Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman prove to be the ultimate ‘lawnmower parents’

The latest college cheating scandal has already caught more than 50 adults red-handed, including coaches, test administrators, CEOs and Hollywood celebrities – not to mention embarrassing the heck out of elite universities like Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, USC and UCLA.
That academic cheating goes on isn’t exactly breaking news. Awhile back The Educational Testing Service and Ad Council even launched a campaign to discourage it with the tagline, “Cheating is a personal foul.” With “increased competitiveness for admission into universities and graduate schools,” The Academic Cheating Fact Sheet said, cheating is “seen by many students as a means to a profitable end.”
But what if your parents are wealthy and do the cheating for you by paying for higher test scores like “Desperate Housewives” actress Felicity Huffman – who paid $15,000 disguised as a charitable donation so their daughter could take part in the college entrance-exam cheating scam, according to court documents.
Or what if they scheme to invent athletic achievements to get you into a top school, like “Fuller House” actress Lori Loughlin, who is accused of agreeing to pay $500,000 in bribes to have her two daughters designated as recruits for the University of Southern California crew team despite that fact that neither child participated in the sport.
You don’t even have to work to get that top SAT score or the position of crew captain. It’s purchased for you, like a new iPhone. Just ring it up on Mastercard…ka-ching.
All looks “profitable” – until you get caught by the Department of Justice.
But would your kids really want you to do that for them? Why not ask them and use this as a natural “teachable moment” to highlight the importance of true self-worth and the value of hard work?
Just throw this out at the dinner table: “I’d love your opinion on something. I just saw a shocking news story about some really rich people who paid a lot of money to get their kids into the right college. We’re not rich, but I’m wondering: If we were and I did that for the two of you, how would you feel about it?”
Wait for it. If you have two kids, their responses will predictably be as different as night and day.
Kid 1: “I’d be upset and hurt. You don’t believe in me very much, do you? I mean, you paid somebody because you didn’t think I could get in myself by studying and working hard.”
Kid 2 shrugs: “If I could get into a big school like that as a done deal, without sweating over an application or a test, cool! What’s bad about that?”
Kid 1 fires back: “You didn’t get into the school, Dumbo. Mom got you into it by paying somebody. You telling me you’d feel good about that?”
Kid 2: (Silence).
Kid 1: “And you’d get caught, because you’re stupid. Even if you didn’t, you could never keep up with the work at a college you didn’t deserve to get in.”
Look at that. With no lecture from you, your older son has just solidified his belief in the self-reward of working hard, and your younger daughter got a wake-up call about the real world.

No one feels truly good about undeserved rewards being handed to them (especially if lies are involved). That’s why I always tell parents, “You never do your kids any favor by snow-plowing their roads in life.” No one can buy you self-respect. You have to earn it yourself.

Simply stated, no one feels truly good about undeserved rewards being handed to them (especially if lies are involved). That’s why I always tell parents, “You never do your kids any favor by snow-plowing their roads in life.”
No one can buy you self-respect. You have to earn it yourself.
If you were one of those two actress moms, imagine explaining what you did to your daughter(s) over the dinner table: “Honey, I thought you weren’t smart enough/talented enough to get into that school, so I was just trying to help…”
Then imagine your daughter’s expression as she realizes: Not only will I be denied admission to the school I bragged about getting in to my friends, but my academic track record is ruined for life.
As I wrote in a previous op-ed, parents if you think you’re doing those things for your kid, take a good look in the mirror. You’re selfish. All those things you’re doing…well, you’re not really doing them for your kid. You’re doing them for you, because the thought of your kid being unhappy, struggling, failing, and not being able to compete with their peers drives you crazy.
But here’s the irony. Doing anything for your kid that he could do for himself actually accomplishes the opposite of what you truly want. It ruins your child’s chance for success in life because it weakens their resolve, kills their resilience, tears down their self-concept, and diminishes their desire to do anything in life on their own.
Now that’ll put a major cramp in a parent-child relationship.

Ocasio-Cortez's 'unfavorable' rating skyrockets, with most people viewing her negatively: poll

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s unfavorable rating has spiked after just months in Congress, with most of the public viewing her negatively rather than favorably, a new poll shows.
The New York Democrat shot to fame amid the party’s lurch to the left and embracement of socialist policies such as the Green New Deal, yet the more people learned about the 29-year-old freshman congresswoman, the more they were turned off by her.
A Gallup poll released Friday shows that Ocasio-Cortez's unfavorable rating has risen by 15 points since last September, when she had yet to win the general election, increasing from 26 percent to 41 percent of the American adults polled.
She has also managed to increase her favorability rating, but only by 7 points. About 31 percent of surveyed people view her favorably, compared to 24 percent in September.
Since September, Ocasio-Cortez became more widely recognized across the country, with half of the respondents saying they have never heard of her before. Now only a fifth of surveyed people says they aren’t familiar with the self-described Democratic socialist.
The poll notes that Ocasio-Cortez’s name recognition is growing compared to that of other politicians at the same point in their careers in Congress. More surveyed people know the New York Democrat than they knew Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz as freshmen.
Overall, the results suggest that Ocasio-Cortez may be a polarizing figure. Most of her support is galvanized around younger, more diverse Democrat-leaning groups, while most of her opposition is composed of Republicans and more conservative Democrat-leaning groups.
Nearly three-quarters of Republican respondents say they view her negatively, with only 5 percent having a positive view. Among the Democrats, 56 percent of respondents had a favorable view of Ocasio-Cortez, compared to only 15 percent of the Democrats polled who don’t support her.
She’s also favored by adults 18 to 34, people of color and women. Yet she’s facing a favorability deficit among men (-24), whites (-24), and adults 55 or older (-22).
Among self-described independents, she has a negative net rating of 5 percent.

Fusion GPS Cartoons

Russian tech firm used in hacking of Democrats, McCain's associate disseminated Steele dossier, unsealed documents show

Documents newly unsealed Thursday in a case involving a Russian entrepreneur and anti-Trump dossier author Christopher Steele reveal that a tech company owned by the Russian was used to hack Democratic Party leaders.
Aleksej Gubarev, a businessman who runs companies across the world, claims his organizations Webzilla and XBT Holdings were defamed by Steele after the unverified dossier was published by BuzzFeed on Jan. 10, 2017.
The dossier alleged that Gubarev's companies “used botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct 'alerting operations' against the Democratic Party leadership.” The dossier also suggested that Gubarev played a “significant” part in the operation while “under duress” from the Russian security agency FSB.
But the unsealed documents on Thursday include a forensic analysis report by a former top cyber expert in the FBI’s cybercrime division that concludes that Gubarev’s companies were indeed used by Russian operatives in an effort to hack Democratic Party leaders, the New York Times reported.
The report notes that the businessman’s companies were often used by criminal groups and Russian agents to carry out various operations, including an attack on Ukraine’s power grid in 2015.
Yet while the report links Gubarev’s companies to Russia’s larger efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, it doesn’t claim that the businessman or his executives actually participated in the hacking operations.
“I have no evidence of them actually sitting behind a keyboard,” Anthony Ferrante, the report’s lead author, said in a deposition, according to the Times.
Gubarev denied the involvement in the hack, while his lawyers tried to ensure the report would be kept under seal and inaccessible to the public and the media, but the judge last December refused the request and ordered the documents unsealed.
Steele and his company, Orbis Business Intelligence, were hired by Glenn Simpson's U.S. based company, Fusion GPS, to work on the dossier and promote its contents to journalists. Fusion GPS received $1.8 million via the law firm Perkins Coie, with the money paid by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
A transcript of a court deposition unsealed Thursday also reveals that an associate of the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was in contact with multiple journalists and government officials in an effort to disseminate the dossier.
David Kramer, a former State Department official, said in a Dec. 13, 2017, deposition that the dossier was provided to journalists at McClatchy, NPR, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and BuzzFeed and CNN’s Carl Bernstein, according to the Daily Caller.
The report by Steele was also shared with State Department official Victoria Nuland, Obama National Security Counsel official Celeste Wallander and Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger.
Kramer said that Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson suggested he would use McCain to pass the dossier around.
“I think they felt a senior Republican was better to be the recipient of this rather than a Democrat because if it were a Democrat, I think that the view was that it would have been dismissed as a political attack,” Kramer said, according to the outlet.

49 killed and more than 20 seriously injured in New Zealand mass shooting targeting mosques

Ambulance staff take a man from outside a mosque in central Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, March 15, 2019. A witness says many people have been killed in a mass shooting at a mosque in the New Zealand city of Christchurch.(AP Photo/Mark Baker)

One person has been charged in connection with a “well-planned” terrorist attack that killed 49 people and injured dozens more in two mosques in New Zealand on Friday, authorities said.
The New Zealand police said four people -- three men and one woman -- were in custody in connection with the attack. Investigators later defused a number of improvised explosive devices that were found inside vehicles. Prime Minister Jacinda Arden described the suspects as one principal, two associates and one person not directly connected to the attacks. She said the suspects were not on any security watch lists.
"These are people who I would describe as having extremist views, that have absolutely no place in New Zealand." Arden said.
Thirty people were killed at the Masjid Al Noor mosque in central Christchurch and seven were slain inside the Linwood Masjid Mosque. Another three died outside the Linwood mosque.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison confirmed that one of the detainees was a 28-year-old white Australian-born citizen. He described the suspect as “an extremist, right-wing, violent terrorist.”
The suspects were apprehended by local police following Friday's attack, Mike Bush, New Zealand's police commissioner, told reporters at a news conference. No motive for the attack has been determined.
Investigators did not rule out that more gunmen could be involved, he said.
Police were also working to remove an unconfirmed video that circulated online showing the Australian suspect entering a mosque and firing multiple shots at people inside. He claimed responsibility for the shooting and reportedly published a 74-page anti-immigrant manifesto prior to the killings. He wrote that he traveled to the island nation to train and commit the attack.
In one video frame, the suspect is seen driving to the mosque with what appeared to be several semi-automatic weapons inside his vehicle.
Officers responded to a shooting at the Masjid Al Noor in Christchurch on Friday afternoon and also responded to a second shooting at the nearby Linwood Masjid mosque.
Authorities were not sure if any other locations were under threat and urged worshipers to refrain from visiting any mosque in the country, Bush said. A brief lockdown of Christchurch schools was lifted Friday evening.
AOC DRAWS IRE RIPPING ‘YOUR THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS’ AFTER CHRISTCHURCH MOSQUE SHOOTINGS
Ardern said Friday's events represented "one of New Zealand's darkest days."
Witnesses said the Masjid Al Noor mosque was full for Friday afternoon prayers when the shooting occurred. Len Peneha told the Associated Press that he saw a man dressed in black enter the mosque and then heard dozens of gunshots. That was followed by terrified mosque-goers running from the terror. A suspect was seen outside, fleeing after dropping what appeared to be a semi-automatic weapon, witnesses said.

A man reacts as he speaks on a mobile phone outside a mosque in central Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, March 15, 2019. A witness says many people have been killed in a mass shooting at a mosque in the New Zealand city of Christchurch.(AP Photo/Mark Baker)

"I saw dead people everywhere," one nearby resident said.
Another witness told TVNZ he saw three women shot and bleeding outside the mosque. A third witness said a suspect fired more than 50 shots, Stuff.co.NZ reported.
"He had a big gun and a lot of bullets and he came through and started shooting, like, everyone in the mosque, like, everywhere, and they have to smash the door and the glass from the window and from the small door to try and get out," he said.
WITNESSES SAY MANY DEAD, INJURED IN SHOOTING AT NEW ZEALAND MOSQUE
Retno Marsudi, Indonesia's foreign minister, said six Indonesians were inside the Al Noor Mosque when the shooting occurred and three escaped.
“We are looking for three other Indonesian citizens," Marsudi said.
Members of the Bangladesh cricket team said they narrowly escaped the shooting at the Masjid Al Noor mosque. Players and coaching staff were reportedly getting off a bus when the shooting broke out. Tamim Iqbal, a batsman on the team, tweeted: “Entire team got saved from active shooters. Frightening experience and please keep us in your prayers.”
Mario Villavarayen, a strength and conditioning coach with the team, told New Zealand media the players did not see the suspect but heard shots. He said the group was shaken but unhurt.
“I spoke to one of them shortly after,” Vllavarayen said. They didn’t see anything but heard gunshots. They were at the ground and just started running. The coaching staff were all at the hotel.”
The team reportedly fled the scene on foot to Hagley Oval where it was scheduled to play New Zealand on Saturday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

DOJ reached agreement with Clinton lawyers to block FBI access to Clinton Foundation emails, Strzok says

The Justice Department "negotiated" an agreement with Hillary Clinton's legal team that ensured the FBI did not have access to emails on her private servers relating to the Clinton Foundation, former FBI special agent Peter Strzok testified during a closed-door appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last summer, according to a newly released transcript.
Republicans late last year renewed their efforts to probe the Clinton Foundation, after tax documents showed a plunge in its incoming donations after Clinton’s 2016 presidential election. The numbers fueled longstanding allegations of possible “pay-to-play” transactions at the organization, amid a Justice Department probe covering foundation issues.
Under questioning from Judiciary Committee General Counsel Zachary Somers, Strzok acknowledged that Clinton's private personal email servers contained a mixture of emails related to the Clinton Foundation, her work as secretary of state and other matters.
"Were you given access to [Clinton Foundation-related] emails as part of the investigation?" Somers asked
"We were not. We did not have access," Strzok responded. "My recollection is that the access to those emails were based on consent that was negotiated between the Department of Justice attorneys and counsel for Clinton."

Peter Strzok arrives at a closed-door interview before the House Judiciary Committee in June. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Although the FBI eventually took possession of the servers, Strzok continued, the possession was "based upon the negotiation of Department of Justice attorneys for consent."
"A significant filter team" was employed at the FBI, Strzok said, to "work through the various terms of the various consent agreements." Limitations imposed on agents' searches included date ranges, and names of domains and people, Strzok said, among other categories.
The agreement was reached, Strzok said, because “according to the attorneys, we lacked probable cause to get a search warrant for those servers and projected that either it would take a very long time and/or it would be impossible to get to the point where we could obtain probable cause to get a warrant.”
Strzok did not elaborate on whether prosecutors made any effort to secure a search warrant, which could have delineated precisely what agents could and could not search.
But Strzok later said that agents had access to the "entire universe" of information on the servers when using search terms to probe their contents. He also told Somers that "we had it voluntarily," although it was unclear if he meant all emails on the servers -- including ones related to the Clinton Foundation.
Former Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who chaired the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee until 2017 and is now a Fox News contributor, said the arrangement signaled that agents wanted willful blindness.

"They had no interest in pursuing the truth."
— Former Oversight committee chair Rep. Jason Chaffetz

"What's bizarre about this, is in any other situation, there's no possible way they would allow the potential perpetrator to self-select what the FBI gets to see," Chaffetz said, noting that the FBI was aware that the servers contained classified information in unclassified settings. "The FBI should be the one to sort through those emails -- not the Clinton attorneys."
The DOJ's goal, Chaffetz said, was to "make sure they hear no evil, see no evil -- they had no interest in pursuing the truth."
Chaffetz added that the DOJ's behavior, including its award of immunity to top Clinton aides early on in the investigation, signaled a clear double standard: "They didn't go make a deal with anyone in Trump's orbit. They seized it. They used guns and agents -- and just went in there and took it."
"The Clinton Foundation isn't supposed to be communicating with the State Department anyway," Chaffetz continued. "The foundation -- with her name on it -- is not supposed to be communicating with the senior officials at the State Department."
The Clinton Foundation did not respond to Fox News' request for comment.
Republican-led concerns that the DOJ, under the Obama administration, was too cozy with the Clinton team during the 2016 presidential campaign have grown louder in recent days. Earlier this week, Fox News exclusively reviewed an internal chart prepared by federal investigators working on the so-called "Midyear Exam" probe into Clinton's emails. The chart contained the words "NOTE: DOJ not willing to charge this" next to a key statute on the mishandling of classified information.
The notation appeared to contradict former FBI Director James Comey's repeated claims that his team made its decision that Clinton should not face criminal charges independently.
But Strzok, in his closed-door interview, denied that the DOJ exercised undue influence over the FBI, and insisted that lawyers at the DOJ were involved in an advisory capacity working with agents.
Fox News also confirmed the chart served as a critical tip that provided the basis for Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe's explosive questioning of former FBI lawyer Lisa Page last year, in which Page agreed with Ratcliffe's characterization that the DOJ had told the FBI that "you're not going to charge gross negligence."
A transcript of Page's remarks was published Tuesday as part of a major document release by the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Georgia Rep. Doug Collins.
Separately in the closed-door session, Strzok defended his affair with Page, repeatedly denying that the relationship presented a security risk when challenged by GOP aides.

Former FBI director James Comey speaks during the Canada 2020 Conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, June 5, 2018. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)

Strzok, who was fired from the bureau after months of scrutiny regarding anti-Trump text messages between him and Page, confirmed he was involved in an extramarital affair when asked about it during his interview before the committee on June 27, 2018. But Strzok was also asked by Art Baker, the GOP investigative counsel for the committee, whether that affair could have made him "vulnerable to potential recruitment" by "hostile intelligence service[s]."
“Yeah, I don’t think I would characterize it that way,” Strzok said. “I think it is not so much any particular action as it is the way that action might be used to coerce or otherwise get somebody to do something. I can tell you that in no way would that extramarital affair have any power in coercing me to do anything other than obeying the law and doing honest, competent investigation."
Fox News' Brooke Singman and Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.

AOC draws ire ripping ‘your thoughts and prayers’ after Christchurch mosque shootings

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., slammed those expressing thoughts and prayers for the victims of Friday's mass shooting that killed 49 people in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Reacting to remarks made by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Ocasio-Cortez took to Twitter and invoked other mass shootings that took place in houses of worship.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ'S SOCIALIST VISION FOR AMERICA
“At 1st I thought of saying, ‘Imagine being told your house of faith isn’t safe anymore.’ But I couldn’t say ‘imagine.’ Because of Charleston. Pittsburgh. Sutherland Springs,’” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
The congresswoman was referencing the 2015 Charleston shooting at the Emmanuel A.M.E. Church that left nine dead, the 2017 Sutherland Springs shooting at the First Baptist Church that left 27 dead, and the 2018 Pittsburgh shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue that left 11 dead.
“What good are your thoughts & prayers when they don’t even keep the pews safe?” she asked.
That sparked plenty of backlash on social media.

Hillary Clinton Cartoons