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“You mean, you’re preventing these qualified students from attending your college because of the color of their skin?!”

Well, you don’t have to imagine it. It’s happening. And at arguably the most prestigious college in America — my alma mater, Harvard.

The ethnic minority isn’t blacks or Jews, as it was in years past. The target this time is Asian Americans.

And it’s just as wrong.

After millions of dollars in legal fees, millions of records examined, and hundreds of hours of depositions and testimony, Harvard’s once purposely opaque admissions policies have been laid bare. It’s not a pretty picture.

Here’s what we now know:

Harvard Admissions rates student applicants in three main ways: 1) Academic performance; 2) Extra-curricular achievements; 3) “Personal qualities.” That’s fine, as far as it goes, if the criteria were applied fairly. But they’re not.

Asian American applicants consistently score higher in the first two criteria–academics and extra-curricular activities, which can be objectively assessed–than white students, Latinos and African Americans.

So how does Harvard justify its Asian American quota? With the help of category three — “personal qualities,” which include vague and largely subjective factors like “likability,” “maturity,” “integrity,” and “effervescence.”

According to Harvard’s own internal reports, Asian American applicants are routinely and systematically marked much lower on this personality scale by Harvard admissions officers who almost never meet or interview applicants. But here’s the kicker: the personality ratings given to Asian students by admissions officers are vastly different than the personality ratings Harvard gets from its own alumni interviewers, who actually meet the applicants in person. Alumni interviewers score Asian applicants as high as whites.

In other words, Harvard artificially and fraudulently downgrades Asians on “personality” to get the results it wants. And what Harvard wants is to suppress the number of Asian Americans admitted.

Based on the data that Harvard was forced to turn over, economist Peter Arcidiacono of Duke University concluded that with the same application profile in terms of test scores, extracurricular activities and personality factors, an Asian American male applicant would only have a 25% chance of admission–versus 32% if white, 77% if Hispanic, and 95% if black.

What’s the real-life result of all this?

In 2013, Asian Americans made up 19% of the incoming freshmen class. According to Harvard’s own Office of Institutional Research, if the personality factors had not been rigged, that percentage would have been 43%.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 guarantees that “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color or national origin, be excluded from participation in, or be denied benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

Each year, Harvard takes hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government.

In Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative action policies, deciding that race could be used as a “plus factor” to achieve diversity, but never as a quota. Yet, by placing strict limits on the percentage of Asian American applicants it will admit, racial quotas are exactly what Harvard is using.

One strongly suspects this quota system isn’t limited to Harvard. In the last ten years, Asian American students have been limited to an 18-22% presence across the Ivy League. Or maybe that’s just a coincidence.

Writing for the majority in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the Court “expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”

With less than a decade to go, the Ivy League shows no indication that it’s giving up on those racial preferences. Instead, these colleges have doubled down. Objective standards regarding admissions continue to be increasingly disfavored as the illegal goal of racial balancing is advanced. This racial balancing is justified by the left’s desire to achieve “racial diversity” — its insistence on seeing every person only through the prism of race, as if the most important thing any of us has to offer is the color of our skin.

Not long ago, that was called “racism.” It’s still called racism.

It needs to end, once and for all — for the sake of deserving Asian American students, for the sake of Harvard’s own integrity, and for the sake of the American principle that the rules must be the same for everyone.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts said it best: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

It’s time we did just that. I’m Lee Cheng, of the Asian American Legal Foundation, for Prager University.  ~The Patriot Post

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOuYN-Fz6tQ

Last year provided the first clues as to how this effect is or isn’t playing out. According to The Washington Post, “Charitable giving in the United States rose a lackluster 1.6 percent last year, despite a strong economy — a sign that the 2018 tax code overhaul could be hurting donations, according to a new study published Monday. The study by the Fundraising Effectiveness Project also reported a quickening shift away from smaller and middle-class donors in favor of wealthy donors. Money coming from donations under $1,000 fell by more than 4 percent. But gifts from major donors jumped 2.6 percent.”

Of course, the Post was strongly against the tax law from the very beginning, so it’s no surprise that it immediately puts this news in a bad light. But is it accurate? It depends on a few factors.

Essentially, there are two ways to look at this. The “lackluster” rise could be attributable to those who simply were unsure about what their tax obligations would look like given the substantial changes to the tax code. This is especially true for independent contractors. But now that they have a better idea and have ironed out the adjustments, their financial situation is more clear, meaning they know for sure how much they can give to charities. In this sense, any rise at all is a good thing.

On the other hand, the simple truth is that there are some who give to charities or nonprofits only for the tax benefits. Take away the benefits, and suddenly they have no inclination to donate whatsoever. While their willingness to provide in the first place is commendable, their benevolence is paradoxically borne out of a selfish desire.

This last point presents an interesting test case. No-strings-attached giving is a virtue. And most of us probably know people who give generously and yet still take the standard deductions out of necessity when filing a tax return without even thinking twice about it. But others are surely now leery to donate. In which case their priorities need to be reevaluated.  ~The Patriot Post

In fact, if anything, China is now facing a serious issue with a ticking clock, thanks in part to the Marcus Island motherlode. Beijing once had a near-monopoly on rare-earth metals and used it as leverage against Japan and other U.S. allies. Now, Japan has its own stockpile that is well out of China’s reach for the foreseeable future. China’s leverage is thus greatly diminished.

China had been able to count on a relatively docile United States — at least in the area of trade. Well, America is not so docile anymore, with the election of President Trump. China has been used to America not taking it seriously on trade. scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton pretty much bent over, George W. Bush had bigger fish to fry in the form of radical Islamic terrorism, and Barack scumbag/liar-nObama was too busy apologizing for America, giving the storeaway to Iran, and otherwise ignoring threats to do much about China.

Trump, though, has applied the pressure in other ways besides the trade war. His strategy with North Korea has managed to lessen the tensions in that hot spot — the collapse of this week’s summit notwithstanding. The White House has no illusions about Kim Jong-un’s character or brutality as a dictator, but at the same time, if the U.S. can get North Korea to partially or completely denuclearize (something scumbag/liar-nObama managed to make more difficult), it’s worth these diplomatic efforts.

The removal of North Korea as a card to play hurts China as well. A potential Second Korean War (more accurately a resumption of the 1950-1953 war) had the potential to pin American forces down, enabling China to make a move in, say, the South China Sea. Now, with a real potential for peace, China’s finding the Pacific Fleet is not so tied down.

So, how do we keep the pressure on China? For starters, building up the Navy is a big part of this. The more hulls in the water, the easier America can respond to regional crises without having to open the door for China.

In addition, it allows the United States to threaten the tankers that would provide China oil — and force the People’s Liberation Army Navy to cover even more territory far from home. The economic boost from a massive naval buildup is a secondary benefit to the improved geopolitical situation.

Second, America must help Japan develop the Marcus Island discovery and to get those materials to market as quickly as possible. The sooner Beijing feels that crunch, the sooner that Xi will have to make some hard decisions that will be related to things like China’s military budget. Cutting into China’s military modernization plans is a good thing — especially as the Department of Defense has been trying to rebuild its own capabilities.

Finally, Trump needs to look for other openings to pressure China. In this case, weapons sales. Lockheed recently offered India a highly advanced version of the F-16. This is a plane that perhaps could be exported to Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines to bolster their defenses against Chinese aggression.

America defeated to the Soviet Union without firing a shot almost three decades ago, and the Soviets had a much more potent military arsenal than China. The right pressure, applied the right way, can achieve a similar result across the Pacific.  ~The Patriot Post

by Thomas Gallatin:  “The Democrats don’t care,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said in his opening remarks at Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing for President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Jordan then zeroed in on the real reason behind the Democrats’ call for Cohen’s testimony: “They just want to use you. You are the patsy today. They want to find someone somewhere to say something so they can remove the president.” That would be impeachment. From there, the hearing descended into several heated exchanges between members of both parties with one another and with Cohen.

There were a few important points to note, however. First off, Cohen did nothing to negate Trump’s recent characterization of him as “proven liar” who was “lying to reduce his jail time.” In fact, it appears Cohen lied again during his testimony when he claimed that he did not want a job in the White House. That statement does not comport with what he had privately told friends and colleagues, captured in seized text messages — that he expected to get an important job within the administration.

As we noted yesterday, Cohen admitted he had no evidence to support the long-running Trump/Russia collusion narrative. But he did try his best to continue spinning the Democrats’ favorite conspiracy narrative, suggesting that Donald Trump Jr. may have alerted Trump to the infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer. “Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgement of anyone in the world,” Cohen said, “and also Don Jr. would never set up any meeting of any significance alone — and certainly not without checking with his father.” However, when he was pressed on whether Trump actually colluded, Cohen hedged, “I wouldn’t use the word ‘colluding.’”

Ironically, Cohen’s testimony actually exonerates Trump of the charge of Russian collusion and undercuts his own claim of  campaign-finance violations. Cohen stated that Trump never really intended or expected to win the election; rather his aim was “only to market himself and to build his wealth and power.”

If, according to Cohen, Trump had no intention of winning but was simply running to build his own brand, then there would have been no reason to engage in collusion with Russia or to pay legally specious hush money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. In other words, Cohen’s testimony on Trump’s motivations was contradictory.

In the end, little new information was gleaned from Cohen, and none of it appears to be legally damaging to Trump — even as much of the mainstream media seeks to spin it as such. That said, the factor that may be most damaging to Trump is having hired Cohen in the first place. What does it say about Trump’s decision-making when he hired and retained for over a decade a man of Cohen’s obviously poor character?  

~The Patriot Post

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXxCmO5IirU

In the Maryland case, lower courts disagreed on whether the 40-foot cross, erected in 1925 by the American Legion to honor 49 Marylanders killed during World War I, represents an “establishment” of religion. In 2015, a federal judge in Maryland rejected a suit by the American Humanist Association, saying, “The predominant and nearly exclusive use of the Monument has been for annual commemorative events held on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.” However, the Fourth Circuit Court later ruled the cross unconstitutional, asserting that any reasonable observer would conclude the cross’s “inherent religious meaning” means the government “either places Christianity above other faiths, views being American and Christian as one in the same, or both.”

Jurisprudence in similar cases has been inconsistent — as Justice Clarence Thomas put it last year, the Court’s “establishment clause jurisprudence is in disarray” — so the justices have a chance to clear up a larger issue if Chief Justice John Roberts doesn’t insist on another narrow ruling. As the American Legion said in its brief, “If a century-old war memorial that is only in government hands because of traffic safety considerations arising 40 years after it was built is unconstitutional, it is difficult to conceive of any cross-shaped monument that will survive.”

There are hopeful signs for a right outcome, whether narrow or broad. While the women on the Court’s left wing seemed hostile to the cross, the other justices appeared amenable to keeping it. And it’s worth remembering however the justices rule that when Thomas Jefferson wrote of a “wall of separation between Church and State,” it was in a private letter, not constitutional language. Jefferson clearly didn’t intend for the metaphor to become legal doctrine as modern courts have made it. The leftist interpretation is a myth.  ~The Patriot Post

Artificial Intelligence Creating Fake News

by Political Editors:   Who needs Russians to run a disinformation campaign when there are American leftists creating “deepfake” news? After the 2018 midterms, a wealthy Democrat became embroiled in controversy when it was reported that he had heavily bankrolled a false-flag operation in Alabama. Back in December, Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized for his part in funding a high-tech disinformation campaign that sought to undermine support for Republican Roy Moore and boost Democrat Doug Jones.

Just after Christmas, The Washington Post reported, “Hoffman invested $750,000 in one group, American Engagement Technologies, or AET, according to a person close to the matter but not authorized to discuss Hoffman’s spending. Hoffman’s statement Wednesday referred to AET, which has been linked to a campaign to spread disinformation targeting Moore.” The Post further reported, “Hoffman’s public apology follows news reports on the effort, known as Project Birmingham, which involved the creation of misleading Facebook pages to persuade Alabama conservatives to vote for somebody other than Moore.”

While the promulgation of fake news is disgusting in and of itself, there is a more sinister aspect to this story that has many on both sides of the political aisle ringing alarm bells. As reported by The Guardian, “The creators of a revolutionary AI [artificial intelligence] system that can write news stories and works of fiction — dubbed ‘deepfakes for text’ — have taken the unusual step of not releasing their research publicly, for fear of potential misuse.”

The nonprofit research company known as OpenAI, founded in 2015 by Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk (who left the company last year over his disagreements with the direction the team wanted to go), finds itself at the center of controversy. The Daily Caller notes that “lawmakers sounded alarms in January about so-called deepfake videos that look remarkably real, with some experts warning they will be the next phase in disinformation campaigns. They worry that this new type of AI can make it difficult for readers and social media users to distinguish fact from fiction.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) last month lamented, “It is almost too late to sound the alarm before this technology is released — it has been unleashed … and now we are playing a bit of defense.”

This is indeed a problem, and it will only get worse as nefarious individuals and organizations work to weaponize AI technology in order to manipulate the masses with disinformation. It also provides some justification for the creation of “crediting houses” such as NewsGuard, which aims to provide a service designed to inform individuals on the credibility of various news sites. Although it’s far from perfect or free from bias, the recognition of the problem is real, and the need for conservatives to be involved in the process of “balancing” the vetting of news is imperative.  

~The Patriot Post

The United States Air Force had been using some of its F-22 Raptors to attack the drug labs. Now, let’s get one thing straight: Bombing the Taliban is good. Making drug labs go away is also good. Making Taliban drug labs go away via bombs is, therefore, very good.

That said, the F-22 Raptor is not the plane for the job. We have previously discussed the short-handed Raptor force. When you have such a highly advanced plane in such low numbers, it needs to be saved for the most important missions — and bombing Taliban drug labs is overkill.

There is plenty of argument over whether we should just get out of Afghanistan. But consider this: The Taliban were instrumental to 9/11. Yes, it’s been more than 17 years, and we will soon see children graduate from high school who were not even alive on the day al-Qaida carried out its unprovoked and dastardly attack. But the message needs to be sent that perpetrating something like 9/11 is a fatal mistake, and while al-Qaida is a shadow of what it once was, there’s still that score with the Taliban.

After all, we didn’t stop fighting Japan after Tom Lanphier shot down Isoroku Yamamoto’s plane in 1943. That wasn’t even at the halfway mark of World War II in the Pacific. So, when the previous U.S. administration wanted quit the fight after killing Osama bin Laden, someone needed to remind him that the Taliban were accessories to 9/11.

With that out of the way, it’s time to point out that since there really is a need to be involved in Afghanistan and to keep taking out the Taliban, then it is obvious the bombing should continue until the Taliban get the hint. But bombing with which plane?

The answer is a force more equipped to deal with the Taliban. F-22s are overkill and needed elsewhere. But there was a plane that the Air Force has dismissed that could sting the Taliban very well — the Textron Scorpion. This relatively simple, multi-role plane could carry the types of weapons needed to blast Taliban drug labs to bits, like Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) or laser-guided bombs. Scorpions can even haul regular old dumb bombs.

If the Scorpion isn’t an option, then the Air Force could always decide to buy the FA-50, a version of the T-50 that recently lost out in the T-X competition. Maybe the United States should also look into re-opening production of the OV-10 Bronco, a far more capable plane than the two planes in the competition: The AT-29 Super Tucano and AT-6B Wolverine.

This could be done as part of building up the United States Air Force. Yes, the USAF is talking about adding 74 more squadrons, but that’s not nearly enough. The fact is, a larger Air Force should also take into account the need to put bombs on al-Qaida, the Taliban, ISIS, al-Shabaab, and other terrorist groups. After all, just because Russia and China are major threats doesn’t mean we should ignore the radical Islamic terrorists.

When the Taliban decide to hand over any al-Qaida personnel they are harboring, then America can begin talks to stop the bombing. Until then, keep bombing their dope labs — and anything else we can find.  

~The Patriot Post

Such is the simple lesson Democrats want us to learn when they trot out teens and elementary children to parrot leftist propaganda about the issue du jour. Last year, it was the Parkland pawns marching for leftist gun control after the horrific mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. This week, it’s kids showing up to protest at various Senate offices to hawk the $90 trillion boondoggle known as the Green New Deal.

The Sunrise Movement specifically uses kids to advocate ecofascist policies because (A) as one kid put it, “you’re looking at the faces of the people who are going to be living with the consequences,” and (B) it’s always difficult to oppose what kids are saying without looking like an uncaring ogre. Sen. Dianne Fein-stein (D-CA) certainly came off as a condescendingly arrogant and grouchy old lady in pushing back against the rehearsed lines and phony anger thrust at her by a group of kids. See the video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd3H1boPIIE

But haven’t we all learned by now to beware selectively edited videos? Clearly, we’re no fans of Fein-stein, but the full video shows this to be a pretty amicable meeting of likeminded folks. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell certainly is aware of these tactics. He refused to meet with protesters, and some of them ended up getting arrested.

Finally, speaking of children with childish dreams, commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the most prolific proponent of the Green New Deal, spent her first day on Capitol Hill back in November protesting with the Sunrise Movement outside Nancy Pulosi’s office. Pulosi later famously called the GND “the green dream or whatever they call it.” And that’s the same commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who said of the climate-change threat, “I think young people … have a legitimate question. Ya know, should — is it okay to still have children?”

Maybe it’s not a great idea to put national policy in the hands of people banging on highchairs — or the hands of children used as pawns by those people, either.   ~The Patriot Post

“This should be frankly the easiest vote we ever cast in this body,” Sasse declared.

Just three Democrats voted for it. Three. Thus, it failed to reach  the 60-vote threshold.

One wouldn’t think that we need a federal law on the books that explicitly compels doctors to do their jobs (i.e., to “do no harm”), yet recent state laws have significantly rolled back infant protections. New York’s law claims to expand women’s rights, but it really just allows abortion as an option right up to labor and effectively negates born-alive protections.

Sasse first tried to pass his bill by unanimous consent, in large part to prove that there was no such consensus for the country’s newborns. Sen. scumbag-Patty Murray (D-WA) became the Dems’ lightning rod and opposed the move, claiming it was redundant because there are already laws against infanticide. Well, there are also plenty of laws on the books regulating gun purchases and ownership, yet scumbag-Murray and her Democrat cohorts are still heaping retread proposals onto that pile every time a useful murder hits the news.

There is no federal law to protect newborns in the context of abortion, and state protections can be shoved aside, as New York and seven other states have proven.

Seeing that the redundancy argument didn’t work, Democrats switched tactics and smeared the bill as restricting women’s access to abortion. (See how quickly they turned this from meaningless and redundant to a mortal threat to women’s rights?) Sasse’s bill does nothing to restrict access to abortion. Instead, it makes doctors culpable for allowing born infants to die from lack of medical care and grants women who receive abortions protection from prosecution. As noted in National Review, this bill will also force Democrats to “choose between rejecting infanticide and arbitrary beliefs about who gets to live.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is affirming life by ending one federal handout Planned Parenthood has been receiving for years. A new rule issued Friday by the White House prohibits federal family-planning money under Title X from being provided to institutions that make abortion referrals or perform abortions at the same facilities that provide other family-planning services such as birth control or medical checkups.

Planned Parenthood will survive without that particular $50-60 million every year because congressional Republicans continuously fail to stop shoveling another $500 million to the abortion mill every year. Moreover, much of its government funding comes from state Medicaid programs. However, it’s very easy for a gift to become a handout and soon to become expected. Planned Parenthood, having received so many taxpayer dollars over the years, insists it’s entitled to that money. It has promised to sue to block the order. If that fails, then the organization has vowed to drop out of Title X altogether rather than give up providing abortions.

In sum, the macabre Democrat Party of today fights tooth and nail against any move to restrict abortion any more than China or North Korea do, while demanding that American taxpayers foot the bill. “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” indeed…  ~The Patriot Post