RIP: Lani Guinier, 71.

We were saddened to read this morning of the death of Lani Guinier. She was a leftist law professor at Harvard specializing in voting rights. We didn’t know her well. In the 1990s, we played a glancing role in stoking the controversy that led President Clinton to pull her nomination to be assistant attorney general for civil rights. Yet we eventually tried to dial her into the debate on charter revision at New York.

The controversy over Guinier’s nomination to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division erupted in 1993. It was ignited by a story by David Twersky in the Forward, which we were then editing. It reported on writings by Guinier suggesting that the Constitution required the election of minorities to public office. The Wall Street Journal summed her up in a now-famous headline “Quota Queen.”

The Forward argued that Guinier deserved a hearing in the Senate. In the event, though, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, one Joseph Biden, doomed her candidacy, saying that if she tried to defend her views, she wouldn’t have a shot. Mr. Clinton soon withdrew her nomination. Guinier, who’d been teaching law at Penn, won a plum position at Harvard Law School.

Read the whole thing.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Selling a Used Car? Here are 20 Photo Tips!

If you are selling a used car online, one great way to make your car stand out from the rest and attract more attention is to up your photo game. You don’t need to be a professional photographer to capture compelling images of the car or truck you are ready to sell—a few simple tips can help your photos grab the attention of possible buyers.

You’ve seen the standard used-car photo—the boring shot taken outside a dealership, in a driveway or crowded parking lot, midday, from standing eye level, of a sterile-looking car, with a wide-angle smartphone camera lens. This type of photo won’t help your online car ad stand out. Better photographs will.

In general, you’ll want to approach the photo shoot for the car in the same way you’d approach it for any other type of deliberate (non-snapshot) photography. This requires paying attention to photographic details that others might miss.

Also, ad copy is important as well: The Story Behind That Hilarious Toyota Corolla Craigslist Ad.

When I ran the CarFax for this car, I got back a single piece of paper that said, “It’s a Corolla. It’s fine.”

Let’s face the facts, this car isn’t going to win any beauty contests, but neither are you. Stop lying to yourself and stop lying to your wife. This isn’t the car you want, it’s the car you deserve: The f**king 1999 Toyota Corolla.

Hey, it’s a ‘90s Toyota. You can drop it off a building and it will start:

BEATLES: GET BACK NEWS:

● Disney confirms The Beatles: Get Back to arrive on Blu-ray & DVD on 2/8. “The Blu-ray Disc SKU will be a 3-disc set that includes one episode per disc. Sound for the program will be Dolby Atmos, as can be heard on Disney+. We don’t know for sure whether there will be special features or not, but the package will apparently feature “8 hours of content” which would seem to indicate that only the documentary itself will be included (as it’s 486 minutes long). The packaging will apparently include a set of collector’s cards featuring photos of the band members.” So apparently, it won’t be bundled with a restored edition of Let It Be, unfortunately.

● Beatles’ Famed Rooftop Concert to Screen in IMAX Theaters. Get Back director Peter Jackson will participate in a special Q&A following the concert film’s special theatrical release. “The 60-minute feature will fittingly premiere Jan. 30, 53 years to the day after the Beatles staged their famous final public performance.”

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Over 11,000 illegal Muslim migrants arrive in Germany from Belarus.

JOHN PODHORETZ: Sidney Poitier’s life was a testament to the greatest of American stories.

Unschooled beyond fourth grade in the Bahamas, sent to America by his parents at 14 to save him from a life of crime, shot in the leg at 16 during a 1943 race riot in Harlem, Poitier worked hard jobs as a menial laborer and an Army hospital orderly before he happened to spot an audition notice for the Negro Ensemble Theater.

He was dismissed by the NET due to a thick accent and halting reading skills — and thereupon began the process of willing himself into becoming the most important American black pop culture figure of the 20th century.

Poitier sat before a radio and trained his own voice, remaking it until he achieved the indelible sing-song baritone that — a little like Cary Grant’s — sounded like no one else’s on Earth. He got into the theater troupe and made conscious use of a charisma that emanated from him like a pheromone.

Four years later he had his first starring role in a movie — 1950’s “No Way Out.” He was all of 22. And he was playing a doctor. He would do so again, 17 years later, in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” the first major motion picture to feature a black man and a white woman in a romance.

That film was the representative work of one aspect of his career — the aspect in which he served as the representation of black pride and dignity, a person it would be impossible to consider in any way inferior to anyone else.

Read the whole thing.

LAYERS AND LAYERS OF FACT-CHECKERS AND EDITORS, POLITICO EDITION: “SPOTTED: Speaker NANCY PELOSI, Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER and wife, IRIS WEINSHALL, Sens. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-Minn.) and DICK DURBIN (D-Ill.) dining together at Le Diplomate on Friday night. Pic. CORRECTION: The original version of this item misidentified Iris Weinshall, the wife of Chuck Schumer, as Sonia Sotomayor. Our tipster got it wrong, but we should have double checked.”

UPDATE: But not before Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post rushed to defend Sotomayor:

(Updated and bumped.)

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Striking Chicago Teachers Union stooges and their Socialist-hypocrite boss Jesse Sharkey are committing systemic racism against the minority children of Chicago’s public schools.

#RESIST, IRANIAN STYLE: Iranians Set Fire to Soleimani’s Statue Hours After Unveiling.

FL SENATE BILL 1534: Will Florida Become the Next San Francisco?

UNEXPECTEDLY: San Francisco trails other major metro areas in economic recovery. Tourists also appear hesitant to book travel to the city.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Dating Game Edition.

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

Conversely:

THE FAILED PRESIDENCY OF FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: William Bullitt’s Warning.

Recently in The American Spectator, I wrote a somewhat controversial article claiming that Franklin Roosevelt was a failure as president. One of the areas of failure, I argued, was FDR’s decision-making during the Second World War, which resulted in the replacement of the Nazi threat with an even greater Soviet threat. Some critics have retorted, What else could FDR have done? The postwar world was largely shaped by where the Anglo-American and Soviet armies ended up when the fighting stopped. But consider the case of William Bullitt’s warning to the president.

On January 29, 1943, William Bullitt, then a close adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt, wrote a memo to the president that Bullitt characterized as “as serious a document as any I have ever sent you.” In that memo (which he followed up with related memos and letters in June and August of that year), Bullitt attempted to persuade FDR to approach U.S. relations with Moscow more realistically and to wage World War II with a view towards the postwar balance of power.

* * * * * * * *

But it was all to no avail. FDR thought he could use his personal charm and political skills to persuade Stalin to join the democracies in establishing a just and stable postwar world. It was a view based on personal naïveté, ignorance about communism, and advice FDR received from the likes of Harry Hopkins, Henry Wallace, Sumner Welles, and other Soviet accommodationists within the administration.

Those who argue that FDR’s options were limited by the positioning of the armies at the end of the fighting are correct. But had the president listened to Bullitt’s advice and waged war so that the Anglo-American armies met their Soviet allies, in Churchill’s words “as far to the east as possible,” the Soviet postwar threat would have been lessened and many of the peoples of central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans might have been spared the misery of 45 years of communist rule.

Add to the above Roosevelt’s decisions regarding the Holocaust and his prolonging America’s Depression, and it’s not difficult to have a revisionist view of his presidency:

● New Documents Reveal FDR’s Eugenic Project to ‘Resettle’ Jews During World War II.

● FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): To know if someone is a failure, you have to know what they intended. Roosevelt drastically and at least semi-permanently expanded the power and wealth of the professional/managerial/academic/political class and thus in their eyes his presidency will always be a huge success.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Is NPR In The Grips Of (Checks Notes) White Supremacy?

Celeste Headlee, who has hosted several public radio programs and written extensively about race in the industry, said she couldn’t speak to the specific reasons individual hosts have left but called the departures concerning. “It’s so common for companies to put resources into recruiting people of color and then put no resources into really retaining them or supporting them in the roles they have so that they will continue with the organization.”
She said she regularly hears from public-radio staffers of color who say they deal with daily slights and resistance to their ideas, despite a sense they got their jobs to help expand the audience.

But Headlee — who founded a nonprofit for minority public-radio employees — credited John Lansing, NPR’s president and chief executive, for being “dead serious about solving these issues.” She added: “If there ever was a chance for our industry to move forward, now is the time.”

NPR employees raised questions about the exodus of women of color during an all-staff meeting last month headed by Lansing, who is generally well-regarded within the organization. But he received a cool reception when he told employees that turnover was common in the news media and that NPR couldn’t stand in the way of staffers seeking greater opportunities elsewhere, according to one participant.

Read the whole thing, as the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks fight it out.

WELCOME BACK, CARTER! VP Kamala Harris admits a ‘level of malaise’ in US over COVID, gets compared to Jimmy Carter.

Does she not realize how damaging it is for a Democrat in office to utter the M-word?

THIS WEEK ON VEEP: Kamala’s latest office hire once mocked “dazed and confused” Biden and Trump’s “janky” COVID vaccine.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Texas teacher put son with Covid-19 in car trunk to prevent exposure, warrant says.

Jack Posobiec responds to the above headline thusly:

STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS BEFORE: Connecticut is asking nursing homes to take in Covid-positive patients.

SCOTT ADAMS:

ATLANTIC WRITER: COVID school policies made me sour on the Democrats.

REPUBLICAN-APPOINTED OHIO SOLICITOR GENERAL TO SCOTUS: The State Can Mandate Vaccines for ‘All Individuals.’

ON THIS DAY IN 2015: Islamic terrorists kill 12 members of Charlie Hebdo staff.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Today’s deep question: Will Twitter suspend Sotomayor for COVID misinformation?

● Sotomayor: “Why is a human not like a machine when it is spewing bloodborne (!) viruses?”

● Sotomayor says Omicron is as deadly as Delta.

● Here is Justice Sotomayor saying that “hospitals are almost all full capacity” and there are “over 100,000 children” hospitalized with covid “many on ventilators. None of those things are true. Not even close.

Related: Sotomayor Claims Not to Understand the Distinction Between State and Federal Powers.

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reports: Oral Arguments Postponed As Justice Sotomayor Gets Gavel Stuck Up Her Nose Again.

JIM TREACHER: It’s Friday, Write Your Own Headline.

The great Andrew Stiles at the Washington Free Beacon looks at “A Day in the Life of a Traumatized Journalist.” Here’s an excerpt of what daily life is like for those unsung heroes:

9:25 AM — Check your phone. You have two missed calls from your editor, so you ring her back. You’re too damn proud to request another day off for self-care, so you decide to power through and pitch her the following story ideas: 1) “How to Talk to Your 8-Year-Old Nephew About ‘Harry Potter’ and The Author Who Must Not Be Named,” 2) “How the New CNN+ Streaming Service Could Be a Safe Alternative to Sending Kids to School,” 3) “Twitter Sleuths Raise Doubts About Casey DeSantis Cancer Diagnosis,” and 4) “Why You Shouldn’t Feel Bad About Berating Your Maskless Delivery Driver.” 

I don’t know how these brave champions of truth and honor manage to maintain their integrity, day in and day out. Make sure to thank a journo today, if you can get a word in edgewise.

Heh. Read the whole thing.

VIRGINIA CLOWN SHOW UPDATE: Meteorologist says transportation officials ignored forecasts, leading to I-95 disaster.

The chief meteorologist for Accuweather criticized transportation officials for effectively ignoring forecasts of a winter storm that hit the mid-Atlantic on Monday morning, saying engineers had adequate warning and could have prevented the I-95 gridlock.

Accuweather’s Jonathan Porter provided screenshots showing that his team predicted six to 10 inches of snowfall in the Washington, D.C., area. Up to 10 inches of snow ultimately fell across the D.C. metropolitan area, according to The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang, marking the highest total the region has seen since Jan. 2019 and one of the biggest snowfalls on record in the city.

To be fair though, why bother checking the weather? All the best people assured us ages ago that: Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.