Freedom Line Blog

Salon’s Steve Kornacki details how embattled Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) won his first election as a city councilman by linking a primary opponent to an infamous race riot.  Though the entire article is worth reading, Kornacki’s conclusion sums up what many are feeling about the justice of removing Weiner from office:

…he parlayed his Council spot into a seat in Congress, and you know the story from there. But who knows where Weiner would be today if he hadn’t made such a dark appeal to racial hostility days after a notorious riot?

It’s something worth keeping in mind now, as Weiner’s career hangs in the balance. Is it unfair if he loses his political future because of a scandal as dumb as this one? Sure. But it’s also not exactly fair that he ever made it this far.

At some point, Americans’ outrage over the nonsense spewed upon us by desperate Washington, D.C. liberals becomes twisted amusement.  Today, Representative Maxine Waters (D – California) managed to pull the “race card” and “blame Bush” card in one preposterous swoop.

Representative Waters now finds herself the defendant against Congressional ethics charges that she improperly offered special assistance to OneUnited, a bank on whose board her husband had served.  At the time, her husband owned $350,000 in OneUnited stock, which was threatened by the financial downturn and would stand to benefit from federal dollars.  Speaking to reporters to rationalize her behavior, Waters claimed that she was compelled to do what she did because the Bush Treasury Department wasn’t responding to her satisfaction:

The question at this point should not be why I called Secretary [Henry] Paulson, but why I had to.  The question at this point should be why a trade association representing over one hundred minority banks could not get a meeting at the height of the crisis.”

Waters apparently hasn’t received the memo that “the race card is maxed out.”

Pulling the race card is beginning to carry about as much cachet as Y2K alerts.

You know things have gotten bad when even Howard “I Have a Scream” Dean feels entitled to pull it (without bothering to understand that Shirley Sherrod was fired by the Obama Administration before supposedly “racist” Fox News had even referenced her name).  Fox News commentator Juan Williams, who is actually one of the less-insane liberals in public discourse, unfortunately seemed to resort to it yesterday on “Fox News Sunday.”  Commenting on new ethical charges against Rep. Charles Rangel (D – New York) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D – California), Williams immediately raised the issue of the two defendants’ race.  Why in the world should that be the immediate consideration while discussing these serious charges?

Too bad that former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay didn’t think of this.  Hey, if Howard Dean can try it, why not DeLay?