But just because you aren't automatically disqualified doesn't mean you're actually going to be given any money.

Facing threats of litigation and pressure from Washington, colleges and universities nationwide are opening to white students hundreds of thousands of dollars in fellowships, scholarships and other programs previously created for minorities.

Southern Illinois University reached a consent decree last month with the Justice Department to allow nonminorities and men access to graduate fellowships originally created for minorities and women.

In January, the State University of New York made white students eligible for $6.8 million of aid in two scholarship programs also previously available just for minorities. Pepperdine University is negotiating with the Education Department over its use of race as a criterion in its programs.

"They're all trying to minimize their legal exposure," Susan Sturm, a law professor at Columbia University, said about colleges and universities. "The question is how are they doing that, and are they doing that in a way that's going to shut down any effort or any successful effort to diversify the student body?"

The institutions are reacting to two 2003 Supreme Court cases on using race in admissions at the University of Michigan. Although the cases did not ban using race in admissions to higher education, they did leave the state of the law unclear, and with the changing composition of the court, some university and college officials fear legal challenges.

I think they're moving from overt racial preferences to hidden ones. Like when whites, in the beginning of the civil rights age, pretended to be open to hiring blacks (or letting them rent a home), but really had no intention of doing so.

Still, I guess it's progress of sorts. Covert racism is somewhat better than the overt kind.

Posted by: Ace at 12:47 PM | Comments (7)
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I won't be doing the show today, and, unless I change my mind or go to a monthly format, I won't be doing it any longer. I just wasn't any good at it and I've dreaded just about every Tuesday because of the expected failure.

So, it's probably off, but who knows.

Thanks for listening and the encouragement and the constructive criticism along the way. I just have a face for radio and a voice for blogging.

Posted by: Ace at 12:04 PM | Comments (60)
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Oh, this is fun. Not much of a surprise on Andre Agassi (all Dem), but Mohammad Ali gave 67% of his contributions to Republicans.

Troy Aikman? 100% to the GOP.

Jerome "The Bus" Bettis? 100% to the GOP. (Yeah, just a $2000 contribution, but still.)

Ditka, Czonka, Elway... all on the side of Evil. (By which I mean our side.)

Steve Young, too, but you all knew that.

Chris Berman, who I somehow once thought was funny, is a liberal dick.

No listing for Howie Long or Terry Bradshaw, but I'm pretty sure I know where they stand. Even if they don't actually contribute money to politicians.

Thanks to MattM.

Posted by: Ace at 11:57 AM | Comments (68)
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Unbelievable. The kid was a team manager. He never played varsity basketball before.

After heaving up an airball and blowing a layup, he drained six three-point shots in the last three minutes of the game.

It's... almost not believable. Why the hell did the coach even put him in, as he was just the team manager and had never actually played? Why put him in with so much on the line?

And then... how improbable is it the kid just begins sinking three pointers like it's going out of style?

Bush just met with this kid (soon to a Major Motion Picture, and God bless him), and of course AP choses to run some bizarre-looking pictures of the meeting.

Correction: My original headline claimed that he had broken a tie by doing this and thus won the sectional finals. I misread the story; they team did seem to win the finals, but in a later game, not due to this kid's improbable heroics.

I guess the coach put him in because the game was either in-hand or not critical.

Still, a hell of a story.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (22)
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It's true. There are miracles.

It almost seemed like a miracle to Haldis Gundersen when she turned on her kitchen faucet this weekend and found the water had turned into beer.

Two flights down, employees and customers at the Big Tower Bar were horrified when water poured out of the beer taps.

By an improbable feat of clumsy plumbing, someone at the bar in Kristiandsund, western Norway, had accidentally hooked the beer hoses to the water pipes for Gundersen's apartment.

"We had settled down for a cozy Saturday evening, had a nice dinner, and I was just going to clean up a little," Gundersen, 50, told The Associated Press by telephone Monday. "I turned on the kitchen faucet and beer came out."

It gets even better. She's three feet tall, has a flat head, and has a g-spot that responds to infrared LED signals, so you can make her orgasm just by flipping through TV channels. Furthermore, after having an orgasm, she cannot bear to cuddle, but instead obsessively begins making sandwiches.

Thanks to Jack Straw, Slublog, and Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 AM | Comments (10)
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I think this is old, and that I've posted it before. But it's worth reading again, and maybe some haven't seen it.

There's so much bad news maybe it's worth mentioning the good news a couple of times.

This was forwarded to me by Captain S. I would write his name but I'm never sure people want to be ID'd by name, especially in the military. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:11 AM | Comments (2)
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Another do as I say, not as I do liberal:

Here's the scene: Former CBS anchorman Dan Rather is in Cherry Hill, giving a speech about the need for journalists to do better.

"What's gone out of fashion is the tough question and the follow-up," he tells an admiring audience of about 600 people at Cherry Hill's Star Forum.

So how can I, the guy covering Rather's remarks, just sit there?

When he finishes, I hurry to a floor mike to ask Rather about an issue that will be part of my story.

"Mr. Rather," I say. "Great suggestions. But you left the anchor desk last year after your report questioning President Bush's military service was discredited. Key memos could not be authenticated. Do you think the failure to ask questions then affects your credibility now?"

Rather responds with civility -- if not clarity. He notes, in part, that an independent review "couldn't determine whether the documents were authentic or not."

Eager to please, I follow up: "The Courier-Post won't run something if we're not sure it's authentic. Are you saying it's OK . . ."

But my microphone goes dead -- and the audience stirs to life.

Some people jeer. Others glare and scowl (I can now distinguish between the two). This continues outside as I call in my story.

Courage, Dan.

Thanks again to Craig. And there's another good one coming from him, too. He's on fiye-yeh.

Posted by: Ace at 10:46 AM | Comments (5)
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Horrific. Monsters aren't motivated, at heart, by ideology, but by simple psychological pathology.

Authorities called it one of the worst rape cases they could recall.

Seven gang members and three female associates were charged Monday with raping a woman as the mother of one suspect allegedly watched and encouraged the assault, authorities said.

The 23-year-old victim was targeted because her boyfriend had angered members of the Anaheim gang, authorities said.

She was lured into a hotel room by a female gang associate at a Feb. 23 party then sexually assaulted over a seven-hour period, Anaheim police Chief John Welter said.

Thanks to Craig. I guess.

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (11)
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Not in so many words, but check out this Harvard alum noting the US commits "violences" and has "violences" committed against it.

All while defending the questions "V" supposedly raises.

Thanks to Allah.

Previously... The very erudite Ms. Portman gave an undergraduate lecture on -- get this -- counterterrorism.

Among her observations:

- “My immediate reaction is that torture is wrong.”

- “I don’t think it’s right to take down the Twin Towers.”

- “Censorship is bad.”

She further opined that puppies are cute, water is wet, and friends are "fun" and "bring happinesses."

Thanks to JohnS. for that.

Related... I just looked up Harvard University's admissions criteria. It turns out you're awarded thirty points if you have a "really smokin' little body on ya," because, apparently, the Harvard student body doesn't have enough of such bodies.

Diversity. Embrace it!

Posted by: Ace at 10:04 AM | Comments (70)
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Remember the brave (ex-) Muslim woman who so forcefully condemned Muslim backwardness, extremism, and violence on Al Jazeera?

She gives her first interview since then to Israeli National News. With her thick accent, it's a little hard to understand, though.

And the New York Times profiles her, actually writing a pointed headline:

For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats

In the spirit of noting that extremist Muslims reacted violently to cartoons suggesting they were, in fact, violent.

She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.

Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.

In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private.

"I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings," she said in an interview this week in her home in a Los Angeles suburb.

Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater and skirt, with fleece-lined slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes and hair are jet black and her modest manner belies her intense words: "Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."

Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."

She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."

She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

A little more:

DR. SULTAN is "working on a book that — if it is published — it's going to turn the Islamic world upside down."

"I have reached the point that doesn't allow any U-turn. I have no choice. I am questioning every single teaching of our holy book."

The working title is, "The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster."

Wow.

Thanks to Craig and JackStraw for the updates.

Posted by: Ace at 08:37 AM | Comments (23)
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