Politics Blog

Liberals who support affirmative action are finding the Supreme Court’s reasoning ludicrous.

On Monday, Dahlia Lithwick, a liberal supporter of affirmative action, debated Walter Dellinger, another liberal supporter, in Slate. Lithwick couldn’t fathom the court’s reasoning.

Today liberal Michael Kinsley savages the court’s decision as so much fudge:

Michigan’s college admissions policy at the time this suit began was strictly numerical: You needed 100 points to get in, and you got 20 points for being an officially recognized minority. Flatly unconstitutional, the court declared. Michigan’s law school, by contrast, “engages in a highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant’s file.” It “awards no mechanical, predetermined diversity ‘bonuses’ based on race or ethnicity.” Instead, it makes “a flexible assessment of applicants’ talents, experiences, and potential

Walter Shapiro says the Democratic presidential primary is wide open:

Sure, it is tempting to snicker at the plight of the six serious Democratic contenders fighting for a flicker of television attention at a time when George W. Bush rules the (air) waves.

It is easy to chortle that the only two Democrats who can attract a national audience are both named Clinton.

Cynics might even snidely point out that the most commanding speaker among the nine Democratic candidates is the Rev. Al Sharpton, a preacher-politician with a checkered past who has no hope of winning the nomination.

But these facile put-downs miss the real story. And that is the potentially thrilling narrative likely to unfold during the next seven months leading up to the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. For it is hard to recall another presidential contest in which this many candidates were so tightly bunched at the half-mile mark with no clear favorite.

Why the SCOTUS’s Michigan rulings are as bad as Plessy v. Ferguson:

…there is a minority dorm at the University of Michigan. Tucked away on North Campus, Bursley and Baits Halls have become the unofficial minority refuge. Architecturally, they resemble something out of an Eastern bloc country circa 1950. Socially they resemble an Alabama lunch counter of the same era. The last thing they resemble is an “incredibly vibrant and complex campus that has diversity in every conceivable way,” as Payton described the campus. But Bursley and Baits are only two incarnations of Michigan’s many failures in fostering diversity.

From application to graduation, Michigan segregates students and stigmatizes minorities. Many minority students are invited to attend the “Summer Bridge” program, which aims to prepare minorities for the rigor of a highly competitive institution. During their freshmen year, they can enroll in the Comprehensive Studies Programs, which offers smaller class sizes, free tutoring, career planning, and mentorship programs for no additional cost. By their sophomore year, many minority students choose to move to Bursley or Baits, and many become active in one of over 90 minority student organizations. During their junior year when most students choose their major, many opt for programs like women’s or African-American studies. And finally, during their senior year, amidst the literal pomp and circumstance of graduation, the Office of Multicultural Academic Initiatives hosts a separate-but-equal African-American graduation ceremony.

Although these programs all fall under the rubric of “diversity,” all they do is divide students. The fact that minority students still feel the need to have a separate graduation ceremony at all is evidence of the university’s ultimate failure. After four years of intense “diversity,” minority students still don’t feel comfortable graduating as a class, rather than as a “critical mass,” to borrow Justice O’Connor’s terminology.

Gab Neville wonders why, if universities are so interested in “diversity,” they’re not giving conservatives a leg up in admissions.

The lovely and talented Ann Coulter has her own blog now.

Coulter’s new book on liberal treason (yes, treason, literally!) has already pushed Hillary’s book down the charts, even though it wasn’t released until today.

And here’s an unofficial transcript from Coulter’s interview with Diane Sawyer:

Diane: You are going to be on the New York Times bestseller list slugging it out with Hillary Clinton.

Ann: I hope so.

Diane: Who is going to win?

Ann: Umm, Well I think she has a three to one pound advantage over me, but we will see.

Diane: (stunned silence for a moment as her jaw drops and eyes bug out) Three to one pound advantage? Did you just say what I think you said?

Ann: You said ’slugging it out with Hillary’

Diane: So you are just talking about arm wrestling?

Ann: Yes, if that is your phraseology.

Diane: Alright, Ann Coulter. As we’ve said, if you want your veins to be bulging, your pulse to be pounding and you really want somethng provocative the book is ‘Treason’ and it is out today. You can go to the ABC News Website if you want to seemore about it and read more exerpts.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Liberals invented the myth of McCarthyism to delegitimize impertinent questions about their own patriotism. They boast (lyingly) about their superior stance on civil rights. But somehow their loyalty to the United States is off-limits as a subject of political debate. Why is the relative patriotism of the two parties the only issue that is out of bounds for discussion? Why can’t we ask: Who is more patriotic – Democrats or Republicans? You could win that case in court.

Fifty years ago, Senator Joe McCarthy said, “The loyal Democrats of this nation no longer have a Party."(1) Since then, the evidence has continued to pour in. Liberals mock Americans who love their country, calling them cowboys, warmongers, religious zealots, and jingoists. By contrast, America’s enemies are called “Uncle Joe,” “Fidel,” “agrarian reformers,” and practitioners of a “religion of peace.” Indeed, Communists and terrorists alike are said to be advocates of “peace.”

Liberals demand that the nation treat enemies like friends and friends like enemies. We must lift sanctions, cancel embargoes, pull out our troops, reason with our adversaries, and absolutely never wage war – unless the French say it’s okay. Any evidence that anyone seeks to harm America is stridently rejected as “no evidence.” Democratic senators, congressmen, and ex-presidents are always popping up in countries hostile to the United States – Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, Iraq – hobnobbing with foreign despots who hate America. One year after Osama bin Laden staged a massive assault on America, a Democratic senator was praising bin Laden for his good work in building “day care centers.” At least we can be thankful that in the war on terrorism, we were spared the spectacle of liberals calling Osama bin Laden an “agrarian reformer.”

David Frum on the ever-befuddled Justice Sandra Day O’Connor:

Once upon a time, we expected the Supreme Court to hand down broad principles of law that people could use to guide their behavior. But in recent years, the current court has taken to issuing ever-more specific decisions with ever-narrower application. Four years ago, my one-time professor Cass Sunstein wrote a whole book praising what he called “judicial minimalism.” His hero was Sandra Day O’Connor, whose whole jurisprudence boils down to a series of snap, arbitrary judgments: “This gerrymander is too squiggly: No.” “This one is not too squiggly: Yes.”

Sandra Day O’Connor is by all accounts a perfectly lovely person. People who have worked with her tell me that she is a very smart lawyer. But these cases in which she was the decisive vote exemplify her failure to do the job that people pay judges, and especially Supreme Court judges, to do. Courts are supposed to settle disputes. O’Connor decisions, by contrast, tend to provoke endless rounds of further litigation, as redistricters try to guess how squiggly a district can be before it becomes too squiggly and universities attempt to anticpate how much racial preference is too much. This isn’t law: It’s a high-stakes version of the children’s guessing game, “Getting warmer; getting colder.”

Peter Kirsanow, who correctly predicted the outcome of the case, has an intelligent, but merciless, dissection of “diversity” as a compelling state interest:

The Court’s holding that student-body diversity is a compelling state interest is not only a rank perversion of the Fourteenth Amendment but is wholly inconsistent with the strict-scrutiny analysis employed by the Court in the past. The Court has previously rejected amorphous concepts such as “societal discrimination” as qualifying as a compelling governmental interest. Only remediation of past discrimination, national security, and perhaps “social emergencies rising to the level of imminent danger to life and limb” qualify.

But the Grutter majority accepts at face value the fuzzy rationale that student diversity is a compelling state interest because a “critical mass” or “meaningful numbers” of minority students “break down barriers” and produce “more spirited discussions.” Aside from the fact that this rationale has been, if not debunked, rendered highly suspect by studies by the National Association of Scholars and Professors Rothman, Lipset, and Nevitte among others, it hardly justifies corrupting the clear language of the Fourteenth Amendment that “no state…shalldeny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.”

Until now, qualifying as a compelling state interest has been perhaps the most difficult legal standard to meet in our nation’s jurisprudence. Nonetheless, the Court simply credits the experts’ studies, reports, and amici briefs from preference proponents to summarily conclude that diversity is a compelling state interest, despite never precisely defining that interest. The Court simply accords the law school broad deference to determine the nature of the interest - a deference, as Justice Thomas notes, completely antithetical to strict scrutiny. It is not an exaggeration to say that today a compelling state interest is any nice idea favored by the elite and backed by flimsy social science.

And, of course, Justice Scalia’s dissent shines with the light of truth. Here’s Scalia focusing on the decision’s muddying the waters even more (I’ve removed cites to make the excerpt more readable):

Unlike a clear constitutional holding that racial preferences in state educational institutions are impermissible, or even a clear anticonstitutional holding that racial preferences in state educational institutions are OK, today’s Grutter-Gratz split double header seems perversely designed to prolong the controversy and the litigation. Some future lawsuits will presumably focus on whether the discriminatory scheme in question contains enough evaluation of the applicant “as an individual,” and sufficiently avoids “separate admissions tracks” to fall under Grutter rather than Gratz. Some will focus on whether a university has gone beyond the bounds of a “good faith effort"and has so zealously pursued its “critical mass” as to make it an unconstitutional de facto quota system, rather than merely “a permissible goal.” Other lawsuits may focus on whether, in the particular setting at issue, any educational benefits flow from racial diversity. (That issue was not contested in Grutter; and while the opinion accords “a degree of deference to a university’s academic decisions,” “deference does not imply abandonment or abdication of judicial review.") Still other suits may challenge the bona fides of the institution’s expressed commitment to the educational benefits of diversity that immunize the discriminatory scheme in Grutter. (Tempting targets, one would suppose, will be those universities that talk the talk of multiculturalism and racial diversity in the courts but walk the walk of tribalism and racial segregation on their campuses and through minority-only student organizations, separate minority housing opportunities, separate minority student centers, even separate minority-only graduation ceremonies.) And still other suits may claim that the institution’s racial preferences have gone below or above the mystical Grutter-approved “critical mass.” Finally, litigation can be expected on behalf of minority groups intentionally short changed in the institution’s composition of its generic minority “critical mass.” I do not look forward to any of these cases. The Constitution proscribes government discrimination on the basis of race, and state-provided education is no exception.

The bottom line is that yesterday’s decision, through its mindboggling softheadedness, allows university administrators to discriminate on the basis of race forever - as long as they don’t use numerical values to do so, but subject each application to the formality of “individual” review that miraculously produces about the same number of “minority” admissions each year.

But there is hope yet. California, Florida and Washington state have all abolished affirmative action through ballot initiatives and legislation. If Texas does the same, about a third of the nation will live in states where affirmative action is proscribed. Over the next couple of decades, we need to focus on undoing affirmative action through legislation. We also need to appoint clear-thinking Supreme Court Justices who can undo this terrible decision.

So I finally caught up with Howard Dean’s Sunday appearance on Meet the Press on my TiVo. Any commentator who says that Dean is ready for primetime is fudging. Tim Russert didto Dean yesterday what he did to Bill McBride in the 2002 Florida gubernatorial race - he eviscerated any pretense that Dean knows what he’s talking about.

Will Dean’s pathetic performance affect his prospects? Among pundits, yes, as you can see from today’s Note.

But Dean supporters may not care. They’re young, passionate and very furious about Iraq - a disease that seems to be afflicting most Democratic primary voters.

In any case it’s time to stop donating to Dean until he makes up for this disaster.

The only person who can be happy about all this is John Kerry.

On Wednesday I wrote:

Over the next few days and weeks you will hear an enormous amount of sniping and whining from the liberal media about the president’s juggernaut re-election campaign. There will be endless attacks from Democrats about the “fat cats” donating $2,000 each to his campaign to make up a “$200 million warchest.”

Sure enough, the Old York Times has a snarky editorial that is emblematic of dozens of other tut-tutting pieces that will be written. Naturally, they use the phrase “fat cat":

The president’s gratitude went over well with the Washington crowd, who ponied up $3.5 million. Even more, it underlined the extraordinary gilded age of fat-cat politicking that has befallen the nation with the intersection of Bush tax cuts favoring the affluent - $1.7 trillion worth and counting - and the start of the president’s phantom primary campaign season.

Read the rest of the editorial if you want to feel the seething rage and hatred that tortures liberal souls these days.

Why does the president need $200 million? To counter the sustained attacks, lies and propaganda that the lying socialist treasonous liberal media will orchestrate over the next year and a half.

In the US liberals, who want to rewrite our constitution through the courts, have to fight conservatives every step of the way. Conservatives sometimes roll back liberal precedents after decades have passed.

In Europe, however, the lunatics are running the asylum. Their constitution is literally what liberals would like our constitution to be.

Just heard that the SCOTUS has upheld the Michigan Law School program, which aims for a “critical mass” of “minorities,” but struck down the Michigan undergraduate program, which awards points for race. I haven’t read the opinions yet, but I’m willing to bet that the swing vote is Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who, in her typical split-the-difference manner has muddied the waters even more.

It will take decades for another such case to reach the court and, during that time, university administrators will engage in all kinds of mischief, using various euphemisms to discriminate on the basis of race.

This SCOTUS decision is the worst since Roe v. Wade and ranks right up there with Plessy v. Ferguson.

Republicans everywhere must hang their heads in shame. The Party of Lincoln was responsible for appointing seven of the Justices who have produced this dreadful endorsement of racial discrimination.

The Supreme Court never ceases to amaze me. Let’s see what you have to believe if you’re a SCOTUS Justice:

1. There is a right to privacy in the constitution, even though the word privacy is never mentioned in the bill of rights. This right to privacy means that states can make virtually no regulation of abortion. Procedures that include opening up a baby’s skull and sucking its brains out with a vacuum cannot be regulated, let alone banned.

2. The Second Amendment, even though it’s entirely devoted to the right to keep and bear arms, allows Congress and the states to impose regulations on the right to keep and bear arms.

3. The First Amendment means whatever the Justices say it does. Burning a flag is free speech. Burning a cross is not. Exotic dancing is free speech. Political campaign ads are not.

4. The Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t mean what it says. You can still discriminate on the basis of race in college admissions because “diversity” is a compelling interest. Ahh, underrepresented minorities. Conservatives, Republicans, Evangelical Christians and Asian Americans are not “underrepresented minorities.” Only Blacks and Hispanics qualify.

5. Racial quotas are illegal; but the Michigan Law School program is not a quota, even though it aims for a “critical mass” of black and hispanic students. What is a “critical mass?” 5%? 10%? A dull non-Supreme-Court-Justice like me would wonder what the difference is between a “critical mass” and a “quota.”

6. Race may be used as a factor in admissions. The Michigan undergraduate admissions policy is illegal because it uses race as a factor.

7. Homosexuality is protected by the mythical right to privacy. Prostitution is not.

Don’t you know that none of the language in the “living” constitution is meant to be taken literally? The constitution means whatever the Supreme Court says it means from day to day. You must consult the document regularly to see if it has magically morphed to suit the New York Times’ latest world view.