Sooner or later everything becomes polarized in this divided country of ours. It’s against the rules to see the other side’s point of view.   That’s like giving ammo to the enemy. Besides, in media circles, where people make a good living dividing Americans, seeing the other guy’s point of view is bad for business.

When he first ran for president Barack Obama promised to unify us. You remember what he said about no Red America or Blue America, just a United States of America.

Instead we got the most polarizing president since Lincoln. I don’t know anybody who’s lukewarm on Mr. Obama. Liberals adore him – or at least have adored him for most of his presidency. And conservatives don’t simply disagree with him; many detest him. If he were caught on video robbing a bank, liberals would find an excuse to exonerate him. “He was just withdrawing money he had deposited, but the bank was closed. What was he supposed to do?” And if he found a cure for cancer, conservatives would condemn him for not finding it sooner. “If he didn’t play so much golf, he’d have found a cure years ago which would have saved the lives of many little children.”

Which brings us to Ferguson, Missouri. Nobody knows what actually happened there, except for the police officer involved – and we haven’t heard from him. Was he justified in shooting an unarmed kid 6 times or did he panic and overreact to some imaginary threat? We don’t know.

But in a polarized America, everybody is an expert. And everybody must take sides. To sit on the sidelines and wait for the facts to come in is a sign of weakness.  Warriors don’t sit on the sideline — ever.

So if you’re a liberal who gets what passes for news from MSNBC you know what happened: The racist white cop shot the black kid because he’s a racist white cop.

And if you’re a conservative who gets the lowdown from Fox, you’re pretty sure the cop is getting railroaded. Didn’t Michael Brown bust the cop in the face and fracture his eye socket? That’s what Fox News reported, initially getting its information from a conservative website. The report may be true – or not. But so far no one in authority has confirmed the story. But if you play right field, you’re hoping the story is true because that would confirm what you always knew – that the cop was right and the kid was wrong.

When they’re feeling generous both sides will say, “We have to find out what really happened” right before they tell us what really happened, even though they don’t know what really happened.

On MSNBC, we get contributor Michelle Bernard, a black woman, telling us that what happened in Ferguson amounts to a “war on black boys” that could turn into “genocide.” We get nothing from her about the inconvenient fact that black boys are far more likely to be killed by other black boys than by white cops.

Liberals condemn abusive cops – especially when young black males are involved. Conservatives say the problem isn’t racism, but dysfunction in too many black communities.

I’ve been a reporter long enough to know that there are bad cops out there. And some are racist bad cops. I’ve also seen dysfunction in too many black neighborhoods. But both sides have a problem in polarized America acknowledging that the other side might have a point. And on TV or talk radio or on the Web, it’s simply bad business to see more than one side. People turn to partisan media to get their own biases validated. They don’t want to hear the other side. That might require them to consider some arguments they’d rather not consider.

When the police in Ferguson released the video of Michael Brown stealing some cigars and roughing up the convenient storeowner, liberals said it was a “smear.”  Conservatives said – correctly, in my view – that a kid who had just committed a crime might also go after a cop he thought was on to him.

We don’t know.

None of this is a case for wishy-washy even-handedness. We all have deeply held opinions based on our values. There’s nothing wrong with that. But sometimes, especially when we don’t know the facts, it might be a good idea to keep an open mind. Maybe that cop was one of the bad ones. Who knows? Maybe the kid was a thug who after stealing the cigars instigated a confrontation with the cop that turned deadly. Could be. Hanging on to deeply held principles is one thing. Circling the wagons to protect your side, and your preconceived notions — ahead of the facts — is something else altogether.

By Bernie Goldberg

Last night on The Factor, Megyn Kelly and I debated the concept of white privilege whereby some believe that if you are Caucasian you have inherent advantages in America.

Talking Points does not, does not believe in white privilege. However, there is no question that African-Americans have a much harder time succeeding in our society. Even whites do. But the primary reason is not skin color. It’s education and not only book learning. Here are the facts.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for black Americans is 11.4 percent. It’s just over five percent for whites, 4.5 percent for Asians. So, do we have Asian privilege in America? Because the truth is, that Asian American households earn far more money than anyone else. The median income for Asians, close to $69,000 a year; it’s 57,000 for whites’ $33,000 for black — so the question becomes why? And the answer is found in stable homes and in emphasis on education; 88 percent of Asian Americans graduate from high school compared to 86 for whites and just 69 percent for blacks. That means 31 percent of African- Americans have little chance to succeed in the free marketplace because they are uneducated. They are high school dropouts.

Asian Americans also tend to keep their families intact. Just 13 percent of Asian children live in single parent homes compared to a whopping 55 percent for blacks and 21 percent for whites. So, there you go. That is why Asian Americans, who often have to overcome a language barrier, are succeeding far more than African-Americans and even more than white Americans. Their families are intact and education is paramount.

American children must learn not only academics but also civil behavior, right from wrong, as well as how to speak properly and how to act respectfully in public. If African-American children do not learn those things, they will likely fail as adults. They will be poor. They will be angry, and they often will be looking to blame someone else.

One caveat, the Asian American experience historically has not been nearly as tough as the African-American experience. Slavery is unique and it has harmed black Americans to a degree that is still being felt today, but in order to succeed in our competitive society, every American has to overcome the obstacles they face. And here is where the African-American leadership in America is failing.

Instead of preaching a cultural revolution, the leadership provides excuses for failure. The race hustlers blame white privilege, an unfair society, a terrible country. So the message is, it’s not your fault if you abandon your children, if you become a substance abuser, if you are a criminal. No, it’s not your fault; it’s society’s fault.

That is the big lie that is keeping some African-Americans from reaching their full potential. Until personal responsibility and a cultural change takes place. Millions of African-Americans will struggle. And their anger, some of it justified will seethe. The federal government cannot fix this problem. Only a powerful message of responsibility can turn things around. And that’s “The Memo”.

By Bill O’Reilly

Lois Lerner’s Blackberry was intentionally destroyed after Congress had begun its probe into IRS targeting of conservative groups, a senior IRS lawyer acknowledged in a sworn declaration.

Thomas Kane, Deputy Assistant Chief Counsel for the IRS, wrote in the declaration, part of a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the IRS, that the Blackberry was “removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.”

That date – June 2012 – is significant because by that time, ex-IRS official Lerner had already been summoned before congressional staffers who interviewed her about reports of the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups.

“We had already talked to her. Our personal staff and Oversight Committee staff had sat down with Ms. Lerner and confronted her about information we were getting from conservative groups in the state of Ohio and around the country,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News.

“If you intentionally destroy evidence, that is a crime. If you make a statement in court saying the evidence is not available and it is, that is also a crime,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice.

The IRS did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

News of the Blackberry’s destruction followed Monday’s statement by Judicial Watch that Justice Department attorneys said in a Friday phone call the federal government backs up all computer records to ensure continuity of government in event of a catastrophe, but retrieving the Lerner emails would simply be “too onerous.”

An administration official told Fox News Monday night that Judicial Watch misinterpreted the Friday phone call. “There was no new back-up system described last week to Judicial Watch,” he said. “Government lawyers who spoke to Judicial Watch simply referred to the same email retention policy that Commissioner (John) Koskinen had described in his Congressional testimony.”

But Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who represents other conservative groups suing the IRS, cited a whistleblower who bolsters Judicial Watch’s interpretation.

“I received information from a former Department of Homeland Security official who had security clearances. He just retired in April,” Mitchell said. “He contacted me and he contacted Judicial Watch and some members of Congress and said there is backup material.”

The dueling versions are not likely to sit well with District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is presiding over Judicial Watch’s lawsuit against the IRS. “He gave the IRS not one, but two opportunities in court filings with him to tell him where they were,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “There was no mention of this backup system to the court at that time.”

According to Sidney Powell, author of “Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice,” Sullivan is known to scold government lawyers who withhold evidence.

Powell said Sullivan appointed an independent counsel to investigate DOJ’s prosecution of now deceased Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.Sullivan described the Stevens prosecution as “the worst case of misconduct he’d seen in 25 years.”

Sullivan also said, “When government does not meet its obligations to turn over evidence, the system falters.”

By Doug McKelway

Court documents released Friday in the so-called “John Doe investigation” into political supporters of Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker show prosecutors subpoenaed phone-company records and that the probe went deeper than previously known, say conservatives who were targeted.

Attorneys for conservative activist Eric O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth point to subpoenas requested by the John Doe prosecutors that sought records from “at least eight phone companies” believed to serve the targets of the investigation, according to The Wisconsin Reporter.

O’Keefe and the club have filed a civil rights suit against the prosecutors, alleging they violated conservatives’ First Amendment rights.

“In fact, Defendants’ submissions confirm and expand upon the scope and intensity of retaliation previously demonstrated,” O’Keefe’s attorney wrote in documents ordered unsealed by the federal appeals court.

The John Doe proceeding compelled scores of witnesses to testify, and a gag order compelled them to keep their mouths shut or face jail time.

Prosecutors conducted the investigation under the theory that at least 29 conservative organizations may have illegally coordinated with Walker’s campaign during Wisconsin’s partisan political recall elections in 2011 and 2012.

The investigation was conducted by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat, until a federal judge halted it in May.

The newly released documents show prosecutors’ subpoena requests sought phone records for a year-and-a-half period.

Prosecutors sought “all call detail records including incoming and outgoing calls,” “billing name and information,” “subscriber name and information including any application for service,” and more, according to the conservatives’ court filing.

By M.D. Kittle

Allen West, US Army Lieutenant Colonel veteran of 22 years and former Congressman, recently stated in his blog:

“The only plausible explanation for many actions taken by President Obama and his administration is that they are working counter to the security of the United States of America. How else can one rationalize the following:”

West goes on to describe 6 primary actions taken by Obama that can only lead to West`s conclusion:

“Sorry, but I can only explain this one way: Barack Hussein Obama is an Islamist in his foreign policy perspectives and supports their cause. You can go back and listen to his 2009 speech in Cairo, where Muslim Brotherhood associates were seated front and center.”

1. The unilateral release of five senior Taliban back to the enemy while the enemy is still fighting us.

2. Providing weapons of support to the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian government — F-16s and M1A1 Abrams tanks — but not to the Egyptian government after the Islamist group has been removed.

3. Negotiations with Qatar and Turkey, two Islamist-supporting countries.

4. Negotiations with Hamas, a terrorist group.

5. Returning sanction money, to the tune of billions of dollars, back to the theocratic regime led by Iran’s ayatollahs and allowing them to march on towards nuclear capability.

6. Obama’s evident support of Islamists in Libya.

In an operation that was again unilateral with no Congressional approval, U.S. military support and resources were given to Islamist groups fighting against Moammar Qaddafy — and we know the results of that action. Not long after, one of the groups this administration armed, Ansar al-Sharia, took responsibility for the terrorist attack and murder of our U.S .Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Ty Woods, and Glenn Doherty at the Benghazi Special Mission Compound (SMC). Oh, and that same group claims it has established an Islamic caliphate in eastern Libya, based in Benghazi. Just two weeks ago, the United States of America evacuated the Libyan embassy in Tripoli due to security concerns.

But I guess it’s all hunky-dory there now, because according to the Washington Free Beacon, “The Obama administration has lifted longtime restrictions on Libyans attending flight schools in the United States and training here in nuclear science, according to a final amendment of the ban recently approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).”

“Less than two years after the deadly terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is poised to sign off on an amendment reversing the ban, which was enacted following a wave or terrorist attacks in 1980s and prevents Libyans from studying these sensitive trades in the United States.”

We just evacuated Libya due to security concerns. There can be no doubt that Libya is an Islamic terrorist sanctuary state, thanks in no uncertain terms to Obama, and now he wants them to come here and learn how to fly planes and understand nuclear science?

Ok Lucy, ‘splain this to me.

The Free Beacon says “the original law effectively disqualified all Libyan nationals and those “acting on behalf of Libyan entities” from training in “aviation maintenance, flight operations, or nuclear-related fields,” according to the ban. “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is amending its regulations by rescinding the regulatory provisions promulgated in 1983 that terminated the nonimmigrant status and barred the granting of certain immigration benefits to Libyan nationals and foreign nationals acting on behalf of Libyan entities who are engaging in or seeking to obtain studies or training in,” the amendment states.”

DHS spokesperson S.Y. Lee who told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration is reviewing its policies towards Libya “to see how they might be updated to better align with U.S. interests” in light of its revolution.”

If I may interject here, Libya is not a stable country and there can be no alignment with U.S. interests as long as there are al-Qaida affiliated groups freely operating in that country.

Of course this action is taken when the House and Senate is away on a five-week hiatus from D.C. but at least the House Judiciary Committee responded by acknowledging, “The terror threat continues and numerous news reports document recent terror-related activities coming from Libya.”

Why wouldn’t the Obama administration allow Kurdish Peshmerga members to come to America and receive flight training so they could be given quality helicopter gunships and destroy ISIS? Can anyone explain what the strategy and objective is here in lifting this ban with a nation that is or should be on the terrorist watch list?

Sorry, but I can only explain this one way: Barack Hussein Obama is an Islamist in his foreign policy perspectives and supports their cause.

While Congress is on recess and President Obama vacations in Martha’s Vineyard, a coalition of free press groups is escalating an already-aggressive campaign against the Obama administration for allegedly freezing out the press and cracking down on reporters.

The flood of critical letters and petitions and statements from First Amendment groups marks a new level of tension in a relationship that for years has been deteriorating. Though Obama, as a candidate in 2008, was widely seen to enjoy favorable media treatment, his administration now is fielding accusations that it’s one of the least transparent in history.

Society of Professional Journalists President David Cuillier, in a statement earlier this week, blasted the administration for what he called “excessive message management and preventing journalists from getting information on behalf of citizens.”

SPJ is among the groups that’s been leading the charge on the issue. Last month, more than three dozen groups, including SPJ, wrote to the White House about what they described as growing censorship throughout federal agencies.

Cuillier’s latest statement came in response to White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest’s Aug. 11 letter to his organization regarding their complaints.

In it, Earnest said Obama’s commitment to transparency is “unwavering.” While he acknowledged “there will always be a healthy, natural tension between journalists and the White House,” Earnest vowed greater transparency going forward and pointed to several steps the administration has taken: like processing more “freedom of information” requests, declassifying records and releasing information on White House visitors.

“Typical spin and response through non-response,” Cuillier shot back.

He said he hopes the administration is “sincere” about being more open, “but we want action. We are tired of words and evasion.”

Media groups are gearing up for another confrontation on Thursday, when they plan to present a petition with 100,000 signatures — backed by the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Freedom of the Press Foundation and others — to the Justice Department. It calls for the administration to halt legal action against New York Times reporter James Risen, who detailed a botched CIA effort during the Clinton administration to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Risen’s reporting is at the center of criminal charges against former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling. Federal prosecutors want to force Risen to testify about his sources at Sterling’s trial, and the Supreme Court recently refused to get involved in the case.

Risen argued he has a right to protect his sources’ identity, either under the Constitution or rules governing criminal trials. A federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., earlier rejected Risen’s bid to avoid being forced to testify.

At the same time federal prosecutors have fought Risen in court, Attorney General Eric Holder has suggested that the government would not seek to put Risen in jail should he refuse to testify as ordered.

But journalist groups want assurances. Risen also is expected to speak during a press conference at the National Press Club on Thursday afternoon.

The case follows tension last year surrounding the Justice Department’s snooping on Fox News’ reporter James Rosen’s phone records and emails, and its seizure of AP phone records in the course of leak investigations. The controversy over those actions led to some reforms at the Justice Department.

Press groups’ complaints about the administration are manifold. They say agencies are prohibiting staffers from talking to journalists without public affairs office approval — and sometimes without public affairs employees sitting in on interviews. Further, they complain about long delays in getting information and about communications staff speaking “confidentially” even on routine matters.

In yet another complaint, journalist and scientific organizations accused the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday of attempting to muzzle its independent scientific advisers by directing them to funnel all outside requests for information through agency officials.

In a letter, the groups representing journalists and scientists urged the EPA to allow advisory board members to talk directly to news reporters, Congress and other outside groups without first asking for permission from EPA officials. An April memo from the EPA’s chief of staff said that “unsolicited contacts” need to be “appropriately managed” and that committee members should refrain from directly responding to requests about committees’ efforts to advise the agency.

The scientific advisory board’s office had asked the EPA to clarify the communications policy for board members, who are government employees.

“The new policy only reinforces any perception that the agency prioritizes message control over the ability of scientists who advise the agency to share their expertise with the public,” the groups wrote.

The chair of that panel, H. Christopher Frey, said in an interview with the Associated Press Tuesday in which he stressed he was offering his personal opinion, that he found the tone of the EPA memo to be unnecessary.

Frey, a distinguished professor in North Carolina State University’s engineering department, said that many of the scientists that seek to serve on the committees are national and internationally-renowned experts and that EPA “need not be too strong in precluding interactions with the media or others.”

An EPA spokeswoman said there are no constraints on members fielding requests in a personal or professional capacity. She said the memo was designed to assure transparency.

Hillary Clinton and congressmen alike have called on Obama to arm Syria’s rebels. But the president fumed at lawmakers in a private meeting for suggesting he should’ve done more.

President Obama got angry at lawmakers who suggested in a private meeting that he should have armed the Syrian rebels, calling the criticism “horseshit.”

The argument that America should have done more in Syria, made for years by foreign policy leaders in both parties and several members of Obama’s senior national security team, was brought back to the fore this past weekend. Obama and Hillary Clinton gave dueling interviews in which they publicly split on whether the security and humanitarian catastrophe in Syria could have been avoided if the United States had played a larger role. Obama’s outburst on July 31, one week prior, reveals the criticism was already getting to him, even before the White House tried to deflect Clinton’s remarks as pre-presidential political posturing.

Just before the congressional recess, President Obama invited over a dozen Senate and House leaders from both parties to the White House to talk about foreign policy. According to two lawmakers inside the meeting, Obama became visibly agitated when confronted by bipartisan criticism of the White House’s policy of slow-rolling moderate Syrian rebels’ repeated requests for arms to fight the Assad regime and ISIS.

According to one of the lawmakers, Sen. Bob Corker asked the president a long question that included sharp criticisms of President Obama’s handling of a number of foreign policy issues—including Syria, ISIS, Russia, and Ukraine. Obama answered Corker at length. Then, the president defended his administration’s actions on Syria, saying that the notion that many have put forth regarding arming the rebels earlier would have led to better outcomes in Syria was “horseshit.”

White House officials confirmed the charged exchange between Obama and Corker but declined to confirm that Obama used the expletive. The interaction between Obama and Corker was a tense moment in the otherwise uneventful meeting.

Corker’s office declined to comment for this story. But days after the White House meeting, Corker wrote a blistering op-ed for The Washington Post criticizing Obama’s handling of foreign policy. “Today, after three years of bold rhetoric divorced from reality, 170,000 Syrians are dead, and we are not innocent bystanders. The president encouraged the opposition to swallow deadly risks, then left them mostly hanging,” the senator wrote. “Extremist groups from Syria have surged into Iraq, seizing key territory and resources, and are threatening to completely undo the progress of years of U.S. sacrifice.”

Top Democratic lawmakers agreed with Corker and Clinton that doing more to support the moderate rebels would have at least had a chance of averting or mitigating the current crisis, which has now spread to large parts of Iraq as ISIS expands its newly declared Caliphate.

“We may never know for sure if ISIS’s decisions were encouraged by Obama’s choices in Syria. What we know for sure is that ISIS metastasized in Syria and was not deterred because of anything Obama said or did so far.”

Rep. Eliot Engel, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, arrived at the White House meeting after the Obama-Corker exchange. But the congressman also heard Obama defend his Syria policy, although using more polite language.

“The president still feels very strongly that we are deluding ourselves if we think American intervention in Syria early on by assisting these rebels would have made a difference,” Engel told The Daily Beast in an interview. “He still believes that. I disagree, respectfully. They were not looking for U.S. troops, they were looking for help and the Syria civil war started with the most noblest of causes.”

In a New York Times interview published Aug. 8, Obama said that the idea arming the rebels would have made a difference had “always been a fantasy.”

“This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards,” Obama said.

Clinton told The Atlantic in an interview published Aug. 10 that Obama’s “failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled.”

In 2012, Clinton revealed that she and then-CIA Director David Petraeus had pushed a plan earlier that year to arm the Syrian rebels that was rejected by the White House. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey later said they supported the plan at that time. Many lawmakers, including Corker and Engel, still support that plan and they agree with Clinton that Obama’s policy left a vacuum that ISIS rushed to fill.

“[ISIS’s threat in Iraq] is definitely tied to Syria because when the uprising started against Bashar al Assad, it was a movement of people wanting freedom and democracy in Syria, it wasn’t a war involving jihadism at all,” Engel said. “They desperately needed our help, which we didn’t supply, and as a result ISIS got the upper hand. We are now paying the price of that.”

Not all lawmakers support arming the rebels; Sen. Rand Paul, for example, is on the record opposing the use of U.S. military resources to fight ISIS in Iraq or Syria. Also, Clinton and many lawmakers acknowledge that arming the rebels was risky and might not have worked. The weapons could’ve fallen into the extremists’ hands, and Syria might have remained a jihadist free-for-all.

“Well, I did believe, which is why I advocated this, that if we were to carefully vet, train, and equip early on a core group of the developing Free Syrian Army, we would, number one, have some better insight into what was going on on the ground,” Clinton said.

By Josh Rogin

Labor Secretary-turned-college professor Robert Reich’s latest lectures on income inequality don’t square with his $240,000 salary for teaching just one class, economists tell FoxNews.com.

Reich, who served in the Clinton White House and is now a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, took on the topic of “Work and Worth” in an Aug. 2 post on his blog. In it, he lamented that there is “little or no relationship” between what someone is paid and their actual worth to society, and he wrapped up his post by calling for student loans to be forgiven for graduates in fields like social work, nursing and teaching.

“The moral crisis of our age has nothing to do with gay marriage or abortion; it’s insider trading, obscene CEO pay, wage theft from ordinary workers, Wall Street’s continued gambling addiction, corporate payoffs to friendly politicians, and the billionaire takeover of our democracy,” Reich wrote in a separate Facebook post.

But a professor who earns a one-percenter’s income for a relatively easy workload has a tough time complaining about how unfair the economy is, according to some critics.

“It’s definitely hypocritical,” said Dan Mitchell of the Washington-based Cato Institute. “And not only does he earn that salary, but I’m sure he pulls in a lot of money from consulting and from giving speeches. But he’s obviously in the top 1 or 2 percent, so if he really thinks that society mismeasures these things, then why isn’t he giving some of his money away?”

By and large, contrary to Reich’s point of view, most workers do “get paid on the basis of their worth,” Mitchell said.

“That type of thinking to sound economic policy analysis is what faith-healing is to medicine.” – Economist Peter Morici

“That being said, the much greater problem is that his economic analysis is wrong and perhaps non-existent,” he continued. “That’s because the private hedge fund people only make money because others voluntarily decide that it’s worth it to invest their money with them. People only pay corporate lawyers what they think they’re worth.”

Reich, whose latest work, “Beyond Outrage,” is now available in paperback, was unavailable for comment Wednesday. He earned $242,613 in 2013, according to a University of California compensation website.

“Professor Reich is out of town, and off the grid for the rest of the summer, unfortunately,” his assistant wrote FoxNews.com. “Thank you for thinking of Professor Reich.”

The tenor of Reich’s recent posts reeks of “wealthy dilettante leftism,” Mitchell said, especially when considering that higher education costs have increased far faster than the rate of inflation in recent years.

“So, if we’re worrying about people getting exploited, why not focus on the students and the bureaucracy and the higher education system as a whole? That might be a good place to start,” Mitchell said.

Peter Morici, a professor of business at the University of Maryland and a Fox News contributor, echoed Mitchell’s take, saying most people get paid what the market says they’re worth.

“He’s just an ideologue, he’s not really an economist,” Morici told FoxNews.com. “He’s basically a social scientist. This is his belief to me; it’s not an analytic position.”

Morici said Reich’s call to redistribute income downward simply won’t work because “half of the population” already doesn’t pay income tax.

“Basically, he’s not thinking systemically, but he’s thinking of policies he wants to support his personal values,” Morici continued. “That type of thinking to sound economic policy analysis is what faith-healing is to medicine.”

The market has a way of bringing salaries in line, according to Joseph Minarik, of the Washington-based think tank Committee for Economic Development.

“Eventually, excessive compensation will be reduced when people offer to provide the same service at lower pay,” Minarik said. “That may be true of financial executives, and of university presidents as well. And caring professions will be paid more when we all decide that we will be willing to foot the bill.”

By Joshua Rhett Miller

Forty years ago public outrage about the actions of President Richard Milhous Nixon, lead by his long time liberal critics, forced him to be the first U.S. chief executive to resign the presidency. Critics screamed about Nixon’s extra-legal and extra-constitutional conduct as protestors ringed the White House chanting “Jail to the Chief.”

Nixon’s men had spied on their fellow citizens, allegedly used the IRS to harass their political enemies, waged war without the consent of Congress and used the CIA in an effort to hide their crimes.

No man, Nixon’s critics assured us, was above the law. For his transgressions, Richard Nixon was forced from office, evading prosecution only because of a presidential pardon.

Liberals are silent as Obama shreds the Constitution in ways Richard Nixon would have marveled at.

Yet by any reasonable measure, Nixon’s sins seem venal compared to those of President Barack Obama.

Nixon’s men illegally wiretapped his political opponents — and they went to jail for it. When the FBI used warrantless surveillance to wiretap and intercept the mail of anti-war radicals, those who did so were charged, tried and convicted.

Obama has used the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to guarantee any surveillance the government wants without probable cause. Nixon spied on a virtual hand-full. Barack Obama’ s NSA wire-taps the entire nation and monitors the e-mails of thousands.

Nixon talked about using the IRS to harass his opponents but there is no evidence that he successfully did so, yet illegal use of the IRS was among the Articles of Impeachment voted by the House of Representatives. Obama’s IRS has actually used the IRS to harass conservative groups. Can you imagine the liberal outcry if IRS officials under Nixon referred to liberals as “a—holes’ and “crazies”?

The White House tapes show Nixon attempting to use the CIA to impede the FBI investigation into the Watergate break-in. This pales in comparison to the CIA spying on members of the US Senate charged with investigating the Agency’s illegal activities.

Where is liberal outrage over Obama’s Justice Department spying on reporters? What would have happened if Nixon’s Justice Department had opened the mail and tracked the movements of Walter Cronkite as Obama’s Justice department did with Fox’s News’ James Rosen?

Nixon’s impeachment included the charge that he evaded Congress’ sole authority to declare war by bombing Cambodia. Yet in Libya Obama said that only he had the inherent authority to decide what is a “war” and that no congressional approval was necessary. He proceeded to bomb  Libya, destroy its military and spend more than a billion dollars in borrowed money in support of one side, who was not aligned with the United States, in a civil war.

Nixon’s men considered the murder of investigative journalist Jack Anderson. That’s nothing compared with Obama’s assertion that he has right to kill any U.S. citizen without a charge, let alone conviction.

Nixon was excoriated for the missing 18 and a half minutes in his White House tapes although his long-time Secretary Rose Mary Woods claimed to have erased them by mistake. In the torture scandal, CIA officials admitted to destroying tapes that they knew could be used against them in criminal cases at the same time Obama’s IRS says hundreds of thousands of documents regarding abuse against Tea Party and Conservative groups are “missing,” without repercussion.

While Nixon was known for his  “Enemies List,” the former head of the National Security Agency’s global digital data gathering program says that Obama also has an enemies list stored by keyword, which has been used to take down perceived political enemies such as General Petraus. During his re-election campaign Obama even brazenly posted his enemies list on-line as a not-so-subtle threat not to donate to his opponents. How Nixon’s critics would have howled if he had publicly targeted Sen. George McGovern’s donors.

Because of Obama’s iconic status on the left, liberals are silent as Obama shreds the Constitution in ways Richard Nixon would have marveled at. Democrats scoff at the notion of the impeachment of Obama for crimes far more serious and reaching than of those committed by Richard Nixon.

By Roger Stone, author of “Nixon’s Secrets: The Rise, Fall and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate, and the Pardon” (Skyhorse Publishing) which will be released on August 11.

Montana Democratic Sen. John Walsh is dropping out of his Senate race after being dogged by allegations of plagiarism, potentially boosting Republicans’ chances of picking up the seat in November.

The senator made the announcement late Thursday in a message to supporters. Walsh said the plagiarism claims have become a “distraction” from the issues.

“I am ending my campaign so that I can focus on fulfilling the responsibility entrusted to me as your U.S. Senator. You deserve someone who will always fight for Montana, and I will,” he said in the message.

Calls for Walsh to bow out have grown louder following accusations that first surfaced last month that he plagiarized part of a paper he submitted for his master’s degree in 2007.

Three of Montana’s largest newspapers recently called for him to withdraw his candidacy, while others have demanded he apologize or forfeit his master’s degree.

The decision comes as a U.S. Army War College investigation is set to begin Aug. 15 into the paper that Walsh previously said unintentionally contained wrongfully cited passages. Walsh also had until Monday to drop out of the race.

His decision to withdraw from the November election allows the Montana Democratic Party to hold a nominating convention to choose a replacement candidate before the Aug. 20 deadline to do so. The convention will be composed of Democratic leaders from each county’s party committee, along with federal and statewide elected officials and the party’s executive board. They will nominate potential candidates who will have a chance to speak before the convention before voting gets underway.

The nominee who receives a majority of votes will be selected as the replacement candidate, according to the party’s rules.

Walsh’s decision is likely to give a boost to Republican Rep. Steve Daines, who is giving up his House seat to run for Senate. Republicans need to gain a net of six seats in the election to take control of the Senate, and Walsh had faced a tough race against Daines before the plagiarism allegations.

Walsh had already announced his candidacy for the seat when Gov. Steve Bullock appointed him in February to replace Max Baucus, who resigned from the Senate to become ambassador to China. Republicans blasted Bullock’s appointment of his lieutenant governor as a political move designed to gain an advantage in the elections.

The New York Times revealed the extensive use of unattributed material in Walsh’s paper about the spread of democracy in the Middle East. Walsh originally called it an “unintentional mistake” and told The Associated Press part of the blame may lie in his being treated for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder following his deployment in Iraq.

He later said he was not blaming PTSD for his mistake.

Walsh is the only U.S. senator who served in the Iraq war. He capped a 33 years in the Montana National Guard, his career rising to state adjutant general before he took his first elected office in 2013 as Bullock’s lieutenant governor in 2013. Walsh received the Master of Strategic Studies degree from the war college at age 47, a year before he became adjutant general overseeing the Guard and the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

Dozens of government watchdogs are sounding the alarm that the Obama administration is stonewalling them, in what is being described as an unprecedented challenge to the agencies they’re supposed to oversee.

Forty-seven of the government’s 73 independent watchdogs known as inspectors general voiced their complaints in a letter to congressional leaders this week. They accused several major agencies — the Justice Department, the Peace Corps and the chemical safety board — of imposing “serious limitations on access to records.”

The inspectors general are now appealing to Congress to help them do their jobs uncovering waste, fraud, and mismanagement.

“Agency actions that limit, condition, or delay access thus have profoundly negative consequences for our work: they make us less effective, encourage other agencies to take similar actions in the future, and erode the morale of the dedicated professionals that make up our staffs,” they wrote.

The letter to the chairmen and ranking members of relevant oversight committees in the House and Senate claimed agencies are withholding information by calling it “privileged.”

In the letter, they said this interpretation poses “potentially serious challenges to the authority of every Inspector General and our ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., calls that extremely troubling.

“If there is anyone who should have transparency, it should be the watchdogs inside the government working for the president,” Issa told Fox News in an interview.

The letter offered specific examples of investigators having trouble getting what they need.

In the case of the Peace Corps, it withheld records of sexual assaults against its volunteers. A Peace Corps spokeswoman told Fox News, “We are committed to working with the inspector general to ensure rigorous oversight while protecting the confidentiality and privacy of volunteers who are sexually assaulted.”

At the Justice Department, the letter said officials withheld records for three reviews until they found the reviews were helpful to department leadership.

Justice spokesman Brian Fallon said everything sought was provided and “because the documents at issue included grand jury material, credit reports, and other information whose dissemination is restricted by law, it was necessary to identify exceptions to the laws to accommodate the inspector general’s request.”

The watchdogs also claimed the EPA’s inspector general had problems getting documents from the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board for a separate investigation.

Issa said that since most IG activities are not public until they are completed, “some of the best examples of obstruction probably are the ones the IGs don’t want to say in a public format.”

The letter notes a 1978 law ensures inspectors general have “complete, unfiltered, and timely access to all information and materials … without unreasonable administrative burdens.”

Issa called the letter unprecedented. “I’ve never seen a letter like this, and my folks have checked — there has never been a letter even with a dozen IGs complaining.”

He added, “This is the majority of all inspectors general saying not just in the examples they gave, but government wide, they see a pattern that is making them unable to do their job.”

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has long voiced concerns about impediments faced by the IGs, and used the letter to hammer the administration on that point. “This is an administration that pledged to be the most transparent in history. Yet, these nonpartisan, independent agency watchdogs say they are getting stonewalled,” he said.

Issa said he’s planning to hold hearings on this issue when Congress, which currently is on recess, returns in September.

By Mike Emanuel

President Barack Obama’s approval ratings have dipped to a new low—40%—according to a new poll released Tuesday.

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which was conducted by a Democratic pollster and a Republican pollster working together, has Obama’s favorability at 40% positive and 47% negative. NBC News reports that the decline in Obama’s polling numbers stems chiefly from a decline in support among Democrats and African Americans.

The President’s approval rating for his handling of foreign policy is particularly low, at 36%.

The approval rating for Congress is far worse, crouching down at 14%, a level where it has been for several years, but disapproval in Congress isn’t split evenly across the aisle. Americans view congressional Democrats (31%) more favorably than they do congressional Republicans (19%).

The President’s dismal numbers heading into a midterm spell trouble for the Democrats but not necessarily a tidal wave like in 2006 or 2010 — enthusiasm, pollsters said, is particularly low all around this campaign season.

The NBC/WSJ survey polled 1,000 adults between July 30 and Aug. 3 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1%.

By Denver Nicks