The Week

■ The Democrats are perhaps not as fanatically dedicated to privacy rights as we had thought.

■ Clarence Thomas is black; Yale Law School had an affirmative-action program when he was admitted; therefore he benefited from affirmative action, and he’s a hypocrite to oppose it. So said Judge Thomas’s critics, neatly demonstrating how affirmative action, by fostering the venomous assumption that every black is less qualified than every white, devalues genuine black achievement.