Secretary of Education shuts down Obama's kangaroo courts

A judicial process that doesn’t allow the accused to cross-examine his accuser or reliably see the evidence against him is a civil libertarian’s nightmare. It traduces every principle of fairness and is blatantly un-American.

Yet Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is about to get savaged for replacing just such a process with something more in keeping with our longstanding legal norms.

The Education Department is preparing new rules that would roll back the monstrously unfair Obama-era requirements for how colleges handle sexual-assault and harassment allegations. It will be a significant advance for due process, which is almost as out of style on campus as free speech.

In one of its least defensible actions, the Obama administration used its Office for Civil Rights to impose its preferred procedures for handling sexual-assault cases on all the universities in the country that receive federal funds. It did it via a 19-page “Dear Colleague” letter, in the name of Title IX, the provision in federal law prohibiting sexual discrimination in education.

The process was terrible. It blew right by the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires public notice and comment before such rules go into effect. And the substance was worse. If the letter reads as if it was written by inflamed activists who had no interest in balanced proceedings, that’s because it was.

It required colleges to adopt a “preponderance of evidence” standard rather than a “clear and convincing” standard.

It more or less forbade colleges from allowing the cross-examination of accusers.

It adopted a remarkably broad definition of sexual harassment to include “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”

The administration also encouraged the use of a “single investigator-adjudicator system,” i.e., one person as investigator, judge and jury.

The Obama rules are medieval in the sense that they ignore central developments in Anglo-American justice that arose hundreds of years ago.

In their important book “The Campus Rape Frenzy,” KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. describe how the rules often played out: “Start with an alcohol-soaked set of facts that no state’s criminal law would consider sexual assault. Add an incomplete ‘investigation,’ unfair procedures, and a disciplinary panel uninterested in evidence of innocence. Stir in a de facto presumption of guilt based on misguided Obama administration dictates, ideological zeal, and fear of bad publicity.”

The result has, inevitably, been jaw-dropping miscarriages of justice. Everyone should want perpetrators of sexual assault to be punished — and in the criminal-justice system, not just by colleges — but elementary protections for the accused can’t be discarded in the process.

One reason the Obama rules were so lopsided is that they were crafted in an atmosphere of moral panic. It was assumed that there was a spiraling epidemic of sexual assault on campus. Taylor and Johnson note, to the contrary, that sexual assaults of female college students dropped by more than half between 1997 and 2013, and that young women in college are less likely to be assaulted than those who are not in college.

The Obama rules have been receiving a battering in the courts, where due process is still taken seriously.

A US district court judge wrote in a 2016 ruling against Brandeis University: “If a college student is to be marked for life as a sexual predator, it is reasonable to require that he be provided a fair opportunity to defend himself and an impartial arbiter to make that decision. Put simply, a fair determination of the facts requires a fair process, not tilted to favor a particular outcome, and a fair and neutral fact-finder, not predisposed to reach a particular conclusion.”

This is the animating spirit behind the DeVos changes. They are still being formulated, but a New York Times report suggests that they will correct the worst excesses of the Obama rules and interject fairness into proceedings that were, shamefully, designed to lack it.

Source

Let's thank Betsy Devos: Betsy.Devos@ed.gov and let her know that what she is doing is fantastic and that we fully support it and her. The more of us they hear from the better so let's do it.

Russian President is not Putin up with pussy riots crap

Pussy riot is finding out that the pussy pass doesn't exist outside the anglosphere. For that I salute Russian President Vladimir Putin for standing up to female terrorism. Russia surely has the cajones the west lacks. Perhaps Pussy Riot and Femen look to the U.S. or any other western country and thought to give these methods a try. The Russian government has seen the same thing and said no way. Putin didn't retreat when he let members of pussy riot know that they were going to cross a line and be held accountable. They crossed the line and were jailed for it. No pussy pass,no fucking around. Putin is not Barrack Obama,he is not David Cameron. He means what he says judging from this situation.

The Official Men's Rights Blog Presidential Endorsement

With Ron Paul officially out of the race we are endorsing Mitt Romney for President. The disaster of the Obama Administration with its misandric stance among other things and they are numerous but here we will deal with the misandry of this administration. To list the misandric sins of this administration where do I start? Dear Colleague Letter that destroys college and university men's rights and it eliminates the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard with the lower "preponderence of evidence" standard to secure more convictions of men. Or the fact that Obama stonewalled us when we wanted a Whitehouse Boys to Men Commission just like the women's commission that his administration had created. Obama is definitely no friend of men so let's give Romney a chance. I believe he may be more supportive of our views. It beats the status quo so vote Romney.

CISPA goes to the Senate

House Passes CISPA: Make Sure It Dies In The Senate

We pushed them to the brink, but House Republicans rammed through CISPA this afternoon, ahead of schedule. Let's make sure it dies in the Senate: Please add your name at right.

CISPA would give the government and corporations vast new powers to track and share data about Americans' Internet use.

But our hundreds of thousands of emails and tens of thousands of phone calls have had a real impact:

Amendments were adopted that made CISPA (marginally) better. Earlier this month CISPA was supposed to sail through, but we helped foment opposition, and the vote was far closer than anybody could have imagined even a couple of weeks ago.

Most Democrats held firm in opposition, and more than two dozen libertarian-leaning Republicans defied their leadership and voted no.

Most importantly, President Obama has threatened to veto CISPA. The Senate will consider cyber security legislation in the coming weeks. Let's turn up the heat right away: Tell the Senate to reject CISPA and any and all legislation that doesn't respect privacy and civil liberties.

Add your name at right to tell the Senate to reject cyber security legislation that doesn't respect privacy.

Source:click here

Let's lobby the Senate to kill CISPA this way we safeguard our privacy.

Fight for the future by opposing internet censorship today

From Fight For The Future:

Can you believe this? After the largest online protest in history, the Obama administration is still voicing support for SOPA.

We promised to ask for your help if SOPA returned. We're asking now. This kind of backtracking demands a strong, fast response. We're running a petition to demand that Obama drop all support for internet censorship. Our goal? Get more signatures than the top petition on whitehouse.gov -- 151,000 signatures. Tell Obama to promise: "I will never advance legislation that blocks websites or disconnects Americans’ internet access.”

What is the White House working on exactly? Just the other day, the administration sent a letter to Congress to demonstrate their support for new internet censorship legislation. A few weeks ago, the White House struck a deal to give corporations private powers to shut down your internet connection (after "six strikes" without due process or judicial review), completely in secret.

Obama's internet would let private companies block sites and turn off our web connections. Blocking websites censors free speech, hurts jobs, and breaks the internet. These are tactics used by totalitarian governments and we believe they’re never ok. Let's get more signatures than any petition on whitehouse.gov.

As Wired noted*, "The White House did say that it wouldn't endorse a bill that endangers freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risks, or negatively affects the DNS system. On the other hand, it says elsewhere that "combating online infringement" -- not protecting free speech -- is a governmental priority "of the highest order." What about free speech, Obama?

Sign the petition now, then share it to keep the internet strong. Our friends need to know where the President is currently standing on SOPA.

We couldn't have stopped SOPA and PIPA without you and all of your friends! And we can't do it without you now. Let's make sure SOPA 2.0 never gets written. Thank you,

Tiffiniy, Zak, Fight for the Future!

click here to sign the petition.

The Hollywood lobby sure knows how to make everyday people from all walks of life hate them. Free speech advocates,such as myself,need to keep them honest and the best way to do that is with an uncensored internet. An uncensored internet is a threat to the PTB and they know it. To preserve freedom I will sign a lot of petitions so one more won't hurt. Sign today.

War on women?

One of the things we have heard these last few days is this so-called "war on women". This "war on women" is the biggest joke to ever come out of the mainstream media or should I say the lamestream media. All this "war on women" is about (or any other "war on women" for that matter) is to garner female votes for Barrack Obama. The "war on women" is a phony war while the "war on men" is very real,as regular readers of this blog will attest to. Rush should have never apologized considering he was in the right to say what he did when he called a spade a spade. Each side is pandering to women and the best way to see it is to look beyond Hannity because when is Hannity NOT pandering to women. Where is this phony "war on women" going? Who knows but we all know how the very real war on men is going.