Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
John and Steve are off galavanting in Florida, up to all kinds of mischief and boozy dinners, so this episode was recorded sans whisky but after a lot of fine wines. So this episode really could have been called “the three Bordeaux happy hour,” plus steak.
We picked up where we left off last week, with some follow up thoughts on the defects of the criminal justice system especially when it comes to “political” offenses like protesting at the Capitol on that faraway winter day. The argument quickly degenerated into another session of beating up on John for his legal positivism. To be continued, probably, ad infinitum. . .
Then we get to the main event: who had the worst week in Silicon Valley: Stanford University, or Silicon Valley Bank, and all of its tech bro clients? More to the point, what is the role of the new Nicene Creed of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in the whole scene? Our detours take us to the controversy over Amy Wax at Penn, the San Francisco proposal for $5 million reparation payments, and lots of other related matters that summon forth our best rants ever.
Subscribe to Power Line in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
Lucretia wasn’t as ranty as she has been. Nice to see.
On reparations in San Francisco, one thing that hasn’t been discussed is who pays?
So far, it’s everyone. Including racial groups who weren’t slaveholders in the United States. The racial makeup of San Francisco, according to Wikipedia includes 41% whites and 5% blacks.
Shouldn’t the reparations be paid wholly by whites in San Francisco? If they are going to target who gets paid by these reparations, shouldn’t they also target who pays?
Kamala
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/harris-hears-boos-march-madness-game-faces-ridicule-for-speech-howard-players-loss
Yes I saw. Unfortunately we recorded before that amazing locker room visit came to light. OMG: I think she may have broken the Cringe Meter.
I think the most egregious aspect of the Stanford Law debacle wasn’t even the shutting down of the speaker, as bad as that was. Worse was the second-year Stanford Law Student who emailed the Washington Free Beacon to demand they not run photos of the students because California is a two-party consent state and they didn’t have legal permission to run the photos. The reporter explained that that pertains only to oral communication, and you have no right of privacy at a public newsworthy event. I am not a lawyer, but I cannot remember ever not knowing that basic concept. How in God’s name could anyone make it through almost two years at ANY law school and not know that? Or, before sending a “lawyerly” threatening letter to a media outlet, at least take 30 seconds to Google and see what the law actually says.
I would expect the students to be self-righteous and boorish; wouldn’t expect them to be stupid.
Extremely interesting episode! It seems that, absent mutual agreement on the meaning of terms (an ever worsening state of affairs these days), the Founders’ framework is not so much failing as being relegated to the storage closet by the ever increasing number of elite young attorneys who seek to impose their own meanings and call it justice.
(Slightly edited after initially posted.)
Lucretia, “That’s all I’m going to say.” Immediately starts talking again.
For the Left, the “Founders’ framework” is part of “systemic racism”, and thus null and void.
Of course, sometimes leftists pretend to honor this or that part of the Constitution, when it happens to be useful to whatever they are trying to do, which tends to muddy the waters.
For a progressive, the purpose of speech is utilitarian: not to tell the truth, but to manipulate the hearer; propaganda, not information. For them, it’s the effect, not the content, of the argument that is important. That’s why they will make inconsistent or contradictory arguments on different days, or before different audiences on the same day.
Remember, affirmative action (=sub rosa quotas) means lowering standards to admit students who claim to belong to “underrepresented minorities”. Such students will tend to struggle, once they’re there, and naturally tend to blame it on “systemic racism” rather than their own inadequacy.
Agreed. Thomas Sowell has written about this, makes the argument that the universities are doing more harm than good to these students.