When the same basic data came out last year, the gains in teen birth rates were overwhelmingly concentrated in South, Southwest and the portions of the Midwest where Hispanic immigration has been most pronounced over the past decade. This is a matter of public record. While I haven't gone over the stats for every state with a nominal 'increase' in teen birth rates, I have seen the numbers for North Carolina and Georgia which I suspect will prove typical for most of the states affected. In both cases, teen birth rates remained steady or even dropped slightly among white and black teens. This was offset and more than offset by the massive influx of Hispanics into these states, bringing teen birth rates in the range of 50-65% with them. Overall teen birth rates climbed once a critical mass of Hispanic teens were present in these states.

The larger point here is that this is a 'problem' that isn't going to be solved without specifically targeted solutions designed to either A.) address teen pregnancy in Hispanic immigrant communities or B.) find ways to limit the influx of high risk immigrants. We can't even begin to solve the problem if we close our eyes and pretend that this is a general "teen" problem, when it's really a problem of a specific immigrant community.

So, as you can see, African Americans make the highest contribution followed by Puerto Rican girls (most born in the US). Coming in 3rd are Mexican girls. Cuban and Caucasian girls come in last.

We're not talking about raw numbers of births, we're talking about changing birth rates. The birth rate for teens of recent Hispanic immigrant status is astronomically higher than it is for other demographic groups, so, not surprisingly, rapidly increasing the Hispanic immigrant population of a particular state is very likely to result in an increase in the teen birth rate, even if other demographics have more teen births in total.

Do you understand statistics at all?

It's very difficult to extrapolate a modern economic position from Lincoln's stances in the years before the Civil War, because they reflect a radically different social and economic environment. But it's worth keeping a couple of things in mind:

1. Lincoln was a lifelong Whig/Republican. In the Antebellum context, that meant he was a member of the party of industrial capitalism. We tend to focus almost exclusively on the issue of slavery (because it's the "sexy" issue from that era), but the Whigs and Republicans were primarily the parties of Big Business, and their economic platforms reflected the dominant influence of industrialist leadership. At the time, Big Business wanted government infrastructure spending (which would inevitably go to their coffers and reduce the cost of moving about their raw materials and finished goods), high tariffs (to protect their products from better and cheaper products from England), and a National Bank to regulate credit (and keep it out of the hands of the riff raff on the farms). Lincoln's mannerisms may have been populist, but his basic political outlook and instincts were fundamentally elitist, and he always aligned himself with the interests of industrial capitalism.

2. Lincoln was an attorney for railroad companies. In fact, much of his "legal" work consisted of what we would today describe as "lobbying." OF COURSE he supported railroad subsidies: that's where his bread was buttered.

To gloss over these facts is, at best, misleading, and frankly borders on deliberate dishonesty.

The court seems unaware that an employer is not bound by the same due process restrictions that the police are. They don't have to get a warrant for an investigation. It shouldn't make any difference whether the process was initiated for "political" reasons. If academic misconduct occurred, I don't care if George W. Bush himself showed up with the army and FORCED the university administration to begin an investigation, the piece of shit should be fired.

Besides, "academic freedom" should apply ONLY to your scholarship. If you spout stupid, blatantly offensive viewpoints unrelated to your academic work and bring negative attention upon your employer as a result, you should be fired just like any schlub working any other job would be.

...we're supposed to believe that Puritans - a group of religious fanatics who believed that crop failures and naughty teenagers were the work of the devil and his witches - understood and applied the germ theory of disease some 200 years before germ theory was postulated?

God, but you're a credulous bumpkin!

It was NOT clearly understood that personal effects could be a means of transmission in the mid/late 17th century, and retention of those effects either as mementos of the deceased or simply because they were too valuable to throw out remained common. Often some personal effects were disposed of, but this was less because they were thought dangerous than because they were frequently ruined by the consequences of the lethal stages of smallpox.

It's pretty telling in this case that the "oral tradition" about "smallpox blankets" doesn't start to show up in the written record until the latter half of the 19th century, soon after germ theory became generally accepted and concurrent with the rise of pro-Indian sentiment among some elements of the American literary classes. The whole schtick is reminiscent of the famed (but ahistorical) 'rule of thumb': an urban legend treated as fact not because it can be even remotely confirmed with evidence, but because it fits neatly into the assumptions of activists.

...why does "academic freedom" protect the right of a professor to embarrass his employer outside the realm of his actual scholarship? The purpose of "academic freedom" is to ensure that professors can pursue academic research and instruction free from administration or political pressure. It isn't supposed to grant them carte blanche to be a total jackass.