as a footnote to the Columbia deans’ report, which was released on Sunday and cataloged the failures and lies that led to the article’s publication.

Press release here. Excerpt:

'Following release of a report detailing the many mistakes of a Rolling Stone article that had alleged a gang-rape at a University of Virginia fraternity, SAVE is now calling on legislators and campus administrators to engage in reasoned debate on the campus sexual assault issue to restore due process and the presumption of innocence.

Commentators have noted how Rolling Stone reporter Sabrina Erdley approached the topic with a pre-conceived narrative. By her own admission, Erdley set out to locate a case that would reveal “what it’s like to be on campus now…where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there’s this pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture.”

Story here. Excerpt:

'The two-and-a-half year period in which the Marine Corps' Infantry Officer Course became gender-integrated for research will end without a single female graduate.

The final iteration of IOC to accept female Marines on a volunteer basis began April 2 with two female participants. One was a volunteer and one was a member of the newly integrated ground intelligence track.

Both were dropped that same day during the grueling initial Combat Endurance Test, said Capt. Maureen Krebs, a spokeswoman for Headquarters Marine Corps. Nine of the 90 men who began the course were also cut.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Over the Easter weekend, I travelled to Sydney with a group of girlfriends. We stayed in a small apartment, went to the beach and took turns cooking breakfast for each other every morning. On a typically sunny Sydney day, we strapped on our rollerskates and navigated the hilly terrain towards Coogee and its lovely women's baths. When we arrived, sweaty and hot, we stripped down to our bathing suit bottoms and splashed about in the saltwater. Afterwards, we lay topless on the rocks, drifting between silence and conversation like the clouds passing by above. I felt carefree in my half nudity, content in the presence of women and the act of just being that seemed to be made possible by the dual absence of men.

As I lay there beneath the sun, the salt drying on my skin, I thought to myself, chicks are the bomb diggety.