Obama

The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate apologized on Saturday for comments he made about Barack Obama’s race during the 2008 presidential bid.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described then-Sen. Barack Obama as “light skinned” and “with no Negro dialect.” Obama is the nation’s first African-American president.

“I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments,” Reid said in a statement released after the excerpts were reported on the Web site of The Atlantic.

“I was a proud and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama during the campaign and have worked as hard as I can to advance President Obama’s legislative agenda.”

In a written statement Saturday, Obama said he accepted Reid’s apology “without question because I’ve known him for years, I’ve seen the passionate leadership he’s shown on issues of social justice and I know what’s in his heart.”

“As far as I am concerned, the book is closed,” he added.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley says the Senator reached out to other Democratic and African-American leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond and others.

“About a dozen in all,” Manley said.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

In presenting himself at a summit here as an equal partner to Latin America, President Obama is drawing on his race as evidence of U.S. social progress and of his own affinity for the region’s poor.

Race occupies a far larger and more troubled place in Latin American politics than it does in Europe, where Obama rarely mentioned his ethnic background this month during his first overseas trip as president.

He is doing so more often here at the Summit of the Americas, in part to push an agenda that, among other issues, seeks to address the region’s income disparity between rich and poor, the widest in the world.

In talking about his race and the backgrounds of his counterparts, Obama is associating himself more closely than his predecessors did with Latin America’s indigenous, black and mixed-race underclass, which has long identified the United States with economic policies that benefit the elite of European descent far more than them.

The approach has helped to reduce, though not eliminate, the expected political strife between Obama and such populist leaders as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of his country.

Source/Full Story::  washingtonpost.com

Source: washingtonpost.com

Officials have said that a principal concern was the possibility of hate crimes spurred by racial prejudice, leading them to focus investigative attention before the inauguration on any number of domestic groups with white supremacist views.

The Capitol Police suspended the two officers with pay on Jan. 19, the eve of the inauguration ceremony, pending an internal inquiry into an allegation that they associated with felons in violation of department policy, according to a senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the personnel matter. The official said the action was taken as soon as officials received the FBI’s file and was not precipitated by Chertoff.

“We were well aware of what some of the accusations were — some of which may have been repugnant, their associations with these guys — but none of it was criminal or actionable from an administrative” perspective, the official said.

The Washington Post is withholding the names of the officers because the allegations have not yet been substantiated and no one at the Capitol Police department would speak on the record about the case.

Chertoff, who stepped down on Jan. 21, declined to discuss the events leading up to the suspensions, referring questions to the Secret Service, which also declined to comment.

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Source: inthenews.co.uk

Security arrangements are being stepped up in Washington against known white supremacists ahead of US president-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Mr Obama, who is set to become America’s first black president, will be sworn into office on January 20th. US security agencies are trying to ensure that the event, which will see millions line the streets of Washington, passes peacefully.

Security experts have told media that they are keeping a special eye out for members of white supremacist groups who may try to attack the president on the day.

Assistant FBI director Joe Persichini told CNN that he was concerned about discussions held on websites frequented by members of the extreme fringe of the white supremacist movement.

He told the US broadcaster: “We have seen a lot of chatter. We have seen a lot of discussions. We have seen some information via the internet. But those are discussions. We look at the vulnerabilities and whether or not the groups are taking action.

“You have freedom of speech. Anyone in this nation can have a discussion about their beliefs, but we are concerned about whether or not they take that freedom of speech and exercise some act that is against the law.”

The American news network also reports that a group, the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, has called on members to wear black armbands and fly the US flag upside down on Mr Obama’s inauguration day and his opening days at the White House.

In October, two Neo Nazis were arrested by authorities in the US state of Tennessee for planning to attack the then presidential candidate’s motorcade in an assassination attempt.

Technorati Tags: inauguration

Source:  CNN.com

Hate crimes experts and law enforcement officials are closely watching white supremacists across the country as Barack Obama prepares next week to be sworn in as the first black president of the United States.

So far, there is no known organized effort to express opposition to Obama’s rise to the presidency other than a call by the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for its members to wear black armbands as well as fly the U.S. flag upside down on Inauguration Day and Obama’s first full day in office.

As Tuesday approaches, when Obama stands outside the Capitol to take the oath of office, experts expect anger about the new president to spike. But they don’t expect it to go away.

“The level of vitriol, I expect, will go up a bit more around inauguration time,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino.

There “is concern” about white supremacist groups during the inauguration, said Joe Persichini, the assistant FBI director who is helping to oversee security during the inauguration.

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Technorati Tags: National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism

Source: The Phoenix

As director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, Mark Potok spends his days monitoring organized extremism and more ad-hoc manifestations of right-wing hatred. And early this past November, Potok was a busy man. The server for stormfront.org, the Web site of the world’s largest white-supremacist organization, crashed immediately after Election Day; so did the server for cofcc.org, the Web site of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group dedicated to “advocating against minorities and racial integration.”

What’s more, says Potok, there was a sharp spike in on-the-ground anti-Obama incidents following the election. Obama was hung in effigy, he says; Obama supporters had crosses burned in their yards; an Obama volunteer was beaten in New Orleans; kids on a school bus in Idaho struck up an “assassinate Obama” chant.

“Here, we’re not really talking about a white-supremacist backlash,” Potok contends. “The way I read it, this was very much a backlash from a sector of mainstream white America. That’s what was most remarkable about it. Those kids in Idaho — that stuff doesn’t come out of nowhere.”

But then . . . things got quiet. “Within two to three weeks after the election,” says Potok, “most of this just disappeared. Clearly, the immediate signs of an angry backlash have subsided. And whether it’s something that’s going to reverberate into the future is really in question.”

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Technorati Tags: Southern Poverty Law Center, stormfront