* This president delivers compassion with a kind face and from a decorous and understated height. And that seems to be the role he prefers to play in the world too. It was doubtless the posture from which he would have liked to address the Arab Spring, and for that matter the civil war in Syria, if only Assad had obeyed when Obama said he must go. Obama has a larger-spirited wish to help people than any of his predecessors since Jimmy Carter; though caution bordering on timidity has kept him from speaking with Carter even once in the last five years. Obama roots for the good cause but often ends up endorsing the acceptable evil on which the political class or the satisfied classes in society have agreed. He watches the world as its most important spectator.
* Meanwhile: Obama Steps Up Efforts To Deport Unaccompanied Children Crossing The Border. And all at the low, low cost of just $2 billion!
* Local news: Wisconsin second only to Alabama in cuts to education funding, study shows.
* On college debate, race, and the very idea of rules.
* …the only definitive statement I can make about Game of Thrones has less to do with what was happening on screen, and more with the popular and critical reaction to it, the fact that the fourth season was the one in which a critical mass of people suddenly noticed just how rapey this show is.
* Academia and disability: Why Are Huge Numbers of Disabled Students Dropping Out of College?
* The New York Times has a followup Q&A on its controversial piece about student debt from last week.
* In November 2012, when Kamel’s lawyers showed the video evidence to the assistant district attorney handling his case, the prosecutor dropped the charges immediately, motioning for a dismissal. The case was built on police testimony that was clearly false. But though Perez’s untrue statement had forced Kamel to endure months of anxiety and trial preparation, and sent prosecutors most of the way towards trying him, the officer suffered no consequence for his actions. On police perjury.
* Arizona State Universities takes the side of a cop abusing one of its own professors on video. Arizona Professor Body Slammed By Police During Jaywalking Stop, Now Charged With Assaulting Officer.
* Today, the UCPD is, as the university told me in a statement, “a highly professional police force,” and one of the largest private security forces in the country. Hyde Park “remains one of the safest neighborhoods in the city,” according to the statement sent to me by the University, and, “All of the neighborhoods patrolled by the University of Chicago benefit from the extra service.”
* Three Ways (Two Good, One Bad) to Fight Campus Rape.
* It Took Studying 25,782,500 Kids To Begin To Undo The Damage Caused By 1 Doctor.
* An illustrated history of Westeros.
* Independent Weekly catches Counting Crows phoning it in in Raleigh.
* Advocacy in the Age of Colorblindness.
* This is a land of peace, love, justice, and no mercy: Hate Crimes Against The Homeless Jumped 24 Percent Last Year.
* U.S. Pledges To Stop Producing New Landmines. The dream of the 1990s is alive.
* Mexico tried giving poor people cash instead of food. It worked.
* How Sci Fi Visionary Octavia Butler Influenced This Detroit Revolutionary.
* Britain’s Nuke-Proof Underground City.
* “Can anyone say no to this?”
* The Golden Gate Bridge will get suicide nets.
* Psychologists Find that Nice People Are More Likely to Hurt You. I knew those dicks were hiding something.
* On Facebook science: The real scandal, then, is what’s considered “ethical.”
* Why Are All the Cartoon Mothers Dead?
* Ripped from the pages of the Colbert Report: NC General Assembly Allows Possum Drop Exception.
* And Martin Freeman says no more new Sherlock until December 2015.
