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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Free Speech on the Quad The First Amendment makes a comeback, but watch out for the bias reporting team.

It’s slow going, but the campaign to highlight censorship on campus may be getting somewhere. That’s the message of a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (Fire), which tracks the speech bullies in academia.

Fire’s 10th annual report surveyed speech policies at 345 four-year public colleges and 104 private schools. The good news is that the share of colleges with “red-light” speech codes that substantially bar constitutionally protected speech has declined to 39.6%, a nearly 10% drop in the last year and the lowest share since 2008. Over the last nine years the number of institutions that don’t seriously threaten speech has tripled to 27. Several colleges including the University of Wisconsin have adopted policies that affirm (at least in theory) their commitment to free speech.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte deserves some credit for this free-speech breakthrough. Last August he sent letters to the presidents of public schools with red-light codes inquiring about their unconstitutional policies. While public universities are bound by the First Amendment, private colleges can legally restrict speech, ironically thanks to their First Amendment right to freedom of association. Nearly twice as many private universities (58.7%) maintain restrictive speech codes as public colleges (33.9%).

As Fire notes, “although acceptance of federal funding does confer some obligations upon private colleges (such as compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws), compliance with the First Amendment is not one of them.” Private schools can therefore discriminate against faculty and students based on their political expression, but not gender or race.

The Obama Administration has used Title IX, which bans sexual discrimination, to threaten schools over their handling of sexual misconduct and assault claims. And its expansive definition of sexual harassment, which encompasses all “unwelcome” conduct of a sexual nature, infringes on speech. Colleges have adopted the Education Department’s “guidance” in responding to sexual harassment claims to avoid sanctions. In June 2015 a tenured Louisiana State University professor was fired for alleged sexual harassment because she used off-color humor. Fire is litigating the case.

Even as some colleges drop speech codes to avoid legal challenges, many have established “bias” reporting systems that solicit complaints about offensive speech. As Fire explains, these systems encourage “students to report on one another—and on faculty members—whenever they subjectively perceive that someone’s speech or expression is biased.”

The Senate’s Shutdown Follies No one knows more about ‘fake news’ than Harry Reid.

This has been a disappointing political year for Democrats, and those with Senate seats decided to end it with a final blaze of ineptitude. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and colleagues were threatening a partial government shutdown ahead of a midnight deadline, only to fold shortly before we went to press on Friday.

On Thursday the House passed a continuing resolution funding the government through April; the 326-96 vote included a majority of both parties. The House has now left town for the year, but all 46 Senate Democrats deemed the measure inadequate. They dropped their objections with the vote looming, but there are more than a few ironies folded into their obstruction.

One is that liberals used to say that holding up a budget (at least when Republicans take the hostage) would hurt the economy and lead to anarchy, if not an extinction-level crisis. The truth is that American life goes on when federal functions not deemed “essential” are interrupted for a couple days until Washington resolves its differences. Usually shutdowns also provide an education in how few functions really are essential.

Now Democrats have rediscovered the power of the purse, just in time for a Trump Administration. We opposed the various Republican brinksmanship strategies over the years not because they were illegitimate but because they were politically inept and likely to fail on the merits. This Democratic stand was dumb and illegitimate.

Mr. Manchin’s complaint is that health benefits for 16,300 retired coal miners expire on Dec. 31. But the continuing resolution has a stopgap preserving these benefits through April while the debate continues. If Democrats had blocked the CR, the miners would lose their benefits on Dec. 31.

Mr. Manchin and the likes of Sherrod Brown of Ohio were also demanding that Congress bail out the coal miners union pension fund. This is the kind of request that typically requires legislation and in any case the fund is solvent for a couple more years, but this Democratic stand on the alleged behalf of the working man is a little rich.

President Obama has been a four-star general in the war against coal. Then there’s Hillary Clinton’s campaign platform, which she herself managed to describe in May as “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” The unions would have more money to pay for pensions and health care if Democrats didn’t do so much to bankrupt the industry.

Meanwhile, Minority Leader Harry Reid gave his farewell address on Thursday, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place, because everybody is so happy he’s leaving the Senate. The Nevadan used the occasion to denounce the scourge of “fake news.” “Separating real from fake has never been more important,” said the man who once told a completely fabricated story about Mitt Romney’s taxes.

In Reports on Parole and Prison Discipline, the Gray Lady Does Disparate Impact BY AndrewC. McCarthy

Despite investing weeks of time in the production of this week’s lengthy reports decrying racism in the state of New York’s prison administration and parolesystem, the New York Times is unable to demonstrate that racism was the reason for the result in any specific case. You needn’t take my word for it. As the Times’ own investigative team puts it, “[I]t is not possible to know whether race is a factor in any particular parole decision.” That’s after scrutinizing thousands of them.

Nevertheless, in agitprop that barely pretends to be straight news reporting, the Gray Lady flatly accuses the state of systematically using race as the factor that determines which prisoners are detained and which are sprung from confinement. The endemic racism is apparently a secret even to the racists themselves. Drawing on vignettes that are comical in their revelations of incompetence and disinterest on the part of parole commissioners, the Times suggests that the commissioners barely know the race, or much else, about the inmates whose cases they decide. But why let that spoil a good narrative?

In this instance, the narrative is built on the social justice warrior’s favorite artifice: the “disparate impact” theory of discrimination. The idea, of course, is that even though it cannot be proved that racism occurred in any particular case, we can infer that race – and only race – is the dispositive factor if the aggregated outcomes are worse for one race than another. In the disparate impact scheme, two rules are observed at all times: (1) ignore the fact that racial discrimination is an abomination precisely because it is a conscious act, an operation of the mind that does not happen inadvertently; and (2) take as a given that our society is pervasively racist, such that it is irrelevant whether any single one of us harbors racial animus – especially those of us whose allegedly racist decision-making is being analyzed.

Since those are the operating assumptions, is it any wonder that the reader must wade through a full 23 paragraphs before finding the most salient bit of information in the Times’s parole story:

The Times did not have access to the full range of information the [parole] board took into account. This includes inmates’ time in county jail, full arrest histories, complete prison disciplinary records and whether required prison programs were completed.

That’s right. Common sense would suggest that, to find the explanation for any disparities in parole determinations involving felons whose offenses appear similar, one should look first at the factors well known to influence parole decisions heavily: Is one guy’s rap sheet worse than the other’s? Has one guy behaved himself better while in custody and thus shown himself less likely to recidivate if released? But the Times, we learn (after 23 paragraphs), does not have this rudimentary information.

For most people, lack of access to the essential data would be cause to refrain from writing or publishing a high-profile news report – after all, any conclusion would necessarily be unreliable. For social justice warriors and their paper of record, though, it’s an opportunity to scream, “Racism!” Who could pass that up?

VICTOR SHARPE: A BLIGHT ON THE CITY OF ROSES

The city that hosted anti-Trump demos after the election has a record of blatant anti-Zionism, which is a crude mask for its twin, anti-Semitism.

The late November sky was gray and murky over Portland, Oregon when hundreds of Israel haters descended upon City Hall with the sole purpose of driving yet another nail into the reputation, honor and survival of the one Jewish state in the world: Israel.

The meeting was held in the city known for its renowned and beautiful rose test gardens, yet for supporters and defenders of Israel very little was coming up roses.

According to a Jewish Federation of Greater Portland survey taken some years ago, the Jewish population numbers some 47,500. Yet from this surprisingly high number of Jewish residents in this Pacific Northwest city barely a handful came to City Hall to defend and support the Jewish state.

In stark contrast, the City Commissioners were assailed with a tsunami of anti-Israel falsehoods so ugly and groundless that they could only have been manufactured in the fevered minds of those consumed by a corrosive and anti-Semitic hatred.

There is now a great danger to the integrity of the Portland City Council if it succumbs to the mendacious anti-Israel hate fest launched upon it by the notorious BDS movement in collusion with far left church groups and the renegade and morally confused organization calling itself Jewish Voice for Peace: All masquerading as human rights organizations.

Among the many falsehoods leveled against the embattled Jewish state – and the grotesque demonization of it – was the regurgitated myth of Rachel Corrie as a valiant peace activist. She was anything but.

Before the City Commissioners was the demand that Portland, Oregon divest from its investment pool all those companies that have business with the Jewish state, such as Caterpillar.

Among the many falsehoods leveled against the embattled Jewish state – and the grotesque demonization of it – was the regurgitated myth of Rachel Corrie as a valiant peace activist. She was anything but.

At best she was a foolish and indoctrinated useful idiot for Hamas. At worst she was a hater of America and Israel, but that did not stop her relatives from being present and poisoning the meeting with the pernicious myths they have helped weave around her.

In his article titled, Rachel Corrie Was No Peace Activist, Jonathan S. Tobin wrote a scathing expose of the Rachel Corrie myth, which has so effectively been exploited by BDS, ISM and others to disfigure Israel’s image and delegitimize it.

Trump’s EPA offensive will be the scientific cat fight of our time By Joseph Smith

After eight years of torment at the hands of President Obama and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, the electoral shoe is now on the other foot, with Republican President-Elect Donald Trump preparing to take the helm in January.

The real battle to come may be fought on the ground of climate change, the sacred cow of the left. A pair of articles posted at Real Clear Politics on the nomination of Oklahoma attorney general and EPA nemesis Scott Pruitt as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) highlight the challenge for Republicans and the distress for Democrats.

The Hill recounts the “Supreme Court’s landmark 2007 climate change ruling” and the Obama EPA’s subsequent 2009 “Endangerment Finding” that carbon dioxide “threatens both public health and welfare.”

The result of the Endangerment Finding was to “pave the way for EPA to finalize the proposed greenhouse gas emission standards for light-duty vehicles,” among other actions.

Since Congress has been unwilling to intervene in the EPA’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act, the task at hand for the incoming EPA administrator, according to The Hill, is to reverse the Endangerment Finding:

As long as the Endangerment Finding stands, any EPA, including one headed by Pruitt, will be in court defending against any subsidiary attempt to halt or reverse any regulation of carbon dioxide[.] … So the Endangerment Finding must be reversed.

The Hill predicts “the scientific cat fight of our time”:

The academy is going to howl, and Washington’s science lobbies … are going to go berserk.

… In nominating Pruitt, the administration is signaling that it is clearly up to such a fight – and not just over climate change.

Pruitt to Dismantle EPA Climate Agenda By Daniel John Sobieski

Personnel is policy, as they say, and despite his meeting with the High Priest of Climatology, Al Gore, president-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to be the new head at EPA, shows Trump is serious about pulling back the curtain to expose climate fraud, leaving climate zealots as unsettled as the alleged “science” they trumpet.

Pruitt has already fought the various unconstitutional power grabs that essentially established it as the fourth and unelected branch of government. As Tom Borelli notes in Conservative Review:

Pruitt’s concerns of EPA overreach also includes the agency’s controversial, “Waters of the U.S.” rule that significantly expanded the federal government’s regulatory reach to include ditches on private land. During the presidential campaign, Trump promised to address the regulation that he called one of the “most intrusive rules” and Pruitt could execute the new president’s goal to neuter its impact.

Every puddle in America, every creek running through a farm or ranch would become subject to regulation by the unelected bureaucrats at the EPA. Pruitt has set dead aim on this and other EPA abuses.

In an article in National Review, coauthored with fellow attorney general of Alabama, Luther Strange, Pruitt opined that climate science isn’t settled and should be subject to a vigorous debate. He argued that EPA dictates are no different than the tyranny America rebelled against in its founding, and that EPA has no justification to bypass the will of the people as expressed through its elected representatives:

The United States was born out of a revolution against, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, an “arbitrary government” that put men on trial “for pretended offences” and “abolish[ed] the Free System of English laws.” Brave men and women stood up to that oppressive government, and this, the greatest democracy of them all, one that is governed by the rule of law and not by men, is the product…..

DONALD TRUMP’S MESSAGE ON PEARL HARBOR DAY

We pause today to remember the 2,403 American heroes who selflessly gave their lives at Pearl Harbor 75 years ago, on a date that will forever live in infamy. We also honor the 1,178 Americans who were wounded, and the countless others who instinctively did their duty, rushing to their posts in the midst of the chaos.

Their shared sacrifice reminds us of the great costs paid by those who came before us to secure the liberties we enjoy, and inspires us to rise to meet the new challenges that stand before us today.

America’s enemies have changed over the past 75 years. But the fact remains, as President Reagan said when first proclaiming National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, ‘there can be no substitute for victory’ in the pursuit of peace. Today we are the bearers of the torch of freedom these brave Americans passed on to us.

In honor of their faithfulness, and for the sake of generations to come, we will never allow that flame to be extinguished.

Donald J. Trump

President-Elect of the United States

Repealing Obamacare: Let’s Get This Done A repeal bill must address all of Obamacare’s shortcomings and replace them with market-based solutions. By Mike Lee & Mark Walker

Since 2010 everyone in the Republican party has agreed that Obamacare must be repealed. Most Republican members of Congress — ourselves included — were elected, and reelected, on the promise that we would take any opportunity possible to end this partisan, ham-handed, and unconstitutional law.

When Republicans attained control of both the House and Senate in 2015, we saw an opportunity to lay the foundation for full repeal under a possible future Republican president. To that end, we penned an article in National Review calling for Congress to send President Obama a bill repealing Obamacare. “It is more important than ever for Republicans in Congress to honor the promises we have made to the American people,” we wrote. “We can do this, before the end of the year, through a procedure known as ‘budget reconciliation.’”

House and Senate Republicans followed through on this promise. We sent a bill to President Obama’s desk that would have repealed much of the law, and was promptly — and unsurprisingly — vetoed. But this exercise was not, by any measure, a fruitless effort.

That bill, H.R. 3762, established the minimum standards against which any future Obamacare repeal bills would be measured. It zeroed out Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates, scrapped the taxes, revived health savings accounts, and rolled back the Medicaid expansion and subsidies. Majorities in the House and Senate are on record voting for all of these items. We can do it again.

But there is no denying that any new reconciliation repeal bill in the next Congress will have a different outcome. This time, when the House and Senate send such a bill to the White House, the incoming president has said he will sign it. That is why it is so important that we get this repeal bill right.

And the bare minimum simply is not enough this time.

A minimum effort could end up hurting many Americans. Specifically, the law’s many insurance mandates drive up health costs and force individuals to violate their deeply held religious convictions. When government bureaucrats and politicians decide that every insurance policy must cover free doctor visits and abortifacients and keep their children on their health-insurance plan through the age 26, Americans who don’t need those options end up paying more for products they don’t want. That’s great for the insurance companies, but not for taxpayers or consumers.

The Coming Sanctuary Cities Crackdown Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel begs President-elect Trump for leniency. Matthew Vadum

Chicago is one of the best places to live in America if you’re one of the millions of illegal aliens present in the country — and free-spending, lawbreaking Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying his best to keep it that way.

Emanuel (D), who used to be a congressman and then President Obama’s chief of staff, dropped by Trump Tower in New York on Wednesday to urge President-elect Donald Trump to abandon his campaign promise to crack down on sanctuary cities.

“I also spoke out strongly about what it means to be a sanctuary city who will support and secure the people who are here, like my grandfather who came to the city of Chicago as a 13-year old 100 years ago,” said Emanuel who actually has no real bargaining power in the equation because he’s on the wrong side of the law.

“Chicago was a sanctuary city for my grandfather. His grandson today is the mayor of this city, which is a testament to the strength of the values and ideals of America.”

Emanuel, of course, is leaving out the values that make Americans inclined to support the rule of law and therefore oppose illegal entry and visa-overstaying by foreigners.

Emanuel is a strident, in-your-face supporter of the sanctuary city movement that gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans. Cheered on by the Left, sanctuary cities hinder immigration enforcement and shield illegal aliens from federal officials as a matter of policy. They ignore immigration detainer forms which ask them to retain illegals in their custody after they would otherwise release them so Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can take custody of them.

These sanctuary cities really ought to be called traitor cities because they are in open rebellion against the United States. Cities are creatures of the states in which they reside and under the Guarantee Clause of the Constitution the U.S. government is required to make sure that states maintain a “Republican Form of Government.” (The same clause also requires the U.S. to “protect each of them [i.e. the states] against Invasion[.]” Perhaps Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions could have his staff look into invoking the “Invasion” portion of the clause.)

These sanctuary cities may as well be flying the Confederate battle flag at city hall in their modern-day campaign of massive resistance against federal immigration law.

Bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Confederates who resisted federal authority and declared war on the United States 155 years ago, or the neo-Confederates in Southern states who resisted federal authority during the civil rights era, Democratic lawmakers and left-wing activists have been working together for decades to create large pockets of immigration anarchy in the United States where the law cannot easily be enforced.

The three criteria for a republican form of government as described in the Guarantee Clause are popular rule, absence of a monarch, and the rule of law. Immigration is a federal responsibility and sanctuary city policies undermine legitimate federal authority and are contrary to the rule of law.

Moreover, actively interfering with immigration enforcement could constitute obstruction of justice and could violate the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act which contains provisions making it unlawful to “harbor” an illegal alien.

The Fact-Challenged Women of ‘The View’ Brag About Their High Fact-Checking Standards By Debra Heine

On “The View” Wednesday, the notoriously fact-challenged women on the panel proudly touted their show’s reputation for being a trusted news source during a discussion about “fake news.”

The women compared their high fact-checking standards to what they say are the low standards of the conservative media website Breitbart.

Newsbusters noticed that Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Whoopi Goldberg were very impressed with their own credibility.

JOY BEHAR: We give opinions but when we give facts it’s checked with ABC News

Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin agreed, to audience applause:

SUNNY HOSTIN: Absolutely. [claps] Absolutely.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Or — you know, we don’t just go to one place. We don’t just go to one place. We actually have — we are held to a different standard. We have to look at many different places before we can say that’s what’s happening.

HOSTIN: Everything is sourced. Everything is sourced.

I don’t watch what PJ Media’s Christian Toto calls “the dumbest show on television,” but I did recently catch Whoopi and Co. on YouTube talking smack about Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick, three women (out of many) who claim to have been sexually harassed and/or assaulted by former President Clinton.

I’m interested to know how many layers of fact-checking they went through in order to be able to confidently proclaim on their show last October that these women (who had never willingly slept with Bill Clinton) were “tramps” who had slept with Bill Clinton.