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June 2019

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Bitter Debate over School Discipline written by Max Eden

By on June 4th, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/05/31/the-bitter

Last month, Congresswoman Kathleen Clark (D-MA) called on Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to resign because the Federal School Safety Commission’s report contained a citation to a study, the findings of which Clark did not like. The Congresswoman did not allege that the study was methodologically flawed. Rather, she simply called the study “racist” because it found that differences in behavior explained the racial disparity in school discipline.

This could have been a teachable moment in the bitter national debate over school discipline. Unfortunately, rather than take this conflagration as an opportunity to review the research literature, journalists seemed more interested in reinforcing Clark’s accusation by innuendo, noting that the study’s author describes himself on Twitter as a “stoic, masculine, conservative.” But for America’s students, the truth matters a great deal more than partisan posturing. Policies predicated on falsehood rarely yield positive results.

If Congresswoman Clark’s contention that the racial discipline gap is not a product of student behavior but rather of “institutional racism” then the Obama administration’s policy of pressuring school districts to decrease discipline disparities by implementing “restorative justice” would have made a great deal of sense. But if, as the study that Clark condemned suggests, the disciplinary disparity is largely a product of behavior, then pressuring school districts toward statistical parity would likely do more harm than good, and Secretary DeVos’s decision to discontinue federal pressure would have been well-founded.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Nolte: Far-Left CNN Suffers Double Digit Primetime Ratings Crash in May

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/06/04/nolte-far-left-cnn-suffers-double-digit-primetime-ratings-crash-in-may/
The news just keeps getting worse and worse for the far-left CNN, which suffered a 16 percent primetime ratings collapse last month.

The embattled CNN, which always lands is far-last place and axed more than 100 jobs already this year, had about as bad of a ratings month as is possible in May.

It’s primetime hours were only able to average a measly 761,000 viewers, while the fake news outlet’s total day viewers dove nine percent (compared to this same month last year) to just 559,000 viewers.

For comparison purposes, Fox News earned three times as many primetime viewers (2.34 million) and more than twice as many total day viewers (1.34 million). What’s more, when compared to this same month last year, Fox lost none of its primetime viewers and only four percent of its total day viewers.

The most astounding thing, though, is that CNN’s ratings are already so low, it seems impossible they could dive any lower — and yet, they always do.

Do you have any idea just how low 761,000 primetime viewers is…?

How does a nationally known brand like CNN, a brand that is decades old, only manage to attract 761,000 viewers throughout a gonzo news month in a country of over 300 million?

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POLITICS Comments turned off

All the Votes Fit to Win The Census status quo favors Democrats—and that’s why they oppose the citizenship question. Howard Husock

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/census-citizenship-question

Just as the Supreme Court considers whether the Trump administration can add a question about citizenship to the 2020 Census, a New York Times report has intensified the redistricting battle. The Times profiles the late Thomas B. Hofeller, a Republican strategist, who, before he died last summer, was called the “Michelangelo of gerrymandering.” According to the report, Hofeller’s estranged daughter discovered hard drives that revealed his influential role in adding the citizenship question to next year’s census.

The files prove, the Times concludes, that “the Trump Administration added the question to the 2020 census to advance Republican Party interests”—specifically, to gerrymander congressional districts favoring the GOP. The Times editorial board added that “the trove of documents . . . makes it hard to see the Trump administration’s efforts to include a citizenship questions . . . as anything but a partisan power grab.” And a Times opinion writer even questioned the Supreme Court’s “legitimacy” if it rules in favor of the administration.

The citizenship question would inevitably discourage noncitizens from responding to the Census, resulting in their absence from the national head count. Their exclusion would affect the drawing of congressional districts, a process constitutionally based on total population, not the number of citizens. Hofeller undoubtedly studied the political implications of counting citizens only: documents submitted to the Court show that his idea dates to 2015. He promoted his proposal to Trump’s transition team, arguing that the added question would ensure enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

New York’s Toxic Schools Chancellor Obsessed with race, Richard Carranza has foisted an empirically baseless and socially destructive program on city schools. Bob McManus

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/richard-carranza-implicit-bias

Three former high-ranking administrators have sued New York City Department of Education and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, claiming that they were demoted because they’re white. It’s an explosive charge, and one that must be proved—but the allegations reflect, at minimum, the intensifying racial tensions since Carranza took charge of the nation’s largest, most complex public school system 13 months ago.

The chancellor threw down the race gauntlet virtually on Day One. He picked fights with white parents on the Upper West Side and in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, promised to achieve racial balance in the city’s famous selective-admissions high schools by essentially “reforming” them out of existence, and commissioned a $23 million “implicit-bias” social-conditioning regimen that lies at the heart of the former administrators’ $80 million lawsuit.

The program, first reported by the New York Post, assumes that New York City’s majority-minority public school students struggle because the system’s white-majority teachers and staff, consciously or otherwise, bring racist attitudes to work with them—and that this, rather than substandard teaching, administrative inertia, and non-classroom-related social issues, is the primary cause of classroom underperformance. Carranza’s reeducation program is the purported remedy, complete with racialist rhetoric, threats, and—if the suit is to be believed—race-based transfers and demotions. Eventually, all of the DoE’s 130,000-plus teachers and administrators will be subjected to such social conditioning.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

From Occupy To AOC: The Rise Of The New Progressives, Part 2 David Marcus

By on June 4th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/04/from-occupy-to-aoc-the-rise-of-th

In the four years between Occupy Wall Street and Trump’s victory, the New Progressives made vast cultural gains and prepared to amass real power.

This is part two of a three-part series. Part one can be read here.

Incubation Under Obama

Barack Obama was a problem for the New Progressive movement. At Occupy Wall Street, many of his policies were attacked, but still with a kind of deference due to him being the first black president. And while Obama may have always been more leftist than he let on — for example, his abrupt “evolution” on gay marriage — he presented himself as a moderate.

Progressives, especially white progressives, had to be careful in attacking him. Some notable black progressives such as Tavis Smiley and Cornel West felt more comfortable taking aim, but in general the New Progressive movement had to bide its time.

During the four years from 2012-2016, the movement made spectacular cultural inroads with everything from movies to news to advertising to corporate culture. By the end of this period, terms like intersectionality and privilege theory had become household words.

In a recent and remarkable Twitter thread, Zack Goldberg shows graphs of searches on LexisNexis for far-left terms like privilege, intersectionality, and a host of others. They go from barely a blip to soaring heights in this period. The beginning of the upswing in almost every case is about 2010, but it wasn’t until 2012, just as the embers of Occupy were dying out, that the vast increases occur.

By the end of 2012-2016, a socialist very nearly became the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, and the New Progressives were poised to capture real political power.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘Same Bus, Different Driver’ By Jay Nordlinger

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/same-bus-different-driver/

One of the most remarkable men I have ever met is Evan Mawarire, a pastor and democracy leader from Zimbabwe. In July 2017, I wrote a piece about him called “Zimbabwe’s Freedom Pastor: Evan Mawarire, the anti-Mugabe.” Robert Mugabe ruled over Zimbabwe from April 1980 to November 2017.

In May 2017, I did a Q&A podcast with Pastor Evan at the Oslo Freedom Forum. At that time, he was out on bail. The authorities had let him have his passport because his parents had turned the title deed to their home over to them. That was the deal: title deed for passport.

Six months later, Mugabe fell from power. This year, in May 2019, Evan Mawarire was back at the Oslo Freedom Forum. I again did a podcast with him: here.

We sat at the same table as before. He was once more out on bail. Once more, his parents had turned over their title deed, in exchange for his passport. Etc., etc.

When we talked, I shared with Evan an old American saying (or perhaps it is British): “second verse, same as the first.” He shared a Zimbabwean saying with me: “same bus, different driver.”

The current regime in Zimbabwe is just as bad as Mugabe’s. In fact, it is a continuation of it. As Pastor Evan says, Mugabe is gone but the Mugabe system remains.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Is Germany Becoming Germany — Again? By Victor Davis Hanson

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/angela-merkel-germany-anti-american-views/

Merkel’s evident anti-Americanism is a familiar refrain. 

The more things change, well, the more they . . . So it is with the perpetual German resentments of the U.S.

Recently German chancellor Angela Merkel reminded us of that German fixation, when she made some astounding statements to the German media that revealed what many Americans had long ago surmised.

Merkel all but announced that Germany, or for that matter Europe itself, is no longer really an ally of the United States: “There is no doubt that Europe needs to reposition itself in a changed world. . . . The old certainties of the post-war order no longer apply.”

She insisted that Germany views the democratic United States as not much different from autocratic Russia and Communist China: Urging Europe to present a united front in the face of Russia, China, and the U.S., she said, “They are forcing us, time and again, to find common positions.” And Merkel concluded that therefore Germany must find “political power” commensurate with its economic clout to forge a new independent European path.

In other words, in the calculus of the supposedly sober and judicious Merkel, the democracy that saved Europe twice from a carnivorous Germany — and Germany once from itself and once from becoming a Soviet vassal — is now similar to the world’s two largest authoritarian dictatorships, nations that not so long ago murdered respectively 30 million and 70 million of their own citizens. And how odd a sentiment for someone who grew up in Communist East Germany, a nightmarish state whose collapse was largely attributable to the Reagan-era effort to bankrupt and roll back the Soviet empire.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum: Pompeo’s justified low expectations for the Mideast plan

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/pompeos-justified-low-expectations-for-the-mideast-plan/

On the very day that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was convening in New York with Jewish leaders, P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas was at a ceremony in Ramallah denouncing the Trump administration’s “deal of disgrace,” which he said “will go to hell.”

In a private meeting on May 28 with the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged that his administration’s “deal of the century” between Israel and the Palestinians is “currently unexecutable.”

No kidding.

Although details of Washington’s much-touted plan for a resolution of the conflict have yet to be revealed, the Palestinian Authority rejected it publicly even before it had begun. This was to be expected. Every previous agreement put forth or brokered by the United States, including those that involved serious Israeli territorial and other concessions, has resulted in greater, not less, Palestinian intransigence and violence towards neighboring Jews.

Indeed, the Fatah-led P.A. in Ramallah and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip both have made it crystal-clear that their goal is neither peace with Israel nor independent Palestinian statehood, but rather the destruction of the Jewish state. In fact, the latter is one of the few issues on which the two terrorist entities are in complete agreement. About all else, they are at each other’s throats, literally and figuratively.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Keeping the Russia collusion hoax alive By Robert Knight –

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jun/2/since-mueller-didnt-explicitly-condemn-trump-democ/

“In the aforementioned book, “The Red Thread,” Ms. West gives chapter and verse on the main characters in the now-obvious cabal to overturn the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Brennan’s admission of voting for the Communist Party ticket in 1976 came during a Sept. 16, 2016, panel discussion at “The Summit on Increasing Diversity in the Intelligence Community” hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year-long fishing expedition found no evidence of the Trump campaign colluding with Russians. So why is Mr. Mueller now hinting that Mr. Trump is somehow guilty after all?

Maybe it’s because the media, which had heaped praise on him, now see him as a sellout or loser. Or maybe it’s because he wants to distract from a glaring fact: He never addressed the real scandal, which is the Obama administration’s flagrant abuse of the FBI and intelligence agencies to damage a presidential campaign and then, failing that, to destroy a sitting president.

Since the “Russia collusion” scandal dominated the news every day, Mr. Mueller may have helped Democrats take the House in 2018. You’d think they’d be grateful. But, since he did not outright nail Mr. Trump, Mr. Mueller’s star has fallen.

For his part, former FBI Director James Comey has been outed as a squirrely partisan who used his office to target Mr. Trump and allowed Hillary Clinton to skate away from actionable offenses connected with her unsecured email server. Her people wiped evidence-bearing computers and used hammers on cellphones? What’s the big deal?

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Why Rep. James Clyburn just walked back his prediction of impeachment By Thomas Lifson

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/why_rep_james_clyburn_just_walked_back_his_prediction_of_impeachment.html
“Do Dems really want to start impeachment against Trump, given the prospect that Obama/Biden/Hillary (and perhaps others in the Obama administration) engaged in what would clearly be impeachable offenses?”

Nancy Pelosi, desperately trying to hold onto her speakership in the face of the Trump-haters (nearly all from safe districts) demanding impeachment, must have been furious at her second-highest-ranking member yesterday saying it’s only a matter of time until President Trump is impeached.  Pelosi knows that if impeachment proceeds, the freshmen Democrats in the House who provided the Democrat majority that made her speaker, most of them elected in swing districts, will face a tough re-election bid.  She would revert back to minority leader in a GOP-run House that could enable a re-elected President Trump to advance his legislative agenda when voters react negatively to what would be an impeachment fiasco.

Rep. James Clyburn is the majority whip in the House of Representatives, second only to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer as an aide to Pelosi.  And yesterday he lobbed what amounts to a stink bomb at Pelosi’s dream of returning as speaker.  Clyburn acknowledged that the public does not yet support impeachment:

Clyburn, who serves as the Democratic whip, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that his party’s leadership is waiting to open an impeachment inquiry until there is broader public support for for [sic] the move, but effectively guaranteed that the president would be impeached at some point.

“We think we have to bring the public along. We’re not particularly interested in the Senate,” Clyburn said, pushing back on Tapper’s suggestion that Democrats might wait to impeach until there is support for the move among Senate Republicans. “We think if we efficiently and effectively educate the public, then we will have done our jobs and we can move on an impeachment vote and it will stand and maybe it will be what needs to be done to incentivize the Senate to act.”

“But it sounds like you’re — you think that the president will be impeached, or at least proceedings will begin in the House at some point, but just not right now?” Tapper went on to ask.

“Yes, exactly what I feel,” Clyburn responded.

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