Race

On July 19, Andrew Breitbart posted a video of USDA official Shirley Sherrod speaking at an NAACP event. In that clip, Sherrod told the audience that she had once withheld the "full force of what I could do" for a white farmer because of his race. Shortly after the video was posted Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, reportedly under pressure from the White House, fired Sherrod.

NAACP president Ben Jealous applauded the firing:

On July 19, Andrew Breitbart posted a video of USDA official Shirley Sherrod speaking at an NAACP event. In that clip, Sherrod told the audience that she had once withheld the "full force of what I could do" for a white farmer because of his race. Shortly after the video was posted Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, reportedly under pressure from the White House, fired Sherrod.

NAACP president Ben Jealous applauded the firing:

JTA's Ron Kampeas reports on the brouhaha developing in Pennsylvania between Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak and the Emergency Committee for Israel:

Attorney General Eric Holder spoke yesterday at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, extolling the Justice Department's central role in "today's struggle to promote tolerance, peace, justice and the rule of law."  His timing could not be more ironic, because on the very same day, the attorney general failed to comply with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights's deadline to report whether the DOJ will allow its employees to testify in the commission's investigation of the DOJ's extraordinary decision to drop its prosecution of Black Panther Party members who menaced voters at the polls on Election Day 2008.

LAST SUNDAY, on ESPN's pregame football telecast, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh said that he doesn't think Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb has ever been all he's cracked up to be. He explained:

I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there's a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn't deserve.

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Thanks for Larry Miller's wonderful article about the Marine who gave him a coin (Coin of the Realm). I'm sure Miller knows that unit coins are very important to servicemen and women. They are usually handed out by commanding officers as informal awards for jobs well done.

THIS THURSDAY, January 16, is the deadline for the Bush administration to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the University of Michigan race-preference cases currently before the Supreme Court. The media and Beltway conservatives have speculated a great deal recently about what position (if any) the Bush Justice Department will take.

DEMOCRATS GOT SMART about the Trent Lott controversy too late. A few days before Lott stepped down as majority leader, prominent Democratic politicians and pundits--Rep. John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, James Carville, Lanny Davis--began saying that Lott should remain.

I WAS OFTEN BOTHERED about what happened to my gun during the James Meredith riots at Ole Miss. Quite a few people were shot during that crazed Sunday night in the fall of 1962. Two civilians died, and 168 U.S. marshals were wounded when bullets flew into the Lyceum Building. No one ever knew who was responsible. I always hoped my gun didn't play a part. I found out almost 30 years later.

I returned for my second year at Ole Miss in late September 1962, a New Englander straight off a summer job as a cop in Ocean City, Maryland.

"Senator Trent Lott's lament that Strom Thurmond lost his segregationist campaign for the White House in 1948 . . . is already influencing an internal Bush administration debate on what approach to take on a major affirmative action case.

"Perhaps most striking, a senior administration official said today that Mr. Lott's statement of support for affirmative action . . . has complicated a developing debate within the administration over a coming Supreme Court case. . .

The Democrats' Flag Fantasy

THE WAR ROOM LIVES! Within minutes of Trent Lott's statement that he was stepping down as majority leader, Democrats were repeating their headquarters-dictated talking points--make that talking point: The GOP is the party of the Old Confederacy.

Nancy Pelosi, top House Democrat, said: "The Republicans have repeatedly exploited the issue of race, as recently as the election in November in Georgia, where their successful campaigns for U.S. senator and governor centered on the Confederate flag."

A letter from John Conyers Jr.

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime. . .

But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near. . .

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust.

--Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"

IN THE MATTER OF TRENT LOTT, time's winged chariot has surely arrived. Now's the time for his Republican colleagues, and the president, to "roll all [their] strength . . .