Ousted General To Teach At Yale

General Stanley McChrystal will soon make the move from the military to academia. Yale University announced Monday that the recently ousted Afghan commander will begin teaching a graduate level seminar on international relations at the Ivy League school.

“I am extremely excited to be teaching at Yale,” McChrystal said in a statement released by the University. “I look forward to sharing my experiences and insights as a career military officer.”

The four-star General will join the faculty as a Senior Fellow in the school’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. His seminar will focus on  the effect globalization has taken on modern leadership.

McChrystal was recently replaced as Afghan Commander by General David Petraeus after disparaging remarks aimed at administration officials from both McChrystal and his staff were included in the June issue of Rolling Stone magazine.  McChrystal was relieved of duty amid the ensuing controversy and retired from the Army soon after. 

Obama Names Sotomayor As Supreme Court Justice

By Annie Berman, Talk Radio News Service

Today at the White House, President Obama announced federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor as the widely-anticipated replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. If confirmed, Sotomayor will be the first Hispanic woman to serve on the bench, and the third woman in history.

A native of New York, Sotomayor, 54, was born to Puerto Rican parents. After her father died she was raised in a single family household.

Sotomayor attended Princeton University where she graduated summa cum laude in 1976. Later, she attended Yale Law School where she was the editor of The Yale Law Journal.

After graduation from law school in 1979, Sotomayor served as an Assistant District Attorney to New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. In 1997, Sotomayer was nominated by President Bill Clinton to her current position.

Sotomayer’s most famous case was the 1994 baseball strike. Sotomayer issued the preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball which prevented the MLB from implementing a new Collective Bargaining Agreement and using replacement players. Her ruling in this case ended the strike one day before the 1995 season.

Obama had only praise for Sotomayor. “Judge Sotomayor has worked at almost every level of our judicial system, providing her with a depth of experience and a breadth of perspective that will be invaluable as a Supreme Court justice,” he said. Obama added that he hopes Sotomayor may begin her tenure with the court when it begins its term in October.  

After Obama spoke, Sotomayor thanked her mother and brother for their support, and the President for the nomination. “I chose to be a lawyer and ultimately a judge because I find endless challenge in the complexities of the law.”  

Sotomayor now faces a daunting confirmation process with the U.S. Senate. 

Immigration not to blame for high unemployment among blacks

Immigration moderately impacts the employment of young black men, according to the presentation presented to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. At the Economic Effect of Immigration on Black Workers briefing, Dr. Gordon Hanson, Professor of Economics UCSD, said that in 1960, 75% of black men were unemployed, versus 68% unemployment in the year 2000. The decline is accompanied by a rapid increase in incarceration, and he would expect any increase of immigration to impact blacks more because they have less education.

Dr. Gerald D. Jaynes, Professor of Economics and African-American Studies at Yale University, said that data forced him to conclude that negative effects of immigration on the employment of blacks were mostly absent and modest at worst for only a segment of lowest skilled workers. More so than immigration, having a significant minority of disadvantaged young people persisting in low educational achievement, dropping out of high school, and engaging in criminal activity are likely to blame for low employment rates.

Dr. Vernon Briggs, Emeritus Professor of Labor Economics at Cornell University, disagreed. Immigrants, he said, take low skilled jobs from native born blacks, and an enormous amount of those immigrants are illegal. A major problem is that a high skilled person can take a low skilled job, but it doesn't work the other way around. In competition for employment, illegal immigrants are likely to be hired because they can be paid less.

Overall, there are negative effects on the employment of blacks by immigration, but the effects are not major, Dr. Harry Holzer said, Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University. People do seem to prefer immigrants to native born blacks, he said, but part of that may be that blacks don't appear to be interested in working certain jobs, such as jobs in agriculture. The solution, he said, has six parts. We must improve education, enhance youth mentoring, improve occupational training, reduce incarceration rates (and the barriers to work faced by ex-offenders), extend the Earned Income Tax Credit to childless adults including non-custodial fathers, and lastly reform child support regulations.

The general consensus in the room was that although immigration does have some impact, lack of education and skills are the main problem causing unemployment in young black men.