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Ruth King

EDUCATION Comments turned off

At Yale, ‘Diversity’ Means More of the Same A 2018 dispute between two students prompts yet another expansion of the massive bureaucracy. By Heather Mac Donald

By on April 24th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-yale-diversity-means-more-of-the-same-11556058975

Yale President Peter Salovey announced a major expansion of the school’s diversity bureaucracy this month, providing a case study in how not to lead a respected institution of higher education.

The pretext for this latest accretion of bureaucratic bloat was a May 2018 incident in a graduate student dorm. Sarah Braasch, a 43-year-old doctoral candidate in philosophy, called campus police at 1:40 a.m. to report someone sleeping in a common room, which she believed was against dorm rules. Yale administrators knew Ms. Braasch had psychological problems and that she had a history of bad blood with the sleeping student, Lolade Siyonbola, a 35-year-old doctoral candidate in African studies. But because Ms. Braasch is white and Ms. Siyonbola is black, the administration chose to turn the incident into a symbol of what Mr. Salovey called the university’s “discrimination and racism.”

Yale leaders immediately announced a slew of new initiatives: “implicit bias” training for graduate students, grad-school staff and campus police; instruction in how to run “inclusive classrooms”; “community building” sessions; a student retreat to develop the next phase of equity and inclusion programming. Despite this flurry of corrective measures, Kimberly M. Goff-Crews, Yale’s secretary and vice president for student life, ominously declared there was still “much more to do.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Thank You, Don McGahn Like so many others, he saved Trump from a major political blunder.

By on April 24th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thank-you-don-mcgahn-11556057923

President Trump should be savoring the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation with no charges of collusion or obstruction of justice, but as ever he can’t stand prosperity. His post-report scrap with former White House counsel Don McGahn shows how this President is so often his own worst enemy.

As part of his obstruction “analysis,” Mr. Mueller recounts that in June 2017 Mr. Trump asked Mr. McGahn to ask Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to say Mr. Mueller had conflicts of interest and couldn’t remain as special counsel. Mr. McGahn took notes but no action, sought advice from White House colleagues, and planned to resign until the President dropped the subject.

Mr. Trump tweeted in response to the report to “watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed,” and his spokesmen have cast doubt on Mr. McGahn’s account. Mr. McGahn says the account is accurate, though the dispute has given Democrats an opening to rehash the episode and they’ve subpoenaed Mr. McGahn to appear before the House Judiciary Committee.

We believe Mr. McGahn, but the needless dispute highlights several realities of the Trump Presidency. One point is that this episode is not evidence of obstruction of justice, despite claims by the Democratic-media chorus. Mr. Trump would have had every constitutional right to fire Mr. Mueller, an inferior officer at the Justice Department. Mr. Trump let Mr. McGahn and others talk to Mr. Mueller and turn over notes, which is the reason Mr. Mueller knows about all this.

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HISTORY Comments turned off

Why Mark Levin Must Give Voice To Informed Jewish Analysts Of Muslim Antisemitism Andrew Bostom

By on April 24th, 2019

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/04/why-mark-levin-must-give-voice-to-informed-jewish-analysts-of-muslim-antisemitism/

The iconic Jewish conservative media figure Mark Levin recently devoted air time (here; starting at 1 hr 43 mins 4 secs) to a discussion of the Antisemitism expressed by Muslima Rep. Ilhan Omar. While I commend Mr. Levin for simply acknowledging this ugly phenomenon, his exploration of the matter did more to obfuscate, than educate.

The approach to the question of Omar’s Antisemitism adopted by Levin was rather warped. Absent any Jews who have studied the Islamic ideological drivers and/or manifestations ofMuslim Antisemitism, not to mention being its target, Levin’s audience was only allowed to understand the Islamic Jew-hatred Ilhan Omar embodies through the bowdlerizing prism of a self-designated “Muslim reformer,” who is actually an apologist/revisionist (here; here). As a result, no basic orienting information was imparted to Levin’s sizable radio audience.

Neither the overwhelming scope, and intensity of Muslim Jew-hatred—now a global pandemic, documented by hard polling data—nor its intimate nexus to canonical Islam as promulgated by Islamdom’s most important religious teaching centers, were illuminated. Sadly, Levin clung to this presentation format—well below accepted fair play standards for honest, informed discourse—after Zionist Organization of America President Mort Klein’s courageous, landmark testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, April 9, 2019.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism by Joshua Muravchik A Review by Paul Hollander

By on April 23rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/05/06/socialisms-rise-and-fall-heaven-on-earth-book-review/

The volume here reviewed is the second edition of a book first published in 2002. I reviewed it favorably (with some reservations) in 2003. A good case can be made for the new edition, given the survival of socialist ideals and the persisting disagreements about their nature and realizability. It remains of interest why people in different parts of the world are still attracted to these ideals and why the same ideals have been so difficult to implement. Of special interest is what Joshua Muravchik calls the “afterlife” of socialism — what happened to these ideals and political aspirations after the political systems supposedly dedicated to their realization, such as the Soviet Union, ceased to exist.

As the reader is informed in the preface, the new edition is largely unchanged, except for the addition of an epilogue, some updating of the chapter on the kibbutzim (collective farms of modern Israel), and the correction of small errors.

The difficulty of coming to grips with the subject — that is, the proper understanding of the nature of socialist ideals and their realizability — has not diminished since the book was first published. The problem begins with the widely held, undifferentiated views of socialism shared by most Americans. They are unaware of the fundamental differences between authoritarian (or totalitarian) state socialism embedded in one-party systems, such as the former Soviet one or the Chinese one under Mao, and social-democratic societies, such as those in Scandinavia.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

As Liberalism Sinks, Socialism Rises Thomas McArdle

By on April 23rd, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/23/as-liberalism-sinks

Imagine things were different in America today. That unemployment on average wasn’t the lowest of any presidency at this point in a first term of office, buoyed by cuts in tax rates and regulations. That we were mired in a war on the other side of the world, with Americans impatient that, years on, it seemed to be getting worse, and no end was in sight. And that a porous border and illegal alien criminality wasn’t topping the list of issues of importance to the public.

Democrats took both houses of Congress from Republicans in 2006 by exploiting big problems, in particular the Iraq war. “U.S. forces in Iraq should transition to a more limited mission focused on counter-terrorism, training and logistical support of Iraqi security forces, and force protection of U.S. personnel,” Nancy Pelosi and 11 other Democrat leaders wrote to President Bush in July of that mid-term election year, charging that “your administration lacks a coherent strategy to stabilize Iraq and achieve victory” and there should be “an effective alternative to the current open-ended commitment which is not producing the progress in Iraq we would all like to see.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Will the Supreme Court Get It Right on the Census Citizenship Question? John Merline

By on April 23rd, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/23/will-the-supreme

Court watchers seem to think that the Supreme Court will end up overturning a lower court ruling and allow the Trump administration to add a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.

The New York Times, for example, led its coverage of the arguments on Tuesday by saying: “The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed ready on Tuesday to allow the Trump administration to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census, which critics say would undermine its accuracy by discouraging both legal and unauthorized immigrants from filling out the forms.”

Let’s leave aside the newest euphemism for illegal immigrants. (Immigrants who are here illegally are “unauthorized”? Does that mean bank robbers can say they’re just making an “unauthorized withdrawal”?)

The practical case against adding a citizenship question falls apart once you start looking at it.

Here are the main arguments:

Asking about citizenship has no place in the census.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum: Measles was eradicated … now it’s back, thanks to anti-vaxxers

By on April 23rd, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/measles-was-eradicated-now-its-back-thanks-to-anti-vaxxers/

More than 110,000 cases of the measles have been reported worldwide since the beginning of the year. Countries once free of the measles are now in danger of reverting to the days before such a blessing existed.

Israel’s national carrier, El Al, has set up a special inoculation station at Ben-Gurion Airport to vaccinate its employees against the measles. So far, some 250 ground and flight crews have been vaccinated, with likely more to come.

The makeshift clinic was created after the Israeli Health Ministry ordered all local airlines to inoculate their staff and called on the Israeli public to get fully vaccinated before taking any trips out of the country.

The directive came after a 43-year-old El Al flight attendant contracted the measles during a flight that set out from John F. Kennedy Airport on March 26 and landed in Tel Aviv the following day. Although the woman was otherwise healthy and had been vaccinated as a child, she nevertheless caught the contagious disease, as she had received only one shot of the vaccine, rather than the recommended two doses these days. After being rushed to the hospital upon landing in Israel, she fell into a coma, and is thought to have suffered brain damage.The same fate befell a 10-year-old boy on a flight to Israel.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Sri Lanka Bombings Terror group’s video shows what it says are Easter attackers, as authorities search for accomplices, weapons By Niharika Mandhana and Jon Emont

By on April 23rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sri-lanka-bombings-linked-to-new-zealand-mosque-shootings-government-says-11556009023

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka—Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Easter bombings that killed more than 300 people in Sri Lanka, and posted a video that it said showed the suicide bombers, dressed in black robes, declaring their loyalty to the group.

“The executors of the attack that targeted citizens of coalition states and Christians in Sri Lanka two days ago were Islamic State fighters,” Islamic State said, according to SITE, a security consulting firm that tracks militant groups.

Hours earlier, Sri Lanka’s defense minister said the government had information indicating the plotters were reacting to last month’s terrorist attack in New Zealand, but the prime minister later Tuesday made clear no direct link had been established.

“It’s possible it could have been because of Christchurch,” said Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. “We don’t know.”

The prime minister said there could be additional attackers still at large, some armed with explosives.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Bernie Sanders: All Felons, Including Boston Marathon Bomber, Should Be Able to Vote In Prison By Jack Crowe

By on April 23rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bernie-sanders-all-felons-including-boston-marathon-bomber-should-be-able-to-vote-in-prison/

Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) said Monday that all felons, including terrorists and rapists, should be able to vote while serving out their prison sentences.

Asked during a CNN town hall in New Hampshire whether he believed people like the Boston marathon bomber should be disenfranchised, Sanders said no, and suggested that all restrictions on voting rights erode American democracy.

“If somebody commits a serious crime, sexual assault, murder, they’re going to be punished,” he said. “They may be in jail for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, their whole lives. That’s what happens when you commit a serious crime. But I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people.”

“Because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘well that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote,’ or ‘that person did that, not going to let that person vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope,” he continued. “So, I believe that people commit crimes, they pay the price. They get out of jail, I believe they certainly should have the right to vote. But I believe even if they’re in jail, they’re paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy.”

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HISTORY Comments turned off

The Cathedral: Mirror of the West, Then and Now By Victor Davis Hanson

By on April 23rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/notre-dame-cathedral-fire-religion-decline-western-civilization/

We are not much interested today in building such expressions of transcendence.

The recent fires at the medieval Catholic cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris almost immediately were seen as a referendum on the West, even by those who are not Christians.

How at the supposed apex of Western technology, science, and affluence could a sudden inferno devour the spire, roof, and some of the interior icons of the nearly 800-year-old cathedral, itself perched on the bank of a river, and the survivor of centuries of desecrations, remodels, expansions, and repairs, when the arts of preservation, fire prevention and response, and engineering were supposedly backward by our standards?

Logically or not, many saw the fire as a curtain call for the West, or at least an eclipse of the ancient marriage of European Christian belief and scientific brilliance that together produced the most impressive and beautiful expressions of Western transcendence.

And now the second-most-revered church in the West smolders — something that neither French revolutionaries nor World War II bombers could accomplish.

In our smug era of high tech and conspicuous consumption, Western Europeans and Americans do not build Christian cathedrals anymore. Our challenge is simply to keep standing — at least sort of — what we inherited.

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