Judicial Salaries

George Will complains that current salaries are resulting in a Bargain Basement Judiciary. To advance this argument, Will presents some misleading claims, but no actual numbers. For example,

The denial of annual increases, Roberts wrote, "has left federal trial judges - the backbone of our system of justice - earning about the same as (and in some cases less than) first-year lawyers at firms in major cities, where many of the judges are located." The cost of rectifying this would be less than .004 percent of the federal budget. The cost of not doing so will be a decrease in the quality of an increasingly important judiciary -- and a change in its perspective. Fifty years ago, about 65 percent of the federal judiciary came from the private sector -- from the practicing bar -- and 35 percent from the public sector. Today 60 percent come from government jobs, less than 40 percent from private practice. This tends to produce a judiciary that is not only more important than ever but also is more of an extension of the bureaucracy than a check on it.

Roberts' claim predates a probable, 32% pay increase for the federal judiciary, almost certain to pass in the Senate. Assuming the House approves, a federal District Court judge will be paid $218,000.00, and a federal appellate judge will receive $231,000.00. Given that the House previously approved similar figures, there's every reason to believe that these increases will take effect. That, I believe is more than four times the median household income for the nation as a whole.

The comparison of judicial salaries to salaries from the highest-paying law firms in the nation? Sure, you're going to be able to argue that associates at those firms earn amounts comparable to the salaries of federal judges. And well in excess of state judges. And comparable to or in excess of state governors and legislators. Or U.S. Senators and Members of Congress. Or the Vice President. Or members of the Cabinet. Or mayors. Or law professors. Or state and federal prosecutors. Well, you get the idea.*

Also, when a lawyer is approached about becoming a federal judge, he does not weigh the offer against a starting salary at a major firm. Either he's in the firm, already making far more money than an associate, or he's in a different type of practice and is quite possibly making far less than the judicial salary. That's the essence of Will's complaint,

Fifty years ago, about 65 percent of the federal judiciary came from the private sector - from the practicing bar - and 35 percent from the public sector. Today 60 percent come from government jobs, less than 40 percent from private practice. This tends to produce a judiciary that is not only more important than ever but also is more of an extension of the bureaucracy than a check on it.

Will provides no evidence that the quality of the judiciary has declined, or that there is a shortage of lawyers willing to take appointments to the bench. All of the evidence I see is to the contrary - we have a lot of highly qualified federal judges, and ample numbers of lawyers who would be happy to get life tenure as a federal judge. As for the idea of judges fleeing from the bench to get bigger salaries, it isn't happening. Granted, some do leave, but we're simply not going to increase judicial salaries to the point that a judge won't be tempted to earn $600,000 - $800,000 or more for walking in the door of a private firm. (If a federal judge wouldn't command that salary when leaving the bench, with the cachet of having a former federal judge on a law firm's résumé, it's safe to assume that the same judge would not be deterred from the judiciary by only making $218,000.00 to start.

Will's other concern appears to be that Republican presidents are appointing too many career civil servants to the federal judiciary, resulting in excessive bureaucracy. That's a creative argument, but one he doesn't back with evidence. Instead, he invokes his usual, tired anti-liberal invective:

Upon what meat hath our judiciary fed in growing so great? The meat of modern liberalism, the animating doctrine of the regulatory and redistributionist state. Courts have been pulled where politics, emancipated from constitutional constraints, has taken the law -- into every facet of life.

That's right, folks. It's the fault of liberals that the judiciary has grown under Reagan, Bush I and Bush II, and they've been advancing their liberal policies by filling the federal bench with liberal bureaucrats. More than sixty percent of federal judges are Republican appointees.

It's insipid for Will to pretend that the number of civil servants who become judges has to do with some sort of "bureaucratization" of the judiciary, or is an evil left-wing plot. Take a look at one of the leading examples of a federal judge who qualified for his position through a careful series of civil service jobs - Clarence Thomas. The civil service provides many opportunities for an administration to position and advance people on the basis of their ideology, without regard for whether those candidates would have a skill set that would allow them to advance in private practice. Some of those people might do very well in private practice, but have deliberately chosen a slower paced life with more rewarding work, great benefits and paid vacations. A federal judgeship has all of those benefits, plus a lot of prestige and a fantastic pension. For all of Chief Justice Roberts' whining about judicial salaries, and that of Chief Justice Rehnquist before him, is there any sign that either of them ever considered resigning their positions to earn more elsewhere?

Even if you choose to overlook the dominance of Republican appointees, it's also silly to pretend that the federal bench has become liberal. State courts are often hostile enough to plaintiffs, but when presented with the opportunity to do so it is the defense that will typically leap at the opportunity to have a case removed to federal court. When "tort reform" groups propose federalizing various claims, such as class action cases, it's not because they believe the federal courts will present them with a disadvantage.

There's also a legitimate question as to whether the highest paying law firms are the best source of federal judges. Will assumes so, and attributes the diminishing number of practicing lawyers who join the bench as evidence that G.W. Bush is appointing substandard judges. To the extent that any substandard judges reach the federal bench, it's the result of patronage, not a dearth of qualified candidates. The greater concern for Will, the one he won't admit, is that he is interested in judicial ideology, not qualification. And no, it's not that he opposes "activist judges" - he wants judges who will actively advance his preferred political agenda.
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Addendum: In addition to the fact that the starting salaries at top law firms are a poor point of comparison, the fact is that we're not going to compensate judges at a level comparable to the highest paying legal jobs in the country, any more than we're going to compensate cabinet members like CEO's. Will implicitly acknowledges this when he speaks of elite firm starting salaries, without choking out specific dollar figures for those neophyte lawyers. You would be hard pressed to find a partner at one of those firms earning less than $500K/year. Most of the people Will claims to want to entice to the bench are likely earning well into the seven figure range.

George Will Blasts John McCain

To put it mildly, George Will does not appear to like John McCain. A taste:

Although his campaign is run by lobbyists; and although his dealings with lobbyists have generated what he, when judging the behavior of others, calls corrupt appearances; and although he has profited from his manipulation of the taxpayer-funding system that is celebrated by reformers - still, he probably is innocent of insincerity. Such is his towering moral vanity, he seems sincerely to consider it theoretically impossible for him to commit the offenses of appearances that he incessantly ascribes to others.

I suspect, though, that come November McCain will still get Will's vote.

This, I suppose, is the type of column which leads some readers who disagree with Will's politics to respect him for his willingness to speak against the interests of the Republican Party. I'm not sold on the idea that Will is a straight-talking maverick... or is that McCain? Well, either way. But it's hard to dispute that this editorial could hurt the prospects of the now-inevitable Republican nominee, and potentially invigorates some tough questions that McCain has so far been able to avoid.

Michigan's Weak Economy

I've been in Michigan a lot longer than George Will. In fact, I'm not sure that he's ever been to Michigan. But for some reason he felt obligated to discuss Michigan in his latest column:

Tuesday's Republican primary is in one of the nation's worst-governed states. Under a Democratic governor, Michigan has been taxed into a one-state recession. Native son Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate who best understands how wealth is created, might revive his campaign by asking: Whom do you want to be president in 2010 when the Bush tax cuts, which McCain opposed, expire?

I'm no defender of Jennifer Granholm, but her administration did not occur in a vacuum. She inherited a disaster left by John Engler, both in the form of a massive budget deficit and an ill-considered tax policy that was made part of the state constitution. Between that and the fact that during most of her tenure the Republicans have controlled both chambers of the State House, it's a child's game to put the blame on the governor or her party. In this particular game, as played by the likes of Will, when roles are reversed (a Republican governor and a Democratic House) all failures are still assigned to the Democrats as "they control the budget." I would personally argue that Michigan's economy has been badly managed for decades, by governors and legislators on both sides of the aisle.

If Michigan has been "taxed into a one-state recession", it is not because of the amount of taxes. The Tax Foundation recently ranked Michigan's "State Business Tax Climate" twenty-seventh out of the fifty states. Given Will's love of Mitt Romney, it is perhaps worth noting that Massachusetts ranked thirty-sixth. So maybe there's more to the picture than taxes. Maybe there's a lot more.

That's not to say that nothing about Michigan's tax policy hurts its future. Consider, for example, the fact that so much revenue is poured into corrections. In the 80's and 90's, legislatures had lots of fun being "tough on crime" - but all that toughness carries a huge price tag. The fact that if you move to Michigan, you'll pay a lot more in property taxes than your neighbor who has lived in the same house for a few years. Say what you want about businesses moving to California (49/50 for tax climate) anyway - Michigan is not California. Paring back public services and funding of state universities to avoid a tax increase? I'm not convinced that many people look at the quality of education available in the state, and the quality of education likely to be available in the future, then say, "I would rather have bad schools than slightly higher (or progressive) state income taxes." I am convinced that many people look at the quality of schools in a lot of the areas where they might locate their businesses, and worry that employees won't want to move there with their families. Oh yes - and the nearest big city is Detroit. (Chicago has the Magnificent Mile, but move to Michigan and you get Eight Mile....)

As for Mitt Romney being the candidate who "best understands how wealth is created"... well, yes. Romney was born into a wealthy, powerful family, so he would have a pretty good idea of how effective that can be at generating wealth and power. (Will provides some of the history, but I'm looking forward to having Bill Kristol fill in the details in his next column on "well-born" Americans.)

Let's close with an explanation of Michigan's budget woes that is somewhat more... competent than George Will's.

Michigan's seemingly perennial budget shortfall, now approaching a five-year run, is rooted in two fundamental issues: a cyclical economic downturn made worse by an endemic, structural deficit. ... Simply put, as its own economic recovery lags behind the rest of the nation, Michigan finds itself faced with the challenge of funding programs with costs that rise faster than available revenues, even in economic boom times. ...

The state's record 1.43 million Medicaid recipients are seeing cuts in services that could grow worse - and, ultimately, more costly to individual patients - if proposed cuts in federal funding are approved by Congress. Michigan's cities and townships have 1,100 fewer police patrolling streets since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and communities are struggling to provide services like fire protection and road and infrastructure maintenance. And as other programs such as corrections swell, more tax dollars are diverted away from higher education, leading to steep increases in tuition and other fees that many say are putting college educations farther out of reach at a time when a changing economy most demands the degrees.

A perfect fiscal storm.

In Michigan's case, steady increases in corrections, Medicaid and K-12 expenditures and what Clay calls an antiquated revenue structure created for a yesteryear economy are leaving the state in a persistent hole....

In balancing annual budgets, Granholm and state lawmakers so far have combined more than $3 billion in cuts, the transfer of nearly $6.5 billion in one-time resources - including draining the state's $1.36 billion rainy day fund - over four years and selective tax increases and shifts to balance annual budgets.

The article also discusses the consequences of the state's failure to invest in education and infrastructure. Almost three years later, things look... no better, probably worse.

I Haven't Seen Him This Angry Since Clinton Was Elected....

Had Romney won in Iowa, would George Will be this angry?

Huckabee fancies himself persecuted by the Republican "establishment," a creature already negligible by 1964, when it failed to stop Barry Goldwater's nomination. The establishment's voice, the New York Herald Tribune, expired in 1966. Huckabee says that "only one explanation" fits his Iowa success "and it's not a human one. It's the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people." God so loves Huckabee's politics that He worked a Midwest miracle on his behalf? Should someone so delusional control nuclear weapons?

Did Will similarly decry George W. Bush's allusions to being guided by the hand of God, or does it only matter in this case because will thinks Huckabee believes what he says, whereas G.W.... And that's the rub, isn't it?

Like Job after losing his camels and acquiring boils, the conservative movement is in distress. Mike Huckabee shreds the compact that has held the movement's two tendencies in sometimes uneasy equipoise. Social conservatives, many of whom share Huckabee's desire to "take back this nation for Christ," have collaborated with limited-government, market-oriented, capitalism-defending conservatives who want to take back the nation for James Madison. Under the doctrine that conservatives call "fusion," each faction has respected the other's agenda. Huckabee aggressively repudiates the Madisonians.

Huckabee's "faction" is supposed to bring out the voters for the wealthy elite who run the Republican Party, and gratefully accept the crumbs scattered to them following each election. There has long been the whisper that swing voters shouldn't be overly concerned about the Republican Party's overtures to the religious right, because they have no intention of carrying out their promises. The problem is, the religious right is dissatisfied with lip service. Having seen G.W. run the government with, for most of his tenure, a majority in both houses, it hasn't been lost on them that their agenda was not a priority.

I saw a chart this morning which reflected that the Republicans who are the angriest with their party are most likely to support Ron Paul. Those Republicans who are less angry with their party, but nonetheless angry, are turning to Huckabee. Why aren't they turning to Romney, who promises that (despite his record) he has been transformed into a social conservative? Could it be that they think he's a phony, and they don't see it as part of their "bargain" with the monied factions of the Republican Party to pretend that he represents their interests?

George Will has joined the efforts of the monied factions of the Republican Party to depict Huckabee as a populist liberal. This isn't a new approach, and hasn't worked very well for Romney. I guess they just don't see how, when every important battle within the party is resolved in favor of what Will deems the "Madisonian" faction, it is breaking their side to get behind the one candidate they believe will actually try to put their agenda first. Or, as David Brooks puts it,

Second, Huckabee understands much better than Mitt Romney that we have a crisis of authority in this country. People have lost faith in their leaders’ ability to respond to problems. While Romney embodies the leadership class, Huckabee went after it. He criticized Wall Street and K Street. Most importantly, he sensed that conservatives do not believe their own movement is well led. He took on Rush Limbaugh, the Club for Growth and even President Bush. The old guard threw everything they had at him, and their diminished power is now exposed.

And yes, that's enough to make George Will's head explode.

Predatory Lending

Is George Will being deliberately obtuse?

Clinton is fluent in the language of liberalism, aka Victimspeak, so, denouncing "Wall Street," she says families were "lured into risky mortgages" and "led into bad situations" by those who knew better. So, lenders knew their loans would not be fully repaid?

Jesse Jackson speaks of "victims of aggressive mortgage brokers." But given that foreclosure is usually a net loss for all parties to the transaction, what explains the "aggression"? Who thought it was in their interest to do the luring and leading that Clinton alleges?

This should be a no-brainer. Mortgage brokers, who received a hefty commission when they connected borrowers with subprime loans, had no incentive to worry about whether the loans would be repaid. They had an incentive to steer borrowers to the loans which returned the greatest commission, regardless of whether it was the best loan for the borrower. Similarly, lenders who intended to sell their mortgages as soon as the ink was dry had little cause for concern that the mortgages would go into foreclosure - they made their money when they sold the mortgages, and the risk was passed along to the buyer.

I'm not absolving borrowers of responsibility. In a lot of these cases I have the reaction, "What were you thinking?" I'm not one to max out the loans on my home, spending every penny of equity (and then some) with the notion that real estate will inevitably appreciate by 10-20% per year. I'm not one to look at an interest-only loan with a teaser interest rate and not ask, "What will I have to pay when the teaser period ends - and can I afford it?" But I'm not going to join Will's insipid pretense that lenders thought that these were all good loans, or that nobody had an incentive to steer borrowers into mortgages for amounts beyond what they should reasonably borrow, or on terms which created significant risk of default, as it's patently untrue.

SCHIP Is About Uninsured Children

George Will shares his thoughts on SCHIP,

SCHIP is described as serving "poor children" or children of "the working poor." Everyone agrees that it is for "low-income" people.

It is described this way... by whom? Because when I look at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services SCHIP website, I read this:

CMS Administers the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Program benefits became available October 1, 1997 and will provide $24 billion in federal matching funds over 10 years to help states expand health care coverage to over 5 million of the nation's uninsured children.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is jointly financed by the Federal and State governments and is administered by the States. Within broad Federal guidelines, each State determines the design of its program, eligibility groups, benefit packages, payment levels for coverage, and administrative and operating procedures. SCHIP provides a capped amount of funds to States on a matching basis for Federal fiscal years (FY) 1998 through 2007. Federal payments under title XXI to States are based on State expenditures under approved plans effective on or after October 1, 1997.

Not one mention of the word "poor". Perhaps what offends Will then is that states are actually afforded the right to share in the determination of who qualfies to participate in the SCHIP program? He lauds Bush's veto because it pares back the rights of states? And he has to "make stuff up" to make his argument more compelling?

Will whines about families who he believes to be too wealthy to be in need of help obtaining health insurance for their children:

Under the bill that Democrats hope to pass over the president's veto tomorrow, states could extend eligibility to households earning $61,950. But America's median household income is $48,201. How can people above the median income be eligible for a program serving lower-income people?

Well, Gee, George - perhaps you have forgotten your years of prattle about how employment-based benefits are part of a "welfare state" that should be eliminated, and the resulting rise of the working uninsured. Perhaps you have totally overlooked what decent health care coverage costs these days - and how if you're not part of a decent group plan you can pay an extraordinary amount of money while getting very little actual coverage. And no matter how much you keep repeating "low income", while nobody has disputed that the SCHIP program has income limits which lead to that result, that does not appear to be among the program's actual goals or elements.

During my last period of being between employment-based insurance plans - during which I was paying COBRA benefits to maintain coverage probably inferior to that Will receives for free from his employer - I priced out "group" plans available through the State Bar. For my family, I found plans which charged $1,200 or more per month, and offered very poor coverage with significant deductibles. I paid my COBRA premiums quarterly, and they were rising several hundred dollars each quarter. The last bill, right before my wife obtained coverage through a new employer, was not far off from $20,000.00 per year.

Will has a lot more concern for the financial plight of the rich, but those are "his people". When do you suppose was the last time he spoke to somebody who works for a living, other than perhaps to explain to his cleaning lady, "Next time I want this toilet bowl to sparkle."

Pity the Rich

A few days ago George Will, presumably speaking for himself, let out a long, pitiful whine about how hard it is to be rich.

Citigroup's Ajay Kapur applies the term "plutonomy" to, primarily, the United States, although Britain, Canada and Australia also qualify. He notes that America's richest 1 percent of households own more than half of the nation's stocks and control more wealth ($16 trillion) than the bottom 90 percent. When the richest 20 percent account for almost 60 percent of consumption, you see why rising oil prices have had so little effect on consumption.

My sympathy is already starting to... er... percolate in my throat.

Will argues that high-end brand names are becoming too democratized. As if there's a deficit of "even higher-end" brand names eager to take their place. He also complains,

But it is increasingly expensive to be rich. The Forbes CLEW index (the Cost of Living Extremely Well) -- yes, there is such a thing -- has been rising much faster than the banal CPI (consumer price index). ...

This is the outer symptom of a fascinating psychological phenomenon: Envy increases while -- and perhaps even faster than -- wealth does. When affluence in the material economy guarantees that a large majority can take for granted things that a few generations ago were luxuries for a small minority (a nice home, nice vacations, a second home, college education, comfortable retirement), the "positional economy" becomes more important.

Wait... is George Will arguing "relative prosperity" to make fun of those who speak of "relative poverty"? No... he really seems to mean this. (Inadvertent self-parody?)

There is some good news lurking amid the vulgarity. Americans' saving habits are better than they seem because the very rich, consuming more than their current earnings, have a negative savings rate.

Note that Will is careful not to use the word "wages" or "income". So the return from your trust fund, taxed at the low capital gains rate, isn't enough to sustain your extravagent lifestyle? Well then, let me be the first to shed bitter tears for you, as you have to sell a few shares of stock in order to maintain your three mansions, yacht and private jet.

Furthermore, because the merely affluent are diminishing the ability of the very rich to derive pleasure from positional goods, philanthropy might become the final form of positional competition. Perhaps that is why so many colleges and universities (more than 20, according to Twitchell) are currently conducting multi billion-dollar pledge campaigns.

Yes, George. Colleges are trying to raise money not because they need it, or because state contributions toward universities is in a downward spiral, but because they hope to kick off a new era where rich people would rather have their name on a tile in a wall of donors than own one of those $200,000 bottles of Hennessy you describe. How astute of you to notice. [Insert eyeroll here.]

George Will's Solution For Racial Justice

All that's necessary to achieve racial justics is for (good?) men to do nothing. That's seems to be the essential message of George Will's latest missive, The Court Returns To Brown. I have heard a lot of criticisms of Brown which are legally creditable, but Will's is not among them.

Incredibly, Will describes Brown as prohibiting the consideration of race in the assignment of children to schools, or implicitly in any other state action. Incredibly, Will quotes Thurgood Marshall for this purpose. Obviously the quote is not representative of Marshall's position, nor is it actually from the Court's decision as Marshall's role was as a lawyer for the NAACP. The quote,

Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere,

appears to be a favorite of right-wingers who prefer an unrepresentative sound bite to substantive debate, and I can't find any presentation of that sentence within its greater context. I suspect that Will picked it up out of a book of quotations or somebody else's column. Is that the only sentence that those opposed to civil rights decisions like Brown can glean from Thurgood Marshall's entire body of written work?

Giving the devil his due, I am not personally a fan of K-12 integration programs offered as a substitute for improving the quality of schools. Even without any discriminatory intent, it can certainly be unseemly if a school district's best schools are largely white and its worst schools are largely minority. Many integration models seem designed to avoid that appearance, but with complacency setting in once the desired level of racial balance is achieved. A bad school is bad, regardless of the racial composition of its student body.

George Will presents what he no doubt believes to be a clever analogy, suggesting that "liberals" like diversity programs for elitist reasons.

Breyer said that last week's decision abandons "the promise of Brown." Actually, that promise -- a colorblind society -- has been traduced by the "diversity" exception to the equal protection clause. That exception allows white majorities to feel noble while treating blacks and certain other minorities as seasoning -- a sort of human oregano -- to be sprinkled across a student body to make the majority's educational experience more flavorful.

Let's start with this nonsense that Brown somehow dictates a "colorblind society". Even if you believe that to be desirable, you would have to be dishonest, ignorant, or deluded to believe that's the principal holding of Brown. You would have to have a similar grasp of history to not know that the insistence of people like Will for a "colorblind constitution" grew out of the civil rights era, and was part of an effort to roll it back. Find me one person like George Will who argued that the Constitution was "colorblind" back when Jim Crow laws were in full force and minority students were intentionally shuttled off to segregated, inferior schools.

Obviously, it cannot be said that the original text of the Constitution is "colorblind".

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

The idea then must be that the 14th Amendment rendered the Constitution "colorblind". That argument fails from the standpoint of originalism. So it is quickly reduced to a textualist sleight of hand - the "plain language" of the 14th Amendment is said to render the Constitution "colorblind" not because of the intent of those who drafted it, and not because of its application during the many decades between the Plessy and Brown decisions, but because "that's what the words mean". I don't mean to dismiss textualism as an approach to constitutional interpretation, but within this context the strongest advocates of textualism are choosing that approach solely as a means to reach their desired outcome, which has always been to roll back the remedial measures implemented in the Civil Rights era.

The "human oregano" comment is meant to be both clever and derisive of Will's primary nemesis, the "liberal". And sure enough, here's one of those nasty "liberals" discussing racial diversity as if it is a seasoning....

While superficial observers might focus on the greater diversity of the Democratic contenders (with one female, one black, and one Latino among them), the eight Dems and ten GOP’ers still showed a similarly disproportionate domination of dark-suited, white, middle-aged males – with a single seventy-something curmudgeon (John McCain for the GOP, Mike Gravel for the Dems) offering some feisty seasoning.

Oops, sorry, that was Michael Medved, and I guess it's white people who are truly "spicy".

Medved, though, represents the George Will school of thought on race - the fact that he regards head counts as indicative of diversity somehow means that everybody else does so, as well. So as much as the Republican right blasted Bill Clinton for having minorities they deemed unqualified in his cabinet, they had no problem demanding that George W. Bush get special credit for having even more minorities in his cabinet, and remain curiously silent when some of those people (most notably Alberto Gonzales) prove disastrously incompetent. (In fairness, incompetence in the Bush Administration is not a racial issue - it's endemic among Bush's appointees.) Beyond the use of less inflammatory language, there's not much to separate this type of "head counting" from that demonstrated by James Watt.

The Brown court's was describing mandatory segregation, but in a manner not irrelevant to the situation which would exist in many school districts in the absence of an integration plan:

Here, unlike Sweatt v. Painter, there are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other "tangible" factors. Our decision, therefore, cannot turn on merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved in each of the cases. We must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public education.

* * *

We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

* * *

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.

The current Supreme Court brushed off these concerns, apparently content that if you remove a single element from the facts of Brown, the mandatory nature of the segregation, all else becomes irrelevant. That's fine with the likes of George Will: If all of the minority students in a district are in failing schools and all of the white students are in quality schools, that's just demographics in action. But to pretend that this is the intent of Brown? To pretend that a decision which overtly speaks of the detrimental effect of segregation "upon the colored children" is color-blind?

Will also proves himself either ignorant of the facts of the Seattle integration program, or again mendacious. The Seattle program permitted students to select their preferred school, with race as a "tie-breaker" for students deemed equivalent under the school board's criteria. No student was forced to be "oregano" - minority students enrolled in schools outside of their neighborhoods by choice, and it is reasonable to believe that virtually all choices were driven by the desire to attend a stronger school, or one which offered programs not available at the local school. It remains the case that equality (or even superiority) of funding of a school does not automatically translate into superior schools, particularly in large urban school districts.

Ultimately, perhaps George Will is the type of "colorblind" buffoon parodied by Steven Colbert. (If you pretend not to see it, at least outside the context of a Republican President's cabinet, it doesn't exist.) I wonder if he sees himself as a modern day George Wallace, standing up for the rights of an 'aggrieved minority'.

At the end of the day the vision of Brown is not fulfilled by pretending that in the absense of intent, de facto school segregation, in which minority students are vastly more likely to end up in weak or failing schools, is not an issue. It is also not fulfilled by shuffling students around between schools to create "racial balance" while doing nothing to improve weak and failing schools. If you gave every school child in a district the ability to go to the school of his or her choice, and the net result were that the vast majority chose their local school because it was "as good or better than" pretty much every other school in the district, the ethnic distribution of students should not be troubling. But we're a long way from that ideal, and (good?) men like Will seem intent on ensuring that we never reach it.

Prohibiting Bilingual Ballots

George Will's latest column, A Vote For English, advocates against bilingual ballots for U.S. elections. He sneers at Alberto Gonzales, who has the temerity to disagree with him on this issue:

The federal government's chief law enforcement official may need a refresher course on federal law pertaining to legal immigrants.

Will points out that in order to be naturalized, the law requires that you "demonstrate an understanding of the English language, including an ability to read, write, and speak words in ordinary usage in the English language." To Will, this means that any person who cannot understand a Ballot that is written in English should not have been allowed to become a citizen. And to Will it inexorably follows that ballots should only be in English, apparently such that voting privileges are reserved to those who "can comprehend the political discourse that precedes the casting of ballot".

Okay... But Will has forgotten a few things. First, not everybody who has weak English language skills is an immigrant. Will may not like this fact, but not every person born in the United States grows up in an English-speaking household. Second, not every election requires that you be a citizen to vote. Some local elections, such as Chicago school board elections, do not require citizenship for participation. Third, communities with large populations of non-English speakers may end up with bilingual ballots even in the abence of a legal mandate as, despite the possibility of Will's disapproval, voters may demand them. The effect of English-only ballots would be felt most significantly by citizens who do not have sufficient political clout to successfully lobby for ballots in their language, which would seem to have the opposite effect of bringing marginalized people into the nation's "political discourse". Fourth, ballots may be available in English, but that English isn't always easy to understand even to a native speaker. Fifth, even if a citizen has weak English language skills, if that citizen is going to vote anyway, isn't it better for everybody else in the country that the citizen understand the ballot?

Oh, but if only we could live in an ideal world, where everybody wears neatly pressed suits, speaks fluent Englsh, and writes for the Washington Post.

As I have previously noted, George Will is preternaturally unable to make even a slight criticism of a Republican without savaging a Democrat. No exception here.

It takes political bravery to propose pruning the Voting Rights Act, given the predictable charges of racism that are hurled so promiscuously nowadays. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, for example, has a liberal's reflex for discerning racism everywhere and for shouting "racist" as a substitute for argument

Demonstrating his firm grasp of the English language, Will asserts the narrowest possible construction of the term "race" and "racism":

Was his opaque idea - well, perhaps it is not opaque to liberals - of unintentional racism merely a bow to Senate rules against personal slurs? What "race" does Reid think is being victimized? Are Spanish speakers members of a single race?

A more astute follower of the nation's civic conversation might recognize that the term "racism" is frequently used in contexts where the speaker is actually referencing "bigotry". Which is not to say that Will doesn't have a point buried in his vituperation. After all, you shouldn't attribute to evil that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Or, in the case of Congress, political opportunism.

"Values Voters" - Just Another Brand

Today, George Will asks, "Who Isn't A 'Values Voter'?" He complains,

This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to . . . well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.

It's the marketing of a brand George, like being a "K-Mart Shopper". It's actually pretty good marketing - It let's an unthinking, bigoted voter feel better than you: "I hate gays, so I will be a 'values voter' by voting for a constitutional amendment which bans government benefits for same-sex couples, and sneer at everybody else as having no values."

It is odd that some conservatives are eager to promote the semantic vanity of the phrase "values voters." And it is odder still that the media are cooperating with those conservatives

The former is not odd - it's good marketing. The latter? Well, I'm sure somebody will find a way to hold it up as proof of "liberal media bias"....

Will, who is preternaturally incapable of even mildly criticizing the political right without attacking the political left, deliberately confuses a politician's appeal to a voter's values with the politician's making an appeal to "values voters".

Hillary Clinton, speaking recently at the annual U.S. Chamber of Commerce convention, scolded "kids," by which she evidently meant young adults, for thinking "work is a four-letter word." She was said to be courting values voters.

She was said by whom to be courting "values voters"? By George Will? Here's how a self-appointed spokesman for "values voters" regards Hillary Clinton:

Hillary Clinton suggested that Democrats go to church for a time to learn the language. Who is stupid now? (Although they might benefit from spending some time in church.)

Do liberals really think that by being able to quote a bit of scripture or to understand Liturgy they are going to be able to win over the values voters? I guess she really thinks we are stupid beyond belief.

How about the bloviations of David Limbaugh?

I'll not address the curious context of Hillary's particular biblical references, as others have covered that subject well. But I will say that when certain famed liberal politicians, like Hillary and John Kerry, invoke Scripture, it seems transparently incongruous.

It's as if they're saying, "Look at me, Middle America, I am bilingual, too: I can talk Scripture as fluently as I can speak English, and I can interweave religion and politics as seamlessly as Roy Moore. So vote for me, Bible-thumpers."

Limbaugh is speaking directly to those who proudly wear the "values voter" brand.

Yes, George, if you presuppose that people who vote based upon their personal values are "values voters", your rhetorical question can be answered "Nobody!" But as you know, the people who have worked so hard to advance the "values voters" brand have something completely different in mind.

Your Civic Duty: Go To The Movies

It is a strange era we live in when we are told that it is our "civic duty" to see a movie. Perhaps the stranger part is hearing that argument from George Will, who would presumably have heaped scorn upon somebody who made a similar assertion about Fahrenheit 911. (Beyond how they relate to Will's political philosophies, I neither mean to compare the two films nor to gloss over the various portions of Fahrenheit 911 which were in my opinion deliberately misleading).

George Will adheres to a philosophy that "you should not rely upon your government", but scorns the notion that you shouldn't trust your government:

After an astonishing 56 months without a second terrorist attack, this nation perhaps has become dangerously immune to astonishment. The movie may quicken our appreciation of the measures and successes - many of which must remain secret - that have kept would-be killers at bay.

Who cares that there is no evidence to support his faith in secret successes (based on secret measures). The important thing is to believe.His adoration for a commencement address given by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. further evidences his adherence to this version of "faith". Holmes wrote:

But in the midst of doubt, in the collapse of creeds, there is one thing I do not doubt, that no man who lives in the same world with most of us can doubt, and that is that the faith is true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause which he little understands, in a plan of campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use.

(A quarter-century before Holmes spoke, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, expressed a similar sentiment.) As we all could be "potential soldiers" in this war in which "the front can be anywhere", in Will's view we apparently all owe the government a soldier's trust in his superior officers and unquestioning obedience to its orders. (Unless, of course, Clinton is the President, in which case a bombing attack directed at Al Qaeda is meant "to distract attention from legal difficulties arising from his glandular life".)

The civics lesson, though, of United 93 can't be to have blind trust in the government. There were many points at which the government could have detected and prevented the 9/11 hijackings. (The question as to whether it would have been reasonable to expect them to put together the pieces in time to prevent the hijackings is subject to debate. The fact that various government actors held the information which, if pieced together, could have been used to prevent the attacks is not.) Will asks us to draw a different lesson:

The hinge on which the movie turns are 13 words that a passenger speaks, without histrionics, as he and others prepare to rush the cockpit, shortly before the plane plunges into a Pennsylvania field. The words are: "No one is going to help us. We've got to do it ourselves." Those words not only summarize this nation's situation in today's war but also express a citizen's general responsibilities in a free society.

That's great, George. The next time I fly I'll be sure to get the passenger manifest in advance, and screen it for suspected criminals and terrorists myself.