Jack & Jill Politics

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is still keeping mum about her future plans, but there's one much-discussed option that's open to her, and her team is reportedly looking into it.

Inside Radio reports that "Palin representatives have been quietly testing the waters to see how much interest radio syndicators have for her," though it adds that they're "not exactly shopping" her. (Hat-tip to GOP 12.)

Assuming Palin wants a future in national politics -- by no means a solid assumption, though she has appeared to be leaning that way -- a radio show could be a mixed blessing. It would keep her in touch with a devoted base, and keep her name in the news. But there's a lot of airtime to fill in a regular radio show, and a lot of ad-libbing: That could end up being a godsend for opposition researchers.

• Above all others, the real celebrity here has been Rush Limbaugh. He's done this kind of thing before -- remember the "Barack, The Magic Negro" song? But in the wake of the Gates incident, he's managed to become even more hard-edged about it. "Here you have a black president trying to destroy a white policeman," Limbaugh declared this past Friday. Yesterday, he shared a dream he's had about the dangers to capitalism: "I had a dream that I was a slave building a sphinx in a desert that looked like Obama." And he joked that food-safety advocates will go after all the unhealthy foods people like to eat, one by one -- but they'll have to wait until Obama is out of office to ban Oreos.

• Glenn Beck said this today on Fox News: "This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture. I don't what it is. You can't sit in a pew with Jeremiah Wright for 20 years and not hear some of that stuff, and not have it wash over."

• During his new crusade of Birtherism, Lou Dobbs suggested on his radio show this past Wednesday, right before the Gates flare-up, that Obama could be an illegal immigrant, tying this into his usual preoccupation. "I'm starting to think we have a document issue," Dobbs said. "You suppose he's un-- no, I won't even use the word 'undocumented,' it wouldn't be right."

• As we reported last week, a high-profile conservative activist against Obama on health care was circulating an e-mail that photoshopped Obama's face onto a witch-doctor's body. This e-mail had been circulating before the Gates incident, but still fits into the overall environment of Obama's ratings having started to flag.

State officials in Hawaii on Monday said they have once again checked and confirmed that President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen, and therefore meets a key constitutional requirement for being president.

They hoped to stem a recent surge in the number of inquiries about Obama's birthplace.

"I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen," Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said in a brief statement. "I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago..."

Councilors also said they were not given the recently released tapes of the 911 call and radio transmissions made during the July 16 incident. The tapes were made public to the media Monday afternoon after a press conference.

“I am concerned that I had to learn about the city’s steps through the media,” said Councilor Marjorie Decker. “It leaves us out in the dark in a way that is unacceptable and inappropriate. The city council has not been talking because we have not been properly briefed.”

Healy, in his defense, said this past week has been “hellacious” for the city, and it was not his intent to offend councilors by not keeping them informed.

“The police commissioner and I have been working nonstop for the greater good of this city,” he said. “If I did not serve some city councilors in a way that they thought I should, then I apologize… I have been silent this whole week in the media. It was time that Bob Healy [said] something.”

Gates was arrested on July 16 after a woman reported she saw a suspicious male trying to get his way into a Ware Street home. It turns out the home belonged to Gates, who had just returned to Cambridge from a trip to China. Gates was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct by Police Sgt. James Crowley, who said Gates was yelling and making a scene. The charges were dismissed last Tuesday.

The decision to drop the disorderly conduct charge against Gates and halt any prosecution against the Harvard professor was made after a discussion with Haas, District Attorney Gerry Leone, and Walter Prince, an attorney representing Gates at the time. It was made for the “global good,” according to Healy.

“It was in the best interest of the city and all parties involved,” Healy said Monday night. “It was an attempt to put the matter behind us.”

Councilors argued that if they were kept on the same page with Healy, they would have been able to address the hundreds of e-mails from concerned citizens sent to them over the past week more properly.

“We should have been notified,” Councilor Tim Toomey. “I think we have done a disservice to the citizens.”

Even Mayor Denise Simmons wasn’t notified about this Monday’s press conference at the Cambridge Police station until less than an hour before it occurred, Councilor Ken Reeves said.

Letter in full:
As America’s “Most Trusted Name in News,” CNN has a responsibility to its viewers to provide commentary and analysis that is substantive and accurate. However, those promoting conspiracy theories about President Obama’s citizenship, the threat of leprosy from immigrants and other falsehoods should be held accountable for spreading misinformation.

America’s Voice is writing you today to express our urgent concern about the quality of reporting on Lou Dobbs Tonight. Anchor Lou Dobbs enjoys regular opportunities to make inaccurate comments on matters of immigration and national origin, without apparent oversight by CNN. Most recently, Dobbs has repeatedly claimed on both his television and radio shows that President Obama has failed to address the claims of “birther” conspiracy theorists. He has said that Obama needs to “produce a birth certificate” and that the birth certificate the president posted online more than a year ago has “some issues.” He never has retracted the outrageous and inaccurate claim, peddled by a known white nationalist, that immigrants are responsible for 7,000 cases of leprosy in the U.S. each year.

CNN should hold their anchors, news producers and researchers to a very high standard of accuracy. By allowing Mr. Dobbs to operate with impunity and with little regard for journalistic standards, CNN is tarnishing its brand as the “Most Trusted Name in News.”

by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Editor-in-Chief

Ten years ago, the Cambridge Police commissioner and mayor issued a public apology after a story by this reporter exposed racially offensive teachings and language by Cambridge police officers during an interview about the use of pepper spray.

Though a decade has passed, last week’s incident in which Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct in his own home was a stark reminder of the ugliness of racial stereotyping and profiling in Cambridge and across the country. It also reminded America of the longevity of friction between police and people of color.

“It’s a national problem and we haven’t been able to really control it in a rational way,” says Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree in an NNPA interview. Ogletree, the lawyer for Gates, says he is glad the incident has sparked a national discussion that began in Cambridge but could have far-reaching and long-term ramifications.

<snip>

The incident brought back memories.

A headline on the website of this week’s Cambridge Chronicle reminds, “Not the first time Cambridge Police Department faced with race allegations.”

It was early August 1999. A group of White Cambridge police officers – including a use of force trainer - sat around a desk inside the police department talking to this reporter.

They were confident and boisterous in the taped interview as they told how their police academy trained their officers that Mexicans and other people who may have grown up eating or working with a lot of cayenne peppers were immune to the affects of pepper spray.

''The people that it doesn't affect are people who have consumed cayenne peppers from the time they are small children, and this generally breaks into ethnic categories,” Officer Frank Gutoski, a trainer in the academy, told this reporter, who at that time was working a summer job for the Cambridge Chronicle.

“Every year, I teach this,” Gutoski was quoted in the Aug. 19, 1999 story headlined, “Pepper Spray Theory Stings Some Minorities.”

He named Mexican-Americans, Pakistani Indian and Cajuns as examples of people who are more likely tolerant to the chemical-like spray that causes intense burning in the eyes and face and closing of air passages. Two other officers in the room excitedly agreed during the openly taped interview.
Emergency room doctors gasped at the police theory: ''This is absolutely not true,'' said Dr. Michael Burns, emergency medicine attending physician and medical toxicologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. ''Most police have no medical background and there is absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever to support this.''

The story was picked up by news mediums around the country, including the Boston Globe, which reported that “Many doctors and law enforcement specialists say it sounds crazy.”

Amidst community outrage and embarrassment, Cambridge police and city leaders immediately issued a public apology for the racially offensive and medically unfounded statements.

''It is unfortunate that these comments were made,” said then Cambridge Police Commissioner Ronnie Watson. ''There is no empirical or scientific evidence to support these statements.”

Then Mayor Francis H. Duehay said, ''It is inconceivable in this day and age that the training program for police officers in Cambridge would contain information which has no scientific basis and slanders the Latino community … I apologize for the misinformation about pepper spray which has been communicated and for the ethnic slur it contains.''

In the Gates incident, there were no such apologies forthcoming. Police stood firmly behind Crowley who insisted he was correct in his actions despite public outrage.

The Chronicle recounted the 1999 incident after even President Obama weighed in on the Gates arrest. In a nationally televised press conference July 22, Obama said the police department “acted stupidly” in the arrest. But, he later softened the criticism, saying he did not mean to disparage Sgt. Crowley or the department and invited the officer and Gates to the White House for a beer this week.

Ogletree, executive director of Harvard’s Charles Hamilton Institute for Race and Justice, hopes the conversations will go much further than just beers at the White House.

It can be dicey after 9/11 for most people, but for immigrants, even completely legal ones, the odds of trouble are higher. The total power the authorities have - especially over Latinos - would give Lou Dobbs a dangerous case of priapism. One simple story:

The son of a decorated Vietnam veteran, Hector Veloz is a U.S. citizen, but in 2007 immigration officials mistook him for an illegal immigrant and locked him in an Arizona prison for 13 months. Veloz had to prove his citizenship from behind bars. An aunt helped him track down his father's birth certificate and his own, his parents' marriage certificate, his father's school, military and Social Security records. After nine months, a judge determined that he was a citizen, but immigration authorities appealed the decision. He was detained for five more months before he found legal help and a judge ordered his case dropped.

Compare this with the plight of Skip Gates and a little perspective emerges. Immigrants or immigrant suspects are at the mercy of anyone with a badge and a gun in America. If immigrants or legal natural-born citizens with the wrong skin color have no money and can't afford a lawyer, they are no match for a bureaucracy like Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And there is no due process:

In immigration detention it falls to the detainees to prove their citizenship. But detainees don't have the constitutional protections, such as the right to legal counsel, that would help them prove their case...

It is the U.S. Constitution, and not some competitive agglomeration of communities or constituencies, that makes a citizen the sovereign of his own home and privacy. There is absolutely no legal requirement to be polite in the defense of this right. And such rights cannot be negotiated away over beer.

The concept of using biometric data, such as fingerprints and retina scans, to verify if employees are eligible to work in the United States is fueling fresh debate among employment and immigration attorneys.

Lawyers are expressing both skepticism and criticism about the concept, which was formally announced during a congressional hearing last week.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who chairs the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, said that he would like to pursue a biometric workplace verification tool that would replace or enhance the current E-Verify system, the online system that lets employers check the eligibility status of workers. Schumer, who believes E-Verify doesn't work and plans to file a biometrics bill in the fall, stated at Tuesday's hearing: "The only way to stop illegal immigration is to stop employers from hiring illegal immigrants. We must...adopt a system that relies upon objective, rather than subjective, criteria to prove identity and legal status. The system must be non-forgeable and airtight."

Biometrics, however, may not be the solution, countered lawyers and legal experts.

A three-judge panel has tossed a ruling by a veteran Henry County Juvenile Court judge that found a lawyer in contempt for making what the judge called a "sarcastic" face at him. Chief Judge A.J. "Buddy" Welch Jr. had ordered Ella A. S. Hughes to jail for the offense, but on Tuesday an appeals panel reversed, in part on the grounds that the judge didn't give the lawyer an opportunity to fight a possible contempt finding.

When Welch had Hughes taken into custody last year, Hughes was in court representing a mother, Robyn Pressley Harris, facing jail time for her own contempt citation arising out of a deprivation case. Hughes, an Atlanta-area solo practitioner, had been a member of the Georgia Bar for less than a year. Welch, a former president of the Council of Superior Court Judges of Georgia, has been a juvenile court judge for more than three decades and is a senior partner at Smith, Welch & Brittain.

According to a separate Court of Appeals opinion issued Thursday in Harris' case, at the July 10, 2008, hearing, Welch expressed dissatisfaction with the level of cooperation Harris had provided the state Division of Family and Children Services. When Harris said she didn't have with her a contact number for the father of one of her children, Welch promptly found Harris in contempt and ordered her taken into custody for 20 days, saying she could get out of jail if she provided all of the requested information.

This one won’t help the GOP’s minority outreach efforts.

The National Council of La Raza, a top Latino civil rights group, is taking a shot at RNC chair Michael Steele and several prominent GOP figures for skipping its ongoing annual conference, saying it raises questions about the GOP’s interest in wooing Latinos.

NCLR spokesperson Marie Watteau confirms to me that Steele, along with three Republican governors, were all invited to its conference, which is concluding today with a big speech by DNC chair Tim Kaine. But Steele and the three governors — Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty, and Puerto Rico’s Luis Fortuno — all declined the invitations through the RNC, Watteau says.

Watteau adds that GOPers like Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain and both George Bushes have attended past conferences.

“You should certainly speak to the Republican Party about why they’re not here,” Watteau told me. “The Latino community is open to hearing from both sides, which is why both parties were invited. The Republican Party not being here may demonstrate a lack of commitment to our community.”

Making the optics of this worse, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were expected to vote overwhelmingly today against confirming Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. This, plus Kaine’s speech at the NCLR, have led Politico

Too many conservative senators like Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are to blame for the GOP's downfall, one of their retiring Republican colleagues complained Monday.

"We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns," Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) told the Columbus Dispatch. "It's the southerners."

Voinovich, a native Clevelander who retires after the 2010 election, continued after the southern elements of the GOP.

"They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr,'" he said. "People hear them and say, 'These people, they're southerners. The party's being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'"