Rolling Stone magazine retracted its article about a brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity after the release of a report on Sunday that concluded the widely discredited article was the result of failures at every stage of the editing process.

The report, published by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and commissioned by Rolling Stone, said the magazine failed to engage in “basic, even routine journalistic practice” to verify details of the ordeal that the magazine’s source, identified only as Jackie, described to the article’s author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely.

via Rolling Stone Retracts Article on Rape at University of Virginia – NYTimes.com.

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PHOENIX — Raul Reynoso got a bonus when he renewed the federal work permit he received through President Obama’s 2012 program granting protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

He was expecting a two-year permit. Instead, his new permit doesn’t expire for three years, until 2017.

The 26-year-old Mesa resident didn’t even realize he got the extra year “until I actually saw somebody post on Facebook that they got it for three years. That’s when I looked at mine and I saw that it was also for three years.”

Reynoso was thrilled he got the three-year permit. Others weren’t.

Reynoso is one of more than 100,000 so-called “dreamers” who received three-year work permits under Obama’s executive actions on immigration before U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen issued a preliminary injunction temporarily halting the programs in February.

Now Reynoso and the other dreamers are caught a bitter legal dispute over whether the Justice Department intentionally misled the judge by failing to disclose that the government had already started issuing three-year permits to some dreamers.

The revelation, which came to light after Hanen issued his injunction, has further incensed 26 states, including Arizona, that have filed a lawsuit seeking to block Obama’s programs aimed at offering protection from deportation to an additional 4 million undocumented immigrants.

via 100,000 ‘dreamers’ could lose 3-year work permits.

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CAMBRIDGE (CBS) — A group of Harvard University graduate students are looking to unionize, according to one report.

The Harvard Crimson reports that some graduate students are in the early stages of forming a union, and advocates say it’ll put students in a better position to negotiate with the university.

“We are interested in making the University a better place for grad students to do the best research and teaching that they can do,” Aaron Bekemeyer told The Crimson.

Organizers of the budding movement told The Crimson that they’d be focused on health care, housing problems and issues important to teaching fellows.

The Crimson notes that graduate students at Columbia University also tried to unionize, but the school has so far refused to recognize them. A decision from the National Labor Relations Board is pending.

via Report: Harvard Graduate Students Start Effort To Unionize « CBS Boston.

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By Molly Pitcher –

According to the discussion around the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act”, the bill is intended to reaffirm religious freedom guaranteed by the 1^st Amendment to the US Constitution. The law’s main objective is to prohibit the passage of any state or local laws that “substantially burden” the religious beliefs of an individual, business or religious institution. If the general public actually understood what the 1st Amendment truly says – that the government cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion, not only would there be an understanding of the redundancy of such a law (hence the word “restoration”), there would be a realization that a law reaffirming our commitment to the 1st Amendment should be unnecessary. To this date, there haven’t been any amendments to the Constitution which are contrary to this extremely important 1st freedom.

Once again, Conservatives, i.e. Republicans, look like clumsy bigots because the message – the argument – is framed wrong. Pundits should be saying, “While we may not like it and are perhaps offended by it, businesses that are not publicly funded have the prerogative to allow religious beliefs to influence their profit making decisions.

In Johnson v. Texas, it was determined that,

“…the Government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.”

In this case, the ruling was a response to flag burning; however, the act itself is protected because we value free thinking. Free thinking goes both ways. Gay people have the right to be who they are, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone and straight people have the right to be who they are, as long as they are not hurting anyone.

Okay, so anyone with knowledge of precedent will now ask about Brown V Board of Education and how this decision influences the public’s response to “RFRA”. The key ideas in the majority opinion are tempered by the words “public” and the role of the “state” or local government in providing a right:

“Where a State has undertaken to provide an opportunity for an education in its public schools, such an opportunity is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms. P. 493.(d) Segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities, even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal. Pp. 493-494.(e) The ‘separate but equal’ doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, has no place in the field of public education.”

Having pizza catered by a particular business establishment is not a right. The ability to exercise our rights and responsibilities as citizens is not dependent on eating a particular slice of pizza nor is government funding involved in bringing this particular service to a community.

If government gets involved, now we are socially engineering. Would I, a potential business purveyor, personally have an issue with who I serve as long as I make a profit? No. However, the government is restricted by the 1st Amendment from telling a business operator who follows a religious belief system to ignore these beliefs – especially if that person is in the minority. That said, what is the difference between serving a gay person who walks into your place of business and catering a private event? Are you going to ask every customer who comes in what his or her sexual preferences are? As a capitalist, any conductor of business will risk going out of business by such “discretionary” practices.

All around our nation, one can find all boy schools, all girl schools, all black colleges, and religious institutions…and no government entity is forcing these private institutions to service those not targeted by their mission. The question one should be asking is this. How does this compare with forcing people to buy health insurance (especially insurance that meets certain criteria)? By compelling people to be insured, the government is forcing a transaction. It is not a transaction of free will. Is anyone thinking about the long term repercussions of such government intervention?

We are a nation founded on the ideas of liberty. Yet, encouraging such government practices is eroding our free will. Such government intervention results in our being told how we must spend our money and with whom we must conduct our business. Capitalism is supposed to guide business decisions. Factions (special interest groups) are supposed to be so numerous that none can seriously gain the power to violate minority rights. And just in case, we have a Bill of Rights. We are a government of laws, not of men.

This misplaced outrage and manipulation of the media would make any teacher fear having a class discussion on this topic because of how it might be misconstrued. And more to the point, this is precisely why children are graduating without higher thinking skills…the thought police might find how this fits into the 1st Amendment too offensive to discuss. This affirms why the Liberal Arts (logic) are important, not just STEM curriculum.

In our political correctness and effort to delegitimize our Founders and Framers for compromising and seeking a more perfect union instead of holding out for utopia, and for not being perfect themselves, we seem to forget that these white men with an agenda were actually looking out for us. They repeatedly stated how a well-educated citizenry was necessary to maintain and guard against those who would take away the freedoms for which they’d spent a significant portion of their lives working toward. It’s sad commentary on our society that the whole point of the 1st Amendment freedoms is lost on multiple generations of the populace. That’s the real story.

Molly Pitcher is the pen-name for an established opinion editorialist and career educator who, for fear of workplace retribution, chose to assume the voice of this American Revolutionary War heroine. Pitcher not only brought water to soldiers during the War for Independence, but she helped man the cannons. She is sometimes referred to as Captain Molly or Sergeant Molly because General Washington issued her a warrant as an officer, in recognition of her efforts during battle.

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