And these people *teach* law?

You know leftists have a truly losing argument if they can't even summon Ruth Bader Ginsburg's help in a Supreme Court case. The absolutely astounding thing is, the losers in the case, oblivious to Constitutional principles, are Ivy-league law professors. You can't make this stuff up.

Last week, it pleased the court to hear Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR). Since Vietnam, the federal government has told campuses that they must allow military recruiters all the privileges of other campus recruiters if it wants federal funding for research. Recently, law schools have tested this rule and eventually backed down after the hundreds of millions of dollars campuses received were threatened. So they brought suit, and a confused lower court ruled in their (FAIR's) favor.

Audio of the proceedings was recently released to the public, and it is a good listen if you've got a spare hour.

What it boils down to is this: following the reasoning of the law schools on this case (that schools should be able to bar whoover they want but keep federal funds), all Title 9, affirmative action and discrimination-fighting measures applicable to schools would be thrown out the window. If the court would treat this as a free-speech issue for campuses (forcing the federal government to let universities compete for grants by striking the Solomon amendment under the unconstitutional conditions doctrine), schools that wanted to discriminate based on race, gender, or any other matter would have free reign.

There is no law against having the view that races should not mix. There is a law that says if you enforce those policies on a campus, you are not eligible for funding from taxpayers. And law schools want to undo this principle.

The other crazy paradox: Congress has an expressed Constitutional interest in providing for an army, right there is article I, section 8. Nobody has yet found the clause requiring federal funding for education.

The Weekly Standard puts it best:
Therefore--the law schools' mindbogglingly illogical argument proceeds--the government is constitutionally required to let universities actively obstruct the Pentagon's on-campus volunteer-force recruitment campaign, free from the "crisis of conscience" that a threatened financial penalty might inspire. This, even though no one disputes the fact that the government could, if it wanted to, forcibly conscript every law student in the land without ever having spent a single dime on higher education.

The scary thing is, this case wasn't hatched by a crackpot like Cindy Sheehan or Howard Dean. This was instigated and guided by law professors. At Ivy league schools. These people are supposedly training "the best and brightest" and their own phony ideas will likely be utterly rejected by an 8-1 or 9-0 decision.

Keep your eye on this case, Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, because it was big news last fall but will hardly be mentioned in papers when decided next spring because it is such an open-and-shut rebuke of liberal shitheadedness.

UPDATE:

The absurdity continues.

Harvard University and Georgetown University object to military recruiters at their law schools because the military supposedly discriminated against gays with the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. What would you think would be their response to an organization that wants them to set up a new center excusing regimes that has an "ask and behead" policy?

That's right, liberals would gladly take the $20 an run. When Saudis want these universities to legitimize their oppression in the name of cultural diversity, universities jump at the chance. Again from the National Review: "While Harvard professors may backslap themselves for protecting homosexuals and their peers from a full choice of careers, it is unfortunate that they welcome cash from a family which denies visas solely on the basis of religion. Jews need not apply."