Sen. Ted Kennedy couldn’t find a “mainstream” if he were floating in the middle of the Mississippi.
In a Washington Post OpEd today, he writes:
As a young but high-ranking political appointee in the Reagan administration, Roberts was involved in, among other things, setting policy on issues of civil rights — including those as fundamental as the right to vote and to be free from discrimination based on race, gender, national origin and disability. If Roberts continues to hold the views he appears to have expressed in the early 1980s, then his views on civil rights are out of the mainstream, and the people have the right to know that.
If Senator Kennedy really believes that “the right to be free from discrimination based on race” etc. is “fundamental,” he would do us all a great service if he would explain how he squares that professed belief with his unwavering support for having the state and private organizations dole out preferences based on race. Indeed, I hereby offer anyone who can provide me with an example of any race preference, including hard quotas, that are intended to benefit minorities that Sen. Kennedy has ever opposed a free, one-year subscription to DISCRIMINATIONS.
Finally, I propose that for the duration of this nomination struggle we all cease and desist from using terms like “civil rights” and “voting rights.” For starters, instead of charging, repeatedly, that Judge Roberts’s views on “civil rights” are “out of the mainstream,” Kennedy et. al. should be called upon to provide specifics: What particular view? That racial busing and racial quotas are bad? What is the evidence for “mainstream” views on those issues?
John, I know this won’t earn me the subscription, but I suspect the Senator opposed preferences when arguing for passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Just a guess though.
One of the complaints against MCRI is that it would “overturn” Grutter. That we should “respect” our Supreme Court. Ted Kennedy introduced legislation specifically designed “overturn” Sandoval, a decision where the court limited so-called “disparate impact” evidence.
From ABAnet:
Introduced by Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Representatives John Conyers of Michigan, John Lewis of Georgia, and George Miller of California, the new act is entitled the Fairness and Individual Rights Necessary to Ensure a Stronger Society: The Civil Rights Act of 2004 (FAIRNESS Act). The FAIRNESS Act would overrule several Supreme Court decisions and provide new protections that fill gaps in essential civil rights laws.
Thanks Chetly, for bringing to light an important piece of legislation for our times.
>>>”In America, our individual rights are supposed to be guaranteed by the Constitution, but in case after case, the courts are taking those rights away and that’s just not right,” LCCR Executive Director Henderson said. “The FAIRNESS Act sends a strong and clear message to the courts
Awkwardly stated – you’re not as smooth with this new idea as you are with your well-worn jingos on race discrimination – Cobra, but, yes, you are beginning to get the idea. Now if you can drop the sarcastic undertone you are on your way to enlightenment.
Notherbob writes:
>>>Awkwardly stated – you’re not as smooth with this new idea as you are with your well-worn jingos on race discrimination – Cobra, but, yes, you are beginning to get the idea. Now if you can drop the sarcastic undertone you are on your way to enlightenment.”
So I can write you down as being on board with Ted Kennedy and the Civil Rights Act of 2004? How about you, Chetly?
–Cobra
Sometimes a rose grows out of a horse turd, so I suppose we cannot be against a bill just because Mr. Liberal Horseshit himself backs it. The Republican backing is a good sign. Haven’t read it, but it sounds like a good idea. Every once in a while Kennedy has to back something that is not a complete pander to liberal special interest groups – just so he can point to it when charged with being a sleaze, so maybe this is one of those times.
Cobra,
I followed your link and took the trouble to read the associated “fact sheets.” Came therefore across this:
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 makes it illegal for federally- funded education programs to discriminate on the basis of sex. In Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, the Supreme Court held that students subjected to sexual harassment must prove that school officials both had “actual notice of” and were “deliberately indifferent to” such harassment in order to receive any damages for violations of the law.
In the first place, the standard seems perfectly reasonable to me. How could anyone justify suing a school if it never knew that there was harassment, or when it knew and was trying to intervene?
In the second place, “sexual harassment” and “discriminat[ion] on the basis of sex” have nothing particular to do with one another. I got the usual nerdy-girl treatment from other girls (yep, girls) at my middle and high schools, and it could certainly be called “sexual harassment,” given that it involved pornographic photos slipped into my textbooks, fellow students asking whether I liked kinky sex, &c. I escaped eventually by essentially bugging myself one schoolbus-ride and producing a transcript and tape for the principal the following morning.
But. Do boys suffer this sort of ordure from other boys? I bet they do, and I bet the folks eager to use Title IX to defend girls will have a tough time doing it to defend boys in like situations. I mean, it’s only a Title IX problem in the first place if there’s “discrimination on the basis of sex,” and no one would argue that a shy boy tormented by other boys because he was weak or undersized, and got pornographic photos put into his textbooks, &c., was being victimized “on the basis of sex,” would they?
After all, seeking legal remedies available IS often the solution recommended to me by posters when I discuss whatever myriad instances of discrimination is bespoiling the land.