COLLEGES CONTINUE TO TRY TO INCREASE MINORITY STEM MAJORS: But they’re still refusing to put away their political correctness and do the most obvious thing to achieve that goal. Sometimes it is hard to take them seriously.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE: Even Democrats can agree that the Obama-Era school discipline policy was counter-productive. And contrary to law I might add.  Thank you, Secretary DeVos for withdrawing it!

ON THIS DAY IN 1781: Astronomer William Herschel discovered Uranus. Or more precisely, he discovered that the tiny point of light that was visible to the naked eye was not a star (though at first he thought it was a comet).

Herschel wanted to name it for his patron, King George III. Had that name caught on instead of the one that did, it would have deprived generations of schoolboys of much-needed amusement.

DINOSAUR TURDS: On this day in 1784, William Buckland, geologist, Anglican priest, and all-around eccentric, was born. Among his contributions to science is this: He was the first to realize that those funny shaped rocks that fossil hunters like Mary Anning had been uncovering were fossilized dinosaur excrement. He named them “coprolite,” and you can buy yours on Ebay today.

ROOSEVELT’S COURT PACKING SCHEME (AND ERIC HOLDER’S): In early 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had recently been re-elected in a landslide. Believing that his popularity should not go unexploited, he set about to use it as a weapon against the Supreme Court, which had been a thorn in his side during his entire first term.

Roosevelt was upset that so many parts of his New Deal legislation had been ruled unconstitutional, often in split decisions. On March 9, therefore, in one of his weekly radio Fireside Chats, he argued that in order to help the Court handle its workload, he should be authorized to add an additional Supreme Court Justice for every current Justice over the age of 70.

The Chief Justice shot back that the Court was having no trouble keeping up with its workload. Roosevelt’s true motivations were obvious. Even the most gullible Americans understood that Roosevelt wasn’t concerned with helping the Court; he wanted to stack it with New Dealers. Indeed, he essentially admitted this.

Call it one of the most audacious power grabs in American history. If he could get Congress to go with him, he could effectively nullify the Supreme Court as the third branch of government. But, though audacious, it was not unconstitutional. Congress does have the authority to change the number of seats on the Court. And it had used it in the past, sometimes not with the purest of motives.  The first Supreme Court had six seats. Nine had been the number between 1837 and 1863 and again since 1869.

The American people, however, decided that they were not amused by Roosevelt’s plan. Newspapers editorialized against it. Political cartoonists ridiculed it. Even Vice President and Senate Democrats weren’t crazy about it. It is likely that it would have gone nowhere.

But maybe nobody had told Owen Roberts that. Three weeks later, when the Court handed down its 5-4 decision in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), Justice Owen Roberts, who had usually sided with the more conservative wing of the Court, switched sides and voted to uphold a minimum wage law. Roberts’ move has been forever dubbed the “switch in time that saved nine.” Maybe that was his intent. Or maybe not.

Two months later Justice Willis Van Devanter retired, and Roosevelt appointed Hugo Black, a New Dealer and former KKK member, in his place. The Court Packing plan may have had no chance. But Roosevelt had won the battle by more conventional means.

But he paid a hefty political price for the scheme. As Michael Parrish wrote, “the protracted legislative battle over the Court-packing bill blunted the momentum for additional reforms, divided the New Deal coalition, squandered the political advantage Roosevelt had gained in the 1936 elections, and gave fresh ammunition to those who accused him of dictatorship, tyranny, and fascism. When the dust settled, FDR had suffered a humiliating political defeat ….”

Eric Holder should keep this in mind when he argues that the next Democratic President should “seriously” consider Court packing.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, OUR OLDEST SERVING SUPREME COURT JUSTICE EVER: Born this day in 1841, he lived to be two days shy of 94. For a sense of how long that is, consider this: As a boy, Holmes shook hands with a Revolutionary War veteran; as a Supreme Court Justice, one of his law clerks was Alger Hiss.

By the way, if you think Holmes was a civil libertarian, read this essay on Holmes by H.L. Mencken.

I NEED SARAH TO LEND ME HER SHOCKED FACE: Transgender clinic accused of covering up negative impacts of puberty blockers on children by Oxford professor.

It’s curious. Vegan parents who are horrified by the thought of gluten in their food allow their children to be shot up with puberty blockers and hormones.

GROWING UP WITH MURDER ALL AROUND: This New York Times article reviews a grim book—entitled An American Summer—about the Summer of 2013 in some of Chicago’s highest crime neighborhoods.

The good news is that we’ve come a long way since the high crimes rates of the late 1960s through early 1990s. Many neighborhoods that used to be dangerous—minority neighborhoods especially—have since blossomed. The book tells the story of some of the much smaller number of neighborhoods that continue to have obscene rates of violent crime.

My worry is that “deincarceration reform” and other efforts at criminal justice reform could easily go off the rails and throw decades of gains away if they aren’t handled carefully and in a hardheaded manner. Alas, the current rhetoric is anything but hardheaded.  If you agree (or especially if you don’t), take a look at my Commissioner Statement on Police Use of Force: An Examination of Modern Policing Practices.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HORTICULTURALIST LUTHER BURBANK: Born this day in 1849, he brought us hundreds of new varieties of plums, raspberries, cherries, peaches, apples, figs, walnuts, strawberries, potatoes, grapes, quinces, and nectarines.

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: Virginia Governor Northam is being asked (by Al Gore among others) to stop “environmental racism.” I don’t know anything about the particular cases being brought to Northam’s attention. But with “environmental racism” things are not always as they seem on the surface.

A few years ago, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights decide focus its attention on the supposed fact that coal ash landfills and ponds are disproportionately located near African Americans..   The report it issued gave our Chairman the perfect opportunity to make an emotional statement decrying “environmental racism” and even blaming it for the cancers in his family. There was just one problem: The Commission’s empirical study (massively downplayed in the report itself) showed that, if anything, coal ash landfills and ponds may be disproportionately located near whites. Facts didn’t matter.

BLOWN TO HELL: On the morning of March 6, 1970, members of the Weather Underground terrorist group were busying themselves with plans to set off a large bomb. Their intended target was a dance for non-commissioned officers scheduled for that night at Fort Dix, New Jersey.   Something went wrong and the bomb went off prematurely, completely destroying the Greenwich Village townhouse the Weathermen were occupying at 18 W. 11^th Street.

That was good news. It meant that the lives of the Fort Dix non-commissioned officers and their dates were spared.

Instead, the bodies of Weathermen Diana Oughton and Terry Robbins, who had been working in the basement on the bomb, were blown to pieces. Member Ted Gold, who was just arriving at the house when it blew up, was also killed.

Upstairs were members Cathy Wilkerson (whose wealthy father owned the townhouse) and Kathy Boudin.   Though dazed and bloodied, they managed to escape.

Cathy Wilkerson was a fugitive from justice for a decade. She finally surrendered to the police, was convicted of illegal possession of dynamite, and sentenced to three years. When a judge ordered that she be released after serving only 11 months, it caused something of a scandal. New York State’s Commissioner of Correctional Services argued that many inmates had better disciplinary records and that Wilkerson simply had good lawyers.

Kathy Boudin was on the run for 11 years. But unlike Wilkerson she didn’t surrender. Rather, she was arrested shortly after her participation in the notorious Brink’s robbery in which three innocent men were killed.  In other words, she was still at it all those years later.

Boudin was eventually sentenced to 20 years to life for her role in the Brink’s robbery/triple murder. She was paroled in 2003 and later hired by Columbia University, where she is now an assistant professor and co-founder/co-director of Columbia’s Center for Justice.

There is evidence that the Weathermen had planned to bomb Columbia University’s administrative building too. But Columbia fell all over itself to hire Boudin anyway. Go figure.

I HOPE IT’S TRUE: Donors don’t take kindly to political correctness at Yale.

YES, YOU DO HAVE TO HUG YOUR GREAT AUNT HEDWIG: I guess I asked for this: As a law professor I was curious, so I ordered from Amazon several books about “consent.” One is called Consent on Campus: A Manifesto; another is The Consent Guidebook: A Practical Approach to Consensual, Respectful, and Enthusiastic Interactions. (Yes, I’ve been accused of being a masochist.)

But when they arrived on Saturday I just didn’t have the energy to sit down and study them. I figured the easiest one to get through was C is for Consent, which is 14 pages long (with pictures!) and aimed at young children, so I decided to look first at it.

The book tries to instill in children the attitude that nobody can touch them without their explicit consent. It includes a drawing of a perfectly pleasant looking grandmother who wants nothing more in the world than a hug from her little grandson. Alas, the grandson doesn’t feel like it.

“That’s okay,” says Dad. “You don’t have to give hugs if you don’t want to!”

Yes, you do. If prune-faced, slightly smelly grandma, who never hurt a fly and remembered your birthday last month, wants a hug, dammit, hug her. Not feeling like it is no excuse.  She loves you, and one day you’ll realize that you can use all the love you can get, maybe especially the unconditional kind you’re getting from grandma.

Increasingly, I don’t fit into the world.

AT FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING OF THIS DAY IN 1801, JOHN ADAMS QUIETLY LEFT THE WHITE HOUSE AND HEADED HOME TO MASSACHUSETTS: It was a significant moment in American history—the first time a sitting President had lost a bid for re-election. Jefferson was to be inaugurated later that day. It was hardly obvious and inevitable that the transition would go smoothly after the bitter contest that preceded it.

Several historians have suggested that Adams left early because he believed his presence might provoke violence; others reasoned that Jefferson never invited him to attend the ceremony and Adams, too proud to ask his successor, departed as a courtesy. One scholar even speculated that Adams simply needed a full day’s time to make the forty-nine mile trip to Baltimore [on the public coach] before heading home to Massachusetts. Regardless of the motive, Adams’s decision to accept the election results and yield power peacefully set an important precedent for future presidential transitions.

Thus a tradition of a dignified transition was firmly set. I hear there is a rumor afoot that Trump will stage a military coup rather than yield power if he is defeated in 2020. It’s remarkable what idiocy folks on the Left will believe these days.

I’ll let others judge how dignified the transition from Obama to Trump has been.

LOCAL CONTROL: Now that the Trump Administration has rolled back the Obama Administration’s effort to control school discipline issues from inside the Beltway, school districts are finally in a position to listen to parents and teachers and establish the policies they think best for their students.  If you want to understand how the Obama Administration managed to wrest control of discipline from local schools, why is was a bad idea and why is was contrary to law, try here.

MOE BERG REMEMBERED: Hardcore baseball fans tell me that Moe Berg was never more than a middling major league baseball catcher, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers (then called the Robins), the White Sox, the Indians, the Washington Senators, and the Red Sox.  But Berg, who was born on this day in 1902, was many other things too … a coach for the Red Sox, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly, a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton, a graduate of Columbia law school, and a quiz show phenomenon. He was also fluent in six languages and had some knowledge of a dozen others.

But the most astonishing role Berg ever played was that of spy. It started innocently enough. During the early 1930s, Berg was selected to go to Japan twice to promote the game of baseball. On the first trip, he stayed longer than the other players and got to know something of the country and the language. The second trip was supposed to be for all-star types—including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. But Berg got to go along, because he could give speeches in Japanese. While there, he bluffed his way up the top of one of Tokyo’s tallest buildings with a movie camera hidden under his kimono and shot film footage of the city, including extensive shots of its industrial areas and its harbor. That footage was later a valuable contribution to the war effort.

During WWII, Berg joined the Office of Strategic Services Special Operations Branch (what is now the CIA’s Special Activities Division). Among his exploits, he was parachuted into Nazi-dominated Yugoslavia to assess the various resistance groups operating within that area and to make recommendations to the U.S. government about which group or groups to support. Oh … and he was a trained assassin.

The CIA displays Berg’s baseball card at its headquarters.  And Hollywood recently made a movie about him (though, alas, you can’t make a movie these days about a historical figure without speculating about your subject’s sexuality.)

EVEN THE TREES ARE HATEFUL IN SOUTH CAROLINA: In early February, the mayor of Lamar, South Carolina observed a sticky, yellowish substance on her car and her husband’s car. Believing it to be spray paint, she reported it to the police and issued a statement that “my husband and I refuse to be intimidated by those who perpetrated this act of vandalism which I classify as an act of hatred.” Police, however, have determined that the substance was likely pollen.

YES, I TOLD YOU THIS WAS TRUE ALREADY: Inside Higher Education reported yesterday that African American and Hispanic students abandon STEM majors at much higher rates than white students. But it didn’t explain how that wouldn’t happen as often if under-represented minority students attended schools where their entering academic credentials matched those of their fellow students.

If you haven’t done so already, please read Want to Be a Doctor? A Scientist? An Engineer? An Affirmative Action Leg Up May Hurt Your Chances.  (Or, better yet, read this longer version.)

DEAR HARVARD STUDENTS: EVEN HARVEY WEINSTEIN DESERVES A LAWYER: Students at Harvard’s Winthrop House are upset that their faculty “overseer,” law professor Ronald Sullivan, has undertaken to represent Harvey Weinstein. Some have demanded Sullivan’s resignation as faculty overseer as the ground that he is making them feel unsafe. Harvard appears to be taking the students’ unhappiness seriously and investigating Winthrop House’s climate.

Someone needs to remind these kiddies that Ronald Sullivan is a lawyer. This is what lawyers do. They represent people who are in trouble. Harvard grad John Adams, who represented the British soldiers accused of murder in connection with the Boston Massacre, would not be amused by such idiocy.

HAVE YOU HAD YOUR KELLOGG’S CORN FLAKES TODAY?: On this day in 1852, Progressive nutritionist John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of corn flakes, was born. His goal was to create something that would deaden your sex drive. I’m not kidding.  Stay away from this dude. He was big on enemas too. Maybe all Progressives are …

GIDDY UP, TRIGGER, LET’S GET OUT OF THIS CRAZY PLACE:  Student in cowboy outfit causes Wake Forest University to go bonkers.

THE HEROES ARE THE ONES RUNNING TOWARD THE CATASTROPHE: In 1941, Lois Gunden was 26 years old and had a job as French instructor in Indiana. But when the Mennonite Central Committee needed a French speaker to go to Vichy France to help Spanish and Jewish child refugees, she went. In France, it was Lois versus the Nazis. And at least sometimes the indefatigable Lois won, thus saving the lives of children for whom deportation would have meant death.

After the United States entered the war, Lois was interned and eventually repatriated to the United States, where she spoke little of her experiences. But Lois’s courage and resolve were not forgotten by at least one of those whose life she saved. In 2013—eight years after her death—Lois was recognized as “Righteous among the Nations.” Today would have been her birthday.

FEMINISM: YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY… AND BACK: Friday’s briefing before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on “Women in Prison” was about how “women are different” from men. The message that they should therefore be treated more leniently was sometimes explicit and sometimes merely implicit, but it seemed to always be there. One of the public commentators declared her goal to be the end all imprisonment for women (but apparently not for men). It was a bit like the 19^th century.

THE TRANSGENDER BATHROOM WARS CONTINUE IN VIRGINIA: Meanwhile, if you are looking for a legal explanation of why Title IX does not require schools to allow transgender students to use the showers of the sex they identify with, here is my amicus brief (with Peter Kirsanow) in the G.G. case.

One thing has changed since that brief was written.  When the Trump Administration withdrew the Title IX guidance on the use of bathrooms, showers and locker rooms by transgender students, the part about deference to agency guidances became outdated.  But the basic argument pushed by the now-withdrawn guidance remains–that Title IX demands that transgender students be assigned to the facilities of the sex they identify with.

EXCESSIVE FINES: Don’t get too excited about the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday. All that was decided was that the Constitution’s Excessive Fines Clause applies to the states. The ramifications of that decision must wait for another day.

For more on how some municipalities may rely too heavily on fines and fees for their budgets, you might want to look at my Commissioner Statement in the Commission on Civil Rights’ report entitled Targeted Fines and Fees Against Communities of Color: Civil Rights and Constitutional Implications. It doesn’t cover every angle of the problem of excessive fines and fees, but I hope it makes a few useful points. Among other things, it argues this is not a race issue (though most of my colleagues seemed to think it was).

There are lots of tough issues in this area of the law (and the debate doesn’t always fit the usual left/right paradigm).  (Full report here.)