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Heather Mac Donald:
“…For decades, the College Board defended the SAT, which it writes and administers, against charges that the test gives an unfair advantage to middle-class white students. No longer. Under relentless pressure from the racial-preferences lobby, the Board has now caved to the anti-meritocratic ideology of “diversity.” The Board will calculate for each SAT-taker an “adversity score” that purports to measure a student’s socioeconomic position, according to the Wall Street Journal. Colleges can use this adversity index to boost the admissions ranking of allegedly disadvantaged students who otherwise would score too poorly to be considered for admission.
Advocates of this change claim that it is not about race. That is a fiction. In fact, the SAT adversity score is simply the latest response on the part of mainstream institutions to the seeming intractability of the racial academic-achievement gap. If that gap did not exist, the entire discourse about “diversity” would evaporate overnight. The average white score on the SAT (1,123 out of a possible 1,600) is 177 points higher than the average black score (946), approximately a standard deviation of difference. This gap has persisted for decades. It is not explained by socioeconomic disparities. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported in 1998 that white students from households with incomes of $10,000 or less score better on the SAT than black students from households with incomes of $80,000 to $100,000. In 2015, students with family incomes of $20,000 or less (a category that includes all racial groups) scored higher on average on the math SAT than the average math score of black students from all income levels. The University of California has calculated that race predicts SAT scores better than class.
Those who rail against “white privilege” as a determinant of academic achievement have a nagging problem: Asians. Asian students outscore white students on the SAT by 100 points; they outscore blacks by 277 points. It is not Asian families’ economic capital that vaults them to the top of the academic totem pole; it is their emphasis on scholarly effort and self-discipline. Every year in New York City, Asian elementary school students vastly outperform every other racial and ethnic group on the admissions test for the city’s competitive public high schools, even though a disproportionate number of them come from poor immigrant families…”
MATT MARGOLIS:
“…President Trump has been remaking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, shifting further and further to the right. On Wednesday he got another victory with the confirmation of Kenneth Lee in a 52-45 vote. And Democrats are really miffed about this one.
Lee’s confirmation came despite neither Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, nor Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a 2020 presidential contender, returning a blue slip on his nomination. The blue-slip rule — a precedent upheld by Senate tradition — has historically allowed a home-state senator to stop a lower-court nominee by refusing to return the blue slip to the Judiciary Committee. How strictly the precedent is upheld is decided by the committee chairman, and enforcement has varied depending on who wields the gavel.
Lee who had a unanimously “well qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, is Trump’s 40th circuit judge to be confirmed, even though Democrats were hoping to block his nomination.
Since the Democrats don’t have a majority in the Senate, and Harry Reid nuked the filibuster back in 2013, Democrats were hoping to use the blue slip tradition to obstruct Trump’s judges, even though it was not meant to be a de facto veto on judicial nominees, and according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), “over the century of the use of the blue slip, different chairmen have used the blue slip in different ways.”…”
Mackubin Thomas Owens:
“…I was raised a Democrat. My parents, like most people of their generation (Depression and World War II), were Roosevelt Democrats. I, like most of their children, followed in their footsteps.
The first election in which I could vote was 1968 (the voting age was still 21) and I voted for Hubert Humphrey. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either Richard Nixon or George McGovern in 1972, but I did vote for Jimmy Carter in 1976. Carter turned me into a Republican. As Ronald Reagan said, I did not leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.
But despite my estrangement from the Democrats at the time, there was still room in the party for a Scoop Jackson, a Sam Nunn, and a Phil Gramm. It claimed the mantle of the middle and working classes. It was anti-communist and patriotic. It was committed to free speech and freedom of religion. But those days are long gone. Today’s party would have no place for John Kennedy.
It is now the party of rich bi-coastal liberals who disparage those who grow their food and make things work — the “deplorables” clinging to their guns and religion. It is the party of dueling victimization narratives (mirror, mirror, on the wall/who is the most oppressed of all?). It is the party of blatant anti-Semitism. It is the party of unrestricted abortion against which no opposition will be tolerated. It is the party of socialist policies that have destroyed prosperity across the globe.
The clearest example of this last point is the party’s opposition to the provision of abundant and relatively cheap energy as a generator of economic growth. Thanks to technological innovations such as fracturing (fracking) and multidirectional drilling, the United States is now the number one producer of natural gas and oil in the world.
But this was despite the policies of the Obama administration, which, in thrall of the radical environmentalists and “green” energy, rent-seeking, crony capitalists, engaged in nothing short of a war on oil, gas and coal. But the Democratic Party has now gone farther, with fealty to the “Green New Deal” a requirement for any Democrat with presidential aspirations.
Even more distressing is the sad fact that the Democratic Party has become the anti-Constitution party. Of course, progressives, who have long dominated the Democratic Party, have never been fond of the Constitution as drafted by the Founders. The latter saw it as a framework for sharing power within a republican government, the only form of government capable of protecting the liberty and natural rights of citizens.
Founding progressives such as Woodrow Wilson, on the other hand, saw the Constitution, with its separation of powers and federalism, as an obstacle to their enterprise of using government to solve the country’s social problems. Its checks and balances could not accommodate the necessary new programs and agencies. But the progressives nonetheless paid obeisance to the document, arguing only that its interpretation must change with the times. It was to be a “living” constitution.
But now the Democrats are going further, happily attacking the Constitution itself: it is, they contend, not sufficiently “democratic,” as illustrated by such elements as the Electoral College and the makeup of the Senate, in which each state, no matter how large or small, gets two senators.
The Democratic Party was pulled sharply to the left during the Obama administration. It is poised to shift even more in this direction in 2020. The question is whether a Democratic candidate who is acceptable to the party’s radical base, as represented by such individuals as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, can appeal to a broad, national, constitutional majority, as required by our system. I don’t think so…”
LIZ SHELD:
“…So who decided to brief President Trump (aka “the news hook”) on the Steele dossier back in January of 2017? Fox News has the receipts.
Sources familiar with the records told Fox News that a late-2016 email chain indicated then-FBI Director James Comey told bureau subordinates that then-CIA Director John Brennan insisted the dossier be included in the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference, known as the ICA. Fox News was told that the email chain – not yet public — referred to the dossier as “crown material,” but it was not clear why this apparent code was used. On Tuesday night, former GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy said on Fox News’ “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that “Comey has a better argument than Brennan, based on what I’ve seen.”
But MSNBC show pony and former CIA head spook Brennan begs to differ. “Former Director Brennan, along with former [Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, are the ones who opposed James Comey’s recommendation that the Steele Dossier be included in the intelligence report,” an official CIA spokesperson said.
“They opposed this because the dossier was in no way used to develop the ICA,” the official continued. “The intelligence analysts didn’t include it when they were doing their work because it wasn’t corroborated intelligence, therefore it wasn’t used and it wasn’t included. Brennan and Clapper prevented it from being added into the official assessment. James Comey then decided on his own to brief Trump about the document.”
OH SNAP. They are turning on each other! Also notice how the statement says the dossier wasn’t corroborated? That further screws Comey because the FBI are the people who presented the dossier to the FISA court, swearing it was true. Ouch.
I am betting that the CIA statement is true: Brennan and Clapper did not want the dossier included in the ICA so they suggested it simply be used an attachment. All they really needed for their “news hook” was the fact that Comey briefed Trump on the dossier claims not that it was specifically included in the ICA. Here is what the “news hook” story from CNN January 10, 2017 says:
The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.
The real question is who decided Trump should be briefed on the dossier at all? My guess is that Brennan insisted the dossier be included with the ICA, not necessarily in the ICA…”
CONRAD BLACK:
“…The full proportions of the debacle that awaits the Democrats next fall is starting to penetrate their complacent disdain and revulsion toward President Trump. Rank-and-file Democrats are so ecstatic at the arrival of a known candidate whose views on principal policy issues cannot be invoked by Republicans to frighten children into eating their breakfast cereal that they have accorded Joe Biden a levitation in the polls…
Mr. Biden is a shopworn, moth-eaten, malapropistic journeyman about whom, when asked to assess him as a potential president, former bipartisan defense secretary and CIA director Robert Gates took four seconds to emit: “I don’t know.” In the land of the Ocasio-Cortez sound-alikes, a track-worn perennial candidate is king…
All Americans, even the president’s most strenuous supporters, should be comforted that the majority of Democrats can still think and count. It is a party infested with lunatics, but not controlled by them. This is in the same reassuring category as the Mueller investigation’s conclusion that no one in the United States colluded with Russians to influence the result of the 2016 election…
Even Barack Obama, who was cozily settling into a good 30 years as a respected ex-president, is already in the crosshairs of the investigation, conducted against the Clinton campaign, of illegal espionage on the Trump campaign through fraudulently obtained FISA warrants and planted agents and sting operations. The rabidly Trumpophobic texting between former FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page reveals that “the White House” was closely monitoring the investigation of the Trump campaign, which raises the question of the involvement of the former president in illegal surveillance…”
Paul Bedard:
“…That shift many have sensed from hard news to opinion and advocacy in the media, especially on cable TV, is real, according to a new and authoritative report from research giant Rand Corporation.
In a study of trends from before 2000 to 2017, it found a big shift in how news is presented on TV and in online reports that means more “personal perspective,” issue advocacy, and opinion…”
Brooke Singman, Jake Gibson:
“…The U.S. attorney appointed to examine the origins of the Russia investigation has been working on his review “for weeks,” a person familiar with the process told Fox News on Tuesday, to probe “all intelligence collection activities” related to the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
Fox News reported on Monday that Attorney General Bill Barr had assigned John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to conduct the inquiry into alleged misconduct and alleged improper government surveillance on the Trump campaign in 2016 as well as whether Democrats were the ones who improperly colluded with foreign actors…”
Brett Arends:
“…I’m used to partisan, inaccurate drivel from all sides these days, but the media’s coverage of President Trump’s tariffs and the so-called “trade war” takes some kind of cake.
There’s no serious doubt that some in the media would absolutely love to tank the stock market. They figure that would hurt Trump’s re-election chances in 2020. Monday’s stock market slump, which saw the Dow Jones Industrial AverageDJIA, +0.82% tumble 2.4% and the Nasdaq Composite 3.4%, looked just like what the doctor ordered.
I write this, incidentally, as someone who is no fan of the president. But I remember when politics was supposed to stop at the water’s edge.
And, anyway, facts are facts. Most of what the public is being told about these tariffs is either misleading or a downright lie.
I’ve been following the coverage all weekend with my jaw on the floor.
Yes, tariffs are “costs.” But they do not somehow destroy our money. They do not take our hard-earned dollars and burn them in a big pile. Tariffs are simply federal taxes. That’s it. The extra costs paid by importers, and consumers, goes to Uncle Sam, to distribute as he sees fit, including, for example, on Obamacare subsidies.
It wasn’t long ago the media was complaining because Trump was cutting taxes. Now it’s complaining he’s raising them. Confused? Me too.
And the amounts involved are trivial. Chicken feed.
President Trump just hiked tariffs from 10% to 25% on about $200 billion in Chinese imports. In other words, he just raised taxes by … $30 billion a year. The total amount we all paid in taxes last year — federal, state and local — was $5.51 trillion. This tax increase that has everyone’s panties in a twist is a rounding error…”
MARK PULLIAM:
“…Utopian social movements often degenerate into unruly—and sometimes vicious—mobs. During the French Revolution, the slogan “liberty, equality, fraternity” quickly led to the guillotine as the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror. We are witnessing a softer version of this at Harvard, America’s most elite university, where Ronald Sullivan, an African-American law professor, faces professional retribution for the sin of representing a (presumed innocent) client (Harvey Weinstein) accused of sexual assault. Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz denounced the incident as “The new McCarthyism comes to Harvard.”
Capitulating to the noisy complaints of a small number of undergraduates, and a sit-in protest at the dining hall, the Harvard administration recently announced that, effective June 30, Sullivan and his wife, Stephanie Robinson (who likewise teaches at Harvard Law School), would be removed as “faculty deans” at the school’s Winthrop House—a student residence where Sullivan and Robinson also lived. (Sullivan remains as a law professor.) When appointed as residential deans in 2009, Sullivan and Robinson were the first African-Americans to hold that position at Harvard, according to The Harvard Crimson. The decision to remove Sullivan and Robinson was made by Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana, who had reportedly joined the students’ sit-in protest, dubbed “Reclaim Winthrop.”
Students absurdly charged that Sullivan’s representation of a criminal defendant charged with sexual assault—by itself—made them feel upset, and contributed to an unsafe and hostile educational environment. Never mind that procedural due process (including the right of criminal defendants to zealous representation) is a critical tenet of the Anglo-American legal system, and that criminal law professors have long practiced criminal defense on the side, without controversy. Never mind that Sullivan previously represented other high-profile clients without incident, including accused terrorists and former New England Patriots tight-end Aaron Hernandez in his 2017 double murder trial. That was then.
The #MeToo movement sweeps away such precedents as inconvenient impediments to achieving a higher state of virtue, just as the Robespierre-led Committee of Public Safety eliminated many “enemies of the people.” It is tempting to ignore the horrors of the French Revolution, or to dismiss them as an aberration of history, but then—as now—idealistic reformers believed with moral certainty in the righteousness of their cause…”
Tyler Cowen:
“…To see why the full picture is more complicated, let’s say the U.S. slaps tariffs on the industrial inputs (whether materials or labor) it is buying from China. It is easy to see the immediate chain of higher costs for the U.S. businesses translating into higher prices for U.S. consumers, and that is what the afore-mentioned studies are picking up. But keep in mind China won’t be supplying those inputs forever, especially if the tariffs remain. Within a few years, a country such as Vietnam will provide the same products, perhaps at cheaper prices, because Vietnam has lower wages. So the costs to U.S. consumers are temporary, but the lost business in China will be permanent. Furthermore, the medium-term adjustment will have the effect of making China’s main competitors better exporters.
Obviously, no final long-run estimates are possible right now. But it is quite plausible that China will bear the larger costs here, not the U.S.
Another risk for China is this: As its access to U.S. markets becomes more difficult, China may be tempted to look to Europe. It remains to be seen whether the European Union will adopt additional protectionist measures, but China must consider that the possibility is more than zero…”
DEBRA HEINE:
“…During his second appearance on Fox News in two days, former congressman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) explained why he said DOJ investigators need to zero in on emails between John Brennan and James Comey from December of 2016.
The New York Times reported Monday evening that Attorney General William Barr has assigned John H. Durham, a U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to examine potential wrongdoing by the intelligence agencies during the 2016 election.
Gowdy told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum that there are two questions his investigators are going to want to focus on: whether the Steele dossier was unverified and uncorroborated when the FBI used it to obtain a FISA warrant, and when they began to corroborate it.
“What I’m telling Mr. Durham or whoever is going to look into this is, I think you’ll see late in 2016, well after it had been used, it was still unverified and the people responsible for it were referring to it as unverified and one or the other demanded that it be included in the intelligence assessment which then prompted the discussion you and I are having now,” Gowdy said.
While the former congressman was careful not to mention any names, rumors have swirled since last March that former CIA chief John Brennan is the one who insisted that the unverified Steele dossier be included in the 2017 U.S. intelligence Assessment of Russian Interference in the 2016 Election.
“A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and fake Steele dossier be included in the Intelligence Report,” Senator Rand Paul tweeted on March 27. “Brennan should be asked to testify under oath in Congress ASAP.”…”
and
“…According to MacCallum, Fox News intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reported Tuesday night that Brennan had again claimed that it was Comey’s idea to put the dirty dossier in the intelligence report — not his or former Director of Intelligence James Clapper’s idea.
Gowdy said that “sometimes in the courtroom, when two people are blaming each other, they’re both right” but the truth of the matter would be pretty easy to sort out.
The veteran prosecutor told MacCallum that he’s seen the Comey-Brennan email himself and based on what he’s seen, Comey has “a better argument than Brennan.”
Gowdy reminded MacCallum that House Republicans called for a second special counsel over a year ago to look into all of these issues.
“Horowitz doesn’t have access to the grand jury, he doesn’t have access to former employees. He’s a wonderful investigator but he’s only as good as the tools he’s given,” he explained.
Because Durham has access to a grand jury and former employees, search warrants and subpoenas, “that’s your A-1 investigation,” Gowdy said…”
Liel Leibovitz:
There’s always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports. And just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them.
(Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib)
Atara Abramson was born in Poland on December 28, 1926. She was just a teenager when she was deported with her family to Auschwitz, and was the only one to survive. In 1946, she joined a religious Zionist youth movement and boarded a boat headed for Eretz Yisrael. The boat was intercepted by the British army, and Abramson was sent to a camp in Cypress for six months before finally making it to her destination. Along with several other Holocaust survivors, she settled in Kfar Etzion, a religious kibbutz in the Judean hills established in 1927.
On May 12, 1948, two days before Israel’s Declaration of Independence, an Arab army consisting of Jordanian legionnaires and local Palestinian gunmen attacked Kfar Etzion with armored vehicles and heavy artillery. The Jewish defenders, armed with just a handful of rifles and mortars, did their best to fight back, but by the following day were no longer able to persist. Their leader, Avraham Fishgrund, who escaped Bratislava just a few years before Hitler’s armies marched in, stepped into the open, waving the white flag of surrender. He was shot on the spot by an armed Palestinian.
The rest of the people in Kfar Etzion, numbering 133 men and women, had no choice but to reiterate their surrender and hope for the best. Again, they stepped into the open waving a white flag and declaring their surrender. Again, they were met with gunfire. They rushed to take shelter in the basement of a nearby monastery; gathering outside, local Palestinians tossed grenades into the building and shot at anyone trying to escape. Like most of Kfar Etzion’s residents, Atara Abramson did not survive. She was 21 when she died, one of 18 women who had survived the Holocaust only to be slaughtered by Palestinians that day.
Ya’acov Goldwasser, too, survived the Holocaust. After he was liberated, he rode a bicycle to his hometown, where he was informed that none of his family had survived. He got back on his bike, rode to Prague, and went to meet with the British ambassador there, claiming that, like every Jew, he was forever a resident of Eretz Yisrael and demanding to be allowed to return to his spiritual home. Goldwasser was fortunate enough to make it to Jerusalem in 1945, becoming a brilliant scholar of geography and archaeology in the Hebrew University. On March 22, 1948, he risked his life and joined a convoy headed for Jerusalem, then under Arab siege. He delivered food and supplies to the city’s starved residents, and dropped off his latest academic manuscript, refusing to abandon his intellectual work even in wartime. Two days later, on his way out of the city, his vehicle drove on a landmine left there by cheerful and neighborly Palestinians, killing Goldwasser and everyone else inside.
Avraham Asher grew up outside of Lodz, and watched with horror as the Nazis forced his family into the ghetto and began starving, hanging, and torturing the dwindling Jewish population. He survived thanks to a job in a sausage factory, deemed essential to the German war effort, the only member of his family not murdered in the Holocaust. He made aliya in 1945, renting a small apartment in Ramat Gan and trying to build for himself a new life. It didn’t last long: With Arab militias everywhere attacking Jewish communities, he volunteered to travel to Kibbutz Yehiam in the north of Israel and help its residents defend themselves against Fawzi al-Qawuqji’s army of Palestinian gunmen. On January 20, 1948, hundreds of armed Palestinians attacked the small and isolated kibbutz; the kibbutz prevailed, but Asher was killed. He was 20 when he died.
There were 433 more Holocaust survivors killed by Palestinians and Jordanians violently opposing the creation of a safe haven for Jews in what had historically and spiritually been their homeland. To attempt and rewrite their well-documented experiences is to victimize them yet again, an unforgivable and deeply anti-Semitic act.
“…U.S.—According to a new report performed by the American Public Health Association, all six men who are sexually attracted to feminists are already suffering deeply from the ongoing sex strike for abortion rights.
The six men in the nation who identify as feminist-attracted include Greg, Sebastien, Shiloh, Ansel, Jade, and Ashley. All of them are from Oregon.
“While this sex strike was attempting to affect conservative men, in the end, it’s these six sensitive males who will suffer the most,” an APHA rep said. “Sebastien is particularly affected, as his girlfriend, Willow, had just come off a sex strike to save a rare species of field mouse in California. He was really looking forward to the end of the sex strike, but once Alyssa Milano and other pseud-celebrities called for a new strike, he realized it was going to be a long summer.”…”