Vast RightWing Conspiracy Newsletter # 8

After he was sued in the late 1980s by the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund for failing to enforce the Voting Rights Act in Arkansas, then-Gov. Bill Clinton suggested to a group of pro-segregation whites that they were being unfairly targeted by civil rights laws as a result of the South's loss in the Civil War, according to one-time Clinton administration Civil Rights Division nominee Lani Guinier.

"In the late 1980s, in a particularly tense meeting in southeastern Arkansas - a section of the Mississippi Delta region where antebellum social relations are still in many respects the order of the day - [Guinier's friend] Dayna [Cunningham] and a local LDF cooperating lawyer were part of a handful of black people there to discuss remedies for a highly contentious LDF voting rights suit," wrote Guinier in her 1998 memoir, "Lift Every Voice."

"The meeting turned sour when one of the local whites demanded to know why, in his view, the whites were always made to pay for others' problems. Other whites in the group began to echo his charge. ..."

"Bill Clinton, the lead defendant in the case, took to the podium to respond. In a tone of resignation, Clinton said, 'We have to pay because we lost.'" Guinier said Cunningham inferred that Clinton was referring to the South's Civil War loss as well as his loss in the court case.

"Clinton had so irresponsibly pandered to the backwards feeling of the white constituency" in his speech about the voting rights lawsuit, Cunningham told Guinier.

News of Clinton's attempt to pander to Arkansas whites who were angry that he'd lost a lawsuit for not enforcing the Voting Rights Act comes just hours after the ex-president accused Republicans of doing the same thing.

"They try to suppress black voting, they ran on the Confederate flag in Georgia and South Carolina, and from top to bottom the Republicans supported it," Clinton said of the GOP on Wednesday, when asked to comment on the continuing Trent Lott flap.

In fact, the Arkansas state flag added a single star above the state's name in 1923 to commemorate its membership in the Confederacy, a design that remained unaltered throughout Clinton's five terms as governor.

News Item: Former President Bill Clinton chides Republicans for being "pretty hypocritical" about race and running "on the Confederate flag" in the South.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton signed Act 116 of 1987, which designated the star above the word "Arkansas" on the state flag as a commemoration of the Confederacy, and signed yearly proclamations for Confederate Flag Day in the state, as well, by the way.

After tapping Guinier for the top Justice Department civil rights post in 1993, Clinton abruptly yanked her nomination after critics labeled her a "Quota Queen." Guinier said she felt betrayed by Clinton, whom she considered a friend since their days together at Yale Law School, and was angered when he called her "anti-democratic" in a nationally televised address announcing he was scuttling her nomination.

Clinton Was Sued for Intimidating Black Voters in Arkansas
Newsmax.com ^ | December 22, 2002 | Carl Limbacher

In 1989 then-Gov. Bill Clinton was sued as one of three top Arkansas officials responsible for the intimidation of black voters in his state as part of a legal action brought under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, NewsMax.com has learned.

And a year earlier the U.S. Supreme court ruled that Clinton had wrongfully tried to overturn the election of a black state representative in favor of a white Democrat.

In the 1989 case, "the evidence at the trial was indeed overwhelming that the Voting Rights Act had been violated," reported the Arkansas Gazette on Dec. 6, 1989. (The paper later became the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.)

"Plaintiffs offered plenty of proof of monolithic voting along racial lines, intimidation of black voters and candidates, other official acts that made voting harder for blacks," the Gazette said.

A federal three judge federal panel ordered Clinton, then Arkansas Attorney General Steve Clark and then-Secretary of State William J. Mc Cuen to draw new boundaries to give maximum strength to black voters.

"Until last year," the Gazette complained at the time, "in more than a thousand legislative elections, the (Arkansas) delta region sent not one black to the legislature. Last year, the federal district court split a multimember district in Crittenden County that had submerged the large number of black voters in the county."

In a related 1988 case, Clinton had tried to replace duly elected African-American state representative with a white candidate, only to be stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The court, by an 8-0 vote, ruled against an appeal by Gov. Bill Clinton and other Arkansas officials that had challenged the election of Ben McGee as a state legislator," the Associated Press reported on Dec. 12, 1988. McGee is an African-American.

"The case began when blacks in Crittenden County filed a voting rights lawsuit attacking the county's at-large system for electing two House members. The suit contended that the system deprived black voters of a chance to elect a black to the House.

A special three-judge federal court had agreed earlier in the year that the system violated the federal Voting Rights Act.

The three-judge court threw out the results of a March 8 primary election in which the black candidate McGee, was defeated by James Stockley, the white candidate handpicked by Gov. Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

"That was tantamount to election on Nov. 8, since no Republican ran for the seat," the AP said.

Clinton and the other state officials had argued that the federal court improperly threw out the results of the first primary and ordered a new election.

The Supreme Court ruling came as the then-governor was fighting another court battle to preserve racial profiling in his state, a tool that Clinton later criticized while president as a "morally indefensible, deeply corrosive practice."

But a decade earlier he approved the profiling of Hispanics by Arkansas State Police as part of a drug interdiction program in 1988, the Washington Times revealed in 1999.

"The Arkansas plan gave state troopers the authority to stop and search vehicles based on a drug-courier profile of Hispanics, particularly those driving cars with Texas license plates," the Times said.

"A federal judge later ruled the program unconstitutional, the paper reported. "A lawsuit and a federal consent decree ended the practice - known as the 'criminal apprehension program' the next year."

Then Gov. Clinton, however, not only criticized the profiling ban, "at one point, (he) threatened to reinstate the program despite the court's ruling," the Times said.

"The state's position was to give away a . . . program that we're now trying to get back," Clinton announced at the time, saying the race-based stop and search program was more important than even airport security measures.

Three years later in 1991, Clinton actually did implement a modified version of the profiling program that prohibited the use of ethnic screening but allowed troopers to continue to stop cars on the highway at their discretion.

Hearing Clinton's condemnation of racial profiling in 1999, Roberto Garcia de Posada, executive director of the Hispanic Business Roundtable, complained that the then-president "had been a strong supporter of racial profiling against Hispanics in the past."

"He does not have the moral authority to lead a national campaign on this issue. If President Clinton truly meant what he said . . . he should apologize to all those Hispanics who suffered this 'morally indefensible' practice, which he publicly supported," de Posada said.

On Thursday and Friday both ex-President Clinton and his wife, Democratic Party presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton, criticized Republicans for trying to suppress the black vote in states like Arkansas and Florida. But reporters declined to ask either Clinton about the well documented record of black voter disenfranchisement in Arkansas while they ran the state.

After the Civil War, the Republicans passed the 13th Amendment, banning slavery, and the 1866 Civil Rights Act, the nation’s first Civil Rights Act, both despite the opposition of the Democrat President, Andrew Johnson. The Republicans went on to pass the 14th Amendment, requiring the states to obey the Bill of Rights, and the 15th Amendment, recognizing the voting rights of racial minorities. Later, the Republicans passed the 1875 Civil Rights Act.

Decade after decade, generation after generation, Republican campaign platforms consistently included committments to the constitutional rights of blacks and minorities, while Democrats actively opposed Republicans on this issue. In 1956 and again in 1960 Republicans passed civil rights acts.

So in 1964, when the Democrat President, Lyndon Johnson, submitted the landmark Civil Rights Bill, a greater majority of Republicans than of Democrats voted for the bill, enabling its passage. This bill had been the dream of generations of Republicans. The chief opponents of the bill were Democrats.

Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Bill, even though they knew the Democrats would take credit for the law in the North and the West, and even though Republicans would lose votes in the South at a time when they were making a concerted effort to win over more southern voters. Republicans had been working for this legislation ever since the 1875 Civil Rights Act was overturned by the Supreme Court. Later in the 1960s, when the Voting Rights Bill and an additional Civil Rights Bill came up for a vote, the Republicans made the same choice and accepted the same risks.

But in the Holiday sprit lets forgive and forget any wrong doings of Mr. Clinton. Can't we just get along.

Here are some more statements by Trent Lott that indicate grave defects in his character:
*I sure would like another cup of coffee." - ADDICTIVE PERSONALITY
*What a beautiful child.* - PEDOPHILE
"What a lovely lady." - SEXIST