UPDATED: Disparate-Impact Doctrine: Doing Away With Due Process (Obama’s Race Database)

Constitution, Justice, Law, Private Property, The Courts

Is there any doubt the US Supreme Court is engaged in shameless social engineering, and now regularly exceeds its constitutional appellate jurisdiction? A scandalous example of this is Justice Anthony Kennedy’s swing vote in affirming the disparate-impact doctrine, thus doing away with due process (property rights have long since been sundered).

The Doctrine holds “that the law allows not only claims for intentional discrimination but also, claims that cover practices that have a discriminatory effect, even if they were not motivated by an intent to discriminate.” (CNN)

An example that comes to mind: A property owner (in name only) doesn’t want to sell a residential property in a quaint little town to a developer who’ll erect an apartment block on the small space, currently surrounded by family homes. The government decides that this would impede the ability of poorer minorities to move into this cute little hamlet, and sues the seller.

The SCOTUS Blog:

On June 25, 2015, the Supreme Court, by a five-to-four margin, upheld the application of disparate impact under the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. While upholding the theory, the Court imposed significant limitations on its application in practice. [Yeah, right!]

In a disparate-impact claim, a plaintiff may establish liability, without proof of intentional discrimination, if an identified business practice has a disproportionate effect on certain groups of individuals and if the practice is not grounded in sound business considerations. The Court, however, imposed important limitations on the application of the theory “to protect potential defendants against abusive disparate-impact claims.”

Is there any wonder Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch was so jubilant? She “released the following statement … after the Supreme Court ruling in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project Inc.:

“I am pleased that the Supreme Court has affirmed that the Fair Housing Act encompasses disparate impact claims, which are an essential tool for realizing the Act’s promise of fair and open access to housing opportunities for all Americans. While our nation has made tremendous progress since the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968, disparate impact claims remain an all-too-necessary mechanism for rooting out discrimination in housing and lending. By recognizing that laws, policies and practices with unjustified discriminatory effects are inconsistent with the Fair Housing Act, today’s decision lends support to hardworking Americans who are attempting to find good housing opportunities for themselves and their families. Bolstered by this important ruling, the Department of Justice will continue to vigorously enforce the Fair Housing Act with every tool at its disposal – including challenges based on unfair and unacceptable discriminatory effects.”

UPDATE (7/25): The link between the affirmation of the disparate-impact doctrine and Obama’s race database is obvious. Have race data will travel.

Paul Sperry:

… Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.

This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases, which Obama already is using to make “disparate impact” cases against: banks that don’t make enough prime loans to minorities; schools that suspend too many blacks; cities that don’t offer enough Section 8 and other low-income housing for minorities; and employers who turn down African-Americans for jobs due to criminal backgrounds.

Big Brother Barack wants the databases operational before he leaves office, and much of the data in them will be posted online.

So civil-rights attorneys and urban activist groups will be able to exploit them to show patterns of “racial disparities” and “segregation,” even if no other evidence of discrimination exists.

MORE.

Does McCain Owe A Mea Culpa To POWS & MIAS?

Criminal Injustice, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Media, War

“Does McCain Owe Mea Culpa To POWS & MIAS?” is the current column, now on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine. An excerpt:

“It’s the beginning of the end for Donald Trump.” “It disqualifies him as a presidential candidate.” “This is the end of his run.” So crowed the political operatives looking to take down Mr. Trump, and by so doing, protect the political status quo and ease themselves into positions of greater power. The egos in the anchor’s chair and the pundits opposite chimed in: “He’ll make the more serious candidates look more serious,” predicted the next Michael Oakeshott and favorite imbecile, S. E. Cupp.

The Donald is in the dock for desecrating one of the political establishment’s most sacred cows: Sen. John McCain. Speaking at a forum in Iowa, the popular presidential hopeful said these sagacious things about the Republican from Arizona:

“[McCain’s] not a war hero. He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, okay?” (On the same occasion, Trump ventured that he was not particularly for the Vietnam War, a position that should endear him to principled libertarians.)

Not only does Donald Trump not owe Sen. McCain an apology; McCain likely owes mea culpa to Trump—and to the very many Vietnam veterans and their families whom he is alleged to have betrayed.

Yes, the heroic prisoner-of-war pedigree upon which McCain has established his career and credibility is probably a myth.

For our purposes, the story begins with Sydney Schanberg, back in the days before American journalism became a circle jerk of power brokers.

Mr. Schanberg is one of “America’s most eminent journalists.” “For his accounts of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975,” Schanberg “was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting ‘at great risk.’ He is also the recipient of many other awards–including two George Polk awards, two Overseas Press Club awards and the Sigma Delta Chi prize for distinguished journalism.” Schanberg’s byline at The Nation magazine further reveals that:

The 1984 movie, The Killing Fields [watch it!], which won several Academy Awards, was based on his book ‘The Death and Life of Dith Pran’–a memoir of his experiences covering the war in Cambodia for the New York Times and of his relationship with his Cambodian colleague, Dith Pran.

Schanberg is also the author of a “remarkable 8,000-word exposé”: “McCain and the POW Cover-Up.” Here follow the opening paragraphs. They provide a précis of the forensic evidence collected by Schanberg against McCain as ally of Vietnam War POWs and men missing inaction …

Read on. “Does McCain Owe A Mea Culpa To POWS & MIAS?” is now on The Unz Review.

Deborah Nucatola & Mary Gatter Ugly Through-And-Through

Ethics, Feminism, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality

When they’re base, crass, cruel and grotesque, left-liberal females are especially base, crass, cruel and grotesque. Is there an abomination uglier than Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood, holding forth about the harvesting of fetal body parts, all the while gorging on salad and gulping down wine?

Yes, there is an entity, a blob, to compete with Nucatola. It’s Mary Gatter, aka Less-Crunchy-Technique, I-Want-A-Lamborghini Mary, the Medical director at Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley in California.

The affectatious tart tones the first creature makes! And the way Mary swooshes her gums with her tongue. These women are ugly in and out.

Joshua Wilkerson Tortured By DREAM Pal Hermilio Moralez

Crime, IMMIGRATION

Not that you’d know it from tuning in to CNN or MSNBC or CBS or ABC, but the Senate held another of its Brownian Motion hearings—to create the impression that its doing something to protect the people. Or, “dedicated to the families who lost loved ones thanks to illegal aliens,” as Breitbart puts it somewhat more hopefully. Particularly horrible was the demise of Joshua Wilkerson by an illegal alien with whom he “had been friends for at least five years,” and to whom Joshua had given a ride home from school.

Mom Laura Wilkerson is right. Unless the same is done to “a Senator, a Congressman, the President, even another of today’s heroes, someone from Hollywood”—nothing will come of the exercise.

Breitbart.com has the testimony of Ms. Wilkerson, prefacing the grisly autopsy details shared with an explanation:

Ms. Wilkerson’s son was murder by an illegal immigrant who, because he came to the country as a minor, would have qualified for Obama’s 2012 executive amnesty granted to illegal immigrant minors — or so-called DREAMers, whom Obama insists “belong here.”

Border patrol and immigration officials have explained that executive amnesty for illegal minors was, in large part, responsible for the surge of children coming across the border last summer.

Unlike most Western countries in which all foreign nationals illegally residing in the country are subject to immigration laws, in the United States, the left has effectively carved out a sector of the illegal immigrant population — illegal minors — who are exempt from immigration law. In so doing, the left has created a perpetual cycle of chain of amnesty– as evidenced by Obama’s 2014 amnesty in which he decided to suspend immigration laws for the parents of DREAMers.

Wilkerson read aloud portions of the gut-wrenching autopsy: “‘This body is received in a grey body bag. There’s a tag on his toe that bears the name, Joshua Wilkerson. This is a white male weighing a hundred pounds. He is tied up with braided rope — 13 loops around his neck in a slipknot. It goes behind his back through his back belt loop. It goes to his hands and his feet, behind his body. He has multiple fractures in his face and nasal cavity. His throat and his voicebox are crushed.’”

Wilkerson took a deep breath and continued, looking at the senators before her with a steady gaze. “He was kicked so hard in the stomach that it sent his spleen into his spine, and sliced it in two … The medical examiner said it was torture.”

She returned to the text of the autopsy: “‘This body has significant skin loss on his buttocks, his abdomen, his penis, his hands, and his face. He has one stick of gum and a tardy slip in his pocket.”

“This was our family’s 9/11 terrorist attack by a foreign invader, whether you want to recognize it or whether you do not,” Wilkerson said. “This government continues to fail or even recognize that we have an issue. Americans are dying daily at the hands of criminals that we don’t even know are here.”

“You’re officially notified today there’s a problem when this happens. You can’t deny it any longer. You cannot you cannot stand by and ignore our families — our American families. You’re elected by Americans, not any other country. You should be for Americans,” she emphasized. “If you want to sit quietly on the sidelines, you’ve thrown your hat into the ring already. Your silence speaks volumes. You’re either for Americans, or you’re not.

“I will not give up another one of my children so that a foreign person can have a nicer life. I’m not going to do it. You don’t understand the pain. It’s so deep in the soul — in the place you don’t even recognize you have. There aren’t words to describe the pain to someone who has not gone through it. I’m not giving up another kid,” she said.

Wilkerson then issued a blistering attack on sanctuary city policies that provide safe harbor and anonymity for dangerous, criminal aliens who are living illegally in the United States. She said …

… MORE.