May 30, 2002 -
Tales from the crypt -
Why is today’s children’s
literature so gothic? By Moira
Redmond, SLATE.COM, Consider
this scenario, taken from a
children’s book: An 11-year-old
girl is wandering the streets of
New York. Her parents don’t know
where she is. She walks down
alleys, climbs onto roofs, and
actually breaks into strangers’
houses. What is the likely fate
for this child?
May 16, 2002
-
The Legal
Fiction of "Diversity" - Good intentions and the unraveling
of affirmative action. By Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, This week,
the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a district court's finding
that the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action policy
was unconstitutional. In upholding Michigan's affirmative action
program, the Court of Appeals, by a 5-4 vote, took another jog in the
twisting national highway of race and education. Because this new
opinion directly conflicts with affirmative action decisions handed down
by other courts of appeals—such that what's unconstitutional in Texas or
Georgia is now permissible in Michigan—it raises questions that can only
be answered in the U.S. Supreme Court. But the Supremes have
consistently declined to revisit their own baffling affirmative action
jurisprudence. Not just because the issue is fraught with political and
ideological ugliness, of a sort that makes Bush v. Gore look like a walk
in the constitutional park, but because the debate isn't even about
"affirmative action" anymore, as most of us understand that term.
Instead, the affirmative action debate has become the illusory,
impossible attempt to define educational "diversity..."
May 15, 2002
-
Eyes of the witness - By
Steve Chapman, SLATE.COM, It’s time the criminal-justice system
recognized that, in some instances, the very last thing you can believe
is what you saw. On the evening of June 30, 1985, Virdeen Willis Jr., an
off-duty official at a state prison, was drinking with two women in a
bar on Chicago’s South Side. As he and his companions left, someone
approached and shot him fatally in the neck. Four days later, police
arrested Steven Smith, a convicted killer who had served time in the
facility where Willis worked. Smith denied any involvement, the police
couldn’t produce the murder weapon, and no physical evidence tied him to
the crime. About all the prosecution had to offer was a witness, Debrah
Caraway, who said she saw Smith shoot Willis...
