Title IX bugaloo

 Three months and fourscore goofiness along, the Regime of Fearless Leader Donald John "Legbreaker" Trump  has revealed to us a few home truths.

One, institutional knowledge and expertise will get you nowhere. And by "nowhere", I mean, "Any yokel can do your job, and we're just the yokels to do it."

Two, batshite crazy is the new normal. And by "batshite crazy", I mostly mean "Brain Worm Bobby Kennedy", though are plenty of other examples. 

Three, the Regime ain't bad at gymnastics.

And by "gymnastics," I mean, "Standing existing civil rights law on its head."

That's exactly what's going on these days with Title IX, which was introduced to ensure women equal access to athletic opportunities but is now being used by the Regime as a weapon in its weird jihad against transgender Americans. Yes, that's right, folks: A law designed to combat discrimination now functions as an instrument for discrimination.

Comes now the news that the Regime is using Title IX to blackjack the University of Pennsylvania into prostrating itself for the crime of allowing a trans swimmer, Lia Thomas, to compete. The Regime's Department of Education is giving Penn 10 days to cast Thomas into outer darkness, issue a statement saying it will comply with Title IX and apologize to each female swimmer  for "allowing her educational experience in athletics to be marred by sex discrimination."

And Georgie Patton thought apologizing for slapping that soldier in Sicily was hard duty.

In truth, as with most doings of the Regime, this Title IX bugaloo is complete eyewash. First of all, allowing one trans swimmer to compete can hardly be described as rampant sex discrimination that deprives women athletes of their "educational experience in athletics." To claim as much is so over the top it makes you wonder how any serious person could keep a straight face while doing so.

(The obvious caveat: This is the Regime we're dealing with here. Serious persons were run off awhile ago)

All of this, of course, is born of the Regime's fetish for solutions in search of a problem. The dirty not-so-secret secret -- and how many times do we have to go over this? -- is transgender athletes are such a rarity they in no way constitute the assault on women's sports the Regime suggests by invoking Title IX against them. In fact, states that allow transgender athletes have a higher rate of biological girls participating in sports than those that don't.

And yet, you still hear, from the wilder precincts of the extremist right, the refrain that unless the Regime bends universities and state governments to its will, hordes of transgenders will completely "take over" girls and women's sports. That a lot of the people saying this didn't give a tinker's damn about girls and women's sports until they became a useful bludgeon against those creepy transgenders hardly needs saying. 

That it's utterly absurd is just as obvious. It's like turning back the clock 40 or so years and saying tennis player Renee Richards -- one of the first notable trans athletes -- was going to run Chrissie and Martina right out of the game if she was allowed to play.

Didn't happen, of course. Just as Penn allowing Lia Thomas to compete didn't, nor in any rational world could, threaten women swimmers.

The key phrase there being, "in any rational world." Which is most assuredly not this one.