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May 2017

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Duke Professor Faces Disciplinary Action for Calling Diversity Training a Waste By Tom Knighton

By on May 11th, 2017

Almost anyone who has been forced to sit through diversity training has probably thought, “What a complete waste of time.” No slideshow presentation is going to undermine one’s beliefs, so any real bigots taking it won’t be swayed, for one thing. For another, it takes time out of doing actual work in a pathetic attempt at indoctrination.

When Paul Griffiths, a professor of Catholic theology at Duke University, said what most of us happen to think about so-called diversity training, however, he stirred up a whole storm of social justice viciousness. The College Fix reports:

The professor of Catholic theology told his colleagues not to “lay waste your time” with the training, which he predicted would be full of “bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs”:

When (if) it gets beyond that, its illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies will show. Events of this sort are definitively anti-intellectual. (Re)trainings of intellectuals by bureaucrats and apparatchiks have a long and ignoble history; I hope you’ll keep that history in mind as you think about this instance.

Now he’s the subject of two disciplinary proceedings – one for “unprofessional conduct” and one for “harassment” – and he is reportedly resigning after the 2017-2018 academic year.

Rod Dreher at The American Conservative obtained documents related to the dispute over the weekend, reprinting a recent open letter from Griffiths to the DDS faculty and the February email chain that started his problems.

After his acerbic response, Griffiths’ dean Elaine Heath responded on the listserv that it was “inappropriate and unprofessional” for him to publicly “humiliate or undermine” his colleague who sent the invitation, Prof. Anathea Portier-Young:

The use of mass emails to express racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry is offensive and unacceptable, especially in a Christian institution.

And here I thought that discussing things was what academics actually did for a living when they weren’t teaching classes. How is it “unprofessional” to voice a dissenting opinion again?

Oh, right, Griffiths assaulted the social justice shibboleth of diversity training, which can never be permitted to stand.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Historically Black College Students Booed Secretary DeVos for Wishing Them Luck…….Video

By on May 11th, 2017

Students at Florida’s Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black college, were not excited to have two representatives from the Trump administration at their college commencement. Omarosa Manigault, an advisor to the president, and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos addressed the crowd to discuss the legacy of the college’s founders and also to wish the graduates luck in their future endeavors. The audience booed and physically turned their backs on these speakers as an act of protest. The college president even defended the speakers, asking his students to hear their points of view. He wasn’t successful.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

In Clinton Caper, Comey Was the Most Visible Player, Not the Most Consequential By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on May 11th, 2017

At National Review last weekend, I addressed the Democrats’ loopy claim that the FBI became a Trump partisan in the 2016 election. The claim is worth more examination in light of President Trump’s dismissal of FBI Director James Comey.

In Clinton World, self-absorption always triumphs over self-inspection, so nothing could be more predictable than Hillary Clinton’s scapegoating of Comey, a diversion from acknowledging what really cost her the election: her own manifest flaws. Congressional Democrats are along for the ride: those who were swooning over Comey in July when he announced that Clinton would not be charged, then ripped him in October when he reopened and quickly reclosed the FBI’s investigation, and then branded him a Trump partisan hack after the votes were counted, are suddenly back in swoon mode.

Comey, of course, hasn’t changed through all of this. He’s always been the same guy. The laughably transparent explanation for all the careening around him is politics.

Mrs. Clinton was hoping to put the e-mail scandal behind her by arguing that she had been vindicated by a thorough, highly professional FBI investigation. But she lost, so the investigation that was to be her credential for office became the downfall that denied her. Comey thus became Rationalization 1 for her defeat … at least until Rationalization 1A, Russia, got some media traction. So now, Comey has gone from villainous J. Edgar Hoover to valiant Elliot Ness again – not out of anything he did, but because Democrats calculate that framing his termination as part of a “cover-up” may resuscitate the Trump-Russia narrative, which has grown stale in the absence of concrete evidence of collusion.

Note that in all of this, Comey is always in the center of events, but he has never been in control of events. Don’t be fooled by appearances. The FBI director has been the most visible player, but he has not come close to being the most consequential.

Yes, the FBI that actually carries out the dual functions of criminal inquiry and foreign intelligence collection. In either type of investigation, it is the Bureau that performs the rubber-meets-the-road work of gathering information and analyzing it, searching for the connections that prove actions and intentions. Consequently, Director Comey has gotten top billing in this drama – a happenstance made more pronounced by the director’s very forceful personality. It has made him look more important than, in fact, he has been.

Some perspective, please. There could have been no indictment against Hillary Clinton unless the Obama Justice Department approved it. Comey headed an investigative agency; he had no authority to exercise prosecutorial discretion – to decide whether charges got filed.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe: Denying the Threat of Islamic Imperialism by Maria Polizoidou

By on May 11th, 2017

The UN report and Erdogan’s rhetoric both evidently expresses the Muslim world’s thoughts about what it apparently thinks should be the fate of Israel and Europe. So far, not a single Muslim state has condemned or opposed Erdogan’s aggression against Judeo-Christian civilization.

The enemy is already inside the gates; many European regimes seem unaware that there is even a threat.

The logic of much of Europe’s religious and political community seems to be that if the elephant in the room is spoken to nicely and made to look cute and adorable, people will not think of it as a threat to their safety.

The Western world can no longer ignore the problem of the latest the elephant in the room: Islamic imperialism. Europe has come to such a state of free speech trials, threats of censorship or, out of fear, self-censorship, that it seems to prefer putting the safety of its citizens at risk than admit that this elephant exists.

Meanwhile, Muslim countries make not the slightest effort to hide their intentions, as recent actions of 18 such states at the United Nations illustrate. They cooperated in the preparation of the report released in March by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA), which accused Israel of “the crime of apartheid,” despite knowing full well that such a baseless claim would be rejected by the world body now that Donald Trump is at the helm of the free world. The reason they went ahead with it anyway was to convey to the West that delegitimizing the Jewish state was merely the first step in a master plan to unravel all of Judeo-Christian civilization and values.

For a body such as UNESCWA to declare the State of Israel in an official Institute’s report, as being guilty of “the crime of apartheid” according to international law, shows that Islamic expansionism is a real and an active political problem.

UNESCWA must have had some idea, before publishing the report, that such a loopy conclusion could not be adopted, even by the UN, which has been doing its utmost to rewrite historical facts. In the last few years, UNESCO has repeatedly declared pre-Islamic historical sites Islamic.

Nevertheless, UNESCWA proceeded to pass this surreal political concoction, probably to declare to the Western world again its attempts to delegitimize the State of Israel and all the freedoms it represents in the Judeo-Christian world that might threaten the expansion of Islam.

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IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Any ‘Immigration Reform’ Must Put Americans First – Political compromise must not jeopardize national security, public safety, or the well-being of Americans By Michael W. Cutler

By on May 11th, 2017

“New and Improved” is a label often slapped on products to swindle consumers out of money.

Several years ago my local grocery store hung up banners declaring that they had permanently lowered the price of bags of sugar. I was impressed. I grabbed a couple of bags of sugar thinking I would save some money. Then I checked a bag and discovered that they no longer contained five pounds of sugar, but four pounds. Instead of saving money, the new bags cost more per pound.

Politicians employ similar tactics. They have elevated the use of Orwellian Newspeak to a true art form. Consider the con game known as “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.”

The issue of immigration reform reemerged after President Trump’s first speech before a joint session of Congress:

I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nation’s security, and to restore respect for our laws.

If we are guided by the well-being of American citizens, then I believe Republicans and Democrats can work together to achieve an outcome that has eluded our country for decades.

President Trump’s statement and his views on true immigration reform — putting Americans first — contrasts significantly from “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” — a program that would put the interests of illegal aliens before the national interest, which politicians have attempted to foist on Americans for decades.

Politicians know that American citizens are adamantly opposed to any “amnesty.” They make the bogus claim that if illegal aliens pay back taxes and learn English, then it is not an amnesty program. Legalizing illegal aliens forgives them for violating the law and provides them with the authority to work legally.

Scamming politicians (forgive the redundancy) from both political parties, accompanied by pollsters, pundits, leaders of industries, and special interest groups, continually claim that our “immigration system is broken,” citing the presence of millions of illegal aliens in the United States, and the need for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform.”

Essentially their “fix” would legalize nearly all of the illegal aliens and, in the short term, the U.S. would no longer have millions of illegal aliens. This isn’t a new approach to “fixing” the “broken immigration system.”

A massive amnesty program to provide unknown millions of illegal aliens with lawful status was tried by the Reagan Administration in 1986 when the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was enacted, with disastrous results. It incentivized the subsequent illegal entry of millions of illegal aliens.

The Reagan Administration estimated that roughly one million illegal aliens would come out of the “shadows.” This supposedly one-time measure provided more than 3.5 million illegal aliens with lawful status, including terrorists and criminals.

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