I BLOG THEREFORE I AM:  Rene Descartes was born this day in 1596.

TO MODERN FEMINISTS, EVERYTHING IS DISCRIMINATON AGAINST WOMEN EXCEPT REAL AND UNDENIABLE DISCRIMINATION AGAINST WOMEN. For reasons I can’t entirely explain, left-leaning feminists don’t seem to care that many colleges demand higher GPAs and SAT scores from female applicants than they do from male applicants. The schools are practicing affirmative action for men.

Conservatives have sometimes been weirdly inconsistent on this issue too. Some of same people who argue against race-preferential admissions policies use precisely the same arguments they reject in connection with race to argue in favor of preferential treatment for men.   What gives?

DON’T TELL MY EMPLOYER ABOUT THESE “FAMILY CLOTH” WIPES:  Like many universities, it has fallen head over heels for “sustainability,” and its judgment has been a bit impaired lately.

ON THIS DAY IN 2005,  Fred Korematsu died after a long and full life.  He lost his famous lawsuit in the Supreme Court, but he eventually won in the court of public opinion.  In Justice Robert Jackson’s dissent to Korematsu v. United States, he acknowledged that courts should ordinarily avoid second guessing military decisions, but nevertheless wrote:

Korematsu was born on our soil, of parents born in Japan. The Constitution makes him a citizen of the United States by nativity and a citizen of California by residence. No claim is made that he is not loyal to this country. There is no suggestion that apart from the matter involved here he is not law abiding and well disposed. Korematsu, however, has been convicted of an act not commonly a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived. […] [H]is crime would result, not from anything he did, said, or thought, different than they, but only in that he was born of different racial stock. Now, if any fundamental assumption underlies our system, it is that guilt is personal and not inheritable. Even if all of one’s antecedents had been convicted of treason, the Constitution forbids its penalties to be visited upon him. But here is an attempt to make an otherwise innocent act a crime merely because this prisoner is the son of parents as to whom he had no choice, and belongs to a race from which there is no way to resign.

Anyway, what could be more American than suing the pants off the federal government for a breach of your civil rights?

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE SHOULD BE  A LOCAL ISSUE:  I have a USA Today op-ed today.

A GERMAN-STYLE APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM IS LIKELY AN UNATTAINABLE GOAL FOR THE USA: The USA certainly should encourage apprenticeships as an alternative to college. But thinking we can come anywhere close to replicating the German system—in which considerably more than half of Germans participate—is unrealistic.  The German system works because of its unusually powerful unions and complex system of job “certification.”

SUPPORT DIVERSITY OF THOUGHT: If you’re an academic or grad student and you are uncomfortable with the one-party system on campuses today, you should consider joining Heterodox Academy.

THIS DAY IN CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY: On March 29, 1961, the 23^rd Amendment, giving the District of Columbia representation in the Electoral College, was ratified. Since then, D.C.’s 3 electoral votes have been reliably cast for the Democratic candidate.

Early in the Republic’s history, the argument sometimes advanced against giving government employees the vote was that they have a conflict of interest: They will always vote for the candidates who favor higher spending. The argument wasn’t entirely crazy.

NOT ALL TRANSGENDER ISSUES ARE CREATED EQUAL: Why did the Department of Defense take a year and a 44-page memo to decide how to deal with transgenders in the military while the Department of Justice and the Department of Education withdrew their joint transgender bathroom/locker room/shower guidance within weeks of Trump’s inauguration? Because DOD had to devise an actual policy. By contrast, DOJ/DoEd decided a legal issue—that local schools, not the federal government, have the authority to decide who gets assigned to which bathroom/locker room/shower. For an explanation of that legal issue (written before DOJ and DoEd withdrew their guidance), try here.

CHAPSTICK COSTS EXTRA: My 92-year-old mother’s first nursing home bill arrived yesterday:  Calculated on a yearly basis, it will be $123,120 PLUS $148,920 for round-the-clock sitters (required by nursing home as a condition to accepting my mother) PLUS assorted other charges including $4.56 for two sticks of “lip balm.” (And in case you haven’t heard, neither Medicare nor Blue Cross/Blue Shield covers nursing home care beyond a certain number of days after a hospital stay, and long-term care insurance pays for only about a quarter of the above. Plan well for your dotage.)

THE OMNIBUS CONTAINS AT LEAST ONE SMALL PUSHBACK AGAINST UNLIMITED GOVERNMENT:  Congress defunds Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing program at HUD.

ENCORE PERFORMANCE FOR THE E.R.A.: WOULDN’T THAT END CONTRACTING PREFERENCES FOR WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESSES? Democrats are talking about bringing the Equal Rights Amendment back. Check out here, here, here, and here.

In the late 1970s, Phyllis Schlafly argued that the ERA could be interpreted to require unisex bathrooms, same-sex marriage, and the military draft for women. ERA supporters accused her of fear mongering. But a funny thing happened: State constitutions with ERA-like provisions were indeed cited in courts arguments for same-sex marriage. It’s therefore hard to avoid acknowledging that she had a point. The difference today is that many are ready to embrace what Schlafly saw as an argument against the ERA.

Still, I’d be surprised if the ERA train gathers steam on the left. In 1996, feminist groups vehemently opposed California’s Proposition 209, which prohibits (among other things) the state from discriminating or granting preferential treatment based on sex in employment and contracting. Prop 209’s feminist opponents didn’t want equal rights then. They wanted affirmative action for women-owned businesses, etc.   I wrote about it a few years ago during the last “Let’s bring back the ERA” movement.

Since the ERA would put affirmative action preferences for women in serious jeopardy, it’s hard to imagine left-leaning feminist groups pushing the ERA for any purpose beyond fundraising.

CONFUCIUS SAYS: “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” I can attest that there is little a college or university won’t do for free money, especially money that comes from a country that may be hostile to American interests. Complete report from the National Association of Scholars here.

NEW STUDY BY PAUL CASSELL & RICHARD FOWLES:  Chicago Homicides Spiked Due to ACLU Police Decree.

INQUIRING MINDS:  U.S. Department of Commerce Announces Reinstatement of Citizenship Question to the 2020 Census.

CNN SAYS INTERIOR SECRETARY RYAN ZINKE TOLD EMPLOYEES DIVERSITY ISN’T IMPORTANT: He denies that he said anything like that. But Peter Kirsanow isn’t sure Zinke should be quite so defensive. Quoth Kirsanow (tongue in cheek* and certainly not in his capacity as a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights): “Speaking as a black male, I often find myself in arguments with Hispanic women about wetlands policy.”

*It is a sad commentary on our times that I needed to point out this was tongue in cheek.

THE ORIGINAL RESEARCH MADE ME FEEL SICK: Megan McArdle helps expose Liz Warren’s highly influential “research” on bankruptcies as highly flawed. No, it is not true, nor has it ever been true, that most bankruptcies are the result of medical bills. Yet those findings helped drive policy for years. More details here.

I HOPE IT’S TRUE: Paul Sperry reports that the Dept. of Education will withdraw the ghastly Obama-Era Dear Colleague Letter on school discipline this summer. Good. It has caused nothing but trouble and misstates the law to boot.

HOME ALONE: John Fund on the Trump Administration’s failure to fill open positions:

Compared with President Bill Clinton’s administration at a similar point in his presidency, Trump’s personnel office has fewer than a fourth the number of staffers to process paperwork and interview applicants. Several of the offices at the personnel department are empty most of the day. This lack of resources reflects a lack of understanding in Trump and others that you can’t have a political revolution by waiting for the perfect nominee or by using players from the other team.

President Trump doesn’t see the urgency of this. He told Forbes magazine last October: “I’m generally not going to make a lot of the appointments that would normally be — because you don’t need them,” he said. “I mean, you look at some of these agencies, how massive they are, and it’s totally unnecessary. They have hundreds of thousands of people.”

Oh dear.

JUST HOW BAD ARE IMMIGRATION DETENTION FACILITIES? MAYBE NOT SO TERRIBLE: If the allegations of sexual abuse, pepper spraying, and racial slurs made in connection with this lawsuit on behalf of Somali and other African detainees are true, the responsible parties obviously need to be punished.  The allegations are serious.

But I have to say that when I toured the Karnes immigration detention center a few years ago for the Commission on Civil Rights, it was … well … pretty nice—decorated with pictures of rainbows, SpongeBob SquarePants, etc.  Even the members of the Commission’s Progressive Caucus seemed surprised. The Port Isabel facility that we toured the next day was not as attractive. Still, the detainees seemed satisfied with their treatment. One told us (in Spanish) that if they let him out on Sundays, he wouldn’t mind staying indefinitely. I couldn’t help but like the guy. Unlike my current gentleman friend, he’d probably be willing to eat my pot roast without complaining.

Unfortunately, long before the Commission began taking evidence for its report, it had committed itself to the conclusion that these facilities were hellholes. As I hope I demonstrated in my 56-page dissent, the allegations that made it into the report were based mainly on feverish hearsay-upon-hearsay, much of it provably false. They weren’t based on anything we actually saw.

UNREQUITED LOVE:  Libertarians love free immigration, but immigrants don’t love libertarianism.

THIS WEEK IN CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY: At the Mount Vernon Conference (March 21-28, 1785), George Washington hosted delegates from Virginia and Maryland to reach an agreement on developing the Potomac River.   It set a precedent for states acting together outside the framework of the Continental Congress. It also caused delegates to think seriously about the advantages of a stronger national government. Two years later, some of the same individuals met in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention.

HAPPY 104^TH BIRTHDAY, NORMAN BORLAUG: If you don’t know who Norman Borlaug was, it’s high time you learned. His claim to fame: Saving over a billion people from starvation. Yes, that’s a “b” for “billion,” but even if it were an “m” for “million,” it would be a staggering achievement. When others are teaching their children and grandchildren to act like a ruthless killer (“Be like Che”), teach yours to “Be like Norman.”   Make his memory eternal.

DOD REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON MILITARY SERVICE BY TRANSGENDER PERSONS:  An interesting read.  I doubt many who are talking about it in the media have read it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HARRY HOUDINI:  I wish he could get us out of the budget deal.