May 2010 Archives

Obama was disappointingly tone deaf in running off to Chicago for the holiday weekend and passing up the traditional Arlington Cemetery rite. The result has his opponents laughing, and the narrative of a president who "doesn't get it" gains strength.

I believe the anti-Obama hysteria is 95% unjustified (granted, 5% of the hysteria may be justified), but Obama doesn't make things easy on himself. I sometimes wonder if he even wants to connect with the sorts of ordinary Americans who express differences with him and his policies.

On his Friday May 28 show, Real Time HBO host Bill Maher demanded that President Obama act like a black president and pack a gun when he meets with the BP CEOs. Now Maher should take his own advice and act like a responsible commentator and apologize for his own politically demeaning and racially offensive dig at Obama. Politically demeaning and racially offensive are probably not strong enough characterizations of Maher's silly, inane, effort to get a laugh. In one fell line, Maher demoted Obama from American president Obama, to black president Obama, complete with gun tucked in waistband. This played to the vile stereotype that blacks are inherent gun toting gang bangers, drive shooters and thugs, and that violence is a natural way of life in black communities. In another fell line, he played hard on the media and GOP line that Obama fell badly asleep at the wheel on the BP spill, has done little to contain it, and has botched every chance to be the strong, commanding president and rein in the oil giant and the oil industry.

Non-funnyman Maher dredged up a textbook perfect bad guy image storm for Obama; a storm chock full of racial stereotypes, and the terrible, finger pointing by much the public and the GOP at Obama for the BP catastrophe. Maher could have hit Obama from any of a dozen angles to get a chuckle about the political straight the BP ooze has put Obama in. He could have cracked that Obama should clamp a wetsuit or a diving bell on the BP CEO, or spray him with an oil can, or even took it the street, and said Obama should kick his butt if he didn't fix the spill. None of which carried any hint, overt at least, of a racial slam or disrespect for Obama and the office.

But Maher didn't go there with that. Race stuff is simply too juicy and eye catching. And now in the wake of the BP spill, Maher, like the ever swelling pack of sharks circling their victim in the water, sniff Obama's sudden vulnerability, and political blood. The hard fact is at this point BP can't cap the well, and even if Obama did what the new crop of his bashers shout he do and order the oil giant to cap it immediately, it still wouldn't get done that minute. Obama, then, can expect more blame, finger pointing, and cheap shots, will be heaped on and taken at him. Maher certainly heaped that on him for the wrong reason, and above all in the wrong way. Bill, you owe Obama an apology.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

It's bound to become official. Curtains, finito, nice knowing you time. Another member of the species is rearing down its hoary head and biting the dust. Once it was the dinosaurs, then the dodo birds and then some flora and fauna. Now it is the modern-day parent.

After taking biology and learning about the birds and the bees, we all know that anyone can be a parent, especially after a night of debauchery and raucousness, or some trips to a family planning center.

But it is the bad or crazy parent that has somehow taken over the genome. Now bad parents have been around since time immemorial. After all, even Adam and Eve must have made their mistakes and that there must have been some glitches in Cain and Abel's parenting. Otherwise, one wouldn't have slew the other.

In some cases, there is the bad seed falling from the perfectly good parent, but in most cases, it is the lousy parent who puts forth the lousy child, and everyone can read the writing is on the wall, everyone except the lousy parent. That's because they are often too blinded by defending their child. The problem is that as of late bad parents have been multiplying like amoebas swimming in a lab Petri dish.

Take the four New Hampshire young men who bullied and preyed on a fourteen year-old boy with a slight case of attention deficit hyperactive disorder. Blake Van Nest, Donald (DJ) Wyman, Ryan Fisk and Travis Johnson told the fourteen year-old that they would leave him alone if he tattooed his backside. They cornered him, forced him to drop his pants so they could tattoo a man's genitals on his backside along with some swear words. They then took him outside and had him to drop his pants and display their handiwork before his peers who were waiting with their cell phones outside. The boy was too humiliated to tell his parents, but the school found out about it after some teachers heard some kids talking about and because the pictures had been circulated from one zombie teen's cell phone to the other's.

In retribution, the four men should have the same body part tattooed on their foreheads, or at the very least, the letter "D," for douche bag, and they, along with their zombie-like parents, should be neutered in the name of public security and safety.

Unfortunately, this is hardly an isolated incident and now more than ever, there are enough cases of children's insensitivity and misdoings to fill the Library of Congress. Now more than ever, kids are hitting and spitting at teachers, they are beating up on each other up and bragging about it, and they are killing and maiming each other.

And it's going to take some doing, meaning lots of consequences and sensitivity training, to find our way back.

For many years I took the position that a society was best served by a government that allowed anything and a culture that encouraged the right thing. Only this, I thought, would produce the right incentive to do the right thing.

Rand Paul attempts to bring this approach, condemning racism while saying it's not his place to ban a business from practicing it. It is intellectually defensible.

The rub is that we all know that, if we let people do things we don't want them to do, they'll probably do them no matter how much we cry. That's why so many conservative evangelicals, who claim in theory to want small, non-meddling government, in practice are on crusades to ban abortion pills, gay marriage and so on. They know that they'll never control the culture enough to squelch such behaviors -- and even if they did, those behaviors would go on anyway.

Cigarette smoking is on the decline in California, but not because of the social pressure, but because the various bans and the pressure together affected behavior. It might be coercive, but it kinda works.

Yet in the South, a century and a half of forced freedom for the black man still hasn't resulted in the vast majority of white people becoming color blind. Imagine how bad they'd be, then, if government hadn't meddled.

That's the problem with libertarian ideals. A democratic citizenry steps back and lets its social groups and institutions do what they want -- and eventually the democratic citizenry has to get involved.

That's when those social groups and institutions start claiming that the democratic citizenry is a fascist or totalitarian state. It's all a little too convenient, isn't it....?

Many Republicans are charging that the Great Oil Gusher of 2010 is Obama's Katrina. While there are many differences--as Earl correctly points out--it is a fair charge. The answer, however, doesn't seem fair. It is, Yes. Earl argues from the position that it is not Obama's fault, which is true; it is Obama's problem. Morally, he may not be guilty of nonfeasance or malfeasance, but politically this is Obama's oil-soaked albatross.

This is a perfect storm of a disaster. Government is proving incapable of either fixing this or leading. Meanwhile private enterprise has lost all credibility. There are no winners. No one is covered with glory. Everyone is covered with oil. Especially the Albatross.
©2020 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

This one could have been mailed in. Sarah Palin predictably knocked President Obama for as she put it in garbled colloquialism failing to "dive in there" and solve the Gulf spill disaster. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and a rash of GOP senators were slightly more grammatically intelligible but still pounced on Obama for being too cozy with BP and not pulling out all stops to staunch the spill. The GOP's political attack plan is crude and transparent. Compare the Gulf spill to Bush's Katrina bumble, liken Obama to Bush and heap the same blame on him.

It won't fly. Before Katrina hit, government tracking systems, weather satellites, and countless news reports warned that the hurricane potentially posed a grave threat to New Orleans and the Gulf. Bush administration officials well knew this. They also knew that the sea walls there were in terrible shape and could give way. When the storm hit, Bush hesitated, dithered, and minimized the immediate impact of the storm, and made no effort to counter the wild, sensational and thoroughly false reports of looting, rape and vandalism. The colossal loss of property, the thousands dead and injured, the horrendous displacement of residents were the direct result of government ineptitude. Five years later thousands remain uprooted, and whole neighborhoods remain gutted. New Orleans and the Gulf are still paying the high price for Bush's abysmal delay. After an international army of volunteers and donors sped aid and relief to the area, Bush eventually recovered and kicked relief efforts into high gear.

Obama's response to the Gulf spill stands in stark contrast. He sent cabinet secretaries, and an armada of homeland security, Environmental Protection Agency, FEMA and Coast Guard personnel, engineers, scientists, technicians and clean-up workers to the Gulf; more than 20,000 responders in all. There are multiple staging areas, and ships in the area involved in the clean-up. Nearly 2 million feet of containment boom, and a million gallons of chemical dispersant have been used to fight the spill. Obama has asked Congress for $130 million for clean-up operations. The White House has churned out reams of releases, statements, and reports to keep the public updated on the progress and problems in containing the spill.

Obama correctly points the blame finger at BP and oil executives for their duck and dodge of full responsibility for the spill, and their inability to successfully contain it. They deserve the blame. But as environmental disasters go, off shore drilling spills are rare.

The industry's forty year safety record on drilling has been fairly good. But the BP mess shows that all it takes is one drill disaster to cancel out the industry's record and paint the industry as a greedy, safety plagued, environmentally irresponsible menace.
The spill should be a wake-up call on the potential and real hazards of ultra deep water oil drilling, and the urgent need to devise new and better safety and equipment standards and controls. The Obama administration has been hands on in supervising BP's efforts to stop the spill. This provides it with terrible but needed teaching moment on the need for the government to ramp up oversight and monitoring of the industry. And beyond that for the Obama administration to rethink and reexamine the potentially devastating environmental hazards and drawbacks of expanded off shore drilling as well as its potential to dent America's energy dependent shackle.

Public opinion polls now show that more than half of Americans say they disapprove of Obama's handling of the disaster. An even bigger percentage says they have no confidence in the government's ability to prevent another spill. The public's heightened jitters over the spill are understandable given the nightmare environmental messes that the oil industry has at times made in the past. The public is also right to be deeply suspicious and outraged over the far too lax and cozy relationship between government regulatory agencies and the oil industry.

The Gulf spill, though, is not solely an environmental catastrophe to Palin and the GOP or even a matter to them of government officials in bed with an industry. If that was there real concern they'd point the same blame finger at themselves as they do at Obama for their sweetheart relation with the oil industry. According to the Sunlight Foundation, BP has dumped six million in campaign contributions to congresspersons in past years. Seven of the top ten recipients of BP contributions have been GOP senators and congress persons, and one of the principal recipients has been GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But the facts are irrelevant. The Gulf spill is simply too juicy a political opportunity for the GOP to pass up to ream President Obama for a disaster that he could not foresee, did not make, and has made a best effort to solve. What better way to drive the political nail in the box than to call the Gulf spill the politically loaded Obama's Katrina. It's a bogus call.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

I can hate anyone at home I want to hate. I can profile those who show up to date my children or grandchildren. The law doesn't deal with my heart. I can discriminate to my shrunken little heart's content in home and in my heart but not in business.

While there may be some gray areas between private associations/homes and public/ business enterprises, for the most part, we know that our homes, our business and social organizations function with different rights and obligations.

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

So what if the beings of George Wallace and David Duke entered into Rand Paul's brain and got stuck there? After all, all the talk about him should die down come election day, should the majority disagree with him.

I wouldn't like to be denied my right to purchase as a credit-card wielding member of my group. But I would be sure to avoid the business at all costs and go across the street to a store's competitors while broadcasting my moans and groans to anyone who'll listen. And since what goes around eventually comes around, the operation would hopefully soon fold especially because I can broadcast like madmen when need be.

The question is where do we draw the line? Should a business owner allow a Klansman into his store? What about a gang-member with tattoos out the yin-yang, a suspected terrorist or any other of society's misfits?

What about black, Asian or Hispanic gang members? Should they be allowed into a flower shop because they're black, Asian or Hispanic, or be kept him out because of their other pursuits? It can all be so complicated.

While I don't know if 'd want to frequent a business that only caters to one gene pool, it is also the owner's constitutional right, so long as the property is private. I don't have a key to the Playboy club, and they probably wouldn't want me because of my views, which I'd be sure to espouse once in the door.

Certain people aren't allowed in certain clubs because they never bothered joining, but that doesn't mean that we should drop all standards and let everyone and his uncle in. The killer here is that along with freedom of speech comes its close relation, freedom of choice.

Ah,the Tea Party. While they are not really a party but more accurately a convention of grievances, their grievances are not without merit. They are not wrong to complain about the arrogance and inefficiencies of government. Their libertarian leanings have a certain abstract logic to them. The titular leader of this wing is, of course, (Ayn) Rand Paul MD.

Can this running against the institution they disparage possibly work for them? Well, it is chastening when I remember that John Betinis won the election on his promise of eliminating student government. Naturally, he did not eliminate it. He grew it. Le plus ca change. Yes, I voted for John. It was great fun in college. Today? Not so much.

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Kentucky GOP senate nominee Rand Paul took withering heat for knocking the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Paul's kind of, sort of recant further fueled fierce debate over whether he is a homegrown bigot or a principled libertarian. It's worth noting that Paul said much worse about civil rights in a May 2002 letter to the editor in response to the Bowling Green Daily News editorial on enforcing the Federal Fair Housing Act. He rapped the editorial, "Decisions concerning private property and associations should in a free society be unhindered. As a consequence, some associations will discriminate."
As bad as his 2002 letter affirming the right to racially discriminate there's a Paul issue that's even more ominous. That's the dubious company that he may keep. It's an odd ball and dangerous assortment of fringe gun nut, bible spouting home schoolers, global conspiracy theorists and abolish government organizations, all backed by fundamentalist race and gender baiting preachers. The groups are linked directly and indirectly through the unofficial Paul related takebackkentucky website. Here's a list and a short take on some of the choicest organizations in the unofficial Paul network.

(www.amerikanexpose.com). This is a group that believes that the United States uses weather control to assail and control other nations, and that the country is under the direct control of the United Nations - without any real sovereignty of its own. This links to (www.freedomadvocates.org). This is a group which appears to believe that the concept of "sustainable development," (both economic and environmental), are actually plots to deny the "liberties" of the peoples of the world, and exert sinister control of population growth movement of sovereign nations. For a representative sample of their literature see (www.freedomadvocates.org/images/pdf/DDDoA.sml.pdf). The subject of the publication refers to a deliberate "dumbing down" of America in preparation for a "socialist" takeover.

(www.afaky.com).
This site connects directly to the Take Back Kentucky/Kentucky Taxpayers United site. It is ultra-religious and seeks to directly influence the outcome of local and national elections. It provides a storehouse of information about politicians involved with these organizations. (http://www.afaky.com/Show.aspx?id=12&m=19). This is the URL to register for the site (votervoice.net/groups/afaky/register). Also on this page is (http://www.afaky.com/Show.aspx?id=111), which discusses punishments for "Hate Crimes." The American Family Association of Kentucky considers it to be inappropriate to tell ministers that they cannot discriminate against homosexuals or other unchristian individuals.

Next there's (www.chek.org). This is the site of the Christian Home Educators of Kentucky. They have waged a ferocious fight against state mandates and controls on how home schooled children are educated by their parents. The emphasis is on a Christian education, which includes the concepts of dispensationalism (their term), American exceptionalism, and strong opposition to secular institutions.
The list wouldn't be complete without the obligatory links to rightwing gun lobby advocacy groups. The prime gun group listing (gunowners.org) is based in Virginia. It's one of the most outspoken rightside pro gun groups in the nation.
The link to (www.youdontsay.org) links to all manner of websites. It has links to Jewish extremist sites, sites advocating direct confrontation with progressive groups, vigilante sites, and sites linked directly to vigilantes and militias.

Some organization listed express a genuine fear of what is known as "Real ID Tags." These are proposed radio tracking devices that these organizations fear the federal government will require be worn by all Americans at some point in the future. The language employed by these organizations in describing their fears in this area is something best described as "panic speech."

Then there's (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bible-smack-radio) where the Reverend Matt Singleton holds forth on such enlightened topics as whether the supposedly mythological creatures of the Bible match the fossil record. Singleton also appears to believe that the Catholic Church is on course to take over America.
For the curious here's the complete list of recommended and affiliated groups on the "unofficial" takebackkentucky.net site.
Rolling Thunder(National)
Greasy OnlineGun Owners of America
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
Armed Females of America
Legally Armed
Women Against Gun Control
Citizens committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Second Amendment Foundation
Law Enforcement Alliance of America
NRA-ILA
Second Amendment Committee
Keep and Bear Arms
Kentucky Coalition to Carry Concealed
Save the Guns
Kentuckians for the Right to Bear Arms (KRBA)
Take Back Kentucky
League of Kentucky Property Owners
freedom.org
Jefferson Review
Congressman Ron Paul
Take Back Florida
Sovereignty International, Inc.
Libertarian Party of Kentucky
Meade County Citizens for Better Government
http://www.cpky.org/
Kentucky Motorcycle Assoc. / K.B.A.
Take Back Maryland
These groups are among the most extreme, xenophobic, homophobic and gender and racial hostile groups in the country. Paul has not publicly said that he supports or receives support from any of these groups. He doesn't have too. He's their champion and the takebackkentucky site makes that amply clear.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

The news hit last December that there was a racially inflammatory picture of the lynching of a black man next to a smiling cherubic picture of three young happy go lucky whites captioned "Happy N....Day" on senate campaign spokesperson Chris Hightower's myspace website. Rand Paul issued this statement. "I have never heard a single utterance of racism from this staffer nor do I believe him to have any racist tendencies. However, it is impossible to present the ideas and reforms we need in this country with this controversy present. Therefore I have accepted his resignation."

What's wrong with this? Where to begin? The racially vile picture was posted on the site on January 2008. It's irrelevant whether Hightower posted it or not (and he didn't say) or by a nut case prankster. It stayed there for nearly two years was viewed and commented on by countless site visitors and many others. It was removed only after a mild furor about it. The furor became a furor only after Paul emerged as a serious contender for the GOP senate nomination in Kentucky. So the ancient question again is what did Paul (or Hightower) know about the posting and when did he know about it? And if he didn't know anything about it which we still don't know for a fact, why didn't he know about it? Hightower was not some low level campaign grunt. He was Paul's main spokesperson.

Now there's Rand's statement on Hightower's resignation. Note carefully that he remorsefully and regretfully accepted it with the obligatory denunciation of racism. But Paul did not fire him. He did not even reprimand him. He did not promise a sweeping, thorough investigation of how this kind of blatant racist taunt could filter into anything that remotely touched on his campaign. Nor did he publicly threaten to ban in Boston anyone who remotely allowed the use of a site connected with his campaign to post or spew racially vile material. A few libertarian sites took Paul to task for his muted response to Hightower and questioned whether Paul took the issue seriously enough. They chided him for not taking a more aggressive stance against it. It was indeed a teaching moment that Paul could have used to make it clear racism has no place in his campaign, and anyone that goes there with that will get the swift boot.

Democrats, civil rights leaders, and a wave of commentators have gotten hoarse screaming at the tea party leaders to speak out against the party's unabashed bigots and the displays of racial hate. The pleas have fallen on deaf ears the tea party top. The simple reason is that it would cut its throat if it denounced its racists and racism, and really meant it. The shouts, taunts, spitting, catcalls, joker posters, N word slurs, Confederate and Texas Lone Star flag waving by tea party activists is and has been an indispensable political necessity for the movement.
Just as Chris Hightower about that. Paul for sure didn't.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Muslims, on balance, typically treat their founder and their symbols with unusual respect. If I sat cross-legged in our living room and one of my feet seemed to get too close to a Quran on the coffee table, my father would slap my leg away. And explicit depictions of the prophet are, as you know, cause for riots.

Conservative Muslims have used their values to bully other Muslims and even non-Muslim into submission. Yesterday was Everybody Draw Muhammad Day on Facebook, a mean-spirited response to the bullying. Many Muslims disapproved of this, and Pakistan's government took drastic action, suspending Facebook and YouTube.

I think average Pakistanis have more to be worried about than offensive depictions of their Prophet. For one thing, they've for years been offensively depicting their prophet's religion to the outside world through their own political and social dysfunction.

But what's not being said is how many moderate Muslims and closet secularists in the Muslim world just don't care one way or another. And they need to begin speaking up, as a few have done so far, to help drive the fanatics back into their caves, and to keep those in the middle from finding it so publicly respectable to side with the fanatics in public demonstrations and Internet ranting.

The genie of pluralism will not be pushed back into the bottle in this emerging global village. Conservative Muslims cannot go on demanding rules to "forbid offense," especially since so many of their own social demands offend others within a pluralistic society. If moderate Muslims don't help them "get" this, Islam as a whole will suffer.

Kentucky GOP senate candidate Rand Paul may or may not learn what his father Ron learned. And that's when you pop off on the always thorny issue of race there's a consequence. The horrid thing is that the consequence might not be the same for Rand as it was for dad. The senior Paul and his backers went apoplectic during presidential campaign 2008 when it was amply and correctly pointed out that Ron Paul's official newsletter was stuffed with oft color unabashed racial jibes and barbs. It bashed Martin Luther King Jr. as a "pro-Communist philanderer." It declared that the 1992 L.A. riots petered out "when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks." And it branded black males as "the criminals who terrorize our cities -- in riots and on every non-riot day." And then assured the reason for that is they were genetically engineered "to hate whites and to steal and loot as much money from the white enemy as possible."
An outraged Ron Paul vehemently denied that he uttered the vile racial slurs and claimed that he did not know they were said or written by him or anyone else in his camp. The colossal problem with his denial was that the racial bile appeared in his officially approved newsletters. There was no evidence then or later that he wrote a correction, issued a clarification, or even as he hinted they were written by someone else, and, if so, that he publicly disavowed and fired that someone else.

Ron Paul had to denounce the racially loaded quips in 2008 because for a brief moment he was deliriously embraced by thousands as the populist alternative to the supposedly hopelessly corrupt, bought and paid for, corporate interest Democrat and Republicans presidential candidates. Paul's fanatic backer's mix of blind adulation and desperation meant more media and public scrutiny than Paul had ever gotten. That in turn meant that his past, or alleged past words, were now wide open for public dissection and accountability. The senior Paul knew that he had to indignantly deny he wrote or uttered anything that could be construed as fanning racial bigotry. The issue quickly faded mostly because Paul's presidential candidacy quickly faded.

Things may be different with Rand. There's his widely quoted smoking gun interview with the Louisville Courier Journal in which he blew off the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a slap against private businesses' right to racially discriminate. He had a second and third chance to eat his words in two separate interviews after his primary win. He blew both. He did the obligatory disavowal of racism, but did not back away from his belief that the Civil Rights Act went way too far in telling private businesses that they couldn't racially discriminate. Junior Paul, unlike dad, is suddenly a national figure and counted on by legions of revved up tea party activists to carry the party flag into battle against President Obama. Rand hasn't disappointed. He made it clear that he'll pound Obama and his agenda at every turn.

Even if Rand, as his dad, didn't trash the Civil Rights Act, his odd mish mash of ultra conservatism and libertarian pronouncements would mark him as racially suspect. A cornerstone of the jumble is his view of government and what it should or should not do about civil rights. Rand, as Ron, holds that government should have minimal or better still no role in civil rights laws and enforcement. The government passed and enforced civil rights laws, did nothing to solve the country's racial ills, and worse, fueled even more racial polarization, he says. That old, worn, and thoroughly discredited view warms the hearts of the packs of closet bigots who pine for the old days when racial and gender discrimination was the American norm and government did little to protect black and gay rights.

Rand pretty much said the same thing in the Courier-Journal interview. Any other time and place in recent American politics that would instantly make him unfit to hold any state or national office. And those who defend his view would be branded as bigots and crackpots. But this is not any other time or place. Rand, unlike Ron, has the most inviting and vulnerable target in President Obama to level his fire at. He has the cheers and backing of untold numbers who share his belief that the President is leading the country to social and financial ruin. They will do everything they can to drive him from the White House.

If Rand and company have to reach back nearly half a century and dredge up a monumental piece of legislation that totally remade the racial map in America to fire up the faithful, then so be it. After all, why let a little thing like racial bigotry trip a Paul up. Ron tipped around it. Rand will do the same. The frightening thing is that he may get away with it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

I'd hate to turn this into a lovefest, but I am going to have to side with Jonathan. It would take hubris and arrogance to assume that Obama's endorsement of a candidate is akin to the political Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. People are tired of running in circles and of problems not being solved. They are tired of all these illegal immigrants. They are tired of the economy, and they are tired that nothing is moving as quickly as they'd like. That was the cause of the shifts and the removal of Arlen Specter, though he also did himself in by saying that he switched parties in order to win. Politicians are known for being geniuses about as often as they are known for being honest, which means never. This has been happening since time immemorial and will happen on again.

Obama is a smart guy who came along at the right time and ran one heck of a campaign with the catchphrase "Change." That is smart. It also helped that blacks and the young came out in droves. The problem is that he inherited a decades-old fiscal mess that was created in part when Bill Clinton started to deregulate Wall Street.

Anarchy isn't the answer, either as science has pinpointed the Neanderthal blueprint circulating in almost all our bodies. No government or controls would cause people to start swinging at and clubbing each other more than they already do. The best thing to do is to follow the Italian model where they hold elections about as often as some people change their socks. That way if a politician is doing a lousy job, we can vote the mope out of office tout de suite.

Sometimes, there are more educated fools than anything. Take the case of undocumented immigrant turned college graduate, Lizbeth Mateo.

Mateo was just fourteen when she snuck across the border with her parents from Oaxaca, Mexico to California. She remained here, in her undocumented status, was educated here, in her undocumented status, and even finished from college here. Why she and her family never bothered changing their status is anyone's guess. Maybe they thought it was easier that way. Maybe they thought they had a right to be here. Maybe they didn't want to hassle with the INS.

Then, reaching the age of majority, Ms. Mateo enrolled in California State University, Northridge and majored in Chicano studies. What anyone can do with a degree in Chicano studies is anyone's guess, though she may content to simply nail the degree to the wall as a sign of what she had endured and for when visitors come over. I have some degrees, too, though not in other disciplines. One is in sociology and the other is in linguistics, though they both amount to the same thing when it comes to job-hunting time.

A few years after matriculating from college, the Arizona immigration law is passed and Miss Chicano Studies travels to there to protest at Senator John McCain's office. As an undocumented immigrant, she wanted him to know she finds the law to be racist, deplorable, wrong, mean-spirited, discriminatory and unfair to undocumented children, as well as some other things. But she crossed the wrong border at the wrong time. It would have been better had she popped out of a sewer drainpipe to deliver a baby in her ninth month of pregnancy. Then she would have at least been given a hospital bed with rails on the sides, so she wouldn't fall off and sue, medication and the near-best food that the hospital could muster because if nothing else, we are a place where future voters count.

But because she positioned herself right in the bosom of anti-immigration law territory and flagrantly didn't have the papers to back herself up, she was arrested for trespassing.

Her friends and supporters claim Mateo risked it all by crossing that border. But she knew the law going in there, she knew that she was waving her status in front of them like a toreador waving a flag in front of a 1,300 lb. bull, and she didn't really seem to care because she wanted to make a point, even if the one on top of her head looked pretty sizeable to begin with. She thought she was going to change the system after having filched off of it without consequence for all those years. But she confused the conservative Arizona with the free-swinging, ever-loving California. And she paid a price and will hopefully get deported.

On the positive side, at least she will get to put her degree in Chicano studies to good use when communicating with her compadres.

I will stipulate that Earl is correct that race plays a significant
part in the anti-Obama animus. There are people who are driven to distraction by the fact that we have an African American president. His achievements, against odds that they know were stacked against him, make their own failures all the more painful. Yes, there are bigots and racists. I disagree with Earl about Tuesday being about Obama. Nor do I believe that November will be a plebiscite.

The fact is Obama is higher in personal approval ratings than Bill Clinton or George W were at this point in their presidencies. They both lost seats but were re-elected. Aside from those who are blinded by hatred, Obama remains relatively unscathed. He is (and no one will like this comparison) much like Ronald Reagan--another Great Communicator. People liked Reagan even if they didn't agree with his policies or ideas. They liked their perception of his character and their sense of a kind of integrity that was both rare and transcended politics. On the left we don't like the war or the moderation in pursuit of healthcare. On the right they see him as over-reaching politically and fiscally, but darn it he is to most Americans what he said of Hillary, "Likable enough."
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Tuesday's primary elections were again about President Obama. And from the look of things every election up to and through 2012 will also be about the president. And the elections will continue to put Obama in a Catch 22. He is duty bound by Democratic Party loyalty, ties, incumbency, tradition, and political need to support seasoned, but shaky incumbents. Ousted Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter crossed party lines to back Obama on key issues. Tottering Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, a conservative Democrat, with deep corporate interest ties, risked much to back Obama's health care reform package. If he played Pontius Pilate and washed his hands of them while the danger mounted against them, he would be reviled as the worst kind of fair weather president. A president who plays it tight to the vest, and sticks his finger in the wind to see which way the political wind is blowing before helping out at risk Democratic incumbents in dire need of support. What kind of leadership is that?
Obama's recognized the dilemma. Endorse an incumbent that loses, and in the case of Specter loses badly, and be called a president whose support for an incumbent is tantamount to a kiss of political death (that was the tag on W. Bush). Or, do nothing, and weaken and divide the party at a time when it needs every ounce of strength it can muster to hold off the GOP counterassault.

The Scott Brown win in Massachusetts earlier this year and the GOP gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia last November again underscored the painful reality that a crushing majority of independents who oppose Obama or disavow his policies for racial, party, ideological reasons or personal prejudices, are a solid backbone of the GOP's counter insurgency against him.

This was yet another reminder that Obama's presidential victory was as much due to his personal appeal and a public fed up with Bush's colossal domestic and foreign policy bungles and GOP corruption and sex scandals than any profound shift in voter party allegiances. The bad mistake was to confuse Obama's popularity with support of his policies. Polls repeatedly warned that while a majority of voters said then and continue to say that they personally like him, they don't like, or are at best, are deeply skeptical about his polices. This has been grist for the mill for the Tea party activists whose faux anti-tax, anti-big government, borderline race tinged appeals and sloganeering have touched a deep nerve among those already inclined to believe and think the worst about Obama. They may even get the hammer they've been desperately searching for to pound Obama even harder with the Senate primary win in Kentucky of Rand Paul.

The other mistake was to misread the 2008 presidential election results. Much was made that Obama got more white votes than John Kerry or Al Gore. McCain crushed Obama by a twelve point spread among white voters. The route was not just among old, Deep South, unreconstructed or latent bigoted white male voters, but in virtually every voter demographic among whites, including a virtual dead heat with Obama among a majority of younger white voters. This doesn't tell the whole story of the sharp divide Obama still faces. A sizeable percentage of whites were disgusted enough with Bush's policies to stay home on Election Day, but not disgusted enough with him and his policies to vote for Obama.

The Henry Louis Gates affair and the right's town hall rabble rousing made more voters wary of Obama's policies. Polls after the Gates outburst showed that a majority of whites condemned Obama for backing Gates and, even more ominously, expressed big doubts about his policies.

There was yet another worry in Tuesday's election. While arguably much of the heat on the White House and White House backed incumbents has come from the Tea Party activists, the low intensity grousing from many progressives and liberal Democrats of expressing disappointment, and even betrayal, with and by Obama took a toll on Lincoln. Moveon. org wasted no time in sending out an email blast claiming that Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter's edging Lincoln into a runoff was a major victory for progressives. The not so subtle hint was that a disaffected and angered left could hurt Obama too by also hitting the barricades against White House backed incumbents.

Last November's election and Brown's win was about Obama. This Tuesday's election was more of the same. There were political casualties in both elections and that's inevitable when elections become a referendum even if unfair on a president and his presidency.

Richard Blumenthal, Attorney General and Senatorial candidate from Connecticut, has embarrassed himself and the Democratic Party. He has, on a number of occasions, claimed to have served in Vietnam during the war. He has spoken feelingly about coming home from Vietnam and being spat on. The problem is that he did not serve in Vietnam. He did serve honorably in the Marine Reserve during but not in the Vietnam War. The choice preposition carries a lot of weight. Pretending to military experience that you did not have is a major offense. Officers, with otherwise impeccable records, have been cashiered for awarding themselves Battle Theater ribbons indicating service where they did not, in fact, serve.

Though sometimes we are fooled, most of the time we know what the truth is. We also know when a lie is a lie and someone is trying to wiggle out of responsibility with a linguistic spin that puts the truth in a Half Nelson--now forever to be known as a Full Blumenthal.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

When someone utters the immortal, "truth is stranger than fiction," they often aren't kidding.

Imagine this. An ambassador from a beleaguered and reviled country is invited to give the commencement address to the students at a prestigious university. Rather than being met with contemptuous silence at best, the ambassador is met with protest signs from students attempting to block his right to be heard.

These are the same humanoids who moan and groan whenever they think that someone is stepping on the toes of their free speech and civil liberties. Yet they deny it to others. But really, what's the worst that could happen at the commencement address? That they would see things differently or learn something new?

Unfortunately, it isn't the plot to the latest Tim Burton movie. It's happening here and now at Brandeis University of all places. To sign the petition to allow Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren to give this year's commencement address, click here.

What in politics makes fundamentally decent people become monstrous caricatures of themselves--representing, or rather misrepresenting, themselves as people entirely different from their records? What is it that makes fundamentally decent people misrepresent their opponents in cruel caricatures of their actual records? And, more critically, what is it in these sleazy stratagems that makes them believe they reflect well on their character?

As I'm sure Patrick Henry would ask if he were here: Is ambition so dear and holding office so sweet as to be purchased at the price of integrity? Sadly the answer in today's political world is: Yes!
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Sarah Palin recently told an anti-abortion activist group that "mama grizzlies" will eat up the Democrats in November and shove the country back into the GOP's arms. Her home grown, home state animal kingdom analogy would have been more apt and frightening a year ago when the Tea Party first gathered steam. Then GOP leaders banked that the Tea Party would be their back channel hammer to pound Obama and the Democrats in November. Things went well in the beginning. The party's angry protests, marches, and parades, the passion, zealotry, their sloganeering, name calling, their anti-tax, anti big government, and defense of freedoms code word racism boded well. President Obama seemed the perfect made-in-heaven foil. He's a moderate, African-American, Democrat who they recast as a closet unpatriotic, race baiting, socialist.

The set script, though, has suddenly radically changed. In quick succession, GOP stalwarts in Utah, Florida, Kentucky, and Maine, and John McCain in Arizona have either been knocked out the box or are under withering fire from Tea Party activists. The white hot anti-incumbent rhetoric in Tea Party circles is almost totally aimed at the GOP incumbents and candidates. Any hint from a GOP incumbent in their words, actions, or voting record of making nice with Democrats and Obama guarantees a tongue lash from Palin, and relentless hectoring, harassment, and even physical threats from street level activists. GOP leaders have slowly woke to the recognition that Tea Party activists will settle for nothing less than a full blown exorcism of any trace of moderation or compromise from the GOP.
The danger looms for the GOP that 2010 could be 1964 all over again. That was the year that a right insurgency powered by ferocious Deep South and Western opposition to the civil rights movement, legislative and court ordered desegregation, and pending civil rights rights bills rammed the GOP to the hard right and in that year's presidential election, to political disaster. The GOP suffered mightily in the aftermath of LBJ and the Democrat's landslide sweep. But the crushing defeat did not totally transform the GOP into a hard core rightwing opposition party. There were many conservative Republicans who were still willing to compromise, conciliate, and work when necessary with Democrats.

The best case in point is McCain. Pre-presidential candidate Obama's ascension, he was widely held up as the standard model of the responsible, pragmatic, Republican conservative who was willing to reach across the congressional aisle to get things done. It's a far different story in the Obama White House days. McCain's sprouted wings on his heels in his mad dash to the right to keep his Senatorial job. His rush to the right typifies the GOP's Catch 22 dilemma. He can't win, or at least the perception is that he can't win, by ticking off Tea Party activists. Yet, catering to them types him as a pandering, captive of the loose jointed right, shill.

Either case scenario poses the grave threat that the GOP could be a fractured, unhinged party months before the November showdown. Polls and surveys show this potentially chilling scenario. In a Pew survey 40 percent of Democrats say they have no faith in their elected representatives in Congress. That's an all time low in the history of the Pew survey. But even fewer Republicans say that they have any faith in their congressional representatives. That's a crushing load the GOP could drag into the fall elections. A pack of hard right candidates that carry the GOP banner will be a powerful turn-off to thousands of politically crucial independent voters. In past polls, many of them registered disgust, frustration and anger at Obama and the Democrat's policies and signaled a willingness to shift back to the GOP. This could be out the window.

Then there's Palin. She poses absolutely no threat to Obama's solid or lukewarm Democratic base. The mere mention of her as a possible presidential candidate is more than enough to terrorize disappointed liberal Democrats out of their Obama inertia. The real damage that she can do will be to further confuse, rile up, and split Republicans. Polls show that while voters in general say Palin's not presidential timber, a huge minority of Republicans say that she is. This could translate into a stock of disgruntled, frustrated voters who would be sorely tempted to push, prod and hector the GOP to give Palin her due as a possible presidential candidate. This kind of talk will propel even more independents away from the GOP.

Palin can talk all day about "mama grizzlies" ousting Democrats from power in November and beyond. But the stark political reality is that so far the only ones who have been threatened or devoured wear the GOP tag. This wasn't in the GOP mainstream's script for Palin and the Tea Party.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

I'll disagree with Gail when she worries that "this country is going to lean so far to the left we're going to fall into the Pacific Ocean." There's no reason to believe that Elena Kagan is going to be more liberal than John Paul Stevens, and her appointment has disappointed liberals who wanted an anti-Scalia.

Give Obama credit. He's within his rights to pick an uber-leftist as long as he's president. I hope people will eventually crawl out from under their beds and breathe a sigh of relief that, come to think of it, he's just not an uber-leftist.

We can argue all we want about the pros and cons of appointing Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. It doesn't much matter because it's already a done deal. Earl opined that the blot on her record is the fact that she didn't hire one person of color while serving as dean at Harvard Law School. But that would be saying that one of color or minority has to be appointed because of his color. Besides, does anyone know how many blacks, Hispanics and Asians applied?

The outer shell shouldn't be a get a free employment pass. It's one's qualifications and how hard a person has worked for a goal rather than race, creed or ethnicity that should be the deciding factor - in theory anyway.

I'd rather not see her on the bench because this country is going to lean so far to the left we're going to fall into the Pacific Ocean. In the end, it may not much matter because we're (hopefully) going to have a more centrist or conservative government in the future. And we've already seen hints of it by the election of Republicans to offices that had been Democratic so long that the party was practically engraved in a nameplate. Let's keep up the roll.

First Pluto lost its status as
a planet, being downgraded to a planetoid. Now Jupiter has lost a stripe. In effect it's been busted down a rank. Nature seems to have stripped a stripe. Yes, it's still the largest planet in our solar system but it is not its old self. Is it a new self?

Old gods, like old guys, can get a bit vain, as the veins starts showing and parts start drooping and dropping. They may vainly go chasing after the surgical Fountain of Youth. I think that's exactly what Jupiter did when we were unable to see. Like so many of my contemporaries who go to Costa Rica or Brazil, like so many of my fellow high school friends did over Spring vacation our junior year, I think Jupiter disappeared in order to have some work done. And he really does look so bright, smooth and radiant south of his equator--something to be envious of at his age. Now, if only he could get rid of that Great Spot. I can hear the vain old god crying, "Out! Out! Damn spot!"
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

The nomination of Elena Kagan is obviously driving nearly everyone crazy. The new centrism is apparently found when no one — left, right or shrinking center — is enthusiastic. The conventional wisdom (which is a phrase that is oxymoronic) holds that she will be easily confirmed because she is smart, doesn't have an extensive paper trail and plays well with others. All this may be true.

However there are issues — some legitimate and some ridiculous — that may cause problems both in her confirmation and more likely as a Justice. Both left and right are troubled by a lack of knowledge about her core beliefs and principles. We cannot tell what she believes from how she advocated for her client, the Obama Administration. We don't know if her position on giving second class access to the military recruiters at Harvard Law was based on her belief or simply carrying out her understanding of Harvard's pre-existing policy guideline.

We don't know if she really believes what she wrote indicating that free speech can be limited if the government's intent is benign. A horrifying concept since almost all bad things are done with sincerity. We don't know if her holding that the battlefield of the war on terror is global, and therefore we can pick up combatants without any process what so ever, is sincere or just advocacy.

Two more troubling issues — one liberal and one conservative — that need examination. Her hiring record at Harvard Law was very short on women and minorities (as Earl pointed out). Also, as a member of the administration can she be fair and objective and separate herself from a career in Democratic politics and policy? Even though this would represent my politics, I am not certain that I want Supreme Court Justices coming out of the political policy shop. Finally, if confirmed, would she have to (or should she) recuse herself from issues close to this White House?
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Dear Gail Saunders, Honorable Advice Columnist:

Help. I have been gainfully unemployed for several years now after losing my job at a hotdog stand. I have looked for a job everywhere, even at the census bureau, but I couldn't pass that test. Then I applied to all the coffee shops and bars I haven't been banned from and have been scanning websites like monster.com. You are known to be very smart and wise, and I am seeking you out because I am out of ideas. What do you think?

Near the Dole

Dear Dole:

You were wise to come to me because I have just the answer: Motherhood. I know it cannot only be meaningful and venerable, but it can also be very lucrative especially for those in your situation. So I suggest that do your best to remain close to the poverty level before attempting Phase Two of the plan: having babies. This will be your fait accompli.

There are many financial benefits to siring children. One is that Uncle Sam will be there to lend a helping hand, come rain or hail or sleet or snow. And it doesn't matter whether you are here legally or not. That is the beauty of the Baby Making Plan. The government will pay you for having babies, or in the event you are a man, to sire some with someone else. If you are beyond the childbearing years, then hire a surrogate, adopt or look into foster care. This is a case where "the more the merrier" applies.

The beauty of the Baby Plan is that the government will give you a monthly stipend for each one and will help pay for pampers, napees and other baby things. You will get food stamps, free medical care (that everyone else has to pay for), and one royal heck of break at tax time.

Being fruitful and multiplying never had such depth, breadth and meaning. Good luck and get going today!

The instant that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's name shot to the top of President Obama's short list of Supreme Court picks in April, progressives and many liberals grumbled "betrayal." Since then the grumbles have decibeled up to screams that Obama took the cheap and easy way out with Kagan to avoid a prolonged, nasty, and in the trenches war with the GOP over his court nominee. The stock rap against Kagan is that she's a tight lipped, beltway, centrist, consensus builder, and putting her on a court with four (and on many days five) of the most bare knuckle, nakedly ultra-conservative, ideological driven justices to sit on the high bench in decades is a colossal prescription for disaster. Put even more bluntly, the horror is that Kagan will propel the court even further to the right.

The evidence of this is scant. It boils down to a few stray comments, a handful of published articles, her required defense as Solicitor General of some Bush era terrorism practices, and her on the surface appearance dismal record of hiring black and Latino professors during her six year stint as Harvard Law School dean. Even if inclined to read into and think the worst about her writings and actions, much less should be made of and read into them than should be made. Kagan is eminently confirmable and confirmable at a point when the Obama administration needs every ounce of political capital it can muster to push through any semblance of meaningful financial reform, comprehensive immigration reform, to revive the cap and trade bill, and in the looming battle over climate control. Progressives hoisted up Diane Wood as the judge with the right progressive political stuff based on her rulings, opinions and writings on abortion, religious and racial discrimination, and unfettered government power.

Wood, though, would have ignited a ferocious, divisive, and nasty fight. The entire Republican attack machine, shrill rightwing talk radio hosts, and bloggers, and tea party activists would have launched a holy crusade against her and by extension Obama. It would have been the Clarence Thomas confirmation brawl and George Bush Senior redux. The Obama administration would have been hopelessly bogged down parrying, counterattacking, and defending Wood as Bush was with Thomas. It would drained him of a massive expenditure of time, staff, resources and the very political capital that he can ill afford to expend. This would have given the GOP and tea party activists a monumental boost at the worst possible time in July when the confirmation hearings likely will be held. They would have sailed into the fall election with a full head of steam. The Democrat's could well have kissed their precarious hold on the House good bye.
The second half of Obama's term would have been one continuous battle with an even more warlike house controlled by the GOP. The unbridled warfare would have spilled over into the Senate. That would virtually assure that Obama's agenda would land on the shelf. Even if Wood's or another supposedly more authentic progressive judge's nomination squeaked through, it would have insured that the intransigent four--Thomas, Scalia, Roberts and Alito, would be even more intransigent in reflexively fighting her or him on any and every case that hit the bench that even remotely touched on civil liberties and civil rights issues. The even greater danger is that they would have pushed swing vote Kennedy permanently to their side.

The scantiness of Kagan's writings, opinions and non-existent experience (in this case judicial), and reputation as a consensus builder are not in themselves cause for terror. These were the very same qualities that millions found so appealing in the man who nominated her to the high court. The great fear is that Kagan will be bullied, badgered, and hectored by Thomas, Alito, Scalia and Roberts on the bench and to make nice with them will tilt or even acquiesce in crucial cases involving abortion, the death penalty, prisoner rights, corporate abuses, tort reform, government power and terrorism. That's a huge stretch. If anything, her supposed consensus building prowess could be spun the opposite way, and that's that she would stake out a position and fight hard to move Kennedy to her position. Countless Supreme Court justices from Hugo Black and Earl Warren to David Souter (and even the man she's replacing John Paul Stevens) were before they ascended to the court were knocked as too conservative, reactionary, and would pose a grave threat to civil liberties and civil rights issues once on the court. In nearly every case, this proved to be a false fear.

Kagan will likely prove to be the same. Progressives can huff and puff and dream starry eyed over whether Obama should have appointed a take no prisoners progressive to the bench. But he didn't. He appointed Kagan, and under the circumstances she was the best that he could get. In time she may well be the best that he should have gotten; even by the standards of progressives.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

There is a good chance that Western Civilization will end where it began: In Greece. The bailout of the Greek economy is a very temporary band-aid on a hemorrhage. Europe is coming down with the financial equivalent of Ebola--a rapidly-spreading and always-fatal form of hemorrhagic fever.

The light may be going out of the Western Enlightenment, ironically just where it was first lit: In Athens Greece.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

How are we becoming a socialist country?
Let me count the ways

We are becoming a socialist country
For all the freeloaders we have,

For all the babies of illegal immigrants we are birthing and paying for
after their parents cross the border and procreate
in order to become citizens

That is how we are becoming a socialist country

We are becoming a socialist country
for that new food stamp program called SNAP,
which stands for the Same Nonsense Against People paying taxes,
(in my humble opinion anyway)

That is how we are becoming a socialist country

We are becoming a socialist country for all those stupid SNAP radio commercials
I wind up listening to while going to and from work
That tell people that they can now buy fruits and vegetables
On food stamps that get paid for
By the sweat of our furry brows
and the labour of our sometimes arthritic hands

We are becoming a socialist country by keeping people indefinitely on the dole
While everyone else goes to work and gets taxed out the yin yang
so they can stay home and watch soap operas
fall asleep or do whatever else enters their feeble minds

That is how we are becoming a socialist country

And as G-d is my witness and things start to go right, we will vote
normal mainstream Republicans like Meg Whitman into office
So we can stop being so gosh darned socialist
and live normal lives by the sweat of our brow
once again

Thank you, amen, over and out.

Shakespeare didn't get much wrong but he was at least incomplete in asserting that "conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution; Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." It is not conscience but the fear of litigation that makes cowards of us all and sends scurrying for lawyers anyone with the impulse to take responsibility for a slight, a disaster or to imply responsibility or fault by apologizing.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the opaquely dark waters of the Gulf of Mexico. When the accident that couldn't happen happened, the hapless officials of British Petroleum withdrew any sense of assurance paradoxically by assuring us that they were not responsible for the accident but they'd clean it up because even though it wasn't their fault, it was their oil. A fine distinction made to imply that they were generously contributing to the clean up though they weren't admitting any actual liability..

When one blows--as inevitably over time and in sufficient numbers--one must, who will be responsible? Obviously, since it couldn't happen, no one will be at fault. All will point fingers. I know the finger with which I'd point.

©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Several headlines this week proclaimed "Humans and Neanderthals Mated." This is not shocking news. Humans, males in particular (not being very particular) will mate with anything. Once we settled long enough to domesticate animals, livestock became a regular option. That humans mated is no news; that we bred, now, there's a story. That shows just how close we are genetically. It answers the controversy over their name. Were they Homo Neanderthalensis or Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis? Were they another species or our first cousins? The answer seems to be first cousins--or closer.

It will be amusing to watch the rapid rehabilitation of Neanderthals. We will quickly morph them from being the embarrassingly crazy cousin in the attic, to the artistic sophisticate whose genetic gifts allowed us to invent gunpowder, weapons of mass destruction and daytime television.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan will plop an issue back on the nation's table that hasn't been seen or heard from or about in what seems like ages. And that's affirmative action. Even before her nomination the word furiously circulated in some circles that during her six year tenure as dean of Harvard University Law School, Kagan had an abominable record on recruiting and hiring minority professors.

At first glance, her record indeed looks atrocious. There were 29 new hires. They were 23 white men, 5 white women, and one Asian American woman; not one black or Latino professor in the bunch. When the dismal figure was released, the White House quickly pushed back. It issued a detailed fact sheet that essentially said that her zero hire of a black or Latino faculty member was grossly misleading. That Kagan had offered several African-American and Latino candidates visiting offers; visiting offers meaning invites to be a visiting lecturer. That's not the same as a permanent offer for faculty spot. But the inference was that a visiting offer, if accepted, could lead to an offer of a permanent faculty position. That didn't happen. The visiting offers were not accepted. That in itself is not a prima facie case to say that Kagan deliberately pushed diversity to the back burner at Harvard. Or even that she did not make a sincere effort to recruit minority faculty members. There are always factors, big, little and unseen in the business of faculty hires at major, even prestigious, universities. But Kagan's motives and the effort she may have made to get a diverse faculty at Harvard Law in the end or a moot point.
Her record on minority hires still stands-- 29 faculty hires, and no black or Latino hires. This is hardly a moot point. There are two major reasons that President Obama nominated Kagan. The first is pragmatic politics. She already went through the confirmation wars as the administration's solicitor general and is widely considered as a consensus building, judicial moderate. That's least likely to ignite a prolonged, heated, and divisive fight over her nomination. The second reason is just as crucial. She is the supposedly the breathing embodiment of diversity.

At a presidential campaign appearance in 2007 Obama was emphatic in demanding that a Supreme Court pick be someone who had empathy for the poor, minorities, disabled and old. In the Senate he ferociously attacked and voted against the confirmation of Bush nominees John J. Roberts and Samuel Alito again precisely because they were hardly cheer leaders for diversity. In their views and rulings they were hard line conservative ideologues who did everything possible to subvert diversity. Obama promised there would be no ideological litmus test in his court picks. However diversity seemed clearly a prime consideration in his choice of a high court judge.
This is not an academic numbers balancing act to get the requisite black, Latino and women on the court. The issue of diversity is a fierce battleground in law and public policy. There are countless cases that invariably wind up contested before the high court on gender, age, disability, and racial discrimination, abortion, the death penalty, prisoner and victim rights, and corporate practices. The issues are highly complex, raise important legal and social questions, and are always contentious. Kagan will be in the thick of the court debate on these cases for years to come.

Conservative judicial watchdog groups know the importance of the diversity battle in court rulings better than any other group. They watch hawk like all potential Supreme Court picks, and they wage endless war in their journals, news articles, on blogs, and in position papers on the need for strict constructionist, diversity neutral judicial picks. They have and will continue to rush to the barricades in their fight to insure that a high court pick will be free of any leaning toward opinions and views that tilt toward a bias for minority rights. They will rally public opinion and Senate Republicans to battle against any such judicial pick.

The irony is that Kagan's blurred record on diversity faculty hiring at Harvard Law School may be a plus and actually keep her out of harm's way from conservative critics at least on the issue of affirmative action. This will and should trouble liberals and progressives who want and expect that President Obama's high court nominee take a stand, a firm stand on the one issue that matters a lot to them and from the president's oft spoken words to him as well, and that's a solid commitment to diversity. The jury is still out on Kagan on this one.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson