5.08.00
Florida Not Preferred

5.05.00 4 p.m.
Tony Coelho, Soft On Crime

5.05.00 8 a.m.
Gallant Effort

5.02.00
Are You Experienced?

5.01.00
Not Quite Wright

4.28.00
Gay Marriage: Coming To Vermont

4.27.00
Hillary and Elian

4.26.00
Detroit News Fires Tom Bray

4.25.00
Bush's Social Security Gamble

4.24.00
Gore Story

4.20.00
Palmetto Pandering

4.19.00
Bye Bye Bayh

4.18.00
The DLC's Other Candidate

oters in Florida won't face a ballot question on racial preferences this November, announced Ward Connerly, head of the American Civil Rights Institute, on Monday. "We're redirecting our efforts to 2002," he said.

Connerly and his allies submitted enough signatures to trigger a Florida Supreme Court review of their initiative language eight months ago, and the justices heard oral arguments in the case two months ago. But there's still no ruling, despite the fact that the Florida Civil Rights Initiative all along has faced tight deadlines to collect about half a million signatures before it could formally win a spot on the ballot.

"We came to the realization last night that we just don't have enough time," said Connerly.

In 1996, Connerly oversaw the passage of California's Proposition 209, banning racial preferences in state government. Two years later, he assisted a similar measure in the state of Washington.

"A lot of people will interpret our decision as a withdrawal," said Connerly. "But we're still here fighting and we've made a commitment for the long haul. We'll be on the Florida ballot in 2002."

Judging By Race
On Saturday, President Clinton criticized Texas senators Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison, both Republicans, for opposing one of his judicial nominees. "To do this to a Hispanic judge from Texas who has made himself into an excellent lawyer and a superbly qualified person is just unconscionable." If the nominee were a non-Hispanic judge who had "made himself into an excellent lawyer," presumably it would be bad, but not unconscionable. (Not that the "made himself" language would be used outside the context of liberal racial condescension.) The principle here seems to be the same one that holds stealing money to be bad, but stealing money from a blind man to be unconscionable.

The Washington Post story, of course, accepted Clinton's framing of the issue as Republicans beating up on a Hispanic. Clinton's remarks were also an occasion for the Post to return to that now-familiar liberal theme, our overburdened federal judiciary. The press is always happy to quote Chief Justice Rehnquist when, in his unofficial role as head of the judges' union, he issues his annual complaint that not enough judges have been nominated and confirmed. (The press never seems to get around to the part of Rehnquist's report where he says that judges wouldn't be so overworked if Congress didn't pass so many unnecessary federal laws.)

The vacancy rate on the federal bench is not, in fact, particularly high by historical standards. (It was higher at the end of 1992.) But the more important response to Rehnquist's complaint is that the federal courts have themselves to blame for their workload. They largely invented the sexual-harassment law that has generated 15,000 cases a year, they decided to start managing schools and prisons, and they decided to micromanage Christmas displays at city halls across America. They liberalized the law of standing so that more lawsuits could be brought. If the judges feel overworked, maybe they should stop generating so much makework.

Friends of Elian
A distinguished group of 30 conservatives and liberals criticizes the Clinton administration's handling of the Elian Gonzalez affair in a half-page advertisement slated to appear in Tuesday's Washington Post. The raid on Elian's Miami home, says the statement, "has frightening implications for everyone in America."

The signers include Bill Bennett of Empower America, Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship, Alan Dershowitz of Harvard University, economist Milton Friedman, Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard University, and writer Nat Hentoff.

"Although reasonable people may disagree about who should speak for Elian or where he should live, there should be no disagreement that such questions, in this nation, should be decided with full respect for due process and the rule of law," says the statement. "Because unilateral actions by the INS, in this case as well as others, raise serious questions of civil liberty, we call on Congress to hold hearings to examine the implications for the rule of law in this nation."

The ad will appear in the front section of the Post at a cost of nearly $36,000. Linda Chavez of the Center for Equal Opportunity and Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute wrote the statement and organized the signers.

Geography Lesson
Check out whitehouse.gov for a guide to President Clinton's school-reform tour. A friend writes in, "Not only have Minnesota and Iowa annexed parts of South Dakota, but Illinois has conquered western Kentucky, and Owensboro, KY, ended up between Nashville & Memphis. Kentucky got so sore they launched an offensive into SW Virginia."

Columns / Current Issue / Goldberg File / Nota Bene
Washington Bulletin / Subscribe / Ad Info / Home