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My understanding from John Oliver's show is that one reason there isn't good data on gun violence is that the CDC is not allowed to fund studies pertaining to it. The parties with private money to put towards research are probably few and biased one way or another.

You will get little real understanding from John Oliver since he isn't really interested in developing a genuine evenhanded understanding of the issues, he is pushing an agenda.

Going on about the CDC is misdirection as the Department of Justice has been collecting statistics and studying this for a long time. Why do you think John Oliver doesn't mention that? Example:

Gun Violence Prevention

Besides private parties and TV hosts, you should also be skeptical of academicians, some of whom are willing to lie to push a narrative.

Does Disgraced “Historian” Michael Bellesiles Deserve A Second Chance?

For your consideration:

An interview with John R. Lott, Jr.
Bogus Gun-Control Numbers

White men born in America are twice as likely to end up in prison as men born abroad,

This carefully mixes legal and illegal immigration together. And there are over twice as many illegal immigrants in the US today, than there were in the 90ies. Oh, and you carefully replaced the number of crimes with the number of incarcerations — illegals don't always go to prison, some times they may get deported instead. Nice try, but fail...

Another funny bit is that neither you nor your source cite figures for Black men — even though this would've supported your point (much) better, you chose to shy away from it for fear of appearing racist... Another ill Trump's presidency may be able to fix...

that crime rates would go down with less immigrants

Not crime rates — the number of crimes.. Fewer people, fewer criminals, less crime. Just housing the already convicted illegal immigrants cost the US taxpayers $1.87 bln in 2014 — on top of the devastation of the victims and the great costs of investigating and prosecuting the crimes.

just the property rights have been estimated at several times that

Another unsubstantiated claim.

Simply driving the segment of the wall to its final location would cost you that much in fuel

And another...

the wall is a simplistic solution from the mind of a child

Israel's wall works — the point you do not even attempt to refute. So will ours.

You actually want to stop illegal immigration? punish the employers.

One measure does not exclude another. But you may be exaggerating the current ease of hiring illegals. When I was hired recently, for example, I had to bring my passport (or some other proof of eligibility) with me on the first day. I forgot and they sent me back home for it...

I suspect he is talking about this http://www.nationalreview.com/...

How odd, thatDoctor Viner's statment that snow would become more rare, and that future snow could become a rare and exciting event becomes "No snow last (sic) year 2000 - I'm assuming that was a typo for "past".

Now it is true that the UK newspaper "The Independent did give a false quote of Viner, apparently by a sub-editor. The false quote had a headline "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past." http://www.desmogblog.com/2013...

But on to some issues with even the Ntional Review article - damn, the NR was a hellava lot better when W.F. Buckly Jr ran it.

They use three winters as a refutation of AGW, and even gloat over the recent few cold winters - to which I say they can go fuck themselves.

But the concept that three winters of cooler than normal winter do not make for a refutation of AGW, and that someone can simplymake shit up, doesn't mean that the person actually said that.

Now in the Northeast of the US, the previous two winters were cooler that what we are used to lately. But yeah, that's weather. In other places it was warmer. Weather. This winter where I live, I used the snowblower exactly once. And only a third of a tank of gasoline in it - also weather It's almost 80 degrees today, and I've ridden my motorcycle without any jacket on in every month of the past year. Weather. I make no claims as does the National Review that this year refutes denialist claims. Did I mention they were a lot better under W.F. Buckley Jr?

I do make claims that when the whole globe is warming up on average, and multiples of years are above the old averages, now that's starting to be climate.

Onw swallow dos not make a summer. But hundreds of them trampling your lawn, eating your goldfinch food, and shitting all over your patio - do.

I suspect he is talking about this http://www.nationalreview.com/...

It sure looks like Hillary Clinton engaged in a conspiracy to migrate classified information off of the secure network and onto her insecure email server. She instructed subordinates to summarize information and send it as new emails, which of course were not marked as classified.

She's not dumb and she's a lawyer, so she knew what she was doing was illegal.

In the first e-mail, Clinton curtly instructs Sullivan, "It's a public statement. Just email it." Minutes later, Sullivan responds, "Trust me, I share your exasperation. But until ops converts it to the unclassified email system, there is no physical way for me to email it. I can't even access it."

"ops" means the "operations" group in the State Department, where apparently Hillary Clinton had people reading emails on the secure system and then sending a summary to her insecure server. "converting" to the unclassified email system.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423417/hillary-staffer-wary-sending-classified-info-just-email-it-andrew-c-mccarthy

http://nypost.com/2016/01/24/hillarys-team-copied-intel-off-top-secret-server-to-email/

Some of the emails were "SAP" classified. Some were "HCS-O".

http://bigstory.ap.org/e19abf78b6fe43e7b7719f059901630d

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3413033/Hillary-s-emails-contained-classified-information-HUMAN-SPYING-State-Department-says-won-t-meet-deadline-publish-emails.html

If that last story is correct, Hillary Clinton's personal email server could have lead to disastrous consequences or death for real human beings. We're way, way beyond anything excusable.

Incidentally, here is another interesting article by the same author, well worth reading for both Europeans and Americans.

What if what you want do negatively impacts someone else's freedom? How do you control that? [...] I believe individual freedom have to be restricted in the common interest

So, which is it? Do you believe that people's freedom should be restricted so that they don't interfere with someone else's freedoms? Or do you believe that individual freedoms should be restricted for the good of society? The two are entirely different concepts.

Like many Americans and classical liberals, I draw the line of what is permissible at what Locke stated as: "Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." That applies both at the level of individuals and "society", which is nothing more than a collection of individuals.

Oh so now it's making sense. You were born in a soviet controlled country and now associate Hillary with Stalin.

No, I wasn't "born in a Soviet controlled country", I was born and educated in Western Europe, but I spent enough time in socialist countries to have a good idea of what socialism is all about, unlike you apparently. My parents were also old enough to have experienced the Nazis sweeping through Europe and government scientists performing craniometry on them.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

Obviously not, which is an embarrassing lapse of historical knowledge on your part.

Racism was never scientific,

You're confusing "scientific" with "true". Racial superiority was a widely accepted scientific theory; it happened to be incorrect. More importantly, progressivism used scientific racism as justification for eugenics, segregation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

Nope. I believe individual freedom have to be restricted in the common interest [...] and science proved them wrong. the racists tried to validate their view with science and science proved them wrong

So you are saying that the problem with scientific racism was that it was incorrect? If it had been right, the political choices based on it would have been justified? That, in principle, society has the right to prevent people from procreating and to oppress them if science can prove that they actually are mentally or physically inferior on average?

See, the problem with scientific racism was not that it was wrong, the problem with scientific racism was that people like you are willing to use scientific claims (whether right or wrong) to violate the rights of individuals for "the good of society". After the horrors of the 20th century, it is disturbing how common your beliefs are, in particular among people who really ought to know better based on their history.

You don't hang out on "those kind of websites" -- i.e., web sites that apply critical thinking to the assertions promoted by James Hansen, the assertions promoted by Michael Mann, the assertions promoted by Al Gore, etc.

Restricting oneself to uncritical, non-diverse sources of information -- a filter bubble, an echo chamber -- is a problem, is it not?

The datasets that do show warming have received far more corrections than the UAH satellite dataset. So by your criteria, they are more suspect than the UAH satellite dataset.

It hit at least one bookseller pretty hard.

Actually, (different AC here) they are backing Trump because they are emotional. Calling them stupid (your words, not mine) is disingenuous.

Emotional people do a lot of things that make sense from an emotional point of view, even when such actions are self-harming. I might be hungry and yet avoid a nearby restaurant I had an embarrassing date in. There is no risk of having a second embarrassing breakup in the restaurant, and after a year has passed, nearly no risk of any eyewitness to the original event being there; yet, it will be avoided, as if revisiting the restaurant would have one revisit the shame.

Trump speaks emotionally. His policy has little in long term plans or strategy. For example, his foreign energy policy is basically "seize the middle east oil fields" Of course, the Middle East has allies and weapons which probably will thwart that policy, and there are no details as how such a thing could be achieved (so one must assume the simple solution, which is war).

His foreign policy with Mexico is basically, "let them pay for my pet projects"

It is very disturbing, he seems to believe that foreign countries exist to do the US's bidding. Dangerous territory. Other countries have resources, and we don't need any more enemies.

Why should we care about this photo of President Obama:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/433048/barack-obama-che-guevara-american-people

Imagine being [a Cuban-American] and seeing celebratory images of Guevara all around you. Imagine—even further—being the son or daughter of someone whom Guevara personally executed. There are such people in the United States. Or imagine—further yet—being a Cuban political prisoner, and knowing that masses in free countries were wearing Che on their chests.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/215531/che-chic-jay-nordlinger

Imagine the above-mentioned people seeing this photo of President Obama.

Why should we care about this photo of President Obama:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/433048/barack-obama-che-guevara-american-people

Imagine being [a Cuban-American] and seeing celebratory images of Guevara all around you. Imagine—even further—being the son or daughter of someone whom Guevara personally executed. There are such people in the United States. Or imagine—further yet—being a Cuban political prisoner, and knowing that masses in free countries were wearing Che on their chests.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/215531/che-chic-jay-nordlinger

Imagine the above-mentioned people seeing this photo of President Obama.

Nope.
not trolling.
just actual fact:

Based on a single issue (gun rights) National review declares him liberal, ignoring that he typically votes in favor of Law Enforcement over criminal defendants (unlike Scalia who actually took an interest in ensuring government didn't overstep even in case of the clearly guilty), and he opposed granting Habeas Corpus to the Guantanamo detainees effectively supporting their indefinite detainment without charge:
http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Ilya Shapiro (a fellow at the CATO institute) writing on CNN simply declares him a "solid liberal."

> http://www.nationalreview.com/...

I'd wondered what the fallout would be. I had no idea. "HOLY SHIT" does not cover my thoughts well enough. I'd been a bit curious as to what was going to happen to the people involved but that never showed up in any of the media that I follow so I mostly forgot about it. I figured that they had to have pissed some people off - especially at the national level and at the level where powerful people sit.

I have not yet looked into it further to see who sent down the orders to do those things. People often wonder why I hold the US' political left, and their adherents, to high standards. At first blush, this would be a good example of why I do so. I've not yet spent the time to look deeper (I will) to see if it's a confirmation of my expectations. I am less than impressed - disgust is the word I'm looking for but that only begins to describe it.

Ah well... I'm awake now. Fortunately, I've been awake since about 0300 and have already had my bucket of coffee.

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Here's hoping the Republicans keep this psycho out of the Supreme Court, the last thing we need is another liberal zealot like Kagan

Guns don't kill people, Americans do.

Except for some strange reason, Americans in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire are less likely to kill people -- not just less likely than other Americans, but even less likely than the average Canadian, or even many Europeans.

If you're talking about social science studies of discrimination, Asian Privilege is something about Asians that cause non-Asians to go "that must be nice."

[...]

Then give me the standard way to say "unchallenged white privilege" that actually means precisely what "unchallenged white privilege" means with no messy sub-meanings that would cause confusion.

You can't because the definition is inherently subjective and nonstandard. Notice the bolded part in your first quote? When you try to define privilege by what other people think rather than an actual objective measure, then you're basing your concept on something ephemeral and ever changing. I could change that with an ad campaign.

Further, the part, "unchallenged" is circular logic. If I don't agree something is a "privilege", say because it isn't by the usual English definition, then it is "unchallenged" and I'm being a spoil sport (connotation discussed next).

Which is why you start talking about "unchallenged white privilege." Which is defined as "nice shit you get because partly you're white in America, and instead of realizing you got it partly because you were white you thought you got it because you earned it and now you're extremely pissed that someone is daring to argue the point."

Just look at the negative connotation dripping off that. This isn't science. It's a "heads I win, tails you lose" game. It's just more bigotry like the bigotry it alleges to study.

Moving on

Thus, most of the actual data they use tends to woefully out-of-date -- for example, racial quotas have not been legal elements of college admissions since '78, yet if you watch any debate on Affirmative Action that involves ordinary white people it rapidly becomes clear that their entire conception of the concept of Affirmative Action is based on a quota system.

But we still have preferential treatment in college admissions based on ethnicity, gender, and political belief. And we still have people claiming there is discrimination by a group merely because the composition of the group doesn't agree with the general population with no consideration of the pool that the group is drawn from (which frequently is different from the general population). Just because the "ordinary white people" don't distinguish the fine distinctions between quotas and the various things I just mentioned, doesn't mean much. After all, what other similarly educated group does?

And generally, if you're in a science that is part of the public debate even the choice of what paper to write is inherently political.

The obvious counterexample is to look at what has been written. I assure you that while there is political advice in climate change-related papers, there are far more apolitical papers. This research has already been done.

For example, the notorious "97%" paper by Cook et al which fraudulently claimed to have a 97% consensus among climatologists about a weak claim that climate change was occurring and due to humans (at the time, there probably was a strong consensus, but it was more like 85-90%), had determined that two thirds of the climate research expressed no opinion at all on whether there was climate change (a follow up study had determined that only 1% of papers had actually expressed an explicit opinion that climate change was mostly due to human activity).

To summarize, you aren't speaking of science when you use highly subjective and ephemeral definitions as core concepts of your study. You also overplay the role of politics in research, even in climatology which has considerable political influence.

University of Oregon.

Nuff said.

It looks like a violation of 18 USC Sec. 793 to me.

More than that, you have reliably conservative publications openly deriding him as a "Dorito-tinted proto-fascist" and declaring that anyone who endorses him is a political whore in editorials.

Strange times, indeed.

Donald Trump Turned Down 94.4 Percent of American Job Applicants, Applied for Hundreds of ‘H’ Visas Instead http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Actually, the ideology for that sort of thing belongs on one side of the American political spectrum: the Left

Scalia made no mention of academic records, he only mentions being African American as a criterion.

You're either ignorant of the topic, and falling for the inflammatory press coverage, or you're intentionally distorting the subject, yourself.

Scalia was merely making reference to a specific brief that had been submitted. The brief in question makes "mention of academic records" and discusses the favorability of various outcomes (for African American students, specifically) in-detail.

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

If he had said, "What's the name of that book, you were reading, about that black guy who killed somebody?" would you be calling him a racist, who apparently thinks all African Americans are murderers? It's absurd and utterly disingenuous.

Yes, I'm sure I'll be modded as a troll but the fact is the democrat party is bought and paid for by the big cable lobby http://www.nationalreview.com/... It's no wonder that Comcast (CNBC, MSNBC, NBC, etc. etc) all endorsed Clinton. Follow the money. http://stopthecap.com/2015/06/... http://bud-meyers.blogspot.com... http://www.fiercecable.com/sto...

So what do you do when you give it to someone who wasn't supposed to cause a lot of trouble but did?

Well, first of all you stop reading right wing propaganda. What you are complaining about is that Obama didn't manage to clean up the complete mess that Bush managed to create and it might not even have been possible to clean that up.

As for when giving it to someone who doesn't try to promote peace afterwards, what you do is shrug and move on.
It's a symbolic prize, it doesn't give anyone actual power. If you give it to Kim Jong-un and it leads to a slight reduction of provocations towards South Korea then it would be worth it.

You give it to someone who might cause a lot of trouble to encourage them to take another path.

So what do you do when you give it to someone who wasn't supposed to cause a lot of trouble but did?

The Israeli spy agencies have a huge reputation in the spy game for skill, guile and ruthlessness.

And war crimes.

A great body of which are fabrications and deceptions.

Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Richard Goldstone, the formerly respected South African jurist who disgraced himself by lending his name to a sinister and libelous U.N. report condemning Israel for war crimes, has now issued a very public retraction. “If I had known then what I know now,” he wrote in the Washington Post, “the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.” New information has persuaded him, he said, “that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy” by Israel.

U.N. Report Rejects Claims of a Massacre of Refugees

The United Nations issued a cautious report today dismissing as unsubstantiated Palestinian claims that 500 people were killed when Israeli forces invaded a refugee camp in the West Bank city of Jenin in April.

As Israel strikes back, fake Gaza images dominate social media

A BBC report has found that many of the photographs used to illustrate the situation in Gaza are from years ago, and even from the conflicts in Iraq and Syria.

CNN Uses Faked Palestinian 'Casualty' Video in Coverage

CNN isn’t the only Old Media outlet that falls for fake Palestinian videos. There is a famous video that caused a contentious court case in France back in 2008. It was a fake video supposedly showing a young Palestinian boy named Muhammad al-Dura being shot at by Israel’s Defense Forces. At first, the video caused international outrage, but in time it was proven to be just Palestinian street theater. No Muhammad al-Dura was ever shot.

Explosives Found in Palestinian Ambulance

The European Left and Its Trouble With Jews

I will throw you a bone in that the elites of the US, UK, much of Europe are engaging in reckless policies that will fundamentally change the nations and societies involved, generally for the worse.

Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser
Legal Immigration: Lifeblood of the Left

It's pretty sad when the people advocating and participating in the destruction of their own culture aren't self-aware enough to recognize it.
John Cleese: London's no longer an English city

The prisoners are there because they were at one point believed to be terrorists and unlawful combatants.

Agreed.

How many cases can someone find of people moved to Gitmo who did not fit those conditions? I'm willing to learn something.

That depends on how we parse your question. If the question is, "How many people were take to Gitmo for confinement that were known at the time to have no involvement with al Qaida, its affiliates, or terrorism?" the answer is zero to the best of my recollection. If the question is, "How many people were taken to Gitmo for confinement due to suspicion of involvement with al Qaida, its affiliates, or terrorism, but were later thought to be innocent of it?", as I recall the answer is on the order of a couple of hundred of the approximately 800 that were ever held there, with a caveat. Of the people that were claimed to be "totally innocent" of involvement with terrorism and released, something like 20-30% of them were found back on the battlefield involved with al Qaida, the Taliban, or other extremists. It seems many of them were able to either hide their involvement or explain away things to the point they were released. Then there is the case of the Ulighars who were involved with militant groups, but directed at the oppression of the People's Republic of China and considered not to be a threat to the US. The problem for them was where to send them? It was considered impossible to send them back to China where it was expected they would be arrested and tortured. So in summary there is no chance Assange will end up there unless there is some significant and direct involvement with terrorism that we don't know about.

Communists and fascists have some surface resemblances, but in ideology are far different, as is much of the practice. That they are close is just a bunch of ignorant right-wing propaganda.

On the contrary, they are from the same part of the political spectrum (Left/Progressive), have many similar goals, and in the past have formed alliances and worked together. There are significant areas of overlap in their practice, and in terms of ideology there is very much a certain "different side of the same coin" aspect to them. Whereas Nazis exterminated by race, Communists exterminated by class, and the little known fact is that Marx and Engels called for extermination by both class and race. Whereas Communists tend to be internationalist socialists the fascists tend towards nationalist socialism.

Have you heard of the documentary, "The Soviet Story"? It's creation was supported by a group in the European Parliament. It would be well worth your time to view it as it exposes a lot of little known history that is quite revealing. I believe you can watch it on itunes or Amazon video for a modest fee if your library doesn't have it. It can be found on Youtube, but ususally not with English subtitles for foreign language sections. Although you do miss things without the subtitles it can still be worth watching if you can't find it anywhere else and can't pay to watch the localized version. Please, by all means watch it!

Telling the Soviet story - A new film about Nazi-Soviet links

The Soviet Story 1 of 9

You might also find the book (discussed below) Liberal Fascism informative even if it is written in an American context. (Aspects of it might be a bit disorienting since the American political spectrum labeling is a bit different than Europe and the rest of the Anglosphere.) There are other books that discuss these ideas as well.

Liberal Fascism

Benito Mussolini was a socialist and earned the title “Il Duce” as the leader of the socialists in Italy. When he founded the fas

Not so much.

70 Percent: The Myth of the Consumer Economy

As Michael Mandel documents copiously in his Bloomberg Businessweek column, what government statistics call “consumer spending” is not — get this! — consumer spending. Most of it isn’t, anyway. Lots of that so-called consumer spending is in fact government spending; Medicare and Medicaid, for instance, are lumped in there, as is most health-care spending, which amounts to, oh, $2 trillion a year, which might tend to throw the consumer-spending numbers off a bit. Health-care spending isn’t really driven by consumers (which is why our health-care market is so messed up, incidentally!), but by insurance companies, government, and other non-consumer enterprises. Something on the order of 15 percent of health-care spending actually comes out of consumers’ pockets. Chickenfeed, in the vulgate. All sorts of other stuff is dumped into that category: the money spent by nonprofits, for instance, along with political parties and campaigns. Never mind, for the moment, that a big chunk of that actual consumer spending goes to things like clothes and electronics and shoes made abroad (and the consumption of which therefore has little direct impact on domestic economic activity), the truth is that consumer spending, in reality, represents less than half of U.S. economic activity, probably around 40 percent.

You don't have that quite right, and there seem to be some things that you don't realize.

It’s Not ‘Unfair’ for Charter Schools to Expel Disruptive Students

After Katrina, Fundamental School Reform in New Orleans

Today, about 91 percent of New Orleans students attend charter schools.

These reforms altered public education in New Orleans, but they did not eliminate it: Charter schools are public schools, although they do not answer to school-district administrators. They are still paid for by the taxpayers, but the government’s principal role, apart from channeling the funding to the various schools, is oversight — that is, holding schools accountable and, if a school is found to be ineffective, closing it.

A team of academic researchers, led by Tulane University’s Douglas Harris, has been studying the impact of New Orleans’s education revolution. In a recent report, Harris and his colleagues found that the reforms have produced enormous gains. Test-score improvements for New Orleans students are of a life-changing size — on average, the students’ percentile rankings on standardized exams are up by about 15 points. New Orleans students are now more likely to graduate from high school and attend college.

The Big Easy’s experience demonstrates that radical education reform can fundamentally improve the lives of poor urban kids. ... Previous research had suggested that incremental education reform can be positive. New Orleans demonstrates that comprehensive reform can be a stunning success.

If 91% of the students are in charter schools it is hard to claim that they are only taking the cream of the crop, isn't it? And yet they are still making large gains in performance.

You don't have that quite right, and there seem to be some things that you don't realize.

It’s Not ‘Unfair’ for Charter Schools to Expel Disruptive Students

After Katrina, Fundamental School Reform in New Orleans

Today, about 91 percent of New Orleans students attend charter schools.

These reforms altered public education in New Orleans, but they did not eliminate it: Charter schools are public schools, although they do not answer to school-district administrators. They are still paid for by the taxpayers, but the government’s principal role, apart from channeling the funding to the various schools, is oversight — that is, holding schools accountable and, if a school is found to be ineffective, closing it.

A team of academic researchers, led by Tulane University’s Douglas Harris, has been studying the impact of New Orleans’s education revolution. In a recent report, Harris and his colleagues found that the reforms have produced enormous gains. Test-score improvements for New Orleans students are of a life-changing size — on average, the students’ percentile rankings on standardized exams are up by about 15 points. New Orleans students are now more likely to graduate from high school and attend college.

The Big Easy’s experience demonstrates that radical education reform can fundamentally improve the lives of poor urban kids. ... Previous research had suggested that incremental education reform can be positive. New Orleans demonstrates that comprehensive reform can be a stunning success.

If 91% of the students are in charter schools it is hard to claim that they are only taking the cream of the crop, isn't it? And yet they are still making large gains in performance.

...sadly, these politicians refuse to look at the studies that show poverty is the leading factor and instead want to channel public school funds to companies that donate to their campaigns.

You wrote "company" when you should have written "union," as in "teachers union."

Fourteen of America’s 25 Biggest Campaign Donors Are Unions

You do know that teachers unions have been fighting tooth and nail against charter schools, school choice, and other measures that have been helpful in raising student achievement?

Blue Civil War: Knives Drawn in Education Fight

You do realise that one of the reasons why charter schools do better then public schools because they kick out the under-performers and only accept those with higher grades? Those who are kicked out or not accepted by the charter school then go back into the public school system where they pull down the average of the public schools in comparison to the charter schools...

...sadly, these politicians refuse to look at the studies that show poverty is the leading factor and instead want to channel public school funds to companies that donate to their campaigns.

You wrote "company" when you should have written "union," as in "teachers union."

Fourteen of America’s 25 Biggest Campaign Donors Are Unions

You do know that teachers unions have been fighting tooth and nail against charter schools, school choice, and other measures that have been helpful in raising student achievement?

Blue Civil War: Knives Drawn in Education Fight

The real problem, which gets far too little discussion, is that Hillary Clinton seems to have set up a system where state department employees (from the "ops" team) would read classified emails on the secure email system, and then type up a summary and send the summary to her personal (non-secure) email system.

In the first e-mail, Clinton curtly instructs Sullivan, "It's a public statement. Just email it." Minutes later, Sullivan responds, "Trust me, I share your exasperation. But until ops converts it to the unclassified email system, there is no physical way for me to email it. I can't even access it."

http://www.nationalreview.com/classified-rules-hillarys-disregard-for-them

Naturally, when ops "converted" the emails, they didn't copy over any classification markings, allowing Hillary Clinton to truthfully say she never received any emails marked as classified.

It is partisan spin to use the word "retroactively" to describe these emails being newly marked with classification markings. If the information in the emails was classified, the emails were classified all along; it doesn't matter whether the emails were marked as classified or not... and Hillary Clinton, who is not dumb and is a lawyer, knows this.

This process of "converting" emails from secure to insecure is go-to-prison stuff. It's truly amazing that Hillary Clinton thought she could get away with doing this.

Unless the information in this article is fabricated or otherwise untrue, she is going to be in very big trouble:

That Hillary and her staff at Foggy Bottom were wittingly involved in a scheme to place classified information into ostensibly unclassified emails to reside on Clinton's personal, private server is the belief of every investigator and counterintelligence official I've spoken with recently, and all were at pains to maintain that this misconduct was felonious.

"The FBI will get someone to talk, we always do."

"This was about a lot more than just some classified emails," a senior Capitol Hill staffer told me, "and we'll get to the bottom of it. But we're happy to let the FBI do the heavy lifting for right now."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/02/will-hillary-clinton-s-emails-burn-the-white-house.html

The tough on crime crowd, also known as the board of directors of for-profit prisons

Actually the people who put the biggest lobbying pressure on being "tough on crime" are the prison guard unions, and indeed, there's a lot of scandal and coverup involved in it too.

http://mic.com/articles/41531/...
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

In fact, in a lot of states they're the biggest one pushing against legalization of Marijuana. Why? Because it gives them LOTS of job security, perhaps more so than any other crime. But, don't let the pro union types hear this, or else you'll get an earful about how unions are in it to protect the working man...

What else would you expect from the Corporate Party?

While it's very true that the Republican party in its current incarnation is absolutely a corporate party it implies that other parties are not. The last 8 years could be dubbed the Goldman Sachs presidency as described here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITI... or http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Not convinced yet? How about Obama pushing TPP as hard as he can? That's as corporate as it gets. Hillary is bought and paid for which is why the media is working its level best to feed us only smiling pics of her. Only Bernie, an independent who seeks the Democratic party nomination, could be described as anti corporate.

National Review has a great op-ed:
http://www.nationalreview.com/...

I'm hoping the pendulum will return to balance soon.

Actually, the part about not allowing foreign citizens who are Muslims into the country is perfectly constitutional.

That's really debatable. Here's a right-wing conservative telling you why (and I can't believe I'm actually linking to National Review):

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

And here are a bunch of top legal and constitutional scholars arguing both ways:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/...

So it's not nearly as cut and dried as you would think.

Sweden's voucher system is causing their educational system to degrade significantly. Even the National Review acnowledges it

The 2008 meltdown was largely the result of problems with mortgage backed securities. Those came into existence due to excesses forced by the Federal government. Democrats blocked measures to fix that, and even applauded that when it is brought up during Bush's State of the Union speech.

As for recovery money - remember "shovel ready projects"? They were supposed to be the target for stimulus since that where the majority of job losses were. The Obama administration directed funds away from shovel ready projects towards priorities favored by feminist organizations.

Just look at all of what was said. He talks about his famous wall, about people having to come into the country legally, all about border security and illegal immigration immediately before and after those questions and specifically in response to some of them without missing a beat. Yet you and plenty of others seriously want to believe that right in the middle, he broke stride and talked about something completely unrelated to those subjects for two sentences.

That's pretty damn foolish if you ask me. The media is known for taking comments out of context and trolling with them. Hell, it's an inbred part of politics it seems. And yes, I'm refering to brother and sister becoming mom and dad because it always seems to be the same ones trying to smear the same people or types of people who are not part of their family. It appears you are caught up in it hook, line, and sinker too.

Either Trump's not smart enough to figure out that he is answering a totally different set of policy questions then the reporter is asking, in which case he should be pilloried in the media for not understanding the requirements of the job he is trying to get.

This is most likely it. It is completely supported by his answers. Look at his answers to the MSNBC reporter. When asking about the database it goes like this

MSNBC Reporter: What do you think the effect of that â" how would that work?

Trump: It would stop people from coming in illegally. We have to stop people from coming in to our country illegally.

SO how would a database of legal residents and citizens stop people from coming in to our country illegally? The answer to that is it wouldn't, but one that registers refugees and travelers destined to the US could track them leaving the US and track that they are actually here illegally. But in the same interview, another question was asked and answered in relation to illegal immigrants.

MSNBC Reporter: Would they have to legally be in this database, would they beâ"

Trump: They have to â" they have to be. Let me just tell you: People can come to the country, but they have to come legally. Thank you very much.

So here again, he is talking about people coming into the county and the reporter is talking about a database still.

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Take issue all you want. It just makes you look silly. He is clearly talking about the border and the country that takes management.

You can tell by the transcript, he is clearly talking about the border and here is the sentence before and after the one about management.

"It would stop people from coming in illegally. We have to stop people from coming in to our country illegally."

"They have to â" they have to be. Let me just tell you: People can come to the country, but they have to come legally. Thank you very much."

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Now you can get your panties in a knot over a political hack's misrepresentation of what happened or you can look it up yourself. It is pretty clear that regardless of what the reporter is saying or asking, Trump is talking about border security and illegal immigrants. This can only mean one thing in my opinion, that Trump was under a working assumption that the question was pertaining to illegal immigrants and border security.

The MSNBC reporter is the one who presented the idea but there is no second reporter in the grassy knoll as you suggest. The MSNBC reporter has Trump's full attention and repeatedly answers in the affirmative about the Muslim database to the reporter's follow-up questions. Here is the full interview including a transcript:

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Today Trump released a statement saying the Muslim database was the reporter's idea, with his camp and conservative talking heads like Rush Oxycontin Limbaugh implying that the MSNBC reporter was laying a trap for him by asking such a provocative question while Trump was rushed for time. Of course the reporter was laying a trap but since Trump can't resist running his mouth whenever a microphone is put in front of his face he obliged and walked right into it.

Here is a transcript of what the reporter and trump said:
http://www.nationalreview.com/...

And here is Rush Fathead's spin on it:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/da...

I do not support any government that indiscriminately kills civilians (ie Israel) and I hold my own accountable when accidents happen.

Israel doesn't make a practice of indiscriminately killing civilians, and the "investigations" making those sorts of accusations tend to have "issues".

Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Israel’s Heroic Restraint
Scandal Rocks the U.N.
The U.N.’s Grotesque Gaza Inquiry
Another Effort to Destroy Israel

Of course they have issues as Israel has an extremely strong propaganda arm.

One might as well argue that the Israeli reports saying otherwise 'have issues'.

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I do not support any government that indiscriminately kills civilians (ie Israel) and I hold my own accountable when accidents happen.

Israel doesn't make a practice of indiscriminately killing civilians, and the "investigations" making those sorts of accusations tend to have "issues".

Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Israel’s Heroic Restraint
Scandal Rocks the U.N.
The U.N.’s Grotesque Gaza Inquiry
Another Effort to Destroy Israel

Of course they have issues as Israel has an extremely strong propaganda arm.

One might as well argue that the Israeli reports saying otherwise 'have issues'.

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I do not support any government that indiscriminately kills civilians (ie Israel) and I hold my own accountable when accidents happen.

Israel doesn't make a practice of indiscriminately killing civilians, and the "investigations" making those sorts of accusations tend to have "issues".

Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Israel’s Heroic Restraint
Scandal Rocks the U.N.
The U.N.’s Grotesque Gaza Inquiry
Another Effort to Destroy Israel

Of course they have issues as Israel has an extremely strong propaganda arm.

One might as well argue that the Israeli reports saying otherwise 'have issues'.

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I do not support any government that indiscriminately kills civilians (ie Israel) and I hold my own accountable when accidents happen.

Israel doesn't make a practice of indiscriminately killing civilians, and the "investigations" making those sorts of accusations tend to have "issues".

Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Israel’s Heroic Restraint
Scandal Rocks the U.N.
The U.N.’s Grotesque Gaza Inquiry
Another Effort to Destroy Israel

Of course they have issues as Israel has an extremely strong propaganda arm.

One might as well argue that the Israeli reports saying otherwise 'have issues'.

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I do not support any government that indiscriminately kills civilians (ie Israel) and I hold my own accountable when accidents happen.

Israel doesn't make a practice of indiscriminately killing civilians, and the "investigations" making those sorts of accusations tend to have "issues".

Goldstone: You Cannot Undo a Slander
Israel’s Heroic Restraint
Scandal Rocks the U.N.
The U.N.’s Grotesque Gaza Inquiry
Another Effort to Destroy Israel