https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/education/carnegie-mellon-president-defends-hiring-rich-grenell-says-university

The president of Carnegie Mellon University this week defended that school's hiring of former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, stating that university officials followed school policy when making the decision.

Grenell's hiring earlier in the summer as a senior fellow with the university's Institute for Politics and Strategy generated opposition from university faculty and staff, with objectors claiming Grenell's history of snarky comments about women on Twitter, as well as some of his decisions as the former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, made him unfit to hold the position.

In response to those objections, university President Farnam Jahanian convened a committee to review the hiring of Grenell. On Thursday Jahanian wrote on the university's website that she concurred with the committee's conclusion, reached earlier this month, that "all existing and relevant policies and procedures were followed" when making the decision.

"As such," Jahanian continued, "I affirm that [Institute Director] Dr. [Kiron] Skinner had the discretion to appoint Ambassador Grenell to be a senior fellow in IPS, and further affirm the subsequent decisions of the deans and the provost permitting her to proceed."

In its report, the committee acknowledged that many of Grenell's Internet posts have been at times "dismissive and disrespectful of the opinions of others," though they acknowledged a "fundamental question" as to "whether we would expect someone coming from outside academia to have abided by its principles beforehand as a condition of employment."

"In any case, during his year at CMU, we fully expect him to follow all University policies and the more general principles of academic freedom," the report added.

New York Gov. Cuomo to allow voters to fix missing signatures, errors on absentee ballots

https://globalnews.ca/news/7292581/cuomo-new-york-absentee-ballots/

Anticipating a wave of mail-in voting this fall, New York state will now give voters a chance to correct missing signatures and other clerical errors so their absentee ballots can be counted — but the exact provisions haven’t yet been made public after last-minute negotiations between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers.

Cuomo said late Friday he’d sign — yet temporarily tweak — legislation that calls for notifying voters about such problems and provides for fixing them.

Under the version that passed the Legislature last month, the voter would have seven business days to file a form to fix the problem after a notice was mailed, in many situations.

Cuomo, a Democrat, said he agreed voters should be able to correct inadvertent mistakes that would otherwise invalidate their mail-in votes. But he said the Legislature’s plan came too close to the Nov. 3 presidential election, requiring a series of notifications and mailings that would overtax election officials.

“New York must balance the right to vote with the need to ensure a timely, seamless and operationally sound election that leaves no doubt as to its outcome,” he wrote in a memo, saying he and lawmakers had agreed on “temporary modifications” that would give voters an opportunity to correct slip-ups “without relying so heavily on an already burdened mail system.”

His memo didn’t give further details on the temporary changes, saying they’d be made in an executive order

‘We’re living under the first President in decades that hasn’t started a new war’