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It's hard to figure who looks worse in this story, Elizabeth Warren or Harvard Law School's affirmative action policies. Warren is the former Harvard law professor whom President Barack Obama pegged to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Now she is running as a Democratic challenger to Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass. Last month, the Boston Herald reported that in 1996, Harvard Law School touted the blond, blue-eyed Warren as proof that it hired "minority women." Then spokesman Mike Chmura wrote in The Harvard Crimson, "Elizabeth Warren is a Native American." In a 1997 Fordham University law review article, Chmura...

MIDDLETON, Mass. — As the lone Democrat seeking to challenge Elizabeth Warren in the Senate primary in Massachusetts, Marisa DeFranco has been ridiculed, admonished and, worst of all, ignored. But for the moment, Ms. DeFranco, an immigration lawyer with high energy and a scrappy band of volunteers, is enjoying a burst of momentum. She surprised party insiders by collecting enough valid signatures by the May 1 deadline — more than 10,000, gathered everywhere from town meetings to town dumps — to qualify for the Democratic primary on Sept. 6. If Ms. DeFranco clears one more hurdle — winning 15 percent...

Repeating what has been a rallying cry of gay activism for years, the cover of the December 16, 2008, issue of The Advocate announced, "Gay is the New Black: The Last Great Civil Rights Struggle." Last week, on May 19, headlines across the nation announced, "NAACP endorses gay marriage as 'civil right.'" So, is gay the new black? There are prominent black leaders who say yes, including Congressman John Lewis, who was active in the early civil rights movement. There are other prominent black leaders who say no, like Timothy F. Johnson, founder and president of The Frederick Douglass Foundation....

Sen. Brown demands Harvard correct record on Elizabeth WarrenBy Josh Lederman - 05/25/12 01:44 PM ET Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) is calling on Harvard University President Drew Faust to correct its diversity statistics after it was revealed that his opponent, Democrat Elizabeth Warren, was listed as a minority despite failing to meet federal guidelines to be considered Native American. Brown's demand followed a Boston Globe report Friday showing that both Harvard, where Warren teaches law, and the federal government have specific criteria determining who can be listed as Native American in diversity statistics provided to the government, and that Warren...

But for at least six straight years during Warren’s tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves. ... The administrator responsible for Harvard Law School’s faculty diversity statistics from 1996 to 2004, the period in question, was Alan Ray, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation who, like Warren, has fair skin, blue eyes, and Oklahoma roots. But Ray, now president of Elmhurst College in...

Except for the different colored-license plates and the fact that smoking is still allowed in restaurants in Nevada, we would have never known the difference between the two states we drove through. The roads were just the same, the restaurants were just as overpriced, and the scenery was the same, and the ski slopes were just as incorrectly graded. Yet, the times when we drove from California into Nevada we drove from the highest-taxes state to one of the lowest-taxed states.

If there’s any politician that infuriates me more than a carpetbaggin’, recipe-stealing fake Indian, it’s one that unloads her imported BMW 528i just before announcing her candidacy, and then doesn’t even bother to pay the automobile excise tax on her campaign’s new Ford Escape. Yes, Comrade Warren, I’m talking about you. A BMW — how tenured Harvard Law is it? She’d owned it since early 2000, but it had to go. After all, she’s a “fight-ah,” as her new TV ad says. So adios BMW and hello used 2008 Ford — hybrid, of course — which is registered to her...

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren said Thursday that she knows she has Native American ancestry because her mother told her so. Warren’s comments came after nearly four minutes of tense back and forth between Warren and Fox 25 reporter Sharman Sacchetti and 7News reporter Andy Hiller. As both reporters questioned Warren about why she listed herself as a minority in law directories, Warren refused to answer, saying she had already answered questions about her background. Finally, Warren said, “I am proud of my family and I am proud of my heritage.” Hiller followed up: “Does it include an Indian background?”...

Elizabeth Warren, emerging from what many consider the roughest patch yet in her Senate campaign, has pulled into a virtual tie with US Senator Scott Brown, according to a new Suffolk University/7News poll. Warren, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has the support of 47 percent of likely voters in Massachusetts, compared to 48 percent for Brown, a dead heat in a poll with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The race for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts has taken a turn toward the absurd. The contest pits two highly qualified candidates — Scott Brown, the incumbent, who made history by snatching Ted Kennedy’s seat away from the Democrats, and challenger Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor and whiz-kid of the Obama administration who created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If any election could be counted on to maintain a high-minded tone and stick to important issues, it’s this one. Instead, Topic A is Warren’s facial features. From a campaign standpoint, Warren hasn’t done much to end this silly brouhaha. She...

Out: Elizabeth Warren, Native American. In: Elizabeth Warren, Jacksonian Democrat. Man, in hindsight it’s a good thing she didn’t attend the annual Harvard Powwow yesterday after all, huh? Awwwk-ward. "As I pointed out in my article here on Sunday, no evidence supports this claim [that her great-great-great grandmother was Cherokee]. O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford had no Cherokee heritage, was listed as “white” in the Census of 1860, and was most likely half Swedish and half English, Scottish, or German, or some combination thereof. (Note, the actual 1894 marriage license makes no claim of Cherokee ancestry.)" "But the most stunning discovery...

Many critics have called Massachusetts Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren a "racist" for relating a family story about how her grandfather had "high cheekbones like all Indians do." But they're wrong. The comment wasn't "racist." It was stupid. In fact, it was childishly stupid. Really, it reminds one of the copout Bill Clinton disgorged when addressing his marijuana use: "I tried it, but I didn't inhale." And it should come as no surprise, either — leftists are childish. As for the "racism" charge, many conservatives take that leaf out of the left's book because, they figure, turnabout is fair play. If...

Elizabeth Warren’s stumbling efforts to douse the firestorm surrounding her claims of being a Native American minority have raised concerns among local and national Democrats who are questioning her campaign’s competence. “There’s nobody watching this that doesn’t think she’s in big trouble,” one well-known Massachusetts Democrat said. Joe Trippi, a prominent national Democratic consultant, told the Herald that while Warren has time to recover, the campaign should have anticipated this issue would surface. One well-known Massachusetts Democratic strategist faulted Warren and her campaign for failing to put out a consistent message. The strategist also said many local Democrats are alarmed...

Harvard Law School lists one lone Native American faculty member on its latest diversity census report — but school officials and campaign aides for Elizabeth Warren refused to say yesterday whether it refers to the Democratic Senate candidate. Warren — who has been dogged by questions about whether she used her claims of Cherokee lineage to further her career — has insisted she never authorized Harvard Law to count her as a Native American in the mid-1990s, when the school was under fire for not having enough minority professors.

...Warren’s statements come as genealogists at the New England Historic Genealogical Society were unable to back up earlier accounts that her great great great grandmother is Cherokee. While Warren’s great great great grandmother, named O.C. Sarah Smith, is listed on a electronic transcript of a 1894 marriage application as Cherokee, the genealogists are unable to find the actual record or a photograhic copy of it, Society spokesman Tom Champoux said. A copy of the marriage license itself has been located, but unlike the application, it does not list Smith’s ethnicity...------------------------------------------------------- Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, fending off questions about whether...

If the presidential election can come down to whether it's more offensive to eat dogs or put one in a kennel on top of your car, I guess it's fair for a Senate election to come down to whether Elizabeth Warren is 1/10,000th Cherokee.The newest front in the "war on women," apparently: Calling a female pol out on her self-serving B.S. Despite claiming she never used her Native American heritage when applying for a job, Elizabeth WarrenÂ’s campaign admitted last night the Democrat listed her minority status in professional directories for years when she taught at the University of Texas...

A prominent Native American group says Massachusetts Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren had “better be able to defend” her past claims of being an Indian-American minority. The Democratic candidate is facing questions about her heritage following the revelation on Friday that she described herself as a Native American minority in professional law school directories during the 1980s and ’90s. “Once you put that down, you better be able to defend it,” Ray Ramirez of the Native American Rights Fund told The Daily Caller on Monday. Warren, who no longer publicly refers to herself as Native American, has disputed that she claimed...

<p>BOSTON (AP) — A genealogist has uncovered evidence that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren does have Native American heritage as she claims.</p>

Massachusetts senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren described herself in law-school professional directories as a Native American minority from 1986 to 1995. The white Democratic candidate has so far offered no evidence that she is, in fact, part Native American, suggesting that she may have falsified that ethnic credential to advance her academic career in the early affirmative-action era. But “it is true,” a Warren spokeswoman told The Daily Caller on Monday, “and we’re working on digging up some sort of evidence to appease you.” Another Warren spokeswoman shot back at the campaign of incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown, whom Warren is...

Current list of California state agencies: California Academic Performance Index (API) * California Access for Infants and Mothers * California Acupuncture Board * California Administrative Office of the Courts * California Adoptions Branch * California African American Museum * California Agricultural Export Program * California Agricultural Labor Relations Board * California Agricultural Statistics Service * California Air Resources Board(CARB) * California Allocation Board * California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority * California Animal Health and Food Safety Services * California Anti-Terrorism Information Center * CaliforniaApprenticeship Council * California Arbitration Certification Program * California Architects Board * California...

US Senator Scott Brown is pressuring his reelection rival Elizabeth Warren to release six years worth of her tax returns, but his strategy could have some unintended consequences: drawing more attention to his fellow Massachusetts Republican, Mitt Romney. The presumptive GOP presidential nominee so far has refused to divulge years of his tax returns, saying that one year – along with promises to release this year’s return when it is complete, sometime before this fall’s general election – should suffice. But Brown, whose top political advisers are the same as Romney’s, is making the exact opposite argument. His campaign argues...

Ohio’s U.S. Senate race continues to be a close one, with incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown now inching slightly ahead of Republican challenger Josh Mandel. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Buckeye State shows Brown with 44% support to Mandel’s 41%. Three percent (3%) like another candidate, and a sizable 12% remain undecided

We just finished our first quarter fundraising report, and we want to share our good news with you first. Our campaign raised $6.9 million from January through March. That's more than double the amount raised by our opponent, incumbent Republican Senator Scott Brown. Scott Brown still has $4 million more in the bank than we do, and there's a lot of work ahead to do to close the gap. But this proves we're building something special. I want to share a few statistics that make me really proud: Elizabeth outraised Scott Brown right here in Massachusetts. More than 30,000 men...

Washington (CNN) – South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Thursday the leading Republican presidential candidate was carrying a "golden bullet" to connect with women voters. Speaking on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer," the Palmetto State Republican said Mitt Romney's wife Ann, along with the candidate himself, would need to answer women with concerns about his platform. Polls released in the past week show Romney trailing President Barack Obama by a large margin among female voters. "If Gov. Romney has not related to women, he needs to get out there and talk about the issues they care about," Haley...

After decisively claiming the Republican nomination earlier this month, State Treasurer Josh Mandel has now tied incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Oh) in the latest Rasmussen Reports survey of 500 likely voters in the vital senatorial race that could very well sway the balance of power this November. Mandel (R) - 43% Brown (D) - 43% Don't know - 11% Someone else - 3% Mandel, a former Marine Reservist who served two tours of duty in Iraq and who is the grandson of two Holocaust survivors, is best known for his outspoken support of Israel and his strong conservative ideals both...

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, in a fight for his political survival and facing Democratic charges he’s waging war on women, plans to blunt the gender assault this week by crossing party lines to lend his high-profile support to a controversial domestic violence bill. The Bay State’s sole Republican in Congress tells the Herald that in a contest against likely Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren, he can show he’s been there for women, with a compelling personal story to back him up.

WASHINGTON _ The Senate on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a sweeping measure to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other protected areas to oil drilling, as well as to approve construction of the Keystone pipeline project. Tuesday's vote was the first time in four years that the Senate has voted on a measure including ANWR drilling, and it failed miserably.

After a huge rush of optimism that Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy would end Scott Brown’s hold on his US Senate seat, Democratic insiders and activists are awakening to a new political reality, driven by a series of recent polls and Brown’s success these past few months in crafting an independent bipartisan image. The campaign’s reshaped landscape, which appears to have shifted in Brown’s favor, has created a quiet buzz among some in the party that Warren, despite her incredible burst onto the Massachusetts electoral map last fall, has hit some strong headwinds and will need to recapture the excitement that lit...

Gov. Jerry Brown tangled with a reporter from the conservative Washington Times newspaper after his meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Sunday. At one point Brown, who was defending his earlier tenure as governor and his efforts to bridge the state’s budget gap, asked the reporter: “Are you a Moonie?” The Washington Times was founded in 1982 by Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church, whose followers were often referred to informally as Moonies. The Washington Times is a conservative paper, and Brown, after recognizing his interrogator, gave no ground. Brown’s spokesman Gil Duran joined...

President Obama met with a group of Democratic governors on Friday and discussed plans to work around Congress toward policy goals. Gov. Jack Markell, the Democratic governor of Delaware and the vice chairman of the National Governors Association, told The Hill that the meeting was “very good” and said many of the governors were responsive to ideas about bypassing Congress. “There was a sense that none of us should wait, we can’t wait for things to happen in Congress,” Markell said of the meeting. “We’re going to do what we can do [now].” Obama has positioned himself against Congress as...

It's early for significant polling in any Senate race, but this result from Suffolk University’s poll is an eye-opener. Despite having won a special election two years ago, most people considered Republican Scott Brown a long shot to win his next election in deeply-blue Massachusetts, especially up against Elizabeth Warren. Instead, Brown starts off the race up by nine over the Democrat: Republican Scott Brown (49 percent) has a 9-point lead over Democrat Elizabeth Warren (40 percent), according to a Suffolk University/7NEWS (WHDH-Boston) poll of likely general election voters in Massachusetts. Nine percent were undecided, and 2 percent would choose...

WASHINGTON — Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown was more than four months delinquent in paying taxes on his Washington, D.C., apartment and had to pay a penalty and interest last week. This was not the first time, records show. Brown also was delinquent in 2006 and 2007 and paid penalties and interest, according to tax records from the District of Columbia. "I was late," he said on a conference call with reporters when asked about the recent delinquency. "I misplaced the bill and I paid it as soon as I found out. I paid a penalty for being late,...

California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system. Most of us might be a little skittish about spending money if we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. But the beauty of politics is that it is all other people's money, including among those other people generations yet unborn. The high-speed rail system proposed for California has been envisioned as a model for similar systems elsewhere in the United States. A...

“I realize there are some wealthy individuals – I’m not one of them, but some wealthy individuals who have a lot of stock portfolios” she told [Lawrence O'Donnell]. Hard to see how Warren wouldn’t be, by most standards, wealthy, according to the Personal Financial Disclosure form she filed to run for Senate shows that she’s worth as much as $14.5 million. She earned more than $429,000 from Harvard last year alone for a total of about $700,000, and lives in a house worth $5 million.

Scott Brown got into the U.S. Senate two years ago declaring, “This is not the Kennedys’ seat,” but 2012 could be the Year of the Kennedys’ Revenge. Joseph P. Kennedy III’s likely congressional run in the redrawn 4th District, which includes Brown’s Wrentham hometown, has Democrats buzzing about a new generation of Kennedys helping Elizabeth Warren take back the late family patriarch’s Senate seat. With Warren already running even with the Republican incumbent in the polls, even a small wave of Kennedy nostalgia, especially on Brown’s strongest turf, could sweep the Democratic challenger to victory in November. The prospect also...

Here in the nation’s capital and in the Bay State, some folks are perplexed by the curious case of Sen. Scott Brown and his decision to back President Obama’s controversial recess appointment last week — a move that irked his Republican comrades and placed him squarely on the side of his likely Democratic challenger. Over the past year, the White House and congressional Republicans have engaged in an epic battle over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog agency created by the Dodd-Frank Act and built from the ground up by Elizabeth Warren. Republicans hate the bureau, saying it’s too...

Gov. Jerry Brown's 2012 budget calls for $4.8 billion in cuts to public schools if voters reject the tax increases he is trying to place on the November ballot. The budget, which says the state faces a $9.2-billion deficit, was erroneously released online Thursday, several days before the governor was due to roll it out. His office was scrambling to arrange an early-afternoon news conference to discuss it. The Times obtained a copy of the document. It paints a better fiscal picture than just a year ago, when the state faced a $26-billion deficit. Brown's budget anticipates closing the current...

Here’s a pretty clear sign of which way the politics are moving in the fight over Obama’s decision to employ a recess appointment to install Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Senator Scott Brown — who’s facing a stiff populist challenge from Elizabeth Warren, the creator of the agency — has now come out in support of the move. His statement, sent over by his office: “I support President Obama’s appointment today of Richard Cordray to head the CFPB. I believe he is the right person to lead the agency and help protect consumers from fraud...

Liberals:President Barack Obama: "I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president - with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln." President Obama: “I wanna make sure they [diplomats and workers in Iraq] come home [safely], because they’re not soldiers.” President Obama: "I do think those dynamics are making it more difficult to get things done.  And it's not unusual, after such a severe economic crisis like this, for the politics to be impacted by that, for people to lurch into extremes, or to get more combative." President Obama: “No matter...

U.S. Sen. Scott P. Brown has voted in favor of a proposal to amend the Constitution to compel Congress to come up with a balanced budget every year. Brown said 49 states, including Massachusetts, are required to balance their budgets and it’s time for the federal government to impose a similar condition on itself. The Massachusetts Republican said a balanced budget amendment would make the government live within its means without tricks or gimmicks. Democrats said the amendment would put the government in a fiscal straitjacket making it unable to respond to economic cycles, wars or natural disasters.

LOS ANGELES — The California Legislature passed a budget last fall relying on optimistic projections of how much money the state could bring in with a growing economy. But to the surprise of few, not all of that money has materialized. Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that the state was about $2.2 billion short of its projected $88.5 billion income and that that would force hundreds of millions of dollars more in cuts to the budget, primarily to state’s colleges and universities as well as to health care. Under the budget the Democratic-controlled Legislature approved in June, if revenues are...

...Brown was unable to pass the largest state tax increase in U.S. history earlier this year because legislative Republicans, whose votes were needed due to California's 2/3rds vote requirement to raise taxes, kept their pledge to constituents to oppose any and all efforts to raise taxes. So Brown is now going out to collect signatures, with financial backing of government sector unions and Hollywood, to put an income and sales tax hike on the ballot. (Side note: Brown should hire ATR to consult him, because as we told him back in January, his tax hikes wouldn’t get through the legislature...

Democrat Elizabeth Warren has opened up a lead against Republican incumbent Scott Brown for the first time in their U.S. Senate showdown, but a barrage of attack ads appears to have damaged Warren and Brown’s standing among Massachusetts voters, a new University of Massachusetts at Lowell/Boston Herald poll shows.

Gov. Jerry Brown has formally proposed a $7 billion a year increase in sales and income taxes to close the state's chronic budget deficit. Whether it will be the only tax increase on the November ballot is uncertain. Several others are in the works, and if they reach the ballot as well, voter confusion could doom all. But assuming that Brown's stands alone, how would the campaign shape up? By next year, he presumably will have pulled the spending cut "triggers" built into the 2011-12 budget because revenues are not meeting its extremely optimistic levels, which would mean schools, colleges...

How A Charlie Brown Christmas almost didn’t happen Few headlines about network television make me giddy. Fewer still make me hopeful that all is good in the world. But back in August of 2010, I read the following headline from the media pages with great excitement: “Charlie Brown Is Here to Stay: ABC Picks Up ‘Peanuts’ Specials Through 2015.” The first of these to be made, the famous Christmas special, was an instant classic when it was created by Charles Schulz on a shoestring budget back in 1965, and thanks to some smart television executives, it will be around for...

Parody videos satirize Warren’s polarizing traits in Mass. Senate race By Josh Lederman - 11/26/11 09:58 AM ET The “fake Elizabeth Warren” has a challenge for the real Elizabeth Warren: Embrace campaign finance reform. What started as a low-budget endeavor by a group of comedians to parody a campaign video has spread across the Internet and become the comic, exaggerated embodiment of everything liberals love and conservatives detest about this high-flying Senate candidate. Now, its creators are using their newfound platform to goad Warren’s campaign into prioritizing a political issue they care about. There was no foretelling that the videos...

Rush Limbaugh has now confirmed what I wrote last week, explaining to a caller on Friday, November 18th that the elephant in the room in the Penn State scandal was that the alleged pedophile acts committed by Jerry Sandusky were homosexual in nature. So much for those who scorned the suggestion, and kudos to Rush for speaking his mind. Here’s the relevant background. On November 15th, two of my articles were posted online, “The Pedophile Elephant in the Gay Activist Closet� and “What Could End Rush Limbaugh’s Career?� In the first article I stated that, “I personally believe that the...

“Thank God” is right. Finally the Massachusetts Senate race is starting to get interesting. No, not the primary — that’s over and done. Obedient Massachusetts Democrats will do as they’re told and nominate the party bosses’ pick, Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren. I’m talking about the battle royale, Scott Brown vs. Elizabeth Warren which has turned, literally, into a “beauty contest.” It began at Tuesday night’s Boston Herald debate when Warren was asked how she paid for college. In reference to Brown posing for Cosmo, Warren quipped, “I kept my clothes on.” Gales of hearty liberal laughter ensued. Then, yesterday...

The X-Men movie series, based on the comic books of the same name, is well-known for its unusual cast of gifted mutants and for its extraordinary special effects. What is not as widely known about the X-Men is the fact that the movies, along with the comic books, draw many clear parallels between the mutants and the gay and lesbian community. It is an open secret that the most recent movie in the series, “X-Men First Class,” which serves as the prequel for the other films, is especially overt in presenting these parallels. Zach Stenz, one of the First Class...

Fellow Conservatives: I'm writing to give you a brief update on the U.S. Senate race in Ohio and the amazing progress made by our endorsed candidate, Josh Mandel (R-OH). Liberal incumbent U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is in deep trouble. According to a recent poll conducted by a Democratic polling firm, less than half the voters in the Buckeye State want to re-elect him even though he's almost universally known. The poll also shows growing momentum for Josh Mandel (40%) against an increasingly vulnerable Sherrod Brown (48%). Mandel has already closed this race down to a single-digit gap (-8%), which...