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Showing posts from April, 2008

Debate, at 20 paces

Hillary Clinton has challenged Barack Obama to a non-moderator debate, a la Lincoln-Douglass. Obama should go back even farther in history and challenge her to a duel. CJL

Mr. Chairman,

Last September I was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association. The latest news is that my colleagues chose me to chair the planning committee for the symposium that we are organizing for next year. My updates to follow, here and at the Website I just put together. CJL

test

This is a test. This is only a test to see whether I am (successfully) live blogging at a conference. I have media credentials to the Newspaper Association of America’s Capital Conference at the Washington Convention Center on April 14‐15, 2008. McCain is speaking this morning from 10:30 a.m., Obama will be the luncheon speaker. Clinton will be speaking tomorrow at lunch. CJL

Fighting poverty--or fighting for development?

In September 2005, former President Clinton launched an initiative "to tackle poverty, climate change and other worldwide issues" during "a gathering of political leaders and activists who are promising to pitch in--and must put those pledges in writing." In early 2005--along with many other times--Mandela was demanding that the world do more to fight poverty. Others have talked about trying to end poverty. And of there is the war on poverty that officially started in the mid-1960s. Yesterday, on the 40th anniversary of MLK Jr's assassination, John McCain took up Martin Luther King Jr's call for America to fight poverty. McCain said: "I will answer his call, and tell him and the American people today that I will make the eradication of poverty a top priority of the McCain Administration." Here's a different suggestion--a fight for development rather than a fight against poverty. Okay, for a liar like Clinton, that might sound like a distincti

Frederick Douglass--liberal, conservative, libertarian, other?

Booker Rising links to a new online magazine that focuses on issues from a black conservative perspective. Booker Rising comments: "I don't know about the late Frederick Douglass being put on that cover as a conservative. I'd call him a liberal, and even moderate would be a stretch for his time period." The thing I've noticed about Douglass is that just about every ideology claims him to be one of their own. You can see in the quotes that people choose to focus on: Liberals, socialists and activists: "Without struggle, there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will." Libertarians and conservatives: "'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early