Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich slammed the Obama administration’s firing of a USDA official Sunday as a panicky response that shows they’re not prepared for the big issues facing the nation.

“If the Obama administration is this afraid of Glenn Beck, how do they deal with the Iranians?” Gingrich asked on “Fox News Sunday.” News accounts this week depicted the firing of USDA official Shirley Sherrod as an effort by the administration to avoid being criticized by Beck.

The quip came during an exchange with former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who accused Fox News of promoting racism.

“Let’s just be blunt about this … I think Fox News did something that was absolutely racist,” Dean charged, referring to the firing of Sherrod after a tape emerged that appeared to show her endorsing the racist treatment of a white farmer.

The opposite turned out to be true – Sherrod helped the white farmer and spoke openly about her own racial issues. She was offered a new job by the Obama administration after the news story turned out to be the sensation of the week.

“Fox News was not blameless during this,” Dean said. “You played it up.”

But host Chris Wallace shot back, “I know facts are inconvenient things, but let’s deal with the facts.” They include that Fox News did not play the clip or mention her name before the Obama administration forced Sherrod on Monday to step down, he said, according to The Hill.

Dean said the clip was about to run on Glenn Beck’s program on Fox, “which is what the administration was afraid of.”

Read the entire story at The Hill.

The Democrats are depressed about their collapsing poll numbers, so it’s time to start calling conservatives “racist.”

As we now know from the Journolist list-serv, where hundreds of liberal journalists chat with one another, and which was leaked to Daily Caller this week, journalists cry “racism” whenever they need to distract from bad news for Obama. (Ironically, this story did not make headlines.)

When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal broke during the 2008 campaign, the first response of Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent was to demand that they start randomly picking conservatives — “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Ackerman, frequent guest on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” continued on Journolist:

“What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.”

This is what “racism” has come to in America. Democrats are in trouble, so they say “let’s call conservatives racists.” We always knew it, but the Journolist postings gave us the smoking gun.

This explains why we’ve heard so much about Tea Partiers being “racists” lately.

But despite a frantic search, the media have been unable to produce any actual evidence of racism at the Tea Parties. Even the trace elements are either frauds or utterly trivial.

For example, there was blind terror last week over a Tea Party billboard in northern Iowa that showed a picture of Adolf Hitler, Obama and Vladimir Lenin under the headings: “National Socialism,” “Democratic Socialism” and “Marxist Socialism.”

Overheated? Perhaps. Racist? No. Unless liberals are about to break the news that Lenin and Hitler were black, what we have here, gentlemen, is not racism.

I’m not even sure why liberals are so testy: As an aficionado of liberal talk radio, I’ve heard both Ed Schultz and Randi Rhodes repeatedly say socialism is terrific. (Given their ratings, this is understandable.)

Most sickeningly, the mainstream media continue to spread the despicable lie that someone called civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis the “N-word” 15 times during the anti-ObamaCare rally in Washington. Fifteen times!

That turned out to be another lie. About a week after the protest, Andrew Breitbart offered a $100,000 reward for anyone who could produce a video of Lewis being called the N-word even once — forget 15 times. (That’s the most we can afford. Hey, who do we look like over here, George Soros?)

Plus, the winner might have his video appear on the new hit TV show, “America’s Most Racist Home Videos.”

With hundreds of news cameras, cell phone cameras and camcorders capturing every nook and cranny of the Capitol Hill protest — and news media hungry for an ugly, racist act — it defies possibility that someone called Lewis the N-word once, much less 15 times, without one single camera capturing the incident. And yet, to this day the reward remains unclaimed.

Democrats did their best to provoke an ugly confrontation by marching a (shockingly undiverse) group of black Democrats right through the middle of the anti-ObamaCare protest. But they didn’t get one, so the media just lied and asserted Lewis was called the N-word. (If they wanted to hear the N-word so badly, they should have sent the congressional delegation to a Jay-Z concert.)

Indeed, news anchor after news anchor has indignantly claimed to have footage of the incident, teasing viewers by saying, “We’ll get that right up” or claiming personally to have seen the video -– and then you watch the whole program without ever seeing footage of anyone calling Lewis the N-word.

Dateline: April 18, 2010, CNN’s Don Lemon: “We have the tape here at CNN. I saw it on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’” And yet, Lemon never got around to showing viewers that tape. IF YOU HAVE THE TAPE, DON, CLAIM YOUR $100,00 REWARD!

And now this week, with the NAACP accusing the Tea Partiers of harboring racists, and conservatives demanding proof, the George Soros-backed Center for American Progress ran a 45-second video allegedly showing racism at the Tea Parties.

One of the videos shows an obvious liberal plant announcing, “I’m a proud racist!” Apparently this was their best shot, because they had to work this video into the montage twice, amid utterly innocuous posters, for example, saying, “God bless Glenn Beck.” So I guess they didn’t have anything better.

Here’s the part Soros’ people didn’t show you: In the fuller video shown on the Glenn Beck show, the Tea Partiers surrounded the (liberal plant) racist, jeering at him, telling him he’s not one of them and to go home. In a spectacularly evil fraud, all that was edited out.

Just hours later on MSNBC, Chris Matthews was loudly proclaiming that he would believe the Tea Partiers weren’t racist when he sees “just one of those Tea Party people pull down one of those racist signs at the next Tea Party rally. I’m going to just wait. Reach over, grab the sign and tear it out of the guy’s hands. Then I will believe you.”

Well, here it was. The (liberal plant) racist was driven from the Tea Party by the Tea Partiers. But you won’t see that. Like USDA official Shirley Sherrod’s apparently racist comments excerpted this week from what was, in fact, a commendable speech about racial reconciliation, the alleged Tea Party racism was, literally, “taken out of context.”

President Obama was supposed to be post racial. When you ask him, he says, he doesn’t believe the attacks on him are racial. But everyone from his wife to the head of the NAACP tells it another way. They believe any attack on the President is racist or racial.

Dick Morris calls it the “ghettoizing” of Barack Obama. He was referring to the tactic of stirring up black and Hispanic voters with charges of racism where there is none. It’s a ploy to stir up voters of color in this off-year election. From the NAACP to the tepid attempt at “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” in the eleventh hour of this congressional session, it’s all about him, Barack Obama.

The Tea Party was the target last week at the meeting of the NAACP. They indignantly and unanimously voted (behind closed doors) for a resolution claiming the Tea Party movement is racist but they won’t release a text of the resolution.

The Tea Party movement is a movement about liberty and fiscal responsibility. A kind of Paul Revere call in the night that “the British are coming.” In this case, it’s “the Socialists are coming” or “Big Government is Coming.” When you talk of redistribution of wealth and economic justice, it may not be Leninist, but it is much closer to socialism than to capitalism.

Herman Cain, a radio talk-show host and black man, grew up in the segregated South. He graduated from high school in Atlanta before desegregation and attended Morehouse College. He’s been a “math-head,” executive, radio host and candidate. He’s also a favorite of the Tea Party movement.

“My reaction to the idea of the NAACP declaring the citizen movement known as the Tea Party as racist is ridiculous,” said Cain. “I am Black. I have spoken at over twenty rallies and conferences. I have talked directly with hundreds of Tea Party activists, and have received hundreds of calls from activists to my nightly radio show. Tea Party people are patriots who want the federal government to stop the spending, stop the legislative abuse, stop the tax increases and start adhering to the Constitution.”

He also laments the NAACP going from a “once relevant and impactful organization is [now] looking for relevance in the wrong place, namely, race. It should be about unity instead of divisiveness.”

For this position of freedom and his disagreement with the President on issues, he’s been called an Uncle Tom and shameless. “Those who are calling me those names have probably never been to a Tea Party event, and I doubt officials of the NAACP have attended an event either.”

The NAACP based its condemnation on unproven charges against the Tea Party members when congressmen walked through the crowd on the day of the healthcare vote. They said they were spit on and racial epithets were used against them. But not one shred of evidence of this has been produced and there were many cameras and microphones present.

The Tea Party movement is a movement of America. It is white and black and brown. People of color should resonate with its message because the President ran on “Hope and Change,” and so far it’s not working. Unemployment is up and the unemployment rate for black Americans is twice the national average.

Deneen Borelli of Project 21, a black Tea Party activist, said, “The Tea Party is about individuals being individuals with independent thought and independent actions. It’s plain and simple. But unfortunately, you have the progressives who want blacks, for example, to be in lock-step on the same subjects, the same opinions, and to vote to the same way. When in reality, that’s not the real world. People need to be accountable for what they do and what they say and not get involved in the group-think.”

Admittedly, it doesn’t help that in a large movement like the Tea Party there are going to be some “hangers on” who have different views. Those fringe elements have been condemned and they are not welcome in the movement. However, it is a bit disingenuous when you don’t hear the NAACP condemn the New Black Panther Party or the likes of Jeremiah Wright who preach hate and killing based on race.

An Iowa Tea Party group made a mistake last week. They created a billboard comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. It has been removed, and Kent Beatty, the general manager of the company that owns the billboard, says a North Iowa Tea Party representative called and asked that the sign in downtown Mason City be removed. Beatty says his company replaced the sign the next morning with a public service announcement.

Because the President is doing so poorly, groups like the Tea Party have to be neutralized in the minds of the President’s dwindling supporters. As a Georgian, I’m happy that some Democrat President is making Jimmy Carter look better. At least he won’t be the worst President in modern times.

“Tea Party people are not racist… They are patriotic Americans who want the greatest country in the world to remain the greatest, by exercising their right to make their voices heard. This isn’t about race. This is about results, and the results by this administration are missing in action,” Cain said about the NAACP’s condemnation of the Tea Party movement.

There will be more fighting between now and the election. We need the Tea Party movement because it is grassroots. Its leaders will continue to be diligent in weeding out the fringe factors and the other side will keep ignoring their fringe factors. It’s the way it is. But as we head into this November election, we will see whose ideas win out. You can make the difference. Vote in your primaries and in the general election and then hold their feet to the fire every day until the next election. It starts with your vote, it doesn’t end with it.

One of the more bizarre tics of liberal thinking on foreign policy is that they believe everyone in the world is basically just like us. They believe they have roughly the same hopes, dreams, concerns and way of looking at the world. So, since they believe they think the way we do, they seem to believe they can be intimidated the same way as so many of us are — by playing the race card:

An US administration official said al-Qaeda was racist and used black Africans as “cannon fodder”.

In an interview on South African television, Mr Obama said: “What you’ve seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organisations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself.

“They see it as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents, without regard to long-term consequences, for their short-term tactical gains.”

An administration official went further, saying that the Ugandan attacks show that “al-Qaeda is a racist organisation that treats black Africans like cannon fodder and does not value human life”

What’s next? Are they going to accuse them of hating the poor? Maybe they can file a nuisance lawsuit against Al-Qaeda. That’ll show ‘em! Perhaps this sounds a little nebulous and nuanced, but here’s just something pathetic about looking at irredeemably evil people who’re living lives dedicated to terrorism, murder, and oppression, and choosing, “You’re a racist” as your shot across their bow.

It’s like the Left has to come up with some reason besides the fact that Al-Qaeda killed almost 3,000 Americans on 9/11 to hate them. “Sure, they killed a lot of Americans, and that was bad — I guess. But, these guys are racists? Well, that’s going too far! Now we have a reason to fight them!”It reminds me of an argument Jonah Goldberg made about hypocrisy,

Hypocrisy is bad, but it’s not the worst vice in the world. If I declared “murder is wrong” and then killed somebody, I would hope that the top count against me would be homicide, not hypocrisy. Liberal elites — particularly in Hollywood — believe that hypocrisy is the gravest sin in the world, which is why they advocate their own lifestyles for the entire world: Sleep with whomever you want, listen to your own instincts, be true to yourself, blah, blah, blah. Our fear of hypocrisy is forcing us to live in a world where gluttons are fine, so long as they champion gluttony.

In Al-Qaeda’s case, I’d hope the fact that they’re the terrorist organization responsible for 9/11 is the “top count” against them, not the fact that they may also be racists.

Not only does Todd Gaziano (Congressional appointee on the United States Commission on Civil Rights) claim that the 2008 Election Day voter intimidation charge against the Philadelphia New Black Panther Party was ‘open and shut’, but that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandez ordered, ‘Never bring another lawsuit against a black or other national minority, apparently no matter what they do.’

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN67KJdd6Mw

From FOX News:

Charges brought against three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense under the Bush administration have been dropped by the Obama Justice Department, FOX News has learned.

The charges stemmed from an incident at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008 when three members of the party were accused of trying to threaten voters and block poll and campaign workers by the threat of force — one even brandishing what prosecutors call a deadly weapon.

The three black panthers, Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint in the final days of the Bush administration with violating the voter rights act by using coercion, threats and intimidation. Shabazz allegedly held a nightstick or baton that prosecutors said he pointed at people and menacingly tapped it. Prosecutors also say he “supports racially motivated violence against non-blacks and Jews.”

The Obama administration won the case last month, but moved to dismiss the charges on May 15.

Click here to see FOX News video from the scene on election day.

Click to watch the incident on YouTube.

The complaint says the men hurled racial slurs at both blacks and whites.

A poll watcher who provided an affidavit to prosecutors in the case noted that Bartle Bull, who worked as a civil rights lawyer in the south in the 1960′s and is a former campaign manager for Robert Kennedy, said it was the most blatant form of voter intimidation he had ever seen.

In his affidavit, obtained by FOX News, Bull wrote “I watched the two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters.”

He also said they tried to “interfere with the work of other poll observers … whom the uniformed men apparently believed did not share their preferences politically,” noting that one of the panthers turned toward the white poll observers and said “you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”

A spokesman for the Department of Justice told FOX News, “The Justice Department was successful in obtaining an injunction that prohibits the defendant who brandished a weapon outside a Philadelphia polling place from doing so again. Claims were dismissed against the other defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law. The department is committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who intimidate, threaten or coerce anyone exercising his or her sacred right to vote.”

More from FOX News:

Ex-Official Accuses Justice Department of Racial Bias in Black Panther Case

In emotional and personal testimony, an ex-Justice official who quit over the handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party accused his former employer of instructing attorneys in the civil rights division to ignore cases that involve black defendants and white victims.

J. Christian Adams, testifying Tuesday before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said that “over and over and over again,” the department showed “hostility” toward those cases. He described the Black Panther case as one example of that — he defended the legitimacy of the suit and said his “blood boiled” when he heard a Justice official claim the case wasn’t solid.

“It is false,” Adams said of the claim.

“We abetted wrongdoing and abandoned law-abiding citizens,” he later testified.

The department abandoned the New Black Panther case last year. It stemmed from an incident on Election Day in 2008 in Philadelphia, where members of the party were videotaped in front of a polling place, dressed in military-style uniforms and allegedly hurling racial slurs while one brandished a night stick.

The Bush Justice Department brought the first case against three members of the group, accusing them in a civil complaint of violating the Voter Rights Act. The Obama administration initially pursued the case, winning a default judgment in federal court in April 2009 when the Black Panther members did not appear in court. But then the administration moved to dismiss the charges the following month after getting one of the New Black Panther members to agree to not carry a “deadly weapon” near a polling place until 2012.

In a statement Tuesday, a Justice spokesman said the civil rights division determined “the facts and the law did not support pursuing claims” against the two other defendants and denied Adams’ allegations.

“The department makes enforcement decisions based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved. We are committed to comprehensive and vigorous enforcement of both the civil and criminal provisions of the federal laws that prohibit voter intimidation,” the spokesman said.

The Civil Rights Commission, which subpoenaed Adams, has been probing the incident since last year. Adams said he ignored department directives not to testify and eventually quit after he heard Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez testify that there were concerns the Black Panther case was not supported by the facts.

Adams has described the case as open-and-shut and said Tuesday that it was a “very low moment” to hear Perez make that claim.

But he described the department’s hostility toward that and other cases involving black defendants as “pervasive.” Adams cited hostility in the department toward a 2007 voting rights case against a black official in Mississippi who was accused of trying to intimidate voters. Adams said that when the Black Panther case came up, he heard officials in the department say it was “no big deal” and “media-generated” and point to “Fox News” as the source.

But as the investigation unfolded, he said he discovered “indications” that the Black Panther Party was doing the “same thing” to supporters of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary season in early 2008. He urged the commission to pursue testimony from other Justice officials to corroborate his story.

It’s unclear how far the commission will get. The commissioners want to hear from Christopher Coates, the former chief of the Justice Department’s voting section, but the commission claims the Justice Department is blocking Coates from testifying about why the case was dropped.

In a written statement last week, the department questioned the motives of Adams, now an attorney in Virginia and a blogger for Pajamas Media.

“It is not uncommon for attorneys with the department to have good faith disagreements about the appropriate course of action in a particular case, although it is regrettable when a former department attorney distorts the facts and makes baseless allegations to promote his or her agenda,” the statement said.

Adams said Tuesday that his personal views played no part in his handling of the case. He also said he did not fight to testify before the commission but resigned after the department would not take action to quash the subpoena.

While would be Senator Rand Paul was recently slated by the controlled left wing media for his nuanced philosophical view on one of the ten titles of the Civil Rights Act, the late Sen. Robert Byrd – an actual former member of the Ku Klux Klan – was lauded today by a former president as well as the nation’s first black president.

Clinton and Obama today both defended Byrd’s past association with the Klan in the 1940s.

In a key note speech at Byrd’s funeral in Charleston today, Clinton hit out at eulogies in some newspapers that had highlighted Byrd’s ties with the Klan.

“He once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan, what does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollows from West Virginia. He was trying to get elected,” Clinton said.

“And maybe he did something he shouldn’t have done come and he spent the rest of his life making it up. And that’s what a good person does. There are no perfect people. There are certainly no perfect politicians,” he added.

Watch the video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqPq4AHjzU4

Byrd signed up with the KKK in 1942, becoming head of the local chapter before claiming to lose interest in the organisation a year later. However, in 1946 Byrd stated that the KKK was “needed today as never before.”

President Obama described Byrd as a “statesman”, adding that his ties to the Klan could be forgiven following his long career as a Senator.

“We know there are things he said and things he did that he came to regret,” Obama said.

In reference to a conversation Obama said he once had with Byrd the president noted: “He said, ‘There are things I regretted in my youth. You may know that.’ I said, ‘None of us are absent some regrets, senator. That’s why we enjoy and seek the grace of God.’”

“And as I reflect on the full sweep of his 92 years, it seems to me that his life bent toward justice,” Obama added. “Like the Constitution he tucked in his pocket, like the nation itself, Robert Byrd possessed that quintessential American quality, and that is the capacity to change, a capacity to learn, a capacity to listen, a capacity to be made more perfect.”

Oh, spare me. Please:

There’s nothing more traditional in American politics than the wholesome family portrait: a beaming candidate, beaming spouse, reluctantly beaming teenagers.

But when Bill de Blasio, a candidate for public office in New York City this fall, put his family in his campaign mailings and TV ads, there was nothing routine about it. De Blasio’s wife of 15 years, Chirlane McCray, is black, his children are of mixed race and, even in one of America’s most liberal cities, no one could remember anything like it…

…With Barack Obama having rewritten the history of race relations in this country, de Blasio may be demolishing one of its last taboos, “For so long in American history, interracial couples went out of their way to keep their relationships out of the public eye that it’s remarkable to see them used in a campaign like this,” said Peggy Pascoe, a historian of interracial marriage at the University of Oregon, who referred to the campaign as “a post-Obama phenomenon.”

That’s a perception McCray said she shared. Obama, she said, “opened a door” and “made it easier for us to go there.”

Nowhere in the article is there even a mention of who over the last decades has made it difficult to “go there.”

No mention of how minority conservative women who marry outside their race are routinely attacked by liberals as traitors, sellouts, whores, ethnic trophy wives, and mail-order brides.

No mention of how Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was excoriated by black liberals for being married to wife Virginia, who happens to be white.

No mention of how anti-government racial preference activist Ward Connerly was also attacked for marrying a white woman.

Need a refresher? Here:

The fact that she is white has drawn criticism from some blacks who see the marriage as evidence that Clarence Thomas has rejected his roots…

…“If he is influenced by his wife, a white conservative who lobbied against comparable pay for women, he will be anti-women’s issues,” wrote USA Today columnist Barbara Reynolds in a July 5 piece. Reynolds, who is black, also is concerned by Thomas’s choice of a white wife.

“It may sound bigoted; well, this is a bigoted world and why can’t black people be allowed a little Archie Bunker mentality?” Reynolds said later. “Here’s a man who’s going to decide crucial issues for the country and he has already said no to blacks; he has already said if he can’t paint himself white he’ll think white and marry a white woman.”

Clarence Thomas advocates a colorblind society, and his marriage may well be an example of that philosophy. But others see a different symbolism.

“His marrying a white woman is a sign of his rejection of the black community,” said Russell Adams, chairman of Howard University’s department of Afro-American studies. “Great justices have had community roots that served as a basis for understanding the Constitution. Clarence’s lack of a sense of community makes his nomination troubling.”

And now, liberals want to give Barack Obama credit for breaking interracial marriage taboos?

What has Obama ever done — what has he ever said — to disavow the bigoted attacks by liberals against minority conservatives in public life who have endured vicious bile because they chose their partners based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin?

Nothing.

JERUSALEM – A close associate and colleague of Harvard professor Henry

Louis Gates Jr. linked to black radicals introduced President Obama at a 2007 Harlem fundraiser by first railing against the “racist” criminal justice system of the “American empire.”

A scan of YouTube clips found controversial race scholar Cornel West introducing Obama at the fundraiser while stating the “American empire is in such a deep crisis” and slamming the “racist criminal justice system” and “disgraceful schools in our city.”

“He is my brother and my companion and comrade,” said West of Obama.

WND found a video of Obama, upon taking the stage just after West’s introduction, expressing his gratitude to West, calling him “not only a genius, a public intellectual, a preacher, an oracle … he’s also a loving person.”

Obama asked the audience for a round of applause for West.

West, currently a professor at Princeton University, served as an adviser on Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March and is a personal friend of Farrakhan. He serves as honorary chair of a U.S. socialist group and has ties to black extremists.

West has branded the U.S. a “racist patriarchal” nation where “white supremacy” continues to define everyday life and once stated the 9-11 attacks gave whites a glimpse of what it means to be a black person in the U.S.

West authored two books on race with Gates, who is at the center of controversy after Obama remarked on Gates’ being handcuffed by police outside his home after a report of a burglary in his house.

Serving as director for a Harvard race institute immortalizing W.E.B. Du Bois, Gates cultivated black radicals to his race studies department, with perhaps West being the most prominent. However, West left Harvard for Princeton in 2002 after a public spat with Harvard’s then-president, Lawrence Summers.

West and comedian Chris Rock both introduced Obama at the 2007 fundraiser, an event featuring about 1,500 people which served as Obama’s first foray into Harlem since he announced his Democratic presidential candidacy.

Obama named West to the Black Advisory Council of his presidential campaign.

From a young age, West proclaimed he admired “the sincere black militancy of Malcolm X, the defiant rage of the Black Panther Party … and the livid black [liberation] theology of James Cone.”

Cone’s theology spawned Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s controversial pastor for 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ. West was a strong defender of Wright when the pastor’s extreme remarks became national news during last year’s campaign season.

In 1995, West signed a New York Times ad voicing support for cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther.

In 2002, West further signed a “Statement of Conscience” crafted by Not In Our Name, a project of C. Clark Kissinger’s Revolutionary Communist Party. He then endorsed the World Can’t Wait campaign, a Revolutionary Communist Party project seeking to organize “people living in the United States to take responsibility to stop the whole disastrous course led by the Bush administration.”

After branding the U.S. a “racist patriarchal” nation in his book “Race Matters,” West wrote that “White America has been historically weak-willed in ensuring racial justice and has continued to resist fully accepting the humanity of blacks.”

Also in that book, West claimed the 9-11 attacks gave white Americans a glimpse of what it means to be a black person in the U.S. – feeling “unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hatred” for who they are.

“Since 9/11,” West wrote, “the whole nation has the blues, when before it was just black people.”

Obama: Cops acted ‘stupidly’ in Gates’ case
By Christina Bellantoni

Wading into a sensitive racial fight for the first time, President Obama said police who arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. for disorderly conduct in his own home “acted stupidly.”

Mr. Obama, the nation’s first black president and a friend of Mr. Gates, a renowned scholar, at first hedged the question by saying he wasn’t aware of all the facts, but then rebuked the Cambridge, Mass., police and said racial profiling still “haunts” the country.

Mr. Gates, director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, was arrested by a white officer last week on charges of disorderly conduct. A police report indicates that officers responded to a report of suspected burglary, and Mr. Gates had just returned from a trip and had to force entry into the jammed door of his Cambridge home.

The professor said the police were racist because he provided identification that it was his home.

Police said Mr. Gates at first refused to show his ID and yelled when they asked. Mr. Gates, however, said he freely handed over his identification.

Asked about the incident during a White House press conference Wednesday – one day after charges were dropped against Mr. Gates – Mr. Obama took sides.

Mr. Obama joked at first that if he was caught “trying to jigger” his way into his home in a similar situation, but then caught himself and noted the White House is now his residence and that if he was an intruder, “I’d get shot.”

Reporters in the room laughed as he kept making his point that police acted properly until Mr. Gates had proven he resided at the home.

“I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that,” he said.

The president went on to say anyone would have been angry and “that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.”

He added, “There’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”

Mr. Obama said his election is testimony to racial progress, but added that “blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently and oftentime for no cause,” which he said is suspicious “even when there is good cause.”

“The more that we’re working with local law enforcement to improve policing techniques so that we’re eliminating potential bias, the safer everybody is going to be,” he said.

The city of Cambridge issued a statement calling the events “regrettable.” Mr. Gates asked Sgt. James Crowley to apologize, but on Wednesday the sergeant refused to do so, according to the Associated Press.

Read more:

• Obama doesn’t regret ‘acted stupidly’ remark about Henry Gates Jr. arrest
• And yet, Obama Now Says, ‘I Could’ve Calibrated Those Words Differently’
• Black Police Officer at Scene of Gates Arrest Says He Supports Arresting Officer’s Actions ‘100 Percent’
• Cop who arrested black scholar is racial-profiling expert
• Obama’s “Acting Stupidly” Remark Causing His Popularity to Crater
• Gates ‘Racist White Institutions’ Video; Obama Questionable Associations Continue to Grow
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Police Report
• Obama Acted Stupidly

UPDATE:

• Still No Apology, Obama Offers a Beer
• A Post-Racial President?