…goes mainstream:

Let’s examine this argument carefully. The Post acknowledges that “we can’t know their hearts.” But it finds a (literally) prima facie reason to suspect them of invidious motives: Almost all of them are persons of pallor. The Post is casting aspersions on Duncan and his colleagues based explicitly on the color of their skin. And it is accusing them of racism!

A couple of other items related to race and politics caught our attention over the Thanksgiving weekend. First, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., an Illinois Democrat and CBC member, resigned from Congress “amid federal ethics investigations and a diagnosis of mental illness,” as the Chicago Tribune reports. That sets up a special election to fill the vacancy:

Some Democrats quickly offered to broker a nominee to avoid several African-American contenders splitting the vote in the heavily Democratic and majority black 2nd Congressional District, which could allow a white candidate to win.

This passes with neither editorial comment nor a disapproving quote. It’s hard to imagine the same absence of reaction if a group of pols offered “to broker a nominee” with the goal of preventing a black candidate from winning a white-majority district.

I’m getting very tired of being accused of racism by virulent racists. They are the party of slavery. They are the party of the Klan and Jim Crow. They are the party that pushes gun control, and Davis-Bacon, and minimum wage, all of which were originally justified as a means to protect white people from blacks. And now they’re the party keeping the blacks on their new inner-city plantations. But I’m the racist.

[Update a few minutes later]

The WaPo‘s dreams of Dixie.

It is amusing (and infuriating) to recall that Condi Rice was opposed by (former?) Klansman Bob Byrd.