Affirmative action, rights cases await U.S. Supreme Court

[Valin]

Reuters:

Jonathan Stempel

Sept. 28, 2012

 

(Reuters) - Affirmative action for minorities, human rights abuses and the constitutional authority for dogs to sniff out crime will top the U.S. Supreme Court's agenda when it returns to the bench on Monday. An even bigger issue, same-sex marriage, lurks on the horizon.

 

(Snip)

 

On October 10, it will hear perhaps the biggest case on the docket so far, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, and weigh whether using race in undergraduate admissions to increase diversity is still acceptable under the U.S. Constitution.

 

"When you look at Kiobel and Fisher, and the possibility the court will visit the issues of gay marriage and voting rights, it's already shaping up to be a momentous term," said Ted Shaw, a professor at Columbia Law School and former director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

 

(Snip)

 

 

Ready on the left

Ready on the right

Ready on the firingline

 

 

 

commence firing!

[Draggingtree]

Southern Poverty Law Center: "Wellspring of Manufactured Hate"

 

 

The communists over at the Southern Poverty Law Center are among the gravest threats to freedom in the United States, and are named as such in the AFDI Threats to Freedom Index. The enemedia eagerly laps up and repeats their designation of pro-freedom groups as "hate groups," and uses this designation as a propaganda tool to demonize and discredit us. But here is an excellent expose that shows what these subversives are really all about.

 

Atlas commenter Bethesda Dog: "The SPLC has been exposed as a shake-down money-raising con dreamed up by Morris Dees. The staff has inflated salaries, and they are always on the lookout for the next big thing they can target in order to continue scaring their donors. Sooner or later, their donors will die off, or realize they've been had. But then they'll just start tapping money from the Arab oil countries and their allies. Inexhaustible supply of funds to advance sharia. They should be known as the Sharia Promoting Law Center."

 

Southern Poverty Law Center: Wellspring of Manufactured Hate by James Simpson Capital Research Center September 25

 

Summary: The Southern Poverty Law Center began with an admirable purpose but long ago transformed into a machine for raising money and launching left-wing political attacks. Lately it’s become more of a threat to free speech and civil debate than a defender of the weak or a foe of violent extremism. It has also taken in millions from the Picower Foundation, whose own funds came largely from founder Jeffry Picower’s “investing” in his old friend Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

 

On August 15, 2012, an angry gay rights activist named Floyd Corkins stormed the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C.

headquarters and began shooting. Corkins shot a

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/09/southern-poverty-law-center-wellspring-of-manufactured-hate.html

[Draggingtree]

Posted: 11:53 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2012

 

Supreme Court grills UT, plaintiff in affirmative action case

 

 

By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz

 

American-Statesman Staff

 

WASHINGTON – An apparently divided U.S. Supreme Court grilled lawyers for the University of Texas and for a woman challenging the university’s consideration of race in undergraduate admissions Wednesday.

 

The justices peppered Gregory G. Garre, representing the university, and Bert W. Rein, representing Abigail Fisher, with a host of questions examining not only the specifics of affirmative action at UT but also the larger question of race-conscious admissions in higher education generally.

 

Garre, a former U.S. solicitor general who has argued more than 30 cases before the high court, was hired at UT’s request and with the permission of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. UT has agreed to pay Garre’s law firm nearly $1 million to handle the case.

 

Fisher, who contends that she would have been accepted to UT but for her race

 

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/supreme-court-grills-ut-defendant-in-affirmative-a/nSZBx/

[Valin]

"So what you're saying is that what counts is race above all.... You want underprivileged of a certain race and privileged of a certain race. So that's race."

Ann Althouse

10/11/12

 

Said Justice Anthony Kennedy at during the oral argument over the the University of Texas affirmative action policy. UT, following state law, automatically admits everyone who graduates from a Texas high school in the top 10%, a colorblind policy that produces a certain amount of racial diversity, especially since there are many high schools in Texas that have a very high proportion of black or Hispanic students.

 

So why does UT do any additional affirmative action as it fills up the portion of the entering class not admitted through the 10% program? You've already got a lot of diversity, so why do you need more? The additional affirmative action is precisely to bring in privileged black and Hispanic students, that is, the black and Hispanic students who did not attend racially isolated schools. If white students get too many of the top 10% spots at those schools, then the 10% program does not bring enough of these minority students into UT.

 

(Snip)

 

My question is, what is so wonderful about diversity

[Valin]

Grutter Has Got To Go

Adam Freedman

October 11, 2012

 

A few minutes into the Supreme Court’s oral argument in Fisher v. University of Texas — a case involving affirmative action — Justice Breyer impatiently blurted out “I want to know whether you [Fisher’s lawyer] are asking us to overrule Grutter,” referring to Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 decision which upheld University of Michigan Law School’s race-conscious admission program.

 

Breyer’s evident anxiety was mirrored by that of Justice Sotomayor, who bemoaned Fisher’s attempt to “gut” Grutter. The Grutter decision has gained a Roe-like status as a sacred cow among the nation’s professional diversity mongers. Veteran Supreme Court reporter Lyle Denniston noted that the very possibility of losing Grutter has raised the “fret level” among college deans. If colleges had to select all their students on merit, countless diversity czars and czarinas might lose their jobs.

 

Fisher’s lawyer, unfortunately, reassured Breyer that his client does not seek to overrule Grutter, but merely to limit it. But the honest answer — made bracingly clear by yesterday’s oral argument — is that Grutter is an incoherent mess that has got to go.

 

(Snip)