BILL McGURN:  “Harvard’s China Virus:  Covid-19 isn’t the only ‘stigma’ that has been imposed on Asian Americans.” (He quotes Pete Kirsanow and me).

REMEMBERING CORONAVIRUS VICTIM JOE DIFFIE: My favorite Joe Diffie song is John Deere Green.  I sing it in car.  Yes, I am one of those drivers …

REMEMBERING SENATOR TOM COBURN:  Not your average politician.

I ALREADY BOUGHT MY COPY:  Excerpts from John Ellis’s “The Breakdown of Higher Education.”

CRIME IS DROPPING IN OUR MAJOR CITIES DURING THE CRISIS: If the ACLU has its way, however, many prisoners will be released and hence the long-term consequences may be to increase crime.  (Here’s hoping American don’t forget how lucky we are to have had a general drop on crime over the last few decades. Let’s not virtue signal ourselves into reversing that trend.)

BATHROOM WARS: I’m still waiting for the case of Grimm v. Gloucester County Board to be decided by U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. This is the same case that was before the Supreme Court a few years ago. Back then it was called Gloucester County School Board v. G.G. But then the Trump Administration withdrew the Obama-Era guidance that told schools that they must assign transgender students to the bathrooms and showers they psychologically identify with rather than the ones suited to their anatomy.  The Supreme Court therefore sent the case back to the lower courts for reconsideration in light of guidance’s withdrawal.  The trial court at least continued to adhere to the Obama Administration’s position.

Will the case find its way back to the Supreme Court? That’s entirely possible. If it does, I plan to file a revised version of my amicus curiae brief.

Of course, it is possible that won’t be necessary. But I’m a born always-be-prepared-for-worst pessimist. The upside of that characteristic is that I had plenty of food in my pantry when the pandemic hit.

LOOK AT HER GO!  WHO’S THAT REALLY TALL GIRL WITH THE BROAD SHOULDERS AND THE …?:  The U.S. Department of Justice weighs in on the side of limiting girls’ sports teams to … uh … biological girls.

HERE WE GO AGAIN:  “Major U.S. Universities Ban Saying ‘Chinese virus.'” The University of California’s Council of Chief Diversity Officers says “[D]o not not allow the use of these terms by others.”

JOHN FUND:  Dump Biden, draft Cuomo?

WILL THE RESPONSE TO COVID-19 BE CITED AS A PRECEDENT BY CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVISTS?:  You bet it will.  Indeed, it already has been.  This is from a blog piece in the London Review of Books:

If there is a silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is what it might mean for the climate crisis. Not only have attempts to control the virus led to a reduction in carbon emissions, they have also led to a significant shift in the way individuals, institutions and politicians discuss our responsibility to protect vulnerable groups in our societies.

By late last year, it seemed clear that decades of attempts to coax governments and business leaders into taking seriously the risks posed by the climate crisis were leading nowhere. Yet faced with the far more immediate threats posed by a global pandemic, states that for decades had been committed to neoliberal thinking have slowly begun to embrace such radically old-fashioned ideas as planning for the future, relying on scientific expertise, or calling on their constituents to make sacrifices in order to protect vulnerable members of society. …

…

… Perhaps, once the Covid-19 pandemic is finally over, governments may be ready to bring that wisdom to bear on the crisis of climate change.

I suspect we’ll be hearing this argument a lot.

TWO MEMBERS OF THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE STATEMENT:

IT’S TIME FOR THE COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS TO STOP USING WORDS LIKE “RACISM,” “XENOPHOBIA,” “HATE,” AND “HATEFUL” SO INDISCRIMINATELY.

 On March 20, 2020, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a statement expressing “grave concern” and “alarm[]” over “recent demonstrations of violence and hate toward people of Asian descent.” It warns of a “growing anti-Asian racism and xenophobia.” For the reasons we will explain below, we declined to support that statement.

We agree, of course, that COVID-19 is no excuse for anyone to attack or insult individuals of Asian descent and that when such acts rise to the level of criminal behavior, law enforcement should immediately intervene. But that’s obvious to just about everyone in America. The rare exception is unlikely to read the Commission’s statement, much less be persuaded by it.

It is important to keep things in perspective. Given that the population of the United States is estimated to be over 330,000,000, the litany of incidents in the Commission’s statement is really quite small; most involve misbehavior by children or teenagers. Yes, a nine-year-old child in New Jersey was told by a classmate, “You’re Chinese, so you must have coronavirus.” But that’s why we send nine-year-olds to school; they’ve got a lot to learn. For adults to view the statement as hateful would be over the top. We’re talking about a child.

More serious is the case of the New York teenager who kicked an Asian-American man in the back, knocking him to the ground. Surely that is (and should be) a matter for the police. Fortunately, there is nothing to show this thuggish behavior represents a wave of racial violence.

Here is our biggest objection: The Commission make the ill-advised suggestion that referring to COVID-19 with terms like “Chinese coronavirus” is somehow fueling “[t]his latest wave of xenophobic animosity toward Asian Americans.” It is common to refer to infectious diseases by their geographic origin. Examples include Asian flu, Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, Brazilian hemorrhagic fever, Ebola, German measles, Japanese encephalitis, Lyme disease, Marburg virus, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Pontiac fever, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Spanish flu, Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever, and West Nile virus. In the case of Spanish flu, it was probably a misnomer. That disease likely originated in Kansas instead. But calling it the Spanish flu was never an indication that people hated Spaniards. It was simply a case in which the Spanish press reported on the flu extensively while the American press was preoccupied with World War I and subject to censorship. People therefore made the mistake of believing it originated in Spain.

It is counter-productive to hector the American people (or its leaders) about describing the COVID-19 as “Chinese” or as having originated in China. It did originate there. Ordinary Americans—of all races and ethnicities—who harbor no ill will toward anyone don’t like to have the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights imply that that they are fueling the flames of xenophobic animosity.   We can’t blame them. It is insulting.

Our colleagues on the Commission close their statement by writing under the current circumstances no American should be “ostracized solely because of their race or national origin.” That is certainly sensible enough. We would add that Americans should not be ostracized on account of false accusations that their conduct has been racist, xenophobic and hateful. The promiscuous use of those terms needs to stop.

Gail Heriot & Peter N. Kirsanow, Members, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

SEEMS LIKE BAD TIMING TO ME, GIVEN THAT CALIFORNIANS AREN’T SUPPOSED TO LEAVE THEIR HOME:  The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights just voted 4-2 to condemn Trump’s January extension of its restrictions on entry to nationals of  “Burma (Myanmar), Eritrea, Kyrgystan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania.”

I think it means Kyrgyzstan, but whatever.

YIKES.  MY 40 MILLION FELLOW CALIFORNIANS AND I ARE ORDERED TO STAY HOME:  Here are the core sentences of the order from Governor Newsom:  “To protect public health, I as the State Public Health Officer and Director of the California Department of Public Health order all individuals living in the State of California to stay home or at their place of residence except as needed to maintain continuity of operations of the federal critical infrastructure sectors, as outlined at https://www.cisa.gov/critical-infrastructure-sectors.  In addition, and in consultation with the Director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, I may designate additional sectors as critical in order to protect the health and well-being of all Californians.”

The order goes into effect immediately.

WHY CAN’T LIBERALS DO ARITHMETIC?:  And why don’t they know how many people live in the United States?  Power Line points out that Bernie Sander’s press secretary asserted on Twitter that 500 million Americans “go bankrupt from medical debt every year.”  Good grief.  That is far more bankruptcies than there are Americans.  Power Line points out that only about 750,000 personal bankruptcies occur annually from any cause.  I can add that the proportion of those that were caused in any real sense by medical debt is quite small (though it is common for bankrupt person to have some medical debt in their overall debt along with lots of other kinds of debt).  It’s tragic when medical debt leads to bankruptcy, though it’s worth pointing out that’s why we have bankruptcy–to spare people in that kind of situation from permanent destitution and debtors’ prison.  It isn’t a punishment for debtors; it protects them.  It’s woefully ignorant to believe it’s happening 500 million times a year.

HERE WE GO AGAIN: Almost 24 years ago, Californians voted to adopt Proposition 209, which amended the California Constitution to include the following prohibition: “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” (Full disclosure: I proudly co-chaired that campaign and spent a good deal of my time and money getting it adopted.)

Voters in several other states followed suit with Proposition 209 clones.

In the early years, Prop. 209 did a lot of good on campuses (as I discuss here). In more recent years, California state universities have learned how to get around it, but it still does some good in other areas, especially public contracting.

There have been many efforts to repeal it. And … well … here comes another one. There is just no end to it. I hope that, like last year’s efforts to repeal Washington State’s version of Prop. 209, this one is doomed to failure. But it will likely take organization and effort to ensure that it is.

Meanwhile, if you are hiding out from the coronavirus at home, now is the time to sit down and read my essay on the problem of “mismatch.”  Alas, that problem is at the root of a lot of what is wrong on on college campuses today.  Instead of trying to repeal Prop. 209, we ought to be enforcing it more vigorously.

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH:  On the 15th day of March, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.

QUARANTINE, ITALIAN STYLE:  It’s kind of adorable.

OH, HIM AGAIN … THE GUY WHO SAID LET THEM F*****G DIE”:  Trinity College sociology professor still doesn’t like white people.  What’s odd is that the Hartford Courant thinks his op-ed is worth publishing.  Can you imagine a newspaper publishing the same sort of drivel from a KKK Grand Dragon?

I GUESS IT’S NOT IMPOSSIBLE, BUT …:  “If Biden’s the Nominee, Might He Pick Michelle Obama as His Vice President”?

THE SPEECH THAT CONVINCED REPUBLICANS THAT ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS PRESIDENTIAL TIMBER:  On this day in 1860, Lincoln gave his famous Cooper Union address in New York.

One eyewitness described it this way:  “When Lincoln rose to speak, I was greatly disappointed. He was tall, tall, — oh, how tall! and so angular and awkward that I had, for an instant, a feeling of pity for so ungainly a man.” However, once Lincoln warmed up, “his face lighted up as with an inward fire; the whole man was transfigured. I forgot his clothes, his personal appearance, and his individual peculiarities. Presently, forgetting myself, I was on my feet like the rest, yelling like a wild Indian, cheering this wonderful man.”

MOVE ALONG. THERE’S NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Last week’s report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hasn’t gotten much attention (and I suspect that suits the Commission’s majority just fine). It was supposed to highlight Obama-Era (and Bush-Era!) Department of Education’s warnings to colleges and universities that they must exercise control over students who make “sexual comments, jokes or gestures,” “spread rumors” (even true ones), or apparently write just about anything deemed to be offensive “of a sexual nature.” The idea when the report was originally planned (in 2013) was to show how colleges and universities are pressured to limit speech that is protected by the First Amendment. Alas, due to changes in the membership of the Commission over the course of Obama’s Presidency, the long-delayed report turned into more a defense of those policies than a critique. The report has a tone of “Move along … nothing to see here” to it. Here’s my short dissent.

The good news is that the Trump Administration will soon be making two new appointments to the Commission. I am looking forward to welcoming two new colleagues.

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA IS NOT OK:  A second University of Oklahoma professor has used the n-word.  Kathleen Brosnan, a history professor, was reading “a historical document” that repeatedly uses the forbidden word.  Campus goes crazy.  In response the university is making “diversity and inclusion training” mandatory for all faculty, staff, and administrators.  Someone should FOIA the cost of this.

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK:  On this day in 1929, Calvin Coolidge (the coolest President our nation has ever known) signed an executive order establishing Grand Teton National Park.

“ON THE CULT OF PERSONALITY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES”: Most speeches by politicians don’t say much, and what they do say often isn’t true. But on this day in 1956, First Secretary of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev shocked the members of the 20^th Party Congress by doing something completely novel: He laid some truth on them about their late leader Joseph Stalin:

Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient cooperation with people, but by … demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept … was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation. …

…

Lenin used severe methods only in the most necessary cases …

Stalin, on the other hand, used extreme methods and mass repressions at a time when the revolution was already victorious. … It is clear that here Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his intolerance, his brutality, and his abuse of power. …

…

Stalin’s willfulness vis-à-vis the party and its central committee became fully evident after the 17^th party congress, which took place in 1934….

It was determined that of the 139 members and candidates of the party’s Central Committee who were elected at the 17th congress, 98 persons, that is, 70 percent, were arrested and shot ….

The same fate met not only the central committee members, but also the majority of the delegates to the 17^th party congress. Of 1,966 delegates with either voting or advisory rights, 1,108 persons were arrested on charges of anti-revolutionary crimes, i.e. decidedly more than majority. This very fact shows how absurd, wild, and contrary to common sense were the charges ….

(Note that there are different versions/translations of what Khrushchev said. This is one of them.)

The speech was intended to be secret. But it was leaked. Its effects were shattering all over the Soviet Union. Riots in Stalin’s homeland of Georgia had to be suppressed.

Here in the United States, its effects among Communists were sweeping. In a 2017 New York Times article entitled “When Communism Inspired Americans,” Vivian Gornick (a red diaper baby herself) wrote of the devastating effect the speech had on American Communists: “Night after night the people at my father’s table raged or wept or sat staring into space.” Gornick reported that within weeks of the speech’s publication in the West, 30,000 members of the party in the United States had quit.

Note that Khrushchev’s speech has been criticized (and for good reason). What he said about Stalin was true, but he concentrated on the horrors of Stalin’s actions against party members. What about the millions of non-party members who died at the hands of the party? And he repeatedly contrasted Stalin with Lenin, whom he praised, when both deserved to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Still, it was a step forward for a nation that had seen nothing but horror from its leaders for decades.

HEATHER MAC DONALD DESERVES A MEDAL:  She continues to speak truth to shrieking college students.