Huma Dumps the Weiner

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Huma Abedin has announced that she is separating from the husband, Carlos Danger. Carlos Danger was caught tweeting photos of his crotch with a child next to him. So Huma says that’s enough.

Did Huma Abedin Weiner really not know she had a deviant taking care of her child? She may not know what’s best for herself, but she apparently knows what’s best for Hillary Clinton. I mean, she’s in line, she’s chief aide now. She’s presumably gonna be Hillary’s chief of staff. But she has not been chief of her husband’s staff, obviously.

It’s interesting to note this, too. Did Hillary try to talk her into staying? Hillary didn’t do this. Hillary hung in there. But Huma has had enough. Huma has chosen Hillary over Weiner. Obviously in more ways than one.

I mean, the idea, the possibility of becoming Hillary’s chief of staff is obviously a very attractive thing, particularly when Huma has not been chief of her husband’s staff, obviously, for quite a while.

But the contrast here, no bimbo eruption unit here. Huma Abedin not arising and trying to find out who these women are texting with her husband and then trying to destroy them.

That’s Hillary’s M.O.

But Huma, I guess she just doesn’t want to deal with it, doesn’t want to put up with it. And they’re very sad in the Drive-By Media. It’s almost fly the flag at half mast day. Jeff Zeleny, CNN, just a moment ago:

ZELENY: He is more than a spouse. He is a central player, of course, to Huma Abedin, though. But one cannot understate the importance of her to the Hillary Clinton campaign. There is no one who is —

Note the tone here. It’s like somebody died.

ZELENY: — at the candidate’s right hand more often than Huma Abedin. This really is a personal matter, not a campaign matter; but it is really angering some people on the campaign I have spoken to this morning when this New York Post report came out. They were hoping that he would not embarrass this campaign, embarrass Huma. But that is what has happened here. But, you know, there are so many aides and so many people who work on a campaign; but, again, no one closer in every respect to Secretary Clinton than Huma Abedin. One can only imagine the personal conversations that Huma Abedin is having with Hillary Clinton…

I wonder if Jeff Zeleny there understands what he really just said when he says, “One can only imagine the personal conversations that” — what does Huma have in common with Hillary? What in the world could this possibly be about? It’s obvious. Horndog husbands. So they all know, they all obviously know, but Huma has chosen a different route. She’s distancing herself and separating herself. I guess she figured there’s no future in the last name being Weiner, whereas Hillary knew there was a future with the last name being Clinton. Here is Brian Stelter, the media whiz at CNN.

STELTER: It’s perplexing, it’s mystifying, and now just downright sad. People have had fun with this story, they’ve exploited this story. The New York Post, among others, certainly have. But now to have a child involved, have a child on the cover of the New York Post with his father in bed with him taking lewd photos, that is just sad.

Well, who made it possible? Didn’t Weiner make it possible?

Anyway, you can expect a lot more hand-wringing. You can expect a lot more sorrow. You can expect much sadness in the days ahead as this story continues to bounce around and reverberate through the presidential campaign. And, of course, what will it mean for Hillary, what will it mean for her campaign, and what will Trump do with it? Yes, everybody will be very, very concerned at whatever tactless, tasteless thing Trump tries to do with it, this in their point of view. (For more from the author of “Huma Dumps the Weiner” please click HERE)

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Will Next WikiLeaks Release Show Hillary Clinton Helped Arm Jihadists?

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Once again last week WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vowed that a “significant” leak affecting Hillary Clinton will be released prior to the election. On Wednesday, Assange told Megyn Kelly of Fox News that his organization is “working around the clock” to “assess the veracity” of the “thousands of pages” of material they’ve been given, and has decided to release the information in “several batches.”

He promised the materials contain “some quite unexpected angles that are, you know, quite interesting, some even entertaining.”

When asked by Kelly if the information in his possession “could be a game-changer in the U.S. election,” Assange replied, “I think it’s significant. You know, it depends on how it catches fire in the public and in the media.”

In an interview late last month with Democracy Now, Assange wasn’t talking about significance or entertainment. He was talking about the slammer.

Assange boldly predicted the emails could put Hillary Clinton in prison. After she got away with tossing classified information around like leaves in autumn, one would think even multi-camera footage of her capping Jimmy Hoffa wouldn’t land her in the clink.

If what Assange revealed about this pending batch is true, however, the White House could be out of the question for Hillary even if the Big House isn’t. Assange told Democracy Now that the emails “create a rich picture” of how Hillary Clinton operated at the State Department in regards to Libya and “weapons flows going over to Syria, being pushed by Hillary Clinton, into jihadists within Syria, including ISIS.”

He says there’s 1,700 Clinton emails, just about Libya alone.

Writing in National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy said, “Just as in Libya, where Mrs. Clinton championed the strategy of arming Islamist ‘rebels,’ the Syrian ‘rebels’ who ultimately received weapons included the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, and ISIS.”

What difference, at this point, does it make? The Daily Wire recalls that at the same Benghazi hearing in 2013 where she made that now-infamous remark, then-Secretary of State Clinton told Rand Paul (R-Ky.) she didn’t have “any information” on any weapons transfer program out of Libya.

Paul: My question is, is the US involved in any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?

Clinton: To Turkey? I’ll have to take that question for the record. That’s, nobody’s ever raised that with me.

Paul: It’s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons. And what I’d like to know is, that annex that was close by, were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons and were any of these weapons being transferred to other countries? Any countries, Turkey included?

Clinton: Well, Senator you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. And, I will see what information was available.

Paul: You’re saying you don’t know?

Clinton: I do not know. I don’t have any information on that.

In the 12th hour of her marathon testimony before the House Benghazi Committee in 2015, when asked point blank by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) about weapons running either to Libyan rebels or Syrian rebels, Hillary Clinton doubled-down.

Pompeo: “Were you aware, or are you aware of any efforts by the U.S. government in Libya to provide any weapons, either directly or indirectly, or through a cutout to any militias or opposition to [former Libyan President Muammar] Gadhafi’s forces?”

Clinton: “That was a very long question, and I think the answer is no.”

Pompeo: “Were you aware or are you aware of any U.S. efforts by the U.S. government in Libya to provide any weapons, directly or indirectly, or through a cutout, to any Syrian rebels or militias or opposition to Syrian forces?”

Clinton: “No.”

Pompeo: “Were you aware or are you aware of any efforts by the U.S. government in Libya to facilitate or support the provision of weapons to any opposition of Gadhafi’s forces, Libyan rebels or militias through a third party or country?”

Clinton: “No.”

As WJLA reported at the time, she also denied seriously considering arming opposition groups through private security experts, as she had proposed in an email to aides.

Both appearances were under oath.

In February 2016, The New York Times published a thorough expose entitled “The Libya Gamble,” which concluded that Clinton personally facilitated “a secret American program that supplied arms to rebel militias, an effort never before confirmed.” The Administration had been “turning a blind eye as Qatar and United Arab Emirates supplied the rebels with lethal assistance.” However, Hillary “had grown increasingly concerned that Qatar, in particular, was sending arms only to certain rebel factions: militias from the city of Misurata and select Islamist brigades.” She wanted in the game. The result was a disaster. In the words of The New York Times — who not even Clinton can accuse of being part of the so-called “alt-right” — “Many of the rebels the Clinton State Department armed joined Islamist causes and defected to terrorism.”

As for Syria, Amnesty International reported last December that ISIS has built up its arsenal not only with U.S. weapons “looted, captured or illicitly traded from poorly secured Iraqi military stocks” but also from the capture or sale of military stocks supplied to armed opposition groups by the U.S. and other nations. Salon detailed “how the CIA stood by as arms shipments from Libya enabled the rise of ISIS.”

The Intelligence Community (IC) knew that AQI [Al-Qaeda in Iraq] had ties to the rebels in Syria; they knew our Gulf and Turkish allies were happy to strengthen Islamic extremists in a bid to oust Assad; and CIA officers in Benghazi (at a minimum) watched as our allies armed rebels using weapons from Libya. And the IC knew that a surging AQI might lead to the collapse of Iraq.

Do the promised WikiLeaks documents prove Hillary’s efforts to overthrow secular dictators involved allowing heavy weapons into the hands of people hellbent on our destruction? Do they prove Clinton lied under oath? Do they show that the chaos she’s left in both Libya and Syria undermine her claim Donald Trump is dangerous? Do they indicate Hillary’s “extremely careless” behavior goes beyond creating a non-secure private sever?

The voting public awaits to see.

But given what’s on the record already, perhaps we won’t find Assange’s “October Surprise” all that surprising. (For more from the author of “Will Next WikiLeaks Release Show Hillary Clinton Helped Arm Jihadists?” please click HERE)

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Pro-Lifers Respond to Planned Parenthood’s Florida Zika Push

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For several weeks, public policy experts have sounded a warning as Zika has spread in the state of Florida. Last week, NPR highlighted how Planned Parenthood has answered the call, joining other groups to knock on thousands of doors and warn people of the dangers associated with the virus, all while promoting its anti-life agenda.

Like many other groups that back abortion, Planned Parenthood says a large part of reducing Zika’s harm is the use of contraceptives to stop women from getting pregnant and passing various disorders onto their children, with abortion as a backup plan. “This is a natural extension of the work we do with reproductive health care and sexually-transmitted infections,” Chief Medical Officer for Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida Dr. Christopher Estes told NPR. “It just made sense. And this is a time of a public health crisis. When you have something like this going on, it’s, ‘All hands on deck.’”

Pro-life groups, however, told The Stream that Planned Parenthood’s approach to Zika prevention is causing more harm than good.

“The biggest problem is that an accurate estimate of” how Zika will affect unborn children “not available,” said Dr. Donna Harrison, Executive Director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “No one can tell a pregnant mom infected with Zika how likely it is that her child will have any of these things.”

“These things” are a number of disorders associated with a pregnant mother’s Zika virus infection. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Zika virus infection during pregnancy is a cause of microcephaly and other serious brain anomalies; however, the clinical spectrum of the effects of Zika virus infection during pregnancy is not yet known. A wide range of neurologic abnormalities, in addition to microcephaly, has been observed among infants with presumed or confirmed congenital Zika virus infection.”

Microcephaly, which can cause small heads and varying levels of brain disorders, has received the most amount of attention. Harrison, though, says “The absolute risk of problems to fetuses whose mother is infected during pregnancy is still being evaluated by the CDC.” She pointed out that maternal infections in the first trimester are by far most likely to affect a child, but that “the best studies show that of all woman infected during the first trimester, 98-99 percent of those infants will not have microcephaly.

“We have a lot of fear,” concluded Harrison, “and very little information at the moment. And fear breeds abortion.”

Jor-El Godsey, president of the pro-life pregnancy care center umbrella group Heartbeat International, said that “What we need to focus on in times like these are cures, treatments and preventing the spread of infectious diseases. Abortion promises none of these societal goods, but instead, promises to end the life of a person who is already alive. That is simply the opposite of health care.”

“The vast majority of women who abort their children do so not because they think it’s the best choice, but because they feel it’s their only choice,” continued Godsey in an e-mail to The Stream. “Women deserve to know the whole truth. A pregnant mother needs to know that Zika and microcephaly are not death sentences for themselves or their precious children.”

“Every life has value and is worth living, regardless of circumstance or the challenges we are called to overcome,” he explained.

According to NPR, Planned Parenthood is not relying solely on birth control and abortion, though it describes that “Family planning is a key part of the Planned Parenthood message.”

“The organization is also distributing Zika prevention kits, including condoms and mosquito repellent, to pregnant women at its health centers,” reports NPR.

Despite the message of the abortion industry, one Florida mother is speaking up to describe the joy she has because of her two children with microcephaly. “[I]t’s not the end of the world because you have these kids,” Haneefa De Clercq, told ABC25. “They will teach [mothers] so much. They’ll teach them how to love, they will teach them patience.”

De Clercq’s disabled children are Andrea, 37, and Robbie, 33, with the respective maturation of a three-year-old and a seven-year-old. “I never expected that I could give them an instruction and that they would follow that instruction and do it properly,” she said. “I see the love between them and it gives me tears of joy.” (For more from the author of “Pro-Lifers Respond to Planned Parenthood’s Florida Zika Push” please click HERE)

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John McCain Is in the Fight of His Political Life in the Age of Donald Trump

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After 30 years in the Senate, during which he transformed himself from war hero into political icon, John McCain now finds himself in more jeopardy than at any time during his political career. And for much of that, he can blame Donald Trump.

This reelection campaign, his fifth, is forcing the Arizona Republican to do battle on multiple fronts, testing his political dexterity in ways unlike any of his previous races, including two unsuccessful bids for the presidency.

First he must clear his primary Tuesday, a day after he turns 80, against an arch-conservative whose campaign received a late six-figure boost from a Trump donor. Then, assuming he wins the nomination, he must move into a general election just two months away against a well-funded Democrat, U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, whose campaign is wrapping McCain’s support for Trump around the veteran Republican’s neck in a bid to drive up Latino turnout.

McCain insists that he will not alter his high-wire campaign strategy, which basically involves steadfast support for Trump while also reserving the right to regularly criticize the GOP nominee when he does or says something objectionable. (Read more from “John McCain Is in the Fight of His Political Life in the Age of Donald Trump” HERE)

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University of New Mexico Dept. Head Confirms Aborted Baby Brains Dissected for High School Students

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A recent video shows the chancellor of the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Paul Roth, admitting that one of the university’s summer science programs for high school students dissected baby brains for research.

This confirms what the House Select Panel on Infant Lives exposed in its report when it referred the university to the New Mexico attorney general for criminal charges for possibly violating New Mexico’s Jonathan Spradling Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act.

Roth, who is also the dean of the medical school, is shown in a video released by the New Mexico Alliance for Life (NMAFL), admitting that some baby brains were used in research:

The person questioning repeatedly tells him she is videotaping the conversation and asks Roth to repeat what he said earlier about using human remains with high school students. Roth replies on camera:

Yes, we had a faculty member who obtained some tissue, and during one of these summer workshops, uh, dissected I think one or two fetal brains.

(Read more from “University of New Mexico Dept. Head Confirms Aborted Baby Brains Dissected for High School Students” HERE)

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Movie About Obamas’ First Date Flops at Box Office in Opening Weekend

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A romantic comedy about Barack Obama’s first date with his future wife opened over the weekend to unimpressive numbers.

Southside With You depicts young lawyer Obama’s outing with Michelle Robinson, a summer associate at his Chicago law firm, in 1989.

The film finished at No. 13 in the weekend box office, grossing a mere $3 million.

The low ranking came despite the promotional efforts of Southside With You‘s stars, Parker Sawyers and Tiki Sumpter, as well as executive producer John Legend.

After its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, writer and director Richard Tanne said the Obamas were “excited” about the movie, but also “a little baffled by its existence.”

The movie, which had a limited release of 813 theaters, fared relatively well in some cities.

Southside With You had its post profitable showing at the Magic Johnson theater in Harlem, N.Y.

It also drew larger audiences in Atlanta, Chicago, Memphis, Los Angeles and Washington.

Howard Cohen, co-president of Roadside Attractions, said, “We’re very happy with the opening. … We had sellouts in many markets and the movie is playing to both an African-American audience and to arthouse audiences.”

Southside With You also received mostly positive reviews.

The film has a “freshness” rating of 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and the site’s Critical Consensus states, “Southside With You looks back on a fateful real-life date with strong performances and engaging dialogue, adding up to a romance that makes for a pretty good date movie in its own right.”

Odie Henderson with RogerEbert.com said, “This down-to-earth approach works surprisingly well because Southside With You never loses sight of the primary tenet of a great romantic comedy: All you need is two people whom the audience wants to see get together — then you put them together.”

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone remarked, “Both Sawyers and Sumpter are terrific, world-class charmers who suggest the powerhouses they’re playing without undue mimickry.”

But The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis said Tanne “mistakes faithfulness for truthfulness. He’s obviously interested in the Obamas, but he’s so cautious and worshipful that there’s nothing here to discover, only characters to admire.”

“Mr. Obama hasn’t even left office, but the cinematic hagiography has begun,” Dargis concluded.

Despite its weak weekend at the box office, Southside With You still managed to outperform Hands of Stone, a Weinstein Co. film about professional boxer Roberto Duran, portrayed by Edgar Ramirez, and his trainer Ray Arcel, played by Robert DeNiro.

That movie opened in 810 venues and grossed $1.7 million.

The top-grossing movie of the weekend was the horror film Don’t Breathe, which opened in 3,051 theaters and grossed $26 million. (For more from the author of “Movie About Obamas’ First Date Flops at Box Office in Opening Weekend” please click HERE)

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TV Star Dies in Plane Crash – ‘Tragic Loss’

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The world of reality television just suffered a tragic loss.

Darrell Ward, one of the stars of History Channel’s Ice Road Truckers, was killed Sunday when his plane crashed en route from Dallas to Missoula, Mont.

Ward had attended the Great American Truck Show in Dallas over the weekend.

Ironically, 52-year-old Ward was scheduled to begin filming a documentary on what goes into recovering a plane crash.

In a statement to Fox 411, a spokesman for Ice Road Truckers said, “We are saddened by the tragic loss of Darrell Ward, a beloved member of the HISTORY family. He will be greatly missed and our thoughts are with his family during this difficult time.”

A press release was posted on Ward’s social media page, where many people went to pay their respects.

One fan wrote: “My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of Darrell’s. Loved watching him on The Ice Road Truckers. He will be missed by all!!!”

Another posted: “We are stunned and saddened by this tragic loss, our thoughts and prayers go to his family. May the good lord wrap his loving arms around you and comfort you as well as to give you the strength and courage to get thru this.”

Witnesses of the crash stated the plane went into a stall and the pilot was unsuccessful in his attempt to gain control.

The Cessna 182 was making an approach to an airstrip in Rock Creek, Mont., and crashed onto the shoulder of Interstate 90.

The accident killed Ward and another person aboard the plane.

The incident is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Ward’s family reportedly released a short statement: “While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief. His manager and best friend M. Bob Stanton and long time friend Chuck Campbell are expected to make a lengthier statement shortly.”

Ward, who described himself as an “adrenaline junkie,” was true to his motto: “Any road, any load.”

Ice Road Truckers chronicles the often dangerous lives of the people who haul cargo to remote areas. (For more from the author of “TV Star Dies in Plane Crash – ‘Tragic Loss'” please click HERE)

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Gun Ownership, Concealed-Carry Permits up Among Women and Minorities

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Antonia Okafor, a Dallas resident, says she believes a gun can be the great equalizer for women to defend themselves—one reason she is now the southwest regional director for a group called Students for Concealed Carry.

State laws allowing residents to carry concealed weapons have been enacted in all 50 states, with varying degrees of regulation—most recently on college campuses.

“We see ourselves as doing this as a means of empowerment,” Okafor, 26, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Real feminism is about empowerment and taking our safety into our own hands.”

Okafor, who is black, said more female role models, such as Olympic gold medalist Kim Rhode, have inspired more gun ownership among women.

But Okafor—a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas, where she became involved in the movement—said her mother is opposed to guns.

In an April poll by ABC News of issues millennial women are most concerned about, gun rights scored even with equal pay and abortion, each getting 11 percent.

A study by the Crime Prevention Research Center earlier this month found concealed-carry permits have boomed nationally, but particularly among women and minorities. “In eight states where we have data by gender, since 2012 the number of permits has increased by 161 percent for women and by 85 percent for men,” the report says.

From 2007 through 2015, concealed-carry permits issued by state and local governments increased about 75 percent faster among nonwhites than whites, according to the report.

Okafor noted that those living in the inner city “are the most likely to benefit” from self-defense.

“A lot of minority homes didn’t have father figures growing up,” Okafor told The Daily Signal. “The right to bear arms is a way to protect our community. Every weekend people are dying in cities riddled with gun control.”

Okafor said increasing gun ownership could mark a political shift among both women and minorities away from pro-gun control Democrats to pro-gun rights Republicans in the longer term.

However, JaQuan Taylor, a senior at Georgia Tech, is a Democrat and president of the college group that advocates allowing students and faculty to carry concealed firearms while on campus. Taylor, who is black, said he doesn’t plan on switching parties, but he is more open now.

“It’s more challenging for me to pick a politician that wants to take away guns or prohibit them in anyway,” Taylor, 22, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “I vote for the person more than the party, but I usually vote Democrat because they are pro-education. Since I’ve gotten a gun, I’ve begun to look at Republicans.”

Taylor said he joined a marksmanship club at Georgia Tech and then “became comfortable with getting a gun to protect myself.”

He said he believes as more African-Americans learn about gun laws, more are buying for self-defense.

He doesn’t see the gun issue as a left-right matter, but more of an issue of freedom, Taylor said.

“It seems like with the push for gay marriage, there is a push for freedom in all directions. That’s a good thing,” he said.

The data on women and minorities should come as no surprise, said Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott, a noted economist and author of the recent book, “The War on Guns.”

“Women benefit more from having a gun than a man because of the large strength differential between a male-to-woman attacker compared to [a] male-to-male attacker,” Lott, the author of the August study, told The Daily Signal.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, questions the research but said any increase in recent ownership is driven by fear.

“The rate of American gun ownership has been in serious decline over the last 40 years, so it’s not surprising that gun manufacturers are desperately seeking to tap into new markets and that they’re using the politics of fear to drive new sales,” Everytown for Gun Safety spokesman Andrei Berman told The Daily Signal in an email.

Lynne Roberts, the Massachusetts state coordinator for the pro-gun Second Amendment Sisters, said classes at a Braintree, Massachusetts, shooting range went from about five women per month a decade ago to 35 in the past year.

“We have to tell them to call before so we’ll have enough instructors,” Roberts told The Daily Signal. “Now we have to limit it to 26, and it always fills.”

She added that in recent years, an increasingly diverse group of women has sought to learn about guns for the first time. They include single mothers and married women, from 22 to 82, in occupations such as nurses, small-business owners, social workers, accountants, and lawyers. They travel from Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine, as well as other parts of Massachusetts.

Roberts also sees a potential political shift.

“Women are voting typically on the Democratic side because over the last two or three generations self-defense and firearms were demonized,” she said. “Women were told they can’t take care of themselves. That’s changing.”

Responsible gun ownership does not represent a political shift, said Brendan Kelly, spokesman for the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun control group.

“Owning a gun and supporting sensible laws that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people are not mutually exclusive,” Kelly told The Daily Signal in an email, adding:

In fact, what we know is that 90 percent of the American public, including more than 70 percent of NRA members, support expanded Brady background checks. Expanded Brady background checks are more popular with the general public now than they ever have been.

The so-called Brady bill of 1993 required gun dealers to run all purchasers through a national system for instant criminal background checks. In 2013, President Barack Obama pushed for legislation to require sales at gun shows to go through the same checks, but the measure died in the Senate even while it was controlled by Democrats.

Restricting guns isn’t the answer, said National Rifle Association spokesman Catherine Mortensen. Violent crime in cities such as Chicago is one reason why traditional Democratic constituencies are buying guns for self-defense.

“Americans have seen the government can’t always protect them—from the terrorist attack in San Bernardino to the shooting in Orlando,” Mortensen told The Daily Signal.

Mortensen added the NRA is the “oldest civil rights group” in the United States.

“We are proud to defend the right to self-defense of everyone regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation,” Mortensen said.

Larry Pratt, president of Gun Owners of America, said he believes the increase in gun ownership and concealed carry could represent a political realignment.

Pratt recalled a friend, a college professor who was a liberal Democrat and an atheist in favor of gun control. Then, after two of the professor’s friends were robbed and murdered, he got a gun. The professor gradually became more conservative on other issues and became a Christian, Pratt said.

“Owning a gun marked the break with the tenets of liberal orthodoxy—that government can take care of me,” Pratt told The Daily Signal. “That opened the door to a broader realignment.” (For more from the author of “Gun Ownership, Concealed-Carry Permits up Among Women and Minorities” please click HERE)

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The Dumbing Down of College Curriculums

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Let’s concede at the outset that many students find their college years enlightening and enriching. But something is rotten in the state of academia, and it is increasingly hard not to notice.

There once was a time when employers could be reasonably certain that college graduates had a basic sense of the world and, as a minimum, could write a coherent business letter. That is simply no longer the case, as some academic leaders appear ready to admit.

Harvard’s former president, Derek Bok, mildly broke ranks with the academic cheerleaders when he noted that, for all their many benefits, colleges and universities “accomplish far less for their students than they should.” Too many graduates, he admitted, leave school with the coveted and expensive credential “without being able to write well enough to satisfy employers … [or] reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, nontechnical problems.”

Bok noted that few undergraduates can understand or speak a foreign language; most never take courses in quantitative reasoning or acquire “the knowledge needed to be a reasonably informed citizen in a democracy.” Despite the massive spending on the infrastructure of higher education, he conceded, it was not at all clear that students actually learned any more than they did 50 years ago.

Indeed, a recent survey of the nation’s top-ranked public universities by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that only nine of them required an economics course for graduation; just five required a survey course in American history; and only 10 required that students take a literature course. Despite the lip service given to “multiculturalism” on campus, the study found that: “Fewer than half required even intermediate study of a foreign language.”

This knowledge deficit has been a long time coming.

By 1990, the cost of four years at an elite private college had passed the median price of a house in the United States. But a survey sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1989 found that a majority of college seniors would flunk even a basic test on Western cultural and historical literacy: 25 percent could not distinguish between the thoughts of Karl Marx and the United States Constitution (or between the words of Winston Churchill and those of Joseph Stalin), 58 percent did not know Shakespeare wrote “The Tempest,” and 42 percent could not place the Civil War in the correct half-century.

Most seniors were unable to identify the Magna Carta, Reconstruction, or the Missouri Compromise; they were “clearly unfamiliar” with Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”

These concerns now seem almost—quaint. The fact that college students had huge gaps in their knowledge was old news by the early 1990s. But today the question is no longer whether students have learned specific bodies of knowledge; it is whether they are learning anything at all.

In their widely cited book “Academically Adrift,” Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa concluded that 45 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” during their first two years of college. More than a third (36 percent) “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning over four years of college.”

Traditionally, the authors wrote, “teaching students to think critically and communicate effectively” have been claimed as the “principal goals” of higher education. But “commitment to these skills appears more a matter of principle than practice,” Arum and Roksa found.

“An astounding proportion of students are progressing through higher education today without measurable gains in general skills,” they wrote. “While they may be acquiring subject-specific knowledge, or greater self-awareness on their journeys through college, many students are not improving their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing.”

But those are precisely the skills that employers increasingly expect from college graduates. A 2013 survey of employers on behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that 93 percent of employers say that a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than a candidate’s undergraduate major.

More than three-quarters of the prospective employers of new college graduates said they wanted colleges to put more emphasis on such basic skills as “critical thinking, complex problem solving, written and oral communication, and applied knowledge.”

Trashing the Curriculum

So how could we spend so much for so little? The most obvious answer is that colleges and universities frankly don’t care whether students learn much of anything.

Once again, Harvard’s Bok is willing to admit that administrators have few incentives to worry about something as irrelevant as student achievement because student learning can’t be monetized and doesn’t do anything to advance academic careers. “After all,” he writes, “success in increasing student learning is seldom rewarded, and its benefits are usually hard to demonstrate, far more so than success in lifting the SAT scores of the entering class or in raising the money to build new laboratories or libraries.”

There are, of course, other factors at work. The dumbing down of elementary and secondary education has made its way to the collegiate level; too many unprepared students are admitted despite their inability to do college-level work. Nearly four out of 10 college faculty now agree with the statement “Most of the students I teach lack the basic skills for college-level work.” This inevitably contributes to the flight from teaching (few professors want to teach remedial courses) and the overall lowering of standards.

This general indifference to what, if anything, students learn is embodied in the modern curriculum that enables students to study just about anything, without necessarily learning much at all. (For more from the author of “The Dumbing Down of College Curriculums” please click HERE)

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Yes, Anthony Weiner Is a Creep, but Huma Abedin Has Ties to Radical Islam

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Anthony Weiner is a creep. Everyone knows he’s a creep. No one is surprised he’s still a creep. And the fact that top Clinton aide Huma Abedin is finally separating from him is a non-story and media scapegoat that allows the bigger scandal surrounding Abedin’s ties to anti-women, pro-Islamic groups to go unnoticed by most.

The New York Post reported Sunday that Saleha Abedin, Huma’s mother, translated and edited a shockingly anti-women book published by the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs.

“Written by her Saudi colleague Fatima Naseef, the book explains that the stoning and lashing of adulterers, the killing of apostates, sexual submissiveness and even female genital mutilation are all permissible practices under Sharia law,” writes Paul Sperry for the Post.

The book is also permissive of marital rape and child marriage while it condemns women in positions of authority in the workplace and laws that promote equal treatment for both genders. In the realm of equal rights, women are allowed, however, to “participate in fighting when jihad becomes an individual duty.”

Now, lest you think that Saleha Abedin edited the book without endorsing the contents, think again:

On the back cover, Saleha says she is “pleased to launch” the book as part of a series on the study of women’s rights in Islam sponsored by the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child (IICWC), for which she is listed as chairperson.

Founded by Huma’s mom, the Cairo-based IICWC has advocated for the repeal of Egypt’s Mubarak-era laws in favor of implementing Sharia law, which could allow female genital mutilation, child marriage and marital rape.

“Saleha is paid by the Saudi government to advocate and spread Sharia in non-Muslim countries like America,” concludes Sperry. He goes on to show how, as secretary of state, “women’s rights champ” Hillary Clinton traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2010 to speak at a girls school founded and managed by mother Abedin. The trip was arranged by Clinton’s right-hand woman, Huma:

While there, Clinton formed a partnership with Saleha’s Dar al-Hekma college called the US-Saudi Women’s Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, and promised to reverse post-9/11 curbs on Saudi student visas to America.

The next year, Clinton invited Saleha and the president of the Saudi school to Washington to participate in a State Department colloquium on women, as revealed by internal emails released in response to a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch.

Will anyone in the mainstream media confront the Democratic presidential candidate and question her about her ties to a hateful and oppressive ideology? Or will the play-by-play of Huma Abedin’s marital problems garner an eternity of media attention as Hillary Clinton coasts to November without mainstream media scrutiny? (For more from the author of “Yes, Anthony Weiner Is a Creep, but Huma Abedin Has Ties to Radical Islam” please click HERE)

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