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March 2021

Georgetown Law Professor Fired for Saying Black Students Underperform in Her Class By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/12/georgetown-law-professor-fired-for-saying-black-students-underperform-in-her-class-n1432003

A Georgetown University law professor was fired and another placed on administrative leave when a Zoom conversation between the two went viral.

The private conversation between Professor Sandra Sellers and Professor David Batson came to light and set off a firestorm, with thousands of students signing petitions demanding “action” from the school.

School dean Bill Treanor said he was “appalled” and that the statements made by the two professors were “reprehensible.”So what did Sellers and Batson say that set off this ruckus?

NBCNews:

“I hate to say this — I end up having this, you know, angst every semester — that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks. Happens almost every semester,” Sellers says.

“Mmm hmm,” Batson says and nods.

“And it’s like, oh, come on,” Sellers continues. “Get some really good ones, but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.”

Be Less White, Law-School Edition By Peter Kirsanow

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/be-less-white-law-school-edition/

The “co-deans” of Case Western Reserve University School of Law recently emailed the student body to exult in the fact that their school ranked 144th out of 200 law schools for “whiteness.” That is, Case Western Law School is “less white” than 143 other law schools in the country. The school proudly notes that “we have the ‘least white’ student body of all of the other law schools in Ohio,” except one.

The whiteness ranking is issued by Vernellia Randall, professor emerita of the University of Dayton School of Law. Professor Randall ranks schools by how much “excess whiteness” they have. She explains in her email to the co-deans (which they included in their email to the student body):

Excess Whiteness is the degree to which a law school is more white than the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) Applicant Pools and state population. Thus, excess whiteness was determined by subtracting the school’s total whiteness from the percent of whites in the various application pool. The results were then summed. Of the 200 law schools in this report, 21 Schools (10%) had no excess whiteness,  153 schools (76.5%) had more whites in their first-year class than was in the National LSAC application pool. One hundred twenty-four schools (62%) had more whites in their first-year class than the state applicant pool.  One hundred nineteen schools (59.5%)  had more whites in their first-year class than was in the regional pool. One hundred and thirty-nine schools (69.5%)  had more whites in their first-year class than was in the state population.

Note that irrelevancies such as GPAs and LSAT scores don’t enter into the analysis. Race is the only salient factor.

Lest there be any doubt that this is just an academic data point, Professor Randall explains:

The Whiter the law school, the less the school is preparing the legal community for serving the United States of America’s diverse racial population.

Apparently, white lawyers can’t adequately represent “diverse” clients. If so, can “diverse” lawyers adequately represent white clients?

Some thought we’d achieved peak academic absurdity when math was declared racist. Not even close.

For those interested in how law schools are failing America by enrolling “excess” white students,  the research is available here.

Biden assures everyone we’ll be able to celebrate July 4th by year’s end Rafi Metz

https://genesiustimes.com/biden-assures-everyone-well-be-able-to-celebrate-july-4th-by-years-end/

WASHINGTON, DC—President Biden offered some crucial guidance earlier today on how to safely celebrate the upcoming holidays over the course of the next several months, now that millions of Americans have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

“We must continue to be vigilant against this virus,” Biden said. “It’s not over just yet, and I implore my fellow Americans to continue following the advice of Dr. Fauci and the CDC no matter how much it changes. But I can assure everyone that if we continue doing our part, we’ll be able to celebrate July 4th by the end of the year. That’s a promise I intend on keeping to the American people.”

When asked for clarification, Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated to reporters, “Whether July 4th celebrations will go on as usual this year is a hard question for me to answer, so I’ll circle back on this sometime in August.”

Gov. Cuomo Solicited Millions in Campaign Cash From State Vendors By Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/03/12/gov_cuomo_solicited_millions_in_campaign_cash_from_state_vendors_766563.html

Soliciting state contractors for campaign cash opens up Gov. Andrew Cuomo to ethical questions.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found 347 state vendors that gave $6.2 million in political donations to Cuomo over a six-year period (2014-2019). Meanwhile, these companies reaped $7 billion in state payments.

We reached out to Governor Cuomo and Rich Azzopardi, a senior advisor, answered for the administration, “No contribution of any size plays a role in any official action and any official who can be swayed by a single dollar has no business being in government.”

In New York, however, this political patronage is perfectly legal (at least for now).

Cuomo solicited campaign cash from big accounting firms, law firms, banks, cable companies, developers, telco’s, and even LLCs.

Here’s just one example:

The big four accounting firms, Deloitte; Ernst & Young (EY); KPMG; and PriceWaterhouseCooper (PwC) collectively gave Gov. Cuomo $360,000 in campaign donations from 2014-2019. The firms reaped $258.8 million in state payments. 

The Sovietization of the American Press The transformation from phony “objectivity” to open one-party orthodoxy hasn’t been an improvement Matt Taibbi

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-sovietization-of-the-american

I collect Soviet newspapers. Years ago, I used to travel to Moscow’s Izmailovsky flea market every few weeks, hooking up with a dealer who crisscrossed the country digging up front pages from the Cold War era. I have Izvestia’s celebration of Gagarin’s flight, a Pravda account of a 1938 show trial, even an ancient copy of Ogonyek with Trotsky on the cover that someone must have taken a risk to keep.

These relics, with dramatic block fonts and red highlights, are cool pieces of history. Not so cool: the writing! Soviet newspapers were wrought with such anvil shamelessness that it’s difficult to imagine anyone ever read them without laughing. A good Soviet could write almost any Pravda headline in advance. What else but “A Mighty Demonstration of the Union of the Party and the People” fit the day after Supreme Soviet elections? What news could come from the Spanish civil war but “Success of the Republican Fleet?” Who could earn an obit headline but a “Faithful Son of the Party”?

Reality in Soviet news was 100% binary, with all people either heroes or villains, and the villains all in league with one another (an SR was no better than a fascist or a “Right-Trotskyite Bandit,” a kind of proto-horseshoe theory). Other ideas were not represented, except to be attacked and deconstructed. Also, since anything good was all good, politicians were not described as people at all but paragons of limitless virtue — 95% of most issues of Pravda or Izvestia were just names of party leaders surrounded by lists of applause-words, like “glittering,” “full-hearted,” “wise,” “mighty,” “courageous,” “in complete moral-political union with the people,” etc.

Some of the headlines in the U.S. press lately sound suspiciously like this kind of work:

— Biden stimulus showers money on Americans, sharply cutting poverty

— Champion of the middle class comes to the aid of the poor

— Biden’s historic victory for America

Democrats Move on Iowa’s Second District The House takes the first step toward overturning an election.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-move-on-iowas-second-district-11615592111?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Democrats have been talking a lot these past few weeks about the sanctity of election results, but their principles on that score may be malleable based on who wins. This week a House committee took the first step in what looks like an effort to unseat the Republican Member for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional district and install a Democrat instead.

GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks won the November race by 47 votes in the first count and six votes after lawyers wrangled over ballots in a recount. Democrat Rita Hart wants the House to use its constitutional authority as “judge of the elections” of its Members to impose another recount and reverse the outcome.

The last time the House reversed a state-certified election result was in Indiana’s “bloody eighth” congressional district in 1985, and the last time it replaced a sitting Member with his opponent was in 1938. In both cases the House was under Democratic control.

Ms. Hart’s brief to the Committee on House Administration claims that 22 ballots should have been counted but weren’t. Ms. Miller-Meeks replied that the challenge should be dismissed because Ms. Hart declined in December to raise her complaints in a special Iowa court designed to resolve contested elections.

How Israel Became the World Vaccine Leader The country made a deal with Pfizer: enough shots for everyone in exchange for data on the results. By Tunku Varadarajan

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-israel-became-the-world-vaccine-leader-11615576463?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

More than 55% of Israelis over 16 have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in the 12 weeks since the first jab was administered to a wincing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on national TV. That’s the world’s best immunization rate and roughly four times the U.S. rate.

To find out how the Jewish state has become such an overachiever, I interview its national Covid-19 coordinator, Nachman Ash. Dr. Ash, 60, began his medical career in 1987 as a combat physician in the Israel Defense Forces. Before retiring from the service, he rose to the rank of brigadier general and the position of IDF surgeon general. Seated in his spartan office in Lod, south of Ben Gurion International Airport, he tells me he’s fighting a “24/7 war.” His current job is “the most intensive” he’s ever had, “much harder” than being chief medical officer of the Israeli army, even in wartime.

Dr. Ash is Israel’s second Covid czar. He took up the post on Nov. 12, after his less diplomatic predecessor quit amid clashes with Mr. Netanyahu and tussles with (frequently recalcitrant) ultra-Orthodox Jews, who chafed against lockdowns and other social restrictions.

Like all good officers, he’s proud of his victories but quick to credit others. He ascribes Israel’s vaccination successes to its political leaders, who showed foresight in concluding early deals to stockpile the Covid vaccine. Officials had “direct discussions” with Pfizer, in which they offered the company a scientific quid pro quo. Israel got the shots early, and in the quantities it needed, and in exchange Pfizer received access to the results of the vaccinations, tabulated by a country with a first-rate medical system and a reputation for statistical and scientific integrity. Dr. Ash calls it “a win-win deal” and believes Pfizer would say the same.

China and Military Power through Artificial Intelligence by Peter Schweizer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17110/china-military-artificial-intelligence

Complacency or eased trade restrictions on dual-use technology would be the greater danger. So would any backing-off of counter-espionage investigations into Chinese bribery of American university professors or further infiltrations of PLA-linked Chinese nationals into research centers in the U.S. Both are prime examples of Beijing’s willingness to play a long game as regards theft of intellectual property that has potential military applications.

Interestingly, there is another Chinese firm that is often mentioned in discussions of China’s push into facial recognition AI development. The company known as Megvii produces a software application called Face++ that has secured many patents in the use of AI for surveillance technologies. One of that company’s stakeholders? Bohai Harvest RST, the investment company started by Hunter Biden and his business partners.

We have seen that China is one of the many practitioners of the “Princeling” strategy, which enriches the associates or family members of powerful politicians in order to grease the skids for deals that, if considered on their own merits, would likely not be allowed by the national security gatekeepers whose mission is to protect valuable military technology from getting into the hands of America’s adversaries.

Military use of artificial intelligence may well determine the outcome of the next war, and it is far too strategic to American national security to look away for even a moment from the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party.

China’s military buildup threatens its neighbors and regional stability in the Far East. Beijing’s aggressive military expansion has made its navy the largest in the world, and it has been flexing its maritime muscle in the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific region. It continues to build its ballistic missile capacities as well.

Further, China’s expertise in cyber-warfare is both well-established and feared. It has allowed the PRC to hack into computers and steal intellectual property, as well as other cyber crimes.

But the junction of China’s growing cyber capabilities and its aggressive military buildup is in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to military weapons and systems.

The Devastating Price  of Ineffective Lockdowns Lockdowns are the “biggest public  health mistake we’ve ever made.” by Mark Alexander

https://patriotpost.us/alexander/78377-the-devastating-price-of-ineffective-lockdowns-2021-03-12

The waxy automaton Joe Biden read a prepared national address last night on the one-year anniversary of the ChiCom World Health Organization’s declaration of the ChiCom Virus pandemic. His handlers chose this date for Biden to insist he saved the nation, despite the fact that WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was conspiring with Red China dictator Xi Jinping to conceal the outbreak — until China was in a position to maximize the damage to the U.S. economy.

By extension, of course, China maximized the devastation not just to American lives and livelihoods but to those of other nations.

Last year, we published a link to the Great Barrington Declaration, a prophetic condemnation of the current lockdown strategies being mandated by many U.S. state governors and leaders around the world.

The authors, infectious disease epidemiologists, and scientists, noted, “Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.”

The Declaration concluded: “Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. 

Biden Speech: The Rooster Took Credit For The Dawn By Dick Morris

https://www.dickmorris.com/biden-speech-the-rooster-took-credit-for-the-dawn/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

In the maiden speech of his presidency last night, Biden was like the rooster taking credit for the dawn.

Crowing loudly about the COVID vaccines he inherited from Donald Trump — his predecessor of whom he could not bring himself to speak — he announced triumphantly that 100 million shots of the vaccine will have been given by his 60th day in office.

But this is the Trump vaccine he is talking about. Operation Warp Speed mobilized the world’s scientists and pharma companies to develop the drug in an unbelievably short time. Trump paid for shots that did not then exist (and might never come to fruition) on spec so as to fund vaccine development.

Now Biden has the chutzpah to say, “When I took office 50 days ago, only 8 percent of Americans after months, only 8 percent of those over the age of 65 had gotten their first vaccination. Today, that number is 65 percent.”

After months? The FDA approved the first vaccine (from Pfizer) on Dec. 11, 40 days before the end of Trump’s term. Not months. In those six short weeks, his team delivered 31 million doses of the vaccine.