Stop blaming black parents for underachieving kids - The Washington Post

Stop blaming black parents for underachieving kids - The Washington Post: Mayors, teachers unions, and news commentators have boiled down the academic achievement gap between white and black students to one root cause: parents. Even black leaders and barbershop chatter target “lazy parents” for academic failure in their communities, dismissing the complex web of obstacles that assault urban students daily. In 2011, then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg exemplified this thinking by saying, “Unfortunately, there are some parents who…never had a formal education and they don’t understand the value of an education.” Earlier this year, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Tony Norman diagnosed that city’s public schools’ chief problem: the lack of “active, radical involvement of every parent.” And even President Obama rued last week that in some black communities, gaining education is viewed as “acting white.”

CIA director John Brennan apologizes for search of Senate committee’s computers - The Washington Post

CIA director John Brennan apologizes for search of Senate committee’s computers - The Washington Post: CIA employees improperly searched computers used by Senate investigators involved in a multiyear probe of the agency’s use of harsh interrogation measures on terrorism suspects, according to the findings of an internal agency inquiry that prompted CIA Director John Brennan to apologize to lawmakers this week.



Ten agency employees, including two lawyers and three computer specialists, surreptitiously searched Senate Intelligence Committee files and reviewed some committee staff members’ e-mails on computers that were supposed to be exclusively for congressional investigators, according to a summary of the CIA inspector general’s report released Thursday.



The document criticizes members of the computer team for a “lack of candor about their activities” when they were questioned by investigators working for CIA Inspector General David Buckley.

At Front Lines, Bearing Witness in Real Time - NYTimes.com

At Front Lines, Bearing Witness in Real Time - NYTimes.com: Bearing witness is the oldest and perhaps most valuable tool in the journalist’s arsenal, but it becomes something different delivered in the crucible of real time, without pause for reflection. It is unedited, distributed rapidly and globally, and immediately responded to by the people formerly known as the audience.



 It has made for a more visceral, more emotional approach to reporting. War correspondents arriving in a hot zone now provide an on-the-spot moral and physical inventory that seems different from times past.



That emotional content, so noticeable when Anderson Cooper was reporting from the Gulf Coast during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, has now become routine, part of the real-time picture all over the web.

The absence of the conventional layers of journalism — correspondents filing reports that are then edited for taste and accuracy — has put several journalists under scrutiny, mostly for responding in the moment to what they saw in front of them.

Pentagon: Russia Could Move Heavier Weapons Into Ukraine 'Imminently'

Pentagon: Russia Could Move Heavier Weapons Into Ukraine 'Imminently': Russia is seeking to escalate the conflict in Ukraine and could move larger, more sophisticated multiple-launch rocket systems into the country to support the separatist rebels as early as Friday, July 25, the Pentagon warns.

"We believe that they're able to transfer this equipment at any time, at any moment," Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters on Friday.

The United States has been tracking a continual flow of weapons moving across the border and into the hands of pro-Russian separatists over the last several weeks.

"We know that they've transferred tanks, artillery, multiple-launch rocket systems," Warren said. "We have indications that the Russians plan to move larger-caliber rocket systems to the Ukrainian separatists."

Hey Spencer Ackerman: do you still think Libya ended successfully? | Fredrik deBoer

Hey Spencer Ackerman: do you still think Libya ended successfully? | Fredrik deBoer: As I said at the time, the time frame of genuine humanitarianism– of ensuring that actual human beings are capable of living lives with basic material security and democratic power– is far, far longer than the time frame of pundit careerism. To declare Libya won at that date was wrong on its face, as there was no possibility that anyone could have safely said that security and political stability had been established. Those things take time, and I’m afraid our political media doesn’t have time to wait.

Glavine and Maddux Lead a Hall of Fame Day Dominated by Braves - NYTimes.com

Glavine and Maddux Lead a Hall of Fame Day Dominated by Braves - NYTimes.com:

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — The Atlanta Braves
washed ashore at Otsego Lake here on Sunday and took over the Hall of
Fame induction ceremony as if they were trying to win one more World
Series for Bobby Cox.

Yes, Joe Torre and Tony La Russa
were inducted, as managers, as was the tearful slugger Frank Thomas.
But it was a Braves day with the induction of pitchers Greg Maddux and
Tom Glavine, and Cox, their manager, before a besotted crowd of
tomahawk-chopping fans, many in blue and red jerseys and caps, and the
ultimate Brave, Hank Aaron, onstage with about 50 other Hall of Famers.

Why Google's Best Leaders Aren't Stanford Grads With Perfect SATs | Inc.com

Why Google's Best Leaders Aren't Stanford Grads With Perfect SATs | Inc.com: Crunching the numbers on the question of what makes a successful leader, Google found out that leaders must be predictable and consistent. When managers are predictable, they eliminate an obstacle from employees' progress--themselves. Managers have their own tendency to interfere, dictate, second-guess, and be a backseat driver. Without this obstacle, employees don't have to worry about whether their manager will try to jump in or suddenly veer in a different direction. Instead, they have the mental space to do great work.

On the flip side, as Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, puts it, "If your manager is all over the place, you're never going to know what you can do, and you're going to experience it as very restrictive." But "[i]f a leader is consistent, people on their teams experience tremendous freedom."

Physicist George Ellis Knocks Physicists for Knocking Philosophy, Falsification, Free Will | Cross-Check, Scientific American Blog Network

Physicist George Ellis Knocks Physicists for Knocking Philosophy, Falsification, Free Will | Cross-Check, Scientific American Blog Network: Physics experiments are approaching the highest energies it will ever be possible to test by any collider experiment, both for financial and technical reasons. We can’t build a collider bigger than the surface of the Earth. Thus our ability to test high energy physics – and hence structures on the smallest physical scales – is approaching its limits. Astronomical observations at all wavelengths are now probing the most distant cosmological events that will ever be “seeable” by any kinds of radiation whatever, because of visual horizons for each form of radiation.





It’s rather like the situation as regards exploring the Earth: once
upon a time we had only fragmentary knowledge of what is there. Then we
obtained a global picture of the Earth’s surface, including detailed
satellite images of the entire land mass. Once you have seen it all, you
have seen it all; apart from finer and finer details, there is nothing
more to find. You might respond, But we can’t see to the bottom of the
oceans. However, we do indeed now have quite good maps of the ocean
floor too, through various sounding techniques.  This is similar to the
way we have seen right back to the last scattering surface in the early
universe at a redshift of 1200 (the analogue of seeing the entire
surface of the Earth from space) with satellites such as COBE, WMAP, and
Planck, and also (indirectly) to the time of emission of gravitational waves by Bicep2 (the analogue of seeing to the bottom of the ocean). We’ll sort out that controversy in the next couple of years.




So what we can see at the largest and smallest scales is approaching
what will ever be possible, except for refining the details.

Rise of the Christian left: Why the religious right’s moment may be ending - Salon.com

Rise of the Christian left: Why the religious right’s moment may be ending - Salon.com: At this very moment, different factions of the religious left are duking it out over Obama’s proposed executive order banning discrimination against LGBT workers on behalf of federal contractors, and though the diversity of the religious left might concern some, the big picture is that the religious left is a growing force for political influence. As time passes and the mantle of political participation passes from prior partisan generations down to millennials, we might see that influence continue to grow, re-invigorating some of the finest features of the Christian tradition: to resist categorization, pull hard for the oppressed and downtrodden and insist upon hope while coping with the realities of power.

The Forgotten Internment

The Forgotten Internment: The invasion triggered the chaotic removal of all the Aleut civilians from the islands. On June 12, a naval commander ordered the immediate evacuation of Atka, the next-most-westerly Aleut settlement, 875 kilometres east of Attu. Once its residents had retreated to the hills, they watched as a military crew burned the village to the ground to prevent its use by the invaders. Then the Atkans were ordered to board a military ship and, without further explanation, their long voyage east began.

Over the next month, the remaining nine Aleut settlements were emptied and their buildings, instead of being burned, were occupied for military use. Residents received little to no warning of their departure and no information about where they were going or how long they would be gone. Some were allowed to bring a single suitcase each; others carried nothing at all.

Final Voyage of the Costa Concordia - In Focus - The Atlantic

Final Voyage of the Costa Concordia - In Focus - The Atlantic: More than two and a half years since it crashed near Isola del Giglio, Italy, the wreck of the Costa Concordia was successfully refloated this week, and has begun its final journey—a four-day trip to a scrap yard in Genoa. The cruise ship capsized after striking a reef on January 13, 2012, killing 32 passengers and crew members. The complex salvage operation was the largest and most expensive in history. Gathered here are images, including several interior shots, of the ship's time near Isola del Giglio—from the initial disaster to today's towing away of the Costa Concordia. [30 photos]

Photos of the Week: 7/19-7/25 - In Focus - The Atlantic

Photos of the Week: 7/19-7/25 - In Focus - The Atlantic: A row of hearses carrying victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 plane disaster are escorted on highway A27 near Nieuwegein, Netherlands, by military police, on their way to be identified by forensic experts in Hilversum, on July 23, 2014. (Reuters/Marco de Swart) #

Jonathan Gruber on Halbig: Says Quote on Exchanges Was a Mistake | New Republic

Jonathan Gruber on Halbig: Says Quote on Exchanges Was a Mistake | New Republic: Did the people who designed Obamacare intend to deprive millions of people of health insurance, just because officials in their states decided not to operate their own insurance marketplaces?

A lawsuit making its way through the federal judiciary, and perhaps on its way to the Supreme Court, claims the answer is yes. And while every federal official and member of Congress who worked on crafting the law in 2009 and 2010 disagrees, now there’s a video from 2012 in which one of the law’s best known advocates and architects—MIT economist Jonathan Gruber—makes the same basic argument that the lawsuit does.



Among those who say they are surprised by the statement is Gruber himself, whom I was able to reach by phone. "I honestly don’t remember why I said that," he said, attempting to reconstruct what he might have been thinking at the time. "I was speaking off-the-cuff. It was just a mistake." As evidence that it was not indicative of his beliefs, he noted that his projections of the law's impact have always assumed that all eligible people would get subsides, even though, he said, he did not assume all states would choose to run their own marketplaces.

Christians United for Israel: The most insanely pro-Israel conference of the year.

Israel certainly wants to put a stop to the
loss of life — but the goal that Netanyahu set at the outset of this
war, ensuring sustained quiet, can only be achieved through the
long-term weakening of Hamas or its ouster. If there is no viable
political solution, that means Israeli military action – bolstered by
our fortunately burgeoning security partnership with Abdel-Fattah
el-Sissi’s Egypt, preventing the influx of weaponry and materials into
the Strip. (One fervently hopes there’s a great deal of Jerusalem-Cairo
coordination going on right now.) Israel needs Gaza demilitarized, and
the UN, US, EU et al are no more capable of ensuring that than the
international community was capable of disarming Hezbollah in south
Lebanon.

Israelis don’t doubt that the army can prevail
in Gaza — to degrade Hamas’s capacity to harm us in the near term,
maybe even the medium term. If the ground offensive proceeds for another
week or two — the government and the generals say, and most Israelis
believe — Hamas’s fighting force, its tunnels, its rocket capabilities
will be devastated. At a terrible cost. And with nothing to prevent
Hamas’s prompt revival.

Read more: The terrible cost of thwarting Hamas | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-terrible-cost-of-thwarting-hamas/#ixzz38PyZO3gl 

Thane Rosenbaum’s Wall Street Journal op-ed: This New York University scholar—like Osama Bin Laden—thinks civilians can be legitimate targets.

Thane Rosenbaum’s Wall Street Journal op-ed: This New York University scholar—like Osama Bin Laden—thinks civilians can be legitimate targets:

For both Rosenbaum and Bin Laden, the situation is straightforward:
Because a majority of Gazans/Americans voted for leaders who used
violence or waged war against Israelis/Muslims, both have forfeited
their claim to noncombatant status. After all, if they wanted to avoid
conflict, they wouldn’t have elected those people in the first place.

If you recoil from this logic, your head is in the right place. By
any standard, it’s perverse and morally wrong—a justification for the
worst atrocities. What’s more, it’s based on the faulty assumption that
there are no innocents in a democratic polity—that all individuals, from
aid workers and conscientious objectors to children and the disabled,
bear responsibility for every action of their government. If this were
true, then the logic of Rosenbaum and Bin Laden would make sense, and
everyone would stand as a legitimate target in armed conflict.

Health Insurance for Millions Threatened; Republicans Celebrate

Health Insurance for Millions Threatened; Republicans Celebrate: Am I being unfair? Well here's a challenge. Let's see if anybody can point me to a single prominent conservative—member of Congress, movement figure, media figure—whose response to that decision is not just what they're all saying (some variant of "This just shows what a terrible law Obamacare is") but also something like, "Of course, we don't want anyone to lose their health coverage, so if this decision is upheld we should pass a law correcting the drafting error that gave rise to this case and making sure those millions of Americans can keep getting the subsidies that make it possible for them to buy private insurance."

Iraqi Christians are raped, murdered and driven from their homes – and the West is silent – Telegraph Blogs

Iraqi Christians are raped, murdered and driven from their homes – and the West is silent – Telegraph Blogs:



The West’s direct intervention in Iraq created Hell on Earth for its
Christian citizens, while the West’s lack of action in Syria (out of
deference to its failings in Iraq) has permitted a regrouping of
Islamist forces and the opening of a second front against Christians.
The lesson is: “either leave other countries alone or, if you must
intervene, do so with consistency and resilience”. The consequences of
going in, messing things up and then quitting with a weary shrug are
terrible for those left behind.



Yet, having been so intimately involved in the collapse of Iraq, the
West is now bizarrely silent about events in Mosul. The streets of
London fill with thousands marching against Israel’s military operation
in Gaza; the West rails mightily against the Russian separatists in
Ukraine. But of Iraq there is nothing. Why?

Dating while mentally ill: When to tell the guy about my condition?

Dating while mentally ill: When to tell the guy about my condition?: So what’s the answer? I would love to feel I could keep my mental illness under wraps until I was comfortable with someone, as if it were a hobby like collecting international Barbie dolls. But that seems both unfair and dangerous. Having a panic attack in front of someone unprepared is not great for building trust. With new friends, I try to rummage around conversationally in their own lives first, and then drop in a few details to see how they land. I am much better at picking friends than romantic partners, and nothing has ever gone terribly wrong with this approach. But somehow it doesn’t seem quite enough when you’re taking the first steps toward asking someone to love you for better or for worse. I come with more worse than most people, and it’s only fair that I’m honest about that.

Why are so many parents being arrested? - The Week

Why are so many parents being arrested? - The Week: But today those communities seem rarer, and so, too, those shared premises about how kids should behave. More than that, there's a fear of taking responsibility for kids in the neighborhood. Deliver a short report on a child's behavior and his parents may snap back, "Don't tell me how to parent my child." A neighbor's interest may seem invasive or even creepy. Lacking church or community, bystanders in a neighborhood refer their concern about a suboptimal parental situation (one they usually know little about because they are not very neighborly) to the only other institution empowered to look out for the welfare of children: the state.



The state's guardianship functions were developed to handle only the most extreme cases of neglect or abuse. The incentives of those within these departments incline them to suspicion and dramatic intervention. "We only get called in an emergency, so this must be one."

Non-Combatants and Gaza | The American Conservative

Non-Combatants and Gaza | The American Conservative:

Thane Rosenbaum unintentionally endorses the logic of every terrorist group in history:

On some basic level, you forfeit your right to be called
civilians when you freely elect members of a terrorist organization as
statesmen, invite them to dinner with blood on their hands and allow
them to set up shop in your living room as their base of operations. At
that point you begin to look a lot more like conscripted soldiers than
innocent civilians. And you have wittingly made yourself targets.

This is perverse and absolutely wrong, but it’s the sort of argument
that one will end up making in order to defend a military operation that
has already killed hundreds of non-combatants. Civilian deaths
reportedly make up the overwhelming majority of Palestinian casualties
in Gaza over the last few weeks, and these have resulted from the
indiscriminate use of force in a densely populated area. More to the
point, Rosenbaum’s argument is extremely similar to the justifications
that terrorist groups use when they target civilians in their own
attacks. It is based on the completely false assumption that there are
no real innocents or bystanders in a given country because of their
previous political support for a government and its policies, which
supposedly makes it permissible to strike non-military targets. It is
very important to reject this logic no matter where it comes from or
whose cause in a conflict it is being used to advance, because this is
the logic that has been used to justify countless atrocities down
through the years.