Here's a good question...why is what Judge Frenchfry said about getting the racists at segregated Bob Jones University a tax break being kept from the public?
"A D V E R T I S E M E N T
WASHINGTON - While an associate counsel in the Reagan White House, President Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge John Roberts Jr., made an intellectual argument for limiting the application of federal anti-discrimination laws, but he counseled the administration that for political reasons it should not adopt his view.
The advice from Judge Roberts is contained in a July 24, 1985, memorandum he wrote to the White House counsel, Fred Fielding. The two-page memo was obtained by The New York Sun yesterday from the Reagan Library, which houses a veritable treasure trove of documents that Judge Roberts handled during his four-year stint at the White House.
The battle over the civil rights legislation continued for several years, but ultimately Mr. Kennedy prevailed. His bill passed in March 1988. Reagan vetoed it and his veto was overridden.
A co-president of the National Women's Law Center, Nancy Duff Campbell, said she was disturbed by the nominee's description of Mr. Kennedy's bill as radical. "That's pretty distressing that he would say that. That's the bill that ultimately passed. That's settled law," she said. "This memorandum does raise concerns about what his views are on civil rights law."
Judge Roberts also kept a file on at least one other contentious civil rights issue, the conflict over the government's right to strip the tax exemption of Bob Jones University because of its ban on interracial dating. That file is not among those presently available for review, according to the library's listing."
http://www.nysun.com/article/17393For those too young to remember--Bob Jones University, founded by one of the most virulent bigots in the nation, was segregated. In 1982, Trent Lott urged the Reagan administration to make it tax-exempt, although Federal law prohibited that for segregated institutions. (Lott had already tried and failed to get Congress to do so.) At the urging of a bunch of staffers, Reagan wrote and signed a memo supporting the idea...but when the memo became public, the Gipper had to disown it, saying he had been misled and he had no idea segregation still existed anywhere. Bob Jones U. also sued for tax-exempt status...the case went to the Supreme Court in 1983, and Bob Jones/Jim Crow lost 8-1 (Rehnquist was the only dissenter).
It would be very interesting to know if Judge Frenchfry was one of those who had misled the Gipper and pimped for Jim Crow.
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