Posted on 12/17/2001 2:23:53 AM PST by kattracks
WASHINGTON--Some whales have vestigial legs because their prehistoric ancestors were land mammals. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is a vestigial leg on whale-like Washington. The commission has no serious function, other than to illustrate how far things have evolved. Its head is a black woman, Mary Frances Berry, who, like many antebellum plantation owners and today's civil rights lobby, believes blacks cannot cope with life in predominantly white America, that they are comprehensively victimized and must be perpetual wards of paternalistic government. Berry, 63, was appointed chairwoman of the commission in 1993 by President Clinton. She has been on the commission since President Carter appointed her in 1980, perhaps to get her out of his Education Department, where she said we should not criticize Communist China's education policies for requiring students to ``develop what they call socialist consciousness and culture.'' In 1982 she lamented that ``a massive barrage of propaganda'' by America's media caused blacks to misunderstand the Soviet Union's virtues, including ``safeguards for minorities,'' ``equality of opportunity'' and ``equal provision of social services to its citizens.'' She says that in the 1960s, the era of landmark civil rights legislation, blacks faced a ``threat of genocide'' that was ``roughly comparable'' to what Jews faced in Nazi Germany.
The Commission on Civil Rights has a $9 million budget but no enforcement powers. It is a megaphone, a hectoring institution. Berry was designed by nature for it. And notwithstanding her old enthusiasms for communist countries, she strongly believes in private property. At least, she believes the commission is her private property. Hence the current fracas.
The eight-person commission has recently been split 5-3 in favor of Berry's worldview. However, a commission member died in 1998 and Clinton nominated Victoria Wilson to complete the member's six-year term, which expired Nov. 29. President Bush has nominated a black Cleveland lawyer, Peter Kirsanow, to replace Wilson.
But Kirsanow, former chairman of the Center for New Black Leadership, rejects the plantation paternalism of today's civil rights lobby (see paragraph one, above). So Berry insists that even though Wilson's certificate of service stipulates a November expiration date, Clinton really intended to appoint her to a six-year term. Berry, resembling George Wallace blocking the schoolhouse door, says U.S. Marshals will be required to force Kirsanow onto the commission.
Berry also resembles another apostle of lawlessness in the name of civil rights--Clinton. He breezily conceded that when Bill Lann Lee served two years as ``acting''--unconfirmed by the Senate--assistant attorney general for civil rights, this was not done ``in an entirely constitutional way.''
But what good does it do? Until the left goes after it's own villains, despicable people like the Clintons, Condit, Jesse, etal, they will continue to do great harm to our democracy. MF Berry does not love America. Somebody needs to slap this ugly hag...I volunteer!
In the meantime, this Commission needs to be disbanded.
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