Let me update you on my search for details on the hooligans who attacked the UCLA Gaza encampment last Tuesday evening. First, there was this very good piece in The New York Times about the incident. It’s one of those full-force endeavors where they mobilize a host of journalists and digital forensics experts to pick apart just how an event took place. What was notable to me though was that despite all the moment-by-moment detail and the review of a huge amount of video about just how the attack unfolded and what was involved, it included no information about who the assailants were.

I note this not as a criticism of the journalism but as a measure of just how hard it seems to be to track this information down.

I assume you’re familiar with Kristi Noem/Cricket the executed dog discourse. But I have to flag this new controversy from her memoir, No Going Back. Noem appears to have made up a meeting with North Korea paramount leader Kim Jong Un.

Says Noem: “I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. I’m sure he underestimated me.” The report casting doubt on that anecdote is from a local outlet, The Dakota Scout.

I wanted to do an update to my post on Monday about the situation in Israel-Palestine as well as on campuses on the United States.

A few of you asked, what was the response to the post? It was, I think, overwhelmingly positive. I did have one longtime reader say he was quitting the site and ending his subscription over it. If I interpreted his message and what I’ve known about his viewpoints generally, he thought I was being too critical of Israel. But people are entitled to their opinions and viewpoints and feelings. And I say that not as a throwaway line but as a statement of fact and a recognition of the right way to live in the world. But the overwhelming and almost universal response was positive.

Everyone is publishing their bills of particulars about all the horrible things Donald Trump will do if he becomes president again. That’s become even easier with Time magazine’s publication today of a lengthy interview with Trump in which he expands on the list and provides quotes that make them more specific. (Get ready for your pregnancy ankle bracelet and fetal monitor if you get pregnant in a red state.) But there’s one item on these litanies that’s not really correct. And we should understand what it actually means more clearly.

I wanted to share a few thoughts on the ongoing crisis and mess in Israel-Palestine and also on America’s elite college campuses.

First, a thought on the campus situation and this question of whether these protests are tainted by anti-Semitism. I know most about the situation at Columbia, which certainly isn’t to say I’m an expert on it. To me it seems clear that non-students operating on the periphery of the campus have been responsible for the most egregious comments or incidents that almost no one would deny are anti-Semitic. There’s been some of that from students on campus, usually in heated instances when visibly Jewish students are in the proximity of protesters.

There were so many things that happened yesterday in the Supreme Court’s hearing on presidential immunity that it’s hard to know where to start. But one part that captured it for me was Sam Alito’s line of argument that presidential immunity might be necessary to make it possible for presidents to leave office voluntarily, or that not having some broad grant of immunity would make refusal to leave office more likely. Here’s one of the quotes: “If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is gonna be able to go off to a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy? And we can look around the world and find countries where we have seen this process, where the loser gets thrown in jail.”