Hate Crime

Jeff Jacoby has an article about Hate Crimes legislation. He shows he isn’t bad as some:
Every crime that would be covered by the bill is already a felony under state law. Each one can already be prosecuted and punished. Its name notwithstanding, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act will not prevent any hate crimes. [...]

The Flesh and Blood Defense

Via KD and Majikthise, this is very crazy stuff:
“I am not a defendant,” Mitchell declared. “I do not have attorneys.” The court “lacks territorial jurisdiction over me,” he argued, to the amazement of his lawyers. To support these contentions, he cited decades-old acts of Congress involving the abandonment of the gold standard and the creation [...]

Roma and Italy

It’s become commonplace to call people fascists just because they don’t agree with you, but sometimes it fits (via Auguste, for a different version of the same story go here or here for the bare bits):
Last week, Silvio Berlusconi’s new rightwing Italian administration announced plans to carry out a national registration of all the country’s estimated 150,000 [...]

Baseball in Mexico

In today’s Boston Globe there’s a review of the book ‘South of the Color Barrier’by John Virtue which looks at the heyday of the Mexican baseball league under Jorge Pasquel. It describes how Pasquel was able to lure players south because of the racism in the US and the reserve clause in baseball:
But a black [...]

Race and Gender

The Boston Globe has an article about bias according to race and gender. It doesn’t get into the details, but notes that research currently shows that:
For decades, researchers have been probing bias — how it arises, how it changes, how it fades away. Their work suggests that bias plays a more powerful role in shaping [...]

Resegregation

Here’s one of the reasons that affirmative action in some form is needed:
About one-sixth of black students and one-ninth of Latino students attend what Mr. Orfield calls “apartheid schools,” at least 99 percent minority. In big cities, black and Latino students are nearly twice as likely to attend such schools. Some two-thirds of black and [...]

Clinton and Racism

Along with others, I’m a bit disconcerted by the number of possibly racist statements coming out of the Clinton camp. Most of them are not that big a deal by themselves, but together they are getting to be. I’ll have to watch to see if Hillary speaks out or this continues.

People Can Be Disgusting

I’m not sure if there’s anything to say about this:
Australia has been rocked by the case of a 10-year-old indigenous girl who was gang raped in her home community, and the revelation that her nine rapists had not been given prison sentences, in part because the judge found that the victim “probably agreed” to have sex.”…“The [...]

Stuff

For some reason there seems to be an argument whether Reagan used the ‘Southern Strategy’. It’s obvious that he did:

And Reagan meant it. He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to weaken the Voting [...]

Abortion Miscellany, Plus a Little Racism

Via Majikthise, Susan Orr has been named the new acting deputy assistant secretary for the Office for Population Affairs:

Orr, who will be acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs, has been directing child welfare programs in another branch of HHS. Prior to joining the Bush administration, Orr was senior director for marriage and family at [...]