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Iowa state Sen. Mark Chelgren wants to tweak the dossier that candidates submit when they apply to teaching jobs at the states universities. In addition to a CV, sample syllabuses, and some writing samples, hed like one other thing: their party registration.

Im under the understanding that right now they can hire people because of diversity, he told the Des Moines Register. And where are university faculty less diverse than party registration? Thats the theory behind the proposed bill Chelgren has filed, which would institute a hiring freeze at state universities until the number of registered Republicans on faculty comes within 10 percent of the number of registered Democrats.

Bills proposed in state legislatures are easy fodder for outrage some wacky proposals get introduced every year. But Chelgren who, it should be noticed, claimed to hold a degree in business that turned out to be a certificate from a Sizzler steakhouse is not an outlier. In North Carolina, a similar proposal was introduced and then tabled earlier this month. And at CPAC, the conclave for conservatives held in Washington last month, newly appointed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos zeroed in on college faculty. She warned college students in the crowd to be wary of attempts to indoctrinate them: The faculty, from adjunct professors to deans, tell you what to do, what to say, and more ominously, what to think.

Fear of a liberal university faculty has been a feature of modern conservatism for decades, woven into the very foundations of the modern conservative movement although the attacks on universities have not always taken the form of legislation or calls for ideological diversity. The adoption of the language of diversity and pluralism serves mainly as a new way to skewer the left using its own vocabulary.

But no matter how often conservatives call attention to the ideological imbalance in the professorate, they fail to affect the makeup of college faculties. Indeed, faculties are markedly more liberal today than they were when the fight began. But persuading sociology departments to hire more Republicans is not really the point. Instead, these attacks have turned into a tool for undermining higher education, part of a far more serious and far less conservative project of dismantling American universities altogether.

It began with the communists. (Almost everything about modern conservatism begins with the communists.) At the dawn of the cold war, the Red Scare snaked its way through American universities, targeting left-leaning professors who found that not even tenure could save them from political persecution. The scare turned conservatives and liberals alike into happy red-hunters, as administrators and professors entered a contest of patriotic one-upmanship: loyalty oaths, hearings, purges.

Ray Ginger, a historian at Harvard Business School, was forced to resign in 1954 when he refused to take the loyalty oath Harvard demanded of him and his wife. They had to leave their home; his wife, nine months pregnant at the time, was forced to give birth as a charity patient. The marriage soon fell apart, and alcoholism claimed Gingers life at age 50. Rutgers fired two professors and allowed a third to resign after they refused to testify before the Senate red-hunt committee. No US university would hire them, and two were forced out of academia altogether.

The university scare more closely resembled the Red Scare in Hollywood than the one within the federal government. With the government, the fear was straightforward espionage: spies and blackmail and treason. With entertainment and education, it was the more nebulous fear of brainwashing, a worry that there was a softness in the American mind that could be exploited by nefarious filmmakers and professors.

For conservatives, anxieties about communist professors co-existed with anxieties about liberal ones. Indeed, a significant part of the conservative theory of politics was that the slippery slope toward communism began with New Deal-style liberalism. In his 1951 book God and Man at Yale, written in the midst of the university scare, William F. Buckley Jr. had little to say about communists. He instead made the case that Yale University had become infested with liberal professors who, in promoting secularism and Keynesian economics, had torn the school from its traditionally Christian and capitalist roots.

As McCarthyism waned, Buckleys argument became more prevalent on the right. Thanks to growing affluence and the GI Bill, millions more students were entering Americas colleges and universities. They were unlikely to become communists, but Keynesians? That was far easier to imagine.

In a 1963 piece for his Ivory Tower column in National Review (a regular feature on higher education underscoring just how much the state of Americas colleges worried the right), Russell Kirk dismissed concerns with communist professors. People who think that the Academy is honeycombed with crypto-Communists are wide of the mark, he wrote. At most, never more than 5 per cent of American college teachers were Communists. The real threat, Kirk maintained, came from liberal groupthink.

And how had the academy become so biased toward liberalism? Because administrators promoted liberals and demoted conservatives. That was the common conservative critique, anyway. William Rusher, publisher of National Review, laid out the plight of these conservative scholars: They face many tribulations. Advancement comes hard. They are victimized by their departments. Passed over for funds to support their research, Rusher argued, these conservative professors became a neglected generation of scholars.

The arguments that folks like Buckley and Kirk and Rusher were advancing in the 1950s and 1960s are nearly indistinguishable from those conservatives make today. But while the arguments have remained the same, something crucial has changed: the case for what to do about it.

Conservatives are certainly correct in their central claim: In the professoriate at large, and particularly in the humanities, the number of liberals and leftists far outstrip the number of conservative. This varies by field (you will find conservatives in in economics departments, business schools, and some sciences) and by school (Hillsdale College and Bob Jones University are hardly hotbeds of liberalism). But in general, the ivory tower indisputably tilts left. Whether this constitutes a problem that needs solving is open to debate, but even among those who feel it is a problem, solutions are hard to come by.

In God and Man at Yale, Buckley held that left-leaning faculty should be replaced by ones more in line with the universitys more conservative traditions. The best guardians of those traditions, he argued, were not faculty or administrators but alumni, who should be given the power to determine the colleges curriculum. They would do this through the power of the purse: withholding donations until the university administration became so desperate that they restructured the curriculum and changed up the faculty to meet alumni demands.

Whats important here is not the mechanism for change Buckleys alumni model was unworkable (it assumed Yale alumni all agreed with his goals and had more financial leverage than they did) but the theory behind it. Buckley was opposed to Yales liberal orthodoxies not because they were orthodoxies, but because they were liberal. He believed the university should be indoctrinating students; he just preferred they be indoctrinated in free-market capitalism and Christianity.

Over time, conservative efforts shifted from changing the liberal makeup of the university to building alternative institutions and safeguarding conservative students. Organizations like Young Americans for Freedom and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute became gathering spaces for young right-wingers, while a swath of new think tanks were erected for the purpose of getting conservative research and ideas into circulation. By the 1980s, anti-liberal student magazines like the Dartmouth Review served as feeders for Buckleys National Review and other conservative publications.

But what of the professors? They came under fire again in the 1990s and 2000s. Books like Allan Blooms Closing of the American Mind and Dinesh DSouzas Illiberal Education popularized the idea that professors infected their students with relativism, liberalism, and leftism, laying the intellectual groundwork for a new effort to limit the influence of liberal scholars.

But when those attacks came, they came wrapped in an entirely new logic and language: ideological diversity.

Lets pause here for a second, because this is important. In the 1990s, there was a real shift in American culture and politics, centered on multiculturalism and the postmodernism. Multiculturalism held that diversity was a positive value, because people from different backgrounds brought with them different perspectives, and a wide range of perspectives was good for intellectual debate. Postmodernism, a more academic idea, held at least in some of its guises that truth was inaccessible, perhaps nonexistent, that everything might be relative, everything might be perspective.

Conservatives didnt like either one of these shifts. Social conservatives like Pat Buchanan and Bill Bennett saw multiculturalism as a thinly veiled attack on the West (read: white European culture). Likewise, the rejection of knowable truths was an affront to believers in a fixed moral universe based on shared values. Multiculturalism, postmodernism these were anathema to their conservatism.

Except multiculturalism was also incredibly useful. If diversity of perspectives was good, and if universities valued that diversity enough for it be a factor in hiring, then surely the paucity of conservative professors was a wrong to be remedied?

Enter the pro-diversity conservatives, who have taken the arguments of the left and turned them into tools to expand conservatives presence in university faculty. The most visible early proponent of this approach was a former leftist, David Horowitz, who in 2003 founded the Campaign for Fairness and Inclusion in Higher Education (later renamed Students for Academic Freedom). The very name of the campaign suggested that Horowitz was committed to a pluralistic model of higher education dedicated to equity and balance.

The central project of Students for Academic Freedom was the Academic Bill of Rights. In its definition of academic freedom, the Academic Bill of Rights homed in immediately on intellectual diversity. It never mentioned conservatism, but rather advocated protecting students from the imposition of political, ideological, or religious orthodoxy. Given that Horowitz had widely criticized the one-party classroom and the liberal atmosphere of the academy, this equation of academic freedom with intellectual diversity amounted to a call to protect conservative professors and students.

That same framework could also be found in the 2009 book The Politically Correct University, published by the American Enterprise Institute. It included a chapter laying out the route to academic pluralism and another that claimed the academys definition and practice of diversity is too narrow and limited, arguing instead for a more inclusive definition of diversity that encompasses intellectual diversity.

In some rare cases, conservatives borrowed the language not just of diversity but of postmodernism. Horowitz asserted that the reason there needs to be more ideological diversity on campus is that there are no correct answers to controversial issues. This is a long way indeed from conservatives traditional rejection of relativism. Indeed, one could fairly wonder whether there was anything conservative about it at all.

So conservatives found a new argument for hiring more conservative professors. What they had not found was a way to convince universities to actually hire them. And this is the perennial problem with conservative critiques of higher education, the reason they scurried away into think tanks or places like Hillsdale college: There doesnt appear to be any mechanism to make universities hire more conservative faculty members.

This is in sharp contrast to the rights power to shape precollege education. Through school boards and state legislatures, conservatives have had real impact on public school curricula around the nation. They have won wars over textbooks, standards, even Advanced Placement guidelines. But that power smacks into a wall when it comes to higher education, where traditions of academic freedom and shared governance between faculty and administrators create real limits to external meddling.

Which is why conservatives are so often left lobbing rhetorical bombs at universities, and why bills like those in Iowa and North Carolina usually wind up quietly tabled. There is no legislative fix for ideological imbalance in the classroom, nor any general agreement that it is a problem that should be fixed.

The most interesting work being done on the topic on liberal academic groupthink is at Heterodox Academy, directed by the NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. The organization brings together scholars from across the country who are committed to promoting greater viewpoint diversity on campuses. But look through the list of solutions Haidt and his colleagues provide, and you wont find a single piece of legislation among them. Indeed, what youll find reading lists, student government resolutions, college heterodoxy ratings is aimed almost entirely at students, not at hiring committees.

The right is still intent on undercutting what they see as the liberal political power of the university. But theyre taking a different tack, pursuing their goals in more structural ways: weakening tenure, slashing budgets, upping teaching loads. It would be easy to dismiss this as simply a result of austerity programs, which have cut public services to the bone in states across America. But in states like Wisconsin and North Carolina, however, the cuts have been accompanied by rhetoric that makes the true goal clear: attacking curriculums and professors who seem too liberal, and weakening the overall power of the university.

Take North Carolina. Since Republicans took over the state government in the Tea Party wave of 2010, the states universities have been under constant attack. Centers on the environment, voter engagement, and poverty studies have all been shuttered by the Board of Governors, which is appointed by the state legislature.

No sooner had Pat McCrory come into the governors office in 2013 than he began making broadsides against the university, using stark economic measures to target liberal arts programs, like gender studies, with which he disagreed. His stated view was that university programs should be funded based on how many of their graduates get jobs.

Notably, the McCrory campaign was bankrolled by Art Pope, founder of the Pope Center for Higher Education (now the Martin Center), an organization dedicated to increasing the diversity of ideas taught on campus. As its policy director, Jay Schalin, explained in 2015, the crisis at the university stems from the ideas that are being discussed and promoted: multiculturalism, collectivism, left-wing post-modernism. He wants less Michel Foucault on campus, more Ayn Rand.

But bills calling for the banning of works by leftist historian Howard Zinn or hiring professors based on party registration havent yet made it out of the proposal stage. What has? Steep funding cuts that have led to higher tuition, smaller faculties, and reduced access to higher education for low-income students.

That is the real threat to the professorate, and to the university more broadly. And as with the strategic conservative embrace of postmodernism, it also represents an erosion of a worldview that once understood the value of an advanced education beyond mere job preparation or vocational training. Unable to reverse the ivory towers tilt, many on the right are willing to smash it altogether, another sign of the nihilism infecting the conservative project more broadly.

Nicole Hemmer, a Vox columnist, is the author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. She is an assistant professor at the University of Virginias Miller Center and co-host of the Past Present podcast.

The Big Idea is Voxs home for smart, often scholarly excursions into the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture typically written by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at thebigidea@vox.com.

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Eternally frustrated by "liberal" universities, conservatives now want ... - Vox

A federal tax-reform plan will not be concluded in time for Finance Minister Bill Morneaus 2017 budget as the Liberal government waits to see how promised tax changes in the United States will affect Canada.

During the 2015 election campaign, the Liberals pledged to raise $3-billion in new revenue by eliminating tax breaks that primarily benefit wealthy Canadians or are ineffective.

March 22 federal budget will focus on job growth: Morneau (The Canadian Press)

Mr. Morneau had intended the budget to reflect the final results of a review of all tax credits, but sources say the process will extend beyond that date. The budget, to be delivered on March 22, is likely to eliminate some tax credits and will also focus on skills training in response to rapid changes in the work force.

Read more: To paint a portrait of the Liberals federal budget, Morneau will have to get crafty

Our budget will be very much about trying to increase jobs in this country, to create opportunities for people today, for their children and for their grandchildren, Mr. Morneau said. It will be about how we can help Canadians get the skills that they need in a dynamic and changing economy. Mr. Morneau has little room for new spending, so his budget is not expected to include a major change in direction. It will provide new detail on existing government plans for infrastructure spending, innovation and research in addition to the review of tax credits. Business groups had argued that the more complex aspects of the tax reforms would need more debate and consultation beyond the budget date.

Tax credits are worth more than $100-billion a year in forgone federal revenue. They cover everything from tax breaks for apprentice vehicle mechanics buying tools to deductions related to investments such as stock options or the sale of a primary residence.

Extending the tax review would allow the government time to see how U.S. President Donald Trump implements his pledges of major tax reform and factor that in to its own plans. Business groups say Canada could be at a disadvantage when it comes to retaining companies and highly skilled workers if the United States sharply reduces personal and business tax rates.

Sources say the budgets focus on skills will be part of a longer-term approach to the economy as the ratio of working-age Canadians to retirees shrinks. Measures to encourage specific groups including aboriginals, low-income people and women with young children to boost their participation in the work force will be a central theme.

Well be thinking about not only how we can grow the economy, but how we can ensure that Canadians are prepared for the exciting and good opportunities that will come out not only for this generation, but for the next generation as well, Mr. Morneau told reporters after announcing the budget date in the House of Commons.

Conservative finance critic Grard Deltell said he hopes the government shelves the tax credit review in light of the changes in the United States.

If the Trump administration tables some new direction to have less fees and less tax for business, well, we must address it because its very serious, Mr. Deltell said. America, as you know, is our most important partner, but also our most important competitor.

The Conservatives also want a more ambitious timeline for erasing the deficit. A finance department report recently said the budget will not be balanced until the 2050s.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said the Liberals should follow through on closing tax loopholes for the rich and deliver on their promises to Indigenous people.

Mr. Morneaus advisory council on economic growth which worked directly with the Finance Minister and his team over the past year called for an increased focus on skills training in a February report.

The Liberal government was elected on a central plank of running deficits to boost economic growth through infrastructure spending, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer and a Senate committee say the money has been slow to get out the door.

The 2017 budget is expected to provide more detailed breakdowns of the long-term spending plan for infrastructure. The numbers are not likely to change much from what Mr. Morneau outlined in his Nov. 1 fiscal update, which increased the total to $186.7-billion over 12 years.

While some new projects are expected to be highlighted in the budget as examples of what is to come, funding announcements on big projects will have to wait. Ottawa has not formally launched its second phase of funding for large projects, which means provinces have not submitted wish lists.

Mr. Morneaus Nov. 1 update added trade and transportation as well as rural and northern communities to the three categories public transit, green infrastructure and social infrastructure on which the Liberals have promised to focus.

One senior government official said the budget will have more to say on federal efforts to promote trade infrastructure.

John Gamble, president and CEO of the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies Canada, said his members are not seeing evidence of increased construction in spite of promises from the Liberals and the Conservatives before them to hike infrastructure spending.

Were very excited and very supportive of the fact that weve seen three successive budgets, from two governments, and each one of them has legitimately claimed to be the largest infrastructure investment in Canadian history, he said. However, in practical terms, we have just not seen the corresponding level of design activity so far. We know there are a lot of reasons. Were just trying to convey a sense of urgency.

With a report from Robert Fife

Follow Bill Curry on Twitter: @curryb

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Liberals extend tax credit review beyond 2017 federal budget, keeping an eye on Trump - The Globe and Mail

Updated March 08, 2017 12:18:07

It is shaping as the Barnett Government's last roll of the electoral dice.

Later today, the WA Premier and Treasurer will front the media armed with their Treasury-assessed election costings, hoping to cast themselves as the trusted hand to guide the state back to a balanced budget and economic prosperity.

But for a government that pledged to fight the election on jobs and the economy, its campaign has looked more like lily-pad politics, skipping from issue to issue without a consistent message or clear core theme.

Some Liberals are understood to be increasingly frustrated by the lack of focus in their party's campaign message.

While Liberal campaign advertising has questioned the experience and credentials of Labor leader Mark McGowan, it has also traversed a wide range of issues from the renewable energy target to claims Labor is planning a swag of secret tax increases.

On the campaign trail, the messaging has been equally mixed. A joint media conference by the Premier and Treasurer last week seemed to flag a targeted attack on Labor's costings, and its unwillingness to submit them to Treasury.

But in the days preceding and following that media conference, the Premier's public pledges ranged from a tourist road to Balladonia and a boost to aquaculture, to sporting statues at the new stadium and an expansion of free public transport on public holidays.

Questioned about the Liberal campaign's apparent lack of focus, Mr Barnett denied it was out of touch with the voters' main concerns of jobs and economic security.

"No-one has made that comment to me, but can I say we have put out 70 policies. We have put out, from my experience, the most detailed agenda across every area," he said.

"A lot of that is about the growth in new sectors such as tourism, such as international relations, agriculture in particular."

By contrast, WA Labor has been relentless in its attack on the Barnett Government's plan to part-privatise Western Power, both in its advertising and on the campaign trail.

Mark McGowan was interviewed on the ABC 7.30 program on Monday night and appeared to be in a parallel universe as he all but ignored the questions from presenter Leigh Sales, and repeatedly returned to his campaign themes.

Asked about minor parties, he responded:

"Well, minor parties have always been around, and they've always attracted votes. But my role as the leader of the Labor Party is to set out a comprehensive agenda for Western Australia, and that's what we've done," he said.

"And it's based around jobs, not selling Western Power, our plan for health all of those sorts of initiatives are the sorts of things that we're standing for."

Asked about union election advertising, he responded:

"I don't know. I don't know the answer to the question."

"But there are important issues out there that all sorts of groups are advertising around. The sale of Western Power, which I oppose. Better funding for schools, which I support. Making sure that we have a decent approach to health and community safety and the like."

Mr Barnett spent most of the same day defending his party's preference deal with One Nation, and being increasingly frustrated by media questions about One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.

"Look it is not what the West Australian public is talking about, the only people talking about Pauline Hanson, with great respect, are the media. No-one else is," he said.

Treasurer Mike Nahan dismissed questions suggesting the Liberal campaign had lacked an effective central theme to make up the ground on Labor in the last days before the election.

He said jobs and growth remain the Liberals key campaign issues and they would be reinforced with the release of the Liberal party election costings.

"It shows good government, focuses on what has to be done even if it's not necessarily popular. There's no flim-flam in our policies," he said.

He said the Liberals had a clear and credible plan to reduce debt and fund capital works through the part sale of Western Power, and would chart a path back to budget surplus by the end of the decade.

He said Labor had no plan.

"How do you reduce the deficit? How do you pay down debt? And how do you fund $5 billion in extra promises?" he said.

"If people fall for that, the warning I have for them is it's a one way street. After Saturday, they're stuck with him for four years."

Topics: government-and-politics, elections, wa

First posted March 08, 2017 08:44:19

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Analysis: Liberal lily-pad politics undermines efforts to cut through on Labor promises - ABC Online

Is there any party less aptly named than the Liberal Democrats? A truly liberal party would embrace the chance to shape Britains future as a self-governing nation outside the EU, free to trade with the world. And a democratic one would respect what the people voted for in one of the biggest exercises of democracy in modern times. Instead, the Lib Dems want to stop Brexit.

With only nine MPs, the Lib Dems can do little harm in the House of Commons, but there are over 100 of them in the House of Lords, many rashly given peerages by David Cameron to placate his Coalition allies. Those peers are seeking to force the Government to hold a second referendum on the final Brexit deal; they say they will vote against the Bill that will authorise Theresa May to trigger Article 50 unless their scheme for another public vote is written into law.

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The Liberal Democrats should learn to respect democracy, even if they don't like the Brexit result - Telegraph.co.uk

An attempt by the Liberal governmentto gut the genetic discriminationbill was defeated by a coalition of MPs from across party lines Tuesday evening, despite constitutional concerns raised by Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Alberta Liberal MPRandyBoissonnaulthadintroduced a motion in the House to remove key sections of the legislation, including those relating topenalties for genetic discriminationand languageforbidding employers from subjecting job applicants to a genetic test. His efforts to dramatically reduce the bill'sscope weredefeated in a voice vote.

A number of Liberal backbenchers, including Toronto-areaMPs Jennifer O'ConnellandPam Damoff, spoke in favour of Bill S-201 An Act to Prohibit and Prevent Genetic Discrimination as originally drafted by recently retired Liberal senator Jim Cowan.

Conservative and NDP MPs also offered their support and chided the cabinet for accepting the "scaremongering" rhetoricof the insurance industry.

Now, at the request of the government, there will be a recorded vote (also referred to as a standing vote) on Boissonault's amendmentsWednesday evening.

Cowan said in an interview with CBC News Tuesday that the Trudeau cabinet's opposition to the bill is "curious" given the party's vocal embrace ofsuch legislation during the last election campaign and raisedthe possibility that aggressive lobbying efforts by the insurance industrysoured support.

Anna Gainey, the president of the federal Liberals, wroteto the Canadian Coalition for Genetic Fairness in October 2015 promising a Liberal government would "introduce measures, including possible legislative change, to prevent this [genetic] discrimination."

"Today, even people without symptoms can be denied life, mortgage and disability insurance and even rejected for employment based on genetic testing that shows risk of future illness. Many other countries have passed legislation on this problem. Canada is an outlier," she said in the letter addressed to the chair of the coalition, Bev Heim-Myers, and obtained by the CBC News.

Public lobbying records show there have been a number of meetings between the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Associationand ManulifeFinancialand senior members of Wilson-Raybould's office over thelast year where Bill S-201was the subject of conversation.

Liberal P.E.I. MP Sean Casey,who was, until recently,the parliamentary secretary to the minister of justice, was also lobbied by the insurance associationsix times in the last year.

Cowan, who introduced the legislation in the Red Chamber more than a year ago, pointed to the lobbying efforts as a potential explanation for the cabinet's skittishness.

"All I can say is look at the number of lobbyists from the insurance industry; they have been very, very active at the federal and provincial levels, and they've been lobbying [the government] very heavily, and lobbying MPs and senators. Now, is that the reason [the cabinet] is opposed to this bill? Some would say yes. But, as they say, I couldn't possibly comment."

After a strong commitment for the bill from the party in the last election, "it makes no sense to me," said Cowan.

Records are vague as to what was discussed during these lobbyist meetings, but the industry has not hidden its opposition to Cowan's private member'sbill, a piece of legislation easily passed the Senate last April, and the House of Commons justice committee inDecember.

Bill S-201, introduced by Cowanin December 2015, would add genetic characteristics as a protected ground under the Canadian Human Rights Act, introducepenalties for discrimination, and forbid employers from subjecting job applicants to a genetic test.

Recently retired Liberal senator James Cowan says aggressive lobbying by the insurance industry could be the reason the Trudeau cabinet is now opposed to his genetic discrimination bill. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

The bill would also allow people to refuse to disclose the results of a genetic test to anybody. Medical experts have said the legislation is necessary to counter the fears associated with potentially lifesaving genetic testing, which could produce resultsthat would help doctors better tailor health treatments.

The insurance industry recently committed to never asking an applicant to undergo a genetic test, but said it will ask for and retain the right to potentially use genetic testing information for life insurance applications for coverage over$250,000.

"The $250,000 limit helps ensure that individuals with knowledge of significant health risks through genetic testing information, cannot apply for unusually large life insurance policies without disclosing this information. Otherwise, the cost of insurance would increase for everyone and fewer Canadians would be able to afford coverage," the group said in a statement.

Cowan said there is no proof of widespread fraud in any other jurisdiction that has protections against genetic discrimination, including in the U.S., Great Britain, France and Israel.

"Their initial point was this will ruin the insurance industry as we know it. What's happened in all other countries that have protections like this? As far aswe know the insurance industry is doing just fine," he said.

Wilson-Raybould has said she is opposed to the legislationbecause she believesit treads on provincial jurisdiction over the insurance industry. (The bill does not specifically mention the insurance industry by name.)

She recently wrote a letter to the Council of the Federation, the group that represents the provinces and territories, asking for its opinion on the legislation.Three provinces, B.C., Manitoba, and Quebec,have raised some issues with the bill as written.

NDP MP Don Davies said during the House debate on Tuesday that the government'sclaims of constitutional problems are "a smokescreen and no more."

Cowanadded constitutional experts have been widely consulted on the bill, and have testified beforethe Senate and House committees that Parliament is well within its rights tolegislate in this area.

He said hewrote letters to the provinces when drafting this legislation and not one responded to his inquiries with any concerns about the bill.

CBC is not responsible for 3rd party content

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MPs reject Liberal government's attempt to gut genetic discrimination bill - CBC.ca

March 7, 2017 BOSTONPerhaps it was only inevitable that in Americas most Democratic state, Nilo Asgaris elephant sticker would get her in trouble.

Amid the intense fervor of the 2016 election, the Boston University student was eating lunch when a fellow student spotted the Republican emblem on her phone case and accosted her.

He came up and started yelling at me, says Ms. Asgari. He didnt know anything about me.

Like the fact that her parents immigrated to the US from Iran, for example and that she opposes the Trumpist rhetoric about immigrants and foreigners.

There are some values that people associate with the Republican Party that can be really offensive to certain groups, says Asgari. People assume that just because someone identifies with the Republican Party that they share those views and its not necessarily true.

Confronted with such pushback, conservatives at Boston universities are flocking to College Republican clubs causing membership to double or even triple. Some of the new members feel inspired by Trump to up their political engagement, but often it is to reaffirm to themselves as well as others on campus that there are more strains of conservatism than just Trumpism.

Feelings about politics are running very strong, says Virginia Sapiro, a professor at Boston University who specializes in political psychology. I think pretty much everyone who cares about politics feels vulnerable for various reasons. And for those in the minority, seeking a safe and congenial space to have conversations with like-minded people would seem attractive.

According to a 2016 Pew Research poll, 57 percent of Millennials identify as Democratic and 36 percent identify as Republican. Democrats also claim more female and college-educated voters. That can make conservatism a tough sell.

During the Obama years, the Northeastern College Republicans had about 30 members, with 10 to 15 attending the weekly meetings. Since the election, the club has grown to almost 100 members, with 35 to 50 attending each meeting.

The Boston University (BU) College Republicans and Tufts Republicans cite similar increases. BUs attendance has tripled in recent months from 10 to 30 students, and Tufts attendance has doubled over the last year, with about 40 students attending each meeting.

Once inside the safety of a Northeastern University classroom, a handful of students swap winter beanies for the iconic red hats stowed in their backpack: Make America Great Again. One student opens a laptop emblazoned with a "Johnson-Weld 2016" sticker, and another shows off a new camouflaged NRA baseball cap.

This is the College Republicans club a weekly reprieve from liberal campus life, if only for an hour. This is the only place on campus during the week when you can say whatever you want and nobody will judge you, says Nathan Kotler, the clubs secretary.

During an overview of the weeks media coverage, club leaders play a Fox News segment, UConn professor claims Trump voters motivated by white supremacy. All 40 students laugh in unison at what they see as the lame responses of the professor to Mr. Carlsons questioning.

At the end of the meeting, they put their red hats and TRUMP for President T-shirts back in their backpacks before leaving the classroom.

We are a minority on campus, says Noah Tagliaferri, president of the Northeastern College Republicans. It is cool when students find out there is a group on campus where they dont have to feel like an outcast.

Despite the camaraderie of College Republicans club, young conservatives say they feel scared or embarrassed to publicize their political beliefs for fear that other students will ostracize them or professors will grade their assignments differently.

Nobody wants to be called a name or have no friends because they are the Republican kid in the group, says George Behrakis, a freshman economics major at Tufts University and president of the Tufts Republicans club. And if you write something in class and you show any sort of bias toward conservatism people feel like they will get lower grades.

Patrick Collins, executive director of public relations at Tufts, says the university "encourages the free exchange of ideas, diverse opinions and beliefs" and supports an environment "in which all students feel free to express themselves."

Noah Tagliaferri, president of the Northeastern University College Republicans, and Nathan Kotler, secretary of the Northeastern University College Republicans.

Since the election, Asgari says she has removed the elephant logo from her phone case and any other public Republican paraphernalia. But she says she is still a proud Republican: She interns with the Massachusetts Republican Party and she is the membership director for BUs College Republicans.

Like Asgari, young Republicans at Boston universities are trying to distance themselves from the stereotype of a Trump-supporter racist, sexist, opposed to same-sex marriage, and so forth.

There are different strains of conservatism in Northeasterns club, says Mr. Tagliaferri: Some members abhor Trump, and some identify as libertarians. But I will say none of them are the strain that are on Buzzfeed or Vox giving the Nazi salute.

Mr. Behrakis says he wants to start challenging preconceived notions on campus by chiming into the political debates with a moderate conservative viewpoint. And when professors make jokes at Republicans expense in class, he plans to call them out.

When we try and do outreach we try to change the narrative on campus about who Republicans are, says Behrakis. If we can prove some people wrong, that is a step in the right direction.

Club members believe they could be a majority on campus someday if only the Republican Party would mirror their clubs platforms and let go of a social ideology that opposes abortion rights, same-sex marriage, or allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice.

Those are ageist issues, says Tagliaferri. Those are issues for 75-years-olds who sip their bourbon and yell to their grandkids about how Bulgarians are ruining the country.

But for some reason the old-school Republicans wont let it go, adds Mr. Kotler. But the younger Republicans, he motions to the classroom, there is nobody in this room that opposes gay marriage.

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In liberal Boston, College Republicans see club membership triple - Christian Science Monitor

The liberal elites, who bear significant responsibility for the death of our democracy, now hold themselves up as the saviors of the republic. They have embarked, despite their own corruption and their complicity inneoliberalismand the crimes of empire, on a self-righteous moral crusade to topple Donald Trump. It is quite a show. They attack Trumps lies, denounce executive orders such as his travel ban as un-American and blame Trumps election on Russia or FBI Director James Comey rather than the failed neoliberal policies they themselves advanced.

Where was this moral outrage when our privacy was taken from us by the security and surveillance state, the criminals on Wall Street were bailed out, we were stripped of our civil liberties and 2.3 million men and women were packed into our prisons, most of them poor people of color? Why did they not thunder with indignation as money replaced the vote and elected officials and corporate lobbyists instituted our system of legalized bribery? Where were the impassioned critiques of the absurd idea of allowing a nation to be governed by the dictates of corporations, banks and hedge fund managers? Why did they cater to the foibles and utterings of fellow elites, all the while blacklisting critics of the corporate state and ignoring the misery of the poor and the working class? Where was their moral righteousness when the United States committed war crimes in the Middle East and our militarized police carried out murderous rampages? What the liberal elites do now is not moral. It is self-exaltation disguised as piety. It is part of the carnival act.

The liberal class, ranging from Hollywood and the Democratic leadership to The New York Times and CNN, refuses to acknowledge that it sold the Democratic Party to corporate bidders; collaborated in the evisceration of our civil liberties; helped destroy programs such as welfare, orchestrate the job-killing North American Free Trade Agreement and Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, wage endless war, debase our public institutions including the press and build the worlds largest prison system.

The truth is hard to find. The truth is hard to know. The truth is more important than ever, reads a television ad for The New York Times. What the paper fails to add is that the hardest place to find the truth about the forces affecting the life of the average American and the truth about empire is in The New York Times itself. News organizations, from the Times to the tawdry forms of entertainment masquerading as news on television, have rendered most people and their concerns invisible. Liberal institutions, especially the press, function, as the journalist and author Matt Taibbi says, as the guardians of the neoliberal and imperial orthodoxy.

It is the job of the guardians of orthodoxy to plaster over the brutal reality and cruelty of neoliberalism and empire with a patina of civility or entertainment. They pay homage to a nonexistent democracy and nonexistent American virtues. The elites, who live in enclaves of privilege in cities such as New York, Washington and San Francisco, scold an enraged population. They tell those they dismiss as inferiors to calm down, be reasonable and patient and trust in the goodness of the old ruling class and the American system. African-Americans have heard this kind of cant preached by the white ruling class for a couple of centuries.

Because the system works for the elites, and because the elites interact only with other elites, they are mystified about the revolt rising up from the decayed cities they fly over in the middle of the country. They think they can stuff this inexplicable rage back in the box. They continue to offer up absurd solutions to deindustrialization and despair, such asThomas Friedmans endorsementof a culture of entrepreneurship and an ethic of pluralism. These kinds of bromides are advertising jingles. They bear no more connection to reality than Trump promising to make America great again.

I walked into the Harvard Club in New York City after midnight on election night. The well-heeled New York elites stood, their mouths agape, looking up at the television screens in the oak-paneled bar while wearing their Clinton campaign straw hats. They could not speak. They were in shock. The system they funded to prevent anyone from outside their circle, Republican or Democrat, from achieving the presidency had inexplicably collapsed.

Taibbi, when I interviewed him in New York, said political power in our corporate state is controlled by a tripartite system. You have to have the assent of the press, the donor class, and one of the two [major] political parties to get in, said Taibbi, author of Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus.

Its an exclusive club. Its like a membership system. They all have to agree and confer their blessing on the candidate. Trump somehow managed to get past all three of those obstacles. And he did it essentially by putting all of them on trial. He put the press on trial and villainized them with the public. I think it was a brilliant masterstroke that nobody saw coming. But it wouldnt have been possible if their unpopularity hadnt been building for years and years and years.

Its a kind ofStockholm syndrome, he said of the press.

The reporters, candidates, and candidates aides are all thrown together. Theyre stuck in the same environment with each other day after day, month after month. After a while, they start to unconsciously adopt each others values. Then they start to live in the same neighborhoods. They go to the same parties. Then it becomes a year-after-year kind of thing. Then after that, theyre the same people. Its a total perversion of whats supposed to happen. Were [the press] supposed to be on the outside, not identifying with these people. But now, its a club. Journalists enjoy the experience of being close to power.

At first the press, especially the television press, could not get enough of Trump. He received23 times the coverageof Sen. Bernie Sanders, who spoke about things that do not make for great televisioninequality and corporate corruption. Trump brought in the advertising dollars. 2016 wasCNNs most profitable year. Then, alarmed at Trumps ascendancy, the press set out to destroy him. The press applied its Darth Vader Force choke. It did not work. They tried it again and again. The Force had deserted them.

When a candidate makes a mistake and steps in it[2004 presidential hopeful] Howard Dean is the classic example,the screamthen they [TV news shows] replay it every hour, 100 times a day, Taibbi said.

The critical part is that Dean was already in violation leading up to that moment. He was not the right person because he was anti-war. He got his donations from the wrong people. He makes the mistake. The press pig-piles on the person just instinctively. All this negative attention. The candidate freaks out and apologizes. He disappears for a while. He tries to soldier on. The next thing you know, theres a Page 16 story: Candidate exits the race. Its a script. But it didnt work with Trump.

The press, like the Democratic Party, is an appendage of the consumer society. These institutions are not about politics or news. They are about imparting an experience. They create political personalities, marketed as celebrities, to make us feel good about candidates. These manufactured emotions, the product of the dark arts of the public relations industry, determine how we vote. Issues and policies are irrelevant. It is marketing and entertainment. Trump is a skillful marketer of his fictitious self.

When you work in that environment long enough you unconsciously become an agent for whatever that commercial strategy is, Taibbi said of the press in our corporate-run political theater.

What we call right-wing and liberal media in this country are really just two different strategies of the same kind of nihilistic lizard-brain sensationalism, Taibbi wrote in Insane Clown President. The ideal CNN story is a baby down a well, while the ideal Fox story is probably a baby thrown down a well by a Muslim terrorist or anACORNactivist. Both companies offer the same service, its just that the Fox version is a little kinkier.

The pseudo-events on television displace reality. This is how a reality star becomes president. Sixty million people think Trumps manufactured personathe predominate tycoonon The Apprentice is real. Our perception of the truth is determined by what appears on the screen. If an event is never broadcast, it somehow never happened. The electronic image is the word of God. The corporate state controls most of what is seen and heard on television, what ideas and events can be discussed in the mainstream media and what orthodoxies, including neoliberalism and the war industry, must never be questioned. We suffer an intellectual tyranny as pervasive as that imposed by fascism and communism. Trump, who is as gullible as the most habitual television viewer, exemplifies our cultural and political death. He is no more authentic than Hillary Clinton. But he appears on our screens as more authentic because he is more deeply embedded in the medium that controls our thoughts. He is what is vomited up from the perverted zeitgeist of a nation entranced and dominated by electronic hallucinations.

People have this idea that Trump has no connection with the common man, but he does, Taibbi said. He has exactly the same media habits that ordinary people have. He believes the stuff that he reads on the internet and watches on television implicitly and unquestioningly. That is what gives him that connection with people. He thinks like they do. He has the same habits they have. A classic example is the thing with the so-called 3 millionillegal voters. He reads that, probably in anInfowarsstory, its policy like two minutes later. He doesnt go through the process of asking himself if its untrue. Hes a perfect consumer in that respect. Thats what makes him so dangerous.

[George W.] Bush was childs play compared to what were dealing with now, Taibbi said. Bush was a puppet. He was a vehicle for a very familiar form of right-wing capitalist politics. This Trump thing is totally different. Trump really is the actual engine behind this phenomenon during the entire campaign. There were no people behind the man, I dont think. The presidential campaign has no relation to the issue of whether or not you can govern effectively. The campaign is a television show. The values that decide whether a person becomes a candidate or cant become a candidate are more or less arbitrary. It has a lot to do with the commercial value of the candidate. You cant have an unentertaining candidate because the press needs to make money. They will unconsciously gravitate towards someone who does what Trump does, which is get [website] hits and eyeballs and ratings.

Trumps popularity increased the more the establishment condemned him. This would have sent a profound and disturbing message to anyone not as clueless as our liberal elites. They did not get it. They thought they could trot out Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Hollywood celebrities and get the rubes to fall for their routine one more time. They thought the country would again obey.

The liberal class, by embracing neoliberalism and refusing to challenge the imperial wars, empowered the economic and political structures that destroyed our democracy and gave rise to Trump. Multiculturalism, when it means, to use the words ofCornel West, nothing more than having a president who is a black mascot for Wall Street, betrays the disenfranchised and endows the ruling elites with a false progressivism, a false humanism and a false inclusiveness.

Hillary and Bill Clinton, Joe Biden and the current Democratic Party leadership designed and built the massive system of imprisonment, essentially ended welfare, expanded our wars and pushed through NAFTA. They destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class families and are responsible for the mounds of corpses in the Middle East. Yet these liberal elites speak as if they are champions of racial and economic justice. They appear in choreographed pseudo-events to demonstrate a faux compassion. Now they have been exposed as fakes.

A genuine populism, one defined and often articulated by Bernie Sanders, could sweep the Democratic Party back into power. Regulating Wall Street, publicly financing campaigns, forgiving student debt, demanding universal health care, bailing out homeowners victimized by the banks, ending the wars in the Middle East, instituting a jobs program to repair our decaying infrastructure, dismantling the prison system, restoring the rule of law on the streets of our cities, making college education free and protecting programs such as Social Security would see election victory after election victory.

But this will never happen within the Democratic Party. It refuses to prohibit corporate money. The party elites know that if corporate money disappears, so do they. The partys hierarchy, pressured by Obama and the Clintons, elevated Tom Perez over Keith Ellisonwhom a major donor to the party, Haim Saban,condemns as an anti-Semitebecause of Ellisons criticism of the Israeli governmentto head the Democratic National Committee. They will press forward repeating the same silly slogans and trying to use the now ineffective Force choke on their political enemies. They may have lost control of the Congress and the White House and hold only 16 governorships and majorities in only 31 of the states 99 legislative chambers, but they are incapable of offering any meaningful alternative to neoliberalism and empire. They are devoid of a vision. They can only moralize. They will continue to atrophy and enable the consolidation of an American fascism.

Fyodor Dostoevskyexcoriated Russias bankrupt liberal class at the end of the 19th century. Russian liberals mouthed values they did not defend. Their stated ideals bore no relationship to their actions. They were filled with a suffocating narcissism.

In Notes From Underground, Dostoevsky lampooned the defeated dreamers of the liberal class, those who preached goodness but lived in moral squalor. These defeated dreamers denounced the social and cultural depravity they had largely created. They had an open disdain for the uneducated, the poor, the working class, the lesser breeds beneath them. And in the end they ushered in a moral nihilism to empower a dangerous class of demagogues, killers and fools.

I never even managed to become anything: neither wicked nor good, neither a scoundrel nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect, the Underground Man wrote.

And now I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and utterly futile consolation that it is even impossible for an intelligent man seriously to become anything, and only fools become something. Yes, sir, an intelligent man of the nineteenth century must be and is morally obliged to be primarily a characterless being; and a man of character, an active figureprimarily a limited being.

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Donald Trump's Greatest Allies Are the Liberal Elites - Center for Research on Globalization

After rattling Republicans at a host of town halls protesting plans to kill Obamacare, liberal activists are zeroing in on their next target: Neil Gorsuch.

The confirmation battle over President Donald Trumps Supreme Court nominee set to heat up ahead of his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee starting March 20 is shaping up as a pivotal moment for the burgeoning protest movement.

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Persuading Senate Democrats to mount a filibuster of Gorsuch would solidify the influence of the anti-Trump grass roots, on the heels of its success in pressuring the 48-member minority to engineer a historic slow-walking of the presidents Cabinet nominees.

The debate over Gorsuch since Trump nominated him last month has been surprising low key. The highly credentialed federal court judge has impressed Democratic senators in private meetings, raising the possibility hell clear the Senate without a bloody filibuster battle.

But significant public pushback against Gorsuch this month would ramp up the pressure on Democrats who right now are more focused on defending Obamacare and investigating Trumps ties to Russia than on the Supreme Court.

Anti-Trump strategists say the Democratic base is prepared to step up the resistance to Gorsuch.

Stopping a Supreme Court nominee means demonstrating to Democrats that their base doesnt want them cooperating with Donald Trump, Ben Wikler, Washington director of MoveOn.org said. That could prove an easier task for liberal activists than, as Wikler put it, convincing Republicans theyre in political danger if they vote to overturn Obamacare.

The level of potential energy for demanding that Democrats do their jobs is off the charts, Wikler added in an interview.

Veteran Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson said the ongoing controversy over Trump aides previously undisclosed contacts with Russian officials, itself a major topic of town-hall protests over last months recess, will help stoke opposition to Gorsuch.

The idea that you could ram this through and no one would notice gets harder when everyones antenna is up because of other personnel decisions hes made about his administration, Ferguson, a former Hillary Clinton aide, said in an interview.

The Democratic bases alarm about Trumps advisers was on stark display throughout last months procedural blockade of multiple Cabinet nominees. During that campaign against what many of Democrats criticize as the presidents swamp Cabinet, Democratic senators often cited the enthusiasm and commitment of the anti-Trump movement.

Democrats couldnt defeat any of Trumps Cabinet nominees on the Senate floor, but they welcomed the chance to speak for the grass roots even on losing battles. During the height of the confirmation debate over Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) said he was seeing intense and sustained engagement on the Supreme Court as well as on Trumps Cabinet and Obamacare.

A significant part of that engagement began with Indivisible, a new force for mobilizing local anti-Trump demonstrations that was founded by former Democratic congressional aides. The group crafted a script for local activists to use against Gorsuch a week after Trump tapped him for the high court.

If Democrats truly do oppose this nominee, they should oppose him with everything in their toolbox, Indivisible executive director Ezra Levin said in an interview.

But Levin underscored that the Gorsuch script, like other Indivisible directives on strategies for resisting Trump on other fronts, isnt being pushed out to local Indivisible chapters but offered as a model.

Were not dictating anything in terms of how often the anti-Gorsuch language is used, Levin said. We do not want to be heavy-handed or take control of the movement.

And Indivisibles biggest strength the ability to generate large turnout at local town halls that lawmakers hold during congressional recesses may not be available to use against Gorsuch. The GOP-controlled Senate is setting the stage for a full vote on the Supreme Court nominee before Aprils two-week recess, in part to give the Senate enough time to clear a must-pass government funding bill by April 28.

Neil Gorsuch has impressed Democratic senators in private meetings. | Getty

Its unclear how systematic liberal groups will be in their campaign against Gorsuch, who has been making the rounds in the Senate for weeks as part of a largely successful persuasion campaign. Wikler, of MoveOn.org, acknowledged that Gorsuch has had the stage essentially to himself so far but insisted that thats going to change.

Also unclear is whether a Democratic pressure campaign can stop the Senate from approving Gorsuch. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) has predicted his eventual confirmation, either by garnering 60 votes or with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) changing Senate rules to approve Gorsuch with a simple majority.

Ilyse Hogue, president of the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, said she senses the Democratic base getting increasingly concerned about Gorsuch as the March 20 start of his hearings draws nearer. The Affordable Care Act produced the majority of the energy among protesters during last months congressional recess, Hogue said, but were starting to see the seeds of town-hall energy getting redirected at the Supreme Court fight.

These people are flooding town halls and running for office at unprecedented rates, Hogue said of the newly engaged Democratic grass roots. They want elected officials to do their job, and part of that job is digging really hard at the hearings into his record.

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Liberal protesters' next target: Thwarting Gorsuch - POLITICO

Russian hackers are targeting U.S. progressive groups in a new wave of attacks, scouring the organizations emails for embarrassing details and attempting to extract hush money, according to two people familiar with probes being conducted by the FBI and private security firms.

At least a dozen groups have faced extortion attempts since the U.S. presidential election, said the people, who provided broad outlines of the campaign. The ransom demands are accompanied by samples of sensitive data in the hackers possession.

In one case, a non-profit group and a prominent liberal donor discussed how to use grant money to cover some costs for anti-Trump protesters. The identities were not disclosed, and its unclear if the protesters were paid.

At least some groups have paid the ransoms even though there is little guarantee the documents wont be made public anyway. Demands have ranged from about $30,000 to $150,000, payable in untraceable bitcoins, according to one of the people familiar with the probe.

Attribution is notoriously difficult in a computer attack. The hackers have used some of the techniques that security experts consider hallmarks of Cozy Bear, one of the Russian government groups identified as behind last years attack on the Democratic National Committee during the presidential election and which is under continuing investigation. Cozy Bear has not been accused of using extortion in the past, though separating government and criminal actors in Russia can be murky as security experts say some people have a foot in both worlds.

Here's What We Know About Russian Hackers

The Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank with strong links to both the Clinton and Obama administrations, and Arabella Advisors, which guides liberal donors who want to invest in progressive causes, have been asked to pay ransoms, according to people familiar with the probes.

The Center for American Progress declined a pre-publication request for comment. "CAP has no evidence we have been hacked, no knowledge of it and no reason to believe it to be true. CAP has never been subject to ransom, Allison Preiss, a spokeswoman for the center, said in a statement Monday morning.

Its unclear whether Arabella is part of the same campaign as the other dozen groups, according to one of the people familiar with the probes, but the tactics and approach are similar.

If the Arabella attack came from a different group, multiple criminals could be lifting a page from Russias hacking of the 2016 campaign, attempting to leverage the reputational damage that could be inflicted on political organizations by exposing their secrets.

Arabella Advisors was affected by cyber crime, said Steve Sampson, a spokesman for the firm, which lists 150 employees operating in four offices. "All facts indicate this was financially motivated.

QuickTake U.S. Probe of Russia Hacking

During the election Russian hackers heavily targeted the personal email accounts of staffers associated with the Clinton campaign. One of the people who described the current campaign said that in some cases, web-based email accounts are also being targeted because of their heavy use among non-profits.

Along with emails, the hackers are stealing documents frompopular web-based applications like SharePoint, which lets people in different locations work on Microsoft Office files, one of the people said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment when asked about the latest hacks. It is continuing to investigate Russias attempts to influence the election and any possible connections to Trump campaign aides. Russian officials have repeatedly denied any attempt to influence the election or any role in related computer break-ins.

I would be cautious concluding that this has any sort of Russian government backing, said John Hultquist, director of cyber espionage analysis at FireEye Inc., after the outline of the attacks was described to him. Russian government hackers have aggressively targeted think tanks, and even masqueraded as ransomware operations, but its always possible it is just another shakedown.

NSA Has Moderate Confidence in Russia Hacking Report

The hackers targeting of left-leaning groups -- and the sifting of emails for sensitive or discrediting information -- has set off alarms that the attacks could constitute a fresh wave of Russian government meddling in the U.S. political system. The attacks could be designed to look like a criminal caper or they could have the tacit support of Russian intelligence agencies, the people said.

Russias intelligence agencies maintain close relationships with criminal hackers in the country, according to several U.S. government investigations.

None of the possible explanations for the attacks are particularly comforting to the victimized groups, few of which are household names but are part of the foundation of liberal politics in the U.S.

Some of the groups are associated with causes now under attack by the Trump administration. Arabellas founder, Eric Kessler, and its senior managing director, Bruce Boyd, worked for national environmental groups early in their careers. Arabella declined to make Kessler or Boyd available for comment.

The Center for American Progress is a fierce critic of the Trump administration and its policies, and has called for a deeper investigation into contacts by Trumps inner circle with Russian officials.

Its unclear if Trump or his top aides have been briefed on the investigation.

The President has accused liberal groups of sending protesters to congressional town halls, mocking his opponents in a tweet on Feb. 21. The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists. Sad!, Trump tweeted from his personal account.

Regardless of who is behind the latest round of hacks and ransom requests, there is also indication that state-sponsored hackers continue a broader targeting of liberal groups in the U.S.

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The day after the election, the FSB, Russias main intelligence agency, targeted the personal emails of hundreds of people, including national security experts, military officers and former White House officials, according to data provided by cyber security researchers who are tracking the spying and who asked not to be identified because of the risks of retaliation. The list was weighted toward people who have worked in Democratic administrations or who are linked with liberal causes.

Among those targets was Kate Albright-Hanna. She worked for Barack Obama in his first presidential campaign in 2008 and then briefly in the White House Office of Health Care Reform.

That was eight years ago. Since then she has worked on a documentary about corruption in New York and developed a network of investigative journalists and activists, not the most obvious target for Russian espionage.

I have no idea why I would be targeted, said Albright-Hanna, who now lives in New York. Its super weird.

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Russian Hackers Said to Seek Hush Money From Liberal Groups ... - Bloomberg

By Fernando Ramirez, Chron.com / Houston Chronicle

Photo: Wesley Hitt/Getty Images

Click through to see the most conservative and liberal colleges in Texas.

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Dallas Baptist University

Dallas Baptist University

8. Texas Christian University- Most conservative colleges

8. Texas Christian University- Most conservative colleges

7. Abilene Christian University - Most conservative colleges

7. Abilene Christian University - Most conservative colleges

6. University of Mary Hardin-Baylor- Most conservative colleges

6. University of Mary Hardin-Baylor- Most conservative colleges

5. University of Dallas - Most conservative colleges

5. University of Dallas - Most conservative colleges

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4. Southern Methodist University- Most conservative colleges

3.

3.

2.

2.

1.

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Southwestern University

Southwestern University

Saint Edward's University

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Saint Edward's University

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The most liberal, conservative colleges in Texas

Colleges campuses are often thought of as intensely liberal institutions, but in reality, they come in all shapes and sizes.

To get some idea, college data site Niche recently ranked the most liberal and conservative colleges throughout the nation.

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The rankings were acquired by surveying students on their political leanings, as well as surveying how liberal or conservative they viewed other students on campus.

Three Texas colleges made the list of the top 100 most liberal colleges in America:Southwestern University, Saint Edward's University and Rice University.

On the other hand, 13 Texas colleges made the national list for being conservative.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: The story behind who Texas' most famous colleges are named after

Click through above to see the most liberal and conservative colleges of Texas.

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The most liberal, conservative colleges in Texas - Chron.com