Free Republic

On this day in 1890, President Benjamin Harrison (R-IN) signed into law the Second Land-Grant College Act. The law, written by Senator Justin Morrill (R-VT), made African-Americans eligible to attend land-grant colleges. Specifically, the law required any state that banned African-Americans from attending land-grant colleges to establish land-grant colleges for those students. Back then, there was no legal or judicial means for the federal government to compel state governments to cease racial discrimination, so this law was actually a big step forward.

...Mr. Bush... has called... for personal retirement accounts in Social Security. His opponent John Kerry, the darling of the self-regarding intelligentsia, called for the brain-dead policy of no change in a Social Security regime that any sensible person understands is in the long run unsustainable. Mr. Bush wants something better. Mr. Bush has also called for an expansion of market-based health-care reforms like health savings accounts. And he has called, in exceedingly vague terms, for broad-based tax reforms, freeing up savings from taxes to encourage investment and wealth accumulation. ...Mr. Bush... has risked giving his policy proposals too little political...