“There’s not much these days that the two parties in Washington can rally around, as evidenced by the increasingly shrill tone here. You might think that one thing on which everyone in both parties could agree would be a resolution apologizing for the Senate’s failure, over many decades, to make it a federal crime for racists to hunt black people like animals and hang them from trees.” Terry Neal wonders why eleven GOP Senators refused to sign the recent anti-lynching resolution. (Cliopatria‘s Robert KC Johnson posted a list of the eleven Senator’s responses from Roll Call a few days ago.)
As I’ve said earlier, I can see how a mea culpa that’s coming anywhere from thirty to 130 years late may not be the most useful legislation ever passed by the Senate. But, when it comes time to mark your name down against an abomination like lynching, why not take the opportunity? To paraphrase Karl Rove, moderation and restraint is not what I feel when I see African-Americans strung up and mutilated by mobs of white folk. But, for one reason or another, a sizable number of the GOP think different. Therapy and understanding for the attackers, perhaps?
Or is that unfair? Well, so be it. After Karl’s 9/11-bomb this morning, my Irish is up and I’m not in a fair mood.
Touche’ – that was a good one.
Small suggestion: swap the order of Comments and TBs so that it’s easier to quickly skim and see if there are any comments. 🙂 (says the person with the lamest weblog-type-entity in the world right now…)
Those GOP senators are pro-lynching and pro-terrorist as long as it’s directed against people of color.
Good idea, Medley – it’s fixed. 🙂 Comments are relatively rare around here anyway, but so far the Trackback option has been a huge bust. Ah well, perhaps someday it’ll take off.