January 31, 2007
"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy ... I mean, that's a storybook, man."
I
Suppose
He
May
Have
Missed
These
Folks.
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"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy ... I mean, that's a storybook, man."
I
Suppose
He
May
Have
Missed
These
Folks.
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January 25, 2007
Authorities at Tarleton State University said they plan to investigate a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party that mocked black stereotypes by featuring fried chicken, malt liquor and faux gang apparel."I feel like there is no excuse for this type of ignorance," said Donald Ray Elder, president of the Stephenville school's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Photographs posted on social networking Web site Facebook.com showed partygoers wearing Afro wigs and fake gold and silver teeth. One photo showed students "mocking how African-Americans do step shows," Elder said. In another picture, a student is dressed as Aunt Jemima and carries a gun.
"That upsets me," Elder said. "That's someone who knows nothing about Dr. King, because Dr. King was totally about nonviolence."
Wanda Mercer, the school's vice president of student life, said an investigation was planned into the Jan. 15 party.
I guess I don’t see the need to investigate. The First Amendment guarantees a right to freedom of speech and freedom of association – even speech and association that are offensive and repulsive, such as this event appears to be. But obnoxious activity is not the basis for a government entity to investigate or (one would presume this is where the investigation is headed) impose sanctions. Stupidity is not a crime.
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Authorities at Tarleton State University said they plan to investigate a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party that mocked black stereotypes by featuring fried chicken, malt liquor and faux gang apparel."I feel like there is no excuse for this type of ignorance," said Donald Ray Elder, president of the Stephenville school's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Photographs posted on social networking Web site Facebook.com showed partygoers wearing Afro wigs and fake gold and silver teeth. One photo showed students "mocking how African-Americans do step shows," Elder said. In another picture, a student is dressed as Aunt Jemima and carries a gun.
"That upsets me," Elder said. "That's someone who knows nothing about Dr. King, because Dr. King was totally about nonviolence."
Wanda Mercer, the school's vice president of student life, said an investigation was planned into the Jan. 15 party.
I guess I don’t see the need to investigate. The First Amendment guarantees a right to freedom of speech and freedom of association – even speech and association that are offensive and repulsive, such as this event appears to be. But obnoxious activity is not the basis for a government entity to investigate or (one would presume this is where the investigation is headed) impose sanctions. Stupidity is not a crime.
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PP, and 
((, and 
, and 
D, and
White House hopeful Tom Tancredo said Thursday the existence of the Congressional Black Caucus and other race-based groups of lawmakers amount to segregation and should be abolished."It is utterly hypocritical for Congress to extol the virtues of a colorblind society while officially sanctioning caucuses that are based solely on race," said the Colorado Republican, who is most widely known as a vocal critic of illegal immigration.
"If we are serious about achieving the goal of a colorblind society, Congress should lead by example and end these divisive, race-based caucuses," said Tancredo, who is scheduled to pitch his long-shot presidential bid this weekend in New Hampshire.
Tancredo's request, relayed in a letter to Administration Committee Chairwoman Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Calif., revived his effort to change House rules to abolish the groups. Besides the Congressional Black Caucus, Democrats also have a Hispanic caucus with 21 members, and Republicans have a comparable Hispanic conference with five full members and 11 "associate" members who are not Hispanic.
The request comes in the wake of reports that freshman Rep. Stephen Cohen, D-Tenn., was refused admission to the Congressional Black Caucus because he is white. All 43 members of the caucus are black.
However, given the tendency of Congress to exempt itself from so many laws, I don’t believe that our elected leaders would ever have the integrity to hold themselves to the same standard that they expect of “We, the People.”
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January 21, 2007
As a college senior in Reno in 1988, I recall proudly standing up for the Rev. Jesse Jackson at a Democratic presidential caucus meeting. This precinct, encompassing the university district, ended up going to Jackson -- perhaps the only Nevada precinct he won that year outside of Las Vegas.But I believe most of us who supported Jackson knew he couldn't win. By contrast, if Obama runs this time, I think he has a legitimate chance to go all the way. He appears able to transcend racial politics in a way that Jackson could never manage.
Nevertheless, I fear that the country's still not ready, that in the privacy of the voting booth, we will not take the leap.
I hope I'm wrong.
So there we have it -- Obama's failure will not be about his qualifications or policy positions. No, it will be because we, as a country, are unwilling to vote for a black man for the nation's highest office. No doubt he would make a similar observation about Hillary Clinton, and claim that her defeat would be based upon our unwillingness to elect a woman.
Nonsense!
Barack Obama is an interesting man. He has, however, only weak credentials for the office he seeks. Furthermore, he is an unabashed liberal, unquestionably an inhabitant of the left quarter of the political spectrum. As such, there is a percentage of the American public that will reject him not over questions of race, but over questions of preparation and ideology. Indeed, many of us who fall into that category are quite ready to support an African-American in a run for the highest office -- and many were unabashed supporters of Condoleezza Rice until she unreservedly and unquestionably took herself out of contention for the GOP nomination. Similarly, many of us were supporters of Michael Steele, not Mel Martinez, for head of the GOP. Our opposition to Obama is based upon other criteria -- and we conservatives are doubtless a sizable segment of the American population.
Indeed, Schumacher unintentionally falls into a trap that many commentators on Obama's candidacy and race fall into -- the notion that votes against the man would be based upon his race, and that his defeat would prove that America has not gotten bast the racism of the past. But I'd argue quite the opposite. That Obama -- or Rice -- could be seen as a credible candidate by the overwhelming majority of Americans is the test, regardless of whether or not one of them ever reaches the Oval Office. Even the defeat of Obama, in a race based upon ideas and issues, would be a sign of the elimination of racism as a significant factor in American life, because Obama would have been treated precisely like any other candidate.
And after all, what more can we ask for as proof that we have achieved the goal of treating African-Americans like everybody else?
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January 15, 2007
Over the years, Ike Brown has earned a reputation in rural Noxubee County as a wily political boss, and his election triumphs have time and again aroused suspicions of impropriety. But talk of his tactics never carried much farther than this small community of sawmills and catfish ponds.Today, though, Brown, who is African American, is scheduled to go on trial in federal court in Jackson, where he will face charges from the Justice Department that he violated the political rights of Noxubee's white minority. It is the first time that the 1965 Voting Rights Act has been used to ensure white rights.
About two-thirds of the 8,700 adults in Noxubee County are black, and Brown, the local Democratic committee chief, has been criticized for urging people to "vote black" while engaging in an array of electoral shenanigans.
At issue is whether Brown, 52, has directed "relentless voting-related racial discrimination" against white voters and white candidates through fraudulent election tactics, as federal lawyers say, or whether he was merely operating aggressive political campaigns in a milieu that has long been split along racial lines.
What are some of the actions that Brown is accused of?
In a 1999 Democratic primary for sheriff, for example, the margin of victory for Brown's preferred candidate was only five votes. A judge ruled that a new election should be held because 52 ballots, most of them from absentees, were found to be invalid.Brown, as chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee in the county, did not fulfill the judge's order, telling the local paper, the Macon Beacon, that someone would have to file a lawsuit to compel him to do so. No one did.
In 2003, Brown recruited a black lawyer to run against the incumbent white county prosecutor, according to the government's court filings, even though the white lawyer is a Democrat and the black lawyer was ineligible to run in Noxubee because he lived in Jackson. Brown refused to hear the complaints of the prosecutor and dropped the campaign only after a judge ruled against him.
The same year, Brown delivered to the Macon Beacon a list of 170 or so white Republican voters whom he said he would challenge if they tried to vote in the Democratic primary. Critics say he singled out white voters, but Brown indicated that he was only trying to keep Republicans from voting.
Now tell me that any fair minded individual would have a single objection to prosecuting such actions under the VRA if this man were white and his victims black. Clearly the same standard needs to apply here -- if this country is truly about applying equal protection of the laws in voting rights cases, without regards for the race of the perpetrator of the violations or the victims.
And wonder -- is there a single liberal out there willing to make a denunciation of the "vote black" rhetoric as they would about a GOP official urging folks to "vote white"?
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t should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S's: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950s and 1960s.
During the civil rights era of the 1960s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs. It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools. President Eisenhower also appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court, which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation. Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman's issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military.
Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded as a proponent of civil rights. However, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act while he was a senator, as did Democrat Sen. Al Gore Sr. And after he became President, Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican. President Kennedy, through his brother Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King.
In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King's leaving Memphis, Tenn., after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a "trouble-maker" who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
Yep -- those who acted agaisnt King and the Civil Rights Movement were Democrats -- and that same Robert Byrd who insulted King during the last few weeks of his life was just placed in the fourth spot in the Presidential Line of Succession by the Democrat Party. It is hard to see why any African-American who is dedicated to King's Dream would wish to be associated with that party.
And this is especially true given the evidence laid out by Frances Rice, on how the Democrats have always opposed the interests of black Americans -- and continue to do so up to this day. That includes killing GOP-sponsored minimum wage bills in 2004 and 2006 -- all while claiming that African-Americans are disproportionately hurt by the failure to raise the minimum wage and it was the fault of the GOP that there had been no increase! (Note -- I believe that the truth is that the increased minimum wage will disproportionately hurt blacks by slowing the economy.) And while the Party of Slavery attempts to paint itself as the Party of Civil Rights, it seeks to divide Americans and award benefits and burdens based upon race and ethnicity -- the antithesis of Dr. King's Dream.
No, Dr. King was a Republican for a reason -- and the GOP still remains the home of his Dream.
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January 14, 2007
Think about it.
Christmas should be the first thing that leaps to mind -- over-hyped holiday sales and ACLU-enforced secularization of the day so that any hint that "Christ" and "Christmas" are somehow connected will bring a lawsuit down upon you faster than you can say "Kris Kringle".
Presidents Day? George and Abe get trotted out to promote sales, when they are not overshadowed by hearts and Cupids.
Memorial Day? It has long since quit being a memorialization of the slain and degenerated into "Swimming Pools Are Open Day". Yeah, we still have some obligatory wreath-layings, but the only thing most folks are trying to remember on the last Monday of May is who has the pole position at the Indy 500 and if there are enough bratwursts to let Cousin Lenny have a third one.
The Fourth of July, for all its patriotic overtones, is really "National Fireworks Day". And Labor Day is "Back To School Sale Day" for most folks.
Columbus Day? Ignored to placate the PC crowd, or yet another excuse for a sale at some brave retail outlets. Nothing closes that I can think of. And sadly, even in the midst of war, Veterans Day is equally ignored.
Thanksgiving is still a feast, but in most households it is little more than an excuse to overindulge while watching football and planning which "Black Friday" sales to hit at dawn (or even at midnight, if you shop at Wal-Mart).
But MLK Day is different. Parades honoring the vision of a great American. Oratorical and essay contests for kids. And nary an advertising circular or commercial to be seen.
But I know it won't last. Not for much longer, as we move further on from the lifetime of this American icon.
And every year, I have the nightmare.
I'm watching television, and they hit a commercial break. Some loud pitchman shouts out at me about the great bargains his store is offering to honor the slain civil rights leader. And I awake in horror, with the concluding words of the dream-commercial still ringing in my ears.
Free at last!
Free at last!
Buy one get one
Free at last!
Let us hope this remains only a nightmare -- and that we can restore a sense of honor and reverence to all our holidays.
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