Legal Commentary

Sins Of Commission And Omission By The Mainstream Media

Posted on July 28, 2008
I have just reported (see post immediately below) that Barack Obama said over the weekend that he supports quotas ? more specifically, that he supports affirmative action ?when it is properly structured, so that it is not just a quota....? He will, of course, deny that he said that, but since there is a CNN video confirming it he will no doubt fall back on clarifications and emendations to the effect that he misspoke, or that somehow the CNN video recorder misrecorded what he actually meant...

A Fund?amental Analysis Of Opposition To Direct Democracy

Posted on July 27, 2008
John Fund has has a must-read article in Saturday?s Wall Street Journal on ?The Far Left?s War on Direct Democracy.? If I were you, I?d stop reading me discussing it right now and go read it. By ?direct democracy? he means the initiative process, a reform born out of the Progressive Era, when there was general agreement that powerful interests had too much influence over legislators...

McCain, Finally, Supports Colorblind Equality!

Posted on July 27, 2008
In an interview with George Stephanopoulus finally stepped away from (?abandoned? might be too strong) his ridiculous refusal to endorse colorblind equality and announced that, after all, and his previous reluctance to the contrary, he really does believe the state should treat its citizens without regard to race, ethnicity, or sex...

Pure Racialism In The New York Times

Posted on July 27, 2008
The headline of an article by Jim Rutenberg on the front page of the New York Times this morning is ?Black Radio on Obama Is Left?s Answer to Limbaugh.? The article reflects as pure an example of racialism ? an ideology that regards race as the fundamental building block of personal identity and social reality ? that I recall seeing in the mainstream press...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Colorado University: Equality Requirement Would Have ?Big Impact?

Posted on July 25, 2008
Opponents of civil rights initiatives ? proposals pending in three states that would require treating individuals without regard to race, ethnicity, or gender ? often say that such a requirement isn?t needed because the discrimination these initiatives claim to prohibit is already illegal and that no such targeted preferential treatment programs actually exist...

Mighty Corruption From Little ACORN Grows

Posted on July 25, 2008
Might oaks, in the old proverb, may from little acorns grow, but in the case of ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) what sprouts ? planted, fertilized, and nourished with abundant federal tax dollars ? is fraud, corruption, and voter intimidation...

Is Colorblind Equality A Winning Issue For McCain?

Posted on July 23, 2008
This article on Pajamas Media today is eerily similar to this post here a few days ago.

Shelby Steele Gets Obama Exactly Right, Almost...

Posted on July 22, 2008
In the Wall Street Journal today Shelby Steele explains why and how Obama ?is the nullification of Jesse Jackson ? the anti-Jackson.? Mr. Jackson was always a challenger. He confronted American institutions (especially wealthy corporations) with the shame of America?s racist past and demanded redress...

When Will The Blackmail Threats Begin?

Posted on July 21, 2008
Obama is already sending not-so-coded messages to the civil rights establishment that his election will not reduce the need, and his support, for continued race preference policies. As Gregory Rodriguez writes today: A Barack Obama presidency could end the Iraq war, transform our national energy policy, revive America?s standing in the world -- but please don?t expect the first black man in the Oval Office to move us above and beyond the civil rights era...

Is Obama A Muslim?

Posted on July 20, 2008
One of the reasons the New Yorker cover showing fist-bumping Obamas in Muslim garb caused such a ruckus is that its appearance coincided with the release of a Pew Research Center report showing that 12% of Americans (interestingly, 12% of both Democrats and Republicans) still believe Obama is in fact a Muslim...

Does McCain Want To Win?

Posted on July 17, 2008
You?d think any presidential candidate wants to win ? otherwise, why go to the trouble? ? but McCain?s continuing failure to come out forcefully for colorblind equality suggests, at least to me, that he may not (and even if he does want to, that he won?t)...

Depressing Poll (And Pollsters) On Racial Divide

Posted on July 16, 2008
The most recent CBS/New York Times poll on the racial divide in the U.S. (actually, more like a chasm) is depressing, as is the NYT?s article about the poll. You?ll need to read the article/poll for yourself. They stop just short of portraying a stark racial divide on absolutely everything...

The Best Reason To Support Obama?

Posted on July 16, 2008
Bonnie Erbe, a U.S. News and World Report columnist who claims to have covered Washington politics ?since God was a baby,? argues that Obama?s election ?would kill affirmative action.? What could do more damage to the argument that African-Americans deserve racial preferences than a majority of Americans voting to put an African-American in the White House? Little, from where I sit...

Some Good News For Liberals

Posted on July 16, 2008
In the past week or so Obamaphiles have been dismayed to see their messiah?s candidate?s lead in the polls diminish dramatically. (See Rasmussen daily tracking polls here.) Most observers attribute this decline to a highly publicized series of rapid flip-flops on major issues, nicely summarized by Dick Morris here: ? After vowing to eschew private fundraising and take public financing, he has now refused public money...

The Declining Reputation Of Affirmative Action

Posted on July 15, 2008
Missouri, you will recall, is the state where obstructionism by the Democratic Secretary of State and Attorney General, later declared illegal, and thuggish intimidation of petition signers succeeded in keeping the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative off the ballot this year...

Princeton Receives Weekly Chutzpah Award

Posted on July 13, 2008
?What weekly chutzpah award?? you may well ask. You?re right. At the moment DISCRIMINATIONS doesn?t bestow a weekly chutzpah award, but if it did this week?s would go to Princeton. Regular readers will be aware of Jian Li?s complaint that Princeton discriminates against Asian applicants by holding them to a higher standard than others, a case I discussed here...

Rocky Mountain Non-News

Posted on July 12, 2008
The Rocky Mountain News more often than not gets things right. Yesterday, however, it did not. Here is the piece in its entirety: Initiative backers plan to file complaint Organizers of an initiative to eliminate most affirmative action programs in Colorado say they will file a fraud complaint against their opponents, whom they charge with lying...

Bader Late Than Never

Posted on July 11, 2008
Some readers may have noticed (and even cheered) the drop in my blog posting (blog output? blogput?) for the past ten days or so. We?re in California for a while, house-sitting in San Francisco, traveling around the greater (and lesser) Bay Area, heading for Pasadena and Southern California in a week or so...

July 4th, Revisited

Posted on July 04, 2008
July 4th is a holiday for all Americans, of whatever persuasion, to celebrate America, but we live in a time when Left and Right increasingly view each other as un-American. Like many others on the Right, I came from the Left (whether or not I really am on the Right is a question I?ll let pass for now, but it?s clear that many of my friends ? and many more of my former friends ? think I am), and so, once again, I think it in order for me to revisit/recycle/reprint perhaps the last occasion in which I appeared in print with my former colleagues...

Let?s Give Helms A Hand

Posted on July 04, 2008
Jesse Helms, known both affectionately and with hostility as ?Senator No,? is dead today at 86. There will be many obituaries, but this is not one of them. I?ve come to praise Helms, not bury him. I certainly did not agree with everything he said or did, but, burnishing and brandishing my qualification for elite membership in the esteemed DISCRIMINATIONS Minority of One Club, I would like to on record, again (see here and here), to offer my commendation of Helms for the one thing he did that earned him bitter, visceral enmity (which will not die with him) from all liberals and Democrats, and not a few others: his infamous ?white hands? ad from his 1990 race against Harvey Gantt...

Obama: The Refined, Artful Candidate

Posted on July 04, 2008
In two impressive columns, last week and this week, Charles Krauthammer has chronicled a large number (but not all) of Obama?s reversals of field, changes of direction, modifications of principle, etc., on major issues. In the fall, he opposed retroactive immunity for telecom companies who assisted in anti-terrorist monitoring, even threatening to filibuster...

Racial Preferences In Community Colleges?

Posted on July 03, 2008
Apparently community colleges in Nebraska are permeated with policies that discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, individuals based on their race, ethnicity, or gender. At least that is the claim of the Board of Governors of Southeast Community College, which has campuses in Beatrice, Lincoln, and Milford, which opposes the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative that would ban such programs...

Arizona Civil Rights Initiative Submits Signatures

Posted on July 03, 2008
The Arizona Civil Rights Initiative has submitted 334,658 signatures with the Secretary of State's office, 100,000 more than the number required to qualify for the ballot. BAMN has filed suit to keep the initiative off the ballot because, as national director Shanta Driver explained, ?she fears a majority of Arizonans will vote for it...

Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative Submits Signatures

Posted on July 03, 2008
Today the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative submitted more than 167,000 signatures to place the initiative on the November ballot. To qualify for the ballot Nebraska requires the submission of signatures from 10% of the registered voters in the state, 113,000 signatures...

More Driver Drivel

Posted on July 03, 2008
One of the downsides of my ?job? (I use the term loosely) providing your peephole/telescopic/microscopic view into the wonderful world of discrimination (not to mention my filter/sieve service, separating the chaff from the really bad chaff) is that I have to read so much offensive, militant nonsense from know-nothings like Shanta Driver, national chairpersonwoman of By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), the battering ram used by the Democrats to do the dirty work of supporting racial preferences, such as disrupting meetings and sending out threatening ?blockers? to intimidate petition-signers...

Schmidt: Universities Living ?A Diversity Lie?

Posted on July 01, 2008
Regular readers (and even irregular readers who?ve visited here more than a few times) know that I have a high regard for the work of Peter Schmidt, who covers affirmative action and other mind-numbing topics for the Chronicle of Higher Education (sorry for that endorsement, Peter; I know it?ll get you in trouble with most of your readers)...

A Decision That Smells Like Rotten Fish

Posted on June 28, 2008
Is this where we?re headed? Where President Obama will take us if he can? The ?this? to which I refer is a recent decision by the Supreme Court of Canada holding that ?[g]iving exclusive commercial fishing licences to aboriginal groups? does not discriminate against non-aboriginal fishermen...

Eagleburger: Obama Playing Race Card Is ?Despicable?

Posted on June 27, 2008
Several posts ago, here, I criticized Obama for playing the race and bigot card when he accused unnamed Republicans of planning to ?make [voters] afraid of me? because of his funny name, inexperience, ?... and did I mention he?s black?? My criticism may have been strong ? I hope it was ? but it was the very picture of modest, restrained diplomatic understatement compared to what former Secretary of State (and eminent Charlottesvillian) Lawrence Eagleburger said today in a letter to the Charlottesville Daily Progress, ?Obama Is Making Race An Issue...

Duplicitous Anti-Equality Protesters

Posted on June 27, 2008
An article about the anti-equality protesters in Arizona has all the usual drivel we have come to expect from them ? outraged (and outrageous) charges that the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative is a ?fraud?; would be ?a setback for civil rights?; etc. ? but it is nevertheless noteworthy, for three reasons: 1) one of the misrepresentations from the anti-equality protesters is unintentionally but revealingly humorous; 2) one of the misrepresentations is perhaps the most egregious I?ve seen in the long, sordid history of the pro-preference crowd; and 3), and perhaps most astounding of all, one of the Arizona protesters actually said something that is almost true...

Obama Targets Blacks, Felons

Posted on June 23, 2008
The candidate who once said, to support from even surprising quarters, that There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America is now targeting voters from black America. Hillary Clinton got into a heap of trouble when she said, quoting an Associated Press article, that Sen...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.