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Lost in the uproar over Sen. Hillary Clinton's invoking of the assassination of Robert Kennedy when explaining why her staying in the race won't hurt party unity is an actual examination of her comparison of the 2008 Democratic primary season to the one from 1968. Clinton yesterday before the Argus Leader editorial board also invoked her husband's race in 1992. We've already twice now looked at how her reference to how her husband was still campaigning in June 1992 is a disingenuous claim.

'WHY don't we just vote to strike tonight - and we'll decide to morrow what we're striking for?" Those were the words of a student protester thoughtfully deliberating at Yale University, as recounted by Roger Kimball in his book on the left, "The Long March." It was a question that captured much of the heedless spirit of the student demonstrations of the 1960s, for which "May 1968" is shorthand. That spring 40 years ago saw a radical takeover of Columbia University - eventually duplicated at other elite campuses - and student protests around the world. In France, the government was...

Nineteen sixty-eight was one exciting moment in a much larger movement. It spawned a whole range of movements. There wouldn't have been an international global solidarity movement, for instance, without the events of 1968. It was enormous, in terms of human rights, ethnic rights, a concern for the environment, too. The Pentagon Papers (the 7,000-page, top-secret US government report into the Vietnam War) are proof of this: right after the Tet Offensive, the business world turned against the war, because they thought it was too costly, even though there were proposals within the government - and we know this now...

The ACLU of Colorado has filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Secret Service and the city of Denver to ensure that protesters are within "sight and sound" of delegates attending the Democratic National Convention this August. "Ultimately, it's the federal courts that are sort of the last resort protectors of constitutional rights," Mark Silverstein, the ACLU's legal director, said today. "It's been the federal courts that are the ones to say law enforcement has not struck the proper balance here between security concerns and citizens' fundamental First Amendment rights," he said. Silverstein said the city is dragging its feet...

Americans are well acquainted with presidential candidate Barack Obama’s legendary pledges to bring “change” to America’s political and social landscape. (For example, see here and here and here.) Indeed, “Change We Can Believe In” is the slogan that adorns the homepage of his campaign website and so many of the placards displayed by the supporters who attend his speaking engagements. His Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, is also well practiced at issuing calls for change. Her “Change and Experience” ad campaign was but an outgrowth of her 1993 declaration, as First Lady, that “remolding society is one of the great challenges...

NEW YORK, April 26 -- Forty years ago, they launched a student protest at Columbia University that involved the occupation of five campus buildings, the hostage-taking of a dean, 712 arrests and injuries to scores of students, faculty members and police officers. This Story At Columbia, Remembering a Revolution The 1968 Protesters, Then and Now Now, they are lawyers, judges, playwrights, poets, professors and ministers. They gathered this weekend back on campus with former classmates to hear memories of those events and occasionally raise a revolutionary fist for old times' sake. "Strangest reunion I ever saw," said Victoria Benitez, a...

Spiro Agnew's political career rose like a phoenix from the ashes. In six short years he went from being elected Baltimore County Executive to being elected Vice-President of the United States. He would be a bulldog for President Richard Nixon, playing a role that many future GOP Vice-Presidents like Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney would, making tough speeches to keep conservatives in line with the more moderate president who would "stay above it all." Agnew's attacks on the mainstream media ("the nattering nabobs of negativity") would make him as hated at the president himself in MSM circles. Agnew's election as...

The conference program on the sponsors’ website promises to air a “wide range of viewpoints” on what happened and why, but the list of speakers shows no range at all—everyone seems to be a proud ex-protester or at least a familiar partisan of the Left. While Todd Gitlin (formerly the president of Students for a Democratic Society, now at Columbia’s journalism school) is a sober and reflective thinker, most of his fellow speakers are far from that standard. They include Kathleen Cleaver, Eldridge Cleaver’s widow and a former Black Panther official; veteran activist Tom Hayden; several former members of the...

Tributes poured out from all over the world in honor of Martin Luther King with Father George Clements of Chicago saying King "is a saint" and "should be canonized." Meanwhile on the streets of Chicago rioting broke out after King's death. Three thousand National Guard troops were initially deployed as many fires burned on the West Side of the city. Dozens were injured by rocks thrown at their cars or by gangs on the streets. Bricks were thrown at firefighters trying to put out the flames and stores were looted. Mayor Richard Daley called on President Johnson for regular Army...

"go home and get your guns"-Stokely Carmichael April 4,1968 in Washington D.C. I had a habit of sitting in the kitchen and eating my breakfast while the radio was turned on to the morning news. The morning of Friday April 5th, 1968 I heard the account of a radio reporter (from UPI) who hid under a car while mobs rioted in the street around him. He sounded scared and he had reason to as rioting broke out in the nation's captial following the assassination of Martin Luther King late on the evening or April 4th and early on the morning...

On Thursday April 4th, 1968 the City of Memphis was back in federal court seeking a permanent injunction against any protest by Martin Luther King to support the sanitation workers strike. Police Director Frank Holloman spoke of black adults buying guns and young black people receiving training in the use of molotov cocktails. In the evening I watched the "Huntley-Brinkley Report" on NBC and saw the story of the day before including the King speech. I was seven years old and this was the first time I had ever heard the name "Martin Luther King." In the evening just after...

Dr. Martin Luther King originally wanted to stage a new march in Memphis on Friday April 5th, 1968 but decided to push the march back to Monday the 8th so labor leaders could show up. The City of Memphis was afraid of more violence if King led another march on behalf of the striking sanitation workers. They went to federal court seeking an injunction. Federal District Judge Bailey Brown issued a temporary restraining order against a march on Monday April 8th. It was with that court order in mind that Dr. King made what would be his last speech. The...

On Monday April 1st, Martin Luther King was in Atlanta preparing for a return to Memphis to lead a march on behalf of the striking sanitation workers. He spoke to his aides and others that day. Matters of discussion were the planned Poor People's March On Washington later in the year and the decision of President Johnson not to run for re-election. King had started on good terms with Johnson, who pushed through the controversial civil rights legislation of 1964. Portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were seen by conservatives as federal power usurping state power in an...

Those lovable, aggressive peace-loving anti-war factions of the left are ready for the 1968 presidential race. At least some of them are preparing to recreate the chaos that surrounded the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago when the Dem delegates gather this August in Denver, Colorado. The band of loons, freaks and frauds planning the new mess is unimaginatively named Recreate 68. It’s a radical left-wing group of “peace-loving” Castro-ettes whose goal is described as peaceful through good old fashioned liberal violence upon the dangerous American establishment and government that Recreate 68 feels must be taken down and controlled by revolutionaries....

"Does Ho Chi Minh have anything like this"-President Lyndon Johnson According to Texas writer Larry L. King (not the CNN guy) the earthy talking Lyndon Johnson made this comment in the White House to staff members with his pants down and his manhood on display. Regardless of the raw nature of Johnson's reported comments the administration's Vietnam War policy always aimed to be a repeat of the Korean War with some negoatiated ending. The "bombing" of North Vietnam was restricted when it came to the main conduit of North Vietnam's war supplies, Haiphong harbor. There was fear that Soviets on...

The sanitation workers strike in Memphis could be seen as just any other labor-management dispute over pay, but since most of the workers were black, the racial aspect stood out. This brought Dr. Martin Luther King to Memphis in the spring of 1968 to support the strike that had begun in February. On March 28th, 1968 King marched with five thousand others in the streets of Memphis. Around 20 minutes after the march began, 200 youths began to break windows and loot stores along Beale Street. The march turned into chaos and Dr. King was taken away. One person was...

The Democrats head for their convention beset by splits and overshadowed by a war, just as they did 40 years ago when Chicago became the focus for extraordinary anti-Vietnam riots. As two films recall those tumultuous events, veterans are reflecting on the similarities with the conflicts of 2008Forty years ago, John Froines was a Sixties radical leading anti-war hippie protests to the Chicago Democratic Convention. After the 1968 convention descended into riots and more than 25,000 troops and police were deployed on the streets, Froines became one of the famed 'Chicago Eight'. He was put on trial for inciting the...

Denver '08 bring up memories of Chicago '68? It will if a group called Re-create 68 have anything to say about it. The group is promising "demonstrations that will rival those at the bloody 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago" at the August's Democratic National Convention in Denver, according to the Rocky Mountain News. The Re-create 68 Alliance is upset that a permit for the Civic Center, a "spacious plaza" that "has been used for major public events and celebrations representing the diversity and cultural heritage of Colorado and Denver," according to the city of Denver's Web site, went to the...

The student unrest in Paris and London 40 years ago filled our writer with revulsion. The protesters enjoyed enviable freedom and had no idea how lucky they were. In 1968 I was living the good life with my first wife and first baby in our first house on the swell of my first play and was beginning to be noted by my peers as someone who was politically dubious. It was to be some years before a well known left-wing director, asked to typify a “Royal Court play”, replied that it was a play not written by Tom Stoppard, but...

The road to the White House was filled with a lot more backrooms in the past. Most of the delegates to political conventions were "superdelegates" in those times. For candidates in 1968 only a handful of primaries existed with New Hampshire leading off the six that had any meaning (linking votes and delegates). Into this situation entered Democrat Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, running an anti-Vietnam War campaign against incumbent Lyndon Johnson. The first big anti-war protests began in 1967, but those protesting were countered by a large demonstration supporting America's Vietnam War effort in New York City. The street...