GOOD FOR BETSY – AT 9:30 A.M. ET:  Betsy DeVos, a wealthy woman who could have spent her life going to parties, instead has devoted it to serving the educational needs of America's children.  Now she is secretary of education, and, of course, a target for every crackpot, self-server, lazy educator and corrupt ideologist out there.  But she is staying her course, and doing the right thing.  From the Politico: 

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said she is "returning" the Office for Civil Rights "to its role as a neutral, impartial, investigative agency."

In a July 11 letter to Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, DeVos asserted that the department's civil rights arm under the Obama administration "had descended into a pattern of overreaching, of setting out to punish and embarrass institutions rather than work with them to correct civil rights violations and of ignoring public input prior to issuing new rules."

As part of the changes she is implementing, the civil rights office would no longer issue "new regulations via administrative fiat," as the Obama administration did, she wrote.

DeVos' letter, which lays out a far less activist philosophy for the civil rights office, came in response to a letter sent late last month by 34 Senate Democrats, who blasted her for a series of actions they said had "diminished" civil rights enforcement. The lawmakers asked DeVos for a host of information by July 11, including a list of civil rights investigations that have been closed or dismissed since the Trump administration began. DeVos didn't provide any of the information in her response.

COMMENT:  The "letter" is from a Democratic contingent under the control of the far left.  Who cares about real guilt or innocence?   Who cares about due process in campus sexual assault investigations?  Who cares about anything except what we want?

DeVos will run into plenty of opposition as she tries to lift the reign of terror carried out by the "office of civil rights," which, under Obama, often looked more like an inquisition.  Students were, under federal rules, dragged up before Soviet-style campus panels convened to "investigate" sexual assault charges.  The standard of proof was set so low that a ham sandwich could be convicted.   Students were deemed guilty, rather than given the presumption of innocence.   There were horrible abuses, like the recent case art the University of Virginia, which stained, for life, the reputations of boys in a fraternity.

Many young men sued the universities, on grounds that any semblance of due process was stripped from them during "investigations."  Many have won their cases.

I don't know if Betsy will win.  Powerful forces are aligned against her, and the Republican Party is not notably courageous in taking on big fights.  But she's on the right side.

July 17,  2017