Wheeled School Bus - Right Front by Bill Ward's Brickpile

There are a lot of people who don’t like politicians. Or they say they don’t like them, since it seems that a lot of the population of our nation don’t actually know any politicians in a meaningful way. I grew up around them, so the idea of hating them seems a little bit like self loathing. Still there are times when the actions of high profile pols stain everyone in the business of government with a black mark.

That is where we are in regards to Sarah Palin. As trashy and unselfconscious as she is I don’t have problems with her being controversial to get more attention. That is part of the nature of politics, but this bus tour of hers is going to be one of those times where people see on politician doing something really distasteful and put it on the all of them.

You Sister Sarah is on vacation and her Political Action Committee are paying for it. That’s right all the bills for the bus, the driver, food and anything else is being footed by not by the Palin’s but by the donors who hope that she will run or support candidates or some such.

Just to rub salt in the wound, it is all completely legal. You see SaraPAC is what is called a “unconnected PAC” which means while it is a still a political action committee it is not associated with a campaign and does not have the restrictions on what it can spend money on. If the erstwhile half-term Governor wants to buy out the gift shop at the Statue of Liberty, then she can do it on the SarahPAC credit card.
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In a frenzy of xenophobia the Radical Republican has been talking up the idea of changing the 14th Amendment or so-called birthright citizenship. The argument is that there are thousands and thousands of late term unauthorized immigrants coming here to have their children. The children born here are citizens and this is either a) a plan for the parents to get to stay in the United States or b) future terrorist agents (this last one is so risible that only in the age of Faux News and Talk Radio could it get any play at all).

As with the 51Park Islamic Community Center they see this as a good wedge issue to whip up their fear addicted base and get them out the polls. This might seem like a new tactic, but like all Radical Republican ideas it is just a case of everything old is new again. The Congress has had hearings on the issue, way back in the mists of time, in 1995 and 1997, just after Radical Republicans had taken control of the Congress. Scott Wong over at Politico brought this to light.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

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Let me be clear from the start, the internment of 110,000 Japanese American citizens and residents is not exactly the same as the recent effort to stop the construction of mosques in Manhattan and elsewhere in the nation, but it is on the same spectrum, just like bigotry, prejudice and ethic hate are on the same spectrum.

It is one of our nation’s greatest shames that we interred our fellow citizens without any due process and merely because of their ethnicity. In the words of President Regan in the official apology was done in a fit of

“race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership”

.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

The conditions were shockingly similar to the ones that are driving the Radical Right to insist that a community center two blocks from the Trade Center Plaza (where the Twin Towers used to stand) is somehow a victory terrorists. Let’s try a little experiment, see if you can tell who said the following:

"A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched… So, a Muslim American born of Muslim parents, nurtured upon Muslim traditions, living in a transplanted Islamic atmosphere… notwithstanding his nominal brand of accidental citizenship almost inevitably and with the rarest exceptions grows up to be a Muslim, and not an American… Thus, while it might cause injustice to a few to treat them all as potential enemies, I cannot escape the conclusion… that such treatment… should be accorded to each and all of them while we are at war with their race

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Let’s start with the facts; on election day 2008 in outside a polling station based in a housing project in Philadelphia two guys in rather in your face paramilitary looking gear stood around trying to look fierce and got caught on tape saying some mean stuff about white people. This was, as it should be, investigated by the local and Federal authorities for possible voter intimidation. It was decided by the Justice Department of President Bush and the local authorities that while these guys were assholes they did not do anything that could be successfully prosecuted and the case was dropped. All of this happened before President Obama ever took office.

Now this little non-story has become a cause célèbre for the Conservative Right. There has been the usual conservative fumbling; at the start they did not acknowledge that the decision to drop the investigation was made by the Bush DOJ not the Obama DOJ. Still it has not gone away. The folks at Faux News, with the help of total scumbags of the Andrew Breitbart, have latched on to the meme of “them scary Black folks are coming for you!” and aren’t going to let it go.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

On Friday seven Republican members of the Senate Judiciary committee decided to weigh in. They wrote a letter to the Chair Leahy asking for an investigation of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, under the charge that it was being politicized. I know, take a minute to wipe the coffee off your screen. This is the classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

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