December 21, 2002 - The trouble with demonizing one’s avowed enemy is that it makes it all too easy to underestimate him. If you are to defeat an enemy you must first know him and recognize his strengths as well as his weaknesses. Only then can you fashion a coherent plan to defeat him. For more than 15 months we have been after Osama Bin Laden in earnest. We have spent millions buying the limited loyalty of the coterie of Afghani warlords who have squabbled amongst themselves since Alexander the Great marched through there and founded Kandahar. We have offered rewards for Bin Laden’s capture that dwarf the annual expenditures of most armies in the region. Yet there have been no takers in a land of abject poverty and deprivation. We should be asking ourselves, “Why does this population ignore what is literally a Kings’ Ransom? What is it about Osama Bin Laden that immunizes him from the kind of human greed we know and respect so well?” Knowing the answer may well be the key to his ultimate defeat....click here for entire article.

December 20, 2002 - Just in time for the Christmas Season a new Spectacular is playing in Washington and simultaneously on small screens across the nation. The Karl Rove production of the venerable Mutiny on the Bounty with Bill Frist cast in the role of the reluctant mutineer, Fletcher Christian. Trent Lott plays Lt. William Bligh, the Captain of the Bounty whose ill-advised acerbic manner alienates his Lieutenant and drives him into the arms of the mutineers. You will recall that in the older versions of the story Bligh’s mission was to gather and transport breadfruit plants from the South Pacific to Britain’s Caribbean colony to satisfy the hunger of slaves. The Tahitian tropical paradise was the mission’s undoing and mutiny erupted when Bligh attempted to round up his crew to complete their task....click here for entire article

December 18, 2002 - The education of a child is not a process of teaching. It is a process of discovery. It does not depend upon the talent of the teacher, though a teacher without talent may stifle the process. It does not depend upon the tools provided, but the child without the tools with which to build with must overcome a high barrier to learning, It does not depend upon the quality of texts, yet a school without a quality library is not a functioning school. The road to education lies within the curiosity of the developing mind, it is not a straight line drawn upon a map of the human intellect. To a large extent the President has hit upon a truism when he has said that crisis in education has more to do with the subtle bigotry of low expectation than with the overt bigotry of unequal resources. The President’s initiative to make educators accountable for their stewardship by tying the Federal contribution to achievement standards has been positive, even though it was first proposed by his predecessor as Project 2000 and reviled by the right wing. Its flaw in the present program is in its leaving the standard making to the States. Math is no different in Mississippi than it is in Massachusetts. Science does not change between Huntsville and Hartford. Literature sings as loudly to the souls of both Lubbock and Ludlow ....click here for entire article.

December 16, 2002 - Thirty years have passed since Richard Nixon invited the Dixiecrat night riders to abandon their old mounts, cover their regalia, and climb up on the Elephant. Trent Lott was among the first to take him up on the invitation. It is some how fitting that three decades later it is that same Trent Lott who has steered the Party (formerly known as the GOP) into a perilous passage between the reefs of genteel racism and the rocks of revulsion at the sudden transparency of the new clothes behind which the transplanted Dixiecrats had hidden their robes and hoods ....click here for entire article.

December 12, 2002 - Today the President of the United States, speaking in Philadelphia, denounced the remarks of his party’s Senate Majority Leader which seemed to most Americans to express nostalgia for the old days when society was segregated by race. Yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments testing whether a Virginia statute criminalizing cross burnings violated the First Amendment as a restriction on free speech. In one of those rare occasions of history all three branches of the Federal Government were dealing with the same problem – the problem of racial discrimination at the highest levels of American society ....click here for entire article

December 10, 2002 - In 1948, Strom Thurmond was Governor of South Carolina. President Truman had just ordered an end to segregated units in the armed services. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota presented a civil rights plank to the Democratic Convention and when it was adopted Strom Thurmond led his South Carolina delegation in a walk out. The bolting southern delegates convened as the Dixiecrat party in Birmingham, Alabama where delegates from the 13 states of the Old Confederacy adopted a platform declaring, “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.” On June 17th they nominated Strom Thurmond as its first and only Presidential Candidate. His campaign stressed segregation as he traveled the south to say, “All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches.” ....click here for entire article.