Legal Commentary

Journalistic History Lessons (Or Not)

Posted on December 27, 2010
Anticipating the renewed discussion of the Civil War that will be precipitated by the coming 150th anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne takes great pains to emphasize today what no reasonable historian denies: that without slavery there would have been no civil war...

Obama Bars Talk Of Triangles

Posted on December 24, 2010
According to Greg Sargent?s Christmas Eve Roundup in the Washington Post, It?s good to see that Obama is so uninterested in the ?triangulation? game that he?s banned the word in the White House.... ?Triangulation just isn?t Obama?s style,? Obama acolyte Sargent reports, and his scolding of liberals seems to be rooted in genuine frustration with them for disagreeing with him about what?s politically possible, given today?s realities...

Conservatisms

Posted on December 20, 2010
A few days ago in Liberalism 5.0? I commended two articles by Walter Russell Mean on the past and future of liberalism, pointing out what I thought (and think) are two major gaps in them: there were no conservatives present; and he mistakenly assumes that today's liberals are the same breed (belong in the same version number) as New Deal-era liberals...

"No Labels" Lacks Truth In Labeling

Posted on December 19, 2010
Some of you may have noticed the new ?citizens? group,? No Labels, called into being last week by a group of elite, politically connected, self-appointed citizen leaders to combat what they regard as ?hyper-partisanship.? The difference between hyper-partisanship, which should be banished, and plain old everyday partisanship, which presumably meets with their approval or at least acceptance, is never made clear...

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Gullibles? Travels

Posted on December 19, 2010
Many Senators were reluctant to support the New Start treaty with Russia because they fear that language in the preamble stating that the two sides recognize ?the interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms? and ?this interrelationship will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced? would prohibit our development of missile defense systems...

Liberalism 5.0?

Posted on December 17, 2010
Walter Russell Mead has two fascinating long posts on liberalism that I encourage you to read, one on the decline and fall of what he calls the Blue Social Model and the other, Can The L-word Be Saved?, giving a succinct and perceptive history of what he regards as the four stages of liberalism, with hints of his coming call for a Version 5...

Legally Diverse

Posted on December 17, 2010
Building Bridges is a ?newsletter celebrating campus diversity? at California State University at Chico. The Fall 2010 issue describes some diverse diversity activities, including (on page 3) a ?Diversity Summit? that ?inspires change and awakens hearts...

HBCU?s And ?Diversity?

Posted on December 16, 2010
On the Chronicle of Higher Education?s ?Innovations? blog this morning, Marybeth Gasman lists the major findings of the recent United States Commission on Civil Rights report on The Educational Effectiveness of Historically Black College and Universities as follows: ? Although HBCU students tend to have lower SAT scores and high-school grades than their African-American counterparts at historically white institutions (HWI?s), they produce 40 percent of black science and engineering degrees with only 20 percent of black enrollment...

Reverse ?Passing?: ?Many Biracial Students Game Racial-Classification Systems?

Posted on December 14, 2010
A few years ago the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an interesting article on Passing: How posing as white became a choice for many black Americans. ?The young unkempt woman still in her pajamas shuffled into her 8 a.m. college psychology class and sat down next to Barbara Douglass,? it began...

Are Obama?s Critics Racist?

Posted on December 11, 2010
Professor Jim Silver, author of the deservedly acclaimed Mississippi: The Closed Society (1964), used to say that by voting overwhelmingly for Barry Goldwater in 1964 Mississippi was the only state in American history that had ever remained a one party state while changing parties...

Does Anti-Semitism Add To Or Detract From ?Diversity??

Posted on December 11, 2010
Should Helene Thomas ? who, you will recall, recently said that Jews ?get the hell out of Palestine"?and ?go back home to Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else? and even more recently said something similar ? be given a ?diversity? prize? Should Grinnell College, where tuition, fees, etc...

Unabridged Version: Do We Need More Black Philosophers And Anthropologists (And Fewer Black Scientists)?

Posted on December 09, 2010
[NOTE: An abridged version of the following appeared here.] You've all heard the old saw: when all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. My blog, Discriminations, devoted primarily to discussing racial preference issues, is my hammer, and more than a few of my friends (and others) think I have a tendency to see perverse racial policies everywhere...

Racial Profiling

Posted on December 08, 2010
The head of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, Fernando Mateo, is telling his drivers ?that for their own protection they should profile potential passengers who are black and Latino.? (HaTip to Drudge) Mateo, who identifies himself as both black and Hispanic, made his comments this week after a livery cab driver was shot several times by a man police describe as Hispanic...

Peter Wood On Bake Sales

Posted on December 08, 2010
Anyone with access to the Chronicle of Higher Education should hasten to read Peter Wood?s penetrating analysis of the ongoing debate over campus anti-affirmative action bake sales, especially the one at Wesleyan that I discussed recently on Minding The Campus , ?Bake Sales? Still Cooking On Campus.

NOT A Chip Off The Old Block!

Posted on December 06, 2010
A few days ago InstaPundit linked to an article, IBM Unveils Nanophotonic Chips that Could Lead the Exascale Computing Revolution. IBM, the article predicted, is prepped to lead the way into the next era of exascale computing, at least if the technology they showed off at a convention today in Chiba, Japan can live up to expectations...

Do We Need More Black Philosophers And Anthropologists (And Fewer Black Scientists)?

Posted on December 06, 2010
If you've wondered about this, take a look here.

The C?est Moi! Defense Moves To Illegal Immigration

Posted on December 04, 2010
A good while ago I identified what I called the C?est Moi! defense of racial preferences. Put forward by ordinary people as well as minor or major celebrities, the C?est Moi! defense says in effect, I never would have been admitted to [insert selective college name here] or [insert law, graduate, or professional school here], but I was given an opportunity because of my race and now look how successful I am...

Rigoberta?s Revenge: The Implosion Of Anthropology

Posted on December 01, 2010
?What,? I ask on Minding The Campus today, is the difference between anthropology and fiction, or between anthropology and political propaganda? What happens to the pursuit of knowledge itself if its only validation is what ?[e]verybody knows? already? To see what led up to those questions, and what followed, you?ll have to go here...

Set Aside Set-Asides

Posted on November 29, 2010
[NOTE: See UPDATE below] In The Set-Aside Boondoggle, Heather Mac Donald persuasively argues: ?Minority quota programs virtually force companies into deception, since there are not enough competent minority-owned companies to fill the quotas...?; ?And when ?disadvantaged? companies do actually participate on a project, rather than just acting as fronts, their suboptimal skills can require the hiring of additional workers to oversee or redo the quota employees? contribution?; ?Government set-aside programs actually require ineffiency in infrastructure projects by demanding that the least competitive contractors be hired to work on them?; ?Success in a contracting business disqualifies a contractor from being designated as a ?minority business enterprise...

Richard Cohen: Palindrone

Posted on November 29, 2010
A palindrome is a word or phrase that reads the same backwards or forwards (madam or, more impressively, Madam in Eden, I?m Adam). Now the liberal crescendo of continuing attacks on Sarah Palin ? some silly, some sensible, all shrill ? suggest the need for a derivative, Palindrone, which I hereby define as a liberal critic whose droning on criticisms of her stupidity and ignorance is always the same no matter what she says or does...

Did You Remember To Be Thankful For Political Scientists?

Posted on November 27, 2010
I hope you remembered on Thursday to include political scientists on the list of the items and institutions we all have to be thankful for. True, we didn?t really need Prof. James Oberlander, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, to inform us in the New England Journal of Medicine that criticisms of Obamacare as ?a government takeover of health care? are ?incendiary ...

?Bake Sales? Still Cooking On Campus

Posted on November 26, 2010
Happy Black Friday everyone. Hope your turkey yesterday was as good as ours (which was made even better by the fact that we didn?t make it; we?re visiting old friends in Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia). Today, while you?re still basking in the afterglow of Thanksgiving and before you get back to your real life, let me encourage you to take a look at my discussion of affirmative action bake sales that appears on Minding The Campus this morning...

Nice Guys Finnish First...

Posted on November 25, 2010
No, ?Finnish? is not a typo. To see why not, read Michael Barone?s excellent article dissecting the mid-term election results, ?In 2010 Sweep, Even the Finns Voted Republican.? In passing, he offers an offhand observation that goes a long way toward explaining the Democrats? dazzling reputation for ethics, honor, and integrity (Dazzling...

The Affirmative Action Debate In South Africa: Similar, But Different

Posted on November 23, 2010
The New York Times has a fascinating article on a roiling debate in South Africa over race preferences. The debate was never supposed to happen. Instituting admissions preferences at the prestigious and selective University of Cape Town as supposed to heal the scars of race; instead (as looking at the United States experience would have suggested), it has done exactly the opposite...

Blow Blows It Again

Posted on November 21, 2010
You don?t have to read this. Really. I completely understand, and even sympathize with, the judgment that life is too short to spend even a few Sunday minutes considering the entirely pedestrian, predictable Charles M. Blow pontificating yet again about race in the New York Times...

Dem Whip Durbin: The Democratic Base v. The American People

Posted on November 21, 2010
Discussing whether the president should seek conciliation or confrontation with the Republicans, Democratic Senate Whip Dick Durbin said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that It?s clear our base feels very strongly about the president taking a firm stand...

Are Blacks and Hispanics More "Holistic" Than Whites And Asians?

Posted on November 19, 2010
I concluded a discussion of this question on Minding The Campus today by asking: Could the turn toward ?holistic? criteria (and the infinitely elastic discretion that it requires) possibly be no more than a pretext for sneaking race and ethnic preferences past gullible lawyers, judges, and obstinate citizens who continue to believe in colorblind equality? But I suppose only a real cynic ? or a close observer of American higher education ? could believe that...

An Incomplete Analysis Of ?How Liberalism Self-Destructed?

Posted on November 19, 2010
Joel Kotkin?s analyses of contemporary America are almost always astute, and his discussion today of Politico of ?How Liberalism self-destructed? is no exception. ?Liberalism?s appeal,? he writes ?has diminished, particularly among middle-class voters, as it has become increasingly control-oriented and economically cumbersome,? and he proceeds to note a number of the nails liberals have been feverishly and foolishly nailing into their own political coffin: their abandonment of expanding the economy, ?preferring a mix of redistribution with redirection along green lines?; their being held hostage by their ?base of political shock troops, public employee unions?; their ?attachment to economically regressive policies such as cap and trade?; their eagerness ?to micromanage people?s lives,? leading them to obsess on the ephemeral [such as San Francisco?s war on Happy Meals] while missing the substantial?; and generally, their ?failure of ambition...

Can States Restrict Their ?Supportive Nudges? to Graduate Students By Race?

Posted on November 16, 2010
Good question, if I do say so myself. And I say quite a bit more here, on Minding The Campus, although I conclude my discussion of that question with a question: Thus, unless I'm missing something, it seems clear that these sixteen states are at least indirectly funding racially restrictive scholarship, and many of those states are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which in Podberesky v...

Canadians Fear Toxic US Export

Posted on November 14, 2010
According to a long article in Macleans, ?Too Asian?? many Canadians are now worried ?that efforts in the U.S. to limit enrollment of Asian students in top universities may migrate to Canada.? (HatTip to reader Ed Chin) The United States, which likes to think of itself as the land of equal opportunity, is rapidly developing a reputation for racial favoritism and closet quotas...

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