| Oh you got trouble.
Right here in Bernie City.
With a capital ‘B’ and that rhymes with ‘C’ and that stands for ‘Cops’ Just when Bernie Sanders was suddenly riding high in the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire he had to go and stick his sensible shoe in his mouth. Sanders came out today and weighed in on the college campus “rape crisis” and dared to say that serious allegations of violent crimes should be handled… *gasp* .. by the police. (The Hill) | Bernie Sanders called for all rape accusations on college campuses to be handled through law enforcement, a controversial stance that puts him at odds with many advocates. Decrying rape and sexual assault on campuses as an “epidemic,” he said schools must not try to handle the issue internally. “Rape and assault is rape or assault whether it takes place on a campus or a dark street,” he said Monday at the Black and Brown Presidential Forum in Iowa. “If a student rapes another student it has got to be understood as a very serious crime, it has to get outside of the school and have a police investigation and that has to take place.” |
I don’t know how this guy expects to get elected as a Democrat now. That’s a statement which could have come straight off the pages of Hot Air and it probably would have been written by, well… me. Ben Kamisar is the author of the linked article and I simply love his explanation of why this is such a problem for Sanders. He talks about how such theories of law enforcement have long been met with skepticism by activists on campus. He cites surveys which indicate that overwhelming numbers of students want to have the choice left to them regarding whether to report or to whom. On the first count I have to reluctantly agree with the students. Whether you report or not is, I suppose, up to you, assuming you were really attacked. But by the same token, if you were, I reserve the right to blame you for the next person that your assailant attacks because you weren’t willing to help bring them to justice. When it comes to the question of who to report to, this is nothing more than one of many chapters in the book of politically correct insanity which makes me come close to suggesting that we should just shut all the colleges down. If there has been a violent crime you report it to the police. You don’t go tell your guidance councilor and ask them to convene a kangaroo court to determine innocence, guilt and punishment. Even if you managed to get the right guy in an actual case of rape or other assault, all the aforementioned kangaroo court can do is expel the attacker, freeing him to go down the road and attack somebody else. And you’ll frequently get the wrong person or simply accuse someone who hasn’t broken any actual laws and deprive them of their constitutional rights. Sanders is going to get into trouble with this one. All of those young, college age kids who flood his rallies are going to demand an explanation. Of course, given how fast Bernie turned tail and ran when challenged by the Black Lives Matter movement, he may be out apologizing for this one by tomorrow morning. | 