A warning issued by the Department of Housing and Urban Development yesterday points in the direction of eventually declaring criminals a protected class, the coveted status that gives a person more rights than ordinary Americans. Blake Neff of The Daily Caller News Foundation reports:  The Obama administration released a warning Monday telling the nation’s landlords that it may be discriminatory for them to refuse to rent to those with criminal records. Now, technically, this is not (yet) making criminals into a protected class:  The Fair Housing Act doesn’t include criminals as a protected class, but the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) says refusing to rent based on a criminal record is a form of racial discrimination, due to racial imbalances in the U.S. justice system. This is the pernicious “disparate impact” theory in use. If a rule (or the rule of law) tends to affect a protected class (like blacks –...(Read Full Post)