University Of California To Permanently Remove Standardized Testing For Admission

The University of California (UC) Board of Regents announced Nov. 18 to eliminate standardized tests from the admission process, without any alternative exam to be adopted in the foreseeable future.

The board originally approved in May 2020 the removal of standardized testing—for applications for admission to the nine UC colleges—and planned to put an alternative test in place of ACT and SAT by 2024.

During the board’s meeting on Thursday, the regents reached a consensus to keep exams out of admission requirements for a longer time, in favor of practices promoting educational equity and quality.

“UC will continue to practice test-free admissions now and into the future,” Michael Brown, UC provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said in a statement.

Also, to help students build a successful college path, the UC will strengthen its relationship with K-12 schools, Brown said.

Cecilia Estolano, chair of the board, said the regents are not feeling comfortable using any assessment in the admission process. She added that the decision to removed standardized test is “significant” because it has set a standard that made a difference nationally.

Bob Schaeffer, executive director of FairTest: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing, told the Los Angeles Times that the UC is becoming “a national model for test-free admissions.”

He said many more schools are going test-free in their admission in the past two years.

Alvin Lyu, a fourth-year chemical biology student at the University of California—Berkeley, told The Epoch Times the board’s decision is “a fair move” as students have many more challenges due to the pandemic.

He added that it is best to have the ACT and SAT scores optional so that high school students with lower grade point averages can use it as a booster in the admission process.

Helen Tan, an international student studying statistics at the University of California—Los Angeles, said removing the SAT and ACT can affect the number of applicants.

“If [the UC schools] don’t require [standardized tests], [they] will definitely attract more students who really like the UCs. But there will be more people taking AP and honor classes to make them a more competitive candidate,” Tan told The Epoch Times.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/university-california-permanently-remove-standardized-testing-admission

Never Trumpers Jonah Goldberg, Stephen Hayes Quit Fox News in Protest of Tucker Carlson’s January 6 Documentary

Famous never Trumpers Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes quit as contributors for Fox News in protest of Tucker Carlson’s January 6 documentary suggesting that the Capitol Hill riot may have in part been sparked by the FBI.

In late October, as Carlson’s documentary hit the subscription service Fox Nation, Jonah Goldberg sent a text to Stephen Hayes wondering if he should quit the network.

“I’m tempted just to quit Fox over this.”

“I’m game,” Hayes replied. “Totally outrageous. It will lead to violence. Not sure how we can stay.”

Speaking with the New York Times, Hayes and Goldberg said they stayed on as contributors with Fox News despite their never Trump stance in hopes that they could help “right the ship” after the former president exited the White House. Those hopes were dashed with the arrival of Patriot Purge, Tucker Carlson’s documentary exploring January 6 and how the riot has allegedly been used by the Biden administration to crack down on patriotic Americans. Goldberg said the documentary was evidence that “people have made peace with this direction of things, and there is no plan, at least, that anyone made me aware of for a course correction.”

“Now, righting the ship is an academic question,” said Goldberg. “The ‘Patriot Purge’ thing meant: OK, we hit the iceberg now, and I can’t do the rationalizations anymore.”

Hayes, editor-in-chief of The Weekly Standard, worried that the documentary could lead people into believing “that there’s a domestic war on terror and it’s coming for half of the country.”

“That’s not true,” said Hayes. “The imagery of waterboarding and suggestions that half the country is going to be subject to this kind of treatment, that’s the same kind of treatment that the federal government used when it went after Al Qaeda.”

“[Tucker Carlson] pumped that stuff out into society, and all you need is one person out of every 50,000 people who watch it to believe it’s literally the story about what happened, that it’s true in all of its particulars and all of its insinuations,” he added. “And that’s truly dangerous in a way that the usual hyperbole that you get on a lot of cable news isn’t.”

Goldberg recalled National Review founder William F. Buckley, who famously purged the John Birch Society from the right-wing as part of his mission to impose “seriousness on conservative arguments.”

“Whether it’s ‘Patriot Purge’ or anti-vax stuff, I don’t want it in my name, and I want to call it out and criticize it,” Goldberg said. “I don’t want to feel like I am betraying a trust that I had by being a Fox News contributor. And I also don’t want to be accused of not really pulling the punches. And then this was just an untenable tension for me.”

“There are lots of people there that I respect and like and consider friends, and they’re making a decision based upon how to provide for their families and deal with their careers and all of that. And I’m not going to second-guess them,” he later added. “And there are also lots of people over there who think the Fox opinion side today is awesome.”

For his part, Tucker Carlson expressed no sorrow over the resignations of Goldberg and Hayes, even going so far as to tell the New York Times that “our viewers will be grateful.”

Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti offered no comment on the resignations.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/11/21/never-trumpers-quit-fox-news-protest-tucker-carlsons-january-6-documentary/

Reese Witherspoon: A World Where Kyle Rittenhouse Goes Free Isn’t ‘Safe for Any of Us’

Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon is yet another Hollywood celebrity to blast the not-guilty verdicts in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, saying that the Illinois teenager doesn’t deserve to go free while deceptively conflating him with mass shooters.

In a Twitter thread posted Saturday, the Legally Blonde and Walk the Line actress lamented a Wisconsin jury’s acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges. In a rhetorical sleight of hand, the actress inaccurately lumped Rittenhouse in with perpetrators of “senseless gun violence,” leaving out the fact that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense.

She then repeated what has become a favorite talking point among left-wingers and anti-gun activists, noting that Rittenhouse crossed “state lines,” which is not a crime and is not relevant to his right to defend his life from rioters who tried to take his gun, hit him with a skateboad, and pointed a pistol at him.

“No one should be able to purchase a semi-automatic weapon, cross state lines and kill 2 people, wound another and go free. In what world is this safe … for any of us?” she wrote.

Witherspoon, who stars in Apple TV+’s series The Morning Show, ignored the fact that one of the men who Rittenhouse defended himself from had sexually abused pre-teen boys. The teen’s assailants attacked him during last year’s Black Lives Matter riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which saw large parts of the city burn to the ground.

The actress then promised to never vote for U.S. representatives and judges who support Rittenhouse.

Witherspoon has been a vocal anti-gun activist, calling for more gun control following the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in 2019.

Other stars who have blasted the Rittenhouse verdict include Mark Ruffalo and Disney+’s The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal, who both bizarrely paid tribute to the two men who threatened and attacked Rittenhouse, insisting they were “murdered.”

Celebrities including Sophia Bush, Alyssa Milano, Bette Midler, and Josh Gad have also lamented Rittenhouse’s acquittal, with some calling it a victory for “white supremacy.”

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/11/21/reese-witherspoon-a-world-where-kyle-rittenhouse-goes-free-isnt-safe-for-any-of-us/

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/11/21/reese-witherspoon-a-world-where-kyle-rittenhouse-goes-free-isnt-safe-for-any-of-us/

>>15053124

>“Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch”

Jan Ludvík Hyman Binyamin (Hoch) Maxwell (1923 - 1991)

Jan Ludvík Hyman Binyamin (Robert) Maxwell formerly Hoch

Born 10 Jun 1923 in Slatinské Doly, Carpathian Ruthenia, Czechoslovakiamap

Son of [father unknown] and [mother unknown]

[sibling(s) unknown]

Husband of Elisabeth Jeanne (Meynard) Maxwell — married about 1945 [location unknown]

[children unknown]

Died 5 Nov 1991 in Canary Islands, Spainmap

His parents were Mechel Hoch and Hannah Slomowitz who had 7 children and were a poor Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish family.

He was born as Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch on 10 June 1923 in the small town of Slatinské Doly (now Solotvyno, Ukraine) in the easternmost province of pre-World War II Czechoslovakia. In 1939 the area was reclaimed by Hungary. In 1944 Hungary was occupied by Nazi Germany and most of his family members died in Auschwitz. But he was fortunate to have had already escaped to France.

While in exile, in May 1940 in Marseille, he joined the Czechoslovak Army during World War II. For a while he used the surname DuMaurier, taken from the name of a popular cigarette brand. Along with 500 other soldiers he was transferred to the Royal Pioneer Corps and later to the North Staffordshire Regiment in 1943. After active service, he was decorated as a Captain the British Army.

He married on 15 Mar 1945 to Elisabeth "Betty" Jeanne Meynard (d: 07 Aug 2013), a French Huguenot Protestant. Over the next 16 years, they had 9 children, 2 of whom died young.

He was naturalised as a British subject on 19 June 1946. [1] He made an official deed for change of name on 30 June 1948 to Ian Robert Maxwell. [2]

He rose from poverty, working in publishing and building up Pergamon Press to a major publishing house.

From 1964 to 1970 he represented the Labour Party as Member of Parliament (MP) for Buckingham.

Afterward he again put all his energy into building an extensive publishing empire. He successively bought the British Printing Corporation, Mirror Group Newspapers and Macmillan Publishers, among other publishing companies.

He was ranked as one of the richest individuals in the world, led a flamboyant lifestyle, was notably litigious and often embroiled in controversy.

In 1989 he had to sell successful businesses, including Pergamon Press, to cover some of his debts.

He was on his yacht in the Canary Islands, Spain when on 05 Nov 1991 his body was discovered floating in the Atlantic Ocean [3] and it was presumed he fell overboard. An inquest was held in December 1991 the official ruling was death by a heart attack combined with accidental drowning. [4] He was given the equivalent of a state funeral in Israel and buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. [5] [6]

After his death, huge discrepancies in his companies' finances were revealed and banks called in loans, triggering the collapse of his publishing empire. His sons briefly attempted to keep the business together, but failed as the news emerged that the elder Maxwell had stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his own companies' pension funds. The Maxwell companies applied for bankruptcy protection in 1992.

Maternal Lineage

Shlomo Slomowitz, b: Lithuania

Moishe Elijah Slomowitz, b: c1790

Chaim Leib Slomowitz, b: c1818; m: Elke

Mendel Slomowitz, aka: Yankel Shlomowitz, d: c1894; m: Tzipporah

Hannah Slomowitz, m: Mechel Hoch

Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch, aka: Ian Robert Maxwell; b: 10 Jun 1923; d: 05 Nov 1991;

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hoch-533

MEGA GROUP

Lawmakers Question Biden’s Military Operations in Syria

Biden cited the Constitution as justification for bombing Shia militias in Syria earlier this year

On Thursday, a bipartisan group of 30 House representatives penned a letter to President Biden questioning US airstrikes and the US military presence in Syria.

In February and June of this year, the US bombed Shia militia targets in Syria and cited Article II of the Constitution as justification for the strikes. In the letter led by Reps Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Peter DeFazio, and Nancy Mace (R-SC), the lawmakers call the idea that the Constitution justifies such strikes a “dangerous claim.”

“We are deeply troubled by your administration’s dangerous claim that Article II of the Constitution permits you to bypass Congressional authorization to perform strikes inside Syria,” the letter reads.

There is wide support in Congress to reign in the president’s war powers by repealing authorizations for the use of military force (AUMFs) that were passed in 1991 and 2002 to wage wars against Iraq.

Some lawmakers also favor repealing and replacing the 2001 AUMF that is used to justify the wars against groups like ISIS and al-Shabaab, even though they didn’t exist when the AUMF was passed. But the fact that the Biden administration used the Constitution as justification for airstrikes sets a dangerous precedent and suggests that no matter what AUMF is repealed, the Executive Branch will still have unilateral power to bomb other countries.

The letter also questioned the US occupation of eastern Syria. There are currently about 900 US troops stationed in Syria under the 2001 AUMF. But since ISIS no longer has a significant foothold in Syria, the lawmakers are questioning this authorization.

“Virtually all observers, including your administration, acknowledge that ISIS no longer holds territory in Syria. This casts serious doubt on the applicability of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which some claim authorizes the entire US military presence in Syria,” the letter reads.

The letter represents a small but growing opposition in Congress to the US war in Syria. Rep. Bowman introduced an amendment to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have required the Biden administration to get authorization to stay in Syria from Congress or leave the country. The amendment was shot down in a vote of 118 to 286, but the majority of House Democrats voted in favor of the measure.

https://news.antiwar.com/2021/11/19/lawmakers-question-bidens-military-operations-in-syria/