EDUCATION Comments turned off

The New Bar Exam Puts DEI Over Competence ‘NextGen’ seeks to ‘eliminate any aspects of our exams that could contribute to performance disparities’ by testing fewer areas of law and probing each subject less deeply. By Jay Mitchell

Posted By on May 20th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-bar-exam-puts-dei-over-competence-ncbe-family-law-schools-9c0dd4e8?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

The bar exam is about to get a nationwide overhaul. The National Conference of Bar Examiners, or NCBE, which creates and administers the uniform bar exam, plans to roll out a revamped version of the bar exam, which it calls the “NextGen” exam, in 2026. After attending the NCBE’s annual meeting this month, I have serious concerns about how this test will affect law students, law schools and the legal profession.

The proposed NextGen exam will be shorter than the current two-day evaluation, test fewer areas of law, and probe each subject less deeply. Certain topics won’t be tested at all. The exam will also feature new client-interaction exercises, though it’s unclear what this feature will look like and how the NCBE will ensure it is graded objectively.

Some of these changes may prove salutary. Working with clients, for example, is an essential feature of any law practice. But the new exam also seems far less rigorous and could hamper the ability of states to determine who should be admitted to practice law. The results could be ruinous. States can’t maintain functional court systems unless clients and judges can trust the basic competency and integrity of attorneys admitted to the bar.

The proposed exam will also eliminate family law and trusts and estates as tested subjects. Tens of millions of Americans live in rural areas and small towns, where legal needs typically revolve around family law (marriage, divorce, custody and adoption) and probate matters (estate administration, guardianships and conservatorships). In many rural areas, residents’ access to justice depends on the ability of only a handful of practicing attorneys. These residents need to know that new lawyers have the foundational knowledge to serve their needs or at least the threshold understanding necessary to refer them elsewhere. If these areas of legal practice are eliminated from the exam, it will be difficult to replenish the requisite knowledge in our lawyer ranks.

But perhaps the biggest concern is the NCBE’s use of the NextGen exam to advance its “diversity, fairness and inclusion” agenda. Two of the organization’s stated aims are to “work toward greater equity” by “eliminat[ing] any aspects of our exams that could contribute to performance disparities” and to “promote greater diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.” The NCBE reinforces this message by touting its “organization-wide efforts to ensure that diversity, fairness, and inclusion pervade its test products and services.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Durham Exposes Robert Mueller’s Failure The new report exposes how the original Russia probe covered up the FBI’s offenses.

Posted By on May 20th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/special-counsel-john-durham-report-robert-mueller-donald-trump-russia-collusion-bf7023c8?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Special counsel John Durham’s report on the Russia collusion fiasco deserves more attention than it is getting, and its critics are dismissing it for one big reason: The 306 pages describe the great failure of original special counsel Robert Mueller.

Mr. Mueller was named special counsel in May 2017, after Democrats and media claimed Donald Trump fired FBI director Jim Comey to stop the bureau’s investigation into the Russia collusion tale. Mr. Mueller hunted for evidence that Mr. Trump was a Russian mole but couldn’t find it. Now the Durham report makes clear that the Mueller team failed to investigate how the collusion probe began as a dirty trick by the Clinton campaign and how the FBI went along for the ride.

The report includes evidence that those engaged in the FBI’s initial Crossfire Hurricane probe and Democratic attorneys used their positions on the Mueller investigating team to cover up the FBI mess. Among Mr. Mueller’s initial hires were FBI agent Peter Strzok, FBI analyst Brian Auten and FBI lawyer Lisa Page—all at the epicenter of the Crossfire fiasco.

Of Mr. Mueller’s 18 attorneys, several worked in the Obama Justice Department during the Crossfire probe, including Andrew Weissmann—a highly partisan Democrat who attended Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election night party. They had a strong incentive to hide the truth.

HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

How Biden’s Reckless Border Policies Are Ruining America By Janet Levy

Posted By on May 19th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/how_bidens_reckless_border_policies_are_ruining_america.html

In taking a wrecking ball to President Trump’s effective policies to secure the border, Joe Biden has unleashed an unprecedented crisis of public safety and national security.

A flood of illegals is precipitating an increase in violent crime and aiding drug- and human-trafficking cartels. It is also adding to the homeless, burdening government entitlement programs, and spreading disease.

Upon taking office, Biden revoked Trump’s order to build a wall along the southern border. He also ended Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy, the safe third country rule, and most recently (on May 12) Title 42 restrictions. The first made asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their claims were processed. The second mandated that asylum seekers passing through a third country must first apply for refugee status there. The third allowed authorities to immediately expel illegal border crossers, giving them no right of appeal.

Biden replaced “remain in Mexico” with a catch-and-release policy, allowing border crossers to stay in the U.S. until an immigration court resolved their case, which could take four to seven years. Though Title 42 restrictions remained in force till May 12, they were applied to only 30% of asylees after Biden took charge, so most illegal border crossers were released into the country. The Biden administration also set up Regional Processing Centers in countries south of the border. And the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) One mobile app allows foreign nationals in Mexico to schedule immigration appointments at eight points of entry in Arizona, Texas, and California up to 14 days in advance.

Experts say these changes, ending Title 42 in particular, will only benefit cartels running a billion-dollar migrant smuggling business and result in more drug running, child labor, human trafficking, and sex slavery. Around 4.9 million illegals have crossed the border since Biden took office, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported in April last year. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) makes a similar estimate: 5 million. Fox News described a 900% surge in migrants from China alone. Many Americans are frustrated by this deluge. When a reporter sided with protestors carrying ‘Let Them Cross’ signs in El Paso, Senator Ted Cruz challenged him with: “Do you know how much illegal immigration we had in 2020? In 2020, the last year of the Trump presidency, we had the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years.”

According to border expert and author Todd Bensman, the migrants at the border hail from over 160 countries and this could be an espionage and security risk, especially with asylees from China, Pakistan, Syria, and Chechnya. Eighty asylees on the FBI’s terror watch-list crossed the border this year; 98 were apprehended last year. In the last several weeks, he says, the app program and the queues at the border are collapsing and illegals are crowding over the border without waiting for permission. 

BOOKS Comments turned off

Book Launch: Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser

Posted By on May 19th, 2023

The highly anticipated book, Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership, curated and authored by Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser, will launch on May 21 at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem.

This book is unique and long overdue. It is a thought-provoking work which analyzes and documents the failure of American Jewish leadership to effectively confront the ideological and physical onslaught that many in the Jewish community are experiencing. The contributing writers describe and explain the failure of Jewish leaders to stop the ongoing demonization and defamation of Jews and Israel in the media, on college campuses, in high schools, and even Congress.

This failure is scandalous, and reminiscent of Jewish leadership inactions during the Holocaust. It is due to several factors, but primarily a lack of understanding of the emerging threats and a deficit of courage. Too often Jewish leaders seem more loyal to a progressive ideology than to the safety of Jews.

The book sheds light on the importance of leadership and the crucial role which Jewish leadership must play to defend and protect American Jewry during a time of growing hostility.

Jacobs, Goldwasser, and a distinguished group of contributing authors — Alan Dershowitz, Mort Klein, Caroline Glick, Richard Landes, Jonathan Tobin, and Thane Rosenbaum among them — skillfully analyze the ideological onslaughts and physical threats that have become all too common. The authors delve into the pervasive presence of anti-Semitism in numerous spheres of American society, from news media to educational institutions, religious organizations, and, more recently, from political leaders.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The FBI Didn’t Persecute Hillary. It Protected Her. That’s the big reveal in the 306-page Durham report. Eli Lake

Posted By on May 19th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-fbi-trump-durham-report?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

For the last seven years, conventional wisdom has told us a singular story about the FBI and Hillary Clinton. That story had a clear headline: the FBI was out to get her. 

Let’s go back to 2016, when the FBI was investigating both major presidential candidates in the run-up to the election. 

At the time, the bureau was looking into Donald Trump’s campaign’s ties to Russia as well as Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

In July of 2016, FBI Director James Comey announced that no charges would be brought against the Democratic nominee. Then, eleven days before the election, he said that in light of new information having surfaced, the Clinton investigation had been reopened. Finally, on November 6, two days before Election Day, Comey announced that the matter was closed—again.

To this day, Democrats remain convinced that Comey’s second to last announcement—which, we can all agree, was ham-handed—cast a pall over the campaign, tipping the scales in favor of the Republican nominee.

It’s a neat story. But it’s only half of it.

That’s the big reveal in Special Counsel John Durham’s 306-page Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns, which came out late last week. 

If the Durham report shows anything, it is that the FBI leadership bent over backward to protect Clinton’s campaign while launching a full investigation into Trump’s campaign on the thinnest of pretexts. In other words, the FBI was not really the Clinton campaign’s persecutor, as so many insisted over the past few years, as much as its protector.

“The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” the Durham report observes, referring to the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, “reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.” 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Reflections on the revolution in the west How to put the nation back into conservatism and conservatism back into the nation Melanie Phillips

Posted By on May 19th, 2023

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/reflections-on-the-revolution-in?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Reflections on the revolution in the west

In the 1990s, I managed to secure for myself entry to an inner circle of hell by arguing that, in general, children were best served by being brought up by their own father and mother. Of course, I said, some marriages would always fail; and of course, many lone parents did a heroic job in bringing up their children. But surely it was best to avoid such disadvantage wherever possible. This was denounced as heartless, cruel, anti-feminist and, of course, right-wing.  

Somewhat to my surprise, therefore, I was approached by a TV producer to make a film about my views on the destruction of the nuclear family. Since I was already cancelled in the best circles, I asked the producer why he wanted to publicise my views. “You’re so reactionary, you’re now in the very vanguard of progress”, he replied.

Given what I went on to say in subsequent years about the destruction of education, multiculturalism, the demonisation of men, Islamisation and anthropogenic global warming theory, I obviously became so progressive I managed to advance to the very end of time itself and met myself coming back.

The onslaught on the traditional family was an early example of a world turned upside down, in which certain kinds of disadvantage became a human right; victim status weaponised bullying and bigotry against those who were denied this status; and untold numbers of children were sacrificed on the altars of mass fatherlessness, the wilful promotion of ignorance in the classroom and the infantilisation of adults.

This all-out onslaught on the nation and its core social and moral norms has created our age of unreason. Language has been hijacked and evacuated of meaning.  Anti-racism means people are now judged, and damned, not for the content of their character but for the white colour of their skin. People with male genitalia are said to be women and are indeed hailed as female role models. Dissent means vilification, character assassination and intimidation.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Look Ahead, Not Backwards, to Hold the Justice Department Accountable The minimal tools to, at the very least, embarrass top officials and expose the existing rot within the Justice Department are in the hands of House Republicans. They would do well to use them. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on May 19th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/18/look-ahead-not-backwards-to-hold-the-justice-department-accountable/

Release of Special Counsel John Durham’s report on law enforcement and intelligence misconduct related to the 2016 presidential election has been met with outrage, recriminations, and a justified amount of vindication for those, including President Donald Trump, who helped expose the brazen operation from the start. 

Trump is taking a well-deserved victory lap, to the extent one can be had, punctuated with angry denunciations of the scandal’s perpetrators. Conservative media is carefully dissecting the report to confirm once again the existence of what can only be described as a legitimate seditious conspiracy—not the phony January 6 sort—concocted by the country’s most powerful interests to take down a duly elected president. U.S. Representative James Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, invited Durham to testify next week.

Unfortunately, the collective reaction is an exercise in futility. No one, as many observers readily admit, will be held criminally responsible. The corrupt scheme’s collaborators receive book royalties, speaking fees, and coveted gigs at cable news outlets and nonprofits rather than lengthy prison sentences despite Senator Rand Paul’s wishcasting. 

Some, including Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, populate the upper echelons of the BIden regime. Biden himself played a key role in perpetuating the destructive lie.

But relitigating the past in the public square, as vindicating as it may feel, is fruitless. The same corrupt elements are still at work, taking aim not just at Trump but his allies and voters in the shadow of another national election. Trump summed up the current threat in a message posted Wednesday morning on Truth Social.  

Trump’s unjustified optimism in the final sentence notwithstanding, he is correct. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s handpicked special prosecutor, a man who has not been seen in public since his appointment more than seven months ago, is hauling everyone from Mar-a-Lago maids to former Vice President Mike Pence before grand juries considering charges against Trump for his role in January 6 and the handling of classified documents. A steady drip of leaks from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office keeps Trump’s suspected criminality on the front pages; at the same time, Smith refuses to disclose the names of taxpayer-paid staff conducting the unwieldy investigations.

Federal indictments are imminent.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Dirty Money that brought down banks is trying to bring down a Supreme Court Justice. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on May 19th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-dirty-money-behind-the-lynching-of-clarence-thomas/

The country is witnessing the second high-profile lynching effort of Justice Clarence Thomas. Even while the media ignores the millions from foreign nationals passing through shell companies to the Biden family, it has pushed invented scandals for Thomas while demanding his resignation to make way for a radical leftist Biden court appointee.

While no one expects anything but lies and smears from the media, few are aware of how the smear campaign against Justice Thomas was organized and who is funding it.

Before it was splashed all over the media, the Clarence Thomas smears were mostly generated by ProPublica with articles such as “Clarence Thomas’ Secret Life of Luxury” then rebroadcast by the media in stories such as “ProPublica: GOP megadonor paid private school tuition for grandnephew of Justice Clarence Thomas” which keep the smear campaign going.

While the media is deeply interested in who paid for Thomas’ grandnephew’s education, it’s uninterested in where the money that funds ProPublica’s smear campaign is coming from.

ProPublica has amplified the coverage of Harlan Crow, a conservative donor who is friendly with Thomas, but is less interested in discussing some of the men who back its operations. Its leftist smear campaigns are funded by the man who helped bring down the economy with his abusive tactics, a former Enron executive and FTX crypto-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

The money that brought down banks is now trying to bring down a Supreme Court Justice.

ProPublica is a leftist nonprofit set up as an “ethical watchdog” by Herbert Sandler, listed by Time Magazine, as one of the 25 people to blame for the financial crisis of 2008, and more bluntly by Saturday Night Live as, ““people who should be shot”. (In a sign of the power and influence of the Sandlers, the SNL skit was quickly censored and cannot be found on NBC.)

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘Murdered Like Animals’: The Genocide of Christians in Nigeria Reaches New Heights by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on May 19th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19648/murdered-like-animals-the-genocide-of-christians

[S]ince the Islamic uprising began in 2009, 52,250 Christians “have been butchered or hacked to death” in Nigeria. — Report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (“Intersociety”), April 10, 2023.

In just the first 100 days of this year [Jan.1-April 10], “no fewer than 1,041 defenseless Christians were hacked to death by Nigeria’s Jihadists …” — Report by Intersociety, April 10, 2023.

[R]oughly 15-20% of the slaughters were attributed to “Nigerian security forces, particularly the Nigerian Army.”

By far, however, the worst killers are the “Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen who specifically target and massacre Christians and wantonly destroy or burn down their sacred places of worship and learning; homes and farmlands.” — Report by Intersociety, April 10, 2023.

The Intersociety report makes clear that the jihadists are fervently trying to cleanse Nigeria of any Christian presence….

“This Jihad is based on the Doctrine of Hate taught in Mosques and Islamic Madrasas in northern Nigeria as well as the supremacist ideology of the Fulani. Using both conventional (violent) Jihad, and stealth (civilization) Jihad, the Islamists of northern Nigeria seem determined to turn Nigeria into an Islamic Sultanate and replace Liberal Democracy with Sharia as the National Ideology. … We want a Nigeria, where citizens are treated equally before the law at all levels….” – Christian Association of Nigeria, May 4, 2018.

Turkey…, once a bastion of ancient Christianity with churches everywhere, has, after the Turkish conquest, become so thoroughly Islamized, that its ancient basilicas, such as Hagia Sophia, now serve as mosques.

Although the report appeared on April 10, the massacres and atrocities have continued relentlessly since.

Sunday, Apr. 16…. One 5-year-old boy was beheaded.

[N]ews outlets—including the Catholic News Agency—fail to identify the religions of either the murdered or their murderers. This video, which otherwise captures the tragic aftermath, refers to the Muslim terrorists as “bandits” and their Christian victims as “villagers.”

Esther Duniya, a 14-year-old Christian girl, was abducted from school and forcibly converted to Islam. Instead of helping her father and aunt recover her, police handed the girl “to Daawa, the Islamic group in charge – of converting and indoctrinating Muslims converts….” — The Guardian, May 10, 2023.

[T]he government of Muhammadu Buhari, the Muslim president of Nigeria, has only “protected” the “Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen” to “the extent that the Jihadists now invade any Christian Community of their target at will and slaughter its natives and takeover their lands and properties at will.” — Report by Intersociety, April 10, 2023.

According to several Christian leaders in Nigeria (see below), the reason formerly simple Fulani herdsmen have, since Buhari became president in 2015, managed to kill nearly twice as many Christians as the “professional” terrorists (Boko Haram, ISWA, etc.), is “because President Buhari is also of the Fulani ethnic group.” — Breitbart, June 27, 2018.

“Under President Buhari, the murderous Fulani herdsmen enjoyed unprecedented protection and favoritism… Rather than arrest and prosecute the Fulani herdsmen, security forces usually manned by Muslims from the North offer them protection as they unleash terror with impunity on the Nigerian people.” — Rev. Musa Asake, the General Secretary of the Christian Association of Nigeria, January 16, 2018.

“What Obama, John Kerry and Hilary Clinton did to Nigeria by funding and supporting [current president Muhammadu] Buhari in the 2015 presidential election and helping Boko Haram in 2014/2015 was sheer wickedness and the blood of all those killed by the Buhari administration, his Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram over the last 5 years are on their hands.” — Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigeria’s former Minister of Culture and Tourism, churchmilitant.com, February 21, 2020.

Despite all this, the American “mainstream” remains committed to describing the jihad in Nigeria as a byproduct of “inequality” and “poverty,” to quote former US President Bill Clinton, who once explained what was “fueling all this stuff” (the “stuff” being a reference to the genocide of Christians in Nigeria).

In their quest to blame anything and everything but Islamic, specifically jihadist, ideology, even climate change has been added to the mainstream arsenal of reasons fueling the genocide of Christians.

Worst of all has been the Biden administration’s response. In 2020, Trump placed Nigeria on the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern—that is, nations which engage in, or tolerate violations of, religious freedom. Under Biden, however, the State Department removed Nigeria—this nation where one Christian is butchered every two hours—from the list.

For mainstream media and politicians, black lives—52,250 now and counting—do not matter — at least not when those lives are Christians’ being slaughtered by Muslims.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Have You Looked Inside Any of These Books? Page through a few of the titles removed from Florida schools—some outright pornographic—and ask yourself if kids should be reading them.Dave Seminara

Posted By on May 19th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/have-you-looked-inside-any-of-these-books

President Joe Biden and the Democrats think that they’ve found a potent campaign issue in “book banning.” Indeed, a recent piece in Politico asserts that the Biden campaign has “made the issue of book banning a surprisingly central element of his campaign’s opening salvos.” Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been the most prominent Republican leader supporting the removal of inappropriate books from schools. I live in Florida, and I checked out five of these “banned” books to see why they were removed from school libraries.

All five books were easy to find at my local library. They are categorized as “young adult,” i.e., titles intended for children ages 12 to 18, according to the American Library Association. After reviewing them, I’m convinced that the overwhelming majority of the public wouldn’t find their removal controversial, if they knew what was contained in these provocative, and in some cases pornographic, titles.

Politico quotes a Democratic pollster who claimed that “book banning tests off the charts,” with Americans overwhelmingly opposing it. “They associate it with really authoritarian regimes, Nazi Germany,” said Celinda Lake. This is likely because the media and Democrats have misled the public in several ways. First, in using the word “ban,” they’ve created the impression that books removed from schools are also being removed from public libraries and bookstores. They’re not.

Second, prominent figures on the left have not told the truth about the content of the “banned” books and which ones have been removed from schools. For example, many progressives promoted a false claim that Duval County, Florida banned books about Robert Clemente, Hank Aaron, and Rosa Parks. Duval County schools wrote a post on February 17 correcting the misinformation, but that didn’t stop Alexandria Ocasio Cortez from blaming the GOP for allegedly prohibiting a book about Parks in Duval County more than a month later in a speech on the floor of Congress. “The Life of Rosa Parks— this apparently is too woke for the Republican Party,” she said.

The first book I looked at, This Book is Gay, written by transgender author Juno Dawson, is marketed as a “bestselling exploration of sexuality and gender for young adults.” Dawson writes in one chapter that “perhaps the most important skill you will master as a gay or bi man is the timeless classic, the handjob.” She continues, “Something they don’t teach you in school, is that in order to be able to cum at all, you or your partner may need to finish off with a handy.” The book also offers graphic descriptions of oral and anal sex, among other adult topics. “Being on bottom makes a dude no less manly than his top partner,” Dawson writes of anal sex. “He is literally taking it like a man.”