Just over a week ago Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan praised the takeover of part of her city by protesters claiming to establish the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) where no police would be needed – or welcome. It would be a “summer of love” Durkan gushed. Shortly thereafter a strong man emerged to proclaim himself in charge and automatic weapons were handed out. Shootings and violence followed. Now the mayor is eating crow, preparing to reclaim part of her city. Also in today’s Liberty Report – More from Bolton’s book on how he sabotaged Trump’s outreach to North Korea and the latest on the “second wave” of coronavirus. Watch today’s Liberty Report:

The doom and gloom “scientists” are back on television warning of a massive new spike in coronavirus cases…while admitting also to a massive “spike” in testing and a massive decrease in deaths across the country. Are they conditioning Americans to accept another lockdown and shutdown of the economy? How to explain the hysteria over rising “cases” while also admitting to falling deaths. Plus today: “contact tracing” looks to be a massive boondoggle in New York. Can Texas expect the same dismal failure of its third of a billion dollar “contact tracing” program? Watch today’s Liberty Report:

Pundits are having a field day making fun of President Trump’s recent comment that less coronavirus testing would probably result in less Covid in the country. They accuse him of doltish behavior and head-in-the-sand thinking. Do they have a point? What are the merits of Trump’s assertions? Also in today’s program, will the “solution” to bias in social media be worse than the problem itself? Watch today’s Liberty Report:

Big pharma is thrilled today after the FDA has rescinded permission for the emergency use of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of Covid-19. This after two “prestigious” medical journals have recently been forced to withdraw publication of articles critical of the use of hydroxychloroquine. The trials cited by the FDA did not include the critical component zinc according to critics, and was thus doomed to fail. That leaves enormously expensive new drugs in trial and the elusive vaccine as the “only way” to end the coronahysteria. Meanwhile states are pushing the idea of a “second wave” and are eyeing another shutdown. Watch today’s Liberty Report:

Sometimes a video can communicate important political ideas very well and quickly. That is the case with the two-minute video “No New Normal” at the Essential People YouTube page.

Starting off, it seems as if the video, like many others, is promoting that people make all sorts of sacrifices, changing their lives drastically and painfully, to counter coronavirus. Then, the video takes a quick turn, harshly criticizing the coronavirus crackdown and the “new normal” of dystopian restrictions on human actions that people in government and media often assert must persist. At the same time, the video denounces Bill Gates who has been a prominent backer of the crackdown and promoter of the “new normal.”

The video also provides a haunting visual demonstration of the dehumanizing nature of the masks and other face coverings that some governments and businesses are mandating people wear.

The video was posted in April, before a much increased recognition that coronavirus is way less threatening to most people than proclaimed through the imposing of coronavirus restrictions in America and before the United States, state, and local governments began their much-touted ramping down of their coronavirus crackdowns. Yet, unfortunately, the video still very much addresses the current state of intense restrictions in America and the continued ominous talk of subjecting people to a “new normal” forever.

Much of the ramp-down has been glacial in pace. It has also been accompanied by the introduction and expansion of attacks on liberty in the name of countering coronavirus, such as surveillance programs termed “contract tracing” and mandates that people wear masks. Meanwhile, some politicians are working hard to ensure a significant portion of restrictions enacted in the name of countering coronavirus stick around no matter what. Plus, there is the persistent threat of starting a new round of full-out crackdowns to deal with a “second wave” of coronavirus, another disease, or some other future “emergency.”

The lyrics in the song played in the video say, “wake me up when it’s all over.” Unfortunately, there are people, including in government and the media, who want to make sure the precoronavirus “old normal” never returns.

Watch the video here:

It seems that University of Chicago professors are much in the news this week. We recently discussed the controversy of posting by University of Chicago Professor Brian Leiter saying that military leaders should “depose” President Donald Trump and jail him.

Now another Chicago professor is under fire. Notably, while no one called for Leiter to be fired for wistfully discussing a military coup, there is a chorus of writers and academics calling for the canning of Harald Uhlig, the senior editor of the prestigious the Journal of Political Economy. Uhlig is also the Bruce Allen and Barbara Ritzenthaler Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago.

The reason is that Uhlig had the audacity to criticize Black Lives Matters and the movement to Defund The Police. Joining this effort is New York Times’ Paul Krugman, who is striking out at someone for giving his opposing view — an intolerant position that has now appears to be official policy at the New York Times. It is all part of the new order where writers call for censorship, academics call for removing academic freedoms, artists call for art removal, and politicians call for dismantling police.

Uhlig wrote on Twitter Monday night: “Too bad, but #blacklivesmatter per its core organization @Blklivesmatter just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice.”

He added:

“Suuuure. They knew this is non-starter, and tried a sensible Orwell 1984 of saying oh, it just means funding schools (who isn’t in favor of that?!?).But no, the so-called ‘activists’ did not want that. Back to truly ‘defunding’ thus, according to their website. Sigh. #GeorgeFloyd and his family really didn’t deserve being taken advantage of by flat-earthers and creationists. Oh well. Time for sensible adults to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all: e.g. policy reform proposals by @TheDemocrat and national healing.”

His comments immediately led to an effort to get him fired including the ever-present online petition where viewpoint intolerance is some how strengthened by numbers. Leading this ignoble, anti-free speech effort are academics like University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers who teaches in the Ford Public Policy school but appears to have a strikingly low tolerance for opposing views on public policy.

Uhlig is accused of “trivializing the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement” and “hurting and marginalizing people of color and their allies in the economics profession.” He is also being denounced because he did not support the NFL kneelers. In 2017, he wrote

 In any case, it is pretty clear, that the current kneeling and the current defense-of-freedom-of-speech is not about some courageous act of standing up for democratic values.

I would so love that to be true, really. Instead, it is all just Anti-Trump-ism.

A letter calling for Uhlig’s ouster states, “Prof. Uhlig’s comments published on his blog and Twitter posts dated June 8th, trivializing the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and drawing parallels between the BLM movement and the Ku Klux Klan, are outrageous and unacceptable.”

The KKK accusation appears to be derived from a blog post in which he asked: “Would you defend football players waving the confederate flag and dressing in Ku Klux Klan garb during the playing of the national anthem?” That does not “draw a comparison” between the movements. It makes a standard comparison between acts of expression, a typical “slippery slope” argument used in countless academic and legal works.

Krugman however does not seem even slightly interested in the context and instead cried “white privilege” – a label that now routinely precedes terminations of editors, academics, and others who disagree with a new orthodoxy:

Krugman called him ‘yet another privileged white man’ in a series of tweets:

Uhlig was called a racist by academics like University of Victoria economist Rob Gillezeau who wrote: “Racists shouldn’t be allowed to gatekeep our profession.”

I understand that Uhlig’s writings upset people. Academics often upset people, sometimes by design, in advancing unpopular perspectives. I can also understand why people would be uniquely ticked when they read a posting mocking the protests like this one:

Look: I understand, that some out there still wish to go and protest and say #defundpolice and all kinds of stuff, while you are still young and responsibility does not matter. Enjoy! Express yourself! Just don’t break anything, ok? And be back by 8 pm.

Much like a recent controversy of a UCLA professor it was a mocking tone that many would not have taken. However, this is a political debate that is raging around the country and many on both sides are using superheated or ironic or mocking language. What we have not seen are demands to can academics using such language on the other side like fellow Chicago Professor Leiter.

Nevertheless, Uhlig issued an apology:

My tweets in recent days and an old blog post have apparently irritated a lot of people. That was far from my intention: let me apologize for that. Did I choose my words and comparisons wisely? I did not. My apology, once again. Let me also make clear that all these are just my views, not pronouncements by the JPE and most certainly not the @UChicago or my department.

The attack on Uhlig as “white privilege” has become a common refrain. We recently discussed how the President of the Minneapolis City Council dismissed anyone who voices concerns over defunding or dismantling the police as just voicing their bias from a “place of privilege.” Thus, to object to this radical proposal is now proof of privilege.

None of this matter with the wave of intolerance sweeping over our campuses, where academics call for the punishment of fellow academics for voicing opposing views. Professors like Jennifer Doleac, an economics professor at Texas A&M University, tweeted “Yep, lead editor at a top journal. Hopefully not for much longer.” It is that simple.

Figures like Klugman are not just the loudest voices, they are now the only voices that seem to appear on the pages of newspapers like the New York Times. What was striking about the recent controversy over the column by Sen. Tom Cotten was not just the writers at the New York Times calling for the resignation of their editors and barring future columns with such opposing views. It was the silence of the other writers who did not utter a word as their newspaper yielded to these demands. As I discussed earlier, however, history has shown that today’s rebels often become tomorrow’s reactionaries. Such attacks on individuals like Uhlig will not stop with him. It becomes an insatiable appetite as the intolerance for opposing views grows.

Recently, protesters took over a precinct in Seattle and declared it the People’s autonomous zone. I was struck by one flier of one of the protesters that read “I support this, but what’s next?”

For those who are joining calls for sack editors and fire academics, it is a question that should concentrate their minds.

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.

It seems that University of Chicago professors are much in the news this week. We recently discussed the controversy of posting by University of Chicago Professor Brian Leiter saying that military leaders should “depose” President Donald Trump and jail him.

Now another Chicago professor is under fire. Notably, while no one called for Leiter to be fired for wistfully discussing a military coup, there is a chorus of writers and academics calling for the canning of Harald Uhlig, the senior editor of the prestigious the Journal of Political Economy. Uhlig is also the Bruce Allen and Barbara Ritzenthaler Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago.

The reason is that Uhlig had the audacity to criticize Black Lives Matters and the movement to Defund The Police. Joining this effort is New York Times’ Paul Krugman, who is striking out at someone for giving his opposing view — an intolerant position that has now appears to be official policy at the New York Times. It is all part of the new order where writers call for censorship, academics call for removing academic freedoms, artists call for art removal, and politicians call for dismantling police.

Uhlig wrote on Twitter Monday night: “Too bad, but #blacklivesmatter per its core organization @Blklivesmatter just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice.”

He added:

“Suuuure. They knew this is non-starter, and tried a sensible Orwell 1984 of saying oh, it just means funding schools (who isn’t in favor of that?!?).But no, the so-called ‘activists’ did not want that. Back to truly ‘defunding’ thus, according to their website. Sigh. #GeorgeFloyd and his family really didn’t deserve being taken advantage of by flat-earthers and creationists. Oh well. Time for sensible adults to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all: e.g. policy reform proposals by @TheDemocrat and national healing.”

His comments immediately led to an effort to get him fired including the ever-present online petition where viewpoint intolerance is some how strengthened by numbers. Leading this ignoble, anti-free speech effort are academics like University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers who teaches in the Ford Public Policy school but appears to have a strikingly low tolerance for opposing views on public policy.

Uhlig is accused of “trivializing the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement” and “hurting and marginalizing people of color and their allies in the economics profession.” He is also being denounced because he did not support the NFL kneelers. In 2017, he wrote

 In any case, it is pretty clear, that the current kneeling and the current defense-of-freedom-of-speech is not about some courageous act of standing up for democratic values.

I would so love that to be true, really. Instead, it is all just Anti-Trump-ism.

A letter calling for Uhlig’s ouster states, “Prof. Uhlig’s comments published on his blog and Twitter posts dated June 8th, trivializing the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and drawing parallels between the BLM movement and the Ku Klux Klan, are outrageous and unacceptable.”

The KKK accusation appears to be derived from a blog post in which he asked: “Would you defend football players waving the confederate flag and dressing in Ku Klux Klan garb during the playing of the national anthem?” That does not “draw a comparison” between the movements. It makes a standard comparison between acts of expression, a typical “slippery slope” argument used in countless academic and legal works.

Krugman however does not seem even slightly interested in the context and instead cried “white privilege” – a label that now routinely precedes terminations of editors, academics, and others who disagree with a new orthodoxy:

Krugman called him ‘yet another privileged white man’ in a series of tweets:

Uhlig was called a racist by academics like University of Victoria economist Rob Gillezeau who wrote: “Racists shouldn’t be allowed to gatekeep our profession.”

I understand that Uhlig’s writings upset people. Academics often upset people, sometimes by design, in advancing unpopular perspectives. I can also understand why people would be uniquely ticked when they read a posting mocking the protests like this one:

Look: I understand, that some out there still wish to go and protest and say #defundpolice and all kinds of stuff, while you are still young and responsibility does not matter. Enjoy! Express yourself! Just don’t break anything, ok? And be back by 8 pm.

Much like a recent controversy of a UCLA professor it was a mocking tone that many would not have taken. However, this is a political debate that is raging around the country and many on both sides are using superheated or ironic or mocking language. What we have not seen are demands to can academics using such language on the other side like fellow Chicago Professor Leiter.

Nevertheless, Uhlig issued an apology:

My tweets in recent days and an old blog post have apparently irritated a lot of people. That was far from my intention: let me apologize for that. Did I choose my words and comparisons wisely? I did not. My apology, once again. Let me also make clear that all these are just my views, not pronouncements by the JPE and most certainly not the @UChicago or my department.

The attack on Uhlig as “white privilege” has become a common refrain. We recently discussed how the President of the Minneapolis City Council dismissed anyone who voices concerns over defunding or dismantling the police as just voicing their bias from a “place of privilege.” Thus, to object to this radical proposal is now proof of privilege.

None of this matter with the wave of intolerance sweeping over our campuses, where academics call for the punishment of fellow academics for voicing opposing views. Professors like Jennifer Doleac, an economics professor at Texas A&M University, tweeted “Yep, lead editor at a top journal. Hopefully not for much longer.” It is that simple.

Figures like Klugman are not just the loudest voices, they are now the only voices that seem to appear on the pages of newspapers like the New York Times. What was striking about the recent controversy over the column by Sen. Tom Cotten was not just the writers at the New York Times calling for the resignation of their editors and barring future columns with such opposing views. It was the silence of the other writers who did not utter a word as their newspaper yielded to these demands. As I discussed earlier, however, history has shown that today’s rebels often become tomorrow’s reactionaries. Such attacks on individuals like Uhlig will not stop with him. It becomes an insatiable appetite as the intolerance for opposing views grows.

Recently, protesters took over a precinct in Seattle and declared it the People’s autonomous zone. I was struck by one flier of one of the protesters that read “I support this, but what’s next?”

For those who are joining calls for sack editors and fire academics, it is a question that should concentrate their minds.

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.

It seems that University of Chicago professors are much in the news this week. We recently discussed the controversy of posting by University of Chicago Professor Brian Leiter saying that military leaders should “depose” President Donald Trump and jail him.

Now another Chicago professor is under fire. Notably, while no one called for Leiter to be fired for wistfully discussing a military coup, there is a chorus of writers and academics calling for the canning of Harald Uhlig, the senior editor of the prestigious the Journal of Political Economy. Uhlig is also the Bruce Allen and Barbara Ritzenthaler Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago.

The reason is that Uhlig had the audacity to criticize Black Lives Matters and the movement to Defund The Police. Joining this effort is New York Times’ Paul Krugman, who is striking out at someone for giving his opposing view — an intolerant position that has now appears to be official policy at the New York Times. It is all part of the new order where writers call for censorship, academics call for removing academic freedoms, artists call for art removal, and politicians call for dismantling police.

Uhlig wrote on Twitter Monday night: “Too bad, but #blacklivesmatter per its core organization @Blklivesmatter just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice.”

He added:

“Suuuure. They knew this is non-starter, and tried a sensible Orwell 1984 of saying oh, it just means funding schools (who isn’t in favor of that?!?).But no, the so-called ‘activists’ did not want that. Back to truly ‘defunding’ thus, according to their website. Sigh. #GeorgeFloyd and his family really didn’t deserve being taken advantage of by flat-earthers and creationists. Oh well. Time for sensible adults to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all: e.g. policy reform proposals by @TheDemocrat and national healing.”

His comments immediately led to an effort to get him fired including the ever-present online petition where viewpoint intolerance is some how strengthened by numbers. Leading this ignoble, anti-free speech effort are academics like University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers who teaches in the Ford Public Policy school but appears to have a strikingly low tolerance for opposing views on public policy.

Uhlig is accused of “trivializing the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement” and “hurting and marginalizing people of color and their allies in the economics profession.” He is also being denounced because he did not support the NFL kneelers. In 2017, he wrote

 In any case, it is pretty clear, that the current kneeling and the current defense-of-freedom-of-speech is not about some courageous act of standing up for democratic values.

I would so love that to be true, really. Instead, it is all just Anti-Trump-ism.

A letter calling for Uhlig’s ouster states, “Prof. Uhlig’s comments published on his blog and Twitter posts dated June 8th, trivializing the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and drawing parallels between the BLM movement and the Ku Klux Klan, are outrageous and unacceptable.”

The KKK accusation appears to be derived from a blog post in which he asked: “Would you defend football players waving the confederate flag and dressing in Ku Klux Klan garb during the playing of the national anthem?” That does not “draw a comparison” between the movements. It makes a standard comparison between acts of expression, a typical “slippery slope” argument used in countless academic and legal works.

Krugman however does not seem even slightly interested in the context and instead cried “white privilege” – a label that now routinely precedes terminations of editors, academics, and others who disagree with a new orthodoxy:

Krugman called him ‘yet another privileged white man’ in a series of tweets:

Uhlig was called a racist by academics like University of Victoria economist Rob Gillezeau who wrote: “Racists shouldn’t be allowed to gatekeep our profession.”

I understand that Uhlig’s writings upset people. Academics often upset people, sometimes by design, in advancing unpopular perspectives. I can also understand why people would be uniquely ticked when they read a posting mocking the protests like this one:

Look: I understand, that some out there still wish to go and protest and say #defundpolice and all kinds of stuff, while you are still young and responsibility does not matter. Enjoy! Express yourself! Just don’t break anything, ok? And be back by 8 pm.

Much like a recent controversy of a UCLA professor it was a mocking tone that many would not have taken. However, this is a political debate that is raging around the country and many on both sides are using superheated or ironic or mocking language. What we have not seen are demands to can academics using such language on the other side like fellow Chicago Professor Leiter.

Nevertheless, Uhlig issued an apology:

My tweets in recent days and an old blog post have apparently irritated a lot of people. That was far from my intention: let me apologize for that. Did I choose my words and comparisons wisely? I did not. My apology, once again. Let me also make clear that all these are just my views, not pronouncements by the JPE and most certainly not the @UChicago or my department.

The attack on Uhlig as “white privilege” has become a common refrain. We recently discussed how the President of the Minneapolis City Council dismissed anyone who voices concerns over defunding or dismantling the police as just voicing their bias from a “place of privilege.” Thus, to object to this radical proposal is now proof of privilege.

None of this matter with the wave of intolerance sweeping over our campuses, where academics call for the punishment of fellow academics for voicing opposing views. Professors like Jennifer Doleac, an economics professor at Texas A&M University, tweeted “Yep, lead editor at a top journal. Hopefully not for much longer.” It is that simple.

Figures like Klugman are not just the loudest voices, they are now the only voices that seem to appear on the pages of newspapers like the New York Times. What was striking about the recent controversy over the column by Sen. Tom Cotten was not just the writers at the New York Times calling for the resignation of their editors and barring future columns with such opposing views. It was the silence of the other writers who did not utter a word as their newspaper yielded to these demands. As I discussed earlier, however, history has shown that today’s rebels often become tomorrow’s reactionaries. Such attacks on individuals like Uhlig will not stop with him. It becomes an insatiable appetite as the intolerance for opposing views grows.

Recently, protesters took over a precinct in Seattle and declared it the People’s autonomous zone. I was struck by one flier of one of the protesters that read “I support this, but what’s next?”

For those who are joining calls for sack editors and fire academics, it is a question that should concentrate their minds.

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.

Just when it seemed we might get a moment without Covid hysteria or riot hysteria, Dr. Fauci is back and telling us that this coronavirus is his “worst nightmare.” But he assured attendees at a vaccine industry conference that there’s a lot of profit to be made when the vaccine comes out. Plus in today’s Liberty Report: A “Texas spike” or just hype? WHO’s new mask guidelines are a farce. And…you might be a psychopath! Today on the Liberty Report:

The shutdown and forced house arrest of the US was predicated on the assumption that the coronavirus could be spread from those without symptoms to others. The World Health Organization now says the research does not support such a thesis. Meanwhile the US economy is ruined and millions are suffering from depression and worse. Also in today’s program: Pelosi’s virtue signalling backfires, Minneapolis city council member explains why cops are a sign of “privilege,” and are the police really racist? Watch today’s Liberty Report:

From Minneapolis, where police killed a black man in their custody, and across the country there are cries to defund and disband police forces. The Minneapolis city council already voted in a veto-proof majority to get rid of its police department. But are supporters of this new mass-movement just reacting to relentless media hype and propaganda? Do they really have a plan to protect life and liberty without government police officers? Watch today’s Liberty Report:

Suddenly there is no talk about coronavirus. Reputable doctors in Italy, the UK, and elsewhere are claiming the virus hardly exists any longer. Just over a week ago much of America faced jail if they dared break the “social distancing” rules put in place by tyrannical governors and other public officials. Now tens of thousands gather to protest a police killing with impunity. And the spikes they warned about in areas where restrictions were eased are not happening. So what is happening? Also, what to make of the Trump/Mattis/Esper spat over US troops deployed against rioters in the US? Watch today’s Liberty Report: