Posted on 02/08/2006 8:45:54 AM PST by LouAvul
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Four U.S. presidents -- including President George W. Bush -- were among the luminaries at Coretta Scott King's funeral Tuesday. Among some speakers' accolades and tributes to the civil rights icon were criticisms of the current administration's actions -- the war in Iraq and domestic eavesdropping.
CNN senior analyst Jeff Greenfield talked to CNN anchor Miles O'Brien about politics raising its head at the funeral.
O'BRIEN: It was quite a funeral, six hours. And the full range of emotions as Coretta Scott King was laid to rest. There were songs, prayers, praise and a healthy dose of politics.
Former presidents Carter and Clinton, and civil rights legend Joseph Lowery used their time at the pulpit to take some jabs at the current administration with the man, as you see, seated a few feet away, President Bush.
Jeff Greenfield is here to talk about the implications of all of this.
Before we get going, we will share video of former President Carter making reference to wiretaps, which of course has historical parallels here to Martin Luther King Day.
(Video clip begins)
CARTER: It was difficult for them personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the targets of secret government wiretapping, other surveillance.
(Video clip ends)
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
We should all call Teddy's office to ask how he felt about Carter criticizing his brothers' for their civil rights record at the funeral.
The Dems will never run out of gas as long as they have Teddy! LOL!
I LOVE it that Lynn Swan is running and I hope he slam-dunks it. Make that a 'spike.'
Oh someone was already spouting on Slate that RFK didn't know about it, which is hogwash. RFK knew that Johnson was tapping and allegedly put some scrambler in his pocket when he had to meet with him so that no useable tapes would be produced.
No, that WAS Hillary. Don't give Goodyear a bad name! ;o)
I hope a lot of everyday Democrats heard about this attack on Bush.
Which only goes to show they were not there to pay their respects to Mrs. King - only to further their own political agendas.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
Just to refresh the memories of any leftists/Democrats who are lurking on the thread.
February 7, 2006
The Democrats' Own History With Race
By Bruce Bartlett
NAACP Chairman Julian Bond probably spoke for most blacks and liberals last week when he said the Republican Party is equivalent to the Nazi Party.
"The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side," he told an audience at Fayetteville State University.
Also last week, a new "scientific study" was released showing that Republicans are racist by nature. "The study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did," The Washington Post reported.
For decades, it has been a template of the major media that Republicans are the party of racism. It repeats uncritically any charges of Republican racism, no matter how unfounded. Democrats, on the other hand, are always given a pass whenever they commit racist offenses. Even a cursory review, however, will show that the media template is totally contrary to history.
Slavery is the greatest evil ever to beset black people in this country. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, there was intense political debate on what to do about it. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 for the express purpose of ending slavery. The Democratic Party, by contrast, defended it to the bitter end.
Just to show how far Democrats would go to defend slavery, it's worth remembering what happened to Sen. Charles Sumner, Republican of Massachusetts. After giving a speech denouncing slavery in 1856, he was viciously beaten by Rep. Preston Brooks, Democrat of South Carolina, for daring to question the right to own slaves. Being a coward, Brooks waited until the elderly Sumner was seated alone at his desk in the Senate and, without warning, struck him repeatedly with a cane. It took months for Sumner to recover.
In 1858, Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, debated Republican Abraham Lincoln on the question of slavery. Said Douglas during one of those debates: "For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form. I believe this government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians and other inferior races."
So prevalent were these views in the Democratic Party that Douglas was named its presidential candidate in 1860. Amazingly, Southerners actually viewed Douglas as being too moderate on the slavery issue and instead voted for Vice President John C. Breckinridge, a slave-owner who also ran as a Democrat, thus splitting the pro-slavery vote and allowing Lincoln to win.
After the war, the Democratic Party held a lock on the South for more than 100 years. All of the "Jim Crow" laws that prevented blacks from voting and kept them down were enacted by Democratic governors and Democratic legislatures. The Ku Klux Klan was virtually an auxiliary arm of the Democratic Party, and any black (or white) who threatened the party's domination was liable to be beaten or lynched. Democrats enacted the first gun-control laws in order to prevent blacks from defending themselves against Ku Klux Klan violence. Chain gangs were developed by Democrats to bring back de facto slave labor.
President Woodrow Wilson, the second Democrat to serve since the Civil War, reintroduced segregation throughout the federal government immediately upon taking office in 1913. Avowed racists such as Josephus Daniels and Albert Burleson were named Cabinet secretaries. Black leaders like W.E.B. DuBois, who had strongly supported Wilson, were bitterly disappointed, but shouldn't have been surprised. As president of Princeton University, Wilson refused to admit blacks and as governor of New Jersey ignored blacks' requests for state jobs, even though their votes had provided his margin of victory.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt had his first opportunity to name a member of the Supreme Court, he appointed a life member of the Ku Klux Klan, Sen. Hugo Black, Democrat of Alabama. In 1944, FDR chose as his vice president Harry Truman, who had joined the Ku Klux Klan in Kansas City in 1922. Throughout his presidency, Roosevelt resisted Republican efforts to pass a federal law against lynching, and he opposed integration of the armed forces.
Another Ku Klux Klan member, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, personally filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for 14 straight hours to keep it from passage. He is still a member of the U.S. Senate today. As recently as the 1980s, Sen. Ernest Hollings, Democrat of South Carolina, publicly referred to blacks as "darkies" and Hispanics as "wetbacks" without suffering any punishment from his party.
In short, the historical record clearly shows that Democrats, not Republicans, have been the party of racism in this country.
Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate
Well, several of the hits I read today say that the approval for the wiretaps came from AG Kennedy, not a court. So it seems the other sources I found weeks ago were wrong. I repent.
at least it has good judgememt...
Carter's speech was one lie after another. He said that the black people were the main ones to suffer from the hurricanes. Aside from the fact that, among the dead, whites were overrepresented based on their percentage of population, if blacks suffered, it's because their inept, corrupt, black-led government allowed their housing to be built on a low-lying swamp.
Not long ago the unsettling thought occurred to me that sooner or later I'll be voting Democrat.
Hmm...new tagline there.
Wait you mean George Bush wasn't the President AND Attorney General in the early 1960's??You don't say! ;-)
What did you think he was up to when he was supposed to be taking a physical for the Texas Air National Guard?
"Bobby Kennedy was assassinated just a few months before MLK was."
People remember so little, any more! Kennedy was assassinated two months AFTER MLK, almost to the day. He marched at MLK's funeral.
"Bill Clinton's swipe against Bush 41, calling him the frozen chosen, was class warfare. (I had to look it up. I had never heard it before.)"
As an Episcopalian, I can tell you that's how we refer to OURSELVES. It was a joke, not "class warfare".
:-) We hope that it's VERY much later.
"It is a historical fact that corpses in the United States almost exclusively vote democrat. Chicago was a pioneer in this area. The Dems were just playing to their base!!!<"p> Very funny! Congratulations.
As long as they are throwing roicks, who cares?
Maybe as an Episcopalian you do not realize that you are regarded as upper crust by people such as those who attended the funeral. but that is part of the joke.
To add to what you posted:
Al Gore's own father, the Senator from TN for many years, opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and voted against it. He was one of those who filibustered for 74 days. (He did the next year vote for the Voting Rights Act.)
Another interesting tidbit:
Condi Rice has talked about when blacks were finally allowed to vote in 1965, her father tried to register as a democrat. He was turned away.
He went to the Republican party, where he was welcomed, and Condi said if the Republican party was good enough for her father, it was good enough for her!
From one of the links below:
"The truth is that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 received overwhelming support from Republicans (more so than from the Democrats) in both houses of Congress - with 82% Republican support in the House of Representatives and 94% in the Senate."
~~~~~~~~~~~
A couple of links on Al Gore Sr.:
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:soE3I_cYskgJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_Sr.+al+gore+father+civil+rights&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=9
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:Hh09EIysJZ4J:www.nationalcenter.org/P21NVDavisVote1099.html+al+gore+father+civil+rights&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
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