George W. Lott

Our considerate president is making friends with the black community: Thoughtfully timed to coincide with the birth of Martin Luther King, he filed a brief yesterday with the Supreme Court arguing that affirmative action admission policies at the University of Michigan are unconstitutional. As a former C-student whose oily family name got him into Yale, he should know all about admission policies that discriminate againt qualified students.

Bush earned only 9% of the black vote in the 2000 elections and, despite the GOP ouster of overt racist Trent Lott, his chances for upping that number next time around seem slim. Replacing Lott with Bill Frist, one-time member of a whites-only country club, and re-nominating segregationist judge Charles Pickering (whose nomination was shot down by Democrats just last year) to the federal appeals court aren't harbingers of a black groundswell of Bush support.