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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…”