Lane Hudson felt justified in interupting former President Bill Clinton’s remarks at Netroots Nation to scream questions about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and Defense of Marriage Act on the grounds that there was no Q&A session scheduled and he was therefore “being held as a captive audience.”

Julian Sanchez, also in attendance and quite sympathetic to Hudson’s views on both DADT and DOMA, demurs:

No, you spectacular dick,  you were not being “held as a captive audience”; you were voluntarily attending a talk where the speaker had declined to allot time for questions. Believe it or not, there were probably one or two other people there with strong feelings about any number of other matters. Being what we call “grown ups,” however, they were not so convinced of their righteous specialness that they imagined themselves entitled to set the speaker’s agenda like some jackass fratboy screaming “Freebird” at the band. I realize it seems shocking that some of your fellow audience members were more concerned about norms of civility than your most-important-issue-evar, but the fact that everyone has one of those is why we have norms of civility. The only reason it was possible for you to be rewarded for your boorishness by getting your question addressed is that you had the good fortune to be surrounded by people who were housebroken.

Quite.

Clinton does quite well handling the interruption and defending his position.  And he’s right:  In 1993, I was firmly against changing the policy on gays in the military and thought DADT was an outrageous concession to political correctness; now, I think it’s time to let gays serve openly.  Ditto, gay marriage.

While my political philosophy has no doubt evolved over the past sixteen years, it’s mostly a matter of the culture having changed through learning.  For Americans outside a handful of urban communities, gays were a theoretical construct or the object of jokes on television.  Now, they’re a small but visible part of the culture and, aside from a fringe Queer Pride element that enjoys the attention that provocativeness brings, pretty damned normal.

Soldiers are drawn from the society-at-large if not quite a microcosm of it. The military culture naturally lags the broader culture because it’s self-selected and more traditional in its values.   If the military leadership isn’t quite ready to end DADT, they soon will be.

And gay marriage will become normal, too, now that it’s taking place in several states.  The idea that gays marrying each other is somehow a threat to the marriages of heterosexuals already seems silly.  The resistance of the religious community will take longer to break down but it’ll happen.  Probably in less time than the sixteen years since DADT threatened to end the Clinton administration before it got started.

A bizarre story in the London Telegraph, “Toddlers who dislike spicy food ‘racist,’” is getting some play, thus far only from conservative blogs.

The National Children’s Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

[...]

The 366-page guide for staff in charge of pre-school children, called Young Children and Racial Justice, warns: “Racist incidents among children in early years settings tend to be around name-calling, casual thoughtless comments and peer group relationships.”

It advises nursery teachers to be on the alert for childish abuse such as: “blackie”, “Pakis”, “those people” or “they smell”.

The guide goes on to warn that children might also “react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying ‘yuk’”.

Staff are told: “No racist incident should be ignored. When there is a clear racist incident, it is necessary to be specific in condemning the action.”

Debbie Schlussel scoffs, “If me no likey da spicy food, then I’m a racist.”  Which is funny on many levels, most presumably unintentional.  But, not to worry, she’s enjoyed “spicy falafel and Plochman’s Spicy Kosciusko Mustard” since childhood, clearly proving she’s no racist.

Jonah Goldberg wonders if his own daughter is now a racist, given her occasional aversion to salsa.

Jimmie @ Sundries Shack has the most intentionally-funny reaction:

According to the guide, you should condemn your child directly and specifically. I suggest such phrases as: “You will eat that tortilla or no white hood for a month!” or “Mommy is sad because you hate Pakistanis”.

It’s never too early to be programming your child to meekly accept everything an authority figure tells them to do. One day they will be adults and they’ll need that skill.

Van Helsing (which, I’m guessing, is a pseudonym) observes, “Monte Python in its prime would have been at a loss to outdo the self-parody into which Britain’s totalitarian political correctness has descended.”

I tend to share the consensus reaction that this is an absurd proposal.  It should be noted, however, that the NCB is merely an activist group, not an arm of the British government, and that the Telegraph has a reputation for sensationalism.  The extent to which this book should be taken seriously is far from clear.  Unfortunately, all the news accounts I’ve been able to locate on it thus far have been regurgitations of the same wire report.

NCB is distancing itself from the more outlandish aspects of the book:

NCB operates as a publishing house for specialist publications on issues affecting the lives of children, young people and their families. Where NCB believes there are very important messages to be communicated, debated and addressed by the sector, it will publish on the basis of book sale income covering costs of production.

They also emphasize:

The book is being funded from book sales alone – and not from government funding or from any grants, as has been reported. The sales have been excellent so far which goes to show there is an acknowledged need for books like it.

Or that it’s outlandish and controversial.

UPDATE: Bruce McQuain identifies, as I neglected to, the real outrage here: defining racism down. If saying “Yuk” to food that doesn’t suit one’s palette qualifies, then the concept loses all meaning.

Barack Obama has a “bad habit” of addressing “all kinds of people” as “Sweetie” in casual conversation, although he’s trying to quit.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has apologized to WXYZ reporter Peggy Agar for calling her “sweetie” during a campaign stop Wednesday in Sterling Heights.

Obama apologized in a voicemail he left on Agar’s cell phone at 3:16 p.m:

“Hi Peggy. This is Barack Obama. I’m calling to apologize on two fronts. One was you didn’t get your question answered and I apologize. I thought that we had set up interviews with all the local stations. I guess we got it with your station but you weren’t the reporter that got the interview. And so, I broke my word. I apologize for that and I will make up for it.

“Second apology is for using the word ’sweetie.’ That’s a bad habit of mine. I do it sometimes with all kinds of people. I mean no disrespect and so I am duly chastened on that front. Feel free to call me back. I expect that my press team will be happy to try to make it up to you whenever we are in Detroit next.”

Here’s a video of the incident:

My initial reaction to this is bemusement that a journalist would truly be offended by being referred to as “Sweetie.” I mean, sure, it’s gender specific and he wouldn’t call a male reporter “Sweetie,” but it’s not exactly disparaging. And maybe he calls the guys “Slick” or something.

A quick perusal of the chickosphere, though, leads me to believe this is a bigger deal than that. BDBlue snarks:

Yeah, this guy is going to wear really well for another six months. Let’s see, he’s insulted white working class voters, lectured pro-choice forces on about how they don’t understand the moral choices of abortion, and now for the second time, he’s called a woman he doesn’t know “sweetie.” I’d say not only is Obama not asking for my vote, he’s going out of his way to make sure he doesn’t get it.

She also guesses Obama wouldn’t call Mike Tyson, “Sweetie.” (Insert prison joke here.)

Ann Althouse wonders if he’ll address Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in that manner. While it would be rather amusing, I’m guessing she’s right as to the implied answer of her rhetorical question.

Kate Harding, who Obama probably would call “Sweetie” if he weren’t giving that habit up, is likewise unimpressed, entitling her post “Tell Me He Did Not Really Say This.” Sorry, Sweetie, he did.

Many dudes are weighing in on this one, too. Matt Bastard (which I’m guessing is a pseudonym) appears to have a degree in Women’s Studies.

Jesus tapdancing Christ. You wanna know how to better help make the case that you deserve the support of women? Step 1: DON’T BE A SEXIST ASSHAT.

Look, intent is irrelevant–habitually using reductive terms like “sweetie’ is both disrespectful and indicative that Obama may have a bigger problem with women than simply not getting their votes, regardless of whether his actions are conscious or otherwise. Not to say that this sort of thing is unique (gee, a man says something misogynistic and dismissive to a woman–film at 11!), nor is it definitive proof that Obama actively perpetuates misogyny (does anyone seriously think that Geraldine Ferraro burns crosses in her free time?)

AllahPundit thinks Obama’s main mistake was “dropp[ing] this on the one member of the media who wouldn’t coo and squeal like an infant at being addressed by him this way.” He incorrectly predicts that the Left will ignore Obama’s comments, even though they’d be all over John McCain if he’d done this.

Robert Farley observes that he couldn’t get away with doing this as a teacher.

When I say that I would face sanction for calling a woman “sweetie” in class, I’m dead serious; even if the woman weren’t offended, it would still be inappropriate and reflect a poor classroom environment. This isn’t dread “political correctness”. “Sweetie” is belittling in a way that “buddy” really isn’t, and it really shouldn’t be used in any kind of professional setting, except perhaps between those who are exceptionally familiar.

Jules Crittenden ain’t buying it but nonetheless thinks turnabout is fair play.

[W]hen you think about it, if everyone else is getting whacked for being racist on Obama no matter what they say, he might as well just take the sexist hit like a man.

Of course, the phrase “like a man” is considered sexist, too. Although maybe Jules is thinking of the ironic song of that name by Confederate Railroad. Or just being sarcastic. Who knows these days?

Frank James tries to figure Obama’s angle.

Was it an attempt by the Democratic presidential candidate to show his affinity for blue-collar folks by attempting to sound like a waitress at a diner?

In the same vein, was he trying for a little machismo in front of the male workers at a Sterling, Michigan auto manufacturing plant he visited today?

Needless to say, a lot of women and even some men aren’t going to like it. Some will interpret it as Obama being dismissive to the point of being somewhat sexist.

Apparently.

On yesterday’s installment of OTB Radio, Dodd Harris argued that the Democrats may well have buyers’ remorse at the end of this process, wishing they’d nominated Hillary Clinton instead. Why? Incidents like this. For all Obama’s brains, charm, and charisma, he’s still a rookie on the national stage. As he continues to wear down from the longest, most grueling presidential campaign in American history, we’re likely to see more of this.

I continue to wonder whether any of this will matter in the end, though. The GOP brand is in its worst shape since Watergate and John McCain isn’t exactly Ronald Reagan. Then again, it’s increasingly clear that Obama isn’t exactly Jack Kennedy, either.

___________

A tangential aside: Almost every account of this I’ve seen has it as “sweetie” rather than “Sweetie.” But isn’t Obama using it as a nickname rather than a descriptive? He’s not saying, “You sure are a sweetie” but rather using “Sweetie” as a substitute for a proper noun. Shouldn’t it therefore be rendered in the upper case?

CPAC presented the Blogger of the Year Award to Ace of Spades and the Journalist of the Year Award to Mark Tapcott, editorial page director of the Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk. Both are quite deserving.

I got there early and was “treated” to a 20 minute rant by David Horowitz on the evils of political correctness. The basic premise, that there’s a “party line” being foisted on us by elite Powers That Be that stifles debate on such issues as Islamist terrorism, is one with which I agree. As is increasingly the case, though, advocates for various political causes seem to feel that the only way to get noticed is to adopt extremist rhetoric and take arguments several steps beyond their logical conclusions.

He’s right that college campuses, especially at elite institutions, are dominated by a leftist professoriate and weak administrations that value sensitivity over vigorous debate. But it’s surreal to make the argument, in an auditorium filled with college educated conservatives, that the conservative message is thus being drowned out.

Much of what he says is complete nonsense. One can certainly criticize George W. Bush for kowtowing to Muslim sensitivity, emphasizing the “religion of peace” aspect while downplaying the degree to which mainstream Muslim society supports the extremists. It’s absurd, though, to argue that he refuses to acknowledge that Islam and terrorism are totally unconnected or that he’s refused to utter the words “Islamic terrorists.” He’s done it repeatedly for years.

The suggestion that American politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are virtually indistinguishable from totalitarian dictators and that their wish is to line those who disagree along walls and shoot them is simply appalling. And, yet, such outrages were greeted with more than a modicum of applause.

To be absolutely clear, the vast majority of the speakers at CPAC are much more mainstream and gracious. For every Horowitz, there are a half dozen Mark Tapscotts and Mike Pences. But it would be much more comforting if the radicals generated less enthusiasm.

Several prominent black leaders are assailing Bill and Hillary Clinton for their use of racially insensitive language in their campaign against Barack Obama, Ben Smith reports for The Politico.

A series of comments from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, her husband and her supporters are spurring a racial backlash and adding a divisive edge to the presidential primary as the candidates head south to heavily African-American South Carolina.

The comments, which ranged from the New York senator appearing to diminish the role of Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement — an aide later said she misspoke — to Bill Clinton dismissing Sen. Barack Obama’s image in the media as a “fairy tale” — generated outrage on black radio, black blogs and cable television. And now they’ve drawn the attention of prominent African-American politicians.

“A cross-section of voters are alarmed at the tenor of some of these statements,” said Obama spokeswoman Candice Tolliver, who said that Clinton would have to decide whether she owed anyone an apology. “There’s a groundswell of reaction to these comments — and not just these latest comments but really a pattern, or a series of comments that we’ve heard for several months,” she said. “Folks are beginning to wonder: Is this really an isolated situation, or is there something bigger behind all of this?”

[...]

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., through a spokesman, used even stronger language. “Following Barack Obama’s victory in Iowa and historic voter turnout in New Hampshire, the cynics unfortunately have stepped up their efforts to decry his uplifting message of hope and fundamental change. “Regrettably, they have resorted to distasteful and condescending language that appeals to our fears rather than our hopes. I sincerely hope that they’ll turn away from such reactionary, disparaging rhetoric.”

[...]

The series of comments Clinton critics’ cite began in mid-December, when the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign, Bill Shaheen, speculated about whether Obama had ever dealt drugs. In the final days of the New Hampshire campaign, however, the discomfort of some black observers intensified as Bill Clinton dismissed the contrast between Obama’s judgment on the war and Clinton’s as a “fairy tale” and spoke dismissively of his short time in the Senate. And the candidate herself, in an interview with Fox News, stressed the role of President Lyndon Johnson, over Martin Luther King Jr., in the civil rights movement.

“I would point to the fact that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done,” she said, in response to a question about how her dismissive attitude toward Obama’s “false hopes” would have applied to the civil rights movement. “That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people’s lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it and actually got it accomplished.”

An aide later said Clinton didn’t intend to diminish King, and later that day she went out of her way to stress his accomplishment and courage in leading a movement.

Then, when Obama lost New Hampshire, the first question on black media outlets like “The Tom Joyner Show” was whether white racism had defeated him, and when a Clinton supporter, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, said — though not directly in connection to Obama — that politicians can’t “shuck and jive” in early-primary states, it only added fuel to the fire.

[...]

“For him to go after Obama, using a ‘fairy tale,’ calling him as he did last week, it’s an insult. And I will tell you, as an African-American, I find his tone and his words to be very depressing,” Donna Brazile, a longtime Clinton ally who is neutral in this race, said on CNN earlier this week.

Asked in an e-mail from Politico about the situation Friday, she responded by sending over links to five cases in which the Clintons and their surrogates talked about Obama, along with a question:
“Is Clinton using a race-baiting strategy against Obama?”

Having watched for years as the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons unleashed these type of attacks on Republicans for similarly innocuous comments, I must confess to a certain degree of schadenfreude here. And, frankly, the Clintons are Grade A race baiters in their own right, being past masters of stirring up black resentment of Republicans.

Still, this is ridiculous.

Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” line has nothing whatsoever to do with race. Here’s a full clip of the comments:

He’s angrily rebutting the idea that Obama’s judgment on the Iraq War was superior to his wife’s and lamenting that the media has allowed that “fairy tale” to go unchallenged.

Similarly, it’s hard to look at Hillary’s rather inartful response to a question about MLK’s dream going away and see it as a dissing of King:

It’s inarguably true that it ultimately takes action on the part of political leaders, especially presidents, to make drastic changes in public policy. Surely, one shouldn’t have to qualify every statement made about King’s legacy with “of course he was a wonderful, wonderful man and the greatest leader our country has ever seen, and golly gee whiz he was wonderful.”

Cuomo’s “shuck and jive” comments are a classic case of unfortunate origins. The phrase undeniably has racist roots:

To shuck and jive” originally referred to the intentionally misleading words and actions that African-Americans would employ in order to deceive racist Euro-Americans in power, both during the period of slavery and afterwards. The expression was documented as being in wide usage in the 1920s, but may have originated much earlier.

It has been decades, though, since that connotation attached. Nowadays, it has the same colloquial use as “tap dance” or various other phrases used to connote an attempt to avoid giving straight answers to a question.

Other Reactions:

• Juliette Ochieng starts us off with a plea: “Fellow Americans, here’s a suggestion: how about we not fantasize about this country turning into Kenya or Pakistan or reverting to the 1968 version of the USA just yet.”

• Gun Toting Liberal wonders, in a post entitled “Nation’s First Two Black (Co) Presidents Feeling Backlash From Supporters Of Nation’s Potential Third Black President,” “[I]sn’t it a bit pretentious of the Senator from Illinois to jump on the “he/she/it’s not black enough” bandwagon after being victimized by it himself for months?”

• Jules Crittenden, “Given that Obama, if elected, would be the president with the least political, government and/or executive experience in living memory, and the competition is being told to shut up on the grounds of ‘equal opportunity,’ it’s almost like they’re trying to turn him into America’s first affirmative-action president.”

• Ann Althouse: “Obama supporters have a motivation to characterize things as racial that are not, and the Clinton campaign must be frustrated that it’s hard to attack Obama, who seems to be getting a free pass. But I don’t doubt that the Clintons will use whatever works for them. Insinuations — and even slip-ups — don’t work, however, when so many people are so ready to detect racial content.”

• Karl @ Protein Wisdom: “[I]t is tough to muster sympathy as those who stoked the fires of political correctness and identity politics get singed by the blowback.”

• Bithead: “Racism, or Sexism? Which will win the Democratic Nomination?”

• Jim Addison: “It seems to me someone predicted this contest would eventually involve charges of ‘racism’ or at least ‘insensitivity,’ but I can’t remember who it was . . .”

• Sister Toldjah: “I don’t feel one ounce of sympathy for the false implied allegations of racism against her, not after what she and her party have done over the years to advance the myth that conservatives are nothing but cold-hearted racists, a vicious tactic liberal Democrats like Hillary Clinton have used routinely for shameless political purposes.”

• Marc Ambinder: “One thing is certain: it’s tough for people to figure out how to talk about a black candidate, including the campaign of the black candidate himself.”

• Josh Marshall has an interesting essay on the difficulties of covering such an issue. Notably, “It’s genuinely unclear to me how much one side or the other is consciously pushing this, how much it’s escalated based in part on misunderstandings, or whether, in a somewhat related fashion, hyping journalistic accounts has given the engagement a life of its own.”

• Matt Stoller, though, thinks there’s much more to the charges than most of us credit: “There’s a kind of cultural racism and elitism that the boomer Clintonistas carry around with them.”

More reax at memeorandum.

There has long been a buzz about the fact that Ron Paul’s vast network of supporters includes white supremacists and anti-Semites. Paul has disassociated himself from them and he’s shrugged it off as the nature of a bottom-up organization. While I’m by no means a Paul booster, that has struck me as quite reasonable.

Today, though, TNR (the publication which laid much of the groundwork for the “George Allen is a racist” meme that finally ignited into an inferno after the Macaca incident) takes it to a new level with James Kirchick’s feature “Angry White Man – The bigoted past of Ron Paul.” It sifts through Paul’s newsletters, some dating as far back as 1978, for statements that are racially charged.

As Kirchick freely admits, many of the charges have been made before in local campaigns and most of the newsletters lack bylines, making the author impossible to pin down. But they were all published by Ron Paul and “seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him–and reflected his views.”

Much of the piece is guilt by association. Kirchick notes Paul’s long association with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a respected libertarian think tank, and points out that other people associated with the organization are Confederate sympathizers and the like. Further,

Paul’s newsletters have themselves repeatedly expressed sympathy for the general concept of secession. In 1992, for instance, the Survival Report argued that “the right of secession should be ingrained in a free society” and that “there is nothing wrong with loosely banding together small units of government. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we too should consider it.”

But, surely, one could philosophically support the right of self-determination without supporting, say, the lynching of people who were born with a different skin color?

The people surrounding the von Mises Institute–including Paul–may describe themselves as libertarians, but they are nothing like the urbane libertarians who staff the Cato Institute or the libertines at Reason magazine. Instead, they represent a strain of right-wing libertarianism that views the Civil War as a catastrophic turning point in American history–the moment when a tyrannical federal government established its supremacy over the states.

One has to love the pitting of urbane Northern libertarians against the reactionary Southern brethren in a tract seeking to establish that someone else is a bigot. Regardless, however, can one not simultaneously think the after effects of the Civil War (or, for that matter, the Great Society) negatively impacted the country while nonetheless being happy that slavery was ended?

Much of the rest of the piece is a mixed bag. Some of the quotes taken from Paul’s newsletters — again, quite possibly not Paul’s own writing but nonetheless put out under his banner — are quite indefensible.

Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began,” read one typical passage. According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with “‘civil rights,’ quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.” It also denounced “the media” for believing that “America’s number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks.” To be fair, the newsletter did praise Asian merchants in Los Angeles, but only because they had the gumption to resist political correctness and fight back. Koreans were “the only people to act like real Americans,” it explained, “mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our rotten liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back and think of England.”

Quite a bit of this strikes me merely as frank discussion about race relations and a reaction against a racially based politics of distribution. One can lament cultural segregation without believing other races are inferior. Certainly, most American conservatives oppose racial gerrymandering, quotas, hate crime laws, and the like. And the idea that there is an attempt to bring “public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda” has been a reality for quite some time.

Still, the business about welfare checks and whatnot is hard to defend.

As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled “What To Expect for the 1990s,” predicted that “Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities” because “mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’” Two months later, a newsletter warned of “The Coming Race War,” and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, “If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it.” In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.” “This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s,” the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter’s author–presumably Paul–wrote, “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.” That same year, a newsletter described the aftermath of a basketball game in which “blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot.” The newsletter inveighed against liberals who “want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare,” adding, “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems.”

Well, we’ve definitely had some race riots. And one can hardly deny there have been numerous instances of mayhem in inner cities after major sporting events. But talk of “animals” and the general tone here is undeniably racist.

There’s much more in the piece, including something to offend just about any group you could think of.

Daniel Koffler, a self-described former Paul supporter, has a whole list of racist quotes from Paul’s newsletters in easy-to-digest, out-of-context form.

Ron Paul denies that this sort of thing reflects his personal views. Kirchick, again:

When I asked Jesse Benton, Paul’s campaign spokesman, about the newsletters, he said that, over the years, Paul had granted “various levels of approval” to what appeared in his publications–ranging from “no approval” to instances where he “actually wrote it himself.” After I read Benton some of the more offensive passages, he said, “A lot of [the newsletters] he did not see. Most of the incendiary stuff, no.” He added that he was surprised to hear about the insults hurled at Martin Luther King, because “Ron thinks Martin Luther King is a hero.”

The urbane Dave Weigel, one of libertines at Reason magazine, caught up to Paul today and got much the same story.

[UPDATE: Paul has issued a press release:

“The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.

“In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content of a person's character, not the color of their skin. As I stated on the floor of the U.S. House on April 20, 1999: ‘I rise in great respect for the courage and high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood steadfastly for the rights of individuals against unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.’

“This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It's once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.

“When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”

END UPDATE]

Even beyond the questionable rhetoric on race, religion, and sexual orientation, we get garden variety kookery.

Paul’s newsletters didn’t just contain bigotry. They also contained paranoia–specifically, the brand of anti-government paranoia that festered among right-wing militia groups during the 1980s and ’90s. Indeed, the newsletters seemed to hint that armed revolution against the federal government would be justified. In January 1995, three months before right-wing militants bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, a newsletter listed “Ten Militia Commandments,” describing “the 1,500 local militias now training to defend liberty” as “one of the most encouraging developments in America.” It warned militia members that they were “possibly under BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] or other totalitarian federal surveillance” and printed bits of advice from the Sons of Liberty, an anti-government militia based in Alabama–among them, “You can’t kill a Hydra by cutting off its head,” “Keep the group size down,” “Keep quiet and you’re harder to find,” “Leave no clues,” “Avoid the phone as much as possible,” and “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

How much Paul believes this nonsense is unclear. My sense of him has long been that he’s a conspiracy theorist and outside the mainstream of intellectual libertarianism.

Andrew Sullivan, who has praised Paul in the past, is quite concerned.

Paul needs to say not only that he did not pen these excrescences, he needs to explain how his name was on them and disown them completely. I’ve supported Paul for what I believe are honorable reasons: his brave resistance to the enforced uniformity of opinion on the Iraq war, his defense of limited constitutional government, his libertarianism, his sincerity. If there is some other agenda lurking beneath all this, we deserve to know. It’s up to Ron Paul now to clearly explain and disown these ugly, vile, despicable tracts from the past.

The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb doesn’t expect to see that: “He’s been speaking in code to the dregs of American society this whole time. And he had no intention of alienating his base of support.”

For that matter, the best case scenario would seem to be that Paul has been marketing a “Ron Paul Newsletter” for years that is anything but. Which, by my reckoning, would make him a fraud.

New York has retroactively decided that a man’s GET OSAMA vanity tags are offensive and can not be displayed on his vehicle.

The federal government may have a $25 million reward for fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden, but a retired city cop says the Department of Motor Vehicles has banned his “GETOSAMA” vanity license plates as offensive.

Arno Herwerth, 42, a retired NYPD sergeant from Hauppauge, in Suffolk County, told The Post he’s flabbergasted by the DMV’s kibosh, terming the agency’s move as “unpatriotic” and political correctness run amok.

“This is unbelievable,” an angry Herwerth told The Post, insisting he’s puzzled at how his support for a US foreign policy goal can be viewed as objectionable. It’s unpatriotic and absolutely disgusts me that anyone would consider that in any way offensive other than if you’re a member of al Qaeda,” Herwerth said. “You look back at Pearl Harbor and WWII and you wonder, would they be offended by, ‘Get Hitler’?” he lamented.

DMV spokesman Nick Cantiello insisted the “GETOSAMA” plates violate a regulation that bans any tag that is “obscene, lewd, lascivious, derogatory to a particular ethnic or other group or patently offensive.”

This is certainly a baffling decision. Who exactly is offended by the idea that we should “Get Osama”?

Then again, this sort of nonsense is what happens when we give bureaucrats the right to unilaterally declare things “offensive.” The rulings will often be arbitrary, inconsistent, and downright silly. The incentives, though, reward CYA rather than maximum free speech.

Given that people can display virtually anything they want on bumper stickers and other displays on their vehicle, it’s far from clear what’s accomplished by policing the statements which may be purchased on a vanity plate. Further, while court rulings have given the government great latitude in these matters, this would seem to obviously violate the letter of the First Amendment.

Elsewhere:

• Pam Gellar finds blowing up buildings and killing thousands more offensive than the plate.

• John Clark notes that this isn’t the first time the license plate police have gone overboard.

via Memeorandum

Several days after the story of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Columbia University visit inflamed the blogosphere, professional outrage monger David Horowitz has weighed in. Robert Stacy McCain has the story on the front page of today’s Washington Times.

Columbia University’s invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the Ivy League school’s New York City campus tomorrow is a “disgrace,” says conservative author David Horowitz, a Columbia alumnus. “Why are they inviting the Persian Hitler to Columbia?” Mr. Horowitz said in a telephone interview with The Washington Times. “It’s a disgrace. … What Columbia is doing is giving moral support to genocide, and as an alumni, I am deeply ashamed.”

[...]

University President Lee Bollinger has said the Ahmadinejad invitation is in keeping with “Columbia’s long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate.”

Naming a list of current and former Bush administration officials, Mr. Horowitz said, “Just ask yourself … do you think any of those people would be invited to Columbia by the president of the university under the pretext of a ‘robust debate?’ ”

Mr. Horowitz, the author of more than 20 books, said he’s never been invited to lecture at Columbia, “certainly not by Lee Bollinger.” Currently promoting the paperback edition of his book “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,” Mr. Horowitz said: “There are nine professors from Columbia in my book — that should tell you something. No other university has more than about three.”

Columbia’s invitation to Mr. Ahmadinejad is an example of the current climate at America’s universities, he said. “It shows that these people do not appreciate that we’re in a war,” said Mr. Horowitz, who has promoted legislation and organized a campus group, Students for Academic Freedom, to “end political abuse” at universities. “The curriculum today teaches students to be sympathetic to our enemies.”

The very idea that academics, qua academics, can be “dangerous” is baffling; it does, however, put Horowitz’ views on Ahmadinejad into proper perspective. A February 2006 excerpt at his FrontPage site gives a good taste of his argument. Here’s a sampling:

Not all of the professors depicted in this volume hold views as extreme as Ward Churchill’s, but a disturbing number do. All of them appear to believe that an institution of higher learning is an extension of the political arena, and that scholarly standards can be sacrificed for political ends; others are frank apologists for terrorist agendas, and still others are classroom bigots. The dangers such individuals pose to the academic enterprise extend far beyond their own classrooms. The damage a faculty minority can inflict on an entire academic institution, even in the absence of a scandalous figure like Ward Churchill, was recently demonstrated at Harvard, when President Lawrence Summers was censured – the first such censure in the history of the modern research university in America — because Summers had had the temerity to suggest in a faculty setting an idea that was politically incorrect.

One of the professors profiled in this text, Columbia University’s Todd Gitlin, explained the achievements of faculty radicals in an essay that appeared in 2004. After the Sixties, Gitlin wrote, “all that was left to the Left was to unearth righteous traditions and cultivate them in universities. The much-mocked ‘political correctness’ of the next academic generations was a consolation prize. We lost – we squandered the politics – but won the textbooks.”

Because activists ensconced in programmatic fields like Black Studies and Women’s Studies also teach in traditional departments like History and English ,and influence them as well, the statements by Rorty and Gitlin may actually understate the ways in which a radical left has colonized a significant part of the university system and transformed it to serve its political ends. In September 2005, the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting, for example, featured a panel devoted to the question, “Is It Time To Call It Fascism?” meaning the Bush Administration. Given the vibrant reality of American democracy in the year 2005, this was obviously a political rather than a scholarly agenda.

Only at the margins and taken to an extreme is this sort of thing “dangerous.”

Churchill was, until fired for reasons unrelated to his rantings, an underqualified crank teaching in a bogus “discipline” whose very existence is coalesced around a political agenda. Black Studies and Women’s Studies are, with rare exceptions, ideology masquerading as scholarship. The topics they study are often quite important; my strong preference, however, would be for it to be done within the context of more rigid methodologies within departments of history, sociology, political science, or what have you.

Still, these people aren’t dangerous. Most of us reading and writing blogs are products of the university system and were exposed to these ideas along the way. Most of us rejected them as silly even as 18- and 19-year-olds.

Presumably, the answer to “Is It Time To Call It Fascism?” is No. Is a discussion of presidential power and the limitations on civil liberties in the name of national security a worthwhile endeavor for political scientists? Absolutely.

Todd Gitlin couldn’t be much further from me ideologically. Still, when I taught a Politics of Communications class a dozen years ago, I selected one of his books to use as one of the course texts. He’s a leading scholar in the field and he argues his anti-Establishment perspective very well. I don’t think many of the students came away converted to his way of thinking. They were, however, forced to grapple with some ideas that were otherwise foreign to them and to thus re-examine their own. That’s the essence of a university education.

Unlike Churchill, Gitlin, and the other 108 scholars mentioned in the book, Ahmadinejad is a very dangerous man. He expresses some genuinely evil ideas and has the wherewithal to carry some of them out. The idea of him possessing nuclear weapons is frightening.

But . . . the Persian Hitler?

He is, according to prominent human rights groups, a bad guy.

According to Amnesty International, dissidents who oppose the government non-violently face harassment, torture and execution and the election of Ahmadinejad signaled the defeat of “pro-reform” supporters. According to Human Rights Watch, “[r]espect for basic human rights in Iran, especially freedom of expression and assembly, deteriorated in 2006. The government routinely tortures and mistreats detained dissidents, including through prolonged solitary confinement.”

Human Rights Watch described the source of human rights violations in contemporary Iran as coming from on the one hand the Judiciary, accountable to Ali Khamenei, and on the other to members directly appointed by Ahmadinejad. Again according to Human Rights Watch, “[s]ince President Ahmadinejad came to power, treatment of detainees has worsened in Evin prison as well as in detention centers operated clandestinely by the Judiciary, the Ministry of Information, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

Tolerance of public protest varies under Ahmadinejad. Human Rights Watch writes that “[t]he Ahmadinejad government, in a pronounced shift from the policy under former president Mohammed Khatami, has shown no tolerance for peaceful protests and gatherings.”

In January 2006 security forces attacked striking bus drivers in Tehran and detained hundreds. The government refused to recognize the drivers’ independent union or engage in collective bargaining with them. In February government forces attacked a peaceful gathering of Sufi devotees in front of their religious building in Qum to prevent its destruction by the authorities, using tear gas and water cannons to disperse them. In March police and plainclothes agents charged a peaceful assembly of women’s rights activists in Tehran and beat hundreds of women and men who had gathered to commemorate International Women’s Day. In June as women’s rights defenders assembled again in Tehran, security forces beat them with batons, sprayed them with pepper gas, marked the demonstrators with sprayed dye, and took 70 people into custody.

Horrible stuff, surely placing him in the running for Most Despicable Dictator.

On the other hand, Hitler is several rungs up the ladder from him in the standings for Most Despicable Dictator of All Time. Ahmadinejad has not, for example, rounded up and systematically murdered millions of people or launched a world war. Were I Jewish, I’d prefer my foreign leaders calling me names and denying that the Holocaust took place to, say, actually conducting a Holocaust.

Further, as I noted last week, Bollinger has not invited Ahmadinejad to a forum presenting him as a hero. He’s insisted that half the time be alloted to questions and answers, including some rather pointed questions of his own about Ahmadinejad’s policies and outrageous statements.

Do I think Bollinger would love to have Karl Rove or Alberto Gonzales or John Ashcroft or Dick Cheney in for such a forum? Absolutely. He’d do it tomorrow, I’d bet. My guess, however, is that none of them would actually submit themselves to the process.

Firemen too. Horrible sexist terms, not gender-neutral.

It’s almost official: There soon will be no more firemen or policemen in Washington.
And they’re vanishing with barely a whimper.
The state Senate voted 41-1 on Friday to get rid of all references to “fireman” and “policeman” in a state law about public employee pensions and replace them with gender-neutral words: firefighter and police officer.
For the record, the only “no” vote didn’t come from a man. It was cast by Sen. Val Stevens, an Arlington Republican serving her 15th year in the Legislature.
“This is my reason for voting no,” Stevens told The News Tribune. “Number one, because it is silliness. Number two, it will slop over into all aspects of government and evolve into another item of political correctness. And we don’t need any more politically correct items to have to figure out and try and deal with.”

She sounds like a Neanderthal, oops, we shouldn’t use that term according to Geico. And this is more than just “police officer” and “firefighter.”

Senate Bill 5063 also tells the Office of Code Reviser, the agency that translates legislative proposals into state laws, to pore over the thousands of state statutes after the Legislature adjourns April 22 and find which laws need to change “he” to “he or she.”
The bill still must be approved by the House and signed by the governor before it becomes law.

Sounds like a waste of taxpayer money to me. State sanctioned and enforced political correctness. What is next, a rule enforcing gender-neutral debate in the State Legislature (not going to happen)? Where is Bill Maher when you need him (obviously not in Olympia, WA)?

Steve Bainbridge has announced that his experiment with a multi-blog magazine format is ending and he is re-consolidating has activities at his old domain, ProfessorBainbridge.com®.

The consolidated blog will focus on law, business, and economics, serving as an on-line adjunct to my scholarship and teaching (indeed, I’m posting links to both the PowerPoint slides from my Business Associations class and audio recordings of my lectures), but I also plan a modicum of eclectic commentary on topics such as politics, religion, cars, non-business law, political correctness, entertainment, book reviews, photography, dogs, and, of course, food and wine.

Please adjust your bookmarks, feeds, and/or blog rolls accordingly.

Matt Yglesias uses a recent mini-controversy surrounding Wes Clark to discuss the bizarre state of “anti-anti-Semitism” in American political discourse. Essentially, the fact there is a well-heeled Israeli lobby that has a powerful influence on American foreign policy and is currently pressing for war in Iran can be acknowledged to thunderous applaud by those advocating one set of public policies whereas those who disagree with said lobby’s aims are denounced as anti-Semites.

Of course, many of us on the Right have been decrying political correctness and its chilling effect on speech for the better part of two decades. The facts that black men are disproportionately represented in our prison population or that women are underrepresented in the sciences are safe topics for discussion by the Rainbow Coalition or NOW but will get conservative speakers booed off of campus or cost a university president his job.

Crying “racism” or “sexism” or “anti-Semitism” is much easier than taking on the arguments of one’s opponents. More often than not, it leads to cheap victory in the public arena. It’s doubly effective, too, because there’s no telling how many are scared off from even bringing up these subjects for fear of being so labeled.

The cost, however, is staggering. In his famous 1859 essay “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill wrote about the ability of public scorn to hamper free discussion:

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism

We have clearly not found that limit, let alone a means of maintaining it, all these years later.

Steve Bainbridge has made his return to the blogosphere with a new design and three blogs instead of two:

Professor Bainbridge’s Business Associations Blog

This is my professional blog, which serves as an extension of my academic scholarship. The subjects about which I post here – law, business, and economics – will be of interest to lawyers, judges, law students, and legal academics. Most of the posts will relate to the law and economics of business associations, especially public corporations.

Professor Bainbridge’s Journal

This is my personal blog. The topic mix is eclectic, but focuses on politics, religion, and culture. Other common topics include cars, non-business law, political correctness, entertainment, book reviews, photography, dogs, and whatever else captures my interest.

Professor Bainbridge on Wine

A blog dedicated to food and wine, focusing on the latter. Wine reviews, news, and commentary, plus recipes.

Check ‘em out and update your blogrolls and feed subscriptions accordingly.

Jim Henley is shocked that the NFL is following up its all-white Super Bowl halftime show in Motown with an all-white halftime show for the Saints’ return to the Super Dome.

Back in the early 1990s I could scowl “political correctness” with the best of them. But when it comes to the world of business, a lot of “political correctness” is really sound management, sensible customer relations and effective marketing.

He has a point. Granting that the NFL is the country’s most popular spectator sport by far and that the time-tested, noncontroversial pop acts tend to be white, it’s still an odd choice.

Surely, they could have snagged, say Aaron Neville. Or, how cool would it be to bring out Fats Domino, who we feared died in the aftermath of Katrina? I don’t care if he can even still sing, that would have been a grand gesture.

With the recent U.K. terror plot to blow up airliners with liquid bombs, there has been lots of discussion on the radio talk shows (at least the ones I’ve listened too) that make a big deal about profiling and how it would be an effective screen against terrorists. There is only two problems with this and those problems were born with the names Don Steward-Whyte and Oliver Savant, two white converts to Islam.

So far in all the bloviations I’ve heard on the radio, nobody seems to mention that these two gentlemen are white and converts to Islam and could very well be Islamic extremist. Everybody focuses on the names and from there assumes that all the people arrested in connection to the plot are Pakistani (and to be sure, most of the people arrested are of Pakistani descent).

The problem with profiling is the Carnival Booth effect. The strategy of terrorist could use to circumvent a profiling system such as CAPS (see the link for a description)¹ is to send people through the airline screening system and see which one’s get caught. Eventually, the terrorist organization will learn enough about the profile to circumvent it, possibly with white converts to Islamic extremism such as Stewart-Whyte, Savant and also Johnny Walker Lindh. Similarly terrorists groups might look to females and also female converts.

Further, people get upset when they see that grandma has been selected for additional scrutiny or that the mother with an infant was selected, etc. The problem here is that random searches are a way of defeating the Carnival Booth strategy. With random screening there is no way to learn what will allow you to slip past the screening. And for something to be random, this means that periodically grandma might have to undergo further scrutiny, Jr. might have to have his bad of toys inspected, and so forth. After all, if you start exempting certain passangers then the random searches are no longer random.

Some people, e.g. Ann Coulter, have argued that the random searches and lack of profiling is due solely to political correctness. Maybe they are right, but there is a non-politically correct reason to reject profiling, at least by itself and with the simple form many advocates seem to favor. Making profiling more subtle so that those who are profiled are unaware of their being flagged is one solution. Since people flagged are unaware they have been flagged there is no way to learn what the profile is. This could be done by devising better methods of scannning both checked luggage as well as carry on luggage. If this can’t be done, then profiling isn’t all that helpful, and in fact could provide a false sense of security when the reality is quite the opposite.

[Note: Initially I was in favor of profiling, but have since changed my mind as this strategy looks like it is too easy to beat. Note that this isn't any kind of nonsense PC consideration, but purely a strategic/security issue. Do try to keep this in mind when posting comments.

Also, note that CAPS and CAPS II are no longer in effect, the new system is called Secure Flight, but from what I've read so far has been built off of CAPS and some of CAPS II, so it again looks like a profiling system. Funny, those in favor of profiling seem unaware that profiling has been going on.]
_____
¹ From the link above,

This transparency [knowing you've been flagged by CAPS] is the Achilles’ Heel of CAPS; the fact that individuals know their CAPS status enables the system to be reverse engineered. You, like Simonyi, know if you’re carryons have been manually inspected. You know if you’ve been questioned. You know if you’re asked to stand in a special line. You know if you’ve been frisked. All of this open scrutiny makes it possible to learn an anti-profile to defeat CAPS, even if the profile itself is always kept secret. We call this the “Carnival Booth Effect” since, like a carnie, it entices terrorists to “Step Right Up! See if you’re a winner!” In this case, the terrorist can step right up and see if he’s been flagged.

The House yesterday voted to extend the Voting Rights Act for 25 years, despite objections from Southern Members.

The House yesterday easily approved an extension of key provisions of the landmark Voting Rights Act, after GOP leaders quelled a rebellion within the party’s Southern ranks that threatened to become a political embarrassment. Before the 390 to 33 vote to extend the measure for a quarter-century, the House defeated four amendments that would have diluted two expiring provisions and possibly derailed final passage before the November congressional elections. With the House hurdle now cleared, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he hoped to bring the extension to the Senate floor before the August reces

[...]

The Voting Rights Act is a cornerstone of the civil rights era and was adopted in 1965 to stop the systematic disenfranchisement of black voters, particularly in the South, through barriers such as poll taxes and literacy tests. Much of the legislation, including a section that bans racial discrimination at the ballot box, is permanent law. But several key provisions are temporary. One requires certain states and jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination to gain federal approval for voting-law changes. Another imposes a language-assistance requirement on jurisdictions with a high percentage of voters whose native language is not English.

It is those two provisions that drew the ire of some Republican lawmakers, mainly from the South. Some of these Republicans had objected to approving the provisions and, in recent weeks, had blocked the bill from going to the floor. To move it forward, GOP leaders allowed the four amendments to be considered. Most of the disgruntled Republicans swallowed their complaints and voted for final passage. One of the 33 holdouts was Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.). “Some politicians in Washington wouldn’t dare vote against this bill because they’d be lambasted by the media and liberal interest groups,” McHenry said. “I will not go along with bad public policy in the name of political correctness. . . . This bill is a 1960s solution for a 21st-century world.”

Two of the amendments the dissenting Republicans brought forward addressed the required approval of changes in states’ voting laws. “It’s true that when the Voting Rights Act was first passed in 1965, Georgia needed federal intervention to correct decades of discrimination,” said freshman Rep. Lynn A. Westmoreland (R-Ga.), whose amendment to ease the pre-clearance requirement failed 302 to 118, although a majority of Republicans backed it. Westmoreland noted that voter registration and turnout in Georgia are higher today among black voters than among white voters. One-third of officials elected statewide are black, including the attorney general and the chief justice, and black representation in the state legislature is in proportion to Georgia’s black population. “Georgia’s record on voter equality can stand up against any other state in the union,” he said.

McHenry and Westmoreland are quite right. Demagogery to the contrary, voting rights for racial minorities are simply no longer in controversy. The two provisions being contested, however, are.

I remain convinced that applying different legal standards to a handful of states is blatantly unconstitutional in addition to being unnecessary. Indeed, I would argue that the preclearance requirement, which requires the federal judiciary to approve something that the Constitution makes a plenary power of state legislatures, is also unconstitutional. But politicians are too afraid of being labeled “racist” to concern themselves about such trifles.