THERE ARE SOME QUOTAS TO KILL

REPUBLICANS DO BEST IN THE DEBATE over racial preferences when they spotlight the least defensible aspects of the civil-rights industry — not its lofty intentions but the grubby reality of race politics. Thus, the defenders of affirmative action fell silent at a House hearing last month when a witness recounted his treatment by a Federal Communications Commission administrative law judge. One J. Thomas Lamprecht read from the judge’s decision informing him that he would not be granted a radio license because he suffered from the “birth defect” of being born a “white Anglo-Saxon male.”