Civil rights
May 8, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Star Tribune drew on the work of three reporters and its collaboration with “Frontline” (through its Local Journalism Initiative, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) for Andy Mannix’s story on the federal indictment of Derek Chauvin and his three former colleagues on federal civil rights charges in the death of George Floyd. With all hands on deck, I thought
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May 7, 2021 — Scott Johnson
A federal grand jury has handed up indictments of Derek Chauvin and his three former colleagues for violating George Floyd’s civil rights. I inferred from the leak underlying Andy Mannix’s April 29 Star Tribune story that the federal civil rights investigation was originally undertaken as a backstop to the state criminal prosecution of the officers in the event that Chauvin and his former colleagues were acquitted, but such is not
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March 24, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Kristen Clarke is Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. She’s an odd pick, or would be in a normal administration, given her history of sponsoring anti-Semitism and advancing the idea that Blacks are superior to Whites. Clarke will argue that this happened long ago, during her college days. However, she is on record as holding another nominee to what he said while in
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January 18, 2021 — Scott Johnson
When Martin Luther King, Jr., brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connor’s Birmingham, he laid siege to the bastion of Jim Crow. In Birmingham between 1957 and 1962, black homes and churches had been subjected to a series of horrific bombings intended to terrorize the community. In April 1963 King answered the call to bring his campaign to Birmingham. When King landed in jail on Good Friday for
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January 15, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Last night, I wrote about Lani Guinier, Bill Clinton’s nominee to head the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. Clinton withdrew her nomination because, in essence, she advocated voting and legislative practices that were not race-neutral. I compared Guinier with Kristen Clarke, Joe Biden’s nominee for the same position, and found Clarke to be more extreme than Guinier. I also pointed out that, unlike Clarke, Guinier was a good-faith advocate for the
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January 14, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
In 1993, President Clinton nominated Lani Guinier to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Guinier was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania law school (she later moved on to Harvard), and a friend of the Clintons going back to their law school days. She had attended their wedding. However, Guinier’s nomination led to scrutiny of her scholarly work and that scrutiny led to charges that she was too
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January 10, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Friday was my friend Eric Dreiband’s last day as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Eric will take the rest of the month off and then return to private practice. Eric accomplished a lot in his two years and two months in charge of the Civil Rights Division. Some of the Division’s accomplishments under Eric’s leadership are set forth in this DOJ announcement. Eric defended the Trump administration’s record on
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December 5, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Every day, it seems, we see another story about governors and mayors (all of them Democrats, seemingly) who impose orders on the rest of us and then break them themselves. This New York Post cover itemizes some of these instances, but by no means all: In California, a restaurant owner was shut down by order of Mayor Garcetti, only to find that she was in the wrong business–i.e., a small
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November 12, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Bloomberg reports that the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is “headed for a dramatic makeover” under Joe Biden. It quotes Linda Chavez, among others. She says that the Biden administration is certain to “undo the Trump years” the same way Trump tried to undo the Obama years — “but with a vengeance.” I don’t want to underestimate the extent to which a Biden DOJ will accommodate race-hustlers, but
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July 17, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Sen. Josh Hawley has asked the Justice Department to investigate Kim Gardner, the St. Louis prosecutor. Gardner is persecuting the McCloskeys, the St. Louis couple who brandished guns when a mob invaded their property and two of its members, both white, threatened them. According to reports, she issued warrants, confiscated their guns, and is considering whether to bring criminal charges against them. I’m not persuaded that the low level of
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June 4, 2020 — Steven Hayward
It is a long running theme that the United States and Europe have been dissipating their inherited moral capital, and with the asset side of our civilizational balance sheet running dangerously low, we can see the consequences in front of us over the last seven days. Take New York City Mayor Warren Wilhelm Bill de Blasio, who is, let’s face it, a literal Communist. You could tolerate him so long as
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March 30, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Justice Department has filed a statement of interest in a case challenging a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) policy that enables biological males to compete against biological females. Attorney General Barr explained: In our pluralistic society we generally try to accommodate how individuals desire to live their lives up to the point where those desires impinge on the other people’s rights. Allowing biological males to compete in all-female sports
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March 10, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice enforces federal statutes that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, religion, and national origin. Under Democratic presidents, the Civil Rights Division largely confines itself to enforcing these statutes for the benefit of groups that are among the Democrats’ core constituencies, especially African-Americans. To be fair, these are the groups that, by far, have suffered most from discrimination in
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March 5, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Earlier this week TCM played the classic Robert Drew cinéma vérité documentary “Crisis: Behind a presidential commitment.” The documentary first aired on ABC in October 1963. My only purpose is to bring it to your attention in case you might find it of interest and to recommend it if you haven’t seen it before. The documentary takes us behind the scenes of the Kennedy administration’s efforts the previous June to
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January 22, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump will attend the March for Life in Washington, D.C. on Friday. He will be the first president to do so. The event is held every year on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. The Trump administration is supporting the pro-life movement in substantive ways as well. The most recent example is the Justice Department’s filing of a brief supporting an Ohio law that
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January 20, 2020 — Steven Hayward
This special edition of the Power Line Show uses the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday as the occasion to ponder his legacy in light of the lengthening of history and the dramatic changes in the poisonous racial politics of our moment. And who better to comment than “Lucretia,” Power Line’s international woman of mystery, along with special guest Peter C. Myers, who is professor of political science at the University
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January 20, 2020 — Scott Johnson
When Martin Luther King, Jr., brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connor’s Birmingham, he laid siege to the bastion of Jim Crow. In Birmingham between 1957 and 1962, black homes and churches had been subjected to a series of horrific bombings intended to terrorize the community. In April 1963 King answered the call to bring his campaign to Birmingham. When King landed in jail on Good Friday for
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