Two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights say the Obama-era school leniency policy that discourages reports of threatening behavior by minority students to law enforcement is dangerous.

“Many schools that have adopted lenient disciplinary policies – i.e., defining offenses down so that blacks and Hispanics aren’t suspended or expelled at significantly higher rates than whites and Asians—have seen marked increases in the number and severity of offenses,” attorney Peter Kirsanow, a Republican member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, tells Breitbart News. “St. Paul is just one example, but numerous districts across the country have reported spikes in violence against teachers and students, as well as other forms of disruptive behavior.”

“Students (and teachers) have reported being fearful of going to school,” adds Kirsanow, who also chairs the board of directors of the Center for New Black Leadership. “One school principal stated unequivocally that the people that are most harmed are the good students who want to learn but are harmed by the chaotic environment.”

Similarly, in a paper released in January, U.S. Civil Rights commissioner Gail Heriot, an Independent and a professor of law at the University of San Diego, writes with her colleague, Alison Somin, of the dangers of the Obama-era policy:

The danger should have been obvious. What if an important reason more African-American students were being disciplined than white or Asian students is that more African-American students were misbehaving? And what if the cost of failing to discipline those students primarily falls on their fellow African-American students who are trying to learn amid classroom disorder? Would unleashing OCR and its army of lawyers cause those schools to act carefully and precisely to eliminate only that portion of the discipline gap that was the result of race discrimination? Or—more likely—would schools react heavy-handedly by tolerating more classroom disorder, thus making it more difficult for students who share the classroom with unruly students to learn?

“The Department of Education’s disparate impact policy is encouraging discrimination rather than preventing it,” the authors further assert:

When it comes to school discipline policy, the federal government has an unimpressive track record. In the past, it has pressed local schools to adopt tough “zero-tolerance” rules for guns (including things that appear to be guns), resulting in children being suspended for “guns” made out of a nibbled Pop Tart or a stick. Similarly, on too many occasions, its get- tough, policies on sexual harassment have led to disciplinary actions against kindergarteners and first-graders—children generally too young to spell “sexual harassment,” much less engage in it.

More recently, we’ve been seeing an overcorrection. The federal government’s policy developed during the Obama Administration has been to press schools to lighten up on school discipline, specifically to benefit African Americans and other racial minorities. But both efforts to dictate broad discipline policy, while well-meaning, are wrongheaded. It’s time for the federal government to get out of the business of dictating broad discipline policy.

The debate over the Obama administration’s policy comes as Nikolas Cruz is charged Wednesday with 17 counts of premeditated murder following his shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County, Florida.

Despite many warnings of Cruz’s propensity for violence and aggression while he was a student at the school, he was never arrested — and was ultimately able to purchase a firearm.

Broward County Public Schools adopted its PROMISE disparate impact policy after current superintendent Robert Runcie left Chicago – where he once worked for Obama education secretary Arne Duncan – and assumed his post as head of the school district.

Runcie and Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel signed onto the PROMISE program. In Israel’s campaign video in 2012, the Democrat praised the ideology behind the lax school policy:

I am the sheriff who will measure the success of the agency by the young people we’re able to keep out of jail and not put in jail, while keeping our neighborhoods secure and making sure that we’re doing things the right way. We’ll end racial profiling, not curtail it, but end racial profiling. We’ll diversify the county, we’ll look differently than each other, we’ll think differently than each other, we’ll have hybrid ideas, and most importantly we’ll bring a cultural change to an agency that’s in dire need of one.

Within a year of Runcie’s arrival in the school district, school arrests dropped dramatically by 66 percent. Seeking to implement a similar nationwide policy, the Obama administration brought the Broward County officials to Washington to propose their plan as a possible model for school districts across the country.

In 2014, the Obama administration issued a Dear Colleague letter that mapped out recommendations for national public school disciplinary policies that would purportedly put an end to the “school-to-prison-pipeline” for minority students. The policy threatened schools with risk of federal investigation if they showed higher numbers of referrals to law enforcement for minority students than for other students – even if the behaviors in question were unacceptable.

With the Obama-era policies in place now in more than 50 school districts throughout the country, students whose behavior would have previously drawn an arrest or a suspension have been instead referred to “teen courts” or “restorative talking circles.”

Kirsanow reports that the literature on racial disparities in disciplinary rates often omits key data.

“Much of the literature that focuses on racial disparities in disciplinary rates recites statistics showing that black and Hispanic students are 3—4 times more likely to be suspended than white and Asian students,” he explains. “But the same literature often leaves out data showing that black and Hispanic students are far more likely than white and Asian students to commit the types of offenses resulting in suspension.”

“There is some evidence that black students are more likely to be suspended than white students for some of the same infractions,” he adds. “But a closer look at the data shows that’s not necessarily due to discrimination, but rather, the disciplinary policies of specific schools or school administrators. Some black school administrators at majority-black schools punish black students more harshly than white school administrators punish white (or black) students at majority white schools.”

In March 2016, Katherine Kersten wrote at the Star Tribune about the increasing number of student assaults against St. Paul, Minnesota teachers, as well as student riots requiring police intervention since the adoption of the lax disciplinary practices.

Kersten noted a comment from one teacher: “We have a segment of kids who consider themselves untouchable.”

“Most parents will tell you that if you eliminate consequences for kids’ bad behavior, you can expect a lot more of it,” Kersten observed. “It’s common sense.”

“But we’re not talking about common sense here,” she added. “We’re talking about a powerful ideology that has gripped the imagination of Twin Cities school officials — and far beyond. That’s the notion of ‘equity’ — a buzzword that is rapidly becoming the all-purpose justification for dubious policies not only in education but in many public arenas.”

“The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a hearing just a few months ago on the “School-to-Prison Pipeline,” Kirsanow tells Breitbart News. “Many progressives start with the assumption that the profound disparities in disciplinary rates between the races must be caused, at least in substantial part, by racial discrimination. Maybe that is a cause of the disparities, but we’ve adduced no evidence of such alleged discrimination, other than the numerical disparities themselves.”

Kirsanow states some school officials may have adopted the Obama-era policies for the purpose of boosting graduation rates and reducing incarceration rates for black and Hispanic students.

“But others have done so because they don’t want to be subjected to the heavy hand of the federal government,” he says. “They just ‘get their numbers right’ by keeping dangerous and disruptive students in class rather than suspending or expelling them, or reporting them to law enforcement.”

“The goal should be issue nondiscriminatory discipline appropriate to the offense, not to lower disciplinary standards so racial disparities aren’t as great,” Kirsanow asserts. “We’re sacrificing good students (and teachers) on the altars of political correctness, racial bean counting, and misguided theories of social justice. This is both boneheaded and tragic. The guidance needs to be rescinded.”

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is composed of eight commissioners. Four are appointed by the president and four by Congress. The commissioners serve six-year terms and are not confirmed by the Senate.

Currently, four members of the commission are Democrats, three are independents, and one is a Republican. The four presidential appointees were all selected by former President Barack Obama.

The New York Times published a long-form article recently discussing the new documentary from Breitbart News Senior Editor-At-Large Peter Schweizer titled The Creepy Line.

The piece published in the New York Times, titled “New Foils for the Right: Google and Facebook,” discusses not only Schweizer’s new documentary but the general growing concern from conservatives that Silicon Valley tech companies are censoring right of center opinions on the Internet. The New York Times is finally noticing the work of conservative publications, including Breitbart Tech, in investigating liberal tech companies that have appointed themselves the arbiters of truth in the digital age.

The Times reached out to multiple conservatives to discuss the issue of tech companies monopoly of information in the modern age, including Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alexander Marlow.

“This could end up being the free speech issue of our time,” said Alex Marlow, editor in chief of Breitbart News, which has published articles accusing Google and Facebook of, among other sins, political bias. “The Silicon Valley elites are saying: ‘We don’t care what you want to see — we know what you should see. We know better.’”

The article also discussed James Damore and the panel he took part in at CPAC in Washington, covered by Breitbart Tech. The panel featured Damore, the engineer fired for his famous “viewpoint diversity memo,” which claimed that biological differences accounted for the lack of women in tech fields. Damore’s lawyer Harmeet Dhillon also appeared on the panel alongside Investigative journalist James O’Keefe.

The article notes that it’s not just those on the right worried about the power of tech companies, even those on the left — including the President of CNN — are worried about the growing reach of Google and Facebook.

Jeffrey A. Zucker, the president of CNN, derided Google and Facebook as “monopolies” and called for regulators to step in during a speech in Spain last month, saying the tech hegemony is “the biggest issue facing the growth of journalism in the years ahead.” And former President Barack Obama said at an off-the-record conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last month that he worried Americans were living in “entirely different realities” and that large tech companies like Facebook were “not just an invisible platform, they’re shaping our culture in powerful ways.” The contents of the speech were published by Reason magazine.

The New York Times discussed the issue of Facebook’s new algorithm, which was updated to focus on posts from users friends and family. Many publishers on both sides of the political spectrum were upset and worried by this update with BuzzFeed even attempting to convince users to download their mobile app to counteract their reduced reach on Facebook’s platform.

The article notes that Breitbart Tech immediately took the social media platform to task with an article by Allum Bokhari on the effects of their updated algorithm, specifically how it affected conservatives including President Trump.

Right-wing media has pounced. In late February, citing statistics from the social analytics firm NewsWhip, Breitbart published an article on the effects on the president’s Facebook page with the headline “EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s Facebook Engagement Declined By 45 Percent Following Algorithm Change.” The drop, the article insinuated, occurred “following a year of pressure from left-wing employees and the mainstream media for ‘allowing’ the president to win the 2016 general election.”

The New York Times stated that Google has attempted some conservative outreach over the past few years, including at the Conservative Political Action Conference which the company has sponsored for the past three years. Google also held a party in a private suite at the convention, which was attended by Breitbart Tech reporters who left upon realizing the event was a blatant attempt to convince conservatives that Google was their new best friend.

Google, which has co-sponsored CPAC three of the past six years, held a lavish reception for attendees featuring an open bar and a roaring outdoor fireplace. Mr. Marlow, the editor of Breitbart, was asked in an interview what he thought about Google’s giving a party in the midst of a crowd that is gunning for it.

“The least they can do,” Mr. Marlow said, “is buy us a drink.”

Read the full article in the New York Times here.

President Obama did a lot of bad things, but pound for pound, one of the worst was the January 2014 “Dear Colleague” letter sent jointly by his Education and Justice Departments to all public schools threatening lawsuits over racial discrimination in student discipline. The letter came after years of his administration browbeating schools for their failure to discipline every race of student at the same rate.

As the Huffington Post put it: “American Schools Are STILL Racist, Government Report Finds.” The evidence? “Five percent of white students were suspended annually, compared with 16 percent of black students, according to the report.” Q.E.D.

According to theory, there’s NO WAY blacks and Hispanics are doing things that require more school discipline than whites or Asians. So if more black students are expelled than Asians, well, gentlemen, we have our proof of racism. To comply, schools would have to stop suspending black kids for breaking a teacher’s jaw, but suspend Asians for dropping an eraser.

Using the same logic, I could close the achievement gap between blacks and Asians in a single day by going to every principal’s office in the country and burning the transcripts. (Liberals are saying, “You know, that’s not a bad idea.”)

The “school-to-prison pipeline” argument for racial quotas in discipline was hatched in education schools and black studies departments. What I want to know is: How did they test the idea?

To validate the theory that recording students’ criminal behavior produces students with criminal records, we divided students into two groups. Group A we continued to suspend when they acted up; Group B we would not suspend no matter what — even when they engaged in their little mischief, like cracking heads with crowbars, dropping teachers off buildings, using a switchblade to cut other students’ eyes out.

RESULT: At the end of the year, Group B had better records.

Were the researchers really in suspense about how the experiment was going to turn out? I could have told them at the beginning that their odds of success were tremendous — unless they forgot halfway through and began accidentally suspending students in Group B.

But the Obama administration said: Wow! That’s amazing. Do you think other schools could replicate those results?

One of the administration’s models was Broward County, Florida. Which is kind of important, now that we know that it was Broward’s official policy to make it impossible to arrest students like Nikolas Cruz, thus allowing him to amass a cache of firearms, walk into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and murder 17 people.

The “school-to-prison pipeline” nonsense may not be the explanation for every school shooting, but it is absolutely the explanation for THIS school shooting. No matter what Cruz did, no matter how many times his crimes were reported to the sheriff or school officials, there was no way a lad with a name like “Nikolas Cruz” was ever going to leave school with a record.

Broward County’s innovative idea of eliminating school discipline captivated Obama’s Department of Education. It was expressly cited by the department’s Civil Rights Division with the notation: “New model for other jurisdictions?”

Last October — nearly a year into the Trump administration — Broward Schools Superintendent Robert W. Runcie humbly noted that the district was receiving “invitations from around the country, including from The White House and Federal Office of Civil Rights, to share details about the historic reforms” on school discipline.

Either: Liberals truly believe that all races commit crimes at exactly the same level, frequency and intensity; OR they are willing to have people die for their political agenda.

Conservatives didn’t pick this school shooting as the test case for gun control. It was liberals who were going to ride the Parkland shooting all the way to the midterms. They thought they had a beautiful story about the evil NRA.

Not the mass shooting in Orlando — because of the obvious immigration angle. Not San Bernardino — for the same reason. Not Las Vegas — probably for the same reason, but we’ll never know because law enforcement has issued only lies and nonsense about that shooting.

The media did all the hard work of making sure Parkland was the only topic on anyone’s mind, with everyone demanding that we “do something!”

And then we got the facts. Cruz’s criminal acts were intentionally ignored by law enforcement on account of Broward’s much-celebrated “school-to-prison pipeline” reforms.

Thank God for the internet, or we’d never have known the truth.

Admittedly, most of the harm done by the policy that enabled Cruz is not usually a mass shooting. The main damage done by the “school-to-prison pipeline” idiocy is: broken bones, smashed teeth, traumatized students, making it impossible for other students to learn, having a bad influence on marginal students and teachers sinking into depression.

Check at your local school for the full results. Thanks to the Obama administration, this crackpot theory is sweeping school districts across the nation!

The next time Democrats control Congress and the presidency, we will have racial quotas for prisons, too. When that happens, you better hope the government hasn’t taken your guns.

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In Zürich for his first public appearance since leaving Breitbart News, Steve Bannon addressed a sold-out arena of more than 1,500 people on Tuesday evening as hundreds of demonstrators protested not far away.

A brigade of 200 police officers decked out in riot gear were deployed to contain the mob of protesters, who carried signs bearing slogans such as “Nazi go home” and “No Tolerance for the Right.” Organized by the Movement for Socialism (BFS), a political party with “Trotskyist” tendencies, the protest targeted Bannon’s economic nationalism as well as “right-wing extremism.”

The BFS also created a webpage to protest the event, accusing Bannon of being a “racist beyond compare” and smearing Breitbart News with the same brush.

“Bannon made the U.S. president popular with society’s right-wing fringe, including the racist news portal Breitbart News he directed,” it reads. “Breitbart News is a known supporter of white supremacists, right-wing extremists who believe that they have a claim to power based on their skin color, which they actively defend.”

“Bannon rescued Trump’s election campaign in 2016 and made sure Trump’s xenophobic and misogynist slogans reached voters,” it continues.

Paradoxically, while the demonstrators railed against Bannon, insisting that he had no right to speak, inside the venue Bannon was defending free speech and the right of all to express their opinions, even those with whom we strenuously disagree. Informed of the protests, Bannon publicly recognized their right to do so as part of a free democratic society.

The contrast of world-views could not be more evident.

“Should appearances of people like Bannon, who represents the emblem of the alt-right movement, be tolerated?” the BFS asked. “Or, in other words, should we simply treat racist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic propaganda as if it were a legitimate opinion deserving of a public platform?”

“The answer is no!” the socialists said.

“The fact that such positions are defended with the sham argument of freedom of expression and given space and a hearing is not tolerable,” they added.

“The mass graves in the Mediterranean and on the U.S. southern border, the everyday life of violence against women, the toxic racism that pervades our institutions and our daily lives speak for themselves,” they said.

“To tolerate the ‘opinions’ of Steve Bannon means to tolerate this violence,” they conclude.

“Because racism, sexism, antisemitism and fascism are not opinions, but crimes!” the website reads.

Apparently, however, slander, censorship, anti-Americanism, defamation of character, and repression of uncomfortable ideas are all just fine — at least in the minds of Swiss socialists.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome