Civil rights

Jerry Brown Sides with Betsy DeVos on Title IX

Featured image Today Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill from the California state legislature that would have codified the previous Title IX “guidance” about sexual assault and harassment on college campuses. Referencing a previously enacted California law imposing an “affirmative consent” standard for hookups (“Yes means yes,” along with a “preponderance of evidence” standard for making judgments), Brown today says this: Since this law was enacted, however, thoughtful legal minds have increasingly questioned »

Harvey Weinstein and the silence of the civil rights group

Featured image We have noted the reluctance of major Democrats to speak out against Harvey Weinstein, the serial sexual harasser and alleged rapist. As John wrote: Hillary Clinton, whom Weinstein supported heavily, remained silent until today [Tuesday, October 10], when she claimed to be appalled by the revelations that have come out about Weinstein. About which, of course, she had no idea until now. Barack Obama maintained his silence even longer, but »

Civil War on the Left, Part 48: Asian Supremacy?

Featured image Are Asians an oppressed minority in America, or not? We know for a fact that elite universities are nowadays discriminating against Asian applicants in much the same way they discriminated against Jewish applicants decades ago. But didn’t a lot of Asians historically suffer the same kind of discrimination that Irish, Italian, and other immigrants nowadays considered part of the world of “white supremacy”? For example, there’s a little noticed passage »

Coates Versus Douglass

Featured image Ta-Nehesi Coates has a new essay out about Trump that is generating a lot of buzz, entitled “The First White President.” Here are a couple of excerpts about what he has to say about Trump: He is preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He is ready and willing at any time during the first year of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice »

Statue of Limitations (2)

Featured image Further to my comments the other day about the issues emerging from Charlottesville, a few more observations and interrogatories: It is understandable that Democrats would be agitating to remove Confederate-honoring statues. After all, it is their history that they need to make go away. You know, things like this: I won’t vouch for the accuracy of the histogram below (after all, it was produced by a hate group, the Southern »

A stellar choice to head the Civil Rights Division [UPDATED]

Featured image President Trump has nominated my friend and former law partner Eric Dreiband to be Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. This is a fantastic selection. Eric is an outstanding lawyer, a solid conservative, and one of the finest individuals I know. Politico greets Eric’s nomination with a hit piece, called “Activists unhappy with Trump’s nominee to lead civil rights unit.” The article, by »

Persecution and the Art of Cake Baking

Featured image I’m on the road today, departing shortly on a flight to Munich, and then connecting on to Bulgaria tomorrow (long story—I’ll try to post updates when I get internet access), but I’m keeping an eye out for Supreme Court news, especially the hoped-for retirement announcement of Justice Kennedy. One announcement from the Court today is important: they are taking up the appeal of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, which had »

A dangerous candidate for the top DOJ civil rights job, Part Two

Featured image Prominent conservatives have expressed to me their alarm over the prospect that Harmeet Dhillon will be tapped for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. However, I have also received pushback from a few of her supporters. In this post, I will address the arguments they make in defense of selecting Dhillon. But first, I will note that the supporters in question have not denied any of the statements of fact »

A dangerous candidate for the top DOJ civil rights job

Featured image The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice was at the center of much of President Obama’s “transformative” agenda. It took a leading role on issues ranging from local police practices, to voting procedures, to transgender matters, to employment quotas, to immigration. In all instances, the Civil Rights Division advanced the left’s position. The amount of mischief the Civil Rights Division can produce is vast. One of the great »

Title IX from Outer Space

Featured image Not even Edward Wood could contrive a more unbelievable legal regime than the federal Office of Civil Rights and its Title IX “guidance” for colleges and universities (hence my title above), and there is no one who is more adept at plumbing the depths of this matter than Shep Melnick, the Tip O’Neill professor of politics at Boston College. As it happens, I’m hosting him tomorrow (Monday) at noon at »

Why the Acosta nomination is very bad news for conservatives

Featured image When the left sinks a Trump appointee, or the appointee sinks himself, the left doesn’t necessarily win. The left wins only if the replacement is more appealing to it than the original guy. Unfortunately, Alex Acosta, the replacement for Andrew Puzder at the Department of Labor, is vastly more appealing to the left than Puzder was. The Acosta selection represents a win for the left and a defeat for conservatives. »

Al Franken triples down on stupid

Featured image I’m not enough of an elitist to believe that only Senators with legal training should serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee. However, the ability to engage competently in legal reasoning ought to be a prerequisite. In his work on the Judiciary Committee, Al Franken has failed to display this ability. Indeed, he shows a lack of competence in basic logic that, in a better world, would disqualify him from 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 »

Another baseless attack on Jeff Sessions

Featured image The left has relentlessly attacked Sen. Jeff Sessions as a racist. Sessions’ Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle know the charge to be false, and African-Americans from his home state who know the Senator have refuted it. Because the racism slander won’t fly, we’re now being told that Sessions is anti-LGBT. In support of this charge, critics cite what CNN calls “a public campaign as Alabama attorney general »

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 »

Could Gay Marriage Lead to . . . Tax Reform?

Featured image Morningafterwise, we didn’t have to wait long for conjectures like this from Time: Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions . . .  Rather than try to rescue tax-exempt status for organizations that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality, we need to take a more radical step. It’s time to abolish, or greatly diminish, their tax-exempt statuses. Or the New York Times »

Post-Obergefell Civil Rights: A Tangle or a Knot?

Featured image Remember the Hobby Lobby decision last year, where the Supreme Court sided with employers whose religious faith led them to object to the Obamacare mandate that all health insurance policies must offer contraceptive coverage? The authoritarian and conformist left howled with indignation. Get ready for a lot of sequels in the aftermath of Obergefell. On Friday the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations in America issued a very gracious statement about »