SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:05 P.M. ET:

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING – FROM PAGE SIX:   "Veep” star Julia Louis-Dreyfus came out Monday in support of the woman who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.  “I was class of ’79 & signed this letter,” she tweeted about a letter signed by alumnae of Holton-Arms, a private girls school in Bethesda, Maryland, where Christine Blasey Ford was a student when the alleged attack occurred.  “We believe Dr. Blasey Ford and are grateful that she came forward to tell her story,” the letter read.  On what basis do they believe her?  She hasn't even spoken yet.  This is what happens when an educational system teaches ideology rather than reason.

OUR LOWERING STANDARDS – FROM THE AMERICAN MIRROR:  Mad Maxine Waters is a leader worthy of honor, according to the National Newspaper Publishers Association.  The group honored the California congresswoman with a “National Leadership Award” on Friday, according to Diversity Inc.  During her acceptance, Waters denounced President Trump, prompting applause from the audience of media leaders.  “I want you, in whatever way that you do, to please allocate all of the front pages to the get-out-the-vote operations in our communities,” she told the group of predominately black-owned paper publishers.  “It is no secret … that I don’t like” Trump, she said, drawing laughs and cheers.  “I knew that this president should not be in the White House when I saw the way that he conducted himself in the primary campaign,” Waters said.  There are so many fine people and educators in the black community.  Why pick this nut for an honor?  African-Americans are doing well under Trump, but the establishment will not acknowledge it.

ANOTHER ONE DOWN – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   Students enrolled in the Kilachand Honors College at Boston University used to have a required class called “Modernity and its Discontents.”  The freshman seminar included readings by Friedrich Nietzsche, Virginia Woolf and Sigmund Freud, and stood as a prime example of an attempt by the honors college to offer students an education grounded in a classical liberal arts tradition.  But “Modernity and its Discontents” is gone, and so is a popular professor who used to co-teach it, Anna Katsnelson.  In late May, she was abruptly dismissed from her post as assistant director of academic affairs for the honors college at the private university, and for many students enrolled in the program, it was the last straw.  A large contingent of students and recent grads of Kilachand Honors College say the program has taken a wrong turn in recent years. They argue it has largely abandoned its original mission to offer a challenging curriculum anchored in a Western canon and has lost its close-knit community feel centered on a passion for academic rigor and diversity of thought.  In other words, the Socratic method of learning has been scrapped and the honors college has become just another typical liberal arts program with an echo chamber of leftism, its critics say.  Who will rescue higher education?  Possibly no one.  And then we will see what country we've become.

September 17, 2018