he U.S. Commission on Civil Rights plans to attack Gov. Jeb Bush at the end of this week in a blistering statement on his intention to eliminate Florida's race-based university admissions. But two commissioners say that chairwoman Mary Frances Berry is rushing the statement through using irregular procedures in order to meet a political deadline: On Friday, an administrative hearing will begin on a lawsuit filed against Bush's proposal by the NAACP and NOW.

A draft of the commission's statement, obtained by NR, dismisses Bush's call to replace race-conscious undergraduate admissions with a plan that automatically enrolls the top 20 percent of every high school's graduating class in one of the state's public universities. This plan, it says, is a "public relations strategy" and "an unprovoked stealth acknowledgment — and acceptance — that the existing school and housing segregation will never change and that long-standing efforts to remedy the race discrimination that was legal in Florida have been abandoned." What's more, says the draft statement, Bush's proposal is "no substitute for strong race-conscious affirmative action in higher education." It even takes a swipe at Bush's school-choice law (now tied up in court): "It does nothing to ameliorate the deplorable conditions of Florida public schools and simply allows a small number of students to flee failing public schools."

Typically, the commission issues statements only after an open discussion and a public vote, scheduled thirty days beforehand with an announcement published in the Federal Register. In this case, however, staff director Ruby G. Moy told the commissioners last Friday that they had until this Thursday to vote via fax or email on the Florida statement.

Republican commissioners Carl A. Anderson and Russell G. Redenbaugh objected to this procedure in separate memos yesterday, asking that the commission take up the issue when it next meets, on April 14. Moy, however, turned them down, repeating a line that had appeared verbatim in her Friday announcement: "The Chair [Mary Frances Berry] believes that this statement needs to be released quickly in light of its timeliness and the fact that events are moving rapidly in this area."

To make matters worse, the commission's Florida statement falls clearly outside its jurisdiction. The commissioners are supposed to investigate voting-rights violations, weigh the federal government's role in civil-rights enforcement, and offer scholarly assessments on discrimination — not engage in partisan attacks on politicians they don't like.

And so, this Friday, the NAACP and NOW will be able to say that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights also thinks that Bush's "One Florida" plan is a bad idea. To accomplish this, however, the commission tossed out the very things that are supposed to give it credibility: Objective fact-finding, public discussion, and bipartisan investigation.

Off Target
There's a new Washington Post/ABC poll out today. The coverage is playing up Al Gore's nine-point lead over George W. Bush on education. Fair enough: It is the issue ranked most important to the public in the poll. But Bush doesn't need to win on education; he just needs to establish himself as being a different kind of Republican from the ones who (like us) want to shut down the Department of Education. The truly surprising finding in the poll is that Bush leads Gore by four points on the question of who would do a better job handling gun control. Democrats have been trying hard to push gun control as a partisan issue for the last year. Where's the evidence it's working — other than the wishful thinking of the national press corps?