So what is still going on at Duke can reasonably be extrapolated to at least the Humanities departments of America’s universities and colleges. And that is not pretty.

One of the Lacrosse players who was NOT accused by the pathetic Crystal Gail Mangum was nonetheless caught up in the blast and suspended by the university at roughly the same time as the other players. He is now suing. As you can read here, Ryan McFadyen is arguably the person who behaved with greatest honor in the whole affair. He certainly behaved with greater honor than prosecutor Nifong or Durham police — who tried to suborn him into giving false evidence. There is another glimpse of his character here.

And when McFadyen refused to be intimidated into giving false evidence, Nifong and the police must have realized that he had put them into a dangerous position. Fabricating evidence is a crime with severe penalties. So they immediately went all-out to blacken his name. And that blackening still shows up today in that he has become something of a hate figure to many.

So he is now suing over that defamation and the illegal and improper behaviour of all concerned in the matter.

The trial has however produced some document disclosures that reveal the full depth of the moral depravity of senior Duke U officials. The documents contain bombshell emails from Duke President Brodhead and others suggesting that Duke’s primary concern was to protect its PR, even if that meant sacrificing innocent students.

In documents submitted February 3 by Plaintiffs’ lawyers, President Brodhead is quoted in an email sent very early in the case to other Duke staff:

“Friends: a difficult question is, how can we support our lacrosse players at a devastatingly hard time without seeming to lend aid and comfort to their version of the story? We can’t do anything to side with them, or even, if they are exonerated, to imply that they behaved with honor. The central admin can’t, nor can Athletics.”

And Joe Alleva, then of the Duke Athletic Dept., also testified during his deposition on January 20, 2012, that he made positive and truthful statements about Plaintiffs and their teammates’ character at the University’s press conference on March 28, 2006.

Mr. Alleva testified that he was “crucified” immediately afterwards for making those statements by President Brodhead himself and in front of the Crisis Management Team, all of whom knew how “off-message” Mr. Alleva’s truthful, positive statements about plaintiffs were.

Alleva was the one who later told Duke lacrosse coach Pressler that “it’s not about the truth” any longer; that the case was about the interest groups and the integrity (reputation) of the university. (Hence the title of coach Pressler’s book, “It’s not about the truth”).

Or as Robert K. Steel (then chairman of Duke’s Board of Trustees) said in explaining why Duke would not be defending its falsely-accused students: “Sometimes people have to suffer for the good of the organization”. More details here

You would think that all the exposure of their moral depravity might have created some caution among Duke faculty about race-related matters. It does not appear to have done so. Just a few days ago I ran a large excerpt (scroll down) from an article which summarized the Arcidiacono affair. I will simply refer readers to there for a treatment of that little explosion of rage and hate. See HERE for the full article. Having their warped view of America threatened is intolerable to Duke’s Leftist Mafia.

No Leftist will admit it of course but I cannot see why Duke should be regarded as atypical. I don’t think there is anything especially poisonous in the air at North Carolina. I think we have seen coming to the surface at Duke what is smouldering away beneath the surface at most of America’s universities and colleges. They are true heirs of Stalin and the ghastly Soviet Union. They are a nest of vipers.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

(Washington Post) Dozens of police maintained a late-night guard around City Hall following daylong protests that resulted in 300 arrests. Occupy Oakland demonstrators broke into the historic building and burned a U.S. flag, as officers earlier fired tear gas to disperse people throwing rocks and tearing down fencing at a convention center.

That’s a whole lot of peace, isn’t it? And yet another in a line of flag burnings.

Saturday’s protests — the most turbulent since Oakland police forcefully dismantled an Occupy encampment in November — came just days after the group said it planned to use a vacant building as a social center and political hub and threatened to try to shut down the port, occupy the airport and take over City Hall.

Apparently, their copy of the Bill Of Rights says something about the “right of the people mostly peaceably to assemble, break and enter, trespass, and threaten”.

An exasperated Mayor Jean Quan, who faced heavy criticism for the police action last fall, called on the Occupy movement to “stop using Oakland as its playground.”

“People in the community and people in the Occupy movement have to stop making excuses for this behavior,” Quan said.

No, Liberals in the community need to stop making excuses for this behavior. They needed to do it from the get go. Except, liberals like you, Mayor Quan, put up with it from the get go. More on that in a moment.

The group assembled outside City Hall late Saturday morning and marched through the streets, disrupting traffic as they threatened to take over the vacant Henry Kaiser Convention Center.

The protesters walked to the vacant convention center, where some started tearing down perimeter fencing and “destroying construction equipment” shortly before 3 p.m., police said.

Peaceful.

Quan said that at one point, many protesters forced their way into City Hall, where they burned flags, broke an electrical box and damaged several art structures, including a recycled art exhibit created by children.

She blamed the destruction on a small “very radical, violent” splinter group within Occupy Oakland.

Who’s making excuses now, Mayor Quan?

Here’s the photo of the day for the protest

I have no idea the background of the photo, but, the KosKidz and the DUmmies seem to think that it is emblematic of the problems in America, and that it is shameful. At the DU we see

• Horrifying…What kind of orders are the police getting? Are we still a free people?
• Makes me want to drive up there and protect the kids- you too? It’s so horrifying to think this is happening in our country.

Well, gee wiz, are we a free country that sees riots that require tear gas, with parents bringing their kids to potential riots, needing gas masks? One DUmmy does mention that perhaps the parents should protect the kids by getting them the hell out of there. And some of the Kos Kidz get that bringing the child is a Bad Idea, but many others are on this wavelength

That photo of a child and her mother wearing…gas masks says it all about the current [disgraceful] state of American society.

That single iconic image should resonate sadly and profoundly with every American for a very long time.

D.C…. WAKE THE HELL UP!!

See, it’s not the fault of the mom who brought their child, knowing they would need a gas mask. It’s the fault of American society! And D.C.! They also blame the Oakland PD. Like this one

I don’t see an encampment. I see a mother and a child standing on the street, but since you never know when the police will attack the citizens, I guess it’s best to make sure you have your gas mask around the clock.

The police wouldn’t need to if you Leftists would stop rioting, breaking and entering, starting fires, etc. But, please, keep it up. Especially in Charlotte.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

The gauzy puffery that the Old Media slathers upon the Occupy Wall Street movement has helped keep most Americans in the dark about how nasty, how violent, how outrageous, and even how incredibly lacking in integrity this movement is. On the conservative blogs the truth is well known, of course, but the fact that few Americans seem to know how bad the OWSers are shows that as conservatives we are not effectively getting our message out there.

For the initial two years of its existence the Old Media spent its every waking moment destroying, maligning, and out right lying about the Tea Party movement. Even today you’ll see an occasional swipe at the Tea Patiers made by some hater from the left and the Old Media is happy to “report” the slander, naturally.

You might remember when Obama operative Anna Park tried to start a counter movement that she prosaically called “the Coffee Party” during the heyday of the Tea Party. You may also recall that those Old Media mavens, while daily lying and lambasting the Tea Partiers, fell all over themselves to play up the silly and quickly failed and forgotten “Coffee Party” effort.

Similarly, when the Occupiers hit the scene, the Old Media went into paroxysms of ecstasy over the whole thing. Even today, after conservatives have so effortlessly ripped away the veneer from the absurdity and essential anti-Americanness of the OWSers, the Old Media is still slathering OWS with unearned and illicit praise.

Most Americans are unaware that real communists and socialists and other anti-American groups form the core of OWS. Few Americans understand that these people are drug addicts and criminals that have indulged every imaginable crime at these events. From property destruction to child abandonment to rape to gun crimes, just about every crime imaginable from small to large have been committed at these events. People have even died at these things!

There is even a website dedicated to chronicling the arrests made at OWS events. As of the writing of this article they had noted 5,975 arrests at OWS events across the nation. And this is a left-wing hosted website, too. You see they are proud of these arrests.

Compared to the several years of Tea Party events, the OWS events have been a criminal’s paradise. Not only have the Tea Partiers never had any arrests, or fights, or criminality, at their events they’ve even left every park they used cleaner than they were when they started their events!

Just because the OWS movement is dying down right now — maybe only due to the winter cold — that doesn’t mean the outrages of the OWSers is slowing. Just recently a church that made the foolish mistake of helping these criminals found its facilities vandalized. A $12,000 baptismal fount was stolen along with laptops and other items. These creeps even urinated on Church property. There have been other churches that have been vandalized when they tried to assist the OWSers, too.

With all the criminality that has occurred at these supposedly peaceful events, the public should have long ago turned against OWS. Yet polls still show that Americans have not turned against OWS. Why? Because the Old Media has told them how great it all is and has made a concerted effort to hide the truth from people.

By contrast, the Tea Party’s image has been thoroughly battered with Americans. Is it any surprise with the near daily barrage of hate the Old Media bludgeons the Tea Party with?

If no other example is believable to show how the Old Media establishment is sold out to the far left, the difference in the way it has treated the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement is solid proof of that bias.

Sadly, even after we’ve exposed all the criminality at the OWS events in conservative media outlets from newspapers to TV to blogs, the fact that Americans still have not turned foursquare against the Occupiers shows that we have made little headway in reaching the country with the truth.

It is more common everyday. A man buys a house, the market collapses and suddenly his house is worth less than the mortgage, then he loses his job until, as a single father, he finds himself in foreclosure with no place to raise his two preteen daughters. It’s a case made for the Occupy Wall Street movement to swoop in and right wrongs, right? Maybe not because the OWSers in New York stole this poor guy’s home away from him in order to give it to one of their own members. Confused? Read on.

A Brooklyn man living in an apartment with his two daughters was alerted to the fact that his in-foreclosure-home had been broken into and occupied by Occupiers, as in Occupy Wall Street activists. When he rushed to his home he found a group of strangers that had broken into his home claiming to have “reclaimed” the house and given it to another family.

“They’re trying to take a house and say the bank is robbing the people because the mortgage is too high — so contact the owner!” fumed Wise Ahadzi, 28, who owns the home at 702 Vermont St. in East New York.

Apparently Ahadzi had bought the house in 2007 for the princely sum of $424,500 but during the housing bubble of 2009 the house ended up being worth only half that. Then, when he lost his job and got behind on the mortgage, the bank foreclosed on the property.

Enter — illegally, mind you — Occupy Wall Streeters who discovered the home in foreclosure and decided that they’d steal it away from “the bank” with the ostensible goal of helping the needy.

Ahadzi is rightfully indignant that they didn’t contact him so that they could help him retake possession of his own house. Ahadzi also asked why they didn’t try to help him and his two daughters to which the Occupiers claimed he “didn’t qualify” because he wasn’t in their group. “Why can’t you fight for me?,” he wondered.

So, who did they want to “give” the house to? An organizer for VOCAL-NY — a gay rights activist group. A fellow with a job and one that belongs to their own group, yet.

Worse, when Ahadzi got to his home he discovered that the Occupiers had taken all his personal belongings and shoved them in a pile in the basement and then began to tear out walls and “remodel” the place, spending, they claimed, over $9,000 in the effort.

This isn’t a lone incident, either. It is apparently an idea that the OWSers are going to try and push nation-wide. At a recent Chicago OWS rally, for instance, a purported Lutheran pastor preached an OWS sermon urging OWSers to do the same thing in the Windy City.

John Ruberry attended the speech and notes that Reverend Tom Gaulke told those assembled that they were going to repeat the New York efforts.

“We will be supporting a homeless family in reoccupying a vacant house,” the reverend claimed.

As Ruberry notes, this is called trespassing.

So, what have we learned form this? We’ve learned that OWS is not altruistic in anything they do even as they claim the mantle of Mother Theresa — well, Mother Theresa if she engaged in rapes, drug abuse, deaths, racism, anti-Semitism, property destruction and general lawlessness, anyway.

We’ve learned that, like any self-interested Wall Street Banker, the OWSers only want to enrich themselves and help their own members. They aren’t really interested in helping defend the poor and downtrodden. Just helping themselves.

Albany Police Chief Steven Krokoff came in for heavy criticism by fans of the Occupy “movement” after he ordered the clearing of their downtown encampment pursuant to a court order. The arguments over the actions by police have raged since the December 23 conflagration with Chief Krokoff getting savaged repeatedly by the media and some city councilmen alike. But this week Krokoff confronted his critics and he wasn’t gentle about it!

The big criticism arose when officers used pepper spray when the Occupiers became violent. Since then several Councilmen, such as Anton Konev, have criticized the police saying that their actions were unnecessary. Konev, for instance, has announced that he has no confidence in the Chief and is angling to have him fired. Naturally, Konev has been an open agitator for and supporter of Occupy Albany.

But on January 6, Chief Krokoff came before the city council with a strong defense of his and his officers’ actions delivering a withering blast to some of the councilmen that have come to the defense of the lawless Occupiers.

In what the Albany Times Union called a “scorching offensive” chief Krokoff scolded members of the City Council for supporting the criminal element of the Occupiers instead of supporting their own police department.

Chief Krokoff also went to the unusual extreme of slamming several of the councilmen by name for supporting the Occupy Whatevers:

“Shame on Councilman Konev and Councilman Freeman, who at every turn, seem so willing to distort the truth of any situation, no matter how tragic, and use it for their own personal gain. Shame on you both for mattering so little to yourselves and your community that you have to create hate and further half-truths just to feel some sense of relevancy. This entire city has seen the content of your character, and I pity you both.”

The chief may be about to become a hero to the law and order set with this spirited defense of his actions.

Albany political blogger Rusty Weiss is one of those cheerleading for Chief Krokoff. Weiss wonders why the media are not pointing out that some of the city councilmen that have been criticizing the chief “were vociferously participating in the Occupy Albany assembly”?

Good question.

Since some of the chief’s critics on the council have been involved in the Occupy movement wouldn’t that make their criticism heavily biased and lacking credibility?

Worse, these Occupiers are hardly innocent bystanders. After the pepper spraying incident, Occupiers began circulating posters identifying one of the policemen involved and advertising his home address where he and his family live. The officer has received numerous threats from Occupiers since.

It’s no wonder that the Chief has about had enough of the harassment. After all, when we compare what happened to protesters in Albany to that of other countries, we see how silly the Occupiers look claiming that they were victims of a brutal police raid. A few spurts of pepper spray on the Occupy Albany folks don’t compare favorably to the real bullets sprayed on Egyptian protesters, after all.

(Washington Post) Before there was the Tea Party to define the phrase “far-right fringe,” there was Rick Santorum. He’s a nice-guy zealot who should never be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.

So, calling for the reduction of power and spending in the Central Government is “fringe”? Responsible spending levels is “fringe”? Stopping wasteful spending is “fringe”? Well, fine, then I proudly take up the banner of “far-right fringer”.

The problem is that his views are genuinely extreme and, in some instances, patently offensive. He is a cultural warrior who has equated same-sex marriage with polygamy, pedophilia and bestiality — and who has argued that gay men and lesbians should not serve openly in the military because “they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people.”

Santorum is implacably opposed to Obama’s health care reforms. Among other objections, he has said that insurance companies should continue to have the right to deny coverage — or charge more — for individuals who have preexisting conditions. “I’m okay with that,” he said last month.

Eugene also mentions Santorum’s tough stance on Iran, and…..that’s pretty much it. The above is what makes Santorum “extreme and should never be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.” Hmmph. Say, Eugene, what do you think about allowing a guy who palls around with domestic terrorists, listens to racist, unhinged, bigoted, conspiracy minded, and anti-American preachers in church, was partly raised by a Marxist mother and grandmother, does business with a shady land dealer who raised money for Obama and eventually became a convicted felon, appoints tax cheats and communists, and surrounds himself with people well outside the mainstream. Not too mention all the golf, basketball, parties, and vacations. Who’s the extremist, Eugene?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Here’s a new way to try and hip-up the boring, ages-old, left-wing idea of tax hikes: link it to reality TV star Kim Kardashian. That is just what ABC News tried to do on the Wednesday, January 4 edition of ABC World News Tonight when the venerable news program helped advertise an effort by a small group headed by a former Democrat operative that wants to hike California’s income taxes. It is a two-pronged approach of hitching a big government, big spending, high tax agenda to the TV reality show star in order to drag younger people into the left’s class warfare game.

ABC highlighted a California Millionaires Tax policy recommendation from a group called Courage Campaign. The group is headed by Rick Jacobs who is the former head of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign in California, a Huffington Post writer, and leader of this admittedly “progressive” group.

ABC reported that the “liberal group” (and kudos to ABC for actually identifying them as a liberal group for a change) is upset that Kim Kardashian, who made some $12 million in 2011, only paid one percent more than the average middle class wage in the Golden State.

Here is what the extremist high-tax group says on it’s website about this:

Kim Kardashian made more than $12 million in 2010, but she only paid 1% more in taxes than a middle-class Californian. That’s not OK, especially when budget cuts are decimating schools and critical programs for children, the elderly, and the disabled. It’s exactly why Courage Campaign and two dozen other organizations are putting the Millionaires Tax of 2012 on the ballot.

Wow, that tiny, little one percent suuuure seems small, right? But let’s look at the actual payment, shall we? Kardashian paid a tax rate of 10.3 percent and 10.3 percent of twelve million is $1,236,000! And those middle-class folks that paid one percent less at 9.3 percent? Well if the average income in California is $47.000, then they paid only $4,371. Why aren’t these middle-class louts paying their fair share? (That’s called sarcasm, by the way.)

Now, it’s not that I care at all for Kim and her brood — I never watch so-called reality TV and have never seen her show — but this is all really just class warfare. After all, let’s look at the tact here. Instead of actually talking about what Kardashian pays, this ABC flogged extremist group focuses on that “one percent” as if that makes her tax remittance tiny. They mislead the public by purposefully avoiding any mention of the amount she actually paid.

Seriously, the fact is we could out right confiscate the millions made by the Kardashinas of this country and it wouldn’t make a dent in the hole of trillions of dollars that Democrats have dug for us.

But there is one last thing to ask about this ABC report. I’m just wondering, but has ABC ever highlighted the tax policy idea of some small Tea Party group that made a video to sell its plan to the people? Why does this tiny, left-wing group in California rate any attention at all in a national news program?

Obviously the answer here is that ABC saw the possibility of exploiting Kardashian and enraging her young fan base in order to drive them to support a left-wing idea. It’s all about branding, you see. If the far left and ABC can leech off Kim Kardashian to sell their creaky old socialist policies, then that’s what they will do.

(Washington Times) People monitoring the Occupy D.C. movement tell Inside the Ring that the two encampments are fast becoming health hazards. Numerous protesters also recently were sickened with unusual respiratory illnesses.

The major emerging problem for the leftists camped out in tents at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza is rats. The rodents appear to be moving into the area by the hundreds, and their numbers are increasing daily.

The McPherson camp appears be where more radical leftists are based. An observer familiar with the McPherson camp said one distinctive smell coming from the park area is that of methamphetamine being smoked.

Among the flags being flown by some protesters are those from the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and al Qaeda.

Such lovely people, aren’t they? Has anyone ever noticed that, despite deeming themselves smarter than everyone else, oh so enlightened, liberals seem to love living in squalid conditions? Come on, a rat infestation? Then there’s the Meth.

Oh, and flying the flags of terrorist organizations is oh so diverse of you, Occupiers. Why not go and try to live with those groups, see what happens.

(LA Times) Most of the roughly 300 Occupy L.A. protesters were released from jail by Friday evening, with some immediately speaking out on the police raid that cleared their camp.

One speaker suggested that some of those arrested might need therapy. Several said they felt traumatized after witnessing police use nonlethal force and being forced to wait for hours in zip-tie handcuffs. Some displayed cuts on their wrists from the handcuffs. Others complained that they were forced to urinate in bags on the bus as they were transported to jails.

These are the people that are going to change the world? They can’t even witness police arresting other filth infused squatters without becoming emotional to the point they need therapy. Jammie Wearing Fool uses a naughty word to describe them.

One speaker urged others to document any complaints. “Make note of every single violation of human rights,” she told those assembled.

For what, peeing in a bag like other criminals are forced to, instead of the usual bottles of hoity toity water they were used to?

The face of Occupy LA look traumatized (from the LA Times)

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

With this week’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of American Airlines, we again see the results of unions having a hand in destroying American businesses. We also saw GM laid low by union demands costing Americans billions in bailouts. But despite these lessons of the recalcitrance of Big Labor forcing even worse calamities on our jobs climate in this dismal economy, Obama is about to make matters worse by using his powers to regulate to further harm both our business sector and our economy.

Obama likes to stand before the American people and claim that he wants to “help” the business sector. He claims that his crony capitalism is meant to “save” those businesses that are “too big to fail.” But while he stands before the microphones and pretends at being interested in capitalism, he wields his powers to regulate like a club with which to beat down the business sector.

Obama’s latest move — among dozens in the last three years — is to have a regulatory board he controls to issue new rules which would make it harder on business owners to prepare themselves and inform their employees on what it might mean to unionize their workplace.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is supposed to be an arbiter between business and labor. It is supposed to be a non-partisan watchdog standing between the two groups as an impartial judge. But since Obama took office the NLRB has been swung solidly on the side of the far left, union bosses — Obama’s biggest campaign fund donors. Obama has taken the NLRB from a non-partisan judge to a fully partisan actor for unions.

This time the NLRB is mulling changes in labor laws that would take away the time that business owners have to respond to unions that want to unionize workers. Currently that response time is up to six weeks, but Obama wants that cut down to ten days. As proposed by NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce, the changes to current practice are:

(1) a shortened time period between the filing of the initial election petition and election date
(2) post-election NLRB review of contested issues previously resolved prior to the election
(3) increased disclosure requirements for employers.

“If adopted as currently proposed, the most significant loss to employers will be time — time to design an appropriate campaign message and a legal strategy to protect their interests and ensure the workforce can cast fully informed votes,” notes Bob Quackenboss, partner at Hunton & Williams LLP in Washington, DC.

“The solution is for employers to work with legal counsel and labor consultants to plan for elections ahead of time, leaving only ‘fine tuning’ for the shortened campaign period. Organized Labor has been perfecting its campaign message for years; early preparation by employers will ensure they do not get caught flat-footed once a petition is filed,” adds Quackenboss.

Another change that Obama wants to force on America’s business sector is something called “micro unions.” He wants to allow as few as three workers to be able to start a union. This could cause employers to have to deal with innumerable small groupings of their employees starting mini unions throughout their businesses. Imagine the confusion, disruption and cost this will incur.

There is a bill being considered in the House today that will curtail some of Obama’s partisan moves to attack the business sector and further dampen our economy. The Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act introduced by John Kline (R, Minn.) seeks to head off the NLRB’s new rules.

“It’s very clear to me that we’re seeing the rights of employers and employees under attack,” said Mr. Kline, adding, “I expect overwhelming support from my side of the aisle.”

Mr. Kline’s bill addresses this sharp cut in the days leading up to unionization. He would require at least 14 days before a pre-election hearing is held, giving employers more time to find a legal team and build their case. He would also require a minimum of 35 days — about the current average — before a vote can be taken.

We need to stop Obama’s attack on the business sector. Call your House members today and tell them you support Kline’s bill.

Also, feel free to sign the petition below to send a message to Congress and the President.