Affirmative Action Lawyer Calls Supreme Court Decision on Michigan Schools ‘Racist’

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

The civil rights lawyer who argued unsuccessfully before the Supreme Court to end Michigan’s affirmative action ban repeated Sunday that the high court’s decision was “racist.”

“This is a racist decision that takes us back to an era of state’s rights,” civil rights attorney Shanta Driver told “Fox News Sunday.” “This decision cannot stand.”

The high court’s 6-2 decision Tuesday upheld a voter-approved change to the Michigan Constitution in 2006 that forbids the state’s public colleges to make race, gender, ethnicity or national origin a factor in college admissions.

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California Bill Would Force Schools to Lecture Children on the ‘Racial Significance’ of Obama’s Presidency

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Photo Credit: IJ Review

Photo Credit: IJ Review

California’s children will receive only the best educational opportunities, including thorough indoctrination into the “racial significance” of Barack Obama’s presidency, if a new state bill passes.

From CBS Sacramento:

The bill by Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, asks state education officials to include Obama’s election in history and social studies standards laying out what students are expected to learn.

High school history students already learn about recent presidents. But Holden says lessons about Obama also should focus on what his election meant for racial equality and civil rights…

Of course, California can take this bold step because children are so well educated in California (43rd in the country in math, and 42nd in reading) that teachers have plenty of time to add racially charged lessons to their curriculum.

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Article V Movement Gathers Steam, Critics Seethe

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constitution_quill_pen-300x197One of the sure signs that your federal government is in a state of disarray is when record numbers of Americans begin turning to the U.S. Constitution to figure out just where it all went wrong. Until recently, these readers might have skipped right past Article V, not noticing that therein lies the most potent of solutions.

As readers of Mark Levin’s book The Liberty Amendments have learned, Article V includes a lesser-known means by which the states can propose amendments. This was precisely the method the founders intended to be used to check an expansionist federal government.

Thanks to Levin, ConventionofStates.com, and Lawrence Lessig’s CallaConvention.org, the effort to get state legislatures to demand the first ever amendments convention seems to be hitting its stride.

But the movement is not without its critics.

Enter constitutional speaker KrisAnne Hall, who would prefer that states engage in out-and-out nullification of unconstitutional federal overreaches. Though less clear constitutionally, the idea has precedent and is also advocated by the Tenth Amendment Center. But unlike the Tenth Amendment Center, Ms. Hall has decided that an Article V amendments convention competes with nullification, and has taken the position that an amendments convention is a road to disaster because she has discovered a clandestine plot by Congress to take over the amendments convention process from start to finish.

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President Obama’s Smoking Problem

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Photo Credit: Politico

Photo Credit: Politico

Malaysia’s government is battling against a smoking epidemic that threatens its young people — and it fears Barack Obama’s big Pacific trade deal will make the health crisis even worse.

When the president, a reformed smoker himself, lands in Kuala Lumpur this weekend for his third stop in a weeklong Asia swing, he’ll be visiting one of the other 12 Pacific Rim countries hoping to close the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade agreement that American and Asian businesses see as worth billions in sales into new markets.

But Malaysia is smarting that Obama’s negotiators won’t back the country’s efforts to take a strict anti-tobacco approach in the trade deal.

Malaysia’s fear is that it will suffer the same fate that Uruguay, Australia and Thailand have in other trade deals: dragged into an expensive, years-long international legal fight over its right to block cigarette companies from advertising.

When Malaysia’s trade negotiators have pushed to carve tobacco out of a section of the deal that would otherwise allow businesses to challenge whether a country’s laws and regulations meet its international trade obligations before an independent panel, the United States has balked and instead called for an approach that Malaysian officials believe would leave their country exposed.

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California Cities Start Water-Waste Patrols

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Photo Credit: AP / Rich Pedroncelli

Photo Credit: AP / Rich Pedroncelli

Steve Upton thinks of himself more as an “Officer Friendly” than a water cop.

On a recent sunny day, the water waste inspector rolled through a quiet Sacramento neighborhood in his white pickup truck after a tipster tattled on people watering their lawns on prohibited days.

He approached two culprits. Rather than slapping them with fines, Upton offered to change the settings on their sprinkler systems.

“I don’t want to crack down on them and be their Big Brother,” said Upton, who works for the water conservation unit of Sacramento’s utilities department. “People don’t waste water on purpose. They don’t know they are wasting water.”

At least 45 water agencies throughout California, including Sacramento, are imposing and enforcing mandatory restrictions on water use as their supplies run dangerously low. Sacramento is one of the few bigger agencies actively patrolling streets for violators and encouraging neighbors to report waste.

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‘He Suffered. He Screamed. He Cried’: Congress Calls for Investigation of Phoenix VA That Reportedly Denied Vets Medical Attention, Leaving 40 to Die

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

“Why is this happening to me? Why won’t anybody help me?” 71-year-old U.S. Navy veteran Thomas Breen asked his family as his health deteriorated, his years-long struggle with cancer nearing its end.

The veteran’s daughter-in-law recalled his final months in an interview with CNN: “At the end is when he suffered. He screamed. He cried. And that’s somethin’ I’d never seen him do before, was cry. Never. Never. He cried in the kitchen right here. ‘Don’t let me die.’”

Before losing his battle with stage 4 bladder cancer and passing away on Nov. 30, 2013, Breen and his family tried again and again to seek medical help from the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system. But along with thousands of other veterans who gave their youth and energy to serve their country, Breen was reportedly placed on a “secret list” and told to wait.

Breen is one of at least 40 U.S. veterans who died while waiting for treatment, CNN reported, suggesting that the Phoenix VA used the “secret list” to stage a cover-up.

“These are extremely disturbing allegations,” Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, said Thursday. “If proven true, these charges will only add to the growing pattern of preventable veteran deaths and patient safety incidents at VA medical centers across the country that are united by one common theme: VA’s extreme reluctance to hold its employees and executives accountable.”

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Scathing Appeals Court Calls Out Raging Hypocrisy of Race-Baiting Obama Administration Bureaucrats

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Photo Credit: EEOC public domain

Photo Credit: EEOC public domain

It’s always satisfying to see race-baiting bureaucrats get their comeuppance in court, but an opinion by the 6th Circuit issued earlier this month begins especially delightfully:

In this case the EEOC sued the defendants for using the same type of background check that the EEOC itself uses. The EEOC’s personnel handbook recites that “[o]verdue just debts increase temptation to commit illegal or unethical acts as a means of gaining funds to meet financial obligations.” Because of that concern, the EEOC runs credit checks on applicants for 84 of the agency’s 97 positions. The defendants (collectively, “Kaplan”) have the same concern; and thus Kaplan runs credit checks on applicants for positions that provide access to students’ financial-loan information, among other positions. For that practice, the EEOC sued Kaplan.

The April 9 ruling in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Kaplan Higher Education Corp. has received little fanfare. It should probably receive more, though, if only because the EEOC lost so good and hard.

In the case, the unanimous three-judge panel ruled to exclude the findings of government contractor General Information Services and the testimony of a dubious statistical analyst, thus affirming a lower court’s “meticulously reasoned” summary judgment decision and likely ending the EEOC’s complaint against Kaplan.

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Ala. Supreme Court: ‘Unborn Child Has Inalienable Right to Life From its Earliest Stages’

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Photo Credit: CNS News

Photo Credit: CNS News

In a case about a pregnant woman who used cocaine and endangered her unborn child, the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed (8-1) that the word “child” includes “an unborn child,” and that the law therefore “furthers the State’s interest in protecting the life of children from the earliest stages of their development.”

In his concurring opinion, Alabama Chief Justice Roy S. Moore wrote that “an unborn child has an inalienable right to life from its earliest stages of development,” and added, “I write separately to emphasize that the inalienable right to life is a gift of God that civil government must secure for all persons – born and unborn.”

The court decision on April 18 was in reference to Sarah Janie Hicks v. State of Alabama. Hicks had been charged in 2009 with violating Alabama’s chemical-endangerment statute, which in part says that a “person commits the crime of chemical endangerment” by “knowingly, recklessly, or intentionally causes or permits a child to be exposed to, to ingest or inhale, or to have contact with a controlled substance, chemical substance, or drug paraphernalia,” a felony.

In Hicks’ case, she was charged with using cocaine while pregnant. Her child, “J.D.,” tested positive for cocaine “at the time of his birth,” reads the court document. (See Hicks v. Alabama.pdf)

In January 2010, Hicks pleaded guilty to the crime but also “reserved the right to appeal the issues” she and her attorneys had presented earlier in trying to get the charges dismissed. Hicks got a three year suspended prison sentence and was placed on probation.

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Georgia Gov. Signs Bill Allowing Guns in Churches, Bars, and School Zones

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Photo Credit: AP / John Amis

Photo Credit: AP / John Amis

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed into law Wednesday a bill that expands gun rights in the state to allow weapons in government buildings, bars, places of worship, and school zones under certain circumstances.
Under House Bill 60, also known as the Safe Carry Protection Act of 2014, school districts will get to decide whether to allow authorized personnel to carry weapons within school safety zones under certain circumstances.

In addition, church leaders will be able to decide whether to allow licensed gun owners to bring weapons into their place of worship. The law also removes fingerprinting requirements for renewal licenses.

The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action called the bill the “most comprehensive pro-gun bill in state history.”

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Chicago Public Schools Now Phoning Home to Make Sure Kids Are Signed Up for Welfare

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Photo Credit: IJ Review

Photo Credit: IJ Review

Last week, parents of children enrolled in Chicago Public Schools received a recorded phone message encouraging them to sign up for low-cost health insurance and food stamps:

“Currently there are 68,000 children in the Chicago Public Schools that are not enrolled in free or low-cost health insurance and SNAP also knows as food stamps,” the recording, obtained by The Daily Caller, says.

“Your child may be one of them. To find out more about your eligibility call the Children and Family Benefits Unit at 773-553-KIDS.”

Read more from this story HERE.