JOHN FUND:  Bloomberg panders to his audience.

THE TRUTH IS UGLY: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ new hate crimes report cites the Southern Poverty Law Center as a respectable authority. I believe my dissent gets it right: The SPLC is a flimflam machine.

HMMM:  San Diego proposes to deal with the lack of affordable housing by raising real estate taxes, thus making real estate even less affordable.

MORE WASHINGTON POST FOLLIES: The WaPo’s fashion critic doesn’t like Jim Jordan’s fashion sense. Or something like that. She criticizes him for failing to wear a suit jacket at the hearing (and, for good measure, throws in that he was “disingenuous” in explaining why).

Flashback:  This is the same fashion critic who attacked John Robert’s children for being too old-fashioned in their dress.  This lady is hard to please … unless you’re a Kennedy.

ANOTHER SCORCHER, HOT OFF THE PRESS:  This morning the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a report entitled “In the Name of Hate: Examining the Federal Government’s Role in Responding to Hate Crimes.” The report … uh … needs work.   My dissenting statement tries to deal with the issues the majority ignored: hate crime hoaxes, overbroad definitions of hate crimes, and double jeopardy.

CHARLES LIPSON:  Bloomberg Will Hit an Iceberg.

WHAT IN THE WORLD IS WRONG WITH NORTHWESTERN’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER?:  If Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism isn’t the most prestigious such program in the country, then it’s darn close.   Yet the editors of its school newspaper recently issued a cloying apology for covering a very newsworthy visit to the the NU campus by Jeff Sessions.   The coverage of the visit and the accompanying protests was evidently triggering for NU’s snowflakes.

Glenn posted something about this last night. But I wanted to re-post it in the morning when more readers would see it.  As a Northwestern grad, this makes me want to burn the place down.   If you have a mind to, please leave comments on the Daily Northwestern web site.  These students need to hear from as many adults as possible.

CONTRARY TO WHAT WE’RE TOLD, NOT EVERYTHING IS RACIST OR SEXIST:  But, alas, it’s pretty much true that everything is illegal employment discrimination.  That makes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission extraordinarily powerful (as well as extraordinarily unaccountable).  Read about how it got that way and how to rein it in.

I SHOULD BE DOING THIS TOO:  Mark Pulliam is voting with his feet.

REFERENDUM 88 VICTORY:  It is now safe to announce that the effort to re-impose affirmative action preferences on Washington State has been defeated.  It was too close to call with certainty for a while.  Minding the Campus’s John Rosenberg discusses “Lessons from Washington State on Affirmative Action.“

“JOHN, THIS IS MONIKA. I AM OVER THE WALL”:  A journalist’s recollection of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

HOT, HOT, HOT OFF THE PRESS: My latest (and not yet officially published): “Title VII Disparate Impact Liability Makes Almost Everything Presumptively Illegal.” The Trump Administration needs to be paying a lot more attention to this ghastly area of the law.

GAIL AT STANFORD:  I’ll be at Stanford Law School this evening advancing the argument that the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 is in part unconstitutional.  Yes, of course, you’re invited.

GEORGE LEEF:  “A Racially ‘Woke’ Agenda Is Now Hardwired in Public Schools.”

HE LIKES IT:  John Fund reviews “No Safe Spaces.”

MY HOUSE IS A WRECK: In their justly famous article, “Broken Windows,” George Kelling and James Q. Wilson put forward the theory that disorder invites crime. When people see a disorder around them—broken windows, graffiti, trash, loitering, etc.—they act as if they have been given permission to engage in petty and not-so-petty crime. Communities that fix broken windows, clean up graffiti and trash, and discourage loitering will thus prevent crime.

I have the following corollary: Bathroom remodeling leads to slovenly behavior. My bathroom is currently being made into what I hope will soon be a wonderland of blue and white talavera tile. In the meantime, the area around the bathroom is unavoidably untidy. Alas, I have succumbed to the tendency Kelling & Wilson warned of. So far I haven’t broken any laws that I know of. But the whole house looks like a tornado hit it. My bad ….

A BRAVE DOG ISN’T THE ONLY ANIMAL HERO THIS WEEK:  Meet the goats who helped save the Reagan Library from fire.

TRANSGENDER BATHROOM CASE HEADED UP TO THE FOURTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS (AGAIN):  Remember the Supreme Court case of Gloucester County School Board v. G.G.?  In 2017, the Supreme Court dodged the issue by remanding the case to the lower courts.  Judge Arenda Wright Allen (an Obama appointee) recently held that schools do indeed have to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms, locker rooms and showers used by the sex they identify with rather than their anatomical sex.  So the appeal process is starting up again.

Here is the amicus brief that Peter Kirsanow and I filed when the case was before the Supreme Court.  All the arguments still apply except the  one about deference to an agency’s interpretation of its own rules.  Because the Trump Administration withdrew the Obama Administration’s interpretation, there is no longer any need to worry about deference.

ELIZABETH WARREN’S LOOMING LEGAL EMBARRASSMENT: There are so many reasons she isn’t quite what her admirers think. (including this one).

HOT OFF THE PRESS: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has “updated” its embarrassing 2015 report on immigration detention centers. The result is (in my view at least) another embarrassing report. Here is my (hastily written) response. Also here is my original dissenting statement on the 2015 report.

(This is a re-post from Thursday.  My article was removed from the SSRN web site for a few days, because SSRN didn’t understand that government reports are not copyrighted. My article is now only warm off the press. )

WASHINGTON STATE REFERENDUM:  A Duplicitous Attempt to Revive Racial Preferences.

THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GO I?:  The case of the 7-year-old boy whose mother says he is a transgender girl is really frightening.  If the mother has her way, her son will be given puberty blockers when he turns eight and later estrogen hormones.

Lots of children “identify” as the opposite sex or at least like to imagine what it would be like to be the opposite sex.  Most grow out of it.  When I was this child’s age,  I wanted to be a boy. And not just any boy.  I wanted to be Illya Kuryakin on The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  I carried a cool toy gun and insisted that everyone call me Illya.  Fortunately, it was the 1960s, so nobody tried to give me testosterone (though in fairness to my mother and father, even if it had been today, I am confident that they would not have been susceptible to this particular fashion).

My transgender phase tomboy phase ended when NBC aired The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.  Stefanie Powers had a cool gun too … plus a more extensive wardrobe.

NOT FROM ME:  Where Does the Impulse to Vilify America Come From?

THE NEW CAMPUS DEPLORABLES:  Who?  Me?

PETER WOOD: Vote No on Washington State’s Referendum 88.