IT’S EQUAL PAY DAY: When you hear that women are paid 79 cents on the dollar, remember that while the comparison is between full-time workers, what constitutes full-time work varies. Full-time men work longer hours than full-time women.

• A few years back, when Dr. Diana Furchtgott-Roth compared 40 hours workers to 40 hours workers, she found women make 86% of what men make.
• When she compared 35 to 39 hour a week workers, she found women made 107% of what men make (yes, women made more).

It’s complicated. And this is only one of the complications.

HAPPY HOCKTIDE:  I take my holidays wherever I can find them.

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE WASHINGTON POST? Both those newspapers are confused about the Obama-era school discipline policy that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos should disavow.   So says my essay on NRO today.

If you are interested in the school discipline issue more generally (and golly gee you should be, since the country is doomed, doomed, doomed if the federal government can’t even let teachers maintain order in their classrooms), then read The Department of Education’s Obama-Era Initiative on Racial Disparities in School Discipline: Wrong for Students and Teachers, Wrong on the Law.

I AM AWAITING THE SUPREME COURT’S DECISION in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission—the case about a Christian baker who declined to design a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding. He considered this “participating” in the wedding (but he was apparently willing to sell an off-the-shelf cake to all comers). But I can’t say I am eager for the decision, since this isn’t an easy case, and I prefer a well-considered opinion to a quick one.

Cases at the intersection of religious liberty and anti-discrimination law are rarely easy. The Commission on Civil Rights did a report a few years ago on the topic. I was shocked at the level of hostility to religion among my Commission colleagues.  For example, here is what the then-Chairman had to say:

“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.”

Weirdly, in person, he always seemed like an affable guy. Alas, many otherwise affable guys go off the deep end these days when discussing hot-button issues.

My Statement in that report tried to deal with the broad issue of religious accommodation (and tried to deal with some of the fevered arguments made by those on the Left). The latter task was pretty easy, the former very hard. Maybe it’ll be “a piece of cake” for the Supreme Court … but … I doubt it.

I LOVE A HERO:  David Harris, a landscaper from Oakland, California.

WHEN IS A DIRTY JOKE JUST A DIRTY JOKE?  And when is it sexual harassment under Title VII and its state law equivalents?  Mark Pulliam (and the Texas Supreme Court) try to put the “discrimination” back into “sex discrimination”.

THE GREAT ENGINEER: Happy 212^th Birthday to Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Britain’s engineering giant. I fell in love with an old photograph of this guy when I was in college. Alas, unlike Brunel, I am not am engineering giant and can’t even figure out how to post the photo here without risking the destruction of the entire Instapundit web site. But I can link to it in all its glory.

WANT TO BE A DOCTOR? A SCIENTIST? AN ENGINEER? AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION LEG UP MAY HURT YOUR CHANCES: A few days ago I overheard a couple of teachers (at least I think they were teachers) talking about how to encourage more minority students to pursue science careers. I almost broke in and told them. Instead, I am telling you: Nowhere is the evidence of the “mismatch effect” clearer than in the area of STEM. Whether it’s an affirmative action preference or a legacy preference, don’t take it if you want to major in STEM. Go to a school where your entering academic credentials put you at least in the middle of the class.

“NO EXCUSES:  THERE IS NEVER A REASON TO CARRY A KNIFE“:   My late (and highly anglophilic) mother-in-law would have been shocked and saddened by the Mayor of London’s bizarre threat to prosecute anyone caught carrying a knife.  Her view was that no gentleman should *ever* be out and about without a knife.  Knives come in handy, you know.

THE BRAVE NEW AGE OF GENDER-NEUTRAL KIDS:  Has anyone looked into whether this is part of a plan to re-elect Trump?

VA HOSPITALS:   More privatizing could only help.

SEVENTEENTH AMENDMENT RATIFIED ON THIS DAY IN 1913: Up until that point, state legislatures decided who would be a U.S. Senator. The 17^th Amendment made it a matter for popular election. Was this the death knell of state power in Washington? Did it mean that federalism was doomed? Or were democratic elections for Senators an improvement on the backroom deals that had produced the Senate in an earlier era? I report. You decide. All I can say is that it’s rather unlikely the country will ever go back.

I LOVE A HERO 2:  Orintheus Buster saved a life.  Knowing CPR pays off.

I LOVE A HERO:  And Jason Falconer is a hero.

HONORABLE MENTION:  The National Association of Scholars will honor Amy Wax.

NO MORE CONSERVATIVE DOCTORS (AT LEAST NOT HONEST ONES):  The MCAT has been politicized.

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, TO FIND GOVERNMENT RESEARCH CONFIRMS WHAT WE ALREADY KNEW: A GAO report finds that boys are disciplined more often than girls in school. It also finds that African-American students are disciplined more often than white students and that whites are disciplined at higher rates than Asian Americans.  Of course, the NYT covers it with an utterly misleading headline “Government Watchdog Finds Racial Bias in School Discipline.”

Here’s what the NYT didn’t say: Just a few days ago, another government report showed that African-American students SELF-REPORT that they have been in a physical fight on school property at a rate MORE THAN TWICE the white rate.  Overwhelmingly, the aggregate disparities in school discipline are the result of differing rates of misbehavior, not bias.

Another non-surprise, surprise: The GAO report also found that students with disabilities are disciplined at higher rates than non-disabled students. But schools DEFINE behavioral problems as “disabilities.” Finding that students with disabilities are disciplined at higher rates than non-disabled students is equivalent to finding that students who misbehave a lot get disciplined a lot. If you are thinking of students in wheel chairs when you hear statistics of this kind, you are misunderstanding what’s driving the issue.

Federalizing school discipline policy is a mistake. It’s hard to think of an issue that is less likely to benefit from the intervention of bureaucrats.

QUESTION: WAS BOOKER WASHINGTON AN OBSEQUIOUS UNCLE TOM OR A CIVIL RIGHTS HERO? Answer: Civil rights hero, you idiot. For far too long it was fashionable in civil rights circles to view Washington negatively. Things have turned around somewhat in the last few decades, thanks in part to Louis Harlan’s biographies, and also thanks (more recently) to the work of black conservatives like Lee Walker, Carol Swain, and many others.

One thing that many people don’t know is that (among his many other accomplishments) Washington quietly raised the money to challenge black disfranchisement in the courts. This was typical of Washington: He was a man who got things done and didn’t necessarily demand the credit. Alas, the case–Giles v. Harris—didn’t work out as it should have. In an opinion by Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Supreme Court essentially decided (5-3) that there was nothing it could do to prevent disfranchisement in the South. It was not the Court’s (or Holmes’) finest hour.  But the result doesn’t make Washington any less a hero.

Booker Washington’s 162^nd birthday is today.

YET MORE REASONS TO DOUBT LIZ WARREN’S INTEGRITY:  Mulvaney’s Letter to the Editor.

BOYS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN (WITH SPHERICAL OBJECTS OF VARIOUS SIZES): Last week, I posted that modern feminists don’t seem to care that women are now routinely discriminated against in college admissions, especially at small liberal arts colleges that complain of “too many women.” Indeed, this may be the most blatant form of discrimination that women face today. But women’s organizations ignore it, often in favor of fighting much less obvious wrongs. Why?

Part of the reason is that their own Title IX in athletics policies—which make it very difficult for small schools to entice men to enroll by offering them a chance to play on a varsity team—helped create the problem.  These policies require schools to spend proportionally on men’s and women’s athletics, unless they can absolutely, positively, no-doubt-about-it, prove that women have all the athletic opportunities they want.  So schools that think they don’t have “enough men” just discriminate at the intake level instead.

Another consequence of these Title IX policies is that they make it harder for schools to spend money on non-athletic extracurricular activities that many women would prefer.   The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TWINKLETOES: Arthur Murray (born Moses Teichman) would have been 123 years old today. Among his students were Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Johnny Mercer and Jack Dempsey.  If you can bring one-tenth as much happiness to your fellow man as Murray and his chain of dancing schools have brought, you will have been a smashing success.

BANKRUPT:  More on Liz Warren’s unreliable “scholarship.”

AND TYLER TOO: President William Henry Harrison died on this day in 1841, only 31 days into his term. He was the first President to die in office. Here’s the Constitutional quirk: In those days, the Constitution simply said that in case of the President’s death “the Powers and Duties of the said office” “shall devolve upon the Vice President.” It didn’t say that the Vice President BECOMES the President. Tyler, however, took the position that he WAS then the President, and got royally (or at least presidentially) pissed off when some people disagreed. It wasn’t until the 25^th Amendment, ratified in 1967, that it was made clear that the Vice President actually becomes the President upon the death, resignation or removal of the President.

NEVER BE BORED AGAIN IN YOUR LIFE: If you are a policy nerd like me, who can’t get enough data, check out Paul Taylor’s Kindle books: The Big Picture: An Illustrated Guide to Modern American Trends (Volume I and Volume II).   They will cause you to hope for a blizzard in April, so you can spend more time with them.

END THE LEFT-RIGHT STALEMATE ON VOTER RIGHTS? John Fund writes:

All across the political spectrum, there’s agreement that our voting system is broken. Academics lament our low voter turnout. Liberals blame that on obstacles to voting, such as registration laws and ID requirements. Conservatives say our rickety system is vulnerable to bureaucratic incompetence and voter fraud.

It’s time to end this Left–Right stalemate, which caused the Obama Justice Department to spend over $50 million to fight ballot-integrity laws. Various civil-rights groups probably spent an equal or greater amount. What if all that money had gone instead into real efforts to put an ID in people’s hands?

It’s an idea being pushed by Andrew Young and Martin Luther King III.