Legal Commentary

Scene & Herd In San Francisco

Posted on September 03, 2009
As I?ve mentioned, my wife, Helene, and I are house-sitting in San Francisco, a wonderful, quirky city but also home pond to Nancy Pelosi and other odd ducks. Following are a few random sightings and quotes that provide a small whiff of the atmosphere here, such as the fact that there are so many Priuses here with Obama bumper stickers that I now suspect that all the cars Toyota shipped to San Francisco last year came with the Obama stickers built into the bumpers at the factory...

Racial Politics In The New (Old?) South

Posted on September 02, 2009
A minority candidate has a real shot at being elected the next mayor of Atlanta, and the prospect has the majority so worried that it is resorting to the old tactic of calling for racial bloc voting. As someone who grew up in the segregated South, I find this new/old call for racial solidarity both familiar and depressing.

Political Correctness Knows No National Borders

Posted on September 02, 2009
Inside Higher Ed reports today that Oxford, ?Citing Racism, Won't Let Tories Use University Name.? The University of Oxford is barring the student affiliate of the Conservative Party from using ?Oxford? in its name, following an incident in which racist jokes were told at an event for would-be officers of the organization, who were asked to tell ?the most inappropriate joke you have ever told...

Civil Rights Division Reshaped And Directed To Pursue Disparate Impact Cases Aggressively

Posted on September 01, 2009
Fulfilling the wet dreams of liberals and the worst fears of conservatives, the Obama Justice Department is hiring 50 additional lawyers in the Civil Rights Division while shifting its focus to disparate impact enforcement. ?As part of this shift,? the New York Times reports, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly...

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Is The National Research Council Racist?

Posted on August 31, 2009
Racist? Maybe, maybe not, but this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education accuses its prestigious Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States of suffering at least from ?a form of implicit bias.? The NRC assessment ?stands as the authoritative source on the quality of American doctoral programs,? and, at least on the surface, appears to be thorough and definitive...

Immoral Imperative?

Posted on August 31, 2009
The Democrats (or their pollsters) seem to have decided that the way to sell health care reform is to describe it not as a money-saver but as a ?moral imperative.? After the funeral for Ted Kennedy, former President Bill Clinton and former Vice-president Al Gore spoke at the Tennessee Democratic Party?s annual Jackson Day dinner...

UPDATE!

Posted on August 30, 2009
?The Least Surprising Correlation Of All Time? has been UPDATED.

More On Women In Science (Or Not)

Posted on August 29, 2009
It?s now been several days since I?ve stood on Roger Clegg?s shoulders to post something, and regular readers are no doubt missing him. Not to worry: here he is (or was a couple of days ago), deftly skewering yet another ?Diversity in Science? report, this one from Grinnell College...

Profiling?

Posted on August 29, 2009
Profiling in the woods? DENVER (AP) - A federal warning to beware of campers in national forests who eat tortillas, drink Tecate beer and play Spanish music because they could be armed marijuana growers is racial profiling, an advocate for Hispanic rights said Friday...

?The Least Surprising Correlation Of All Time?

Posted on August 28, 2009
Greg Mankiw, Harvard economist, finds the inference often made (such as by the New York Times Economix Blog) from the correlation shown on a graph between parental income and SAT scores ?The Least Surprising Correlation of All Time.? It tells us nothing, he says, ?about the causal impact of income on test scores...

What Bob McDonnell Should Do

Posted on August 26, 2009
Helene and I are now enjoying the pleasures (and political annoyances) of San Francisco, house-sitting once again (we?ve done this for several summers) for an old Stanford friend of mine. (For those of you who remember and are concerned about Mosby The Wonderdog, don?t worry...

Police Victims Of Discrimination Win Retroactive Promotions

Posted on August 23, 2009
Here?s another blow to affirmative action: In a recent court settlement, four police officers who were denied promotion five years ago were vindicated on all the points of their complaint, with retroactive effect.... The legal proceedings had been instituted by four forensic scientists and on Monday the case was settled by granting all the requests they asked for back in November 2004: immediate promotion, which was formerly refused due to the colour of their skin, as well as full compensation with retroactive effect, as if they had indeed been promoted at that time...

Interests? What Interests?

Posted on August 23, 2009
The Washington Post?s Dan Balz reports today on the left?s growing doubts about Obama. The ?immediate cause for the rebellion,? he writes, is fear that the public option will be sacrificed, but that has given way to ?broader criticisms,? such as: ?Is Obama tough enough to defeat the interests arrayed against health-care legislation?? What ?interests? would those be? The AMA? Hospitals? Big Pharma? The AARP? Last time I looked (about 30 seconds ago), all the ?interests? I could think of were supporting Obama?s proposals (whatever they are)...

Fear Of Health-Care Rationing ?Not Entirely Irrational??

Posted on August 22, 2009
In an oh so gingerly fashion, Robert Pear of the New York Times describes a number of reasons why a reasonable person might believe that President Obama?s health-care/insurance (or whatever) reform would probably lead to rationing of services, especially to the old...

Whose Misperceptions II, Or : There He Goes Again ... And Again

Posted on August 21, 2009
President Obama repeated twice ? once in his interview on Michael Smerconish radio show and again in his pep talk to partisans at the DNC ? that it is a ?misconception? to claim that his proposed health-care reform (or health insurance reform, or whatever it is) would cover illegal immigrants...

How Stupid Do Obama And The Democrats Think We Are?

Posted on August 21, 2009
According to Rich Lowry, pretty damn stupid. Read the whole thing to see 22 leading examples

Misperceptions? Whose Misperceptions?

Posted on August 20, 2009
MSNBC reports a NBC poll that, it claims, finds that ?Misperceptions abound on president's health overhaul initiative.? Leaving aside the problem of how there can be misperceptions of a proposal that does not yet actually exist, what does NBC/MSNBC think these misconceptions are? Here are some of the presumed misconceptions mentioned in the article: ?A plurality believes Obama?s health plan would worsen the quality of health care?; ?Forty-five percent think the reform proposals would allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care for the elderly?; ?Majorities in the poll believe the plans would give health insurance coverage to illegal immigrants...

Obamaphobia?

Posted on August 19, 2009
In ?The Rising Stakes of Obamaphobia? our old target, Penn anthropologist John L. Jackson Jr., argues that much antagonism to Obama is, well, phobic. Not all of it, you understand, but the criticism offered by (like that offered by?) Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, et...

And Meanwhile, In Charlottesville...

Posted on August 18, 2009
... some of you may be interested in this perceptive letter that recently appeared in the Daily Progress.

Helene On Glenn Beck!

Posted on August 18, 2009
My wife, Helene, was on Glenn Beck at 5:00 PM today talking about how the AARP has betrayed its members by supporting (its denial notwithstanding) Obamacare. I think the program will be repeated in many markets at some ungodly hour (2:00 AM?) and maybe again over the weekend...

White House/AARP Spam

Posted on August 17, 2009
My wife, Helene, is one of an apparently quite large number of people who received a surprising, unsolicited, and hence disturbing email from David Axelrod attempting to extol the virtues of President Obama?s proposed health care health insurance reform, whatever it is at the moment...

Another Unkeepable Obama Promise...

Posted on August 17, 2009
Now even the Washington Post reports that the Obamamantra ? ?If you like your doctor ... if you like your current health plan...? ? is a promise that can?t be kept, no matter how often it is repeated. President Obama promises that, if health-care reform is enacted, people will be able to keep their current coverage...

Health Care As A Civil Right?

Posted on August 16, 2009
In Obama at Portsmouth: ?Civil Rights? for the Sick I criticized President Obama?s constant refrain about insurance company ?discrimination,? noting that [t]his charge of insurance company discrimination is intended, no doubt, to make health care reform ? now presented as merely health insurance reform ? seem like simply another anti-discrimination law, a civil rights law for the sick Now, almost as though I had invented him, comes Jonathan Alter of Newsweek with a simplistic argument that Obama needs to ?reframe the debate? and sell ?Health Care As A Civil Right...

Explicit Criticism Of The Implicit Association Test

Posted on August 16, 2009
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) purports to prove what all liberals already know: all of us are biased, whether we think so or not. Now comes a new study, Strong Claims and Weak Evidence: Reassessing the Predictive Validity of the IAT, challenging the reliability of the IAT, at least as its been interpreted (HatTip to reader Linda Seebach, via Marginal Revolution).

The Boston Globe Opposes Preferences!

Posted on August 15, 2009
Reader Fred Ray points to a hard-hitting attack by Jules Crittenden against an editorial opposing preferential treatment in the Boston Globe, which Crittenden calls a ?Lefty Rag? and others refer to simply as the New York Times outpost in New England...

?Death Panels?: Hyperbole? Yes. A Lie? I Don?t Think So

Posted on August 15, 2009
For better or worse much of the debate over health care health insurance reform has concerned ?death panels,? which opponents of the president?s reform proposals think notorious and supporters think non-existent. Sarah Palin?s attack on these alleged ?death panels? on Facebook ratcheted up the debate, and her criticism has brought renewed attention to Dr...

Obama At Portsmouth: ?Civil Rights? For The Sick

Posted on August 13, 2009
Here?s another article on Pajamas Media that I really like. I encourage you to read it.

?Illegal Immigrants Spend Millions Extra On Tuition?

Posted on August 11, 2009
Amazing! A state law banning illegal immigrants from in-state tuition actually seems to work! In 2006 over 70% of Arizona voters passed Prop. 300, ?rendering undocumented Arizona students ineligible for in-state tuition rates or state scholarships.? Now comes the Arizona Republic with a report documenting that the new law is working as intended, to the dismay of those who opposed it, and, it appears, the author of the Republic?s report...

Ain?t Choice A Bitch?

Posted on August 10, 2009
Well, sociologists have finally discovered something we argued in the Sears case over thirty years ago. (My long discussion of EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck and Co., 628 F. Supp. 1264 (1986), 839 F.2d 302 (1988), can be found in the last three-fourths of this post...

Is ?Nobody? Talking Too Much?

Posted on August 09, 2009
At a fundraiser for Virginia Democratic candidate for governor Creigh Deeds last Thursday, President Obama told his critics to shut up and get out of his way. ?I don?t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking,? he said. ?I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess...

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