The Iowa Democratic Party announced today that its State Central Committee voted “to begin the process to change the name of the annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner following the 2015 Dinner.” In a statement I’ve enclosed in full below, state chair Dr. Andy McGuire said “it is important to change the name of the dinner to align with the values of our modern day Democratic Party: inclusiveness, diversity and equality.” She promised that all Iowa Democrats will have a chance to suggest new names for what has often been the party’s largest gathering of the year.

One obvious choice would be to name the dinner after longtime Senator Tom Harkin, now that the Harkin Steak Fry is no more. Or, if party leaders want to stick with historical figures whose legacy unites Iowa Democrats, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

The continuing controversy over displaying Confederate flags has divided the Republican caucus in the U.S. House, forcing leaders to cancel a vote planned for today on a bill to fund the Interior Department for the 2016 fiscal year.

For the second time in less than a month, Iowa’s four U.S. representatives split along party lines over how to handle Democratic efforts to remove all Confederate flag images from the Capitol.

Follow me after the jump for background and details.

While too many Republicans of national stature “tread carefully” in commenting on displays of the Confederate flag, Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann provided a clinic this week on how to talk about the issue.

Representative Steve King and Senator Joni Ernst joined the long list of Republicans who announced plans this week to reject or donate campaign contributions from a white supremacist leader based in Texas. Earl Holt is the president of the Council of Conservative Citizens. That group’s publications inspired the racist beliefs of Dylann Roof, who allegedly shot and killed nine people and injured others at last week’s attack in a historic black church.

Holt donated $1,000 to King’s 2012 re-election campaign and $1,500 to the Republican’s 2014 campaign in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. On June 22, King posted this statement on his campaign website:

King for Congress will be donating the amount of past donations received from Earl Holt, President of the Council for Conservative Citizens, to both the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund and to the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. Our prayers are with the families and friends of those affected by this tragedy.

Also on Monday, Ernst announced on Simon Conway’s WHO Radio show that she will donate $1,000 (the amount Holt donated to her U.S. Senate campaign) to the Charleston church. I didn’t see any statement on her Facebook page or campaign website, which at this writing consists only of a landing page seeking contact information and donations from supporters.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Last week Andrea Farrington’s family buried the Coral Ridge Mall shooting victim, who should have enjoyed a long and healthy life but had the misfortune to attract the attention of a loser with a gun fetish. After she reported his sexual harassment, he allegedly went home to retrieve his gun and shot her three times before running away. I have nothing profound to say about this horrendous crime, so I refer you to Lynda Waddington’s latest column for the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Since Wednesday, millions of Americans have grieved for the nine people killed and others who were hurt during a massacre in a historic South Carolina black church. The alleged murderer appears to have been motivated by paranoid racist fantasies. Again, words fail me. Grant Rodgers and Danielle Ferguson reported for the Des Moines Register,

Two Cedar Rapids [black] churches have reached out to their city’s police department, asking officers to review their emergency plans and possibly provide additional active shooter training, said Greg Buelow, a department spokesman. Buelow said he would not release the names of the churches at their request.

Similar conversations will happen at Des Moines’ Faith Missionary Baptist Church, where parishioners finished their own open-door Wednesday night worship service shortly before news broke of the Charleston killings, said deacon Arnold Woods Jr., who’s also president of the Des Moines NAACP.

How sad that people have to think about such contingencies when they come together to worship.

All topics are welcome in this open thread. Representative Steve King (R, IA-04) inspired the unifying theme of this weekend’s post, when he approvingly linked to this recent article by Heather Mac Donald called “Practical Thoughts on Immigration.” King commented, “USA declining 2 Third World status bc shrinking %age who would reverse course don’t realize demographics r destiny.” At this writing, King has not responded to my request that he clarify whether he meant to say that a U.S. where non-Hispanic whites are a minority would inevitably sink to “Third World status.”

Meanwhile, the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that immigration contributed greatly to Iowa’s population growth of 2 percent between 2010 and July 1, 2014.

After the jump I’ve enclosed a map showing the latest Iowa county population estimates, some links on the Census Bureau data, and excerpts from Mac Donald’s commentary, which struck a chord with King.

Ten potential Republican presidential candidates will speak at Bruce Rastetter’s Iowa Agriculture Summit today, and a few more may send videotaped remarks. But only one GOP contender was the focus of a long and flattering feature by the Des Moines Register’s chief political correspondent the day before the event.

When Jeb Bush hired longtime Iowa GOP consultant David Kochel, I figured friendly coverage in the Register would be coming to the former Florida governor. During last year’s U.S. Senate campaign, just about every line Joni Ernst’s backers wanted out there ended up in some Des Moines Register piece by Jennifer Jacobs. Still, Jacobs’ spread on Bush in Friday’s Des Moines Register shocked me. The message could hardly have been more perfectly tailored for Iowa Republicans if Bush’s spin doctors had written it themselves.

Technically, it’s still a long weekend for some people, so here’s an open thread for all topics.

Establishing a holiday to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a long road, as Ben Kamisar reported for The Hill yesterday:

The King holiday used to be controversial, only passing the House more than ten years after Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) filed the first bill calling for a day to commemorate the slain civil rights icon. The measure eventually passed in 1983. Ninety representatives and 22 senators voted against it. […]

There are only six current members of Congress who previously voted against creating a national holiday for King. Another small handful did so at the state level.

The six who cast votes against the national holiday are all Republicans: Sens. Richard Shelby (Ala.), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), John McCain (Ariz.) and Orrin Hatch (Utah), as well as Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner (Wis.) and Hal Rogers (Ky.). Shelby cast his vote as a Democrat, before he switched parties. […]

A Grassley spokesperson noted that the Senator has been “very active in several African American causes,” including efforts to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act when he joined the Senate in the early 1980s. More recently, he has advocated for black farmers who had been discriminated against when applying for financial help.

“Senator Grassley’s vote against an MLK Day holiday was purely an economic decision both in the cost to the broader economy in lost productivity, and the cost to the taxpayers with the federal government closed,” the aide told The Hill in an email.  

Not one of Grassley’s finer moments, that’s for sure.

Bleeding Heartland has compiled other links related to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. here, here, here, here, and here.

I haven’t seen the movie “Selma” yet. For those who have, what did you think?

Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady delivered his annual State of the Judiciary address to Iowa House and Senate members this morning. The full text is available here (pdf), and I’ve posted important sections after the jump. Cady hailed progress the court system is making on helping Iowa children and improving efficiency and transparency. He described ongoing initiatives to improve how Iowa courts handle family law cases and review guardianship and conservatorship laws and procedures. Cady also asked lawmakers to appropriate 4.7 percent more funding for the court system in the next fiscal year.

Cady cited recent work within the judicial branch to “better understand and address the persistence of racial disparities” in the criminal justice system–a longstanding problem in Iowa. I enclosed below reaction from Assistant House Minority Leader Ako Abdul-Samad. Abdul-Samad is one of five African-American members of the Iowa House.

Finally, the chief justice alluded to a shooting last September during a meeting of the Jackson County Board of Supervisors as he called for action “to make every courthouse in Iowa safer and more secure.”

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.

I hope everyone in the Bleeding Heartland community had a good Thanksgiving holiday and is enjoying the weekend, however you prefer to celebrate. For those who still need to use up leftovers, I’ve posted a few ideas for soup here and my favorite thing to do with extra cranberry sauce.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Winter storms and “Black Friday” shopping have dominated newscasts for the past day or two, but the big story of the week was the St. Louis County grand jury declining to indict Officer Darren Wilson in connection with the August 9 shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old. I cannot imagine how awful it would be to lose a child in that way, knowing that the person responsible will never even stand trial. Whether or not you believe Wilson acted improperly, there was clearly enough evidence to indict him. Let a jury sort out whether he is guilty beyond reasonable doubt at a criminal trial. Signs point to the prosecutor not even trying to get an indictment. A New York Times graphic I’ve posted below shows “what was different about the Ferguson grand jury.”

Not surprisingly, there was unrest in Ferguson for two nights following the grand jury’s announcement. Most of the protesters there and elsewhere were peaceful, despite feeling intense anger. However, some looting and burning incidents provided fodder for Officer Wilson’s sympathizers to portray those who protested Brown’s death as “thugs” or worse. I mostly avoided social media arguments over the Ferguson case but saw many people talk about blocking or unfriending racists in their feeds. Spectra Speaks wrote this counter-intuitive post: “Dear White Allies: Stop Unfriending Other White People Over Ferguson.” It’s worth a read.

A common thread in many online arguments over Ferguson was someone reacting negatively to the phrases “white privilege” or “check your privilege.” For people who don’t understand what that means, Des Moines-based writer Ben Gran spelled it out:

White privilege exists for all white people, even poor whites.

“White privilege” doesn’t mean you get free stuff for being white. “White privilege” doesn’t mean that life is easy if you’re white. “White privilege” doesn’t mean that you get everything handed to you on a silver platter for being white.

“White privilege” means that there are certain HORRIBLE things that are MUCH LESS LIKELY to ever happen to you because you’re white.

For example, if my son were waving a pellet gun around in public, it is much less likely that anyone would call the police, much less likely that police would open fire on him within seconds of arriving on the scene, and much less likely that police would stand around not administering first aid afterwards. Which is not to say it’s advisable for anyone to wave a pellet gun around–only that doing so while white is much less likely to get you killed.

UPDATE: PBS published an outstanding chart comparing “several key details” of Officer Wilson’s version of events to testimony various witnesses provided during the investigation. The chart “doesn’t reveal who was right or wrong about what happened that day, but it is a clear indication that perceptions and memories can vary dramatically.”

What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Today’s Des Moines Register featured a front-page article by Kathy Bolten about the massive racial disparity in arrest rates across Iowa. The piece contained new analysis and statistics on a longstanding problem in our state. I’ve posted some excerpts after the jump. This database includes detailed from 41 Iowa law enforcement jurisdictions that “arrest blacks at a higher rate than people of other races.” Iowa-Nebraska NAACP President Betty Andrews noted that when blacks and whites are detained for the same alleged offenses, police are more likely to charge blacks. The American Civil Liberties Union found last year, “Iowa has the largest racial disparity in the country of arrests in marijuana possession, with blacks being more than eight times as likely to be arrested than whites, even though whites use marijuana at about the same rate […].”

Speaking of double standards, MacKenzie Elmer reported for the Des Moines Register last week that on October 3, an Urbandale police officer let Joni Ernst’s spokeswoman Gretchen Hamel get away with driving drunk. Knowing that an arrest would get her fired, he let Hamel off with a warning. I’ve posted excerpts from that piece after the jump too. Raise your hand if you think a non-white drunk driver who initially lied to the police would have received the same sympathetic hearing from an Urbandale cop. Less than a month later, Hamel was arrested in West Des Moines for OWI. Fortunately, she didn’t kill or seriously injure anyone in the meantime.

Hamel’s arrest occurred on October 29, and she resigned from the Ernst campaign the following day. Surely reporters covering the IA-Sen race would have noticed that Ernst’s primary press contact was gone. Yet the Register’s first report on the incident appeared on the newspaper’s website on November 6 and in print the following day. Republican blogger Craig Robinson breathed a sign of relief: “Can you imagine the mess this would have created for Ernst if it had gotten out before Election Day?”

The delay fueled some suspicions that the Register held back the Hamel story until after the election. Given Ernst’s margin of victory, this news could not have affected the outcome, but getting knocked off message in the final days could have been significant in a close campaign. On November 7, I asked the Register’s political reporters Jennifer Jacobs and Jason Noble when they noticed Hamel was gone and when they found out why.

After getting no response for two days, I took the same questions to the Des Moines Register’s Editor and Vice President Amalie Nash. She responded promptly,

Thanks for asking the question. We published the story on Gretchen Hamel’s arrest as soon as we were able to confirm it. We were aware she had exited the campaign and inquired with Joni Ernst’s staff as soon as we found out she was gone. We were told she submitted her resignation due to a “drinking incident,” but the campaign declined to release additional details. We continued asking questions of other sources until we were able to find out where the incident occurred and get details from the police department. As soon as we got confirmation of her arrest, we published a story.

I was confused about why it took the Des Moines Register so long to confirm Hamel’s arrest. Details about the case were posted on the Iowa Courts Online website on October 30 and 31. Searching for Hamel’s name would have allowed any Register employee to confirm the arrest in seconds. Furthermore, a major newspaper presumably has a staffer checking arrest logs on a daily basis. When two WHO-TV reporters were arrested for drunk driving in Des Moines this past summer, the Register had a story up with their mugshots less than three days after the incidents.

Nash responded to my follow-up question by saying, “We have staff checking [arrest logs] daily in Des Moines, but not all surrounding communities on a daily basis.” Hamel was arrested in West Des Moines and booked at the Dallas County jail. Nash later elaborated,

We received the tip that she may have been arrested on an OWI last Wednesday [November 5] and were able to confirm and publish with details by Thursday [November 6].

As I noted, we don’t do daily stops at the West Des Moines Police Department to check arrest logs. We get over there as much as we can, but do not have the staffing to make a daily visit.

It seems unlikely that political reporters who talk frequently with Republican sources would not have heard anything about Hamel’s arrest until seven days after the fact. And if that’s true, I wonder why Jennifer Jacobs and Jason Noble didn’t just say so when I first asked them about it. In any event, that’s the official explanation from the Des Moines Register.

UPDATE: Some Iowa politics-watchers have asked me why it matters when the Register covered Hamel’s arrest. Although Ernst was winning the IA-Sen race regardless, it matters if anyone at any level in the Register’s newsroom held back a story to preserve good relations with and access to people around the senator to be.

The Des Moines rumor mill says other area reporters had the story about Hamel’s OWI but decided against running it, period. We can debate whether it’s newsworthy that a campaign staffer was driving drunk. But Register Editor Amalie Nash takes a different position: the incident “was newsworthy, which is why we published a story as soon as we learned of her arrest.” It is frankly hard to believe that no one in the newsroom knew about that event before November 5.

P.S. I forgot to mention that Annah Backstrom, the Register’s “content strategist for politics,” also declined to answer my straightforward question about when staff at the newspaper found out why Hamel was no longer working for Ernst.  

Republicans had a lot to celebrate on November 4, and Democrats have plenty to worry about after the midterm election debacle.

But all is not rosy in GOP world either. If I were a Republican, I’d be particularly concerned about three things.

Two weeks after election day, political junkies like me are still processing what happened. Losing control of the U.S. Senate was the most obvious bad outcome for Democrats, but maybe not the most concerning one. The Senate map for 2016 gives Democrats a lot of opportunities to make up ground.

Five other political realities have been bothering me more.  

Many Iowans think of our state as a great place to settle down, thanks to relatively low unemployment, crime rates, living costs, and other quality of life factors (such as short commute times). After considering 44 criteria, the StateMaster website ranked Iowa the sixth best state to live. The latest Kids Count report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation ranked Iowa third in terms of children’s well-being.

So Danielle C. Belton’s article for The Root last week should be a wake-up call. For the roughly 102,000 Iowans who are African-American, this state doesn’t stack up nearly as well against the competition. In fact, Belton considers Iowa the fourth-worst state for black people.

If you’re black and into marijuana, avoid Iowa. The state arrests blacks at a rate eight times higher than whites for marijuana possession, despite the rate of drug usage between blacks and whites being about the same. For years, Iowa also held the title for locking up black people at a higher rate than any other state (it recently lost that crown to Wisconsin). While other states have large prison populations, what makes Iowa stand out is that it’s a relatively small state with a small population. In fact, its black population is only about 3 percent. Adding insult to injury, the poverty rate among African Americans in Iowa is 31 percent, compared with 11 percent for white Iowans.

The massive racial disparity in Iowa’s arrest and imprisonment rates has been one of the country’s worst for a long time. Way back in 2005, Bruce Dixon of the Black Commentator highlighted Iowa as one of the “ten worst places to be black” for this very reason. If Governor Terry Branstad wants to spend the next four years cementing his legacy as a leader who cares about all Iowans, he should try to do something about this persistent problem. I don’t know how to change the culture in local law enforcement or county attorney offices, but there’s no excuse for such a large disparity in whether people will be arrested or charged for the same unlawful behavior. Surely the governor’s staff could research, and Branstad could propose, policies Iowa can adapt from other states that have addressed this problem.

Today’s Des Moines Register features a long front-page story by Daniel Finney and Jeffrey Kummer on Storm Lake (Buena Vista County) as one of Iowa’s most diverse communities, and expected trends in the state’s demographics between now and 2020. I encourage you to click through and read the whole thing. After the jump I’ve enclosed a few excerpts and one graphic from the feature. Separate, shorter pieces examine diversity trends in the Des Moines metro area (Polk and Dallas counties), Webster County (including the Fort Dodge area), and Butler County (the least diverse in Iowa).  

On Monday, Michael Barbaro of the New York Times examined Iowa’s population shift from rural to urban and suburban areas as “a potent but unpredictable undercurrent in a closely fought Senate race.” I’ve enclosed a few excerpts at the end of this post. Barbaro interviewed people northwest Iowa’s heavily white Pocahontas County, as well as in downtown Des Moines, the far western suburbs in Dallas County, and Denison (Crawford County), a town where almost half the residents are Latino.

I spent some time in Denison last fall and was impressed by the vibrant downtown, with more locally-owned shops and restaurants than I’ve seen in most Iowa towns of similar size. One resident told me that approximately 75 percent of students in Denison’s public schools are Latino. That has helped the area avoid the steep enrollment declines and school closures seen in Pocahontas, as Barbaro recounts, and in so many other communities.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.  

Anyone who has followed Representative Steve King’s career knows that he is prone to racially insensitive comments that minimize realities of how African-American people are often treated in this country. Specifically, he has long defended racial profiling by law enforcement. King’s most recent comments on this topic made national news yesterday. As the country reacts to yet another police shooting of an unarmed black man, King has determined that we don’t need to worry about racial profiling by police in Ferguson, Missouri. You can watch his whole Newsmax interview here or read the highlights here:

“This idea of no racial profiling,” King said, “I’ve seen the video. It looks to me like you don’t need to bother with that particular factor because they all appear to be of a single origin, I should say, a continental origin might be the way to phrase that.”  

This man thinks it’s a horrible infringement of liberty for a corporation to be required to provide contraception coverage, yet he is incapable of acknowledging the long and well-documented history of police officers killing black men for no reason. I don’t think this was a slip of the tongue–King thinks ahead of time before making the offensive comments that end up on highlight reels.

I’ve posted the Iowa Democratic Party’s reaction to King’s “hateful rhetoric” after the jump.

UPDATE: Some progressives believe King is “crazy,” while some conservatives believe the liberal media are out to make the congressman look bad. I say both groups are wrong. Speaking to the Sioux City Rotary Club more than six years ago, King admitted that “he plans everything he says, no matter how ‘provocative’ — it’s weighed ahead of time, never off the cuff and designed to stir discussion of key issues.”

Republicans have been long been masters at demanding that prominent Democrats apologize for some obscure person’s offensive comment. Today the Black Hawk County Republicans used this tried and true technique to score a story by the Des Moines Register’s chief politics reporter. In a now-deleted post on the Black Hawk County Democrats’ Facebook page, a volunteer shared a graphic comparing Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Among other things, the graphic described Reagan as a “white supremacist.”

Jennifer Jacobs’ story leads with a Republican press release and includes an apology from the chair of the Black Hawk County Democrats for this “unfortunate” and “unacceptable” post. However, nowhere does Jacobs hint at why anyone would think to apply this label to Reagan in the first place. Maybe she’s playing dumb, or maybe she’s too young to remember.

Sad to say, the U.S. has had more than a handful of white supremacist presidents. I don’t think Reagan was one of them. But I recommend the following reads on his use of racially charged language to win support for his political agenda.

Ian Haney-Lopez provides a good overview of how Reagan “used coded racial appeals to galvanize white voters.”

During the 1980 presidential campaign, Reagan traveled to Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the most notorious murders of the civil rights movement, to deliver this speech declaring his support for “states’ rights.” (full transcript) As Bob Herbert wrote many years later, “Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans – they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.”

David Love chronicles Reagan’s “troubling legacy” on race. Not only did he oppose the Voting Rights Act of 1965, during the 1980 campaign he criticized that law as “humiliating to the South.”

In 1981, Reagan White House aide Lee Atwater gave a remarkably frank interview about the GOP’s “Southern strategy.” He described how overtly racist political rhetoric evolved into conservative slogans about busing or economic policies that hurt black people more than whites.

Peter Dreier reminds us that Reagan’s “indifference to urban problems was legendary” and notes that his administration “failed to prosecute or sanction banks that violated the Community Reinvestment Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in lending.”

On a related note, Reagan’s riff about “welfare queens” is perhaps the most famous example of how he used racial code words. Josh Levin published a fascinating profile of the con artist who inspired that part of Reagan’s stump speech.

I was so focused on the environmental impacts of Governor Terry Branstad’s recent vetoes, I failed to look closely at other appropriations in a supplemental spending bill he axed. Today I learned from Democratic State Senator Rob Hogg,

Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the start of Freedom Summer and the murder of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney – it is too bad Governor Branstad vetoed the $300,000 the Legislature appropriated on a bipartisan basis to help the African-American Museum of Iowa collect Iowa’s civil rights history and educate the public about these historic events.

There it is on page 4 of Senate File 2363: $300,000 for “an oral history of civil rights” at the African-American Museum of Iowa in Cedar Rapids.

It’s maddening that Governor Branstad has no problem with tens of millions of dollars in tax giveaways to wealthy corporations, yet he pleads fiscal prudence when vetoing spending like this, which serves the public interest without major impact to the state budget. Many of the 1950s and 1960s civil rights activists have already passed away, and those who haven’t are senior citizens. “Freedom Summer” was a major event in 20th century American history. Some Freedom Summer veterans with connections to Iowa City or the University of Iowa have already told their stories to historians or recorded their memories on paper or film. The Historical Iowa Civil Rights Network are doing their part too, and you can follow their work here. I’m disappointed that the African-American Museum of Iowa won’t have the funding to collect and archive these stories on a larger scale.  

The Prison Policy Initiative, a non-partisan non-profit organization created “to document and publicize how mass criminalization undermines our national welfare,” has published a fascinating report on the “global context” of sky-high U.S. incarceration rates. I knew that our country locks up more of its residents per capita than any other country on earth, but I didn’t realize that if you consider the 50 states and Washington, DC individually, three dozen American states have a higher incarceration rate than Cuba, which has the world’s second-highest incarceration rate. Iowa now has 437 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 residents, putting us among the states with the ten lowest incarceration rates. Even so, just three other countries (Cuba, Rwanda, and the Russian Federation) imprison more residents per capita than Iowa. The report notes,

Utah, Nebraska and Iowa all lock up a greater portion of their populations than El Salvador, a country with a recent civil war and one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Five of the U.S. states with the lowest incarceration rates – Minnesota, Massachusetts, North Dakota, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island – have higher incarceration rates than countries that have experienced major 20th century social traumas, including several former Soviet republics and South Africa.

States in New England tend to have the lowest incarceration rates, followed by the Midwest. Most states with the highest incarceration rates are in the South.  

The Prison Policy Initiative recently published a detailed comparison of state prison systems. The Iowa profile shows the growth in the incarceration rate as well as the massive racial disparities other researchers have found in our state. I’ve posted a few graphs after the jump. (Note that one graph shows an incarceration rate a little below 300 per 100,000 residents, rather than 437. That’s because the graph below includes only people serving a prison term longer than one year.) Click here for links to all state incarceration rates by race and ethnicity and here for a report “tracking state prison growth in all 50 states.” Data on that last page show how “state-level policy choices have been the largest driver of our unprecedented national experiment with mass incarceration.”

Since Democrats changed U.S. Senate rules in November to remove the 60-vote threshold for cloture motions on most presidential nominees, senators have confirmed dozens of President Barack Obama’s appointees as federal judges, ambassadors, and to various executive branch positions. In fact, fifteen presidential nominees sailed through the process during the past month alone.

Yesterday, for the first time under new Senate rules, Democrats could not muster even a simple majority of votes in favor of cloture on a presidential nominee. Alexander Bolton and Ramsey Cox reported on the controversy that torpedoed Debo Adegbile’s nomintaion to be assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Critics said Adegbile was unfit for the job because as director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he had supported efforts commute the death sentence of Mumia Abu-Jamal, “who was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981.”

Seven Democrats joined all the Republicans present to defeat the cloture motion on Adegbile’s nomination by 52 votes to 47 (roll call). The Iowans split along party lines, with Senator Tom Harkin supporting cloture on Adegbile’s nomination and Senator Chuck Grassley voting against the motion. Harkin sharply criticized his colleagues, saying Adegbile would have been confirmed if he were white.

Bolton and Cox saw yesterday’s vote as “a stinging defeat for Obama.” I see it as a more stinging defeat to basic concepts underlying the American justice system: everyone has a right to a defense, and defense attorneys should not be held accountable for their clients’ conduct. Going back to the colonial period, this country has a tradition of attorneys providing a vigorous defense at trial to even odious criminals. President John Adams remained proud of his work defending the British soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre of 1770 and opposing the death penalty for them, even though they had shot and killed patriots.

UPDATE: Added comments from Harkin after the jump.

Government offices and many public school districts were closed today in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Bleeding Heartland has compiled links about King to mark this day for the past three years, as well as on last summer’s 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Here’s a new batch:

The civil rights leader was a fan of the “Star Trek” television series and persuaded Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura) not to leave the show during the second season.

Thomas J. Sugrue on Restoring King: “There is no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted and words more drained of content than Martin Luther King.”

Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon on The Martin Luther King You Don’t See on TV: “[N]ational news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.”

Daily Kos user HamdenRice on why Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did: “his main impact was his effect on the lives of African Americans, not on Americans in general. His main impact was not to make white people nicer or fairer.”

Todd Dorman on King’s visits to eastern Iowa in 1959 and 1962:

“We have come to the point,’ Dr, King said, “where we can say in the South to those who use violence against us:

“We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering.

“We will meet your physical force with soul force.

“Do to us what you will, and we still love you.”

P.S.-“Abigail Van Buren” published this quote from Dr. King in today’s “Dear Abby” column. It was new to me, but I agree with her that it “applies to many aspects of life”: “All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face-to-face with another problem.”

Iowa’s “C+” average in a new report on The State of Women in America masks a large disparity in Iowa’s ranking across the three dozen factors measured. Anna Chu and Charles Posner of the Center for American Progress compiled the report released this week. The fact sheet on Iowa is here, and these interactive tables show how Iowa compares to other states overall and on each metric. I’ve listed the metrics considered in each area after the jump. This page explains in more detail the methodology and data used to measure the states.

The C+ grade for Iowa reflects a ranking of 21st out of 50 states when all factors are considered. Iowa did best in the “health” area, with an A- grade and a ranking of seventh. The percentage of our state’s population lacking health insurance is relatively low. Several reproductive rights issues were examined, which means that our state’s grade and rank might be far lower if the Iowa Senate had not been under Democratic control these past few years (blocking efforts to restrict access to legal abortion).

In the “economic security” area, Iowa was ranked 32nd and received a D+ grade. Those low marks reflect the gender gap in wages, especially for Iowa women of color, and the lack of any state policy on “paid family, medical, or temporary disability leave.”

Iowa’s worst marks were in the “leadership” area, where our state got an F and ranked 42nd among the states. Who can be surprised, given our dismal record of electing women to high office? The Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University has an extensive database of reports on women’s representation in Iowa government at the local, state, and federal level. The Center for American Progress also noted the fact that “Women hold only 33.3 percent of the managerial jobs in Iowa, despite making up 51 percent of the state’s population.”

Fifty years ago today, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his most famous speech to a crowd of at least 250,000 people during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. After the jump I’ve posted the “I Have a Dream” video and other links related to this moment in American history.

August 28 will mark 50 years since the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s March on Washington, where he delivered his most famous speech. To mark the occasion, the Pew Center released a report on racial disparities (real and perceived) in the U.S.

The analysis finds that the economic gulf between blacks and whites that was present half a century ago largely remains. When it comes to household income and household wealth, the gaps between blacks and whites have widened. On measures such as high school completion and life expectancy, they have narrowed. On other measures, including poverty and homeownership rates, the gaps are roughly the same as they were 40 years ago.

I strongly recommend clicking through to read the full report. What a treasure trove. Chapter 1 covers perceptions of progress toward racial equality. Chapter 2 covers opinions about “short-term progress for black Americans.” Chapter 3 “looks at a variety of economic, educational, health, political and social indicators to assess change in the relative well-being of black and white Americans in recent decades.” I wasn’t surprised to learn that white respondents are much more likely than African-Americans to say that “the situation of black people in this country is better now than it was five years ago.” It’s striking that only a minority of white respondents perceive that “blacks in their community are treated less fairly than whites by the criminal justice system, in the workplace and when voting in elections.”

This slideshow highlights the key findings from the Pew Center’s report, and this interactive feature tracks up to 50 years of data on “racial and ethnic gaps among whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics.”  

A Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman of both second-degree murder and manslaughter today in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The verdict doesn’t surprise me. No one witnessed the whole encounter that led Zimmerman to shoot an unarmed teenager. Although I did not watch the trial, I gather from commentaries and coverage at Talk Left and elsewhere that the defense turned several of the prosecution witnesses and produced their own witnesses supporting parts of Zimmerman’s story. They didn’t need to prove the self-defense narrative–only create reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors.

That said, I doubt any jury would have acquitted an African-American man of shooting an unarmed white teenager under the same circumstances.

Roberto Martinez, a former U.S. attorney in Florida’s Southern District, made the case for a manslaughter conviction in the Miami Herald. I recommend reading the whole piece, but I’ve posted an excerpt after the jump. Even those who believe the jury reached the right verdict from a narrow legal perspective should acknowledge that Zimmerman’s stupid and reckless behavior caused the death of an innocent child. This verdict does not vindicate the actions of vigilante wannabe cops.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

UPDATE: Why am I not surprised? State Senator Kent Sorenson (contender for creepiest Iowa lawmaker) celebrated the verdict as “a victory for 2nd Amendment rights around the nation.” Hat tip to Christian Ucles, who commented, “Really Kent? The death of a child is a victory for 2nd amendment rights. […] You make me sick. I can’t believe to think that you and I both went to the same church, an considered you a Brother in Christ. You value guns and the actions of gun owners over the lives of children not your own?” In the comment thread, Sorenson responded, “Your [sic] a political hack that [sic] doesn’t care about anything other then [sic] your parties [sic] talking points!”

SECOND UPDATE: Iowa House Democrat Ako Abdul-Samad reacted to the verdict here.

THIRD UPDATE: Comments from President Barack Obama and Representative Steve King are after the jump. King really goes out of his way to stir up the pot sometimes.

Most political junkies love a good brawl. While Congress-watchers were paying attention to fights this week over the president’s proposed budget, confirming federal judges, or tightening up gun ownership regulations, a non-controversial but significant bill zoomed through the U.S. House and Senate.  

The Republican National Committee released a so-called “autopsy” on the 2012 election results today. You can read the full report on the “Growth and Opportunity Project” here. I’ve posted a few excerpts, links and thoughts after the jump.

Any comments about the GOP’s rebuilding and rebranding effort are welcome in this thread.

President Barack Obama’s 50-point edge over Mitt Romney among Asian American voters was one of the most surprising election results for me. Growing up during the 1980s, it seemed like all of my Asian American friends’ parents were Republicans. Bill Clinton received an estimated 31 percent of the Asian American vote in 1992, compared to 62 percent for Obama in 2008 and 73 percent for Obama this year.

Since the election, I’ve read several attempts to explain this trend. The most interesting links are after the jump.

More than 1,100 people attended the Governor’s Bullying Prevention Summit in Des Moines yesterday. To his credit, Governor Terry Branstad stayed all day to listen to speakers like Sioux City Superintendent of Schools Paul Gausman and Rosalind Wiseman, author of the book “Queen Bees and Wannabes.” The governor also announced a new hotline and website designed to help young people targeted by bullies.

I was unable to watch the livestream from what sounds like a fantastic event. After the jump I’ve posted a bunch of news and links about the summit as well as background on Iowa’s anti-bullying policies.  

Leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People urged Governor Terry Branstad yesterday to change Iowa’s extreme restrictions on voting rights for ex-felons and to address the huge race disparity in Iowa incarceration rates.

At least 200 people gathered on the west steps of the Iowa State Capitol Monday evening for a rally and vigil marking one month since Trayvon Martin’s killing in Floriday. After the jump I’ve posted a few notes from the event, along with links about the impact of Martin’s death on the debate over proposed “stand your ground” legislation in Iowa.

The Iowa Senate confirmed six of Governor Terry Branstad’s appointees to state offices and boards yesterday, but Democratic senators indicated that two of the governor’s picks may not receive the two-thirds vote needed in the upper chamber. Meanwhile, Branstad suggested at his weekly press conference that race may be a factor in opposition to Isaiah McGee as director of the Iowa Department of Human Rights.

Follow me after the jump for more on who was confirmed yesterday and the battles coming later this week.

UPDATE: On April 12 the Senate rejected McGee as well as William Gustoff, one of Branstad’s appointees to the state Judicial Nominating Commission. Senators confirmed Teresa Wahlert with two votes to spare and three members of the Environmental Protection Commission. Details on the April 12 votes are below.

Geraldine Ferraro died today at age 75, after battling multiple myeloma for 13 years, far longer than she was expected to survive when diagnosed. She became the first woman named to a major-party national ticket in the U.S. when Walter Mondale chose her as his running mate in 1984. Ferraro acknowledged that she would not have been Mondale’s choice for vice president had she been a man. The Democratic nominee was trailing President Ronald Reagan badly in the polls and needed something to shake up the campaign. Ferraro was supposed to turn the emerging “gender gap” in American politics to the Democrats’ favor.

I remember discounting the rumors that a woman might be nominated for vice president. The Reagan years had rapidly developed my cynicism. It was a big deal just to have a woman on the “short list,” so I figured that talking Ferraro was going to be the Mondale camp’s gesture toward women, and we’d have to wait another cycle or two to see a woman on a ticket. But after watching Ferraro’s speech at the national convention, this liberal teenage girl was so excited and inspired that I briefly forgot what I knew about Mondale having no chance to be elected.

Journalists covering the campaign picked Ferraro apart; you can read the gory details in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times obituaries. She wasn’t very experienced in terms of media relations, and she was a strong woman, so she was an easy target. One manufactured controversy after another dominated stories about her campaign, and I remember lots of speculation about her Italian-American husband’s possible mob ties. Meanwhile, media provided scant coverage when Reagan’s Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan was indicted in September 1984, six weeks before the presidential election. You’d think the first-ever indictment of a sitting cabinet secretary would be a bigger news story than some of the garbage being thrown at Ferraro, but you would be wrong. (Donovan was later acquitted.)

Bleeding Heartland readers too young to remember the 1984 campaign may know of Ferraro mainly because in March 2008, she asserted that Barack Obama’s race gave him an advantage in the presidential primaries against Hillary Clinton: “Sexism is a bigger problem [than racism in the United States] […] It’s OK to be sexist in some people’s minds. It’s not OK to be racist.” The ensuing furor prompted Ferraro to resign from Clinton’s presidential campaign fundraising committee, though she stood by her remarks. At the time, I felt many Obama supporters blew Ferraro’s comments way out of proportion. Her perspective was shaped by decades of personal experience with sexism, like law school professors who felt she had taken “a man’s rightful place.”

Representative Bruce Braley said in a statement today, “Geraldine Ferraro was a great leader and a remarkable woman. She not only made history, she inspired generations of women to do the same. She will be greatly missed, but her influence will live on.”  I will update this post with further Iowa reaction to Ferraro’s passing.

Share your own memories of Ferraro and her political career in this thread.

UPDATE: Senator Chuck Grassley posted to Twitter, “Geraldine Ferraro was an xtraordinary M of Cong. A person easy get along w. True abt my working w her”

Ferraro’s father died when she was eight years old. Here’s a reflection she wrote on how losing a parent so young affected her life.

LATE UPDATE: Joan Walsh’s reflection on Ferraro’s life and career is worth reading.

The U.S. Census Bureau released a ton of new Iowa demographic information yesterday.

Data for Iowa show that the five most populous incorporated places and their 2010 Census counts are Des Moines, 203,433; Cedar Rapids, 126,326; Davenport, 99,685; Sioux City, 82,684; and Waterloo, 68,406. Des Moines grew by 2.4 percent since the 2000 Census. Cedar Rapids grew by 4.6 percent, Davenport grew by 1.3 percent, Sioux City decreased by 2.7 percent and Waterloo decreased by 0.5 percent.

The largest county is Polk with a population of 430,640. Its population grew by 15.0 percent since 2000. The other counties in the top five include Linn, with a population of 211,226 (increase of 10.2 percent); Scott, 165,224 (increase of 4.1 percent); Black Hawk, 131,090 (increase of 2.4 percent); and Johnson, 130,882 (increase of 17.9 percent).

Click here to find the Iowa numbers and charts. I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to look through the data, but I’m posting a few starting points for discussion here.

Rick Smith’s piece on growth in the Cedar Rapids-Iowa City corridor is worth a read. I’m not surprised Linn County grew substantially during the decade, especially in the suburbs, but the population growth in Cedar Rapids itself is impressive. I didn’t expect to see that after the 2008 floods destroyed whole neighborhoods in the city.

After the jump I’ve posted official 2010 population numbers for all 99 Iowa counties, along with a map putting the counties in different population categories and a map grouping counties by population gain or loss (percentage). Ten Iowa counties have populations larger than 65,000 people. Another 14 counties have populations between 25,000 and 64,999; 29 counties have populations between 15,000 and 24,999; and 46 counties have populations between 4,029 (Adams) and 14,999. Dallas led the 33 Iowa counties that gained population between 2000 and 2010.

Although I wasn’t able to reproduce this chart showing the racial and ethnic breakdown of the Iowa population by Congressional district, I did include those numbers at the end of this post. I was surprised to see that even though Polk County has the largest Latino/Hispanic population in Iowa, there are more Latino/Hispanic residents in IA-05 than in IA-03, with IA-02 and IA-04 not far behind. Meanwhile, IA-01 has the smallest Latino/Hispanic population but the largest African-American population. The largest Asian population is in IA-03 with IA-02 not far behind. View the chart here or scroll down for more details.

Share any thoughts about the census data or details that caught your eye in this thread. For example, the Newton Independent posted 2000 and 2010 numbers for Jasper County and area cities.

UPDATE: The Des Moines Register has lots of census coverage here. Statewide, Iowa’s population grew by 4.1 percent from 2000 to 2010. The Latino population was up by 83.8 percent, the Asian population was up by 44.9 percent, and the African-American population was up by 44.1 percent.

On his first day back in office, Governor Terry Branstad rescinded Governor Tom Vilsack’s 2005 executive order on felon voting rights as well as Governor Chet Culver’s 2010 order on project labor agreements. By prohibiting project labor agreements on public works projects involving state funds (executive order 69), Branstad will drive down wages and help contractors that don’t hire unionized workers.

Branstad defended his voting rights directive (executive order 70) as a way to protect crime victims while recouping more fines and court costs. However, the main impact will be to shrink the Iowa electorate. Follow me after the jump for more background and analysis.  

Representative Steve King rarely misses a chance to accuse the Obama administration of racism, but this week he seems uncertain about the best way to exploit the fiasco over USDA official Shirley Sherrod’s dismissal. King told Politico yesterday that he sympathized with Sherrod, having been misquoted himself.

King suggested Sherrod has changed her views over the past quarter-century and should get her job back.

“Also, I think it’s interesting that we don’t have it clear whether [U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom] Vilsack fired her or the White House fired her,” King added. “The president was going to be the first post-racial president but his whole presidency is becoming about race.”

But in a talk radio appearance, King took a different tack, saying Sherrod’s hiring by the USDA should be investigated. He noted Sherrod was a claimant in the Pigford case (a discrimination lawsuit black farmers brought against the USDA). Apparently King wants Americans to believe the Pigford case settlement resulted in too much money going to too many black farmers.

In other recent King news, to no one’s surprise he joined the new Tea Party Caucus that Michele Bachmann founded in the U.S. House of Representatives. Bachmann and King are ideological soulmates who share a press secretary. To see who else became a founding Tea Party caucus member, check this list on the Mother Jones blog. You’ll find some famous loudmouths (Joe “You Lie!” Wilson) and “big idea” folks like Paul Broun, who wants to repeal the constitutional amendments that permit the federal income tax and the direct election of U.S. senators.

The Tea Party caucus isn’t just a haven for fringe-y House wingnuts, though. Bachmann’s group attracted GOP leaders including National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence. Whether they’ll manage to harness tea party energy for the bulk of GOP establishment candidates remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, heavy rain continues to batter Iowa this week. I see King joined Iowa’s other U.S. House members in asking President Obama to “quickly approve Gov. Chet Culver’s request for a disaster declaration for Iowa counties” affected by flooding. However, I can’t find any press release from King’s office explaining his vote last week against extending the federal flood insurance program.

UPDATE: King tweeted around 1:30 on Thursday afternoon, “Shirley Sharrod was involved in a collective farm in Georgia. Nation’s largest ($13 million) recipient in Pigford Farms($2 billion) fraud.” He got that information from talk radio host Ben Shapiro.

SECOND UPDATE: King notes in a press release that he has signed on to a “friend of the court” brief defending the state of Arizona’s new immigration law. The U.S. Department of Justice has filed suit against that law. On Fox News yesterday, King gave a theological justification for his position on immigration:

God gave us rights. Our founding fathers recognized that. It’s in our Declaration [of Independence]. It’s the foundational document of America, and God made all nations on earth and He decided when and where each nation would be. And that’s out of the Book of Acts and it’s in other places [in the Bible]. So we can’t be a nation if we don’t have a border, and if we grant amnesty, we can’t define it as a border any longer or ourselves as a nation as a border any longer.

Rarely are secretaries of agriculture near the center of attention in Washington, but Tom Vilsack is in the hot seat after abetting the right-wing noise machine’s latest attempt to undermine the Obama administration. On Monday an African-American US Department of Agriculture official, Shirley Sherrod, was sacked because a right-wing website made her appear to have discriminated against a white farmer.

Sherrod, USDA’s rural development director for Georgia, said she was ordered to resign on Monday after a video, posted on one of Andrew Breitbart’s conservative sites, showed her saying she had not given a white farmer her “full force.”

The NAACP later posted the full, unedited video of Sherrod speaking at an NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner, and it showed the remarks had been taken out of context in the version posted by Breitbart. Breitbart had said that he had posted the full version he was given. The farmer, Roger Spooner, now 87, appeared on CNN from his Georgia home and said Sherrod had been “helpful in every way – she saved our farm.”

Vilsack should know better than to validate a phony right-wing narrative, but he’s never been a happy partisan warrior. I’m not surprised he kicked a USDA official to the curb instead of waiting to hear all the facts. He probably hoped to kill this “news” story before it gained momentum. The problem is, he has created more incentive for Obama’s opponents to gin up fake scandals. Vilsack also damaged his own reputation. Lots of people will want answers to the questions Greg Sargent asks today:

Now that the full Shirley Sherrod video has been released, vindicating her completely, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is  promising to undertake a review of her firing. So maybe he will re-instate her after all.

But it isn’t enough for Vilsack to reinstate her. People should demand that his review include an explanation for his own decision to fire her. We need to hear his justification for the decision to ax this woman before all the facts were in, on the strength of nothing more than an Andrew Breitbart smear.

Did Vilsack make any effort to learn more about her speech before giving her the push? If not, why not? Sherrod says she told top USDA officials that the full speech would vindicate her. Did anyone at USDA give her protestations even a passing listen? Did anyone try to obtain video of the full speech? If not, why not? Why was Breitbart’s word alone allowed to drive such a high-profile decision?

People should also demand that the White House weigh in publicly on what happened here. The White House has only discussed this via anonymous leaks, and this morning, officials are conveniently leaking word that the White House prodded Vilsack to reconsider Sherrod’s firing. That’s nice, but was the White House told in advance that the firing was about to happen, and if so, why did it allow the firing to proceed?

The White House looks bad for supporting Vilsack’s rush to judgment, then backing off when the full video of Sherrod’s remarks appeared. But ultimately, this was Vilsack’s mistake. Let’s hope he learned the right lessons from it.

UPDATE: Charles Lemos posted the full video of Sherrod’s speech and his reaction to it. It’s worth a read.

SECOND UPDATE: Vilsack has apologized and offered Sherrod another USDA position. I’ve posted the video after the jump. Good for him; it’s not always easy for politicians to admit a mistake. TPMDC reported today,

In response to a question from TPMDC, Vilsack called the debacle “a teachable moment for me.” He admitted that Sherrod had received advance notice of Breitbart’s intention to (mis)use the clip and had attempted to inform her superiors, including Vilsack, by email — but the email did not get through, and thus her superiors’ first contact with her regarding the incident was after Breitbart’s release of the clip.

Democratic Congressional candidate Matt Campbell has challenged incumbent Steve King to a series of three debates this year. Campbell’s press release notes that King “has never formally debated an opponent” since his first election to Congress in 2002.

Don’t expect this year to become the exception that proves the rule. King ignored Campbell’s request that he apologize for making racially polarizing remarks about President Barack Obama, and he’s probably going to ignore Campbell’s request for debates on the issues.

Why would King agree to take questions from a panel of journalists while Campbell points out how little the incumbent has accomplished for his fifth district constituents? The status quo is very comfortable for King. Conservative interest groups pay to fly him all over the country. He gets one softball question after another from right-wing talk radio hosts. Even when sensible Republicans are embarrassed by his presence, he can find a receptive audience for his wrong-headed comments.

Douglas Burns put it well at the Carroll Daily Times Herald:

In evaluating employees one of the more important measures is time management. […]

We can debate whether King is accurate with his portrayal of Obama as a closet black militant. But, really, is this the sort of business we want Mr. King, our $174,000-a-year employee, doing for us on the job?

The time King spends on this matter is time he’s not devoting to the great sweep of land that is the 5th Congressional District. A self-described insomniac, King can claim that he has time to be a right-wing talk-show darling and a reliable piñata for MSNBC’s liberal commentators whose eyes light up like kids seeing candies and other sweets every time they see the Kiron Republican’s lips jiggle into their default position of flapping about.

But at the end of the day, there’s no getting away from the fact that it takes time and energy and political capital to play the role of Congressman Steve King as he’s written the part. […]

More important, when King is chasing the lights, cameras and action of the spit-scream arena of modern political talk entertainment shows what is he neglecting in Cherokee or Carroll or Creston or Council Bluffs? What agricultural or economic-development issue is getting less attention than it would otherwise have?

The most important choice we make in life is how to use our time. It is a limited commodity. King is on our clock and he’s spending our time in ways that have little to do with real life in western Iowa.

I would bank on Campbell’s handshake with King at the Storm Lake 4th of July parade being the only meeting between the two candidates this year.

In related Steve King news, this week he claimed the closure of a voter intimidation case in Philadelphia proved he was right to claim the Obama administration has a “default mechanism” favoring racial minorities. For context about the New Black Panther Case dropped by Obama’s Justice Department, read this piece by Zachary Roth at TPMMuckraker. Conservatives like King are making “whistle-blower” Christian Adams out to be a hero, but Josh Marshall reminds us how this guy got his DOJ job in the first place:

Adams was one of the attorneys US Attorney firing scandal luminary Bradley Schlozman hired when he was purging the Civil Rights Division of female, minority and non-right wing attorneys and replacing them with “good Americans.”

Basically, Adams was one of the guys who got in during the bad old days when the crooks and bamboozlers then running the DOJ were purging career attorneys and replacing them with right-wing activists like Schlozman himself. And remember, Schlozman’s role at the Bush DOJ was getting US Attorneys to bring bogus ‘vote fraud’ cases to further the effort to suppress minority and low-income voter turnout.

Let’s see, what else was one of the 10 worst members of Congress wrong about lately? Oh yes, King agreed with a right-wing talk show caller who claimed Obama’s not helping Louisiana cope with the BP oil spill because that state’s governor is a Republican. In the process he falsely accused the president of failing to waive the Jones Act. Pat Garofalo explains here why the right-wing Jones Act talking points are false.

Representative Steve King won’t cancel his planned trip to Colorado this weekend, even though the conservatives he had planned to help don’t want to be associated with him. Via Swing State Project’s morning news roundup I found this Loveland Connection article following up on the controversy over King’s recent comments on race. King is not backing down on his claim that President Barack Obama’s “default mechanism” on race “favors the black person.” As I discussed yesterday, the comments prompted Colorado Congressional candidate Cory Gardner to cancel a fundraiser King was supposed to headline and got King uninvited from a Northern Colorado Tea Party rally to be held in Loveland. From the Loveland Connection piece:

King said he called both [Northern Colorado Tea Party director Lesley] Hollywood and Gardner on Tuesday after their cancellation announcements.

“I have spoken with her and Cory Gardner both, and neither one of them disagreed with what I said or the position I have taken,” King said in an interview.

Gardner’s campaign manager, Chris Hansen, flatly rejected King’s characterization of his conversation with the Northern Colorado congressional candidate: “That is not an accurate reflection of Representative Gardner’s views,” he said in an e-mail.

Hollywood was interviewed Tuesday morning but couldn’t immediately be reached for comment after King’s interview.

The Iowa congressman said he told Gardner and Hollywood he’d be in Colorado on Saturday.

“I pointed out to them that I’m coming to Colorado, that’s in my schedule and they’ll have to figure it out from there,” he said.

He declined to elaborate on his weekend plans: “We will make some arrangements so that works out to be effective.”

A spokesman for Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck, a Republican Senate candidate who also will speak at the Loveland rally, also rejected King’s statement.

“His comments do not represent the Tea Party,” Buck spokesman Owen Loftus told The Associated Press.

Stay tuned–this could get interesting over the weekend if the rank and file Colorado tea partiers stand by King. He typically gets a warm reception from tea party crowds, as Joseph Morton noted in this story for the Omaha World-Herald:

King said that the controversy over his comments had been drummed up by liberal activists and that he was surprised both the Gardner campaign and the local tea party leadership “caved” in the face of that controversy.

“That’s not the kind of people I want guarding my back,” King said. […]

King has spoken at numerous tea party rallies, including one in Washington in April. King was introduced to the enthusiastic crowd as a “tea partier on the inside” and a congressman who is “tea party tested and tea party approved.”

He also hung one of the “Don’t Tread On Me” flags popular among tea party regulars outside his Capitol Hill office. He said at the time that the flag has become “the symbol of taking our country back.”

Obama and race also were mentioned in a speech made last month by King.

“When he had an Irish cop and a black professor, who’d he side with?” King asked. “He jumped to a conclusion without having heard the facts. And he ended up having to have a beer summit.

“The president of the United States has got to articulate a mission. And instead, he’s playing race-bait games to undermine the law enforcement in the state of Arizona and across the country.”

Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn clearly wants this controversy to blow over, but King would rather stand his ground, even if he embarrasses fellow Republicans in the process.

UPDATE: King tweeted on Thursday, “I will do media and two events in Colorado Saturday. One at Elizabeth at 11:00, one at Loveland at 2:30 with Tancredo and others.” Can’t wait!

Meanwhile, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Sue Dvorsky said today,

“King’s statements reflect an absolute callous disregard for the truth and is an embarrassment to all Iowans,” Dvorsky said. “I’m calling on Sen. Grassley, Terry Branstad, and Iowa Republicans to join me and the Northern Colorado Tea Party in denouncing Steve King’s irresponsible and divisive comments.” […]

“It’s truly unfortunate that Matt Strawn and other Iowa Republicans haven’t mustered the courage to put him in his place,” Dvorsky said. “This is a Congressman that spends more time trying to make the news than working for his constituents. It’s time for Iowa Republicans to make a stand and let Rep. King know this kind of behavior is not going to be tolerated.”

UPDATE: Isaiah McGee, the rising African American star of the Republican Party of Iowa, defended King in this post at The Iowa Republican blog. The Iowa Democratic Party asked whether Terry Branstad was indirectly defending King, noting that McGee serves as Young Professionals Chair for the Branstad campaign.

I was offline for a few days and returned to find that Representative Steve “10 Worst” King has been shooting off his mouth again. Historically, King’s offensive outbursts have enhanced his reputation with the country’s right wing, but this time even some conservatives are troubled by his comments. On Monday, King went on G. Gordon Liddy’s talk radio show to talk about Arizona’s new immigration law. Apparently that topic wasn’t controversial enough, because King said of President Barack Obama’s administration,

When you look at this administration, I’m offended by [U.S. Attorney General] Eric Holder and the President also, their posture.  It looks like Eric Holder said that white people in America are cowards when it comes to race.  And I don’t know what the basis of that is but I’m not a coward when it comes to that and I’m happy to talk about these things and I think we should.  But the President has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down the side of race – on the side that favors the black person.

The Media Matters Action Network’s Political Correction blog posted the audio clip here. Naturally, King misquoted Holder and distorted the meaning of his words. Over at The Atlantic blog, Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses the long American history of claiming your political opponent is “favoring black people.”

We Iowans are used to King embarrassing us from time to time, but some out-of-staters were apparently shocked this week. Republican candidate Cory Gardner, who is challenging a Democratic incumbent in Colorado’s conservative-leaning fourth district, quickly canceled a fundraiser King was planning to headline this weekend (more on that here). Meanwhile, the Northern Colorado Tea Party axed King’s scheduled appearance at its June 19 event, saying, “we do not feel his remarks align with the mission and vision of the Northern Colorado Tea Party, which focuses on promoting fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free enterprise according to Constitutional principles. The race debate does not have a place in the Tea Party movement or in politics today.” Gardner will be at the Tea Party event and presumably wanted to avoid being on stage with King.

King told an Iowa political admirer on Monday, “The fact that liberals have risen to attack me and call me names without rebutting my assertions concedes my point […] When they start calling you names you know they’ve lost the argument.”

No, Congressman, when even your supposed political allies can’t get far enough away from you, it proves you have lost the argument. How often do candidates cancel opportunities to raise money for a campaign?

In case you were wondering what King had planned to say about the Arizona law on Gordon Liddy’s talk show, I infer it’s something like what he said on the floor of the U.S. House Monday evening:

   KING: Some claim that the Arizona law will bring about racial discrimination profiling. First let me say, Mr. Speaker, that profiling has always been an important component of legitimate law enforcement. If you can’t profile someone, you can’t use those common sense indicators that are before your very eyes. Now, I think it’s wrong to use racial profiling for the reasons of discriminating against people, but it’s not wrong to use race or other indicators for the sake of identifying that are violating the law. […]

   It’s just a common sense thing. Law enforcement needs to use common sense indicators. Those common sense indicators are all kinds of things, from what kind of clothes people wear – my suit in my case – what kind of shoes people wear, what kind of accident [sic] they have, um, the, the type of grooming they might have, there’re, there’re all kinds of indicators there and sometimes it’s just a sixth sense and they can’t put their finger on it. But these law enforcement officers, if they were going to be discriminating against people on the sole basis of race, singling people out, that’d be going on already.

Something tells me King wouldn’t be so comfortable with racial profiling if law enforcement singled out people who look like him. But empathy has never been his strong suit. We’re talking about a guy who thinks deporting undocumented immigrants to an area devastated by an earthquake might be a good way to send extra relief workers.

Matt Campbell is the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s fifth district; go here to get involved in supporting his campaign. Rob Hubler, King’s opponent in 2008, spoke with the Sioux City Journal’s Bret Hayworth last week about the challenges of campaigning in this huge district, which covers 32 Iowa counties. He noted that it’s particularly hard for a candidate to get a message out with so many media markets covering portions of the district.

UPDATE: The Political Correction blog followed up on this story today.

Also, King told Radio Iowa that he stands by his remarks. Campbell commented on the controversy too: “I think they’re reflective of a pattern of Mr. King saying polarizing things. I think collectively they preclude meaningful work on issues important to the development of western Iowa because of statements such as this.” Hard to argue with that one.

SECOND UPDATE: Representative Bruce Braley, a Democrat, said King’s comments about Obama favoring black people “were deplorable and an embarrassment to the state of Iowa.”

Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Matt Strawn and third district Congressional candidate Brad Zaun declined to comment, and Zaun said repeatedly that he didn’t know exactly what King had said.