Posted on 09/05/2008 7:35:09 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Last week, just before Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) big speech, Tim Cavanaugh and I attended a small fundraiser for Libertarian Party vice presidential nominee Wayne Allyn Root. The chatty Vegas sports bettor, memorably profiled by David Weigel two months back, was in a mind to talk about a fellow classmate of his at Columbia University back in the early 1980s, a guy by the name of Barack Obama.
Root is no fan of the Democratic nominee: "A vote for Obama is four years of Karl Marx, and no one should be happy about that," he told us and a few genial young libertarian activists over cocktails. "He's a communist! I don't care what anybody says. The guy's a communist.... And his mother was a card-carrying communist, and he says she's the most important person in his entire life; he learned everything from her."
But the thing Root really wanted to talk about was Obama's grades. Specifically, he was willing to bet a million dollars that he earned a better grade point average at Columbia than his old classmate, and that the only reason Obama went on to Harvard Law School was the color of his skin.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
This is what happens when a once great university caves in to student demands to eliminate letter grades, just have a pass/fail syatem, and accept more minorities even though they are much less qualified than others who may have been straight A students and valedictorians/salutatarians..
I said awhile ago that OMama would never show his grades—because they are probably mostly pass/fail, in which a GPA has no meaning and class standing is similarly useless..In the circles these effete,elite snobs travel they are accepted without question and offered jobs as a result of their connections or pedigree, or just because of an interesting background...Money must have flowed like water to pave the way everywhere he went...where it came from—only The Shadow knows....
This is what we get as a result—a charlatan with a Harvard degree running for the highest office in the country saying He’s got the ideas for change...Never mind the pinstripe suit..He’s still a phony, a Marxist sympathizer, a Muslim sympathizer,and a friend of violent Revolutionaries...we have seen the proof right here on FR and he cannot hide from the facts...
But that’s ok...The Dems nominated him as their man...So in November the entire arty will pay a heavy price for their utter stupidity and arrogance...they have 1 saving grace..just a small amount: they broke the Clinton machine....OK, thank you, enough of that now let’s get on with the Vote..
“Apparently some of Obama’s HLS classmates have claimed that Obama didn’t even put down his race on his HLS application. Of course how would they know?”
When I took the LSAT, there were “optional” questions about family income and ethnicity. Maybe Harvard had that information from his LSAT.
Not true, as he referenced that his Father went to Harvard. Harvard would have known Obama’s race based on his Father’s short time at Harvard in the 60’s.
And Obama was the Editor and did not write a single article ?...Is that right ?...
Even membership on the Harvard Law Review is intensely competitive..Only a select few of the best and brightest make it and you either have to be very very smart, or have excellent writing and citation skills....Competition for Editor is equally keen though there are understandably fewer candidates...That fact that OMama got the position and never wrote a single piece is preposterous !..This Law Review is so prestigious it is quoted in other peer reviewed Law Journals and even by the U.S. Supreme Court..Therefore any Editor who aspires to a Federal Court Clerkship or work in a high government office would naturally want to write a few outstanding articles...
Just beginning to think.........say, does anyone have a NYC Transit token ? No, i don’t need a banana thanks...
Once upon a time I passed the EIT (Engineer in Training) exam, and had a certificate from my home state. You could not even take the PE exam until you had a certain amount of experience. (The same is not true of a law license). But neither the Air Force, nor my first employer after my active duty time, and grad school, cared much about folks having a PE after their name. (Later they did, and they encouraged people to get it before the test requirement kicked in. I didn't..maybe that's why I got laid off, although that occurred quite a few years later still). Pre-test requirement, you could get the license by having another engineer with a PE certify some length of professional experience.
Of all the Harvard Law Review Editors in the history of this position, has there ever been an Editor that didn't write an article? Or is this only unique to Obama?
Obama appears very insecure. He seemed insecure in Bill O’Rielly’s interview. Which is understandable based on his upbringing. He was fronting on his defensive answers. Obama was acting. There are so many moments in his life which have been role played with his handlers. His appearances come off as rehearsed and insincere.
Insecurity is the last trait we need in our next President.
But we’re told he graduated from Harvard Law magna cum laude. One would expect his grades would have predicted that performance.
Great. Do you have a source?
If it’s true that he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, then you can pretty much end this thread right here.
I graduated cum laude from HLS two years after Obama (I never ran into him there) and I can assure you that magna at HLS is a true intellectual feat.
What’s more, all grading at HLS (and yes, virtually every class is graded; very few — such as the third year thesis — are pass fail) is entirely blind. You write your student ID number on each test and the professor doesn’t even know whose test he or she is grading.
I didn’t know that he got magna until reading this thread, but, if it’s true, I can assure you that he got top grades and very definitely “deserved” to be there.
If Obama had written a single article, it would be published. Which it is not. He's coasted on his connections and so-called charisma and documented Chicago inspired corruption.
Surely, the McCain campaign knows the truth or they wouldn't keep referencing it in speeches or ads.
No. I just don't pass on unsourced info as fact and neither should you. If you have a source I will add it to my database.
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — How strongly does Barack Obama believe in unlimited abortions? Strongly enough that the only article he wrote for the Harvard Law Review while he was a law school student talked about how fervently believed in legalized abortion. Obama’s name wasn’t attached to any other legal scholarship during the time.
In an article unearthed by the Politico web site, Obama, as the president of the Harvard Law Review, wrote an unsigned article touting abortion.
The web site says the article comes in at six pages and is contained in the third volume of the 1990 Harvard Law Review.
In the work, Obama considered a parenthetical abortion issue — whether unborn children have a legal right to sue their mothers for damage sustained during pregnancy, from such things as alcohol or illegal drugs.
Obama says no and writes supportively of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case and another from the Illinois Supreme Court saying no such right exists.
According to Politico, Obama wrote: “[T]he case raises the broader policy and constitutional considerations that argue against using civil liability to control the behavior of pregnant women.”
In a discussion of abortion itself, Obama wrote that government has more important business than “ensuring that any particular fetus is born.”
He also decried any limits on abortion, saying the government has an interest in “preventing increasing numbers of children from being born in to lives of pain and despair.”
Politico said the Obama campaign confirmed the pro-abortion presidential candidate wrote the piece in question and that it was one of the typical articles law students would write briefing and opining on federal and state court decisions.
In an email to the web site, Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt also confirmed that Obama “remains committed to” the sentiments he expressed in the piece.
Obama’s article is on page 823 of Volume 103 of the Harvard Law Review and would likely be located in larger public libraries and databases that chronicle legal articles in scholarly publications.
“Barry Obama was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review-—and he didn’t write a single article for it!”
Thank you for your post!
I’ve been asking these questions for some time, namely, what has he even written in his own field of expertise?
I’d even settle for his college theses.
Where is it?
If I ask one of his supporters these questions I never get an answer.
He’s a “professor” of law that NEVER wrote even a single legal article?
Did he have any students? — God help them.
... And to think he went to Harvard?
I’ve heard about the “dumbing down” of America, but this is really to much!
STE=Q
Edwinland,
Everything you say about Harvard Law School is true, and it has been reported that he graduate magna cum laude, but there is something about this story that doesn’t add up. Why not release this wonderful law school transcript? Why not release his LSAT scores or his grades at Columbia. Why is the campaign keeping them hidden. I think there is more to the story here. Perhaps several “independent study” or “research seminars” with A plus grades? In your experience, how many folks have dismal college grades, and get into Harvard Law School to begin with. Don’t you think there is something there that does not add up?
Evidence of grade inflation at Ivy League schools:
* In 1966, 22% of Harvard undergraduate students earned A's. By 1996, that figure rose to 46%. That same year, 82% of Harvard seniors graduated with honors.
* In 1973, 31% of all grades at Princeton were A's. By 1997 that rose to 43%. In 1997, only 12% of all grades given at Princeton were below the B range.
Source: American Academy of Arts & Sciences
When a report found recently that eight out of every 10 Harvard students graduate with honors and nearly half receive A's in their courses, the news prompted plenty of discussion and more than a few jokes. But is grade inflation worth worrying about?
Really smart students probably deserve really high grades. Moreover, tough graders could alienate their students. Plus, tough grading makes a student less likely to get into graduate school, which could make Harvard look bad in college rankings.
All are among reasons cited by professors in explaining why grade inflation is nothing to worry about. And all are insufficient justification for the practice. College-grade inflation — which is probably an extension of the well-documented grade inflation in high schools — is a problem. And it extends well beyond Harvard.
Fewer than 20% of all college students receive grades below a B-minus, according to a study released this week by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. That hardly seems justified at a time when a third of all college students arrive on campus so unprepared that they need to take at least one remedial course.
The report sifts through several possible causes for the inflated grades. Among them:
A holdover practice from the 1960s, when professors knew that F's triggered a draft notice and a trip to Vietnam.
An influx of more students, including some minorities, who are less prepared for college work. Grading leniency is believed to encourage their continued academic participation and promote self-esteem.
Evaluation systems in which students grade professors, thereby providing an incentive for teachers to go easy on their future evaluators.
An explosion in the number of overburdened adjunct professors who lack the time to evaluate each student more accurately.
The authors of the report cast doubt on several of those explanations, including the influx of minorities. They barely touch on an obvious explanation offered by several professors: Families paying more than $30,000 a year for a college education expect something more for their money than a report card full of gentleman's Cs.
More important than the reasons for inflated grades is the impact they have.
When all students receive high marks, graduate schools and business recruiters simply start ignoring the grades. That leads the graduate schools to rely more on entrance tests. It prompts corporate recruiters to depend on a “good old boy/girl” network in an effort to unearth the difference between who looks good on paper and who is actually good.
Put to disadvantage in that system are students who traditionally don't test as well or lack connections. In many cases, those are the poor and minority students who are the first in their families to graduate from college. No matter how hard they work, their A's look ordinary.
Viewed in that light, the fact that 50% of all Harvard students now get A's is a troubling problem.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002/02/08/edtwof2.htm
Obama should release his test scores.
This just reinforces that Obama probably advanced due to affirmative action. That isn't racist. There are many of us who are color blind and would vote for a Conservative African American if they were the best candidate on the ticket. Key word being Conservative. Obama changed his name from Barry to Barrack in his college years, which must have impressed many along the way - he must have highlighted his cosmopolitan background throughout his life, which many in New York, Boston and Chicago found impressive.
He was well received by the Elitist snobs throughout his adult life. He doesn't understand why the bitter clingers to guns and religion are unable to relate to exotic background which so many found fascinating during his Harvard and Chicago years.
If McCain bashes Obama for a specific character flaw, it's because they know the truth about his un-American background. Obama can't defend himself when his critics are speaking the truth.
Or be a black ideologue.
If his name isn’t attached, he didn’t write it.
Has this clown EVER earned anything?
I have read that Obama, as new Senator, was given the Chairmanship of a Senate Sub-Committee. To this date, his committee hasn't held a meeting since he became Chairman.
This article from Obama's law school days makes it sound as if being the Law Review editor might actually have been quite a bit harder than writing a single article.
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