I Have Questions

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Bojan Pancevski, in his piece in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, thinks a researcher has identified the origins of half of humanity:

For about half the people alive today, the story of where they came from just became clearer.
…
For centuries, historians and linguists have been searching for the cradle of the Indo-Europeans, an ancient people who shaped history and created the world’s largest language family, now spoken by over 40% of humanity. Now research led by David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School who specializes in the study of ancient populations, is making it possible to give a precise answer.

Maybe not so precise.

DNA detectives, including at Reich’s lab, analyzed DNA samples from the remains of around 450 prehistoric individuals taken from 100 sites in Europe, as well as data from 1,000 previously known ancient samples. In two papers published in the scientific journal Nature last month, the researchers combine genetic evidence with archaeology and linguistics to argue that sometime before 3000 BC, a previously unknown people migrated from the Volga River to the Ukrainian steppe north of the Black Sea, where they mixed with a local population and formed the Yamnaya.

All of that, though, only begs a number of questions.

Who were those previously unknown people?

Where did they come from before the Volga?

Why did they migrate?

Who were the local population people?

Where had they come from?

What were the climate pressures then?

Pushing the origins answer back in time is useful and important, but these data don’t provide data for the origins of half of humanity.

Impeaching Judges

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Especially those who rule against Trump—that’s a bad idea, as The Wall Street Journal‘s editors correctly note. Doing this—even were it possible just once—would destroy the necessarily independent and coequal status of our judiciary.

Impeach judges who violate their oaths of office—certainly. This would apply not only to those who engage in “severe misconduct,” but also those who rule other than on the text of our Constitution or the statute before them in a specific case. Activist judges, and Justices, who rule on the basis of their view of a living constitution or on their personal view of the needs of society or how social requirements have evolved, are among those who are violating their oaths of office, which explicitly require them to uphold and defend our Constitution. Violating an oath, of office or of any other reason or purpose, would be an especially egregious and severe misconduct.

But therein lies the rub.

There is room for honest, textual disagreement on the meaning the text—the words and especially the phrases—present in our foundational documents and the statutes subsequently enacted to give flesh to them. Proving a ruling to be based on activism rather than on honest effort at textualism is deucedly hard. Moreover, even were a proof possible in a given case, the political implications would damage the perception of judicial independence, and that would be as damaging as any actual assault on judicial independence.

Better to take the longer view and elect Presidents and Senates who will nominate and confirm judges and Justices that will rule on the basis of Constitutional and statutory texts. Those confirmed would be good for several generations of election cycles and for a couple of generations of citizens. That would provide sufficient stability in law and court rulings.

I Disagree with Israel

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Per a Wall Street Journal article centered on Israel’s revised war plans vis-à-vis Hamas, this appears to be at those plans’ core:

…a series of escalatory steps to gradually ratchet up pressure on Hamas now that talks to extend a seven-week cease-fire have stalled, plans that could lead to a resumption of hostilities in the 16-month war in the Gaza Strip.

The steps, supposedly:

• block the entry of goods and supplies into Gaza
• cut off electricity and water
• campaign of airstrikes and tactical raids against Hamas targets
• displace the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have used the cease-fire to return to their homes
• re-invade Gaza with far more military power than it has deployed so far in the conflict
• hold ground and effectively occupy territory while it attacks the remnants of Hamas

Even if it’s only something like that, gradual escalation, at its core, is a mistake: it gives the enemy time to adapt to the revising situation. Even if the escalatory pace is faster than the enemy’s OODA Loop, that leaves too much room for the enemy to catch up from the first, or first very few, response deficits. It’s necessary IMNSHO to apply maximum pressure at maximum pacing from the start. Leave no room at all for the enemy to adapt to the new and levels of violence and pacing of their application.

This is particularly the case when dealing with a terrorist entity whose avowed purpose in life is the extermination of Israel with no concern whatsoever for the cost to the civilians among whom these terrorists secrete themselves.

Chit Chat

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The Trump administration has cut $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University, and a number of Federal agencies have ended their association with the school, both over the school’s management team’s overt decision to support pro-Hamas “protestors'” assaults on the school’s Jewish students and those “protestors'” seizure of and vandalism in school buildings. That tacit support clearly illustrates that management team’s own intrinsic antisemitic bigotry.

Now—and only now—is the head school manager, Interim President Katrina Armstrong, talking about beginning to enforce long-extant rules of comportment as applied to Jewish students and all other students and student groups. She wrote a letter.

“[T]he funding cuts will “immediately impact research and other critical functions,” she wrote.

She takes the cuts “very seriously” and is prepared to work with the government on its “legitimate concerns[,]” she wrote.

“When I accepted the role of Interim President in August 2024, I knew Columbia needed a reset from the previous year and the chaos of encampments and protests on our campus[.] The University also needed to acknowledge and repair the damage to our Jewish students, who were targeted, harassed, and made to feel unsafe or unwelcome on our campus last spring[,]” she wrote.

She “accepted” her role seven months ago.

Chit chat.

What has she actually done? She could have called in campus police and the city’s police to arrest these lawbreaking sham “protestors.” She didn’t do that beyond a couple of token/scapegoat arrests.

She could have expelled every one of those lawbreaking “protestors.” She didn’t do that.

She could have identified to the Federal government those lawbreaking “protestors” present on student visas with a view to having their visas canceled and those students sent back to their home countries. She didn’t do that.

In response to the funding and contract cancelations, she at the least could have done those last two. Instead, she chose to write a letter and call it a day. ‘Twas a very famous…victory.

Her words are insulting to our intelligence, and they’re insulting to the school’s Jewish student population.

A Good Start

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The Trump administration has pulled $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University in response to that institution’s management team’s decision to take no serious action against the antisemitic and terrorist-supporting “demonstrators” who seize university buildings and threaten the safety of Jewish students.

A federal antisemitism task force—convened by President Trump and including the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education, as well as the General Services Administration (GSA)—announced the barring of US taxpayers’ money from funding the school.

DoEd Secretary Linda McMahon:

Since October 7, Jewish students have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses—only to be ignored by those who are supposed to protect them[.]
Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding. For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus. Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.

It’s only a beginning, though. No substantive change can be expected for the long run unless and until there’s been a complete replacement of all of Columbia’s management team from the middle tier on up. The incumbents have shown themselves to be utterly unrepentant antisemitic bigots and terrorist supporters. They won’t change. They can’t change. They’ll only spend their energies, and Columbia’s money—their students’ and parents’ and investors’ and donors’ money—looking for ways to weasel-word around any agreements they might pretend to make to get those $400 million back.