Boston Globe
by Derrick Z. Jackson

09/14/05

"The Senate confirmation hearings of John Roberts are in the eye of a perfect storm of American hypocrisy. It is largely assumed that Roberts will be confirmed despite his animus for affirmative action for people of color. In 1981 as a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, he wrote that affirmative action 'required the recruiting of inadequately prepared candidates.' Such sentiments will not sink his chances for the high court, not in a nation where affirmative action of inadequately prepared white men is so rampant that we let them manage our two worst disasters. There is Hurricane Katrina, where Michael Brown resigned this week as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brown had no emergency management experience and did not know that the New Orleans convention center was reeking in squalor, despite media reports. Days before the resignation, he was kicked out of New Orleans by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. That was the unqualified calling the unqualified 'unqualified'...

http://tinyurl.com/93oek


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp