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Republicans are demanding an apology Wednesday from President Obama's campaign manager after a tweet that they argue was insulting toward Latino Americans. Jim Messina, who is helming the president's reelection effort, tweeted a line from a column written by The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, in which he argues that Republicans will struggle to attract the Latino vote after coming out against the DREAM immigration reform act. "Line of the day from WAPO's Dana Milbank: 'The chimichanga? It may be the only thing Republicans have left to offer Latinos,' " Messina tweeted. But the comments drew rebuke from Republicans, who argued...

Jackson: Heated GOP rhetoric puts presidents at risk

Odd question? Well yesterday Daniel Burke’s article in the Washington Post titled, “Will Mormons’ racial history be a problem for Mitt Romney?” tried to tarnish Romney with the brush of past discrimination in the Mormon priesthood. Burke states that “Until 1978, the LDS church banned men of African descent from its priesthood.” But if the actions of others in a group you belong to reflect on you then should Obama be tainted with the racial bigotry of the Democratic Party. For none other than Bull Connor was a Democrat and the history of many elected Democratic who were historically significant...

Politico's Jonathan Martin provides expert analysis of the Florida primary for MSNBC this morning and hurls an offensive epithet to describe counties in the panhandle of the state.

Ron Paul, well known as a physician, congressman and libertarian , has also been a businessman who pursued a marketing strategy that included publishing provocative, racially charged newsletters to make money and spread his ideas, according to three people with direct knowledge of PaulÂ’s businesses. The Republican presidential candidate has denied writing inflammatory passages in the pamphlets from the 1990s and said recently that he did not read them at the time or for years afterward. Numerous colleagues said he does not hold racist views. But people close to PaulÂ’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that...

The following is edited from remarks given at the Nov. 11, 2011 meeting of the Communist Party National Committee.2012 is a big election year and as we know the stakes are very high. The right-wing Republican opposition unashamedly defends the wealth and privilege of the 1% over the 99% that includes tens of millions who are struggling to survive. These self-proclaimed patriots are willing to wreck our country in order to defeat Barack Obama in 2012 elections. Our party and youth league are an active part of the great democratic mass that is standing against them. These so called patriots...

In a short piece in the “Culture Monster” section of the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Knight decries a satirical depiction of the First Lady based on a 1775 portrait of famed French lover of luxury, Marie Antoinette. The image replaces Marie’s face with Mrs. Obama’s, and the young queen’s puffy-sleeved left arm with a bare muscular black arm – clearly a poke at Mrs. Obama’s penchant for going sleeveless to show off her buffed guns. Her right hand points to a spot on a world globe, and the image caption reads “Choosing the next vacation.” Obviously a pointed commentary on...

We all know Al Sharpton has a history of not reading the teleprompter correctly on his MSNBC tv show. The latest flub? Saying the Republican party has rushed to "white" wing extremism. (VIDEO) Can you imagine what would happen if Sean Hannity "accidentally" said black wing extremism?

NBC's Andrea Mitchell on New Year's Day made it clear to Nightly News viewers that her Obama-loving network will continue using the race card to assist the current White House resident's reelection. In a brief segment about the upcoming Iowa caucuses, Mitchell said "the rap" on the Hawkeye state is that "it doesn't represent the rest of the country - too white, too evangelical, too rural" Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/01/02/andrea-mitchell-iowa-too-white-too-evangelical-too-rural#ixzz1iMDxZzyc

Is it racist to require people to show a photo ID when they vote? You need a photo ID for nearly any meaningful transaction, such as cashing checks, including government checks. If this simple requirement “suppresses� the vote, maybe we need to ask why it’s such a great idea to push for universal suffrage for every adult who is merely breathing. Of course, even this latter requirement would suppress the vote in Chicago and New Orleans, where dead people get to vote all the time – and do so cheerfully! In a speech Tuesday at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library...

Worst. Administration. Ever. The Justice Department today released a statement insisting Attorney General Eric Holder was not playing the race card when he played the race card in an article published yesterday in The New York Times. Clearly this incompetent Obama official thinks we’re all stupid. Eric Holder needs to go. They won’t own up to their incompetence and think we’re stupid.

You know he’s getting desperate. (NYT) — For nearly three years, Republicans have attacked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on national security and civil rights issues. For months, they have criticized him over a gun-trafficking investigation gone awry, with dozens of leaders calling for his resignation. Last week, more than 75 members of Congress co-sponsored a House resolution expressing “no confidence” in his leadership. [...] In the interview, Mr. Holder offered a glimpse of how he viewed the criticism. He said he thought some critics — like Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who favors allowing the military...

(AP) HUTCHINSON, Kan. - A tea party group in Kansas says its depiction of President Barack Obama as a skunk is satire, not racism as the leader of a civil rights group alleges. Hutchinson-based Patriot Freedom Alliance says on its website that like the president, the skunk is "half black, half white, and almost everything it does stinks." The Hutchinson News reports local NAACP president Darrell Pope sees no humor in the depiction, which he calls a blatant statement of racism. Local tea party supporter Chuck Sankey says former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been the target of worse...

Glenn Beck has made no secret of how much he dislikes Newt Gingrich– not even to Newt Gingrich’s face. But he has yet to confront his supporters until last night, when he reasoned to Freedom Watch host Judge Andrew Napolitano that there was very little difference between Gingrich and President Barack Obama– so much so that the only possible explanation for Tea Partiers rallying around Gingrich is “Obama’s race.”

A Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday on the House floor that Republican legislators around the country are purposefully trying to deny blacks the right to vote by pushing for voter identification laws. “It’s no coincidence that a disproportionate number of these affected voters come from communities of color as well as the poor, the elderly and students,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Having been born and raised in Texas, this certainly looks like a poll tax to me, which those of us remember as a way to prevent African Americans from voting. These...

I understand that the NAACP opposes voter-ID laws. Given the long history of fighting against uses of state law to deny blacks and other minorities the franchise until the Civil Rights Movement prevailed, their deep skepticism over proposed stricter enforcement of eligibility laws can’t help but recall echoes of voter suppression in their communities, even if the new laws are innocent of any racial animus. We still have plenty of mistrust that will take generations to undo, especially given that we still have those with living memories of having been denied the right to vote. Still, if the NAACP wants...

Tacoma's Mayor Marilyn Strickland recently told students at Pacific Lutheran University that the reasons Republicans were unsuccessful in recruiting minorities was because "they are racist." When her comments leaked to the media, she said she intended to say that they were "perceived as racist."I don't buy the idea that she "intended" to say something different. But I can accept that in hindsight she wishes she had. And that's a start. At least she acknowledges that Republicans are trying to include minorities, which is more than some Democrats have been willing to say of late. And it's good that she feels...

With just about a year to ago until Election Day, the U.S. is a racially divided nation when it comes to President Barack Obama. Consider this: A new CNN/Opinion Research Poll shows 61% of whites disapprove of the way Obama is handling his job vs. 36% who don’t – that’s almost two-to-one. For non-whites, it's almost the mirror image. Only 32% disapprove while 67% approve. For a president who was supposed to symbolize a post-racial America, this is not good news. When Obama defeated John McCain in 2008, he did it with significant support from white Americans. Exit polls showed...

Wasserman Schultz accuses GOP of rigging elections with 'suppression laws'By Pete Kasperowicz - 11/16/11 08:43 PM ET Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) on Wednesday night said Republican governors and legislatures are purposefully pressing for the enactment of voter identification laws in order to suppress Democratic voter turnout in the 2012 election. "State legislatures are attempting to impose voting restrictions that are the modern day equivalent of poll taxes and literacy tests," she said on the House floor. "We cannot allow state legislatures to drag our nation backward in what is nothing more than a political quest to...

Surrrrprise surrrprise surrrprise (anyone old enough to remember Gomer Pyle here?) Exactly as has been pointed out to pollsters for almost 3 years now: IF minorities were holding Obama accountable and NOT voting skin color, Obama would be at a 35% approval instead of hovering around 40 to 42%.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, folks. After all of these years, none of us should be surprised, but I still am. Look at how quickly what is known as the mainstream media goes for the ugliest racial stereotypes they can to attack a black conservative. You know who's laughing himself silly today is Bill Clinton. (imitating Clinton) "Yeah, I really did it. Ha-ha. They praised me and they went as far out of their way as they could. Even my old buddy Carville is out there and he's saying, 'Look what happens when you...

Karen Finney is not just any Democrat; she was the spokeswoman for the Democrat National Committee, served in the Clinton White House, was the press secretary for Hillary Clinton's New York Senate race, and is a veteran of four Presidential Campaigns. Tasked with analyzing Herman Cain's surge in the GOP's Presidential campaign for MSNBC last week, Finney offered up the most outrageous, insulting, demeaning single sentence we have ever heard – particularly by someone who supposedly speaks for an entire national political party. "I think he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel that they're not...

The author who calls himself simply Toure -- a regular guest on MSNBC, and before that on CNN -- is throwing rhetorical bricks at Herman Cain for Time magazine. His article is headlined "Is Herman Cain the Most Unctuous Black Man Alive? Why the Hermanator experience is making me sick." Toure compared Cain to a circus clown, called him a "buffoon," compared him to "rancid, spoiled, stinky, curdled milk" and dissed him (in the liberal mind) by calling him "the Black Sarah Palin." In the midst of that, he somehow scolds Cain for "sinking to teenage-level disses." He began: This...

In a "Joy Behar Show" segment scheduled to be aired on HLN Friday, singer Harry Belafonte attacked Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in potentially the most disgraceful manner of any media member to date. While his host and others on the set laughed, Belafonte called Cain "a bad apple" that was "so denied intelligence...I don’t think prayers were created for him" (video follows with transcript and commentary): JOY BEHAR, HOST: Now, let me interrupt you for a second, because now you have someone like Herman Cain. HARRY BELAFONTE: Who? BEHAR: Herman Cain? BELAFONTE: Herman Cain? BEHAR: You know who he...

I returned a bit ago from getting photos and video of the Obama fundraiser protest in St. Louis. It was hosted by Tom Carnahan, owner of the Wind Capital Group, an alternative energy group which received around $100 million in stimulus funds. That Carnahan’s brother is Democratic Representative Russ Carnahan surely helped change Wind Capital Group’s fortunes. (Snip) I’ve been to a lot of protests–both conservative and progressive–and only one other time have I witnessed such a level of hostility and outright inappropriate behavior. It’s a shame some individuals allow themselves to get so partisan and emotional that they make...

For two years conservatives indulged themselves in unheard-of dogwhistle campaigns against this young African-American President while enlightened liberals pointed it out in a mild, somewhat derisive fashion but with little outrage. Now, in the aftermath of the midterm 'shellacking', a New Confederacy is rising with the assistance of the tea party and John Birchers, and it's getting enough traction in Congress to do real damage. The scary part? It's working. Fact: We are NOT living in a post-racial society. Not on the liberal side, and not on the conservative side. As nice as it is to think that we've transcended...

Updated 2:22 p.m. Wallace Jefferson, the first black chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, said the hunting ranch name controversy is "much ado about nothing" and argued the implication that Rick Perry is insensitive to matters of race is flatly wrong. Jefferson, who was appointed to the post by Perry, and whose great-great-great-grandfather was a slave owned by a Waco district judge, said the reality is quite the opposite: Perry "appreciates the role diversity plays in our state and nation." Jefferson said he can recall his first conversation with Perry, in 2001, like it was yesterday. They talked about...

WASHINGTON -- Rick Perry's presidential campaign said Sunday that his family moved quickly when they found they that the Texas hunting camp they leases was named "Niggerhead," and painted over the word on a rock next to the camp entrance. The rapid response from the Texas governor's campaign, to a newspaper report Sunday about the camp name and to criticism from his one African-American rival, was an attempt to stem any political fallout for a candidate who has struggled to regain his footing since a weak debate in Florida and a surprise loss in a straw poll there. The Washington...

“The Washington Post story revealing that Texas Governor Rick Perry hunted and hosted lawmakers at a hunting camp called Niggerhead is alarming and displays a new height in racial insensitivity in national politics. Mr. Perry should immediately fully explain how he could have gone to a ranch and hunted that is named after such an obvious racist term or he should withdrawl from the race. He is either blindly insensitive or hopelessly unaware of where he spends his time. Either way it makes one wonder if he is ready for prime time and certainly whether he is ready for the...

Janeane Garofalo: "Herman Cain is probably well liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican party. Conservative movement and tea party movement, one in the same. "People like Karl Rove liked to keep the racism very covert. And so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity say you can say 'Look, this is not a racist, anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look we have a black man.'"

While speaking with Tavis Smiley of PBS, Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee said conservative bloggers should "shut up" and "stop playing racial politics." This from a member of the caucus that does little else but play the race card. Seconds later, Jackson Lee went on to say that buy American should be "buy African American." She also said that if Obama's jobs bill is passed, that contractors who "do not look like" her need to make sure that if they get federal money, their workforce "better be reflective of those suffering double-digit unemployment." "I don't consider it discrimination, I don't...

Rep. Waters urges Obama to drop nice-guy act and fight Republicans, Tea Party By Mike Lillis - 09/22/11 02:46 PM ET It’s time for President Obama to quit watching sports and drinking beer with his political opponents in the hope it will lead to a bipartisan agreement, Rep. Maxine Waters said Thursday. The outspoken California Democrat needs to fight harder against the GOP and Tea Party and for Democratic policy priorities, outspoken Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said Thursday. “He's been very nice about it,” Waters said of Obama’s budget negotiations with Republicans. “He's been on the other side of the...

Obama is finished. It's not so much the past six weeks, rough as they were, as his own actions and responses that have finished him...........These were not the actions of a leader, a statesman, or even an adult. They will be neither forgiven nor forgotten. It's hard to see how he recovers from any of this. (And this is not even to mention the unfolding Solyndra, LightSquared, and Fast and Furious scandals; add the AttackWatch debacle and my cup runneth over.) He has no shred of reputation left to build on, no reservoir of goodwill to draw from. His approval...

What’s the most obvious difference between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama? Unhappy members of the Congressional Black Caucus “probably would be marching on the White House” if Obama were not president, according to CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.).“If [former President] Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House,” Cleaver told “The Miami Herald” in comments published Sunday. “There is a less-volatile reaction in the CBC because nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president.” Rather than march...

Lil Wayne isn't feeling hopeful about any of the candidates in the current Republican Presidential field. In a new interview with Vibe, he offers his take on Tea Party Republicans, and suggests that the Tea Party's disrespect for President Obama has more to do with his race than any of his policies.

MSNBC's Richard Wolffe went there. The political analyst for the Lean Forward network actually played the race card in his analysis of why the Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner did not accept Barack Obama's big foot move to deliver a speech to Congress on the same night as a GOP presidential debate, as he pondered: "it could be, let's face it, the color of his skin."

A top lawmaker in the Congressional Black Caucus says tea partiers on Capitol Hill would like to see African-Americans hanging from trees and accuses the movement of wishing for a return to the Jim Crow era. Rep. Andre Carson, a Democrat from Indiana who serves as the CBC’s chief vote counter, said at a CBC event in Miami that some in Congress would “love to see us as second-class citizens” and “some of them in Congress right now of this tea party movement would love to see you and me ... hanging on a tree.” Carson also said the tea...

"Let us all remember who the real enemy is. The real enemy is the Tea Party -- the Tea Party holds the Congress hostage. They have one goal in mind, and that's to make President Obama a one-term president," Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) said at a Miami town hall with constituents. Rep. Frederica Wilson blamed "racism" for the high black unemployment rate on MSNBC yesterday.

She’s quite serious, which makes this clip blogworthy even though it’s just the latest in a long, long, long line of paint-by-numbers racial demagoguery from Garofalo on Olbermann’s show. Even the core criticism is recycled. Remember when she made the same charges about “Stockholm syndrome” and tea-party tokenism against Clarence Thomas a few months ago? You can see her roots as a comic in these segments — they’re essentially just “bits” in which she runs through her routine, the emcee grunts with approval, and the liberal audience cheers in appreciation of an old performer whom they think fondly of. She’s...

For months, NewsBusters has been warning readers that America's media are going to do everything in their power to label all contenders to Barack Obama racist. On Monday's "The Ed Show," the host edited Rick Perry - in mid-sentence, mind you! - to falsely accuse the Texas governor of making a racist remark about America's first black president (video follows with partial transcript and commentary): ED SCHULTZ, HOST: Perry just inferred President Obama is not in love with the United States of America? Yes, he really said "inferred" rather than "implied." He actually did it twice Monday evening. This is...

As Congress and the White House wrestle whether to raise taxes for the wealthiest Americans, a new analysis of Census data shows that the wealth gaps between whites and blacks and Hispanics widened dramatically during the recession. [Snip] The declines from the recession left the median black household with $5,677 in wealth (assets minus debts, where assets include items like a car, a home, savings, retirement funds, etc.) and the typical Hispanic household with $6,325. White households, by comparison, had $113,149, the study found.

Rep. Maxine Waters delivered a blistering defense of race-conscious politics on Sunday, telling thousands of delegates to the NAACP's national convention that conservative politicians are actively working to roll back the voting rights of African-Americans ahead of the 2012 presidential election. "With only 15 months left before the next presidential election, Republicans are rewriting voting laws to require photo identification at the polls, reduce the number of days of early voting and to enhance voting restrictions against ex-felons and out-of-state students," Waters said, citing legislation signed into law by GOP governors in Texas, Wisconsin and Florida.

Democrats' advantage over Republicans in partisan affiliation is way down from 2008 as white voters have turned against them, according to a poll released Friday by the Pew Research Center. While minority voters continue to support Democrats in large numbers, what was just a two-point Republican edge among whites in 2008 has grown to a 13-point advantage today. Republican gains among white voters are "particularly pronounced among the young and poor," according to the report. White voters under age 30 now break for Republicans by an 11-point margin; in 2008 they broke for Democrats by a seven-point margin. This could...

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on Friday strongly suggested that members of Congress are making it difficult for President Obama to raise the debt ceiling because of his race. "I do not understand what I think is the maligning and maliciousness [toward] this president,” said Jackson Lee, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Why is he different? And in my community, that is the question that we raise. In the minority community that is question that is being raised. Why is this president being treated so disrespectfully? Why has the debt limit been raised 60 times? Why did the...

DNC Race-Baiting Camouflages Vote Fraud Quin Hillyer Thursday, June 9, 2011 "If there is a partisan or ideological bent to conservative attempts to de-fang the Left’s fraud snakes, it is born not of racial animus but of a legitimate need for protection of honest ballots." Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Democrat, has ripped the scab from a deep wound in American politics.  The Left has spent years slinging at conservatives the calumny that we want to block access to the polls by minority groups.  The charge is a vile slander.  Yet in the space of just...

SOQUEL, Calif. – Students banned from a Central Coast school for wearing a white t-shirt. On Wednesday, Soquel High School suspended at least two students. The students say it’s because of allegations, they’re part of a white supremacist group.

Newt Gingrich is facing criticism for yet another idea he has floated during his presidential campaign -- that the country bring back tests for voting, which were banned by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a tool used to suppress African-American voters. Now, Think Progress reports, none other than Tea Party favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL), an African-American, is disagreeing -- and referring to the sort of discrimination that his own parents faced.

[snipets] When Beck’s show made its debut on Fox News Channel in January 2009, the nation was in the throes of an economic collapse the likes of which had not been seen since the 1930s. Beck’s angry broadcasts about the nation’s imminent doom perfectly rode the wave of fear that had washed across the nation, and the relatively unknown entertainer suddenly had 3 million viewers a night — and tens of thousands answering his call to rally at the Lincoln Memorial. But as the recession began to ease, Beck’s apocalyptic forecasts and ominous conspiracies became less persuasive, and his audience...

Gov. Patrick: Racism in birther movement By: CNN's Leinz Vales New York (CNN) – In an interview with CNN's "In the Arena" host Eliot Spitzer, Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick admitted racism may be playing into the birther movement. Patrick, a close friend and political ally of the president, campaigned for him in 2008 and plans to appear with Obama during the 2012 presidential campaign. When asked whether questioning the president's birth certificate can be linked to racism, Patrick said, "Well, there might be."

University of Kentucky officials are investigating two incidents in which someone hung signs that called President Barack Obama a racial epithet. On March 15, a professor noticed one such sign hanging on a door to the UK School of Law on South Limestone. He turned it in to campus police, who are investigating, said spokesman Jay Blanton. Early Thursday morning, third year law student Ches Clark said he found a sign affixed to a bus shelter on South Lime near Maxwelton Court. The sign said "How Do You Spell Nigger? OBAMA." The letters looked to be cut out of a...