Health Vote Delayed, Columbia Settles
Sunday, July 16, 2017
July 16, 2017
To Your Health: A planned vote on the Senate health care bill is being delayed while Arizona Sen. John McCain recovers from surgery. The Republican majority can’t afford to lose a single vote.
The 80-year-old McCain had a blood clot removed from above his left eye in what doctors described as “a minimally invasive craniotomy with an eyebrow incision.” He’s out for at least a week.
Majority leader Mitch McConnell had hoped to get a vote this week on the bill to dismantle Obamacare.
Sexual Politics: Columbia University has settled a lawsuit brought by a former student who was accused of rape and made the object of yearlong performance art in which his accuser carried her mattress everywhere she went on campus for a year. The amount of the settlement was not disclosed.
Paul Nungesser, a student from Germany who was cleared of rape by a university disciplinary panel, said he was hounded, ostracized, and condemned for the remainder of his time at Columbia. He said the sex was consensual.
His accuser, Emma Sulkowicz, turned her accusation into her senior arts thesis, carrying her mattress as a symbol of her burden, even to her graduation. Two other women also accused Nungesser of sexual misconduct, but he was found not responsible in those cases as well.
The settlement came within days of an announcement by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that her department is re-examining Obama-era policies that some people say give too much power to the accuser and infringe on the rights of the accused in quasi-judicial campus proceedings.
Nation: Three people died Friday in fire in a Honolulu high-rise that had no sprinklers. The 36-floor building near Waikiki Beach was built in 1971, before sprinklers were required.
BookBeat: Former FBI James Comey is writing a book about his time in government, including his run-ins and dealings with President Trump, who fired him. Comey is also expected to write about the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
Comey’s agent said, “It’s a book about leadership and his search for truth.” It goes up for auction to publishers this coming week.
Center Court: Spanish tennis player Garbiñe Muguruza toppled Venus Williams to win the Wimbledon women’s singles tennis championship. Stamina appeared to be a factor. Muguruza, at 23, is 14 years younger.
Adult Swim: A Brazilian court has thrown out criminal charges against US Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte, who claimed during the games last year that he had been robbed at gunpoint. Lochte and three other American swimmers claimed they were robbed while riding in a taxi, but security video at a gas station showed that it never happened.
Instead, it showed the swimmers being rowdy in a gas station and confronted by a security guard with a gun. The incident was an embarrassment and Lochte, who has won 12 Olympic medals, was suspended for 10 months from the US swim team.
Monkey Business: To the dismay of some local creationists, a statue of the legendary lawyer Clarence Darrow has been erected to accompany the figure of Williams Jennings Bryan outside the Dayton, Tenn., where the infamous Scopes “Monkey Trial” was held. Darrow unsuccessfully defended teacher John Scopes for breaking the state ban on teaching evolution. Darrow scored some hits, but Bryan became a hero for holding up the Biblical interpretation.
It wouldn’t have been a drama without both men, and with the addition of the Darrow statue, the drama goes on. The Pew Research Center says 34 percent of Americans still reject the theory of evolution, the science that pretty much explains all of biology.
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