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Overnight Open Thread

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Occasional Reader6/30/2009 8:11:53 am PDT

re: #740 avanti

The spin was made by misreading his interview comments and I’m tired of posting links. The simple fact is if you don’t like Obama, you’ll read negatives into a comment, if you do, you’ll get unicorns and rainbows. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

So let me get this straight: You’re claiming Obama did not actually say the following:

But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

And that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.