RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Feb. 10 to Feb.16 Featured Investigation The Trump administration is considering banning the use of a government-wide effort to right perceived wrongs against minorities and women: a disputed racial-bias theory known as disparate impact. Championed by liberals and civil-rights activists, and aggressively enforced by the Obama administration, disparate-impact doctrine holds that policies or practices that are written and applied neutrally can be discriminatory if they have an unequal impact on specific groups. Aimed at rooting out subtle forms of bias, the theory asserts that statistical disparities can be proof of discrimination even when no intention is clear. The Obama administration used this approach to accuse schools, police departments and businesses across the country of racism, launching hundreds of lawsuits and collecting billions in fines. PaulSperry's detailed reportingfor RealClearInvestigationshighlights a wide-range of areas - including consumer credit reporting, employee background checks, school discipline policies, criminal court fines and traffic stops - where the theory has been used to allege bias despite the existence of other significant factors. For example: - The Obama administration argued that African-Americans students are disciplined at much higher rates than their white peers because of racism and insisted that school districts adopt more lenient policies to combat this disparate impact. A national survey of students conducted in 2017 by the federal Centers for Disease Control found that African-American students are more than twice as likely to get into fights "on school property" compared with white students. Sperry also reports that violence at urban school districts spiked as administrators pulled back on punishments under "disparate impact" mandates.
- The federal government has also assumed that racism is behind racial "disparities" in police activities, finding, for example, that black motorists were "overrepresented" in traffic stops and citations. Data from Justice's own research arm, the National Institute of Justice, show that blacks, on average, violate speeding and other traffic laws at much greater rates than whites. It attributes differences in traffic stops by race to "differences in offending."
- Through an Obama-era compliance directive and the threat of lawsuits, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission discourages employers from looking up the criminal records of job applicants, because they have a "disparate impact" on black men. But the imprisonment rate for black men is nearly seven times higher than that of white men. A federal judge ruled, in throwing out an EEOC suit against a private business for denying jobs to former convicts, that such checks are a "rational" part of the hiring process of uniformly screening out people of all races who could steal from companies or commit fraud or even workplace violence.
Sperry reports that many Democrats and civil rights activists are poised to oppose the proposed ban and it is still not clear whether the Trump administration is willing to fight that battle. Read Full Article The Trump Investigations: Top Articles McCabe Says DOJ Discussed Removal of Trump, New York Times
McCabe Book Excerpt: Every Day a New Low in Trump White House, Atlantic
Senate Dems, Republicans Agree: No Hard Collusion Evidence, NBC
The Case for Russia Collusion … Against the Democrats,TheHill
Mueller Collusion Focus Now: Russian Bid to End Ukraine Flak, New York Times
Trump's Inaugural Grift Reportedly Lined His Own Pockets, New York
MariaButina: Perfect Scapegoat for Russian Meddling, New Republic
Southern NY District Probe Is Real Peril for Trump, National Review
Judge FindsManafortLied to Mueller, Voiding Plea Deal, Washington Post Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Southern Baptist Sex Abuse Only Spread
HoustonChronicle/San Antonio Express-News
The predators were all Southern Baptist church members - including pastors, ministers, Sunday school teachers, deacons and church volunteers. Their victims were also members of the church -- many of them vulnerable children. Since 1998, roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct, according an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. That number includes those who were convicted, credibly accused and successfully sued, and those who confessed or resigned. They left behind more than 700 victims, many of them shunned by their churches, left to themselves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions. This three-part series details the abuse and the efforts of church officials to dismiss and cover up many of the allegations. 7 Accuse Singer Ryan Adams of Sexual Misconduct
New York Times
Ryan Adams is a rock star. He may also be a sexual predator. At least seven women and more than a dozen associates who spoke with the Times described a pattern of manipulative behavior in which Adams dangled career opportunities while simultaneously pursuing female artists for sex. In some cases, they said, he would turn domineering and vengeful, jerking away his offers of support when spurned, and subjecting women to emotional and verbal abuse, and harassment in texts and on social media. From a teenager living in a small town to his ex-wife, the singer and actress Mandy Moore, these artists said Adams exploited and then stifled their ambitions. "Music was a point of control for him," Moore said. Adams's lawyer denied the charges. The Sorrow of Forced Adoptions in East Germany
Der Spiegel
Add another soulless atrocity to the black book of Communism. East Germany routinely took children away from their parents because of politics, typically when Mom or Dad tried to escape to the West, or actually succeeded. There are still more questions than answers about this little-scrutinized practice. Researchers estimate "at least several hundred" politically motivated child removals and adoptions were carried out until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. A two-part series. Unvaccinated Teens Trying to Get Shots on Their Own
Washington Post
An old journalism joke says that a trend is three examples and a deadline. This story may fit that bill. It says that as "anti-vaccination movements metastasize amid outbreaks of dangerous disease, internet-savvy teenagers are fact-checking their parents' decisions in a digital health reawakening - and seeking their own treatments in bouts of family defiance." Thearticle'sevidence is that "in three states, at least three self-described teenagers told [the social media platform] Reddit they have a common problem: Their parents are staunchly opposed to vaccination, and they fear for their health if they do not take action." It then focuses on one of these teens, 18-year-old EthanLindenbergerof Norwalk, Ohio, who turned to social media to find out how "to inoculate himself against infectious disease and his family's dogma." The Call From Family Services: 'We Have Your Children'
Boston Globe
Cynthia is poor. She is a victim, she said, of domestic violence and suffers from a genetic disability, which caused learning problems and probably her hearing loss. She also has six children, which shehas not raised for many years because the state ofMassachusettshasjudgedherdeficient — particularly for her failure to avoidthe father of some of her children, whom authoritiesconsidered dangerous.This article describes her effort to get her children back. 'Cold as Hell': Brooklyn Jail's Weeklong Collapse
New York Times
The official line was that inmates were "minimally impacted" after an electrical fire knocked out power at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. In fact, this article reports, it was "cold as hell" for a week, as hundreds of inmates spent the coldest days of the winter in darkness, largely without heat and hot water. The blackout crisis was just the latest episode in a long history of neglect and brutality at the jail, one that has been documented in previous Justice Department reports. Investigators over the years have issued findings that suggest the jail is among the worst in the federal system, determining at different times that prisoners have been beaten, raped or held in inhumane conditions. What Were Enquirer's Saudi Ties in Bezos Dustup?
Wall Street Journal
It's good to own your own newspaper. That's one lesson from the slanted coverage of the feud between Jeff Bezos - the Amazon.com billionaire who owns the Washington Post - and the parent company of the National Enquirer, which published stories he didn't like about his extramarital affair. This Wall Street Journal article takes off from claims first aired in the Post that Saudi Arabia and pro-Trump forces might be behind the coverage Bezos does not like - prompting an extensive examination of such ties. Turns out that was a case of misdirection; the offending information seems to have come not from international spies, but the brother of Bezos's girlfriend.This New York Times article addresses some of thecomplications Bezos poses for the Post. Date-Rape Drug Testing Is Totally Unreliable
BuzzFeed
Nobody knows how many rapes involve the use of powerful drugs that render victims unconscious. One reason is theglaring inconsistencies in the standard methods used to test for date rape drugs in hospitals and labs. This investigative report found that no national standards exist for the range of drugs labs should test for, or the amount of drugs in a person's body that should count as a positive result. That renders the outcomes wildly unreliable and hard tointerpret. Private Mossads for Hire in Election Trickery
New Yorker
They're called "privateMossads" - the new wave of private intelligence firms recruited from the ranks of Israel's legendary secret servicethatsell their clandestine expertise to the highest bidderfrom Gabon to Amsterdam to New York City. This article focuses on one of the most aggressive of these outfits,Psy-Group, which "stood out from many of its rivals because it didn't just gather intelligence; it specialized in covertly spreading messages to influence what people believed and how they behaved. Its operatives took advantage of technological innovations and lax governmental oversight. "Social media allows you to reach virtually anyone and to play with their minds," Uzi Shaya, a former senior Israeli intelligence officer, said. "You can do whatever you want. You can be whoever you want. It's a place where wars are fought, elections are won, and terror is promoted. There are no regulations. It is a no man's land." |
