Morning Reads With an Observation.

Wait up. Hold the phone.

“Besides, the Cobb County Sherriff Department’s record concerning brown people is stellar.”

Do you have any evidence that this is not the case? If you do, provide it. While I know there were some problems with Cobb law enforcement and the black community in times past, I haven’t heard of anything beyond anecdotal incidents since moving back to Georgia nearly 20 years ago. (Yes, Lisa Cupid being profiled counts as anecdotal.) And this is despite Cobb’s black population more than quadrupling and the area going through like 3 major recessions in that time. If anything, there have been more questionable incidents between blacks and law enforcement in Atlanta and in DeKalb than in Cobb.

“And for everyone sympathetic to what the cheerleaders were protesting or their right to do so, remember you’re un-American and hate this country.”

I am a huge first amendment guy. But if KSU does not wish for KSU students that are representing KSU in an official capacity – which members of the KSU cheerleading team incontrovertibly are with cheerleading being an NCAA scholarship sport – to protest at Kennesaw State sponsored events – again which KSU football games are – then that is an issue that is well within the prerogative of the KSU administration, of which Olens is chief administrator. This is not about regular students – for the lack of a better term – representing only themselves and their own views while protesting on their own time in a free speech zone on campus or anywhere off campus. This was KSU scholarship athletes appearing in their capacity as and performing the duties of KSU scholarship athletes at a KSU event. So if the cheerleading coach, the athletics director (the employer of the cheerleading coach) or the university president (the employer of the athletics director and the cheerleading coach) wants to prevent them from protesting during their cheerleading outings, that is most certainly within their prerogative and job description as student athletes have no more right to stage protests while competing – or in the case of cheerleaders performing – as students have the right to protest while taking midterm exams. I do not know where the idea that society has an unconditional responsibility to accommodate all protest all the time comes from but that is not reality. Sympathy to the cheerleaders’ cause is fine but opposition to the ability of a university administrator to perform his duty … I won’t call you “un-American and hate this country” but I will say that it is not a belief system that is sustainable if implemented in practice on a wide scale. Keep in mind: the only reason why NFL players are able to protest in this manner is because the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the NFLPA allows it. The NBA specifically forbids this type of protest – they added the language after Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf began to stop observing the national anthem in the late 1990s – meaning that yes those who do not wish to allow people representing their organization to protest have every right to stop them.

“It’s why I laughed out loud when I heard talk of Cobb County preparing an Amazon proposal.”

“Leadership was Sam Olens primary qualification for appointment as KSU President, but even there he’s not up to snuff”

When you look at Olens’ career http://president.kennesaw.edu the fact that he is a Republican is the only reason why his qualifications were challenged at all. Plenty of people have been appointed presidents of the sort of “double-directional” state universities that Kennesaw State University is with far fewer.

“It’s why I laughed out loud when I heard talk of Cobb County preparing an Amazon proposal.”

Were Cobb County part of MARTA they would have as good a shot at the Amazon campus as any in this metro area, as tons of Fortune 500 companies have offices there, and there are about as many IT jobs and workers in Cobb County as anywhere else in the metro area, right along with Alpharetta and downtown Atlanta, as any perusal of Monster.com or similar would quickly bear out. I am as big a city of Atlanta booster as the next guy, but I would imagine that most of the people who would potentially actually have to go to work for Amazon each day would rather see HQ2 be located in Vinings than the site near Hartsfield that is going to be the main pitch.

So apparently Republicans shouldn’t be university president, right? That attitude only confirms the attitude towards higher education that you will encounter by reading National Review and the Weekly Standard.