A government study shows that more than two-thirds of parents support abstinence education. Unfortunately, the other third seems to be giving and getting federal grants.
Maybe that’s why the feds held up the release of the survey for nearly two years. “A nearly two-year-old, federally-funded survey of teen and parent attitudes about sex has prompted new outrage among abstinence education supporters, just as federal funding for their programs is ending,” Ben Penn reported in “Youth Today, the newspaper on Youth Work” on August 26, 2010. “The report, dated February 2009, was released Monday by the U.S. Administration for Children and Families (ACF) without fanfare but after repeated demands by supporters of abstinence-only education.”
“The report–which never addresses the question of whether abstinence education is effective, the Obama administration’s standard for funding–is a study of the attitudes of 1,000 randomly chosen adolescents 12 to 18 and their parents.”
“Among the report’s findings,” according to Penn:
* “About 70 percent of parents said they are either strongly opposed or somewhat opposed to premarital sex, both in general and for their own children specifically.
* “Roughly 80 percent of parents strongly disagreed with the notion that it is okay for their adolescents to have sex if they use birth control.
* “When asked to list their preferred sources for their children’s abstinence messages, 85 percent named a place of worship, 85 percent named the doctor’s office or health center and 83 percent included school.
* “The adolescents were less opposed to pre-marital sex than their parents and ‘were more likely than their surveyed parents to agree that engaging in sexual intercourse would be permissible for them in specific contexts.’”
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
They may not be able to graduate on time or, in some cases, pass a security background check, but undocumented students, whether they be physicists or fellow travelers, just got a pass. “The Homeland Security agency responsible for protecting the border and deporting unauthorized foreigners (Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE) has halted the removal of illegal immigrants who are students, according to a Washington, DC-based legal group,” Jim Kouri reported for The Examiner newspaper chain on August 19, 2010. “The move, which will spare some 700,000 illegal aliens, is a response to nationwide rallies and demonstrations by defiant illegal immigrants protesting their eminent removal or that of their illegal parents, according to officials at Judicial Watch.”
“News of this outrageous plan comes days after a separate Judicial Watch report revealed that the administration is secretly working behind the scenes to grant millions of illegal aliens amnesty in case Congress doesn’t pass sweeping legislation to do it.
“Devised by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), that backdoor amnesty plan aims to enact ‘meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action.’
“In the meantime, the Obama administration is protecting scores of illegal aliens who have participated in disruptive sit-ins, rallies and marches to demand legal status simply because they came to the U.S. as children by no fault of their own. Among them was a weeklong protest on Capitol Hill, rowdy sit-ins at legislators’ offices and a large march from Florida to Washington D.C.
“Each time, ICE agents spared all of the illegal alien participants from deportation as per White House orders. Just last month 21 illegal immigrant students arrested by the Capitol Police during sit-in protests at various Senate offices were released by the feds, according to Judicial Watch officials.
“Last week immigration authorities deferred the deportation of a Mexican woman in Arizona because dozens of student groups petitioned on behalf of her two American-born (anchor baby) children.” Kouri is also the fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police.
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
The University of North Carolina has concocted a compromise on its abortion coverage that illustrates why such gestures can leave pro-lifers compromised. “Starting this school year, University of North Carolina students will be required to purchase a private insurance plan or enroll in a campus plan that includes abortion coverage,” Christopher A. Guzman reported on CNSNews.com. “And while the UNC administration has agreed under pressure from pro-lifers to allow students on the 16 campuses in the UNC system to opt out of the abortion coverage aspect of the campus plan, students who do opt out will pay the same premiums as those who do not.”
“Students for Life of America (SLFA), a pro-life group with chapters at campuses throughout the United States, originally called attention to the abortion provision in the campus insurance plan. Under the plan, a benefit of up to $500 as well as 80 percent Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) coverage is available for ‘Elective Abortion.’”
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
Widely studied in institutions of higher and lower learning, Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle is commonly presented as a first-hand representation of turn-of-the-century (19 to 20) urban life. Go to USA.gov, type in his name in the search engine, and see how many school districts show up in use of his opus.
Yet and still, can you trust the fiction of a man who proved himself to be so factually, if not ethically, challenged? “Many of those who later became useful stooges of the party went through their own baptism of mud at the hands of the comrades,” Eugene Lyons wrote in The Red Decade. “In 1934 a New Masses cartoon showed Upton Sinclair as an insect on the boot of a capitalist marching straight for fascism.”
“He expiated his sins when he joined the Popular Front of know-nothing defense of the Stalinist terror and thus won immunity. The apex of his glory as a Muscovite megaphone was reached when he spoke by direct wire from Pasadena, California, to a mass meeting in New York in fervid approval of Stalin’s ‘liquidation.’ of the Old Bolsheviks.”
“He certainly did travel far since the days of The Jungle, since human slaughter could leave him so beautifully untouched.”
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but it can erode credibility, particularly if the imitators are old enough to know better. “The cleric who wants to build a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero claims that ideas from his book were incorporated into President Obama’s landmark Cairo address to the Muslim world last year by one of the drafters of the speech,” Patrick Goodenough reported on CNSNews.com. “Feisal Abdul Rauf made the remarks during two media interviews in Egypt last February.”
“I am not going to hide from you that one of those who participated in writing the speech transferred parts of my book A New Vision for Muslims and the West, which he referred to U.S. interests converging with the best interests of the Muslim world,” Rauf said.
Meanwhile, “A recent study published by Michigan State University’s Education Policy Center appears to contain a significant amount of plagiarized material,” Michael Van Beek of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy reports. The author of the study, Sharif M. Shakrani, is a professor at MSU.
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
From George Washington University comes an unusual affirmative action case: a white employee charging his supervisor of color with discrimination. “Two former University Police officers have filed discrimination complaints against the University Police Department, alleging mistreatment based on their race,” Amy D’onofrio reported in The GW Hatchet. “The officers, both men in their mid-20s, filed complaints through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—a D.C. agency that seeks to protect employees from discrimination in the workplace—alleging UPD supervisors, including Interim Police Chief James Isom, discriminated against them.”
“University spokeswoman Candace Smith said it is University policy not to comment on personnel matters, but added that GW is taking the complaints seriously and is ‘looking into the matter.’ Isom did not respond to requests for comment.
“The first officer, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, filed a complaint July 7 naming Isom, who is black, as the principal supervisor in the alleged discrimination. The officer was employed by the University from March until he resigned in July. He is Indian-American.
“Throughout his time at UPD, the first officer said he was given the ‘38’ patrol, in which he had to check various residential halls on campus and walk the equivalent of about six miles per shift. He said he noticed he would get the ‘38’ patrol one to three times a week – more than other officers – and said that the post is often referred to as the ‘ethnic post or African post’ by other officers.
“In addition, the officer—a GW Law School graduate—said he requested a three-week leave of absence to take the bar exam. He said Isom denied his request, though another Caucasian officer who had been hired after him was allegedly given similar leave for a different exam.”
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
If, as many of his detractors say, President Obama is a Marxist, then he would not be the first to come out of Harvard. “Almost the entire membership identified as belonging to the first Ware cell came out of the Harvard Law School: Alger Hiss, Nathan Witt, Lee Pressman, John Alt and Henry H. Collins, Jr., Harry Dexter White and Lauchlin Currie were teachers as well as students at Harvard,” James Burnham wrote in Web of Subversion, published in 1954.
Actually, White and Currie were economists at Harvard, the former a beneficiary of the one-way outreach of another economist there—Frank W. Tausig. “Harry White, using the prestige of Harvard, secured a position in the United States Treasury Department until he became the chief financial policy maker for the United States,” the Veritas Foundation reported in 1960. “He repaid Tausig, Harvard University and his country be becoming a Soviet espionage agent, diverting our financial power to serve Soviet interests.”
“Harry White was at the same time dubbed as America’s chief Keynesian economist by none other than John Maynard Keynes himself.” The Veritas Foundation was founded by Harvard alumni.
“Lauchlin Currie, another Keynesian economics instructor at Harvard, used the prestige of his position to secure an appointment to the Federal Reserve Board,” Veritas reported. “After being accused of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union, Currie removed himself from our shores and exiled himself in Columbia, South America, ‘well outside the national jurisdiction of the United States government.’”
It should be noted, as well, that John Reed, immortalized in the Warren Beatty biopic Reds was also a Harvard grad, of the class of 1910.
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
The White House is very proud of its Race to the Top education program but should remember that pride goeth before a fall in educational standards. “U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced today that 10 applicants have won grants in the second phase of the Race to the Top competition,” the White House revealed on Tuesday. “Along with Phase 1 winners Delaware and Tennessee, 11 states and the District of Columbia have now been awarded money in the Obama administration’s groundbreaking education reform program that will directly impact 13.6 million students and 980,000 teachers in 25,000 schools.
“The 10 winning Phase 2 applications in alphabetical order are: the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island.” For his part, Frederick Hess, the education specialist at the American Enterprise Institute is somewhat less than impressed.
“Successful bureaucracy-busting measures tend to be cut-and-dry—states either do or don’t enact a specific reform—yet, the core of the Race to the Top program is about promising to do things,” he stated. “It’s good to see states like Rhode Island, Florida, Massachusetts, and DC recognized for their efforts.”
“But I am shocked that Louisiana and Colorado are not included among the winners.” Hess taught high school in Louisiana.
Montgomery County, Maryland, though, may have a golden opportunity to enact tangible education reforms. Their schools superintendent, Jerry Weast, just resigned.
“Residents have witnessed a near doubling of the schools’ budget over Weast’s tenure, to about $2.2 billion today, from just over $1 billion when he came on in 1999,” Leah Fabel reported in The Washington Examiner on August 25, 2010. “The money has gone largely to salaries for a growing teacher force and an expanded central office, as Weast directed a greater share of resources to lower-performing schools.”
“Achievement has not kept pace.” Gee, where have we heard that before?
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
Having spent an inordinate portion of the summer reading the academic jottings of recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, it is refreshing to remember that there is another lady on the federal bench who really does know what it is all about.
That would be U. S. Court of Appeals Judge Janice Rogers Brown. At the 46th annual meeting of the Philadelphia Society, she very succinctly described America’s founding principles. I had the pleasure of hearing those remarks in person which The Fund for American Studies received her permission to transcribe.
“The historian Jacques Barzun divides the last 500 years into three eras: The years 1500-1660 were dominated by the issue of man’s relation to God; 1661-1789 by debating an individual’s status and the mode of government; 1790-1920 by the question of how to achieve social and economic equality,” she reminded Society members at the April meeting in Philadelphia. “The American Revolution falls into the second category; the French Revolution is in the third.”
“That is, the American Revolution represented the culmination of religious consciousness applied to the designs of government, while the French Revolution heralded the beginning of the secular age. And this discontinuity in worldview has made all the difference.
“America’s Founders were not utopian idealists. They acknowledged the practical limits of human reason, understood the necessity of transcendence and relied on experience. In contrast, the French Revolution succumbed to the powerful notion of abstract human rights and insisted on reinventing the world through principles that are utterly divorced from the reality of human nature. According to the French revolutionaries, man can remake his history, generation by generation, through some collective cultural process.
“The American philosophy of the rights of man relied heavily on the indissoluble connections between rationality, freedom, justice and property. Fully cognizant of man’s aptitude for folly and the antinomy between reason and power, the Founders made a serious effort to limit government—to make it subservient to the people.”
We should note that Judge Brown received a standing ovation for her remarks from a capacity crowd.
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
The last redoubt of concern for the common man is ridiculously awash in the cash that keeps eluding the object of its affections but then, maybe that’s where it comes from.
The Almanac of Higher Education shows us that colleges and universities took in about a trillion dollars this year and spent roughly that amount. Most of these institutions have multi-million dollar endowments, even some community colleges. Most parents do not.
Professors make about $100,000 a year with tenure while the untenured lecturers and associates range between $45-80,000 a year. Ironically, this is where most share-the- wealth schemes originate.
The creators of these plots don’t seem to realize that in the search for deep pockets they themselves are in a target-rich environment.
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
