Justice Department Files Friend-of-the-Court Brief Siding with Baker in Gay Wedding Cake Dispute

Meanwhile, Molly DeVos is being smeared by leftwing nihilists because she's vowed that the era of the kollege kangaroo kourt is over, and due process and evidentiary standards are back.

"The era of 'rule by letter' is over,” Education Secretary Molly DeVos said Thursday afternoon, in reference to an Obama-era practice of issuing guidance documents that acted as laws. DeVos' speech signals yet again her agency's willingness to end the injustices that spread under the Obama administration, which made women into unquestioned victims and treated men as perpetrators without giving them a chance to defend themselves.

"Through intimidation and coercion, the failed system has clearly pushed schools to overreach," DeVos told an audience at George Mason University’s Arlington campus. She also accused the former administration of "weaponized" federal guidance documents that "work against schools and against students."

This was the first time a federal official spoke publicly about the need for due process and the presumption of innocence while highlighting instances where students had been falsely accused. It was also a welcome change from the guidance the Obama administration issued in 2011. At the time, the "Dear Colleague" letter issued by the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) greatly changed how schools would be required to adjudicate accusations of sexual assault to retain access to federal funds and prevent federal investigations.

That letter did not have the force of law, but when you're threatening to pull a school's government subsidies for noncompliance, it sure seems like a law.

Ashe Schow reports more on DeVos' speech, including DeVos' proposal to have more rigid definitions of sexual harassment, and to stop telling people who didn't even think they were assaulted that they were raped.

"If everything is harassment, then nothing is," DeVos said.

The left greeted this speech with their typical reasonableness and coolness of head:

She didn't say anything at all about "brushing off" or "blaming." She said she'd like actual due process to protect the provably innocent, and some standards of definition of what "crimes" are being prosecuted, and some standards of due process in hearings.

You know -- like the musty, ancient "but the Constitution is like old, man" belief that an accused must be afforded a chance to view and respond to the evidence against him, with the assistance of an advocate.

Molly DeVos didn't just speak in generalities -- she cited specific instances of institutional failures in these makeshift Rape Courts. Including situations where the school's utter inability to handle such an investigation properly resulted in actual rapists going free.

None of the harpies attacking DeVos want to talk much about the false accusations, but Robby Soave notes each of the examples DeVos gave, and offers some background.

I've really had it up to my neck with Trump, if I'm being honest, and have proclaimed "Done with this" privately a bunch of times.

But then something like this comes along, and it reminds me: Oh yeah, we're in a civil war and the other side is now waging politics by other means: specifically, violence, coercion, intimidation, and the weaponization of government against the citizenry.

posted by Ace at 06:29 PM

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