Well, it’s official
Blessings on you and your family from all the Huckabee staff! Thank you for subscribing and I hope you enjoy today’s newsletter.
Mike
DAILY BIBLE VERSE
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:3
The experts on SCOTUS and affirmative action quotas
Lucky for us, two of our favorite legal analysts have expounded on the two cases that went before the Supreme Court on Monday, examining the principle of affirmative action as applied in 2022 –- that is to say, at the expense of high-achieving Asian students.
Yes, that’s “cases,” plural, both brought by the organization Students for Fair Admissions, one against the President & Fellows of Harvard College and the other against the University of North Carolina.
Law professor Jonathan Turley was there in the crowd as history was made in October 1977, when the Supreme Court heard the case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, regarding the constitutionality of racial quotas at a California medical school. At that time, he was a teenage congressional page.
In Bakke, SCOTUS ruled against affirmative action in a fractured decision (no one clear majority opinion), but the way it was written, it didn’t resolve the issue. Turley calls it “extremely nuanced,” as it didn’t bar the use of race entirely but said it could be one of a number of diversity elements. Later precedent was equally unclear.
In that case, the plaintiff was white; this time, it’s the Asian community fighting discrimination. Observers had noticed that at Harvard University, the percentage of incoming students who were Asian remained oddly consistent from year to year, between 18 and 20 percent. And they believe this is due to a clever four-category ranking system that obscures racial preferences. In addition to being scored for academic achievement, extracurricular activity and athletic participation, students are also given a “personal” ranking.
They’re subjectively assessed on such traits as likability (!), courage and kindness.
So, why is it that only 22 percent of Asian American students received a ranking of 1 (“outstanding”) or 2 (“very strong”) when over twice that percentage of African American students received those scores? Two explanations make sense to us: either the admissions people are trying to jigger the result with the “personal” rating or they consistently do just “like” the African American students more than they “like” the Asians. That sounds racist either way, actually.
Some justices see racial quotas as completely at odds with the Equal Protection Clause and also the Civil Rights Act. Recall that Chief Justice John Roberts has said, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” And in 2006, he wrote, “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” And indeed it is.
But to set a clear line, the justices will have to overturn the Grutter v. Bollinger decision of 2003. At that time, a 5-4 Court upheld the University of Michigan’s admissions policy that was merit-based but still used race as a “plus factor.” In Gratz v. Bollinger, which involved UM’s College of Literature, Arts and Sciences, a 6-3 court rejected the use of a “threshold” for race BEFORE individual considerations were applied. (See, more “nuance.”)
As Turley phrases it, “The Court...has been in the business of race-based admissions criteria for 44 years.”
The author of the Grutter decision was Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote that the Court “expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” It’s been 20 years. Ironically, before “wokeness” hit college campuses, I think we were just about there.
That’s because society’s goal in defeating racism used to be ensuring equal opportunity and equality under the law for every person regardless of skin color. That’s what it still should be –- without penalizing anyone for hard work, intelligence and achievement. But today, instead of being encouraged to reach that goal, we’re called racist for even desiring it and are confronted with the very different concept of “equity,” which means equality of outcome for various groups and is an excuse for using blatant racism to achieve that goal. In the interest of “equity,” if Asians are doing better than other groups, they have to be pulled back. That's right: being "woke" --- being "anti-racist" --- is itself extremely racist and completely at odds with the Equal Protection clause.
Margot Cleveland is definitely on the same side as Judge Roberts when it comes to racial discrimination in admissions. She offers some background on the case...
Students for Fair Admissions Inc. is an organization “defending the right to racial equality in college admissions.” Its members include Asian American students who were not accepted at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. As Cleveland describes it, both universities “consider the race of applicants, with the schools advantaging American Indian, Hispanic and black applicants to the disadvantage of Asian American students.”
They’ve been litigating this since 2014. SSFA sued the University of North Carolina for violating the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause, which provides that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” UNC is a state school, so that provision applies. But since Harvard is a private university, it doesn’t. Still, Harvard accepts federal funding –- quite eagerly, I would assume, even with its $40 billion endowment –- so it’s subject to Title VI, a federal law stating, “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/28/harvards-endowment-is-worth-40-billionheres-how-its-spent.html
Legal precedent has established that even though two different laws are being used in these suits, the same legal standard would apply to both.
The SSFA argues that Grutter was wrongly decided and should be overturned. But even if it isn’t, they say, the universities violated the standard set by it, giving race an “undue” influence by making being Asian a “minus” and by adopting “impermissible racial stereotypes” about Asians such as that they are “timid, quiet, shy, passive, withdrawn, one-dimensional, hard workers, perpetual foreigners, and ‘model minorities.’” Wow, if that’s what these universities have been doing, that is about as racist as it gets.
As Cleveland explains, lower courts essentially had to rule in favor of the universities because only the Supreme Court can reverse its own decision in Grutter. So both cases were appealed and the Court decided to consolidate them and hear them together.
The universities argue that “the Framers of the 14th Amendment understood that race may be considered to advance overriding governmental objectives.” (Aside: we've been subjected to far too many "overriding governmental objectives" lately.) But Cleveland believes their argument will fail with this Court. If it does, she says, then we “return to the true meaning of the 14th Amendment: that equal means equal –- not equal, plus or minus.” May it be so.
Here are some choice comments made by the justices to the attorneys presenting the case.
https://freebeacon.com/courts/supreme-court-eyes-end-of-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions/
We also like Greg Gutfeld’s take on affirmative action, which is that it has helped more unqualified people get ahead than the name “Biden.”
Leave me a comment, I read them!
Well, it’s official
The Democrats have no arguments whatsoever for reelecting them.
Last night, President Biden made that clear with a hurriedly-scheduled prime time speech that was widely seen as a Hail Mary pass to avoid total electoral annihilation. The issues of most importance to voters are the economy, inflation, high fuel prices, crime and the open border (5 million illegal crossers since Biden took office, and $5.8 million worth of meth seized from a truck entering Laredo just last Sunday.)
Biden should have used this address to list all the ways that Democrat policies have improved Americans' lives. But he couldn’t because all their policies have been disasters that have made our lives exponentially worse. And so he droned on for over 20 minutes, repeatedly banging away on the same broken drum: “MAGA extremists” and “election deniers” are a threat to “our democracy” (he said “democracy” – which we’re actually not – 37 times. I hope nobody was playing any drinking games based on it or they’ll be dead from alcohol poisoning.)
Yes, the only way to save democracy is to have a one-party system and prevent voters from choosing the representatives they want.
This tattered deuce was the only card he had left to play, and he played it over and over and over, despite polls showing that when he pulled the same “demonizing Republicans” shtick a few weeks ago, 60% of voters found it to be divisive and unhelpful. On the plus side, at least this time he did it without the Nuremberg rally background, and he did magnanimously admit that not all Republicans are a deadly threat to democracy. I'm sure he makes an exception for Liz Cheney.
One difference between this speech and the last one was that Biden repeatedly cited the attack on Paul Pelosi as an example of the violence of “MAGA” rightwing extremists. There has been no evidence so far to tie the homeless drug addict who attacked Pelosi to any Republicans. Indeed, all indications are that he’s a leftist, including the fact that he was on hallucinogens.
But what most irritated many Republicans is the ridiculous canard that all “election deniers” and all exponents of political violence are on the right. Here’s a round-up from Instapundit of prominent Democrats (including Biden) denying the results of elections they lost.
https://instapundit.com/551775/
Karl Rove also noted that Biden owes his presidency to Rep. James Clyburn rallying the black vote, and Clyburn was an election denier who falsely claimed computers switched 100,000 votes from Kerry to Bush in 2004.
As far as violence goes, Democrats only seem concerned about it when it happens to a Democrat. I said from the moment the Pelosi attack was reported that I pray for him to make a full and swift recovery. But Biden not only never voiced contrition for demonizing Republicans as a threat to democracy, he just doubled down on it, even knowing that it’s inspiring leftist nutjobs to violence.
He mentioned Pelosi repeatedly, but never said the name Cayler Ellingson, a North Dakota teenager run down with a car and killed because the driver thought he was a “Republican extremist.” He didn’t mention Sen. Rand Paul or Rep. Steve Scalise or New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin or Justice Brett Kavanaugh or any other conservatives who’ve experienced attacks or death threats from the left.
He talked at length about the one riot that threatened Democrat politicians, but not a word about the 700+ Democrat-sanctioned riots that destroyed homes and businesses and injured over 1,000 cops, and whose perpetrators were either immediately released or bailed out by a fund supported by his VP. His FBI hounds selfie-taking grannies from January 6th and arrests pro-life activists for praying outside abortion clinics, but there have been no arrests in over 60 incidents of fire-bombings, vandalism and death threats against pro-life pregnancy centers. Biden also didn’t mention the countless other people who have been assaulted, robbed and killed by homeless people, criminal illegal aliens and released repeat offenders thanks to Democrat policies, and not just in San Francisco.
And as far as threats to “our democracy” goes, I’m more worried about a two-tiered justice system, government censorship of private speech, arrests and raids of journalists and political opponents, and calls to do away with the Senate filibuster and the Electoral College and stack the Supreme Court than I am about people demanding that elections be trustworthy.