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.

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.