Thursday, January 19, 2017

Loony Democrat wants the fraudulent hacking meme institutionalized. James Clapper lied to Congress so why believe him?

Levine: Schools should teach children about Russian interference in election

National Intelligence Director James Clapper testifies on Capitol Hill on Jan. 10 before the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian Intelligence Activities. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
National Intelligence Director James Clapper testifies on Capitol Hill on Jan. 10 before the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian Intelligence Activities. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen) 
Assemblyman Marc Levine. (Robert Tong/Marin Independent Journal)
Assemblyman Marc Levine. (Robert Tong/Marin Independent Journal) 
SACRAMENTO – History textbooks read by schoolchildren in California — and perhaps across the country — could include a lesson about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election if a bill to be introduced by a Marin County legislator becomes law.
The bill from Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, will ask the state to adopt high school history curricula based on a recent national intelligence assessment: that Russia interfered in the election through the production of fake news and hacking, according to the lawmaker.
In testimony this month, National Intelligence Director James Clapper did not say the alleged Russian hacking changed the outcome of the race, but nevertheless called the actions “an existential threat” to the United States.
High school students need to learn about that threat, Levine said in an interview Wednesday. “We need to make sure that we treat this attack on American democracy with the appropriate significance it has in our nation’s history,” he said.
In 2014, California passed a law requiring the state board of education to consider adopting social studies lessons on the significance of electing the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama. Similarly, Levine said, the state’s Instructional Quality Commission would be asked to develop a lesson on Russian influence in the 2016 election and recommend it to the state board during its next revision of history and social studies standards.
“I’m not going to write the history book myself,” he said.
Another bill, introduced last week by Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, would require schools to teach children “media literacy” — including how to tell the difference between “fake news” and real news.
“During the final, critical months of the 2016 presidential campaign,” Dodd’s bill states, “20 top-performing false election stories from hoax Web sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated 8,711,000 shares, reactions, and comments on social media.”
One Republican lawmaker, Sen. John Moorlach, of Costa Mesa, called the proposed Russian-interference lesson “petty,” an example of “showmanship.”
Asked whether kids needed to learn the difference between real and fake news, he said, “I’d just be happy if we taught kids how to read and write and do arithmetic.”

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