"Eliminate Department of Education, Four Republican Presidential Candidates Say" (Education Next)

"Massachusetts Teachers Union Aims to Eliminate Standardized Test as High-School Graduation Requirement" (Education Next)

"Latest New York Times Target: Zionism at Jewish Sleepaway Camp" (Algemeiner)

"Trump Faces a Teachable Moment on Criminal Justice Reform" is the headline of my latest column for the New York Sun. Please check out the full column over at the Sun.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on a low-interest loan that the University of Pennsylvania approved to Amy Gutmann as she was leaving the university's presidency. (She's now President Biden's U.S. ambassador to Germany after having set Biden up as a professor at Penn):

The university's trustee compensation committee in late 2020 quietly authorized a $3.7 million, 0.38% interest home loan to Gutmann, according to tax records and financial disclosure forms. The loan was to help with her "presidential transition," said Scott Bok, chairman of Penn's board of trustees.

Specifically, Gutmann, 73, had lived in the president's house on campus during her tenure, and she wanted to purchase a home to stay in Philadelphia.

This sort of deal is apparently somewhat frequent for outgoing university presidents: "Columbia gave its recently departed president, Lee Bollinger, a $6 million home loan, tax records show. The former president of the University of Southern California, C.L. Max Nikias, also got one for $3 million."

The following press statement from the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, crossed the wire this afternoon, with the subject line "Tenth Anniversary of the Ghouta, Syria, Chemical Weapons Attack":

Ten years ago the Assad regime launched rockets carrying the deadly nerve agent sarin into the Ghouta district of Damascus, killing more than 1,400 people.

The United States remembers and honors the victims and survivors of the Ghouta attack and of the other chemical attacks launched by the Assad regime. Ten years on, we continue to seek justice and accountability for those responsible for these horrific acts.

The September 2023 issue of Harper's carries a letter from Kathryn Lofton, identified as a professor of religious studies and American studies at Yale (she's also dean of humanities in Yale's faculty of arts and sciences). She writes:

Many religious communities around the world include an injunction to acknowledge wrongdoing through expiation. Within Protestant sects, confession is a ritual that occurs in some but not all churches, and not always for the same reasons. Christianity is a term that summarizes thousands of different sectarian movements unified by little other than interest in the Jesus story.

But facts don't matter when prejudice is being stirred up, and Buruma here leans hard on the last acceptable prejudice—that against religious people—to compare cancellers to fundamentalists. Unable to comprehend religion or its diversity, Buruma offers myopia and misinformation in its place...

Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy stopped by Tucker Carlson's Twitter-based (sorry, "X, formerly known as Twitter, -based") television show this week for an interview that exposed the flaws in the candidacy that nationally is third in the RealClearPolitics average.

It was a disappointing, verging on disqualifying, outing, both in substance and in style.

In substance, Ramaswamy signaled that on foreign policy, he'd be worse than Biden or Obama. "We have no discernable national interest at issue in Ukraine," Ramaswamy said. "We are on our way to Ukraine turning into another Iraq or Vietnam all over again."

From a Bloomberg news article about Citadel founder Ken Griffin lobbying to dial back Florida legislation that, in its initial form, would have imposed sweeping restrictions on Chinese ownership of real estate, comes this statement from Griffin: "I care deeply about individual rights and freedom, economic policies that encourage prosperity and upward mobility, all children having access to a high-quality education, ensuring our communities are safe, and a strong national defense."

"New York Times Finds $32 Billion in Israel High-Tech Investment Not Fit to Print," is the headline over my latest column for the Algemeiner. Please check the full column out over at the Algemeiner.

"Nixon's Famed Speech of 50 Years Ago Has Much Wisdom for Our Own Era of Scandal and Manichean Politics," is the headline over my latest New York Sun column. "For a historical pointer to our current era — special counsels, political scandals potentially verging into criminality, congressional investigations, popular disillusionment — it's hard to beat the Nixon presidency," the column begins. Please check the full column out over at the New York Sun.

Recent investigative press coverage directed at the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans is the topic of my latest piece for the Wall Street Journal, which headlined the article: "Why the Left Hates Horatio Alger." It isn't just about Clarence Thomas. Please check out the full article over at WSJ.com.

An emerging theme around here has been the role of religious faith in the upcoming presidential election. (See this column from back in April). In that vein it's worth paying attention to President Biden's remarks August 8 at a fundraiser in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Toward the start of his speech, he reminded the crowd that when he ran for president in 2020, he said the first reason he was running was "to restore the soul of America -- this sense of decency."

Biden concluded his remarks like this:

every time I'd walk out of my grandpop's house, he'd look at me and he'd yell, "Joey..." My -- and he -- by the way, he went to Santa Clara out here -- out of California, was an All-American football player in 1906, went back, was a newspaper guy in the business side, had four sons and a daughter -- my mom.

And -- but every time he'd walk out the door, he'd yell, "Joey, keep the faith." And my grandmother would go, "No, Joey. Spread it."

Let's go spread the faith. Thank you.

"What explains the lack of outrage and attention in certain circles to the scandal of the Biden family's corruption?" I try to answer in my latest New York Sun column. Please check the full column out over at the Sun.

A Bloomberg editorial on China advises, "Needless to say, the best way to avoid the consequences of a war with China over Taiwan is to stop such a conflict ever happening. The US, in particular, should try harder to reduce tensions with Beijing. Concentrating on narrowly defined national-security risks, rather than seeming to plan ways to cripple China's economy, would help."

The Wall Street Journal today publishes several letters to the editor on the topic of preferences in college admissions for children of alumni, including one letter from me.

For the latest evidence that big-government, anti-business sentiment is spreading from the Elizabeth Warren Democratic left to the Republican Party, check out the joint op-ed in the New York Times from Senators Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren promoting their new "Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act," which would "create an independent, bipartisan regulator charged with licensing and policing the nation's biggest tech companies — like Meta, Google and Amazon — to prevent online harm, promote free speech and competition, guard Americans' privacy and protect national security."