Brian is an experienced television and print journalist, working both in North Dakota and his home state of New Jersey. He’ll be producing posts and news videos for the blog starting later today.

Say Anything has always been a place for news and opinion. With Brian on board, we’ll be doing a lot more original reporting, which I am very excited about.

Stay tuned.

Dickinson State University awarded hundreds of degrees to foreign students who didn’t earn them, signed up students who couldn’t speak English and enrolled a handful without qualifying grades, according to an audit report of the North Dakota school.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its Friday release, depicts Dickinson State as a diploma mill for foreign students where lax record-keeping was common. Most of the affected students were Chinese, the audit says.

Agreements that the school made with foreign universities are “seriously lacking controls and oversight,” the audit says.

“Several process level controls have been waived, or controls that were once in place have been intentionally overridden, or ignored,” it says.

Read the full AP story for all the ugly, gory details. Keep in mind that when this audit began, Goetz and the higher education system tried to limit the scope to the Roughrider Scholarship Fund. Thankfully the State Auditor’s Office expanded their audit beyond that limited scope, which is why their report covered these other major problems.

The audit report concludes that DSU could face fines and penalties from the State Department, the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security for each fraudulent degree, and the cost for that could range into the millions of dollars.

Out of 410 degrees issued through the program in question, 400 of them failed to meet standards for required coursework or credits. DSU had 127 agreements with international schools to have their students study in North Dakota, but of those 127 agreements only 4 met the requirements to be valid as part of this program. International students were given degrees by DSU with incomplete transcripts, meaning they got four-year degrees with only two years of verified education.

When I wrote last night that this scandal might shut down a university that wasn’t mandated to exist by the state constitution, I wasn’t kidding.

This is yet another embarrassment for North Dakota’s scandal-plagued university system, and hold on to your hats, because the problems revealed in this report may go far beyond just DSU.

Update: I need to make a correction. This wasn’t the report from the State Auditor’s Office. This was an NDUS internal audit.

Update: This may give you an indication as to how serious this is: I just tried to email NDUS media affairs staffer John Irby to request a copy of the audit and I got a message backs saying his inbox is full.

The “schtick” in question, as I’ve alluded to before, is to spread innuendo about the damage the Fighting Sioux nickname will do to UND’s athletic programs if it is kept. Specifically, claims that the Big Sky conference will give UND the boot.

You can tell it’s a schtick because every time the issue comes out we get a round of articles like this where university and athletics officials (Brian Faison in this instance) drone on and on about the allegedly growing consternation of the Big Sky conference.

The Big Sky conference is concerned about the nickname, we’re told. Then we’re told their super-duper concerned. The next thing you know we’ll be on double top secret probation or something.

It’s all a little tiresome.

If we’re going to have an honest debate about the Fighting Sioux nickname – and I’m all for that, especially since it will be on the ballot for voters in June – then we should demand that the Big Sky Conference go on the record about specific consequences for keeping the nickname. No more innuendo. No more maybes and possibilities.

Get the conference presidents together and put the question to them: What will the Big Sky’s actions be if UND keeps the nickname?

The answer, whatever it is (personally, I don’t think the Big Sky would kick UND out), would help voters make their decision on the June ballot.

Sadly, I think the state’s higher education officials (who would very much like to be rid of the nickname) find the uncertainty they promote about the Big Sky to be more convenient for their arguments than definitive answers, and the state’s reporters are too in-the-tank for higher ed to ask them the question.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that religious liberty objections to the Obamacare rule mandating that all health insurance policies – except those for clergy and church employees – pay for sterilization and FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that induce abortion, were an “excuse.” She stressed that religious freedom under the First Amendment was not the issue but that “this is about women’s health.”

The mandate, as part of Obamacare, was finalized on Jan. 20 and is set to take effect on Aug. 1. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Orthodox Christian bishops, leading Protestant pastors, and more than 158 members of Congress have denounced the regulation and several lawsuits have been filed challenging its constitutionality.

Although Pelosi is a Catholic, she strongly defends the regulation, which would require Catholic individuals to pay for health insurance that covers actions contrary to their faith, e.g., abortion-inducing drugs (“Morning After” pill).

Deabte over the rule, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is a “sad one,” said Pelosi, because “the overwhelming practice is going in favor of women’s health.”

I guess I think that a violation of individual liberty is a pretty darn good excuse.

Eastwood isn’t sure how “supposedly intelligent” people could think the ad was a “specific products” or “philosophy.”

Just a reminder for Mr. Eastwood, it was a commercial for a car company that got massive government bailouts. That means it was both for a certain product (Chrysler vehicles) and a certain philosophy (too big to fail).

I really like Clint Eastwood, but he’s coming off a little foolish in this.

As if that weren’t bad enough, this board would have lee way to make grants of this money to very political non-profit groups (not surprisingly, the measure is being backed by a coalition of environmental non-profits).

The Grand Forks Herald has a good article in which the backers of the measure are asked to explain it, and one of them revealed a little more truth than he intended:

“We’ve had the luxury of having the space, low population density and low pressures (on natural resources) that things have been good,” said Keith Trego, executive director of the North Dakota Natural Resources Trust. “That’s what’s changing. It’s the pivot point we’re at. It’s the decision we think people should be looking at.” …

Trego of the Natural Resources Trust said the proposal could be a “capstone” for bridging the gap between ag and conservation programs. There’s little political risk for lawmakers to be neutral or opposed to conservation programs, he said, so it’s time to look elsewhere for that support.

“North Dakotans, other than hunter and angler dollars, have never invested in natural resources,” Trego said. “This is an opportunity to broaden that.”

Read those last two paragraphs very carefully. Mr. Trego is upset that the state’s elected leaders aren’t spending enough money on his pet crusade, thus his support for a constitutional measure that would short-circuit the state’s democratic process and give broad spending ability (not to mention the huge slush fund) to a board that isn’t elected.

If North Dakotans wanted more spending on conservation they would elect state leaders who would spend more on conservation. The environmentalists don’t get to change the rules of the game just because they aren’t getting their way in Bismarck.

It was a tough year for higher education in North Dakota in 2011. From the NDSU’s tuition hike and abuse of a private airplane to wasteful spending throughout the system, the state’s university system took a lot of black eyes and lost a lot of credibility with lawmakers and the public.

And it’s about to get worse. North Dakota University System Chancellor Bill Goetz will be at Dickinson State University today to announce the findings of an audit which occurred after revelations about enrollment fraud. The audit report itself won’t be released to the public until next week, so on Friday and through the weekend all we’ll have to work with is Goetz’s spin of the audit report.

Deft political maneuver, that. These guys do love to be transparent.

But there are some indications which tell us that the report is going to be very, very ugly. I’m told that there have been some quiet resignations at DSU in recent days in advance of the release of this audit including Marshall Melbye, Director of Academic Records, and Mike Hillman, Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs for the North Dakota University System.

There may be more too.

SAB readers will remember that Goetz and the Board of Higher Education initially attempted to limit the scope of this audit to the abuse of the Roughrider Scholarship Fund, where it was alleged that scholarships far in excess of the $1,000 maximum were given to some students, but I’m told that the State Auditor’s office has expanded the scope of the report.

That expansion may be the reason why DSU has decided to give up on the creation of the so-called “Confucius Institute” which was to have students from China attend the university. I’m told there may have been some problems with the enrollment of those foreign students that brought scrutiny from the federal government.

You’ll also remember that when the enrollment scandal originally broke, Goetz told the university faculty to keep their mouths shut about it because at the time the legislature was in session and a breaking scandal might have impacted the budgets for the university system.

We’ll all have to wait and see what, exactly, is in the audit but one observer close to the situation told me that if Dickinson State University weren’t an institution mandated to exist by the state constitution there’s a very real possibility that it would be shut down.

Stay tuned.

That’s a bit tone deaf as a) North Dakota already has more jobs than workers able to fill them, and b) Berg’s competition in the race Heidi Heitkamp supports the pipeline as well:

But while Daum apparently has the time to make trivial and Heitkamp-friendly critiques of this ad, Heidi Heitkamp’s FEC report which was released days ago hasn’t gotten a bit of coverage.

Nothing about the extra-special campaign fund set up for trial lawyers (despite her claims that she won’t represent “special interests”). Not a word about tens of thousands Heitkamp has received from the trial lawyers who work for the law firm of her tobacco lawsuit crony Jack McConnell.

You would think that Heitkamp continuing to get payback from the tobacco trial lawyers more than a decade after her apparent quid pro quo arrangement with McConnell would be newsworthy, but apparently not.

Daum once ran an article in which she accused Rep. Rick Berg of being fiscally irresponsible because he’d loaned his own campaign $100,000 and, just months after the campaign ended, hadn’t paid it back to himself yet.

That, somehow, is a valid news article for Daum, but Heitkamps cozy relationship with trial lawyers? Not so much, apparently.

With reporters like Daum in the state, why do Democrats even need public relations staff?

It’s about whether or not Americans have religious or moral choices. It’s about whether or not the government can force you to violate your conscience.

But according to the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee, it’s a “Republican war on women,” and they’re fundraising on it:

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) – the campaign arm of the Senate Democratic Caucus – is using the controversy over the Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate to raise campaign funds.

The email, sent to potential Democratic donors, touts the Obama administration’s decision to require insurance providers to provide contraceptive and sterilization services free of charge.

The email, signed by DSCC Chair Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), calls opposition to the Obamacare mandate an “attack” on women’s health.

“Our right-wing opponents continue to launch attack after attack against women’s rights, women’s health, and women’s economic security — and we’ve got to fight back every single day,” the email says.

“The next battle over the Obama administration’s decision to make contraception more affordable under the new health care law is already underway.”

The DSCC says it has created a new grassroots effort, called the Standing Strong for Women Project – “to combat the Republican war on women.”

That’s pretty disgusting.

Again, this is an issue that goes far beyond left vs. right, or abortion vs. pro-life. This is about the freedom of religion. However you feel about abortion or contraception issues, shouldn’t private organizations (including religious organizations) have the freedom to choose to avoid those things they have a moral objection to?

In short, it’s yet another failure for prohibitionist policy.

But the tribe wants to pin the problem on alcohol retailers and the beer companies, blaming them for reservation citizens buying the booze, and to that end have filed a lawsuit against them.

The lawsuit alleges that the beer makers and stores sold to Pine Ridge’s Indian population, knowing they would smuggle the alcohol into the reservation to drink or resell. The beer makers supplied the stores with “volumes of beer far in excess of an amount that could be sold in compliance with the laws of the state of Nebraska” and the tribe, tribal officials allege in the lawsuit.

The Connecticut-sized reservation has struggled with alcoholism and poverty for generations, despite an alcohol ban in place since 1832. Pine Ridge legalized alcohol in 1970 but restored the ban two months later, and an attempt to allow it in 2004 died after a public outcry. …

The tribe views the lawsuit as a last resort after numerous failed attempts to curb the abuse through protests and public pressure on lawmakers, White said. He said the tribal council voted unanimously about four months ago to hire his law firm.

The lawsuit says one in four children born on the reservation suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. The average life expectancy is estimated between 45 and 52 years, the shortest in North America except for Haiti, according to the lawsuit. The average American life expectancy is 77.5 years.

The situation on the Pine Ridge reservation, and on a lot of America’s reservations, is a modern tragedy. America is the most prosperous nation on earth, and yet within our borders we have pockets of misery on the reservation where life isn’t all that unlike some third-world backwater.

That being said, drinking alcohol is a personal choice. People who live drunken lives, and who endanger themselves and others through their drinking, have nobody but themselves to blame.

The solution to inebriation is to avoid inebriants. The solution for those who can’t consume alcohol responsibly isn’t to curtail the freedom of others to sell/consume a perfectly legal product, but rather to hold responsible those who act irresponsibly.

That may come as cold comfort to Native American communities, genetically predisposed as their ethnicity is to abusing alcohol, but in a free society there is no other way. It is an injustice to hold one group of people responsible for another group of people’s actions. Yet that seems to be the trend of late.

If you’re fat, blame the restaurants. If you commit a crime, blame the gun companies. If you’re drunk, sell the guy who sold you the beer.

It’s not right.