PLEASE LET IT BE SO … FOREVER SO:  “How Meltdowns Have Brought Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History.”

THESE FOLKS ARE BARKING MAD:  Gov. DeSantis was not exactly given a hero’s welcome in New York City on Sunday.  The protestors, there purportedly on behalf of the LGBTQ community, included Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), State Senator Brad Hoylman (D-Lower Manhattan), Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou (D-Chinatown), and candidate for Lieutenant Governor Ana Maria Archila.   Videos of protestors here.

A friend of mine was present for DeSantis’s speech.  As he left the event, he was followed down the street as by a deranged protestor who screamed “JEWISH NAZI!!!!” at him.  Lovely.

IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO THROW SEVERELY DISABLED WORKERS OUT OF A JOB, THIS IS AN EXCELLENT STRATEGY:  When the Commission on Civil Rights reported on requiring employers to pay the standard minimum wage to Down Syndrome workers, their families were overwhelmingly against it. 

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE (TWO) YEARS:  The State Department Still “Hearts” BLM.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE POLICY HAS RUN AMOK:  The local NAACP and local teachers association recently rallied for stronger school discipline policy from the Baltimore County Public Schools.  Local organizations like those are often pretty good on the issue.  It’s the inside-the-beltway, haven’t-seen-the inside-of-a-classroom-since-the-Clinton-Administration educrats who tend to do the most damage.  See The Department of Education’s Obama-Era Initiative on Racial Disparities in School Discipline:  Wrong for Students and Teachers, Wrong on the Law.  Alas, my understanding is that the Biden Administration is abandoning the Trump Administration’s approach and going back the Obama approach.

BECAUSE IT WOULD MAKE US ALL MISERABLE:  “Why Not Polygamy?”

IDIOTS DELIBERATELY MISCONSTRUE WHAT SEN. BILL CASSIDY SAID:  Racial disparities in maternal mortality is getting to be one of those issues for which one must robotically repeat the progressive talking points.  No further comment is permitted.

TEACHING LIBERTY:  At Reliance College in Chicago.

GEORGE WILL DISCUSSES HERIOT & MULDER:  In the Washington Post and in newspapers without pay walls.

UNDERSTANDING DISPARATE IMPACT THEORY:  It’s important for all of us to understand what a giant morass the Supreme Court pulled us into when it decided (quite wrongly) in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) that Title VII outlawed disparate impact.  Since then, the concept of liability for “disparate impact” has spread to other areas of the law (and to our way of thinking about race and sex issues).  Paul Taylor has done seven-part series on the subject on Substack:

Paul Taylor:  Disparate Impact Part 1.

Paul Taylor:  Disparate Impact Part 2.

Paul Taylor:  Disparate Impact Part 3.

Paul Taylor:  Disparate Impact Part 4.

Paul Taylor:  Disparate Impact Part 5.

Paul Taylor:  Disparate Impact Part 6.

Paul Taylor:  Disparate Impact Part 7.

It’s definitely worth taking a look.

FREE SPEECH 2022 CONFERENCE:  Monday! Monday! Monday!  Pepperdine School of Public Policy in beautiful Malibu is sponsoring a half-day conference on free speech.  Robby George will be the keynote speaker, and yours truly will be there to moderate a panel on free speech (or lack thereof) in academia.  If you can make it, we’d love to have you there.  Register here.  (Note that you can also register to receive a video, but the video will not be available until a week after the conference.)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:  Paul Mirengoff and Bill Otis are now on Substack with “Ringside at the Reckoning.”

MATERNAL MORTALITY:  Try googling “maternal mortality” and click for “news.” Maternal mortality is a big issue on the Left.  From their point of view, even though the numbers are very small, the racial disparities are large, and American rates are worse than rates in many other countries (though that’s at least in part because we define maternal mortality broadly).  The abortion angle on the issue also interests them.  Oh … and climate change … Ms. Magazine is blaming climate change.

They’re not wrong that the death of a young mother (or father) is especially tragic or that we should do better.  But the emphasis on racial disparities and the solutions they offer won’t get us there.

The racial disparities are what has inspired the so-called “Momnibus Act,” which is getting a lot of attention in Congress.  But the attention is mostly misinformed.  The proposal is all about spending federal money to “invest” in minority communities, when the most useful thing to do would be to advise all obese or diabetic women (not just those of any particular race) to lose weight and keep their diabetes under control.  Meanwhile, one California county has declared “Latina Maternal Health Awareness Month,” even though Latina mothers are actually less likely to die in childbirth than non-Hispanic white mothers.  Nobody wants to talk about obesity in connection with maternal health (just like they don’t want to talk about obesity in connection with cancer).

The Commission on Civil Rights’ report on maternal mortality preferred to put more blame on the racism of doctors and nurses—even though doing so would only discourage minority mothers from seeking care early in their pregnancy (which is also a contributing factor to the racial disparities).

HEROES IN BUFFALO AND IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA:  They can turn up everywhere.

JP MORGAN CHASE & CO. SHAREHOLDERS ARE SICK AND TIRED OF THEIR WOKE COMPANY’S ILLEGAL ACTIONS:  Yesterday, JPMorgan Chase & Co. shareholders, through their legal counsel, the American Civil Rights Project, demanded that the company publicly retract a host of illegal, discriminatory policies that the company had been bragging about.  Shareholders are getting wise to this stuff (in part due to the work of the American Civil Rights Project … of which I am chairman).

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE:  The Chicago Tribune is concerned that African American students are disciplined at higher rates than other students.  But in making racial comparisons of this kind, you have to compare misbehavior rates, not population sizes.  If African Americans students misbehave in school at higher rates than other students (and self-reported data indicates that they do), higher rates of discipline are to be expected.   We need to be careful that we don’t make classrooms chaotic by holding back on discipline.  That’s not doing students a favor.

PRONOUN POLICE GO AFTER MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS:  I got called the “Hairy It” (a play on my surname) in elementary school even though “it” was not my pronoun of choice.  That was before Title IX, so I wasn’t able to turn it into a federal case.  Instead, I had to come up with similar epithets for my rowdy playmates … which, upon reflection, was kind of fun.

CORPORATE WOKEISM:  Dropbox advertises that it intends to violate Title VII.

JOHN McGINNIS:  “Lawyers for Radical Change.“

JEFF JACOBY:  “Who’s Afraid of Liberal Media Bias?”  (I’m not half as confident as he is that liberal media bias has been overcome.)

ON THIS DAY IN 1940:  Two brothers named McDonald–Richard and Maurice–opened the first McDonald’s restaurant in San Bernardino, California.  Ray Kroc, then a milkshake mixer salesman, became involved in 1954 and purchased the company in 1961 for $2.7 million.

I WAS THERE IN DALLAS FOR THIS:  Justice Thomas talks about the leak … and much more.

THE LAST SALEM WITCH TRIAL:  On this date in 1878 (yes, that’s 1878, not 1678), the last witch trial opened in Salem, Massachusetts.  Sort of.

UPDATED VERSION NOW AVAILABLE:  If you haven’t had a chance to read A Dubious Expediency–my 2015 essay on the problem with mismatch on campuses–the updated version (2021) is now available electronically.

(Or you can buy it here in a book that also contains essays by Heather Mac Donald, Peter Kirsanow, Peter Wood, Maimon Schwarzschild and others.  The book is named for the essay.)

R.I.P.  JOHN LEO:   He was a lovely man and always willing to do battle with political correctness.  He will be missed.