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Jewish World Review Jan. 18, 2001 / 23 Teves, 5761

Ann Coulter

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Ashcroft and the blowhard discuss desegregation

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS need to start sending at least one Potemkin nominee to the Senate for confirmation hearings. If there were just one Cabinet nominee willing to sacrifice his appointment for the opportunity to yell back at that adulterous drunk, Sen. Teddy Kennedy might not be so cavalier before launching his premeditated vituperations.

Whatever else the "Stop (fill in name here)! Task Force" can say about John Ashcroft, they cannot say that he drunkenly plunged a woman to a horrifying watery death and then fled the scene of the accident, relying on his family's connections to paper over the woman's death.

They cannot say that John Ashcroft was thrown out of college for cheating -- or that he got into college on the basis of his family pedigree. (Inasmuch as Ashcroft attended an Ivy League college, it was not much help having a father who was a Pentecostal minister, rather than, say, a bootlegger.)

Poor John Ashcroft couldn't say any of that when Sen. Kennedy erupted in gin-soaked venom. He has higher aspirations than talking back to a dissolute slob for laughs. But surely there is someone out there who would go for laughs. Bush should find that guy.

In the first day of the Ashcroft hearings, Sen. Kennedy waxed nostalgic over a court-ordered "voluntary desegregation" plan, issuing blood-curdling screams about "the kids": "How costly was this going to be, Sen. Ashcroft, before you were going to say that those kids going in lousy schools, that you were going to do something about it?"

You remember what a fabulous success court-ordered "desegregation" plans have been. Few failures have been more spectacular. Illiterate students knifing one another between acts of sodomy in the stairwell is just one of the many eggs that had to be broken to make the left's omelette of transferring power from states to the federal government.

It's one thing for the federal courts to inform the states and localities that they cannot discriminate on the basis of race -- that was duly accomplished back in 1954. It's really quite another for unelected judges to be imposing $2 billion property taxes and ordering school districts to build opulent school campuses replete with Olympic-sized pools, 25-acre wildlife sanctuaries and model United Nations (with simultaneous translation facilities!).

That's what a federal judge did to Kansas City, Mo., under the Olympic-Sized Pool and Tax-Them-Till-They-Scream clauses of the U.S. Constitution. (As a matter of technical constitutional law, the Constitution does not strictly require states to provide public school students with petting farms.)

But over the past several decades, any number of federal judges got it into their heads that black students had to sit next to white students in order to learn. It was all the rage at the elite universities -- Harvard Law School, in particular. Justice Clarence Thomas responded to the theory by saying, "It never ceases to amaze me that the courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior."

In any event, the theory was that if the federal courts ordered the states to spend gobs of money building "model schools" with petting farms (and highly paid teachers' unions) in the mostly black city schools, the all-important white students would come. Surrounded by white people, black students' education would improve. (The popular appeal of this charming notion gives you some idea why the most frequent modifier to "federal judge" is "unelected.")

Needless to say, having federal judges and Harvard professors run local school districts on the basis of a preposterous racist theory nearly wrecked school system after school system.

Federal judges managed to wrest control of the school systems in the first place through scam lawsuits between non-adverse parties. It worked like this: A few parents would sue the school board, and the school board would promptly admit guilt. Then the amiable adversaries would giddily enter "voluntary" settlement agreements requiring the school boards to make lavish improvements (and generously increase the salaries of school administrators). The court would enter an order confirming the "voluntary" settlement -- and the taxpayers would be stuck with the bill.

These "voluntary" desegregation plans were voluntary in the same way you "volunteer" your wallet to a couple of con men who have just staged a phony confrontation to abet picking your pocket. As Ashcroft explained his objections to the "voluntary" desegregation plan to Sen. Kopechne, "the thing was that the state was going to have to pay for everything that people volunteered to do." The plans also had as much to do with desegregation as -- well -- a pickpocket does.

It's time to send in Alan Keyes. He could probably explain all this to the drunk with some trenchancy.


JWR contributor Ann Coulter is the author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton. You may visit the Ann Coulter Fan Club by clicking here.


Up

01/11/01: TWO WEEKS TILL INDICTMENT!
01/04/01: Liberal pimps for Clintonism
01/02/01: Kwanzaa: Holiday from the FBI
12/28/00: If Americans support abortion, let's vote
12/26/00: Gore, him and her
12/21/00: Channeling Jackie O
12/14/00: My Court is bigger than your Court
12/11/00: HANG IN THERE, AL!
12/07/00: National Lampoon's Florida Supreme Court Vacation
12/04/00: It's past time for GOPers to quit being good at losing
11/30/00: Things only a Dem will say with a straight face
11/27/00: Certify the electors, then the judges
11/23/00: Kangaroo coup
11/20/00: This is what the Electoral College is supposed to prevent
11/16/00: The liar next time
11/09/00: JUST GO!
11/06/00: Hail Mary past
11/02/00: As the nose grows: The scripture according to Gore
10/30/00: Clinton sure can pick 'em
10/26/00: Gore's 'Nam flashbacks
10/23/00: Courting George Orwell
10/20/00: The three faces of Al
10/17/00: Must Christian conservatives be fascists?
10/13/00: Oil good; Dems bad
10/10/00: Al Gore: Serial fibber
10/06/00: Sigh of the crook
10/03/00: So who's the 'dumb guy' now?
09/29/00: Don't do drug legalization
09/26/00: I'd burn down my neighbor's house
09/22/00: Democrats worship the money shot
09/19/00: Other film footage we'd like to see
09/15/00: Bush can name the **^%*
09/12/00: The Supreme Court ratchet
09/08/00: Our mistake -- keep polluting
09/05/00: Bubba protects and serves
09/01/00: AlGore's 'going out of business!' tax plan
08/29/00: Bush's compassionate conservatism
08/25/00: Space alien tells funny jokes in bathtub
08/22/00: Dems view world only in black and white, not in color
08/18/00: Another Damascus Road conversion
08/15/00: The viagra cotillion
08/11/00: The hand-wringing Hamlet from Hartford
08/07/00: The Democratic party's white face
08/04/00: Hillary's potty mouth
08/01/00: The hole in the story
07/28/00: Cheney's detractors can't get their story straight
07/25/00: AlGore: Elmer Blandry
07/21/00: The tyranny of non-objectivity
07/18/00: The state's religion
07/14/00: Reform it back
07/11/00: Keating for veep
07/07/00: Gore invented 'Clueless'
07/04/00: The stupidity litmus test
06/30/00: O.J. was 'proved innocent' too
06/27/00: The last guys 'proved innocent'
06/23/00: Serious Republican candidates don't get serious press
06/19/00: They weren't overzealous this time
06/16/00: Evolution of the strumpet
06/13/00: Actual journalistic malpractice
06/09/00: I did not have sexual
relations with that ... man!
06/06/00: IRS turns Bubba's screw
05/30/00: Too corrupt to be an Arkansas lawyer
05/26/00: Choose liberalism
05/24/00: Violence against coherence
05/22/00: Developmentally disabled Republicans
05/16/00: For womb the bell tolls
05/12/00: Asylum from Georgetown
05/10/00: The truth is out there, even for the clueless
05/08/00: Barbie is a liberal Democrat
05/02/00: Moving the goalpost
04/28/00: The bastardization of justice
04/25/00: How Monica Lewinsky saved the constitution
04/24/00: It's sunny today, so we need gun control
04/19/00: No shadow of a doubt -- liberal women are worthless
04/14/00: It takes a Communist dictator to raise a child
04/11/00: The verdict is in on Hillary
04/07/00: Vast Concoctions III
04/04/00: 'Horrifying' free speech in New York
03/31/00: Check-Off Box For Pimp Suits
03/28/00: All the news that fits -- we print!
03/24/00: Net losses all around
03/20/00: To protect, serve --- and be spat on
03/16/00: Thank Heaven for the consigliere
03/13/00: Vast concoctions II
03/09/00: The bluebloods voted against you
03/07/00: The Tower of Babble
03/03/00: Vast concoction
03/02/00: Hillary's sartorial lies
02/28/00: You have to break a few eggs to make a joke
02/22/00: I've seen enough killing to support abortion
02/18/00: A liberal lynching
02/15/00: McCain and the flag
02/11/00: The Shakedown Express
02/08/00: To mock a mockingbird
02/05/00: Summing up Campaign 2000: 'Oh, puh-leeze!'
02/01/00: A Confederacy of Dunces
01/28/00: Dollar Bill's racist smear
01/24/00: How high is your freedom quotient?
01/21/00: Numismadness
01/18/00: How dare you attack my wife!
01/14/00: The Gore Buggernaut
01/10/00: The paradox of discrimination law

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