An Illinois school district is in the news because it has been refusing to permit a transitioning female athlete use the girl's locker room.  Instead, her high school has made available a private shower for her.  She has sued claiming stigma and the Department of Education agrees that because she is psychologically a girl, she has the right to use the girl's room.  If the school doesn't make available to her full access to the girl's room within 30 days or reach a mutually agreeable accommodation, the feds may withhold funding.

Helaine Smith is an English teacher at an elite K-12 girls school in New York City.  The Wall Street Journal recently published her essay on teaching literature without letting "politics" or "personal identity" intrude.  Here is my response to the Journal:

Monday, the New York Times reported that the recently-concluded criminal trial against three former executives at the bankrupt Dewey & LeBoeuf law firm ended in a mistrial.  Last week, the jury hung on several of the 151 charged counts of fraud and acquitted on others.

Right after the Democratic debate Ryan Lizza tweeted "Hillary Clinton won because all of her opponents are terrible."  Other pundits were every bit as hyperbolic as the New Yorker's snarky reporter.  The Boston Globe declared "Hillary Clinton roars, Bernie Sanders stumbles".  Politico insisted "Clinton towers, Sanders glowers." 

As a caustic Clinton critic and tenacious tart-tongued TPP traducer, my reaction to Hillary's announcement that she opposes the multi-nation "free trade" deal should be obvious.  I would openly question her commitment to the working Americans she says the partnership will hurt.  I would doubt that she really cares that giveaways in the deal to pharmaceutical companies will hurt consumers.

The front page of Friday's Washington Post includes reporter David Farenthold's hit piece on Bernie Sanders. Much closer in tone and content to Charles Krauthammer on a bad day than legitimate journalism, Farenthold's commentary is expertly debunked by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich at Huffington Post and macroeconomist Dean Baker of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

This past Sunday Senator Elizabeth Warren gave a justly lauded speech at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate. Warren focused on the interplay between racial and economic injustice in America over the past 80 years. “Prominent [Black Lives Matter] activist DeRay McKesson,” according to Salon, “praised Warren as better than any other politician on her understanding 'that the American dream has been sustained by an intentional violence[.]'” (Emphasis supplied.) I fear McKesson got Warren's message precisely wrong.

Readers have pushed back against my varied criticisms of Hillary Rodham Clinton over the past few months. Some accuse me of cherry-picking her worst moments, e.g., her vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq. Others claim that I have misconstrued various statements and votes over the past twenty years or that I arrogantly believe that I know better than her supporters what's best for them.

Yesterday evening, my 15-year old son William and I drove out to Manassas, VA, to see and hear Bernie Sanders. The rally began at 7:30 officially with Sanders due to appear at about 8. Here are my thoughts and experiences as they occurred.

For years I have criticized, frequently harshly, Hillary Rodham Clinton.  I think she is arrogant, aloof, and self-regarding.  Her political convictions are thin and yielding. More often than not she has shied away from tackling humankind's two most serious problems - economic injustice and global warming - perhaps because she seeks and accepts support from international business elites and the fossil fuel industry. 

President Obama is receiving praise for his fine-sounding speech at the Glacier Conference in Alaska Monday on the urgency of combating global warming.  If the soaring rhetoric, reminiscent of Obama circa 2008, were married to concrete action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, I'd be happy to join the acclaim.

Nate Silver’s 538 deserves journalism’s worst timing award.  On August 11, 538’s Harry Enten all but crowned Hillary Democratic nominee claiming that the Bernie Sanders surge was “over“.  A few hours later, the first of two polls came out showing Sanders ahead by 7 in New Hampshire.

Black Lives Matter organizers have launched Campaign Zero as part of their fight against police violence. At their website, they grade several of the Presidential candidates on a 10-point scale. Bernie Sanders rates highest with a score of 8. Hillary Clinton received a 2.

Over the past few days an awful lot of bad news about and for Hillary Clinton has come out. First the polls: In New Hampshire, she may well be behind Vermont's Senator Bernie Sanders. CNN and Fox polls of Democratic primary voters, released within the past few days show her support below 50% for the first time in this election cycle, including in must-win states Pennsylvania and Ohio. In two short weeks, Sanders halved her 36% lead nationally over him.

In Wherefore the Gender Gap, I noted irony in the fact that women greatly prefer Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders given Hillary Clinton's initial reaction to deceptively edited video purporting to show Planned Parenthood conspiring to sell fetal parts. Clinton called the dishonest video “disturbing” and refused to rule out government hearings into Planned Parenthood's practices.

A Fox poll released August 3, shows a remarkable gender gap among Hillary Clinton supporters. 60% of women who say they will vote in the Democratic primary prefer Clinton over her closest competitor Bernie Sanders who garners a mere 16% of the female vote. By contrast 38% of Democratic men support Clinton's candidacy and 32% support Sanders. What's interesting about this is that Sanders is stronger than Clinton on the issues that women say matter most to them. This became obvious in their different responses to a secretly filmed and deceptively edited video of Planned Parenthood representatives that falsely purports to show them plotting to profit from abortions.

Imani Gandy who writes "Angry Black Lady Chronicles" is angry at Bernie Sanders. She excoriates him profanely for his admittedly poor response to activists at the Netroots Conference who disrupted first Martin O'Malley and then Sanders and mocks his involvement in the civil rights movement.  Here's my response to Ms. Gandy.

Any discussion with or at Bernie Sanders about race should start as follows:

The Washington Post's jihad against American workers continues with its latest [June 10] unrestrained attack on critics of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Since March, the newspaper that Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos purchased in 2013 has promoted the multi-lateral free trade deal in a number of lead editorials.

Currently, Republican House leaders are trying to round up enough votes to grant President Obama Trade Promotion Authority (TPA). If TPA is granted, the House and Senate would only have the right to vote up or down after negotiators finalize the TPP's language. This would almost certainly lead to the bill's passage.

This is part 4 in a series. The first three parts are here, here, and here.

The truth is out there. Indeed it is Mulder and Scully. In fact, the truth can sometimes be found in such unpromising soil as a column by conservative pundit James Poulos or an address to investors by the CEO of Exxon. Poulos is known, if at all, for posing in print the antediluvian question: “What are Women For?” Yet Poulos provides real insight into how to solve anthropogenic global warming (“AGW”). As improbably, and in conjunction with Poulos,