John Edwards got himself in some hot water yesterday, although I'd be shocked if you read it in tomorrow's paper:

"We cannot build enough prisons to solve this problem. And the idea that we can keep incarcerating and keep incarcerating - pretty soon we're not going to have a young African-American male population in America. They're all going to be in prison or dead. One of the two."

Now imagine if Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney had said something akin to that.

NRO makes it clear that the African-American community is not all Bloods/Crips, Kanye West/50-Cent and Glock/Mac-10 but is a community that is sending their children to college and making great inroads. Of course we have inner city violence and that is more of a cultural issue hat must be addressed but Edwards made a huge mistake here, even more than the mistake the prominent GOP candidates made by not attending the debate last night.

Edwards sounds a bit Dixiecratish. For those who think the GOP is the party of racists, do yourself a favor and read of current Senator Robert Byrd's KKK Kleagle days or the fact that Al Gore's father was anti-civil rights. Educate yourself on where the parties history on racism lies.

Berkeley Breathed's "Opus"cartoon was pulled from print editions of the Washington Post because they believed it would inflame Muslims around the world. In other words, they censored themselves.

The cartoon is fairly innocuous as it portrays a recurring character who becomes a radical Islamist because it's fashionable. Here's some background from Fox News:

A popular comic strip that poked fun at the Rev. Jerry Falwell without incident one week ago was deemed too controversial to run over the weekend because this time it took a humorous swipe at Muslim fundamentalists.

...Sources told FOXNews.com that the strips were shown to Muslim staffers at The Washington Post to gauge their reaction, and they responded "emotionally" to the depiction of a woman dressed in traditional Muslim garb and espousing conservative Islamic views.

There was also considerable alarm over the strip at the highest echelons of The Washington Post Co., according to the sources.

What is Mike Huckabee's secret sauce? The Washington Times talks to a campaign consultant who thinks he knows:

That Mr. Huckabee has a knack for connecting with voters is obvious, but Rich Thau, a campaign communications consultant who is conducting focus groups on the debates, has measured it and says Mr. Huckabee was literally off the chart in one of his answers in last weekend's debate.

Mr. Thau does dial-testing, in which voters constantly rate performances by turning a dial to indicate their approval of what a candidate is saying. He posts his results on his Web site, www.messagejury.com, and he says in last weekend's debate, voters scored Mr. Huckabee's blunt "Let's get it done" answer on energy independence at a 98 out of 100, putting it in the realm of "motherhood and apple pie."

"He has yet to deliver a dud response in any of the four GOP debates," Mr. Thau said calling him the Ted Williams of the debates for combining consistency with his ability to hit a home run. "Huckabee has that ability to bring the entire issue down to a single sentence where people go, 'Yeah, that makes sense to me.' "

Rich Thau has the "get it done" answer and the audience reaction to it on his website here. Fascinating stuff.

This past weekend, I was in a Denny's for breakfast. (Bickford's was closed, and there were too many people at IHOP.) Later I would Wikipedia the franchise and read that, after a series of dismaying racial incidents, Denny's worked to improve its operations and drew praise for its efforts to include minorities in the workplace. (Online research seems to corroborate this.)

The Denny's turnaround indicates that people can make progress in race relations in this country. What are some of the 2008 presidential candidates saying about race?

Sen. Barack Obama has discussed how Americans can unite to overcome racial difficulties. "(Race) permeates our society," he said at the recent Democratic debate. "It is still a critical problem. But I do believe in the core decency of the American people, and I think they want to get beyond some of our racial divisions ... And as president of the United States, my commitment on issues like education, my commitment on issues like health care is to close the disparities and the gaps, because that's what's really going to solve the race problem in this country."

Last night's Democratic debate was short on fireworks yet long on racial rhetoric. The candidates all tried to appeal to the minority population and gain their racial bona fides regardless if what they said was untrue. Hillary Clinton played the race card to perfection:

Clinton drew a huge cheer when she suggested there was a hint of racism in the way AIDS is addressed in this country. "Let me just put this in perspective: If HIV-AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34 there would be an outraged, outcry in this country."

Think about what Hillary said, the sheer chutzpah. What Clinton failed to say and what the audience is ignoring is that HIV-AIDS does not discriminate, it will infect Whites as well as Blacks, Hispanics and Asians. The central point is that HIV is a 100 percent preventable disease. By using condoms or practicing monogamy or abstinence, the chance of being infected is reduced to zero. Clinton knows this full-well but couldn't allow a chance to pander to the audience slip by and if it entailed ignoring that 800-pound elephant in the room, so be it. The fact that she gets to infer that the GOP and the rest of America is bigoted is an added bonus.

Four years ago, affirmative action dominated news headlines as the Supreme Court examined the issue on college campuses. Then-Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gave colleges 25 more years to continue race-based admissions policies.

Now the court has revisited race, and has ruled in a 5-4 decision against using race to affect enrollment in public schools.

"The decision in cases affecting schools originated in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide," NPR reported, "and it leaves public school systems with a limited arsenal to maintain racial diversity."

I am curious to know how the presidential candidates will respond to this decision. John Edwards, for instance, has frequently focused on race, whether in his "Two Americas" speeches or in discussing Hurricane Katrina, while Rudy Giuliani, when he was New York City mayor, seemed to approve of placing Big Apple public schools under centralized authority (his own).

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has criticized racism among Republicans in the past (such as her "plantation" speech), while Barack Obama has discussed race as an important element in a melting-pot nation, one that can bring people together, not draw them apart.

The Supreme Court has given these candidates, and others, a chance to address the issues of race, education, and opportunity in this country. Who will take it, and who will not?

Today, the Supreme Court ruled that a school system can not use a diversity plan based on race to determine the school population. In other words, there is no more busing. Again, the vote was 5 to 4.

There was a day that busing was needed to integrate the segregated school systems around the country. The costs of the transportation was high and could be better spent on improved education.

The court left the door open for extreme situations.

This is the end of an era but it is certainly time to move on. The Supreme Court has made the right decision.

SCOTUSblog is reporting on a major decision on the constitutionality of voluntary school racial policy programs. The 5-4 decision strikes down the racial integration programs in two school districts, Seattle and Louisville.

This is a big decision, and critics are going to claim that it violates Brown v. Board of Education. But I don't believe that's not true. In arguments before the Court it was made clear that these two programs were not ordered as a remedy to existing problems by any court. The school districts involved undertook the racial integration programs because they thought that it was a good idea -- not because there was any actual racial segregation policies in place in the two districts. In fact, there was no racial integration policy problems at all in Seattle; and Louisville, once under court order to integrate, was no longer under that court order. In a way, it's a political correctness case. Racial integration is a common good so it must be forced upon people, even if there is no existing problem with current local policies.

The parents involved in this case saw that the assignment of their children to schools was arbitrary and unnecessary. They sued, and won.

Therefore, this decision has no bearing at all in cases where the courts have determined that there exists discriminatory racial preference policies in a particular school district and that a remedy is applicable and so ordered. It also has no effect on the ability to bring a complaint against a school district that does have an illegal racial segregation policy as determined by Brown.

Today, Alabama's Republican governor, Bob Riley, signed a resolution that officially apologizes for Alabama's role in the institution of slavery. Earlier this year, Virginia did the same, following Maryland and North Carolina in attempting to come to terms with the South's past sins:

"Slavery was evil and is a part of American history," the Republican governor said. "I believe all Alabamians are proud of the tremendous progress we have made and continue to make."

But don't count on Alabama removing the Confederate battle flag from atop the state Capitol building just yet. And if Rudy Giuliani is elected president, he certainly won't rock the boat, either. On the matter, America's Mayor famously equivocated in the following manner:

"We have different sensitivities, and at different times we are going to come to different decisions, and I think that is best left up to the states."

Ah, yes, the old "states rights" code. That familiar rhetoric that was once used to deny blacks the vote across the South and prevent the federal desegregation of schools. It was the mantra that Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond used to whip up white fury in his unsuccessful bid for president on a segregationist platform. But now that these southern states are themselves disavowing their own pasts, one wonders whether Mr. Giuliani would like to reconsider his answers.

Most Americans would agree that a candidate's character and actions matter more than what race or gender he or she happens to be. This might help explain why there's no uproar over the fact that the Republican party has so far put forth 10 white guys from which to choose a presidential candidate. Of the eight Democrats who appeared in the first debate, the country saw a slightly more representative demographic sampling, with a noticeable shortage of women and Asians (who make up roughly 4.3% of the population). What with the fact that women continue to far outpace men in terms of earning college degrees, however, we should start to see more and more female candidates in the near future.

The only Hispanic running for president in 2008 is Bill Richardson. So far, his campaign has been centered squarely on the question of competence and experience, and in the process, he has produced the season's best political ad. In other words, he had chosen to highlight his deeds rather than his ethnicity. Until now, that is:

It's no accident that he [Richardson] chose Los Angeles as the place where he'll announce officially today that he's seeking the presidency. "I'm not running as a Hispanic candidate, but I'm trying to convince Hispanics that I am Hispanic, and they don't know," he told The Post during a swing through Washington past week. "I go to Los Angeles, they don't know I'm Hispanic. When they know, it's a positive. So it's a question of building that."

Smart move. After all, according to the US Census Bureau, more than 35% of California's 36-million-plus residents are Hispanics. That's more than all the other racial groups who reside in the Golden State combined. And seeing as the state recently moved its primary up to February 5, that puts a lot of importance on courting the Hispanic vote. So will the act of highlighting Richardson's ancestral lineage help his chances in the primary? Well, it won't hurt.

Let me tell you about a very disturbing story. Earlier this year, a young couple were carjacked. The man -- Christopher Newsom -- was raped repeatedly, mutilated and eventually shot and burned. His body was left near railroad tracks.

The young woman -- Channon Christian -- was also gang-raped, mutilated and her body was found in a trashcan inside a residence of one of the accused. The details of what these men did to her are sickening and the story is not for the faint of heart.

All the suspects are black and several of them were parolees. The details of the crime are too horrific to describe on this site, but LaShawn Barber has more details.

How many of you have heard this story? I would venture that none of you, unless you live in Tennessee have heard anything about this case. The next question is why? Why was it not a front page story in every major newspaper in the country? Why did it not lead the top of the hour news update on CNN? These are difficult questions, yet ones that must be asked.

A good piece in today's Washington Post discusses a few issues that Barack Obama has been highlighting on the campaign trail:

Sen. Barack Obama is delivering pointed critiques of the African American community as he campaigns for its votes, lamenting that many of his generation are "disenfranchising" themselves because they don't vote, taking rappers to task for their language, and decrying "anti-intellectualism" in the black community, including black children telling peers who get good grades that they are "acting white."

The achievement gap between races is a major, major issue for our country, and one that isn't being adequately addressed by any other current candidate. Of course, race itself is one reason why. Can you imagine the outcry if Rudy Giuliani or Bill Richardson approached this matter as directly as Obama while standing at the pulpit of a black church? Not everybody in the African American community, however, is thrilled to hear Obama's thesis.

The gap is "not because black 7-year-olds are holding back other black 7-year-olds," said Melissa V. Harris-Lacewell, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University. "This black pathology argument is appealing, but I think he's wrong empirically."

But Obama's call for self-examination is, by and large, being very well received as he travels the country. It's no wonder, really, given the disparity of incarceration and infant mortality rates between blacks and whites, that people want change and have grown weary of waiting for others to give it to them. In fact, more than a century after slavery, nearly every economic, educational, and physical health indicator puts African Americans at a marked disadvantage. As Obama puts it, "There's an old saying that if America has a cold, we have pneumonia." What I like about Obama is that when he speaks he doesn't seem much like an actor at all.

Hillary's apparently trying to capitalize on her allies' successful take-down of Don Imus by appearing today at Rutgers. Here's the statement from Rutgers last week, as relayed by MSNBC (the irony runs deep):

Per a campaign spokesman, "The Eagleton Center for American Women and Politics had a standing invitation for her and we felt that it would be an appropriate time to discuss the role of women in society given all that is happening."

Hillary will tell the Rutgers' community that she is and was disgusted at the language and 'bigotry' shown over the years by Imus - but I think her opinion of Imus, and the actions by Media Matters in instigating his elimination, is more a product of the merciless mocking and ribbing she took from him for years than anything he just said. The language Imus used certainly can't bother her, as evidenced by this fundraiser recently held in Miami for her campaign by someone called Timbaland. Here's one of the announcements for the event:

In his most innovative collaboration yet, Timbaland is teaming up with Hillary Rodham Clinton to host a $1,000-a-head benefit for the presidential hopeful. The fundraiser, which will be held on March 31st in Miami, was reported by The Miami Herald. The Timba-approved event is a big win for Clinton, who lost out on some Hollywood backing to Barack Obama, in terms of garnering the youth vote. In addition to the acclaimed rapper-producer, Clinton's husband will lend some star power to the event.

Check out some of his lyrics (beware of vile language). Perhaps Hillary can participate in a sing-a-long to this tune with the Rutgers women's basketball team on stage. Can't wait to hear Hillary's explanation as to why Timbaland's words are supportable, while Imus' are not.

Thanks to Jim Geraghety at The Hillary Spot for pointing this out. I was writing a post just to point out Hillary's pathological opportunism, with Rutgers as the latest example, but the Timbaland info just put icing on the cake. Opportunistic and hypocritical at the same time! She has many talents...

This morning, I had a chance to listen to Tim Russert on Meet the Press. One of his guests was Gwen Ifill. I have watched her presentations on PBS over the years. She was good. Today, she was great. Her comments were controlled and not emotional. She didn't throw bouquets at Tim Russert before telling him that he was part of the club.

The guests on the show brought up all the points that have been articulated on the blogs. Others do it. We listen to it. He has been doing it for years and finally that "shock jocks" are successful because of how politically incorrect they are. Despite how hateful their comments might be. Gwen Ifill threw it right back on Russert and one of his other guests, David Brooks, She said: "There has been radio silence from a lot of people who have done this program who could have spoken up and said, I find this offensive or I didn't know. These people didn't speak up. Tim, we didn't hear from you. David, we didn't hear from you."

In a recent article, Ms. Ifill wrote about how she had been a target of Imus. Many years ago, it has been alleged that Imus said, "Isn't The Times wonderful, it lets the cleaning lady cover the White House."

A couple of days ago, I wrote that the firing of Don Imus was wrong. Today, I listed to Gwen Ifill and realized that I was wrong. It was not all about Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. Long ago, Don Imus crossed the line and in the past he took care of his mistakes by apologizing. This time, the apology didn't work. You see, after apologies of the past, Imus never changed. He continued to say hurtful things about people and races that were just not true. Yes, Imus should have been fired.

Sixty years ago this week, Branch Rickey--GM of the then Brooklyn Dodgers--put a man on the baseball field who changed the entire landscape of professional sports in America. Jackie Robinson took the field amidst boos and hisses, pejorative slurs and this was not only coming from spectators, but fellow players.

The integration of baseball had begun and it paved the way for integration in other major sports as well. Without #42 stepping onto the field, we may not have had the good fortune to see Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and one of the nastiest pitchers of all time; Bob Gibson in baseball. The football world may not have marveled at Jim Brown, O.J. Simpson (yes, he was a great running back at one time) and Gale Sayers. The basketball world would not have had a Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 in a game or a Julius Erving gliding through the air on his way to yet another slam.

Of course these sports would have been integrated in time, yet the courage and self control of Jackie Robinson made him the right man at the right time. Sometimes certain men are destined to be a key player in history altering events, Jackie Robinson was indeed one of them. He won the Rookie of the Year and two years later the Most Valuable Player award. Stunning both in a time of racial upheaval.

Many don't realize that Jackie Robinson served our country with distinction during WWII and may have been the catalyst for full integration within the military. He was charged with insubordination but the charges were dropped.

Jackie Robinson still matters. Although Major League Baseball now consists of only 1.3% African-Americans, Robinson's exploits transcended all sports. He was a player that all Americans could watch be enthralled with. He could do it all and proved it every season.

Jackie Robinson was an example of a true leader. He, and Branch Rickey, knew full-well that they would face everything from racial taunts to death threats. They knew that the nation wasn't ready and forged ahead any way regardless of the consequences. Rickey was a visionary while Robinson was the man who had to go out and do it. Long after current black "leaders" are footnotes in history, Jackie Robinson will be remembered as a brave man who actually went out and put himself on the line to change the landscape of America's game.