Ivy League professor calls Carson a 'coon'

 Ben Carson

Anthea Butler

This piece of Trash is Teaching our Young? 

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/religious_studies/

 Follow the link above for more on the So call University of Pennsylvania

An Ivy League professor said that Ben Carson should win the "coon of the year" after the 2016 hopeful supported allowing Confederate flags at NASCAR events.
In a tweet sent out last Tuesday, University of Pennsylvania religious studies professor Anthea Butler, wrote "If only there was a 'coon of the year' award ..." when responding to Daily Beast editor-at-large Goldie Taylor's tweet containing a link to a Sports Illustrated article on the issue.
"Swastikas are a symbol of hate for some people too … and yet they still exist in our museums and places like that," Carson said during an event with Richard Petty in North Carolina last Monday. "If it's a majority of people in that area who want it to fly, I certainly wouldn't take it down."
Obviously, Butler disagreed with the famed neurosurgeon, who currently sits second in the Washington Examiner's latest power ranking, behind only Donald Trump.

Scotus Cartoon

Critics blast $20M Cal-Berkeley fund for race-based scholarships, hiring

The $20 million fund unveiled by a top California university last month to endow scholarships for African-American students and to hire diverse faculty is just the latest attempt to get around a state law barring schools from using racial preferences in admissions, according to critics, who are vowing yet another legal battle. 
University of California-Berkeley's "African-American Initiative" would raise funds from private non-profits to fund “a comprehensive effort to address the underrepresentation of African-American students, faculty and staff at our university, and improve the climate for those who are here now and all who will join our community in the future.” The money would go to scholarships for black students, the hiring of race-specific clinical psychologists and fostering a more diverse faculty and senior management, according to the school.
“For too long, African-Americans on our campus have faced obstacles to feeling fully included in the life of our university,” said Nicholas Dirks, chancellor of the University of California system's flagship school, adding that the initiative is “predicated on our collective determination to engage and improve the campus climate for African-Americans across every sector of our community.”

“The reality is, if they improved on working towards the achievements of their students they wouldn’t need to go around the law.”
- Ward Connerly

But critics say the scholarship fund is an end-run around Proposition 209, the 1996 law barring state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity for public employment, contracting and education. Ward Connerly, a conservative African-American who served on the University of California Board of Regents from 1993-2005 and is considered one of the architects of Prop 209, said the initiative appears to be illegal.
“The University of California, especially Berkeley and UCLA, have long tried to circumvent the law when it comes to this,” Connerly told FoxNews.com. “We are a nation of laws and Berkeley is not above them. The school has no right to avoid the law by developing initiatives such as this.”
Prop 209's backers claim it was modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred race as a factor in an effort to protect African-Americans from discrimination. By using similar language more than three decades later, the measure's proponents sought to stop racial preferences. University of California schools have seen higher graduation rates among minority students since Prop 209 took effect, with the Berkeley campus alone seeing a 6.5-percent increase in graduating students. But despite the rise in graduation rates, raw enrollment rates among African-Americans has dropped.
At the 38,000-student Cal-Berkeley, African-Americans currently make up just 3 percent of undergraduates, 4 percent of graduate students and 2 percent of the faculty at the university, according to officials.

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Critics say that UC Berkeley is focusing on the wrong methods to raise the enrollment of African-American students. (berkeley.edu)

School officials declined comment, instead referring FoxNews.com to a recent “Q&A” page where Dirks laid out the reasoning for the initiative. But officials told The College Fix the purpose of the initiative is not to make it easier for black students to be admitted, but to encourage more to apply because they know they could get help with tuition once accepted. The endowment fund will consist of “privately administered scholarships for admitted African-American undergraduates, many of whom receive scholarship offers from other institutions that are beyond our current financial aid abilities."
Prop 209's effect on universities has long been viewed as impacting admissions policies. While private scholarships can legally use race as a consideration, Cal-Berkeley's involvement in creating and administering the endowment could be viewed as violating the law's intent, according to Connerly.
“I intend to ask the Pacific Legal Foundation to take a look and if there’s any wrongdoing found, we will sue,” he said. “If we allow them to disregard the law, then they will try to do more and more.”
Gail Heriot, University of San Diego law professor and expert on Prop 209, told The College Fix the scheme does appear to violate the law.
“If the initiative is as described in the university’s announcement, it is a straightforward violation of Proposition 209,” Heriot said.

                                   Nicholas Dirks, chancellor of the University of California

Trump calls former President George W. Bush 'a disaster'

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took a swipe at former President George W. Bush Tuesday night on Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier,”  saying he had been a “disaster” and entering the Iraq War was “one of the worst decisions ever made.”
In a sit-down interview with Baier, the front-running GOP candidate also said he thought eminent domain, the right of the government or a builder to take away property from its owner for compensation, was “wonderful.”
Trump, a billionaire real estate mogul, suggested property owners shouldn’t hold out in situations where a factory or other job-creation project is proposed and discredited the charge eminent domain meant the government simply grabbed Americans’ homes and other properties.
“Most of the time it’s more money,” said Trump, who also criticized a major critic of the tactic, the influential fiscal conservative group Club for Growth.
When Baier asked Trump if he stood by a statement he made 2007 and 2008 saying he would impeach Bush for getting into the Iraq War, Trump replied, “I think he was a disaster and I think it was one of the worst decisions ever made. (He) has totally destabilized the Middle East. If you had Saddam Hussein, you wouldn’t have the problems you have right now.”
Trump insisted that he is the “most militarist” candidate in the 2016 presidential field but stood behind his recently-stated position that the United States should allow Russia to continue airstrikes in Syria that are hitting Islamic State fighters.
“If somebody wants to go hit ISIS, that’s OK with me,” said Trump, whose campaign has been criticized for too much showmanship and too little specifics on foreign and domestic policy.
Trump also expressed frustration with the constant questions from reporters about whether he’ll stay in the 2016 race, despite leading the GOP field in essentially every poll since early summer.
“That’s dishonest reporting,” he said. “I’m not going to get out of the races. … I’m having a great time. I want to make America great again.”

Justice Department to release 6,000 inmates from federal prisons beginning Oct. 30

The Justice Department will release some 6,000 inmates from federal prisons beginning at the end of the month as part of new sentencing guidelines for drug crimes established last year, a federal law enforcement official confirmed Tuesday to Fox News.
The new drug sentencing guidelines from U.S. Sentencing Commission, which are intended to reduce penalties on certain nonviolent drug offenders, also applies to any future offenders.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission decided in July 2014 that close to 50,000 federal inmates locked up on drug charges would be eligible for reduced sentences. The new sentencing guidelines took effect on Nov. 1, 2014.
The commission’s action is separate from an effort by President Obama to grant clemency to certain nonviolent drug offenders, The Washington Post first reported Tuesday.
The timeframe for release by the Bureau of Prisons is Oct. 30 through Nov. 2, an official told Fox News.
The agency was given one year to prepare for the release of these inmates, which will be one of the largest one-time releases of federal prisoners ever, according to a federal law enforcement official.
While “a majority” of the inmates granted release will be transferred to halfway houses and, in certain cases, drug rehabilitation centers, approximately one-third will be handed over to ICE to face possible deportation, according to an official.
The individuals released at the end of the month will also face a normal probationary period and supervised release.
Under the new guidelines, inmates who were deemed eligible under the new rules could apply for release, according to a law enforcement official.
Each case was then reviewed by a federal judge in the district in which the inmate’s case was tried in order to determine whether it would be beneficial to public safety to grant the prisoner early release.
“Even with the Sentencing Commission’s reductions, drug offenders will have served substantial prison sentences. Moreover, these reductions are not automatic,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said in a statement. “Under the Commission's directive, Federal judges are required to carefully consider public safety in deciding whether to reduce an inmate’s sentence."

FBI probe of Hillary Clinton emails expands to second tech company

The FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email has now expanded to include obtaining data from a second tech company, which is fully cooperating with the FBI probe that has threatened Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, Fox News has learned.
A source familiar with the investigation told Fox that the FBI contacted Connecticut-based Datto, Inc. in September and asked them to preserve all data they had which may be connected to Clinton. Datto was hired to help back up data in May 2013 by Platte River Networks, the Colorado-based tech company that managed Clinton’s server and has already been cooperating with the FBI investigation.
The cooperation of a second tech company raises new questions about whether the FBI is now obtaining any of the emails that Clinton says she and her attorneys deemed to be personal and deleted, as Republican critics have demanded to know if any of those emails were really work-related emails that should have been turned over to the State Department along with other federal records.
Datto's cooperation also raises more questions about whether anyone at the company, where employees do not have security clearances, had access to classified information that was in Clinton’s server. The source familiar with the investigation said that like all major tech companies on the front lines, Datto has faced cyberattacks, another subject of great interest to the FBI in its probe of Clinton’s server.
The FBI investigation gathered new steam this past Friday when officials at Datto received written consent from both Platte River and Clinton’s camp to turn over relevant data to the FBI, a process that is now underway as Clinton struggles in the polls just days before the first Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas.
However, the source familiar with the investigation stressed it’s not clear whether Datto has in its possession all of Clinton’s personal and officials created while she was Secretary of State -- or new emails or other data created after she left office.

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The confusion comes from the fact that Datto was hired by Platte River and not the Clinton team, so the company had no idea it was backing up data for Clinton until August of this year when company officials read news reports about Platte River having the high-profile contract.
Once Datto officials realized this summer that they had been backing up some of Clinton’s data which was now the subject of an FBI probe, one company official recalled, “there was a collective lump in our throats” and they sought to cooperate fully.
Datto’s involvement was first revealed by Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who is investigating the security of Clinton’s server, and sent a letter to the company this week seeking more information.
Aides to Johnson have privately expressed interest in emails among Platte River officials about whether there was a record of a “directive to cut the backup” of Clinton’s data.
In August, Johnson wrote, an employee at Platte River voiced suspicions over searching for an email from Clinton Executive Service Corp. directing such a reduction in data being stored in October or November 2014 and then again around February, advising Platte River to save only emails sent during the most recent 30 days.
“Starting to think this whole thing really is covering up some shaddy [sic] [expletive],” the Platte River employee wrote.
When employees at Platte River discovered that Clinton’s private sever was syncing with an offsite Datto server, one Platte River employee wrote in an email, “this is a problem.”
The source familiar with the investigation stressed there was no conversation between employees of Datto and Platte River about covering up any data. Though the source noted that this summer Platte River employees were “surprised” to learn that the Clinton data was being backed up in an offsite cloud, which wasa more extensive backup than Platte River officials had anticipated. As a result, officials at Datto took steps in August to make sure the Clinton data was being preserved because they did not want to run into a legal problem.
Michael Fass, general counsel at Datto, would only comment on the company’s general decision to cooperate with the FBI probe.
“With the consent of our client and their end user, and consistent with our policies regarding data privacy, Datto is working with the FBI to provide data with its investigation,” Fass told Fox in an emailed statement that referenced Platte River as well as Clinton.
Fass added in the emailed statement late Tuesday, “Also, we received a letter from the Senate Homeland Security Committee and Government Affairs Committee just last night and we are in the process of responding to it. Datto is a data protection and business continuity company that provides backup data storage to thousands of Managed Service Providers, including Platte River Networks. Datto has no role in monitoring the content or source of data storied by MSP clients such as Platte River.”