There is a controversy out of the University of Virginia where federal Judge Carlton Reeves gave a scathing speech against President Donald Trump — likening his conduct to that of the Kl Klux Klan and segregationists from the Jim Crow period. The speech (accepting an award) raising troubling issues about Reeves engaging in political speech in violation of core judicial ethical rules.
A U.S. District Court Judge of the Southern District of Mississippi, Reeves is an Obama appointee from 2010. He was receiving the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law at the University of Virginia and gave a 16-page speech with 130 footnotes.
In the speech, Reeves takes thinly veiled swipes at Trump, using his unmistakable tweets to make historical comparative points:
“When politicians attack courts as ‘dangerous,’ ‘political,’ and guilty of ‘egregious overreach,’ you can hear the Klan’s lawyers, assailing officers of the court across the South. When leaders chastise people for merely ‘using the courts,’ you can hear the Citizens Council, hammering up the names of black petitioners in Yazoo City.”
I have previously denounced those same attacks by Trump on the courts. However, I am a legal commentator, not a sitting federal judge. Thus, the issue is not the merits but the messenger.
The most basic canons of judicial ethics dictate that judges avoid political activities and positions:
CANON 1
A judge shall uphold and promote the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary, and shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.CANON 3
A judge shall conduct the judge’s personal and extrajudicial activities to minimize the risk of conflict with the obligations of judicial office.CANON 4
A judge or candidate for judicial office shall not engage in political or campaign activity that is inconsistent with the independence, integrity, or impartiality of the judiciary.
Most judges would not give such a speech that ventured so deeply into the political debate. Reeves had justifiable anger over Trump’s attacks — a view shared privately with me by many judges. However, Reeves made the comments publicly:
“When the powerful accuse courts of ‘opening up our country to potential terrorists,’ you can hear the Southern Manifesto’s authors, smearing the judiciary for simply upholding the rights of black folk. When lawmakers say ‘we should get rid of judges,’ you can hear segregationist Senators, writing bills to strip courts of their power.”
While some may cite the recent statement of Chief Justice John Roberts to show that judges cannot be expected to remain silent in the face of acts on the courts. I do not agree. I previously wrote about the Roberts controversy. First, and foremost, Roberts’ statement was essentially one line confined to the rejecting the notion of Democratic and Republican judges. Reeves went far beyond that.
Second, this was a speech at a public event that addressed objections to the conduct and comments of a sitting president. Reeves clearly was denouncing the President’s views and rhetoric.
Finally, Reeves tied the President’s comments directly to threats and insults directed at himself personally:
“I know, because I am there. The proof is in my mailbox. In countless letters of hatred I’ve been called ‘piece of garbage,’ ‘an arrogant pompous piece of s…, ‘a disgrace,’ an ‘asshole…(who) will burn in hell,’ and the ‘embodiment of Satan himself.’”
He also ventured into judicial appointments — again an area of politics that most judge avoid: “Justice (Sonia) Sotomayor was originally a George H.W. Bush appointee. And the last Republican administration confirmed 24 black judges,” Reeves said. “This administration has confirmed one.”
The controversy is disappointing given Reeve’s moving personal story. Reeves was the first in his family to attend a four-year college. He graduated in 1986 magna cum laude from Jackson State University and then attended the University of Virginia School of Law as a Ritter Scholar. When Reeves was a teenager, he cleaned the office of Judge William Henry Barbour, Jr.
The comments are, in my view, clearly inappropriate for a sitting federal judge. It is the price that must be paid for an Article III lifetime appointment as a federal judge. Judges must accept that their political views must remain private and their activities strictly apolitical. That standard was not met in this instance.
More than a half century has past since LBJ delivered that speech.
And there seems to have been no progress since, in meeting the goals he laid out in the speech.
“The Negro” is as victimized as ever, and that is unlikely to change over the next 50 or 100 years.
On the plus side, the sweeping Civil Rights legislation that LBJ, VP Humphrey, Sen. Dirksen and others were able to get passed was followed by outbreaks of major inner-city riots in about 100 cities.
So the urban renewal programs got a boost from replacing the neighborhoods that were torched by some of those that LBJ was advocating for.
That’s an overly pessimistic view of the changes since the 60’s in both the legal and economic conditions of blacks in America. Legally – and that includes especially public accommodations – there is no comparison to the segregated south in which I grew up and economically, the percentage of blacks in poverty has fallen from almost 60% to just above 20% now. Education rates would show similar stark improvement.
https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2001/demo/p60-214.html
That does not mean all problems are solved or that serious ones do not persist, but historical perspective is critical to moving forward.
Anon, cynics like Tom (and even many Blacks) like to say that Blacks have made ‘no progress’ since the Johnson era.
One must note, however, that since the age of globalization, a significant number of White people have made ‘no progress’. In fact it was disenchanted White people, in dying industrial towns, that gave Donald Trump his Electoral College victory. Therefore ‘lack of economic progress’ isn’t limited to Blacks.
As you note, this myopia comes from both sides, and as we see regularly, a lack of historical perspective is common. Along with a tendency of humans to exaggerate both the uniqueness and the problems we face, the overwhelming numbers of us think we live in one of the worst times, when the reality is – irrefutably – it is hands down the best for the species taken as a whole. Our ability to progress will depend not on pumping sunshine or gloom and doom – much more common – but in realizing what has worked while trying new approaches. Steady and realistic optimism is in order based on our past.
A recent data driven book by Steven Pinker called “Enlightenment Now” ( a reference to the Age of Enlightenment, not Eastern religions or drugs) makes this point clearly and argues that the humanistic rationalism which inspired our founders (every king and despot has claimed to be God’s favorite) will work best against our many challenges.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/science/steven-pinker-future-science.html
Unproven statements that might be repeated but are inherently wrong.
Here we have an ‘Anonymous’ commenter vaguely telling us that “unproven statements that might be repeated but are inherently wrong”.
What the hell does that mean??
I’ll take a shot at that. The facts you provided, Peter, were unproven and actually contested by good raw numbers. Like you others repeat the same statement since it comes from the same set of talking points. I guess the thought process exceeded your capacity so I’ll make it short. Your statement though you and others will repeat it over and over again is BS.
let’s trying something here……Hollywood Hill points out where I said that “blacks have made no progress since the Johnson era.
I said that there is a strong tendency to point to the past “heyday” of the Klan, etc.and that some like Judge Reeves would like to convince people that there are some strong similarities to the “Klan of the past” era.
There is a reason to have a very strong basis to call Peter or anyone else a lying sack of “****. And there’s a reason why people eventually get fed up with hyper-partisan, lying, evasive scim like Hollywood Hill.
Hint : watch fir weasel words like “I wasn’t that far off” again, like when he tried to sugarcoat the fact that 6% is “not that far off’ from 40%.
That’s where the unintentional humor comes in when this clown either doubkes- down on a lie, or uses an “I’m not that far off” with the lie.😊😄😃😂
Tom we are dealing with ignorant clowns that have no desire to discuss policy or reality.
They will talk for weeks how a white cop killed a black guy who just terrorized a shop keeper and was attacking the police officer. They will justify the actions of that man that should have been in jail. They will push and push hoping to start some type of violence where an innocent person might be hurt or killed. They will talk about it in the newspaper as racism. All of this is hashed and rehashed for weeks while dozens of black kids violently die in the inner cities at their hands. They don’t give a d-mn.
Well, I have to give you a failing grade on your “shot.” No one here has ANY idea what “facts” you are alluding to. Then you go and cite “good raw numbers” without providing a single digit. So, I flip you the single digit and remand you to 5th grade. Again.
Undergraduate, from elementary school? Almost 6 weeks to figure out a reply? At the rate you are going you will be on Medicare before you reach 6th grade.
“Almost 6 weeks to figure out…” This, offered up by Allanumbskull.
Unlike you, not everyone lives here, Allan. Other people have lives, believe it or not.
Diane, it is 40 days since the last comment though you can’t count the time between one bottle and the next so for you 40 days is just one big blur.
” it is 40 days since the last comment ” -Allanumbskull
So what. I don’t care if it’s been 400 days. And neither should anyone else.
I don’t think it’s overly pessimistic re the leadership and direction of the Civil Rights Movement.
There were true icons of that movement; MLK is of course the best- known, but you also had people like Roy Wilkens, Ralph Abernathy, Thurgood Marshall, and at least a dozen other top leaders of what was once an effective civil rights movement.
In the c. past 50 years, anyone would be hard-pressed to come up with the names of their “successors” who were as smart, effective, and courageous as the people I named.
I think things have improved ( not because of the current “leadership”, but mostly thanks to those people and many others. But at the same time, those not exposed to and victimized by the past virulent racism in this country can not and will not concede that improvement.
If they were not personally victimized by the KKK or even know someone who was, it’s important to act as though the Klan has offices in the West Wing and they are every bit as threatened and victimized as the real victims of the Klan years ago.
Except at the margins – voter disenfranchisement for example – the CR movement is rightly not the focus of progress, either achieved or to come. Victimization is a common attitude of everyone from the inner cities to the small towns full of white Trump supporters (are there any other kind?). MLK would have died happily knowing Obama would be elected President 40 years later, as were the overwhelming numbers of his still living followers.
“Are there any other kind?”.
You obviously missed the rally where Trump pointed to “my African-American supporter”.😏
This shows the diversity of his appeal.
You got me!
I should have been more specific in clarifying the sarcastic nature of the comment that there seems to have beem no progress since LBJ laid out those goals 55 years ago.
Instead of clarify if in later commemts. To listen to someone like Judge Reeves pretend that there is some kind of parallel between the days when the KKK was a real, major threat to today’s situation with Trump criticising the judiciary is ridiculous. There was the most significant Civil Rights legislation since the civil war. De jure segregation has been virtually eliminate. In spite of exaggerated claims of voter supression, just about anyone over 18 with the required ID….in some stares that requirement is minimal….can vote.
When someone draws a comparison to the situation two generations ago and the Klan’s actual level of threat makes no sense, and it trivializes what others in the past actually did go through.
To hear Judge Reeves portray, he can still hear the Klan assailing civil right lawyers across the South in Trump’s criticism of the judicuary. People can debate what he “actually meant” by his words, but the comparison he was trying to draw is hard to miss.
Again, rather than clarify the sarcastic no progress comment in subsequent nearby posts, it should have been included in the initial comment on this string of comments.
There has been no ‘The Klan’ since 1949. It broke up into a set of factions when it’s head honcho died.
There have been a mess of klanlets. The organizations with the largest census have bee run by Bill Wilkinson and David Duke respectively. In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League estimated that about 70% of all klavern membership was an affiliate of Wilkinson’s outfit or Duke’s and that the two together had about 3,000 members each. Then Wilkinson’s outfit went into bankruptcy court that year and he admitted in his filings that there were only 1,800 members. The civil suit the $PLC won against a third outfit resulted in the transfer of their assets to the plaintiff. Their assets began and ended with a quonset hut appraised at $51,000 in value.
Again, lethal violence by klaverns in the post-war period has been limited to four states. The most gruesome business was in Greensboro in 1979. The perps belonged to an unaffiliated local klavern and their victims were out of town reds, not local blacks. In none of these states has the death toll over 70-odd years exceeded single digits. The last klan murder in Judge Reeves’ home state occurred in 1967, and he wasn’t three years old at the time.
The last lynching in Mississippi occurred in 1959.
The various klans had a brief, circumscribed revival after 1953. They generally were not recruiting people of much consequence. IIRC, the most successful was an outfit in North Carolina which was run by a man who sold aluminum siding. There was, quite notoriously, a county sheriff in Mississippi enrolled who was responsible for a set of political murders in 1964. In the 1920s, you had a single national organization with a seven-digit membership with klaverns enrolling members of local establishments. Forty years later, you had a disaggregated set of lodges which may or may not have had a five-digit membership, and leadership in the hands of characters like Robert Shelton (a tire salesman).
Again, Judge Reeves knows nothing of the Klan from personal experience. ‘Klan lawyers’ would be general practice attorneys with hourly rates a tire salesman could afford.
I’m not sure I see it the same way Professor Turley.
“CANON 1
A judge shall uphold and promote the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary, and shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.”
Wasn’t this judge doing exactly what Cannon 1 says? Standing up to a threat to the independence, integrity and impartiality of the judiciary?
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Good point, though a sitting judge should quietly meet this goal and let others take the public podium.
according to Bill Clinton there is no truth, so just hang da judge.
“Wasn’t this judge doing exactly what Cannon 1 says?”.
No, he wasn’t.
Dunno
Sorry, Paul. You and your leftist ilk are, as always, wrong. Because someone criticizes the obvious total lack of any integrity or principal in the vast majority of sitting judges, who rule not based on law or the Constitution, but on thier personal views instead, the critic is in fact arguing FOR integrity and actual jurisprudence.
It is the politicians who have stacked the courts with ninny progressives who are intent on “total transformation” of our nation and society through their rule from the bench who are to blame for the present morass known as our “system of justice.’
That was to the “8:25 AM anonymous”, the one who first mentioned the clown car.
Funny stuff. Yeah, the judge shouldn’t have said that but most of those denouncing him cheer on the constant scum .b.. behavior of our low life president.
Lowering the bar means others can and will follow. If you haven’t denounced Trump’s BS, deal with it. You’re part of the problem.
Trump won. Your gal lost. Trump’s approval rating exceeds Obama’s at this point in his Presidency. That’s what matters.
Translation: “I got nothing, but you make me so mad, I just have to post something.”
Come back when you have something, and in the meantime, enjoy the low road while the traffic is still light.
No it was clear English and your point was pure vitriolic nonsense. Just thought I’d give you the perspective you’ve obviously lost. Btw I’m elated to do it.
I said “after you have something”. You still don’t.
Trump is riding high. Anon is riding low.
Trump should take a lesson and behave as sober and dignified as a judge, or at least in this case, Judge Reeves.
Until all politicians adopt the objective, non- partisan approach🤭 of this judge, those politicians are indeed part of the problem.
We don’t need a lesson in judicial cannons to know this judge just jumped out of a clown car but will certainly be hailed by the Democratic mob as some race pioneer. Thanks Judge Reeves for vindicating Trump’s case against the activist judiciary which not so coincidentally is made fresh off his stunning vciory over the propaganda media. By the way we need qualified judges without regard to their skin tone.
One of many anonymouses,
We’ll see if he throws his hat into the ring for the 2020 Democratic nomination while holding down the fort as an objective, fair-minded😄jurist.
There could be a motorcade of clown cars following him on the campaign trail.
Wild hyperbole is not the best way to make a point for anyone, let alone a judge.
But it’ll sell better for him in the world of political theater, so as a judge/politician, he might be able to pull it off to his benefit if he plays it just right.
Without the high level of danger😳 and ongoing threat from “the Klan’ and “Klan-Like” or “Near-Klan”, those like Judge Reeves might have to give up one of their most cherished possessions—victimhood.
The irony is that this judge has just vindicated Trump: there are obviously democrat judges and republican judges, no matter what Roberts might think.
Amen. There are clown judges, too.
Mespo,
I don’t necessarily assume that the judge, if he throws his hat into the ring for 2020, would run as Democrat.
He could run a third party campaign as the candidate for The Judiciary Party, a relatively small but increasingly influential political movement.
Absolutely. When a judge is judging a matter of law he doesn’t abide by his own feelings which is what this judge said a judge needs to do. That poor attitude means that we have Democratic judges and Republican judges. When dealing with the individual or more personal matters a judge may have more leeway
Judges using their own feeling with regard to national security issues rather than the law and the balance of power make our system of government a mockery. This judge demonstrated very bad behavior and if there were a mechanism for removal I would consider informing him of the process.
It’s OK for a jerk on a blog such as this to call the President a scum bag even though it demonstates an invidual who has little self value and is totally ignorant. It is not OK for a sitting Federal Judge to do the same.
I agree that the judge should not cal the President a scum b.. while those of us civilians here have a moral obligation to do so.
Anon, citizens have a right to call the President anything they wish but they do not have a moral obligation to do so. In fact a feeling of such moral obligation denotes a low class uneducated individual. Those more normal folks with a modicom of intelligence that dislike the President can make all sorts of persuasive arguments why they don’t feel him fit for the job. They can even debate those arguments, but what we are seeing here on the blog all too often are empty and foolish arguments that are generally seen on a gradeschool playground where the 9 year olds don’t learn from prior proof.
There you go. Moralizing as though the Left has any moral authority. It’s comical irony.
The appeal to authority is a well-known logical fallacy. When modified by the word moral, (as in the phrase moral authority), that logical fallacy becomes immoral as well.
So, you and Allan want to debate whether our president is a scum b..? OK. Resolved: The President is life long lying braggart, tax cheat, and self confessed sexual predator, exhibiting sociopathic narcissism with attendant and typical low to non-existent empathy levels.
Speaking for the affirmative, Anon: Read a newspaper.
You’re up.
Anon’s challenge once again remind’s me of the Gary Bauer joke about the angry soccer mom confronting Bill Clinton at a 1990s rally.
She berated him as a draft-dodging, lying, womanizing, misogynist pig.
Then added, “But I’m voting for you”.
Yeah, Gary Bauer. He was great on What’s My Line?
The What’s My Line host was Wally Bruner, and he died before anyone had ever heard of Monica Lewinsky.
I see the repeats of the originas”What’s My Line’ shows hosted by John Daly. I’ll watch those 50-60+ year old shows over any current version in the overcrowded game show genre, with the possible exception of Jeopardy.
They had celebrity panelists, celebrity guests, celebrity guest panelists, and a well-educated, well-educated known moderator who was Earl Warren’s son-in-law.
Funny. Anon is reminding us of a pit bull that is rabid and needs to be put down.
Mespo,
If there are no courses in Sophistry or the Dianese Language in your area, you can always take a correspondents course right here taught by L4B.
She regularly lays out her own, addled🤪rules of “logic” that can be painstakingly translated from Dianese into English.
The phrase “moral authority” presupposes a relationship between two people: Either a parent and a child, a master and a slave, or a deity and a mortal creature. The relationship between Mespo and Anon is none of those relationships. Unless Anon is Mespo’s Daddy. But I doubt it.
To be Mespo’s daddy, Anon would have to be about 90 years old. Since Anon’s the one always babbling about the ‘dying old minority’, it would be pretty funny if he actually had been in his young adult years when Johnny Ray was the hottest thing around.
Mespo is nobody’s master–least of all Anon’s.
Would you car to go for deity?
https://youtu.be/ktRb5qsvf_c
No, it does not presuppose that kind of a relationship.
The alternative is that Mespo can tell right from wrong without an authority figurine to ‘splain it too him.
deninrye,
Are you really suggesting that there are partisan, biased judges!?!?😲
“The most basic canons of judicial ethics…”
When you stop pretending our nation subscribes to the principle of having a moral consensus, ethics, enforces laws and our judicial system works, then you will be better positioned to help the nation rise from its demise. Till then you are living a myth.
—-
“1. The American experiment in democracy rests primarily upon a moral consensus rooted in the transcendent rights of the human person.
2. Because the foundation for American democracy is a moral consensus, substantive and civil dialogue within American society concerning the key issues of the day is necessary for democracy’s survival.
3. American culture is warped by an exaggerated dedication to technology and material acquisition, and thus is prey to the increasing instrumentalization of the human person in the name of progress.”
– John Courtney Murray, SJ
https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/517/article/he-held-these-truths
when we allowed for the continued presence of radicalized RBG on the supreme court we lost any power to condemn nor criticize others.
1. One thing we’ve learned for sure in the last four years is that the intellectual quality of the discourse in and around the Democratic Party is just the pits. You can look at some of the utterances of partisan Democrats who post here for examples.
2. Black public figures are treated indulgently by everyone and are hardly challenged when they make obnoxious or semi-lunatic utterances, which are a sort of performance art for them. (Ralph Nader’s tangles with the Congressional Black Caucus ca. 2000 are an interesting exception).
==
Just what is ‘moving’ about Carlton Reeves ‘personal story’?
A. I have news for you. The share of the population acquiring a baccalaureate degree was about 6% for the 1908 birth cohort, about 25% for the 1952 cohort, and about 45% for the 1994 cohort. North of 1/3 of the children born in this country over the past 90 years were first-born children or only children. It really isn’t all that unusual for the recipient of a college diploma to be bereft of grandparents, parents, or siblings with such a diploma.
B. Judge Reeves grew up in Mississippi. That’s the part of the country where the regime in race relations has been most severe. The thing is, Judge Reeves was born in 1964 and has lived nearly 90% of his life during a run of years when the net migration of American blacks was not directed northward. He himself has had stints elsewhere, but has elected to make his home in Mississippi. Same deal with his wife. His wife died young (at age 53); that’s about the most poignant chapter in his biography.
C. Judge Reeves’ grandfathers were both general laborers (farms, sawmills). I’m sure his parents knew what real poverty meant. And likely knew what it was to fear the white man, at least in their younger years.
TIA x3:
Stop with all the facts. It ruins the fairy’s tale. Wonder if Carlton Reeves will reveal his grades? Judging by this speech he’s “special admission” at UVA Law.
I wonder how many white graduates of Jackson State have been admitted to the Univ of VA Law School? Or any top-10 law school? Black professionals have to keep the victim train rolling to justify what they know deep down inside, that they can’t cut it without special allowances from the white man, whom they both need and hate.
He passed the bar exam. That’ll do. A great many of those admitted to the bar (about 1/3 these days) can’t build a career in law. He did. It’s conceivable that another lawyer at his level of competence would be doing workmen’s comp cases or real estate closings or defending drunk drivers. There’s no reason to believe he ‘cant’ cut it’.
I don’t know if he can cut it or not but UVA is a top tier law school. Does he sound like a top tier graduate to you or more a race baiting numbskull filling out a black robe?
Nat Hentoff is dead and Alan Dershowitz is real old. You have a few wonks like Harold Pollack and Mark Kleiman. Otherwise, liberal discourse is stupid when it’s not dishonest. In that context, there isn’t much remarkable about what he said. It has some black chauvinist blah blah incorporated within it, but that’s gotten to be a bore after all these years.
The stupidity is a function of his liberal education employed in the social contexts in which he lives. Most liberals live in a Monovox bubble and are acquainted with no one who contends with them or treat anyone who contends with them as if they were senile. (See the hurry-up-and-die discourse favored by Anon).
When he’s drawing on his professional expertise and not his liberal education, he may be reasonably coherent. My guess is that he’s a rank-and-file lawyer who landed a patronage plum. (I’d also cut him some slack. Losing your wife can be disorienting).
N.B., the political culture of the American black population is terrible – terrible in ways it was not in 1955 and terrible in ways that have no analogue in the orderly parliamentary systems of the Caribbean. This is so in spite of the fact that – with possible exception of West Indians living in Britain, Canada, and the French dependencies – black Americans constitute the most affluent and extensively educated negroid population in the world (of any size). No clue how long it will take for matters to improve.
Are you still here?
DSS, this is a fair representation of the man and the culture. Unfortunately it flies way over Anon’s head.
Triply Absurd is patronizing and condescending. His opinion of Judge Carlton Reeves is literally a stereotype and a caricature. Triply Absurd has never met the man. Never conversed with the man. And yet, Allan believes that somehow, someway Triply Absurd has the skinny and the lowdown of Judge Carlton Reeves. It’s almost as though the both of you were mere automatons utterly lacking any awareness of yourselves or of your surroundings.
I don’t expect a nut like you Diane to be open to anyone’s opinion other than your own.
L4D, Keep at it. It is sure to win you the poor house, the dog house and the losing house, but your peeps will never make it in White House given their pathetic messaging.
But hey! You. Do. You.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/us/politics/democrats-republicans-2020.html
With Polls and Private Meetings, Republicans Craft Blunt Messaging to Paint Democrats as Extreme
WASHINGTON — Republican leaders are sharpening and poll-testing lines of attack that portray Democratic policies on health care, the environment and abortion as far outside the norm, in hopes of arming President Trump with hyperbolic sound bites asserting that Democrats would cause long waits for doctors or make killing babies after birth legal.
The blunt messaging underscores one of the biggest challenges facing Democrats as they try to defeat the incumbent president: the need to define themselves and their ideas before Mr. Trump and his conservative allies do it for them.
The Republican National Committee has already begun polling in 16 states to assess ways to discredit ideas like “Medicare for all,” which Senator Bernie Sanders proposed in a bill this week, and build on the party’s broader argument that Democratic candidates like Mr. Sanders are promoting an extreme socialist agenda. Social conservative leaders have met with White House officials to discuss calling attention to Democratic-sponsored legislation to loosen restrictions on abortion in the second and third trimesters, like one that passed recently in New York.
The recent focus on health care and abortion follows well-coordinated attacks on policies like the Green New Deal, which reduced the far-reaching climate change proposal to a punch line with jokes about cow flatulence and putting farms out of business.
Some Democratic strategists said they have been taken aback recently by how successful Mr. Trump and Republicans have been at setting the terms of the debate around liberal policy ideas. And they are encouraging their party to be more nimble and deliver a more concise and accessible message.
In a fight with Mr. Trump, they say, nuance is not usually the Democrats’ best weapon.
“What our side has to understand is that to fight Trump it’s a battle for definition,” said Celinda Lake, a top Democratic pollster who has been working with left-of-center groups on a strategy to counter the messaging campaign from the right.
“The Democrats will issue a 61-page white paper that nobody in their right mind will pass on to their friends,” she added. “He uses a one-sentence slogan, and his voters feel emboldened to share it, pass it on.”
Democrats say they expect an asymmetrical battle against an opponent who makes his own rules and possesses a singular ability to saturate the national conversation. This can cut both ways, especially on issues like immigration where his fitful threats to close the southern border may cast him as more of a crisis instigator than mitigator. In 2018, Mr. Trump’s alarmist warnings about the Central American migrant caravan and his exaggerated claims about immigrants and crime were divisive with many suburban voters and contributed to Democratic victories that helped the party win the House.
Still, the president’s purge of the Homeland Security Department this week signals his belief that strict immigration enforcement is a winning issue for him. And while the wall he promised in 2016 remains unbuilt, he will continue to look for new ways to hold a hard line on border security.
The Republican National Committee has already begun polling in 16 states to test ways to discredit ideas like “Medicare for all.”
It is not clear whether any of the Republican messaging is having an impact on voters outside of the president’s so far unmovable base. But Ms. Lake said that as she surveyed likely 2020 swing voters, she was surprised to hear people in focus groups repeat false assertions made by the president and his allies — that Democrats would end air travel in the United States and shut down dairy farms and beef production because of greenhouse gas emissions from cows.
“It’s amazing the number of people who would volunteer that,” she said. The actual language in the proposal calls for cleaner transportation and agriculture “as much as is technologically feasible.” The misperception about cows and airplanes originated with a now-retracted fact sheet published by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office that contained an ironic aside about getting rid of “farting cows and airplanes.”
Republicans said they also saw “Medicare for all”-type proposals as a way to give their rallying cries on socialism more substance and potency. Some plans, like the one put forward by Mr. Sanders, would largely eliminate private insurance plans, which Republicans have found is overwhelmingly unpopular with the kinds of voters they need to win back.
“The debate that’s going to play out in suburbs across the country is a choice between capitalism versus socialism,” said Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. “When Democrats talk about abolishing private health insurance, for example, most of my friends are on private insurance plans through their jobs or their husbands’ jobs. They don’t want to lose that. They don’t want to wait in line to get to the pediatrician.”
“Whichever Democrat wins the nomination will have to own their party’s socialist agenda,” she added. “That’s a debate that President Trump is eager to have and knows he can win.”
The Republicans’ data on voters from the 2018 midterms showed that coverage of pre-existing medical conditions was the top issue of concern. But here they face a serious disadvantage: They have no health care plan of their own.
But they have been testing messaging on health care with likely voters in the 16 states they believe will be the most competitive in 2020. These include ones Mr. Trump narrowly won like Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, as well as those he won by larger margins but have tilted more Democratic lately, like Arizona and North Carolina. The R.N.C. found that when voters were told that “Medicare for all” would eliminate private insurance and create a government-run system paid for by higher taxes, independents, married women and union members disliked the idea by wide margins. Among married women alone, nearly 60 percent disapproved.
Mr. Trump’s own approach at labeling Democrats has been inconsistent. He has yet to come up with the kind of indelible rhetorical device that he used repeatedly to brand his opponents in 2016. So far he has nothing like “Crooked Hillary,” “Little Marco’’ and “Low-energy Jeb,” which delighted many of his supporters two years ago.
But he has occasionally made graphic and false claims that Democrats support legislation that would allow “executing babies AFTER birth,” as he said in a recent tweet. During a meeting at the White House before his State of the Union address that included some conservative activists, Mr. Trump expressed amazement at comments by the governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, who had to clarify his defense of abortion in later stages of pregnancy after activists accused him of saying doctors should be able to kill a baby born alive during the procedure.
“Can you believe this governor?’’ the president said, according to two people at the meeting, who said that he was surprisingly animated about the subject and vowed to keep mentioning it.
The Centers for Disease Control says such late-term abortions are extremely rare. Only about 1.3 percent of abortions in the United States in 2015 were performed in or after the 21st week of pregnancy, the agency reported.
But anti-abortion activists said the efforts in some states like New York and Virginia to remove certain barriers to second- and third-trimester abortions allowed them to present the issue to voters in a new and graphic light. Democrats have struggled to defend the new legislation; privately some say they are not being persuasive in explaining the health situations the bills address while the other side accuses them of condoning infanticide.
While polls show that Americans support allowing abortion in the first three months by wide margins, that support drops sharply when people are asked in general about the second and third trimesters. (They overwhelmingly support exceptions if the mother’s life is endangered.)
“We’re in a totally different environment,” said Mallory Quigley, vice president of communications for the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that opposes abortion rights and that plans to test messages on the issue with voters in the months ahead.
Democrats say they cannot let Mr. Trump and other Republicans go unanswered as they try to link the party to socialism — a term that Americans view negatively over all — and to extremism in a broader sense. That has been the motivation behind Republicans’ intense focus on two young, freshman members of Congress: Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, the congresswoman from Queens who calls herself a democratic socialist; and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, whose criticism of Israel led the president and others to condemn her as an anti-Semite. Some of Ms. Omar’s most vocal defenders have been self-described democratic socialists.
Even if Americans say they like policies that are derivative of socialism, like Social Security, the term “connotes very clear imagery to people in a very dog whistle kind of way,” said Jefrey Pollock, president of the Global Strategy group, which advises Democrats on messaging. “Then they attach faces to it,” he added, “and I think it can have resonance, and it has had resonance.”
The effort on the right to elevate Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 29, as the most prominent socialist foil is something Democrats are watching, Mr. Pollock said. “She is, of course, six years away from being able to run for president. But they are still trying to make her the face of the party.”
Conservatives have extended this line of attack beyond candidates like Mr. Sanders, who identifies as a democratic socialist. They are using it on other 2020 contenders like Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind. Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host, last week accused Mr. Buttigieg’s father, who died recently, and who had taught at the University of Notre Dame, of being “a committed Marxist, who affectionately embraced the Communist Manifesto.” She cited a Washington Examiner report as evidence.
Democrats’ own research has found this approach to be effective with the Republican base, which can be more aware of liberal policies like the Green New Deal than liberals are. When Global Strategy Group and GBA Strategies surveyed Fox News viewers last month, they found that Republicans who watch Fox are more than twice as likely as all other groups to have heard about the plan than Democrats.
Their verdict? Seventy-seven percent of them are very concerned about the influence of socialism in the Democratic Party.
Filliblogger. (Compare with filibuster.)
https://youtu.be/YY0eB_J-Ya8
Absurd,
I don’t doubt that those of Judge Reeve’s grandparents’ era had to content with extreme racism in the Deep, Deep South.
As long as the experiences and wisdom and suspicions of that generation can be kept alive and past down to subsequent generations, I see a new era of racial harmony evolving.
Of course the judge in his paper said nothing like that, and in fact said the opposite.
Then he was misquoted in the column when he (allegedly) said he could hear ” the Klan’s lawyers threatening officers of the Court throughout to South”.
In 1976 I went to work as a civil rights lawyer in a southern town which was run by a Mayor and five alderman who were members of the political party known as The White Citizens Council. The town was 40 % minority yet was run by these guys who feared and did not trust the minority. They did not always hate all of the minority but they kept them in what they thought was their place. Sometimes white painted crosses were burned on the levee which kept a river from flooding the town. I will not say which town this was.
This Judge who made this speech is a minority person from the south. He knows some things that Y;all on this blog may not really know. Maybe you think his speech was beyond the Pale. Turley thinks he went beyond the Pale. What does it mean when you go beyond the Pale? Well. That word refers to the Palenitate. Or some such spelling.
Let us go back to some Dems in office. We had a Dem President who got us into war and who segregated the U.S. government jobs and the military. He never gets criticized. His first name was Woodrow and he started the war to end all wars and the war to make the world safe for Democracy. It took another Democrat President who hailed from Missouri to desegregate the armed forces and some of the federal government. His name was Give Em Hell Harry and he was a good one. But he got defamed by the New Yorkies and East Coasters who preferred that segregationist style of military and his name was FDR which stands for Failed Democracy Righteously.
The Trump is a horse of a different color. He is an odd duck. Like FDR he hails from NY. He tweets and talks too much. He doesn’t drink but he laughs too loud and don’t know how to make it in no northern town. He ain’t keeping the minorities down. He is not insane but he is not always aware of rain. When it rains it pours.
Go tweet you’re momma, go tweet your dad. Don’t tweet your children just beause you are sad. In fact don’t tweet. Talk in person. Look em in the eye.
Regarding this Judge and his speech to some humans at a university. Give him a break. He was not sitting on the bench. He was not holding a gavel.
Liberty-If a white guy gave a speech to humans at a university, would you give him a break. As a matter of fact white guys with opposing viewpoints are being stopped giving their views.
When he’s sitting on the bench holding a gavel do you really think he feels differently? Just saying buddy.
That’s not an apt comparison. He’s not a white guy, and he’s not held to white guy standards of decorum, self-discipline and maturity.
Good post. What state were you in? I grew up in the segregated south and was a very small part of the civil rights movement there.
I had my civil rights law job in a town in Illinois. I won’t say the name so as to protect the innocent. And the guilty.
I think that a judge has a right to give a speech at a university about the law and our politics. He was not sitting on the bench when he made this speech.
Thanks.
Given what I think are your politics, I appreciate your open mind.
When the highest levels of government officials and government agencies violate international law and national law on a regular basis with impunity, the entire country becomes lawless.
Bingo, Sam. Reeves like Trump is a reflection of our collective cultural morass
That’s true, Estovir, but fortunately the judge and Trump are equally apolitical.😉
As long as we have non-partisan judges who distance themselves from political demoguogery as well as our president, I’d say we’re in pretty good shape.😄
Tom, I’m not quite sure what you are getting at. Trump is President of all but he reperesents the executive branch and is inherently political. Without question, by becoming President he had to engage in political rhetoric to defeat the other candidate. When a judge is appointed especially a Federal Judge he is not supposed to be political even though he may have ideas particular to him. His speech shows that he is unable to act dispassionately and fairly and therefore should not be on a Federal Court. I would say the same if another judge would act in a similar fashion towards Obama.
That is what the KKK was all about. Put away the rule of law and go after people based on what your view of life is. That is what this Federal Judge did when he took off his black robes and put on his white ones.
Allan,
I was pointing out that political hacks aren’t just found in The White House or in Congress.
There’s another branch of government where they can be found.
An ACLU guy appointed by Obama.
Disbar the wacko judge!
A successful angry man with a chip on his shoulder
This refers to the act of holding a grudge or grievance that readily provokes disputation. It can also mean a person thinking too much of oneself (often without the credentials) or feeling entitled.
EXERPTS FROM JUDGE’S SPEECH
READ MORE SANER THAN TRUMP’S DAILY TWEETS
I know what I heard when a federal judge was called “very biased and unfair” because he is “of Mexican heritage.”95 When that judge’s ethnicity was said to prevent his issuing “fair rulings.”96 When that judge was called a “hater” simply because he is Latino.97 I heard the words of James Eastland, a race-baiting politician, empowered by the falsehood of white supremacy, questioning the judicial temperament of a man solely because of the color of his skin. I heard those words and I did not know if it was 1967 or 2017.
This attack is heard loudest in the slander of Judge Curiel. But it will be felt through this Administration’s judicial nominations, especially those confirmed with the advice and consent of the Senate. Of the Article III judges confirmed under the current Administration, 90% have been white.100 Just one of those judges is black.101 Just two are Hispanic.
It’s not just about racial diversity. Barely 25% of this Administration’s confirmed judges are women.102 None have been black or Latina.103 Achieving complete gender equality on the federal bench would require us to confirm only 23 women a year.104 How hard could that be? I suspect Deans Goluboff and Kendrick would say, “not very hard.”
Think: in a country where they make up just 30% of the population,105 non-Hispanic white men make up nearly 70% of this Administration’s confirmed judicial appointees.106 That’s not what America looks like. That’s not even what the legal profession looks like.107
Some say our judicial nomination process is hampered by a “campaign of systematic and comprehensive obstruction.”108 They may be right, but what others see is a systematic campaign to deprive America of a bench that reflects the richness of the nation.
There is no excuse for this exclusion of minority experiences from our courts. Minority populations are not monoliths; we contain multitudes.109 Presidents from Nixon to Reagan to Bush have proven that Republican Administrations have no trouble finding women and people of color with suitable judicial philosophies. Justice Sotomayor was originally a George H.W. Bush appointee.110 And the last Republican Administration confirmed 24 black judges.111 This Administration has confirmed one.
Edited from: “Defending The Judiciary: A Call For Justice, Truth and Diversity On The Bench”
Judge Carlton W. Reeves
RE. ABOVE:
Reeves was shocked that Candidate Donald Trump launched racist attacks on Federal Judge Curiel. ‘I’ was shocked! Many pundits were shocked as well. Trump seemed to suggest that Curiel, a Hispanic, had no right to even be on the bench.
Reeves then observes that President Trump has a strong preference for White males on the bench. Which doesn’t sound good considering Trump’s attacks on Judge Curiel.
Reeves comments strongly contradicts the right-wing narrative that Blacks are grateful to Trump. Only Trumpers share that fantasy!
“READ MORE SANER THAN TRUMP’S DAILY TWEETS”
This is Stupid. The President is a political animal. The judge is supposed to appear impartial and is appealing to the drunk and stupid ‘let’s hang him high crowd’ that was a bad crowd when they wore white gowns with hoods and just as bad now.
But is it “more stupider”? And are some things “more worser” than others🤭?
It’s not just stupidity but also an arrogance that necessary rules of decorum don’t apply to specific persons and that the decorum they have is not consistent with their job title.
President: Political
Federal Judge: Appolitical
Packing the court and thus altering the Judicial branch is judicial interference by a President.
Involvinvg oneself in polical rhetoric that displays a prejudice is judicial imprudence and should not be acceptable.
Imagine this judge overseeing a case with a defendant who publicly supported Trump. The judge would have to recuse himself.
What a dope. Just another typical, elitist, wealthy progressive masquerading as a victim.
He was a rank and file lawyer married to a social worker living in one of the more impecunious cities in the United States. I doubt he’s wealthy.
All civil officers shall be removed on impeachment and conviction for Crimes of high office and Misdemeanors.
This has the feel of contempt, official subversion, subjective bias, abuse of power, usurpation, insurrection, etc.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Article 2, Section 4
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
George, you did not state any impeachable offense that Judge Reeves might have committed. Are you sure that you want Congressional Republicans to lead an impeachment drive against an African-American federal Judge appointed by Barack Obama while Democrats control The House just because that Black man dared to speak the truth about Trump out loud in public? D’oh! Is that the impeachable offense Judge Reeves committed?
This is L4D.
Regarding this “…civil officer of the United States…,” contempt, official subversion, subjective bias, abuse of power, usurpation, insurrection, insubordination against duly elected officers, egregious and malicious slander, etc. are crimes and misdemeanors of the occupant of the related high office.
Will the fundamental law be enforced? Doubtful. The singular American failure for 230 years has been the Supreme Court which should have struck down all unconstitutional acts of central planning, control of the means of production (i.e. “regulation”) redistribution of wealth and social engineering. It didn’t. It failed America and its Constitution.
Article 1, Section 8 provides Congress the power to tax merely for “…general Welfare…,” omitting and, thereby, excluding any power to tax for individual welfare or redistribution of wealth.
Article 1, Section 8 precludes any power of Congress to regulate anything other than “commerce” as it enumerates the power of Congress to regulate merely trade, exchange or “…Commerce among the several states to preclude favor or bias by one state over another.
Congress has no constitutional power to redistribute wealth by any means and Congress has no power to regulate anything other than commerce.
The entire socially engineered, redistributionist, American welfare state is irrefutably unconstitutional.
But there it is.
Congress has accomplished these feats of communism because of the nullification, usurpation, subversion, insurrection and treason of the Supreme Court which has failed to declare all acts contrary to the “manifest tenor” of the Constitution void.
______________________________________________________________________________________
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
– Alexander Hamilton
L4D here–So you are saying that it is supposedly an impeachable offense for a Black Man to speak the truth about Trump out loud in public. But which one on your list is it? Subjective bias?
BTW, were you quoting yourself? Or did you get that “list” form some sort of anonymous author such as “Q” of “Q-Anon fame”?
Absolutely right Turley! He should remain silent, saying nothing while he receives death threats. Of course, the problem is the man speaking up as opposed to the man with the dangerous rhetoric.
You are pretty good at the fake rhetoric yourself “Republicans: From The Party Of Lincoln; To The Party Of Putin, Trump, And David Duke”
David Duke is still a Democrat, Democrats are still the party of Hate, the KKK, etc … no matter how much you Orwellian tactics to try to use, to play it off on the right.
Obama was closer, and did more with Putin than another other President in history, lets push the reset button, ok?
Ignoring the truth, or just flat lying like so many Leftist do, is finally biting them in the butt, and I can’t wait till all Leftist hate mongers are destroyed in the public’s eye.
It’s also disheartening that you state “I suppose I should also add history because, without an understanding of the past, we’re doomed to repeat those mistakes.”, yet regurgitate the same old indoctrinated history written by Leftist, to benefit Leftist. You should be ashamed.
Ron – You might wish to recheck David Duke’s political affiliation. He certainly ran for the Senate in 2016 as a Republican. You may now continue with your personal attack full of bile, claiming how full of hate “Leftists” are.
Honestly, I had no idea that you were a “leftist,” Enigma. How was I supposed to know?
This is L4D
David Duke type of Republicans have been named
RINOs
For a reason
I’m not going to generalize and suggest all Republicans are like David Duke. Let’s just say they accept that they require that portion of their base is needed to win elections and accept their behavior. Nothing about Duke makes him a RINO. Feel free to explain why you believe that true?
David Duke has a lot in common with many of the Democrats of today and earlier days.
He is a racist, anti-Semetic, Grand Wizard of the KKK, Holocaust denier, has spoken with a forked tongue as demonstrated by his running for the Presidency on the Democratic ticket,the Republican ticket, and the Populist Party ticket, an ex prisoner, an inciter of riots, a race baiter.
What he should really be called is a white nationalist that is not much different from the black nationalists that populate the Democratic Party. Tribalism should be abhored, but it seems to be a favorite tool of ardent Democrats who instead of embracing people that are different use them as tools for political gain..
David Duke should be equally disliked by all.
The Judge in question based solely on his rhetoric in this one case has a lot in common with David Duke. Both should be reviled.
David Duke had one term in the Louisiana legislature and has otherwise earned his living as a professional white supremicist (supplementing his income with the proceeds of the sex manuals he’s written). Seems more comical and pathetic than something worth reviling. (His traipsing about in Nazi regalia as an adolescent is something you might revile).
I think David Duke ended up with less than 5% of the vote on the 2016 Senate campaign Enigma mentioned.
He was shunned by both the GOP establishment and by Trump.
Duke had previously run as U.S. candidate decades earlier, and I think once even started a presidential campaign.
Robert Byrd was still an active member of the Senate back then, and I think Duke blew it by not running as a Democrat instead.
Byrd could have helped to guide him on that tricky path from the KKK to the U.S. Senate.
It was pointed out by Pat Buchanan at the time (1989) that when a bunch of national party sachems cut advertisements for a state legislative race in suburban New Orleans, they were begging for the voters to flip them the bird. Voters shouldn’t do that and put repellent little no-accounts in office, but sometimes voters do.
Fred Barnes take on the Duke phenomenon in Louisiana (1989-93): “he drew large crowds, then bored them.” Barnes offered that people who compared Duke to George Wallace were people who never saw Wallace speak; Wallace was “witty, sarcastic, and had genuine demagogic skill”. Duke was none of these things. Wallace was a lawyer who had other things he could have been doing with his time. Duke had no real occupation other than professional agitator (and oral sex maven).
David Duke is nothing more than a dot in history. There will always be those that play his type of game and they are outliers and generally don’t count. The judge, however, was reflecting a type of culture where our humanity is diminished rather than expanded.
You are, of course, allowed your own opinion–no matter how uninformed it reveals you to be. However, you are not allowed your own facts. In reality, President Barack HUSSEIN Obama was the greatest President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces since Harry Truman. But more alarming to your ilk, prior to his marriage, he undoubtedly had “access” to the white women.
this is to “ok, but they can have the fat ones” ronnie
What death threats?
Did you read the article? Among the comments the judge made were about his personal experience including death threats.
He said he got rude crank mail, not death threats. Rude crank mail comes with the job. You don’t want rude crank mail, stay out of public life.
Finally, Reeves tied the President’s comments directly to threats and insults directed at himself personally:
“I know, because I am there. The proof is in my mailbox. In countless letters of hatred I’ve been called ‘piece of garbage,’ ‘an arrogant pompous piece of s…, ‘a disgrace,’ an ‘ass-[w]hole…(who) will burn in hell,’ and the ‘embodiment of Satan himself.’”
Rude crank mail labeling a Black man as “the embodiment of Satan himself who will burn in hell,” in The State of Mississippi, which includes Yazoo City, is, in fact, a death threat. It’s time to remove the bandages from your eyes so that can see the skin color for real.
Late4Dinner
Rude crank mail labeling a Black man as
What difference does that make? Is he supposed to have some super-duper immunity to being called ‘Satan’ that a paleface does not possess?
Byron De La Beckwith – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_De_La_Beckwith
Byron De La Beckwith Jr. (November 9, 1920 – January 21, 2001) was an American white supremacist and Klansman from Greenwood, Mississippi, who …
Continued reading from Wikipedia: Guess what party he was from?
” he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party’s nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi.[4]”
According to Delmar Dennis, who acted as a key witness for the prosecution at the 1994 trial, De La Beckwith boasted of his role in the death of Medgar Evers at several KKK rallies and similar gatherings in the years following his mistrials. In 1967, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party’s nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi.[4]
You are glossing over the key word—unsuccessfully. Likewise, you’re at pains to identify the last Democratic Governor of Mississippi. Could it have been George Wallace? Why not look up the names Haley Barbour and Trent Lott and find out what party they belonged to?
Excerpted from the article linked above:
The state twice prosecuted De La Beckwith for murder in 1964, but both trials ended with hung juries. The jurors were all male and all white. Mississippi had effectively disenfranchised black voters since 1890, and they were excluded from serving on juries, whose members were drawn from voter rolls. During the second trial, the former Governor Ross Barnett interrupted the proceedings, shaking hands with De La Beckwith while Myrlie Evers, Medgar Evers’ widow, was testifying.
[repeated for emphasis] [T]he former Governor Ross Barnett interrupted the proceedings, shaking hands with De La Beckwith while Myrlie Evers, Medgar Evers’ widow, was testifying.
[end excerpt]
That’s witness tampering and jury tampering with one hand-shake. Where was the White Judge in that Courtroom when the people of Mississippi needed a fair and impartial jurist?????
Citizens’ Councils – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Councils
The Citizens’ Councils were an associated network of white supremacist, extreme right …. For instance, in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1955, the Citizens’ Council …
Completion of the previous sentence:
For instance, in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1955, the Citizens’ Council published in the local paper the names of 53 signers of a petition for school integration. Soon afterward, the petitioners lost their jobs and had their credit cut off. As Charles Payne puts it, the Councils operated by “unleashing a wave of economic reprisals against anyone, Black or white, seen as a threat to the status quo.” Their targets included black professionals such as teachers, as well as farmers, high school and college students, shop owners, and housewives.
Medgar Evers’ first work for the NAACP on a national level involved interviewing Mississippians who had been intimidated by the White Citizens’ Councils and preparing affidavits for use as evidence against the Councils if necessary. Evers was assassinated in 1963 by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens’ Council and the Ku Klux Klan.
There is some value in revisiting the history of people like John Lewis, or Medgar Evans, or James Merideth, or many others in the heyday of the civil Rights movement.
Just as there is some value in reviewing the history of events like the Pettus Bridge March, the Brown v. Board decision, the Emanipation Proclamation, or other events of L4D’s youth.
It also helps to contrast what the people mentioned were actually up against back then, the issues involved, v. a clownish attempt to link a president to the KKK or risking a sore tailbone by staging a sit-down on the carpet in the House of Representatives.
Trying to somehow link the two trivializes what actually went on back then, and what they accomplished and how they accomplished their goals.
Since PBS has done the subject to death, there isn’t a whole lot of marginal social utility from any of us revisiting the subject.
There was a funny story about Wm. F. Buckley, a very erudite man. He supposedly once asked, “who is this Harriet Tubman, and how come I’ve never heard of her?”. Buckley would have been at the midpoint of his schooling in history ca. 1939, and received close to the best money could buy. It’s indicative of how the emphasis in teaching American history has changed. (Tubman was not a particularly consequential person, but treated as emblematic by some). My history schooling decades later might have had glancing references to her; now they want to put her on the currency.
Tom, almost half the country thinks Trump’s a White nationalist. That’s his fault for projecting all the thoughts (and rants) of a nationalist.
You’re argument here is like saying Bernie Sanders doesn’t deserve to be called a ‘socialist’.
If the actual number is 6%, Peter can always claim that he wasn’t too far off. Trying to link or compare Trump and the KKK is like insisting the Bernie is a Communist, not a social.
There’s a reason why hyperbole does not sell well with everyone.
Bernie at one time (ca 1983) had copies of The Militant stacked neatly in his office in Burlington. He didn’t think much of Michael Harrington and his organization. Perfectly friendly profiles of Bernie made notice of this.
Every once in a while a Republican pol is raked over the coals for having given an interview to some publication. The more feeble among them (that’s to say every last one but Steve King) issue canned apologies.
The Denialist said, ” . . . a clownish attempt to link a president to the KKK . . .”
Who sued whom for whose birth certificate to prove who was eligible to be president?
Why do you think that people who have been dreaming of lynching Obama for at least ten years already support Trump?
Do you dream of lynching Obama? George does.
You ransacking Wikipedia for basic information on what was a highly public organization in 1960. I take it that you’re now suffering from losses of long-term memory, which I don’t think happens until you’re past ‘moderate cognitive impairment’.
This is absurd x 3 says: April 13, 2019 at 2:34 PM
Let’s grant him he’s lived a different experience than you?
You don’t wanna go there.
There’s always a history. Those who deny it are doomed to relive it. You are a denialist. Read it and weep.
What ‘different experience’? He’s a professional class denizen living in a small city. That has been his life since about 1990.
He grew up in a small town adjacent to the Mississippi delta. It’s not a fragment of some larger whole, but a discrete community surrounded by countryside. The town is predominantly black and has one local high school, which he attended.
It’s a reasonable wager his parents held ordinary wage jobs and had little discretionary income. It’s not rare for professional people to have had working-class backgrounds.
Absurd,
I believe she regurgitating Wikipedia, not ransacking it.
If there are 100,000 pages of WikiPedia material ( I don’t know the actual number), L4D is well on her way to cutting and pasting most of it before she’s done.
And there are also the “Excerpted from the above WikiPedia” verbiage she often adds on
.
Absurd,
There was an assassination of a judge in a nearby city (in SE Washington State) about 45 years ago
…I later worked with a law student who knew members of his family. They caught the guy and he’s still deserving time.
This mail box murder was not related to political activities by the judge; it had to do with a specific case involving the guy that motivated him to mail the bomb, to his home, I think.
There might have been a time where judges did not need to be as concerned about threats, just as there was a time when schools shootings were unheard of or members of Congress weren’t shot at a baseball practice or at a meet the Congresswoman gathering in a Safeway parking lot.
For a variety of reasons, judges ( and others) now have to take the possibility of someone following through on those threats seriously.
The risk is probably enhanced for a judge when he engages in partisan political theatrics, raising his profile and pushing the buttons of those who might follow through on those threats.
Translation: “Judge Reeves is really asking for it, now.”
Maybe the two “white” guys who put a rope around Jussie’s neck and ate his tuna sandwich! 😹😹😹
What our resident partisan Democrats hate is that Trump can drink their milkshake from any spot in the room.
Hmmm, the fact that you consider any rhetoric “dangerous” tells us everything we need to know about your constitutional hypocrisy, Enigma.
Please Google, “Comet Ping Pong” and read of the NC man who went to a DC pizza joint and fired shots with an assault rifle based on dangerous rhetoric.” That you don’t think anything qualifies is more alarming.
Fortunately, the guy who shot Rep. Scalise and tried to kill a bunch of others was unlikely to be affected by “political rhetoric”.
There’s no shortage of that rhetoric or Taxi Driver-type of idiots out there.
We’ve been stuck with that problem for a generation or two now.
Yeah, Tom, there’s no shortage of deluded idiots out there. Some are even commenting on this thread.
But if Donald Trump is a stable adult, worthy of being President, why is he always playing to deluded idiots??
Historically presidents made a concerted effort to keep their rhetoric civil and responsible. The idea was to avoid saying anything that would inspire deluded idiots. But Trump sees accurately sees those people as his natural base!
why is he always playing to deluded idiots??
He isn’t.
dekuded
That is correct, Absurd. I have seen no evidence that Trump is “playing to” Hollywood Hill or anyone else in Tinseltown.
Tom Nash – We can agree that there’s no shortage of dangerous rhetoric. We might disagree as to who does the most of it? “debinrye” seems to believe there is no such thing.
Dangerous? No. Irksome, boring, and disgusting rhetoric. ‘Dangerous’ is Rap Brown getting a bunch of hoodlums to burn down two blocs worth of Cambridge Md., and there hasn’t been much of that since about 1970.
Enigma:
Reeves is an obvious bigot seeing everyone and everything through racist eyes. That you defend him tells me you have the same optometrist.
Let’s grant him he’s lived a different experience than you? Is there such a thing as a white obvious bigot? Can you name any public figures that fit the description or perhaps only certain ones are within your spectrum.
Let’s grant him he’s lived a different experience than you?
You don’t wanna go there.
I kinda do want to go there. Some of the people here have apparently not seen or heard of a racist act committed by a white person since (take your pick) the end of the Civil War, the end of he Civil Rights Era, the passage of Brown v. Board, or most recently the election of Barack Obama.
Enigma, Racist acts have been committed by all people. …And “All lives count.”
I think its time you clean your own house, Enigma.
Sage, advice, Alan. I’m sure the Black community could benefit from the wisdom of old businessmen like yourself. It would be sweet if you could devote some time to mentoring.
“sweet if you could devote some time to mentoring.”
Peter, we hold breakfast meetings reading what you say and laughing. The best way to teach logical thought and make it interesting is to show a person like Peter that is deficient and then have others correct his logic.
I’m sure the Black community could benefit from the wisdom of old businessmen like yourself.
Blacks will benefit from the following:
1. Collective efforts to suppress crime in the slums;
2. Collective efforts to sequester incorrigibles and keep them from ruining the atmosphere in schools.
3. Improving the signal-to-noise ratio in schools and workplaces. That means impersonal paper-and-pencil testing, that means instructional tracking.
4. Optimizing time use in primary and secondary schooling. That means replacing half-assed liberal education with rigorous vocational schooling at the secondary level.
5. Restructuring the degree architecture in tertiary schooling, amending financing means, and meritocratic allocation of berths.
6. Amending the means of local finance to quell the forces promoting property neglect in impecunious neighborhoods.
7. Replacing various means-tested doles and subsidies with earned income matching.
I think you’d really have to scrounge to locate a black politician who supports any of these measures.
There have been racist incidents, and most have heard about them.
That’s why it’s so vital to then speculate about and invent a connection between the Klan and the current occupant of the White House….that makes a LOT of sense.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides,” Trump said.
“Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,” Trump said.
“You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” Trump said.
I kinda do want to go there.
No, you don’t, because then you’ll have to sit and listen to people’s experience of …urban living.
Judge Reeves doesn’t know the Klan from tiddlywinks. You have 50 states in the union. In 46 of them, the Klan has been cosplay throughout the entire post-war period.
There are about a half-dozen homicides attributable to klaverns during the years Judge Reeves has been of an age to remember anything going on outside his own household (none of them in Mississippi). Five of them were members of a Maoist outfit called the Worker’s Viewpoint Organization, shot dead at a rally in November 1979. Not in Mississippi, but in Greensboro, NC.
Too stupid to respond to.
Too stupid to respond.
Too low to reason.
Absurd,
Maybe the judge can tell us about his participation in the March on the Bettis Bridge/ “Bloody Sunday”….or his victimization at the hands of the Klan he’s experienced in his life.
Those life experiences are probably what makes him want to bring up the burning (cross) issue of the thread of the Klan he sees today.
I’ll have to check his date of birth to see how old he was when he involved in “Bloody Sunday” ….I think he was born in 1965, which I think is also the year the marchers tried to cross the bridge.
He may not have a clear memory of that day’s events, but I’m sure the “memory” still haunts him.
John Lewis became nationally known during his prominent role in the Selma to Montgomery marches when, on March 7, 1965 – a day that would become known as “Bloody Sunday” – Lewis and fellow activist Hosea Williams led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. At the end of the bridge, they were met by Alabama State Troopers who ordered them to disperse. When the marchers stopped to pray, the police discharged tear gas and mounted troopers charged the demonstrators, beating them with night sticks. Lewis’s skull was fractured, but he escaped across the bridge to Brown Chapel, the movement’s headquarter church in Selma. Before Lewis could be taken to the hospital, he appeared before the television cameras calling on President Johnson to intervene in Alabama. Lewis bears scars from the incident on his head that are still visible today.
Many people are aware of the events at the Pettus Bridge ( which I misspelled earlier), and John Lewis’ role in and injuries from that march, or attempted march, across the bridge.
I found Lewis’ sit-down stunt/protest in Congress to be nearly as inspiring as his acts in 1965, the lunch counter protests, etc.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/22/politics/john-lewis-sit-in-gun-violence/index.html
Some of those protesting with Rep. Lewis even threatened to hold their breath until they turned blue.
John Lewis is a back bench member of Congress whose accomplishments since 1966 begin and end with being elected to a series of public offices. He has no history of even proposing much less shepherding consequential legislation. At age 78, he appears to remain in Congress for lack of anything better to do with his time. (Widower, one child, no grandchildren).
What does one call a person such as Triply Absurd who cannot say anything good about any Black man other than Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas?
Sure, anyone who calls out the President who criticized a judge for being Mexican, and has negatively stereotyped racial and religious groups must be a bigot.
There’s what the president says and then there are the lies and stupidities propagated by partisan Democrats.
“Optometrist!” LOL!
Their optometrist is Karl Marx.
If one views through constitutionalist eyes, one perceives the complete dearth of rational inheritance and intrinsic merit and an aberration as the product of “Affirmative Action Privilege” and “Generational Welfare” related to the appointment of an artificial construct as “federal judge.”
More word salad, but fits you well. Keep on keepin’ on.
this is to “I bet overseer was a good job” georgie – paulie
the rhetoric by Mad Max and others apparently can’t be counted when we’re figuring out “who does most of it”.
We also need to disgard the dispassionate, analytical rhetoric of those like Natacha/ Anonymous.
Or the “we’re gonna impeach the f*****.
Once we eliminate those examples, it’ll be easier to conclude who does “most of it”.
Sounds more like Stephen Miller — Rump is too intellectually shallow to comprehend