Obama urged to issue black boxer Jack Johnson a posthumous pardon

Jack Johnson was the most famous African American of his day, the first black heavyweight boxing champion. In 1910, he gave a black community with little to cheer about a stunning lift by defeating white champion Jim Jeffries in Reno, a historical first that led to race riots by the white audience.

So lasting was Johnson's achievement that years later, in 1970, Howard Sackler made a movie -- "The Great White Hope" -- based on his play. Filmmaker Ken Burns was also drawn to the story, crafting a documentary called "Unforgivable Blackness."

In 1913, Johnson's relationship with a white woman led to his conviction for violating the Mann Act, which prohibited the transportation of women across state lines for "immoral" purposes. At a time when blacks in the South were lynched for even looking at a white woman, he served 10 months in jail.

Now, two Republican boxing enthusiasts -- Arizona Sen. John McCain and New York Rep. Peter King -- are waging a campaign to get President Obama to pardon the boxer posthumously.

"It is our hope that you will be eager to agree to right this wrong and erase an act of racism that sent an American citizen to prison," the two Republicans said in the letter sent Friday. The charges, they added, were clearly intended "to keep him away from the boxing ring, where he continued to defeat his white opponents."

During the summer both the House and Senate passed resolutions unanimously urging Obama to grant a pardon. As McCain put it at the time, "Rectifying this injustice is long overdue. [The resolution recognizes] the unjustness of what transpired, and sheds light on the achievements of an athlete who was forced into the shadows of bigotry and prejudice."

President George W. Bush failed to act on appeals during his presidency to pardon the heavyweight champ.

No word from the White House yet about what Obama will do, but as the first African American president -- a child of a white mother and a black father -- it's hard to imagine he would resist history's call. Or Congress' for that matter.

[For the record: A previous version of this post incorrectly reported that writer Howard Sackler based his movie “The Great White Hope” on “his story.” Actually, “The Great White Hope” was originally a Pulitzer Prize-winning play.]

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Associated Press file photo

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Could drop in black turnout cost Democrats the House?

In next month's gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia -- widely seen as a referendum on the Democrats running the White House and Congress -- one constituency may stay home.

African American voters, crucial to Barack Obama's success in those two states in last year's presidential races, are telling pollsters they don't plan to vote in the off-year elections. In a recent poll in Virginia, the Washington Post found that while African Americans made up 20% of the electorate last year, just 12% are expected to show up this year. 

The poll also suggested a wider problem for Dems -- many white voters who helped lift Obama to the White House last year may also stay home. Call it a backlash against Washington's policies on the economy, healthcare and Wall Street, a massive infusion of government spending that has still left unemployment rates soaring.

But it's the disaffection among black voters -- perhaps a natural falloff from the high turnout levels they posted during the historic election of the first African American president -- that is drawing attention from analysts. Some think it could cost Democrats control of the House in 2010.

“If what looks like is going to happen in Virginia plays out on a national level, I do think Democrats will lose the House,” Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling told The Hill newspaper. In a recent column, he predicted that in a number of Southern congressional districts "Democrats are going to have a world of trouble ... if black voters aren't engaged to a greater extent than what the Post is finding in Virginia."

David Bositis, an expert on black turnout at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, told The Hill that he doubts Virginia will be a bellwether on the 2010 elections, because results will likely turn on the individual candidates and their outreach to black voters.

"It’s going to be a stretch to say that what happens in Virginia will, in any way, be telling about next year,” he said. “But it definitely is something they are going to be concerned about in terms of 2010.”

-- Johanna Neuman

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Photo: Holly Jackson and 6-month-old daughter, Hollin, and her '"Vote" sticker at a Colorado Obama rally in November 2008. Credit: Ed Andrieski / Associated Press.

Two polls show unease over Afghanistan among American public

As President Obama continues to wrestle with what to do about sending more troops to Afghanistan, two new polls show the American public is unhappy about the choices.

The latest Associated Press-GfK poll shows that public support for the war, now 8 years old, is at 40%, down from 44% in July. Almost seven out of 10 people who describe themselves as Republicans favor sending more troops, while 57% of Democrats oppose such an increase.

Obama and his national security team are examining the possibility of sending as many as 40,000 more American soldiers to Afghanistan. The U.S. has authorized 68,000 troops and NATO 40,000 more.

By 65% to 28%, American voters are willing to use American soldiers to fight terrorism threats from groups in Afghanistan, according to a Quinnipiac University poll of 2,630 U.S. voters released today.

By 49% to 38%, voters said they do not...

What they said: How the media and Gibbs sparred over Jimmy Carter's race remark on Obama

You have to hand it to the White House press corps. It knows how to stay on topic. As seen during a White House briefing this week, the reporters repeatedly asked about President Carter’s remark that racism is driving some opposition to President Obama.

The excerpts below make for intriguing reading, as White House spokesman Robert Gibbs discussed Carter, public perception, race relations in general and the arrest this summer of a black Harvard professor by a white police officer.

The Wednesday press briefing began with several questions about healthcare and foreign affairs. Then came the first question on Carter, combined with a query about the activist group ACORN. The unedited excerpts were taken from a transcript prepared by the White House:

Q: Okay. And I just wanted to get the White House reaction to a couple items in the news. One is former President Jimmy Carter saying that he believes an overwhelming majority of the intensely demonstrated animosity towards the President is because he’s black and those voters can’t accept the fact that a black man is President. And also an organization the President a long time ago did file that motor voter law for, ACORN --

GIBBS: A larger group of legal entities --

Q: Along with them, ACORN, a group the President has had some ties with over the years. The Census Bureau eliminated their relationship with that group for the 2010 census and the Senate overwhelmingly voted to cut off housing funding. And I was just wondering the White House reaction to either of those.

GIBBS: Well, let’s take a look at what former President Carter said. The answer that I’m going to give is the same answer that I gave on Sunday, when I was asked this question. The President does not believe that that criticism comes based on the color of his skin. We understand that people have disagreements with...

Are Obama's critics racist? Jimmy Carter thinks so

Former President Jimmy Carter, who has a habit of stirring controversy, said this morning that "an overwhelming portion" of those opposing President Obama's policies are racist.

In an interview with NBC's Brian Williams, Carter lobbed a bomb into Washington politics, already seething with passions over healthcare, federal spending and whether a congressman named Wilson should apologize to the House for screaming "You lie!' to a president.

Here's what Carter said:

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The charge is likely to ignite a firestorm of anger, and could provoke a backlash among those who would oppose Obama's healthcare reform whatever his racial identity. One site calls it evidence of a "failed ex-President making this ignorant, outlandish charge."

Carter, who has been an ex-president for almost 30 years, has done this sort of thing before. The 39th president angered the Clinton White House with his frequent diplomatic freelancing with various dictators around the world.

Of course Carter has been an equal-opportunity thorn to White Houses of both parties, making life difficult for Republican presidents as well as Democrats. Among other things, he called George W. Bush the worst president in history in international relations.

The current bombshell is likely to make life difficult for the Obama White House, which as MSNBC's Chuck Todd noted this morning, will now have to rebut the impression that it played the race card to win votes on healthcare.

Maybe it's not too late for Carter, who turns 85 on Oct. 1, to learn tact.

-- Johanna Neuman

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Sotomayor's first words in first Supreme Court argument

The case involved Hillary Clinton (the movie), the future of campaign finance reform and the sanctity of the 1st Amendment guarantee of free speech. Just the usual fodder for a Supreme Court tasked with being the last appeal for all causes, from all corners.

There were a few firsts.

Elena Kagan made her first argument at the high court as solicitor general, presenting the government's case that the movie was a campaign ad and therefore subject to regulation by the nation's campaign finance laws.

She was facing off against a former solicitor general, Theodore Olson, who was arguing that those laws violate the 1st Amendment rights of corporations and unions by banning them from political speech. "Why is it easier to dance naked, burn a flag or wear a T-shirt profanely opposing the draft," Olson said in July at the conservative Federalist Society, "than it is to advocate the election or defeat of a president? That cannot be right."

The case is so pivotal -- and so potentially tumultuous to decades of campaign finance law -- that the justices returned from their summer recess three weeks early to hear arguments.

And the case could be decided by two justices appointed by George W. Bush -- Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. -- who may have to choose between personal views and court precedents.

But no matter all of that.

Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina justice and the first high court appointment by President Obama, spoke her first words. And the world took note.

By all accounts, she jumped right into questioning. She appeared skeptical of arguments by Citizens United that the conservative group's 90-minute campaign-era movie about Clinton ("Not a musical comedy," observed Justice Stephen Breyer) was protected speech. And she questioned Olson about why he had abandoned a former argument -- that Citizens United was not really a corporation -- for a more sweeping one, that campaign funding restrictions discriminate against corporations.

Upbraided by several Republican senators during her confirmation hearings about the importance of respecting court precedents, she asked Olson why he seemed so intent on toppling it in this case. Her first words:

Mr. Olson, are you giving up on your earlier arguments that there are ways to avoid the constitutional question to resolve this case? I know that we asked for further briefing on this particular issue of overturning two of our Court's precedents. But are you giving up on your earlier arguments that there are statutory interpretations that would avoid the constitutional question?

His answer: No.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Getty Images

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White House aide’s 9/11 conspiracy theories cloud his future. It’s not easy being green.

He is the green jobs czar at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the aide who’s supposed to offer inspiration and input on how to convert the nation’s creaky, Saudi-dependent oil economy into the idyllic bliss of energy independence.

Van Jones is much respected in enviro circles, praised for his bestselling book, “The Green Collar Economy.”  Former Vice President Al Gore told the New Yorker, “I love Van Jones.” And actor Leonardo DiCaprio said of him in Time magazine, “Steadily -- by redefining green -- Jones is making sure that our planet and our people will not just survive but also thrive in a clean-energy economy.”

But right now Van Jones is in a toxic dump full of trouble.

Wednesday he had to apologize after video surfaced of an appearance he made in Berkeley in February in which he called Republicans an anatomical expletive deemed inappropriate for this family newspaper, which this isn't but rules are rules.

Then Thursday the Yale University grad, a onetime Marxist who was arrested during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, was forced to issue a statement apologizing for his signature on a petition. The petition, to then-New York Atty Gen. Eliot Spitzer, urged an investigation into whether 9/11 was an inside job by George W. Bush to soften public opinion for a war in Iraq.

“In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the administration -- some of which were made years ago,” he said in the statement. “If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize. As for the petition ... I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.”

Score one for Glenn Beck, the Fox News commentator who has been hammering on Jones for days. Take a look.

Turns out, as our friends at The Times’ Show Tracker noted, that Jones co-founded Color of Change, an African American political advocacy group that organized an advertising boycott of Beck’s show. 

They used to say that the power of the press belonged to those who owned one. I guess these days it’s those who have the loudest megaphone.

 Either way, the White House is standing by Jones, for now.

-- Johanna Neuman

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Republicans looking for 'great white hope' to counteract Obama? Congresswoman says she didn't mean it that way

One of the instructive (and occasionally entertaining) aspects of the presidency of Barack Obama, the nation’s first black commander in chief, has been the intermittent surfacing of traditionally submerged racial attitudes. These incidents often take form as slips of the tongue, or perhaps “jokes,” that may or may not indicate racism. But the reaction to such statements serves to remind those in the public glare that potentially offensive references to race -- whether deliberate, accidental or unconscious -- will be ruthlessly picked apart in the blogosphere. 

Especially if you are a Republican. (Macaca, anyone?)

The latest pol to receive a self-inflicted egg facial is Lynn Jenkins, a freshman Republican congresswoman from Kansas, who according to the Associated Press told a group of constituents Aug. 19 that the GOP is “struggling right now to find the great white hope.”  She added: "I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington." (Poor quality video is here. Comment is at about 50 seconds.)

The tape was -- naturally -- turned over to the Kansas Democratic Party, whose spokesman pronounced Jenkins's remark “a poor choice of words.”

Later, at another event,  Jenkins pleaded ignorance: “I was unaware of any negative connotation,” she said.  “And if I offended anybody, obviously, I apologize.”

Now, we don’t expect all of our legislators to be fans of boxing -- nor even theater or movies, for that matter. But we find it strange that an educated person such as Jenkins, who is a certified public accountant, never knew that the phrase “great white hope” is freighted with racial animus.

"Great white hope" was coined early in the last century to describe the search for a white boxer who could regain the world heavyweight boxing title from Jack Johnson, the first African American to win it.  Johnson -- and the ugly reaction of many whites to his 1908 victory -- was the subject of the 1967 play "The Great White Hope," which won a Tony for actor James Earl Jones in 1969, who also starred in the film. In 2005, PBS aired a Ken Burns documentary about Johnson, "Unforgivable Blackness."

Liberal blogger Matt Yglesias over at Think Progress believes a comment like Jenkins' should not shock anyone: "Now to be fair," he writes, "there are virtually no nonwhite Republican members of Congress, so in suggesting that the party’s future hopes rest essentially on white talent, Jenkins was arguably just stating the obvious."

Ouch.

-- Robin Abcarian

Photo: Lynn Jenkins addresses her use of "great white hope" today in Kansas. Credit: Associated Press

N.Y. Gov. Paterson blames unpopularity on his skin

New York's Democratic Gov. David Paterson has figured out why his popularity there has declined from the heady days when the lieutenant governor succeeded sex scandal-plagued fellow Democrat Eliot Spitzer.

Paterson told a radio interviewer today it's because he's black and there aren't enough black media outlets to counter the white ones. He also suggested the same racist forces will soon take after President Barack Obama.

After a period of high popularity, Paterson has fallen on hard political times in the Empire State, drawing severe criticism even from key fellow Democrats for how he's run state government and handled the state's budget problems and even for the on-again-off-again nomination of Caroline Kennedy to fill Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat.

Paterson's approval rating plummeted to 18% at one point, below even Republican President George W. Bush and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but has since crept back up to 30%. A humorous and unscientific online poll with the Daily News on this gubernatorial outburst shows 2% agree with Paterson, 1% is undecided and 97% want him out of office "because he stinks."

"My feeling is it's being orchestrated. It's a game. And people who pay attention know that," Paterson told N.Y. Daily News columnist Errol Lewis today.

According to state Sen. Kevin Parker, a fellow Democrat and African American from Brooklyn: "He's given the media more than enough to feed on with the incompetence shown in his administration."

Paterson said the goal is to force him out of an election campaign next year. Polls have shown that state Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo would annihilate Paterson in a primary struggle. On the Republican side, there's always ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Associated Press (Cuomo, left, Paterson, right).

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: 'No words can adequately express what I am feeling'

The first Latino Supreme Court justice was introduced today by the first African American president of the United States at a White House that has seen so many firsts in the last few months historians may some day marvel at the speed of change.

Both of them teared up.

At a reception in the East Room honoring Sonia Sotomayor, the newest Supreme Court justice, President Obama said, "We're here not just to celebrate our extraordinary new Supreme Court justice. We're here to celebrate an extraordinary moment for our nation…. We celebrate the greatness of a nation in which such a story is possible.''

With a host of activists, officials and relatives looking on -- including New York Gov. David Paterson, New York Dist. Atty. Robert Morgenthau and Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens -- Obama talked about how Sotomayor has already influenced Americans.

"It's not just about her," Obama said. "It's about every child who will grow up thinking to his or herself, 'If Sonia Sotomayor can make it, then maybe I can too.' "

But it was really the court's new, 111th justice who stole the show.

No longer in the brightly colored jackets of her confirmation hearings but dressed all in black, Sotomayor said that "no words can adequately express what I am feeling." Thanking her family and her colleagues, the president and the Senate, she said, "I am so grateful to all of you for this extraordinary opportunity."

But she gave most of the credit to America. Saying she was "struck by the wonder of my life," Sotomayor added, "I am most grateful to....