Family Diversity
Donald Scoggins is a real estate agent in northern Virginia. One of his sons was recently accepted at the University of Michigan, but he’s not altogether pleased. Ironically, the week before the oral arguments in the University of Michigan case, one of my sons was accepted to the school’s engineering program. He’s quite smart. I’m […]
Greetings From Bryn Mawr
Actually, greetings from nearby Swarthmore. We brought Jessie up yesterday and deposited her in her room at Bryn Mawr, and now wife Helene and I are staying with our good friend with a large house in Swarthmore, which still contains a garage full of stuff to deliver to Jessie when I get over my new […]
The NAACP On Racial Data In Florida And California
Citing an article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Kimberly Swygert, on her terrific Number 2 Pencil, deftly reveals the flaws in the NAACP’s lawsuit aimed at blocking Florida’s Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) “until the achievement gap between minority and white students is eliminated.” (The NAACP’s brief is here.) Kimberly makes a number of good points, […]
Hispanic Or Latino?
Sandra Cisneros, a Mexican American novelist and poet, was hopping mad. She had walked into Valenzuela’s Latino Bookstore in Austin thinking she had found a treasure, but then a clerk made an offensive remark. “She used the word Hispanic,” Cisneros said, her voice dripping with indignation. “I wanted to ask her, ‘Why are you using […]
King, Character, And Creed
Writing to commemorate the anniversary, coming Thursday, of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, David Broder, dean of Washington political writers, recalls King’s famous hope that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but my the content […]
Immoderate Notions Of “Moderate”
The Washington Post continues to salt its news columns with editorial judgments, judgments that are no less, well, judgmental for being possibly unconscious. In an August 19 article staff writer Evelyn Nieves discusses the fits “Schwarzenegger’s moderate views” are causing California conservatives. What are those “moderate views”? He supports abortion rights, gay rights and gun […]
My Problem With Pragmatism (Or At Least One Of Them)
The emiment judge (7th Circuit) and scholar Richard Posner reviews a new book on Lincoln’s Constitution, which provides an ideal platform for him to display his well known fondness for a pragmatic approach to constitutional interpretation. (Posner concludes that the book’s pragmatic defense of Lincoln’s bypassing constitutional niceties — suspending habeas corpus, flouting judicial orders, […]
Keep Your Eyes On What Prize?
“Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” was one of the leading anthems of the civil rights movement. An article in the Washington Post today on the 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington demonstrates the degree to which the civil rights movement has disintegrated. The article is built around one of the organizers […]
“Diversity” In A Highly Selective High School
Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology is a highly selective public high school in the D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia. I mentioned it in passing here but have never given it the attention it deserves, even though it has generated “diversity” arguments for years. Now I don’t have to, since reader Sean Duffy, […]
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