Daily Digest |  |
- Is Race Discrimination Legal, Or Not?
- Report: Kristen Clarke organized conference that championed cop-killers
- Shapes of things (30)
- Why aren’t there more leaks from the Biden White House?
- This day in baseball history — True Blue
| Is Race Discrimination Legal, Or Not? Posted: 09 Apr 2021 04:42 PM PDT (John Hinderaker) We live in a world in which race discrimination is ubiquitous. Universities, government agencies and all major employers systematically discriminate in favor of some races, and against others, under the banner of “affirmative action.” This has been going on for 50 years. And yet, the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection has been applied to ban race discrimination by public entities in a number of contexts. Similarly, the Civil Rights Act purports to bar race discrimination in employment and public accommodations. Such discrimination in employment is nevertheless pretty much universal; see, e.g., United Airlines’ recent declaration of its intent to discriminate for just one of many thousands of instances. I have no idea what the operative legal principles are. Here is an example from contemporary America: race discrimination in the dissemination of covid vaccines. This email was sent out by the University of Minnesota Health Services in collaboration with the Fairview health care system. For legal purposes, I take it this is a public enterprise to which the 14th Amendment applies. Click to enlarge:
This is the relevant part:
So the University of Minnesota is engaging in naked racial discrimination. Not in some trivial matter, but in the dissemination of a vaccine that is assumed to be lifesaving. If you are white–or Indian- or Iranian- or Pakistani- or Japanese-American, all of which groups have higher incomes than whites, and I think longer life expectancies–you have to have cancer, hemophilia or the like to be eligible. But if you are a member of a favored race–black, Hispanic (which of course is not a race, many Hispanics are white), American Indian, Southeast Asian–you go to the front of the line. Am I the only one who thinks this is unAmerican? Or is that sentiment a relic of a long-gone, better time? Race discrimination seems to be so deeply embedded in our society, so widely accepted, that it is hard to see how we can get rid of it. As noted above, I do not understand the legal framework within which race discrimination has become both universally condemned and, in practice, universally accepted. Someone suggested years ago that we should re-enact the exact language of the 14th Amendment, and add the words: “And this time, we really mean it!” That, basically, is the position of conservatives. But we are a forlorn minority. Maybe consistent legal principles are at work here–not good ones, but consistent–and I am too dense to understand them. I call on Paul for help. Many of our readers may not know that Paul was, early in his career, an appellate lawyer for the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Thereafter he devoted decades to litigating discrimination cases of various kinds. So maybe he can explain: Which is it? Is racial discrimination forbidden to public bodies and, in some contexts, to private organizations? Or is it not only permitted, but, in polite society, mandatory?     |
| Report: Kristen Clarke organized conference that championed cop-killers Posted: 09 Apr 2021 01:37 PM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) According to Fox News, Kristen Clarke, Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, organized a conference at which left-wing activists championed cop-killers and backed the freeing of violent criminals. Fox News reports:
What was the conference Clarke organized about? It was mainly about freeing cop-killers and radical extremists:
I guess attacks on the Capitol, the “temple of our democracy” — didn’t bother Clarke much back then. One of the speakers was Safiya Bukhari, founder of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition. Bukhari downplayed the Holocaust, saying it “was only 6 million Jews killed in the camps and prisons of Germany and Poland.” Clarke must have been comfortable with that. A few years earlier, she had invited a notorious anti-Semite to speak at Harvard and then endorsed his attacks on Jews. Clarke’s defenders may argue that her organizing activities in law school shouldn’t be held against her two decades later. However, I doubt that, for purposes of high-ranking Justice Department nominees, there’s a statute of limitation on supporting cop-killers. Moreover, Clarke held the college writings of a Trump nominee against that nominee. Law school activism is more relevant than college writings. Accordingly, Senators should hold Clarke’s celebration of cop killers against her. They should add it to the list of reasons not to confirm her.   |
| Posted: 09 Apr 2021 11:23 AM PDT (Scott Johnson) Our friend Roger Kimball wears hats including that of the publisher of Encounter Books. Roger writes us with this public service announcement: Amazon made headlines in February when they got into the censorship business. Without notice or warning, they summarily delisted Ryan Anderson's When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, a thoughtful, deeply researched, and humane study that I published at Encounter Books some three years ago. But it turns out that Amazon is not the only woke book store attempting to determine what you may and may not read. We just learned that Bookshop.org, which bills itself as a scrappy alternative to the Bezos Behemoth, has also dropped the book. We have suspected that this was the case for some weeks. We reached out at least three times to inquire abut the book. The organization never replied to us. At first, our distributor told us that they suspected there were stock issues. Just today, however, they got a direct response from Bookshop.org. This is what they said: "We did remove this title based on our policies [what policies?]. We had multiple complaints and concerns from customers, affiliates, and employees about the title." I note that Bookshop.org, like Amazon, continues to sell Hitler's Mein Kampf, the lunatic anti-Semitic ravings of Louis Farrakhan, and many other similarly unedifying tracts. They do not, however, sell many conservative books, including Heather Mac Donald's The War on Cops and my own Tenured Radicals. Readers interested in Ryan Anderson's book can still get it from Barnes & Noble here or directly from Encounter Books here.   |
| Why aren’t there more leaks from the Biden White House? Posted: 09 Apr 2021 09:33 AM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) In another pro-Biden piece, the Washington Post praises Joe Biden’s White House for not leaking to the press. It contrasts the Biden White House to Donald Trump’s. There’s no denying that the Trump administration was plagued by excessive leaking. It’s a mark against the former president that (1) he surrounded himself with leakers and (2) he wasn’t able to stop the leaking. But the Post goes further than just contrasting the two White House operations. Its reporter, Paul Farhi, is gushing in his commendation of Biden and his staff:
Farhi’s article raises two questions. First, how does the amount of leaking at this White House compare to the amount in past administrations, excluding Trump’s, in the first two and a half months? Remember, we’re very early into this administration. Farhi doesn’t answer this question, but does acknowledge that Bush 43 ran a pretty tight ship and that, as time goes on, leaks will start coming from the Biden White House. Second, how hard are reporters trying? During the Trump administration, a brigade of reporters looked at everything the White House did with a skeptical eye and played staffers against one another. Is this happening now? Or are reporters far more inclined to accept what the Biden administration says at face value? If so, it seems inevitable that they won’t obtain leaks at nearly the same rate as before. Farhi doesn’t address this question. He seems to assume that reporters are trying just as hard to get leaks from this White House as from Trump’s. I doubt that they are.   |
| This day in baseball history — True Blue Posted: 09 Apr 2021 09:01 AM PDT (Paul Mirengoff) On opening day of the 1971 baseball season, the Washington Senators chased young pitching phenom Vida Blue to the showers in the second inning. Blue’s next start, on April 9, was a different story. Blue faced the Kansas City Royals. His Oakland team, considered strong contenders in the AL West, had lost its first three games. Not to worry. Blue was almost unhittable on the day. He set the pattern in the top of the first by fanning the Royals’ first two batters — Freddy Patek and Cookie Rojas. The latter didn’t strike out much. Blue completed the inning by retiring Amos Otis on a ground ball. He would go on to strike out 13 batters in six innings, after which the game was called due to rain. Blue walked Patek — who was listed at only five feet, five inches — twice. Lou Piniella and Dennis Paepke each singled. Otis reached on an error by Bert Campanaris. And that was it. The Royals didn’t score. Oakland scored five runs, all in the second inning. The eruption was mainly due to the generosity of KC starter Jim Rooker, who walked four batters in that frame. It’s unfortunate that the game was called after the top of the sixth, because Blue was on pace to break the existing record for strikeouts in a nine inning game (18). Moreover, he seemed to be picking up steam. In his last inning of work, he struck out the side — Piniella, Bob Oliver, and Paepke. Blue would go on to win his next seven starts, all complete games. Counting the April 9 game, he racked up ten straight wins before his next loss in late May. So the Vida Blue of April 9, not the opening day version, was the true Blue. That, by the way, is how Oakland owner Charlie Finley wanted to market Blue. Obsessed with nicknames (like Catfish Hunter and Blue Moon Odom), Finley wanted Vida Blue to change his name to True Blue. He offered Blue $2,000 to make the change. When the pitcher declined, Finley instructed the team’s radio and television announcers to call him True Blue, anyway. This led to friction between the owner and the player and helped contribute to a blow up at the end of the season. Apologies to Mr. Blue for using Finley’s wordplay in the title of this post. NOTE: Although I'm boycotting Major League Baseball due to its decision to weigh in on the Democrats' side of a political issue, there's no reason not to continue writing about baseball history. My "this day in baseball history" posts do not benefit the current game. Fifty years ago, baseball wasn't "woke." It did not take the left's side on any controversial issue of which I'm aware. The achievements of the players back then deserve to recognized and fans of that era deserve to be reminded of them.   |
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