Free Republic

BANK AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, Secretary Cuomo admits they forced banks to make BAD LOANS, and Obama's tie to all of it. Secretary Cuomo even admits these bad loans will default. Then Obama is seen discussing his legal and community organizing career. See how it ties in to ACORN and the Clinton administration enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act.

When Barack Obama was seeking to get into Harvard Law School (he entered in the fall of 1988) he had the assistance of Khalid Al-Mansour, a Black Muslim and Black Nationalist who was a “mentor” to the founders of the Black Panther party at the time the party was founded in the early 1960s. There is some suggestion that Mansour had provided financial assistance to Obama for Harvard Law School, though the Obama campaign denies this. Obama has refused all requests that Harvard and Columbia open up his records for examination, as he has refused requests to have the official...

WaMu Recognized as Top Diverse Employer—Again Washington Mutual, Inc., September 24, 2008 Washington Mutual, Inc. (NYSE:WM), one of the nation’s leading banks for consumers and small businesses, has once again been recognized as a top employer by Hispanic Business magazine and the Human Rights Campaign. Hispanic Business magazine recently ranked WaMu sixth in its annual Diversity Elite list, which names the top 60 companies for Hispanics. The company was honored specifically for its efforts to recruit Hispanic employees, reach out to Hispanic consumers and support Hispanic communities and organizations. The Human Rights Campaign, the largest national gay, lesbian, bisexual and...

THEY GAVE YOUR MORTGAGE TO A LESS QUALIFIED MINORITY September 24, 2008 On MSNBC this week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter tried to connect John McCain to the current financial disaster, saying: "If you remember the Keating Five scandal that (McCain) was a part of. ... He's really getting a free ride on the fact that he was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country." McCain was "in the middle of" the Keating Five case in the sense that he was "exonerated." The lawyer for the Senate Ethics Committee wanted McCain removed from the investigation altogether, but,...

For the past 30 years I've been a Black guy in America. When a person is born black, male, to a single mother, living in Harlem, at the lower end of the tax bracket, in 1978, well society didn't have very high expectations. Nonethless there I am floating in a pool at the condo that I own in Boulder, CO. Not to say that I am some pinnacle of success and prosperity, I asure you that is not the case, but if a stock beat market expectations by such a large margin, and still only cost $10 a share, well...

In his 19 years as a law professor at UCLA, Richard Sander has pondered a nagging question: Does affirmative action help or hinder African Americans who want to become lawyers? Two years ago, he published research suggesting that racial preferences at law firms might be responsible for black lawyers' high rate of attrition and difficulty making partner. He hypothesized that in the interest of promoting diversity, law firms sometimes hired black lawyers who were underqualified, and that when there was a "credentials gap" between black and white lawyers at a firm, black lawyers often were less likely to advance and...

Ever since California voters banned the use of racial preferences in government and education in 1996, the University of California has tried to engineer admissions systems that would replicate the effect of explicit racial quotas while appearing color-blind. To some observers, the legality of those efforts has long been suspect, but proof of wrongdoing has been hard to come by. Now a professor who sat on UCLA's committee on undergraduate admissions is charging that the school is deliberately taking race into account when deciding which students to admit. The university has refused to give him access to the data to...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday it was "unacceptable" that there were so few black people like herself in the US diplomatic corps. "I want to see a Foreign Service that looks as if black Americans are part of this great country," Rice told a gathering of black colleges and universities in Washington. "I have lamented that I can go into a meeting at the Department of State," said Rice, the second black person to become secretary of state after her predecessor Colin Powell. "And, as a matter of fact, I can go into a whole day of meetings...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Tuesday that African-Americans are better served by colorblind programs than affirmative action. Thomas, addressing leaders of historically black colleges, said affirmative action ''has become this mantra and there almost has become this secular religiosity about it. I think it almost trumps thinking.'' A longtime opponent of race-based preferences in hiring and school admissions, Thomas said, ''Just from a constitutional standpoint, I think we're going to run into problems if we say the Constitution says we can consider race sometimes.''

The former dean of the University of Washington School of Law said Friday that Nebraska universities must be ready to adjust if voters approve a measure to ban most types of affirmative action in the state. W.H. “Joe” Knight Jr.’s message to the Nebraska Legal Diversity Summit in Omaha: “Prepare yourselves.” In 1998, voters in Washington approved a similar measure. Knight said minority enrollment decreased immediately, and has just now started to catch up because of the university’s hard work — and more money spent — on recruitment. Schools have also sought more scholarships from private donors, who can designate...

What a fool. The Clown Prince of Politics strikes again.

He Graduated Without Honors. Senator Obama's life story, from his humble roots, to his rise to Harvard Law School, to his passion as a community organizer in Chicago, has been at the center of his presidential campaign. But one chapter of the tale remains a blank — his education at Columbia College, a place he rarely speaks about and where few people seem to remember him. Contributing to the mystery is the fact that nobody knows just how well Mr. Obama... performed as a student. The Obama campaign has refused to release his college transcript... The Obama campaign declined to...

A professor who said he suspects UCLA is cheating to illegally admit black students resigned Thursday from its admissions committee, saying the university refused to provide him the data he needs to investigate his suspicions. "A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions," political science Professor Tim Groseclose wrote in a report he released Thursday. "Specifically, applicants often reveal their own race on the essay portion of the application."Students typically report their race on their applications, but the people who evaluate their files don't see names, race or ethnicity. If race does come up in...

Of all the criticisms an apparently panicky Dem party has heaped on Sarah Palin in the hours since her selection was announced, Keith Boykin [bio] has come up with perhaps the unseemliest. The former aide to President Clinton has accused Palin of being an "affirmative action" pick.

Of all the criticisms an apparently panicky Dem party has heaped on Sarah Palin in the hours since her selection was announced, Keith Boykin [bio] has come up with perhaps the unseemliest. The former aide to President Clinton has accused Palin of being an "affirmative action" pick. Boykin, a graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard Law, was debating the selection with Republican Joe Watkins at the end of MSNBC's 4 PM EDT hour. After some preliminary jousting, Boykin dropped his bomb. KEITH BOYKIN Let me just say something about this choice. The reason why she doesn't help, quite frankly, is because...

The Democratic Party has historically attracted women and minority voters, and this year's national platform reiterates the party's support of affirmative action programs. So why do so many Colorado Democrats support Amendment 46, the measure on the November ballot that would end state-sponsored affirmative action programs? Three recent polls show that support for the measure — which would ban race and gender preferences in state hiring, contracting and education — is higher among Democrats than Republicans. Critics of the measure and political observers say the polls likely reflect voter confusion over what the measure would really do. They say some...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - The U.S. Naval Academy is building on efforts to increase student diversity with the help of a new commercial and a graphic novel. ... Vice Adm. Jeffrey Fowler, the academy's superintendent, wants to make the academy's student body as diverse as the Navy's enlisted force, in which minorities make up about 47 percent.

In these times I am rarely surprised by most notions put forth by political pundits. But I must admit to being taken aback by the suppositions of Terry Michael in "Obama as the End of Identity Politics as We've Known Them" (Reason magazine, 6/10/08). Michael appears to believe that under an Obama presidency, we soon will be on "the beginnings of a journey away from the Great Society mind-set of the Democratic Party" and on a course that will put "the Jesse Jacksons, the Al Sharptons, and the white identity politics liberals out of business." Michael envisions the end of...

With his request for access to historical bar exam data from the California State Bar repeatedly rejected, a law professor has turned to the state Supreme Court. UCLA School of Law professor Richard Sander, along with former State Bar governor Joe Hicks and the California First Amendment Coalition, filed a writ petition Thursday asking the court to direct the State Bar to hand over those records with redactions to protect test takers' privacy. CFAC Executive Director Peter Scheer said that the wrestling match had become a matter of access to public records and freedom of information. "I believe very strongly...

Maureen Dowd recently preened that Obama "didn’t even tell Harvard Law School that he was black on his application." To the extent that her own research led her to believe this, or she would know accurately, one should still wonder why in the world Barack Obama, the child of a white woman and African father, would check the affirmative action box? When he applied to law school, there was nothing in the circumstances of his birth or even his upbringing up to then that located him in the African-American experience. Obama's recent evocation of some sort of reparations, the resurgence...

Divisive social issues will be on the ballot in several states in November, including constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in Arizona, California and Florida, and limitations on abortion in California, Colorado and South Dakota. Although research indicates that ballot measures do not drastically alter voter turnout, they have begun attracting the attention of both presidential campaigns. Unlike 2004, when same-sex marriage bans were considered in 11 states, no single issue will dominate statewide ballots. “Tax and spending issues are typically one of the main focuses of these measures, but this time that’s less true,” said Jennie Drage Bowser, a policy...

Much of America's political conversation is couched in code. And so it was that recently the McCain campaign accused Barack Obama of playing the "race card," two four-letter words that, taken together, trail a wealth of innuendo like a comet's tail. Using the term "race card" as a pejorative is almost always meant to promulgate the big lie that takes hold everywhere from the workplace to the classroom: that black men and women commonly use race as a bludgeon and an excuse, and that they will always blame failures or disagreements on racism. This is belied by objective reality. To...

Just one paragraph tucked toward the end of a column. But Judith Warner's words offer a revealing insight into how liberals view economics and the world. In the lefty mindset, making it isn't a matter of doing or making something of value. It comes down instead to contriving to get a piece of the action, a share of the wealth that some undefined other has created in some undescribed way. The gist of Warner's column, Compassion Deficit Disorder, is that Americans have become increasingly cranky and suspicious of how others are gaming the system. She cites Michael Savage's accusations that...

The six-year running battle over the admissions policy of a highly regarded private school in Hawaii — the Kamehameha Schools — is back in the courts, with one side specifically aiming for an ultimate test in the Supreme Court. An earlier case, testing whether an 1866 civil rights law still bars the use of race in private school admissions, reached the Court last year, but was settled before the Justices took final action on it. A new lawsuit, raising the same challenge, was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Hawaii — with the same name (Doe v. Kamemameha Schools),...

The New York Times recently reported on Barack Obama’s long-standing support for affirmative action that gives preferential treatment to members of disadvantaged minorities. While still a student at Harvard Law School , Obama readily admitted that “I undoubtedly benefited from affirmative action,” but the deeper question is how he could justify that advantage. Apologists for preferences explain these policies as a remedy for long family histories of discrimination, but Obama’s background features no such legacy of oppression. His mother was white and his father’s family, in Kenya , had never been enslaved or subjected to American “Jim Crow” laws or...

PHOENIX (AP) -- With one brief criticism of affirmative action, John McCain has brought new attention to ballot issues aimed at dismantling preferential treatment programs for women and minorities. The question is whether McCain's support for one of those initiatives, in Arizona, will make any difference. . . .McCain's comments also have drawn critics who pointed to comments he made a decade ago calling similar measures "divisive."

The tyranny of the matriarchy (Feminist agenda) The feminists are whipping up women to join their ranks and rebel against the tyranny of the patriarchy. They claim they want a society that will give them equal rights regardless of gender. They want a unisex society where women can enter the workforce and hold a good career as do the men. The feminists however want something else instead. They want more than a platform over a pedestal, they want a throne. During the sixties when you had in the name of civil rights radicals fighting for so called equality, these people...

Whitey Need Not Apply by Patrick J. Buchanan "Will race be an issue in this campaign?" Hearing the cable talk-show host solemnly pose the question, I could not suppress a belly laugh. For the anchor was fearful that some white folks might reject Obama because he is African-American -- even as a Rasmussen poll was reporting that Barack is beating McCain among black voters 94 to 1. What, other than race, explains how Barack rolled up 90-10 margins among black voters while running against Hillary Clinton, wife of the man novelist Toni Morrison dubbed "our first black president"?

If the press insists on hinging on every word of Obama, can't they at least ask for clarifications and details about his sweeping proclamations? Most are still waiting for the particulars of his idea to create a shadow Pentagon of civilian aid and civil support workers funded to the same tune of $500 billion a year. That seems a big deal that the electorate should ponder? How would it function? Where would the funding come from? What would be the relationship with the Pentagon? And now what does the following mean from Obama: I personally would want to see our...

"We could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could save just as much."

May he live to be 120, but when Bob Shrum eventually goes to his reward, his epitaph could read "Here lies Shrum. He thought he was great. But his presidential record . . . was 0-8." After Shrum taunted Pat Buchanan as "living on Mars" for supposedly overestimating the power of affirmative action as an issue, Pat fired back, reminding Shrum of his dubious lifetime achievement of having consulted on eight losing Dem presidential campaigns with nary a win. View video here.

Sounds like somebody in the McCain camp recognized that they will probably get the votes of Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, and that's it, from the black folks this year, so there is no use in pandering on the issue. White folks, to include Hillary's supporters, are the ones who get screwed by Affirmative Action, and this position will maximize the votes from the people who disagree with the policy.

Presidential challenger John McCain said Sunday that he supports a proposed ballot initiative in his home state that would prohibit affirmative action policies from state and local governments. A decade ago, he called a similar effort "divisive." The reversal comes as McCain, a conservative senator from Arizona, seeks to tailor his policies and rhetoric to independent-minded voters who will determine the outcome of November election. Both McCain and Democratic rival Barack Obama have accused each other _with good reason _ of "flip-flopping," a charge that carries weight with independents who seek consistency and authenticity in their political leaders. McCain was...

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Kevin Kilbane Report: During a "This Week" interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos John McCain reversed himself on affirmative action and endorsed for the first time a proposed state ballot measure which would end race and gender-based affirmative action in his home state of Arizona. "I support it," McCain declared when asked about the referendum. "I do not believe in quotas... I have not seen the details of some of these proposals. But I’ve always opposed quotas."

Opposing race-based preferences could help power a McCain comeback.

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) is installing software which monitors diversity in all law firms it uses, regularly and just-in-time. Those firms falling short of Wal-Mart's diversity target numbers will be terminated. That move by Wal-Mart, which sets policy for how global supply chains are managed, will in itself radically change the composition of law firms - and eventually law schools.

I last visited my alma mater, Princeton University, two years ago to speak on an alumni panel about the future of Iraq. Inside stately McCosh Hall, where I'd taken Constitutional Law more than a decade earlier, I spoke to a mostly white crowd about my experiences as a special Iraq correspondent in 2003, sharing the stage with an impressive bunch of alums, including a soldier who had served several tours in the Middle East and a former CIA station chief. At the end, one of my fellow panelists turned to me and complimented me on my remarks. "What school did...

Probably gonna take some arrows for this one. But the following is a perfect example of an Affirmative Action trainwreck. And if people cannot debate the pervasive damage the program does to its "beneficiaries" then those "beneficiaries" will continue to exist in their uncomfortable purgatory. I ran across this opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled, "Michelle, Meritocracy and Me." Since Michelle Obama hasn't been a proud American until this year, and is therefore unfit to be anywhere near the levers of power, I have an interest in learning anything I can about her to see what we might be...

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself. It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — "generations from now we will be able...

For decades, critics of affirmative action have contended elite colleges, in their zeal to form racially diverse student bodies, have discriminated against top white applicants. In a twist on that long-running feud, federal authorities are investigating an allegation that Princeton University discriminates against Asian-American applicants by accepting black and Hispanic students with lower entrance scores. At the heart of both arguments lies the question of whether and how colleges should consider race when choosing a class. The Supreme Court has ruled race can be a factor in the process, though racial quotas have long been declared unconstitutional. Critics say admission...

Dinesh D'Souza breaks out the red pen on Michelle Obama's thesis. "To wreak so much havoc on the English language in one sentence, without conveying anything of substance, is perhaps deserving of a prize. Is this what her professors were thinking when they granted her honors?"

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama's political success might claim an unintended victim: affirmative action, a much-debated policy that he supports. Already weakened by several court rulings and state referendums, affirmative action now confronts a challenge to its very reason for existing. If Americans make a black person the leading contender for president, as nationwide polls suggest, how can racial prejudice be so prevalent and potent that it justifies special efforts to place minorities in coveted jobs and schools? "The primary rationale for affirmative action is that America is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist," said Ward Connerly, the leader of state-by-state efforts to...

The Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce will ink an agreement next week with state agencies and universities that could lead to as much as $100 billion in procurement opportunities for Texas Hispanic-owned businesses in the years ahead. The parties will sign the memorandum at an event at the Texas Capitol on June 24. The agreement calls for a number of state agencies and universities to earmark procurement work for Hispanic-owned businesses statewide. According to those involved, the total value of the procurements over the next several years could reach $100 billion. [Snip] State agencies participating in the...

Students earn way by sweat of brow in new program . Bruce Randolph's bold decision last fall to end social promotion, to inform parents that students who fail core academic classes will not be passed on to the next grade. "We're changing the culture," said Principal Kristin Waters. "You can't not pass anymore; you have to do the work." It's an unprecedented stance by a neighborhood school in Denver. DPS, unlike other metro districts, allows parents to decide whether their children are held back a grade until they reach high school. Few choose to hold them back. Not until grade...

Senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus yesterday criticized a compromise plan for the proposed merger of the XM and Sirius satellite radio companies, saying the deal does not provide enough opportunities for minority-owned programming. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin said over the weekend that he would support the merger after XM Satellite Radio Holdings and Sirius Satellite Radio voluntarily agreed, among a series of other concessions, to lease 4 percent of their radio spectrums, or 12 channels, for programming run by minorities and women. Members of the black caucus on Capitol Hill have been arguing for the...

The city of New Haven, Connecticut, went to great lengths to devise a firefighter test that would not have "disparate impact" on minority applicants, but when the results of the 2003 test-taking came in, applying the city's "Rule of Three" which required selection from among the highest scorers, "no blacks and at most two Hispanics would have been eligible for promotion to captain and no blacks or Hispanics would have been eligible to make lieutenant". So the city civil service board vacated the results, frankly acknowledging that it was in search of better minority hiring numbers. White applicants sued and...

WARREN, Mich. -- Stan Sheyn, a white student who attends community college in this working-class Detroit suburb, supports Barack Obama for president. But he has no time for what he calls "double standards and propagation of victim mentality." "The fact that a black man can run for the position of the President of the United States of America only corroborates that there is enough opportunity and equality for great things like that to happen," he says. "And that there is no need to create special advantages for any demographic group."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has launched a Web site to dispel rumors about his faith and patriotism and his wife's views on race that have dogged his candidacy for more than a year.

A California group is running a radio ad that uses Barack Obama’s former minister and Nebraska’s only black state senator to take aim at affirmative action in the state. The ad, which includes a clip of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright saying “God damn America,’’ says Wright and Nebraska Sen. Ernie Chambers believe in race preferences, but most Nebraskans don’t... The American Civil Rights Initiative, which is sponsoring the ad, is pushing measures in several states, including Nebraska, that oppose affirmative action, which the group says gives preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. The...

Ward Connerly's critics often blame the success of the millionaire businessman's anti-affirmative-action campaign on some dubious political sleight of hand. Now they'd like to make the former UC regent's controversial initiative disappear before it reaches the ballot in five states. Connerly's measure won handily in his home state of California and in Washington and Michigan, affecting race- or gender-based programs in public employment, education and contracting. Connerly spearheaded California's Proposition 209 in 1996, which amended the state constitution to outlaw race and gender-based preferences in state hiring and state university admissions. His twelve-year tenure on the Board of Regents ended...