Tag Archives: KKK

national news

Klansman statement is soaked in irony

Time for a pop quiz, ladies and gentlemen.

You ready? Here goes: What comes into your mind — immediately — when you hear theĀ term “Ku Klux Klan”?

Time’s up.

The answer should be: hatred, bigotry, violence, virulent and vicious racism and anti-Semitism.

It is with that context established that I must offer a brief comment on a statement offered this weekend at a clash between supporters of the KKK and the Black Panthers, who gathered in front of the South Carolina state capitol to protest the taking down of the Confederate flag. The flag came down as a response to the heinous murders of nine African-Americans at a church in Charleston, S.C., by a white gunman. A young man is accused of the crime.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/19/us/south-carolina-kkk-black-panther-rally/index.html

The KKK and the Panthers rallied today to express different points of view ofĀ the flag.

One comment stands out, at least to me. It came from a Klansman, who told CNN: “The Confederate flag does not represent hate. A lot of Americans died for that flag,”

Ah, yes. It “does not represent hate.”

Back to my question about the Klan: What words come to mind when you hear the term?

I’ve actually covered a couple of Klan rallies. Both were in Texas; one in Orange and one in Amarillo. They took place to protest government policies that helped African-Americans. What was the predominant symbol seen at both rallies? The Confederate battle flag.

Let’s recall — if we need reminding — that the Klan has a long and infamous history of violence toward blacks and Jews. Lynching? Shootings? Arson? Cross-burnings?

And they have performed these acts while standing next to or under the Confederate battle flag. They’ve wrapped themselves in that banner. They proclaimed proudly that they stand for what the flag stands for. And that would be … ?

The Klansman is right about one element of his statement. A “lot of Americans” did die for the flag. He didn’t say, apparently, that they fought on the side that sought to tear the country apart. Why was that? Because they fought that that euphemistic principle of “states’ rights,” which was to allow states to continueĀ the practice of slavery.

So, let’s quit slinging the horse manure around on this issue.

national news

Heritage? OK, let’s talk about it

1 Comment

All this talk about the Confederate battle flag has ignited a side discussion.

It deals with “heritage.”

There are those who contend that the battle flag doesn’t symbolize hatred, bigotry and enslavement. It symbolized people’s “heritage.” They say it’s a historical symbol that embodies a region’s pride.

Interesting, don’t you think?

The South Carolina Legislature’s decision to strike the flag from the statehouse grounds was a welcomed event to many of us. I cheer the fact that the flag is now down. It was put there to protest the Voting Rights Act of the 1960s.

The flag, of course, is displayed prominently at Ku Klux Klan rallies. I don’t need to remind you what the KKK stands for.

Heritage? Do we want to look at other elements of our nation’s heritage? Do we want to salute these chapters?

* Our heritage denied women the right to vote from the founding of the Republic until 1920. Do we celebrate that denial?

* U.S. heritage also contains the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during much of World War II after the Roosevelt administration decided it couldn’t trust these Americans to be loyal to their country. Hey, let’s celebrate that event, too.

* Native Americans had their land taken from them as settlers marched westward in their conquest of our continent. Oh, andĀ those settlersĀ slaughtered millions of head of bison along the way. Let’sĀ honor that, too.

The word “heritage” has become almost a throw-away line in the discussion about the Confederate battle flag.

The flag that’s been part of this discussion flew over the Army of Northern Virginia, which fought with other Confederate forces to tear apart the United States of America. The Confederates State of America sought to form a new nation and sought to preserve the right of human beings to own fellow human beings.

That’s the heritage some Americans want to honor?

No thank you.

national news, political news

Scalise needed to be in Selma

If there was one member of the congressional leadership team who needed to be in Selma to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, it was Louisiana U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise.

He should have been there. He should have sought to make amends for a significant error in judgment some years ago, before he became a Republican member of the House of Representatives.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/steve-scalise-skip-selma-march-conference-116232.html?hp=lc3_4

Scalise had the bad taste in 2006, prior to his election to Congress, to accept a speaking engagement before a group founded by noted Ku Klux Klan grand lizard David Duke.

Scalise, who’s now the House majority whip, has since expressed regret over attending the Duke-sponsored event.

Where was he the day of the Selma commemoration? He was in Sea Island, Ga., attending an American Enterprise Institute conference, along with some other key conservative thinkers and politicians.

One of them attending the AEI event was House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who also took time to attend the rally on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

McCarthy was one of a handful of key Republican politicians to attend the Selma event; another key Republican in Selma was the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush, who was there with his wife, Laura.

Scalise, who still has some damage to repair from the fallout from his David Duke speech all those years ago, missed a chance to demonstrate that he really doesn’t subscribe to the views held by the KKK.

 

International news

Why the masks, terrorists?

1 Comment

The thought keeps occurring to me: Why do terrorists keep covering their faces when they make these videos intended for international distribution?

Have you ever wondered?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-isis-threatens-europe/ar-BBhZurk

The picture on the link here shows an Islamic State goon waving a knife at the camera. All you see are this fellow’s eyes. Why don’t they show themselves to the public? Why don’t they reveal their identity?

Is it because:

* They believe what they’re doing is wrong?

* They don’t want international cops, spooks, commandos, anti-terror analysts to identify them?

* They’re cowards?

Maybe it’s all of the above. I’m going with the coward angle, kind of like the way the Ku Klux Klan goons cover their faces under hoods.

Terrorists don’t comprehend that they commit criminal acts when they behead innocent victims. They don’t seem to have any understanding of “right” and “wrong” the way you and I do. They’ve perverted every single principle, concept and tenetĀ under which civilized human beings live.

They’re surely hiding from the good guys, which might imply they know what they’re doing is wrong. I believe it’s more akin to the last part. They don’t want to get caught because they’re afraid of the consequence they’ll face.

Fear. Cowardice. Get it?

Some of them have deserted from military organizations in their home country, usually somewhere in the Middle East, to join forces with ISIL, Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda … whatever. They’re hiding their faces from their former military commanders.

In the end, though, it all seems to smack of cowardly acts. Just as lynchings were the acts of cowards in the United States a century ago, these terrorists have zero sense of honor and courage.

 

national news, Uncategorized

Racial issue gets in GOP's way once more

That darn issue of race relations has just bitten the Republican congressional leadership right in the backside.

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

GOP closes ranks around Scalise

GOP House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., spoke to a white supremacist group in 2002. The group was founded by a fellow Louisianan, one-time Ku Klux Klan grand dragon/wizard/potentate/medicine man David Duke.

Scalise says now he “regrets” his “error in judgment.” He condemns the views of “groups like that.”

Hey, it was a dozen years ago. No harm done now, right? He spoke six years before entering Congress.

Should he quit his leadership post? Should the congressman quit his House seat? I’m not going there until we know more about what he said and the nature of the invitation.

It does kind of remind me of what happened when former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., had the poor judgment to say something kind about the late Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential campaign. That was when ol’ Strom broke away from the Democratic Party — of which he was a member back then — to run for the White House as a Dixiecrat. He was a segregationist back then — and proud of it, too! He just didn’t like mixing with black people — even though, as we would learn later, he mixed it big time with an African-American woman, with whom he produced a daughter.

Lott said this about Strom: ā€œWhen Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

Oh, brother. That got Lott into some serious trouble. Lott stepped down as majority leader.

Two questions: Did the invitation to Scalise come from a group — the EURO Conference — identified easily as a white supremacist organization? And did he know ofĀ Klansman David Duke’s association with it?

The deal-breaker well might be the Duke involvement. Let’s come clean, shall we?

 

 

political news, Uncategorized

This story went untold: Edwin Edwards's loss

While most of the U.S. political press was fixated on the U.S. Senate race in Louisiana, another contest ended and virtually no one cared about its conclusion.

Except me.

The Sixth Congressional District race featured a contest between RepublicanĀ Garret Graves and Democrat Edwin Edwards. Yes, that Edwin Edwards. The former governor and former prison inmate.

He once was the state’s governor and served also in Congress, representing the state’s Seventh District. Edwards also was, shall we say, one of the more colorful politicians ever to serve Louisiana, a state known for colorful pols. Huey Long might have written the book on political flamboyance, but ol’ Cajun Edwin wrote a chapter, maybe two, in that book.

Edwards wasn’t your run-of-the-mill character. He was proud of the trouble he kept finding. Edwards once said (reportedly) that the only way he’d ever lose an election was to be caught frolicking with a “dead girl or a live boy.” (Maybe it was the other way around, but you get the idea.) Another quote attributed to Edwards is that Louisianans “don’t expect their politicians to be crooked, they demand it of them.”

I had the pleasure of watching his 1991 campaign for Louisiana governor against Ku Klux Klansman David Duke, who was the Republican nominee that year. I attended a couple of political events in southwestern Louisiana back when I was working for the Beaumont Enterprise. Edwards crushed Duke that year in a landslide.

Seven years later, he was indicted and then convicted of several counts of racketeering, mail fraud, extortion and money laundering. He spent two years in a federal lockup in Fort Worth. Yeah, he’s a prince of a guy.

Well, he wanted back into public life. He’s 80-plus years old now, a bit past his prime, no doubt.

I was pulling for him to score an upset. If nothing else, the House of Representatives could use a little proverbial color in its ranks. Edwards would have provided it — and then some.

 

 

Uncategorized

Treat Klan as terrorists

A Northeastern University professor has put forward a provocative notion: Perhaps the U.S. government should include the Ku Klux Klan as an enemy in its war against terrorism.

Why not, indeed.

Max Abrahms, a political science professor and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, took on the KKK-terrorist issue in a column on Politico.com. He writes:

“There is still no consensus over the definition, but terrorism usually denotes a nonstate actor attacking civilian targets to spread fear for some putative political goal. And here we had a 73-year-old lone wolf opening fire on a Jewish community center and retirement home on Passover eve yelling ‘Heil Hitler.’ā€

The “here” involved the killing of three people on Passover eve in Overland Park, Kan. Police arrested a known Klan leader and virulent anti-Semite. Granted, the suspect hasn’t been convicted of anything — at least not yet — but he seems to many observers to be acting like someone who is guilty of killing those three innocent victims.

Let’s suppose, though, the Klan leader-suspect had nothing to do with it, does the Klan’s violent history make it any less of a candidate as a terrorist organization? Hardly.

Back to Abrahms’s point …

“But what does it take for a hateful act to become a full-fledged terrorist attack? You might think the distinction hinges on lethality. A year ago this week, though, the Boston Marathon bombings killed the same number of bystanders, and Americans had little trouble fingering the incident as terrorism. And over the years, the Klan has killed many more Americans than has Al Qaeda, and the group has certainly fanned its share of fear,” he writes.

Do we launch drone strikes in the back woods of some remote region in the country where KKK members are known to plot their dirty deeds? Of course not. The Klan and other domestic hate groups, though, do “terrorize” citizens with their threats and their actions.

Why not call them what they are and then act as if we’re at war with them?

Abrahms’s full essay is here. Take a look.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/04/the-kkk-is-a-terrorist-organization-105717.html?hp=r2#.U05gB1JOWt8

Uncategorized

Edwin Edwards making a comeback?

Awesome news is trickling out way over yonder in Louisiana.

It’s that former Gov. Edwin Edwards is thinking of making a political comeback. The formerly disgraced Democratic governor, who’s now 86 years of age, might run for a congressional seat that will be vacated when the incumbent runs this year against U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/194323-report-former-gov-edwin-edwards-considers-run-for-congress

The incumbent is a Republican, Bill Cassidy. He’ll run against Landrieu, meaning that his seat automatically becomes vacant, as he can’t run for two offices at the same time.

Edwards would create quite a stir were he to win the House seat. He has been convicted of money laundering and racketeering. Edwards has led quite a flamboyant life for as long as anyone can remember.

I had the pleasure of covering a bit of one of Edwards’s re-election campaigns while I was working in Beaumont, just about 25 miles from the Louisiana border. His GOP foe in 1991 was none other than Klansman David Duke. I’d say “former” except that Duke kept talking like an active KKK member as he campaigned around the state. Edwards won easily — thank goodness.

He’s a character of the first order.

I’ve been fond of repeating a quote that’s been attributed to Edwards. I cannot vouch for its accuracy but if he didn’t actually say it, he should have.

It’s that Louisianans don’t “expect their politicians to be corrupt. They demand it of them.”

Were he to win — and given Congress’s abysmal approval rating among Americans, it seems ol’ Cajun Edwin will fit right in.