Civil rights

Barry and Biden Barely Cared About King

Featured image On January 15, 2016, when he proclaimed the national holiday for Martin Luther King, President Obama said: With profound faith in our Nation’s promise, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led a non-violent movement that urged our country’s leaders to expand the reach of freedom and provide equal opportunity for all. Together, with countless unsung heroes equally committed to the idea that America is a constant work in progress, »

A lift too far: Where’s the order?

Featured image JayCee Cooper’s case against USA Powerlifting seems to me to represent the reductio ad absurdum of the woke trans madness, at least in its legal manifestation. Cooper is a biological male who claims that USA Powerlifting has discriminated against him by not allowing him to compete as a woman. Are you kidding me? Physical strength lies at the core of weightlifting. Men are stronger than women. Treating men as women »

A lift too far, death penalty edition

Featured image I wrote about the Minnesota state court decision ruling that USA Powerlifting must permit the male trans athlete JayCee Cooper to compete as a woman in “A lift too far” and “A lift too far, Tucker Carlson edition.” Ramsey County District Judge Patrick Diamond is responsible for the ruling. There’s no crime in being wrong, but in this case it should damage your reputation. At the time I wrote those »

A lift too far, Tucker Carlson edition

Featured image Minnesota’s Star Tribune has yet to cover the ridiculous Ramsey County District Court decision requiring USA Powerlifting to allow male trans athlete JayCee Cooper to compete as a woman. The Star Tribune has nevertheless published Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve’s op-ed column celebrating the decision. Reeve omitted any discussion of the possible participation of male trans athletes in the WNBA. She could have made a contribution if she had taken »

A lift too far

Featured image You may have heard about the Minnesota state court decision ruling that USA Powerlifting must permit the male trans athlete JayCee Cooper to compete as a woman. The decision has been widely reported in the national press. NRO’s Ari Braff, for example, has a story on it here. It is a story that has been reported in outlets including the New York Post, Fox News, NBC News, and UnHerd. Cooper »

The Hoarse Voice of the Left

Featured image If you thought the primal screams from the left after the Dobbs decision were deafening, just wait until after next Tuesday’s election result, and especially next year if the Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action at the end of this term. I expect the left is going to go hoarse from all their primal screaming. The New Republic is especially alarmed that, as they put it in a headline today, »

Chief Justice Roberts for the Win

Featured image I listened to all five hours of the Supreme Court oral argument today while on a long car drive home, and am hoping to post a special podcast tomorrow going over the whole scene, but for me, one single moment especially stands out. Seth Waxman, the primary attorney defending Harvard (a former solicitor general under President Clinton), was going head-to-head with Chief Justice John Roberts about whether race is a »

Flashback: The 1969 Prophecy of the Corruption of Affirmative Action

Featured image With Supreme Court oral arguments now scheduled for the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative action cases, I’ve started reading through some of the amicus briefs filed in the case, and will comment on some of them in due course. Meanwhile, an exchange of letters between Macklin Fleming, a Justice of the Court of Appeals, State of California at Los Angeles, and Louis Pollak, Dean of the Yale Law School, that was »

Mr. Putz strikes again

Featured image The Minnesota Department of Human Rights has filed a 72-page charge of discrimination over a period of 10 years against the Minneapolis Police Department. I commented critically on the charge along with a link to the charge itself in “Who will speak for the MPD?” We have yet to see any of the 480,000 pages of documents and other evidence gathered by the department in the course of its investigation. »

The College Admissions Sausage Factory

Featured image Our go-to thinker on civil rights issues, University of San Diego law professor Gail Heriot, is out with a new paper (with co-author Carissa Mulder) on “The Sausage Factory” of college admissions. Here is the abstract: The Supreme Court assumes that race-preferential admissions policies are the result of a careful academic judgment by colleges and universities that racial diversity has pedagogical benefits for students generally. But evidence shows that the »

US v. Tou Thao: Opening statements

Featured image Yesterday the federal trial of the three former Minneapolis police officers other than Derek Chauvin began in earnest with opening statements. The three officers are Tou Thao, Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane. They are charged with violating the civil rights of George Floyd in the arrest that resulted in his death. I went down to the Warren E. Burger Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in downtown St. Paul to watch »

At the George Floyd trials, cont’d

Featured image Last week I previewed the federal trial of the three former Minneapolis police officers other than Derek Chauvin: Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao. They are charged with violating the civil rights of George Floyd in the arrest that resulted in his death. Were it not for this gratuitous prosecution, the three officers would already have been tried on the criminal charges pending against them in state court. Why »

The George Floyd trials, cont’d

Featured image Tomorrow jury selection is set to commence in the federal trial of Derek Chauvin’s three former fellow Minneapolis police officers before senior Minnesota federal district judge Paul Magnuson in St. Paul. The three officers are Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao. They are charged with violating the civil rights of George Floyd in the arrest that resulted in his death. As everyone knows, Derek Chauvin was convicted of the »

The prophetic voice

Featured image 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 »

Worst presidential speech in modern history?

Featured image Has any president in the last 50 years delivered a worse speech than Joe Biden did yesterday in Georgia? The only one that comes immediately to my mind is Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” address of 1979. But impolitic as it was, at least that speech contained a kernel of truth. I invite the distinguished presidential scholars among our readers and my co-bloggers to point to a speech worse than Biden’s. How »

Uses and abuses of the past

Featured image Lani Guinier, the law professor and civil rights attorney, died on January 7. The Washington Post’s obituary is here. The Post uses its obituary to settle old scores against Republicans and to make political/ideological points. Accordingly, the obit begins this way: Lani Guinier, a lawyer whose innovative and provocative writings on racial justice and voting rights were used to undermine her nomination to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division »

The Biden DOJ’s lawless “environmental justice” investigation of Alabama

Featured image The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has announced that it opened an “environmental justice” investigation into the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Lowndes County Health Department. The DOJ’s press release states that the Civil Rights Division will examine whether the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Lowndes County Health Department operate their onsite wastewater disposal program and infectious diseases and outbreaks program in a manner that discriminates »