John Cornyn is an establishment Republican who rarely sticks his neck out for any conservative principles.  But like a monkey clattering away on a typewriter, he occasionally does something right, albeit in a small way.  This is one of those times.

The Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights is now going to be renamed the Senate Subcommitee on the Constitution.  What happened to civil rights?  The term civil rights has unfortunately become a code phrase for the left.  Civil rights used to be about giving people the same rights that others had – in the case of blacks, the right to vote, use public accommodations, and be treated the same for job and school applications.

Now it means something completely different.  Now civil rights is about giving special rights to certain groups, while at the same time taking away rights from everyone else.  Here are a few examples:

1) The struggle against voter ID laws.  This fight has been cast as a civil rights struggle, because it is said that poor black and Hispanics can't get free IDs from their states, nor do they already have such IDs, which they must have for renting cars and hotel rooms, buying beer, and boarding planes.  The fight against voter IDs permits voter fraud, a Democratic Party specialty, and each fraudulent vote that is cast nullifies the vote of a legitimate voter, reducing, not increasing, our civil rights.

2) Rights for the disabled.  The Americans with Disabilities Act imposed massive costs on American businesses that were not always cost-effective.  Just one example: hotels were forced to install giant robot arms so people in wheelchairs could use their swimming pools.  The cost of these lifts were tremendous, and small hotels had to raise their rates to pass this cost onto their customers.  A presidential committee estimates that the average employer paid $930 per worker accommodation since the law took effect.  There was no real cost/benefit analysis when these regulations were put in place.

3) Right to gay marriage.  Now that gays can get married, religious orphanages who oppose gay marriage can be sued for not letting gays adopt children; bakers and wedding organizers can also be sued for not participating in these marriages; and our children are taught in school that this is a healthy alternative lifestyle (it's not).  There is a big difference between allowing people to be gay and forcing everyone else to participate and/or approve of it.  This violates freedom of association and reduces our civil rights.

4) Quotas in jobs and education.  Quotas, whether formalized or not, permit less qualified minorities to get jobs and enrollment at universities over other more qualified students.  This reduces the civil rights of non-minority students (as well as unfavored minority students, like Asians and Jews), who deserve to be judged based on objective criteria.  Furthermore, it also stigmatizes minorities, who many people believe succeed because of lower standards, not merit.

No wonder they took the name "civil rights" off the name of the committee!  I would, too.  I'd like to see the committee talk about the "civil rights" of taxpayers – how their property rights are being violated by millions and millions of pages of federal regulations, high taxes, spying by the NSA, and other violations of the government.  Please wake me when an elected Republican gets an original thought on this.

Pedro Gonzales is editor of Newsmachete.com, the conservative news site.