Can a Clump of Cells be Black?

First, a math/computer science joke that only balding men (some of which may have beards by coincidence) or women are likely to understand. There are only 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

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I found these comments about Miers very disturbing (from David Frum's diary on NRO):

"Her critics say the problem goes beyond what Miers does or doesn't know about policy -- and right back to a near-obsession with detail and process.

"'There's a stalemate there,' says one person familiar with the chief of staff's office. 'The process can't move forward because you have to get every conceivable piece of background before you can move onto the next level. People are talking about a focus on process that is so intense it gets in the way of substance.'

"One former White House official familiar with both the counsel's office and Miers is more blunt.

"'She failed in Card's office for two reasons,' the official says. 'First, because she can't make a decision, and second, because she can't delegate, she can't let anything go. And having failed for those two reasons, they move her to be the counsel for the president, which requires exactly those two talents.'"

I've worked for people like that, and it sucks. Another source I read said that she was obsessive about correcting typos and editing documents herself, another sure sign of trouble, and a classic symptom of the problems mentioned above. I think the root of this behavior is the sub-conscious knowledge that you are in over your head; rather than contemplate the problems that may stem from that, you convince yourself that the value-add of editing a document for its grammer (rather than its content) is why you get paid the big bucks. Thus convinced, you think it is OK that you don't understand the content, and you cast a suspicious eye at English graduate students who are capable of doing your job, and willing to do it, at $30 per hour.

Maybe she'll turn out to be a good judge, but I wouldn't be surprised if every good lawyer who ever clerks for her leaves with an extremely bitter taste in the mouth.

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Meanwhile, Bill Bennett is getting skewered for recent comments, where he cited the Freakonomics argument that more abortions implies less crime. He made the mistake of saying that you could reduce crime by aborting every black baby, and then went on to say that would be morally reprehensible. He could have made the same point with any race, or with no race (i.e. all babies), but instead, in unscripted remarks, he focused on the race with arguably the largest crime problem. Now he is being skewered as a racist. Jonah Goldberg had the following remarks in a column today on NRO:

And Democrats and many liberals have been trying to distort what Bennett said. Former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe: "The point he was trying to make, I guess, he said, you know, if you were to go out there and kill the black babies, the crime would go down." Ted Kennedy and a predictably long list of others have called him a racist. Radio host Ed Schultz said: Bennett is "out there advocating the murder of all black babies."

There are too many ways in which this anti-Bennett backlash is cheap and tawdry to discuss here. (Though I should note that a considerable minority of liberal writers who loathe Bennett refuse to participate in the witchhunt.)

My first objection is more of a delicious irony. Notice how so many righteously offended liberals keep referring to fetuses as people. In the New York Times, Bob Herbert proclaims that Bennett considers "exterminating blacks would be a most effective crime-fighting tool." Schultz and McAuliffe say Bennett wants to exterminate "babies."

Funny, I thought the bedrock faith of pro-abortion liberals is that fetuses aren't babies. Isn't it interesting how this lynchpin of liberal morality evaporates the moment an opportunity to call Bennett a racist presents itself?

Can a clump of parasitical cells really claim a race? The other interesting aspect of this is that the origins of NOW were racist in nature - too many black people having these wild kids. Arguably the only person or organization that can be credibly accused of advocating abortion for the purpose of reducing crime by killing black "clumps of cells" is NOW. Bill Bennett is staunchly pro-life, and would counsel any black woman contemplating abortion to consider otherwise. What would Teddy counsel? How 'bout Jesse? He could have avoided paying out a lot of hush money.