Terry Eastland’s piece on the

Terry Eastland’s piece on the Weekly Standard’s web page reports on a federal class action lawsuit challenging the federal government’s affirmative action program regarding its own employees. Eastland demonstrates the cynicism and absurdity of that program. Bill Clinton promised to “mend” affirmative action. Yet, the government apparently has preferred minority candidates over better qualified whtes where the overall representation of the minority group in the relevant job category was one-tenth of one percent less than what the bureaucrats deemed, based on census-type data, to be the “proper” level. To do so, the law requires these officials to find such slight differences a “manifest imbalance.” This turns out to be no obstacle for the government. At least until the class action suit is decided.