The fallout from the Internal Revenue Service harassment of conservative groups continues to rain down on the Obama Administration.

Alex Uzarowicz of Knox College offers his view about what the Obama Administration could do to clean-up the continuing mess, noting that the lack of leadership is a roadblock to the “bipartisanship” liberals say they crave.

Last week was a rough week for the Obama Administration: three scandals under three different departments. All of these fall under the authority of the President of the United States and showcase the hands-off approach of this administration on a variety of issues from foreign policy to tax exemption statuses.

…President Obama should be held responsible on all of these issues. These are significant scandals that Congress must further investigate and determine whether or not the President knew of any of these issues.

What’s clear is that these events will further American government skepticism. Those who were already against Obama will be against the President even more, and those who were on the fence, will lean against the White House. There are reports already that show that Democrats are even questioning the doings of the White House.

Even Congressman Rangel spoke out on the issue of the wiretapping. He said, “I don’t think anyone truly believes that the president has given us a sufficient answer for America, much less the press.” Rangel is the most inappropriate critic on these affairs. The congressman was convicted for unethical behavior – in fact, 11 charges. When you have him questioning the President of the United States, that’s when you know that you’ve done something wrong.

These scandals will also unfortunately prevent any kind of bipartisanship. Many Republicans will not want to work with a president that oversees all of these departments and allowed such scandals to happen. In the same vain, Democrats would not want to associate themselves with a president that the public mistrusts. It’s a two-way street.

President Obama needs to take action. He needs to get rid of his “leading from behind” mindset, as Joe Scarborough put it. He needs to start firing officials and disclose any kind of information to the public to establish trust with the American people. He needs to hold people accountable for their actions. He needs to fix his administration.

Of course they do. Didn’t everyone know it was just a matter of time before this happened?

Robby Soave of The Daily Caller reports.

Senate Democrats propose student loan bailouts

Following closely on the heels of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s recent proposal to subsidize student loans through the Federal Reserve, another senator is taking aim at student loan debt with a bill that would give a borrowers a huge break but leave taxpayers scrambling to make up the difference.

New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a bill this week that requires the Secretary of Education to offer borrowers the chance to refinance their loans at a flat interest rate of 4 percent. This would lower the debt obligations of 9 out of 10 borrowers, according to The Huffington Post.

“At a time when corporations, homeowners and even local governments are refinancing at historically low interest rates and saving millions of dollars, students and families who take out loans to pay for college are getting left behind,” said Gillibrand in a statement. “Ensuring that our graduates are not saddled with unmanageable debt by keeping interest rates low is just common sense.”

Such a break for students and graduates would come at a tremendous cost to taxpayers, however, since the current, higher interest rates generate a massive profit for the government. If rates are left unchanged, the Department of Education will make $51 billion off of student loans in the coming year.

As an owner of a chemistry degree, I can attest to the fact that one of the biggest challenges I faced was enrolling in science laboratory classes because of tight space restrictions.

Now, in my home state, one university is looking to break science lab course bottlenecks, changing life sciences education by ending in-person lab experience for many non-majors. Ry Rivard of Inside Higher Ed reports:

A statement to a local newspaper by a prominent evolutionary biologist that, “teaching creationism is like denying the Holocaust”, has evolved into focus of support for campus religious freedom by a large anti-theist organization.

Macaela Bennett of Campus Reform has the details:

Bestselling author and popular lecturer, Professor Jerry Coyne, made the comment while discussing a Ball State University (BSU) class which considers creationism and deism in the context of science.

“The students are being duped,” Coyne said, regarding the class. “It’s a straight Christian intelligent design/creationist view of the world, which is wrong. It’s not science.

“It’s not that it’s not science,” he continued, speaking to the Star Press. “It’s science that has been discredited. It’s like saying the Holocaust didn’t happen.”

On his blog “Why Evolution is True” Coyne said he warned a BSU official after a student complained that the class’s professor had been “cramming Jesus down the students’ throats.”

On May 15, the country’s largest anti-theist organization, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), criticized the class in a letter to BSU President Jo Ann Gora, calling the class a thinly-veiled excuse for Christian evangelization

The class presents a “one-sided monologue by a government paid employee whose agenda is to show that science proves the truth of religion – in this case one particular religion, Christianity,” read the letter.

“The use of public money at a public university to proselytize to students is disturbing,” it continued.

According to the course syllabus, however, its aim is to consider whether or not there might be more to the universe than what science is capable of explaining.

“In this course, we will examine the nature of the physical and the living world with the goal of increasing our appreciation of the scope, wonder, and complexity of physical reality,” it reads.

The class is taught by BSU Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Eric Hedin, who has received some criticism on the review site RateMyProfessor.com for his open Christianity.

“He does far less teaching than he does preaching, and will go to any length to make sure that anything unexplained by science is explained by God,” wrote one reviewer.

Coyne, whose blog contends there is no place for such “Jesus-infused” teaching in the classroom demands that BSU cancel the class.

In a move that highlights the consequences of the education bubble burst, the Chicago Board of Education is now closing almost fifty elementary schools.

The Daily Caller Education Editor Eric Owens files this report:

Autumn seemed like dark days for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The Chicago Teachers Union had declared a strike, shutting down public schools across the city. Nearly two weeks later, Emanuel had capitulated to substantial salary increases for teachers over three years.

Only a fool would bet against Mayor Rahm, though. Not for nothing is the foul-mouthed former ballerina nicknamed Rahmbo. Turns out, the former Clinton adviser and Obama chief of staff was playing chess while the union was playing checkers.

On Wednesday, the Chicago Board of Education voted 6-0 to shutter 48 elementary schools and one high school program, reports the Chicago Tribune. (The vote was closer for a 49th elementary school.) All affected students will transfer once their schools close.

The school closings are the centerpiece in Emanuel’s long-term plan to close the $1 billion budget deficit currently facing the city, according to CBS Chicago.

By comparison, the raises teachers got as a result of their strike have an estimated price tag of $74 million each year, notes the Tribune.

The move to close so many schools in such a short time is unprecedented in any large American city (though Philadelphia is also closing a couple dozen schools).

“We can no longer embrace the status quo because the status quo is not working for all Chicago schoolchildren,” said Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, according to the Trib. “It is imperative that you take the difficult decision but essential steps.”

“I firmly believe the most important thing we can do as a city is provide the next generation with a brighter future,” said Emanuel in statement.

Emanuel is continuing — in radical fashion — a transformation initiated some two decades ago by then-Mayor Richard Daley who convinced the Illinois legislature to give the city considerable power to overhaul public education. As the Trib notes, Hizzoner presciently saw improved public schools as critical to luring and sustaining a middle-class tax base.

Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and an ardent critic of Mayor Emanuel, has promised to force the mayor out of office over the school closings. The union has also filed lawsuits.

“Today is a day of mourning for the children of Chicago,” Lewis lamented in an email obtained by The Daily Caller. “Their education has been hijacked by an unrepresentative, unelected corporate school board, acting at the behest of a mayor who has no vision for improving the education of our children.”

This story is such a disappointment. People expect more from students at West Point, given the school’s high standards of admittance.

Thom Shanker of The New York Times reports.

Women Were Secretly Filmed at West Point, the Army Says

WASHINGTON — A sergeant first class on the staff of the United St...

We recently covered the case of Matthew Werenczak, a Syracuse University student defended by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) after being expelled for Facebook comments.

His comments were about an experience as a tutoring event, during which condescending remarks about...

We recently reported that the lack of conservative speakers at graduation ceremonies nationwide had gotten so bad, even the Los Angeles Times noticed.

The newspaper published several reader letters in response to the observation:

Steve Murray, Huntington Beach:

It’s an ironic turnaround. When I was in college, students demonstrated for free speech on campus....

A professor of music just gave new meaning to the phrase, “Out of tune”.

The New York City-based instructor responded to online criticism with a humorous video in which he told students their parents should have “slapped them around” when they were children. Campus Reform contributor Spencer Schredder has the details:

A pr...

The kicker of this story is that DePaul is a private university. Welcome to Chicagoland.

Robby Soave of The Daily Caller reports.

Chicago taxpayers could finance private university’s sports arena

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to revitalize the Chicago area includes the controversial use of public funds to build a new sports arena for DePaul...

One concern about the “pornification” of college campuses is that it is filtering down to high schools.

One Florida high school, however, is bucking that trend. The Daily Caller’s Education Editor Eric Owens has these details:

Is a cigar sometimes just a cigar? That debate will remain unresolved, but The Daily Caller can...

A debate on President Obama now focuses on which scandal-ridden President he is most like:  Richard Nixon or Warren Harding.

However, hope springs eternal among some members of elite academia.  George Washington University student Katherine Rodriguez shares some dreams of the faculty at her school.

A handful of George Washington University political and...

Dinesh D’Souza is a conservative pundit who most famously produced 2016: Obama’s America, a movie that details potential reasons for the current President’s political motives.

In a rare campus appearance by a conservative, Souza recently addressed more than 80 people at Northwestern Univeristy before answering about a dozen questions almost equally divided...

Cecillia Wang, Director of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project, has written an ACLU blog entry, “Reflections of Another Affirmative Action Baby,” describing the wonders of the new world “diversity” opened up for her as an undergraduate at Berkeley.

...

It’s good to know there are college students in America who have rejected the BDS insanity that has infected so many college campuses.

This report comes via the Camera blog, Snapshots.

Algemeiner and JNS: CAMERA Launches New Student Website

The Algemeiner and JNS report:

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA)...