Last night, Roger Clegg linked to two news stories on McCain’s support for Ward Connerly’s initiative to end state-sponsored racial preferences in Arizona. An additional point: Both stories claim that the initiative would “ban affirmative action.” That’s not true. Many people understand “affirmative action” to include measures to expand applicant pools, rather than put a thumb on the scale for underrepresented minorities, and the initiative would not bar such measures. But even if you leave aside the imprecision of the phrase “affirmative action,” the verb “ban” is inappropriate here because the initiative would leave private-sector racial preferences alone.