Why would the college have any reason to discipline the students, especially if this is a public college

A fraternity is an officially recognized campus group. On some campuses they even have special housing. Yanking that privilege when the group behaves like a bunch of assholes is not censorship. It's not the same as belonging to Joe Bob's Gaming and Bar-B-Q society which meets every Sunday in Joe Bob's garage.

Chanting about lynching could be seen as a credible threat of violence against African Americans. It is a grey area and would depend on context.

For a student to saying "I don't like black people" is asinine and ignorant...but certainly not a crime and should not be a disciplinary offense. (For a professor or a TA to express such bigotry is a different matter. Still not a crime but a bigot isn't qualified to do that job.)

As a corollary to that point, why are we not allowed to WATCH the video and judge for ourselves?

Who's stopping you? It's here.

Not all speech is protected.

Yes. It is. It amazes me that people still cite Holmes's "fire in a crowded theater" bullshit from Schenck v. United States, where the SCOTUS trampled over Amendment I to criminalize an anti-draft protest.

If you shout "fire" in a theater when there is in fact a fire, you could be a hero. If you're on stage as part of the performance and fire is part of the plot of the play, you can shout "fire!". If shouting "fire" in a theater causes people to get trampled, the fault is on the architects or operators of the theater for not providing adequate exit routes, not the speaker. The only rightful liability someone falsely crying "fire" falsely has is civil, not criminal.

Using anonymous speech to say things that are harmful to OTHERS is cowardly and generally speaking not protected by the First Amendment nor should it.

Speech can only harm a person if it is credible. (E.g., I start a credible rumor about you, your reputation is damaged.) Anonymous speech is not credible.

And there is no exception in the First Amendment for "harmful" speech. Nor should there be. Sometimes speech should be harmful to people. "John Doe broke the law!" is harmful to John Doe, but if it's true it should certainly be protected.

Liberal folks, this is your issue. The conservatives and libertarians are all over preserving the right to speech. Where is your support for the same?

Liberals are by definition "all over preserving the right to speech".

Authoritarian progressives are not.

Authoritarian progressives have taken over some of the political and social organs often associated in popular thought with "liberalism". I think this can be traced back to the 1988 Presidential campaign, when Bush attacked Dukakis as a "card carrying member of the ACLU", and rather than pushing back with "yes, I support civil liberties as enshrined in the Bill of Rights -- you don't? Shame on you!", the Democrats began a retreat from those values.

Feel free to move to North Korea friend,

Right, because the only possible alternative to capitalism is Maoism.

Communism, we can all lounge around navel gazing our way through coffee table philosophy books as equals.

Sure, an economic system based on the value and dignity of labor and the idea that the system should be run by and for workers rather than a state-backed aristocratic capitalist class, leads to lounging around all day navel gazing. Obviously.

But there is no such choice in the single most important sphere of all: the children education.

Really? There is no choice? No private schools, no charter schools, no home schooling?

I'm all in favor of arranging public education to grant more choice to students; smaller and more numerous schools and let a student go to any public school in their county/city/state (depending on how taxes are allocated) they like. Maybe even vouchers for secular private schools that take the voucher as the whole tuition (no public funds for religious education, no letting rich kids use tax dollars as partial payment at a school for the 1%ers), though I'm not sure on that point. But to claim that the current system offer no choice is simply inaccurate.

Since 1960-ies the per-pupil annual cost of public schools quadrupled (inflation-adjusted), while the quality of education remains the same (if it has not gotten worse).

Public schools have increased the array of services provided -- free and reduced-price meals, special education, vocational education, and services for disabled or ESL students -- in that time.

Overall, public schools have equivalent or better outcomes than private schools with the same level of spending per student.

And Texas's public school spending is near the bottom compared to other states, so trying to link this to some supposed overspending on schools does not fly.

If you're thinking of voting for any politician who takes contributions from the the NEA, then FUCK YOU.

...because the NEA is so strong in Texas. So very strong that per-pupil spending and teacher's salaries are near the bottom compared to other states.

As usual, union bashing is disconnected from reality.

Are there any valuable functions mapped to a middle button anyway, that make it so important?

Yes. For people who use real computers, middle button = "paste selected text".

Who puts three fingers on the surface of a mouse?

People who use real computers but have not yet found the one true pointing device, the 4-button Logitech Marble Mouse Trackball.

Just because one is a physical limitation and the other is a psychological one doesn't make them different

Yes, actually, it does. That the idea of so-called "mental illness" obscures this is one of the problems with mislabeling various problems of living as diseases.

I've heard claims that one in four women will be raped at some point in their lives, and have yet to hear any sort of data-based rebuttal.

Really? You heard such an extraordinary claim, but apparently made zero effort to look into its validity?

Here you go. And here. And here.

Essentially, that inflated number is based on questionable surveys which often fail to distinguish between a regrettable drunken hookup and rape, and is not just about rape but about behavior ranging from grabbing a woman's butt on up through attempted rape and actual rape. (Yes, grabbing someone's butt is bad. It's assault. It's unacceptable. It is not, however, rape.)

Is rape much more common than most people think? Yes. The data is murky but I would be surprised if the lifetime victimization rate for women was less than 5%, 1 in 20. Is it 25%, "eeny-meeny-miney-RAPE!" common? No.

And a teacher sending a student sexy messages over the internet is certainly a breach of professional conduct...but it's not rape.

Star Trek now has freedom to have any future the writers can come up with

No, they're stuck with the universe Abrams left them. A universe which makes no sense, where starships are irrelevant because transporters can move people over interstellar distances (from Earth to the Klingon homeworld), and where a cure for death has been found in Khan's blood. Not to mention the absurd political situation, with a corrupt Starfleet operating accord to some bizarre system of personal prerogative of individual commanders rather than any rational chain of command.

The open ballot worked fine in the US for 100 years.

Are you seriously referring to the era of American history when slavery and Native American genocide were at their peak, when women and those of the wrong skin color were deprived of the vote, when worker revolts were regularly put down by armed force, when violence at the polls was a regular occurrence, as a time when voting "worked fine"?

Here's how we used to vote. Any claim that this system "worked fine" is disconnected from reality.

The ahistoricalism of American political discourse never ceases to amaze me. Nor does the desire for technical fixes to social problems: to get voters to vote, we don't need on-line voting, we need better candidates, a reform of ballot access and campaign finance laws. (And a preference ballot and ad binding "none-of-the-above" option.)

. "Reusability is the critical breakthrough needed in rocketry to take things to the next level."

What an amazing unprecedented breakthough idea.