Misc

Microsoft CEO Ballmer claims Microsoft is a device and services company. Say what? Maybe their patents on Windows are expiring, and he believes they won't be able to continue tide that government gravy train. That would be excellent.

Supreme Court to rule on race as a factor in college admissions.  This article is confusing, but it has a good quote from Roberts.

"Justice Anthony Kennedy is viewed as the key vote in the Fisher case. Unlike Roberts, who memorably wrote in 2007 that the "way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race" -- in a decision joined by Justices Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- Kennedy does not believe that the use of race in university admissions is always unconstitutional. In practice, however, he has voted to strike down every affirmative action policy that has come his way."

This is also an interesting comment.

"So Sotomayor started Wednesday morning by asking Rein why Fisher belonged in court at all if the university said she was not qualified for admission regardless of racial preferences and she had already finished her undergraduate degree elsewhere. That question, of course, was directed more toward her conservative colleagues, who had made the decision to take the case with full knowledge of its procedural faults."

As is this:

""My students of color, I worry they're going to say that 'these places don't value what I bring,' " she said. White students, too, will look elsewhere, she said.
"When my students are shopping for colleges, (diversity) is an important data point for them," Bigham said. "We're going to lose out on a lot of great kids.""

Interesting how this affects Texas policy.

"The school uses a "Top 10 Percent" plan through which students in the top 10% of their high school graduating classes are automatically admitted to the state university of their choice. That has helped schools boost racial diversity, primarily because most of the state's public high schools are segregated by race and ethnicity."

It seems ironic they're using high school segregation as a tool to create diversity.

"But because that does not create a "critical mass" of racial groups, the school also considers race in filling out the rest of each year's class. As a result of that policy, enacted after the Michigan decision, black enrollment grew only slightly, from 4% to about 6%. But Fisher's attorney, Bert Rein, noted nearly 40% of students are minorities, about half of them Asian Americans."

I love these vague terms. Critical mass. Holistic approach. Underrepresented. Trust a local paper, the Dallas Morning News, to provide better information.

"In 2003, Kennedy dissented in a case dealing with admissions policies of the University of Michigan Law School. By a 5-4 vote, the court ruled universities could consider an applicant’s race alongside a host of other factors to improve diversity."

This makes it sound like this case is fait accompli.

"Gregory Garre, the attorney for the university, struggled to explain just how many Hispanic or black students are needed to ensure a variety of classroom viewpoints and to ward off a sense of isolation among minority students. He carefully denied, though, that the goal is to match Texas’ demographic mix – the high court has explicitly barred racial quotas.
“You won’t tell me what the critical mass is,” Chief Justice John Roberts responded. “When will we know that you have reached critical mass? There has to be a logical endpoint.”"

"The last time the court issued a major ruling on affirmative action in higher education was in 2003, when the justices ruled 5-4 that diversity is a compelling enough state interest to justify consideration of race in admissions as part of a “holistic” approach.
The opinion in that case, Grutter vs. Bollinger, allowed the University of Michigan Law School to use race as one of many factors to attain a desired “critical mass” of minority students. Its author, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has since retired, ruled that colleges had an interest in avoiding ethnic isolation and promoting class discussions that include a variety of views."

Since there cannot be quotas, there cannot be an objective measure of critical mass. The 2003 decision in the Michigan case was ridiculous.

"Afterward, Powers defended the need for some level of affirmative action, though he acknowledged that “most Americans would like a day when we don't have to take race and ethnicity [into account] in our admissions.”"

I'd like that day to be today, and if the government would end its institutionalization of prejudice, it could be today.

"Conservative interest groups have urged the Supreme Court to revisit the question of whether the quest for diversity justifies any degree of discrimination. Some of the 17 friend-of-the-court briefs siding with Fisher argue that race-conscious admissions actually strains race relations in academia, by sowing resentments and subjecting non-whites to suspicion that they weren’t admitted on pure merit."

Whatever happened to merit?

"“There is no automatic preference in Texas” based on race, he said, noting that Fisher wasn’t directly challenging the longstanding Supreme Court holding that a quest for diversity on college campuses justifies some reliance on race in admissions policies."

So don't expect any big changes.

"Justice Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama’s most recent appointee, recused herself from the case because she worked on it as the U.S. solicitor general. Still, five of the other eight justices would have to rule against the university to overturn its policies; a tie would uphold the UT admission policy without setting a precedent."

So Kagan's recusal was strategic. It won't matter.

"He dissented in the 2003 case, arguing that Michigan’s admissions rules amounted to an unconstitutional quota and that race was used not as one factor among many but as a predominant factor. UT’s attorneys took pains to point out the differences between their system and the one that drew Kennedy’s ire."

So this case comes down to some triviality.

More vague terms:

"Kennedy said race should only be a “modest factor among many others to achieve diversity” on college campuses and that schools must strive to ensure that “race does not become a predominant factor” in deciding who gets in."

Modest. Predominant.

"Roberts pressed Garre on how he and his fellow justices would know when the University of Texas had reached a balanced level of diversity.
“When will I know that you’ve reached a critical mass?” Roberts asked Garre.
Garre answered that critical mass would be when “African-Americans and Hispanics do not feel like spokespersons for their race.”"

More vagueness.

"From the liberal wing of the high court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the case boils down to “when do we stop deferring to the university’s judgment that (considering) race is still necessary?”"

Who is this we? As if Sotomayor or anybody else has the moral authority to sit in judgment of a university's admissions criteria. This is another case of government creating conflict where none would otherwise occur.

Thomas Sowell praises Ann Coulter's book, Mugged, about how leftists play the race card and have played the race card for decades.

"The whole history of the role of the Democrats and the Republicans in black civil rights issues is taken apart and examined, showing with documented fact after documented fact how the truth turns out repeatedly to be the opposite of what has been portrayed in most of the media."

"Mugged is more than an informative book. It is a whole education about the difference between rhetoric and reality when it comes to racial issues. It is a much needed, and even urgently needed education, with a national election just weeks away."

Good for Ann Coulter, but who on the left, or even in the middle, will read this book and educate themselves on this issue?