NEWS YOU CAN USE? There’s Another Sriracha Shortage — Here Are The Best Dupes.
Archive for 2023
July 7, 2023
IT’S A GOOD THING THERE’S NO HUMAN ACTION INVOLVED HERE: Guns and drugs are killing people in the US at increasing and unprecedented rates, 20-year study finds.
A PROGRESSIVE PRESCRIPTION TO FIX HIGHER ED. “To sum up Bunch’s argument, the U.S. should make universal postsecondary education a ‘public good.'”
The K-12 system is universal and it’s not doing so hot–how about we fix that first?
GIVE THE AUDIENCE WHAT THEY WANT: How the faith-based thriller ‘Sound of Freedom’ knocked out Indiana Jones at the box office.
SINCERE THANKS TO ATTORNEY CORY LIU: My general policy as a law professor is that I don’t write briefs in cases, as an amicus (“friend of the court”) or otherwise. If I wanted to be a lawyer, I would practice law.
A bit over two years ago, attorney Cory Liu contacted me and asked me if I was planning to write a brief urging the Supreme Court to hear the SFFA affirmative action cases. I explained my policy, noted above. Cory suggested that my emerging work on the arbitrariness of racial classifications, published in an article and in my then-forthcoming book, Classified, provided an important perspective on an issue that that the Court had largely ignored but needed to consider: not just whether affirmative action preferences served a compelling interest in the abstract, but whether the classifications used to grant or deny favorable treatment, such as “Hispanic” and “Asian,” were unduly arbitrary and failed to serve their purported purpose. Cory offered to write the brief with me as the named amicus, discussing my work. I agreed.
Once the Court agreed to hear the case on the merits, we filed another brief. As one of over 100 briefs filed in the case, I didn’t expect it to get any attention, and was pleasantly surprised when many articles on the case discussed this brief to the exclusion of almost all the others. Clearly, Cory and I had struck a nerve.
The fruits of Cory’s efforts were ultimately apparent in the Court’s opinions. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, stated that one reason Harvard and UNC’s policies were unlawful was that “it is far from evident … how assigning students to these racial categories and making admissions decisions based on them furthers the educational benefits that the universities claim to pursue. For starters, the categories are themselves imprecise in many ways. Some of them [such as Asian American] are plainly overbroad…. Meanwhile other racial categories, such as ‘Hispanic,’ are arbitrary or undefined.”
Roberts also cited Justice Gorsuch’s concurring opinion, which has an extensive discussion of the arbitrariness of the classifications. Gorsuch primarily relies on, and extensively cites, Cory’s amicus brief.
Justice Thomas, concurring, also citing Gorsuch, adds that “university admissions policies ask individuals to identify themselves as belonging to one of only a few reductionist racial groups…. Whichever choice he makes (in the event he chooses to report a race at all), the form silos him into an artificial category.”
In short, the Court’s majority has given potential litigants a new rationale for challenging affirmative action preferences and other uses of race in public policy; such preferences not only constitute illicit divvying up of opportunities by “race,” but the way they are divvied up is based on incoherent, arbitrary classifications that in most situations will be impossible to justify. Given the Court’s almost total reticence on this issue before SFFA, I doubt they would have reached it but for Liu’s efforts.
BOB GRABOYES: Eight Comments on Freedom.
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! 60 years after George Wallace pushed segregation, Dems block the schoolhouse door.
JIM TREACHER: Ben and Jerry Want America to Return Mt. Rushmore.
Ice cream manufacturers and dumb leftists Ben & Jerry are back at it, and this time they’ve found a new reason to bash America on the Fourth of July: Mt. Rushmore was stolen!
Wait, what?
The junk food-makers posted an essay on benandjerry.com, claiming:
“Ah, the Fourth of July. Who doesn’t love a good parade, some tasty barbecue, and a stirring fireworks display? The only problem with all that, though, is that it can distract from an essential truth about this nation’s birth: The US was founded on stolen Indigenous land.
“This year, let’s commit to returning it.
“Here’s why we need to start with Mount Rushmore.”
Return Mt. Rushmore. What could be more patriotic?
How would that work, exactly? Do we need to box it up ourselves to return it? Do the original owners send us an address label?
Remember: Those two fat old men make overpriced ice cream. That’s the only reason you’ve even heard of them. Ice cream.
Right. So why don’t they start by committing to return the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Waterbury, Vermont? After all, it was built on land that was “once the frontier between the Mahican and Pennacook people.” Go first — set the example for the rest of us, fellas!
CHANGE: MTG Ousted From the House Freedom Caucus. “Depending on which source you access, Greene was given the gate for her support of Kevin McCarthy or for the issue with Boebert, during which Greene allegedly called Boebert a ‘little b***h’ on the House floor. Greene was irked that instead of supporting her original articles of impeachment against Biden, Boebert had filed her own, which made use of some procedural resources Greene had not accessed.”
HOW TO MAKE A DISASTER EVEN WORSE: Lockdowns: the Self-Inflicted Disaster. My new piece at City Journal looks at the latest lockdown research as well as previous research into the consequences of politicians using a natural disaster as a pretext for authoritarianism:
Long before Covid struck, economists detected a deadly pattern in the impact of natural disasters: if the executive branch of government used the emergency to claim sweeping new powers over the citizenry, more people died than would have if government powers had remained constrained. It’s now clear that the Covid pandemic is the deadliest confirmation yet of that pattern.
One reason Sweden escaped lockdowns is that its constitution guaranteed freedom of movement to citizens. We need to enact those sort of protections in the U.S, particularly since the CDC and WHO are making plans to seize even more power — and do more damage — in the next pandemic.
OUT: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. IN: Is artificial ‘super’ intelligence coming soon?
DEAL OF THE DAY: TMA Cordless Vacuum Cleaner. #CommissionEarned
CHANGE (IT BACK): Why the Marines Are Ditching Tanks and Howitzers to Prepare for America’s Next Big War. “The U.S. Marine Corps is undergoing its biggest reorganization in decades, slimming down and chopping weapon systems, such as tanks and howitzers, in an effort to become quicker, more agile, and more lethal, while specializing in operating in island chains and coastal areas. It’s all built on the service’s belief that the next war will resemble World War II far more than Iraq or Afghanistan.”
FOR SOME REASON SHE ONLY THINKS THIS APPLIES TO WOMEN: Justice Kagan: Affirmative Action Suggests that Beneficiaries Could Not be Accepted Based on Merit Alone.
FIGHT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG: The Latest Company to Lose Billions After Anti-Woke Backlash Won’t Shock You.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA:CDC now giving tips for trans people who want to breastfeed.
WELL, YES, THAT’S THE GOAL: Professor: Michigan ‘hate speech’ bill could criminalize conservative opinion.
WHY DOES THE DNC THINK ALL MINORITY GROUPS AUTOMATICALLY “BELONG” TO THEM? Islamic leader challenges Psaki’s claim Muslim parents manipulated by GOP: We’re not ‘political puppets.’