KINDER'S COMMENTARY: A VICTORY NOTCHED FOR CALIFORNIA'S CIVIL RIGHTS INITIATIVE

Last November, by a margin of 700,000 votes, the electorate of California struck an enormously important blow for freedom and true American values by passing the California Civil Rights Initiative. History will record this event as a decisive turning point in the effort to jerk our culture away from the arrogant elites, especially in government, higher education and the news media, who have done so much to ruin it over the last 30 years or so. History will also record CCRI chairman Ward Connerly as one of the great heroes of this historic effort.

Those elites have taken the original American ideal -- it doesn't matter who your father is, because here you'll be judged not on your birthright but on individual merit and accomplishment -- and turned it on its head. The new dispensation of these pro-quota elites is that the only thing your father is; the only thing that matters is what racial grouping you belong to; the only thing that matters is your gender, your ethnicity, or your claimed membership in one or another accredited victim group.

This is wrong and fundamentally un-American. The original, unanswerable appeal of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was expressed most eloquently by the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his famous "I have a dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in the summer of 1963: "I have a dream that some day my little children will grow up to live in a country where they will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. ..."

Recall that the voters' verdict wasn't 24 hours old before the usual suspects from the American Civil Liberties Union announced their intention to file suit to halt its implementation. They went shopping and found a compliant federal judge, Thelton Henderson, himself until recently an ACLU board member -- conflict, anyone? -- who did their bidding in striking down the CCRI.

Now, as predicted, Judge Henderson has himself been reversed. The following good news update is from the current issue of the Weekly Standard:

"While Washington was feting Connerly, a three-judge 'motions panel' of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was upholding his handiwork in California, restoring constitutional order to that state -- and to the national debate over affirmative action. On Feb. 10, the panel unanimously overturned the outrageous ruling by district court judge Thelton Henderson that had blocked implementation of CCRI. A majority of California voters last November had approved the amendment to the state's constitution, which prohibits race and gender discrimination in employment, education and contracting. Judge Henderson, however, decided in December that CCRI was probably a violation of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment -- and should not be enforced until such doubts could be formally addressed in court.

"Last Monday, the Ninth Circuit panel swept aside Judge Henderson's constitutional improvisation with unusual ferocity. California is not like 'Serbia or Algeria' where 'first they have elections and then they decide whether to honor them,' Judge Andrew Kleinfeld reminded an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union ... The ACLU and Judge Henderson may adopt whatever fancy theory they like, Kleinfeld noted with obvious contempt, but the United States remains a government by the people, for the people -- not one by 'the people with highest Law School Admission Test scores."

"'And it gets better. Later the same day, Judge Kleinfeld and his two colleagues and his two colleagues on the Ninth Circuit motions panel elected to retain near term jurisdiction over the underlying constitutional litigation surrounding CCRI. The case will not now return to Judge Henderson's court, as expected. Instead, the Ninth Circuit panel will itself -- soon, probably by mid-March -- make a formal determination whether CCRI may be constitutionally enforced by California's state and local governments. If, as appears likely, they decide the answer is yes, Gov. Pete Wilson will be freed immediately to begin requesting that state appellate courts hold California's myriad affirmative action programs unconstitutional.

"... There's no telling how this whole mess will end. But all the latest news is good."

Meanwhile, folks, CCRI is going national. Stay tuned.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and is a state senator from Cape Girardeau.