Pun Salad

Still, it accurately reflects my mindset.

• Of Course It Will. Campus Reform posts on the latest from the University Near Here: New course will teach UNH students about 'racism in science'.

  Declaring that science is not necessarily “culturally neutral,” academics at the University of New Hampshire are offering a new course about anti-racism in STEM.

  Natural resources professor Serita Frey and graduate student Emily Whalen are teaching “Anti-Racism in Science: Promoting an Inclusive and Equitable STEM Community” in the spring 2021 semester.

  Yeesh. UNH Today has more, and it's pretty predictable. Sample from instructor Serita Frey:

  “Racism in science is like racism in all other aspects of our society. As we say in the course syllabus, science is often viewed as ‘culturally neutral,’ and scientific information is often presented as objective and unbiased. However, science, like every other human endeavor is subject to the biases of its practitioners,” Frey says.

  “All of us in the U.S. were raised with a 400-year history of racism and thus we all hold biases, implicit or otherwise, and these translate into treating people differently based on the color of their skin and also has led to policies and practices that make it difficult for Black, indigenous people and people of color ( BIPOC) to enter and fully participate in STEM disciplines,” she says.

   That truth is reflected in the lower number of BIPOC people who work in the sciences.

  "We all hold biases", states Prof Frey, but I wish she'd examine her own before she flatly holds out her dubious assertions as "truth".

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• Contrary Opinions are a Threat. My guess is that the Frey course would be a likely breeding ground for this sort of litigious fun, as reported by Robby Soave at Reason: A Medical Student Questioned Microaggressions. UVA Branded Him a Threat and Banished Him from Campus..

  Kieran Bhattacharya is a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine. On October 25, 2018, he attended a panel discussion on the subject of microaggressions. Dissatisfied with the definition of a microaggression offered by the presenter—Beverly Cowell Adams, an assistant dean—Bhattacharya raised his hand.

  Within a few weeks, as a result of the fallout from Bhattacharya's question about microagressions, the administration had branded him a threat to the university and banned him from campus. He is now suing UVA for violating his First Amendment rights, and a judge recently ruled that his suit should proceed.

  That's the University of Virginia. As in "Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia".

  No word on the RPMs recorded in TJ's grave.

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• Joe's Lips Moved. The Results Were Predictable. David Harsanyi on Joe Biden’s Amazing Second Amendment Whopper (which sounds like a bad takeoff on Tom Swift and His Polar-Ray Dynasphere, but never mind):

  Here is how the president of the United States, Joe Biden, proud graduate of Syracuse University Law school, opened his remarks on his new gun control efforts:

  “Nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment,” Biden said. “They’re phony arguments suggesting that these are Second Amendment rights in what we’re talking about.”

  Biden added that “no amendment to the Constitution is absolute. You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded movie theater and call it freedom of speech. From the very beginning, you couldn’t own any weapon you wanted to own. From the very beginning of the Second Amendment existed, certain people weren’t allowed to have weapons.”

  Every part of his statement is utterly absurd.

  Click through for David's three-part takedown, but also see Charles C. W. Cooke's comments: The Bill of Rights Doesn’t Have to Be ‘Absolute’ to Have Teeth

  David is right, of course. But what annoys me the most about this claim is that it is totally irrelevant to the question of whether Biden’s plans are legitimate. Invariably, people who say that a “right isn’t absolute” are not trying to determine the proper scope of the right so much as they are trying to skip a step by implying that if some regulation is permissible then all regulation is permissible.

  Which it’s not.

  As Charles notes, this type of argument is also often deployed against First Amendment rights. It's tedious to deal with people who deploy it as if it were somehow profound.

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• Nevertheless, He Persisted. In lying, that is. Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted another brain-dribble: Contrary to What Biden Says, Gun Show Sales Aren’t Exempt From Background Checks.

  In announcing new gun control plans yesterday, President Joe Biden commented on alleged loopholes in gun background checks. "Most people don't know, you walk into a store and you buy a gun, you have a background check. But you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want and no background check," according to Biden.

  Multiple fact-checkers have taken issue with this claim.

  Because it is utter garbage. Even Politifact rates it "mostly false", which, given their bias, means "made-up crapola".

  But you have to admire Biden beginning it with "Most people don't know…". Joe, people don't know that because they live in reality.

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• Pun Salad is a Sucker for any Column Using 'Dragoon' in the Headline. George Will looks at an objectionable feature of Biden's/Democrats' latest spendapalooza: Congress dragoons the states.

  The essence of progressivism’s agenda is to create a government-centered society by increasing government’s control of society’s resources, then distributing those resources in ways that increase the dependency of individuals and social groups on government. Hence this stipulation in Congress’s just-enacted $1.9 trillion money shower: None of the $350 billion allocated for state governments can be used to finance tax cuts.

  So, the federal government is using the allocation of society’s financial resources to state governments to coerce them into maintaining their existing claims on such resources. This illustrates how progressives try to implement a leftward-clicking ratchet. The Supreme Court, whose duties in supervising democracy include reminding a forgetful Congress about federalism, should find the following provision unconstitutional.

  They probably will, but I have a modest proposal: the folks who wrote that provison, voted for it, and the guy who signed it into law should resign for violating their pledge to support the Constitution.

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• Speaking Of Unconstitutional Legislation… The effort to sell the "For The People" act caused a snarky tweet du jour.

  Aren't you worried that President Bloomberg will veto it?

  — Paul Sand (@punsalad) April 8, 2021

  Joke explanation, if necesssary, here.