FRAUD IN THE ACADEMY: A Plagiarism Scandal At Amherst. But note this:

Since some believe that Basler did not ask for help because she didn’t feel that Amherst was a safe and understanding place, both faculty and students brought to the forefront the issue of creating a better environment in which people feel more comfortable coming forward with their academic problems.

“I think the important part of it, I guess, is that I feel that there’s a lot that we can learn about how to support vulnerabilities and deficits,” Professor Karen Sánchez-Eppler said. “How do we as an institution make it a place where when people feel that they’re getting stuck — and I think that this is true for our students as well as our faculty — that when they’re feeling stuck, they can say ‘I’m stuck, help me,’ and not try to cover it up? That’s the kind of soul-searching that we as an institution need to do.”

So, wait, academic fraud — apparently going all the way back to the dissertation — is somehow because the institution isn’t a “safe and understanding place?” With all the people looking for academic jobs, what could account for this attitude? Well, she teaches White Identity. Plus: “Coming from a Mexican-American background, she was particularly interested in the diversity of the student body.”

Imagine that she was a white male Republican, instead of a probable affirmative-action diversity-studies hire. Same response to plagiarism?

To Amherst’s credit, she’s gone, and there’s no indication they’ve relaxed their standards on plagiarism. But I imagine the response would be very different if there were less diversity involved. Which means that the patronizing comments here about feeling “safe” are, well, racist.

Plus, from the comments:

I have to say as a tenured African American faculty member at a flagship state university in the Northeast who has written one scholarly monograph, one textbook, and 12 peer-reviewed articles, I find this hand wringing foolish and incredibly insulting to minority faculty. This woman cheated period. Why? Because, she was too lazy to do her job. Have I had tons of articles rejected? Of course. Have I had book manuscripts rejected? Yes. Did I feel frustrated about my writing everyday of my academic career? Of course. Did I decide to use another scholar’s work and fail to cite them properly? Hell no.

Indeed.

THERE IS A LIBERTARIAN CASE FOR MITT ROMNEY: and Stephen Green makes it.

AT AMAZON, bestselling books on Survival Skills.

IT’S REVERENT. YOUR OBJECTIONS ARE MISGUIDED: Or maybe not. “Dear Brother Ali,” James Lileks writes at Ricochet, “the flag is not a prayer rug. Stand up and fold it right and go to a VFW hall where they’ll tell you what should be done with a flag that’s been treated like that. Shame on you.”

WELL, HE’S HIGHLY MOCKABLE: SNL mocks Obama defending his record on the economy.

ANNE PIERCE: Foreign Policy Mythology.

In this instant age, even the very recent past is forgotten. This means that very recent history can also be rewritten. Witness President Obama and Secretary Clinton’s re-telling of their foreign policy story and the way “reporters” have embraced it. “Of course” they strongly support Israel. They have “always” maintained a “strong sanctions regime” against Iran. They have done “everything they [we] can” to help the Syrian people. The list goes on. Thus, we must start deconstructing foreign policy mythology. Let’s start with the assumption that this administration’s foreign policy is smart, caring and sophisticated – a myth easily dispelled with an honest look at the record.

Smart? Was it smart to alienate and abandon our allies while catering to potential enemies?

Recall that Obama, Clinton and Panetta: embraced a minimalist response to Iran’s nuclear program; sought a “reset” in relations with Russia by offering a reduction in our own nuclear arms before asking anything in return; devastatingly revoked plans to install missile defenses on Polish and Czech soil; provided a lavish and welcoming reception to Chinese leaders at the White House while giving a strangely cold and “unavailable” reception to the British upon their first visit; unceremoniously “returned” the bust of Churchill which England had sent as a gift in a show of post-9/11 allegiance; chose Syria’s Assad as “peace intermediary” in the Middle East; made public, preemptive demands upon the Israelis while making no such demands upon the Palestinians; centered policy around “talking” with the world’s worst tyrants and offering them concessions in exchange for keeping their ruthlessness confined within their own borders; bowed to Hugo Chavez; and sent fawning letters to the “Supreme Leader” of Iran.

Caring? To the dismay of human rights groups and citizens stuck in repressive regimes, Clinton began her career as Secretary of State by indicating that she would not include human rights in her list of topics for discussion with the Iranian, Chinese, Syrian and North Korean governments.

Recall that this administration: turned a blind eye to Russian resurgence and oppression in Georgia, Chechnya and Ukraine; was silent in response to the cries of brave young Iranian protestors for help; has said nary a word for innocent Iranians languishing in notorious prisons or innocent North Koreans suffering in concentration camps; responded to every obstruction and hostile act of the totalitarian North Korean regime with more offers of concessions in exchange for its ever-elusive “cooperation;” focused on economic disagreements with China while ignoring the plight of Chinese democracy advocates; and came very close to ignoring the bloodbath in Syria (and did ignore it at first). Nowhere is the lack of humanity more evident than in the Obama administration’s Syria policy – a policy so indifferent to human suffering and so counterproductive to Middle Eastern struggles for democracy that it can only be called abhorrent.

Sophisticated? The response to recent events in Libya makes clear this administration’s lack of foreign policy sophistication.

Well, nobody’s perfect. And hey, what they lack in sophistication, they make up in prevarication.

A SEXY PLUG-IN?:  It’s a gorgeous 4-door Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo Hybrid, premiered as a concept car at the Paris Motor Show.  It has 416 horses and goes 0-60 in under 6 seconds.  Oh yeah, and it gets about 67 mpg.

HEALING JOINTS with injections of platelet-rich plasma? Hey, I have that all the time, a consequence of losing my spleen when I was 3.

MAKING FUN OF Matt Damon, shill for Middle Eastern oil interests.

WELL, THERE YOU GO AGAIN: Expect to see plenty of Obama’s Poker Tells during the presidential debates, Hugh Hewitt writes.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Boston University set for $1 billion in fund-raising.

I think that at some point, you’ve raised enough money. We need to spread that endowment around so everybody benefits. Maybe a special tax, with the money dedicated to helping students with their loans.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Handmaid To The Plutocrats: Elizabeth Warren’s ironic legal past. “One pleasure of the Massachusetts Senate race is that we are all learning about the remunerative outside legal work on behalf of corporate defendants done by Harvard Law School’s resident bankruptcy law expert. Let’s just say she doesn’t do this work pro bono. Everyone has to make a living, but Ms. Warren’s legal moonlighting does raise a question or two about her posture as the tribune of the powerless little guy.”

Then there’s that whole law license question, which keeps getting more involved.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT YESTERDAY, HERE’S my Sunday Washington Examiner column on politics and the importance of showing up.

YOU’RE SO COLD — YOU MUST BE A LIBERTARIAN:  Recent research has unearthed some fascinating associations between psychological traits and ideological/political inclination.  A personality survey study of over 12,000 self-identified libertarians revealed the following:

[W]hen libertarians reacted to moral dilemmas and in other tests, they displayed less emotion, less empathy and less disgust than either conservatives or liberals. They appeared to use “cold” calculation to reach utilitarian conclusions about whether (for instance) to save lives by sacrificing fewer lives. They reached correct, rather than intuitive, answers to math and logic problems, and they enjoyed “effortful and thoughtful cognitive tasks” more than others do.

The researchers found that libertarians had the most “masculine” psychological profile, while liberals had the most feminine, and these results held up even when they examined each gender separately, which “may explain why libertarianism appeals to men more than women.”

All Americans value liberty, but libertarians seem to value it more.

Guess we knew that last part.  But now you libertarian guys have official bragging rights to being more “masculine” than your conservative or liberal counterparts.  As for us female libertarians, I don’t know about you, but I suddenly feel a need to freshen up my lipstick!  :)

JEN RUBIN IN THE WASHINGTON POST: MSM: Hey, the president dissembled on Libya.

Late Friday afternoon the spokesman for Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James R. Clapper Jr. released a statement in which the intelligence head tried to fall on the administration’s sword on the Libyan-consulate debacle. But the problem was that Clapper’s statement did not absolve the administration of repeatedly making false statements after intelligence agencies knew this was a planned al-Qaeda terrorist attack.

The Post’s Glenn Kessler got things started with a devastating timeline of the Libya events. Then Fox News’s Bret Baier put together an extremely useful video account of the sequence of events. . . .

In its own ticktock of events, the Times, like other outlets, makes clear that even if DNI was initially confused, the White House and other top officials continued to push the connection to the anti-Muslim film long after it was known that this was an orchestrated al-Qaeda assault.

No doubt the mainstream media were slow to get to this story, because they initially labeled the episode a “bad for Mitt Romney’s campaign” story. However, the real Libya story is only now unfolding. It will be impossible for the president to avoid scrutiny and for others to escape blame for what appears to be either the most inept response to a terrorist attack in memory or a clumsy effort to shove an intelligence failure under the rug so as to keep the president’s campaign on track.

If Obama is smart, he’ll get the entire story out quickly and completely. It’s never the screw-up that gets you, it’s always the cover-up. And Obama better come clean. Fast.

And furious?

An apology to Mr. Nakoula would be nice, too.

MITT ROMNEY IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: A New Course for the Middle East.

Disturbing developments are sweeping across the greater Middle East. In Syria, tens of thousands of innocent people have been slaughtered. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has come to power, and the country’s peace treaty with Israel hangs in the balance. In Libya, our ambassador was murdered in a terrorist attack. U.S. embassies throughout the region have been stormed in violent protests. And in Iran, the ayatollahs continue to move full tilt toward nuclear-weapons capability, all the while promising to annihilate Israel.

These developments are not, as President Obama says, mere “bumps in the road.” They are major issues that put our security at risk.

Yet amid this upheaval, our country seems to be at the mercy of events rather than shaping them. We’re not moving them in a direction that protects our people or our allies.

And that’s dangerous. If the Middle East descends into chaos, if Iran moves toward nuclear breakout, or if Israel’s security is compromised, America could be pulled into the maelstrom.

We still have time to address these threats, but it will require a new strategy toward the Middle East.

Well, yes.

WHO SAYS JEWS AND MUSLIMS CAN’T GET ALONG? Azerbaijan, a Muslim country that was once part of the Persian Empire, may be planning to help the Israelis strike Iranian nuclear weapons facilities.

RATS ON THE WEST SIDE, BEDBUGS . . . IN THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT? “The health department is the city’s top resource for people seeking to deal with their own bedbug infestations, in both their homes and their offices. A section of the department’s Web site is about bedbugs. It includes a page that the department itself might find useful, to ‘help building managers or owners of commercial buildings prevent bedbug infestations, and safely control them if they do occur.'”

Mayor Bloomberg might want to spend more time on the bedbug problem, and less time on nannyism. How about solving the 19th-century health problems before focusing on the 21st-century ones? Ya know?

OBAMA GOES TO MADISON: “He’s finally acknowledging he has a Wisconsin problem.”