The University of Minnesota student who offered to sell his vote for president on eBay has been sentenced to 50 hours of community service.The charge against 19-year-old Max Sanders of Edina will be dismissed if he completes the service within six months, the Hennepin County attorney’s office said Tuesday.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

I find it interesting that a college student gets slapped with a felony charge for trying to sell his vote on eBay, but when a politician sells his vote for campaign money he gets reelected.

These laid off supervisors need to file a class action lawsuit against the state.

This has been crossposted at Carolina Politics Online

South Carolina Republicans aren’t planning a statewide meeting to get input into their national party platform, but the party still plans to welcome all suggestions submitted online.

The GOP is inviting people to create an account on the Web site, www.GOPPlatform2008.com, where they can then participate in polls and submit platform ideas.

State GOP Chairman Katon Dawson said the Internet outreach will improve the transparency of the platform process, and he hopes that it will give more people a sense that they own it.

The Post and Courier

They still don’t know???  For God’s sake conservatives have only been screaming about it for how many years now.  They want low taxes, low government spending, a truly free market (not this federally backed crap we have now that is failing), individual responsibility and personal freedom and liberty!  Basically, everything that neither the national party nor the South Carolina Republican Party stands for now, but lies to voters claiming they do!  The Republican Party is obviously run by blind and deaf gimps because this message has been out there from the grassroots for a hell of a long time.  It’s nothing new and the party clearly isn’t listening or simply doesn’t care because just yesterday 21 Republicans in the U.S. Senate and over 100 Republicans in the House voted against Bush’s veto of the Medicare bill that would have cut doctor’s payments with our tax dollars by 10%.  Medicare and Social Security are the two biggest entitlements that are going to bankrupt this country.

The Virginia Republican Party has really been dropping the ball lately. That’s been evident with the Democratic take over of the State Senate as well as losing a U.S. Senate seat in 2006. It’s also looking fairly likely that they will lose the other U.S. Senate seat this year as well.

All of that along with a growing disenchantment of the Republican establishment may very well have been what lead to the defeat of the State’s GOP Chairman John Hagar yesterday. What’s even more significant about this loss is that it was Hagar’s son who just married Jenna Bush last month, turning Hagar into a Bush in-law. None of that seemed to matter yesterday to the state committee voters who chose a young, 32 year old State Representative Jeff Frederick to succeed him as the new State Chairman.

Frederick is a stalwart conservative who Democrats have been unable to take down in either election of the two terms he has served. He is a former enlistee of the U.S. Naval Reserves and current member of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly and the Virginia Club for Growth. I imagine we will see good things from him and hopefully he will be able to pull the Virginia GOP out of their current funk.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Republicans have overwhelmingly elected their first black member to the Republican National Committee.Glenn McCall is chairman of the York County Republican Party.

McCall says it is time for Republicans to get out of the fox hole and go on the offensive.

After Saturday’s vote showed McCall the heavy favorite, opponent Drew McKissick asked that the convention elect McCall by acclamation.

The State

Glenn McCall is awesome! He is the GOP Chairman of York County where I live. I attended a county Republican committee meeting last summer and McCall called out a County Councilman, who the committee worked to get elected the year before, who turned out to be a complete RINO. McCall was gathering a group of residents from the councilman’s district to have a meeting with him to give fair warning not to automatically assume the committee would support him again. I found that to be admirable because a lot of committee people are total hacks, especially for incumbents.

I really don’t know why McCain felt the need to comment on this ad run by the North Carolina GOP. It wasn’t created for his benefit and has nothing to do with him at all. It’s aimed at helping the Republican gubernatorial candidates. Barack Obama is an extreme radical leftist and the two Democrats running for governor have endorsed him. Therefore, it’s fair to say they approve of his extreme radical leftist views. I don’t see the problem here.

DETROIT — Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick was charged on Monday with misconduct in office, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice and perjury, felonies that could end his political career and send him to prison for as long as 80 years.

Among the eight felony counts against him, Mr. Kilpatrick is accused of authorizing the city of Detroit to settle an $8.4 million lawsuit with several former police officers “with the corrupt motive” of preventing the release of text messages which would have revealed that he had lied under oath in the case, the charging documents say.

The New York Times

After months and months of high profile Republican scandals I guess the Democrats were getting jealous and wanted a piece of the action.  First Spitzer, then Paterson (a work in progress) and now Kwame.  Will the fine citizens of Detroit learn anything from this?  Not if history is any indicator.  They will more than likely replace Kwame with another corrupt politico molded from the same machine and Detroit will continue its slow decline to the tenth level of Hell.

The city actually had a decent mayor in Dennis Archer, the man Kilpatrick succeeded.  He had a law degree, held a seat on the Michigan State Supreme Court,  and as mayor did a lot of reaching out to the suburban and business communities in the region to work to repair the city’s image and bring about a return of the thriving metropolis the city once was.  Naturally, Archer was ridiculed for his positive ideas for change and labeled a “white black man” by many city residents.  Archer declined to run for reelection in 2001 and Kwame is the result.  Progression and change lost to ignorance and bigotry and today Detroit  remains a broken shell of its former self.

In Arkansas, where Republicans lost the governorship in 2006 and are outnumbered in the state House and Senate by 3-1 margins, state GOP Chairman Dennis Milligan said he is facing defections and malaise.

“Independent conservative individuals just said they were fed up and they said there is no difference [between the two parties],” Milligan said. “We have sent out the message that we are now different. We know it did not fall down in one day and it won’t be rebuilt in one day.”

Even in some of the reddest states in the nation, Republicans have faced dispiriting news. As if Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ easy 2006 re-election victory wasn’t insult enough in heavily Republican Kansas, she won with a running mate who was more than a little familiar to the state GOP—Mark Parkinson, the former state Republican chairman, who switched parties to run as her lieutenant governor.

Just four years earlier, Parkinson had exclaimed that “any Republican who supports Kathleen Sebelius for governor is either insincere or uninformed.” Sebelius is now frequently mentioned as a prospective vice presidential nominee.

Most recently it was the Alaska Republican party airing its dirty laundry.

Just over a week ago, at the state Republican convention, the lieutenant governor shocked his party colleagues by announcing a primary challenge to veteran Congressman Don Young, who is under federal investigation. The state’s senior senator, Republican Ted Stevens, is also under federal investigation.

At the same event, GOP Gov. Sarah Palin, who is at odds with the state party, called for changes in leadership in the wake of a series of scandals that have tainted the party. An attempt to oust GOP Chairman Randy Ruedrich fell just short.

“We are not a unified group as we once were,” said Republican John Harris, the Speaker of the Alaska House. “Between Congressman Young and Senator Stevens, and our governor seems to throw out comments periodically about the ethical operation of the state … internally, that fuels the fire constantly.”

“Democrats don’t have to do that much to keep it alive. We keep it alive ourselves,” he added. “That breaks down morale.”

While Alaska Republicans were battling among themselves at their convention, roughly a dozen Republican state chairmen met in Las Vegas –the first gathering of its kind in recent memory, according to one of the chairmen who attended.

Formally, the purpose was to exchange ideas on “improving each state party’s performance,” said Sean McCaffrey, the executive director of the Arizona Republican party. But there was widespread concern expressed over the direction of the party as a whole.

The Politico

I think some of these people running the party are so incompetent that if they shot a gun at the air they would miss.  These guys are sitting around scratching their heads trying to figure out what is wrong as if it isn’t staring them straight in the face.  Evidently someone needs to send in Captain Obvious because it isn’t sinking in.

When Reagan ran on small government policies he won two landslide elections.  When the Republican Party orchestrated a nation wide push for conservative policies in 1994 they won in a huge landslide and even won in areas where Republicans were heavily outnumbered by Democrats.  This is not rocket science.

I wish I could have gone to this Las Vegas meeting because it wouldn’t have taken long to point out the problems.  Stop protecting corrupt incumbents!  Stop putting up big spending, big government RINOs!  Hold their feet to the fire!  If they don’t deliver on the party principles then get rid of them and put up someone who will.  Stop backing spineless wimps who won’t stand up to the destructive policies of the Democrats and neocons like Bush.  Stop debt spending!  Stop expanding government!  Stop the Federal  bailouts!  Get a set of cahoneys and tackle the ballooning entitlements that are eating up 40% of Federal spending and make the American people understand that it has to be done!   If you aren’t willing to do these things then don’t come looking for my support.

Enough is enough already.

PLEASANT HILL — California must swiftly enact budget reforms or suffer a neverending fiscal roller coaster ride, a relaxed but insistent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told East Bay business and elected leaders Wednesday. “I can’t reform the budget by myself,” he said. “I need the Legislature. And if the people could be behind me and put pressure on the legislators, let them know that it is extremely important not to just think about the budget for the coming year but think about how to never let this happen again.”It was the third in a series of town hall-style budget meetings, one of the governor’s trademark strategies to influence public opinion.

He is pushing his plan to cap state spending at the annual rate of revenue growth and create a reserve to cushion bad fiscal times. The reforms would eliminate the boom-and-bust budget cycles that terrorize California’s schools and public services, Schwarzenegger said.

Contra Costa Times

It’s nice to see Arnold back on our side again. This is a good plan. A spending cap would keep the General Assembly from spending beyond their means, a serious problem in California, and keep their fiscal house in order.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple. Enter the status quo:

But it was not his call for a rainy day fund that prompted about 40 protesters to gather outside Pleasant Hill City Hall, waving posters and chanting, “Save Our Schools!”

To close the remaining $8 billion estimated budget gap, the governor has proposed 10 percent across-the-board cuts next year in state-funded programs, including education.

“I have three children in the Pleasant Hill schools, and I’m very concerned,” said protester and Pleasant Hill Education Commissioner Mary Gray. “The schools have already been cut to the bone.”

I have a really hard time believing that.

Democrats oppose a cuts-only option. They say it is time to raise taxes, such as the restoration of the vehicle license fee the governor axed when he was elected in 2005.

Naturally, because what better way to solve the problem than to tax more people straight out of California.

The proposed cuts suggest that Schwarzenegger is out of touch with average Californians, Assemblyman Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, said following the event.

“By virtue of his celebrity, he lives in a bubble,” DeSaulnier said. “It’s not his fault, but he doesn’t understand how his proposals would hit people’s lives. To cap budget growth and say it won’t impact the lives of Californians is disingenuous. We still have needs. Our education system is failing our kids. Our health care system has problems.”

DeSaulnier is just giving me way too much fodder with this one. Schwarzenegger is the one out of touch? [Sarcasm]Yes, I’m sure if today we went and commissioned a poll all over the state the people of California would overwhelmingly ask for the car tax to be reimplemented adding to their already heavy tax burden which is one of the worst in the country. [/Sarcasm]

I imagine the education system is failing the kids. That’s what happens when you have a government monopoly. I imagine health care system is having problems as well. That’s what happens when you are forced to treat thousands of illegal aliens who don’t pay for the services they are receiving. And this guy has the nerve to say that it’s Schwarzenegger who is living in a bubble?

The bottom line, though, is that the voters are at fault for all of this. The Governator ran on a reform platform after Davis was ousted and in his first year he stayed true to it, but the people of California voted down all of his necessary reforms at the ballot box and continued to reelect the status quo politicians that are standing in his way.

For his part, Schwarzenegger downplayed the idea that he views his draft budget as the final word.

He also conceded that he proposed 10 percent across-the-board cuts chiefly as a starting point for budget talks.

“In the end, (my budget) is only a proposal,” he said. “I say, ‘Here are my ideas. Now, you come and present your ideas.’”

He insisted that he is willing to listen to suggestions regardless of party affiliation and repeated what he has been saying for weeks: Everything is on the table, even new taxes or the elimination of tax loopholes.

No, he has to be stronger than that. I say stand with the 10% cut and don’t budge. Go all over the state and make it very clear to people that this has to happen and those that stand in the way aren’t interested in fixing the problem. In fact, go to their home districts and mention those legislators by name.

California has created its own mess and you couldn’t pay me to live there. That state is absent of any common sense and is one big black hole of waste and despair. Just keep it on your side of the continent, folks.  Don’t bring it over here.

First there was the alcohol sales on Sunday debate, in which a bill to allow local communities to vote on the matter was gaining traction in the GA General Assembly only to be put to death by Gov. Perdue’s (a supposed Republican) announcement that he’d veto the bill if it reached him.

Now, the Guv decided to show us again his love of big government by opposing tax cuts for Georgians:

“I think the people of Georgia get the joke,” said Gov. Sonny Perdue, ridiculing a proposed constitutional amendment that passed the Georgia House of Representatives 166-5 last week to virtually eliminate the property tax on personal cars, trucks and motorcycles.

The joke? What joke? An aside, my source on this is Jim Wooten, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s token conservative writer, and he’s right on the money (pun intended, ha):

While there’s a legitimate debate to be had about how much of our money government “needs,” it’s clear that, like the Democrats before them, Republicans will find a worthy need for every dollar available. They don’t have the courage to accept for themselves the cap on spending that many legislators would impose as spending discipline on local governments. The only real option then is to fund essential needs — and then return the excess collections.

The line of money-seekers is endless when there’s money on the table. To force priorities, limit collections. The House of Representatives, with only five dissenting votes, did that this week. No joke.

Right on, Mr. Wooten.

Republican Kentucky State Representative, Tim Couch, has what he considers a brilliant solution to end online harassment. He wants to step all over some of your First Amendment rights by denying you anonymity on the Net. Yes, Representative Couch has caught a bit of the authoritarian bug.

It doesn’t take long to realize the ramifications of a law like this. Sure, it would probably cut down significantly on “online bullying”, which I doubt is as much of an issue as he feels it is, but by doing so it will also infringe on the freedom of ideas and especially political speech. Anonymity can certainly be abused, but it is also a tool to allow people to expose negative actions among the community, workplace, etc. while keeping their identity concealed and personal safety secure without fear of backlash or reprisal from the accused party.

Why is it a general rule of thumb to not release the identity of an alleged rape victim? Because doing so would prevent many victims from stepping foward and reporting the crime if their names were to be dragged through the media. Why do we have whistle blower laws? We have them to prevent acts of revenge on those who have the courage to expose the corruption. Furthermore, think of the impacts of political speech this law would have? Many people would be quite reluctant to make their true views and feeling known about a certain politician or policy if they have to reveal their true identity.

Then we have the matter of personal safety. You can find anyone today by using the Internet without a whole lot of work. Anyone who has commented on a blog or on a message board forum knows how heated discussions can be. Do we want people being stalked because another reader doesn’t like the political views they espouse or the fact they may have trashed their favorite sports team? This is not far fetched. It happens and your full name would be out there for all to see.

How would a law like this be enforced? How would the State of Kentucky determine what Internet sites are subjected to this restriction? Would it be only those blogs or message forums that are run from within the state? What of people in Kentucky who access Web sites served outside of the state? The Internet knows no geographical boundaries. A law such as this would simply open the door to more bureaucracy and judicial chaos

Mr. Couch is an example of an increasing problem within the Republican Party, the spoken belief of limited government, but the practice of big government authoritarianism when it helps a personal agenda. This proposed law is unenforcible, unconscionable, and unlikely to pass Constitutional muster.

House District 90
Clay
Harlan (part)
Leslie

Mailing Address
PO Box 710
Hyden KY 41749

Frankfort Address(es)
702 Capitol Ave
Annex Room 432B
Frankfort KY 40601

Phone Number(s)
Home: (606) 672-8998
Home: (606) 672-8998 (fax)
Annex: (502) 564-8100 Ext. 632

As six Republican senators devised a plan to yank $2.3 million in federal funding for Berkeley programs, the mayor of the famously liberal city apologized Wednesday for his hard stance against a Marine recruiting center.

Two City Council members vowed to soften their stance as well.

NCB11

Looks like these “principled” extremists changed their tune once their Federal welfare check was threatened.

DeMint was angered after learning that the Berkeley City Council voted this week to tell the U.S. Marine Corps to remove its recruiting station from the city’s downtown.”This is a slap in the face to all brave service men and women and their families,” DeMint said in a prepared statement. “The First Amendment gives the City of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on they should do it with their own money.”

“If the city can’t show respect for the Marines that have fought, bled and died for their freedom, Berkeley should not be receiving special taxpayer-funded handouts,” he added.

Fox News

I fully agree, of course, neither Berkeley or any other city in this country should be receiving taxpayer-funded handouts in the first place, but the People’s Republic of Berkeley would be a great place to start stripping from.

In the meantime, a senior Marine official tells FOX News that the Marine office in Berkeley isn’t going anywhere.

“We understand things are different there, but some people just don’t get it. This is a part of the military machine that gives them the right to do what they do, but what they are doing is extreme,” the official said.

DeMint said he will draft legislation to rescind any earmarks dedicated for the City of Berkeley in the recently passed appropriations bill — which his office tallied to value about $2.1 million. He said that any money taken back would be transferred to the Marines.

Sounds like a good arrangement to me. Berkeley can’t throw out the recruiting station anyway because it’s a Federal office. They are just grandstanding because the city is full of attention starved misfits from society. That being the case, I can’t imagine there are too many residents actually signing up for the military anyhow, but that’s not the point. Here is the list of government waste they are slated to receive:

— $975,000 for the University of California at Berkeley, for the Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service, which may include establishing an endowment, and for cataloguing the papers of Congressman Robert Matsui.

— $750,000 for the Berkeley/Albana ferry service.

— $243,000 for the Chez Panisse Foundation, for a school lunch initiative to integrate lessons about wellness, sustainability and nutrition into the academic curriculum.

— $94,000 for a Berkeley public safety interoperability program.

— $87,000 for the Berkeley Unified School District, nutrition education program.

Mississippi legislators this week introduced a bill that would make it illegal for state-licensed restaurants to serve obese patrons. Bill No. 282, a copy of which you’ll find below, is the brainchild of three members of the state’s House of Representatives, Republicans W. T. Mayhall, Jr. and John Read, and Democrat Bobby Shows. The bill, which is likely dead on arrival, proposes that the state’s Department of Health establish weight criteria after consultation with Mississippi’s Council on Obesity.

The Smoking Gun

With morons like these, who needs John McCain to change the face of the GOP?

Over the past few decades there have been some universal truths in North Carolina politics. They vote Republican for President and Democrat for state offices. The Republican candidate has won the state’s electoral votes in the last seven Presidential elections. Conversely, the Democrats have held the Governor’s mansion for the past 20 years as well as the State Legislature for most of that time.

However, the state has been morphing rather quickly from a traditional southern state of blue collar workers to a virtual melting pot of migrants from all over the country and abroad. It is now a conglomerate of white collar yuppies, big banking barons, and “techie” nerds, mixed with the natives. In other words, it’s not your father’s North Carolina, which may explain the surprise I had when I read yesterday’s Rasmussen Report:

Hillary Clinton is competitive in the state against four leading Republican Presidential candidates. The former First Lady has a two-point edge over Mitt Romney (42% to 40%) and trails Rudy Giuliani by a statistically insignificant single percentage point (Giuliani 40% Clinton 39%).

She also trails John McCain by five (45% to 40%) and Mike Huckabee by seven (46% to 39%).

Against all four Republicans, Clinton’s support is steady and ranges from a low of 39% to a high of 42%.

Hillary leading in North Carolina?

North Carolina voters also have two major statewide races to look forward to in 2008.

In the gubernatorial contest, Pat McCrory, a Republican who just won his seventh term as mayor of Charlotte, has a three-point margin over two possible Democratic nominees. McCrory leads both Lieutenant Governor Beverly Perdue and State Treasurer Richard Moore by identical margins of 42% to 39%.

So we now have a Democrat leading the Presidential race and a Republican who hasn’t even declared his candidacy yet leading the gubernatorial race.

All of these are very close percentages of course, but I think it reflects the swiftly changing demographics in the state. Population just recently passed the 9 million mark and the state passed New Jersey last year, becoming the tenth largest. The state overall has always been purple, so to speak, as Democrats do outnumber Republicans but these are the old school socially conservative Democrats that tend to be to the right of the national party explaining their preference for Republicans at the Federal level, but still electing the socially conservative Democrats in the state party to fill local offices. With the influx of mostly northerners to the state, who tend to be more liberal in their social views, I think we are starting to witness the effects, each side countering out the other leaving more centrist candidates to be desired perhaps. McCrory is more of a moderate Republican with a mayoral history of using government to guide and shape the economy and Senator Clinton, while certainly no moderate, does radiate a more centrist impression of herself when compared to Obama and Edwards. This could explain my theory.

In any case, the North Carolina GOP had better learn a lesson from their neighbors to the north. Virginia has also been rapidly growing and while once a Republican stronghold, the party is now collapsing and Democrats have successfully captured the Governor’s seat, the State Senate, and one U.S. Senate seat and are likely to take the other next year. Furthermore, the state will most certainly be in play for the presidential race coming up.

If the Republican Party is to continue taking North Carolina for granted much like they did Virginia, I think they will be facing another such battle come 2012.

This is a big deal.  Remember, this is Rhode Island.

Coaty defeated Cicilline 872 to 511, with 53 mail ballots still to be counted, in the race in Newport’s District 75, according to preliminary results from Newport’s Board of Canvassers

While long-time Newporter Cicilline supported expanding the sales tax to more goods and cautioned against cuts that would harm the disadvantaged, newcomer Coaty emphasized that he would seek to cut state spending and would not raise any taxes.

“We got our message out. People in the city of Newport are very concerned about the state of the fiscal crisis that we are facing,” he said, adding that residents “are sick and tired of one-party rule.”

The Providence Journal

I hope he’s right.  They’ve got their work cut out for them.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today he plans to declare a fiscal emergency next month in the face of a $14 billion budget shortfall, clearing the way for his administration and lawmakers to make immediate mid-year spending cuts in state services.

The governor, during a speech about health care in Long Beach, said the fiscal pain would be spread “across the board” but that passage of a long-awaited, health-care reform plan in the meantime would ease impacts on the poor who depend on Medi-Cal, government-subsidized health insurance.

“We are going to call this January for a fiscal emergency when the legislators come back” Schwarzenegger said. “We will make that announcement next week some time with the legislative leaders. We will address that.”

Voters gave California’s governor the power to declare a fiscal emergency when they passed Proposition 58 three years ago. Today’s announcement marks the first time Schwarzenegger has exercised the authority.

Contra Costa Times

I must remark how quite enjoyable it is to watch California politics from the other side of the country. The icing on the cake in this latest bout of mayhem is that the guy declaring the disaster is the same guy that helped create it.

Top Republican lawmakers on Tuesday called on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a “fiscal crisis” to deal with California’s looming budget problem, but administration officials said such a move would be premature.

Sen. Bob Dutton, a Republican from Rancho Cucamonga who refused to vote for the current budget because it spent too much, said the governor should use a special authority voters assigned him during the last budget crisis to tackle a budget deficit forecast to be nearly $10 billion.

Under Proposition 58 passed in 2004, the governor could declare a fiscal emergency if he determines revenue is “substantially below” what was anticipated in the budget and summon the Legislature into special session.

“If we don’t do something now … to deal with this crisis, we could find ourselves right back where we were five years ago,” Dutton said following a Senate budget committee hearing in the Capitol on Tuesday.

The Sacramento Bee

I think Arnold has actually been worse than Gray Davis.

Washington State’s largest school district sent letters to teachers and other employees suggesting Thanksgiving should be “a time of mourning” for its Native American students.The memo, from Caprice Hollins, the district’s director of Equity, Race & Learning Support, included an attachment to a paper titled “Deconstructing the Myths of ‘The First Thanksgiving.’”

It includes 11 “myths” disputing everything from what was served at the first Thanksgiving (no mashed potatoes or cranberries) and who provided the food to the nature of the Pilgrims themselves: Myth No. 3 calls the colonists “rigid fundamentalists” who came to the New World “fully intending to take the land away from its native inhabitants.”

But what got the Internet abuzz was Myth No. 11: “Thanksgiving is a happy time.” It was followed by “Fact: For many Indian people, ‘Thanksgiving’ is a time of mourning … a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.”

Hollins would not defend her letter, but David Tucker, a spokesman for the district, said it was an effort to be sensitive to minorities in Seattle schools.

Fox News

First of all, what kind of joke of a position is District Director of Equity, Race & Learning Support? I’ll bet that woman makes a six figure salary. Get a real job, Ms Hollins. How many tax dollars are being wasted on you to tell kids that they shouldn’t dare be thankful for what they have on Thanksgiving Day, that instead they should feel horrible and guilty for being white? Sensitive to minorities? Do not black Americans celebrate Thanksgiving? What about other ethnic Americans like Hispanics and Asians? Hell, even the Indians celebrate it, according to the according to members of the Tulalip Tribes.

Native Americans in the Northwest celebrate the holiday with turkey and salmon, said Daryl Williams of the Tulalip Tribes. Before the period of bitter and violent relationships between natives and their culturally European counterparts, they worked together to survive, he said.

“The spirit of Thanksgiving, of people working together to help each other, is the spirit I think that needs to grow in this country, because this country has gotten very divisive,” he said.

I think Michael Medved put it best:

Nationally syndicated talk show host Michael Medved was more blunt.

“The notion that now you have a major school system sending out a message that, no, rather than expressing thanks we should emphasize guilt on this holiday — that is sick, it is destructive and it is anti-American.”

Caprice Hollins is clearly just another far left crackpot who thinks so lowly of herself that she must spread her misery onto other peoples’ children with her anti-American Marxist brainwashing. This is not the first time the Seattle school district has engaged in such behavior. The woman needs to be fired from her job immediately.

The U.S. Department of Education investigated in April after the district spent part of a federal Smaller Learning Communities grant to send 20 students to the “Eighth Annual White Privilege Conference.”

After complaints last year, the district removed from its Web site a definition of racism that claimed planning ahead and individualism were examples of cultural racism.