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Showing posts from June, 2007

The name is Lartigue, son...

Oliver Willis , who blogged next to me at the Democrat Presidential Forum on PBS last Thursday night, gets a lot wrong in two sentences. As Willis wrote: " -- Casey Latrigue from CATO , who's right next to me, exemplifies the kind of silly thinking the right supports. Oh, the civil rights act passed we ought to pretend race is solved. " First, here is what Willis gets right: a) I did sit next to him. b) The right may enjoy things I say--that's why people use the term "strange bedfellows." That's also why some take the approach that there are no "permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests." I will point out to Willis that many on the right do have a problem with me when the topic is gay marriage, the drug war, or immigration. What Willis definitely gets wrong: 1) " Latrigue ." I won't give him (much) grief about misspelling my name, it is a bit difficult for people who don't hail from Louisiana. Plus, in the rush

Supreme Court ruling on race

"What we want is the striking down of race . . . They give tests to grade children so what do we think is the solution? Simple. Put the dumb colored children in with the dumb white children, and put the smart colored children with the smart white children--that is no problem." --Thurgood Marshall, during oral arguments before the Supreme Court* *Mark Tushnet, "Change and Continuity in the Concept of Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall and Affirmative Action," in Paul, Miller, and Paul, Reassessing Civil Rights , 151.

Presidential forum last night

My random posts below were comments from when I was live-blogging at the Democrat presidential candidate debate last night. I'll have some more comments about it later today... The post "Mock Epic" was actually written by my colleague Eliot Morgan--and I stole the line from him about getting your act together four decades after passage of the Civil Rights Act. CJL

Protectionism update

The question is now on outsourcing. It is always amazing how the various levels of government make it difficult to do business, then those same geniuses in government, respond, " whaddayamean they moved their headquarters to Thailand ?" But they can always fix that by "investing" with subsidies and tax breaks... CJL

Katrina

The response to Katrina is only a disappointment if you have expectations from government. Which would you trust to get to you faster after a catastrophe, All State or FEMA ? CJL

Criminal justice

Wickham notes that blacks are 29% of those arrested, whites 70% of those arrested, but that more blacks are inmates. As long as Wickham isn't being more specific about the statistics, such as mentioning which types of crimes lead to blacks being more likely to be inmates, I'll do the same: I know the point they focused on is that it is unfair that blacks are more likely to be in jail, but since most crimes are intraracial , wouldn't that mean that white victims are more likely to have their victimizers on the loose, and that black victims are more likely to have their victimizers put in jail for a longer period of time? CJL

War on drugs

Gravel says something dramatic that I agree with--end the War on Drugs. It "creates criminals out of people who are not criminals." The audience isn't with him, however. Unfortunately, based on my experience as a radio host, you can't just always talk sense on race issues--you must also add a conspiracy theory to it. Gravel would have gotten more applause if he had said that the War on Drugs is a conspiracy against blacks....

Ed-u-ka-shion

As usual, the politicians talk about the great things they'll do and talk about--but nothing about ways to increase the power of parents when it comes to education choices. If the great Plan A of each candidate falls through, what is Plan B for families? As usual, even the Democrats on the stage who have supported education choice in the past are afraid to mention it. I guess they still remember the way Lieberman got beat up back in 2000, and these candidates may still want to run as the VP... CJL

Race, race, race

On the issue of race: Clinton goes first, (surprisingly) without her Selma accent. Biden doesn’t mention that there is a clean and article black person on the stage. Richardson says the next president must talk about race…we need less talk about race, and more about individual action. Edwards said something, apparently to help us transition to the only somewhat black candidate on the panel. Obama has the home field advantage being at Howard, but doesn’t do much with the initial question. Kucinich says that people are told to raise themselves up by their own bootstraps, but then they steal the boots. He gets the loudest cheers. This will be a long night if that continues... Gravel —who? Dodd —like the 64th team in the NCAA basketball pool, Dodd should be one and done. Brb, I’m checking on the NBA draft… CJL

Mock Epic

These folks are so impressed with themselves. I hope the rhymes are kept to minimum. Deval Patrick deserves credit for saving the introduction though.

PBS All-American Presidential Forum!

Tomorrow night I will be over at the All-American Presidential Forum on PBS , moderated by Tavis Smiley. The event will be held at Howard University and airs live at 9 PM ET. I 've been credentialed through the Media Bloggers Association which is aggregating my blog along with 20 other bloggers on the MBA web site . I will be live blogging from the Media Center. More later.

Paris Hilton released!

I suspect that some of the anger about the treatment of Paris Hilton is jealousy based on the way she flaunts her wealth. In my case, I'm embarrassed that a rich white chick has more street cred than I than do now that she has served some time in the joint. CJL

June 23 radio show on Urban Legends and Conspiracy Theories

We were back on the air! XM 169 had some technical upgrades last week. Here's the clip of the June 23 show . My co-host Eliot Morgan and I focused on urban legends, conspiracy theories, and rumors. To be clear, when you consider history, there are some good reasons for blacks to be suspicious of the various levels of government (as all people should be suspicious of government). But does the reality of Scotsboro, Tuskegee, and COINTELPRO mean that we must also believe that: Ø Church’s Chicken or Kentucky Fried Chicken have been injected with an ingredient to sterilize black men. Ø Nike and Reebok use their profits to support the Klan? Ø That rich clothing designers don’t want to sell clothing to black women because they believe that black women have big hips. Ø The first U.S. president was black. Ø Memorandum 46—the "confidential" memo allegedly written by Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor. As I mentioned on the radio yesterday, I'm posting the time line that

June 9 edition of the Casey Lartigue Show!

* Professor Walter E. Williams returns this weekend to the Casey Lartigue Show on XM 169 The Power. We'll be talking about his recent columns. During last week's show we had a caller who asked about a column Professor Williams wrote about blacks benefiting from slavery. That column has been attacked numerous times by hosts and callers on XM 169. So it will be interesting to hear what Professor Williams has to say. * Following up on last week's discussion, we will present more information to debunk Memorandum 46 . That's the memorandum that was allegedly written by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor. It is widely circulated in black leftist circles. On last week's show I read an e-mail that Brzezinski sent to me denouncing the memo as a forgery . * We'll be looking at other news from the week. If I had to go on the air within the next few minutes, then we would talk about Gary Sheffield's comments that Major League B