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Will Someone, for Christ's Sake, Please Fire MF Berry?
What a wanker Berry is. Bush needs to show this person the door.Earlier this week we wrote about the attempt by some liberals to scare up black voter turnout this year by invoking the Florida myth of 2000. But in case that doesn't work, the fallback seems to be to play the race card one more time. At least that seems to be the strategy of the Democratic majority on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which is about to deliver a scathing report on President Bush's record on civil rights. This is the all-too-familiar handiwork of Chairman Mary Frances Berry and her staff, who produced the document all by themselves with zero input from the Republican commissioners, to whom it was delivered late Wednesday morning. Time to free up this fiefdom for someone a whole lot less partisan. Berry is ( or should be )an embarssment to those who support civil rights for everyone The timing of the report "draws into question the objectivity of the report and whether it's being issued for substance or for the desired effect," says GOP Commissioner Peter Kirsanow--which is putting it mildly. And all the more so given that the Commission's review of Bill Clinton's civil-rights record was deliberately timed for release after the 2000 election. Nor was this report submitted for the usual "affected agency review," a process that allows every agency mentioned to comment or correct errors. This process usually takes a month or two, which of course would have delayed it until after November 2. The partisan motives are also suspicious given the substance of the report, which can generously be described as selective liberal analysis. Take education, where the Bush Administration is castigated for demanding accountability, even (gasp!) from poor kids, in the form of the testing requirements in the No Child Left Behind Act. Now, it isn't as if Mr. Bush sprang those requirements on unsuspecting voters; he ran on them everywhere in 2000 and argued for them with his famous anti-discriminatory phrase, "the soft bigotry of low expectations." Both Ted Kennedy and John Kerry voted for those testing standards. Perhaps what really upsets Ms. Berry and friends is that Mr. Bush has used accountability, as well as support for vouchers for the District of Columbia, to take the moral high ground on education. The folks now blocking African-Americans at the schoolhouse door are those who support the education status quo. Likewise on housing, Mr. Bush is blamed for reducing rental subsidies for the poor. But the report doesn't bother to mention that minority homeownership is at a record high, and that Bush policies have been aimed less at maintaining permanent rental subsidies than in promoting the self-sufficiency that can come from home ownership. Reports like this doesn't bother to mention anything like that because that would make the report fair and balanced: in other words, truthful. And, oh yes, the President is accused of being soft on civil rights for nominating a Hispanic (Miguel Estrada) and an African-American (Janice Rogers Brown) to the appellate bench. Never mind their ethnicity, these conservatives have a judicial philosophy that the report says will lead to the "eventual weakening of civil rights laws." So Mr. Bush is insensitive to civil rights if he doesn't appoint minorities but he's also insensitive if he does. That's about all you need to know about the objectivity of this political exercise. I need to know when Bush is going to fire MF Berry. Posted by: badanov 2004-10-02 |
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