Posted on 06/18/2005 5:26:03 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
Senator Barack Obama says he may try to block the confirmation of a high-level nominee to the State Department out of concerns over racially insensitive comments attributed to her in the past.
Mr. Obama, (D-I) and the only African-American member of the Senate, said he was pressing to gain access to a background report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other records regarding the nominee, Henrietta Holsman Fore, the director of the United States Mint, who is President Bush's candidate to be under secretary of state for management. The position is the State Department's top human resources job.
While a trustee of Wellesley College in 1987, Ms. Fore, who ran a manufacturing business in California, gave a lecture at the school in which she described her difficulties keeping black assembly-line workers on the job; she was quoted as saying in a subsequent letter to the college newspaper that blacks would rather go "back to the street to earn more money" selling drugs. She later said the remarks were misconstrued and were meant to illustrate the problems of bringing diversity to the workplace. But she resigned as a trustee and apologized.
When questioned by Mr. Obama at her confirmation hearing on Thursday, she said she had resigned to protect the school's image during the student recruitment season.
"I made the statement in the context that what we had to do was fight these stereotypes," Ms. Fore said.
Mr. Obama said his interest in this was "just making sure that this whole controversy has been fully vetted and satisfactory answers have been provided." He said that if his concerns were not addressed, he might place a hold on the nomination or otherwise try to defeat it...
Mr. Obama, has discussed his concerns about the nomination with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Obama should be asking fellow democrat KKK Robert Byrd about how many crossburnings and lynchings he participated in.
Also how many lynchings did Byrd's KKK recruits conduct?
Obama should also come clean about his muslim upbringing.
Bush should just recess this appointment along with Bolton time to slap the senate around a little bit and put it back in its place.
No, he hopes the WH will not allow access to FBI reports so that he can precipitate just such a fight and garner attention.
His forefathers were not Slaves. He is a Johnny come lately to the be sorry for me scene.
Clearly the only reason that he is doing this is that he is a misogynist. He would not have done the same if the nominee were a man. (What do you mean that I don't have any evidence for that statement? I guarantee that if the FBI were to release Obama's full dossier to me, I could prove it to you. I'm going to make a big stink about Obama's woman-hatred until such time as the FBI releases his full report to me.)
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