Legal Commentary

Curent Health Care System Is Bad For ... Women?

Posted on September 18, 2009
Michelle Obama told a gathering of women?s groups today that the treatment of women under our current health care system is ?unacceptable.? Michelle Obama said women are being ?crushed by the current structure of our health care? because they often are responsible for taking care of family illnesses, arranging checkups and monitoring follow-up care...

The Obama Justice Dept.: Civil Rights For Some, Not All

Posted on September 16, 2009
Jennifer Rubin has a very disturbing report arguing that the Obama Justice Department has, from the Attorney General on down through the career lawyers working in civil rights, rejected the view that civil rights laws protect everyone equally. The notion that civil rights laws apply to all citizens, and are not on the books merely to protect minority groups or to pursue white racists, is an anathema to the liberal civil rights establishment and their sympathetic partners in the Justice Department...

Black Journalist Peers Into The Brains Of Obama Critics, Finds Racist, Damaged Psyches

Posted on September 16, 2009
According to today?s column by the always entertaining Derrick Z. Jackson, Rep. Joe Wilson?s ?You Lie!? outburst was a double-barreled blast. One was a shout out for white Americans who somewhere in their psyche cannot respect a black president. The other, since it came as Obama said undocumented people would not be covered under his health care proposals, was a political bullet aimed at immigrants south of our borders, who mostly happen to be brown...

Required Reading Re ?Required?

Posted on September 16, 2009
The White House has been changing its tune with increasing frequency on some matters related to health care reform. One, which I discussed several days ago, concerned whether or not the House legislation contained truck-wide loopholes that would have allowed coverage of illegal immigrants...

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Rasmussen: Most Democrats Believe Most Obamacare Critics Are Or May Be Racist

Posted on September 16, 2009
[NOTE: This post has been updated, twice] In the past few days besieged Obamanauts have been hurling charges of racism against Obamacare critics with increasing ferocity and, yes, unwitting, unintentionally self-indicting humor, such as Maureen Dowd?s unembarrassed admission that when she heard Rep...

Obama Speech To Wall Street!

Posted on September 15, 2009
Something remarkable almost happened yesterday: I found myself agreeing, at least for a moment, both with the underlying vision and actual policy proposed in a speech by President Obama. I happened to be walking by a TV report of his speech and thought I heard him say We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis ...

With Health Care Analysis Like This, Who Needs Cartoons?

Posted on September 15, 2009
From ?Fox News Sunday?: CHRIS WALLACE (host): Senator McCaskill, do you really believe that that?s possible, that you can take hundreds of billions of dollars out of Medicare without cutting services to seniors? SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D-MO.): Well, I don?t know how many ads you?ve seen for scooters on cable TV, but I see a lot of them...

Invisible Whites And The Meaning Of ?Diversity?

Posted on September 15, 2009
Ralph Ellison would be amazed at the new color of invisibility. In ?Diversity Increases at Public Historically Black Colleges,? the Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning: Public historically black colleges and universities have become increasingly diverse over a 20-year period, according to a new report by the Thurgood Marshall College Fund...

Roger Clegg?s Excellent Letter, Release 2.0

Posted on September 14, 2009
About a week ago I posted a link to Roger Clegg?s Excellent Letter .... Now he?s gone and written another one, and once again some ?obviously sleeping? mainstream media editor let it slip by. Don?t let it go to waste; read it.

Phooey On Biased AP Story

Posted on September 14, 2009
In an Associated Press article worrying over ?Election trouble brewing for House Dems in 2010,? reporter Beth Fouhy points to the likelihood of a highly motivated GOP base confused by the president's proposed health care plan and angry at what they consider reckless spending and high debt...

Black Chamber Of Commerce Leader Urges ?Ugly Stuff? In Street

Posted on September 13, 2009
HAMMOND [Indiana]| The leader of the Washington, D.C.-based National Black Chamber of Commerce on Friday issued a rallying cry for minority-owned business to take to the streets and shut down big cities if necessary to get their slice of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds...

Crossing The Finish Line... Or Not

Posted on September 12, 2009
Those of you who follow these things (and most of you must, or you wouldn?t be here) will have noticed the appearance of a new book by former Princeton president William Bowen, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities ...

If Joe Wilson Lied When He Said Obama Lied ...

Posted on September 12, 2009
... Why is the White House providing what MSNBC cutely calls ?clarification? of its position on health care for illegal immigrants? (?Clarification,? for those of you whose Washington-speak vocabulary is weak, means abandoning one?s previous position...

Chicago Tribune: Purposefully Misleading Or Merely Incompetent?

Posted on September 12, 2009
Yesterday the Chicago Tribune ran an article under this headline: New U. of I. board eliminates preferential admissions. The assertion in the headline is, of course, not true. What the new board eliminated was only the preferential admission of friends of politicians and other well-connected people, as discussed here and here...

Word Wars

Posted on September 11, 2009
Jonah Goldberg calls attention to new Rasmussen findings on the declining popularity of the terms ?liberal? and ?progressive? with American voters: ?Progressive? is becoming more of a dirty word, but all political labels ? except ?being like Ronald Reagan? - are falling into disfavor with many U...

Could Obama Have Survived Appointment In Another Administration?

Posted on September 11, 2009
The last two Democratic administrations, Obama?s and Clinton?s, have a similar interesting embarrassment in common: both appointed or attempted to appoint intelligent, articulate, very highly regarded black graduates of an elite Ivy League law school, Yale, and both had to be thrown under the bus after their radical views came under scrutiny...

Speech Note II & A Suggestion

Posted on September 10, 2009
A couple of excerpts from The Speech ... we?ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system ? a system that is currently full of waste and abuse.... Now, because Medicare is such a big part of the health care system, making the program more efficient can help usher in changes in the way we deliver health care that can reduce costs for everybody...

Liar! Liar!

Posted on September 10, 2009
I have no reason to suspect that Rep. Joe Wilson, the loudmouthed heckler from South Carolina, is on the payroll of the Democrats, but if he is he?d have done just what he did last night. The Dems and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) are already milking Wilson for all he?s worth to confirm what I?ve described, here and here, as the new Conventional Wisdom that Obama critics are all so rabidly unreasonable that none of us need be listened to, justifying Obama in moving ahead with a health care reform based only on Democratic votes...

What Happened To the ?Post-Partisan? Obama?

Posted on September 10, 2009
There is a new Conventional Wisdom hardening the already hard intellectual arteries of the mainstream media, and it is revealed, nicely if unwittingly, by the John F. Harris & Jonathan Martin Politico article today. They begin: This summer marked the fifth anniversary of the Democratic Party?s swoon for Barack Obama, who thrilled millions of people hearing the young state senator for the first time with words that set his image as a dazzling unifier in an age of mean and divisive politics: ?Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes,? Obama told the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston...

Obama?s ?I? Talk To School Kids

Posted on September 09, 2009
I haven?t said anything about Obama?s controversial talk to school kids today because of a bad case of one-the-one-hand-on-the-other-handism ? on the one hand, I?ve been less bothered by it than most of those who are bothered, but on the other I was more bothered by his invitation to the students to write letters laying how they could help him in his mighty tasks (an invitation subsequently withdrawn) than were those people who were not bothered...

Speech Note

Posted on September 09, 2009
Since I don?t know what Obama was trying to do in his speech tonight (rally his base? persuade the unpersuaded?), I obviously have no idea whether or not it will succeed. But I do nevertheless have one observation: If he did intend to give a partisan speech that was sure to insult, anger, and energize those who oppose his approach, so that he could then point to us and say, ?See, these right wingers are so negative you can?t reason with them and so we?ll just have to pass a bill with only Democratic support,? he would have given exactly the speech he did.

From The Providence Journal?s ?Diversity Calendar

Posted on September 08, 2009
Diversity Calendar: Sept. 7 The Rhode Island Affirmative Action Professionals is looking for people to join in a meeting to talk about creative ways to recruit people of color for jobs in the public and private sectors. The meeting is at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, Sept...

The Left And The Democrats: The Van-guard Of The Revolution

Posted on September 08, 2009
There?s been so much written about the past, present, and passing of Van Jones that I hesitate to add to it, but I think this is, as someone else said recently in a different context, a ?teachable moment,? and the lesson needs to be drummed home. That lesson is what today?s left looks like, and it?s not a pretty picture...

Roger Clegg?s Excellent Letter ...

Posted on September 08, 2009
... slipped by obviously sleeping New York Times editors and (and this vacationing blogger, until today) and appeared on Sept. 4. If it slipped by you, too, you should read it now. For background and more depth, see this post of his on NRO last week (and for another bite of the same apple, this one from a less distinguished source).

?See Baby Discriminate?

Posted on September 07, 2009
According to this long research-reporting article in Newsweek, even babies discriminate (HatTip to reader Hube). I don?t have a strong enough grounding in psychological social science research to have anything worthwhile to say about the research fondly reported here, which for all I know may be penetrating and profound ? but if it is it will be in spite of the pervasive politically correct contemporary liberal bias that drips from the Newsweek article...

Two Questions For The Presidential Mouthpiece...

Posted on September 06, 2009
... that the mainstream media will never ask: 1. Mr. Gibbs, is Van Jones the only communist the president has appointed to an influential position, or are there others? 2. Mr. Gibbs, was the president familiar with Van Jones?s racist, radical past when he appointed him green jobs czar? If not, has he appointed any other czars wits whose record he is equally unfamiliar?

Conflict Of Interest?

Posted on September 06, 2009
The doubt I have about whether Congressmen are even capable of having conflicts of interest was reinforced by Instapundit?s link today to this New York Post editorial about Rep. Charlie Rangel?s gifts to three members of the House Ethics Committee, which will eventually judge his tax and reporting evasions...

San Francisco Recruits Blacks

Posted on September 05, 2009
Helene and I went to San Francisco?s de Young Museum today for the the King Tut exhibit, and while there we picked up this San Francisco Examiner supplement about the exhibit. Imagine my surprise when, browsing through it, I saw this ad for the San Francisco Housing Development Authority?s effort to recruit blacks for assisted housing...

Health ?Disparities?

Posted on September 04, 2009
The Black Caucus has warned President Obama that he better express his ?unwavering support? for progressive health care reform in his upcoming speech. According to Politico?s report, the letter from CBC chair Barbara Lee stated [W]e are deeply concerned about the current discussions surrounding health care reform and the possibility that current components of the bill ? such as a robust public option and myriad health disparity elimination provisions ? may be stricken in order to lower its cost to about $500 billion...

Surprise! Race Mavens Insist ?Race Still Matters?!

Posted on September 03, 2009
Remember that movie from a few years back, A Day Without A Mexican? People fight in grocery stores as local vegetables become a hot commodity. Affluent families have to ? gasp ? actually mow their own lawns and take care of their own children. Hollywood has to resort to using latino-looking actors to play the role of ?Hood No...

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