Friday, July 15, 2005

An Insincere Republican Apology for Racism   Yesterday, Ken Mehlman, director of the Republican National Committee, apologized to the NAACP for the "Southern strategy" and his party's decades of calculated exploitation of racial divisions.  I went to Catholic school, and I recall that where there is no willingness to make amends, there can be no true remorse.  When you insist on keeping the gains of your evil acts, you are not sorry.  Republican dominance in the South came as a result of racist appeals; as long as the successors to those segregationists do little or nothing to see blacks achieve social, political, and economic equality, the apology is a lie.  The President, who attended the Indiana Black Expo on the same day, did not apologize.  He, at least, was sincere.  Of course, an apology from him would have come across as crass and most dishonest on his lips, after he went to Bob Jones University in 2000, to fan the flames of racial division, in order to further his Presidential campaign in the Republican primaries. 2:25:35 PM    comment []

Quote for the Day, 7/15/2005   "Who am I, in Heaven's name, to decide Which were my vintage years of love?"   -Christopher Fry, Venus Observed 6:50:37 AM    comment []

More on the Plame Affair   Valerie Plame was a CIA agent who had spent her time abroad working for a front company which had cost the United States years and millions of dollars to establish.  This means that by revealing Plame's identity, Karl Rove not only destroyed the usefulness of that company, which had been established at enormous expense, but exposed every other CIA agent who had used that company as cover, and made every foreign national who had any association with that company vulnerable to reprisals ranging from suspicion to prison to death.  Weigh our national security in the balance against Rove disliking Plame's husband.  Six of one, a half dozen of the other...? Further, Karl Rove lied when he said Plame had ordered her husband to go abroad to investigate the Niger claim.  At least, the CIA says that what Rove claimed is a lie, as they have repeatedly stated that the order for Wilson to go abroad came from a more senior CIA official.  The Senate investigation of the Niger claims also concluded that Plame didn't order Wilson to Niger.  And it is, further, logically false; Plame did not rank high enough to cut such orders.  If she had ordered such a thing, she would have been ignored, or else ignored and fired.  She may have recommended her husband, but no more.  So the pretext under which Rove outed Plame was utterly false. Some are wondering if Karl Rove might be tried, not on charges of knowingly revealing the name of a covert agent, but on espionage charges.  Given that he had exposed a dummy corporation which was painstakingly developed to provide a cover for CIA agents, such charges appear fully warranted, and perhaps even inevitable.  In the moments after the President said he was reserving judgment until the criminal investigation was through, aides told the press the President was "fully confident" in Karl Rove. "Fully confident."  The President used to run a baseball team.  That's what owners always say about coaches or managers...a week or two before they fire them.  They don't defend a guy they're going to keep, because leaving them in place says all you need to say. 4:57:48 AM    comment []