20 years ago: BYU cuts wrestling, men’s gymnastics

Editor's note: Every Sunday, the Deseret News sports staff takes a look back into our archives_._

BYU announced it would drop two of the athletic department's most successful programs in wrestling and men's gymnastics after the 1999-2000 season.

Although BYU was in compliance with Title IX, those sports were often dropped by other schools, making scheduling difficult.

Air Force and Wyoming were the only other schools in the Mountain West Conference to have wrestling and Air Force was the only other to have men's gymnastics.

Financial considerations also played a role, as the school looked for ways to cut costs.

Read the full story here.

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2HPAKuG

20 years ago: BYU cuts wrestling, men’s gymnastics

Editor's note: Every Sunday, the Deseret News sports staff takes a look back into our archives_._

BYU announced it would drop two of the athletic department's most successful programs in wrestling and men's gymnastics after the 1999-2000 season.

Although BYU was in compliance with Title IX, those sports were often dropped by other schools, making scheduling difficult.

Air Force and Wyoming were the only other schools in the Mountain West Conference to have wrestling and Air Force was the only other to have men's gymnastics.

Financial considerations also played a role, as the school looked for ways to cut costs.

Read the full story here.

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2HPAKuG

Megan McArdle: What the political storms over the Mueller report and Brexit have in common

WASHINGTON — I am writing this column from Toronto Pearson International Airport, on a layover en route to London. Behind me is the political storm over the long-awaited report from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who appears to have found no evidence that Donald Trump's presidential campaign entered a secret election-rigging compact with Russia. Ahead of me is another sort of storm: British Prime Minister Theresa May's frantic scramble to get Parliament to approve some kind of Brexit deal.

Yet from the vantage of an in-between place, sheltered from the gale-force political winds, these two storms have a certain similarity: the impression of a cosmopolitan class eager to overturn the results of a populist vote, but unable to find an airtight excuse for doing so.

For going on two years, Trump's opponents have been waiting on, counting on, praying on the Mueller report. In many minds, the possibility that Trump had secretly collaborated with Russia shaded over into the probability that he had done so. And that probability, in turn, metamorphosed into treating collusion as practically an established fact.

Those who acted as though Trump were already under indictment now look foolish and somewhat desperate, which is hardly the image you want to project when you're trying to convince the public that you're the sane and sensible alternative to Trump. In looking for the most expeditious way to rectify what they viewed as a catastrophic voter error, the #resistance has made things worse.

There's a lesson in that for their counterparts across the Atlantic, who currently, momentarily, seem to be ascendant. The prime minister has lost control of the House of Commons, which on Monday passed an amendment giving Parliament — rather than May and her cabinet — the power to explore alternatives to the deal she negotiated with the European Union. The move was not only a challenge to May's leadership, but also a striking departure from the normal course of things, in which the government sets policy and the parliament follows.

There's no telling where all this will end up. But some Parliament-watchers say there's probably a cross-party majority for a less radical Brexit alternative known as Norway Plus, which would allow free movement of goods, services, capital and people across borders, but that would limit the push of "ever closer union" into other areas, such as the justice system.

The benefit of Norway Plus is that it would minimize disruption, a feat it achieves by not actually changing much. Britain would still have to contribute most of what it does now to the E.U. budget; it would still have to allow immigration from other E.U. countries; and it would still be subject to many E.U. rules, while losing its voice in the European Parliament that makes those rules. The only obvious benefit of this plan is that it can be called "Brexit" and voted for by people who don't actually want Brexit to happen.

There's a case for this Brexit-in-Name-Only, of course. The people who voted for Brexit in June 2016 were voting for a set of vague ideas about Britain's regaining control of its borders and budget. They weren't voting for the specific deal May has negotiated.

That deal is probably the best she could wrest from the E.U., which wants to make Britain's departure from the E.U. as unpleasant as possible pour encourager les autres. But it will simultaneously impose heavy costs on Britain's economy, at least in the short term, while leaving open many questions — most notably, what happens to the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic — that Britain must settle before safely charting a separate course.

Legislators with more information than Leave voters had, and more time to study the intricacies of policy, may well be right that this is not what voters really wanted and that the responsible thing to do is either call another referendum or simply pretend to leave without really doing so. Just as the American #resistance makes a decent case that Trump's presidency has been disastrous for the country — and for his own causes.

But that assumes voters were mostly voting for Leave, or for Trump, rather than against a political establishment that has for decades responded to voter discontent by saying, "Nanny knows best." If the latter is the case, repeating the phrase louder and more firmly won't make voters any happier. Especially if driving the message home involves contravening the very civic norms and political order that the establishments in Britain and in the United States claim to be trying to preserve.

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2WDdALv

Megan McArdle: What the political storms over the Mueller report and Brexit have in common

WASHINGTON — I am writing this column from Toronto Pearson International Airport, on a layover en route to London. Behind me is the political storm over the long-awaited report from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who appears to have found no evidence that Donald Trump's presidential campaign entered a secret election-rigging compact with Russia. Ahead of me is another sort of storm: British Prime Minister Theresa May's frantic scramble to get Parliament to approve some kind of Brexit deal.

Yet from the vantage of an in-between place, sheltered from the gale-force political winds, these two storms have a certain similarity: the impression of a cosmopolitan class eager to overturn the results of a populist vote, but unable to find an airtight excuse for doing so.

For going on two years, Trump's opponents have been waiting on, counting on, praying on the Mueller report. In many minds, the possibility that Trump had secretly collaborated with Russia shaded over into the probability that he had done so. And that probability, in turn, metamorphosed into treating collusion as practically an established fact.

Those who acted as though Trump were already under indictment now look foolish and somewhat desperate, which is hardly the image you want to project when you're trying to convince the public that you're the sane and sensible alternative to Trump. In looking for the most expeditious way to rectify what they viewed as a catastrophic voter error, the #resistance has made things worse.

There's a lesson in that for their counterparts across the Atlantic, who currently, momentarily, seem to be ascendant. The prime minister has lost control of the House of Commons, which on Monday passed an amendment giving Parliament — rather than May and her cabinet — the power to explore alternatives to the deal she negotiated with the European Union. The move was not only a challenge to May's leadership, but also a striking departure from the normal course of things, in which the government sets policy and the parliament follows.

There's no telling where all this will end up. But some Parliament-watchers say there's probably a cross-party majority for a less radical Brexit alternative known as Norway Plus, which would allow free movement of goods, services, capital and people across borders, but that would limit the push of "ever closer union" into other areas, such as the justice system.

The benefit of Norway Plus is that it would minimize disruption, a feat it achieves by not actually changing much. Britain would still have to contribute most of what it does now to the E.U. budget; it would still have to allow immigration from other E.U. countries; and it would still be subject to many E.U. rules, while losing its voice in the European Parliament that makes those rules. The only obvious benefit of this plan is that it can be called "Brexit" and voted for by people who don't actually want Brexit to happen.

There's a case for this Brexit-in-Name-Only, of course. The people who voted for Brexit in June 2016 were voting for a set of vague ideas about Britain's regaining control of its borders and budget. They weren't voting for the specific deal May has negotiated.

That deal is probably the best she could wrest from the E.U., which wants to make Britain's departure from the E.U. as unpleasant as possible pour encourager les autres. But it will simultaneously impose heavy costs on Britain's economy, at least in the short term, while leaving open many questions — most notably, what happens to the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic — that Britain must settle before safely charting a separate course.

Legislators with more information than Leave voters had, and more time to study the intricacies of policy, may well be right that this is not what voters really wanted and that the responsible thing to do is either call another referendum or simply pretend to leave without really doing so. Just as the American #resistance makes a decent case that Trump's presidency has been disastrous for the country — and for his own causes.

But that assumes voters were mostly voting for Leave, or for Trump, rather than against a political establishment that has for decades responded to voter discontent by saying, "Nanny knows best." If the latter is the case, repeating the phrase louder and more firmly won't make voters any happier. Especially if driving the message home involves contravening the very civic norms and political order that the establishments in Britain and in the United States claim to be trying to preserve.

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2WDdALv

S.E. Cupp: All presidents (and candidates) deserve Trump-level scrutiny from the press

In the days since the Mueller report was concluded and found no collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia, the attention has turned to the press and its perceived hyperfocus on the two-year-long investigation.

Questions about whether outlets like The New York Times, MSNBC or CNN, where I work, spent too much time speculating about the findings or wanting a certain outcome have abounded, and not just from Trump himself.

The RNC complained about what it believes is an imbalance of coverage in an email blast, citing lopsided reporting on the investigation versus the renegotiation of NAFTA, "the Trump admin's successful implementation of middle class tax cuts," and the war against ISIS.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has gone so far as to say the press owes the president an apology.

But it's not just Republicans. The press coverage of the Mueller investigation is being questioned by some members of the media as well. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi wrote, "WMD damaged the media's reputation. Russiagate may have just destroyed it." Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept has been vocally and consistently critical of the media's focus on Russia for years. Michael Tracey catalogued similar grievances in the Daily News.

Self-reflection and an open audit of the way we cover this administration and all other things is always a good idea. It's inarguable that some journalists — too many — did what they weren't supposed to do, and openly rooted for an outcome in the Mueller investigation. That is exceedingly damaging to public trust. It also helps cement Trump's dangerous, false narrative, that the press is the enemy of the people.

Among many, many others, however, there was a healthy probing of what might lay behind what to any reasonable observer were a series of puzzling interactions with Russia, a boatload of lies from the president's campaign and administration about those interactions, and consistent displays of affection toward Putin by Trump, who has very few nice things to say about almost anyone else.

But there's another way to view the relationship between Trump and the media. And maybe the question isn't whether the press has been too adversarial to this administration.

Namely: Why wasn't the press just as adversarial to all the others?

The most glaring example is also the most recent. Despite having a slim record of accomplishments upon ascending to the White House, President Obama earned the quick adoration of many in the media. But, with some exceptions, had the press been as systemically suspicious of Obama as it is of Trump, we might not have needed to rely on whistleblowers to expose illegal drone wars, mass data collection or shoddy defense contracts, not to mention an inadequate response to a drug abuse crisis that's now killing tens of thousands of people.

From the Truman administration to the Kennedy administration, a more adversarial press may have uncovered the full level of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War years earlier.

And as openly disapproving of George W. Bush as many in the media were, even that administration received the benefit of the doubt on far too many occasions for far too long, from the passing of the Patriot Act to the justification for the Iraq War.

No modern president, save perhaps Richard Nixon, who waged an outright war on the press, earned the scorn and suspicion that Trump has since the day he took office.

Let's be crystal clear: Trump deserves scorn and suspicion. He is a liar and a huckster. But so too does every person in a position of immense power, because power is inherently corrupting, and because the decisions presidents make impact so many people's lives.

So, yes, let's learn some lessons from this episode — not just to be better at covering this president, but all future presidents. In fact, we can start right now, by bringing the same level of suspicion — the Trump treatment, as it were — to each of the Democratic candidates for president.

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2HRnXb1

S.E. Cupp: All presidents (and candidates) deserve Trump-level scrutiny from the press

In the days since the Mueller report was concluded and found no collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia, the attention has turned to the press and its perceived hyperfocus on the two-year-long investigation.

Questions about whether outlets like The New York Times, MSNBC or CNN, where I work, spent too much time speculating about the findings or wanting a certain outcome have abounded, and not just from Trump himself.

The RNC complained about what it believes is an imbalance of coverage in an email blast, citing lopsided reporting on the investigation versus the renegotiation of NAFTA, "the Trump admin's successful implementation of middle class tax cuts," and the war against ISIS.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has gone so far as to say the press owes the president an apology.

But it's not just Republicans. The press coverage of the Mueller investigation is being questioned by some members of the media as well. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi wrote, "WMD damaged the media's reputation. Russiagate may have just destroyed it." Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept has been vocally and consistently critical of the media's focus on Russia for years. Michael Tracey catalogued similar grievances in the Daily News.

Self-reflection and an open audit of the way we cover this administration and all other things is always a good idea. It's inarguable that some journalists — too many — did what they weren't supposed to do, and openly rooted for an outcome in the Mueller investigation. That is exceedingly damaging to public trust. It also helps cement Trump's dangerous, false narrative, that the press is the enemy of the people.

Among many, many others, however, there was a healthy probing of what might lay behind what to any reasonable observer were a series of puzzling interactions with Russia, a boatload of lies from the president's campaign and administration about those interactions, and consistent displays of affection toward Putin by Trump, who has very few nice things to say about almost anyone else.

But there's another way to view the relationship between Trump and the media. And maybe the question isn't whether the press has been too adversarial to this administration.

Namely: Why wasn't the press just as adversarial to all the others?

The most glaring example is also the most recent. Despite having a slim record of accomplishments upon ascending to the White House, President Obama earned the quick adoration of many in the media. But, with some exceptions, had the press been as systemically suspicious of Obama as it is of Trump, we might not have needed to rely on whistleblowers to expose illegal drone wars, mass data collection or shoddy defense contracts, not to mention an inadequate response to a drug abuse crisis that's now killing tens of thousands of people.

From the Truman administration to the Kennedy administration, a more adversarial press may have uncovered the full level of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War years earlier.

And as openly disapproving of George W. Bush as many in the media were, even that administration received the benefit of the doubt on far too many occasions for far too long, from the passing of the Patriot Act to the justification for the Iraq War.

No modern president, save perhaps Richard Nixon, who waged an outright war on the press, earned the scorn and suspicion that Trump has since the day he took office.

Let's be crystal clear: Trump deserves scorn and suspicion. He is a liar and a huckster. But so too does every person in a position of immense power, because power is inherently corrupting, and because the decisions presidents make impact so many people's lives.

So, yes, let's learn some lessons from this episode — not just to be better at covering this president, but all future presidents. In fact, we can start right now, by bringing the same level of suspicion — the Trump treatment, as it were — to each of the Democratic candidates for president.

from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2HRnXb1

Guest opinion: Our constitutional emergency

During the June 1788 convention at which Virginia ratified the U.S. Constitution, Patrick Henry, a critic of the proposed government, accused James Madison, its foremost defender, of failing to protect against corrupt or lawless politicians. "Is there no virtue among us?" Madison replied. "If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks — no form of government can render us secure."

That exchange is worth recalling as the House of Representatives failed to muster the two-thirds majority required of both legislative chambers to override the presidential veto of a congressional resolution to nullify the national emergency to build a border wall. It seems likely that the Senate, for its part, will not even do its constitutional duty and try. Republicans, especially Republican senators, are being justifiably excoriated for failing to defend congressional authority.

But blaming them alone misdiagnoses the constitutional problem. Congress' impotence indicates an appalling failure of constitutional awareness and education in the United States. The Republican base — like the Democratic base during President Barack Obama's tenure — is demanding, and getting, a constitution of expediency rather than of law.

As many observers have noted, the Republican senators who criticized the emergency declaration and then voted to uphold it — Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina foremost among them — all face reelection in 2020. Trump is popular in their states, and their constituents are evidently more concerned with building a border wall than with the constitutional niceties according to which it is funded. These senators' failure to "refine and enlarge the public views," in Madison's phrase, is a dereliction of their duty under Article I of the Constitution. But the root problem is the constitutional views that elected officials are supposed to refine.

One Republican senator who voted against the emergency declaration, Roy Blunt of Missouri, was disinvited from a political event in his state by a local party official who demanded of him, "Why could you not support my president in the emergency declaration?" So long as the public does not care whether Congress protects its institutional turf — or, worse, is hostile to it doing so — the constitutional architecture cannot stand.

Madison understood this. One of the most consistent themes of his writings is that the public always governs eventually in the United States. "In republican Government the majority however composed, ultimately give the law," he wrote before the constitutional convention. Alexander Hamilton, too, explained that liberty in the United States "must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government."

The constitutional imperative is to slow down policymaking so that passion can dissipate and reason can take hold. That requires civic virtues that constitutional education must teach. They involve not merely knowledge but ultimately temperament. The foremost is patience: Constitutional mechanisms work slowly by design. Another essential virtue is public-spiritedness: In a sprawling republic, those with strong views must recognize that they share the political community with fellow citizens whose competing views are equally intense. Both patience and public spirit entail caring not just what happens, but also how it happens.

If, by contrast, civic education focuses solely on outcomes at the expense of process, it will produce a politically entitled people immune to these virtues or to any civic quality other than demanding what you want when you want it. Yet this is substantially how civic education — which occurs in schools but also in the public square, when the news media reports on issues and when public figures discuss them — treats the constitutional order.

In schools, civic education tends to accord outsize importance to the Bill of Rights at the expense of the more complex topics of separation of powers, federalism and other pillars of the constitutional edifice. Hamilton had opposed a Bill of Rights in part because he thought these mechanisms safeguarded rights better than protections inscribed on paper could. Journalists and politicians equally obsess over winners and losers. The public hears whose ox is being gored, but too rarely the importance of the constitutional process by which the goring occurs.

A Madisonian people, by contrast, will care about constitutional integrity in addition to political outcomes. This is for constitutional reasons but also for selfish ones: The power whose use one celebrates today will be wielded by a leader with whom one disagrees tomorrow, a lesson Democrats who endorsed Obama's unilateral executive orders are now learning. Such citizens will also understand that they occupy the country along with more than 325 million fellow citizens whose views must be accommodated.

Crucially, they will not tolerate members of Congress who surrender legislative authority, even for results to some voters' momentary liking, because they will prioritize enduring constitutionalism over transient policies. They will realize, too, that maintaining legislative authority, which is more immediately responsive to local concerns, serves their own interests as well.

Finally, some group among a Madisonian people will have the foresight to step off the cynical and anti-constitutional carousel according to which President George W. Bush did it so Obama could do it so Trump might as well, too.

None of this excuses members of Congress from their duties, which sometimes include withstanding public opinion. Even the Democratic justification for an override vote sure to fail is, as the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, put it, to create a record so the issue can be resolved by the courts.

To her credit, Pelosi did say that "we are Article I, the first branch of government." But she was less reticent about executive power when Obama acted unilaterally on immigration. In both cases, the House should have defended its constitutional turf. It is no solution — on the contrary, it presents its own constitutional problems — for one party to ask the courts to provide the institutional protection the whole House declined to provide itself.

As for the Senate, one purpose of its members' six-year terms is to enable what Madison called "great firmness" in resisting public whims and defending constitutional principles. So much for that. Every legislator is accountable for how he or she votes on the emergency declaration, but Madison expected those immediately facing re-election to capitulate more easily to public opinion. There are worse political sins. Harsher criticism should be reserved for senators who caved without facing immediate electoral consequences.

But their constituents who demanded this constitutional surrender — especially those who profess fidelity to the Constitution as the bedrock of their politics — deserve the sternest rebuke. It is an axiom of republican politics that everyone incurs criticism sooner or later, except the people. Yet if the people care solely about expediency at the expense of law, we are in a "wretched situation" from which the Constitution will not rescue us.

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