by Mike Memoli

In his first public comments on the matter, President Obama said that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack "jumped the gun" in seeking the resignation of Shirley Sherrod.

Speaking with ABC News in an interview to be aired Friday, Obama blamed Vilsack's hasty decision on the current media environment.

"He jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles," he said. "I've told my team and I told my agencies that we have to make sure that we're focusing on doing the right thing instead of what looks to be politically necessary at that very moment. We have to take our time and think these issues through."

Press secretary Robert Gibbs has rejected suggestions that Vilsack resign over the matter.

Obama also talked of lessons to be learned from the incident, saying that "rather than us jumping to conclusions and pointing fingers at each other, we should all look inward and try to examine what's in our own hearts and, as a consequence, I think we will continue to make progress."

President Obama has called Shirley Sherrod to express his personal apology over the events of this week. The White House sends this readout:

The President reached Ms. Sherrod by telephone at about 12:35. They spoke for seven minutes.

The President expressed to Ms. Sherrod his regret about the events of the last several days. He emphasized that Secretary Vilsack was sincere in his apology yesterday, and in his work to rid USDA of discrimination.

The President told Ms. Sherrod that this misfortune can present an opportunity for her to continue her hard work on behalf of those in need, and he hopes that she will do so.

by Mike Memoli

The White House has apologized to a former USDA employee it now says was fired before the situation involving controversial videotaped comments was fully reviewed.

"A disservice was done for which we apologize," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday afternoon, saying he spoke for the entire administration.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was attempting to reach the former employee, Shirley Sherrod, to speak further about the matter, Gibbs added. Vilsack said in a statement released overnight that he would reconsider the department's decision to demand Sherrod's resignation.

While apologizing for the White House specifically, Gibbs also said the media and political activists also were culpable for making "determinations and judgments without a full set of facts."

"I don't think there's any doubt that if we all look at this, one of the great lessons we will take away from this is to ask all the questions first," Gibbs said.

by Mike Memoli

President Obama signed into law today what he called the "strongest consumer financial protections in history." The passage of financial reform is considered by the White House to be one of its signature achievements, one that will feature prominently in the midterm election campaign, as Jim Puzzanghera points out.

But as White House press secretary Robert Gibbs prepares to face reporters shortly, one story is sure to dominate his briefing, and it's not the bill signing. The USDA's controversial firing of Shirley Sherrod after a conservative web site released edited video footage of a speech to the NAACP has embroiled the White House in another media firestorm over race.

The problem for the White House is partly of its own making. It initially stood by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's decision to fire Sherrod, but Vilsack reversed course overnight and is now re-evaluating. And the administration is not alone: the NAACP, which initially renounced her speech, later claimed that it had been "snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart."

The larger point is that an administration which routinely criticizes the current media culture seems to have walked into a larger mess because of how it allegedly seemed to be catering to it.

by Mark Silva

As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take the oath of office, most people worry that the nation is losing ground on an array of problems.

The one front on which a majority of Americans believe the nation actually is making progress: Minority discrimination. 53 percent see progress there.

That's a notable exception in a long list of concerns on which most Americans see the nation as losing ground, according to a survey run by the Pew Research Center.

With a federal budget deficit now projected at $1.2 trillion this year, it's little surprise that the greatest majority of those surveyed see the country as losing ground on the deficit: 79 percent.

With unemployment soaring, a similar attitude prevails about job availability: 72 percent say we're losing ground.

Sixty-percent say we're losing ground on the cost of living, 59 percent on the gap between the rich and poor, 56 percent in lowering moral standards, 56 percent in health care, 52 percent in poverty and homelessness, 50 percent in education.

"Notably, the only issue where most people see progress being achieved is no doubt related to Obama's historic election: 53 percent say the country is making progress on discrimination against minorities, compared with just 15 percent who say the country is losing ground, and 28 percent who see little change,'' Pew reports. "During the mid-1990s, far fewer people said progress was being achieved reducing discrimination (40 percent in 1995, 38 percent in 1994).

The survey was conducted Dec. 3-7 among 1,489 adults and carries a possible margin of error of plus or minus three percent - which always makes it possible that a majority of people don't really think we are making progress on that one front (but we'll err on the side of optimism here in the Swamp.)

by Mark Silva

There's no talking about the political and possibly legal showdown between Roland Burris and the Senate's Democratic leaders looming in Congress next week without talking about "the race card.''

"There are no African-Americans in the Senate," says Rep. Bobby Rush (pictured right), a Chicago Democrat and co-founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party. "And I don't think that anyone, any U.S. senator who's sitting in the Senate, right now, want to go on record to deny one African-American from being seated in the U.S. Senate."

That would be Burris, the first black official elected statewide in Illinois (both comptroller and attorney general), and now Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appointee for the vacant Senate seat of President-elect Barack Obama, who was the only African-American member of the Senate.

The Senate's Democratic leaders - with the full backing of Obama himself - vow to block Burris' seating in the Senate - not because of Burris himself, but because of who is appointing him, the Illinois governor who stands accused by federal authorities of attempting to sell Obama's seat to the highest bidder.

Neither Burris nor Obama nor any of the Senate's leaders want to make this a racial issue. But Rush and others stand ready to make that implication.

"I would ask you to not hang or lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer," Rush said Tuesday in promising to lobby congressional leaders vowing not to seat Burris or anyone else appointed by the embattled two-term Democratic governor of Illinois.

This morning on CBS News' The Early Show, Rush suggested that those attacking Blagojevich should "chill.''

"I think what needs ... to happen now is that all these folks who are opposed to Gov. Blagojevich, they need to take a chill pill," Rush said. "We're still a nation of laws and I believe that Roland Burris and Gov. Blagojevich, they're on solid constitutional grounds in terms of ... him being selected. I think the U.S. Senate will have to accept him."

And Burris, appearing this morning on WGN-TV in Chicago, defended Rush's comments and maintained that the South Side congressman is not playing racial politics. Rush, Burris said, is just relating "facts and not playing the race card and not being emotional about it."

Donna Christensen, the congressional delegate to Congress from the Virgin Islands and an African American, had something to say about this today on the radio - on The Takeaway with John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji on WNYC and Public Radio International.

(Rep. Bobby Rush, pictured at the center above, with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, left, and the governor's appointee for the Senate, Roland Burris. (AP Photo by M. Spencer Green)

by Frank James

Well, that didn't take long.

The congressional committee putting together the inauguration earlier this afternoon announced that the program for President-elect Barack Obama's inaugural would include an invocation by Rick Warren, the celebrity preacher at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.

People for the American Way, one of the best known liberal advocacy groups in the nation's capital, is letting it be known it's not happy with this choice.

An excerpt of a PFAW statement attributed to Kathryn Kolbert, the group's president:

It is a grave disappointment to learn that pastor Rick Warren will give the invocation at the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Pastor Warren, while enjoying a reputation as a moderate based on his affable personality and his church's engagement on issues like AIDS in Africa, has said that the real difference between James Dobson and himself is one of tone rather than substance. He has recently compared marriage by loving and committed same-sex couples to incest and pedophilia. He has repeated the Religious Right's big lie that supporters of equality for gay Americans are out to silence pastors. He has called Christians who advance a social gospel Marxists. He is adamantly opposed to women having a legal right to choose an abortion.

This reaction isn't surprising. But for Obama, making a statement about his inclusiveness and willingness to reach across ideological lines is more important than satisfying liberals on every issue as he has shown with his cabinet choices.

In fact, PFAW's reaction may help Obama with some centrist and more conservative voters.

by Frank James

Many people have worried about President-elect Barack Obama's safety since he would be the first African-American president.

While this is obviously a non-trivial concern, modern presidents are hardened targets. The Secret Service is second to none when it comes to protecting leaders in open societies, having learned difficult but important lessons from earlier presidential tragedies.

What concerns me more is all those soft targets out there, African Americans who aren't protected by magnetometers, sharpshooters and serious plain-clothes law enforcement officers listening to the latest update on the president's movements over their earpieces.

Chicago Tribune national correspondent Howard Witt has a report that points to the rising potential for such violence based on the greater flurry activity among hate groups spurred by Obama's election.

An excerpt:

BOGALUSA, La.--Barely three weeks after Americans elected their first black president amid a wave of interracial good feeling, a spasm of noose hangings, racist graffiti, vandalism and death threats is convulsing dozens of towns across the country as white extremists lash out at the new political order.

by Mark Silva

In an election campaign that cast a harsh spotlight on the most "incendiary'' words of President-elect Barack Obama's longtime and former pastor, the first Sunday after the election of the first African-American president brought another focus to the pulpits of black churches from coast to coast.

"At Apostolic Church of God on Chicago's South Side, less than two miles from Obama's home, jubilant Sunday services were peppered with references to the election and calls to be grateful for his victory,'' the Associated Press reports in a survey of Sunday singings of praise for a historic election.
.
"We thank the Lord for this second Sunday (in November) after the first Tuesday," Apostolic's Dr. Byron Brazier said to resounding applause and cheers from the mostly black congregation. "This is a wonderful time to be alive."

Obama, who parted ways with the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and its former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, after Wright's divisive words from the pulpit forced the presidential candidate to sever ties with a longtime mentor, had spoken at Apostolic on Father's Day, in his first address to a congregation after leaving Trinity.

See what other pastors across the country had to say to today on this, the first Sunday since a landmark election:

by Mark Silva

"Mutts like me.''

With those words - mouthed about the pound puppies that the Obama family might be looking at in search of a new dog for the White House - Barack Obama has casually reduced the sensitive question of race in America to a simple matter of familiar melting pot dynamics.

"There was something startling, and telling, about hearing his self-description -- particularly in how offhandedly he used it,'' the Associated Press' Alan Fram writes about Obama's casual response to a question about searching for a puppy for his daughters at the first press conference of the president-elect.

"The message seemed clear -- here is a president who will be quite at ease discussing race,'' Fram writes - "a complex issue as unresolved as it is uncomfortable for many to talk about openly. And at a time when whites in the country are not many years from becoming the minority.''

"Our preference would be to get a shelter dog,'' said Obama, explaining that the family will need a hypoallergenic pet because one of his daughters is allergic. "But, obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me. So whether we're going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household.''

Obama, son of a white mother from Kansas and black father from Kenya, will become the nation's first African-American president.

In a nation of Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans and, increasingly, Mexican- and other Latin-Americans, the African-American-elect is suggesting in his own off-handed way that, with the exception of those direct and undiluted descendants from the Mayflower, we are pretty much all in the same boat in America. And it's a pretty big boat at that.

by Margaret Ramirez and Mark Silva

Last night, at Northwestern University, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of President-elect Barack Obama, spoke of the historic struggles of African-Americans, the new president and the challenges that remain.

"I come here today, three days after the incredibly powerful election of the nation's first African-American president," Wright told a cheering crowd. "We need to teach our children to take everything ... that we learn here, take it out there.''

But the day before, in Connecticut, Wright was talking about his own unwitting role in the campaign that led to Obama's historic election: "Weapon of mass destruction.''

Speaking at a forum about race and religion, Wright accused the media of taking out of context videos which showed him cursing the government and accusing it of conspiring against blacks from the pulpit of the Chicago church where Obama had worshipped for 20 years, the Trinity United Church of Christ. The videos, showing Wright's thundering "God damn America!", dominated cable television for weeks. Obama was forced to severe ties with the pastor.

Wright told an audience of about 200 at a church in Milford, Conn.that he was trying to convey the anger and desire for vengeance that people felt after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He said the media failed to mention that he was a proud Christian.

"Their intention was to use me as a weapon of mass destruction, to tear down that man's integrity,'' he said of the way his words were used against Obama.

The campaign of Republican Sen. John McCain did not deploy Wright as a "weapon'' in its contest with Obama, but an independent group did replay Wright's words, questioning Obama as "too risky,'' in TV ads near the close of the campaign. .

Friday night, at Cahn Auditorium at Northwestern, at an event hosted by the university's Black Student Alliance, Wright did not comment on Obama's departure from the church where he had worshipped for 20 years and where Wright has retired as pastor, though some close to Wright have said he was wounded by the separation.

by Frank James (see end of post for 8:15 pm ET update)

We don't know more than what the Associated Press and others are reporting about an alleged neo-Nazi skinhead plot fo kill Sen. Barack Obama and scores of everyday African-Americans.

But while this information is sad, disgusting and infuriating, it's not surprising.

Here's what AP is reporting:

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

In court records unsealed Monday, federal agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target a predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads. Agents said the skinheads did not identify the school by name.

By John L. Micek

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Veteran Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha ventured into a political minefield last week by saying there was ''no question'' that western Pennsylvania is a ''racist area'' and that older voters might be slower to support Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

''I think Obama is going to win, but I don't think it's going to be a runaway,'' Murtha, of Johnstown, told the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. ''I think he wins Pennsylvania.''

Murtha's remarks, which echoed those made earlier by Gov. Ed Rendell, provoked an uproar online and thrust the issue of race and the campaign front and center once more.

Within 24 hours, Murtha issued an apology, noting that ''while we cannot deny that race is a factor in this election, I believe we've been able to look beyond race these past few months.''

Yet on Tuesday, Democratic Bucks County Commissioner Diane Marseglia said, ''I think that racism could still be a factor.''

But were Rendell, who in February suggested some Pennsylvanians might have a hard time voting for a black candidate, and Murtha and Marseglia committing the textbook definition of a political gaffe? In other words, did their comments reveal the truth -- or at least a truth -- about Pennsylvania voters?

No, Pennsylvanians are no more or less racist than people in other parts of the country, say state pollsters, who spend their days examining the thinking of various demographic groups. ''I understand that politicians have to be careful not to offend, but what is so radical about the concept?'' asked Christopher Borick of Muhlenberg College in Allentown. ''The simple reality is that race matters. It is an undeniable reality in our society.''

See the rest of the report on race in today's Morning Call, a Tribune Co. newspaper.

by Frank James

You have to wonder why someone would do something with indisputably racist overtones and then deny it was racist.

But that's what a woman in a Southern California Republican club has done. A certain Diane Fedele, the club's president, says the images on the "Obama Food Stamp" illustration she reproduced in the group's newsletter -- including watermelon and fried chicken -- didn't strike her as racist. We assume she said this with a straight face.

Here's some reporting from the LA Times' L.A. Now blog:

"If I was racist, I would have looked at it through racist eyes," she said. "I am not racist, which is why it probably didn't register."

She's known Fedele a long time and is shocked by the newsletter.

"If I was racist..." That kind of sounds like O.J. Simpson's aborted book "If I Did It."

Here's a news report by KTLA.

by Frank James

Randall Kennedy, a Harvard University law professor, an African American and an Obama supporter (many will see that as redundant) has a really honest piece in the Washington Post in which he ruminates about his potential response should the Democratic presidential nominee loses.

If Obama loses, I personally will feel disappointed, frustrated, hurt. I'll conclude that a fabulous opportunity has been lost. I'll believe that American voters have made a huge mistake. And I'll think that an important ingredient of their error is racial prejudice -- not the hateful, snarling, open bigotry that terrorized my parents in their youth, but rather a vague, sophisticated, low-key prejudice that is chameleonlike in its ability to adapt to new surroundings and to hide even from those firmly in its grip.

I hope that I'll take to heart the wisdom offered by two of my students. "Obama losing," one wrote, "would be hurtful, but it still spells substantial progress. . . . Change WILL come -- the wheels have been set in motion." Declared the second: "Sometimes you have to believe in the change before it comes (and in the face of its apparent defeat) for the change to be possible."

Delegates at the Republican National Convention the Xcel Energy Center on Paul, Minnesota. U.S. Sen. John McCain will accept The GOP nomination for U.S. President Thursday night. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

by Frank James

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Several news outlets covering the Republican National Convention this week wrote about the lack of African-American delegates here thanks to the Joint Center for Economic and Political Studies which issued a report at the start of the week about the relative paucity of blacks.

The study painted a pretty bleak picture of the situation in the Republican Party so far as black participation is concerned, a problem readily apparent anytime you stroll through the convention hall.

According to the study:

The 36 black delegates to the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul is the lowest total in 40 years for a Republican National Convention. These delegates represent 1.5 percent of the total number of delegates, substantially below the record setting 6.7 percent in 2004. The 36 black delegates in 2008 represent an 78.4 percent decline over the 167 black delegates at the 2004 convention. There are 36 black alternates to the Republican Convention in 2008, down substantially from 124 in 2004 (71.0 percent decline), and 76 alternates in 2000. The following salient facts are worth special attention:

There is only African American with a prime speaking role at the 2008 Republican National Convention is former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steel. Joint Center tallies show one black member on the RNC Credentials Committee.

It was Steele who set off what had to be one of the weirdest racially "colored" moments at any Republican convention. In his speech last night, he spoke of the necessity of exploiting domestic supplies of energy to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil:

So, do you want to put your country first? Then let's reduce our dependency on foreign sources of oil and promote oil and gas production at home.

In other words, drill baby drill!

by Rick Pearson

DENVER--An African-American woman who is an Illinois delegate for Sen. Hillary Clinton maintained today that Senate President Emil Jones, a mentor of Sen. Barack Obama, called her an "Uncle Tom" at the Illinois hotel for the Democratic National Convention.

Earlier today, Jones, a veteran African-American legislator who is resigning at the end of his term in January, denied using the racial slur and said he referred to Clinton delegate Delmarie Cobb as among the "Doubting Thomases" who should embrace Obama's candidacy as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

"Clearly that's not what he said," Cobb said, adding that Jones shouted the slur to her across the lobby of the Marriott hotel the delegation is staying at on Saturday night.

"When I went back to him and asked what he said--I said, 'Excuse me, what did you say?--he grabbed me by the shoulders and laughed," she said. "He didn't say anything. I asked, 'Did you call me an Uncle Tom?' He never said anything. At that point, I proceeded to call him a few things. Then I walked away."

Cobb said the comments from Jones reflect the pressures that have been placed on African-American women who backed Clinton's candidacy against Obama in the extended Democratic primary season.

"There's this feeling out here that we've somehow betrayed the race," Cobb said. "The attitude (from Obama supporters) is that they're going to beat you into submission and make you admit you were wrong for supporting Hillary."

She said, as she did in the 1988 contest, she evaluated which candidate had the best record for advancing the causes of African Americans. A decade ago, she said, it was Rev. Jesse Jackson.

by Jason George

DENVER -- What's the subject of Denver's newest art show?

Sen. Barack Obama, of course.

Obama appears in almost all of the artwork at this week's Manifest Hope Gallery, just 2 miles from the site of the Democratic National Convention. About 125 artists from across the U.S. have pieces on display: There's Obama as Abraham Lincoln. There's Technicolor Obama. There are portraits of the candidate as a young man.

"The show's really about five themes -- hope, change, unity, progress and patriotism -- but Obama is pretty much throughout," said Yosi Sergant, a show co-producer. "The artists kind of see him as a symbol of change itself -- he looks like 'change.' "

Ray Noland of Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood has employed Obama themes in his art since 2006, but witnessing all the other artists' work in Denver left him nearly speechless Sunday.

"It's amazing to see such collaboration," he said, as he stood beside pieces such as Obama-painted sneakers and "Yes We Can" cheerleading outfits.

Noland, aka CRO, whose paintings and posters often deal with Obama and race, said he came to his muse as a supporter and an African-American, but his work's purpose has expanded.

"It's grown really to try to record what's happening in this country," he said. "I am really trying to document this moment in time."

Details on the event, which runs through Friday, can be found here.

by Frank James

Earlier this week it was David Brooks in the New York Times's pages who dismissed the importance of skin color, and all the baggage that comes with, in the closeness of the presidential contest.

Today it's Michael Gerson, President Bush's former speech writer, now a Washington Post columnist, who while not exactly saying race isn't an issue as Senators Barack Obama and John McCain vie for the White House, says it may be eventually overwhelmed by other factors, like the youth vote:

For some, the answer -- or at least part of the answer -- is simple: because Obama doesn't look like the presidents on American currency. But race in America is anything but simple, and polls seem powerless to measure its political influence. There is clearly an undercurrent of prejudice in parts of the electorate, evident even among some Democratic primary voters. There is also massive enthusiasm among younger voters to break the color barrier in the Oval Office, coupled with large increases in African American primary turnout. These unpredictable factors may well balance in Obama's favor, which would speak well of the country.

There are explanations enough for a close presidential race without recourse to race.

Gerson is right of course. There are other reasons that help explain the closeness of the race between Obama and McCain. The nation is generally centrist with a rightward drift, Gerson says, which could help account for why Obama, who is center-left, isn't breaking away from McCain in the polls in what should be a Democratic year.

He also mentions that Sen. Obama may be hard to get a handle on since he's has shifted positions on a number of issues as he's gone from primary to general-election mode which typically requires moving to the political center.

Such factors suggest one thing, that if Obama should eventually lose, it will be hard if not impossible to assign his loss to race since these other issues may play as large a role as race.

To be able to say that shows clearly how much the national mood on race has changed in even the past 20 years. It's hard to imagine that two decades ago it would have been possible to say, if an African-American candidate lost a contest in which the political environment favored his party, that factors other than race played as much, if not a larger role, than race.

As Gerson says, race is anything but simple and in the Obama-McCain matchup that's most assuredly true. As some observers have noted, Obama has been helped by his race.

Clearly, there are millions of white Americans and Americans of other hues who would like to see an African-American in the White House because of the grand statement that would make to ourselves and the world beyond.

Cohen, left, celebrates with his co-campaign manager Randy Wade. (AP Photo/The Commercial Appeal, Mark Weber)

by Frank James

In Memphis, Rep. Steve Cohen, a white Democrat, won a decisive primary victory over Nikki Tinker, a black lawyer, in a congressional district that is 60 percent African-American.

Call it a victory for incumbency or a demonstration that African-Americans don't always vote for the candidate who have the most melanin in his or her skin, Cohen picked up 79 percent of the vote versus 19 percent for Tinker. Talk about your thumpings.

Here's a snippet from today's Memphis Commercial Appeal with a Cohen quote:

Cohen won 79 percent of the vote, greatly expanding his base of support from the 2006 Democratic Primary he had won with 31 percent of the vote on a very crowded ballot. Nikki Tinker polled only 19 percent (she got 25 percent in 2006).

Cohen, 59, is virtually assured of re-election, though his campaign does move to the November general election, with independent candidates Jake Ford, Dewey Clark and Mary Taylor Shelby Wright on the ballot. In 2006, Cohen easily defeated Ford, the brother of former 9th District representative Harold Ford Jr. and son of former representative Harold Ford Sr., drawing 60 percent of the vote to Ford's 18 percent.

This race was marked by fairly blatant racial appeals from both Cohen and Tinker. Cohen introduced legislation which passed the House that would have the U.S. officially apologize for slavery.

For her part, Tinker ran an ad in which showed video of marching Klansmen and a picture of Cohen who she accused of once voting against a bill that would have changed the name of a Memphis park so it no longer honored on of the Ku Klux Klan's founders.

by Rick Pearson

RACINE, Wis.--Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain's campaign accused Democratic rival Barack Obama of injecting "the race card" into the presidential contest on Thursday, further spiraling the negativity over the fight for the White House.

With the Arizona senator campaigning in Wisconsin, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, accused Obama, an African-American senator from Illinois, of bringing race into the contest during comments the Democrat made during visits on Wednesday in Missouri.

"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong," Davis said in a statement.

Specifically, McCain's campaign cited remarks that Obama made in which he accused the Republicans of trying to make the public "scared" and portray him as "risky."

"You know, he's not patriotic enough," Obama said, according to a transcript cited by the McCain camp. "He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He's risky. That's essentially the argument they're making."

The McCain campaign has ratcheted up the heat of the campaign in recent days through an intensifying rhetoric and TV ads critical criticizing Obama and likening him to a celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears, prompting the Democrat to ridicule McCain's effort and question whether that's all the Republican have to offer.

by Matthew Hay Brown

One hundred and forty-three years after the Civil War, and forty-four years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lawmakers are poised tonight to apologize for slavery and racial segregation under Jim Crow.

Introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen, a white Tennessee Democrat facing a party primary with a strong African-American challenger during his first term in a majority-black district, House Resolution 194 would amount to the first apology for slavery issued by a branch of the federal government.

The legislation, which is expected to pass this evening as one item on a longer list of non-controversial bills, makes no mention of the more contentious issue of reparations. Rep. Carolyn C. Kilpatrick, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, called it "a milestone in our nation's efforts to remedy the ills of our past."

"We must now continue our efforts to free African Americans from the shackles of inferior education, inadequate health care, and lack of jobs," the Michigan Democrat said.

Cohen, a liberal Democrat, had expressed interested in becoming the first white member of the Congressional Black Caucus when he arrived in Washington last year, but subsequently backed away from the idea.

by Paul West

This year's election promises to be one of the great experiments in U.S. history.

Is the country ready for an African American president? No one knows for sure. It's increasingly clear, though, that the '08 vote will be a referendum on the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas.

Inevitably, racial attitudes are going to influence that choice. But there is growing evidence that race is losing its potency as a determining factor in U.S. politics.

Some of it comes from a pair of statewide elections in 2006. Both featured breakthrough tries by black Democrats who, in effect, were trailblazers for Barack
Obama. And top Obama strategists were involved in each one.

by Frank James

It's doubtful Sen. John McCain won over many African-American voters today with his appearance before the NAACP convention.

Sen. Barack Obama pretty much has upwards of 90 percent of the black vote sewn up if only because, number one, he's the all-but-official Democratic nominee and blacks are overwhelmingly Democrats, number two, he's African-American and number three, millions of black Americans never thought they'd live to see the historical moment when they'd get the chance to vote for a major party presidential nominee who happened to be black.

But McCain surely will get points from some black people for appearing before the convention and engaging participants afterwards by answering a few questions. President Bush stiffed the NAACP for much of his presidency, so McCain succeeded to a large extent by merely showing up.

It wasn't the first time he's appeared before a mostly black audience not predisposed to him. For instance, earlier this year McCain visited the Lorraine Motel Civil Rights Museum in Memphis to mark the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

For Obama to appear at an analogous event, one where his supporters would be outnumbered by McCain supporters by several factors, he'd probably have to speak before the National Rifle Association convention or a Family Research Council gathering. That would be something to see.

As far as the speech itself, which was received respectfully, and got a few intentional laughs at points. It went pretty much as expected. McCain wisely acknowledged the historic nature of Obama's achievement, a very important watershed to his audience:

Senator Obama talks about making history, and he's made quite a bit of it already. And the way was prepared by this venerable organization and others like it. A few years before the NAACP was founded, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the nomination of an African-American to be the presidential nominee of his party. Whatever the outcome in November, Senator Obama has achieved a great thing -- for himself and for his country -- and I thank him for it.

by Frank James

Voters, especially Democrats, are more interested in the coming presidential election than they've been in two decades, a trend that could significantly boost turnout and give Sen. Barack Obama a big advantage over Sen. John McCain, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Another finding from the Pew poll that could augur well for Obama is that voter engagement was especially high among younger voters under 50, exactly that voter group Obama is counting on to turn out in large numbers for him.

The Obama campaign is hoping for historic levels of turnout amoung voters on the young end of the age scale in particular, voters who in past elections have typically not shown up at the polls the way older voters have. The poll suggests that such voters are psyched for Obama. The question, of course, is whether they'll stay excited about Obama all the way to the election booth.

Here's yet another interesting result: despite the good news for Obama, there was bad news for him too. Democrats weren't as unified behind him as Republicans were behind McCain. But what Obama lacked in party unity he made up for in enthusiam, an area that was a McCain weakness.

And here's why both candidates are taking such pains currently to move towards the center of the political spectrum: Pew's results suggest there exists a substantial pool of undecided swing voters out there yet to be won over.

Here's a summary from Pew:

The outlook for the presidential election at mid-year is substantially different than at comparable points in time in recent campaigns. First, turnout is likely to be higher this fall - perhaps much higher than in previous elections - as voter interest continues at record levels. Second, as has been the case since the start of the campaign, Democrats enjoy a substantial engagement advantage over Republicans that may significantly alter the composition of the November electorate.

by Clarence Page

A WARNING TO UNDER-AGED READERS:

Now that I've got your attention...

This has to be some sort of new speed record. The Rev. Jesse Jackson has issued an apology this afternoon for a story that has not even been reported yet.

"For any harm or hurt that this hot mic private conversation may have caused, I apologize," the statement from the Operation Push president begins. "My support for Senator (Barack) Obama's campaign is wide, deep and unequivocal. I cherish this redemptive and historical moment...."

Oh? What "hot mic," as in "microphone" conversation about Obama is Jackson talking about?

Well, Swamp fans, as Jackson explained to me by telephone, his remarks occurred during an off-air moment during a Fox News Channel interview that aired Sunday.

Jackson didn't realize that the mics were still "hot," as in turned on and recording when he made a few off-the-cuff remarks about Obama's faith-based programs.

Bill O'Reilly has the story and plans to report it on his Fox program, "The O'Reilly Factor" tonight.

Even though O'Reilly has booked me and another guest to respond to the video, he is withholding a full transcript or recording of Jackson's remarks even from me until the program airs.

So far I have only been told by a producer that Jackson criticizes Obama's proposed faith-based programs for "talking down to black people."

And (A warning here to younger or more sensitive readers) Jackson also says something about how the senator was "going to get his (twin objects of male anatomy) cut off."

Jackson, who recalled his remark as, "The senator is cutting off his you-know-what with black people," expressed deep regrets for saying it, even in what he thought was a "private conversation."

"I want to be clear," Jackson said. "My support for Barack Obama is unequivocal. I apologize to Barack and the Obama campaign for my crude and hurtful comments."

The full text of Jackson's apology follows:

by Don Frederick

A year in which Barack Obama heads the Democratic national ticket is not a year in which the party's decades-old lock on the black vote will show any signs of loosening.

Indeed, a recent Associated Press story noted that because of the precedent-shattering nature of Obama's candidacy, even some well-known African American voices from the right were thinking twice about what they would do with their secret ballot.

Commentator Armstrong Williams said of Obama: "I don't necessarily like his policies; I don't like much that he advocates, but for the first time in my life, history thrusts me to really seriously think about" voting for a Democrat for president. "I can honestly say I have no idea who I'm going to pull that lever for in November. And to me, that's incredible."

Also on the fence, according to the story, is J.C. Watts, the former House member from Oklahoma who for years -- in virtually every story that quoted him -- would at some point be identified as "the sole black Republican member of Congress."

Against this backdrop, the surprise in November will be if Obama fails to better the high mark for black support that exit polls found was hit by two Democratic presidential candidates -- 90 percent, posted by Walter Mondale in 1984 and equaled by Al Gore in 2000 (John Kerry came close four years ago, winning 88 percent).

But also against this backdrop, it is worth noting a small milestone for a black GOP politician that occurred last week in South Carolina.

Tim Scott, a businessman who also chairs the Charleston County Council, won his party's nomination for a seat in the state's House of Representatives. He faces no Democratic opposition in the general election, setting the stage for him to become the first black Republican to serve in South Carolina's Legislature since Reconstruction ended in 1877.

In writing about Scott's achievement, the State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., reported that when Scott takes office, South Carolina will be "on par with Georgia" as the only Deep South state where the ranks of state legislators include black Republicans.

Don Frederick, a political editor in the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau, wrote fhis for Top of the Ticket, the L.A. Times political blog.

Andrew Zajac

The WaPo has an interesting story tracing Barack Obama's path to the Democratic presidential nomination back to John Mercer Langston, by most accounts the first black man to hold elective office when he was voted in as Brownhelm Township clerk in northern Ohio in 1855.

Langston was educated a few miles away, at Oberlin College, which calls to mind another aspect of race and politics in the U.S., the Republican Party's departure from its roots as the party of Lincoln.

Until the 1970s, the area around Oberlin was heavily influenced by the GOP, reflective at least in part of the town's, college's and the party's origins intertwined with abolitionism.

For example, Republican Albert Baumhart represented the area in Congress for three terms until 1961, when he was succeeded by anther Republican Charles Mosher who served 16 years until 1977.

These were not lightweights either. Baumhart was director of the Republican National Committee in the early 1950s and Mosher was a player on science issues and an early advocate of solar energy.

But Mosher, an early opponent of the Vietnam War, was no social conservative of the sort who dominate the GOP today.

There once was a whole wing of the Republican Party filled with social moderates and liberals. Today they are about as plentiful as ivory-billed woodpeckers and the party's agenda has not had the same place for certain social issues, like civil rights, that it once did.

Some of this was by design, of course, part of the GOP's "southern strategy."

Since Mosher gave up his seat in 1977, it's been held by Democrats Donald Pease, Sherrod Brown and Betty Sutton.

The town of Oberlin, dominated by the college, is liberal. But much of the rest of the 113th district, not so much. It's got a lot of farmers and factory workers worried about trade policy and job outsourcing. The GOP has had a tough time crafting an economic message that addresses those voters' feelings of insecurity.

by Frank James

When you watch the Democratic National Convention this summer and see the diverse ocean of faces, keep in mind that the diversity you're witnessing didn't happen by accident.

Instead, it will be the result, in substantial measure, of a very strong affirmative action program within the Democratic Party which at times seems virtually indistinguishable from the use of quotas.

This comes through in an informative Wall Street Journal story by June Kronholz about the other campaign going on in the Democratic Party currently, the effort many people have undertaken to become delegates to the party's national convention in Denver.

The story explains how some candidates for delegate spots host parties at restaurants, bake cookies or produce campaign videos for cell phones in order to win a delegate position. It also explains how various state party organizations go about filling their delegations.

But here's a key passage that speaks to the use of what many would view as quotas.

The states and parties have different ways of filling those seats. Some, like Pennsylvania, put delegates' names on the primary ballot. Party central committees name some delegates in others. But for Washington state's Mr. (Jody) Rodgers, for example, the road to Denver began at a Feb. 9 caucus at his West Seattle elementary school. There, his neighbors elected him an Obama delegate to Seattle's 34th Legislative District convention, which in turn elected him an Obama delegate to the state's 7th Congressional District convention.

The odds are long: The party's big-tent diversity goals reserve six of Washington's convention seats for blacks, 10 for Hispanics, and others for Asian, American-Indian, young, disabled, and gay, lesbian and transgendered Democrats. Any diversity seats that haven't been filled at the congressional-district meeting will be plugged at the state convention.

by David Nitkin

Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele entered the race for U.S. Senate two years ago with a major push from President Bush and his allies.

National Republican leaders were looking to build their party's brand identity among African-Americans, touting Steele, Lynn Swann of Pennsylvania and Ken Blackwell of Ohio as part of a new breed of candidates who would help expand the GOP tent.

It was a tough sell in a post-Katrina environment. All three lost; Steele was defeated by Democrat Ben Cardin.

But Steele continues to stay near the spotlight, partly with help from his friends on Pennsylvania Avenue and elsewhere in Washington. Since his defeat, Steele has served as chairman of GOPAC, which recruits and trains Republican candidates for state and local office.

Today, Bush named Steele as part of a seven-member delegation heading to Tanzania next month to participate in a summit on economic and social development in Africa, the Leon H. Sullivan Summit VIII. Leading the delegation will be Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. Read past the jump to see the other members of the delegation.

Steele recently told a Maryland political blog that he's interested in running for governor in 2010, if former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. decides against a rematch with Democratic incumbent Martin O'Malley.

by Mike Dorning

Barack Obama's once-unlikely campaign for the presidency is poised to pass a crucial threshold tonight, winning a majority of the elected delegates to the Democratic National Convention. It's a moment the campaign celebrates as a claim to a popular mandate for his party's nomination, even though Obama still must gain more commitments from elected officials and political insiders who are superdelegates before he can clinch the Democratic nomination.

The history-making campaign of the freshman senator who now seems likely to be the first biracial major-party presidential nominee and first Generation X nominee started not with a campaign rally or a television appearance but with a short video posted on his web site.

From his Internet announcement that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee in January 2007 to the legions of small-dollar donors who have funded a campaign that bested the formidable fundraising machine of a former president and first lady, the Internet has figured powerfully in each step of Obama's presidential campaign in much the same way that the then-new medium of television helped propel John F. Kennedy to the presidency in 1960.

Here, then, are a few of the most memorable Internet moments of Barack Obama's bid for the White House.

Some of the best moments:

1. "Yes We Can" video by will.i.am generates at least 14 million views in several postings on YouTube.

2. The Obama Girl's "I got a crush...on Obama" becomes a pop culture phenomenon.

3. The debut of MyBarackObama.com on the day of his February 2007 official campaign kick-off rally in Springfield, Ill., stirs supporters to create more than a thousand Obama groups on the first day of business.

4. The Obama campaign's first quarterly fundraising total bests Hillary Clinton in cash raised for the primary, in part because of large haul of Internet dollars, foreshadowing a big draw of small-dollar donors over the Internet that will give him financial superiority over the Clinton's well-tested fundraising network.

5. Obama announces his presidential exploratory committee over the Internet on his web site.

6. A video of Obama's full speech on race relations, "A More Perfect Union," is viewed at least 5.5 million times in several postings on YouTube.

Some of the worst Obama Internet moments:

1. Excerpts of incendiary sermons from former Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright are posted on YouTube gaining even greater attention after the clips are aired on television.

2. E-mail campaigns spread false rumors that Obama is a Muslim and unwilling to hold his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.

3. An Obama internet consultant is linked to an unauthorized "mash-up" video portraying Hillary Clinton as 1984's "Big Brother," based on a famous Super Bowl ad for Apple lampooning IBM.

by Frank James

If you look at images of Sen. Barack Obama's campaign appearance at an auto plant in Sterling, Mich. yesterday, the stop where he called a female reporter "sweetie," you'll notice an American flag pin on his lapel.

It's not just happenstance that Obama, who more often than not goes flag pin-less, was wearing it when he visited a job site filled with the kind of voters he has had so much trouble winning, white blue-collar workers.

With many of those voters questioning Obama's patriotism because of false stories bouncing around the Internet, it shouldn't surprise anyone if Obama increasingly showed the flag or, more precisely, the flag pin going forward.

He once explained that right after 9/11 he voted to wear a flag pin before he voted against wearing one, feeling that it was a superficial form of patriotism.

But that was then. He's going to need every vote he can get in swing states, especially if the racial animus in flyover country is as strong as this Washington Post story indicated.

A flag pin on his jacket would at least help take one small but lingering issue off the table. So we'll likely be seeing a lot more of it when he's out in middle America courting this demographic.

Sen. Barack Obama on his campaign plane at Chicago's Midway Airport en-route to Washington DC, May 7, 2008 (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

by Frank James

Now that the Democratic presidential nomination race between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton has pretty much been resolved in the senator from Illinois's favor, at least according to the conventional wisdom in Washington, maybe we're not totally jumping the gun by turning our attention to the general-election campaign.

And what a campaign it promises to be, the first in which a black American, if everything follows the expected trajectory, will become the presidential nominee of one of the U.S. two major political parties.

That fact alone is enough to make many observers nervous about how the next few months could play out. The 2008 general-election campaign may become one of the nastiest in American history, the mother of all race-baiting efforts.

True, the next six months could pleasantly surprise us. There could be relatively few outright racial and racist appeals meant to torpedo Obama's candidacy.

But the history of U.S. political campaigns when one of the candidates is African-American isn't encouraging on this score.

by Whitney Blair Wyckoff

Tony Zirkle, who spoke at an Adolf Hitler birthday party last month on how prostitution and pornography impact white women, came in third place in Indiana's 2nd Congressional District Republican primary yesterday. Fighting prostitution and porn is a major plank in Zirkle's platform.

He has said that he will speak to any group who invites him, but he dodged questions from an Indiana paper asking whether he was a white supremacist sympathizer.

Washington Post columnist Al Kamen has the story:

Tough news last night in the closely watched Republican primary in Indiana's 2nd Congressional District.

Zirkle, whose top campaign issue is opposition to pornography and prostitution, finished a distant third behind Goshen, Ind., businessman and GOP establishment candidate Luke Puckett and Culver, Ind., newspaper delivery man Joseph Roush. Puckett won with 48 percent of the vote; Zirkle drew 16 percent.

Mildred and Richard Loving, January 26, 1965. (AP Photo)

by Frank James

On this day when people in Indiana and North Carolina are choosing between the Democratic candidates for president, one of whom is the offspring of an interracial union, it's mind-boggling to think that just over 40 years ago, marriages like that which produced Sen. Barack Obama were illegal in many states, including North Carolina where voters are going to the polls.

But all that was changed in 1967 because of two quiet and courageous people who fought for their love by fighting an unjust law, Richard and Mildred Loving of Virginia. Their desire to have their marriage recognized in the eyes of the law in native state led them all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws in the nation.

Mildred Jeter Loving, an African-American, died at 68 last week. Her husband was killed in 1975 by a drunken driver. But she and he will forever have a place in history as the Loving family in ironically perfect legal citation Loving v. Virginia.

A humble woman by all accounts, Loving didn't see herself as a hero akin to Rosa Parks. But she and her husband started something that hasn't ended, for champions of same-sex marriage view the Lovings as a model.

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

by Frank James

How much of Sen. Barack Obama's supposed patriotism deficit among voters has to do with his being African-American?

The answer to that is likely an especially difficult if not impossible to reach. How would you disentangle the perceptions of Obama the candidate from Obama the African American?

Still, it's a question worth asking.

What's the evidence that many whites see blacks as less patriotic? The best I can do this morning is a study by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago which, in a poll back in the early 1990s, found that 51 percent of whites held the view that blacks were less patriotic than whites.

Assuming that the trend towards improvement in racial understanding seen since the Second World War continued in the last 17 years, that 51 percent is probably smaller.

Sen. John McCain greets the crowd in Memphis Friday, April 4, 2008 (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer.)

by Frank James

Perhaps being shot down over enemy territory and spending years as a prisoner of war makes Sen. John McCain less intimidated than other politicians at the thought of speaking to unfriendly audiences. After all, what's a little heckling after you've endured years of North Vietnamese tormenters.

That thought crossed my mind as I watched McCain speak last week in Memphis to an African-American crowd gathered outside the Lorraine Motel, the site of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr'.s 1968 assassination.

The venue was certainly well beyond the typical suburban comfort zone of Republican presidential candidates. And it was especially hot spot for McCain who voted against the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, a historic fact that drew boos from some in the audience when he mentioned it.

But there he was.

And as John Dickerson of Slate writes, it's part of a McCain campaign strategy that will find him visiting inner city and poor rural areas, places Republicans usually write off as too Democratic to waste precious campaign time in.

by Frank James

Sen. Barack Obama's church, Trinity United Church of Christ, is fed up and not going to take it anymore. "It" would be the media intrusions that have come with the controversy over the by- now infamous comments of its retired senior pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The church's new lead pastor, Otis Moss III, held a press conference yesterday to make two points. He called for a national conversation about race. And he wanted to read the riot act to some reporters who have gone overboard in the opinion of church members and others, in their pursuit of interviews with Trinity members.

The call for a racial dialogue gave the press conference a more elevated gloss than if it had been merely held for the purpose of telling reporters to cease and desist from bothering church members.

But one got the sense from watching the press conference that the main purpose was to tell the media to back off.

The church is clearly feeling besieged and not just by the media. There have been death threats and other warnings of violence.

But overzealous reporters have been a very real and present annoyance. According to Moss, journalists have tried to conduct interviews during church services. They have accosted members as they've headed into the church.

Some journalists have even actually gone as far as calling church members whose names they found on the sick and shut-in list that appeared in the church bulletin, a list which included the names of people dying in hospices. (Chicago Tribune religion writer Manya Brachear had this very good story about Trinity's sense of having been invaded.)

By Jim Tankersley

Barack Obama's speech in Philadelphia this week and the emotionally charged reactions to it, pro and con, illustrate a hard truth about America circa 2008: We still struggle to talk openly and honestly about race.

Perhaps it's the long and tumultuous history of race relations in this country, from slavery to the civil rights era to the great affirmative action debates of recent decades. Perhaps it's the still-divergent views among Americans of many races of whether we're even close to "equality" in this country. Perhaps it's lingering prejudice. Perhaps it's a nagging worry, from people who believe they harbor no trace of racism, that a stray word could brand them "racist" in the eyes of society.

Whatever the reason, it remains one of the most difficult conversational minefields for Americans to navigate civilly. Just take a look at the Swamp comments section.

Several newspapers examine the issue today in thought-provoking terms.

Tribune reporters Rex W. Huppke, Jodi S. Cohen and Antonio Olivo note that Obama's speech encouraged Americans to break "the racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years." But, they write, "But those in the trenches of racial dialogue know that whatever progress might result won't come fast, or easy. Fruitful conversations require listening without being defensive, identifying common goals that transcend race and having a willingness to be uncomfortable."

In The Oregonian newspaper, the major daily in the state Obama visited at the end of the week, Nikole Hannah-Jones writes today that talk of race "paralyzes. Even here. In progressive Oregon." She goes on to quote a University of Texas professor saying, of Americans, "The way we talk about race is wholly inadequate."

by Frank James

Looking at the reaction of a MediaCurves focus group of 709 viewers to Sen. Barack Obama's race speech in which he took on the issue of his controversial pastor, Rev. Jeremiah C. Wright, it's once again interesting to see the racial divide in how the speech was received. It's the same racial split Obama so deftly described in his speech.

Blacks who took part of the survey had higher levels of agreement with Obama than non-blacks. And Democrats had more favorable impressions of the snippets of the speech they were shown than independents and Republicans.

Watch for the reaction to Obama when he asserts that he never heard his pastor say anything derogatory about specific ethnic groups. Non-black respondents weren't necessarily buying that while blacks did.

That could indicate a real problem for Obama going forward if a lot of voters believe he's being less than candid.

But even Republicans came back to Obama when he said Wright's mistake was that he was blind to the progress that had made on race issues, advances that explained the reality that one of Wright's own members was, indisputably, a serious contender for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, in large part because he had forged a multiracial coalition.

by Frank James

11:57 am: More random thoughts on The Speech. Obama is definitely cool, considering the pressure he was under today. He appeared fairly serene even though most commentators were saying the stakes were no less than the his campaign's continued viability. Does he have sweat glands?

Wouldn't it be great to hear Wright give a sermon in response to the Obama's speech? Would he accept Obama's criticisms that his views are a way over-the-top reaction to real and perceived racism? Or would Wright call Obama a sell-out, a "negro", one of the pastor's preferred terms for blacks who aren't sufficiently black enough to suit him?

Of course, we probably won't be seeing much of Wright for the foreseeable future.

Despite today's speech, Obama is going to have to continue to answer questions about Wright and his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ. He appeared to try to set himself up at the end of today's speech to be able to say "I want to talk about the Big Issues" like the Iraq War and the economy.

But that's not going to fly. He spoke honestly about the issue of race today in a way that is rare for presidential candidates. If he wants voters to believe that he meant what he said, he's going to have to continue to speak honestly about it.

This presents a problem for the Obama campaign. He has run a campaign to date that has meant to transcend the race issue. He has not wanted to be seen as an African American candidate.

But now he is squarely in the middle of the race issue. It was bound to happen. He can't avoid it at this point. So he's going to have to deal with it from here on forward. But as he showed today, talking about race doesn't mean you can't talk about the other big issues.

The legend for the video clip is:

Purple: African Americans
Green: Independents
Blue: Democrats
Red: Republicans

by Frank James

If you want to see a vivid visual portrayal of the perceptual split between blacks and whites, take a look at this focus group of 799 people who were shown video snippets of sermons by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama's pastor.

The reaction of blacks and whites, who looked at the video and showed their agreement or disagreement with Wright by moving their computer mice, diverged from the start and never converged.

Of the survey participants, 48 identified themselves as black while 654 said they were white. There were 65 who said they were Hispanic, 65 who claimed to be Asian and 10 who said they were Native American. (HCD Research Inc., which did the survey, said some participants chose more than one category.)

Using its MediaCurves technology, HCD also got viewers' reactions to Obama's response to questions about his membership at Trinity Church of Christ during a Fox News interview with Major Garrett.

The legend for the video clip is:

Asian/Pacific Islander 44
Black/African American 33
Caucasian (non-Hispanic) 421
Hispanic 28
Native American 7
Other 8

What's interesting in this study is that the curve for African Americans tracks with those for Democrats, Republicans and Independents until Obama says the first he had heard comments like the controversial ones in the YouTube videos circulating on the Internet was relatively recently.

At that points, African Americans clearly give Obama the benefit of the doubt while others, to greater or lesser degrees, find Obama less believable on that count.

by Mark Silva

So much controversy surrounds the church where Barack Obama has worshipped for two decades, the church whose retiring pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has stirred a storm with his words about power in America -- words which Obama himself decried today as "appalling.''

So much of the racial divide that remains in America is reopened with debates over these words, followed by renunciations and demands for even greater repudiation, that it's refreshing to hear some words of common sense rising through clouds of polarizing venom.

These words come from the congregation tonight. As the torch passes at Trinity United Church of Christ -- with the Rev. Wright's retirement and the ascension of the Rev. Otis Moss III, and with Obama repudiating the harshest words of the outgoing pastor while insisting that he and his family will remain as members -- another longtime member writes to the Swamp this evening to offer another perspective on the controversy that has enveloped the church.

"I am an African American who is very proud to say that I am a member of Trinity United Church of Christ,'' writes "BLH,'' in a posting on Obama and the retiring pastor below. "I have been a member for 30 years.

"You might not agree with what Rev. Wright said. I rarely agree with anyone 100 percent of the time. However, the USA has not been an innocent. It has not been "right" all of the time. The minute someone points that out they are seen as being un-American.''

Say Amen.

by Frank James

Has his race helped or hurt Sen. Barack Obama in his effort to win the presidency?

Is it possible the most honest answer is yes to both?

Former Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro reaped the whirlwind earlier this week when she said the senator has advanced as far as he has in the primaries because he's African-American and that many voters are taken with that as a "concept."

Obama retorted that being black and having his very exotic sounding name aren't exactly advantages in a presidential race.

Aren't they both right?

by Frank James

With Geraldine Ferraro, what's past is prologue when it comes to African-American presidential candidates.

Ferraro, the former 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate who yesterday sparked controversy with the comment that Sen. Barack Obama has only gotten as far as he has because he's black, actually said something very similar in 1988 of then-presidential candidate Jesse Jackson.

This is from an April 14, 1988 Washington Post story by Howard Kurtz:

Placid of demeanor but pointed in his rhetoric, Jackson struck out repeatedly today against those who suggest his race has been an asset in the campaign. President Reagan suggested Tuesday that people don't ask Jackson tough questions because of his race. And former representative Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that because of his "radical" views, "if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race."

Asked about this at a campaign stop in Buffalo, Jackson at first seemed ready to pounce fiercely on his critics. But then he stopped, took a breath, and said quietly, "Millions of Americans have a point of view different from" Ferraro's.

Discussing the same point in Washington, Jackson said, "We campaigned across the South . . . without a single catcall or boo. It was not until we got North to New York that we began to hear this from Koch, President Reagan and then Mrs. Ferraro . . . . Some people are making hysteria while I'm making history."

Uncanny, isn't it?

by Frank James

Is Sen. Barack Obama's overwhelming support from black voters the kiss of death with many white ones, especially core Democratic, non-college graduates?

That fascinating and important question is raised but ultimately not answered by Associated Press story today by Charles Babington. As Babington writes:

"...Some analysts think it's possible Obama's heavy black support is nudging some working-class white Democrats into Clinton's camp. If true, it could be an important factor in a contest that remains remarkably tight after a year of campaigning...

Ronald Walters, a University of Maryland political scientist who tracks racial trends and is writing a book on Obama, thinks Obama's strong support from blacks made it easier for some whites in Ohio and Texas to vote for Clinton.

"There's some of that," Walters said in an interview. He pointed to exit polls from Ohio, where 62 percent of all whites lack college degrees and many are anxious about their jobs in a weak economy.

"This is a racially sensitive group," he said, referring specifically to whites who earn less than $50,000 a year and did not attend college.

"They are the quintessential Reagan Democrats," he said. "They feel they've been left" and their resentment can have social and racial overtones.

By Michael Martinez

LOS ANGELES – Turnabout is fair play when Oprah stumps for Obama on Super Bowl Sunday.

Normally, Lucille “Miss” Evans, 54, a south Los Angeles community activist, is something of a football widow to her boyfriend, Ray Lewis, on Super Bowl day.

But when Oprah was scheduled to come to the University of California at Los Angeles to rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, Evans told Lewis that he would have to give up the NFL’s biggest game – or at least a good part of it – to hear Oprah, Caroline Kennedy and Michelle Obama on Sunday afternoon.

Lewis thus became something of a widower to a rival event on Super Bowl Sunday.

President Ronald Reagan signs legislation creating the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday as Coretta Scott King, the civil-right's leader's widow, watches, Nov. 2, 1983. Reagan Presidential Library.

by Frank James

Given the New Hampshire comments by Sen. Hillary Clinton about it taking a president to make dreams a legislative reality, for which she was excoriated by some of Sen. Barack Obama's supporters, and Obama's Nevada comments about Reagan being a transformational president, for which he was castigated by Sen. Clinton, her husband former President Bill Clinton and others, this seemed like an appropriate photo to run today.

by Frank James

When the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued its hate-crimes report this morning, a document which indicated a nearly eight percent increase in 2006 in such crimes compared with the year before, more than a few suspicions were aroused.

Why did the agency wait until the Monday morning of Thanksgiving week to issue the report and not do it last week when Congress was still in town, as were thousands of mostly African American marchers led by Rev. Al Sharpton marched around the Justice Department to demand more federal action against hate crimes?

Was the FBI trying to keep from further riling up the demonstrators who visited Washington on Friday to express their anger at the Jena 6 and other racial incidents?

Absolutely not, said FBI spokesman John Miller. Here's what he said at length.

Rev. Al Sharpton (C) and Martin Luther King III (C-R) march around the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. to protest hate crimes, November 16, 2007 (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

by Frank James

New Attorney General Michael Mukasey, just a week into the job, got a visit from a welcome wagon committee of a few thousand people led by his fellow New Yorker, civil-rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton.

Sharpton was in Washington to lead a protest march that was essentially a continuation of the march that occurred in Jena, La. last month to protest the harsh sentences meted out to six young African American men who beat a white youth in retaliation for anti-black acts that took place during a period of escalating racial tensions in Jena.

It's unclear how many protesters showed up for today's demonstration which was publicized on popular black radio shows like those hosted by Tom Joyner and Steve Harvey. The organizers said they had 100 busloads. Suffice it to say it was enough people to leave an impression.

The marchers called for stronger hate-crime enforcement against acts like noose-hangings, a spate of which has caught the attention of the media whose focus is likely spurring some copycat attention.

Stronger federal-hate crime enforcement probably wouldn't have accomplished much in Jena, however, since the nooses were hung by juveniles who were too young to be susceptible to federal law anyway.

By Matthew Hay Brown

Praise for a white Department of Homeland Security employee who dressed for an office Halloween party as a dark-skinned, dreadlocked prisoner could cost the the official who oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement her Senate confirmation.

President Bush used a recess appointment to install Julie Myers as assistant secretary of homeland security in January 2006 after her nomination stalled in the full Senate. Bush renominated her in January 2007, but the Senate has yet to vote on her confirmation.

Now one senator has placed a temporary block on that vote, and Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying that the White House may want to reconsider its support for the embattled administrator.

“I believe that people who serve in government should be sensitive to religious issues, racial issues – personal issues,” Reid told reporters today. “And from what I know about the Halloween party, this woman was involved in awarding a prize to something that I think was very insensitive to what our country’s trying to work through.

“I personally would take a real close look at that before we are able to go the mat,” he said. “I think the White House should really take another look at this person.”

Donald Washington, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, testifies before House Judiciary Committee on Jena 6 case. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

by Howard Witt

Under pointed questioning from Democratic House members who decried the lack of federal intervention in the racially-charged Jena 6 case, U.S. Justice Department officials revealed Tuesday that they are now weighing an investigation into allegations of systemic racial bias in the administration of justice in the small, mostly white Louisiana town.

U.S. Attorney Donald Washington also said for the first time that the hanging of nooses from a shade tree in the Jena High School courtyard in September, 2006, by three white students—a warning to stay away from the tree directed at black students that triggered months of interracial fights in the town—constituted a federal hate crime, but that federal authorities opted not to prosecute the case because of the ages of the white youths involved.

Jena school officials dismissed the noose incident as a youthful prank and issued brief suspensions to the white students involved, angering black residents of the town.

“Yes, hanging a noose under these circumstances is a hate crime,” Washington, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, told a House Judiciary Committee hearing convened to examine the Jena case. “If these acts had been committed by others who were not juveniles, this would have been a federal hate crime, and we would have moved forward.”

Sen. Barack Obama joined hands with Charlene Drew Jarvis, left, and Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert, during his visit as keynote speaker at convocation today. Photo by Chuck Kennedy/MCT

by Mike Dorning

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama promised today to right "glaring inequities" in the U.S. justice system that he said were exposed by local prosecutors' handling of a racially charged fight among high school students in Jena, La.

"We know these inequities are there," Obama said in a speech at the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C. " We know they’re wrong. And yet they go largely unnoticed."

The Illinois senator has been accused by some black activists, most notably the Rev. Jesse Jackson, of insufficient passion in his response to the Jena 6 incident. Jackson told a South Carolina newspaper that Obama was "acting like he's white" as he criticized Obama for not participating in the protest march in Jena, La. Jackson later said the remark was taken out of context.

Six black high school students in Jena were charged with attempted murder for a fight with white students after white students hung nooses in a schoolyard tree. The students who hung the nooses—which appeared after black students tried to sit under a shade tree that previously had been used only by white students--were not charged with a crime or expelled from school.

With his speech at Howard, Obama turned to the Jena incident as an object lesson to assert broad structural disparities in the way the criminal justice system treats members of minority groups and offered his vision for addressing them.

by Mike Dorning

There's a lot of interest in Sen. Barack Obama's speech yesterday about a "quite riot" of despair among poor blacks. Here's my story about it in today's Chicago Tribune.

WASHINGTON -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama declared the nation has failed to address a "quiet riot" of despair simmering in impoverished black neighborhoods across the country as he spoke Tuesday before one of the oldest and largest annual gatherings of African-American ministers.

Obama offered an ominous portrait of hopelessness pervading many inner-city neighborhoods and its potential to erupt into uncontrolled violence, along with a call to the rest of society for a more determined effort to reduce pockets of endemic poverty.

Guest posted by David Lightman, Hartford Courant, at 8:51 am CDT

South Carolina's Democratic primary vote will include a sizeable African-American voting bloc--maybe as much as 50 percent of the total. As a result, the state, which holds its primary Jan. 29, 2008, will be closely watched--and its voters heavily courted--during the presidential campaign.The Hartford Courant assesses the impact.

Here's the top of the story:

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Wesley Pringle remembers the pride, energy and spirit behind the Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.

"You had to be behind him. It felt good to be behind him," the dry-cleaning businessman recalled with a smile.

Today, though, he sees politics less as a matter of pride and more a question of what's best for him and his community. That's why Pringle, like many black voters, is not automatically lining up behind Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, seen as the African American with the best chance since Jackson for a major party's presidential nomination.

"We have a lot of choices today," said Pringle, rattling off the names of several acceptable candidates, "and I want to see who picks up momentum."

His thoughts are echoed by many black voters throughout South Carolina, a state where as much as 50 percent of the Democratic primary vote is traditionally cast by blacks.

Posted by Jim Tankersley and Christi Parsons at 4:20 CDT

Sen. Barack Obama picked up a personal Secret Service detail today, after a committee made up of the top Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate determined that he was a "major candidate" in need of special protection.

The Secret Service confirms the appointment of the detail, the earliest ever assigned to a presidential candidate who didn't already merit protection because of another job, but did not say why Obama now needs it.

Privately, several congressional sources close to the senator said they believe there was no threat against Obama that raised specific concerns but that there had been a series of threats since he launched his campaign.

Two Secret Service agents stood out front of his Hyde Park home this afternoon.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) already has a detail because of her status as a former First Lady.

Posted by Frank James at 7:30 am CDT

There's been speculation, to which I've tried to contribute, about what Washington's political and journalistic elite would do regarding future appearances on the Don Imus Show in the wake of his "nappy-headed hos" comment about the Rutgers University womens basketball team.

Unlike some of his sponsors, some Washington types are throwing Imus a life-line. As my colleague in the Tribune Washington Bureau Dave Lightman notes in a story in today's Hartford Courant, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says Imus has apologized and that's good enough for him. "I am a great believer in redemption," is the quote from McCain in David's story. McCain say he'll go back on the Imus show.

Another presidential candidate, Sen. Chris Dodd, didn't say whether he would go on Imus again or not. The best he would do was to say the comments were "wrong and unacceptable" which was the safe path.

Posted by Frank James at 8:44 am CDT

Who knew this Don Imus controversy would mushroom into The Big Story?

Last week, when I predicted that Washington politicians and journalists would probably still appear on Imus's show despite his "nappy-headed hos" comment, that was in part based on what appeared to be a fairly low outrage level last week. There were very few stories about it.

It was also because Imus has said many controversial comments over the years and Washington types still appeared on the show.

Must've been the pre-holiday doldrums.

Now, the Imus story has emerged into a major national story, at least judging from the news coverage.

His show has been suspended for two weeks by the corporations that air it. Imus, sensing his career to be in mortal danger, went on the Rev. Al Sharpton radio show yesterday. Didn't do as much good as Imus might've hoped. Sharpton is still calling for his firing as is Rev. Jesse Jackson, who led an anti-Imus protest in Chicago on Monday.

Some have noted the contradiction of two Christian ministers not accepting the apology of a penitent and telling him to go and sin no more, but I digress.

Players at Rutgers are not happy about Imus.

Posted by Frank James at 9:37 am CDT

Don Imus's presumably mock racist comments about the Rutgers University basketball team members being "nappy-headed hos" has prompted the National Association of Black Journalists to call for all journalists (Tim Russert, this means you too) to boycott the radio personality's show.

But as anyone who follows politics knows, the Imus show is also a major venue for national politicians wanting to tap into Imus's huge audience and his edginess which can make Washington stuffed-shirts seem less, well, stuffed.

So how will politicians handle the Imus scandalette? Will they be asked to boycott Imus too?

Even if they are, it's a safe assumption they'll hate the sin and love the sinner, that is, to distance themselves from Imus's comments while still appearing on the show.

After all, Imus is a serial offender and that hasn't kept Washington types from embracing him before.

Posted by Josh Drobnyk at 11 a.m. CDT

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter — dubbed Snarlin’ Arlen by foes and friends alike because of his prosecutorial style — is raising money to seek re-election in 2010. He plans a fundraiser Friday at a private home near Allentown. He'll formally kick of his re-election fundraising effort at a larger gathering in Philadelphia April 4.
“His sights are set on 2010,” said spokeswoman Kate Kelly.

Specter, 77, would become the oldest senator from Pennsylvania if he wins, starting another six-year term weeks shy of age 81. That said, he’s dwarfed in age by six senators. The oldest is West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, 89.

Posted by Mike Dorning at 6:05 am CST.

Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton both will be in Selma, Ala., this Sunday, participating in a commemoration of the 1965 Voting Rights march that began there with competing speeches scheduled for the same hour at morning services in neighboring churches.

Their dueling appearances reflect the two campaigns' struggle to win over African-Americans, a formidable constituency within the Democratic party and particularly so in the early primary state of South Carolina.

Though the presidential campaign has barely begun--Obama officially entered less than three weeks ago and the first votes for the party nomination will not be cast for another 10 months--much has been made in recent weeks about early polls showing the former First Lady leading among African-Americans.

Some commentators have suggested that, despite being the most prominent black candidate, Obama may have trouble rallying black voters because his heritage and childhood experience differs from most urban blacks. He is product of a mixed-race marriage between a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya who was mostly raised in Hawaii by his white grandparents.

Well, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll suggests those concerns may be overblown. The poll, as described in a front-page Washington Post article today, shows Obama now leading Clinton among African-Americans and, incidentally, closing the gap among Democrats as a whole.

Posted by William Neikirk at 11 a.m. CST

It was a cold day in March when Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Kentucky State Capitol to call for passage of a state civil rights bill. He stood with Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodger baseball great and one of the heroes of my youth.

I remember it was not only freezing but wet. His aides held an umbrella on his head as he spoke to some 10,000 protesters.

It was 1964. And it was all very peaceful.

Posted by David Lerman at 12:41 CST

He was just a 20-year-old college kid with a camcorder.

But S.R. Sidarth— a son of Indian immigrants who was called ``macaca”—helped foil the re-election of Virginia Sen. George Allen, tipping control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats.

Sidarth, whose videotape of Allen’s ``macaca” stumble spread across the Internet like wildfire, became an overnight celebrity.

Posted by Frank James at 10:03 am CST

We just became aware of a new web site called RunObama.com whose slogan tells you what you need to know about it: "We the people believe Barack Obama should run for President."

The web site doesn't have a ton of material right now. It's got a brief Obama biography, a petition and a blog.

Still, we wondered who was behind it.

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.,) newly elected to the Senate Republican leadership, is surrounded by the media today. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Posted by Jill Zuckman at 11:01 am CST

Trent Lott is back.

Once the consummate Senate insider, then a political pariah, and now a Senate insider again, Lott, the Mississippi Republican, was elected Minority Whip this morning. The secret ballot was 25-24, with Lott edging out Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

Lott was ousted from his position as Senate Republican leader in 2002 after he praised then-Sen. Strom Thurmond’s segregationist 1948 presidential campaign during a 100th birthday tribute. In his place, the Bush White House essentially installed Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who is not likely to go down in history as one of the better Senate Majority Leaders.

posted by Christi Parsons at 10:20 a.m. CST

Sen. Barack Obama spoke at today's groundbreaking ceremony for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial.

In his remarks, he pondered what he will say in the future when one of his young daughters asks about the King legacy.

(Chicago Tribune photo by Pete Souza.)

Posted by Frank James at 9:00 am CDT

For all those who believe media coverage of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has made him out to be a latter-day Mr.-Smith-Goes-to-Washington, there's the new Harper's magazine cover story whose essential point appears to be that the junior senator from Illinois is really shaping up to be a tool of the monied interest.

The piece by Ken Silverstein isn't available on the Harper's website so you'll need to go buy a copy of the magazine if you want to read the entire thing.

Posted by Frank James at 8:06 am CDT, revised at 10:45 am CDT

Is the Republican National Committee's playing the race card in a television ad against Rep. Harold Ford Jr., the African-American who hopes to be the first black elected to the Senate from a southern state since Reconstruction?

It certainly looked like it to William Cohen, the former Clinton administration Defense Secretary and one-time Republican U.S. senator from Maine.

Posted by Frank James at 2 p.m. CDT

This just in from the Associated Press:

By KRISTEN WYATT"
Associated Press Writer"
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) - A national black Republican group is running a radio advertisement accusing Democrats of starting the Ku Klux Klan and saying they have ``bamboozled’’ black voters.

Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the black Republican nominee for Maryland’s open U.S. Senate seat, disavowed the ad Thursday and called for the Washington-based National Black Republican Association to stop running it. In a statement, he said it was ``insulting to Marylanders and should come down immediately.’’

Posted by Frank James at 4:55 pm CDT

The House passed today by a largely partisan vote of 228 to 196 the Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006 which would require anyone wanting to vote in a federal election to present polling place officials with a government-issued photo ID.

But according to the legislation, it can’t be any old government-issued photo ID. It must be one that proves its holder is a U.S. citizen.

Posted by Frank James at 10:30 am CDT

Jennifer Skalka of the Baltimore Sun, has a report on the televised debate between Rep. Ben Cardin and Kweisi Mfume, the two top Maryland Democratic candidates according to the polls for their party's nomination to fill the Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Paul Sarbanes, a Democrat.

Interestingly, Mfume played the race card by saying if he won the primary, race would be neutralized as an issue since Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele is also black. Clever.

Read Jennifer's story below:

From the Baltimore Sun

Attempting to create distance between their candidacies, Kweisi Mfume criticized rival Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Benjamin L. Cardin last night for voting for the USA Patriot Act, not supporting a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq and taking special interest money, while Cardin insisted that his long record of service and his ability to get laws passed in Washington make him an effective leader.

Posted by Frank James at 3:19 pm CDT

Jennifer Skalka of our sister publication, the Baltimore Sun, had a story in that paper today that examined what’s at stake tonight in the Maryland senate race that could very well put a second African American in the Senate.

Tonight’s Maryland Democratic debate is between Rep. Ben Cardin and Kweisi Mfume, a former congressman and former president of the NAACP. A recent poll shows Cardin, who's white, ahead of Michael Steele, Maryland’s black Republican lieutenant governor, while Mfume, who's also black, lags behind the GOP candidate.

Read Jennifer’s story below.

Challenge moves to TV
Democratic Senate candidates Cardin, Mfume to spar tonight

It's "do or die" time for Mfume, who has trailed Cardin in polls, according to Zach Messitte, assistant professor of political science at St. Mary's College.

Posted by Jeff Zeleny at 8:26 a.m. CDT

MASAI MARA, Kenya – It's the height of migration season here on the Mara, the time of year between July and September when an untold number of animals move from the Serengeti in Tanzania to this colossal game reserve across the border in southern Kenya.

Elephants, lions, buffaloes, rhinos and leopards – considered the must see, big five – make their trek across sweeping, grassy plains that stretch as far as the eye can see. Giraffes, gazelles, wildebeests and zebras do, too, creating a spectacle of nature paralleled by few places in the world.

One day last week, the management at Basecamp Explorer on the Mara received an unexpected telephone call from the Kenyan military. A guest of the Kenya government – an official state visitor – would be coming.

Posting by Frank James at 11:57 am CDT

The Gallup Poll organization has a report out today which suggests that a wise strategy for Republicans hoping to keep control of the House would be to encourage regular church goers to go the polls on election day, so long as they’re not black.

Recent Gallup polling indicates that what I’ll call the church gap between Republicans and Democrats hasn’t lessened, with registered voters who describe themselves as regular churchgoers being much more likely to vote Republican than less frequent churchgoers who tend to be Democrats.

Posted by Jeff Zeleny at 8:39 am CDT

KISUMU, Kenya -- Michelle Obama joined her husband, Sen. Barack Obama, in taking an HIV test here today as thousands of jubuliant admirers cheered the mere sight of the man they have come to adore.

After their caravan barreled through town, the Obamas toured a medical clinic before walking up the steps into a mobile AIDS testing center. They took the test together, they said, to encourage African men and women to also be tested for the disease that effects about 15 percent of the people here.

Posted by Frank James at 1:40 pm CDT

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is still the only African American in the Senate. But if Russell Simmons, the hip hop mogul has anything to say about it, there will be two, Republican Michael Steele being the other.

The Washington Times reported today that Simmons is scheduled to hold a fundraiser in Baltimore tonight for Steele, Maryland’s lieutenant governor who has a virtual lock on the Republican nomination for the open Senate seat.

Simmons, a founder of Def Jam, a major entertainment label, has been active in Democratic and progressive politics, helping to register thousands of new voters from the Hip Hop generation.

(Russell Simmons. McClatchy-Tribune photo by Chuck Fadely)

Posted by Frank James at 10:51 am CDT

Seems like there's a rash of public figures opening mouths and inserting feet these days. In just the last week, we've seen Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) cause a controversy by referring to an Indian-American as "Macaca."

Then along comes former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young who very undiplomatically spit out stereotypes of inner-city Jewish, Arab and Korean merchants as price-gouging purveyors of off-date food products.

Young lost his gig as a spokesman for Wal-Mart for remarks which, not surprisingly, outraged the groups he singled out and people beyond. Because Wal-Mart has enough image problems without a spokesman like Young, he was dropped faster than a price on a discounted Wal-Mart item. (For the record, Young says he quit but we all know he wasn't going to have the option of staying.)

Posted by Frank James at 11:39 am CDT

Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) who is running for re-election and preparing, by all accounts, to run for his party’s presidential nomination, has a bit of a racial controversy of his own making on his hands.

At a recent campaign event, he called an American citizen of Indian ancestry “Macaca.”


(Photo of S.R. Sidharth provided to journalists by the Allen campaign.)

Good morning.

Here are a few Washington events of note for Thursday, July 27, as compiled by the Associated Press.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding a confirmation hearing at 8:30 a.m. on the nomination of John Bolton to be UN Ambassador, a position he already holds by presidential appointment

President Bush is signing a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act.

The Senate Aging Committee is meeting to release results of its investigation into laboratories and companies involved in selling at-home DNA tests to consumers. Location: Room 106 Dirksen at 9 a.m.

Posted by Frank James at 5:20 pm CDT

Clarence Page, the Chicago Tribune's Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, shares his thoughts on President Bush's first visit to the NAACP convention with readers of The Swamp. Click the link below to watch his video commentary.

Good morning.

Here are a few Washington events of note for Thursday, July 20, as gathered by the Associated Press.

President Bush is addressing the annual NAACP convention at 9:30 a.m., the first time as president he has appeared before the group.

The Institute of Medicine holds a news conference to release a report assessing the frequency and toll of drug-related mishaps. 10 a.m.

7 a.m. TIGERS — News conference to release ``the most comprehensive scientific study of tiger habitat ever done,’’ sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society and Save the Tiger Fund.
Location: Lion/Tiger Hill, National Zoo.

Good morning.

Here are some Washington events of note for Wednesday, July 19, collected by the Associated Press.

The Labor Department is releasing the Consumer Price Index for June at 7:30 a.m.

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is giving his semi-annual report to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee at 9 a.m.

Good morning.

Here are a few Washington events of note for Monday, July 17, as compiled by the Associated Press.

The NAACP is holding its 97th annual convention at the Washington Convention Center and in nearby Arlington, Va. at the Hyatt Regency-Crystal City.

10 a.m. BAYH-MIDDLE CLASS — Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) discusses the future of the American middle class at a National Press Club newsmaker media briefing. Bayh will present reforms that he believes would provide greater economic opportunity, and will critique the Bush administration’s policies that he contends have failed to meet middle-class needs.
Location: National Press Club, Zenger Room.

Posted by Frank James at 10:38 am CDT

I have a story in today's Chicago Tribune about the Voting Rights Act whose reauthorization the House is scheduled to vote on this afternoon.

Essentially, much of Congress wants to renew the VRA as is. But there are some lawmakers who say the act needs to be changed. They are joined by scholars, some of whom are liberally and strongly support the continuance of the act, who say the VRA runs the risks of being struck down by the Supreme Court if it's renewed in it's current form.

I intend to blog more on this issue. Stay tuned.

Posted by Frank James at 1:07 p.m. CST

After yesterday's Washington D.C. press conference where civil-rights leaders vowed to fight the planned April 22 New Orleans election, I asked Rev. Jesse Jackson about his view of the national Democratic party's response to the plight of displaced voters. To say he wasn't satisfied with their response would be an understatement.

He said he met with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean last week as well as Senate and House minority leaders, Sen. Harry Reid (D.-Nev) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.)

Posted by Frank James at 6:27 p.m. CST

At a press conference here today, some of the nation’s best-known civil rights leaders vowed to fight the upcoming New Orleans city election.

The election, they said, would grossly violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act since thousands of city’s voters dispersed across the nation by Hurricane Katrina would find it difficult to participate.

Posted by Matthew Chayes at 10:35 am CST

Gentlemen, start your diversity. That was the message this week from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who joined four colleagues and a top NASCAR official to announce an effort to bring more African-Americans to a sport they tacitly acknowledged is overwhelmingly white.“It’s a great thing that brings people together, and it should bring everybody together in this nation,” said Hastert (R-Ill.)

He was lauding a resolution sponsored by Reps. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.) and Michael Rogers (R-Ala.) to support a partnership between NASCAR and historically black colleges to diversify auto industry jobs in such areas as engineering, marketing and finance. And NASCAR hopes to attract more fans.

Posted by Frank James at 5:30 pm CST

For many people, a funeral probably seems an inappropriate time to criticize someone in attendance, especially if it happens to be the president of the United States.

But many Christian funerals are used by preachers to strike the conscience of those attending in order to create a come-to-Jesus moment where souls are won. Sometimes at such funerals, hard things are said. Coretta Scott King's funeral fit that bill.

Posted by Frank James at 11:01 am CST

Some people's lives define the words dignity, courage and perseverance. Coretta Scott King was one.

Since first being thrust into the public eye so many years ago as the wife of a young Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she has seemed one of the most dignified Americans of our time, maybe of all times.

Posted by Frank James at 9:37 am CST

I happen to be in Carlisle, Pa. today visiting my alma mater, Dickinson College, whose alums include President James Buchanan, the 15th president, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, two men not treated well by history because of being on the wrong side of the slavery question.

Anyway, no sooner do I arrive than I see a banner headline in the local paper, the Sentinel: "Scranton says sorry, Swann." The story goes on to tell how Bill Scranton, who's contesting pro football legend Lynn Swann for Pennsylvania's Republican gubernatorial nomination, fired his campaign manager for saying during a TV interview that Swann was the "rich white guy" in the race.

Posted by Frank James at 1:36 pm CST

Washington politicians are always in a mood to ban things--flag-burning comes to mind. They should add one more thing to the list and act on it immediately: likening the experience of being in the congressional minority to plantation life.

As everyone probably knows by now, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) on Monday told a black audience at a King holiday event in New York: "Because when you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation. And you know what I'm talking about."

Newt Gingrich said something similar in 1994 as he led the insurgency against the Democrats then running the House. "They think it is their job to run the plantation. It shocked them that I'm willing to lead the slave rebellion," he said.