Code Words.

This article examines the Democrats' new version of the civil-rights bill vetoed by President George Bush last year. The Democrats are pushing a new version of the civil-rights bill President Bush vetoed in October, and this one will be tougher than the last. As the bill is written, any statistically "disparate impact'' in hiring standards would be presumed discriminatory. The burden of proving it "job-related'' would fall on the defendant. So the bill would impose hypocrisy by tacitly pressuring employers to adopt what the government says it opposes. The Democrats have been encouraged to renew their assault on freedom in the name of rights by the Bush Administration's manifest reluctance to veto the previous bill, and by its nervous reversal of a ban on federal aid to schools that reserve scholarships for racial minorities.