https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-attorney-general-opens-probe-into-sexual-abuse-by-catholic-clergy-in-washington/2018/10/23/6fb4ea62-d650-11e8-83a2-d1c3da28d6b6_story.html?utm_term=.903eeac26552



D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine said Tuesday that his office has begun an investigation of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in the archdiocese of Washington, the latest in a string of state-level law enforcement officials now looking into the Catholic Church’s handling of abuse complaints.

The investigation, announced by Racine at a regularly scheduled breakfast among the District’s elected officials, will bring scrutiny to Catholic leaders who have come under intense criticism in recent months.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl resigned this month as Washington’s archbishop amid an uproar over a Pennsylvania grand jury report that depicted systemic abuse across the state’s Catholic Church, including in Pittsburgh, where Wuerl had been a bishop.

[Cardinal Wuerl resigns in the face of outrage over handling of abuse]

Wuerl’s D.C. predecessor, former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, was removed from ministry in June following allegations that he had sexually abused a teenager decades ago while serving as a priest in New York.

Racine has limited power to prosecute crimes in the District, where felony cases are handled by the U.S. attorney’s office. However, he is opening the investigation under his authority to enforce D.C. law governing nonprofit organizations, as well as District law regarding the mandated reporting of sexual abuse.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/10/20/in-a-previously-unheard-interview-jamal-khashoggi-talks-saudi-arabia-and-freedom/?utm_term=.da7c93f5d4cf

Jamal Khashoggi and I wrote about opposite, but equally troubled, shores of the Persian Gulf for The Washington Post’s Global Opinions section: Jamal focused on Saudi Arabia, and me on Iran.

This past summer, Jamal and I sat down with Global Opinions editor Karen Attiah for a wide-ranging conversation about the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Jamal and I used to call Saudi Arabia and Iran, respectively, home, and then their regimes made clear – in word and deed – that we were no longer welcome to return.

What struck me most at the time was how much we appreciated and cared about Iran and Saudi Arabia. We both wanted better for those societies but could not overlook the abuses, repression and mistakes of their governments.

Both countries are young and dynamic. Most people there want what most people want everywhere: more opportunities, more transparency, more stability.

“Saudi Arabia is a country with 20 million people population. Two-thirds of them are young, less than 30 years old,” Jamal told us. “Mohammed bin Salman is putting all issues — economic, religion — in Saudi Arabia on fast-forward.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/10/06/read-jamal-khashoggis-columns-for-the-washington-post/?utm_term=.560e8c52a0cf

Jamal Khashoggi, a veteran Saudi journalist, was killed in Istanbul after walking into the consulate of Saudi Arabia, according to Turkish officials. In a statement released Saturday, Fred Hiatt, The Post’s editorial page editor, said that if true, this would represent “a monstrous and unfathomable act.”

Khashoggi had been writing a column for The Post’s Global Opinions section since last year. “He lamented that Saudi Arabia’s repression was becoming unbearable to the point of his decision to leave the country and live in exile in Washington,” wrote Karen Attiah, Khashoggi’s editor, on Wednesday.

Hiatt, in his statement, called Khashoggi a “committed, courageous journalist.”

“He writes out of a sense of love for his country and deep faith in human dignity and freedom,” Hiatt said. “We have been enormously proud to publish his writing.”

Read excerpts from some of Khashoggi’s columns below.

Nikki Haley jokes at fundraising dinner: 'You wanted an Indian woman, but Elizabeth Warren failed her DNA test'

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/18/politics/nikki-haley-al-smith-dinner/index.html

(CNN)Outgoing United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley joked Thursday during the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner that the organizers had "wanted an Indian woman, but Elizabeth Warren failed her DNA test."

At the dinner, which is known for political figures cracking jokes during the keynote address, Haley said that after President Donald Trump's speech at the charity dinner for the Catholic Church two years ago and Paul Ryan giving a "choir boy" speech last year, "this year you wanted to spice things up again, right?" Haley said.
"I get it. You wanted an Indian woman, but Elizabeth Warren failed her DNA test," Haley joked.
"Actually, when the President found out that I was Indian-American, he asked if I was from the same tribe as Elizabeth Warren," she quipped.
Haley announced last week that she is resigning her post and will leave the administration at the end of the year.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/14/asian-americans-affirmative-action-898521

A legal battle over Harvard University’s use of race in admissions beginning Monday will ratchet up the Trump administration’s war on affirmative action, a play to the president’s base that also highlights a Republican bid to win the allegiance of the fastest growing racial group in the nation.

Harvard is fighting a lawsuit that claims the elite school’s consideration of race in its ultracompetitive admissions process is unfair to Asian-American applicants. The Trump administration has thrown its support behind the suit and launched its own investigation into claims the Ivy League school is discriminating against Asian-Americans — moves that could allow the GOP to win over a new group of angry voters.

Asian-Americans have long supported Democrats, tending to favor gun control, pathways to citizenship — and even affirmative action. But a vocal and growing segment of the Asian-American population is fed up with the use of race in admissions, which they believe holds Asian-Americans to higher standards than other groups — and some Republicans see an opening to start to woo a new bloc of supporters. GOP candidates in at least two congressional races this year have railed against affirmative action in explicit bids for Asian-American voters.

Asian-Americans unhappy with the use of race “have an ear, because they occupy a pretty unique place in American politics: They’re nonwhite voters who are opposing affirmative action,” said Janelle Wong, a professor of Asian-American Studies at the University of Maryland who supports affirmative action.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/03/us/brooklyn-college-professor-kavanaugh-comments-protests/index.html


Mitchell Langbert is an associate professor of business at Brooklyn College in New York.

(CNN)Brooklyn College students are calling for administrators to fire a professor who seemed to dismiss sexual assault by teenage boys in a blog post the teacher now says was an attempt at satire.

Last week, Mitchell Langbert, a business professor for 20 years, wrote: "If someone did not commit sexual assault in high school, then he is not a member of the male sex.

"The Democrats have discovered that 15-year-olds play spin-the-bottle, and they have jumped on a series of supposed spin-the-bottle crimes during (Supreme Court nominee Brett) Kavanaugh's minority, which they characterize as rape, although no one complained or reported any crime for 40 years."

The blog post was reposted in a private group for some 5,000 students and alumni.
Some students were outraged. Corrinne Greene said her campus group, Young Progressives of America, wants Langbert fired.
"To have someone in a position of power espousing sexual assault is not a joke. It's something that needs to be taken seriously," she said.