Two Other Points on Felon Voting

Roger CleggVoting Rights

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Governor Terry McAuliffe’s lamentable decision last month to reenfranchise over 200,000 felons in Virginia.  But the news coverage of that decision calls me to make a couple of additional points. Over eleven years ago, I had a column on National Review Online debunking the claim that racism explains why felons are currently disenfranchised.  I was prompted to write it because a number of bien-pensants were making this claim at that time, which I suspected could be traced to misinformation being fed to them by the “the well-funded and ubiquitous felon-reenfranchisement movement.” It’s …

Euphemism of the Year?

Roger CleggUncategorized

Once upon a time, “juvenile delinquent” was a nice way to say “young criminal.”  As often happens, however, eventually even the euphemism is thought to be too harsh, and so a better one has to be found.  And so one has:  This Obama-administration press release last week talked a lot about “justice-involved youth.”  Then, to top itself, the administration broadened the euphemism to include criminals of all ages, with Attorney General Lynch referring to “justice-involved individuals.”    And then, after that, it continued still further in this vein last week, referring to “justice-involved Veterans.”   After my noting it, the …

The Felon Vote

Roger CleggVoting Rights

Last Friday, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe signed an order that reenfranchised over 200,000 felons in that state.  This week I’m devoting my email to two pieces I wrote in response, one for the New York Times (addressing the issue of felon voting in general terms) and the other, with Hans von Spakovsky, for National Review Online (which focused on Virginia in particular). First, here’s what I said in the New York Times: We have certain minimum standards of responsibility and commitment to our laws before entrusting someone with a role in the solemn enterprise of self-government. People who commit serious …

Silliness at the White House Science Fair

Roger CleggUncategorized

The White House had its annual science fair last week, but every week is political correctness week at the White House, so the president warned that we must work through some of the structural biases that exist in science.  Some of them — a lot of them are unconscious.  But the fact is, is that we’ve got to get more of our young women and minorities into science and technology, engineering and math, and computer science.  I’ve been really pleased to see the number of young women who have gotten more and more involved in our science fairs over the …

Obama Disavows Diversity Hiring (Sort Of)

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

President Obama spoke at the University of Chicago law school last week about his nomination of Merrick Garland — a white male (tsk, tsk) — to the Supreme Court.  At one point, he was asked about “diversity” in this context, and the answer he gave is interesting (search for the word “diversity” to find the relevant question and answer).  The president professed not to make judicial appointment decisions on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex, instead insisting only on a process that ensures that all the best candidates are identified and looked at.  He said the same thing for …

Some Funny Anti-PC Items

Roger CleggUncategorized

The Washington Post Magazine’s end-page is always a column by humorist Gene Weingarten, who’s very funny but extremely liberal.  His column this week, however, makes fun of Bowdoin College’s political correctness, which I recently wrote about, in the sombrero scandal.  Mr. Weingarten’s column is styled a plea for forgiveness and addressed to the Bowdoin student government; he wants forgiveness for his daughter having dressed up as an Indian (complete with feather, horrors!) many years ago. It’s very funny, and if even a big liberal like Gene Weingarten agrees things have gotten out of hand, then maybe there’s hope. Another funny …

Maryland's Stadium was recently renamed.

Renaming Campus Buildings?

Roger CleggUncategorized

I wrote at little about his earlier, but I’d like to add a couple of other thoughts regarding campus demands to rename buildings, statues, and the like commemorating individuals whose views on minorities and women have not stood well the test of time.  First, as I noted before, since none of us is without sin, requiring sinlessness for commemoration means no one will be commemorated.  Yet even those who were terrible sinners in one area might be visionaries in another.  So a Woodrow Wilson Civil Rights Center might be a bad idea, but not a Woodrow Wilson Center for Loopy …

Disparate Impact and Criminal Justice

Roger CleggDisparate Impact

The Obama administration’s efforts to apply “disparate impact” theory to the criminal justice system continue.  In a “Dear Colleague” letter to state and local courts last week, the administration warned, “In court systems receiving federal funds, these practices [i.e., the enforcement of fines and fees] may also violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d, when they unnecessarily impose disparate harm on the basis of race or national origin.” The trouble is that the enforcement of just about any criminal law is going to have a disproportionate impact on some racial or ethnic group …

Bowdoin’s Sombrero Scandal

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

The horror, the horror:  Sombreros were apparently distributed during a tequila party at Bowdoin College (see Weekly Standard item here).  Needless to say, the powers of political correctness at the college are in high dudgeon.  They are being accused of overreaction — but, really, how can one overreact to this sort of vicious cultural appropriation in what is supposed to be a civilized society in the 21st century?  Off with their hats, I mean heads! Trump and Affirmative Action – One addendum to this National Review Online post on the Michelle Fields matter:  The Breitbart reporter was asking Mr. Trump …

Dissing “Diversity”

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

It turns out that the corporate “celebration of diversity” is not only unfair, divisive, inefficient, illogical, immoral, and illegal — it doesn’t work very well by its own terms, according to the Harvard Business Review. So here’s a crazy idea: How about if companies announced that from now on people were going to be judged as individuals and that nobody would be given any preference or suffer any discrimination on the basis of skin color, national origin, or sex? They could make clear that this applied to men and women, minorities and non-minorities alike. Might that possibly be a good way to advance …