Afirmative action is unconstitutional, but we're ignoring that fact because it is for the greater good?  Does this scare anyone but me?

The SCOTUS has ruled several times that "reasonable restrictions" as long as they don't prevent the entire right are acceptable.  That is why even if the Second Amendment is ruled an individual right, it will have no effect on the gun control laws because they are seen as "reasonable restrictions".

And yet, in the long run,  AA has negative consequences.    How can it do otherwise,  when it puts underqualified people into a position of responsibility, where eventually they will fail and damage the organization they're with?

I think AA is one of the reasons why American is sliding down the shithole.

CJ

And do you think the people forcing the issue are so stupid they don't know that???

Does that lead you to any conclusions??[:D]

Christ. We are SO fucked....

What kind of nation are we leaving our children? [:(]

It seems that we plug one hole and another opens up. We win the Congress, and they lose their spines. We get the Presidency, and (despite all his good traits) passes more Democrat issues than Republican. We assign Supreme Court Justices (SUTER and O'CONNER) and they turn into complete idiots on the Constitution.

Maybe another revolution IS the only answer. How very sad........

God, please make me wrong...

Ever read "Atlas Shrugged"?

Yeah, liberals ignore the 14th amendment when it suits them, then will turn around and argue the 14th amendment justifies thir cause.

In the civil rights time, they (rightly) fought for the 14th amendment to be extended to black people.  Now they're ignoring the same 14th amendment, on behalf of black people but at the EXPENSE of young white people.  It's not consistent.

In Alaska, a huge issue is whether native alaskans who traditional depend on wild food for much of their diet should get priority over urban hunters/fishers when those wild game resources are scarce.

To me, it's only fair and right that traditional indigenous people have priority.  Except, there's that whole 14th amendment where one group cant have special privileges over another group. So I am sorry.  The law is the law.  But seeing how inconsistent the freaking SCOTUS is on the 14th, maybe the natives stand a chance on subsistence.

CHrist, maybe we don't want this SCOTUS getting any 2nd Amendment cases. They might rule that people are required by law to be tagged like wildlife, neutured, and shot through the lungs simply for having a copy of HEAT in their video library...

The vague, ambiguous needs of the many outweight the specific constitutionally-protected rights of the individual.


It's the American way.

I think Monday 23 June, 2003 will end up in the history books as being one of the turning points of this nation.

Race over ability or merit has been upheld.  Granted they tossed in a lot of weasel words to keep it from being black & white (no pun intended) but it's clear nonetheless.

I agree with Zaphod on this one.  We ARE totally screwed.  The fuse has been lit.  It remains to see just how long that fuse is.

As a father to be, this is really very disturbing.  Unfortunately my wife and I are white.  What sort of future are we bringing our young one into?  What opportunities will they have being white?  Pretty depressing thoughts, huh?

Does anyone else find afirmative action to be more of a racist idea than the biggest Klan rally in the South?
The Klan is scared of blacks because they know deep down that their abilities are equal to ours, and they could be a threat.
Afirmative action says that because you're a minority, you are incapable of operating based solely on your merits, and you require govt. intervention in order to have a chance.

If ya'll knew some of the govt policies as they apply to construction of govt work you'd shit yourselves.

Not unless it's also a turning point in the lives of individuals too. Perhaps this will help wake some people up to the FACT that both major parties have been hi-jacked, and are leading us in the same direction.  AWAY from our founding principles.



It always has been. Some have warned about the war against whites. Most folks dismiss those statements out of hand...Maybe some will look a little closer, and not allow the demonization to intimidate them.





You don't know how pleased I am to see zaphod, (and some others), coming around.

That's TWICE in one thread, you've called on the Name of The Lord!!! [shock]

This decision must have REALLY affected you!!! [:D]

I'm afraid Civil War 2 may be inevitable......

[url]http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/ocr/section.do?section=COMMENTARY&year=2003&month=6&day=24[/url]  Click on the Political cartoon.

Wear the blindfold for cases such as racial profiling, but take it off for affirmative action cases.

If you're open and honest about your racism we'll strike you down, but if you're sneaky and clever, we'll let you get away with it.  

What's painfully obvious is that there is no end in sight for AA policies.  The Bakke case was [b]25[/b] years ago, IOW a generation, and the claim remains.  O'Connor, in the Bakke case wrote (in the majority decision)  that in 25 years she "expected that racial preferences will no longer be necessary".  It's become an institution and an entitlement that shows no sign of going away any time soon.  The law school application of affirmative action as a special case argues for the "priesthood" of lawyers as somehow deserving of higher status than others.  Dangerous grounds, this "reasonable restrictions" that is bandied about for any and all preferences and discrimination.

The County government where I live (overall, very conservative)  instituted a 2% performance bonus clause for workers and 95% received it.  Proof that entitlements have been inextricably woven into the social fabric.

Two things I now believe as pretty much dogma.

Welfare (along with AA)  is reparations.

Registration is confiscation.


It's very important to understand what O'Connor meant in this majority opinion.

"In order to cultivate a set of leaders with [i]legitimacy[/i] in the [b]eyes[/b] of the citzenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be [b]visibly[/b] open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity."  That's some major doublespeak.

I think she's just said that AA is forever.  Unfortunately the only ones who are intended to make use of it and who will avail themselves of it are the "usual suspects".  The Asians and Hispanics (except for a minority of Mexicans)  will achieve parity through hard work and initiative.

Go to www.conspiracypenpal.com/columns/injustice.htm for a more complete summation of our national condition!!

I guess I just don't WANT to believe that our country is being so determinedly fucked by people who are aware of the damaging consequences of their actions, and want those consequences to happen for some reason that I can't possibly see as a desirable goal.

Maybe even I am not really willing to admit just where the line between good (freedom loving) and evil (freedom hating) really lies, and how many people are on the other side and who they are.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Well,  I'm sorry to say that I'm starting to see just how many "well intentioned" people there are, busily laying bricks on a downward leading path.


Good lord,  we need a revolution, and soon, before this shit gets to the point of the slope where it's too steep and slippery to stop the fall.   And I'm afraid we're perilously close to that point of no return.   And gun rights are just a small part of the picture.

Now I've done it.  I've damned near scared myself.

CJ

This is the most disgusting decision I have ever seen in my lifetime.  I can't believe what kind of twisted, tortured logic those Liberal Bastards (O'connor included) have used to justify their attempt at social engineering.  This "White Guilt" crusade has gone on long enough.  

We should be as disturbing now, as when they inevitably outlaw our guns.  I am ashamed of America, and White Americans in particular for not standing up for themselves.  No protests, no march on Washington, nothing but geeks at keyboard bitching silently about it.  

But you know what; I'm going continue living passively in my comfortable little house, in my comfortable suburban neighborhood, keeping my mouth shut, so that I don't jeopardize my comfortable little job, that affords me my comfortable little SUV, and gives me the money to hopefully insulate my children from this government sponsored RACISM.

One thing I will promise is that my children will not grow up ignorant as I was.  They will be educated from day one that this is not a country "of the people, and for the people"  but rather "of the people, and for an elite, privileged ruling class and a few selected minorities"

[b][i]"Oh, it's not that bad," said the wise man, "It's worse."[/i][/b]

Woo hoo! You all deserve everything that is going to happen.

I'm such an optimist.  The decision was 5-4 and two of the justices are about to retire.  6-3 struck down the more quota-like system used by the UM undergrad system.  

B/c of that it will likely be harder, not easier, for state-sponsered AA programs to survive.  These split decisions will only churn up more litigation rather than mark any kind of watershed.

Bakke, in 1978, was far more of a watershed, but in light of Adarand, City of Richmond, and other decisions AA is on the way out

Even O'Conner set an arbitrary time limit in her opinion.  

SCROTUS has long ago exceeded its constitutional mandate and begun extending itself into the legislative realm. They have been setting social policy for quite a few decades now. Waiting for them to stick their nose into the executive branch. I think the founding fathers blew it when they left SCROTUS without any oversight. Not sure how you would do it but SCROTUS doesn't work anymore.
I read their decision and though I am not an attorney, it made absolutely no logical sense to me.

Not sure why Sandra O'Connor's decisons are surprising anyone. She was a mistake from the start and Reagan knew better. Hell, we'd be better off if women had never been given the vote much less allowed to hold office. Now there are 2 on the SCROTUM.

Most of you are right about nothing short of a revolution restoring our constituional republic. However, there are not enough men in this country with balls anymore. [b]And THAT is why we are screwed.[/b]

I wonder if there will be an arbitrary time limit on whining, pathetic losers. Somehow I doubt it.

I agree, there should be some oversight of the Supremes.

If I were to run the zoo,  I'd grant the President power to remove any member of the Supreme Court, provided that a panel consisting of the senior Senator from each state and the senior Representative from each state concurred with the President's decision by a 2/3rds majority.

That sounds fairly reasonable, I think.  It requires cooperation from both the legislative and executive branches.


You guys might be interested to know that there is a bill before the House that would force Congress to cite the Constitutional justification for any new law to be introduced.





There is another bill of interest as well:



Conservative Alerts sent me the letters, which I have drawn excerpts from.

CJ

This was from last year--

Equality Isn’t Good Enough for UCLA

By: Timothy M. Sandefur
“Any program that elects black candidates simply because they are black and rejects all white candidates simply because they are white is politically unsound and morally unjustifiable,” wrote Martin Luther King. “The basic thing in determining the best candidate is not his color but his integrity.”

But the student government of UCLA disagrees. Last week, the Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) rejected four appointments to the campus’ Judicial Board for no reason except that they are white. “Race and gender should be taken into consideration,” said one student, who admitted that the applicants “are qualified.”

It is hard to decide which is more shocking: that such blatant racism still goes on, or that nobody condemns it. In fact, UCLA’s newspaper, the Daily Bruin, applauded the decision, urging USAC president David Dahle to “nominate someone of a different ethnicity or background.” In the Bruin’s eyes, it’s not the content of character that matters—it’s the color of skin. Responding to the Bruin’s editorial, though, Dahle did not attack the USAC’s racism—although the council had rejected his nominees solely because of their race, he wrote, “I did not disagree.”

But the voters of California do disagree. In 1996, they passed the California Civil Rights Initiative (Prop. 209), which prohibits the state from discriminating against people on the basis of race. Since UCLA is a department of the state, the USAC’s decision is in violation of state law.

Worse, it is a violation of the principles of equality on which our nation was founded. Racism is wrong because it assumes that people will think or act a certain way on the basis of their race. To distinguish between people on the grounds of color ignores what makes us human—our minds. To racists, there is no difference between a white man like Bull Connor, who let police dogs attack elderly women marching for Civil Rights in the 1960s—and a white man like William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist who risked his life in the 1830s by declaring that “Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion.” To the USAC, Garrison and Connor are only two white guys.

But those who take the idea of equality seriously believe that people should be judged by their ideas, their skills, their decisions, their abilities, and their souls, not their color. Shortly before Garrison’s death, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed to guarantee to all people the equal protection of the laws. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court gutted that amendment in the infamous “Separate But Equal” case, Plessy v. Ferguson. The only dissenting judge in that case, Justice John Harlan, wrote that “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.... The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.” After Plessy was repudiated in Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the California Civil Rights Initiative were passed to ensure that Harlan’s words would be the law of the land.

Of course, today’s racists don’t see themselves that way. They think they are benefactors, using racial preferences to remedy old racism. But it only worsens the problem. It punishes people today for the crimes of others in the past, and it sends minorities the message that they cannot make it without government help. That is unfair to both sides. Nor do racial preferences even rectify past racism effectively. The traditional victims of racism in California have always been the Chinese, who in the 1880s were even prohibited from owning property. But under the UC’s admissions policies, Asians have to score about 300 points higher than Hispanics on the SAT if they want to be admitted. One recent study found that while a black student with a 3.8 GPA had a 26 percent chance of getting into U.C. Berkeley, a Chinese immigrant with a 4.0 GPA has only about a 15 percent chance.

But despite hostility and prejudice, Asian immigrants have succeeded in every field of endeavor. Their story, and the stories of descendants of slaves who, in a little over a century, have risen to high levels of business, government, and academia, prove that the secrets to success are dedication and hard work. Those qualities are not determined by race, and cannot be parceled out (or dodged) by government. That is why Californians approved Prop. 209. As Justice Janice Brown—who escaped Jim Crow to become the first black woman on the California Supreme Court—has put it, “the electorate desired to restore the force of constitutional law to the principle [that] basing present discrimination on past discrimination is obviously not right.”

Timothy Sandefur is a College of Public Interest Law Fellow at Pacific Legal Foundation.

Ya, 25 years. They know that by then, at current trends, the White race, (Read White Male voter), will be [b]irrelevent[/b] in the USA..[xx(]

And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Or maybe I should say our grandfathers.

This stupid opinion will be reversed. We need one or two more good justices and we're fine.  

The Supreme Court has done comparatively less damage in the last 30 years than the previous 30. It's just a matter of time.

Plus I predict Gratz will reak havoc in the lower courts.  Just donate to Center for Individual Rights--the plaintiff's litigants--if you want to keep the ball rolling.  

If I understand the court's reasoning, in order to treat people equally under the "equal protection clause" of the constitution, we must treat them unequally.

Orwell would have liked that one.