That’s what Silicon Valley Bank had for the last 8 months of 2022. Much is being made of SVB’s choosing to employ a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion person in an executive position during that time frame, but a more important function is being missed in this kerfuffle. That is the answer to this question:
It is not clear who handled [SVB CRO until April ’22, Laura] Izurieta’s duties in the last eight months of 2022.
Pope Francis is contemplating ending the celibacy requirement the Catholic Church imposes on its priests and nuns. The hue and cry over ending this “thousand year” tradition is deafening.
I have a brief thought on this. Those decriers are missing, with equally missed irony, the meaning of that thousand year tradition in a two thousand year old church.
For good or ill, celibacy has never been a universal requirement in the universal church. Get the smelling salts; some pseudo-traditionalists seem to need them.
Matthew Wielicki, University of Alabama Assistant Professor of Geological Science, is on the right track, but he’s in a vanishing minority.
We’re literally moving away from the foundations of academia. If professors have any hesitancy in their speech, if students are hesitant to ask questions, if there is a decrease in dialogue because of a fear of retribution—that’s the fundamental principles that universities were founded on.
Unfortunately, he says, professors have precisely that hesitancy to speak freely. And this regarding a December 2022 poll by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression that found that
One man in DC understands the situation. Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee has this radical idea on getting violent crime, at least, back under control:
What we got to do, if we really want to see homicides go down, is keep bad guys with guns in jail. Because when they’re in jail, they can’t be in communities shooting people.
Sadly, that’s a concept that’s too complex for the wonders of the DC City Council, who passed—and overrode the Mayor’s veto to do so—an ordinance that
reduce[s] maximum penalties for violent crimes such as burglaries, robberies, and carjackings, along with abolishing minimum sentences for most crimes.
I wrote yesterday, in part, about Germany’s disreputable performance in supporting Ukraine in the latter’s war for existence against the Russian barbaric invasion.
Now, Germany has made the apparent decision to walk away altogether in any practical form from Ukraine in that nation’s hour of need, paying only lip service to aiding that nation.
In a landmark speech days after the invasion, [Chancellor Olaf] Scholz promised a Zeitenwende—a turning point—pledging to rebuild Germany’s military, secure alternative energy supplies, and help Ukraine fight off Russia.
Since then, according to Bojan Pancevski, in his Thursday Wall Street Journal article (at the link just above), Germany has
There is some growing angst about the amount of treasure and weaponry that we’re sending to Ukraine in support of that nation’s effort to defeat the barbarian Russian invasion and to drive the barbarian back out. Typical of the angst is Victoria Coates’ (a former Deputy National Security Advisor to former President Donald Trump) beef, which includes concern about the amount of aid the US is providing compared to that provided by the European nations on whose ramparts the barbarian would be should he overrun Ukraine:
The Washington, DC, City Council, dominated by the Progressive-Democratic Party as it is, voted a month ago to allow non-citizens, including illegal aliens, to vote in city elections, so long as they have been “resident” in the city for at least 30 days.
Congress has a 30-day review window during which it can override DC Council-passed laws and remove them. The Republican-led House did so, but the Progressive-Democrat-led Senate…did not. As Fox News meekly put it, the Senate ran out of time before the review period ended.
The subheadline of a Wall Street Journal article on cell phone security vulnerabilities presents the subject of my post.
The passcode that unlocks your phone can give thieves access to your money and data; “it’s like a treasure box”
The article then laid out the problem:
Recall the Smithsonian Museum student visitors who were ejected from the Museum by its guards for the heinous crime of wearing pro-life ball caps. The Museum’s management has responded to House Republicans requests for status and repercussions.
“This was an aberration and not reflective of Smithsonian values and practice of welcoming all visitors regardless of viewpoint,” Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III said. “Visitors are not to be denied access based on messages on their clothing, and an error was made in this regard on January 20, 2023.”
When asked whether disciplinary action would be taken, Bunch responded, “The instruction to visitors to remove their pro-life hats was a mistake – a misinterpretation of what was permissible. It was not a willful violation.
The FBI doesn’t engage only in pernicious activities—investigating mothers and traditional Catholics as terrorists, for instance, or lying to FISA courts.
Sometimes FBI personnel are just incompetent, and along a number of axes.