AP reports: "The leader of the NAACP criticized President Bush and his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, for challenging race-conscious admissions in colleges and vowed to work to unseat the president in 2004. Speaking at the 94th annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, chairman Julian Bond praised the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the use of race as a factor in university admissions policies... Bond criticized the Florida governor for his One Florida program, under which state universities can no longer consider race or gender in admissions decisions. High school students are instead guaranteed admission if they are in the top 20 percent of their graduating class... Bond also voiced his disappointment that neither President [sic] Bush nor his brother attended the 2002 NAACP conference in Texas or the 2003 meeting. He also said the group intended 'to uproot the bigger 'Bush' in 2004.'"

NY Times reports: "The Supreme Court preserved affirmative action in university admissions today by a narrow margin but with a forceful endorsement of the role of racial diversity on campus in achieving a more equal society. 'In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity,' Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in her 5-to-4 majority opinion upholding the University of Michigan's consideration of race for admission to its law school. At the same time, by a vote of 6 to 3, and with Justice O'Connor in the majority as well, the court invalidated the same university's affirmative action program for admission to its undergraduate college. The difference was in the details."

Amos Jones writes, "Here in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, a number of the largely frustrated and jobless white students who will graduate in two weeks have been grumbling that the former 'New York Times' reporter never would have been hired and/or promoted had he been white...Conservatives ignore the fact that The NYT did not hire and promote black journalists for most of its history, compelling today's editors to pay special attention to race because of their historical tendencies, in the absence of diversification programs, to discriminate racially. The issue I spot, as a 25-year-old black journalist familiar with NYT and some of the young journalists who work there, is that Blair should have taken Blair off the job long ago... Yet the editors...avoided coming to terms with the ever-elucidated reality that this man was in over his head, even as he steadily reduced the newspaper's credibility."

Farai Chideya writes, "Wouldn't it be great if people like Jessica Lynch and Shoshana Johnson didn't have to go to war to get a job or an education? At the same time that Americans are protesting against the war, thousands this week protested in favor of affirmative action, which faces its latest Supreme Court challenge. Working-class women and African-Americans like Lynch and Johnson will be among those to lose if affirmative action is ended. But affirmative action, as useful as it is, only gives a fraction of Americans the chance they deserve. Schools in working-class neighborhoods are becoming more like truly impoverished ones. In other words, they've become places where too many bright students lose hope."

"Microsoft Corp. said on Monday that it was teaming with General Motors and dozens of other major U.S. companies to support a University of Michigan minority student admissions policy. The world's top software maker said more than 30 companies plan to side with UM's affirmative action policy in a friend of the court brief to be filed on Tuesday in two lawsuits before the U.S. Supreme Court. 'By upholding the university's ability to include race and other factors in the admissions process, the courts will preserve Microsoft's ability -- and that of other companies --to recruit the diverse work force necessary for success in today's global marketplace," Claudette Whiting, Microsoft's senior diversity director.'"

Michael Kinsley writes: "They may not have had an explicit point system at Yale in 1964, but Bush clearly got in because of affirmative action. Affirmative action for the son and grandson of alumni. Affirmative action for a member of a politically influential family. Affirmative action for a boy from a fancy prep school. These forms of affirmative action still go on. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Harvard accepts 40% of applicants who are children of alumni but only 11% of applicants generally. And this kind of affirmative action makes the student body less diverse, not more so."

Brian Balta writes for the Hoosier Review: "If [Bush] really wants to make a point that he's against unfair college admission practices, at his next speech he should take out his diplomas and burn them before the audience. Why? Because the President [sic] of the United States right now is an exact example of unfair privilege in college admissions. He got into Yale and Harvard strictly because his last name was Bush. He went to private schools. He was given an unfair shot because his application received extra points because his father was in a strong political position, in exactly the same way that African Americans are receiving extra points in University of Michigan Admissions. (So did his opponent in the 2000 elections, by the way) It's all a part of the same mess. We've built up a system based on having a privileged few at the top, and those people have set the system up to keep them there."

From a Buzzflash Editorial: "So that brings us back to Condi and her highly orchestrated statement of non-dissent dissent. Like most such Karl Rove-inspired press comments, it is meant to assuage moderate suburban white women voters, while meaning nothing in terms of changing the substance of the latest anti-multi cultural society Bush initiative. It is a pro-white affirmative action policy shrouded in legalese and Neo-Confederacy code word mumbo jumbo. Condi pulls off a typical Rovian Orwellian rope-a-dope: She appears to 'split' with Bush, while still supporting his action. The White House then gets 'image enhancement' mileage out of having a black female appear to be allowed to challenge Bush, when she was apparently one of the key architects of the policy under fire."

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) writes that if Bush is truly "for racial diversity, but against affirmative action as the means - because it 'unfairly awards or penalizes prospective students based solely on their race' - then he should be for a method that fixes the Constitution in such a way that 'all citizens of the United States shall enjoy the (constitutional) right to a public education of equal high quality.' And he should support the idea that Congress will have the power to implement that constitutional right with appropriate legislation - unless he's more committed to 'states' rights' than he is to fixing the educational system through the Constitution so that none of our children are left behind." Jackson's proposed Amendment is H.J. Res 29: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States regarding the right of all citizens of the United States to a public education of equal high quality. Hey George - we're waiting for your signature!

Joe Conason writes, "Why was the Andover dean so concerned about Bush's prospects [for getting into] Yale? Perhaps he glanced at Bush's SAT score of 1206, above average but nowhere near the level needed for acceptance at an Ivy League school. (Bush's score was almost 200 points lower than the average for Yale freshmen circa 1970.) Bush's middling SAT score, incidentally, is roughly the same as that for most of the black students admitted to selective schools in a major Mellon Foundation study that began in 1976. Perhaps that Andover dean also looked at Bush's 'solid' grades, which may or may not have exceeded the C average he later earned at Yale... 'Affirmative action' for the sons and daughters of alumni was a major factor in admissions at Yale and other selective colleges - and continues to be an important factor today. The children of alumni are about twice as likely to be accepted by Yale as other applicants." So where is the outrage???

The Feed writes, "Yesterday, Bush stood up and said that he opposed the University of Michigan's affirmative action program... W hisself, a guy who got into Yale with alumni connections, using his rich guy quota points to get into college. Geez. What gives with this, people? Karl Rove trotted out Bush -- which means they wanted to make news. What a shame. It just goes to show that, no matter how many absurd Trent Lott comments Bush repudiates, no matter how many black leaders meet with the RNC, it's the same old GOP. The same GOP that pushes judges like Charles Pickering (the Mississippi judge who tried to reduce the sentence of a cross burner in 1994), the same GOP that doesn't have a single African-American in the Senate or the House (more on that later), and the same GOP that makes campaign stops at Bob Jones University and insists on fighting for the Confederate flag at the state level." Read this devastating indictment of the GOP's race policies.

"It is unfortunate that [Bush] misunderstands how our admissions process works at the U. of Michigan. It is a complex process that takes many factors into account and considers the entire background of each student applicant, just as [Bush] urged. We do not have, and have never had, quotas... In our undergraduate admissions system, fully 110 points out of 150 are given for academic factors including grades, test scores and curriculum. We only count 12 points for test scores, but that is because we value high school grades to a much greater extent-they can earn up to 80 points. We consider many other factors as well. Race is one of those, but a student who is socioeconomically disadvantaged also can earn 20 points (students cannot earn 20 points for both factors, however). Geographic diversity is also important, and a student from Michigan's upper peninsula, for example, earns 16 points. We also consider leadership, service, and life experiences." W - quit LYING about quotas!