Another problem looming for the McCain campaign: Palin fits right in with the Democratic attack that McCain is in the pocket of big oil.

So far, this is not going well. She looks star-struck up there. My girlfriend says she’s rambling. I think she sounds hokey (sometimes that’s a good thing, but I don’t think here). Her diction is not strong — she sounds halting to me. And it’s thematically disjointed. First impressions are crucial for such an unknown quantity, and right now Palin is not delivering. Also — did anyone else notice McCain’s new “country first” slogan? Definitely doubling...

So CNN reports. It’s an intriguing choice and, I think, a dangerous one, for both the Democratic and the GOP tickets. What do I mean by that? Simple: Palin is a risky choice for McCain. It could turn out really well, or it could turn out really badly. The breakdown on Palin shows someone who has the potential to really create movement for McCain, but whose main benefits are speculative, unproven, or based on shaky assumptions. So what are the key points to consider?…. Read the rest of...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The backers of the Arizona initiative seeking to ban affirmative action got a reprieve today, as a judge is willing to give them more time to prove they received the requisite number of valid signatures to get on the ballot. A suit against American contractor KBR alleges that 12 Nepalese workers were held in slavery in Iraq. They were later kidnapped by insurgents, and all but one was executed. The Mexican Supreme Court has upheld Mexico City’s...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news A quick note: Now that I’m not doing this for my job, the CRR probably will undergo some changes. First, it’ll probably be later. Because if I’m not forced by a paying employer to start working at 9:00 AM, it’s highly unlikely I’ll do it on my own. Second, it may well be shorter. I don’t know. This is a transition. But I do enjoy providing the roundup each morning, so I am going to try to keep the feature going. So...

I saw President Clinton and Senator Biden’s speeches tonight (but not Senator Kerry’s). Admittedly I saw them at a wine night, so I might have been somewhat distracted. And that might explain why I’m not as high on either speech as many others are. Certainly, I think Hillary Clinton blew both out of the water. President Clinton’s speech, I thought, was particularly flat. It felt disjointed, I didn’t feel like his heart was truly in it, and it never really developed thematically....

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The LPGA (woman’s international golf organization) is requiring all of its players to be able to speak English if they want to compete. The Tour has been dominated in recent years by foreign-born players, and there are questions about whether this requirement violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. A Filipino man convicted of sending threatening communications to a variety of Black and biracial public figures was sentenced to over three months...

Gut reaction? Clinton nailed that speech. As it turns out, the best thing she could do to accomplish her aims in that speech was to lay-into John McCain. It unifies, it delegitimizes McCain’s outreach efforts, it obviously weakens McCain (to the extent that any partisan political speech does that), it forthrightly lines up her supporters with Obama — attacking McCain accomplishes everything. And she drilled it.

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Ms. Magazine gives its quick take on the appointment of Hans von Spakovsky to a staff position on the US civil rights commission. Inside Higher Ed has the scoop on the higher education elements of the Democratic Platform, including (among other things) a restatement of their support for affirmative action. …. And here’s McCain’s plan, courtesy of the Chronicle on Higher Education, which notes McCain’s apparent reversal on that...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news An observant Jewish engineer was vindicated after being hounded by spying accusations, after a probe found he was targeted on basis of religion. The Washington Post had a nice article up over the weekend on the experiences of other Black “firsts” (first astronaut, first Miss USA, first NBA player, etc.). Also from the WaPo this weekend, an analysis of how voters perceive the theme of race popping up this cycle (focusing on Akron, Ohio). The...

My wonderful co-bloggers already have several posts giving their takes on how the Biden choice will affect the presidential race (Tony Campbell thinks it’s an awful choice; Jazz Shaw thinks the GOP will love it; Dorian de Wind and Robert Stein love it; and Shaun Mullen shouts out for his home-state boy). As for me, on the political side I’m decidedly meh. I’ve been persuaded that it was unreasonable of me to expect Biden to vote against the credit card industry on the bankruptcy...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Ward Connerly’s petition to ban affirmative action in Arizona has been thrown out, after election officials found that he fell far short in obtaining the number of valid signatures required to put the measure to a vote. A federal judge stayed the execution of a Texas inmate, ruling that the state grossly erred in refusing to determine whether he was mentally competent to be put to death. Washington Post: “Civil Rights Panel Faulted on Hiring...

Spencer Ackerman takes a fresh look at the New Republic/Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy. When I read Franklin Foer’s fact-check of the story, I remarked that it did not appear to me that the story needed to be retracted at all — and certainly, nobody had done anything to justify the vitriol that had been heaped upon both writer and magazine by radical right-wing bloggers. Ackerman’s piece only verifies that instinct, and it is well worth the read.

The technical term for this is sick $&%@ing joke.

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Americans of all stripes mourn the death of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH). After graduating from Case Western University (thanks to a scholarship she attributed to affirmative action efforts), Jones went on to become the first Black woman to represent Ohio in Congress. Supporters and opponents of an initiative to ban affirmative action in Nebraska are squabbling over the ballot language. Meanwhile, the University of Nebraska is reporting great...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The cellmate of a immigrant who died in US custody described the incredible pain he was in — and how detention center staffers laughed and said he was faking. A study finds that minority students are far more likely to be paddled in school. A noose was found at a Chicago police station, triggering an investigation. A Las Vegas Review Journal columnist apparently got smoked by his readers when he made the simple factual observation that the ACLU...

I don’t like hearing it under any circumstances, but John McCain sure seems to find the worst situations to use the phrase “Judeo-Christian”, doesn’t he?

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The highest court in California has ruled that doctors cannot refuse to treat gay and lesbian patients due to religious objections. The federal government is starting to push to make sure apartments are handicapped-accessible. A vandalism spree in Staten Island is not being characterized as a hate crime, despite concerns by nervous Latino residents that they were targeted by ethnic hatred. The number of juveniles being held in adult jails is falling,...

So one of the predominant misconceptions out there today about affirmative action is that it’s a quota system. This is false, as I have gently reminded CNN, but it still seems to hold a lot of sway over the electorate when debating plans to abolish equal opportunity programs like affirmative action. But now, civil rights groups fighting to defend affirmative action are test-running a new plan that seeks to neutralize the misconceptions on quotas….. Read the rest of this post

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news I’m not sure I agree with this reading of Frederick Douglass’ career, but the comparison to Obama is interesting nonetheless. Virginia’s new project to use DNA evidence to help exonerate falsely-convicted prisoners continues. The business community is throwing everything it has against the Ledbetter Fair Pay act. The Kosher plant that was targeted in the Postville raid is having trouble getting itself back up and running. How can...

Note to the commenters: You can’t defend replacing (as opposed to supplementing) race-based affirmative action with class-based programs by compared rich Blacks to poor Whites. For that claim to be valid, the axis of comparison has to be the equal position of poor Blacks to poor Whites. Otherwise, you’re risking just masking the effects of potential racial discrimination that wealth can “buy off”, but which still become an extra obstacle on top of poverty to poor Blacks without...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The family of a gay California teenager who was slain by a classmate is suing the school, saying that it endangered their son by allowing him to wear feminine clothing and makeup. Solid move by Tim Kaine: He issued a pardon to a local woman who had lived in the US since she was 7, who was facing deportation for a minor crime she committed 12 years ago. The move is giving her at least a one year reprieve from her deportation order, allowing her more...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news The census estimates that the US will become majority-minority by 2042. My projection is that many currently non-White ethnic groups will become or will be absorbed into Whiteness to keep the numbers up. ICE has detained 42 suspected illegal immigrants working at Dulles Airport, stressing that there is no indication of terrorist activity. An Egyptian Muslim women writes in the Washington Post: If Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow women on its Olympics...

So the Supreme Court made a factual error in its ruling holding that the death penalty for child rape is unconstitutional. Since the error was definitely relevant (though not necessarily critical) to its ruling, some folks have been urging that the Court reopen the case (an issue I am pretty much neutral on). Today, we find out via a recently released study that the Supreme Court also made a factual error in its ruling holding that the federal partial-birth abortion ban is constitutional (that being...

In an editorial for the Washington Post, Peter Beinart thinks that Barack Obama could put the issue of race away for good if he came out for replacing race-based affirmative action with class-based programs. I have no problem with class-based affirmative action, though I think it should supplement, not replace, its racial peer, as both are independent sources of disadvantage and both are independent sources of diversity. But even the premise is wrong here…. Continue reading this post