For the nation and for black people, the first black president should be the caliber of a Jackie Robinson and Barack Obama is not.

Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.

For the nation and for black people, the first black president should be the caliber of a Jackie Robinson and Barack Obama is not. Barack Obama has charisma and charm but in terms of character, values and understanding, he is no Jackie Robinson. By now, many Americans have heard the racist and anti-American tirades of Obama's minister and spiritual counselor. There's no way that Obama could have been a 20-year member of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church and not been aware of his statements.

Wright's racist and anti-American ideas are by no means unique. They are the ideas of many leftist professors and taught to our young people. The basic difference between Sen. Obama, Wright and leftist professors is simply a matter of style and language. His Philadelphia speech demonstrated his clever style where he merely changed the subject. The controversy was not about race. It was about his longtime association with such a hatemonger and whether he shared the Reverend's vision.

Obama's success is truly a remarkable commentary on the goodness of Americans and how far we've come in resolving matters of race. I'm 72 years old. For almost all of my life, a black having a real chance at becoming the president of the United States was at best a pipe dream. Obama has convincingly won primaries in states with insignificant black populations. As such, it further confirms what I've often said: The civil rights struggle in America is over and it's won. At one time black Americans did not have the constitutional guarantees enjoyed by white Americans; now we do. The fact that the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems confronting many members of the black community but they are not civil rights problems and have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination.

While not every single vestige of racial discrimination has disappeared, Obama and the Rev. Wright are absolutely wrong in suggesting that racial discrimination is anywhere near the major problem confronting a large segment of the black community. The major problems are: family breakdown, illegitimacy, fraudulent education and a high rate of criminality. To confront these problems, that are not the fault of the larger society, requires political courage and that's an attribute that Obama and most other politicians lack.

I always thought Obama was a bit backwards

Justices Rebuff Bush and World Court
Powers Limited in Texas Death Case

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 26, 2008; Page A01

The Supreme Court yesterday issued a broad ruling limiting presidential power and the reach of international treaties, saying neither President Bush nor the World Court has the authority to order a Texas court to reopen a death penalty case involving a foreign national.

The justices held 6 to 3 that judgments of the International Court of Justice, as the court is formally known, are not binding on U.S. courts and that Bush's 2005 executive order that courts in Texas comply anyway does not change that.

The decision, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., was a rebuke to the government in a case that involved the powers of all three branches of government, the intricacies of treaties and the international debate over the death penalty.

It placed the president on the side of Ernesto Medellin, a brutal murderer, and the rulings of the World Court, and against the authority of his home state's courts.

Texas's high court had rejected the World Court's judgment that it "review and reconsider" Medellin's conviction because he is a Mexican national and was not advised after his arrest that he could meet with a consular from his country, as the Vienna Convention requires.

Even though the administration disagreed with the World Court's decision -- and has withdrawn from the international pact that gave it force -- Bush nonetheless issued a memorandum ordering the Texas courts to rehear Medellin's case.

But Roberts wrote that neither the Optional Protocol of the Vienna Convention nor the operative part of the United Nations Charter creates binding law in the absence of implementing legislation from Congress.

And he wrote that the government had not made the case that Bush had the power to issue a directive that "reaches deep into the heart of the state's police powers and compels state courts to reopen final criminal judgments and set aside neutrally applicable state laws."

Joining Roberts were the justices who are most consistently conservative: Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Justice John Paul Stevens concurred, but for different reasons than Roberts gave. Stevens agreed that Texas could not be forced to reconsider the case but urged it to do so nonetheless, especially because its failure to advise Medellin of his rights "ensnared the United States in the current controversy."

Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in dissent that the court had misread the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which says properly ratified treaties "shall be the supreme law of the land" and that the treaties at issue did not need to be implemented by congressional legislation. "As a result, the nation may well break its word even though the president seeks to live up to that word and Congress has done nothing to suggest the contrary," Breyer wrote. He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter.

Roberts said to accept Medellin's argument would make World Court decisions not only binding domestic law but also "unassailable."

Bush's intentions -- to ensure reciprocal observance of the Vienna Convention with foreign governments, protect international relations and show a commitment to international law -- are "plainly compelling," Roberts wrote. "Such considerations, however, do not allow us to set aside first principles."

Frederick L. Kirgis, a professor of international law at Washington and Lee University, said he was surprised that the court was not more deferential to the president.

"It is a matter of diplomacy, after all, and the president is the chief diplomat, and he has acted," Kirgis said, adding that the reaction of other governments, especially Mexico's, is "certain to be negative."

The Mexican Foreign Affairs Ministry said it regretted the court's decision and its lawyers are reviewing the implications for "other Mexican nationals facing death sentences, in order to determine immediate legal actions to preserve their rights."

The case involved Medellin and 50 other Mexican nationals who have been convicted in U.S. courts.

Medellin, 33, has lived in the United States since he was 3; he speaks and writes English but is still a Mexican national. He was part of a gang that attacked Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Pena, 16, as they walked home from a friend's house. They were raped and murdered, one strangled with her shoestring.

Medellin signed a waiver of his Miranda right to remain silent and confessed within hours of his arrest. But he was not told of his right to talk to the consulate of his country. Medellin did not raise that right during his trial but did in one of his death penalty appeals.

The administration first argued against Mexico, and then in 2005 Bush issued his memorandum to the attorney general saying that the United States will "discharge its international obligations . . . by having state courts give effect to the decision" of the World Court.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Bush was disappointed with the decision and is reviewing it to see how it might influence international relations.

Unconvinced by Obama’s Wright Speech

Something few have mentioned... Rev. Wright and others have said that Obama came from a single parent home... NOT TRUE!
Here is his step father, mother and half sister and Obama himself.







By: Edward I. Koch Sen. Obama in his speech acknowledged that the rantings of his minister are “inexcusable,” but stated, “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother — a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.” There was a time spanning the 70’s to the mid-90s when many blacks and whites in large American cities expressed the same feelings on street crime held by Obama’s grandmother. Indeed, the Rev. Jesse Jackson made similar comments in 1993 at a meeting of his organization, Operation Push, devoted to street crime. According to a Nov. 29, 1993, article in the Chicago Sun Times, he said, “’We must face the No. 1 critical issue of our day. It is youth crime in general and black-on-black crime in particular.’ Then Jackson told the audience, ‘There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved . . . After all we have been through,’ he said. ‘Just to think we can’t walk down our own streets, how humiliating.’” Isn’t that exactly what Obama’s grandmother was referring to? To equate her fears, similar to Jesse Jackson’s, with Wright’s anti-American, anti-white, anti-Jew, and anti-Israel rantings is despicable coming from a grandson. In today’s vernacular, he threw her under the wheels of the bus to keep his presidential campaign rolling. For shame. What is it that I and others expected Obama to do? A great leader with conscience and courage would have stood up and faced down anyone who engages in such conduct. I expect a president of the United States to have the strength of character to denounce and disown enemies of America — foreign and domestic — and yes, even his friends and confidants when they get seriously out of line. What if a minister in a church attended primarily by white congregants or a rabbi in a synagogue attended primarily by Jews made comparable statements that were hostile to African-Americans? I have no doubt that the congregants would have immediately stood up and openly denounced the offending cleric. Others would have criticized that cleric in private. Some would surely have ended their relationships with their congregation. Obama didn’t do any of these things. His recent condemnations of Wright’s hate-filled speech are, in my opinion, a case of too little, too late. It is also disturbing to me that Obama’s wife, Michelle, during a speech in Wisconsin last month, said, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” Strange. This is a woman who has had a good life, with opportunities few whites or blacks have been given. When she entered Princeton and Harvard and later became a partner in a prestigious law firm, didn’t she feel proud to be an American? When she and the senator bought their new home, was there no feeling of accomplishment and pride in being a U.S. citizen? When her husband was elected to the state legislature and subsequently to the United States Senate, didn’t she feel proud of her country? Obama was asked if he thought his speech changed any minds. He replied he didn’t think so, and certainly not of those who weren’t already for him.

Mexico: The New Colombia

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has declared war on drug cartels in his country — but so far the cartels appear to be winning.

Since taking office in December 2006, Calderon has deployed about 30,000 soldiers to aid police in gathering intelligence about drug smuggling, interrogating suspects, and seizing contraband.

But drug gangs have intensified their degree of violence and engaged in bloody turf wars, ignoring traditional “codes of honor” that moderated their activities in the past, according to the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ Transnational Threats Update.

As in Colombia, gangs have assassinated police, soldiers, and judges engaged in prosecuting the war on drugs. They have even killed family members of those targeted, including young children.

More than 4,000 deaths due to drug-related violence have been reported over the last two years.

The growing power of these drug gangs has a direct effect on the United States, since according to a United Nations report, 99 percent of all methamphetamines produced in Mexico wind up in the U.S.

Mexico is the No. 1 foreign supplier of marijuana to the U.S., and an estimated 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the U.S. enters this country from Mexico.

The Mexican government’s cartel-fighting efforts have had some moderate successes. More than 1,000 suspects have been arrested, and at least 80 drug dealers have been extradited to the U.S., the Update reports.

The government has also undertaken measures to reform the nation’s corruption-plagued police, where in some areas they are forced to choose between accepting bribes or risk being killed.

And Mexico reached an agreement with the U.S., the Merida Initiative, which will apportion $1.4 billion to Mexico’s antidrug efforts over the next three years.

According to the U.S. Department of State’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, issued this month, Mexico made “unprecedented efforts and achieved unprecedented results in attacking the corrosive effects of drug trafficking and consumption” during last year.

The report cited the seizure of 48 metric tons of cocaine by Mexican law enforcement officials.

But the Transnational Threats Update asserts, “Despite Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s use of the military to crack down on narcotics smuggling by drug cartels, they have proven resistant to such measures.”

OBAMA'S ANGER

OBAMA'S ANGER
By Ed Kaitz

Back in the late 1980s I was on a plane flying out of New Orleans and sitting next to me was a rather interesting and, according to Barack Obama, unusual black man. Friendly, gregarious, and wise beyond his years, we immediately hit it off. I had been working on Vietnamese commercial fishing boats for a few years based in southern Louisiana. The boats were owned by the recent wave of Vietnamese refugees who flooded into the familiar tropical environment after the war. Floating in calm seas out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, I would hear tearful songs and tales from ex-paratroopers about losing brothers, sisters, parents, children, lovers, and beautiful Vietnam itself to the communists.

In Bayou country I lived on boats and in doublewide trailers, and like the rest of the Vietnamese refugees, I shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of rice. When they arrived in Louisiana the refugees had no money (the money that they had was used to bribe their way out of Vietnam and into refugee camps in Thailand), few friends, and a mostly unfriendly and suspicious local population.

They did however have strong families, a strong work ethic, and the "Audacity of Hope." Within a generation, with little or no knowledge of English, the Vietnamese had achieved dominance in the fishing industry there and their children were already achieving the top SAT scores in the state.

While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the language could be, within a generation, so successful. I also asked him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities that the Vietnamese had recently embraced.

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

"We're owed and they aren't."

In short, he concluded, "they're hungry and we think we're owed. It's crushing us, and as long as we think we're owed we're going nowhere."

A good test case for this theory is Katrina. Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and assorted white apologists continue to express anger and outrage over the federal response to the Katrina disaster. But where were the Vietnamese "leaders" expressing their "anger?" The Vietnamese comprise a substantial part of the New Orleans population, and yet are absent was any report claiming that the Vietnamese were "owed" anything. This is not to say that the federal response was an adequate one, but we need to take this as a sign that maybe the problem has very little to do with racism and a lot to with a mindset.

The mindset that one is "owed" something in life has not only affected black mobility in business but black mobility in education as well. Remember Ward Churchill? About fifteen years ago he was my boss. After leaving the fishing boats, I attended graduate school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I managed to get a job on campus teaching expository writing to minority students who had been accepted provisionally into the university on an affirmative action program. And although I never met him, Ward Churchill, in addition to teaching in the ethnic studies department, helped to develop and organize the minority writing program.

The job paid most of my bills, but what I witnessed there was absolutely horrifying. The students were encouraged to write essays attacking the white establishment from every conceivable angle and in addition to defend affirmative action and other government programs. Of the hundreds of papers that I read, there was not one original contribution to the problem of black mobility that strayed from the party line.

The irony of it all however is that the "white establishment" managed to get them into the college and pay their entire tuition. Instead of being encouraged to study international affairs, classical or modern languages, philosophy or art, most of these students became ethnic studies or sociology majors because it allowed them to remain in disciplines whose orientation justified their existence at the university. In short, it became a vicious cycle.

There was a student there I'll never forget. He was plucked out of the projects in Denver and given a free ride to the university. One day in my office he told me that his mother had said the following to him: "M.J., they owe you this. White people at that university owe you this." M.J.'s experience at the university was a glorious fulfillment of his mother's angst.

There were black student organizations and other clubs that "facilitated" the minority student's experience on the majority white and "racist" campus, in addition to a plethora of faculty members, both white and black, who encouraged the same animus toward the white establishment. While adding to their own bona fides as part of the trendy Left, these "facilitators" supplied M.J. with everything he needed to quench his and his mother's anger, but nothing in the way of advice about how to succeed in college. No one, in short, had told M.J. that he needed to study. But since he was "owed" everything, why put out any effort on his own?

In a fit of despair after failing most of his classes, M.J. wandered into my office one Friday afternoon in the middle of the semester and asked if I could help him out. I asked M.J. about his plans that evening, and he told me that he usually attended parties on Friday and Saturday nights. I told him that if he agreed to meet me in front of the university library at 6:00pm I would buy him dinner. At 6pm M.J. showed up, and for the next twenty minutes we wandered silently through the stacks, lounges, and study areas of the library. When we arrived back at the entrance I asked M.J. if he noticed anything interesting. As we headed up the hill to a popular burger joint, M.J. turned to me and said:

"They were all Asian. Everyone in there was Asian, and it was Friday night."

Nothing I could do, say, or show him, however, could match the fire power of his support system favoring anger. I was sad to hear of M.J. dropping out of school the following semester.

During my time teaching in the writing program, I watched Asians get transformed via leftist doublespeak from "minorities" to "model minorities" to "they're not minorities" in precise rhythm to their fortunes in business and education. Asians were "minorities" when they were struggling in this country, but they became "model minorities" when they achieved success. Keep in mind "model minority" did not mean what most of us think it means, i.e., something to emulate. "Model minority" meant that Asians had certain cultural advantages, such as a strong family tradition and a culture of scholarship that the black community lacked.

To suggest that intact families and a philosophy of self-reliance could be the ticket to success would have undermined the entire angst establishment. Because of this it was improper to use Asian success as a model. The contortions the left exercised in order to defend this ridiculous thesis helped to pave the way for the elimination of Asians altogether from the status of "minority."

This whole process took only a few years.

Eric Hoffer said:

"...you do not win the weak by sharing your wealth with them; it will but infect them with greed and resentment. You can win the weak only by sharing your pride, hope or hatred with them."

We now know that Barack Obama really has no interest in the "audacity of hope." With his race speech, Obama became a peddler of angst, resentment and despair. Too bad he doesn't direct that angst at the liberal establishment that has sold black people a bill of goods since the 1960s. What Obama seems angry about is America itself and what it stands for; the same America that has provided fabulous opportunities for what my black friend called "hungry" minorities. Strong families, self-reliance, and a spirit of entrepreneurship should be held up as ideals for all races to emulate.

In the end, we should be very suspicious about Obama's anger and the recent frothings of his close friend Reverend Wright. Says Eric Hoffer:

The fact seems to be that we are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about. Vehemence is the expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that can never stand on its own.

Eloquent Speech, Troubling Ideas

March 18, 2008

Eloquent Speech, Troubling Ideas

Ken Blackwell released the following statement in reaction to Senator Barack Obama's speech today. "Barack Obama just gave an eloquent speech, but one that does not address the underlying nature of Senator Obama's beliefs. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, like Mr. Obama, believes in a state-centered 21st century form of big-government socialism. This 21st century form of socialism is at the heart of the Liberation Theology Rev. Wright preaches from the pulpit. Today, Mr. Obama again made it clear, with all his eloquence, that he still embraces these beliefs that would require dismantling the free-market system that has made our country's economy the most prosperous in all of human history.

In contrast to Liberation Theology, the Christian orthodoxy teaches about the nature of God, the nature of man, the relationship between the two in this life, and about the hereafter.

Liberation Theology, on the other hand, is a belief system about
political agendas,
socialistic economic policy,
and redistribution of wealth.
Proponents of Liberation Theology, like Rev. Wright, teach that
God commands us to form a government that will supervise our economy to create government-subsidized jobs under central-government planning;
guarantee healthcare and education by having government control both;
and achieve 'economic equality' by redistributing wealth through massive taxes on the affluent and massive government entitlements for the poor.
And it advocates replacing governments that do not embrace this socialistic agenda.
Those are the beliefs of Liberation Theology."
For the remainder of Ken's insights, go to frcaction.org.