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.

SPEAKING OF ERRORS IN RECENT SUPREME COURT OPINIONS: Justice Sotomayor wrote in her SFFA affirmative action dissent that during the Jim Crow era, University of North Carolina excluded “all people of color.” In fact, only black Americans were excluded.

THE COMPREHENSIVE CASE AGAINST RENOMINATING TRUMP: Qunn Hilyer: A Trump nomination would bring GOP victories to a screeching halt.

Trump’s laziness and incompetence are confirmed by those who were closest to him. When a single disgruntled former staffer hurls accusations at his former boss, such complaints may be dismissed as sour grapes. But when numerous former aides, each of high independent stature, all recount the same serious horror stories of an out-of-control president, reasonable people should believe them. Former Gens. H.R. McMaster, James Mattis, and John Kelly, two-time Attorney General William Barr, and longtime foreign policy leader John Bolton were Trump’s “best men.” But he drove them all away to tell harrowing tales of catastrophes averted only because Trump was so easily distracted that he did not follow through on his worst instincts.

THERE IS, IN SHORT, INCREDIBLE CORRUPTION IN MINORITY BUSINESS ENTERPRISE PROGRAMS: Welcome to the World of Minority Contracting.

When writing my book Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America (currently, btw, at its lowest price on Amazon to date), three things struck me about MBE affirmative action. One is that the Supreme Court issued two pretty strict rulings against in in 1989 and 1994, everyone thought this would be the end of minority contracting quotas and preferences. As it turned out, government at all levels was so committed to these programs that they exploited loopholes in the decisions and took advantage of the limited resources of preference opponents, such that racial preferences in contracting are more prevalent than ever. Which shows, in turn, that if SCOTUS want to get rid of such programs, whether in education or contracting, they need to hold them unconstitutional, period.

The second is that these programs were instituted in the 1970s to help black Americans integrate into the national economy, but the vast majority of such contracts go to post-1965 Hispanic, Caribbean, African, and Asian immigrants and their descendants, and to people with distant Native American heritage. Very few MBE contracts to descendants of American slaves. I tried to get some hard data on this from friends in the Trump federal Department of Transportation, but word came back that the statistics were so embarrassing that no one would ever release them. Meanwhile, given immigration and intermarriage rates, within a few decades eighty percent or more of Americans will be eligible for an MBE preference. If almost everyone gets a preference, does it still count as affirmative action?

Third, not only can people with only vague, distant minority ancestry claim MBE status, there is an incredible amount of fraud in these programs. Paper-only majority ownership by minorities, with the real owners being white men. White men pretending to be American Indians (finally, in 2019 the DOT started requiring tribal membership instead of self-identification), white men buying membership in Indian tribes, white men inventing otherwise non-existent Indian tribes and getting state legislatures to recognize the new tribe … and so on. It’s remarkable given the level of fraud and the amount of money involved that there is no book on the subject, and precious few investigations by journalists.

$1.5 TRILLION HERE, $1.5 TRILLION THERE, PRETTY SOON YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT REAL MONEY: CBO Projects Debt-Ceiling Deal to Reduce Budget Deficits by $1.5 Trillion over Next Decade.

YOU MIGHT NOT BE INTERESTED IN WOKE, BUT WOKE IS INTERESTED IN YOU: Campus Puritans Come for an Astronomer—And His Byline.

NONSENSE GOVERNMENT RACIAL CLASSIFICATIONS PERPETUATE AND ENCOURAGE RACISM, BOTH LEFT AND RIGHT: Justin Gest: The Problem With How the Census Classifies White People. “White” Americans, like “Asians,” “Hispanics,” and so forth, are a mix of different ethnicities, ancestries, national origins, and cultures. And to paraphrase Justice Scalia, the Constitution recognizes only one race: American.

RELATED: The Arbitrariness of Racial Classifications Gets Attention as SCOTUS Considers Affirmative Action.

RETORT OF THE MONTH:

IT’S 2023, AND ANGELA DAVIS IS STILL A COMMUNIST SIMPLETON: But a very well-paid one, you almost gotta admire the grift of a Communist getting paid 30K-plus (per speech) to peddle conspiratorial nonsense at places like the University of Texas.

NO, ELON MUSK IS NOT “AFRICAN AMERICAN”: At least not according to the official government definition.

Based on some correspondence with Instapundit readers, a lot of people are confused by this, and by the Hispanic classification. The US has official government racial and ethnic classifications, promulgated by the Office of Management and Budget in 1977. One of those was Black/Negro, later changed in name but not in substance to Black/African American. The government’s definition is a person descended from one of the “black racial groups of Africa.” So, no, Musk does not qualify, nor does an Egyptian or Moroccan-descended American, no matter how dark-complexioned.

Re Hispanics, people seem to think that this is also a racial classification, and means someone from a Spanish-speaking background who has brownish skin. In fact, Hispanic is defined by the government as an ethnic classification that includes anyone of “Spanish origin or culture.” So, yes, that blond-haired blue-eyed Argentine immigrant of German descent who you met in college is officially Hispanic, as is anyone who immigrates from Spain.

Of course, outside legal contexts, no one requires us to follow these classifications and definitions. But if Elon Musk applied for Minority Business Enterprise status based on being an African American, the relevant government agency would properly deny that status based on the law.

If you are confused by all this, you can always read my book for an explanation of how our classifications developed, how they are defined, and how they are enforced.

UPDATE: To everyone saying I don’t get the “joke” of people referring to Musk as an African American, I understand that we all know that when people say “African American,” that’s not what they have in mind. But a lot of people also seem to think that Musk is *technically* African American, because he fits the definition, and thus *could* check the box for affirmative action and whatnot if he wanted to. That’s incorrect, though I should add that one of the weird things about American government-imposed racial classifications is that while we are constantly asked to check the “right” box, we usually aren’t provided with the relevant official definitions on the forms.

THE ABSURDITY OF AMERICAN “RACIAL” CLASSIFICATIONS, IN ONE PICTURE: Hispanics are already the only official American “ethnic” minority. If the Biden administration gets its way, these guys will be members of an official “racial” minority if they live in the US.

ETHNIC QUOTAS ARE A ZERO-SUM GAME, AND THIS IS A NATURAL RESULT: India:

The Bnei Menashe victim this week is believed to be one of at least five other people killed in violence that erupted after protests by more than 50,000 Kukis and members of other predominantly Christian tribal communities in Churachandpur and adjoining districts in Manipur state protested against demands by the non-tribal Meitei ethnic community to be included under the government’s “Scheduled Tribe” category. Under Indian law, members of such tribes are given reserved quotas for government jobs and college admissions as a form of affirmative action to address structural inequality and discrimination.

AN OVERTLY ANTI-CATHOLIC, BIGOTED ARTICLE BY TWO PROMINENT LAW PROFESSORS: Marci Hamilton and Leslie Griffin: How Did Six Conservative Catholics Become Supreme Court Justices Together? The underlying facts backing up the absurd notion that there has been a conspiracy to stock the Court with Catholics aren’t even accurate. Clarence Thomas was raised Catholic, but had left the church when he was nominated to the Supreme Court (he later returned). Neil Gorsuch was also raised Catholic, but seems to have been attending an Episcopal church as an adult. I thought this sort of crude anti-Catholic conspiracism had died out with JFK’s election… (And by the way, there is a simple explanation as to why conservative Justices have been disproportionately Catholic–they almost all went to Yale or Harvard, which is almost a prerequisite for appointment these days, and those schools graduate many more conservative Catholics than Protestants. For example, when I was in law school, the presidents of the Yale Federalist Society over three years were Catholic, Catholic, and (you guessed it), also Catholic.) The one exception to the Yale and Harvard rule, Amy Coney Barrett, became a conservative hero when Democrats attacked her Court of Appeals nomination because she was … Catholic.

OR GETTING RID OF THEM ENTIRELY: Unchecking the Box. This piece is a brief summary of the themes of my book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America. So if you’ve been thinking of checking it out and want to get the gist…

By the way, if you *have* read the book, a brief review over at Amazon is always appreciated.

NY TIMES TRIES AND FAILS TO GIN UP A SCANDAL ABOUT MY LAW SCHOOL: How Scalia Law School Became a Key Friend of the Court. Here’s the deal: Law schools like Harvard and Yale used to go to a lot of effort to grow ties with Supreme Court Justices. But given increased Progressive intolerance, this would cause more trouble than its worth. So it provided an opportunity for a few law schools not captured by the left, like Scalia Law, to swoop in. It’s great for the students who get to take classes for them, great for our reputation, and nice for the Justices to get a chance to interact with folks outside the Court (and the Justices, from what I hear, do take their teaching responsibilities quite seriously.)

As for the Times, the quality of the piece can be summed up with these excerpts.
Excerpt 1: “Scalia Law has offered the justices a safe space in a polarized Washington… and their personal needs are anticipated, from lunch orders to, in Justice Gorsuch’s case, house hunting.”
Excerpt 2: “[Scalia Law faculty member Jamil] Jaffer had clerked for [Gorsuch] on the appeals court and counted him as a friend and mentor. After the Supreme Court confirmation, Mr. Jaffer acted as the Gorsuches’ unofficial relocation consultant, meeting with a real estate agent and touring at least one equestrian estate in Virginia.”

I laughed when I got to that. Either the Times reporters are too dumb to distinguish between “Scalia Law helped Gorsuch with househunting” and “a friend of Gorsuch on the faculty of Scalia Law helped Gorsuch,” or they are outright dishonest. I’m guessing they aren’t the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but in this case dishonesty is the more likely cause.

And by the way, have you noticed all the negative stories, the vast majority ranging from trivial to bogus, that have come out about the conservatives Justices over the past two weeks. It smacks of a coordinated media campaign, with “journalists” regurgitated stories they are spoonfed by left-wing dark money groups. I expect a lengthy investigative report from the Times on who is behind these stories, what they hope to accomplish, and who the funders are… never.

QUESTIONS I NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE ASKING: Why is an NHL team’s Twitter account lecturing fans about gender theory?

THIS IS A PARODY ACCOUNT, BUT IT COULD HAVE BEEN THE BBC:

WHY ARE PROGRESSIVE INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPOOLS OF BIGOTRY?: ‘Antisemitic Invective’ Goes Mainstream at the University of Michigan Law School.

I AGREE, BUT I’M OBVIOUSLY BIASED: New Book Crucial to Understanding Imminent SCOTUS Decisions on Racial Preferences.

COMING SOON TO BERKELEY LAW SCHOOL: From the Brixton Palestine Solidarity Campaign. This is the inevitable next step in the Berkeley Law student groups’ “Zionist” boycott, and it smells a lot like Nazi and Stalinist antisemitic campaigns of old. If they aren’t doing it now, it’s not because they don’t want to.

THE IDEA IS SUPPOSED TO HOW TO REDUCE ANTISEMITISM, NOT HOW TO EFFECTUATE IT:

CHAT GPT, GIVE ME SOMETHING THAT SOUNDS LIKE IT MUST BE SATIRE, BUT IS ACTUALLY FROM AN ACADEMIC PAPER WRITTEN BY A FULL PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION AT A BIG TEN UNIVERTSITY: Here ya go:

Our choice to destroy the planet to serve our immediate/capitalistic/technology needs is a form of settler colonialism that perpetuates violence. That is, because a Western worldview does not consider plants, animals, and rocks as living beings of equal value with the same rights to this universe as humans, the result is that plants, animals and rocks suffer the same treatment as Indigenous peoples have endured throughout time. For example, like American Indians who were stripped of their lands and communities and forced to live in boarding schools, plants are yanked from their families and forced to assimilate into Western ways of doing things (e.g., to become suburban gardens). By respecting animals, plants, and even rocks as living beings, we can avoid some of the human/material binary that has plagued the sciences in the past.

NOT QUITE: I googled woke and trans. Google replied: “About 22,300,000 results.” Just for example.

I’LL TAKE HEADLINES YOU WON’T SEE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES FOR $500, ALEX: What’s life like under Hamas? ‘Whispered in Gaza’ offers unique, courageous testimony.

I SEE PEOPLE CLAIMING THAT KANYE CLEARLY GOT HIS NUTTY ANTISEMITISM FROM “WHITE NATIONALISTS,” BUT I’M NOT SO SURE: For example, there is only one other public figure I can recall extolling Hitler’s virtues, and he isn’t a white nationalist.