Worst smear job ever!
Posted on 01/10/2003 6:25:04 PM PST by RCW2001
By Ron Fournier
AP White House Correspondent
Friday, January 10, 2003; 8:56 PM
WASHINGTON –– Bush administration lawyers are laying the groundwork to oppose a University of Michigan program that gives preference to minority students, a step that would inject President Bush into the biggest affirmative action case in a generation.
Bush himself has not decided what role, if any, the administration will play in the landmark case but several officials said Friday night he is unlikely to stay on the sidelines. White House political allies are planning to intervene against the Michigan program nonetheless.
The administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, pointed to Bush's record in Texas and their continuing review of Clinton administration affirmative action cases as signs that the president is inclined to oppose the university's policies. Furthermore, he is likely to suggest alternatives to racial preferences that still promote diversity, officials said.
Bush is awaiting formal recommendations from Justice Department and White House lawyers before making his decision.
The Supreme Court, in its most important case this year, is expected to rule on the constitutionality of programs that gave black and Hispanic students an edge when applying to the University of Michigan and its law school.
The issue is a lightning rod both for conservative voters who back Bush and for minority voters, whom Republicans are courting.
Further complicating the White House's decision is the fallout for the GOP from the racially provocative comments that cost Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., his job as Senate majority leader. Bush denounced Lott's remarks, which were widely interpreted as nostalgia for segregation.
Siding with white students so soon after the Lott controversy could be seen as an affront to blacks.
The administration is not a party to the Michigan fight and does not have to take a position. Traditionally, however, the White House weighs in on potentially landmark cases.
Bush must decide soon. Legal briefs opposing affirmative action are due to the court Jan. 16, and briefs supporting the Michigan admissions plans are due in February.
Lawyers for political allies of the White House are drafting friend-of-the-court briefs arguing that the University of Michigan policy is unconstitutional, administration officials said.
The Justice Department is awaiting word from Bush on whether to file a brief of its own. At the least, Bush is expected to take a public stand on the matter and explain his position that racial quotas are not needed to foster diversity, officials said.
In Texas, Bush opposed racial preferences in public universities and proposed instead that students graduating in the top 10 percent of all high schools be eligible for admission. Supporters say the policy increased diversity because many schools are largely minority.
Among the cases that would bolster their argument against the University of Michigan, officials said, is a 1997 affirmative action suit that supported a white high school teacher's claim that she suffered reverse discrimination when laid off from her job. A black teacher was retained.
The Clinton administration argued that the school district's affirmative action policy went too far and could not be justified merely by the notion that a diverse teacher corps is a worthy goal.
"A simple desire to promote diversity for its own sake ... is not a permissible basis for taking race into account," the government said then.
The brief was largely written by Walter Dellinger, former head of the Office of Legal Counsel and later the Clinton administration's acting solicitor general. Administration lawyers consider at least one other Dellinger brief, a case involving a Wisconsin teacher, as further basis to argue against the University of Michigan policy.
Contacted Friday, Dellinger said the reasoning assumed that there is some role for affirmative action but noted that the tool can be wrongly used.
"The general position taken was that while the use of race is sometimes permissible in educational settings, it must be narrowly tailored and shown to advance important educational goals," he said.
In a 1995 memo analyzing the effects of a Supreme Court case over affirmative action in government contracting, the Clinton administration's Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel noted that the Supreme Court has consistently rejected racial balancing as a goal of affirmative action.
"To the extent that affirmative action is used to foster racial and ethnic diversity, the government must seek some further objective beyond the achievement of diversity itself," said the memo, largely written by Dellinger.
I went to the very thread, and cut and pasted howlin's words. You will have to excuse me, but I do not see how those words differ from the words as TLBSHOW quoted them.
When the Bush Bots turn to name calling you know they are operating on a vacumn. There is nothing there.
And now you have called me a liar and accused me, among other things, of supporting Jesse Jackson.
Now I am not amused by you anymore; you obviously have some deep personal problems that require you to hop from web site to web site, pretending you're relevant. I know you've been banned from the other sites, and, alas, we're stuck with you.
But people are sick and tired of your spamming of threads and bashing Bush with lies. You may think it's funny and you may actually think what you're doing is helping "conservatives" since you have now decided that Bush isn't a conservative. Since you are so disconnected from reality, you have no way of knowing what harm you've done to the goodwill you had at this site.
Whatever your personal problems are that are causing this type of behavior must lead you to believe you're accomplishing something here with all your "rah rah" crap. The only thing you are accomplishing is turning people off to YOU.
If you have opinions you'd like to share, why don't you start you OWN thread and let people who want to discuss YOUR views come to YOUR thread, instead of going on EVERY SINGLE BUSH THREAD with the same old tripe day in and day out?
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one that feels this way.
TLB, George W. Bush is not influenced by self-absorbed egotists (sorry for the redundance) who think they are influencing him by "keeping his feet to the fire." The decision he makes, whether that be to stay out of the fray, or to come down against affirmative action, will be based on what is best for the country, not on threats coming from the right OR the left.
(And it humors me to think that there are actually people who think that what happened to Lott was because of what "Bush did to him." How badly must you need to blame everything you don't like on the President. Unbelieveable).
Tell us about it, Miss Egomaniac.
If true, yippie. No matter how Bush comes out on the case, he needs to speak, on a case of this importance. He should not duck. That is what leadership is all about. If he does duck, I will think less of him even than if he supports the U of M position, and wades into the public square to defend it. My own position is inbetween which is often typical for me, but not relevant to the point that Bush has a duty to speak out.
So, you think he's a monarch, is that it? Get a grip.
Worst smear job ever!
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