From my new column in Taki’s Magazine:

Are Law Schools Above the Law?

Steve Sailer, December 18, 2024

A fascinating test case of the rule of law in America is whether or not law schools are obeying the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions decision in the summer of 2023 finding affirmative action in undergraduate admissions to be a violation of the 14th Amendment’s promise of “equal protection of the laws.�

That ruling against Harvard College didn’t exactly necessarily apply to law school admissions, but come on…you law school deans are supposed to be able to figure out its implications.

The American Bar Association has now published the data on first law classes enrolled after the Supreme Court’s decision, so we can see who’s been naughty and who is nice.

I will focus on the 19 law schools with median LSAT scores of 170 (Vanderbilt, UCLA, Berkeley, Duke, and Boston U.) to 175 (Yale). These account for a little over 14 percent of all law students, and a higher percentage of those who will graduate, more of those who will pass the bar exam, and an especially huge percentage of those who will get hired by Big Law firms to work on corporate deals at starting salaries around $225,000. You often hear about the top 14 law schools that you must attend to be hired to work on major corporate contracts, but nobody seems able to agree on precisely who they are. So a top 19 list works well.

Read the whole thing there.

Here’s a table showing that Harvard Law School’s apparent gesture of compromise with the Supreme Court was not imitated by Yale or Stanford law schools, nor most other leading lawyer factories:

This is one of the funnier and crazier Democrat ploys: Senator Gillibrand (D-NY) wants to change the Constitution by having the National Archivist type the failed feminist Equal Rights Amendment, whose time limit to be ratified was up 42 years ago, into her Official Copy of the United States Constitution. Or something.

44 other Senators joined Gillibrand’s call.

But yesterday the National Archivist, Colleen Shogan, said that No, she wasn’t going to do that, that that’s not the way the Constitution works.

Senator Gillibrand is really mad at Ms. Shogan for “wrongfully inserting herself into a clear constitutional process:”

Presumably, the Democrats know the Supreme Court would not let them do this. But the idea is that they can then win an even higher percentage of the Angry Feminist vote by arguing that the Supreme Court unconstitutionally ripped the Equal Rights Amendment out of the fabric of the Constitution.

It’s pretty amazing that there are a few ski hills within a 90 minute drive of the ten million residents of Los Angeles County. Then again, they aren’t good ski resorts and are barely in business. I have no idea how they get employees to show up on the rare days when they are open. But they exist, and when some optimist buys one and announces big plans, it makes the news, even if the selling price is that of a 6 bedroom house in Pasadena.

For example, Mt. Waterman Ski Resort was recently offered for sale at $2,275,000, which is not actually a lot for half a square mile of Southern California.

From the New York Times news section:

One Ski Resort’s Long-Shot Bet to Survive Low Snowfall and Devastating Wildfires

The closest ski hill to Los Angeles recently sold to an investment group with big plans. But can those ideas work amid catastrophic climate threats that continue to plague the mountain?

Mt. Waterman is a ski hill only 37 miles northeast of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena via Angeles Crest Highway. It peaks out at 8,000 feet with a healthy 1,000 feet of vertical drop, not much by the standards of Park City’s 3,226′ or Telluride’s 4,400′, but not bad by, say, the standards of the biggest hill within several hours of Chicago (300′).

My parents used to go skiing at Mt. Waterman before I was born. But Southern California skiing has tended to move east from the San Gabriel Mountains to the more inland San Bernardino Mountains, where winter temperatures are slightly less mild, the slopes are not quite as steep (Mt. Waterman is 60% advanced runs), there are multiple access roads, and water for snowmaking is readily available from Big Bear Lake.

Hence, Mt. Waterman often is open only a few weekends per year. For example, two winters ago, it didn’t open for lack of snow through the end of February 2023, at which point 8 to 10 feet of snow fell in the most epic dump in decades. March 1, 2023 was the greatest bluebird day...

I’m up to 150k followers on Twitter

From a new book review of my anthology Noticing in Chronicles:

The Crime of Noticing

December 2024

By Auguste Meyrat

Noticing: An Essential Reader (1973-2023)

by Steve Sailer

Passage Publishing

458 pp., $29.95

When it comes to political and cultural commentary, Steve Sailer is one of the most influential writers whom most people have never heard of. But if they listen to any popular podcast, conservative or progressive, they will come to see that Sailer’s arguments and even his style of argument are ubiquitous. Exiled for harboring politically incorrect positions on various issues, he has nevertheless continued writing regularly for three decades, knowing that the right people are reading him.

Of course, some people still try to label Sailer a racist kook devoid of principle. The most recent example can be found in The Atlantic, which published an article attacking Sailer’s character without addressing any of his arguments (“The Far Right Is Becoming Obsessed With Race and IQ,� August 2024). Supposedly, Sailer and others who dare to examine data on race “are shrouding bigotry in a cloak of objectivity and pseudoscientific journalism.� How this is so is anyone’s guess, since the claims of the essay itself rely on prejudiced assumptions and baseless inferences rather than facts.

Fortunately, this kind of emotive reasoning has lost much of its power in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency and the rise of conservative populism. Compared to most writers, both now and in the past, Sailer speaks to the moment and has a firm grasp on what is happening around the world. This is demonstrated in the recent release of Noticing: An Essential Reader, a collection of Sailer’s most notable essays over the course of his long career. Not only does it showcase Sailer’s reliably clear, witty, and refreshingly candid writing style, but it also demonstrates his uniquely inductive approach to every controversy.

Read the whole thing there.

Order my book from Passage

https://twitter.com/PassagePress/status/1864358706789351934

�

From my review of Gladiator II in Taki’s Magazine:

… Denzel is quite good as the Iago-like villain Macrinus (in real life, Macrinus was a Caucasian North African, not a sub-Saharan African, who had Caracalla assassinated and briefly became Roman Emperor before losing his throne to the transgender Heliogabalus, who sounds like he would make a lurid bad guy for Scott’s planned Gladiator III). Denzel plots to take over Rome, or destroy it trying, as vengeance for Marcus Aurelius having been his slave owner long ago in Africa. (In Roman literature, former slaves make the most vicious slave owners.)

Two weeks ago I argued that it wasn’t ridiculous to imagine that an exceptional black could rise to a position of power broker in the Roman Empire. For instance, Pushkin’s great-grandfather Abram Petrovich Gannibal, an extraordinarily clever sub-Saharan slave, became a czarist general under Peter the Great and the ancestor of much of Britain’s current aristocracy.

Nonetheless, [spoiler alert] the 69-year-old Denzel makes an anticlimactic Final Boss for the hero to fight at the end.

I think the complex story could have been simplified by dropping Denzel’s conniving character completely and instead focusing more on how the heroic gladiator and the heroic general overcome their differences to team up to fight a more realistically formidable version of the emperor Caracalla, who would make a more plausible Final Boss.

Caracalla died in real life being assassinated by his own soldier when attacking Persia. Scott could have made that the moral of the movie: Don’t start a needless war with Persia.

Sounds timely.

Unfortunately, the sequel’s obsession with the glamor of royal descent contradicts the ostensible anti-dynastic pro–Roman Republic ideology of the two movies.

Read the whole thing there.

I would have been okay with Trump pardoning Hunter as a gesture of reconciliation.

So it turns at the epicenter of where our country went mad in the summer of 2020 isn’t ground zero for a thriving commercial district…[Businesses near George Floyd Square sue Minneapolis for $30M in damages, CBS News, November 14, 2024]:

Several business owners at the struggling corner where George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020 are suing the city to demand it take over their properties and compensate them.

The owners of the Cup Foods convenience store and other businesses operating near 38th Street and Chicago Avenue argue that the city’s failure to address deterioration and crime in the neighborhood has ruined their businesses and constitutes an unlawful taking of their property without just compensation, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported Thursday. They’re seeking $30 million in damages.

The area, now known as George Floyd Square, has become a place of pilgrimage for social justice supporters from across the country, and the store has renamed itself Unity Foods. But business owners say they haven’t benefitted, while activists and officials remain divided over how to transform the intersection while keeping it as a permanent memorial.

The legal action, filed last week in Hennepin County District Court, argues that the businesses have lost revenue, real estate value, reputation, and tenant and rental income. It argues that the city’s decisions led to higher crime and created a “no go zone� for police in the area. It replaces an earlier lawsuit by the businesses that was dismissed two months ago.

A city spokesperson said in a statement that while it can’t comment on pending litigation, the city “understands the challenges that residents and businesses have confronted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.“

The pendulum will swing back. So many people across the nation were negatively impacted by what happened in May of 2020 in Minneapolis, not far from where the fabled Mall of America is now a Mecca for...

PK Note: Back tomorrow!

Previously on SBPDL: As White Americans Drown in Appalachia from the Flood Waters of Hurricane Helene, FEMA (MIA) Remains Committed to Equity as the “Foundation of Emergency Management”

Remember, the “foundation of emergency management” for FEMA is equity, and that along with this, diversity and inclusion are also not optional. When you understand DEI is simply another way of saying “anti-white,” you’ll understand why a black FEMA supervisor told workers to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they were providing relief to those affected by Hurricane Milton. [EXCLUSIVE: FEMA Official Ordered Relief Workers To Skip Houses With Trump Signs – Whistleblower: ‘It’s almost unbelievable to think that somebody in the federal government would think that’s okay, Daily Wire, November 8, 2024]:

A federal disaster relief official ordered workers to bypass the homes of Donald Trump’s supporters as they surveyed damage caused by Hurricane Milton in Florida, according to internal correspondence obtained by The Daily Wire and confirmed by multiple federal employees.

A FEMA supervisor told workers in a message to “avoid homes advertising Trump� as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid, internal messages viewed by The Daily Wire reveal. The supervisor, Marn’i Washington, relayed this message both verbally and in a group chat used by the relief team, multiple government employees told The Daily Wire.

The government employees told The Daily Wire that at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags were skipped from the end of October and into November due to the guidance, meaning they were not given the opportunity to qualify for FEMA assistance. Images shared with The Daily Wire show that houses were skipped over by the workers, who wrote in the government system messages such as: “Trump sign no entry per leadership.�

It is unclear whether the same guidance...

One of the best accounts, Auron McIntyre, put it best regarding Daniel Penny:

The trial of Daniel Penny takes on a whole new context after Trump’s election He was charged under the old regime and its open hatred of white men He must be freed and celebrated for his heroism

I’ll go one step further: to the establishment, all white men who reject the anti-white mindset are a Daniel Penny waiting to be targeted via left-wing lawfare. [Daniel Penny labeled ‘the white man’ by prosecutor at racially charged manslaughter trial, NY Post, November 4, 2024]:

On day two of his manslaughter case, Daniel Penny ceased having a name.

He became merely “the white man.�

During the prosecution’s opening statements on Friday, they asked why Penny, 26, did “not see Mr. Neely’s humanity.�

On Monday, the Marine Corps veteran — facing 15 years for the subway chokehold that killed mentally ill homeless man Jordan Neely — was reduced by the same prosecution to his race and sex.

Over and over.

This started when 19-year-old Ivette Rosario, a bystander on the train that day, was called to the stand. Rosario, appearing visibly shy and nervous, captured a short, shaky video of Penny holding Neely in a chokehold on the uptown F train.

It became clear that Rosario, whose voice at times was barely audible, did not know Penny’s name, so she referred to him as “the white guy.�

But she was not corrected by Assistant DA Jillian Shartrand, nor did the lawyer inform Rosario of the defendant’s name. Instead, Shartrand adopted it as her own, calling him “the white man.�

Shartrand continued to question Rosario, referring to the defendant as such, more than a half a dozen times. It was jarring to hear it repeated so casually.

Given the racial undertones of the case, with BLM protesters hurling accusations of Penny being a “racist vigilante,� it felt doubly reckless. Even if it wasn’t wholly malicious.

In fact, when Penny’s defense attorney, Thomas Kenniff,...

Years ago, Pat Buchanan wrote a book wondering if America would survive to 2025. The answer from November 5, 2024 is that yes, the American people want to go on. To survive.

They rejected an anti-white Kamala Harris in resounding fashion, re-electing for a third time President Donald J. Trump. No, Trump is far from a race realist, but he has ignited a conflagration deep in the hearts of a people yearning for the America they knew, all so their posterity can enjoy the prosperity and promise they once knew from their parents and grandparents.

Change is a part of life. You gotta move on in life and not look back.

For me, that’s the ultimate lesson of the greatest political comeback story in American political history. We are living through absolutely historical times. Some of that history, you actually have impact you. January 6, 2021, I was actually driving out of Washington D.C. to head to my office in NOVA. Was staying with a friend, and passed by thousands of people making their way to the Stop The Steal rally. I’ve often thought about how many of those people I drove passed – all carrying American flags and wearing “Make America Great Again” attire – were arrested when they stormed the Capitol.

To my everlasting shame, I watched it all unfold from an office high above the skyline across the Potomac. I remember wishing I was apart of the moment, because these patriots stood for something, even if it seemed a fools hope at the time. Last night, watching the returns at a party, it became clear those men and women who stormed the Capitol were the true heroes worthy of veneration. They knew 2020 was stolen, and as the results trickled in, each vote made it clearer how the insanity of the COVID lockdowns, George Floyd Insurrection, and perpetual voting (ballot harvesting) allowed the steal to occur. Not to mention social media censorship, of which Unz.com was a big part of earlier in 2020.

Little did those who participate in the January...

We are in Post-Constitutional America, where the lawlessness seen all across the country is actively kept quiet – and celebrated as declining – by our Media-Run State, only for the FBI to hit CTRL-F in the crime data from a 2022 and replace law heralded data demonstrating a “drop” in crime with the somber reality of what’s actually happening. [FBI Caught Gaslighting the Public With Bogus Crime Stats: The FBI sneakily amended its violent crime statistics and negated the Democrats’ ‘Violent Crime is on the Decline’ narrative., Spectator.org, October 26, 2024]:

Haiti is an island nation, sharing the same landmass with the Dominican Republic. Our entire policy when it comes to resettling Haitians in the USA should be based on how the the Dominican Republic views their neighbors. Nothing more, nothing less (well, save the early years of Haiti when the black slaves slaughtered all the white French in a racial rebellion). [Dominican Republic to deport up to 10,000 Haitians a week, citing an ‘excess’ of immigrants, CNN.com, October 2, 2024]:

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (AP) — The Dominican Republic announced Wednesday that it would start massive deportations of Haitians living illegally in the country, expelling up to 10,000 of them a week.

Government spokesman Homero Figueroa told reporters that the government took the decision after noticing an “excess� of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

Figueroa said officials have seen an increase in Haitian migrants as a UN-backed mission in Haiti to fight gang violence flounders. He said authorities also agreed to strengthen border surveillance and control, but he did not provide details.

Last year, the Dominican Republic deported more than 174,000 people it says are Haitians, and in the first half of the year, it has expelled at least 67,000 more.

Activists have long criticized the administration of President Luis Abinader for what they say are ongoing human rights violations of Haitians and those of Haitian descent born in the Dominican Republic. Abinader has denied any mistreatment.

Wednesday’s announcement comes a week after Abinader announced at the UN General Assembly that he would take “drastic measures� if the mission in Haiti fails. It is led by nearly 400 police officers from Kenya, backed by nearly two dozen police and soldiers from Jamaica and two senior military officers from Belize. The US has warned that the mission lacks personnel and funding as it pushes for a UN peacekeeping mission ...

Nice town you got here in Logansport, Indiana… be ashamed if it became another dumping for thousands of Haitians (and Hispanics). Out of 18000 people, the city is roughly is 62 percent white and 30 Hispanic. Assimilation is impossible when the mandate for those citizens of Logansport is to accept demographic usurpation and the primarily white children of the latter are being “muscled of the schools” by the former. [In Logansport, Indiana, kids are being pushed out of schools after migrants swelled county’s population by 30%: ‘Everybody else is falling behind’, NY Post, October 21, 2024]: