A good decision -- how do you penalize a company and stockholders today for (lamentably) legal actions taken (often by a predecessor entity) over a century and a half ago?

A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected most claims by slave descendants that they deserve reparations from some of the nation's biggest insurers, banks and transportation companies.

The three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that slave descendants have no standing to sue for reparations based on injustices suffered by ancestors and that the statute of limitations ran out more than a century ago.

But the panel did keep alive a smaller portion of the suit, claiming that major U.S. corporations may be guilty of consumer fraud if they hid past ties to slavery from their customers.

The opinion, written by Judge Richard A. Posner, said that "statutes of limitations would be toothless" if descendants could collect damages for wrongs against their ancestors.

"A person whose ancestor had been wronged a thousand years ago could sue on the ground that it was a continuing wrong and he is one of the victims," the court said. It said statutes of limitations could be extended in some cases but not for acts committed 100 years ago.

The panel also said the descendants lacked standing to sue because their links to the slaves were distant.

Now the court did keep alive a consumer fraud claim, but I doubt it will prevail. After all, does a company have an affirmative obligation to disclose any connection to slavery in its distant past?

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Unfortunately for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his crowd of Holocaust denying anti-Semites, the verdict is in and the evidence indisputable.

Delegates at the meeting earlier on Tuesday agreed to form a "fact-finding" committee to study the Holocaust.

The head of the new committee, identified as Iranian academic Mohammad Ali Ramin, said its members were "not racist or opposed to any particular group".
"Rather they are just seeking the truth to set humanity truly free," the ISNA students news agency quoted him as saying, without naming the committee members.

Robert Faurisson, a French scholar who has described the Holocaust as a "historical lie", said the committee included members from the United States, France, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Iran, Bahrain and Syria, ISNA reported.

But if you want to know what these buffoons are really all about, consider this speech and its reception.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday told delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel's days were numbered.

Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of six million Jews in World War Two as a "myth" and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map", launched another verbal attack on the Jewish state.

"Thanks to people's wishes and God's will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want," he said.

"Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added.

His words received warm applause from delegates at the Holocaust conference, who included ultra-Orthodox anti-Israel Jews and European and American writers who argue the Holocaust was either fabricated or exaggerated.

This is the leader of a nation chasing after nuclear weapons. He is promoting a view of history that is wrong, in order to justify his own planned genocide of the Jews – a genocide envisioned and justified by his holy book. Given the folks that Ahmadinejad has surrounded himself with during this conference, perhaps the now is the time to put an end to him and his plans – and to cleanse the human race of some of its most disgusting specimens.

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Look who turned up at Iran's Holocaust Denial Conference.

Iran held a gathering that included Holocaust deniers, discredited scholars and white supremacists from around the world on Monday under the guise of a conference to “debate” the Nazi annihilation of six million Jews.

Among those representing the United States was the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, whose prepared remarks, issued by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said the gas chambers in which millions perished actually did not exist.

Robert Faurisson, an academic from France, said in his speech that the Holocaust was a myth created to justify the occupation of Palestine, meaning the creation of Israel.

That is what IranÂ’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has frequently claimed, and it was Mr. AhmadinejadÂ’s statements that inspired the Foreign Ministry to hold the conference. The ministry said 67 people from 30 countries were participating in the two days of meetings.

In a welcoming speech, Rasoul Mousavi, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies, said the session would provide an opportunity to discuss the Holocaust “away from Western taboos and the restriction imposed on them in Europe.” In several European countries, denial of the Holocaust is a crime.

An accompanying exhibition also denied the Holocaust. One poster with three photographs showed dead bodies and described accounts of their gassing as a myth. Signs pointed to smiling prisoners freed at the end of the war with the label “truth.”

New captions in Persian on other pictures of corpses described them as victims of a typhus epidemic in Europe, not of the Nazi death machine.

I bet my recently0-banned troll Ken Hoop is positively orgasmic reading these accounts, having spent months espousing just such lies here.

And I ask the world -- is this a nation that we can allow to get nuclear weapons, especially given the stated objective of its president to complete the task tha he denies hitler began?

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I wish he had gotten life, but 90 years seems acceptable.

A teenager who helped to savagely beat another youth and sodomize him with a plastic pipe, leaving him near death, was ordered Monday to serve 90 years in prison.

In a verdict that his victim called "just," Keith Turner, 17, faces at least 30 years behind bars before he can become eligible for parole. The sentence came less than a month after Turner's friend, David Tuck, 18, received a life prison term for his role in the attack.

"This is just another step," the 18-year-old victim told the Houston Chronicle after Turner was sentenced. He noted that he faces more surgeries and the trial of a lawsuit related to the incident.

His father said he was pleased with the result.

"We did it. We got them both. It's what we wanted. We're happy," said Albert Galvan. "Those two guys are not going to walk around in society for a while."

Turner showed little emotion as state District Judge Michael McSpadden announced the jury's decision. His mother, Janis Turner, sobbed.

She had sought to convince the jury on Friday that her son is a good person who was influenced by bad people. "He's not a bad kid," she told jurors as they began considering punishment. "He's making bad choices."

How many "good kids" do you know who sodomize people with a pipe for kissing a girl of a different race?

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It does not get any clearer than this -- such statutes are under-inclusive in their application.

If their overarching purpose is to affirm the equality of all people, then the law should punish all assaults the same, regardless of the race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability or veteran status of the victim. The "protected class" should be human beings.

Cut through all the arguments about freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and "perceived harms" from crimes based upon bias, and this is the heart of it -- no person should be victimized by crime, and differential treatment based upon "protected class" status undermines the very notion of equality that we as a society strive for in our attempts to wipe out racial bias.

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After all, the overwhelming majority of the GOP base -- and Americans in general -- are supportive of the philosophy of colorblindness enunciated by one of the greatest members of our party.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

We are ready, willing, and eager to live that philosophy as a nation NOW, as we do in our day to day lives as individual citizens. Unfortunately, a host of racial set-asides, special programs, and affirmative action schemes make that impossible, for government classifies Americans by race and ethnicity for the purpose of distributing benefits to them -- and forces private industry to do the same.

That is why the people of Michigan passed the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative -- despite opposition by the party establishments of both major parties.

On Election Day, when Michigan easily re-elected a Democratic U.S. senator and governor, a ballot measure to end such programs in college admission and state government hiring and contracting won by an even larger margin.

But virtually every major GOP official and organization, including the gubernatorial candidate, opposed the measure, as did Democratic leaders and candidates.

Yet the proposal won overwhelming support from Republicans and independents, and almost all demographic groups.

But how deep does support run for such a colorblind policy? Pretty deep, if the polling data can be trusted.

The ballot measure won majorities among virtually all demographic groups except blacks, self-described liberals and Democrats. It passed 64-36 percent among whites who were 85 percent of the electorate, and lost 86-14 among blacks, who were 12 percent (roughly the national average) of the electorate.

Other than a 50-50 split among the 15 percent of the electorate with incomes of $15,000-$30,000, the measure carried every income group and every age group.

Interestingly, the only group of voters, when classified by education, among whom it lost was the 16 percent of the Michigan electorate with post-graduate degrees. And it received 49 percent from them.

Do we have the guts to stand up as a party and push for true equality? Do we have the guts to stand up as a party and push for colorblindness? Do we have the guts as a party to truly embrace the notion that distributing benefits and burdens based upon race and ethnicity is morally and constitutionally reprehensible and must end?

Or will we be cowed by those who would call us racists for following such a strategy for equality -- and who would call us racists even if we did not?

The very future of America depends upon our willingness to stand for principle.

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But in doing so, they need to seek the overturn of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as well as the recently approved Prop. 2. After all, the ballot initiative took its language straight from that landmark civil rights legislation.

In the wake of a decisive Nov. 7 vote to prohibit race- and gender-based preferences in employment, education and contracting, leaders in government and academia who fought to preserve affirmative action are now hurrying to assess the impact. Officials said the response is likely to start with a court challenge.

Business and civic leaders who opposed the anti-affirmative-action measure are gathered here on Friday to develop a strategy. The University of Michigan Board of Regents is also meeting, with announcements expected soon. At City Hall, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D) is drafting an ordinance that would favor companies based in the city, which is more than 80 percent African American

"The voters went to the polls and Proposition 2 passed, and we have to live with it now," said Matt Allen, the mayor's spokesman. "As of December 22, there can be no more gender or race preferences."

The first attempt to block the new law in court was filed soon after the election, although courts have upheld a similar California law.

"There will be both offense lawsuits and defensive lawsuits filed to understand what this actually means for Michigan," said Kary L. Moss, executive director of the Michigan office of the American Civil Liberties Union. "I do think it's necessary for the courts to slow this thing down and . . . interpret some of the language."

But really, how much is there to interpret -- or object to -- in a law that declares that state and local government entities "shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting"?

After all, the 1964 Civil Rights Act forbids discrimination based upon "any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin". After more than four decades, how can an enactment like the MCRI even be controversial -- unless one supports discrimination or preferences based upon one or more of those categories?

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My only objection is that this 18-year-old punk will get a shot at parole when he turns 48. Life ought to mean life -- especially since this scumbag has spent three of the last four years in jail because of race-based assaults on others.

As a fifth-grader, David Henry Tuck had punched and kicked his teacher, leaving the woman with broken glasses and a black eye. A few years later, he beat a man unconscious because of his ethnicity. When a deputy tried to arrest him for that attack, he kicked the officer in the hand.

After listening about the violent past of the 18-year-old, jurors sentenced him Friday to life in prison for beating another teen so severely that the youth still requires medical attention for internal injuries caused when Tuck kicked a plastic pipe into the youth's rectum.

On Thursday, a Harris County jury convicted Tuck of aggravated sexual assault for the April incident, in which a witness said he shouted "white power!" and racist epithets while assaulting the Hispanic youth.

The jury sentenced Tuck to the maximum under the law, including a $10,000 fine. He will be eligible for parole in 30 years. The jury deliberated for less than an hour. It declined to comment afterward, court officials said.

Why the attack? Because the Hispanic victim had allegedly kissed a white girl.

Now some want the Legislature to pass a new "hate crime" law because of this incident. I disagree. It seems pretty clear to me that the statutes that exist right now are more than adequate to deal with such offenses -- just as the legal system adequately dealt with the killers of James Byrd (two death sentences, with life in prison for the third perp for his testimony against his co-defendants). The question comes down to one of the will of prosecutors to pursue the cases with the tools they have -- tools that offer the maximum punishments available under state law for any crime.

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All but the most stunted of moral midgets recognize that the two great evils of the twentieth century were Communism and Nazism. Just as the former still holds some attraction for the Mercedes Marxists on college campuses and in Hollywood, so, too, does the foul ideology of Hitler attract those with hate in their hearts.

They have scurried out of the sewer in Germany.

German neo-Nazis, some shouting ``Sieg Heil,'' rampaged in the eastern city of Frankfurt on Oder and destroyed wreaths placed to mark the anniversary of the 1938 Nazi pogrom against the Jews, police said on Friday.

A police spokeswoman said the group had launched an attack on Thursday evening, shortly after a memorial service by community and Jewish leaders at a monument where a synagogue once stood.

She said the neo-Nazis trampled floral wreaths placed at a memorial stone to the synagogue in the Polish border city that was destroyed 68 years ago in the Nazis' Kristallnacht or ''Night of Broken Glass.''

They threw away candles left at the memorial, which had been attended by about 200 people. When police arrived, some of the neo-Nazis shouted ``Sieg Heil,'' police said. Authorities stayed on guard at the memorial site through the night.

That this malignant mindset still holds sway over any minds after the documented evil perpetrated in its name is rightening. And the choic of the anniversary of Kristalnacht is clearly intentional, showing that anti-Semitism is alive and well in Europe.

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A former head of the KKK is dead -- too bad it is of natural causes.

Former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Samuel H. Bowers, who was convicted eight years ago of ordering the 1966 bombing death of a civil rights leader, died Sunday in a state penitentiary, officials said. He was 82.

He died of cardio pulmonary arrest, said Mississippi Department of Corrections spokeswoman Tara Booth.

Bowers was convicted in August 1998 of ordering the assassination of Vernon Dahmer Sr., a civil rights activist who had fought for black rights during Mississippi's turbulent struggle for racial equality. He was sentenced to life in prison.

"He was supposed to stay there until he died. I guess he fulfilled that," Dahmer's widow, Ellie Dahmer, told The Associated Press on Sunday. "He lived a lot longer than Vernon Dahmer did."

Booth said that the Klansman died at approximately 11:30 a.m. in the Mississippi State Penitentiary Hospital in Parchman, a sprawling prison carved out of the cotton and soybean fields in the impoverished Mississippi Delta.

Here's hoping that not even Bowers' family mourns this creep's death -- though I'm sure that I'll hear from at least one of his fans on this site.

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The junior senator from Illinois and presidential hopeful proves that even election to high office doesn't guarantee that one knows or speaks the truth.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois on Friday urged hundreds of blacks not to vote along racial lines next week in Maryland's Senate race.

Obama, the only black U.S. senator, came to the state to rally support for Democratic Rep. Ben Cardin, who is white. Cardin's Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, is the first black candidate ever elected statewide and has been courting black Democrats.

"Listen, I think it's great that the Republican Party has discovered black people," Obama said to laughter from students at the rally at predominantly black Bowie State University. "But here's the thing. ... You don't vote for somebody because of what they look like. You vote for somebody because of what they stand for."

Let's give this man a quick history lesson.

If one goes back to the birth of the GOP, it was a party that had the rights of blacks as its primary issue. Remember, the GOP was the party of abolition -- and that among those who were a part of its founding meeting was Frederick Douglass. At a time when the Democrats believed every black should be a slave, the Republican Party was co-founded by black men like Douglass -- an escaped slave. While they could not vote because they were women, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman were also active supporters of the Republican Party. The Democrats, on the other hand, fought tooth-and-nail to keep blacks from voting in general elections -- or participating in party primaries, until the Supreme Court told Texas Democrats in Fort Bend County (and, by extension, Democrats in the rest of the country) that such actions violated the guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment.

When the Civil War came to an end and the black slaves of the solidly Democrat South achieved the freedom guaranteed them by Republican President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Republican Congress' Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, the Republican controlled legislature of Mississippi sent Hiram Rhodes Revels to be the first black United States Senator (filling the seat left vacant by the resignation of Democrat Jefferson Davis -- President of the Confederate States of America. He was later succeeded in the Senate by Blanche Bruce, the first black United States Senator to serve a complete term. At the end of his term, the Democrat-controlled Mississippi legislature replaced him with a former Confederate officer who had helped draft and sign the Mississippi Ordinance of Secession.

Incidentally, the next black man to serve in the US Senate was Edward Brooke of Massachusetts -- another Republican, from 1967-1979, at a time when the Democrat Party was still fighting against civil rights and trying to determine if blacks should have representation at Democrat nominating conventions. On the other hand, should the Democrat Party regain control of the US Senate next week, they will choose a former leader of the KKK, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, to be the president pro tempore of the Senate, placing him third in line for the presidency of the United States.

Republicans were active in their defense of the rights of African-Americans for the next century -- and every significant piece of civil rights legislation passed during that time was the product of GOP authors and/or an overwhelming number of GOP votes in Congress. Democrats, on the other hand, fought against civil rights every step of the way, writing and enforcing Jim Crow policies. It took a Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, to craft a decision to overturn such segregation.

It was a proud Republican who, in 1963, gave a speech at the Lincoln Memorial that clearly enunciated the Republican position on civil rights and racial equality -- of an America in which all people "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Today the GOP continues to stand for the vision of our brother Martin Luther King, Jr., while the Democrats continue to seek to divide and balkanize along racial lines.

So you see, Senator Obama, it is pretty clear that neither party needed to "discover" black people. The problem is that one of them is the party of Ol' Massa, Jim Crow and the Klan, while the other is the party of emancipation, civil rights, and equality. Michale Steele is a part of the latter -- and any African-American should be ashamed to vote for or serve in office as part of the former.

OPEN TRACKBACKING AT Samantha Burns, Pirate's Cove, Third World County, Bullwinkle Blog, Adam's Blog, Clash of Civilizations, Right Nation, Uncooperative Blogger, World According to Carl, People Are Idiots, Cao's Blog, Stop the ACLU, Conservative Cat, Amboy Times, Blog-O-Fascists, Church & State, Woman Honor Thyself, Right Wing News, Blue Star Chronicles, Echo9er, Wake Up America, Pursuing Holiness, Dumb Ox, Is It Just Me?, Jo's Cafe

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And, as usual, they are bad for the prosecution and its flimsy case.

he dancing partner of the woman who accuses three Duke Lacrosse players of raping her refutes a key part of her partnerÂ’s account of the alleged crime.

Kim Roberts, who danced at the same party where the alleged rape took place, makes the revelation in an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley this Sunday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Roberts' answer to BradleyÂ’s question directly contradicts a crucial statement the accuser gave to police. Bradley asks whether she, Roberts, who goes by the stage name "Nikki" when she performs, was holding onto the accuser at the beginning of the alleged crime.

Says Bradley, "In the police statement, [accuser] describes the rape in this way: 'Three guys grabbed Nikki,' 'That's you,'" says Bradley, "'Brett, Adam and Matt grabbed me. They separated us at the master bedroom door while we tried to hold on to each other. Bret, Adam and Matt took me into the bathroom.' Were you holding on to each other? Were you pulled apart?"

"Nope," replies Roberts, who says she was hearing this account for the first time.

Roberts also denies the accuser's statement to the police that after the alleged rape, Roberts came into the bathroom and helped one of the rapists dress her.

When pressed by Bradley about whether she saw signs of rape from the accuser, such as complaining about pain or a mention of an assault, Roberts says, "She obviously wasn't hurt...because she was fine."

Bradley's report also contains interviews with the three defendants, Collin Finnerty, Reade Selligmann and David Evans, all of whom proclaim their innocence, and others involved in the case.

It seems to me that, unless there is some bombshell information is ut there, DA Nifong needs to drop this case.

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After all, a ban on a symbol is a ban on a symbol -- even if the symbol is being mocked and deprecated.

Juergen Kamm, the owner of a small German mail-order business, makes a modest living fighting neo-Nazis. His firm sells sloganeering T-shirts, music albums and books as part of a campaign to rid the country of extremists. "Smash Fascism!" one hot-selling button urges.

Last week, however, a court in the city of Stuttgart ruled that under German law Kamm might as well be a Nazi himself. His crime? Selling items bearing swastikas, the Nazi symbol that has been forbidden here since the end of World War II.

Never mind that Kamm's company, Nix Gut, loosely translated as "No Good," displayed the swastika only inside a crossed-out circle or as part of other designs intended to impugn Nazis and their ilk. A panel of judges agreed with state prosecutors in Stuttgart that any reproduction of the symbol, no matter the context, risked making it socially acceptable again in Germany.

"The danger of familiarization is ever present," said presiding Judge Wolfgang Kuellmer. "In particular, this mass-market business risked undermining its taboo status."

I hate the swastika. I also hate the ubiquitous Che photo. But I wish that they are never banned -- because making them illegal just makes them attractive to a small segment of non-conformist, not just the moral midgets who accept the underlying philosophy.

Free speech is the key to killing malignant ideologies -- from Nazism to Communism to Islamism.

Posted by: Greg at 02:00 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Bt then again, why should anything different be expected of the party of slavery and segregation?

httpBlack business owners and religious leaders say there is an undercurrent of discontent with the Maryland Democratic Party's lack of black statewide candidates and think it will encourage support for Republicans -- especially Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's run for the U.S. Senate.

"There's a lot of nervousness. You got a whole lot of black folks who are going to move towards Steele and possibly [Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.]," said Wayne Frazier, a black business leader in Baltimore and a supporter of Mr. Steele's opponent, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin.

The Rev. Grainger Browning Jr., pastor of the 10,000 member Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Fort Washington, said: "The Democratic Party does have a challenge now to show that it wants to make sure the African-American leadership is included in decision making."

The Baltimore Sun yesterday reported that Maryland's 10 black state senators met last week with Mr. Cardin and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, the Democratic nominee for governor, to register complaints that the party's top candidates for statewide office are white men.

The black senators, dubbed the "Committee of Ten," told Mr. Cardin and Mr. O'Malley, who are both white, that they are hearing about discontent among their constituents over the party's lack of diversity.

One participant complained that blacks get nothing but lip-service from the Democrats, despite the overwhelming loyalty of African-Americans to that party. This points up two things. First, because of their monolithic voting patterns, Democrats don’t need to even throw a sop to the black community because their votes are secure. Second, it demonstrates that too many blacks have bought into the myth that the GOP is racist, despite the fact that the Republicans do run minorities for major offices for substantive offices and reach out to the black community despite having their hand slapped away by black “leaders” who have been bought and paid for by the Democrats.

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Bt then again, why should anything different be expected of the party of slavery and segregation?

httpBlack business owners and religious leaders say there is an undercurrent of discontent with the Maryland Democratic Party's lack of black statewide candidates and think it will encourage support for Republicans -- especially Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's run for the U.S. Senate.

"There's a lot of nervousness. You got a whole lot of black folks who are going to move towards Steele and possibly [Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.]," said Wayne Frazier, a black business leader in Baltimore and a supporter of Mr. Steele's opponent, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin.

The Rev. Grainger Browning Jr., pastor of the 10,000 member Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Fort Washington, said: "The Democratic Party does have a challenge now to show that it wants to make sure the African-American leadership is included in decision making."

The Baltimore Sun yesterday reported that Maryland's 10 black state senators met last week with Mr. Cardin and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, the Democratic nominee for governor, to register complaints that the party's top candidates for statewide office are white men.

The black senators, dubbed the "Committee of Ten," told Mr. Cardin and Mr. O'Malley, who are both white, that they are hearing about discontent among their constituents over the party's lack of diversity.

One participant complained that blacks get nothing but lip-service from the Democrats, despite the overwhelming loyalty of African-Americans to that party. This points up two things. First, because of their monolithic voting patterns, Democrats don’t need to even throw a sop to the black community because their votes are secure. Second, it demonstrates that too many blacks have bought into the myth that the GOP is racist, despite the fact that the Republicans do run minorities for major offices for substantive offices and reach out to the black community despite having their hand slapped away by black “leaders” who have been bought and paid for by the Democrats.

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This from Pace University in New York City.

A paperback copy of the Koran was tossed into a toilet on the lower Manhattan campus of Pace University - the latest in a spate of bias incidents upsetting students and administrators at the college, officials said yesterday.

The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the vandalism of the Koran, and the university's private security also is probing the incident, sources said.
"A Koran thrown into the toilet? I am hurt, not just as a Muslim but as a human being," said Zeina Berjaoui, 20, president of Pace's Muslim Student Association.

In the past two weeks, vandals also scrawled a swastika and .anti-black slurs on the same bathroom wall at Pace's campus near City Hall. Someone also sprayed the N-word onto a car parked at the school's Westchester County campus, cops and university sources said.

"One of our university's greatest strengths is its diversity," Pace President David Caputo wrote in a letter describing the incidents. "When speech is hurtful towards a class of people or incites violence, we must condemn it and take measures to stop it."

The copy of the Koran had been taken from the university .library before being defaced Sept. 21. It turned up in the toilet approximately two weeks ago. Today, cops will quiz the student who last withdrew the book, police sources said.

Well maybe there is a crime here – someone stole the book from the library.

But apart from the theft, how exactly does the act of placing a Koran in a toilet constitute any sort of crime? Indeed, is it not like flag burning, expressive conduct that communicates a point of view -- perhaps “Islam is a bunch of shit.” Would a Bible in a toilet elicit a similar response from the University? How about an American flag? An Israeli flag?

I find the statement that the university wishes to “take measures to stop” speech that is “hurtful to a class of people” particularly chilling. Does this mean that expression of the “wrong” views on abortion, homosexuality, religion, or race are prohibited at Pace University? Will speech that targets conservatives, Christians, Jews, or white people be stopped by the University, or will the offended students and faculty members be told that they need to butch up and accept the right of their antagonists to speak out? Just wondering – but pretty sure about the answer.

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A group of Jewish doctors close their medical clinic on Saturday in accordance with their religious faith. Sounds like a legitimate choice to me, and one certainly protected by the First Amendment.

But not according to the NAACP. They want to impose a little bit of involuntary servitude and religious oppression upon those who own and operate the clinic.

The village chapter of the NAACP has filed a complaint accusing the Ben Gilman Medical and Dental Clinic of religious discrimination for closing on Saturdays.

The complaint, filed Sept. 6 with the state's Division of Human Rights, alleges that the clinic's practice of remaining closed Saturdays in observance of operators' Jewish Sabbath, unlawfully imposes their religious beliefs on others.
Complainants say the practice is an unlawful violation of people's civil rights, particularly since the clinic's operator, Monsey-based Community Medical and Dental Care Inc., has received millions of dollars in federal funding.

In addition to the Gilman clinic, Community Medical and Dental Care operates Monsey Medical and Dental Center.

Sharon Milner, executive director of Community Medical and Dental Care, declined to comment on the complaint but said the organization had retained attorney Robert Lewis to handle the matter.

Lewis, who has an office in Nyack, also declined to comment.

Willie Trotman, president of the Spring Valley branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the purpose of the complaint was to have the clinic open on Saturdays.

Those who work — more than 80 percent of the clinic's clientele are Hispanic or black, according to a letter the clinic sent to the Human Rights Commission earlier this year — would find it convenient to visit their doctors on a Saturday when they had the day off, Trotman said yesterday.

Yeah – but it would also be convenient for them to see their doctors on Sundays. How many Christian doctors has the NAACP filed complaints over closing their offices on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath? I’d be willing to bet that it is a non-negative number smaller than 1.

But I guess when you are a perpetual victim class, the rights of others are irrelevant.

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A group of Jewish doctors close their medical clinic on Saturday in accordance with their religious faith. Sounds like a legitimate choice to me, and one certainly protected by the First Amendment.

But not according to the NAACP. They want to impose a little bit of involuntary servitude and religious oppression upon those who own and operate the clinic.

The village chapter of the NAACP has filed a complaint accusing the Ben Gilman Medical and Dental Clinic of religious discrimination for closing on Saturdays.

The complaint, filed Sept. 6 with the state's Division of Human Rights, alleges that the clinic's practice of remaining closed Saturdays in observance of operators' Jewish Sabbath, unlawfully imposes their religious beliefs on others.
Complainants say the practice is an unlawful violation of people's civil rights, particularly since the clinic's operator, Monsey-based Community Medical and Dental Care Inc., has received millions of dollars in federal funding.

In addition to the Gilman clinic, Community Medical and Dental Care operates Monsey Medical and Dental Center.

Sharon Milner, executive director of Community Medical and Dental Care, declined to comment on the complaint but said the organization had retained attorney Robert Lewis to handle the matter.

Lewis, who has an office in Nyack, also declined to comment.

Willie Trotman, president of the Spring Valley branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the purpose of the complaint was to have the clinic open on Saturdays.

Those who work — more than 80 percent of the clinic's clientele are Hispanic or black, according to a letter the clinic sent to the Human Rights Commission earlier this year — would find it convenient to visit their doctors on a Saturday when they had the day off, Trotman said yesterday.

Yeah – but it would also be convenient for them to see their doctors on Sundays. How many Christian doctors has the NAACP filed complaints over closing their offices on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath? I’d be willing to bet that it is a non-negative number smaller than 1.

But I guess when you are a perpetual victim class, the rights of others are irrelevant.

Posted by: Greg at 09:01 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I cannot see any basis for punishing people/organizations today for actions that took place a century-and-a-half ago – and which were legal at the time.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. are among 18 corporate defendants named in a slave-reparations case to be heard tomorrow in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

The case is a consolidation of nine cases filed by African-Americans across America in 2002. Among the other defendants are Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Aetna Inc., New York Life Insurance Co., and Lloyds TSB Group.
Prior to 1865, when slavery was abolished, predecessor companies of J.P.Morgan, Bank of America, and of other banks extended loans to slave-owners using slaves as collateral for the loans, the consolidated lawsuit alleges.

The predecessor companies of major insurance companies, such as Aetna and Lloyds of London, wrote life-insurance policies on the lives of slaves with slaveowners as the beneficiaries, it says.

"Our goal is to secure restitution of ill-gotten gains to create a trust fund to benefit the descendants of slaves," the lead plaintiff in the case, Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, said. The lawsuit was dismissed last year, but she's confident that it will get through on appeals. The case, according to Mrs. Farmer-Paellmann, is similar to the one brought by relatives of Holocaust victims, leading to a $1.25 billion settlement from Swiss banks.

"Slavery is a crime against humanity under international law," she added. "There's no statute of limitation."

Ah – but even accepting that last comment, was slavery recognized as a crime against humanity at the time, or did that designation come later? And what of the question of the legal status of slavery under the domestic laws of the United States? Do we not have a problem with the ex post facto imposition of law?

Throw the suit out – and the plaintiff’s and their attorneys with it.

Posted by: Greg at 08:57 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The FBI is involved in an investigation of THIS?

FBI agents have joined a Gilbert police investigation into a possible hate crime in which a Black Barbie doll was found hanging by its neck in the car of an African-American woman.

The 24-year-old woman found the doll July 8 after leaving the vehicle unlocked overnight at her apartment complex in the 1300 block of West Juniper Avenue, according to police.

The act potentially specifically targeted the victim, which could warrant federal charges should investigators determine it was motivated by the victim's race, said Special Agent Deborah McCarley, an FBI spokeswoman.

OK – I get the hate part. Could someone explain the underlying CRIME here? And I am being very serious here.

Posted by: Greg at 08:55 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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As it has been since before the Civil War, the Democrat Party seems to still be the comfortable home of racism and anti-Semitism. We've seen that in postings at MoveOn.org, Kos, And DU.

Now, Maryland Congressman Ben Cardin has had to fire a staffer from his Senate campaign in the wake of the discovery that she had been blogging racist and anti-Semitic comments.

Rep. Benjamin Cardin has fired a campaign staffer who posted racially charged comments against his opponent on the Internet, the congressman's campaign said Saturday.

The staffer's blog includes references to Oreo cookies. Cardin's opponent, Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is black, has said people threw Oreos at him during a 2002 debate as a slight directed at his race and political views.

In a statement, Cardin, who is white, also condemned comments written by the female staffer on her blog that he considered derogatory to Jews.

"I am deeply offended and disgusted by the blog's racial and anti-Semitic overtones," the 10-term congressman said. "The staff person responsible was promptly dismissed and will have nothing to do with my campaign."

Melissa Sellers, a Steele spokeswoman, criticized the blog.

"It is deeply disturbing to learn that a staff member of 10-term Congressman Ben Cardin would keep a blog chronicling racial prejudices toward Lt. Gov. Steele and others," Sellers said. "This is the kind of attitude and gutter politics that Marylanders are sick of and why they are ready for change."

I will praise Cardin for getting rid of his little bigot, but will again note that we keep seing racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric spewing from the Democrat Party and its allied organizations and supporters.

While the campaign and the Washington Post won't identify the little bigot, Wizbang Politics seems to have ferretted out her identity.

According to the latest FEC filing, there was a Ursula Gruber from Chicago paid a salary of $782.46 on Aug. 15, The "Persuasionatrix" posted about moving from Chicago to Maryland on August 4. Gruber filed an expense report from the supplies store Staples, for $67.82, on Aug. 18. The "Persuasionatrix" posted about visiting Staples on Aug. 4. Given that no one else matches those details, it's pretty safe to assume that your Persuasionatrix, or rather your ex-Persuasionatrix, is Ursula Gruber.

Enjoy your unemployment, Ursula. Given your name, I'm not surprised that you have views that would have been mainstream in the National SOCIALIST Party.

MORE AT Blog-o-Fascists, Soccer Dad, Heaving Melons, The Right Angle, Alabama Liberation Front, Pajamas Media, LaShawn Barber, Mary Katharine Ham

Posted by: Greg at 04:56 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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IÂ’m disgusted by this column in the Star-Tribune in the People's Republic of Minnesota. How can this writer possibly object to identifying a candidate as a racist Kluxer?

Somewhere between a recital/rally he held at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown a month ago and Keith Ellison's Tuesday night victory in the DFL primary for the Fifth District seat, [Democrat Congressional candidate Alan]Fine changed keys. In the process, he lost any claim to moderation, thoughtfulness or originality, which were just a few of the attributes I poured on him.

Here's a sampling of what Fine had to say the day after Ellison -- who is white and a Christian -- handily won his hard-fought primary: "I'm personally offended that this person is a candidate for U.S. Congress. He is unfit to represent the voters of the Fifth District. ... He is the follower of a known racist, David Duke ... a person who believes that the black man is the anti-Christ, a person who believes that Jews are the scourge of the Earth. I'm personally offended as a Jew that we have a candidate like this running for U.S. Congress."

This new Alan Fine suddenly can't say the name "Keith Ellison" without saying the name "David Duke."

That’s right – Fine loses his claim to be a moderate, thoughtful decent man for objecting to the nomination of a member of the KKK, who organized for that racist organization ad Christian Identity groups during his student days, who brought known racists to speak on his college campus, and who continuously lied during the campaign to obscure his past memberships and association. After all, I guess that the Klan is mainstream in the Republican Party, and that holding to the hate-filled doctrines of Christian Identity constitutes acceptable religious practice for a nominee of a major political party and possible member of Congress. Objecting to such a candidate clearly makes one an extremist.

But let’s cut to the chase. No such column would ever be written or published in the MSM today – nor should it be. A column like the one quoted above is utterly reprehensible, and the author would be condemned – probably fired.
Except such a column was written. And published.

Only it was a little different from what I wrote. Take a look.

Somewhere between a recital/rally he held at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown a month ago and Keith Ellison's Tuesday night victory in the DFL primary for the Fifth District seat, [Republican Congressional candidate Alan] Fine changed keys. In the process, he lost any claim to moderation, thoughtfulness or originality, which were just a few of the attributes I poured on him.

Here's a sampling of what Fine had to say the day after Ellison -- who is black and a Muslim -- handily won his hard-fought primary: "I'm personally offended that this person is a candidate for U.S. Congress. He is unfit to represent the voters of the Fifth District. ... He is the follower of a known racist, Louis Farrakhan ... a person who believes that the white man is the anti-Christ, a person who believes that Jews are the scourge of the Earth. I'm personally offended as a Jew that we have a candidate like this running for U.S. Congress."

This new Alan Fine suddenly can't say the name "Keith Ellison" without saying the name "Louis Farrakhan."

Ellison has lied repeatedly about his past, and has been given a pass by the Star-Trib. This has been well documented over at Power Line and by Joel Mowbray. Now we are told that daring to speak out against the racist past and deceptive present of a candidate converts one from a thoughtful moderate to a hateful extremist.

The difference? Party, race, and religion.

Ellison is a Democrat, an African-American, and a Muslim. As such, the Star-Trib considers him beyond criticism – and defines any criticism of his documented history of bigotry as a sign of bigotry on the part of the critic. After all, liberals excuse racial and religious bigotry coming from minorities – if they are properly liberal.

Posted by: Greg at 12:53 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I applaud those who have made progress in this area, trying to make homes for children who need them without regard to race.

When Martina Brockway and Mike Timble, a white couple in Chicago, decided to adopt a child, Ms. Brockway went to an adoption agency presentation at a black church to make it clear they wanted an African-American baby.

Their biological daughter, Rumeur, 3, is accumulating black dolls in preparation for her new brother or sister. Black-themed children’s books like “Please, Baby, Please” by the filmmaker Spike Lee and his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, share shelf space with Elmo and Dr. Seuss.

But the couple’s decision provoked some uneasy responses. One of Mr. Timble’s white friends asked, “Aren’t there any white kids available?”

Ms. Brockway’s black friends were supportive. “But,” she said, “I also sensed that there was maybe something they weren’t saying.”

Mr. Timble cut in. “Like maybe they were thinking, ‘What do these people think they are doing?’ ”

This all really rings a bell for me.

Posted by: Greg at 10:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And drawing editorial cartoons for the Sacramento News and Review under the name John Kloss.

After all, how else can you explain this little gem?

So let's shout out a hearty "Sieg Heil!" to Herr Kloss and his editors and publishers, who would no doubt never consider publishing these, for fear of losing their heads.

H/T Instapundit, Texas Safety Forum, Volokh Conspiracy, Solomonia

Posted by: Greg at 10:13 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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But since the group is composed of black racists, these politicians probably won't suffer for it.

Ald. Todd Stroger, the Democratic nominee for Cook County Board president, and the 8th Ward organization he represents have given almost $8,000 to a group that believes blacks should not be taxed and should not be involved in interracial relationships, and which supports the creation of a separate state for blacks.

Records show that since 2000, the Coalition for the Remembrance of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (C.R.O.E.) has received $2,000 more from the campaign committee for Ald. Stroger's father, longtime county Board President John Stroger.

The Nation of Islam splinter group calls for "former slave masters" to provide the land for a black state and 20 to 25 years of supplies for those living there, along with free schooling for black students, who should be taught only by other blacks, its Web site says.

Other local politicians who have given financial support to the group include Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, state Senate President Emil Jones, Cook County Assessor James Houlihan, Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine, interim Cook County Board President Bobbie Steele and Chicago Ald. William Beavers. I won't supply the party label for any of these folks -- but will remind you that this is Chicago.

Now could you imagine the outrage if there were politicians giving money to a white group that supported such white separtist principles? How long would it take for such indivivuals to be driven out of office? Want to be that doesn't happen here, even though the views are just as repugnant?

Oh, and by the way -- Munir Muhammad, the groups's leader, is a member of the Illinois Human Rights Commission.

Disgusting.

Posted by: Greg at 06:03 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I'm just disgusted by this vote. Rather than make the temporary provisions of the Voting Rights Act relevant to today's issues, lawmakers chose to keep trying to undo the wrongs of 1964.

The Senate today extended the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for 25 more years as Republicans sought to earn goodwill from minority voters in a congressional election year.

The vote was 98-0.

The temporary provisions of the landmark civil rights bill -- enacted to stop systematic disenfranchisement of black voters, particularly in the South -- did not expire until next year.

But with their control of Congress at stake, Republican leaders seemed intent on extending the legislation before the August recess.

Sorry, I just find this cynical.

I've explained my reasoning before.

Fine, I can accept some sort of renewal of these provisions of the VRA. But none of these provisions is about turning the clock back four decades. Indeed, one of the defeated amendments (opposed by Democrats as a killer amendment) would have targetted voting issues as they exist TODAY, not back when I was still an infant.

A second amendment, offered by Rep. Charles Whitlow Norwood Jr. (R-Ga.), would have made every district potentially subject to the pre-clearance requirement, by including any jurisdiction where voter turnout fell below 50 percent in a presidential election. It would have eased the pre-clearance requirement for jurisdictions with voter turnout above 50 percent in three consecutive presidential elections, presuming that no court had found that discriminatory voting practices were employed. The measure failed 318 to 96.

Wow -- considering voter turnout in elections taking place TODAY was labelled as being against civil right. Applying the law to what happened in 2004 and what will happen in 2008 is not as important as correcting what happened in the election when Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater. Good grief -- would you accept the advice of a doctor who shunned MRIs and CAT scans and stuck strictly to old-fashioned x-rays because that was what he learned in medical school back in the 1960s? Of course not! Then why engage in the illogically absurd practice of using antiquated measures to determine racial discrimination -- and demand that they continue to be used for another quarter century?

One would think that John Kerry would have supported something like this, given his words on the Senate floor.

"Too many Americans in too many parts of our country still face serious obstacles when they are trying to vote here," said Kerry, who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential election. " . . .No one should pretend that reauthorizing the Voting Rights Act solves the problem of being able to vote in our own country. It doesn't. And in recent elections, we've seen too many times how outcomes change when votes that have been cast aren't counted."

While I think the last part of that statement is a line of crap, he is dead on in noting that there are obstacles to voting today. But renenwing provisions and sanctions based on elections going back up to four decades isn't the answer -- looking at current elections is.

But the VRA is such a sacred cow that even the slightest tweak to make it relevant is seen as a desecration and a return to the days of the (all Democrat) KKK lynching "uppity niggers" for trying to vote.

Too bad the Senate lacked the courage to do what was needed.

Posted by: Greg at 02:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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After all, just because one of the criminals admits that the victim was chosen because he was "a goofy-looking white boy" doesn't make it a crime based upon bias.

Prosecutors on Wednesday stood by their contention that the three teens who allegedly beat and robbed a 14-year-old Beverly boy won't be charged with a hate crime -- even though one of the trio told police they picked the boy because he was "a goofy-looking white boy."

They instead charged the three black teens with aggravated battery and robbery, both felonies. Bond was set Wednesday at $300,000 for Micha Eatman, 17, and two 16-year-olds were in juvenile detention.

Meanwhile the condition of the victim, Ryan Rusch, was upgraded from critical to serious.

Chicago Police said after the incident Sunday they were investigating it as a robbery. But Tuesday, in light of the suspect's statement in court, the case was assigned to the department's civil rights section.

Now tell me -- what would happen anywhere in this country if three white kids beat a black kid into a coma and one of them made a public statement that they picked the victim because he was a "goofy-looking black kid"? Hate-crime charges would be filed in an instance, and every self-aggrandizing member of th e"civil rights leadership" would be on the scene, demanding government action and a cut for their organization.

Now as I've said often enough in the past, I don't believe in hate-crime laws. I don't think they can ever be applied in a neutral fashion. This case proves my point.

Posted by: Greg at 11:18 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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In 2032 I will, God willing, turn 69. The data used to determine which states need special monitoring for racial discrimination in voting will turn 68 -- making it more than old enough to collect social security if that program still exists.

That is why today's knee-jerk renewal of certain provisions of that law is an absurd act of political cowardice by the House of Representatives.

The House yesterday easily approved an extension of key provisions of the landmark Voting Rights Act, after GOP leaders quelled a rebellion within the party's Southern ranks that threatened to become a political embarrassment.

Before the 390 to 33 vote to extend the measure for a quarter-century, the House defeated four amendments that would have diluted two expiring provisions and possibly derailed final passage before the November congressional elections. With the House hurdle now cleared, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he hoped to bring the extension to the Senate floor before the August recess.

The act's temporary provisions do not expire until next year, but Republican leaders had hoped that early action would earn goodwill from minority voters as members of Congress head into a brutally competitive fall campaign season.

"Today, Republicans and Democrats have united in a historic vote to preserve and protect one of America's most important fundamental rights -- the right to vote," said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

Wrong, Mr. Speaker. Democrats and Republicans have become a sleuth of pander-bears. These provisions were meant to expire in 1970, and use data that is woefully outdated to limit the effective coverage of the act to aonly a few states.

It seems clear that some members of Congress have been in hibernation for the last four decades.

In urging adoption of the act, Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, recalled marching on Bloody Sunday, a turning point in the movement for black voting rights in 1965, when the police in Selma, Ala., beat 600 civil rights demonstrators.

“I gave blood,” Mr. Lewis said, his voice rising, as he stood alongside photographs of the clash. “Some of my colleagues gave their very lives.”

“Yes, we’ve made some progress; we have come a distance,” he added. “The sad truth is, discrimination still exists. That’s why we still need the Voting Rights Act, and we must not go back to the dark past.”

Fine, I can accept some sort of renewal of these provisions of the VRA. But none of these provisions is about turning the clock back four decades. Indeed, one of the defeated amendments (opposed by Democrats as a killer amendment) would have targetted voting issues as they exist TODAY, not back when I was still an infant.

A second amendment, offered by Rep. Charles Whitlow Norwood Jr. (R-Ga.), would have made every district potentially subject to the pre-clearance requirement, by including any jurisdiction where voter turnout fell below 50 percent in a presidential election. It would have eased the pre-clearance requirement for jurisdictions with voter turnout above 50 percent in three consecutive presidential elections, presuming that no court had found that discriminatory voting practices were employed. The measure failed 318 to 96.

Wow -- considering voter turnout in elections taking place TODAY was labelled as being against civil right. Applying the law to what happened in 2004 and what will happen in 2008 is not as important as correcting what happened in the election when Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater. Good grief -- would you accept the advice of a doctor who shunned MRIs and CAT scans and stuck strictly to old-fashioned x-rays because that was what he learned in medical school back in the 1960s? Of course not! Then why engage in the illogically absurd practice of using antiquated measures to determine racial discrimination -- and demand that they continue to be used for another quarter century?

Even suggesting that the renewal be done for a decade rather than a quarter century was labelled as a poison pill. Never mind that those who wrote these provisions thought it sufficient that they expire after five years -- now, four decades later, anything less than an extension of 25 years is tantamount to repealing the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

I've expressed my frustration over this issue a number of times in the past. I'm not persuaded by anything I've read today. Far from being a profile in courage, the blind renewal of these provisions of the VRA is a profile in political and moral cowardice.

Here's hoping the Senate has the backbone either to make the Voting Rights Act relevant to the problems that exist today or to allow these provisions to expire as their authors intended them to do.

Crossposted at Homeland Stupidity

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Posted by: Greg at 08:25 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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Courtesy, of course, of our "allies" the Saudis.

Jeddah, Jun. 26, 2006 (CNA) - Two Ethiopian and two Eritrean Christians have been arrested and incarcerated in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for conducting prayers in their home.

The Compass Direct news agency reported that the religious police, called Muttawa, armed with wooden clubs, broke into a private residence in Jeddah two weeks ago and arrested the four Christians - the four remain in prison.

More than 100 Eritrean, Ethiopian and Filipino Christians were gathered in the house when the Muttawa arrested the four group leaders: Mekbeb Telahun, Fekre Gebremedhin, Dawit Uqbay and Masai Wendewesen. The few Christians in Saudi Arabia are mostly migrant workers.

The government of Saudi Arabia forbids the practice of any religion other than the fundamentalist Wahhabite version of Islam. It prohibits building places of worship, churches, or chapels. Any public expressions of faith, such as carrying a Bible, a crucifix, or rosary beads, and praying in public are forbidden.

Given the history of Islamic terror in this country and elsewhere, I think we have more to fear from granting Muslims rights in our country than the Saudis do granting Christians such freedom. Yet somehow our Muslims never get around to demanding that their brothers in faith give Christians the same sort of respect that they get here in the Christian West.

Their silence is deafening.

Posted by: Greg at 02:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I’ve seen a lot of dumb editorials in a lot of newspapers over the years – but this one in today’s Houston Chronicle has to be among the worst.

JOLTING the leadership of their own party, Texas Republicans in the U.S. House helped block a vote on renewing a key section of the Voting Rights Act. Though the White House, leaders of both parties and a Republican-led committee all supported the bill, the Texans claimed it wrongly singled out this state and was, in any case, unneeded.

The Texans were half right.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act, much of which is permanent, choked off the Jim Crow laws that kept minorities from voting.

So to clarify, the refusal to renew this “key section” of the Voting Rights Act does not eliminate the law itself, simply one section that its authors intended to end in 1970 – and which did not, in its original form, even include Texas as a state requiring preclearance. Only with the addition of non-English ballots in 1975 did the measure include Texas among the states with a preclearance requirement. Indeed, calling this a "key provision" is nonsense, given the sunset provision.

Section 5, which is up for renewal, made states with histories of voter discrimination get federal "preclearance" for any changes in their voting law. Texas is one of those states.

There was good reason to subject Texas to federal review. Civil rights lawyers would wrestle down one assault on rights — a poll tax, or a literacy rule, or a morals test — only to see Dixiecrats dream up a new one.

In other words, we are subject to this requirement because the Democrats were out to keep minorities from voting. Given that Texans have grown up politically and expelled the Democrats from most positions of governmental authority, it seems like we have made good progress to eliminating the source of the discrimination. Texas has, dare I say it, decisively moved away from its history of racial intolerance by rejecting the party of slavery segregation, and vote suppression and embraced the party of emancipation, enfranchisement, and equality.

Section 5 switched the burden of defending voter rights from civil rights workers to the federal government. Today, the rule is especially useful at the local level, where council members and others might not be sensitive to a law or procedure that would have an adverse impact on racial minorities.

Would you care to offer some examples?

When the Voting Rights Act was passed, it was easy to spot attempts to disenfranchise minority voters. Most took place in the South. In recent years, though, attacks on voter rights and access to polling places have erupted all over the map. In the last presidential election, some of the most egregious violations occurred in Florida and Ohio — states largely exempt from Section 5.

Actually, nobody had documented even a single attempt to disenfranchise minority voters in Florida, for all the heated rhetoric to the contrary. And in Ohio, black voters voted at a higher rate than white voters during the 2004 presidential election.

In an ideal world, the proposal of some Texas Republicans would indeed be law. The preclearance rule would apply to everyone. In reality, as the Texas delegation well knows, any such amendment to the Voting Rights Act would be a poison pill and prevent renewal.

States now exempt from Section 5 would furiously resist any attempt to rope them in, and administering universal application would be nearly impossible.

In other words, equal protection of the law for every citizen of every state is an unrealistic goal, and therefore it is wrong for Republicans to demand it. It is even wrong to suggest that data from the 2004 election be used to determine which states need special scrutiny – we need to continue using data almost as old as I am from the 1964 presidential election, because other states will object to changes that might subject their practices to scrutiny. Rather than attacking courageous Texas Republicans for standing on solid principle, you should be chiding those who refuse to embrace the proposed change out or political self-interest. But that would mean venturing away from the "Democrat good, Republican bad" meme that often colors the Chronicle's editorial (and nesw) pages.

The Texas lawmakers' second argument, unlike the first, is indefensible:

"I don't think we have racial bias in Texas anymore," asserts the optimistic U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock. Really? The controversial redistricting of Texas congressional districts (deemed objectionable by the Justice Department's career lawyers) and recent attempts by the Legislature to require voter IDs suggest otherwise.

Yes, the careerists found the plan objectionable – but the courts did not. Furthermore, the major criticism of the plan has always been that its goal was partisan advantage, not racial discrimination. In fact, it created more majority-minority districts that existed under the previous plan imposed by a federal court -- so it is the Democrats that are seeking the sort of retrogression that the Voting Rights Act is meant to prevent.

If Carter and his like-minded colleagues think Texas has outgrown the need for voter protection, there's a good way to get out of Section 5 coverage. Embedded in the Voting Rights Act is a measure that lets states prove they no longer deserve preclearance. Texas has never tried to make that case.

Unfortunately, the provision asks that states prove a negative. That is, of course, impossible – rather like asking you to prove that you do not still beat your wife or abuse your children. The use of newer data (say from 2000 and 2004) rather than the 42-year–old data from the 1964 Johnson/Goldwater presidential contest would indicate where real problems with racial disparities exist today, rather than the current system which continually seeks to exorcise the ghosts of elections past. The newer data would decisively prove whether or not a problem exists.

House Republicans say they want to maximize justice in Texas. If they dropped their attack on the Voting Rights Act and worked to show Texas no longer discriminates, they would achieve their goal. Minority voters would continue to be protected by federal oversight — until the state provides the welcome proof that federal oversight is unneeded.

Dead wrong – let’s instead allow the wisdom of the law's authors to prevail and permit Section 5 to expire as they intended. Either that, or re-write it so that it covers every state, or at least the states with demonstrable current disparities. To do otherwise is foolish symbolism which fails to adequately protect the rights of any American.

Posted by: Greg at 11:31 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Bravo for those who are delaying the renewal of parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act which were originally intended to expire in 1970. Why do I say this? Because they discriminate against a few states and localities.

House Republican leaders on Wednesday postponed a vote on renewing the 1965 Voting Rights Act after GOP lawmakers complained it unfairly singles out nine Southern states for federal oversight, according to their joint statement.

"We have time to address their concerns," Republican leaders said in a joint statement. "Therefore, the House Republican Leadership will offer members the time needed to evaluate the legislation."

It was unclear whether the legislation would come up this year. The temporary provisions don't expire until 2007, but leaders of both parties had hoped to pass the act and use it to further their prospects in the fall's midterm elections.
The statement said the GOP leaders are committed to renewing the law "as soon as possible."

There are two special areas of concern among those who question the blind renewal of the four-decade old provisions -- pre-clearance requirements for election changes in nine states, and non-English ballots.

The most important element appears to be the pre-clearance question.

Several Republicans, led by [Rep. Lynn] Westmoreland, had worked to allow an amendment that would ease a requirement that nine states win permission from the Justice Department or a federal judge to change their voting rules.

The amendment's backers say the requirement unfairly singles out and holds accountable nine states that practiced racist voting policies decades ago, based on 1964 voter turnout data: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

Westmoreland says the formula for deciding which states are subject to such "pre-clearance" should be updated every four years and be based on voter turnout in the most recent three elections.

"The pre-clearance portions of the Voting Rights Act should apply to all states, or no states," Westmoreland said. "Singling out certain states for special scrutiny no longer makes sense."

No one disputes that there were voting problems in these states in 1964. The historical record is clear. But the very Congress that passed this law in 1965 did so with a sunset provision for pre-clearance that eliminated it in 1970. The provision was allowed to lapse by Jimmy Carter and a Democrat-controlled Congress in 1980, only to be revived under the GOP two years later. But the time has come to do one of two things -- either expand the scope of the pre-clearance provision to include all 50 states or eliminate it completely as the law's authors intended. Rep. Westmoreland's proposal is, if anything, a weak fall-back position -- though it would at least end the use of data which, when the provision is next up for renewal, will be 68 years old. After all, as matters no stand, a change in election law that would be beyond question in Massachusetts could be treated as a violation of the Voting Rights Act in Texas.

As for the language requirements, those who fail to become proficient in English have chosen to exclude themselves from the civic life of this country. Surveys have shown that most Americans do not support providing ballots in languages other than English. The renewal bill, on the other hand, would continue the mandate.

The other big issue centered on requirements that certain jurisdictions offer bilingual ballots and language assistance to citizens whose English lags. But Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King and other lawmakers who oppose the bilingual rules were not going to have a chance to offer amendments.

King said in a statement it was irresponsible to "institutionalize multilingual voting for the next 25 years." He said bilingual voting, which was not part of the original voting rights bill but was added a decade later, drives "a wedge between cultures."

In other words, the House Leadership was out to silence those who would dissent on this provision that also helps illegal aliens vote illegally. While I do not find this provision to be nearly so odious as the pre-clearance provision, I would prefer to see it eliminated after having experienced the wasted time, money and manpower that goes into providing assistance to a mere handful of voters in most polling places during my years as an election judge (I must have Vietnamese material in my precinct, but have only had one person need it in the last five years -- an have had fewer than 10 voters need my Spanish-language clerk in that time).

Oh, and by the way -- the major case currently underway regarding language issues regards practices in Boston.

Now please realize that the failure to renew these provisions does not repeal anyone's right to vote. it does not even result in the elimination of the Voting Rights Act -- it simply allows the end of a couple of provisions that the law's authors never intended to be in force this long.

Previously:
Do Not Renew Voting Rights Act Provisions
Voting Rights Don't Expire In 2007 -- Or Ever

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Posted by: Greg at 10:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Some folks want to find racism in everything.

It's right there, under "Extreme Hairstyles," in the 2006 seasonal handbook for Six Flags America employees: no dreadlocks, tails, partially shaved heads "or any hairstyle that detracts or takes away from Six Flags theming."

Braids "must be in neat, even rows and without beads or other ornaments," the amusement park handbook advises.

That prompted Tim Bivins, 18, who has worked at Six Flags America in Largo for two years, to cut several inches off his hair this spring and pay $50 to have it braided into cornrows. Not good enough, he was told. Cut the braids shorter or go home.

* * *

Femi Manners and her 16-year-old son, Shakir, agreed that he would not change his hair: short cornrows with a small design braided in. Instead, she contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, which is investigating complaints from more than a dozen black employees of Six Flags America.

The complaint is the latest in recent years alleging that private companies or government agencies are violating civil rights with restrictions on ethnic and Africa-inspired hairstyles and beards.

"This is culturally very, very insensitive and possibly discrimination," said King Downing, coordinator of the ACLU's national campaign against racial profiling. "The question is, how long do we have to keep going around and around with this when it comes to people of African descent and the natural style of the hair that they wear?"

This code was in place when I worked for Six Flags Great America -- over 20 years ago. It is not about race, it is not about ethnicity -- it is about fitting with the THEME of the THEME park. In the park where I worked, there was a New Orleans themed area, a Yukon Gold Rush themed area, an early 1900s town square themed area. We had to be prepared to fit with any one of those areas -- and had I done my hair like the lead singer of "Flock of Seagulls I would have been out of place in every single one of them. As it was, I had to cut my hair, worn a bit onthe ong side with sideburns to the jaw, in order to meet the grooming standards.

So to the folks complaining, I say "Get a haircut, kid."

Or get a new job where your employer doesn't give a damn that you look like a freak.

Posted by: Greg at 08:53 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A police report has been filed by Jennifer Gratz, Executive Director of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, alleging she was threatened by a leader of By Any Means Necessary, a pro-racial discrimination organization opposing the MCRI.

An official with the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which is pushing for an end to race-based affirmative action policies, has accused a member of an opposition group of threatening her with a knife.

MCRI Executive Director Jennifer Gratz on Tuesday filed a report with the Detroit Police accusing Luke Massie, national chairman of the activist group By Any Means Necessary, of displaying the knife during a confrontation. She said the incident happened Monday morning outside of a Michigan Civil Rights Commission meeting in the State building on West Grand Boulevard.

Massie contends it didn't happen at all.

"I won't be intimidated," Gratz said today. "It was a clear attempt to threaten and intimidate."

The initial police report, which has been assigned to an investigator, says Gratz told officers Massie had a knife in his right pants pocket and toyed with it, said Detroit Police Sgt. Omar Feliciano.

Gratz said Massie pulled the knife halfway out of his pants but did not draw its blade.

In light of the history of violence by BAMN in an attempt to prevent the people of Michigan from grafting elements of the 1964 Civil Rights Act into the Michigan Constitution, it strikes me that the charge is probably well-founded.

Posted by: Greg at 01:16 PM | Comments (58) | Add Comment
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This column certainly should open some eyes about the “low Negro tolerance” of the Democrat Party in Michigan.

Some Democrats in Michigan have a distorted view of affirmative action. It's one thing to advocate giving minorities an opportunity. It's another thing to actually practice it.

Just recently some hard-core members of the party told me that any opposition to Gov. Jennifer Granholm in November is also a vote for the anti-affirmative action ballot measure known as the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.

In other words, Democrats are the only people who support equal rights for people of color in Michigan. I don't think so.

I mean, let’s look at the Michigan Democrats, aside from a few black officials from safe districts.

The Democratic Party is probably the biggest hypocrite when it comes to giving African-Americans opportunities to develop politically.

Let's look at its track record in Michigan. When Granholm came into office, she tried to appoint Melvin Butch Hollowell as the chairman of the Democratic Party of Michigan. Guess what? Mark Brewer, backed by the United Auto Workers, refused to step aside. Hollowell was given a title of co-chair with no power. Brewer controlled the finances and all of the hirings.

How many African-Americans and other people of color hold positions of power in the Michigan Democratic Party? How many black consultant firms has Brewer hired? I am not talking about subcontracting jobs. When was the last time we've seen a black campaign manager managing a Democratic candidate for statewide office in Michigan? Never.

What's makes Granholm campaign manager Howard Edelson qualified for the job? I know at least five African-American political strategists who have more experience and are more battle-tested. They weren't even consulted or asked to apply. What job do blacks occupy every election for the Democratic Party? Let me see. Hmmmm, field coordinator.

A few months ago, a well-known African-American Democrat asked the governor about the attorney general position. She told him to run for secretary of state. Is that the only statewide position that blacks can run for as a Democrat? Until African-American voters break the cycle of dependency, we will continue to be an afterthought.

It is the Democrats who gladly let blacks onto the lowest rung of the ladder – and then keep them there. But when well-qualified black conservatives are raised tohigh office by Republicans, we ehar about tokenism and how such folks are not “really” black – and the term “Uncle Tom” gets trotted out soon afterward.

Republicans freed the slaves. Republicans were responsible for the passage of most civil rights legislation in this country’s history. And Republicans continue to seek to put forward well-qualified African –American candidates for office, while Democrats play Jim Crow games.

So would someone explain to me why the party that has always promoted slavery, segregation, and racial division is seen as the friend of African Americans?

Posted by: Greg at 10:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This column certainly should open some eyes about the “low Negro tolerance” of the Democrat Party in Michigan.

Some Democrats in Michigan have a distorted view of affirmative action. It's one thing to advocate giving minorities an opportunity. It's another thing to actually practice it.

Just recently some hard-core members of the party told me that any opposition to Gov. Jennifer Granholm in November is also a vote for the anti-affirmative action ballot measure known as the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.

In other words, Democrats are the only people who support equal rights for people of color in Michigan. I don't think so.

I mean, letÂ’s look at the Michigan Democrats, aside from a few black officials from safe districts.

The Democratic Party is probably the biggest hypocrite when it comes to giving African-Americans opportunities to develop politically.

Let's look at its track record in Michigan. When Granholm came into office, she tried to appoint Melvin Butch Hollowell as the chairman of the Democratic Party of Michigan. Guess what? Mark Brewer, backed by the United Auto Workers, refused to step aside. Hollowell was given a title of co-chair with no power. Brewer controlled the finances and all of the hirings.

How many African-Americans and other people of color hold positions of power in the Michigan Democratic Party? How many black consultant firms has Brewer hired? I am not talking about subcontracting jobs. When was the last time we've seen a black campaign manager managing a Democratic candidate for statewide office in Michigan? Never.

What's makes Granholm campaign manager Howard Edelson qualified for the job? I know at least five African-American political strategists who have more experience and are more battle-tested. They weren't even consulted or asked to apply. What job do blacks occupy every election for the Democratic Party? Let me see. Hmmmm, field coordinator.

A few months ago, a well-known African-American Democrat asked the governor about the attorney general position. She told him to run for secretary of state. Is that the only statewide position that blacks can run for as a Democrat? Until African-American voters break the cycle of dependency, we will continue to be an afterthought.

It is the Democrats who gladly let blacks onto the lowest rung of the ladder – and then keep them there. But when well-qualified black conservatives are raised tohigh office by Republicans, we ehar about tokenism and how such folks are not “really” black – and the term “Uncle Tom” gets trotted out soon afterward.

Republicans freed the slaves. Republicans were responsible for the passage of most civil rights legislation in this country’s history. And Republicans continue to seek to put forward well-qualified African –American candidates for office, while Democrats play Jim Crow games.

So would someone explain to me why the party that has always promoted slavery, segregation, and racial division is seen as the friend of African Americans?

Posted by: Greg at 10:24 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A contested race for president and an upset victory by a relative outsider. What will it signify?

The Southern Baptist Convention elected Frank Page its new president Tuesday, choosing a pastor who had said that it would take a "miracle" for him to win and heralding a new direction for the denomination.

Page's surprising win over two higher-profile candidates follows years of tightly scripted politics and intolerance for internal dissent. He called his victory evidence that Southern Baptists believe "we could do together a lot more and a lot better than what we can do separately."

"I'm a little taken aback by this," Page said. "Because I have not been known across the nation, ... I truly believe (the election) is God's people saying we want to see broadened involvement."

Winning just over 50 percent of the vote on the first ballot, Page bested Ronnie Floyd, a megachurch pastor from Springdale, Ark., and Jerry Sutton, pastor at Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville, Tenn., and currently the SBC's first vice president.

The 53-year-old Page is pastor at First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C., a small, upstate community north of Greenville. During his campaign, he emphasized the importance of giving to the Southern Baptists' cooperative program, in which autonomous congregations pool money to fund overseas and domestic missions. That seemed to strike a chord with delegates to the SBC's annual meeting.

In the years since moderates stopped participating in SBC politics, candidates for the SBC presidency have typically run unopposed or faced only token opposition. But this year, concerns about stagnating memberships, declining baptism rates and the future of the cooperative program led to the first contested presidential race in recent memory.

Johnny Hunt, a pastor from Woodstock, Ga., was the leadership's choice for president but unexpectedly dropped out of the race in late April. He was replaced by Floyd, head of the First Baptist Church in Springdale, Ark., and the nearby Church at Pinnacle Hills.

Then Page entered the race, leading a group that criticized the low levels of cooperative program giving at Floyd's churches. Page's church, by contrast, gives 12 percent of its undesignated offerings to the program.

Many smaller Southern Baptist congregations see the cooperative program as a crucial collective effort for the denomination and the best way for them to carry out influential missionary and evangelistic work.

Rallying around Page were a group of younger pastors and others who have felt marginalized by an older generation that led the conservative takeover of the SBC in the 1970s and 1980s. Some have dissented on theological issues like whether strict Calvinists and charismatic Christians should be welcome in the denomination, while at least one has been reprimanded for airing concerns on his Internet blog.

The fundamentalist takeover that happened three decades ago revitalized the SBC, but created serious rifts within the denomination. Will this upset victory be the beginning of a new direction for the largest Protestant group in the United States, or will it merely be a brief interlude between traditionalist leaders?

Posted by: Greg at 10:48 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Decent Americans have to be disgusted when they read stories like this one -- and have to recognize which political party remains the seat of racism in America.

A group of black and Hispanic elected officials from Brooklyn are scheduled to meet this morning to devise strategies to keep a white candidate from winning a Congressional seat of historical significance in black politics.

It is not the first such meeting of these officials, nor is it likely to be the last. That there are talks so steeped in ethnicity indicates that race is not just one of the issues in determining who will succeed Representative Major R. Owens. It seems to be the dominant one.

Mr. Owens, a veteran of more than two decades in Congress who turns 70 this month, is not running for re-election. The black and Hispanic officials gathering today are discussing how to prevent David Yassky, a white city councilman from Brooklyn Heights, from winning a seat that once belonged to Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress.

Mr. Yassky, a former law professor, has collected as much in campaign contributions as his rivals combined, more than $800,000 at the time of the last campaign finance filing.

And his three black opponents in the Democratic primary — as well as many black and Hispanic officials throughout the borough — have become increasingly agitated by the possibility that blacks would split their vote, allowing him to win.

Today's meeting, which was called by City Councilman Albert Vann, a Brooklyn Democrat, will focus in part on whether one or two of the three black candidates might be willing to drop out of the campaign.

Two weeks ago, a fourth black candidate, Assemblyman N. Nick Perry, announced that he was withdrawing from the Congressional campaign and running instead for re-election. He said one reason was to reduce the number of black candidates and make it harder for Mr. Yassky to succeed.

In other words, they want the winner of this election to be judged by the color of his skin, not the content of his character.

Now why this racist strategy to keep the seat in black hands? Well, it goes back to the history of the district.

As a result of a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act of 1965, several predominantly black neighborhoods of Brooklyn were consolidated into the 12th Congressional District. In 1968 it elected Ms. Chisholm, who in 1972 sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Mr. Owens succeeded her in 1983.

The district lines were later shifted, and much of the 12th District was incorporated into what is now the 11th.

"We want to see if there is a way that we might unite behind one black candidate in the race, as opposed to several black candidates running along with Yassky," said Assemblywoman Annette Robinson, an organizer of the meeting. "We're going to try to work this out, reminding the candidates that people have fought for this district to be a Voting Rights district."

Uh. . . excuse me? Do you really mean to imply, madam Assemblywoman, that someone's voting rights would have been violated if a white candidate wins in this congressional district? I thought that the purpose of the Voting Rights Act was to end racial discrimination in voting, and to make sure that blacks could have meaningful participation in the electoral process. Nothing I have ever read has indicated that it was supposed to Jim Crow the election process, posting "No Whites Allowed" on certain electoral districts.

I want to know where the public outcry is -- you know, the howls of outrage that would follow if a group of white political leaders were to conspire to prevent a popular black candidate from winning an election.

And I hope the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is taking careful note of this meeting so as to prepare to prosecute every public official and community leader who participates.

Posted by: Greg at 11:15 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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About 15 years ago, David Duke got the idea that he could be accepted as a Republican. Republican elected officials from around the country went to Louisiana to campaign against him and urge votes for his corrupt Democrat opponent, bearing a simple message -- "Vote for the crook -- It's important."

On the other hand, in Minnesota, Democrats embrace those with a long history of racist and anti-Semitic affiliations -- and nominate them for Congressional seats in safe districts.

Imagine that a Republican seeks his party's endorsement for the U.S. House of Representatives, despite having been allied with a white supremacist organization just a decade earlier. Imagine that this candidate had once sarcastically proposed setting aside certain states for white citizens and had shared a stage with a speaker known for excoriating Jews as "bloodsuckers."

You're right. That man wouldn't get his party's endorsement. He would probably want to go into hiding after the howl of negative media coverage.

So how did we get Keith Ellison?

State Rep. Keith Ellison of Minneapolis is the DFL-endorsed candidate for the Fifth District congressional seat. In this DFL bastion, that means that -- barring a primary loss -- Ellison will succeed Martin Sabo when Congress reconvenes next year.

Ellison's background is, shall we say, unorthodox. He is a former outspoken supporter of Louis Farrakhan's notorious Nation of Islam, a virulently anti-white, anti-Semitic organization once led by Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad.

Ellison claims he has changed, that he never really held those views, and that he wasn't affiliated with the groups all that long. He says he should be forgiven and his past ignored.

Fine -- except for the fact that even in this Ellison wants to apply a racial (dare I sa racist) double-standard.

There's a strange irony here. In April 2004, Minnesota's public safety commissioner at the time, Rich Stanek, resigned after acknowledging making racist comments in 1992. At a news conference, Keith Ellison and other black leaders condemned Stanek's remarks and vowed to fight his confirmation.

Stanek repudiated the comments and said he had changed. Nevertheless, Ellison didn't give him the benefit of the doubt. "He's definitely one to hold other people accountable, so I held him accountable," Ellison told the Star Tribune.

So we are looking at the same sort of behavior -- if not more severe. Ellison claims his associations and misdeeds are long in the past -- but they are from the same time period as the inappropruate comments that led to his demnds that a white man withdraw from consideration for public office. So shouldn't Ellison be held to account in the same way he held another man?

Or does he believe that the color of one's skin should determine the standard to which one is held -- proving that he remains a racist, unfit for office.

A much more detailed piece is found at Powerline.

UPDATE -- 6/11/2006: Well, here is some candor.

"I wasn't proud of my work with the Nation of Islam," Ellison said Sunday, "but I was hoping it wouldn't come up." He said now that he's in the spotlight, "I have come face to face with my past."

Yeah, I bet he didn't want it to come up -- but it is there, on the public record, and must not be ignored. Ellison's failure to address these issues earlier speaks volumes about his honesty and trustworthiness.

So off he goes to meet with the men's group at a synagogue. And it seems that at least some of them have forgotten the lessons of the 1930s and 1940s.

Bill Prohofsky, who attended the breakfast, liked what he heard from Ellison. "I think he convinced me," he said.

"Until today, I was very much against him," said Dick Hoffman. "I think a lot of his thoughts co-exist with mine. ... I could support him."

Said Richard Hunegs, "I was favorably impressed by him. I was refreshed by his honesty."

Elliot Miller said, "I think he's a good candidate, but he needs further seasoning in the Legislature."

Perhaps if you are lucky, you will get a leading role in "Ellison Goves The Jews A City".

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Posted by: Greg at 08:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It appears that at least one newspaper columnist from the area near Duke University believes that if you don't meet his moral standards, you deserve to be falsely accused of sexual assault. That means if you drink or look at strippers, you bring libelous accusations upon yourself.

Thing is, we might expect those guys on the lacrosse team to have some bags under their eyes.

I mean, here's David Evans, who was the captain on the lacrosse team: He graduated on Mother's Day and in less than 24 hours was at the county jail turning himself in on a rape charge.

But that's what can happen when you don't keep your nose clean. Whether or not he's shaved his would-be incriminating mustache in the days since a stripper claimed he attacked her during a party where he was living at 610 N. Buchanan Blvd., the biggest news in Durham would have been Jackie Wagstaff's school board loss had Evans and his homeboys not decided to get their kicks one night in March.

No drunken orgy, no allegations of rape.

* * *

Butch Williams, representing a lacrosse player who hasn't been indicted, said his client and the other 44 who haven't been charged are free to resume a normal life.

Which I take as meaning deciding in the coming weeks of spring about returning to Duke for classes in the fall. And if they want to play lacrosse, maybe they go elsewhere, since Duke President Richard Brodhead and the rest of the big dogs haven't said yea or nay about fielding a team for the upcoming season. But there's also the notion of whether it'll do any good for the players to transfer if the curious stares will follow them wherever they go.

Nothing's normal about that.

The lacrosse boys brought it on themselves, though -- even if the accuser's lying.

Hmmmm.... I wonder if John McCann would also agree with this premise regarding the accuser. No going into houses full of strange men to take your clothes off for money, no rape -- she brought it on herself.

Nope, I didn't think so. Any person with even an ounce or decency would reject such an argument. As they should reject Mr. McCann's disgusting column.

(H/T Blogs for Bush, Real Clear Politics)

Posted by: Greg at 01:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Could scenes like this one make the difference in this fall's Maryland senatorial race?

Richmond Myrick, the principal of Largo High School, is a registered Democrat in overwhelmingly Democratic Prince George's County next to Washington, D.C. He has not been active politically and is not recorded as having made any contributions to candidates for federal office. Yet recently, he stood in the parking lot of Prince George's Community College adjoining his school to introduce Republican Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, whom he has endorsed for the U.S. Senate.

Myrick is African American, as are most students at Largo High. So is Steele. If enough non-political blacks follow Myrick's course, Steele will become the first black Republican elected to the Senate in 32 years. That is the Democrats' worst nightmare. Democratic dominance in Maryland has been based on maintaining a hammerlock over the state's substantial African- American vote. Steele threatens that domination.

* * *

I asked Myrick why he had endorsed Steele. ''He came to school, not just for a brief visit, but spent the whole day,'' the principal told me. ''He showed he cared about the students and teachers.'' What about Cardin? ''He hasn't been here,'' said Myrick. When I asked if he even knew who the veteran congressman was, he said he did not.

And like many Republicans, Steele is more than willing to cricize President Bush on policy issues, and to disagree with his handling of situations. The Republican Party thereby shows itself to be a big tent that does not demand nearly the ideological conformity of the Democrat Party, which has been driven for years by liberal special interst groups and is now being hounded to become even more ideologically liberal by groups like MoveOn. That makes Michael Steele, Ken Blackwell, and Lynn Swann potential bright spots for Republicans this fall, if African-American voters turn out for a new generation of leaders who have an (r) after their names.

Posted by: Greg at 05:25 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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