SO I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO NOTICED: The Hill: CNN headline makes blacks and felons synonymous.

The headline above is not for an editorial/opinion piece, but rather what is supposed to be a standard, non-partisan, just-the-facts-ma’am news story.

But, in attempting to slam Trump for being racist and/or hypocritical for having the audacity of taking a position on ex-felons not being allowed to vote, after openly courting the black vote, the authors — Ashley Killough and Karl de Vries — inadvertently make themselves look that way instead. Because almost any lucid person seeing such a headline would come to the same conclusion:

That “blacks” are somehow synonymous with “felons.”

Is Trump’s perspective on ex-felons voting completely out of step with the American people, and therefore needs to be called out? Not at all.

The most recent poll on the subject of ex-felons having the right to vote has 54 percent support via a YouGov survey in April. That’s obviously not an overwhelming majority, but a sliver more than half.

In a related story, the Supreme Court agrees with Trump.

The racists at CNN have changed their headline.

Old:

New:

ALL IN THE FAMILY: Trump’s kids are cashing in on his campaign.

Campaign finance laws on the topic are hazy and contradictory, largely because no candidate for federal office has ever had such a sprawling business empire that could be employed for a campaign. The FEC allows candidates to rent themselves their own office space—as the Trump campaign does at Trump Tower—but bans them from collecting royalties on any memoirs purchased by the campaign. Money ultimately flows back to the candidate in both cases but the FEC has issued divergent rules.

Nevertheless, when it comes to payments to relatives or family-owned companies, the Trump campaign is breaking new ground. “The extent of Mr. Trump’s use of his own companies for goods and services during the campaign is unprecedented,” says Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance expert and the Deputy Executive Director of The Campaign Legal Center. “It has the potential to transfer donations to himself and his children.”

In July alone, Trump’s campaign paid $169,758.33 in rent to Trump Tower Corporation LLC, $48,239.77 for rent and catering at Trump National Golf Club in Weschester, $1,000 to Trump Restaurants LLC, and $428.53 worth of Trump’s bottled water Trump Ice. In May, Trump’s campaign spent $3,938.58 at the vineyard run by his son Eric. Campaign dollars are also funneled to allies of Trump’s children. Each month, the campaign spends millions on apparel like the “Make America Great Again” trucker hats. The manufacturer, Ace Specialties, is owned by Christl Mahfouz, a board member on Eric Trump’s charitable foundation.

Most of this seems like much ado over nothing, and simplifying our “hazy and contradictory” campaign finance laws would provide some much-needed transparency to every campaign. But it’s still true that Trump’s campaign spending has been at the very least “unorthodox.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: We are now entering the Age of Stupid. How did our voters become so credulous?

“Entering?” Now who’s being naive, Kay?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzMas1bVidw

TO BE FAIR, THERE ARE SO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM: Yemen, Not Syria or Iraq, Is Obama’s Worst Foreign Policy Mistake.

Good thing the nation isn’t poised to continue the insanity by electing his former Secretary of State to succeed him…

MORE ON THE SEX PANIC AT YALE:

The bizarre procedures of Yale’s sprawling sexual assault bureaucracy may well be the worst in the nation. We have come to realize this because Yale is the only university to publicly document all campus allegations of sexual assault, the result of a 2012 agreement with the Obama administration. Reports issued by Deputy Provost Stephanie Spangler don’t provide much detail, but with each new report, we see more clearly a campus environment characterized more by witch hunts than a pursuit of justice.

Consider this item: “An administrator informed a Title IX Coordinator that a Yale College student reported that another YC student made unwanted advances.” On the basis of this third-hand allegation, a current Yale student is being investigated.

Cost of attending Yale: $63,970.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Through greater trade we can have a greater Britain.

The exact nature of Brexit — hard or soft — remains to be seen, but the minimum requirement should be the removal of the Common Customs Tariff, which will allow the UK to negotiate our own trade deals once again. The EU boasts about the 56 trade agreements signed with non-EU countries.

But of these, only 24 are with countries within the top 100 economies in the world, and only 11 are within the top 50. The total combined GDP in 2015 of these 56 countries in January 2015 was $6.7 trillion — put to shame by the massive achievements of much smaller countries such as Switzerland ($39.8 trillion) and Chile ($58.3 trillion).

Brexit will enable the UK to throw off the shackles which EU membership has bound us with.

The vote to Leave the EU was not a vote to Leave Europe — which would be geographically impossible. Nor was it a vote for isolationism (we are not about to sail off into the Atlantic either)! Rather, it was a vote against the advancing European federal superstate, with an entirely Eurocentric focus.

Free trade doesn’t require an ossifying superstate like the EU, or opaque supertreaties like the TPP.

WAR ON COLLEGE MEN (CONT’D): School admits to excluding witness that could have proved accused student was innocent.

Jonathan Dorfman was accused in 2011 of cheating on a test.

The “evidence” against him consisted of a changed letter at the top of the test — indicating Dorfman had changed what exam version he was taking — and a theory from a professor at a different school that statistics showed Dorfman couldn’t have had so many wrong answers in common with another student, referred to as “Student X.” The school alleged that Dorfman copied off of Student X.

But UCSD refused to identify Student X to Dorfman. The school wouldn’t even verify where Student X was sitting in relation to Dorfman. The test was administered in different classrooms, so Student X could have been sitting next to Dorfman, or across the room, or in a different room completely, meaning it was entirely possible that Dorfman didn’t copy off of Student X’s test.

Dorfman has been trying to clear his name for years, and a judge is about to determine whether the school will be allowed to try Dorfman one more time (perhaps this time with the identity of Student X revealed).

At Dorfman’s second hearing (both his first and second hearing decisions were thrown out by the schools provosts and a state trial judge), he argued against his accuser (his professor), by noting “40 other instances” of tests with as many matching answers as his and Student X’s.

He said half of those matches came from students “who were sitting in different classrooms.” Despite this, the school still found him responsible and expelled him, using the low “preponderance of evidence” standard.

The reason Student X’s identity was never revealed, UCSD said, was that Student X wasn’t “relevant” to the investigation because he or she wasn’t also being charged with cheating. This is not how “relevant party” is defined in UCSD’s policies, however, which merely state that a relevant party is “one with direct and material understanding of the allegation.”

Good grief.

JUST THINK OF THE MSM AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE: “The media feel like lawyers for the Clinton campaign, taking whatever the evidence is and presenting it as advantageous to their client,” Ann Althouse writes.

Which brings us to media professor and early blogger Jeff Jarvis:

This is a journalism professor essentially justifying a presidential candidate avoiding scrutiny. Pretty amazing. pic.twitter.com/AD5t8aJBtW

— Jason C. (@CounterMoonbat) August 22, 2016

And note this:

If you call Fox and Breitbart media rather than political organizations https://t.co/RWClJag8L8

— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) August 22, 2016

Now do ABC, aka, the House of Stephanopoulos; NBC, the home of Al Sharpton; CBS, whose news division president is David Rhodes, brother to self-immolating Obama advisor Ben Rhodes, and where the current host of Face the Nation advised Obama in 2013 to ‘Destroy the GOP’; and of course, the Clinton News Network.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: Inspector General Confirms EPA Broke Law, Failed to Study Environmental Impact of Ethanol.

Those findings, the result of an inspector general audit, confirm what the Associated Press reported back in late 2013, prompting the audit.

In 2007, Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act, which was and signed into law by Pres. George W. Bush. Among other things, the 2007 legislation increased the Renewable Fuel Standard that mandated biofuel production, primarily ethanol, and the blending of at least some of that ethanol into the gasoline supply.

The law also stipulates that the U.S. EPA must conduct studies every three years and report to Congress on the air and water quality benefit, or lack thereof, by adding corn-based ethanol to gasoline. The purpose of that part of the law is to make sure solutions to the country’s energy needs don’t adversely affect the environment.

The 2013 AP investigation characterized the use of ethanol as having a far more negative impact on the environment than the EPA and Dept. of Energy predicted. The AP reported that with corn effectively subsidized, farmers put millions of acres of land formerly devoted to conservation into corn production, destroying animal habitats and polluting water supplies.

For its part, the EPA agreed with the IG that the agency failed to follow the law and produce the studies. The EPA said it will produce a report on the impacts of biofuels by the end of 2017 — seven years late.

Though it’s now complying with that part of the law, apparently the agency feels the triennial requirements in the law are still optional.

Good luck if there are any laws you’d like to treat as “optional.”

BUT THE REAL FEAR IS THAT SOME TRUMP SUPPORTER SOMEWHERE MIGHT TURN VIOLENT: Roanoke stabbings being investigated by FBI after man allegedly shouted ‘Allah Akbar.’

WHEN ORDINARY PEOPLE DO THIS TO AVOID SCRUTINY, THE GOVERNMENT CALLS IT “STRUCTURING” AND PROSECUTES THEM AS FELONS: Claudia Rosett: Riddle of $1.3 Billion for Iran Might Relate to 13 Outlays Of Exactly $99,999,999.99. “Yet more questions surround the administration’s handling of the remaining $1.3 billion. Could this have been drawn from a fund bankrolled by American taxpayers and housed at Treasury, called the Judgment Fund? And why were the 13 payments in amounts of one cent less than $100,000,000? The Judgment Fund has long been a controversial vehicle for federal agencies to detour past one of the most pointed prohibitions in the Constitution: ‘No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.'”

DON’T THEY KNOW THAT ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE? Roll Call: Freedom Caucus’ Jordan Eyes Another Push to Oust IRS Chief.

Rep. Jim Jordan and other conservatives are reviving efforts to press the House to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen as the embattled agency head tries to woo Democrats and undecided Republicans.

The Ohio Republican, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said in an interview that he and other allies were weighing the use of procedural tactics similar to the July bid by Louisiana GOP Rep. John Fleming to bring up an impeachment resolution as a privileged measure bypassing committee consideration. The measure calls for formal impeachment of Koskinen for misstatements and a failure to cooperate with a House investigation of the IRS’ handling of tax-exempt status requests from conservative groups.

Well, with even Larry Tribe saying the IRS was guilty of “inexcusable abuse” here, it’s not crazy.

DAN MARKEL UPDATE: Judge In Dan Markel Murder Case Approves Subpoena To See If Wendi Adelson’s Brother Paid For Breast Implants For Mother Of Hit Man’s Children.

STUDY: Worldwide concern over ‘too many immigrants.’

THE DEPARTED: Leo ditches Hillary fundraiser under shady circumstances.

The move came just days after the Hollywood Reporter said the star and his eponymous foundation could be linked to a scandal involving a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, at the same time Hillary and Bill Clinton’s own charitable fund is under scrutiny.

Guests attending the Clinton event in LA were notified via e-mail over the weekend that “the production schedule for [DiCaprio’s] climate change film ‘Before the Flood’ has altered . . . which will prevent him from returning to Los Angeles . . . As a result, Leo personally asked his friends Justin Timberlake and wife Jessica Biel to host Tuesday’s lunch with Hillary at their home in the Hollywood Hills.”

But some attendees wondered if the move had more to do with the THR report, which said the US Department of Justice filed an asset-seizure complaint in federal court pertaining to a Malaysian fund that backed Red Granite Pictures — a production company behind the DiCaprio film “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Pay-to-play works both ways.

IT’S NICE TO SEE GOOD SENSE ASSERT ITSELF: “The University of Iowa has scrapped plans to create a Bias Assessment and Response Team after determining that such bodies often become what one administrator called ‘scolding bodies’ that can create as many problems as they are intended to solve.”

Related: It’s Fatuous To Outlaw An Emotion, Especially Hate: “If they are determined to go down this route I would much rather they outlawed simpering or self-righteousness — but that would mean banging up half the capital, including the mayor himself. . . . I suppose the police go along with this sort of garbage partly because they have to, but also because these non-crimes are very fashionable and politically correct and are rather less messy to clear up than other sorts of crimes. The rozzers get themselves establishment brownie points without having to do anything too onerous or too dangerous. But trolling is a crime in which nobody is really hurt or even seriously discommoded — unlike, say, being stabbed in the throat, having your car nicked or being burgled. Suffer either of the latter two crimes and you will be exceedingly lucky if a copper turns up at all. Whereas tweet that ‘we should kick out the immigrants, pronto’ and it won’t just be the filth who swarm round, but social services too, if you have children. It is a strange position we have got ourselves into.”

If we don’t see more reassertions of good sense, we’ll need tar and feathers.

THIS DOESN’T SEEM LIKE A GOOD PLACE FOR HILLARY TO BE: It’s Colin Powell vs. Hillary Clinton on email.

Republicans are seizing on reports of friction between Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell to bolster their case that the Democratic presidential nominee lied to the FBI about her handling of classified information.

Powell this weekend publicly reproached Clinton’s reported comments to the FBI naming him as the inspiration for her private email setup at the State Department.

“Her people have been trying to pin it on me,” Powell, who was secretary of State under President George W. Bush, told People at an event in the Hamptons this weekend. “The truth is she was using [her email setup] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did.”

The episode raises “serious questions about whether she lied to the FBI” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement on Monday.

“Clinton’s pattern of serial dishonesty is completely unacceptable for a candidate seeking the nation’s highest office, and her refusal to tell the truth and own up to her poor judgment is a preview of how she would conduct herself if elected president.”

That’s certainly true.

CHILDREN’S CRUSADE: Iraq stops would-be child bomber for ISIS.

Dramatic video has emerged of Iraqi police stripping an explosive belt from a child suspected in a suicide bombing attempt for ISIS.

The footage appears to show security personnel restrain a visibly upset boy while they carefully cut the belt from the youth’s torso in Kirkuk. Once the belt has been removed, the boy is scooped up and taken away.

Kurdistan 24, a broadcast news station based out of Irbil, Iraq, aired Sunday’s capture.
Authorities said they believe the 15-year-old came to Kirkuk a week ago from Mosul, ISIS’ most significant stronghold outside Syria.

Good lord.

SOFT MONEY: Ramen is displacing tobacco as most popular US prison currency, study finds.

A new report by Michael Gibson-Light, a doctoral candidate in the University of Arizona’s school of sociology, found the decline in quality and quantity of food available in prisons due to cost-cutting has made ramen noodles a valuable commodity.

“[Ramen] is easy to get and it’s high in calories,” Gibson-Light said. “A lot of them, they spend their days working and exercising and they don’t have enough energy to do these things. From there it became more a story, why ramen in particular.”

Gibson-Light interviewed close to 60 inmates over the course of a year at one state prison as part of a wider study on prison labor. He did not identify the prison to protect the confidentiality of the inmates.

60 inmates at a single prison doesn’t sound like much of a study.

IN BILL DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK, THIS ISN’T EVEN A SURPRISE: Central Park Drinking Fountain Doubles As Dog Bidet.

RACISM ALERT: 77% of nonwhite Americans support voter ID laws, according to new Gallup poll.

HARMONICA LEGEND TOOTS THIELEMANS, KNOWN FOR ‘SESAME STREET’ THEME, DIES AT 94.

Dubbed “one of the greatest musicians of our time” by Quincy Jones, and quite accurately so. RIP.

TRUMP CALLS FOR SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO INVESTIGATE HILLARY AND CLINTON FOUNDATION CORRUPTION: The special prosecutor would investigate her email scandal and her “pay to play” State Department.

FLASHBACK: Joseph Stiglitz, in Caracas, Praises Venezuela’s Economic Policies.

THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED (CONT’D): Idea for ‘Scaring Off’ Migrants: Pig Heads on Border Fence.