JustOneMinute

A Zimmerman Case No-News Update

The Zimmerman defense is expecting to get their discovery documents on Monday, May 14. Normally, they would become public record at that time but defense counsel O'Mara expects to move for further redactions:

The first round of discovery documents in the George Zimmerman Case are most likely to be provided to O’Mara Law Group on Monday, May 14. Public release of the of the discovery may be delayed as we may be filing a motion to further redact information, and an opportunity to review the discovery is necessary to determine the applicability of that motion. While we understand the frustration of those who want to view the information as soon as possible, we believe that Mr. Zimmerman’s right to a fair trial, decided by an impartial, unbiased jury is paramount.

The absence of news has moved this case off the front pages, which I believe is the defense strategy. Once the lynch mob is distracted by something (aren't the Heat still in the hunt? And surely a Kardashian is doing something silly somewhere...) the legal system can process Zimmerman out like an ordinary case.

More Surprises For Elizabeth Warren

In what will surely be yet another surprise to Elizabeth Warren, the Boston Globe reports that the U Penn Law School also touted Ms. Warren as a minority when she was there.

To compound the hilarity, U Penn is also concealing her specific minority status. So, just as Harvard claims to have a Native American on the law school faculty but won't say who it is, U Penn is also playing "spot the role model".

We are constantly told that having a diverse faculty (or workforce, or student body) provides faculty and students with fresh perspectives and valuable role models. How that works when no one is aware of the role modeling opportunities on offer remains a mystery. Just who at Harvard is taking inspiration from the Mystery Native American lurking in the shadows there? Who at U Penn is drawing strength from the news that if Elizabeth Warren can overcome her minority status, whatever it was, so can they?

Well. The Supreme Court will tackle affirmative action this fall, Democrats will howl, and Elizabeth Warren will be hard pressed to avoid addressing this. The Comedy Channel is arranging coverage now.

Metaphor Madness And Profiles In Decisiveness

Barack Obama explains the timing behind his gutsy call on gay marriage:

Obama on Biden: 'Got Out a Little Bit Over His Skis'

Obama skis? I thought he was more of a snowboarder.

And this profile in decisiveness may one day be carved on Mt. Rushmore when it is renamed Mt. Obama:

"I had already made a decision that we were going probably take this position before the election and before the convention..."

Well, I have made a decision that I will probably laugh out loud the next time I read about Obama's bold "leadership".  But maybe not! I'll let you know. Probably.

Obama's Latest Gutsy Call

Presumably muttering "'Effing Joe Biden" off-mike, Pres. Obama ended the suspense and finally evolved on gay marriage.

Jacob Sullum has more background.

And by way of Bill Jacobson we see that, having declared his personal view, Obama has exhausted his gutsiness; this is from ABC News:

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states deciding the issue on their own. But he said he’s confident that more Americans will grow comfortable with gays and lesbians getting married, citing his own daughters’ comfort with the concept.

Bold. That puts the President spectating on the sidelines with me. Of course, I am not running for President...

WORD RETRIEVAL ISSUES: From Obama's interview:

when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf...

Oh, please - the greatest speaker in the history of speech meant "at my behest". Or maybe he really beleives these guys enlisted to fight for him and not the USA.

 

Har De Har

Pauline Kael lives! MSNBC covers the Dem debacle in West Virginia and exemplifies the sort of insular tone-deafness that will (we hope!) doom the MSM effort to re-elect Obama:

President Obama was expected to win the West Virginia primary, but not to be WITHIN 20 points TO A CONVICTED FELON SITTING IN FEDERAL PRISON IN ANOTHER STATE. By the way, wonder why Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin says he’s not sure who he’ll vote for this fall in the presidential election? This is why -- and why West Virginia will continue to be the butt of jokes by coastal elites.

My, my - with that threat of ridicule and mockery hanging over them, I bet there isn't a liberal in Manhattan or the media prepared to vote for a felon.

Well, the coastal elites can keep making jokes, and the rubes in flyover country can keep voting against Obama. We'll see how that works out this November.

 

 

Brain Lock In The House

Poised to pander! House Democrats prepare the "Trayvon bill" [and subsequently withdraw it]:

House to vote on Trayvon amendment

House Democrats said Tuesday they will offer an amendment to push to overturn stand-your-ground self-defense laws in states like Florida.

The amendment, which would withhold some grants from states that have such laws, will come as part of the House's debate on the Commerce Department spending bill.

"'Shoot-first' laws have already cost too many lives. In Florida alone, deaths due to self-defense have tripled since the law was enacted. Federal money shouldn't be spent supporting states with laws that endanger their own people," said Reps. Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the two Democrats who are offering the legislation. "This is no different than withholding transportation funds from states that don't enforce seat-belt laws."

Politfact looked at the numbers last March and concluded that, since the law expanded the classification of deaths as justifiable homicides, the claim was partly true:

Our ruling

Smith said that since "stand your ground" passed in 2005, deaths due to self-defense have jumped over 250 percent. When we calculated the average for five years before the law passed and five years after it passed, we found an increase of 200 percent. That’s short of Smith’s claim, though the numbers largerly support the idea that self-defense deaths have increased since 2005. As for whether "stand your ground" is the reason self-defense deaths are up, experts either disagree or say it’s difficult to determine without examining the specifics of each case.

We rate this statement Half True.

I looked at their numbers and more, and came away believing the claim was Mostly Misleading. (The most glaring flaw in the PolitFact numbers - justifiable homicides by the police also tripled over the same period, even though the new law did not affect them. One might infer that the people doing the classifying are taking a different perspective on everything.)

John Hinderaker has more.

Lugar Out

Indiana boots Lugar.

North Carolina amends state constitution (text) to ban gay marriage:

Incomplete returns show the amendment up 61.05 percent to 38.95 percent.

Obama has hopes of carrying North Carolina this fall, so this result will give him pause in his evolution on gay marriage.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/05/08/2052643/marriage-amendment-latest-results.html#storylink=cpy

In Other News...

Ind. man arrested with 4 kids strapped to car hood

Neither Mitt Romney nor Gail Collins (nor Seamus!) were available for comment.

Wrong Branch In Elizabeth Warren's Family Tree

Ooops - a genealogist discovers that not only is Ms. Warren probably not descended from a Cherokee, she is descended from a man who helped round up the Cherokee. I guess that is why she skips the Harvard powwow.

Scott Brown is upping the ante by calling on Ms. Warren to release the relevant application records:

“Serious questions have been raised about the legitimacy of Elizabeth Warren's claims to Native American ancestry and whether it was appropriate for her to assume minority status as a college professor,” Brown said in a statement. “Her changing stories, contradictions and refusal to answer legitimate questions have cast doubt on her credibility and called into question the diversity practices at Harvard.”

Brown added that to clear up any confusion Warren should “authorize the release of her law school applications and all personnel files from the various universities where she has taught.”

A few weeks back I would have guessed this to be a dead end; Ms. Warren was listed in the law school directory as a minority and my guess would have been that prospective employess would be dscreet enough to rely on that rather than other documentation.

However, if the documentation were helpful to Ms. Warren's cause one might have expected her to have released it by now, so Scott Brown may come up aces here.

Lessons In Leadership From The NY Times

The NY Times provides alternative visions of leadership. Today, we learn about about Joe Biden:

Mr. Obama has also relied on his deputy for his political skills and complementary strengths. Mr. Obama might have “overestimated his own ability to engineer his own charm offensive, especially on the Hill,” said a former White House aide who asked not to be named while characterizing the president’s mind-set.

“The vice president is proof that to some degree the path to the new school goes through the old school,” said Jared Bernstein, a former top economic adviser to Mr. Biden. He refers to Mr. Biden as “an ambassador back to an earlier form of politics where relationship-building plays a key role.”

Yesterday the Times wrote about Gen. Stan McChrystal (ret.), who is now teaching a seminar on leadership at Yale:

In General McChrystal’s recent seminar, open to both undergraduates and graduates, two hours was spent discussing how leadership was important to solving problems like apartheid. Like all his sessions, it was off the record — students are not supposed to talk about it outside class — because General McChrystal wanders into anecdotes about sensitive operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His teaching style is loose: he wears khakis and open-necked shirts, insists that the students call him Stan, prods quiet students into talking and invites them all for runs with him and on overnight field trips to Gettysburg.

The theme in his case studies in leadership is that personal relationships matter — a view he set forth in another recent class about the 2010 Rolling Stone article, required reading, which quoted him and his staff as making dismissive comments about White House officials. Within days, President Obama fired him.

Obviously none of this is of any interest to Obama, who already knows everything about this.

Still, this is yet another reason to root for Romney - Biden should have a blistering "If only those geniuses had listened to me" book in him if Obama loses.

Mitt Romney, Busted!

Mitt Romney got taken down hard back in 1981. As BS arrests go, this ranks up there:

According to what Romney told the Boston Globe in 1994, he had taken his family off to Wayland, Mass.'s Lake Cochituate, about an hour outside Boston, for a summer excursion. As Romney prepared to put his family boat into the water, a park officer told Romney not to launch because his license appeared to have been painted over. The officer told Romney if he put his boat into the water he would face a $50 fine.

Romney felt that his license was still visible and decided to ignore the order from the officer and pay the fine.

"I figured I was at the state park with my kids. My five kids were in the car wondering why we weren't going out in the boat, so I said I'd launch and pay the fine,” Romney said in 1994.

He launched the boat, the officer busted him for disorderly conduct, and Mitt was handcuffed and taken downtown in his bathing suit, where he was released without bail. Pause, and...

Several days later, Romney appeared in Natick District Court and threatened to sue the arresting office for a false arrest. The charges were dropped and sealed at Romney’s request.

"He did not have the right to arrest me because I was not a disorderly person. This was an obvious case of false arrest," Romney said. "The officer obviously agreed because he agreed to dropping the case."

My first thought was that if Obama had ever experienced so bogus an arrest it would have prompted a whole new "Dreams" chapter on race relations and the impossibility of the American Dream.

Of course, my second thought was that maybe Obama has been arrested and written such a chapter. The suspense mounts!

That War On Women

Jim Geraghty retweets an interesting point by David Freddoso - per a new poll touted by Politico, Romney is doing well among white women (my emphasis):

A gender gap still exists, but it appears to be narrowing. Obama leads among women by 7 percentage points, while Romney has the same lead among male voters. But among women younger than 45 , Obama leads 57 percent to 39 percent. Yet Romney leads among women older than 45, 50 percent to 45 percent. The Republican also leads among white women, 57 percent to 38 percent.

By way of comparison, back in 2008 Obama beat McCain among all women by 56% to 43%, a 13% margin; among white women, Obama trailed by 46% to 53%, a 7% deficit.

So Obama is down by 6% among all women and 12% among white women.

I CAN'T QUITE GET THERE FROM HERE: Politico does not present the crosstabs, but we see that they had 78% whites, 12% blacks, 6% Hispanics and 4% other.

The sample was also 48% men and 52% women.

If (IF!) each race splits the same among men and women, then the sample on the women's side should be 78/12/6/4, just as with the men. This does not quite jibe with 2008 turnout - women outnumber men in each demographic, but white men are closely to parity than other ethnic subgroups.

Pressing on! Given that (close but wrong) assumption, we are told that 78% of the sample favors Romney by 57 to 38 percent, yet the overall pool favors Obama by 7 percent.

That implies (unless I am having a MAJOR math fail) that the 22% non-white group goes 100% for Obama. Yike! In 2008 McCain picked up about 30% of the Hispanic and other vote and 3% of the black vote.

If the non-black, non-white pool is 10% of the total and goes "only" 80% for Obama, he still wins among women by a mere 3%.

Well - one explanation would be that white women are a smaller proportion of their pool and white men are a larger proportion of theirs, which accords with recent historical experience.  However, when I figure Obama to get 37% of the white vote, 98% of the black vote and 80% of the Hispanic and other vote, I have to beat white women down to 74% of their pool (which becomes 74/16/12) to produce a 7% margin in favor of Obama.

To get back to an overall sample that is 78% white, that implies that white men are roughly 82% of the male pool. Based on this simple calculation, relative to the 2008 turnout, white women are under-represented and white men are over-represented.

Which means... beats me. And don't rule out the major math fail as an explanation. I have double-checked my double-checks, but I have had some grim experiences with brainlock over the the years.

VP Picks

John Hawkins reviews the Vice-Presidential field, but is he really passing this off as analysis?

1) Rob Portman: (Senator, Ohio)
Strengths: Romney must win Ohio to defeat Obama and Portman would make that much more likely. Portman has served in the House and under Bush as the U.S. Trade Representative and Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). That experience would be very useful if Romney’s elected.
Weaknesses: Portman is dull and his connection to Bush would be a liability.

Portman is dull?  Portman nails down the Star Wars vote. Having Natalie's dad on the ticket will win the vote of any hipster confused enough to have thought Obama would be a good choice.

And if you think mere reality will sway me, well, think again.

Collar The Vote

Serfs Up!

Or, they mostly serf who only stand and wait...

 

Backwards Day

Some quick hits - the Iranians picked a pretty clever photo to accompany a story about how their missile program is over-rated and unthreatening.

Maybe the Iranians could export that sense of humor to SNL - this "Killing Osama Day" is not exactly killing me. Of course, I have no idea whether the alternative skit merited a smile or two.

Terror At The Times

We had a heart-stopping, but mainly stomach-turning moment as we glanced at the lead NY Times website:

 Oh, geez, is that an Indonesian chef? Bo, we hardly knew ye.

Fortunately, the story is about some busted biggie in China. Whew!

Waiting For Evolution And Obama's Next "Gutsy Call"

VP Joe Biden seems to break new ground with his support for gay marriage, leaving him waiting at the altar for Obama.

So, the suspense mounts! Will Obama complete his evolution on gay marriage and announce his support in time for the Democratic convention? Or do we have to wait until after the election?

Either way, when Obama finally announces his support Joe Biden will no doubt pronounce it a "gutsy call".

I DO HAVE A CAVEAT: Without seeing a complete transcript I am not so sure what new ground Boden broke. The Times tells us this is the key passage:

“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Mr. Biden said, while noting that the president, not he, sets policy on such matters.

Lacking the complete context that could be read as support for civil unions. And do keep in mind, the people claiming this is some sort of a Administration breakthrough are the advocates for gay marriage; it may well suit their agenda to pressure Obama by declaring Biden fully evolved. Back to the Times:

The vice president’s comments are likely to intensify pressure on Mr. Obama, who says he is still wrestling with his feelings about same-sex marriage, to take a clearer stance on it before the presidential election this fall, something the White House has shown reluctance to do.

 Mr. Biden’s aides, in insisting that he was not deviating from White House policy, pointed to a 2010 statement by the vice president that the country was moving toward a “national consensus” on same-sex marriage. And in Sunday’s interview, Mr. Biden did not say explicitly that the federal government should recognize it.

But gay rights advocates, who spent Sunday morning parsing Mr. Biden’s words, said the president’s running mate had, in their analysis, conveyed new and unmistakable support for their biggest cause.

 FWIW: ThinkProgress says it is an endorsement, Sully says its not.

Sunday AM

Away we go. Ross Douthat is very interesting on 'Julia'.

Gulity Until Proven Innocent

This Orlando Sentinel article from May 3 purports to expand on Zimmerman's account of events the night of the shooting.

One of th details has us circling back to this Wagist attempt to recreate the sequence of events. 'Nuff said.

A (Composite) Blast From The Past

A former colleague of Barack Obama wrote a post in 2005 discussing the accuracy of "Dreams" vis a vis Obama's financial writing career. The comments come to life in 2007 (and some other former colleagues join in) as Obama's Presidential campaign takes off.

It sounds as if Obama's "job" was also a bit of a composite.

Harvard Law School Celebrates Diversity With Its Double Top-Secret Census

And then there were none.  Or one! The comic fallout from Fauxcohantas Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren's affirmative action status continues:

Harvard won’t say if Liz Warren listed as minority

By Hillary Chabot

Harvard Law School lists one lone Native American faculty member on its latest diversity census report — but school officials and campaign aides for Elizabeth Warren refused to say yesterday whether it refers to the Democratic Senate candidate.

Warren — who has been dogged by questions about whether she used her claims of Cherokee lineage to further her career — has insisted she never authorized Harvard Law to count her as a Native American in the mid-1990s, when the school was under fire for not having enough minority professors.

...

Harvard Law’s 2011 diversity report does not indicate who the Native American professor is. And the school refused to say whether it’s Warren.

They are proud of their diversity, they are committed to increasing and improving their diversity, but they aren't quite proud enough to tip us off as to who it is that is delivering that diversity and the uniquely informed perspectives it provides.

And there is another diversity candidate!

The 2011 report indicates that “Race/Ethnicity designations are from self-report data,” meaning whoever is listed as a Native American told the school of their tribal lineage.

Robert C. Clark, a professor and former Harvard Law School dean, is listed as part Choctaw in a 1999 Harvard Magazine article. Clark has worked for the law school since 1989 but wasn’t named in a 1996 Harvard Crimson article when law school officials sought to defend their minority hires. Clark did not return requests for comment.

Former law school spokesman Mike Chmura said in the 1996 article that out of 71 professors, only one was Native American and that was Warren.

Robert Clark would make a fine-looking Indian chief - if Brad Pitt were unavailable. (Hmm, Dean Clarke looks brown-eyed in his official portrait.  Tough call!)

Look, this is the law school and not the mathematics department, but there are alternative explanations. Maybe Harvard Law School has 32 professors each of whom is, like Ms. Warren, 1/32 Native American. Or maybe they have a professor who is 1/4 native, four who are 1/8 and one who is 3/16 and they decided to round up.

DOES THIS SOUND LIKE A PASSENGER ON THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION TRAIN? Here is Robert Clark's brief bio in one of the many articles that neglect to mention his Choctaw heritage:

Born in New Orleans in 1944, Clark originally studied for the priesthood, intending to be a foreign missionary. He graduated from Maryknoll College in 1966. He received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1971, and the J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1972.

After two years at the Boston firm of Ropes & Gray, he served on the Yale law faculty, rising to become a tenured professor. In 1979, he returned to Harvard Law School as a professor of law, and he was named Royall Professor of Law upon his appointment as dean in 1989.

It is certainly possible that someone hoovered him up to check an AA box, but he has a graduate resume (Columbia, Harvard, Yale) that is a bit different from Ms. Warren's (Rutgers, Texas, Michigan, Penn, Harvard). The Captain has more on the oddity of her resume.

This NY Times article on racial scuffling at Harvard in 1990, when Clark was dean, also overlooks his own contribution to diversity:

Of the law school's 60 tenured professors, five are women and three are black. Harvard has never had a tenured black woman law professor.

But Dean Clark insisted that the school is moving to recruit more women and minority professors as quickly as it can find them. He said that, of 12 visiting professors coming to the school next year, seven are women, and one of those is black; one professor is an Hispanic male, and two are from Japan. Visiting professors form a major pool from which Harvard recruits new faculty.

Blacks, Hispanics, Asians... no Native Americans?

Another Firing Over The *Two* Bad Zimmerman Edits

TV Newser reports that yet another NBC News correspondent, Lilia Luciano, has been fired due to dubious editing of the Zimmerman call to the police.

Jeralyn Merritt, who first noted the use of a misleading edit on the March 22 Today Show, has an exhaustive timeline of the use of the two misleading edits, for a total of three uses on the Today Show and one on the NBC Nightly News.

And for comic relief, turn to the Media Encoder, Brian Stelter of the NY Times. Mr. Stelter doesn't understand or won't report that the problem at NBC runs beyond two problematic airings on the Today Show. Yet I remain confident that if Fox News had misreported something unflattering to Obama his coverage would be more comprehensive.

Here is the TV Newser report:

In a story for the “Today” show on March 20, Luciano used part of the George Zimmerman 911 call in which an entire phrase (italicized below) was taken from a later part of the conversation:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or on drugs or something. He’s got his hand in his waistband. And he’s a black male.
Dispatcher: Are you following him?
Zimmerman: Yeah.
Dispatcher: Okay, we don’t need you to do that.

Here is Media Lapdog Brian Stelter of the Times, putting into a more helpful perspective for his "Don't vex me with tales of a misbehaving liberal media" readership:

Ms. Luciano was the correspondent on a “Today” show segment on March 22 that presented Mr. Zimmerman’s description of Mr. Martin as a “black male” grossly out of context. The editing of the audiotape made it seem as if Mr. Zimmerman volunteered the information, when in fact a 911 dispatcher had asked Mr. Zimmerman for the information.

No, the March 22 edit was different from the March 20 edit (although Ms. Luciano was involved with both segments). That would be obvious even to Times readers if Mr. Stelter printed both edits, so he doesn't.  Fortunately TV Newser provides a helpful reminder:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

If we can persuade Mr. Stelter to re-read TV Newser he will discover there are *three* problematic edits from the Today Show. For some reason he seems to be reporting this in a way that minimizes NBC's miscues. If we can get him to read Jeralyn Merritt, he will learn that there was also a fourth bad edit on the March 19 NBC Nightly News. Here's hoping!

Meanwhile, here is his hard-hitting Media Encoding coverage of the March 20 and March 19 bad edits:

According to a person with knowledge of the NBC investigation, the error in her March 22 originated in the script of a report on WTVJ, the NBC-owned station in Miami. A correspondent for WTVJ, Jeff Burnside, was reportedly fired last month.

¶By borrowing from the WTVJ report, Ms. Luciano and her production team repeated the mistake, according to the person, who was not authorized to talk to speak about it publicly.

¶A second person, however, said that the NBC News investigation was unrelated to the local station and that the error on March 22 did not originate in the WTVJ script.

My guess is that few people will take from that the news that the NBC Nightly News had a bad edit on March 19 which was recycled by Ms. Luciano for the March 20 Today Show.

As an aid, let me excerpt and simplify Ms. Merritt's excellent timeline:

• Pete Williams, March 19 NBC Nightly News, 6:30 pm ET, Misquote version #1 ('he's a black male')
• Luciano, March 20 Today Show, Misquote version #1
• Luciano, March 22 Today Show, Misquote version #2 ('he looks black')
• Ron Williams Allen, March 27 Today Show, Misquote version #2

Just to square the circle, it is possible that on March 20 Ms. Luciano was a victim of someone else's bad editing, since she recycled the March 19 Nightly News tape. Then, with that error inducing brain-lock, she managed a comparable error for the March 22 Today show, and got herself fired for that. In which case, who was the fall guy for the March 19/20 edit? Has to be Jeff Burnside, yes? Per Poynter:

WTVJ reporter Jeff Burnside was fired Friday after being involved in editing a tape of George Zimmerman’s 911 call before he shot Trayvon Martin....

...

The WTVJ video, though edited similarly, was not the one that aired on NBC’s “Today” show, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The video that aired on the “Today” show actually came from NBC’s Southeast headquarters, also based in south Florida.

Baffling. Well, when Brian Stelter reports on three bad edits at Today and one at NBC Nightly News I will feel better. Right now he has described two bad edits at Today and linked to the Poynter account of a guy fired at a local affiliate. Unsatisfying, especially in light of this Poyner correction:

Correction: This post originally stated that the WTVJ edited video aired on the “Today” show. It did not. The edited video that aired on “Today” came from NBC’s Southeastern headquarters.

Well, wherever it came from, a bad edit appeared on Today on March 20; Times reader relying on the Media Encoder will never figure that out.

It's water under the bridge now, but back in early April when we discovered shenanigans at NBC6 Miami, I had noticed that in addition to revising three website stories that had included the "he’s up to no good. He looks black" edit, NBC6 had revised a different AP / NBC story from March 17 with a different presentation. I was not able to recover the original version so we are left wondering whether that story has a connection to either of the bad edits shown here. No doubt the comprehensive NBC investigation will apprise us of that.

LATE ADD: 'Narcisco' advises us that the March 27 NBC reporter is Ron Allen, not Ron Williams.

 

As If In Answer To Prof. Althouse

Prof. Althiuse asks (rhetorically, we imagine) whether Native American Senate candidate Dances With Occupiers Elizabeth Warren favors affirmative action. C'mon, what conventional lib doesn't?

But appropos of this and that, it was only last Monday that Ms. Warren's other baby, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, announced its pick to lead its "Office of Minority and Women Inclusion".

This was mandated by Dodd-Frank; it is hard to believe Ms. Warren opposed it, but as Prof. Althouse exhorts our press, why not ask her?

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today announced the selection of Stuart Ishimaru to head the newly established Office of Minority and Women Inclusion (OMWI), which will work to promote diversity at the CFPB and at the financial institutions it regulates.

“Americans from all walks of life use consumer financial products and services. We should strive to reflect that diversity because, in the end, it will only strengthen the work we do,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Mr. Ishimaru’s extensive experience in promoting diversity makes him the perfect person for the job.”

Mr. Ishimaru has spent much of his professional life working to foster greater diversity in workplaces. His experience includes leading the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and serving in senior positions in the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, and the Commission on Civil Rights. His work was often geared toward creating policies to foster diversity in the workplace and creating opportunities for women and minorities in contracting jobs.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires the Bureau to establish the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion. In January, the CFPB established the office in January 2012. Among other requirements, OMWI is charged, by statute, with developing standards for:

Equal employment opportunity and the racial, ethnic and gender diversity of the workforce and senior management of the agency;

Increased participation of minority-owned and women-owned businesses in the CFPB’s programs and contracts; and

Assessing the diversity policies and practices of the CFPB’s regulated entities.

Here are more diversity thoughts from CFPB head Richard Cordray, who holds the job meant for Ms. Warren. Does anyone have a hard time picturing her delivering these bromides in favor of diversity?

Exit Sandman

Mariano Rivera out for the season and maybe forever? The NY Times magazine profiled him (in a good way!) a few years back.

Here is Mo and company dispatching the Red Sox in 2003. The shoe was on the other foot in 2004 and Mo blew two opening week saves against the Sox in 2005, so he was briefly a Fenway fave. Briefly.

Fauxcohantas

Elizabeth Warren just wanted to make friends by promoting her Native American heritage.

But truth may remain a stranger:

Warren’s latest statements came as genealogists at the New England Historic Genealogical Society were unable to back up earlier accounts that her great-great-great-grandmother is Cherokee. Warren’s ancestor, O.C. Sarah Smith, is listed on an electronic transcript of a 1894 marriage application as Cherokee. But as of yesterday, the society was unable to find the actual record or a photocopy, according to spokesman Tom Champoux.

A copy of the marriage license itself has been located, Champoux said, but unlike the application, it does not list Smith’s ethnicity.

I'm still stuck on the fact that, regardless of the veracity of her claim, she dropped it once she reached the pinnacle of her profession.

 

A Paper Of Cowards

Drudge links to a Virginian-Pilot editorial piece about a beating in Norfolk, VA experienced by two of their own reporters two weeks ago, but he misses the Obama connection that may explain the delay in their reporting.

Per the Pilot a mob of "at least 100" black youths beat up two white reporters, who missed a week of work as a result. One of them found this exchange on Twitter the next day:

"I feel for the white man who got beat up at the light," wrote one person.

"I don't," wrote another, indicating laughter. "(do it for trayvon martin)"

DaTechGuy notes that the Pilot had not stinted in their prior coverge of the Martin shooting. So why so coy now?

Let me continue to bury my lead while I reprise the hand-wringing at the VP:

In this case, editors hesitated to assign a story about their own employees. Would it seem like the paper treated its employees differently from other crime victims?

Oh, please. Left unmentioned - it was just a few weeks earlier (last March 30) that Maurice Jones, the publisher of the Virginian-Pilot was finally confirmed as Obama's Deputy Secretary of HUD after a six month wait.

Obviously this crime was a local, not federal matter. Still, the national media does not seem in a hurry to cover the black-on-white "Justice for Trayvon" violence that has a possible connection to the kid that would have looked like Obama's son. And it may be that the news judgment of the Pilot was shaded by a desire to spare their old boss from having to explain to his new bosses just what a symbol that hypothetical son had become.

Just guessing out loud here.

OMG! 'Forward' With Barack

[We note that 'Loyalty Day' is a Communist era relic in an update.]

Was it only a few years ago that conservatives were "frightened bedwetters" and "authoritarian cultists" who wanted a strong father figure to tuck them in safely at night?

OMG! Now libs are rallying behind a deity to save them from the scary Wall Streeters and the scary one percenters and the scary frackers, and, well, the scary world.

His halo has slipped slightly but we get the picture.

And yes, I'm sure I speak for many when I express regret that the team that brought us Joe Biden didn't select this as a campaign poster:

Many more suggestions can be found in the comments to this recent post.

WELL, IT'S ONLY ONE DAY A YEAR... Obama challenges his base to observe "Loyalty Day". Weird that Bush never thought of that [Oops, he did]!  Well, Bush probably had the quaint notion that every day was loyalty day.

THE LIMITS OF REASON: It's a poor workmen who blames his tools - Reason gave me the feeling that this was a new law with this:

Who says House Republicans and President Obama never work together? From Whitehouse.gov:

In fact, the bill was a Communist-era relic, per Wikipedia:

It was made an official holiday by the U.S. Congress on July 18, 1958 (Public Law 85-529).^[4][5] Following the passage of this law, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed May 1, 1959 the first official observance of Loyalty Day. ^[6]

In 2011, and again in 2012^[7] President Barack Obama issued an official proclamation of Loyalty Day on May 1 in accordance with the 1958 Congressional declaration,^[8] as have many of his predecessors:

•  
  • George W. Bush, proclamation 8137 (April 30, 2007) ^[9]
  • Bill Clinton, proclamation 6556 (May 1, 1993) ^[10]
  • George H. W. Bush, proclamation 5962 (April 28, 1989) ^[11]
  • Ronald Reagan, proclamation 4836 (April 14, 1981) ^[12]
  • Jimmy Carter, proclamation 4493 (March 23, 1977) ^[13]
  • Gerald Ford, proclamation 4354 (March 4, 1975) ^[14]
  • John F. Kennedy, proclamation 3528 (April 18, 1963) ^[15]

LA PLUS CA CHANGE... Oh, dear.

SEAL Snipers

The Glorious History Of Obama As Told By Obama (Who Killed Osama!) is taking fire from those who think it was more of a team effort.

Even Jimmy Carter could have managed this anniversary better. In fact, Mr. Peanut managed the first anniversary of the Iranian hostage debacle by getting himself voted out of office, which was a wonderful observance.

Still Proud (And Relieved!) To Be A Native American

Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren climbs the family tree and finds a Native American in the upper branches:

A record unearthed Monday shows that Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has a great-great-great grandmother listed in an 1894 document as a Cherokee, said a genealogist at the New England Historic and Genealogy Society.

The shred of evidence could validate her claim that she has Native American ancestry, making her 1/32 American Indian, but may not put an end to the questions swirling around the subject.

Maybe the Warren campaign could bring in Cher for a fundraiser; the crowd could sing along to "Cherokee Nation", or in tribute to Ms. Warren's great-great-grandmother, "Half-Breed".

Donald Douglas surveys the action. James Taranto guesses (as do I) that Ms. Warren stopped claiming her minority status once it had brought her to the prestigious hall of Harvard; Prof. Althouse disagrees.

But our Law Schools Sans Clue award goes to the various schools described in the NY Times:

Elizabeth Warren, the likely Democratic challenger to Senator Scott P. Brown in the closely watched Senate race in Massachusetts, released statements on Monday night from officials at all of the law schools where she has taught insisting that her hiring was based on merit, not ancestry.

Aides to Mr. Brown have accused Ms. Warren, who teaches at Harvard Law School, of having misled the public by saying she had American Indian ancestors to advance her academic career at a time when law school faculties were under fire for their lack of ethnic and gender diversity.

So let's get this straight - our nation's law schools were under pressure to improve their recruitment of women and minorities. Ms. Warren was clearly flagged in the Association of American Law Schools as a double win, being a female and a Native American. Yet despite the value they claim to attach to diversity in hiring and their focus on improving their diversity in hiring, they missed the screaming clue in the directory and hired her thinking she was merely a white female. Later, of course, Harvard realized their oversight and touted her as the lone Native American woman on the payroll.

Uh huh.

MORE: Prof. Althouse also finds this coyness about AA puzzling.

 

Forward! Or Even Better, Fast Forward!

Team Obama lets their freak flag fly with their new slogan:

New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism

The Obama campaign apparently didn't look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, "Forward" — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism.

Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called "Forward (generic name of socialist publications)."

So it does; here are some screen shots so we can track future defensive editing. From the main Wiki page for "Forward", which includes things like power forward in basketball, we get this subsection on politics:

And the Wiki page devoted to 'Forward' as a generic name for socialist publications has this:

 

I don't know if I should be afraid that Team Obama is didn't research this, or afraid that they did.