"His (Barack Obama) candidacy kindled hope that he might bring down the curtain on the long running and intensely boring melodrama ‘Forever Selma,’ staring Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton."
This concerns Will’s anger regarding Senator Obama’s (and most every non racist in the Senate) saying he will vote against the confirmation of Leslie Southwick to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. This is the Old South circuit with the most per capita black population.
The publicized issue is from 1998 when Judge Southwick voted to say that a state employer calling an employee a "good old black" was only "somewhat derogatory" and likened it to calling an employee a "teacher’s pet." Though that is the issue that hit the wires, it is not the most troublesome. The warning sign concerns Southwick’s pattern regarding racial jury selection. Dozens of times Southwick has rejected claims that the prosecution was racially motivated in striking Blacks from juries on the basis of race while at the same time decrying prosecutors who struck Whites from juries on the basis of their race. I mean, come on, who does not understand what that’s all about.
Why George Will is on the warpath over this is beyond me. For 6 years a Republican rubberstamp Congressional machine, with malice of forethought, has allowed Boy George to get two White-Wing Honkies on the Supreme Court and hundreds more confirmed thoughout our District and Circuit Court system. It’s what Republicans are most about; racism, militarism and war. Ring a bell?