Take this bit of race baiting for example. He spoke out about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, after admitting he didn’t know all the facts, and said that if it had happened to us “any of us would be pretty angry.”
Those racist cops don’t know when to quit eh? Responding to a 911 call about a couple men breaking into a house, described as two black men, and then having the gall to question the men…who coincidentally had jimmied their way into the house AND fit the description given in the 911 call…for ID.
This is just unbelievable. And Harry Alford? My hats off to you, sir. This is an exchange not to be missed… made especially delicious by a respectful man, lashing out at a woman with the chutzpah to be offended at being addressed as “maam” instead of “Senator” by Brigadier General Michael Walsh, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, not long ago.
Akron police say they aren’t ready to call it a hate crime or a gang initiation. But to Marty Marshall, his wife and two kids, it seems pretty clear.
It came after a family night of celebrating America and freedom with a fireworks show at Firestone Stadium. Marshall, his family and two friends were gathered outside a friend’s home in South Akron.
The Marshalls, who are white, say the crowd of teens who attacked them and two friends June 27 on Girard Street numbered close to 50. The teens were all black.
”This was almost like being a terrorist act,” Marshall said. ”And we allow this to go on in our neighborhoods?”
They said it started when one teen, without any words or warning, blindsided and assaulted Marshall’s friend as he stood outside with the others. When Marshall, 39, jumped in, he found himself being attacked by the growing group of teens. His daughter, Rachel, 15, who weighs about 90 pounds, tried to come to his rescue. The teens pushed her to the ground. His wife, Yvonne, pushed their son, Donald, 14, into bushes to keep him protected.
I blame Bush. Obama will fix it. You just have to give him time. It’s a big mess that he inherited.
Yesterday, Curt posted on this highly racial statement by the Black Panthers at a Philly voting location:
Racially charged statements by armed black panthers who happen to work for the Dem party in Philly. No surprise the DOJ spiked the charges against the three black panthers.
In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated former Justice Department lawyer Miguel Estrada to a seat on the federal courts of appeals. In that instance, as today, the nominee was was a Hispanic with a compelling story and impressive qualifications. And some of the very people who are today praising Sotomayor spent their time devising extraordinary measures to kill Estrada’s chances.
Born in Honduras, Estrada came to the United States at 17, not knowing a word of English. He learned the language almost instantly, and within a few years was graduating with honors from Columbia University and heading off to Harvard Law School. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, was a prosecutor in New York, and worked at the Justice Department in Washington before entering private practice.
Estrada’s nomination for a federal judgeship set off alarm bells among Democrats. There is a group of left-leaning organizations — People for the American Way, NARAL, the Alliance for Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, and others — that work closely with Senate Democrats to promote Democratic judicial nominations and kill Republican ones. They were particularly concerned about Estrada.
In November, 2001, representatives of those groups met with Democratic Senate staff. One of those staffers then wrote a memo to Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, informing Durbin that the groups wanted to stall Bush nominees, particularly three they had identified as good targets. “They also identified Miguel Estrada as especially dangerous,” the staffer added, “because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They want to hold Estrada off as long as possible.”
It was precisely the fact that Estrada was Hispanic that made Democrats and their activist allies want to kill his nomination. They were determined to deny a Republican White House credit, political and otherwise, for putting a first-rate Hispanic nominee on the bench.
Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.
The incident – which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube – had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.
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The career Justice lawyers were on the verge of securing sanctions against the men earlier this month when their superiors ordered them to reverse course, according to interviews and documents. The court had already entered a default judgment against the men on April 20.
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People directly familiar with the case, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution, said career lawyers in two separate Justice offices had recommended proceeding to default judgment before political superiors overruled them.
Tensions between career lawyers and political appointees inside the Justice Department have been a sensitive matter since allegations surfaced during the Bush administration that higher-ups had ignored or reversed staff lawyers and that some U.S. attorneys had been removed or selected for political reasons.
Obama thinks the discussion of race is long overdue in this country. That’s a discussion I don’t mind having. I – and I think most Americans – are appalled and embarrassed at this inequitable attitude in our history… one where we separated the value of mankind based on skin color, nationality or gender. And all are prominent in our past.
But since the middle of the 20th century, the US has made great strides towards correcting what was an undeniable wrong. As we look around and see the past and present prominent members of the Bush administration in positions of power held by those “of color”, one would think we have moved beyond race, and into competence and qualifications. Indeed, most of us thought nothing about Condi or Colin Powell being black. We thought most of, and admired them for, their competence. The same could be said for Alberto Gonzales as AG.
I have continually worried that this President-elect thinks of himself first as a hypenated “black American”, and second as an American. And that worry came not because of his mulatto skin color, but from his own words. Since his well received but (IMHO) disturbing “A More Perfect Union” speech on race, that nagging perception of mine that Obama – himself – has not risen above color increases. And if our President-elect cannot rise above race as an issue, how can we, as citizens?
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[Mata Note: I say "disturbing" above because the below paragraph in Obama's speech emphatically states that he believes the dreams of the white community has come at the expense of his own, and the black community.]