Elizabeth Warren Fesses to Affirmative Action Fraud

The latest statement from Elizabeth Warren gives away the game:

“I let people know about my Native American heritage in a national directory of law school personnel. At some point after I was hired by them, I also provided that information to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard”

That an element of affirmative action fraud was committed, there can be no doubt. Both Penn and Harvard touted their Native American professor in their minority hiring statistics. To what extent Warren was complicit or received personal benefit strikes me as too fine a point to make in defense.

Here's the damning part as reported by the Boston Globe:

"Warren had previously said only that she indicated minority status in an Association of American Law Schools directory used to make diversity-friendly hires beginning in the 1986-87 school year, the year before she was hired at Penn. She stopped listing herself in the directory in 1995, the year she became a tenured professor at Harvard.

Before Warren’s time in the Ivy League - in the early 1980s - she indicated on an official University of Texas form that she was white. She also had the option to indicate Native American heritage at that point, but did not check that box."

When the story keep changing as additional documents are found undercutting the previous story, it's fair to assume the worst.

First Circuit Goes Down on DOMA

Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, has been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit sitting in Boston.

I neither support nor oppose gay marriage, believing that civil unions would adequately address the demands of equality. It's my view that same-sex unions are very similar to opposite-sex marriage but also different in important ways that make some legal distinctions desirable even with a framework of extending full civil rights.

Section 3 of DOMA provides:

"In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife."

This was a little bit lazy, in my judgment and in the court's. There are, I would imagine, quite a number of places in the federal regulations and rules of far flung federal bureaucracies where the word spouse is used in and offhand and trivial ways that would give no great concern if it were extended to gay couples.

The court seemed to find one of these in a obscure provision regarding federal funding for veteran's cemeteries. In other words, should such a veteran's cemetery be excluded from receiving federal funding merely because some soldiers are buried there with their gay partners rather than the cemetery being limited to soldiers and their spouses as narrowly construed by DOMA. In a word, that's silly.

There are, on the other hand, instances where it strikes me as fair for Congress to decide who gets the benefits of the "married filing jointly" tax status, particularly if some states allow gay marriage and others don't. Which is more important withing our federal constitution, taxing gay couples the same as straight couples in Massachusetts or taxing gay couples in Massachusetts the same as gay couples in North Carolina?

The difficult cases are the ones that come down to benefits. Congressman Gerry Studds represented Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 to 1997. Midway through that tenure, in 1983, he was censured for having an affair with a 17-year-old page. Gerry Studds and Dean Hara were married in May 2004 (they reportedly had been couple since 1991). Studds passed away at age 69 in October 2006.

The legal question under DOMA is whether Hara should get the pension and health benefits that Congress extends to spouses. And here the case has an interesting wrinkle. Former Congressman Studds seems to have failed to check the "self and family" box when applying for benefits.

Dean Hara may be just as well qualified in the minds of some egalitarians to receive federal pension and health benefits as Nancy Moore, the second wife of U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, who married Strom when he was 66 years old (on the way to 100) and she was 22. They separated in 1991 but never divorced. Nancy did have 4 children with Strom, so perhaps her case is different than Dean on that account.

Then there is the case of Carrie Butler, a Thurmond family maid who had his first child when she was 16 and he was 22. Should the federal taxpayer have paid her a pension too? She died in 1948, making that question moot. Their daughter Essie Mae is still living.

It does not really matter the the general public, outside of a person's family, who was the right to visit them in the hospital or inherit their partner leaves to them when they die.

It does, however, matter who must be paid a public pension, who gets their health care bills paid, who was to pay what level of taxes, and other questions of that sort. Most of the laws regarding spousal benefits are premised on the traditional notion that one spouse, traditionally the male breadwinner, is responsible for the financial support of the other spouse, both in life and to some extent in death.

In the short term, it's convenient for the First Circuit to say marriage is marriage, but that's bound to lead to results just as silly as the veteran's cemetery. Over the longer term, we're going to have to better define what marriage means, both for same-sex and opposite-sex couples. That's not a place everyone is ready to go, and not just for reasons of bigotry.

Here's where we are today. Retiring U.S. Congressman Barney Frank (age 72) will marry his partner Jim Ready (age 42) in June. That, by the way, just fails the half your age plus rule (72 / 2 = 36, 36 + 7 = 43). Former U.S. Senator John Edwards was acquitted today on one charge with a mistrial declared on others related the secret payoffs to Rielle Hunter, with whom he had an affair and a child. On the way out the door of the courthouse, a reporter asked Edwards if we would now be marrying Hunter.

I don't see how it is fair that I, as a single person and taxpayer, should have to pay a pension to either Jim Ready or Rielle Hunter. Explain the equality of that.

Sex in the City with BHO and SJP or WJC

Well the Democrats have done it now, invited me to two competing fundraising dinners in New York City.

Behind Door Number 1: A grassroots supporter and their guest will be joining President Obama and the First Lady at Sarah Jessica Parker's home in New York City, with airfare and accommodations provided by the campaign.

Behind Door Number 2: President Obama and former President Bill Clinton are inviting a Democrat like you, and a guest of your choice, to join them in New York. Airfare and hotel are covered.

Dinner with George Clooney was just the beginning, we're going to be raffling off President Obama all summer.

PURCHASE, PAYMENT OR FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION WILL NOT INCREASE ODDS OF WINNING. PROMOTION VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

Texas Gives Romney the Ring, Ron Paul Eyes Newt

Mitt Romney went over the top, securing the last of the 1144 delegates he needs to clinch the Republican nomination with a win in the Texas primary yesterday.

# of delegates secured so far	NYT	WSJ	CNN	CBS	MSNBC	RCP
Mitt Romney	1191	1191	1172	1198	1191	1169
Rick Santorum	265	265	266	231	265	267
Newt Gingrich	138	138	144	125	138	145
Ron Paul	137	137	140	121	137	118
Jon Huntsman	2	2	1	2	0	0
Michele Bachmann	1	1	1	0	0	0
Total	1734	1734	1724	1677	1731	1699
% of delegates secured so far
Mitt Romney	69%	69%	68%	71%	69%	69%
Rick Santorum	15%	15%	15%	14%	15%	16%
Newt Gingrich	8%	8%	8%	7%	8%	9%
Ron Paul	8%	8%	8%	7%	8%	7%
% of remaining needed to clinch:
Mitt Romney	-9%	-9%	-5%	-9%	-8%	-4%
Rick Santorum	159%	159%	156%	150%	158%	149%
Newt Gingrich	182%	182%	178%	167%	181%	170%
Ron Paul	182%	182%	179%	168%	181%	175%

Ron Paul has pulled within 4 to 9 delegates of surpassing Newt Gingrich. With six states left to vote and a number of delegates to be selected at state conventions where Ron Paul is always well organized, he's on track to do that. That would put Ron Paul in third and push Newt Gingrich down to fourth going into the convention.

Well, everything after first place is for bragging rights, but that may go to the lone Huntsman delegate from New Hampshire, if there is even one. Lone Huntsman, that sounds like a superhero. Dr. Paul is the evil villain with the heart of gold. Newt Gingrich is the hapless henchman.

Update 5/31/2012:  The Lone Huntsman rides alone no more. After the Texas votes settled, Jon Huntsman and Michele Bachmann were each awarded 1 Texas delegate. In Eye of Newt news, Ron Paul has now pulled within 1 to 4 delegates on mots scorecards of creeping up to third place.

Memorial Day 2012: Waist Deep in the Big Muddy

Pete Seeger will seem an odd choice to some for Memorial Day, but it is perhaps the best tribute to the old military saying: "Every soldier is entitled to a competent command."



This goes out to:

• My high school friend Traci's son Lucas who will be commissioned in the U.S. Marine Corps after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis tomorrow. Semper Fi and God be with you.
• My cousin Justin who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in spring 2011, and served on active duty for 10 years with more deployments than I could keep track of. This will be his first Memorial Day as a veteran.
• My cousin Bud, an Army Air Corps pilot who died when he was shot down over Belgium on December 24, 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge. His name is carved in an arch at Virginia Military Institute where he took his officer's training.
  
• My severals-great uncle Isaac Lee, a private in the Iowa Volunteers who was mortally wounded and taken prisoner at Jenkins Ferry, Arkansas on April 30, 1864, died in hospital a week later, and is buried beneath the southern pines.

Poor Joe Biden Still Dreams of Being President

A lot of people are talking about Joe Biden's rant in Ohio. What they are not talking about is the gaffe within the gaffe. Queue to the 45 second mark:

"I resent the fact that they think we are talking about, we're angry, it's job envy, it's wealth envy, that we don't dream."

Pay attention to the switch in what he says next:

"My mother believed and my father believed that if I wanted to be President of the United States I could be, I could be Vice President."

Joe Biden always wanted to be President. He wanted it so bad that he ran for President to no effect in 1988 and 2008 He got the VP slot on the ticket in 2008 after John Edwards self-destructed and Hillary Clinton decided she'd rather be Secretary of State.

"My mother and father believed that if my brother or sister wanted to be a millionaire, they could a millionaire."

Joe Biden's net worth is notoriously low, a mere $500,000 by some reports, despite making pretty good money as a U.S. Senator for 36 years and currently making $230,700 a year as Vice President. I don't know if Joe's siblings achieved the parental dreams but Joe apparently has come up a little short of his mother and father's dreams.

"My mother and father dreamed as much as any rich guy dreams. They don't get us. They don't get who we are."

Oh, I think I get it. It must hurt Joe Biden to the core to be serving alongside President Barack Obama. Not only does he have Barack Obama's $400,000 a year salary to envy, he also has the many millions Barack Obama has made from his book, Dreams from My Father.

Elizabeth Warren, Woman of Color and Mystery

The Elizabeth Warren affirmative action fraud scandal continues to unravel. It's clear Elizabeth Warren self-identified as a minority in professional directories to further her professional career. It's also clear that some of the law schools where she worked took that information and touted her minority status as evidence of their commitment to affirmative action.

The latest revelation is this paragraph from a 1997 Fordham Law Review article:

There are few women of color who hold important positions in the academy, Fortune 500 companies, or other prominent fields or industries. This is not inconsequential. Diversifying these arenas, in part by adding qualified women of color to their ranks, remains important for many reasons. For one, there are scant women of color as role models. In my three years at Stanford Law School, there were no professors who were women of color. Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995.

Portions of the Fordham article are archived at the website racisim.org, which includes this tantalizing tidbit:

I have spoken with many women of color about their law school experiences of attending class, hearing a professor say something demeaning about women of color, noticing no reaction among their classmates, and ultimately wondering, "Is it just me?" To illustrate, at a conference at Harvard Law School organized by the Women of Color Collective, when one panelist described the "is it just me" phenomenon, women throughout the audience nodded their heads in understanding.

Just who was the panelist who asked "is it just me"? That sounds like a certain blue-eyed blonde white woman who wants to be the junior U.S. Senator for Massachusetts. Well, maybe not. But just what was Elizabeth Warren's connection with the Women of Color Collective at Harvard? We have ourselves a mystery.

The thing that you can regard as absolutely certain is that organization's such as the Collective kept close track of minority hiring at colleges and universities around the country, and kept especially close track at Harvard. It's inconceivable that such a conference would have been held at Harvard at a time when the law school was publicly touting Elizabeth Warren in its minority hiring stats without her being invited.