The first is by Mary Sanchez who calls out Kris Kobach for "defaming a dead man."
All in the name of political gain
Politics can be a dirty game; that is no surprise.
But just how far will a candidate go to get elected?
Defaming an opponent? Unfortunately, this is common during the waning days of most elections.
But defaming a dead man?
Most voters, regardless of party affiliation, would be offended by such a ploy.
Yet this is what Republican Kris Kobach has done. Kobach is a U.S. Congressional candidate for the 3rd Kansas district.
Sanchez delves into Kobach's use of the late Steve Endean, founder of the Human Rights Campaign, in his recent call for Moore to return contributions from HRC. As The Note would say, it is a "must read."
Then in today's Star, Wyandotte County columnist Mark Wiebe discusses why Hispanic activists are up in arms over Kobach-ally Project USA's posting of anti-immigration billboards in Hispanic neighborhoods.
There appears, then, to be nothing about the ads that suggests the racially motivated innuendoes and fear tactics too often embraced by those who promote a strict nativist agenda. Nothing, that is, until you consider that the billboards (there are three of them) appear in an area heavily populated by Hispanics and Hispanic businesses. Placed in this context, one can understand why some might read the ad as saying, essentially, “This is what your neighborhood could look like if we don't enforce immigration laws.”Wiebe also counters Project USA's insistance that race isn't an issue, by quoting from passages of their website where race is clearly an issue. This gives "critics reasons to doubt the organization's true motives." Wiebe continues...
So does this: ProjectUSA has received $25,000 in a three-year span from the Pioneer Fund, an organization whose original charter included “race betterment” as one of its goals. According to the organization's Web site, its president, J. Philippe Rushton, has “documented” evidence that descendents of Africans are, on average, less intelligent, less socially organized and practice less sexual restraint than East Asians, Europeans and their descendents.
Those facts raise serious questions about ProjectUSA's purposes. But just as important, they raise an equally serious question about Kobach's campaign: Why would he want to risk accepting ProjectUSA's support?
Yes, why indeed?
* We originally used Google News Alerts, but after hearing about how ABC's The Note relies on "Google Monkeys" to find its stories, we all pitched in to get one of our own. Unfortunately, we could only afford an unemployed Rally Monkey. It doesn't really find very many stories, but it helps keep our spirits high.
