EDUCATION Comments turned off

China Ratchets Up Its U.S. Spying Programs American Universities and financial institutions are at risk. Michael Cutler

Posted By on August 21st, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271074/china-ratchets-its-us-spying-programs-michael-cutler

Russian efforts to corrupt American politics captivates the media, but they pay scant attention to the aggressive actions of the Chinese. This under-reporting is concerning, given the concerted Chinese efforts go well beyond the hacking of U.S. computers – an illegal activity of great concern – but they also extend onto the campuses of our universities.

There are, however, occasional acts of real reporting on Chinese espionage. One example comes from, the usually liberal and globalist publication, Newsweek back on May 20, 2015, A New Cold War, Yes. But It’s With China, Not Russia.

Another story worthy of mention is this from the Houston Chronicle reported on August 8, 2018, which reported: FBI warns Texas academic and medical leaders of ‘classified’ security threats.

The piece led off with this ominous excerpt:

In an unprecedented gathering, FBI officials warned top leaders of Texas academic and medical institutions Wednesday about security threats from foreign adversaries, the first step in a new initiative the bureau plans to replicate around the country.

Then went on to note:

The meeting reflects the bureau’s increasing concern, made in public comments and before congressional committees, about cybersecurity threats posed by adversaries such as China, Russia, and Iran. Following a 2017 report that found intellectual-property theft by China costs the U.S. as much as $600 billion annually, FBI Director Christopher Wray this June called China “the broadest, most significant” threat to the United States and said its espionage is active in all 50 states.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Social Media Corporations Step Up Attacks on Conservatives The critical off-year elections are a little over two months away. Coincidence? Matthew Vadum

Posted By on August 21st, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271089/social-media-corporations-step-attacks-matthew-vadum

The politically-driven censorship of conservatives by the gigantic, unregulated social media corporations controlled by the Left is moving into high gear as the crucial midterm congressional elections of Nov. 6 approach.

It’s no secret that social media platforms have been suppressing and marginalizing ideas they don’t like — and the ideas they don’t like are overwhelmingly of the conservative and patriotic variety.

But the social media corporations are ramping up censorship of right-leaning groups and individuals to give Democrats an advantage in the upcoming elections.

The stakes are high. If Democrats recapture either chamber of Congress from Republicans, President Trump’s conservative reform agenda will grind to a halt and investigating Trump for all manner of imagined misdeeds will be all Americans hear about 24/7/365. It will be political payback – pure and simple.

The immediate goal is to silence and intimidate conservatives, as well as anyone who supports Preside

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is “The Truth, the Truth” When It Comes to Prosecutors? by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on August 21st, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12896/is-the-truth-the-truth-when-it-comes-to

All the Special Counsel needs, in order to charge a subject of an investigation with lying to a prosecutor, is a single witnesses willing to contradict the subject.

The witness may not only be “singing,” he may also be “composing” – that is making up or embellishing a story because he knows that the better his story, the better the deal.

Under federal law, the testimony of such a flipped witness need not be corroborated in order to secure a conviction.

Even one question that results in an answer that is contradicted by one witness would be enough to spring the perjury trap.

When Rudy Giuliani stated, perhaps inartfully, that “truth isn’t truth,” he was getting at a higher – or should I say lower – truth. This is a truth that virtually every experienced defense attorney and prosecutor understands: namely that prosecutors get to pick which witness — and which “truth” — to believe.

Giuliani was discussing President Trump’s decision whether or not to be interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Giuliani made the point that even if President Trump testified truthfully, he could be accused of lying to a prosecutor – a serious felony – if the prosecutor chose to believe witnesses who have provided a different account.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Free Tuition Education Ken Langone’s book should be required reading at NYU.

Posted By on August 20th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-free-tuition-education-1534805635

New York University announced late last week that it will offer free tuition for every current and future student attending its medical school. That’s pretty cool and will save students some $55,000 a year and a lot of debt. But in the spirit of Milton Friedman’s line that there is no such thing as a free lunch, allow us to suggest that every NYU student should have one obligation in return for accepting the gift—read and write an essay on Ken Langone’s autobiography, “I Love Capitalism!”

The medical students should at least know where the money for their free tuition will come from. It doesn’t flow from the good intentions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and it isn’t a product of the Cuban health-care system.

It will come from capitalists like Ken Langone and his wife Elaine, who donated about $100 million of the $600 million that NYU says it will need to fund the scholarships. The son of a plumber and a cafeteria worker, Mr. Langone went to Wall Street after Bucknell and NYU business school. He went on to found Home Depot , the national home-improvement chain that now provides a livelihood for some 400,000 people.

Mr. Langone has channelled much of his wealth into philanthropy, including the medical center at NYU that is named for him and his wife. As Mr. Langone explains in his book, this is how a free society creates wealth and then redistributes it. Socialism creates little wealth and redistributes poverty, as Venezuelans are discovering. The medical students could spend a semester in Caracas to learn these lessons, but they can save time and considerable pain by reading Mr. Langone.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

College Offers Class on ‘Consequences’ of Whiteness By Toni Airaksinen

Posted By on August 20th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/college-offers-class-on-consequences-of-whiteness/

The University of Oregon is offering a course this summer to teach students about the “consequences” of masculinity in the United States.

Taught by Ashley Woody and Tony Silva, Sociology 399: Whiteness, Masculinity, and Heterosexuality is a featured course on the sociology department’s website, and it aims to take a critical approach to the historical development of masculinity and heterosexuality.

The class —which also goes by “Sociology 399: Straight White Heterosexuality Masculinity” — must be taken for a grade by sociology majors, but its description notes that grading is “optional for all other students.”

“What do whiteness, heterosexuality and masculinity mean today? How do they differ across contexts? How do they intersect, and what are the consequences?” the course description opines.

Neither Woody nor Silva responded to a request for more information about the class, but they appear to take a social constructionist approach to gender theory. In one of Silva’s recent works, for example, he interviewed 19 men from Grindr and Craigslist to document the “centrality of heterosexuality to normative rural masculinity.”

According to Silva’s research, hobbies such as hunting, fishing, cutting firewood, ranching, and farming are ways that certain men “perform a rural masculinity,” as Silva documented in his seminal article “Bud-Sex.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Emails Show Cuomo Administration Officials in Regular Contact with Corrupt Lobbyist By Jack Crowe

Posted By on August 20th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/andrew-cuomo-administration-regular-contact-corrupt-lobbyist/

Senior New York state officials regularly corresponded with, and acted on behalf of, a lobbyist and former aide to governor Andrew Cuomo in the months and years leading up to his indictment on federal corruption charges.

While the Cuomo administration has downplayed lobbyist Todd Howe’s access to senior officials, emails obtained by the New York Times after a protracted legal battle with the administration demonstrate Howe’s continuing influence.

In one particularly revealing email sent to Jim Malatras, then the director of state operations, Howe urgently requests payment for his clients, two developers contracted by the state for a public-private infrastructure project.

“Both need some payment as a sign of good faith before the close of business tomorrow,” Howe wrote to Malatras and his deputy, Andrew Kennedy, in December 2014 .

POLITICS Comments turned off

Chelsea Clinton Says Future Political Career Is a ‘Definite Maybe’ By Mairead McArdle see note

Posted By on August 20th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/chelsea-clinton-future-political-career/

At least Caroline Kennedy knew when to quit…..terminally insipid Chelsea should know better…..rsk

Chelsea Clinton is leaving the door open to a possible run for political office down the road.

In an appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival Sunday, Clinton said that a political career is a “definite no” at the moment, but a “definite maybe” in the future.

“At federal level, as much as I abhor so much of what President Trump is doing, I have a great amount of gratitude for what my congresswoman and my senators are doing to try to stop him at every point,” Clinton said. “While I disagree with the president … I think my family … is being really well represented. But if that were to change — if my city councilor were to retire, if my congresswoman were to retire, my senators — and I thought that I could make a positive impact, then I think I would really have to ask my answer to that question.”

In wide-ranging remarks that touched on her family and her feelings about the Trump administration, Clinton went out of her way to assert that she feels “incredibly protective” of twelve-year-old Barron Trump, recalling her own experience as a teenager in the White House during her father’s presidency, when critics mocked her appearance.

“I disagree with [Barron Trump’s] father on everything, but people have made fun of him, bullied him for his appearance or for him being more private,” the former first daughter said. “Equally I have no patience for that because he’s a child and he deserves a childhood as every child does.”

Clinton has upped her social-media presence since the 2016 presidential election, defending Barron Trump several times from online bullies and advocating for LGBT and women’s rights.

MEDIA Comments turned off

In McGahn Report, the New York Times ‘Attempts’ to Find Corruption Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on August 20th, 2018

The president’s critics are trying to build an obstruction case based on reading Trump’s mind.

The thing to bear in mind is that the president of the United States does not “attempt” to fire anyone in the executive branch. The chief executive either fires an inferior executive official or he does not. “Attempt” does not enter into it.

Yet “attempt” is the foundation on which the New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman build their blockbuster report this weekend about the decision by President Trump — apparently on the advice of his first team of lawyers — to waive executive privilege and attorney-client privilege so that prosecutors on the staff of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III could interview White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn II.

I will in another column address the significance of the waiver. (To my mind, it bolsters the already strong argument that the president should not agree to be interviewed by the special counsel.) For now, let’s keep our eye on the ball: the question of whether there is an obstruction case against the president. The Times report is lengthy, but here is the critical passage:

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Robert Mueller Shouldn’t Even Ask Trump for an Interview By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on August 20th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/robert-mueller-donald-trump-inte

With testimony from the president’s top lawyer, the special counsel is in no position to claim he needs to speak with Trump.

For months, these columns have contended that, on the question whether President Trump should agree to a request by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III for an interview, the burden of persuasion has been imposed on the wrong party. That is, the president should not even be asked to submit to questioning at this point; the prosecutor must first establish that the president (1) is implicated in a serious crime and (2) has information or evidence that the prosecutor is unable to obtain from any other source.

That argument is bolstered by this weekend’s New York Times report that, with the president’s consent, Mueller’s team has conducted 30 hours of interviews with White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II. Having secured testimony from the president’s top lawyer, the special counsel is in no position to claim that he needs the president’s own testimony.

The president’s consent to make McGahn available to prosecutors is extraordinary, as it involves waiving both executive privilege and attorney–client privilege. As to the latter, some claim that there is no real waiver involved because McGahn purportedly represents “the presidency” in the abstract, not the actual incumbent. (The Times pushes this line, claiming that McGahn “viewed his role as protector of the presidency, not of Mr. Trump.”) This is nonsense. McGahn’s client is the president in the latter’s official capacity — in contrast to Trump’s private lawyers (Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow).

POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrats Are Fielding Even More Anti-Semitic Candidates For Congress Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib is representative of the Democratic Party’s march beyond the embrace of candidates who criticize Israeli policy or its current government to a much uglier place.Warren Henry

Posted By on August 20th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/20/democrats-fielding-even-anti-semitic-candidates-congress/

Last week, J Street, the lefty group created to counter the bipartisan American Israel Public Affairs Committee, withdrew its endorsement of Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic candidate in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District. The unprecedented move followed Tlaib’s endorsement of a “one-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and comments supporting the left-wing boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement.

Tlaib is running unopposed in the general election, blunting the effect of the de-endorsement. But Tlaib is representative of the Democratic Party’s gradual march beyond the embrace of candidates and officials who criticize Israeli policy or its current government to a much uglier place in politics.
BDS Is Definitely Anti-Semitic

To put this trend into context, consider that the U.S. State Department has adopted a “working definition” of anti-Semitism, as a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The “working definition” provides illustrations of anti-Semitism, including “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

The founders and leaders of the BDS movement support a “one-state solution” that destroys Israel as Jewish state. The movement is the intellectual descendant of the 1945 Arab boycott, which did not distinguish between Jews and Israel. It is based on the premise that Israel is a racist apartheid state requiring the sort of action once taken against South Africa.

Accordingly, when Tlaib compares the two-state solution to the idea of “separate but equal,” even the J Street doves begin to worry. Tlaib carefully claimed she merely supports the free speech of the BDS crowd, which is a very weak claim.

Her answer also seems disingenuous, not only because she supports a one-state solution, but also because she is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Last year, the DSA overwhelmingly endorsed the BDS movement, with many chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” afterward.
It’s Not Just Rashida Tlaib, Either