Steve King Isn't Racist, Just Ignorant

Steve King is getting some heat for referring to then-Senator Obama as a "very, very urban senator" on the floor of the House today, in reference to a farm bill Obama introduced that would correct discrimination against black farmers. Bloggers saw racism in the "very, very urban" comment, but King defends himself in National Review:

For his part, King is flabbergasted. “I had hard time figuring out what they meant,” he tells National Review Online. “If you’re determined to be offended, I can guess you are determined to find offense in anything.”

What did he really mean? “If Barack Obama had been a rural senator, within a state that had a significant amount of black farmers, he would have introduced this bill,” King explains. “But it’s pretty obvious to me that he didn’t have a legislative interest in this that could have been rooted in his Illinois constituency."

Ever been to Illinois? Get outside of Chicago and its suburbs, and it is thousands of square miles of the flattest farmland you have ever seen. It's boring. It makes Nebraska look charming. It's an agricultural state -- and ag interests were thus part of Obama's portfolio when he went to the Senate. There is no senator from just Chicago, after all.

Steve King is from neighboring Iowa. He surely knows all of this. His defense is that he's not racist, but that he's completely ignorant of his own region. That doesn't seem like a good defense.

I wouldn't bother with this. Fights over ambiguous references to race aren't usually fruitful. But man, Steve King's defense just is so insulting to the intelligence. I couldn't let it go.

The Legal Case Against Wikileaks

Kevin Drum: "In any case, I doubt the United States has any legal recourse against Assange or WikiLeaks. Assange is an Australian national not living in the U.S. and WikiLeaks is a distributed site not dependent on any single country's goodwill. What's more, despite some huffing and puffing to the contrary, I find it extremely unlikely that Assange has actually broken any existing laws. Perhaps new laws could be written, but it's hard for me to conceive of a law prohibiting actions like this that was both (a) effective and (b) not so broad that even Bill Kristol would oppose it. The United States has considerable control over actions by its own citizens on its own territory, but not over noncitizens who reside overseas and work primarily in cyberspace."

Wikileaks and the Toughness Meme

I keep seeing comments like this: "Assange is a rank coward.  If he really wanted to show his bravery, he should expose the secrets of Russia, or China.  There’s plenty of dirt there from the trafficking of the organs from imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners to the murder of Russian investigative journalists.  But no, he targets the US, because he knows that if he went after Russia or China, her would be dead in two days.  Instead he attacks the US, a country that respects the rule of law and will not come after him until we can make a reasonable legal case against him. "

Even granting the premise, the correct answer to this is: so what? The United States is the biggest power in the world, with troops in more than 100 countries and the power to influence (if not steer) the destinies of many more. What our government does, then, is of interest -- not just to taxpaying citizens, but to the entire world. The United States might not be quite as willing to assassinate Julian Assange for digging into its secrets, but that fact doesn't make our secrets any less relevant to many people around the world. Julian Assange isn't tough enough to go after the Russians? Really, who cares?

Let The Public Have Its Say

This Inky editorial is dripping with the right amount of sarcasm.

Elmer Smith and Wikileaks

I don't get this point from Elmer Smith about Julian Assange:

"But if this is an act of civil disobedience, he should be willing to face the consequences, the way Freedom Riders did when they willingly went to jail for defying unjust Jim Crow laws. Assange, on the other hand, seems willing to let Pfc. Bradley Manning rot in jail. Manning is being held in military detention for allegedly passing the cache of documents off to him while Assange seeks asylum in a place without an extradition treaty with the U.S."

I don't know. Civil disobedience is an act of defying the authorities. Getting arrested by them proves that they have the authority, but if you see your actions in terms of power and resistance, I'm not sure why it would be noble to defy the authorities and then submit yourself to them for punishment. Why be a martyr if you can keep on fighting?

UPDATE: A friend comments: "Yeah, that Rosa Parks totally had the wrong idea."

Er... let me clarify. What Rosa Parks did was noble and, ultimately, empowering. It was also probably the right strategy for the time and place: Submitting to arrests worked, ultimately, to shame the authorities who were acting oppressively. But while that's the most prominent example of civil disobedience in our society, it's not the only model. And if you grant that Assange sees himself in this mode, as Smith does, I'm not sure why you'd advocate that it's the right model for him -- aside, of course, from the fact that Smith merely wants to see Assange behind bars.

Quote of the Day!

Philadelphia Daily News:

"'Brian didn't receive oral sex from calves; he only lawfully possessed firearms,' Nappen said."

Philly Police Crime Watch

Tyrone Wiggins goes on trial today:

"Wiggins, a former Marine and volunteer youth-karate instructor, retired from the police force Nov. 18, 2009, one day before he was arrested after a two-year investigation by the department's Internal Affairs Bureau.

The investigation was launched when the woman told authorities how Wiggins had befriended her family when she was 10 and she began taking karate lessons from him at the Olney Recreation Center.

She told of how - when she was 12 - Wiggins allegedly began raping her regularly at the recreation center, at her home, at his house on Chew Avenue near Front Street, in hotels and in his van in Fairmount Park.

She told of how - when she was 18 - he allegedly began to beat her, even causing an eye to swell shut."

There's an amazing, maybe uplifting element to this story: The woman Wiggins is accused of raping all those years? She's a cop now.