JAMES TARANTO IS defending Vanderbilt Law School’s Carol Swain from charges of being a white-supremacist-lover. “Swain, who is black, is a professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University. She is an expert on white supremacists, having written a book on the subject, ‘The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration,’ which was published in 2002 by Cambridge University Press and drew plaudits from scholars both liberal (Harvard’s William Julius Wilson) and conservative (Princeton’s Robert P. George).” But read the whole thing, which makes clear just how unfair the charge is.

I think the SPLC’s work is finished, if this is the best it can do. It certainly undercuts my already-diminished faith in Mark Potok. . . .