Pelosi's vision
Actress Tiny Fey got a lot of deserved laughs for her dead-on "Saturday Night Live" portrayal of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who said during her 2008 vice presidential campaign that she could see Russia from her state. In the Bering Sea, after all, one island belonging to Russia and one island belonging to the United States are less than two and a half miles apart, so it's totally possible.
Whether U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gets as much lampooning over her recent statement remains to be seen, but she, unlike Palin, could not see what she claimed to see.
The California representative, seeking to establish legitimacy with last week's detention by Iran of two U.S. boats that had strayed into Iranian water, claimed she had viewed Iran from Bahrain across the Persian Gulf, and that "everything is very close."
Apparently, she didn't think anybody would do the research, but U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., did. Iran, he tweeted, is 136 miles away from Bahrain, and is definitely not visible from there.
"SNL"? Your move.
Campus thought control
Watch what you say at Penn State University. You never know who might be watching and waiting to report you.
College officials at the State College, Pa., school have begun a massive campaign encouraging students to be careful about what they say because they might offend someone, but should someone hear something they need to report it.
"Be the difference," a campaign poster shouts. "Report a bias incident."
What might be included in such biases? Lisa Powers, director of the school's strategic communications office, said such intolerance would even include microaggressions.
According to the University of California, a microaggression can be anything subtly politically incorrect. For instance: "When I look at you, I don't see color." "There is only one race, the human race." "America is a melting pot." "I don't believe in race." "America is the land of opportunity." "I believe the most qualified person should get the job." "Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough."
Got it? Good, because, according to Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minnow, microaggressions are comparable to sexual assault and violence.
Be scared. Be very scared.
Who's shocked
You think your student is being indoctrinated in college? You betcha.
During the past 25 years, higher education has seen a nearly 20 percent jump in the number of professors who identify as liberal, according to the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, The Washington Post reported. They now outnumber those who identify as conservatives by a ratio of about 5 to 1.
"Liberal" or "far left" professors, according to the survey, jumped from 42 percent in 1990 to 60 percent in 2014. Meanwhile, "conservative" or "far right" professors fell by nearly 6 percent but have risen slightly since 2011. Moderates fell 13 points.
As off-balance as that might be, Daniel Klein, an economics professor at George Mason University, said the faculty who vote Democratic rather than Republican is more like 9 to 1 or 10 to 1.
Within the general public, according to a Gallup poll released earlier this month, 38 percent of Americans identify as conservative and 24 percent as liberal. Slightly more than 30 percent of students, according to The Washington Post, identify as liberal, while slightly more than 20 percent identify as conservative.
Interestingly, liberals, according to Matthew Woessner, a professor at Penn State Harrisburg, are more damaged because of the large ideological split in faculty.
"Conservatives benefit from having liberal ideas to expand their horizons and challenge their thinking," he said, "but ideologically liberal students get their ideas reinforced. This means they're not growing intellectually because they don't have the exposure to other ideas to make them think."
Lower than Lowe?
Former Brat Pack heartthrob Rob Lowe has done nothing to make anybody believe he's anything more than just another limousine liberal in Hollywood, but he may have upset the apple cart during a recent interview on CNN.
In an industry where following President Barack Obama in lockstep is almost demanded, the actor revealed he is pro-gun.
"Look, I own guns," Lowe said, according to American News. He went on to say he owns three guns but no "assault weapons."
With Obama leading a frantic effort to cut down on legal gun sales, the actor's comments are practically heresy.
Lowe went on to criticize the president for trying to take away guns, saying that the country's time would be better spent improving "mental health, parenting [and] personal responsibility" instead of destroying the 2nd Amendment.
Whether he will be blackballed for his comments remains to be seen, but sources say the effort is on to do so.