"That the Second Amendment was the last bulwark against the tyranny of the federal government is false," he said. Instead, the "well-regulated militias" cited in the Constitution almost certainly referred to state militias that were used to suppress slave insurrections. [NAACP Legal Defense Fund president John] Payton explained that the founders added the Second Amendment in part to reassure southern states, such as Virginia, that the federal government wouldn’t use its new power to disarm state militias as a backdoor way of abolishing slavery.
So the NAACP says that gun rights was only so southern states could protect slavery. Yet they also often and loudly decry Jim Crow laws, part of which was the deliberate and targeted removal of guns from southern blacks so they could defend themselves.
I guess consistency isn't something we can expect on this issue.
As liberals blogasm over the death of Jerry Falwell (and eagerly hope for more deaths), I direct your attention to a list of Al Sharpton's crimes, from tax evasion to race baiting to FEC violations to . . . well, read it for yourself. [Via Digg]
Sickeningly liberal Juan Williams (whom I can't stand to watch on Fox News Sunday because of his consistently narrow-minded support of virtually every far-left talking point) is being called the "black Ann Coulter".
What has he done to deserve such high praise?
He wrote a book condemning the failure of black leaders in America: Enough: The Phony Leaders, 
Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It.
And who is slinging the dirt? Those self-same black leaders:
"I think Juan is trying to be the black Ann Coulter with pants," Sharpton told me yesterday, responding to Williams' critique of him as a cynical, money-grubbing self-promoter who encourages African-Americans to evade responsibility for problems by blaming others. "I have fought for social responsibility in the black community, unlike some of these guys who try to hustle right-wing politics for Fox News."
Jackson was equally insulting, accusing Williams of journalistic sins tantamount to plagiarism.
Yet Williams is standing firm. At a recent appearance on his book tour, he asked the audience:
If Washington, D.C., has a black mayor, black city council and a black school board, how can you blame your troubles on racism?
How indeed?
Williams is taking up the banner recently hefted by Bill Cosby — that the culture of victimization, the breakdown of the black family, the glorification of gansta rap, the disdain for learning, and so on are things that the black community must take upon itself to fight against.
But Williams directs his sights towards those that publicly claim to stand up for the black community:
Williams wonders why blacks don't organize against feckless fathers, black-on-black crime, the glorification of failure and Stop Snitching campaigns that vilify those who testify against drug dealers and murderers. He quotes a law professor at Loyola University advising against cooperating with the police because it ``sows distrust in some of the nation's most socially vulnerable communities.''
The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once wrote of defining deviancy down so that what was once abnormal -- constant use of the N word, high school girls in class in maternity clothes -- becomes routine. Instead of railing against teenagers for smoking crack cocaine, black officials pour energy into criticizing judges who hand out higher sentences for that than for sniffing the drug (a white addiction). Where, Williams asks, is a black War on Drugs?
It is interesting that Williams is following Cosby's lead, yet I can find no mention of Williams commenting on Larry Elder's Ten Things You Can't Say in America. Elder achieved some notoriety in 2000 when he proclaimed that the "nanny state" was doing more harm than good and that blacks are more racist than whites.
So perhaps Williams is just jumping on the Cosby bandwagon to make a buck. But he's taking a lot of flak for it and is not taking it quietly. In a recent LA Times op-ed, Williams defends his position:
My critics are busy blaming racism for all this poverty. But that tactic is losing its punch because so many people of color, including black people from Africa and the Caribbean, arrive in this country and outperform native-born black people in educational achievement and income. And it is hard to make the old "racism is the whole problem" argument when the other 75% of black America is taking advantage of 50 years of new opportunities — since Brown vs. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act — to create the largest black middle class in history, with unprecedented wealth and political power.
Much of what Williams says is nothing new. For instance, take this excerpt from a recent interview with NewsMax:
Moreover, Williams said, Jackson and Sharpton are paid by competitors to stage phony "civil rights" demonstrations at companies.
"Because one company wants to get access to a cable system, for example, they have these people out there demonstrating as if this is a civil rights issue," Williams said. "They're trying to embarrass [companies] by having people like Jackson and Sharpton pull up in limousines and lead these demonstrators. It is a total farce."
This sounds a lot like something you'd read in Ken Timmerman's book, Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson.
LaShawn Barber, writing for the Examiner, interviews Williams and you'll find an excerpt from the book at the bottom of the article. This is kind of her, considering that Williams has usurped her title; Barber was labeled the "black Ann Coulter" over a year ago.
The Corner posts a letter from the Congressional Black Caucus inviting lobbyists to thier annual awards dinner. Here's the interesting bit:
No wonder the Dems are backing off from using the "culture of corruption" phrase. Well, this and little things like free boxing tickets, $90,000 in a freezer, millions in minority-contracting fraud and such.We earnestly ask for your support and participation and hope that you will act now and commit to a strong presence at the ALC with the minimum purchase of a $10,000 Silver Table. To learn about other ways that you can support the CBCF, please visit our website, http://www.cbcfinc.org/pdf/marketing_06.pdf
Technorati Tags: Culture of Corruption, Democrat Perfidy.
He says that blacks should take responsibility for their own disproportionate crime rates and poor academic performance and not blame a system imposed on them by whites; that whites support affirmative action and other "silly racial policies" out of fear, to avoid accusations of racism.He says that blacks who use the "race card," as Johnnie Cochran did in defending O.J. Simpson, are practicing "blackmail" through the manipulation of white guilt. ...
"Any white who says these things is going to be seen as racist, and any black who says them is going to be seen as an Uncle Tom. That's because the only politically correct way to see blacks is as victims of larger forces that are constantly determining them and beating them and miring them in difficulty." ...
"But I think the real problem in the black community is the decline of family life, the fact that we have an illegitimacy rate of 70 percent. In the inner cities, it's around 90 percent." ...
Technorati Tags: Shelby Steele, White Guilt, Race Relations, Racism, White Guilt, Affirmative Action, Black Conservatives.
Imagine what would happen if the 2008 Republican presidential nominee could campaign on these issues in inner-city Baltimore, Detroit, Cleveland, and Philadelphia with fellow Republicans who have been elected statewide and also happen to be black.
Technorati Tags: Economy, Black Vote, 2006 Election, GOP.
"You're going to relegate my history to a month?" the 68-year-old actor says in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" to air Sunday (7 p.m. EST). "I don't want a black history month. Black history is American history." ...Amen!Freeman notes there is no "white history month," and says the only way to get rid of racism is to "stop talking about it."
The actor says he believes the labels "black" and "white" are an obstacle to beating racism.
"I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man," Freeman says.
Wallace, a construction-company exec, was candid about the fact that his business life was a big part of his decision to change.I would much rather his reasons include improving education, gun control is rascist, Democrat policy is designed to keep the black man down, or any one of the other thousand reasons to switch."It's purely a business decision. Ninety percent of those I do business with are Republicans," he said. "Opportunities that have come to my firm have been brought by Republicans." ...
Wallace elaborated that his "business" line of thought also referred to the NAACP. Behind many of the power desks in this town sit Republicans. And he said he wants his organization to be part of that structure. Just as importantly, he said, he didn't want people to immediately brand -- or dismiss -- NAACP concerns as synonymous with those of liberal Democrats. "I want this branch to be respected," he said.
The chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus Friday urged his Capitol Hill colleagues to extend and strengthen the Voting Rights Act in order to "level the playing field" because, U.S. Rep. Melvin Watt said, "white people ... will not consider voting for an African American candidate."Look in the mirror, Melvin. Here in Memphis a populace was highly dissatisfied with Mayor "King Willie" Herrenton yet voted him in over a more qualified candidate because . . . the other guy was white and Memphis is predominantly black.
To say that a conservative white guy won't vote for a conservative black is wrong . . . and racist. I would have voted for Colin Powell for president before I saw his soft-on-terrorism cozy-up-to-the-UN policies in action. I will definitely vote for Condi Rice for president precisely because I've seen her play-hardball-with-lefty-foriegn-governments and I-love-the-Second-Amendment stances.
Democrats are the racists and I'm getting tired of it. Fortunately, so are African-Americans as word gets out that while Democrats engender victimization and subsidies, Republicans engender achievement and building a legacy:
On a related note, the media is in love with the concept of the new television show, Commander in Chief, being the method of preparing the American psyche for a real woman president. The media, being leftists, and the creator/director/writer (Rod Lurie), a Democrat, envision this being Hillary. How sweet would it be if that female president turned out to be Condi? There wouldn't be an uncracked cap in all of California for all of the gnashing of teeth!
Ten years later, more than 65 percent of our children are still born out of wedlock.And for a powerful parable concerning this topic, I highly recommend William Raspberry's The Elephants' Tale.Ten years later, we are still five times more likely to die of homicide.
Ten years later, still fewer than half of us own our homes.
Ten years later, we still marry less, go to jail more and die sooner.
Ten years later, the promises we made that crisp Monday in October lie fallow and unredeemed.
On Sunday, it will be a decade since African-American men descended on the Mall in Washington. ...
Yet 10 years later, here we are, still damned by numbers. Because change is not something you talk into existence. Change takes action.
Some of us did go back to our communities and work to change them. But too many of us, it seems, just went back.
Today more than a hundred black clergy gathered at a Los Angeles megachurch to unveil a "Black Contract with America on Moral Values" [see below].
Jackson said his group would work with the Democratic Party if it agreed to endorse its moral "contract," which calls for a condemnation of gay marriage - as well as stronger families, counseling in jails and job creation. The name plays off the conservative agenda which GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich used as a political litmus test in the mid-1990s.
Later this month another group that has ties to Gingrich will announce a similar compact, the "Mayflower Compact for Black America". This group already has plans for organizing in key states ahead of the 2006 and 2008 elections.
Near the end of the month the conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation [of which I am a proud supporter] will play cohost to black conservatives "designed to counter dominance of the "America-hating black liberal leadership" and to focus African American voters on moral issues."
Most interesting is the reaction from blacks in power:
The meetings have a common goal: to foster a political realignment that, if successful, would challenge the Democrats' decades-long lock on the loyalty of black voters.No mention of the Democrats abandoning black children as they side with teachers who don't teach in increasingly failing schools. No hint that perhaps blacks should be concerned with moral issues as their culture of strong family values is being eroded by the nanny state. No thought for doing what is best for these Americans. No -- the reaction is to fear for their jobs.The effort has proved so successful already that Democrats who make up the Congressional Black Caucus are quietly expressing alarm — and planning countermeasures.
"I am frightened by what is happening," said Rep. Major R. Owens, an 11-term Democratic congressman from New York who has been conferring with colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus. "Our party is in grave danger. This Republican movement is going to expand exponentially unless we do something."
The nation's largest civil rights group is refusing to turn over documents for an Internal Revenue Service investigation into allegedly improper political activity, claiming the probe is politically motivated.Yeah, I think I'll refuse to pull over the next time a cop puts his lights on because my bumper stickers were no doubt the reason for his actions. Wonder how that'll play with the judge?
African-Americans have become more politically astute and realize the value and power of their votes. They are demanding more accountability to ensure that their votes really do count. Black clergy are insisting that candidates address moral issues and visit their churches throughout the year instead of merely two weeks before Election Day.Rather than embracing change, the NAACP chairman stays with the same old poisonous rhetoric:Voters are researching candidates and relying less on sound bites and endorsements by popular political kingpins. Those leaders certainly have their followers, and their endorsements have value. But it is a fallacy to assume that one or two leaders can shake all the apples from the voting tree into any one bucket.
[NAACP Chairman Julian Bond] noted that the Republicans won all the states of the old Confederacy in last month's presidential election. Bond said Republicans have reached out to "Talibanistic" elements whose idea of civil rights is being able to fly the Confederate flag beside the U.S. flag.So the NAACP Chairman believes that Bush won the presidency because Southerners are racists comparable to the Islamic fundamentalists with whom we are currently at war. Bond packs more stereotypical hate in one speech than most people can express in a lifetime.
The final tear came after the election. Mfume suggested sending a letter to President Bush, mapping out ways that they could work together to help the community. Bond rejected the idea. Mfume sent the letter anyway. To Bond, this was an unforgivable. A few weeks later, Bond had Mfume voted out. The message was clear: There is no room within the NAACP for intellectual diversity. Just loyal servitude to the Democratic Party.This is a crime. This is a shame. This is the sad state of the nation’s most storied civil rights organization.