A group of 10 black youths—one of them a 12-year-old girl—surrounded a white couple’s car in Brooklyn, viciously beating the husband and yanking the wife to the pavement by her hair as they peppered the two with racial slurs, authorities said.
Get those crackers!” some of them screamed, according to court papers. “Get that white whore!”
And so on.
I wonder: if President Barack Obama had a son and daughter-in-law, would they look like this couple?
Here’s another example. A 17-year-old high school student (and volleyball player) in the North Andover Public Schools system, Erin Cox, was texted by a friend at a (underage) drinking party who needed a ride home. Notwithstanding the judgment that brought the friend to such a gathering, this young lady retained the good sense to ask for help, recognizing that she was too drunk to drive herself. Cox answered the call.
Shortly after she arrived to pick up her friend and bring her home, though, the police also arrived and made a number of arrests—not including Cox. The police involved absolved her of any wrong-doing, recognizing she was there to help a friend and not a party participant.
That wasn’t good enough for Superintendent Dr Kevin Hutchinson, though. He has a “No tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol.” He suspended Cox for five games for her involvement in the party. “No tolerance” apparently includes no tolerance for helping drunken friend who retained the judgment to call for help rather than trying to drive herself—since giving that help necessarily involved the alcohol that help-requesting friend had ingested.
Cox spoke a few days later to The Boston Herald.
I wasn’t drinking. And I felt like going to get her was the right thing to do. Saving her from getting in the car when she was intoxicated and hurt herself or getting in the car with someone else who was drinking. I’d give her a ride home.
…
I just feel very defeated. When you’re in high school you’re supposed to stay perfect and be perfect, but everyone makes mistakes.
No. This young woman made no mistake. Her school’s “leadership” did.
How does this work, exactly? The Los Angeles Times has decided that it will no longer publish letters to its editorial staff from “climate change deniers.”
The Times‘ letters editor, Paul Thornton, wrote, with no trace of irony,
Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying “there’s no sign humans have caused climate change” is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.
No statement of an opinion, here. Mm, mm. Thornton is a newspaper man. Each of his statements a Truth.
Here’s what Thornton is demonstrating with his censorship. When someone is unable to make a coherent argument for his case, when he’s unable to concede the possibility of the error of his case, when he lacks the integrity to concede the possibility of that error, he does his best to prevent the opposing case from being spoken—either through ad hominem attacks against the opposing case’s presenters or, as Thornton does here with his control over speech, through outright censorship of the speech with which he’s unable to dispute coherently.
I can’t hear you, indeed.
The Daily Caller notes that
During a Sept 9, 2008 speech to a crowd in Lebanon, Va., then-presidential candidate Sen Barack Obama praised CGI Federal’s ability to create new jobs for Americans as the result of investment in broadband Internet infrastructure.
Move forward, just a bit. The Washington Examiner notes that
Federal officials considered only one firm to design the Obamacare health insurance exchange website that has performed abysmally since its Oct 1 debut.
Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a sole bidder, CGI Federal
even while knowing that CGI had “uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.”
Michigan’s Proposition 2 is in front of the Supreme Court, with oral arguments having occurred last Tuesday. Prop 2 is an amendment to Michigan’s constitution which the citizens of that state very solidly approved ‘way back in 2006, with 58% voting for it. The amendment banned racial discrimination affirmative action in public education and in state employment and contracting.
Why is this even a question for the Supremes? Because the 6th Circuit Court struck down the people’s voice on the odd pseudo-logic that banning racial preference was somehow harmful to minorities. It would, as The Wall Street Journal put it, “bar a black student from seeking preferential admission to the University of Michigan while allowing applicants with alumni connections or other attributes to try to gain an edge.”
The 6th‘s argument is curious especially because the Michigan citizens’ amendment doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race; it bans exactly that. Minorities can, for instance, go on about seeking special preferences based on family—just as anyone can at nearly any college or university in the country. Minorities can go on about seeking special preferences for funding for sickle-cell anemia, which particularly afflicts blacks (oh, wait, there’s that disparate impact thing) or on and on. No one can seek special preferences on the basis of race, though.
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary attorney, George B Washington, says with no trace of irony,
We don’t believe in the colorblind Constitution. We’re making what we think is a straightforward defense of the rights of black and Latino young people” to seek admissions preferences from university officials….
It doesn’t get any starker than this: eliminating discrimination on the basis of race is to discriminate on the basis of race because discrimination on the basis of race is a race right.
What should be a slam dunk in the Supreme Court, though, isn’t. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the 14th Amendment had been applied to protect politically weak “minorities against hostile, disadvantageous legislation” imposed by the majority. True enough: the 14th demands “equal protection of the laws” for all, regardless of race (or any other non-meritorious characteristic). By banning racial preferences, the citizens of Michigan did exactly than, and so those good citizens protected Michigan’s politically weak “minorities against hostile, disadvantageous legislation.” Ginsburg chooses not to see that, however.
Additionally, Justice Sonia Sotomayor had this:
It’s always wonderful for minorities that they finally get in, they finally have children, and now you’re going to do away [with] that preference for them. It seems that the game post keeps changing every few years for minorities.
No. The problem is the constant insistence on racial preference—on judgment not by the content of a man’s character, but by the color of his skin. The so far denied change is to eliminate that pernicious discrimination.
Finally, many have argued that Prop 2 actually has hurt minorities: their enrollment in Michigan’s colleges and universities, has fallen since the amendment was adopted. A look at actual facts presents a different picture, though. The graph below, from the University of Michigan and The Wall Street Journal, illustrates.
Plainly, there has been no effect at all on one minority group (which has been carefully ignored throughout the pro-affirmative action types—no discrimination here, though). Americans of Asian descent has been constant since 2000, six years before passage of the amendment.
Black enrollment has fallen off. But that downward trend was well established long before passage; their enrollment has been dropping steadily since 2001. Since passage, the drop-off has continued, unchanged.
Hispanic enrollment paints a somewhat different picture. This group’s enrollment has been flat since passage, halting a slight downward trend from a 2002 peak.
At worst, the citizens’ amendment has had no effect on minority enrollment.
Again, I ask: why is this even a question for the Supremes? Except that it’s necessary in order to reverse a racially ignorant ruling by the 6th.