THE NAACP'S EXTORTION ATTEMPT: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a once-prestigious civil rights organization, has embarked on a mission to extort money from corporations that the NAACP believes can be tied, in some manner, to slavery. From the Washington Times story: "The group's strategy will include a lobbying effort to encourage cities to enact laws requiring businesses to complete an extensive slavery study and submit it to the city before they can get a city contract." Powerline Blog's Paul Mirengoff cuts to the chase:

The money will benefit individuals who were never slaves and whose parents and grandparents weren't either. These individuals cannot show that they are worse off today than they would have been if, for example, a southern bank had not owned 100 slaves for a time as collateral on a loan. Nor can these individuals show that they are worse off today than they would been if the institution of slavery as a whole had not existed. Moreover, these individuals presently are the potential beneficiaries of racial discrimination through public and private race-based preferences in college admission, employment, government contracting, etc. For all of the talk of "diversity," these preferences are best viewed as a form of reparation. The case for demanding that corporations chip in money on top of this is non-existent.