End legacy admissions, too, squad’s absurd attack on court

Liberal: End Legacy Admissions, Too

“The Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action in higher education enjoys wide public support,” but more remains to be done, including eliminating universities’ “legacy admissions,” argues The Wall Street Journal’s William A. Galston. Affirmative action’s demise should bring a “thorough re-examination of the entire college-admissions process” as “elite colleges and universities [are] rife with preferences that have nothing to do with race.” Such schools don’t deny it but argue that “every university does it.” In contrast to Harvard’s unethical admission practices, the University of Texas at Austin mitigated unequal opportunity by reserving “75% of its admissions slots . . . for the highest-achieving students at each of the state’s high schools: rich and poor; rural, urban and suburban” — producing a very diverse student body.

Conservative: Justices’ Ruling Won’t Fix Schools

Democrats’ opposition to the court’s affirmative-action ruling contains “a not-so-subtle racist assumption,” notes Derek Hunter at The Hill — “that Black students will fail if made to compete on an even playing field.” Liberals claim “systemic racism” is why “a large racial achievement gap exists in schools.” “The actual reason for the disparities in educational outcomes is, of course, a failed education system” — in areas controlled by Democrats and teachers unions. Yet it’s not in Democrats’ interest to “stand up to the constituency that comprises their party’s lifeblood.” The answer to getting “more qualified Black students” into Harvard and not discriminating against Asian Americans “is to fix the big-city education systems that Democratic Party politics has broken.”

Libertarian: Today’s Journos Love Censorship

The federal government’s “campaign to curb politically disfavored speech on social media has finally encountered a setback,” cheers Reason’s Robby Soave. A judge ruled “against the Biden administration in a pivotal free speech case” over people “punished by social media companies at the behest of federal officials.” That includes a White House staffer appealing directly “to Twitter to remove an account that parodied Biden’s granddaughter.” Twitter complied. Yet the judge’s ruling has “alarmed mainstream outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times,” with one NBC reporter defending such “federal pressure on social media platforms.” The real reason you should worry? The ruling would still likely allow “the federal government to notify social media companies” over “threats,” just like those already being used as an excuse for censorship.

Conservative: Squad’s Absurd Attack on Court

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s nonsense that recent Supreme Court decisions “signal a dangerous creep towards authoritarianism” and Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s declaration that the justices are defying “the will of the majority” are more of the left’s “tired assault on the judicial branch,” groans Adam Carrington at the Washington Examiner. “One would think a member of Congress would be glad for the court to check a president trying to supplant his own role within our constitutional government.” And the “claim that the court thwarted majority will” is also absurd, as “polling consistently shows the public opposing race-based college admission policies by 20-point margins.” “We should reject these wild claims for what they are: cheap shots and shallow talking points.”

COVID beat: Tallying the Cost of Lockdown

Lockdowns were “an unprecedented disaster,” thunders John Tierney at City Journal, per two “exhaustive” studies. One estimates “the average lockdown” reduced “Covid mortality by just 3.2 percent,” some “4,000 avoided deaths.” Compare that to “the toll from the ordinary flu, which annually kills nearly 40,000 Americans.” Another “found no statistically significant effect from the restrictions.” And, during the lockdowns, excess deaths “rose by nearly 100,000 annually due to extra deaths from stroke, heart attack, diabetes, obesity, drug overdoses, alcohol-induced causes, homicide, and traffic accidents” — and American students may earn “6 percent less over the course of a lifetime” thanks to school closures. Yet “the officials responsible for the damage are ignoring these consequences and seeking even more power in the future.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board