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RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Jan. 20 to Jan.26

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Because she feared being labeled racist, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos ignored mountains of evidence and decided not to acknowledge strong links between last February's school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and lenient Obama-era discipline policies aimed at reducing suspensions and arrests of minority students.

As Paul Sperry reports forRealClearInvestigations, few were satisfied by the conclusions of a Devos-led, post-Parkland investigation of school safety. Its recommendation to rescind the Obama policy guidelines angered Democrats while its politically cautious omission of a linkage to Parkland angered parents of victims. They say it's obvious the lenient policies played a role in the bloodbath that killed 17 almost one year ago, Feb. 14.

Sperry has reported on this link since the attack, and on how the Obama policies have diminished school safety across the country. He details the forces behind the decision:

• At one meeting last year, according to two Education Department staffers, DeVos and her top aides fretted that they couldn't tie Parkland to the policy, or even rescind the policy, without getting "labeled racists in the media."
• DeVos became reticent after media criticism of her comments on school discipline and historically black colleges and universities.
• Sessions grew fearful of being tarred by the media and developed "cold feet" as the commission neared its decision, according to people who spoke with him at meetings who said he did not want the scrapping of the minority-friendly policy to be part of his "legacy."
  
• A former senior Justice official, however, said Sessions wanted to rescind the policy all along, "but we kept getting pushback from DOE." The source said Sessions had not even seen the key chapter of the report on discipline policy before he resigned. "The problem was 100 percent the Department of Education."

Sperry reports that some parents are angry about this omission, which, they say, is making it easier for the Broward County schools to keep in place policies they consider dangerous. They are also mystified by it because, as Sperry established in earlier articles, the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, was a serial offender who was able to pass the background check that allowed him to purchase the weapon he used in the massacre because the policies had preserved his "clean" record.

Read Full Article

Read morehereandhere on the testimony about school mayhem left out of the DeVos commission's final report.

The Trump Investigations: Top Articles

Huge Trove of Russian Files Released by Transparency Advocates, New York Times
Trump Adviser Roger Stone Indicted in Mueller Probe, New York Times
Clinton Machine Flooded FBIWithTrump-Russia Dirt Until It Bit, The Hill
What If the FBI Had Probed Obama?, Wall Street Journal
Most Americans Not Exposed to 'Fake News' in '16, Science Magazine 

Other Noteworthy Articles and Series

Now Schools Have Defense Budgets. Watch Them Grow
RealClearInvestigations
Safety sells - especially when it comes to school bonds. In the year since a troubled student killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., educators across the country are finding that taxpayers are more willing to put their fiscal concerns aside if the money promises protection. As Steve Miller reports for RealClearInvestigations, government officials have launched new security initiatives with little taxpayer pushback, spending billions for added security staffing, mental health counselors and protective upgrades.

• In Florida, voters after Parkland approved seven of 25 bond proposals last year thatwere pitched as security-related.
  
• More than half of California school districts last year emphasized security as part of bond proposals, and nearly 80 percent passed.
• Texas Gov. Gov. Greg Abbott's$110 million school safety planis aimed at increasing more security staffing at schools.

Miller also reports that after suffering a resounding defeat for its bond issue in 2017, the Chippewa Valley school district in suburban Detroit rebranded: A similar package of building upgrades passed by a wide margin, with a few safety items that were emphasized. That suggests that many districts are merely filling longstanding needs with a vogue-ish security pitch - at a time when school shootings remain rare.

Details of Pelosi's $185K Luxe Jaunt With Kin in '15 Via Air Force
Daily Caller
The media were all over Scott Pruitt's extravagant spending on travel when he headed the Environmental Protection Agency - including first-class tickets and the use of military planes. That coverage helped drum him out of office. But major outlets have shown far less interest in what Judicial Watch dubs Air Pelosi. This story focuses on the watchdog's Freedom of Information Act revelations of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's high-flying ways. A Pelosi trip to Italy and Ukraine from July 30 to Aug. 6, 2015 cost the Air Force $184,588. That's on top of Pelosi's use of luxury Air Force jets as glorified taxis between her congressional district and D.C. Judicial Watch said Pelosi's military travel cost the Air Force $2.1 million over one two-year period — "$101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol."

U.S., North Korean Spies Held Talks for Decade
Wall Street Journal
U.S. intelligence officials have met with North Korean counterparts secretly for a decade, the Wall Street Journal disclosed -- a covert channel that allowed communications during tense times. The secret channel between the Central Intelligence Agency and spies from America's bitter adversary aided in the release of detainees and helped pave the way for President Trump's summit last year with North Korean leader Kim JongUn. The secret channel included two missions to Pyongyang in 2012 but appears to have gone dormant late in the Obama administration. Mike Pompeo, now Secretary of State, re-energized it in 2017 while CIA director,.

FBI vs. Skeptics on Use of Photo Analysis as Evidence
ProPublica
The FBI has long maintained that its pattern recognition technologies and experts could determine which fingertip left a print, which gun fired a bullet,andwhich scalp grew a hair to the exclusion of all others. Research and exonerations by DNA analysis have repeatedly disproved these claims, and the U.S. Department of Justice no longer allows technicians and scientists from the FBI and other agencies to make such unequivocal statements, according to new testimony guidelines released last year. Though image examiners rely on similarly flawed methods, they have continued to testify to and defend their exactitude, according to a review of court records and examiners' written reports and published articles.

Undocumented Pay Big for Basics at Private ICE Jails
Reuters
Immigrants and activists say for-profit corrections companies deliberately skimp on essentials, even food, to coerce detainees to labor for pennies an hour to supplement meager rations. This article opens with the story of one "perpetually hungry" inmate whose dollar-a-day salary doesn't go far because the prison charges $3.25 for a can of tuna (four times the price at the local Target). So he eats a lot of ramen, which is 58 cents a package, twice the going rate outside.

Dozens Scammed Out of Life Savings So She Could Stay at the Ritz
Washington Post
Keisha Williams lived large. When she stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in the Bahamas, her cabana had to have a balcony, and her shrimp could not be jumbo - "too tough." At theCavalieriin Rome, she complained that the Mercedes that picked her up was "too small" - not her "vision of luxury." In Bora Bora, she bragged that she spotted actor Tracy Morgan but "I have the biggest Villa on the island."For the next 15½ years, Williams will live in sparser federal digs up the river after admitting that the millions she spent on luxury vacations, cars, restaurants and high-end goods came from a fraudulent health-care software scheme. It was built on intimidation and lies about phantom investors, including John, a "cancer-ridden Texas billionaire," and fleeced more than 50 people out of their savings.Testimony showed that right after telling an investor she was desperate for money she texted someone else, "I'll call you after we snorkel."

Artificial Intelligence Bluffs Better Than Gambling Pros
Engadget
Good for computers that they can beat people at chess. But who bets on chess, right? Now the artificial intelligence revolution is starting to pay real dividends as computer programs have now mastered poker. Machines now routinely beat the world's best players in no-limit TexasHold 'Emand have shown great skill at that most human of strategies - the bluff. As gambling increasingly goes online, players might use machines to decide when to hold ‘emand when to fold ‘em. Maybe this will make some players rich, but where's the fun?

No Pay Stub? No Problem. Unconventional Mortgages Back
Wall Street Journal
Mortgages once panned for their role in the housing meltdown a decade ago are making a comeback. These loans, aimed at buyers with unusual circumstances such as those who can't providethe standard proofs of income, are growing rapidly even as rising interest rates and higher home prices crimp demand for mortgages. Lenders issued $34 billion of these unconventional mortgages in the first three quarters of 2018, a 24 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. While that makes up less than 3 percent of the $1.3 trillion of mortgage originations over that period, the growth is notable because it came as traditional home loans declined 1.2 perceny over the same period.

Scamming Grandma: Elder Financial Abuse at Record High
Wall Street Journal
U.S. banks reported a record 24,454 suspected cases of elder financial abuse to the Treasury Department last year, more than double the amount five years earlier, according to government data. The increase occurred as new federal and state laws are prompting banks to take a more active role in trying to address frauds and scams that target older customers. For their part, banks are beefing up training programs for employees on how to detect, stop and report issues without violating a customer's privacy. Employees are even learning to recognize early signs of cognitive decline.

Nearly 1,500 Jets at Eco-Focused Davos
MarketWatch
Though virtue-signaling elites like to go on and on about global warming, some 1,500 private jets were expected at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to Air Charter Service, up from 1,300 last year.Air travel in general comes with a hefty carbon footprint, but private jet travel more so. Yet even those who can't afford their own plane don't seem to mind much. They're increasingly buying fractional shares in private jets. In the U.S., the number of flights by fractionally owned aircraft increased 4.7 percent between 2016 and 2017andthe number of on-demand charter flights and flights through jet card memberships rose 9.2 percent over that same period.