Friday roundup

In pursuit of maximum virtue signaling, the Kennedy School of Government misses out on a fine opportunity to get the views of someone well-qualified to talk about the challenges of governing:

 The Kennedy School did not formally rescind its appointment of [former Michigan governor Rick] Snyder to be a fellow at the school’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government. Instead, in the wake of the public backlash over his role in the handling of the infamous — though exaggerated — lead-poisoning crisis over the Flint water supply, Snyder took the high road and withdrew. But Kennedy School dean Douglas Elmendorf effectively threw Snyder under the bus by saying, in the wake of a petition drive against the appointment, that “having him on campus would not enhance education here in the ways we intended.” The school, said Elmendorf, must study both successes and failures of government — but would look elsewhere for a study of failure, notwithstanding Snyder’s openness to discussing what he’s publicly called a failure of government at all levels.

Harvard — both Elmendorf and students — might have looked more deeply into the Flint situation before rushing to judgment. There is no doubt that Flint children were exposed to more lead than desirable in the city’s drinking water — but, as Drs. Hernán Gómez and Kim Dietrich, specialists in toxicology and environmental health, wrote in the New York Times, that is no reason to conclude they were “poisoned.” Who knows but that the situation in Newark — which is receiving far less notoriety — might not turn out to be worse? It lacks, however, the storyline of a Republican governor and a majority-African-American city.

The dean, the former head of the Congressional Budget Office, had an obligation to separate fact from spin. Instead, he has not only acquiesced amidst another storm of academic illiberality — he has misunderstood the school’s educational mission. It was my role for almost two decades to lead the Kennedy School’s development of case studies in public policy and management, such as the one that played out in Flint. The goal of our cases was consistent: not to identify good guys and bad guys, but to frame discussion of the complexity of public leadership.

Iran is conducting "massive war games" featuring a missile system modeled on the Russian S-300 system. 

I saw Martha McCallum interview this guy  - the CEO of Overstock.com, who abruptly resigned yesterday - on her FNC program last evening, and I thought to myself, this guy is either the ultimate wack job, or he has the goods necessary to blow the lid off a real "deep state." He claims the Department of Justice - "the top," although he refused to name names - made him an informant, and as part of his duties, had him be a prostitute - that is, carry on a feigned romance, with all that entails, with Russian spy Maria Butina. He deftly darted between intricate details of this alleged plot, and coy pullbacks when McCallum would ask certain questions. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air seems to have made up his mind about it:

Come on, man. The man was crying on camera, lashing out at a journalist who criticized him, kept changing his story, and had trouble at times completing his thoughts. This is a man who was having some serious mental and/or emotional issues, and two major networks put him on for long stretches of time despite that.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is replacing the term "convicted felons" with "justice-involved persons." 

Pakistan has no leg to stand on in its latest huffiness over India's stance toward Kashmir.

The big question as this year's G-7 summit gets underway: how much of a bull in a china shop will the Very Stable Genius be?

File this one under "The Huntley-Brinkley Report era is decidedly over." This op-ed seriously appears on the NBC News website. It's entitled "Miley Cyrus' Split With Liam Hemsworth Isn't Just Celebrity Gossip - It's a Blow to the Patriarchy." A taste:

Men need heterosexuality to maintain their societal dominance over women. Women, on the other hand, are increasingly realizing not only that they don’t need heterosexuality, but that it also is often the bedrock of their global oppression.

Patriarchy is at its most potent when oppression doesn’t feel like oppression, or when it is packaged in terms of biology, religion or basic social needs like security comfort, acceptance and success. Heterosexuality offers women all these things as selling points to their consensual subjection.

Historically, women have been conditioned to believe that heterosexuality is natural or innate, just as they have been conditioned to believe that their main purpose is to make babies — and if they fail to do so, they are condemned as not “real,” or as bad, women. 

Yo, toots, even if the only human beings you want to see populate the planet from now on are females, how the hell are you gonna make em?

Tom Gilson at The Stream says Christianity - nationally and worldwide - is in better shape than some widely cited data would have us believe.