A dispatch from Washington in the national section of today's New York Times reports on the maneuvering among House Republicans for positions in the congressional leadership. The Times reports, "Representative Ray LaHood, Republican of Illinois, said he was considering running for either majority leader or whip. 'We need new faces, new blood and new ideas,' Mr. LaHood said."
The Times lets this statement, which is laugh-out-loud funny, pass without noting that Mr. LaHood has been drawing a federal paycheck for his work in the House of Representatives since 1983. He was a longtime aide to Rep. Robert Michel, who served for a time as the House Republican leader. Mr. LaHood served for four years as Mr. Michel's chief of staff. When Mr. Michel retired in January 1995, Mr. Lahood took over his seat in Congress. If Mr. LaHood really believes "we need new faces, new blood and new ideas," he ought to take himself out of the running.
Coordinated Action: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports, "The president of Yale University said yesterday that he would like to abandon the frenzied process of early-decision admissions, and that he had approached the presidents of other selective colleges to discuss the possibility of coordinated action." The article goes on to report that the Yale president's comments "came as Yale and other selective colleges were mailing out hundreds of acceptances this week to early decision applicants who filed applications by Nov. 1 and are committed to enroll if accepted."
Funny how the Times seems to embrace "coordinated action" when it is engaged in by college presidents seeking advantage in the market for incoming freshmen, but not by auction-house executives seeking advantage in the art market.
And funny, too, how the article makes no mention of the early action program at Harvard and MIT, which gives applicants an early answer without requiring a commitment from them to enroll if accepted. Brown, Princeton and Yale used to have early action programs but have since moved to binding early decision programs. If Mr. Levin thinks the binding early decision program is such a bad idea, why then did he abandon the early action program? The Times article doesn't help with any answers.
Unreasonable: Check out this paragraph from today's New York Times review of Bernard Goldberg's book "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News." The Times reviewer writes that Mr. Goldberg's argument is "diminished by willfully unreasonable analogies: 'Why should the children of Jesse Jackson or Colin Powell or Diana Ross get some kind of racial preference when they apply to college or go out for a job, but no 'affirmative action' is given to the child of a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant coal miner from West Virginia?' An example that loaded is as unfair as the weighted news stories he denounces." Leave aside the fact that Smartertimes.com doesn't quite see how Mr. Goldberg's example fits the definition of an analogy. Mr. Goldberg's question doesn't strike Smartertimes.com as "willfully unreasonable" or "loaded" or "unfair" at all. It's a question that comes up often in the public policy debate over racial preferences in hiring, one asked by neo-liberals like the Washington Monthly's Charlie Peters as well as by the federal judges that must rule on the legality of such programs. It's a question that defenders of racial preferences have ready answers to. The treatment of the coal miner's child might be considered "unreasonable" or "unfair," but it is just hard to see how the Times reviewer would consider Mr. Goldberg's raising the question to be unfair.