COLOR: On this day in 1781, Sir David Brewster, inventor of the kaleidoscope (among other things), was born.

KIRK KOLBO:  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at 100.

EDUCATION SECRETARY BETSY DeVOS’S PANEL ON SCHOOL SAFETY WILL RECOMMEND THE WITHDRAWAL THE OBAMA-ERA SCHOOL DISCIPLINE GUIDANCE: At least that’s what the Washington Post is reporting. If so, this is excellent, excellent, excellent news (for reasons that go well beyond school safety).

ON THIS DAY IN 1725 (Old Style Nov. 30), GEORGE MASON  WAS BORN: He is often called the father of the Bill of Rights for two reasons: He was the principal author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, upon which Madison later based the Bill of Rights. And, as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, he was prominent among those who refused to sign the draft document because it did not yet contain such a bill.

As a result of pressure from Mason and others, a Bill of Rights had to be promised in order the secure ratification.

NO, JUSTICE SCALIA WAS NOT A DIRTY, RACIST SCUM BUCKET: This week in history (well … assuming that something that happened in 2015 can be viewed as history), Justice Scalia was accused of being a racist for bringing up, at the Fisher v. University of Texas oral argument, why race-preferential admissions end up making many of their intended beneficiaries worse off. If you aren’t familiar with the studies he was trying to refer to, please take a look here or for a somewhat more detailed version here.

WILL HOUSE DEMOCRATS SCRAP TERM LIMITS FOR COMMITTEE CHAIRS?:  There is evidence that they will.

I BET YOU CAN GUESS WHY:  In the U.K., 58% of burglaries occur while someone is home.  In the U.S.A., the figure is only 28%.

EMERGENCY ROOMS: If you wonder why more emergency rooms have been closed over the last few decades than opened, here may be part of the reason.

WHENEVER THE DEMOCRATS GAIN A MAJORITY IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, THERE IS A RENEWED CALL TO PASS THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT: I wrote about it just after they re-took the House a number of years back. So far these calls haven’t gone anywhere, in part because “equal rights” are the last thing supporters of “affirmative action” for women in science and technology or on corporate boards really want. The calls may be just an effort to rally the troops.

One item of proof that most feminist groups don’t really want an ERA is their reaction to Proposition 209. When that initiative came before California voters in 1996, feminist groups fought it tooth and nail even though it would have required the State of California to refrain from discrimination or preferential treatment based on sex in public education, public employment and public contracting. If they really had been serious about equal rights (as opposed to equal results) they’d have been pleased.

Thursday’s WaPo column does indeed invoke the new House of Representatives as a reason to pass the ERA. The hope is that Virginia will ratify and then Congress will retroactively extend the deadline for ratification (or will be excoriated for failure to do so). Interestingly, the author ridicules Phyllis Schlafly for arguing that the ERA could be interpreted to require unisex bathrooms. Of course, the Obama administration took the even less defensible position that Title IX (which is similar) requires that anatomical males be permitted to use women’s showers and play on women’s sports teams. Given that, it is strange to ridicule Schlafly.

MORE PROOF THAT IT’S NEWSWORTHY ONLY IF THE MSM SAYS IT’S NEWSWORTHY: The case of the Obama Administration’s use of teargas at the border.

IF YOU THINK THIS SOUNDS ASTONISHINGLY CORRUPT, YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF FOR BEING SO NEGATIVE:  Al Sharpton sells his life story rights for $531,000–to his own charity.

ON THIS GHASTLY DAY IN 1974, NOT ONE, BUT TWO BOEING 727s CRASHED IN THE USA: Although winter weather figured in both, the accidents—TWA Flight 514 (92 fatalities) and Northwest Airlines Flight 6231 (3 crew fatalities, no passengers onboard) were otherwise unrelated.

Air travel safety has much improved since then. That’s great. But don’t let the industry get complacent …

ANOTHER TRAGIC EXAMPLE OF MISMATCH: Highly competitive colleges and universities that give large preferences to “diversity” students or to the children of major donors aren’t doing those students any favors. Deliberately misleading colleges and universities about an applicant’s academic credentials only make the problem worse.

REST IN PEACE, MR. PRESIDENT:  George H.W. Bush has died.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MARK TWAIN: Alas, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been dropped from the curriculum at a number of schools. But here’s a fact that is somewhat less well-known these days: High-minded folks viewed Huckleberry Finn as objectionable from the beginning: The Concord Public Library condemned the book and took it off its shelves in 1885, shortly after it was published.

IT’S RAINING IN SAN DIEGO:  That’s a wonderful thing.  But, as usual, cars are spinning out and crashing all over town.  I don’t know what it is about Southern Californians …

ENGLISH RULES ARE “TOO BIG A RISK”: Employers can be held responsible for their employees’ misbehavior in all sorts of ways. They can be sued for sexual harassment. They can lose customers if their employees are viewed as rude. The best way to manage these risks varies from workplace to workplace. But sometimes English-speaking supervisors have required their bilingual employees to speak English on the job, so they can assure proper workplace decorum is being upheld and so customers and fellow employees don’t freak out (“They’re talking about me; I just know it!”) Courts have repeatedly upheld this. But these days it often doesn’t matter what the courts do; the EEOC can and does make employers with English-only rules miserable.

Last night I ran across a web site advising employers to avoid such rules. It says it’s “too big a risk,” and that may be right. Alas, there are so many different bodies of “law” at work these days. There is the law as Congress enacted it. Then there is the “law” as a court would interpret and apply it if there were a case before it. Then there is the “law” as interpreted by the EEOC. Unless and until the EEOC actually sues, that “law” is procedurally tricky to get in front of a court. Instead, the EEOC’s strategy is usually to investigate a non-compliant employer to death. The wiser course for employers is usually to comply.

THE DESECRATION OF THE CEMETERY OF CONFUCIUS: Over the course of this month in 1966, gangs of Maoist students tore up the Cemetery of Confucius.

On November 29, 1966, they sent the following celebratory telegram to their hero:

Dearest Chairman Mao:

One hundred thousand members of the revolutionary masses would like to report a thrilling development to you: We have rebelled! We have dragged out the clay statue of [Confucius]; we have torn down the plaque extolling the “teacher of ten-thousand generations”; we have leveled Confucius’s grave; we have smashed the stelae extolling the virtues of feudal emperors and kings; and we have obliterated the statues in the Confucian temple!

Swell.  They apparently didn’t mention it, but they also dug up one or more corpses and hung them naked from trees. As the People’s Daily editorialized a couple of months later, “To struggle against Confucius, the feudal mummy, and thoroughly eradicate … reactionary Confucianism is one of our important tasks in the Great Cultural Revolution.”

Why? One important reason is that Confucius emphasized filial loyalty. Totalitarianism cannot tolerate the institution of the family: All loyalty must be to the State.

“THE IDIOT”: Here’s a song for all those who have moved to a not-so-wonderful place, because that’s where the jobs were, rather than be unemployed in a place they loved. It’s called “The Idiot,” by Stan Rogers, who would have turned 69 today had he not been tragically unlucky.  Sample lyrics: “The government dole will rot your soul back there in your home town.”

I’M NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS, BUT IT’S ALIENS: Whenever something asinine happens in this country, I tease my friends that it’s time for conservatives to pull up stakes and colonize northern Baffin Island (at least I think I’m teasing). Today one friend sent me a link suggesting that somebody may be getting in ahead of us.

WILL I MISS HAVING A REPUBLICAN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES? Alas, I probably won’t, not on the race and sex/identity politics issues that I work on. (We probably will on other issues.)

GOP members of the House were mostly terrified of race and sex issues. And because they are terrified, they didn’t bother to inform themselves on them, so they didn’t realize how crazy the law is. Here’s an example: If this tiny legislative fix was deemed too controversial to pass (and it was), then nothing useful can pass.

For decades, many decent conservatives thought the best way to deal with race and sex issues was to smile politely and let the Left get its way. I’ve been called a Cassandra, constantly warning that identity politics was getting bigger and bigger and more totalitarian and corrupt. It was the wrong metaphor: Never lose sight of the fact that Cassandra was right.

SCIENCE/NOT SCIENCE:  On this day in 1955, Bill Nye, the man who somehow convinced many Americans that he is a science guy, was born.

CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS OUST ALMOST 130, INCLUDING 9 TEACHERS, OVER CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECKS: I can’t tell for sure from the story what the circumstances were, so I am unsure whether this was a good move or not. Given how large the number was, I have my doubts. My point is that it ought to be the school system’s (and not the federal government’s) decision.

Nevertheless, the EEOC’s 2012 Guidance on criminal background checks says that because these decisions have a disparate impact on African Americans they potentially violate Title VII. It essentially says that it gets to decide whether an employer’s policy on hiring (or retaining) ex-felons is permissible.

If the EEOC had direct jurisdiction over state and local governments, I suspect it would already be bringing a Title VII lawsuit for “race discrimination” here. Fortunately for Chicago Public Schools, only the Department of Justice can initiate federal pattern or practice lawsuits against it under Title VII, so we’ll see ….

I am sympathetic to the notion that we need to do things to re-integrate ex-cons back into society (and I support the modest tax deduction available to employers who make voluntarily hires). But the EEOC’s policy of bullying employers into hiring ex-felons against the employers’ better judgment—which I discuss and critique here—is wrongheaded for all sorts of reasons and was never intended by Congress.

PEDESTRIAN CROSSINGS REOPENED AT U.S.-MEXICO BORDER AFTER FOUR-HOUR CLOSURE:  The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

UPDATE:  The freeway is now open too.

FEINSTEIN CRITICIZES TRUMP NOMINEE KENNETH KIYUL LEE FOR HIS “CONTROVERSIAL” POSITION ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION … except that Lee’s position is more in keeping with that of the majority of Americans than Feinstein’s. As Paul Sniderman and Thomas Piazza, experts in political opinion, wrote a number of years ago, issues like preferences in college admissions are “politically controversial precisely because most American do not disagree about [them]. The distribution of public opinion on … affirmative action (understood as involving either preferential treatment or racial quotas) … is unmistakable … In the country as a whole, affirmative action in employment or in education is opposed by four in five, or more.” (Italics in original.) That opposition continues.

Just before Grutter v. Bollinger, I wrote an article that argued: (1) Obviously, public support for race discrimination shouldn’t count for squat when it comes to determining its constitutionality; (2) But on the other hand, if the public opposes race discrimination (as it does in the case of race-preferential admissions policies), that should pretty much foreclose a finding by a court that a “compelling” need for it. What’s so compelling about an argument that most Americans don’t buy?

Alas, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor must not have read it….