From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Equality
and the Political Mainstream
The Associated Press marks Martin Luther King Day with a poll on Americans'
racial attitudes. For the most part the message is vague and predictable: There's
been great progress but much remains to be done, etc. But this is interesting:
"For a big portion of the African-Americans, there's not better education," said David Bositis, an analyst of black issues for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. "There have been some gains made, but it's uneven. A lot of whites basically say: 'The civil rights movement has been done. I don't want to hear about it anymore.' " . . .
"Politically, the group that has gained the most after the civil rights movement was white Southern conservatives," Bositis said. "They have transformed the Republican Party, which has become the dominant political party."
The same point was made two years ago by one James Taranto:
To be sure, LBJ's stand on civil rights was good for the GOP, since it broke the Democratic Party's post-Civil War monopoly on the South, which was rooted entirely in the defense of segregation. It hardly needs saying that it was good for America too. But it was also good for the South.
Before LBJ in 1964, the last Southerner to receive a major party's nomination for president was Zachary Taylor, a Louisiana Whig, in 1848. (Woodrow Wilson was a Virginia native but a New Jersey resident.) Since 1968, and including a prospective Bush-Kerry matchup this year, nine of 20 major-party nominees, and five of nine victors[*], have hailed from the South.
By resolving the problem of segregation, which had cleaved the South from the rest of the country for a century, Johnson brought his region into the American mainstream. In this sense the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a political triumph as well as a moral one.
During the decades between Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Act, white Southerners were extreme political outliers. Much of their political energy was invested in defending a system of racial discrimination that privileged them. They voted Democratic in overwhelming proportions, sometimes approaching 90%, even during periods when Republicans were the dominant party nationwide.
Sound familiar? The political behavior of white Southerners then is remarkably similar to that of black Americans today. This is not to say that affirmative action is the moral equivalent of Jim Crow. It is, rather, to suggest that blacks may be paying a price for affirmative action in the form of political marginalization--and that abolishing affirmative action may ultimately benefit blacks, just as abolishing Jim Crow benefited Southern whites.
Eventually this proposition is likely to be put to a test. In the 2003 case of Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that some affirmative action in higher education is constitutionally permissible, but only for 25 more years. The Constitution will become colorblind, according to the Grutter majority, on June 23, 2028.
That's still 22 years, five months and seven days away, but the deadline may move up. In another case on the same day, Gratz v. Bollinger, the court held that some affirmative action already is unconstitutional. Taken together, these cases are sure to produce litigation over just where to draw the line. Plaintiffs will contend that affirmative action policies fail under the Gratz standard, and defendants will counter that they do meet the Grutter one.
Eventually one or more of these cases are likely to end up before the Supreme Court--a court without Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote the 5-4 majority opinion in Grutter but also joined the 6-3 majority in Gratz. If both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are so inclined, Grutter will go by the boards. (We're no expert on stare decisis, but it strikes us that a judicially invented expiration date probably does not enhance a precedent's inviolability.)
We wonder if one day one of our grandchildren will write a column quoting one of David Bositis's grandchildren observing that politically, blacks were the group that gained the most after the abolition of affirmative action.
We
Told You So
We've been arguing for years that Democratic obstructionism on judges was a
losing political strategy. Yesterday the New York Times reported that the Democrats
have, for the most part, come around to our way of thinking:
In interviews, Democrats said the lesson of the Alito hearings was that this White House could put on the bench almost any qualified candidate, even one whom Democrats consider to be ideologically out of step with the country.
That conclusion amounts to a repudiation of a central part of a strategy Senate Democrats settled on years ago in a private retreat where they discussed how to fight a Bush White House effort to recast the judiciary: to argue against otherwise qualified candidates by saying they would take the courts too far to the right.
The piece concludes with a quote from Rep. Rahm Emanuel: "George Bush won the election. If you don't like it, you better win elections." It took them five years to figure this out!
And Ted Kennedy still hasn't figured it out:
Mr. Kennedy said that the nomination process, and particularly the hearings, had "turned into a political campaign," and that the White House had proved increasingly skilled in turning that to its advantage.
"These issues are so sophisticated--half the Senate didn't know what the unitary presidency was, let alone the people of Boston," he said, referring to one of the legal theories that was a focus of the hearings. "I'm sure we could have done better."
"But what has happened is that this has turned into a political campaign," he said. "The whole process has become so politicized that I think the American people walk away more confused about the way these people stand."
We suppose Kennedy is due a bit of compassion, though. After all, he never quite got over the untimely death of his good friend Mary Jo Kopechne.
In a follow-up piece today, the Times observes that, as the headline puts it, "Alito Hearings Unsettle Some Prevailing Wisdom About the Politics of Abortion." This is news? Even Howard Dean has observed that Democrats hurt themselves by being the party of abortion.
This passage from yesterday's article, though, may be the most revealing of all:
Several Democrats expressed frustration over what they saw as the Republicans outmaneuvering them by drawing attention to an episode Wednesday when Judge Alito's wife, Martha-Ann, began crying as her husband was being questioned. That evening, senior Democratic senate aides convened at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, stunned at the realization that the pictures of a weeping Mrs. Alito were being broadcast across the nation. . . .
"Had she not cried, we would have won that day," said one Senate strategist involved in the hearings, who did not want to be quoted by name discussing the Democrats' problems. "It got front-page attention. It was on every local news show."
This goes to show how much Democrats have come to depend on friendly media for political victories. The trouble is, friendly media often tell them what they want to hear rather than what is true. That's why the New York Times didn't get around to telling them they were losing until they already had figured it out.
Her
Vote Says 'No,' but Her Lips Say 'Yes'
John Kerry** may be a master of the flip-flop, but he doesn't
hold a candle to California's senior senator when it comes to political gymnastics.
The Associated Press reports that in an incredible athletic display, she is
for and against Sam Alito's confirmation at the same time:
"I do not see a likelihood of a filibuster," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "This might be a man I disagree with, but it doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court."
She said she will not vote to confirm the appeals court judge, based on his conservative record.
As near as we can tell, no other Democrat has yet said definitively how he'll vote on Alito, obvious as it is in some cases. As we did with John Roberts, we're keeping a tally of Democratic votes on Alito, which you'll find here and we'll update as more of them take a public position.
Please
Allow Me to Introduce Myself
David Broder, the Washington Post's respected senior columnist, has an oddly
foolish criticism of Sam Alito:
At no point that I heard did Alito express sympathy for the men and women who came to his court looking for help--and were turned away. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked him about some of those people.
One was a black man convicted of murder by an all-white jury sitting in a courtroom where local prosecutors had eliminated all African American jurors in five consecutive murder trials in the space of a year. Alito, dissenting from a verdict overturning the conviction, wrote that the makeup of the jury was no more significant than the fact that "Although only about 10 [percent] of the population is left-handed, left-handers have won five of the last six presidential elections."
Durbin asked why he had used an analogy that his fellow judges had called totally inappropriate and suggestive of a disregard of "the history of discrimination against prospective black jurors and black defendants."
Alito responded, "Well, the analogy . . . went to the issue of statistics and the use and misuse of statistics, and the fact that statistics can be quite misleading . . . that's what that was referring to. There's a whole--statistics is a branch of mathematics, and there are ways to analyze statistics so that you draw sound conclusions from them and avoid erroneous conclusions from them."
That perfectly bureaucratic response betrays not the slightest doubt about the human consequences of his reasoning.
Broder is not a very effective sob sister. Here he is faulting Alito for his lack of "sympathy," yet he himself doesn't care enough to tell us anything about the defendant in this case--not even his name. Broder's unnamed "black man" turns out to be James William Riley. Reading the majority opinion in Riley v. Taylor, we get to know him a little better:
After a five and one-half day trial, a jury convicted Riley of two counts of first degree murder (felony murder and intentional murder), second degree conspiracy, possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony and robbery in the first degree. The convictions arose out of a liquor store robbery by Riley and co-defendants, Tyrone Baxter ("Baxter") and Michael Williams ("Williams"). During the robbery, the liquor store owner resisted and hit Riley with a bottle of wine. Riley shot the owner twice, killing him.
The State's case was largely based on Baxter's and Williams's testimony. After the jury found Riley guilty, it heard evidence on whether he should be sentenced to death or life imprisonment. The jury unanimously recommended death, and the state trial court sentenced Riley to be hung [sic].
Two judges of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, over Alito's dissent, overturned Riley's conviction. Riley was retried and convicted again. So Broder is telling us that there is something wrong with Alito because he doesn't "express sympathy" for a guy who knocked over a liquor store and murdered the owner.
Well, fine, to each his own. But there's another point Broder misses. Alito is an appellate judge, not a trial judge. The two jobs are vastly different. A trial judge establishes the facts of the case, hearing testimony from parties and witnesses. An appellate judge considers whether the trial court (or a lower appeals court) made errors of law.
Alito's job is to listen to legal arguments, made by lawyers, and decide who is right on the law. "Sympathy" has no part of it. An appeals judge does not interact with the parties to a case unless they are pro se (Riley was not). The Supreme Court is the ultimate court of appeals, so Alito's 15 years on the Third Circuit should be good preparation for his new job. Indeed, once he joins the court, every justice will have been elevated from a federal circuit court of appeals.
Perhaps it would be good if the court had more justices with trial experience. (Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter each did a stint as a state trial judge before moving up to the appellate bench.) Broder would have done better to make that argument rather than take cheap shots at Alito's character.
What
the Left Really Thinks of Dissent
The Weekly Standard's Terry Eastland turns out to have been an editor of Prospect,
the magazine of Concerned Alumni of Princeton. CAP was the group at the center
of last week's failed Democratic smear campaign against Sam Alito. In the new
Standard, Eastland tells the story of CAP and Prospect:
It quickly became apparent to me that CAP was loathsome to the [Princeton] administration. The first issue of Prospect had declared that it was CAP's mission to provide constructive criticism of the university from "a group of dedicated alumni who are hopeful of an early consolidation--not of the old Princeton, not of what is being recognized as the new Princeton, but of the Best of All Possible Princetons." Prospect itself was "not to interfere [with] but to be of genuine service" to Princeton. But the administration saw CAP as wanting to recover the old Princeton, and not so much helpful as disloyal.
Doesn't the left keep saying that "dissent is patriotic"?
What
Would Biden Do Without Critics?
"Biden's Gift of Gab Is a Distraction, Critics Say"--headline, News
Journal (Wilmington, Del.), Jan. 14
Headlines
We'd Like to See
"Sharks Silence Powerful Senators"--headline, San Jose Mercury News,
Jan. 13
Inflation
Is on the Rise
The link above is the Hyundai USA Web site's page for the Sonata model. Click
on "Airbags" on the right, and you learn that the Sonata has a lot
of 'em:
- 2 advanced front airbags
- 2 front seat-mounted side-impact airbags
- 2 side-curtain airbags for front and outboard rear passengers
That's still two fewer airbags than the Senate Judiciary Committee has, though.
Quote
From the Crook. It's Important.
We got a chuckle during PBS's "NewsHour" Friday when Mark Shields,
asked about Sam Alito's prospects for confirmation, invoked a famous politician
(now in prison for racketeering) to say it was a sure thing: "Gov. Edwin
Edwards of Louisiana once said he wouldn't lose an election unless he got caught
with a live boy or a dead woman in a compromising position."
Actually, that's a bit of a misquote. What Edwards actually said, while running for re-election in 1983, was: "The only thing that would keep me from winning the election is to be caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy."
We guess we can understand why Shields would change "in bed" to "in a compromising position." After all, PBS's viewers tend to be old and stodgy and may not cotton to Edwards's sexually explicit talk.
But why did he change "girl" to "woman"? This is an obvious sop to politically correct feminism, which abominates the word girl and insists that all female human beings must be called "women," or, if they're underage, "pre-women." (Unborn baby girls, however, are not "pre-pre-women," they are just clumps of tissue.)
OK, so why then did Shields say "boy" rather than change it to "man"? Because he didn't want to offend the gays by suggesting that there's something wrong with being caught with a live man.
Maybe Shields should have just said, ". . . unless he got caught with a live person or a dead person in a compromising position."
Autumn
in New York
"For every 100 babies born in New York City, women had 74 abortions in
2004, according to newly released figures that reaffirm the city as the abortion
capital of the country," reports the Daily News:
The new Vital Statistics report released by the city Department of Health this month shows there were 124,100 live births, 11,700 spontaneous abortions and 91,700 induced abortions in the city in 2004.
That means 40 out of 100 pregnancies in the city ended in a planned abortion--almost double the national average of 24 of 100 pregnancies in 2002, estimated by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a Manhattan-based nonprofit group that researches reproductive health issues.
Some women come from out of town to abort their children, but such termination tourism accounted for only 7% of 2004's abortions. By and large, it seems this is a matter of the city depopulating its future self. Oh well, at least it'll be easier to get a seat on the subway.
Hitler's
Rise Occasioned Some Anxiety. Too
The understatement of the week award goes to London's Sunday Telegraph for an
article about Iran's lunatic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
Iran's dominant "Twelver" sect believes this will be Mohammed ibn Hasan, regarded as the 12th Imam, or righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammad.
He is said to have gone into "occlusion" in the ninth century, at the age of five. His return will be preceded by cosmic chaos, war and bloodshed. After a cataclysmic confrontation with evil and darkness, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace.
This is similar to the Christian vision of the Apocalypse. Indeed, the Hidden Imam is expected to return in the company of Jesus.
Mr Ahmadinejad appears to believe that these events are close at hand and that ordinary mortals can influence the divine timetable.
The prospect of such a man obtaining nuclear weapons is worrying.
OK,
We'll Bite
"Former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite, whose 1968 conclusion that the Vietnam
War was unwinnable keenly influenced public opinion then, said Sunday he'd say
the same thing today about Iraq," reports the Associated Press.
Does anyone know who this guy is?
Spot
the Idiot
What is the root cause of crime? Lucy Horton of South Whitehall, Pa., offers
an answer in a letter to the editor of the Allentown Morning Call:
The upsurge of armed robberies in the Lehigh Valley, and especially in Allentown, is the direct fruit of Bushonomics: reward the rich, shortchange the workers and the poor.
Bill Clinton pushed hard to put 100,000 police on the streets nationwide. The concept was called ''community policing,'' and the idea was that a cop on the beat will reduce crime a lot more effectively than police in squad cars. The local officer will get to know the beat, the people, the players. Trust is established.
Well, the GOP reasoning goes, if Clinton wanted it, then it must be a bad idea. Cut the funds; let the cities rot (they vote Democratic anyway).
Pardon me if I sound cynical, but it hurts to read the news these days. How bad do things have to get before the McMansion-dwellers realize that this is their problem, too?
OK, we've heard of Reaganomics and Clintonomics. We can imagine Lincolnomics, Trumanomics, maybe even Van Burenomics and Buchananomics. But who the heck is Bushon?
Glad They Cleared
That Up
"In a Jan. 12 'Culturebox,' Seth Mnookin incorrectly referred to James
Frey's motivational tattoo (FTBSITTTD, for "[Obscenity] the [barnyard vulgarity],
it's time to throw down") as an acronym. Those letters do not form a word, so
it is an abbreviation, not an acronym."--Corrections column, Slate.com,
Jan. 13
Homelessness Rediscovery Watch
"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000
"A seventh-generation heir to the duPont family fortune is suing his trust fund company, saying he has been forced to survive on just $36,000 a year and to turn to one of his former wives and his friends for shelter. The heir, Alexis I. duPont-de Bie Sr., 62, says in papers filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that he is 'destitute and homeless' because of the trust's bad investments."--New York Times, Jan. 14, 2006
It's
Still 100%
"Screening for Prostate Cancer May Not Reduce Men's Risk of Death"--headline,
press release, Yale University, Jan. 9
Helping
the Enemy
"Turkey Moves to Save Poultry Industry"--headline, Associated Press,
Jan. 14
Causing
Columbus More Embarrassment Than Pain
"Chinese Eunuch May Have Beaten Columbus"--headline, Ananova.com,
Jan. 13
Thanks
for the Tip!--XXXVIII
"Health Tip: Don't Let a Stroke Hinder All Activities"--headline,
HealthDayNews, Jan. 16
Bottom
Story of the Day
"Argentina Advances Partial Opening of Squid Season"--headline, Mercopress
(Montevideo, Uruguay), Jan. 13
If
You Love Someone, Set Them Ablaze
"Officials are asking the public for information about a firebombing and
a later blaze at the same house last weekend," reports the Sacramento Bee:
At least two men threw four Molotov cocktails at a house in the 4300 block of Burgess Drive in the Robla area about 2:30 a.m. Sunday.
Two adults and two children were asleep in the house but were uninjured. The homemade bombs did little damage, said police spokesman Sgt. Terrell Marshall. . . .
The incidents don't appear to be hate crimes, Marshall said.
In California, they have a funny way of saying "I love you."
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ruth Papazian, Rob Saker, Scott Hill, Dennis Powell, Robert Paci, C.E. Dobkin, Evan Slatis, Mark Murray, Michael Segal, Aaron Cummins, Mark Van Der Molen, Daniel Foty, Jim Woosley, Rosanne Klass, Alan Turin, Allen O'Donnell, Richard Brum, Charlie Gaylord, David Beebe, Ethel Fenig, Samuel Walker, Tim Wieand, Mark Amundsen, William Schultz, David Stanton, Fran McDonald, Richard Ong and Henry Doval. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
- Stephen Moore: Conservatives now have a chance to take back the House.
- John Fund: Today it's liberal Democrats who stand in the schoolhouse door.
- Mary O'Grady: Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are more than just pen pals.
