Charles Krauthammer: Finally getting it right on affirmative action

WaPo   "Every once in a while a great, conflicted country gets an insoluble problem exactly right. Such is the Supreme Court’s ruling this week on affirmative action. It upheld a Michigan referendum prohibiting the state from discriminating either for or against any citizen on the basis of race.

"The Schuette ruling is highly significant for two reasons: its lopsided majority of 6 to 2, including a crucial concurrence from liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, and, even more important, Breyer’s rationale. It couldn’t be simpler. “The Constitution foresees the ballot box, not the courts, as the normal instrument for resolving differences and debates about the merits of these programs.' ”
...
"This is pretty weak gruel when compared with the social harm inherent in discriminating by race: exacerbating group antagonisms, stigmatizing minority achievement and, as documented by Thomas Sowell, Stuart Taylor and many others, needlessly and tragically damaging promising minority students by turning them disproportionately into failures at institutions for which they are unprepared." ...

The Tortoise and The Harry

Chip Bok

 

In the old cowboy movies range wars were fought over cows and sheep. Now they’re fought over cows and dessert(sp) tortoises.

Thanks to the Cliven Bundy standoff with BLM we learned that the federal government owns 81% of the land in Nevada. Harry Reid owns the rest. Well, not quite but it seems that way.

 

Cliven Bundy -- The Man Who Said Too Much    ... "Distance themselves, they should, not just because Bundy’s comments are flatly racist, not just because he managed to project an awful lot onto a segment of society after driving by a building one day, and not just because continued political support will end careers.  His supporters should separate from his cause because his statements go against American ideals on a very basic level."

Samantha Power neglects opportunity to stop Iran from gaining seat UN women's rights body, then tweets her outrage

Thomas Lifson   ... "U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power took to Twitter to express her views: “Yet again Iran unopposed & was ‘elected’ to Commission on Status of Women. Given record on women’s & human rights, this is an outrage.”

"But Richard Grenell, who served as spokesman for four U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. during the George W. Bush administration and is a close observer of the world body, was unimpressed with her reaction.

“Ambassador Power can tweet her outrage after the fact all she wants,” he said. “She should have been in the room for the vote and demanded a secret ballot rather than allow an automatic acclamation by her silence.”  ...

Dear Government: Please Stop Helping!

http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/04/branco-cartoon-please-stop-helping-1/

 

Woman Drops to 83 Pounds After Obamacare Denies Meds   "A Staten Island woman battling a neurological disease that has required four brain surgeries dropped to 83 pounds after her Obamacare plan denied her three months worth of vital medications."

 

Senators Denounce Obama for Threatening 'Entire Constitutional System' By 'Nullifying' Immigration Laws 
" 'Your actions demonstrate an astonishing disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the rights of American citizens and legal residents," the senators wrote in a letter to Obama. "Our entire constitutional system is threatened when the Executive Branch suspends the law at its whim and our nation’s sovereignty is imperiled when the commander-in-chief refuses to defend the integrity of its borders.' "

Finally, this:

President Obama traveled to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines this week to celebrate the economic successes of America's allies in Asia. That's the way it works. If President Obama wants to celebrate an economic success, he actually has to leave the country.   Argus Hamilton

Parent to Obama: Let me tell you about the Common Core test Malia and Sasha don’t have to take but Eva does

washingtonpost.com

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"I get a lot of e-mail from parents and teachers who wonder if President Obama, whose children go to the private Sidwell Friends School, knows what is actually going on with all of the standardized testing in public schools. Here’s an open letter to Obama explaining what he is missing, written by Rebecca Steinitz, a literacy consultant in urban high schools, a writer and an editor. She was previously director of the High School Program at Lesley University’s School of Education and an English professor at Ohio Wesleyan University, where she ran the Freshman Writing Program. Steinitz is also a parent, as you will see when you read this post of hers, which also appeared on Huffington Post.

"Dear President Obama..."

The True Opponents of Immigration Reform; Too many special interests profit from the present mess.

Victor Davis Hanson    "Solving the illegal-immigration problem should not be hard. No one knows how many foreign nationals are residing illegally in the United States — estimates range from 11 million to 20 million. But everyone understands that it is an untenable situation that must be addressed.
"The two extreme positions of the Left and Right probably have little public support — on the one hand, blanket amnesties and open borders, and on the other, deportation of all foreign nationals who reside here without legal authorization.
"Polls show that most Americans want something in between." ...

SCOTUS Ruling On Affirmative Action Ban Reveals Sotomayor As Liberal Activist

American Glob   "Justice Sotomayor, the Wise Latina, as she has called herself, was very unhappy with the ruling…

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in the longest and most significant dissent of her career, said the Constitution required special vigilance in light of the history of slavery, Jim Crow and “recent examples of discriminatory changes to state voting laws.”

"Recent examples of discriminatory changes to state voting laws?
That sounds an awful lot like the complete falsehood currently being pushed by… every single Democrat running for office.
Sotomayor has made it clear that she’s not a Constitutionalist. She’s a Democrat activist."

 

Two (OK, Three) Views on How to Stop Discrimination on the Basis of Race   "Sonia Sotomayor:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race.

"John Roberts:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

Holder praises Sotomayor's 'courageous' dissent   "Would someone tell me what's "courageous" about makling a statement the entire liberal establishment and every major media outlet in the country agrees with?"  Rick Moran.

The 'Wise Latina' jumped the shark   ... "With her extreme positions and her elevated judicial standing, Sotomayor has now become the poster girl for self-interested racial preferences. Her mediocre performance on SAT and LSAT tests served as a predictor of her performance on the Court. Two fellow liberals on the Court abandoned her, leaving only Ginsburg in her camp. And as I have been reporting, the Left now is after Ginsburg, trying to get her to resign so that President Obama can appoint a young and healthy liberal to spend the next few decades rewriting the Constitution. " Thomas Lifson.

Sotomayor: Raced-Based Preferences Forever   ... "I submit that many Americans — regardless of race — are increasingly exhausted by what Chief Justice Roberts declared in 2006 was this “sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”
"It’s clear where Eric Holder would take us — an endless fixation on race that inevitably brings its own racial discrimination. It’s clear Justice Sotomayor would take us in pretty much the same direction. She would just pretty up the “sordid business” by coming up with new euphemisms for it."

Cliven Bundy Just Ruined His Cause

"After Bundy's overtly racist remarks, let's see how far politicians run away from him."

National Journal    "The New York Times has overheard Cliven Bundy—the Nevada rancher who, instead of paying decades of overdue grazing fees, met the Bureau of Land management with guns and a small militia—saying this:

"I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro," he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, "and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn't have nothing to do. They didn't have nothing for their kids to do. They didn't have nothing for their young girls to do.  More...

From the April 18th Tunnel wall: From NRO:The import of rancher Bundy vs. the Obama administration  
"The Problem with Cliven Bundy; "His plight is sympathetic; his actions are indefensible."
....
Bindy: He’s an unapologetic freeloader, but the BLM and the feds are appallingly bad landlords.    ..."Testing Bundy’s claim is simple. If he has a right to do what he is doing on public land to which he does not have title, then so should you and I. What would happen if a hundred other people each put a hundred head of cattle on the same property? The grass would run out; every animal would, eventually, starve."

Basically conservative opinion (aside from Sean Hannity?) is "a plague on both your houses"

Harry Reid: A McCarthy for Our Time

Victor Davis Hanson  "We should ask Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) the same question once posed to Senator Joseph McCarthy by U.S. Army head-counsel Robert N. Welch: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

"Reid is back in the news for denigrating the peaceful supporters of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, a popular critic of the Bureau of Land Management policy, as “domestic terrorists.”

"McCarthy in the 1950s became infamous for smearing his opponents with lurid allegations that he could not prove, while questioning their patriotism. Reid has brought back to the Senate that exact same McCarthy style of six decades ago — and trumped it.

"During the 2012 presidential campaign, Reid slandered candidate Mitt Romney with the unsubstantiated and later-refuted charge that Romney was a tax cheat. “The word’s out that he [Romney] hasn’t paid any taxes for ten years,” Reid said." ...

"Like a pre-reform-era politician, Reid entered public service relatively poor and will leave it as a multimillionaire. He has granted lucrative favors to casinos and rich investors who hired his son’s legal firm. While in office, he made considerable profits on private business and real-estate deals. Some of those who donated to his campaigns got favorable government treatment." ...

The Adolescent President; The rhetorical excesses of Barack Obama.

George Will  "Representative Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) had recently released his budget, so Obama expressed his disapproval by calling it, for the benefit of his academic audience, a “meanwich” and a “stinkburger.”

"Try to imagine Franklin Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower or John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan talking like that. It is unimaginable that those grown-ups would resort to japes that fourth-graders would not consider sufficiently clever for use on a playground.

..."Today’s president is older than that. But he talks like an arrested-development adolescent."
...
"Finally, the real discussion-stopper for the righteous — and there is no righteousness like an adolescent’s — is an assertion that has always been an Obama specialty. It is that there cannot be honorable and intelligent disagreement with him."

Right: adolescent enough for you?

Along this same line come these posts:

• Our Petulant Child President
• Even thisTunnel Wall March 2013 post came up when searching "petulant juvenile"
• When you mess with a petulant juvenile administration they will shut you down.
• “It is a petulant, juvenile response,” said one Democratic official close to the administration.

Keep searching

Major Obama Donor Avoids Jail Time After Brutally Beating Girlfriend

Via Drudge: Washington Free Beacon    "A high-dollar Obama donor who was caught on video brutally beating his girlfriend got off with 25 hours of community service last week after he pled guilty to domestic battery charges.

"CCTV footage caught Gurbaksh Chahal, the CEO of San Francisco tech startup RadiumOne, kicking his girlfriend 117 times, including blows to the head, and trying to smother her with a pillow during a vicious 30-minute assault.
...
"According to police reports, Chahal also threated to kill his girlfriend several times."
...
"Chahal’s political contributions indicate more liberal sensibilities. He has donated more than $100,000 since 2011, all of which went the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates.

"Those contributions include $81,600 to the Democratic National Committee and $5,000 to President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign."

Argus Hamilton on the Clintons

... "China News Agency reports a man who collected five thousand bras while giving lectures at colleges across China opened a museum of his bra collection in Beijing. At least it's in the capital. In America you have to go to the Bill Clinton Presidential Library for an exhibit like this.

"Chelsea Clinton thrilled Bill and Hillary Clinton with the news on Friday that she and her husband are expecting a baby this fall. The family couldn't be any happier. No one knows if it's going to be a boy or a girl, but it's already leading the polls in the 2056 presidential race."   More here.