Rep. Lynn Westmoreland:

“Just from what little I’ve seen of [Michelle Obama] and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said, according to The Hill, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill.

When asked to clarify, Westmoreland said, “Uppity, yeah.”

The only surprise is that it took so long for a prominent Republican to say it out loud.

“It was only a matter of time before Republican officials shifted from oblique racially-charged language to brazen racially-charged language,” wrote Steve Benen, author of a blog for Washington Monthly magazine.

Westmoreland is thinking about running for governor of Georgia in 2010. Is he trying to solidify his base?

In light of last night's speeches at the Republican National Convention, the Obama campaign is reminding the public of this video, shown at the Democratic National Convention. These are the community organizers who were the objects of scorn and derision yesterday in speeches by Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani. Ordinary people trying to make their communities and their country better. To the white conservative crowd, "community organizer" might be a code word, but ridiculing people who do good work is a strategy destined to backfire.

Sometimes reports of romantic affairs by public officials, if true, matter. For Charles Dean Hood, set to be executed next week, it could mean the difference between life and death. A judge has set a hearing on whether the judge and prosecutor in his capital case were having a secret affair during Hood's trial:

The hearing will address arguments that Brewer's murder trial was unfair because of an alleged unethical romantic relationship between the judge presiding over the trial and the district attorney prosecuting the case.

Brewer ordered retired judge Verla Sue Holland and former Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell to be ready to be interviewed by lawyers Monday – if Brewer agrees with Hood's attorney that the pair should be deposed.

[More...]

Disgraced Republican Jack Abramoff was sentenced today in his second case to four years in prison, to be served concurrently with the six year sentence he is already serving.

Judge Ellen Huvelle issued the sentence after federal prosecutors recommended leniency due to Abramoff's cooperation in pursuing corruption cases against lawmakers and former administration officials. He faced a maximum of 11 years under a plea deal reached in 2006.

Abramoff sang for his supper and got rewarded big time. Great job by defense attorneys Abbie Lowell and Neal Sonnett.

A "mountain of dismal economic news" released today will not help a McCain-Palin ticket that has no economic plan more sophisticated than "What Bush did" and "drill, baby, drill."

[T]he Labor Department said new applications for unemployment insurance rose by 15,000 from the previous week. That broadly missed expectations for a fourth-straight week of declines, and heightened worries that the average American — already feeling the effects of the weak housing market — will have even less means to spend. ... Economists are predicting the eighth straight monthly payrolls drop, and a rise in the unemployment rate.

That typical Americans have less to spend is evidenced by the absence of spending, as shown by poor retail sales figures last month. Crude oil prices dropped, but not as much as analysts expected. All of this contributed to another stock market plunge. If John McCain continues to cling to the Bushian belief that the economy is strong, he might have to worry that even the reddest of the red states will turn bright blue in November.

Will McCain come up with a realistic plan to turn the economy around? Listen for one tonight when McCain accepts his party's nomination.

Kwame Kilpatrick has resigned as mayor of Detroit. Kilpatrick, who was facing a number of felony charges arising out of lies he told about an extramarital affair with an aide and other improper actions he took to keep the affair secret, resigned as a condition of a plea agreement to resolve those charges.

He agreed to plead guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice, pay restitution to the city of $1 million, give up his law license, forfeit his state pension and serve 120 days in the Wayne County jail. His resignation is to take effect within 14 days. All other charges were dismissed, and the judge scheduled sentencing for Oct. 28.

Detroit has been even more dysfunctional than usual since the Kilpatrick scandal became public. Now that this chapter in the city's history has ended, Detroit has a chance to make a new beginning. The Detroit City Council president will take over until a new mayor is elected.

I hope most Democratic women realize the truth in Gloria Steinem's column today in the Los Angeles Times. Hillary Clinton certainly does, and so do I.

The reason Gov. Sarah Palin is the wrong woman for the job of Vice-President has nothing to do with her gender or her family issues or private life (although I wish she would stop bringing them up and showcasing them.)

She's the wrong woman for the job because of her stand on issues and her attachment to the radical right. Unfair treatment by the media doesn't make her any more qualified or right for the job of Vice-President. Here's some snippets from Ms. Steinem:

Gov. Sarah Palin is no friend of the environment.

Palin, McCain's vice presidential running mate, has had frequent run-ins with environmentalists. ... "Her philosophy from our perspective is cut, kill, dig and drill," said John Toppenberg, director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, maintaining she is "in the Stone Age of wildlife management and is very opposed to utilizing accepted science."

Palin challenged the Bush administration's decision to classify the polar bear as an endangered species. Nor does she agree with the National Marine Fisheries Service that the beluga whale population is endangered. She opposed ballot initiatives to better protect salmon streams from mining operations and to outlaw the shooting of bears and wolves from aircraft. Let's not even talk about her lust for pipelines despite their impact on caribou populations. And, unlike John McCain, she refuses to acknowledge that human behavior might have had an impact on climate change. [more...]

This is an interesting policy question: Should cities be allowed to insure themselves against claims of police brutality? The City of St. Paul agreed to host the Republican National Convention on the condition that Republican Party arranged "to buy insurance covering up to $10 million in damages and unlimited legal costs for law enforcement officials accused of brutality, violating civil rights and other misconduct." Private donations were used to purchase the insurance.

The plus side of the agreement is obvious: taxpayers won't have to pay damages resulting from police misconduct. But the downside, while less obvious, is troubling: [more...]

Regarding my earlier post on the Palin speech, some interesting focus group findings from Greenberg Quinlan:

Based on focus groups conducted live last night and new polling data from an oversample of married and unmarried women, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research released the following findings about women voters’ reactions to Governor Sarah Palin[:]

[More...]

Richard Wright, author of the powerful novel Native Son, died in 1960. Had he lived, this would have been his 100th birthday.

This great black writer not only helped change the face of American fiction but he also helped pull the curtain down on Jim Crow. We should commemorate Wright because he defied all the odds. One hundred years ago, he was born poor, black, the son of a sharecropper. In his formative years, he was legally denied access to segregated Southern public libraries. Raised in poverty and hunger, and barely educated in rural Arkansas and Mississippi, Wright believed that "books are weapons." His material spat in the face of indifference, forcing readers to acknowledge the racist underside of the American dream.

Happy birthday, Richard Wright.

The comments are overflowing. You can continue ongoing discussions or start new ones here.

This is an Open Thread.