SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

UNDERSTANDING THE ENEMY – It's hard to make this up.  From the Jerusalem Post:  "Perhaps you were wondering if all the terrible tales of sex slavery by ISIS could be true? After all, they claim to be a very religious group. Unfortunately, new evidence reveals the situation is indeed as grim, if not grimmer, than the reports.  ISIS militants recently handed out pamphlets in Mosul ,Iraq, entitled, 'Questions and Answers on Taking Captives and Slaves,' explaining in a clear question-and-answer format the official positions of the 'Islamic State' concerning female slavery, according to CNN. 'Can all unbelieving women be taken captive?' reads one question, taken from the translation done by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).  The answer: 'There is no dispute among the scholars that it is permissible to capture unbelieving women [i.e., any non-Muslim woman].'"  Read the whole thing.  It is just stunning.  But, of course, who are we to question another culture?

OUR COLLAPSING LAW SCHOOLS – Law schools should be the bastions of reason and freedom.  They are not.  From Fox:  "Law school exams often present legal conundrums ripped from headlines of the day, but one UCLA law professor is apologizing for basing a test question on what is apparently a taboo subject -- the fallout from the police shooting of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri.  Professor Robert Goldstein said the exam question was designed to test students’ ability to analyze the line between free speech and inciting violence. It cited a report about how Michael Brown’s stepfather, Louis Head, shouted, 'Burn this bitch down!' after a grand jury decided not to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown.  The question then asked students to imagine that they are lawyers in the St. Louis County Attorney’s office and had been asked to advise the prosecutor 'whether to seek an indictment against Head' for inciting violence. The exam reads:  '[As] a recent hire in the office, you are asked to write a memo discussing the relevant First Amendment issues in such a prosecution. Write the memo.'"  A perfectly good question, but the little children in the law school were "offended," as they are by almost anything.  The professor should not have apologized.  He should have insisted that the students grow up.  What a mess our universities have created.

MADNESS – Political correctness gone amok.  From the New York Post via Townhall.com:   "The Fire Department has stopped requiring probationary firefighters to pass a job-related physical-skills test before getting hired — a move that critics derided as a lowering of standards.  The move by first-year Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro, which allows probies to fail components of the Functional Skills Training test but still graduate from the Fire Academy, comes amid criticism of the department’s low hiring rate of women."  Christine Rousselle of Town hall comments, "This, frankly, scares me. If I were trapped in a burning building, I wouldn't care if the person tasked with saving me were a man, a woman, or a genderless robot--my main concern would be their ability to carry me to safety. It's also highly unlikely that physical fitness tests are the only reason for the disparity of the sex ratio in firefighters. Call me crazy, but if I were a mother with children, I personally wouldn't seek out a job that required me to regularly risk my life and run into a burning building."  Common sense from Christine.  Women should of course be treated equally.  But that means meeting minimum standards of strength.  Just as we should not give men breaks on verbal aptitude tests, where women often score higher, we should not give women breaks on physical tests.  Both verbal skills (giving and receiving orders) and physical skills (carrying casualties) are critical.

December 12, 2014