"It offends me that the court failed to exert any kind of leadership with this decision."

Says William, in the comments in the previous post, apparently forgetting that whole notion of leading from behind.

The underlying issues are clear as a bell. By kicking the case back to the lower court for another look, the court simply deferred its ultimate responsibility.

But affirmative action is all in the timing. The Court manufactured delay the first time the issue came around. Then it did Bakke, giving schools a clue on how to move forward. (Say "diversity," and be like Harvard.) Then it let things ferment for 25 years, at which point, it said:

It has been 25 years since Justice Powell first approved the use of race to further an interest in student body diversity in the context of public higher education. Since that time, the number of minority applicants with high grades and test scores has indeed increased... We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

Even if 25 years had already passed — it's only been 10 — the argument would be for an extension.

Like a schoolmarm, William insists "The underlying issues are clear as a bell."

That paper was due 40 years ago.

I'd say the answer is crushingly clear: We need more time.

"All well stated Professor, but your initial instincts are also correct."

Said William, in the comments to my post about closing the White House to tourists.

My response: "Yes, but sometimes it happens that you decide to do something for the wrong reason and it happens to be a good decision for other reasons."

Can you think of some good examples?

I was going to say that my observation is related to but different from the idea of unintended consequences. But it seems to be the first of the 3 types of unintended consequences:

A positive, unexpected benefit (usually referred to as luck, serendipity or a windfall).

A negative, unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy (e.g., while irrigation schemes provide people with water for agriculture, they can increase waterborne diseases that have devastating health effects, such as schistosomiasis).

A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended (when an intended solution makes a problem worse)

"In the olden days, when leftists wished to argue against gun owners, they claimed that guns were phallic symbols..."

"... and that the excessive love of guns demonstrated latent homosexuality," says William (the commenter), tapping his own memory as "I'm an old man and a living link with the past."

Keep oiling and loading that pisstool, big boy. We know what you're really doing....

Can we not now claim that excessive fear of gun ownership indicates a streak of homophobia? They don't want to ban guns. We know what they really want to ban.