Mother Jones take on Heller; it's all about racist oppression and it always was.

[Beagle-zebub]

Regardless of what side of the moral issue you are on, I think pretty much everyone would have to agree that the issue of racism is exceptionally difficult to resolve, given the nature of the terms involved.

Possibly the biggest problem is that, unless overt, it is difficult to determine with a high-degree of certainty that any given action is racist and to what degree. It is certainly plausible, particularly given previous events in the state's history, that the sluggish reaction to hurricane Katrina was the result of racism; confirming this, though, is more difficult, since storms of that magnitude, against cities that vulnerable, within states that dysfunctional only happen very rarely, meaning that a cleanly comparable disaster afflicting a whiter city would be very unlikely to happen without considerable time elapsing during the control disaster and its experimental counterpart, during which time society might or might not change. The obvious alternative is to make rougher comparisons, but the level of roughness at which comparisons are still acceptable is up to every individual to make subjectively, and this choice may be influenced by the individual's possible racism.

The particularly offensive nature of racism encourages its use a weapon. If you have unrestricted hatred for a person, and they're not the same race as you are, what better way to attack somone than with a racial epithet? It replaces their individuality with an undesirable stereotype, makes an immutable part of their being into something bad, and impresses upon them that entire segments of the population hate them. To a lesser degree, the idea that certain races are less protected by the law gives a sadist disproportionate reason to victimize them--that might sound ridiculous, but supposedly the rates of rape victimization on Indian reservations by outsiders is astronomical (heard a story about this on NPR); whether or not the lack of legal protection is due to racism, or to the legal nightmare created by the issue of federalism, it's fairly certain that rapists are more likely to rape Indian women because of the perception that they are less likely to get punished for doing so.

Additionally, an accusation of racism is not falsifiable. We've all heard "some of my best friends are ________!" We have probably heard it more as a joke than in earnest, since it's so laughable...and that's probably the most reasonable attempt at falsification.

So, everyone is pretty much screwed.

 

[JWarren]

Beagle,

I lived through Katrina. The response to Katrina had NOTHING to do with racism. It had everything to do with not realizing how bad it was.

I'm really tired of seeing that accusation thrown around with nothing but one's own speculation as evidence. If racism was the motive, why was there tons of supplies going into NO weeks before we ever saw an emergency vehicle of any kind?

It was a storm of the century-- that means its kinda hard to firmly grasp the effects. It's not like the US has a lot of history or experience with dealing with such a thing....



Regurgitating the same speculative and asinine claims is no different than what we repeatedly criticize the media, gun control activists, politicians etc. about daily on this board when they use idiotic claims to support gun control. And yet, I see the EXACT thing happening regarding with issues like this. It seems that if you repeat something often enough you really will get the masses to believe it. I guess it simply depends what we wish to challenge.



-- John

 

[FourNineFoxtrot]

I hope this article doesn't circulate much. Doesn't matter that it's b.s.; the creation of a link, however fictional, between guns and racism, is disastrous for us. Brilliant stroke by them, of course, and I'm surprised it hasn't been done sooner and with greater force. Since the anti-gun campaign has always been more about emotion than logic, it's a natural step.

If a large number of people were led to believe that guns and racism had a definite link, there would be little hope for us. Let's just hope this article dies the quiet death it deserves.

Maybe it's just the mood I'm in, but this whole idea is giving me a bad feeling.

 

[learn2shoot]

It is the trait of a professional (regardless of profession) to attempt to continously improve themselves in their career. Please give the author of this article the opportunity to improve herself....

[email protected]

Rememeber, this is the highroad so be polite, yet helpful

 

[Cavalier Knight]

The Klan's Favorite Law

Gun control in the postwar South

David B. Kopel | February 15, 2005

If you believe everything that Michael Moore says in Bowling for Columbine and his books, then you would think that "pro-gun" people are white racists, and that "gun control" would be a wonderful way to help minorities. But a look at America's past reveals what historian Clayton Cramer has accurately called "The Racist Roots of Gun Control."

After the Civil War, the defeated Southern states aimed to preserve slavery in fact if not in law. The states enacted Black Codes which barred the black freedmen from exercising basic civil rights, including the right to bear arms. Mississippi's provision was typical: No freedman "shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition."

Under the Mississippi law, a person informing the government about illegal arms possession by a freedman was entitled to receive the forfeited firearm. Whites were forbidden to give or lend freedman firearms or knives.

The Special Report of the Anti-Slavery Conference of 1867 complained that freedmen were "forbidden to own or bear firearms and thus.rendered defenseless against assaults" by whites. Or as a letter printed in the Jan. 13, 1866 edition of Harper's Weekly observed: "The militia of this county have seized every gun found in the hands of so-called freedmen in this section of the county. They claim that the Statute Laws of Mississippi do not recognize the Negro as having any right to carry arms."

Congress' "Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction" set forth the factual case for the need for a 14th Amendment to protect the liberties enumerated in the federal Bill of Rights. At the Committee's hearings, General Rufus Saxon testified that all over the South, whites were "seizing all fire-arms found in the hands of the freedmen. Such conduct is in clear and direct violation of their personal rights as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, which declares that 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.'"

Despite the statutes, and at the suggestion of Reconstruction governors and other leaders, blacks often formed militias to resist white terrorism. For example, in June 1867 in Greensboro, Alabama, the police let the murderer of a black voting registrar escape; in response, a freedman who would later serve in the Alabama State Legislature urged his fellow freedmen to create a permanent militia. "Union League" militias were formed all over central Alabama.

The freedmen slipped from white control. One planter protested that his workers were "turbulent and disorderly," coming and going when they wished, as if they had a choice whether or not to work. The Union League, protested another ex-master, was advising freedmen "to ignore the Southern white man as much as possible...to set up for themselves."

The next spring, the Ku Klux Klan came to central Alabama. The Klansmen, unlike the freedmen, had horses, and thus the tactical advantages of mobility. In a few months, the Klan triumph was complete. One freedman recalled that the night riders, after reasserting white control, "took the weapons from might near all the colored people in the neighborhood."

The same dynamic existed throughout the South. Sometimes militias consisting of freedmen or Unionists were able to resist the Klan or other white forces. In places like the South Carolina back-country, where the blacks were a numerical majority, the black militias kept white terrorists at bay for long periods.

While many blacks participated in informal, local militias, most of the reconstruction governors set up official state militias that were racially integrated. Like many other facets of the reconstruction governments (and the racist governments which followed them), the integrated "black" state militias were corrupt. The state militias, which sought to protect the state governments and the election process, were frequently in conflict with informal white militias. Arms shipments from the federal government to arm the militias were often intercepted and seized by white militias.

Official or unofficial, the black militias were the primary target of the white racist resistance. "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, the U.S. Senate advocate of racism for many decades, joined a "Sweetwater Sabre Club" whose members seized control of South Carolina's Edgefield Country from a black militia in 1874-75, and attacked a black militia at Hamburg, South Carolina in 1876.

In areas where the black militias lost and the Klan or other white groups took control, "almost universally the first thing done was to disarm the negroes and leave them defenseless," wrote Albion Tourgeé in his 1880 book The Invisible Empire. (An attorney and civil rights worker from the north, Tourgeé would later represent the civil rights plaintiff in Plessy v. Ferguson.)

The Klan's objective in disarming the blacks was to leave them unable to defend their rights, a Congressional hearing found. Afraid of race war and retribution, whites were terrified at the mere sight of a black with a gun. As legal historian Kermit Hall notes, "From the southern white's point of view, a well-armed Negro militia was precisely what John Brown had sought to achieve at Harpers Ferry in 1859."

The Vicksburg white riot of 1874 typified the problem. According to a Congressional investigation, the whites conducted, "Unauthorized searches by self-constituted authority into private homes, searches for arms converted, as is unusual, into robbery and thieving...." The Congressional Report detailed one arms roundup:

One poor old man, half crazed, but harmless, sitting quietly in a neighbor's house, is brutally shot to death in the presence of terrified women and shrieking children. He gained his wretched living by hunting and fishing, and had a shot-gun. No one pretended that Tom Bidderman had anything to do with the fight, but he was black, and had a gun in his house, and so they murdered him for amusement as they were going from the city to restore order in the country.​

The Radical Republican Congress observed the South with dismay. The Republicans intended to use federal power to force freedom on the South. One of the Radical Republicans' most important tools was the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which required states to respect basic human rights. While the vague language of the amendment has produced disagreement about exactly what is covered, the Congressional backers of the amendment seem to have intended, at the least, protecting the core freedoms listed in the national Bill of Rights. Announced Representative Clarke of Kansas: "I find in the Constitution an article which declared 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' For myself, I shall insist that the reconstructed rebels of Mississippi respect the Constitution in their local laws."

The earlier Freedman's Bureau Bill had also been squarely aimed at protecting the right to bear arms. The bill guaranteed federal protection of "the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and estate, including the constitutional right of bearing arms."

The Amendment was quickly emasculated by the United States Supreme Court in The Slaughter-House Cases and United States v. Cruikshank, The Supreme Court understood the social realities of the South. The Cruikshank decision gave the green light to the Klan, unofficial white militias, and other racist groups to forcibly disarm the freedmen and impose white supremacy.

One state at a time, white racists took control of government by using armed violence and the threat of violence to control balloting on election day. Freedmen and their white allies also resorted to arms. But white Republican governors were usually afraid that employing the black militias fully would set off an even broader race war.

The white South, while defeated on the battlefield in 1865, had continued armed resistance to Northern control for over a decade. When the North, an occupying power, grew weary of the struggle and abandoned its black and Republican allies in the South, the white South was again the master of its destiny.

In deference to the Fourteenth Amendment, some states did cloak their laws in neutral, non-racial terms. For example, the Tennessee legislature barred the sale of any handguns except the "Army and Navy model." The ex-Confederate soldiers already had their high quality "Army and Navy" guns. But cash-poor freedmen could barely afford lower-cost, simpler firearms not of the "Army and Navy" quality. Arkansas enacted a nearly identical law in 1881, and other Southern states followed suit, including Alabama (1893), Texas (1907), and Virginia (1925).

As Jim Crow intensified, other Southern states enacted gun registration and handgun permit laws. Registration came to Mississippi (1906), Georgia (1913), and North Carolina (1917). Handgun permits were passed in North Carolina (1917), Missouri (1919), and Arkansas (1923).

As one Florida judge explained, the licensing laws were "passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers... [and] never intended to be applied to the white population."

That gun control has a very unsavory past does not, in itself, prove that all modern gun control proposals are a bad idea. But it does offer reasons to be especially cautious about the dangers of disarming people who cannot necessarily count on their local government to protect them.

ARTICLE

 

[TCB in TN]

It is certainly plausible, particularly given previous events in the state's history, that the sluggish reaction to hurricane Katrina was the result of racism;

Correct me is I am wrong but I believe that many of the main LA gov. officials involved were black. I know the mayor was (Ray Naygan), and the gov. was a female dem (Kathleen Blanco), so you KNOW should couldn't ever be a racist she also had a black director of public safety (Deputy Secretary, Superintendent Col. Stanley Griffin), and a black secretary of transportation, (Johnny Bradberry). While I would love to see FEMA improve in their response, the first and main responsibility for the problems related to Katrina fall first on Mayor Nagin, and the La gov. office. All the poor FEMA response proves is how in-effective the Fed. Gov is in ANY function! Just as you can never depend upon LEA's to protect you, you should never depend upon the Fed for emergency help!

 

[Deanimator]

Correct me is I am wrong but I believe that many of the main LA gov. officials involved were black. I know the mayor was (Ray Naygan), and the gov. was a female dem (Kathleen Blanco), so you KNOW should couldn't ever be a racist she also had a black director of public safety (Deputy Secretary, Superintendent Col. Stanley Griffin), and a black secretary of transportation, (Johnny Bradberry). While I would love to see FEMA improve in their response, the first and main responsibility for the problems related to Katrina fall first on Mayor Nagin, and the La gov. office. All the poor FEMA response proves is how in-effective the Fed. Gov is in ANY function! Just as you can never depend upon LEA's to protect you, you should never depend upon the Fed for emergency help!

While I believe there were racially motivated incidents during the disaster (police from other communities blocking escape routes from NO), BY FAR the greatest harm was accomplished through sheer stupidity and incompetence by state and local officials, Black and White. Let's be honest; through his blithering ineptitude, Ray Nagin killed more Black people in New Orleans in two weeks than the Klan has in the last HUNDRED YEARS. It was like Stalin hiding under a table, drunk with a blanket over his head during the first days of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. There was quite literally NOBODY in charge of New Orleans. Ray Nagin has all of the leadership skills of the Mayor of Old Detroit in "Robocop II".

 

[JWarren]

mrreynolds,

What are you asserting with that Koppel article? a simple quote with no explaination does little to further discussion.

I don't think ANYONE has suggested that much of gun control found its roots in racism. I further do not thing that anyone has asserted that the South has not had its share of racism.

What HAS been asserted is that the South does not have monopoly on racism. Nor does White persons, nor does Hispanics, nor does Asians, nor does ______ (fill in the blank.)

And nothing you posted has refuted that. What exactly are you trying to say?


-- John

 

[Tyris]

restrict the ability of a majority black city to protect its citizens from gun violence.

Translation: I don't trust blacks with guns.
Fair enough. Neither does the KKK.

-T

 

[Nikon777]

<<< Black dude with plenty o' guns for the Klan.

 

[another okie]

It is useful to distinguish between racism and racial prejudice, as social scientists do.

Racial prejudice is believing that a particular person has certain characteristics because they are of a certain race.

Racism is applying that belief by using power to injure someone.

So someone may be prejudiced but not a racist, if they have no power over someone else of another race. A white man with a black foreman may be racially prejudiced, but has no power over the foreman, so is not racist. I think this is why many people think social scientists teach that only white people can be racists. They perceive that white people have all the power. But of course this not the case. There are plenty of black mayors, police officers, police chiefs, teachers, lawyers, judges, and so on.

If you distinguish between the two it allows to attack the most harmful part, which is racism.

 

[Cavalier Knight]

And nothing you posted has refuted that. What exactly are you trying to say?

This thread was not about universal racism it was about what I just posted. Which is what was implied in the initial article. I just learn from history or it's doomed to repeat itself....

 

[Vern Humphrey]

It is certainly plausible, particularly given previous events in the state's history, that the sluggish reaction to hurricane Katrina was the result of racism;

That is absolutely untrue. I am on the Catholic Charities Disaster Relief committee. The primary cause of the problems with Katrina was that the city and state failed in their responsibilities -- so the federal government had nothing to work with -- no viable city and state disasterplans, no system to feed in information, no means to get assistance out to the people who needed it. All that had to be built from scratch.

It wasn't racism that left people in the city for lack of transportation -- while over 200 busses were drowned out.

It wasn't racism that took money for levy upgrades and used it to buy a casino and an airplane.

 

[JWarren]

This thread was not about universal racism it was about what I just posted. Which is what was implied in the initial article. I just learn from history or it's doomed to repeat itself....

True. But your post #52 seemed to transcend the orginal topic. Perhaps, I was assuming that your Koppel article was addressing the questions that was asked.

-- John

 

[Cavalier Knight]

True. But your post #52 seemed to transcend the orginal topic. Perhaps, I was assuming that your Koppel article was addressing the questions that was asked.

No I'm more of a bottom line type of guy ie: nuclear bombs kill not well they kill a few only if they detonate blah blah blah. I think you get my drift. They did not want "men such as myself" to have firearms but on a total seperate level you also have this:

(First op-ed in a NY newspaper which brings up the history of the Sullivan Act.)

Big Tim Sullivan was a notorious Irish gangster whose mob controlled New York City south of 14th Street around the turn of the 20th century. Throwing in his lot with the likes of Monk Eastman, Paul Kelly and Arnold Rothstein, Sullivan became an expert on that dark nexus where organized crime and politics consummate their unholy alliance, and soon became an influential figure in the corrupt Democratic machine there known as Tammany Hall.

He made the relatively easy transition from dangerous street thug and political ward heeler to New York state senator first in 1894. He left Albany in 1903 for a term in the U.S. House of Representatives, and returned to the legislature in 1909 after complaining that he lacked the juice in Washington he'd grown accustomed to on his home turf.

In 1911, the Irish and Jewish mobsters who put him into office faced a growing problem -- the Italians. Immigrant mafiosi newly arrived from Sicily and Naples were horning in on what had once been their exclusive domain. Gunfights on the Lower East Side and the neighborhood around Mulberry Street that was to become Little Italy grew more and more frequent, and it was getting so that you couldn't even shake down a barber shop or a greengrocer without some guy fresh off the boat taking a shot at you.

Not to worry, Big Tim told the boys. And in 1911, he took care of the problem.

The Sullivan Act was passed into law in New York state in 1911 and remains Big Tim's primary legacy. It effectively banned most people from owning and, especially, carrying handguns. Under the onerous conditions of the corrupted law, a peaceable citizen of sound mind could apply for a pistol permit, but if any of a number of elected or appointed officials objected to its issuance, he or she could be denied the license. The law remains in effect to this day and has been used as the basis for gun laws in many other states and municipalities.

One of those is Washington, D.C., which enacted its handgun law in 1973. Like the Sullivan law, it was written as a "may issue" permit statute, rather than the more common "must issue" permit statutes of many states. Under the "may issue" provision, a person can pass a police background check, take a gun safety course and jump through whatever other hoops the law requires, and still be turned down for a permit at the discretion of government officials.

Actual criminals, who have no problem breaking the laws against robbery,rape and murder, routinely ignore the absurd pistol-permitting process.

Last week, a challenge to the D.C. law wound up being argued before the United States Supreme Court. The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Dick Anthony Heller, 65, an armed security guard, who sued the district after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection. A lower court threw the D.C. statute out, ruling it to be unreasonable and in violation of Heller's rights under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The district appealed, and for the first time in our nation's history, the high court is preparing to rule on what the framers actually meant when they wrote the Second Amendment.

For many, that meaning has long been clear as glass: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Two clauses that some smart editor might have made into two sentences -- the first of which calls for the establishment of a "well regulated militia," thought by most authorities to be the present National Guard, and the second, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," which needs no interpretation at all. Beginning in the 1960s, however, left-leaning legal theorists and postmodern politicians began putting forth the notion that the Second Amendment had nothing to do with individual rights, that it instead was intended simply to make sure that the state-regulated militia members had guns. This ridiculous reading flew in the face of much that was written by Jefferson, Washington and the other men of action who bought our country's independence with blood and ink and gunpowder, but scant attention was paid.

Guns kill people, the revisionists said. We have the police to protect us, and the truths of 1776 have no place in 20th century society.

Big Tim Sullivan's law was mimeographed, retyped and copied out by hand, and sent around to state capitols and city halls around the country, where politicians -- primarily liberal Democrats -- took up his tainted cause.

The old gangster would have gotten a laugh had he lived to see the results of his crooked efforts. But a year after the Sullivan Act was passed in Albany, he went insane -- the result, it is said, of tertiary syphilis -- and was placed in a lunatic asylum. A year after that, he escaped, lay down on some railroad tracks up in the Bronx and was cut into three ragged pieces by a slow-moving freight train.

As a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat of nearly 35 years' standing, I never thought I'd say this, but thank goodness for Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. They are the majority on the first high court in our nation's history to have the courage to tackle the Second Amendment issue head on.

And if the statements they made and the questions they asked last week as attorneys presented their oral arguments in the case are any indication, D.C. residents and those throughout the country may be liberated from the most outlandish and onerous gun control measures the states and cities have been able to pass in the four decades since the silly "Summer of Love" turned this great nation of ours on its head.

To begin with, the five justices clearly indicated that the "well regulated militia" clause is indeed separate from the "keep and bear arms" clause, and that alone is a huge step forward. How exactly they will rule on the specifics of the Washington law is less clear, but any easing of the restrictions it carries will represent a huge victory for gun owners everywhere.

Once the court sets its precedent, New York's Sullivan Act seems a likely next target for challenge by downtrodden gun owners whose rights have been violated for far too long.

Gun control has been a losing issue for Democrats for decades, and in national elections has cost them most of the western and southern states, as well as helping to create "swing states" out of such traditionally Democratic bastions as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida.

If Sen. John McCain has any sense, he'll use the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority's decision, which will be handed down well before November, as a major campaign issue, pointing to either Sen. Hillary Clinton's or Sen. Barack Obama's past anti-gun stances.

And if Clinton and Obama have any sense -- which, thus far, they haven't shown they have -- they will avoid the gun issue like the plague, zipping their lips and acknowledging the Supreme Court's mandate to interpret questions regarding the Constitution. If they don't, they'll be handing the election to the GOP on a silver platter.

Since its ratification by congress on September 21, 1789, the Second Amendment has never before been interpreted as to its actual meaning and intent by the Supreme Court.

Hopefully, once the justices have done the right thing by Jefferson, Washington, and the American people, the matter will not come up again for another 219 years, at least.

ARTICLE

 

[JWarren]

I think you get my drift. They did not want "men such as myself" to have firearms

mrreynolds,


I do, and I agree with that assertion.

As you reminded us...

If we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.


-- John

 

[Coronach]

If the Supreme Court invalidates the city’s handgun ban, any ensuing uptick in gun violence is likely to have a disproportionate impact on African Americans, particularly young men.

Interesting. Since it is a statistical fact (yes, fact) that the vaaaaaaaast majority of shootings are single demographic events (white male on white male, black male on black male), what this means in translation is that they're afraid that loosening gun restrictions will result in more black males committing murders. Hmm. Who was it Mother Jones was calling racist?

Mike

 

[Cavalier Knight]

I do, and I agree with that assertion.

As you reminded us...

If we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

No problem if you noticed I said "they" as in those involved as not to falsely accuse present company...

 

[Beagle-zebub]

Vern,

The state history that I am referring to is not recent, but rather that of the the hurricane that hit in '27. Even Farrakhan's accusation of the levees being dynamited had a shred of credibility, since this actually happened in '27.

 

[Neo-Luddite]

Honest guys, when I first posted this I had no idea it would go so far --I was just poking a stick at the Mother Jones magazine folks and their logic or lack thereof.

All the same, it has been interesting to follow the discussion thus far. Thanks -- Mike.


BTW--there was a recent PBS special on the '27 flood--I had little knowledge of that event in U.S. history and it was very interesting.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flood/

 

[JWarren]

Farrakhan's accusation of the levees being dynamited had a shred of credibility

Seriously, it doesn't have ANY credibility.

If blowing levees had ANYTHING to do with racism, PLEASE explain to me why one of the levees in question was the 17th Street Canal in Metairie-- one of the "Whiter" areas of the Greater NO area. Please explain to me why one of the others was the levee break at the Industrial Canal flooded one of the wealthiest areas of New Orleans. A man who has a hunting camp near me had his million dollar home literally swept away with the Industrial Canal levee broke.

The news puts on air what will get ratings and will draw viewers. You'd do a LOT better if you didn't formulate every view from what you get there. You'd do a LOT better if you didn't get your views from people who are exploiting events to further their own political and societal agendas...


Consider this...

A content analysis of news programs relating to Katrina will give a majority of its coverage to New Orleans. Is anyone aware that Slidell, LA-- just across Lake Pontchartrain had severe flooding?

Or how about this... Where New Orleans got flooded, Biloxi, MS was practically erased from the map. The eye actually hit there. Where New Orleans had water damaged buildings, Biloxi LITERALLY had even the concrete foundations of buildings disappear.

Perhaps we should seek deeper meanings behind our own asymetrical coverage of events?


-- John

 

[goon]

BTW - I'm a little hazy on this, but didn't the Democratic party originally run on a platform of racism?

 

[Deanimator]

BTW - I'm a little hazy on this, but didn't the Democratic party originally run on a platform of racism?

"Originally" as in this week?

Some people would say that the Clinton campaign has been throwing down so many race cards that it seems like the World Series of Poker. Of course Obama has set himself up to be the mirror image of that, hanging out with friends of Louis Farrakhan. But then both of them are CHICAGO politicians. Expecting a Chicago politician to NOT be corrupt AND racist is like expecting to find a great white shark that only eats veggie burgers with soy milk...

 

[entropy]

Expecting a Chicago politician to NOT be corrupt AND racist is like expecting to find a great white shark that only eats veggie burgers with soy milk...

ROTFLMAO!

2nd Amendment meant to keep slaves down? Perhaps that was an unfortunate by-product of 2A until the situation was rectified in 1862. I think Condoleeza Rice has a much different take on it, which is why she is an ardent supporter of it.

 

[Coronach]

FISH ARE FRIENDS, NOT FOOD!

Sorry, had to.