Disparate impact victory: Texas Department of Housing

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There has been so much SCOTUS news in the past two days that it’s easy to ignore cases that ordinarily would be of enormous importance but have been overshadowed by others. One is the disparate impact case, otherwise known by the unwieldy moniker Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. In it, the Court ruled (with Kennedy once again casting the deciding vote) that:

…the FHA [Fair Housing Act] reaches otherwise lawful activities which, while free of discriminatory intent, are nonetheless found to have a “disparate impact” on minority groups. In so holding, the Court agreed with decades of unanimous federal appeals-court precedents that arrived at the same conclusion.

Three things stand out here. The first is that Justice Kennedy, an unelected official, has become one of the most powerful people in the US. The second is that disparate impact, of extremely dubious scientific value, has now become enshrined. The third is that the Court has no trouble ruling that statutes don’t mean what they say, both in the Obamacare case and now in the case of the Fair Housing Act, and that with Obamacare we can look at generalized legislative intent and go with that instead of the wording of the law, and that in the disparate impact case we must ignore the intent of the Fair Housing Act in order to get the progressive result we want.

There is a tiny sliver of a caveat in the case, but I doubt it will matter, because it’s hard not to notice that these things tend to get expanded and expanded and expanded rather than contracted:

At the same time, the high court cabined disparate impact liability to those policies that pose “artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers.” That important qualifier may ultimately determine the outcome of this case on remand. And the Court further reminded the government and lower federal courts that important constitutional considerations limit the remedies available for disparate impact liability under the FHA.

The Fair Housing Act had an intent to ban intentional discrimination:

…[T]he [Texas] case hinged on the meaning of Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, commonly known as the Fair Housing Act. The FHA makes it unlawful to “refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer, or to refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of, or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.” 42 U.S.C. § 3604(a). The FHA further prohibits discrimination “against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith,” on account of those same protected characteristics. Id. § 3604(b). While the FHA clearly prohibits intentional discrimination, whether or not the statute encompasses disparate-impact liability had never been squarely considered by the Court…

Undoubtedly the weakest part of the majority’s rationale is its reliance on Congress’s 1988 amendments to the FHA as a basis to conclude that Congress somehow “ratified” disparate impact liability. Because Congress knew at the time that nine courts of appeals had held the FHA encompasses disparate-impact liability, the Court reasons, three exemptions from liability included in the 1988 amendments would have been “superfluous” had Congress assumed that disparate impact liability was unavailable. But Justice Alito gets the better part of the argument in his dissent, pointing out that the official view of the United States in 1988, manifest by its formal position in the Supreme Court and many lower courts, was that the FHA prohibits only intentional discrimination. As Justice Alito concludes: “It is implausible that the 1988 Congress was aware of certain lower court decisions [allowing for disparate impact] but oblivious to the United States’ considered and public view that those decisions were wrong.” And the Court has consistently rejected identical arguments about “implicit ratification” in other cases. It is a testament to the force of Justice Alito’s argument on this point that the majority offers nothing in response but silence.

Silence is adequate, though, at least in practical terms. When you have the numbers and therefore the power, you don’t need the arguments.

Gay marriage the law of the land

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[NOTE: I’m writing something quite long on the subject, but I may end up sending it out to another publication, and I’m still in the middle of writing it. Meanwhile, I thought I’d provide this shorter thread for you to discuss the subject of today’s same-sex marriage ruling.]

In a move that probably came as no surprise to anyone, the Supreme Court made same sex marriage the law of the land. Legal Insurrection is always a good place to go to read about legal matters, so I’d recommend this post there as well as this one.

To me, this case is less about gay marriage and more about extending the Constitution in a way never intended by the Framers and detrimental to liberty because it extends further the power of the federal government. At PJ Media, Michael van der Galien writes that federalism is now dead in America:

The “right” of gays to marry has never existed. It isn’t protected by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In fact, because of the 10th Amendment this issue (marriage) is completely left to the individual states. In other words, marriage is none of the federal government’s business; it’s up to individual states to decide whether to legalize it or not.

Combined with yesterday’s ruling on ObamaCare…we can only conclude that federalism is no more. America is now a centralized country, comparable to individual European states.

I believe that is the real significance of today’s ruling. Its predecessor (not in content but in process) was Roe v. Wade, in which abortion, another trend that was already gaining ground in the states and probably would have more slowly become legal in most if not all states, was forced on the American people as a whole by finding a right in the federal Constitution that previously had never been thought to exist. Both cases (today’s and Roe) also share the fact that they are a particular affront to many religious Americans and have the potential to violate their right to freedom of religion.

The Humpty Dumpty Court: more from Scalia in King v. Burwell

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A dissent has no power except the power of its words and its logic—that is, it has no legal power. So Scalia’s dissent in King v. Burwell (joined by Alito and Thomas) is satisfying only in the rhetorical and intellectual sense. But it is so good that I’m highlighting it anyway.

Here are some excerpts:

[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover.” Lynch v. Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370 (1925) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved…

Perhaps the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will attain the enduring status of the Social Security Act or the Taft-Hartley Act; perhaps not. But this Court’s two decisions on the Act will surely be remembered through the years. The somersaults of statutory interpretation they have performed (“penalty” means tax, “further [Medicaid] payments to the State” means only incremental Medicaid payments to the State, “established by the State” means not established by the State) will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence. And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.

More Scalia quotes here.

One of the strange things about the conservative reaction to this decision (and I count myself in that group) is that the SCOTUS ruling in King vs. Burwell doesn’t have all that much immediate practical effect on Obamacare. The Republican majority Congress was not going to let the state subsidies lapse, certainly not right away, even if the decision had gone the other way. Their proposed fixes involved a temporary preservation of the state subsidies, with various plans to change things to a more choice- and market-based system in the future if a Republican president were to be elected, plans that might or might not have come to fruition depending on how conservative the president would have been and how conservative the new Congress might be. So in practical terms nothing much has changed: the subsidies stand, and a new (and more conservative) Congress and president could still change things if they so desire.

The greater damage done by this decision is to the rule of law and our faith in the Supreme Court’s ability to abide by basic legal rules and exhibit sound legal reasoning. That faith had already been sorely shaken; now the thread by which it had been hanging has been cut. You can see this in Scalia’s complaint that “words no longer have meaning” and “the [Obamacare] cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.”

To put it in legal terms, this case sets a terrible precedent.

Scalia wrote that we could rename Obamacare “SCOTUScare” now. I will add that we should rename the current Supreme Court, as well. It’s not “the Roberts Court” anymore, it’s “the Humpty Dumpty Court” instead:

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ”˜it means just what I choose it to mean ”” neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ”˜whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ”˜which is to be master ”” that’s all.”

King v. Burwell: SCOTUS rules that state subsidies are just fine and dandy

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We were expecting the ruling in King v. Burwell any day now, and here it is. The vote was 6-3, with swing justice Kennedy and new swing justice Roberts joining in interpreting the statute in a manner that preserves the status quo. So although Roberts continues his pattern from Sebelius, it was not determinative because even without him the result would have been the same, at 5-4.

When I emphasize preserving the status quo, I do so because I am firmly convinced that was the motivation (and I mean the sole motivation) for this ruling. Professor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection agrees:

As he did in upholding an Obamacare constitutional challenge in 2012, Roberts found a way to read the law so as to save the law…

The Court found Obamacare so “inartfully drafted” that the Court essentially wrote the law for Congress through “statutory interpretation.”…

Roberts and the majority did not want to be the ones to take down Obamacare, and that drove everything:

“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter. Section 36B can fairly be read consistent with what we see as Congress’s plan, and that is the reading we adopt.” [at 21]

Scalia’s dissent, joined by Thomas and Alito, was stinging, and in my opinion correct as to the absurdity of the Court contorting itself to save the law (as Roberts did in the original Obamacare challenge):

“The Court holds that when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says “Exchange established by the State” it means “Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government.” That is of course quite absurd, and the Court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so.” [at 1]

From Scalia’s dissent: “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”

I believe Professor Jacobson is quite correct (as is Justice Scalia). The Supreme Court turned the law, if not upside down and inside out to find for Obamacare, then at least sideways. The same was true, if not more so, of Roberts’ opinion in Sebelius.

That latter fact is why I predicted exactly this outcome, as I did the outcome in Sebelius. This isn’t about caring whether I’m right; I would absolutely have preferred to have been wrong.

One consolation, however (if you can call it that), is that I don’t think the GOP was ready to deal with it if the decision had gone the other way. They might have risen to the occasion, but somehow I doubt it. We won’t get a chance to find out, however. At least this way the Republicans are spared the constant, incessant parade of sad stories of people whose subsidies were threatened—which is why the Republicans weren’t going to do away with subsidies for states in the first place. The hardship would have been too great; they were going to have a temporary fix while waiting till after Obama’s presidency was over (and his veto power as well), and hope for a Republican president to approve a more permanent and market-oriented solution.

Instead, the Obamacare system will become even more entrenched. That’s why Sebelius, which might have overturned Obamacare before it had really gotten going, was far more important (as well as a closer decision). None of this would stop a determined (read, “more conservative than at present”) Republican majority from changing things in 2016, if they manage to get a conservative Republican president in office. That’s quite an “if,” however.

[NOTE: Here’s what I wrote on the subject in March of 2015 during the SCOTUS hearings on the case:

But I’ll stick to my previous prediction, based on my general hunches about such things. I was right about the way the previous Obamacare decision (mandate) would go, although I failed to predict the details of Roberts’ reasoning. I make essentially the same prediction now that I made then, for a related reason: the Court’s reluctance to change things and fear of the major consequences of doing so. In the previous case, the issues were constitutional, and it would have been easier to rule against the Obamacare mandate because for the most part the law hadn’t yet gone into effect. In the present case, the issues are statutory, but the law has been in operation for over a year and a significant number of people have come to rely on it.

Should that matter? Isn’t the law the law? And wouldn’t that be all the more reason to stop it now, anyway, before it becomes more and more irrevocable? Well, that’s not the way people””even SCOTUS justices””usually think. If a ruling has enormous potential consequences that seem negative to the justices, it enters into their decision-making process and increases the burden on those who would argue for that change to occur. If in this case the justices fail to overturn the state subsidies as I am predicting they will, it will most likely be based on emotional/political reasoning on their part regarding consequences for real people in the real world, although they will most assuredly find legal cover for it by coming up with other reasons to justify the decision…

I will add that I hate to be gloomy here, and I hope I’m wrong, but I have to be truthful about what I see at this point. In order to change things (and minus a black swan event), it would be necessary for conservatives to control House, Senate, and presidency, and to do so for long enough to nominate more SCOTUS justices of the conservative persuasion. That’s a tall order. And to consolidate those gains, conservatives have to mount their own Gramscian march through the institutions of education, press, and entertainment.

I recalled that I had predicted a 5-4 vote back then. However, looking at that March post, I find that I actually wrote this:

Hey, if I’ve gone this far with predictions, I’ll go even further in throwing caution to the winds and saying that it will either be 5-4 with Kennedy joining the liberals, or 6-3 with both Kennedy and Roberts doing so but for different reasons.

Well, it was 6-3, but Kennedy and Roberts agreed on their reasons.]

[ADDENDUM: Further thoughts on the ruling and its significance here.]

Left and right: Kevin D. Williamson thinks…

The New Neo Posted on by

…we have reached left activist peak.

I certainly hope he’s correct, although I deeply doubt it.

Williamson writes:

We have seen an extraordinary outburst of genuine extremism ”” and genuine authoritarianism ”” in the past several months, and it will no doubt grow more intense as we approach the constitutional dethroning of the mock messiah to whom our progressive friends literally sang hymns of praise and swore oaths of allegiance…There is an unmistakable stink of desperation about this, as though the Left intuits what the Right dares not hope: that the coming few months may in fact see progressivism’s cultural high-water mark for this generation. If there is desperation, it probably is because the Left is starting to suspect that the permanent Democratic majority it keeps promising itself may yet fail to materialize. The Democrats won two resounding White House victories but can hardly win a majority in a state legislature (seven out of ten today are Republican-controlled) or a governorship (the Democrats are down to 18) to save their lives, while Republicans are holding their strongest position in Congress since the days of Herbert Hoover. The Democrats have calculated that their best bet in 2016 is Hillary Rodham Clinton, that tragic bag of appetites who couldn’t close the deal in the primary last time around. “Vote for me, I’m a lady” isn’t what they thought it was…

He is correct that the idea that the left has already peaked is something the right “dare not hope.” He is also correct that on the state level the left is doing remarkably poorly.

But the strong position of the Republicans in Congress right now doesn’t amount to much because (a) the president is a leftist Democrat with veto power, and the Republicans cannot override his veto without significant Democratic help, which is only forthcoming in rare and extraordinary circumstances; and (b) the Republicans in Congress contain among their ranks too many RINOs to pass the sort of legislation (even assuming it would be vetoed) that conservatives would like to see.

In other words, the presidency itself is more powerful than Williamson credits. And the reality that Hillary Clinton, with her myriad flaws, is a very serious contender and current frontrunner to win the presidency in 2016 says a great deal about the sort of near-lock the Democrats and especially the left now have on the presidency of the United States.

That is not encouraging. Presidents appoint SCOTUS and other federal justices, and that has an enormous effect, too.

In his article, Williamson is also ignoring the fact that the war the left has been waging is not even primarily in the political arena: it is generational, and is fought culturally in the media, the educational system, and entertainment. I see no evidence that the left is losing that war, and I see no “desperation” about it. I see the thrill of victory powering them on.

Williamson also appears to be minimizing the remarkable and ferocious intensity and patience the left has displayed over time. That is the main reason the right “dare not hope” that we’ve reached peak leftism. The left has only just begun, despite the fact that they’ve been fighting this war for well over a hundred years.

Those “Asian” men in Rotherham

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Well, they say you learn something new every day, and yesterday was no exception.

Yesterday I learned that “Asian” means something quite different in Britain than it does in the US. Several commenters to this post of mine revealed that in Brit-speak the word “Asian” commonly refers to people from South Asia (India and Pakistan, as well as Bangladesh), whereas I already knew that in the US it ordinarily means people from the Far East.

Just another example of the fact that the English language on both sides of the pond differs in subtle ways that are not immediately apparent to a native speaker on one side (in this case, me).

The context of that post was the PC response in Britain to the discovery of widespread sex abuse in Rotherham, a case in which authorities allowed the abuse to go on for a long time in part so as not to offend the tender sensibilities of the community there from which the many perpetrators had come. And what was that community? Hint: it wasn’t the “Asian” one, even if you use the word as the British do, although it was a part of that group. It was the Pakistani community in Rotherham.

So it seems that the use of the word “Asian” itself, in reference to this story, is a way of at least partially hiding the origins of the criminals, because it lumps all South Asian Britons together, and they are most definitely not a unitary group. By doing so it not only hides the actual country from which these people came, but it hides the religion they practice, which is predominantly the Muslim religion.

This is not a meaningless or arbitrary distinction. People who live in Britain and whose origins are Indian differ significantly from those who are from Pakistan or Bangladesh. Pakistan and Bangladesh (originally known as East Pakistan) were created during the partition of India after the British left there in 1947. Countries are not partitioned for fun, they are partitioned because of differences and strife, and in this case the main difference was between an Islamic majority in both Pakistans and a Hindu majority in India. The partition was both preceded and followed by an enormous amount of bloodshed (estimated as involving the killing of up to a million people), and involved “14 million [people who] were displaced during the partition; it was the largest mass migration in human history.”

When people from the regions emigrated to Britain these differences remained, although they can become tempered as a function of how long people have been away from the homelands and as assimilation occurs. But assimilation does not occur at the same rates in both groups, nor does economic success, and this difference persists even for the small percentage who happen to hail from the same region and yet differ in religion:

The term ”˜British Asian’ fails to recognise the diversity of British-born, second-generation Asians according to policymakers and researchers who took part in a roundtable discussion at LSE on cohesion, integration and social mobility among these communities.

A pilot study presented at the roundtable suggests that even Hindu Bengalis and Muslim Bengalis that live side by side in the East London Borough of Tower Hamlets have different experiences. This is in spite of the fact that the two communities come from the same ethnic group, speak the same language, migrated at approximately the same time, have the same socio-economic origins, emigrated from the same region ”“ Sylhet in Bangladesh ”“ and settled in the same places…

Hindu Bengalis from Tower Hamlets show relatively high levels of social mobility when compared to the findings of research on other Asian communities in East London. Although the first-generation had largely come without professional qualifications and took up ”˜blue collar’ jobs in East London, most of the second-generation respondents worked in ”˜white collar’ professions, such as jobs in the financial sector or as medical doctors.

They felt high levels of self-identification with the term ”˜British’ relative to other options. They felt least affinity with the term ”˜Asian’ when choosing between ”˜Asian’, ”˜Bengali’, ”˜British’, ”˜Hindu’ and ”˜Indian’ because they felt it had negative connotations, particularly in the media. Hindu Bengalis, and British-born Asians in general, in London were found to prefer more nuanced identities instead of umbrella terms such as ”˜British Asian’.

You can bet they do.

This Wiki article indicates that the immigrants from Pakistan to Britain are almost entirely of Muslim origin and culture: 92%. In contrast, those from India are predominantly of Hindu or Sikh origin: 55% for the former and 29% for the latter, with the remaining percentage Muslim.

So if we go back to the original story that engendered the discussion of “Asian,” it seems that in Rotherham the use of the word to describe the perpetrators reflects a very common practice that obscures the large differences within the “Asian” population in Britain, a difference based on national origin/religion. What’s more, in terms of the Rotherham story, there was either very specific pressure by the Muslim community to coverup the crimes and/or a very specific desire on the part of government to cover them up in order to soothe that community and not reflect poorly on it:

The extent to which the former Labour government tried to play down criminality and extremism among British Muslims for fear of undermining community cohesion is revealed today, as the fallout from the Rotherham sex abuse scandal continued…

Sources revealed that the July 2001 race riots in Bradford, Burnley and Rochdale marked a “turning point” in the way that Mr Blair’s government responded to Britain’s Muslim communities, and that there were efforts ”“ more in “good faith” than in an attempted cover-up ”“ to play down examples of disunity…

At the same time, it is now known that a Home Office researcher was conducting an investigation into trafficking and underage prostitution by mainly Muslim gangs in Rotherham, but it was never published, and the files were seized in 2002 by the Labour-run council when she tried to blow the whistle. The researcher faced intimidation by the police and council officials, the report by Professor Jay revealed last week…

Local council officials are to be called before the Commons Home Affairs committee about the suppressed 2002 report and the wider issue of the abuse of girls.

While there is no suggestion that Mr Blunkett or his close advisers knew about the 2002 Rotherham report, sources said the Government was obsessed with keeping the Muslim community onside ”“ even if it meant sidestepping serious criminality and extremism.

Hope that clears up the confusion from the previous Rotherham post.

[NOTE: And what of the people in Britain who are of “Asian” origin in the way the word is commonly used in the US—in other words (literally), from China, Japan, Vietnam, or other countries in the Far East? What are they called in Britain? The best I could tell from Googling it is that the word “Oriental” (which in the US is now considered racist or colonialist, and verboten) is used, or they are designated by their specific country of origin.]

Andrew Sullivan on blogger burnout

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Andrew Sullivan quit blogging a few months ago, saying it was for health reasons.

I can believe it. Blogging’s stressful. On the other hand, Sullivan had a staff of helpers, huge traffic as motivation, and made good money at it into the bargain. He did push a lot of posts up there—the article says 40 per day, seven days a week, for the whole site. Since I stopped reading Sullivan long ago (although he’s actually indirectly responsible for my start as a blogger), I don’t know whether that’s true or how many were actually written by Sullivan, but I’ll take his word for it that he worked very hard.

But this seems wrong:

Here’s what I would say: I spent a decade of my life, spending around seven hours a day in intimate conversation with around 70,000 to 100,000 people every day, ” Sullivan said. “And inevitably, for those seven hours or more, I was not spending time with any actual human being, with a face and a body and a mind and a soul.

Sullivan never had comments on his blog. So I don’t know what this “conversation” consisted of or how he would define it; perhaps from the emails he received. But compared to most bloggers who have comments, it’s not all that much of a dialogue, it was really a monologue for him.

I would also submit that readers are “actual human beings, with faces and bodies and minds and souls,” even though he wasn’t seeing them or encountering them face-to-face. But one can assume they exist as separate human entities rather than just as creatures in the Sullivan cranium. If his “conversation” with them is “intimate,” they’ve got to be humans, although perhaps by “intimate” Sullivan means that he’s spilling his guts to them.

Or perhaps he means writing about intimate things, such as Sarah Palin’s uterus and most recent childbirth experience (or non-experience, according to Sullivan, who did not believe that Trig was her biological child). At any rate, Sullivan says:

I couldn’t imagine blogging the next election,” he said. “I will not spend another minute of my time writing about the Clintons. Period. Or the Bushes.”

With that, I can deeply sympathize/empathize.

Reporting on sex abuse in Rotherham

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Please see this subsequent post on the British use of the word “Asian.”]

The Rotherham sex scandal, already bad enough, grows in scope:

The sex-trafficking ring in Rotherham may well be the worst in the West ever, or so one would hope. British officials have now identified at least three hundred suspects in a crime syndicate that raped and trafficked underage British girls for years, while local police ignored signs and clues for years…

Who are these perpetrators? Ask the Telegraph:

At least 300 possible suspects have been identified by investigators probing the Rotherham child sex exploitation scandal.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said most of the potential suspects were Asian men, while the vast majority of victims were young British girls.

The NCA launched a major investigation into the scandal after a damning report by Professor Alex Jay last year, revealed that as many as 1,400 children had been raped, trafficked and groomed by mainly Asian gangs in the South Yorkshire town between 1997 and 2013.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “Asian”? For me, it’s people from China, Japan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and a few smaller countries right near them. But of course, “Asia” includes a lot more than that—everything in the Eastern Hemisphere that isn’t Africa, Europe, and Australia.

So Asia is a mighty huge place. Did the perpetrators hail from a mix of representative Asian countries? No. They were actually from an area known as South Asia, which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

So, were the perpetrators from a mixture of those countries? No. They were actually almost entirely from one country: Pakistan. And they were almost entirely from one religious group as well: Muslims.

Why do I bring this up? Because one of the major reasons the sex abuse ring wasn’t stopped earlier was that there was an active coverup due to the one-sided, non-PC nature of the criminals (the following is from an August 2014 article):

Sources revealed that the July 2001 race riots in Bradford, Burnley and Rochdale marked a “turning point” in the way that Mr Blair’s government responded to Britain’s Muslim communities, and that there were efforts ”“ more in “good faith” than in an attempted cover-up ”“ to play down examples of disunity.

David Blunkett, who was Home Secretary from 2001 to 2004, seemed to support this claim when he said yesterday that the 2001 riots “and the knock-on [effect] elsewhere had an impact on the way in which people saw these issues in race terms”.

At the same time, it is now known that a Home Office researcher was conducting an investigation into trafficking and underage prostitution by mainly Muslim gangs in Rotherham, but it was never published, and the files were seized in 2002 by the Labour-run council when she tried to blow the whistle. The researcher faced intimidation by the police and council officials, the report by Professor Jay revealed last week.

So an unknown but probably large number of girls suffered because of PC reluctance, and now that the extent of abuse is known, the reporting still reflects that PC reluctance. Even the Telegraph, a British paper that is not especially liberal, conforms to the rules.

The Guardian, a leftist paper, is little better. The Guardian offers a PC-tapdance while actually reporting on the racial controversy in the scandal, continuing to use the word “Asian” rather than “Pakistani” even while talking about the ethnicity issue:

After refusing to say if all of the potential suspects were of Asian background, Baldwin was accused by one reporter of not properly addressing the investigation’s race dimension in the investigation, just as Rotherham council had not acted for fear of upsetting racial sensitivities.

Baldwin denied the allegation, saying: “The majority of potential suspects appear to be of Asian appearance. However, we are still researching further suspects.”

The majority of readers could be forgiven if they’re picturing these suspects as being Chinese. The only mention of Pakistan in the entire article is the following sentence concerning a single suspect: “Last month a key suspect in a child exploitation case in Rotherham skipped bail and was reported to have fled to Pakistan.” Readers could also be forgiven for wondering, why Pakistan? And religion is not mentioned at all.

This is no accident. It is akin to the same protective impulse that allowed the crimes to proliferate in the first place.

The NY Times tries really, really hard…

The New Neo Posted on by

…to parse Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s latest remarks in a way that doesn’t make President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry look like fools, dupes, appeasers, or traitors.

It’s a difficult task, and I can’t say that the Times succeeds.

Time marches on, and the deadline for the talks is at the end of June, which is about a week from now. My guess is that it will probably be extended.

[NOTE: Khamenei has been pretty consistent in singing a more hardline tune than his negotiators do. He’s the one with the final say.]

More from Victor Klemperer

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Here are some more quotes from Victor Klemperer’s journal I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1933-1941:

March 20, 1938:

The last few weeks have been the most wretched of our life so far.

The immense act of violence of the annexation of Austria, the immense increase in power both internally and externally, the defenseless trembling fear of England, France, etc. We shall not live to see the end of the Third Reich. The flags have been waving for eight days, since yesterday a broad yellow handbill with the Star of David has been stuck to every post of our fence: Jew. Warning against the unflagged plague barracks. Der Sturmer has dug up its usual ritual murder I would truly not be surprised if next I were to find the body of a child in the garden.

April 10, 1938

For some days now divine right has been given ever more prominence. Again and again in the newspaper: He [Hitler] is the instrument of Providence…[Klemperer than wonders why Wilhelm I only claimed to be a secular emperor]…that’s not what I find interesting here, but the question surfacing after I had taken the fact for granted for almost fifty years. I now so often ask myself questions about things…that I took for granted for fifty years. The main thing for tyrannies of any kind is the suppression of the urge to ask questions. And it is so easy to do. If I, a professor, schooled in thinking all my life, have not asked myself so many and such obvious questions in the course of fifty years, how should the people hit on asking questions? One hardly even needs to force them to do the opposite…

…half of [the German population] has been made stupid, and no one believes the ballot is secret, and everyone trembles.

August 24, 1938

But whatever work I do, think, the terrible pressure of the situation is always there. So very often a verse goes through my head, which I heard Father say a thousand times: “I would that it were time to sleep and everything were done.” I always laughed because Father clung so very fearfully to life. Now I know that it is possible to cling so very fearfully to life and simultaneously quote the verse with complete conviction and honesty. Only, I have more reason to quote it than Father ever could have had.

February 8, 1942

Always the same seesaw. The fear that my scribbling could get me put into a concentration camp. The feeling that it is my duty to write, that it is my life’s task, my calling. The feeling of vanitas vanitatum, that my scribbling is worthless. In the end I go on writing anyway…

I’m very glad he did.

[NOTE: Background on Klemperer here.]