ERIC HOLDER:  America was never great.

HANS BADER:  “Harsh penalties deter crime, contrary to what this ‘expert’ says.”

Quoth Bader:  “[John] Pfaff poses the question, ‘How many studies show that severe sanctions are an effective way to deter crime?’  He answers his own question, ‘None.’  But there are many such studies.”

PUBLIC COMMENT ON IMMIGRATION DETENTION FACILITIES: A few years ago, the Commission on Civil Rights issued a report whose purpose was to expose (in the words of the then-Chairman) “egregious human rights and constitutional violations” that he believed were occurring in detention facilities.  Curiously, the draft of the report was mostly finished by the time the Commissioners got around to actually visiting any of those facilities. To the surprise of my colleagues, the facilities we saw were pretty nice (especially the privately run facility for women and their minor children). Since the report barely mentioned what we really saw, I wrote a detailed dissent that (in contrast to the rest of the report) I believe will be useful to anyone who wants an accurate assessment of what those immigration detention facilities are like.

The Commission now wants to reexamine the issue.  On Friday, April 12, 2019 from 10:00 to 12:30 a.m., the Commission is hosting a public comment session. According to the Commission’s announcement, it seeks comment “on the condition of immigration detention centers and status of treatment of immigrants, including children.” It further states, “The Commission seeks to hear from members of the public, including policy advocates, legal experts, affected persons, and other individuals who wish to speak on the issue.” Here is the link to the announcement.

Note that the Commission also welcomes submission of written material. The email and snail mail addresses for the submission of written material are available at the link above. The deadline for submission is May 13, 2019. If you believe you have something useful to say, especially if you have some first-hand knowledge, I hope you’ll consider submitting something. If you know someone who might want to comment (again, especially if that someone might have first-hand knowledge), please pass this information on to him or her.

I know there is lots of expertise and experience out there.  If this is an area you know something about (or you know someone who does), don’t let that knowledge go to waste.

PETER KIRSANOW, MEMBER U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS, WRITES TO SAN ANTONIO MAYOR:  Calls decision to exclude Chick-Fil-A from San Antonio airport “bigoted virtue signalling” and implies that Chick-Fil-A may be “the tastiest chicken sandwiches in creation.”

DROPPING CHARGES AGAINST SMOLLETT IS LIKE SPITTING IN THE FACE OF CHICAGO POLICE: My gentlemen friend is more pessimistic about the world than I am (and that’s saying something). He predicted that the police would be prevented from investigating the possibility that Jussie Smollett’s case was a hoax (wrong), that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel would cheerlead for Smollett no matter how obvious his guilt (wrong), and that Smollett would never be charged with a crime (wrong).   My reasoning in predicting the opposite was this: Why would Chicago’s leaders want people to believe that you can’t go out for a sandwich in one of Chicago’s toniest neighborhoods without being violently attacked by Trump supporting nut cases carrying nooses?

We never dreamed that charges would be suddenly dropped against Smollett, so we never discussed that possibility. Still, score one for my friend’s pessimism.

I take consolation in the fact that Emmanuel is spitting mad, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is spitting mad, the editors of the Chicago Tribune are spitting mad … and even Piers Morgan is unhappy.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE METHODS CHAMPIONED BY THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AREN’T WHAT THEY’RE CRACKED UP TO BE: And that actually understates it. Now that they are no longer required, I expect more and more schools to back away from them.

PEW POLL FINDS AMERICANS OVERWHELMINGLY REJECT RACE AS A FACTOR IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS: I should have written about this three weeks ago, but I got too busy. But here’s the bottom line: 73% of adults say that race should not be a factor in college admissions. On the other hand 19% say it should be a minor factor and 7% say it should be a major factor.

When you break it down by race, you get this: Whites: 78% not a factor, 18% minor factor, and 4% major factor; Blacks: 62% not a factor, 20% minor factor, and 18% major factor; Hispanics: 65% not a factor, 22% minor factor, 11% major factor; Asians: 59% not a factor, 27% minor factor, 14% major factor.

This is consistent with past history. As Paul Sniderman and Thomas Piazza wrote in 1993 in The Scar of Race, “[The affirmative action agenda] is politically controversial precisely because most Americans do not disagree about it.” When the poll question is halfway clear, the answers are pretty consistent.

Before Grutter v. Bollinger was decided in 2003, I wrote an article entitled Strict Scrutiny, Public Opinion, and Affirmative Act on Campus: Should the Courts Find a Narrowly Tailored Solution to a Compelling Need in a Policy Most Americans Oppose? First, it argued (uncontroversially, I think) that when the public favors discriminatory laws, the public’s view should carry no weight at all in a court’s analysis. As every law student knows, strict scrutiny holds that a racially discriminatory law or policy can only be justified by a compelling purpose, and the law or policy must be narrowly tailored to serve that purpose. But next, it argued, a court should not be able to find a compelling purpose if the public favors race neutrality instead. If the public finds the reason for discrimination, how can a court find it compelling?

Obviously, my argument failed to convince Justice O’Connor.

OF COURSE THEY DO:  Media ignore Trump’s Executive Order on Campus Free Speech.

YES, EVEN THE MSM UNDERSTANDS THIS IS WRONG:  Chicago Tribune editorializes against letting Jussie Smollett walk:  Indefensible.

RAHM EMMANUEL BLASTS DECISION TO LET JUSSIE SMOLLETT WALK:  Calls it a “whitewash of justice.”

JUSSIE SMOLLETT WALKS: Charges dropped.

HARMLESS OR HARMFUL?: Congressional Democrats have now re-introduced the proposed “Do No Harm” Act, which would limit the reach of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. I am not against clarifying the federal RFRA in some respects, but Progressives have made it clear that when religious freedom and anti-discrimination laws come into conflict, anti-discrimination laws should win hands down every time. That can’t be right.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report on the conflict between religious freedom and anti-discrimination laws a while ago (e.g. should a baker have to bake a special cake for a same-sex wedding?). The body of the report was reasonably fair. But the individual Commissioner statements revealed a strong bias on the part of the Progressive majority toward religion (and especially toward the Christian religion). It was eye opening for me. The then-Chair of the Commission wrote this:

“The phrases “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.”

Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over others, or a veto power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others. However, today, as in the past, religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality. In our nation’s past religion has been used to justify slavery and later, Jim Crow laws. We now see “religious liberty” arguments sneaking their way back into our political and constitutional discourse (just like the concept of “states rights”) in an effort to undermine the rights of some Americans. This generation of Americans must stand up and speak out to ensure that religion never again be twisted to deny others the full promise of America.”

That was his whole statement; he obviously didn’t see any of the issues as close. I responded as best as I could. If you read my Commissioner statement, you may notice it was written in waves. The first page responds to the original staff-written part of the report, the next few pages responds to “Finding & Recommendations” adopted by the Commissioners themselves (over my objections), but the bulk of it responds to the over-the-top Statements of my fellow Commissioners.

I regard many of these issues as hard.  My colleagues didn’t seem to think so.

JOHN FUND: The reaction to the nomination of Stephen Moore.

“BUILD A WALL,” SAY OREGON, NEVADA, AND ARIZONA: A surprising number of Bay Area residents say they will likely move away in the next few years.

HAVE A CHE REBEL SPIRIT ENERGY DRINK!: It’s rebelicious.

“DEMOCRATS RE-INTRODUCE EQUALITY ACT TO BAN LGBT DISCRIMINATION”:   Here is my take on an earlier version of the bill. I haven’t had a chance yet to see if the new version has any differences.

HAWAII’S 60^TH ANNIVERSARY: On this day in 1959, President Dwight David Eisenhower signed the bill making Hawaii our 50^th State (effective August 21). At the time, Hawaii’s exemplary record on matters of race and racial integration was considered to be part of the reason for bringing it into the Union.

That was then and this is now. In this Era of Identity Politics, the focus has been on creating a semi-sovereign tribal status for Hawaii’s “Native Hawaiian” population in order to preserve various affirmative action-style benefits. If such a proposal were to pass and all those claiming descent from pre-Western contact Hawaiians were to join, it would be by far the largest tribe in America. Read about those efforts and why such a status would be contrary to law here.

A SLIGHTLY LATE HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY: Today, to be Irish American is to be a typical member of the “white majority.” They’re told they’ve been living a life of “white privilege.” But, if so, it was not always thus. Maybe it’s a good time to remember the tough times …

By all accounts, nineteenth-century Ireland—from which Irish immigrants to this country fled by the boatloads—was a remarkably dismal place even before the Great Potato Famine. As Gustave de Beaumont, traveling companion to Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote in the 1830s: “I have seen the Indian in his forests and the Negro in his chains, and thought, as I contemplated their pitiable condition, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness; but I did not know then the condition of unfortunate Ireland.”

With the famine, things took an almost unimaginable turn for the worse. In a short period of time, the potato, Ireland’s staple crop, essentially disappeared. One and a half million, half-starved souls were cast upon American shores in the years between 1845 and 1855. And these were the lucky ones. Out of Ireland’s population of eight million, around one million died.

When these rural immigrants got off the boat, many were illiterate, unskilled and ill-equipped for urban life. Not everyone sympathized with them. Friedrich Engels, who regarded himself a champion of the workingman, viewed the Irish immigrant to Great Britain as having a “crudity” that “places him little above the savage.” For work requiring skill or patience, Engels complained, “the dissolute, unsteady, drunken Irishman is on too low a plane.” Here in America, many agreed with Engels’ assessment. “No Irish” signs went up. And for decades, Irish neighborhoods had more than their share of crime, prostitution, and other urban pathologies.

Yet despite all these difficulties, things eventually worked out. It’s the kind of story that makes me optimistic about America and quite willing to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as a day of revelry.

NO MORE EMOTIONAL SUPPORT GORILLAS IN THE CLASSROOM?: “U. Minnesota proposes banning emotional support animals from classrooms, offices.”

I had a student a few years ago who gleefully told me about his efforts to annoy his landlord by demanding the right to two large canine emotional support animals. That’s the problem with our legal system. We create entitlements on the assumption that they won’t be used as a weapon. But that assumption turns out to be unwarranted.

NEWSWORTHY: The ghastly massacre in Christchurch this week is certainly newsworthy and richly deserving of the universal condemnation it is getting. But let’s also spare a thought for the massacre of over a hundred Christians at the hands of Muslim militants in Nigeria these past few weeks. So far it has been ignored in the MSM.

P.S.: It’s more evidence for my study (with Hal Pashler) showing that one’s political views tend to bias one’s judgment about what is newsworthy. Yes, I know that should be obvious, but you might be surprised at the extent to which journalists argue that their own views do not bias their reporting.

THIS WEEK’S COLLEGE ADMISSIONS SCANDAL: I’ve been writing for years that minority students, particularly those who are interested in STEM, are worse off when they are given the kind of preferential treatment in admissions that is typical at colleges and universities today. Attending a school at which one’s entering academic credentials put one well below the median is usually not a good idea.

But does the same logic apply to rich kids like the ones in the current scandal?

Yes, of course, it does.  This may come as a shock to identity politics types, but it’s true: When it comes to academic success, entering academic credentials matter; race doesn’t.

Here’s an angle worth mentioning: It is often said that when the beneficiary of a racial preference winds up at or near the bottom of the class that the reason for his disappointing performance is a lack of role models on the faculty. Yet when a student with a mega-rich daddy or mommy with identical entering credentials winds up at or near the bottom of the class, nobody tries to blame the problem on the lack of mega-rich kids on the faculty as role models.  And with good reason.  It’s not about role models.

ON THIS DAY IN 1860, BACTERIOLOGIST WALDEMAR HAFFKINE WAS BORN: If he had only been willing to convert from Judaism to Christianity, he could have had an academic career in the Russian Empire where he was born. But Haffkine was not the type to bend to that kind of pressure. Fortunately for him and for humankind, he was able to secure a position at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he developed vaccines for cholera and bubonic plague. How did he know that his vaccines were safe? He tested them on himself. 

THE De HAVILLAND COMET: I obviously have no idea whether the 737 Max is flawed in some way that has contributed to the recent tragedies. They don’t teach aircraft design in law school. But for those of you interested in the history of flight, the story of the ill-fated De Havilland Comet is worth reading about.

In the early 1950s, the British-made Comet was the world’s first commercial jetliner. It was the coolest thing in the sky … until one failed to become airborne departing Rome on October 26, 1952 … then another failed coming out of Karachi on March 3, 1953 … then a third crashed shortly after takeoff in Calcutta on May 2, 1953 … then a fourth broke apart in midair over the Mediterranean on January 10, 1954 … then a fifth crashed near Naples on April 8, 1954. We’ve learned a lot since then, but sometimes we’ve had to learn the hard way.

P.S.  I am fond of the famous dictum of British jurist Baron Bramwell (1808-1892):  that it is entirely false to suggest that “because the world gets wiser as it gets older, therefore it was foolish before.”  The Comet’s engineers were not idiots.  We owe a lot to early aircraft designers.

I REALLY SHOULDN’T HAVE TO LINK TO THIS: But evidently there are people these days who really think that the federal government can fund every project that tickles its fancy just by printing up more money. They don’t get the connection between that and inflation. I wonder why they think the federal government has been bothering to tax people all these years if it could have gotten what it needed just by printing more money.

I have one of those one hundred trillion dollar bills from Zimbabwe. It’s a nice reminder of how bad things can get.