Dear Commons Community,

Time Magazine has named Greta Thunberg as its Person of the Year. 

The 16-year-old from Stockholm rose to global prominence this year with her impassioned pleas for governments to take far-reaching action to avert climate catastrophe.  Edward Felsenthal, Time’s editor-in-chief, described Greta, who is the youngest person to be named Person of the Year, as the “biggest voice on the biggest issue facing the planet.” 

Hillary Clinton tweeted that she “couldn’t think of a better” choice.

“I am grateful for all she’s done to raise awareness of the climate crisis and her willingness to tell hard, motivating truths,” Clinton said.

Senator Cory Booker was among the 2020 presidential candidates to congratulate Thunberg.

Great choice and congratulations to Greta!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Trump yesterday signed an executive order designed to crack down on what he sees as rising anti-Semitism on college campuses. The order, which comes less than a year after his administration issued another order aimed at protecting free speech, drew mixed responses, with skeptics seeing the potential for conflict between the two measures. As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“How, for instance, should a campus respond when white nationalists declare that “Jews will not replace us,” as they did in 2017 during a violent confrontation in Charlottesville, Va.? And will colleges that are worried about running afoul of the latest order be more likely to punish activists who criticize Israel’s occupation of the West Bank? Getting those decisions wrong could mean losing a lot of federal money.

Colliding goals are nothing new to colleges that have long sought to balance the right of free speech with the expectations of a welcoming climate. But colleges may face even tougher questions about when speech that offends someone is anti-Semitic and when efforts to restrict such speech violate the First Amendment.

Trump announced his decision to sign the order in a statement issued by the White House on Wednesday, saying “the vile, hate-filled poison of anti-Semitism must be condemned and confronted everywhere and anywhere it appears.”

In March he issued another order that suggests that money be withheld from federally funded colleges that fail to promote “free inquiry.” The purpose, it said, is “to encourage institutions to foster environments that promote open, intellectually engaging, and diverse debate.”

Wednesday’s order is partly a response to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which calls on colleges and universities to take such actions against Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians. The movement has roiled campuses in recent years and prompted some Jewish students to say they feel threatened or harassed.

To critics, the latest action represents more unwelcome federal interference in college affairs. This fall the Trump administration ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to revise their joint program in Middle East studies, which it called biased, in part because it offered too little “positive” imagery of Judaism and Christianity in the region.

Jewish advocacy groups were divided on Wednesday’s order. The American Jewish Committee, a global advocacy group, welcomed it. A study conducted by the committee found that more than a third of Jewish young people said they had either experienced anti-Semitism on an American college campus themselves or knew someone who had.

“We trust that a careful application of this directive will enable university administrators to avoid running afoul of free-speech protections as they seek to root out anti-Semitism on their campuses,” the committee’s chief executive, David Harris, said in a written statement. He added that the committee would speak out against any attempt “to suppress rational criticism of Israel or its policies.”

Colleges will face tough cases in which they must decide whether speech is constitutionally protected, he said. “To date, though, responses to anti-Semitism on many campuses have often fallen short, leaving Jewish students vulnerable. Existing federal policy has not been fully enforced, and today’s order merely gives Jews what other groups have long enjoyed — the right not to be subject to a hostile environment on campus.”

Wednesday’s order says that anti-Semitic incidents have increased since 2013, “and students, in particular, continue to face anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on university and college campuses.”

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance,” the order states. While it doesn’t specifically cover religious discrimination, “individuals who face discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin do not lose protection under Title VI for also being a member of a group that shares common religious practices,” the order says.

“Discrimination against Jews,” the order continues, “may give rise to a Title VI violation when the discrimination is based on an individual’s race, color, or national origin. It shall be the policy of the executive branch to enforce Title VI against prohibited forms of discrimination rooted in anti-Semitism as vigorously as against all other forms of discrimination prohibited by Title VI.”

A report in The New York Times on Tuesday alarmed some activists and groups by saying the order would define Judaism as a “national origin,” but the official proclamation contains no such language. On Twitter, reporters said the Times’s description reflected how the White House had initially portrayed the order.

It instructs agencies to apply the working definition of anti-Semitism adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which states that anti-Semitism is “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.”

In determining discriminatory intent, the order calls on agencies to consider contemporary examples of anti-Semitism identified by IHRA, as the alliance is called.

On its website the alliance says that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for ‘why things go wrong.’ It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms, and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.”

Among the specific examples it spells out are making demeaning or stereotypical allegations about Jews, including that Jews control the media and the economy, and denying the scope or intentionality of the Holocaust.

Other examples include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and comparing contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

The order cautions that “agencies shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected under federal law or under the First Amendment.” But some groups are not convinced that the two orders can coexist without conflict.

The American Civil Liberties Union has argued that the Holocaust alliance’s definition is too broad and that enforcing it could stifle free speech on college campuses.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, known as FIRE, agreed. “While the order is couched in language intended to paper over the readily evident threat to expressive rights, its ambiguous directive and fundamental reliance on the IHRA definition and its examples will cause institutions to investigate and censor protected speech on their campuses,” the foundation said in a written statement.

“Having spent 20 years defending speakers from across the political spectrum, FIRE knows all too well that colleges and universities will rush to punish student and faculty speakers in an attempt to avoid federal investigation and enforcement,” the statement went on.

Sunaina Maira, a professor of Asian American studies at the University of California at Davis and a leader of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said the order poses “a disturbing challenge to academic freedom as well as for human-rights advocacy.”

The IHRA definition “makes murky distinctions between anti-Semitism and criticism of the State of Israel,” she wrote in an email.

“U.S. academics have for years been afraid to criticize Israel,” she wrote, “and an ambiguous definition of anti-Semitism has been used to shut down human-rights activism and BDS campaigns related to Palestine-Israel.”

Katherine Franke, a law professor at Columbia University, said the order could exacerbate the tendency to interpret any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism.

“If I raise the issue about the annexation of settlements, I am routinely hammered with criticism of being anti-Semitic,” she said. “Even if I don’t mention the Jewish people, there is a body of activists on campus and in well-funded outside organizations who are poised to describe any criticism of the State of Israel as anti-Semitic.”

With the order, Franke said, “a student could go to the Equal Opportunity Office and say, ‘Hey, I’m being discriminated against, and I’m in a hostile environment because people are talking about BDS. If the university doesn’t do anything about it, it exposes itself to the potential loss of funding.”

Cary Nelson, an emeritus professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has criticized the boycott movement, fears that the executive order will squelch academic freedom and free speech are overblown.

Nelson, who is chairman of the executive committee of the Alliance for Academic Freedom, says the IHRA definition “can be used to promote rational discussions of the issues as opposed to emotional arguments about whether one is or isn’t anti-Semitic.” But relying on the definition could be messy, he said, because people enforcing it all come with their own political perspectives.

When it comes to the BDS movement, “we have student debates on campus that have become increasingly unpleasant —almost unbearable,” Nelson said. “A competition where everyone’s trying to win as the most victimized party is awful.”

Tony

Bill Barr

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Frank Bruni, delivered a broadside this morning against  attorney General Bill Barr for his “perverse servility” to President Trump.  In a pathetic display of toadying on Monday, “Barr showed contempt for the people who work under him in the Justice Department, by renouncing a determination by the department’s inspector general that the F.B.I.’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia was legitimate and that anti-Trump bias was not its animating force.  Yesterday, he did it again, with even less subtlety and more sanctimony. “It was a travesty,” he said of the investigation, and he was speaking not just of the sloppiness and haste of some of the F.B.I.’s actions, with which the inspector general also took issue. He was dismissing the whole effort as rotten.

It was an eerie echo of his efforts last spring, when he sought to neuter Robert Mueller’s findings about the Trump campaign’s openness to Russian help and the president’s attempts to obstruct justice. Give Barr points for consistency. He has bought fully into the idea that the zeal of Trump’s detractors matters more than the presidents’ abuses of power. 

Bruni’s entire column is below.

Perverse and pathetic aptly describe Barr’s “servility.”

Tony

—————————————————————————————————

The New York Times

The Perverse Servility of Bill Barr

How does Trump’s attorney general keep a straight face?

By Frank Bruni

Opinion Columnist

Dec. 10, 2019

Donald Trump famously said that he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not “lose any voters.” I don’t know about that. But I’m confident that he wouldn’t lose Bill Barr.

Execution privilege, Barr would probably call it. He’d release a statement or hold a news conference to say that Trump had a spastic trigger finger or was triggered by Adam Schiff or was set up by those dastardly Ukrainians, who are never up to any good. Such is the magnitude of Barr’s servility, the doggedness of his deference. He’s the president’s moral launderer. Trump does evil, and Barr washes him clean.

As attorney general, he’s supposed to be the nation’s lawyer. But he has bought into the autocratic delusion that Trump equals America, that national interest and presidential prerogative are inextricably intertwined. So he’s Trump’s advocate, come hell or high crimes, as surely as Pat Cipollone or Rudy Giuliani is.

On Monday, showing fresh contempt for the people who work under him in the Justice Department, Barr renounced a determination by the department’s inspector general that the F.B.I.’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia was legitimate and that anti-Trump bias was not its animating force. He did this instantly.

And then, on Tuesday, did it again, with even less subtlety and more sanctimony. “It was a travesty,” he said of the investigation, and he was speaking not just of the sloppiness and haste of some of the F.B.I.’s actions, with which the inspector general also took issue. He was dismissing the whole effort as rotten.

It was an eerie echo of his efforts last spring, when he sought to neuter Robert Mueller’s findings about the Trump campaign’s openness to Russian help and the president’s attempts to obstruct justice. Give Barr points for consistency. He has bought fully into the idea that the zeal of Trump’s detractors matters more than the presidents’ abuses of power.

But what of the Constitution? What of common decency? Barr isn’t concerning himself with those. To do so would call into question the honor of serving in this administration, the compliment of holding the job that Trump gave him. And he wants that compliment. That pedestal. He prefers to see himself as a holy warrior than as an unholy dupe.

To appreciate his perspective, you must travel back two months, to the University of Notre Dame, where he delivered a speech that garnered some headlines but not nearly enough of them.

You should read it. You should savor its grandiosity — it has references to the dawn of homo sapiens, the twilight of the Judeo-Christian order, Edmund Burke, James Madison — so that you can understand his current overreach, born of his certainty that he knows better than the rest of the body politic and is called to heal us.

You should note his remarks’ obsession with morality and you should try not to laugh, the same way you stifle chuckles when you’re reminded that Mike Pompeo is a putatively worshipful Christian and you try to square that with how he abetted the persecution of Marie Yovanovitch, leaves his State Department charges twisting in the wind and genuflects before a false prophet. In Trump he trusts.

You should dwell on the part of Barr’s jeremiad where he says that “men are subject to powerful passions and appetites and, if unrestrained, are capable of ruthlessly riding roughshod over their neighbors and the community.” Ruthless? Roughshod? That’s Trump in an alliterative nutshell, but Barr seemed to be perversely oblivious to that. He was making a case for Trump’s presidency.

The wonder of this wretched moment has never been the existence and stench of a bad egg in the Oval Office. That’s hardly strange, given how ably shamelessness serves ambition. The wonder is how many other bad eggs the current president has assembled or hatched. The wonder is this fluffy, funky omelet of unscrupulousness.

All these supposedly godly men — Barr, Pompeo, Mike Pence, Ben Carson, Rick Perry and more — cluster around such a demonstrably godless one. They rationalize that Trump’s indulgence of certain religious factions absolves him of his sins. Barr is the principal agent of that absolution.

He’s also a paragon of hypocrisy, telling Pete Williams of NBC News that the F.B.I. investigation of Trump’s campaign was an ominous abuse of government power for partisan aims. That description better suits the conduct for which Trump is about to be impeached. I don’t know how Barr kept a straight face.

Actually, I do. Since betrothing himself to Trump, he has had ample practice. In the Notre Dame speech, without any palpable sense of irony, he urged a “moral renaissance” and delivered this priceless line: “No society can exist without some means for restraining individual rapacity.” I agree.

In our society, impeachment is one of those means. The law is another. And if Barr could dig out his conscience from under all those layers of ego, he’d see that the rapacious individual in direst need of restraint is the one he’s letting roam free.

Dear Commons Community,

House Democrats announced two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump yesterday, declaring he “betrayed the nation” with his actions toward Ukraine as they pushed toward historic proceedings that are certain to help define his presidency and shape the 2020 election.  The specific charges aimed at removing the 45th president of the U.S.: Abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.  As reported by the Associated Press and the New York Times.

“Speaker Nancy Pelosi, flanked by the chairmen of impeachment inquiry committees at the U.S. Capitol, said they were upholding their solemn oath to defend the Constitution. Trump responded angrily on Twitter: “WITCH HUNT!”

Voting is expected in a matter of days by the Judiciary Committee, which begins deliberations Wednesday, and by Christmas in the full House. The charges, if approved, would then be sent to the Senate, where the Republican majority would be unlikely to convict Trump, but not without a potentially bitter trial just as voters in Iowa and other early presidential primary states begin making their choices.

In the formal articles announced Tuesday, the Democrats said Trump enlisted a foreign power in “corrupting” the U.S. election process and endangered national security by asking Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, including Democrat Joe Biden, while withholding U.S. military aid as leverage. That benefited Russia over the U.S. as America’s ally fought Russian aggression, the Democrats said.

Trump then obstructed Congress by ordering current and former officials to defy House subpoenas for testimony and by blocking access to documents, the charges say.

By his conduct, Trump “demonstrated he will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, ” the nine-page impeachment resolution says.

“If we did not hold him accountable, he would continue to undermine our election,” Pelosi said later at a forum sponsored by Politico. “Nothing less is at stake than the central point of our democracy – a free and fair election.’’

Trump tweeted that to impeach a president “who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness.”

He later headed to Pennsylvania for a reelection campaign rally, where he called the effort “impeachment lite” and promised it would lead to his reelection in 2020.

The outcome appears increasingly set as the House presses ahead toward impeachment as it has only three times in history against U.S. presidents, a test of the nation’s system of checks and balances.”

A sad day for our country!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A long-awaited report by the Justice Department’s inspector general delivers a scathing critique of the F.B.I.’s handling of a wiretap application but also punctures conspiracy theories. F.B.I. officials had sufficient reason to open the investigation into links between Russia and Trump campaign aides in 2016 and acted without political bias, a long-awaited report said on Monday, but it concluded that the inquiry was a rushed and dysfunctional process marked by serious errors in documents related to a wiretap.

The exhaustive report by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, faced an immediate challenge. Attorney General William P. Barr sought to undermine the key finding that investigators had an adequate basis to open the inquiry, known as Crossfire Hurricane.

“The inspector general’s report now makes clear that the F.B.I. launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Mr. Barr, a close ally of President Trump who has begun his own re-investigation of the Russia inquiry, said in a statement.

Yet Mr. Horowitz stressed that the standard for opening an F.B.I. investigation was low — echoing the sort of criticism that civil libertarians have made for years. He also exonerated former F.B.I. leaders, broadly rejecting Mr. Trump’s accusations that they engaged in a politicized conspiracy to sabotage him.

“We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced” officials’ decision to open the investigation, the report said.

At the same time, Mr. Horowitz’s report was scathing about other aspects of the sprawling inquiry, documenting serious and systematic problems with the F.B.I.’s handling of applications to win court orders to wiretap Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser. Mr. Horowitz said investigators appeared to overstate the strength of their applications, and he separately referred one low-ranking F.B.I. lawyer for possible prosecution for altering a related document.

By puncturing conspiracy theories promoted by Mr. Trump and his allies, yet sharply criticizing law enforcement actions that have not been the subject of public debate, Mr. Horowitz’s mixed findings offered a basis for both critics and allies of Mr. Trump to claim vindication. The report by an independent official presented a definitive accounting of the F.B.I.’s actions in the early stages of the Russia investigation.

The report’s basic premise has Trump fuming!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

U.S. women’s national soccer team captain Megan Rapinoe yesterday was named as Sports Illustrated’s 2019 sportsperson of the year. In the press release, Rapinoe was described “as a force of nature on and off the field” by the magazine. 

“The outspoken squad leader galvanized the team amid a victorious World Cup push and a high-profile lawsuit for equal pay, all under the cloud of personal attacks by President Donald Trump.

“Choosing Megan as the Sportsperson of the Year was an easy decision,” Sports Illustrated’s co-editor in chief Steve Cannella said in a statement.

“She is a force of nature on and off the field, a trailblazing soccer player who also proves every day how large and loud a voice a socially conscious athlete can have in 2019.”

The award caps a highly decorated year for the 34-year-old midfielder, who also won the Golden Boot and Golden Ball as the top scorer and best player at the World Cup, and the Ballon d’Or award, given to the world’s best female player.

Off the field, the openly gay Rapinoe has repeatedly accused the Trump administration of pursuing policies that further threaten the rights of marginalized communities, including LGBTQ people and immigrants.

She made headlines in June when, while speculating about a potential World Cup victory and the traditional White House invitation that might follow, she told a reporter, “I’m not going to the fucking White House.”

“We’re not gonna be invited,” she added. “I doubt it.”

″[Trump] tries to avoid inviting a team that might decline,” she said later. “Or, like he did when the [NBA’s Golden State] Warriors turned him down (in 2017), he’ll claim they hadn’t been invited in the first place.”

Trump reacted in a series of tweets attacking Rapinoe and accusing her of disrespecting “our Country, the White House, [and] our Flag.” Though he pledged a team invite regardless of the World Cup’s outcome, he later backtracked on the promise.

While no White House visit was in the cards, some of the players did meet with members of Congress to discuss issues like the pay disparity between the women’s and men’s national soccer teams.

While no White House visit was in the cards, some of the players did meet with members of Congress to discuss issues like the pay disparity between the women’s and men’s national soccer teams. Earlier this year, 28 members of the team sued the U.S. Soccer Federation claiming “institutionalized gender discrimination,” a violation of the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act.

The suit is scheduled for trial in May.

Congratulations, Meghan!  And well-deserved!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd examined last week’s focus on the word “hate” after reporter James Rosen asked Nancy Pelosi point blank “Do you hate the president, Madam Speaker?” Pelosi retorted, “I don’t hate anybody…As a Catholic, I resent your using the word ‘hate’ in a sentence that addresses me. I don’t hate anyone. I was raised in a way that is a heart full of love and always pray for the president.” Before walking off, she delivered the coup de grâce to a chastened Rosen: “So don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.”

With Pelosi’s encounter as an introduction, Dowd comments on how others deal with hostility in public.  She retells Joe Biden’s experience in Iowa last week when he erupted at an 83-year-old retired farmer who brought up Hunter Biden’s involvement with a Ukrainian energy company. The farmer had his facts twisted, mistakenly claiming that Biden had “sent” his son to work in Ukraine to sell

“You’re a damn liar, man,” Biden  snapped and  showed that he still thinks any questions about his son’s windfalls while he was vice president are out of line.  

As for Trump, she comments on how he likes to retaliate when attacked such as at last week’s  “trans-Atlantic pout after learning that the other world leaders were caught on tape mocking him.”.

Dowd concludes that Trump brings to mind the paradox of Cassandra. Her gift was that she could see into the future, but her curse was that no one believed her. Trump’s triumph is that he has sought attention his whole life and now he can command all the attention in the world. But his curse is that the attention he attracts is largely ridicule and repulsion.

Fortunately for the president, one person in Washington is praying for him.

In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti  Amen!

See Dowd’s full column below.

Tony

————————————————————————————-

Hating the Word ‘Hate’

Don’t mess with us, man.

By Maureen Dowd

Dec. 7, 2019

When people ask me about my work, or comment on it, there is one word that always makes me bristle.

“Hate.”

When I wrote about George W. Bush relying on souped-up intelligence to invade Iraq, people would ask, “Why do you hate W.?”

When I wrote about how Barack Obama was hampered as president by his disdain for politicking, people would ask, “Why do you hate Obama?”

When I wrote about Hillary Clinton’s flaws as a candidate, people would ask, “Why do you hate Hillary?”

I hid my irritation by making a joke: “I don’t hate politicians. I save strong emotions like that for my ex-boyfriends.”

But I’ve thought about the word “hate” a lot. Not, as Nancy Pelosi said, in relation to being Catholic. But in relation to being a woman.

The reason it upset me was that it seemed like a way to undercut legitimate concerns I had about the behavior of a president or would-be president by suggesting that strong emotions were clouding my judgment. It’s not that they are doing something wrong; it’s that you are an overwrought female.

It evoked the old trope that women are vengeful and hysterical — a word derived from the Greek word for womb. (This is the same sexist trope Donald Trump played into when he rebutted my criticisms of him during the 2016 campaign by tweeting that I was “wacky” and “neurotic.”)

So I understood why reporter James Rosen got under the speaker’s skin when he asked if her declaration that the House would draw up impeachment articles was inspired by the irrational rather than the rational.

She wore white but she saw red.

When Rosen asked, “Do you hate the president, Madam Speaker?” Pelosi wagged her finger and retorted, “I don’t hate anybody.”

With more to say, she strode back to the microphones: “As a Catholic, I resent your using the word ‘hate’ in a sentence that addresses me. I don’t hate anyone. I was raised in a way that is a heart full of love and always pray for the president.” Before walking off, she delivered the coup de grâce to a chastened Rosen: “So don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.”

Within the hour, the president had predictably tweet-trashed her, saying she had “a nervous fit,” returning to the threadbare canard of women as hysterics. He said he did not believe that Pelosi prayed for him.

But she does. I talked to her about it in August, when she was still keeping impeachment at bay, after we visited the chapel at Trinity, where she went to college.

She said that she prays for the president at night in her apartment in Georgetown and in church on Sunday. “The prayer,” she said, “is that God will open his heart to meet the needs of the American people.”

She said that she even complained to her pastor that her prayers were not working.

“Maybe you’re not praying hard enough,” the priest replied.

The last week was a tale of three tantrums: one justified, one unjustified and one just what we expect.

Pelosi’s upbraiding was effective because it wasn’t someone whining or feeling sorry for herself. It was someone laying down the law — without worrying that a man would label her a virago or harridan or termagant. Nervous Nancy? Hardly. She was more like John Wayne, minus the racism and colonialism.

In Iowa, meanwhile, surly Joe Biden erupted at an 83-year-old retired farmer who brought up Hunter Biden’s nepotistic payday from a Ukrainian energy company. The farmer had his facts twisted, mistakenly claiming that Biden had “sent” his son to work in Ukraine to sell “access” to the president.

Biden’s friend John McCain had a blazing temper, but he set the template for how to handle an older Midwestern voter who has the facts bollixed up — firmly but politely.

Biden’s outburst — “You’re a damn liar, man,” he snapped — showed that he still thinks any questions about his son’s windfalls while he was vice president are out of line — even though Hunter himself has acknowledged using “poor judgment.”

It also showed that he has no answer for something that’s bound to be a big part of the general campaign, since it is at the heart of the crazy Rudy-Donny conspiracy theory that provoked the impeachment drive. If Joe Biden can’t handle an 83-year-old retired farmer without losing his cool, how can he handle a 73-year-old piranha?

Withholding $400 million in military aid to a fledging democracy under attack from Russia is in a different universe than making a quick buck off the Washington influence machine. But that farmer is not the only voter who feels a little queasy about Joe Biden not stopping Hunter from making a money grab in Ukraine while the vice president was pushing the Ukrainians to be less corrupt.

President Trump’s trans-Atlantic pout after learning that the other world leaders were caught on tape mocking him as prolix was typical but still pathetic.

He brings to mind the paradox of Cassandra. Her gift was that she could see into the future, but her curse was that no one believed her. Trump’s triumph is that he has sought attention his whole life and now he can command all the attention in the world. But his curse is that the attention he attracts is largely ridicule and repulsion.

Fortunately for the president, one person in Washington is praying for him.

Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump  slammed Fox News yesterday for  interviewing Democratic lawmakers.

The president tweeted his displeasure that Fox News allowed Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) ― whom he described as “losers” and “radical left haters” ― to appear on the network’s airwaves. 

Cicilline was a guest on “Fox News Sunday,” where he discussed Democrats’ forthcoming articles of impeachment with host Chris Wallace. Cicilline sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which held impeachment hearings last week.

The president criticized the network following the broadcast, tweeting, “Don’t get why @FoxNews puts losers on like @RepSwalwell (who got ZERO as presidential candidate before quitting), Pramila Jayapal, David Cicilline and others who are Radical Left Haters?”

“The Dems wouldn’t let @FoxNews get near their bad ratings debates, yet Fox panders. Pathetic!” he added.

The three representatives responded almost simultaneously about 15 minutes later saying that they were busy working to protect and uphold the Constitution while he was tweeting insults.

Despite his preference for the network, the president has gone after Fox News in recent months over unfavorable coverage during the impeachment inquiry. Late last month, he attacked the network for its decision to “waste airtime” by hosting Swalwell, a member of both the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, who spoke about the inquiry following a day of testimony from three government officials.

“Fox should stay with the people that got them there, not losers!” Trump said at the time.

Fox News host Neil Cavuto reminded the president how journalism works in November, telling Trump that reporters have an obligation to question him, even if that invites his “wrath.”

“You are free to rage. All we are free to do is report and let the viewers decide,” he said, after Trump had attacked Wallace, a veteran journalist, for a “Fox News Sunday” segment during which he called out Rep. Steven Scalise (R-La.) for “very badly” mischaracterizing some of the impeachment witness testimonies.

Trump should be careful.  Fox News is his only friend among the major news media outlets.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The F.B.I. is investigating the motive behind a shooting at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida that killed three people and injured eight others on Friday.  The authorities said the gunman, identified as Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani,  was a member of the Saudi Air Force and was killed by a sheriff’s deputy who responded to the attack. Alshamrani initially entered the United States in 2017, when his training with the United States military began, Pentagon officials said. After his initial arrival in the country, he attended language school at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, the officials said, and took classes in English and aviation.

Suspicion about terrorism (see Note below)  is being considered because Alshamrani and six other Saudis had watched videos of mass shootings at a dinner party the night before the attack.   The other Saudi nationals were detained for questioning near the scene of the shooting, which took place over two floors in a classroom on the base. Three of the Saudis who were detained had also been seen filming the entire incident, according to another person briefed on the investigation.  Lastly, the gunman and three other Saudi military trainees visited New York City recently, including several museums and Rockefeller Center, according to the person. Investigators are seeking to determine whether the trip was a tourist excursion during the Thanksgiving holiday week in New York, or whether the Saudi trainees had other motives or met with other people there.

This  story  will be closely watched over the next several days and weeks.

Tony

NOTE:  After the original posting was made above, the FBI announced that it was working under the presumption that the fatal shooting at the Pensacola naval base carried out by Mohammed Saeed Alshamranif was an act of terrorism.

William E. Macaulay Receiving an Award at Macaulay Honors College Commencement

Dear Commons Community,

One of CUNY’s most generous benefactors, William E. Macaulay died on November 26^th of a heart attack at the age of 74.  The billionaire energy investor gave a $30 million gift to help launch the CUNY honors college which now bears his name.  A graduate of CUNY’s Baruch College, his gift to CUNY in 2006 endowed the full tuition subsidy and special funding for student research projects and study abroad. It also financed the purchase of a five-story collegiate gothic building at 35 West 67th Street in Manhattan as the hub of the selective program, which had been called simply the Honors College and was renamed the William E. Macaulay Honors College.  His full obituary is below written by Sam Roberts of the New York Times.

May he rest in peace!

Tony

————————————————————————————————-

William E. Macaulay, 74, Booster of Tuition-Free Education, Dies

By Sam Roberts

Dec. 5, 2019

William E. Macaulay, a billionaire energy investor whose record $30 million gift to the City University of New York has given thousands of select students the same opportunity he was accorded a half-century ago as a middle-class teenager from the Bronx — to graduate tuition free from an elite college — died on Nov. 26 at a hospital in Cleveland. He was 74.

The cause was a heart attack, his daughter Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis said.

Mr. Macaulay made his fortune in energy company buyouts, overseeing the transformation of the First Reserve Corporation, which he acquired in 1983, into one of the field’s largest private-equity firms. He was chief executive until 2015, shared the title until 2017, and had been executive chairman since then.

He and his wife, Linda, also contributed to the American Museum of Natural History (she was a co-chairwoman of the board); the Rogosin Institute, a kidney treatment and research center, at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College; and the Macaulay Library at the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology. (The couple were avid bird watchers, logging 6,625 species in 147 countries.)

Mr. Macaulay especially prided himself on what may be his most enduring legacy: the highly selective college, founded in 1999, at which the most promising students from eight of the City University’s senior campuses receive additional academic mentoring and financial support.

The couple’s gift in 2006 endowed the full tuition subsidy and special funding for student research projects and study abroad. It also financed the purchase of a five-story Collegiate Gothic building at 35 West 67th Street in Manhattan as the hub of the selective program, which had been called simply the Honors College and was renamed the William E. Macaulay Honors College.

“I wanted to give back,” Mr. Macaulay said in a 2016 interview with Yahoo News. “It’s that simple. If it weren’t for the City University, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to achieve what I achieved.”

Mr. Macaulay graduated with a degree in economics from the Baruch School of Business at City College in 1966, two years before the business school was spun off as a separate college within the just-established City University system.

“Because CUNY was free, Bill was able to get a high-quality education, which he would not have been able to afford otherwise,” said Professor Macaulay-Lewis, his daughter, who teaches liberal studies and Middle Eastern studies at the Graduate Center of the City University. “He wanted to provide future generations that same opportunity.”

He was primed, therefore, when the university’s chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, reminded him that he might help restore advantages that they had both valued at City College in the 1960s — the prestige of a City College diploma and a cost-free education — but which had been diluted, largely because of political decisions made in the 1970s.

The university agreed in the early 1970s to accept virtually any New York City high school graduate, an open admissions policy that critics said devalued the stature of a City University degree. (The policy has since been abandoned altogether at four-year colleges, with unprepared students now diverted to community colleges.)

The university imposed tuition a few years later under pressure from outside monitors during the city’s fiscal crisis.

Dr. Goldstein envisioned the Honors College as a means to address both issues and to enhance CUNY’s prestige. He went to Mr. Macaulay to help realize those goals.

Since 2005, nearly 4,800 students have graduated from the honors college. More than half of them were the products of New York City public high schools, and about one in five were the first in their families to attend college. Mr. Macaulay regularly attended commencement ceremonies.

The $30 million gift, the largest single donation received by the university at that time, “enabled the university to help its honor students achieve their full potential,” Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez said in a statement.

William Edward Macaulay was born on Sept. 2, 1945, in Manhattan to John H. Macaulay, an engineer, and Ella (Cook) Macaulay, a homemaker.

After graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx at 16 and from City College in 1966, he received a master of business administration degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and joined Oppenheimer & Company, the brokerage and financial services firm, where he became a protégé of the hedge fund pioneer Leon Levy.

In 1983 he and John Hill, a partner in another buyout firm, acquired First Reserve. As a financial adviser and investment manager, he built the firm into an energy industry specialist that managed some $20 billion in assets at its peak.

In addition to his daughter Elizabeth, Mr. Macaulay, who lived in Greenwich, Conn., is survived by another daughter, Anne Macaulay; his wife, Linda (Rodger) Macaulay; and two grandchildren.