RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
Oct. 14 to Oct. 20
Featured Investigation
Colleges and universities have a long history of trying to control student newspapers. But the efforts of Tarleton State University in North Texas are raising concerns because of its use of a powerful tool – Title IX, the federal anti-discrimination law – to keep journalists in line.
As Steve Miller reports for RealClearInvestigations, the university's student-run Texan News Service published a story in which several unnamed women described sexual overtures made by a longtime professor at the North Texas school. The administration sent a letter to the newspaper’s adviser, Dan Malone, informing him that he had violated school policy by failing to report the accusations immediately to his superiors. It threatened to fire him if he didn’t submit to additional Title IX training. Miller wrote:
Malone, an assistant professor, says the case illustrates the tension between his obligations as a journalist and as a school employee. “The university sees me as a teacher who is not a journalist, yet they hired me because of my background as a journalist,” said Malone, who as a Dallas Morning News reporter in 1992 shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on police misconduct. “I can’t agree that if you’re a journalist and start teaching, you relinquish all duties as a journalist,” including the obligation to protect anonymous sources.
The university maintains that the case does not involve sacred principles but standard policy. It never asked Malone to disclose the names of the accusers. It just insisted that he follow the rules that require all such allegations be relayed immediately to the school – not through the campus paper, but through proper channels.
“See where Dan gets paid,” said Laylan Copelin, spokesman for the Texas A&M System. “He’s an employee.”
The Trump Investigations: Top Articles
Mueller Ready to Deliver Key Findings in His Trump Probe, Bloomberg
Treasury Aide Arrested for Trump-Tied Leaks, Flash Drive in Hand, Fox
Judge Cites State Dept.'s 'Clearly False' Statements in Clinton Probe, Fox
FBI Aide Lied Over Sports-Tix Bribe From Press, Went Scot-Free, Washington Times
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
Private Medicaid Gets Billions of Tax $ with Little Oversight
National Public Radio
More than two-thirds of Medicaid recipients are enrolled in managed care programs, a type of public-private arrangement that has grown rapidly since 2014, boosted by the influx of new beneficiaries under the Affordable Care Act. Yet the evidence is thin that these contractors improve patient care or save the government money. When auditors, lawmakers and regulators bother to look, many conclude that Medicaid insurers fail to account for the dollars spent, deliver necessary care or provide access to a sufficient number of doctors.
100 Terror Arrests in Guatemala, Source of U.S.-Bound Caravan
Judicial Watch
As a caravan of migrants heads toward the United States, the president of one of the source nations, Guatemala, announced that his country has apprehended close to 100 people connected to terrorist organizations, including ISIS. Several of the terrorists were Syrians caught with fake documents, according to Guatemala’s head of intelligence. President Jimmy Morales also revealed that Guatemalan authorities captured more than 1,000 members of gangs, including MS-13.
DOJ, FBI Take Junkets, Freebies From Special Interests
The Hill
DOJ has a new meaning: Department of Junkets. During the past three years hundreds of department employees have accepted free travel, lodging and food from special interest groups. The junkets have taken senior DOJ officials and front-line agents to some of the world’s most desirable locations — including Sao Paulo, Morocco and Paris, the scenic Indian Ocean island of Mauritius and the glamorously modern Arabian Peninsula city of Dubai. The hosts footing the bill often have a strong policy or investigative interest in the agencies whose employees they schmooze, or they were controlled by foreign governments.
How Chemical Weapons Have Helped Assad
BBC News
After seven devastating years of civil war in Syria, which have left more than 350,000 people dead, President Bashar al-Assad appears close to victory against the forces trying to overthrow him. So how has Assad gotten so close to winning this bloody, brutal war? This joint investigation by BBC Panorama and BBC Arabic shows for the first time the extent to which chemical weapons – including an estimated 106 attacks since 2013 – have been crucial to his war-winning strategy.
Donations for Going Easy? FBI Probes Manhattan DA
New York Daily News
FBI agents are probing the Manhattan district attorney’s office over its handling of high-profile cases that were dropped once lawyers for the well-connected subjects made campaign donations. These include lawyers tied to movie mogul and accused sexual predator Harvey Weinstein and to Donald Trump’s children.
Kushner Likely Paid No Income Tax for Years
New York Times
Even as Jared Kushner’s wealth has quintupled over the years to $324 million, the presidential son-in-law “appears to have paid almost no federal income taxes” thanks to “a common tax-minimizing maneuver [depreciation] that, year after year, generated millions of dollars in losses,” according to confidential financial documents reviewed by the New York Times
U.S. Mercenaries Went to Yemen to Do Targeted Killings
BuzzFeed
As the world responds to reports that Saudi Arabia murdered dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, this article reports that the United Arab Emirates has routinely hired former Green Berets and Navy SEALs to assassinate people in Yemen. Abraham Golan, owner of the Delaware-incorporated company Spear Operations Group, said his team of mercenaries was responsible for a number of the war’s high-profile assassinations, though he declined to specify which ones.
Was Gary Hart Set Up?
Atlantic
In 1987 Sen. Gary Hart was seen as the overwhelming favorite to be the Democratic nominee for president. Then a picture surfaced of him on a boat named Monkey Business with a young woman on his lap, Donna Rice, who was not his wife. This article claims that storied Republican strategist Lee Atwater confessed to setting up the photo just before he died of a brain tumor in 1991. The article has no comment from Rice, who would know if she were a plant, and doesn’t explain why Hart called and met with her after the boat trip.
The Violent Rise and Demise of Aaron Hernandez
Boston Globe
Aaron Hernandez, the star tight end who was convicted of murder before killing himself in prison, was a bundle of secrets and traumas. These injuries were both emotional – beginning with the sudden death of his beloved father – and physical, “his brain was ravaged by CTE, the devastating disease caused by hits to the head, of a severity never seen in someone so young.” That may help explain why this multi-part Spotlight Team investigation found "a man who lived a life of secrets — about his childhood, his football career, his sexuality, his drug habits, and his fascination with violence.”
One House on Florida Beach Stands, Built for 'the Big One'
New York Times
As they built their dream house last year on the shimmering sands of the Gulf of Mexico, Russell King and his nephew, Dr. Lebron Lackey, painstakingly saw to every detail of the elevated construction, from the 40-foot pilings buried into the ground to the types of screws drilled into the walls. They picked gleaming paints from a palette of shore colors, chose salt-tolerant species to plant in the beach dunes and christened their creation the Sand Palace of Mexico Beach. Their best-laid plans were tested when Hurricane Michael roared through their Florida beachfront community – a test they passed, as aerial photos after the storm showed their house standing tall amid the ruins.
