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Today's Stories February 27, 2008 David Rosen Playing the Race Card: Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political Dirty Tricks February 26, 2008 Debbie Nathan Confessions of a Gitmo Guard Alan Dershowitz v. Frank Menetrez On Finkelstein Harvey Wasserman How Ohio Got Nuked Michael Colby Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals Gary Leupp Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade David Orchard The New Conquistadors: Canada in Afghanistan Martha Rosenberg The Big HRT Fran Shor The Electoral Circus and Nader's Sideshow Serge Halimi The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto: Bernard Henri-Levy's Plan for the French Left Global Balkans Neo-Liberalism and Protectorate States in the Post-Yugoslav Balkans: an Interview with Tariq Ali Website of the Day Texistentialism   February 25, 2008 Roger Morris A Death in Damascus Anthony DiMaggio Military Bases, the Media and the Democrats Ralph Nader Why I'm Running Patrick Cockburn Iraq Broils Paul Craig Roberts Kosovo and the Empire Crazies Peter Morici Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms Dave Lindorff General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That Minot Nuke Incident Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film Heather Gray James Orange, Civil Rights Legend Robert Weitzel Accomodating Torture John Halle Kucinich Goes Down Website of the Day Do the Trunk Monkey! February 23 / 4, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain Paul Craig Roberts Obama and Global Trade Wajahat Ali Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon on the 9/11 Commission Ralph Nader Neutering the FDA Jürgen Vsych "What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?" Fidel Castro Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana Andy Worthington Britain's Guantánamo David Macaray Unions Under Assault Jeremy Scahill The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence David Krieger Stanley Sheinbaum Caging the Cold War Monster Ron Jacobs Building for the Future Michael Garrity The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies Brian McKenna Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down Missy Beattie Over the Hill with John McCain Fred Gardner American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly) Boris Kagarlitsky The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement Mike Ferner Kick That Barrel Dan Bacher On the Trail with the Border Angels Christopher Ketcham Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread Poets' Basement Davies and Buknatski Website of the Weekend Obama Mariachi   February 22, 2008 Mike Whitney The Bonfire of Capital Jason Hribal Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet Liaquat Ali Khan Arresting Musharraf Joshua Frank That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child Dave Lindorff Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for Her! Liliana Segura When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion Robert Fantina Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen? Yifat Susskind The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women Norm Kent Pushing 60 with Pot Website of the Day Bush Gets Down in Liberia February 21, 2008 Saul Landau Fidel Steps Aside Elizabeth Schulte Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed Helen Redmond Health Care as a Human Right Benjamin Dangl Undermining Bolivia Michael Levitin Kosovo's Dilemma Liam Leonard Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle Patrick Irelan Land and Food in Venezuela Linn Cohen-Cole Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto Michael Simmons Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music CounterPunch News Service A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs Website of the Day Cop Abuse in Shreveport   February 20, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Lies and Spies Paul Krassner My Brief Encounter with Fidel Castro Fawzia Afzal-Khan The Pakistani Elections Farzana Versey The Great Dictator: Musharraf, Peace and the Autumn of the Patriarch Allan Nairn Dying for a Second Round: Israel's New Plan to Attack Lebanon John V. Whitbeck If Kosovo, Why Not Palestine? Niranjan Ramakrishnan A Balcony Seat to Our Own Balkanization? Steve Eckardt Cuba Sans Fidel: No News is Big News Lee Sustar Union-Busting at Freightliner Mike Ferner How Sick of It are You? Website of the Day The US Military Index   February 19, 2008 Uri Avnery Blood and Champagne Paul Craig Roberts Paying Insurgents Not to Fight Gary Leupp The Independence of Kosovo Fidel Castro The Moment Has Come David Macaray Management's Dirty Little Secret Reza Fiyouzat Buck the Circus! The Left and the Elections Valerie Morse The New Zealand Terror Raids: Land of the Long White Lie Walter Brasch Bush on Safari Website of the Day Don't Think Twice, It's Alright   February 18, 2008 Wajahat Ali Free Pakistan: an Interview with Imran Khan Diana Johnstone NATO's Kosovo Colony Paul Craig Roberts What Do We Stand For? Andy Worthington Gitmo: "We're Making This Up as We Go Along" Debbie Nathan Bernie Ward's Sex Tapes Anthony DiMaggio Following the Money Trail: the Democratic Party and the Business of Elections Bill Simpich Ten Years Ago, People Power Stopped Clinton in Iraq Eva Liddell A Short History of Super-Delegates: Hope, Yes! But Pay in Cash Christopher Brauchli The President Who Couldn't Keep His Word: Short-Changing Veterans Stephen Soldz Wikileaks is Under Attack! Johann Rossouw The Ouster of Thabo Mbeki: South Africa and the Costs of Neoliberalism Website of the Day Sick of It Day!   February 16 / 17, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Terrorists Still at Ground Zero, 7 World Trade Tower, Lower Manhattan Ralph Nader We the Corporations ... David Macaray The Big Buy Out: Did GM Drive Another Nail in Labor's Coffin? William J. Peace Wheelchair Dumping Ron Jacobs War on the Psyche: Shellshock and Redemption Diane Christian War Corrupts Alan Maass Oil, Blood and Greed: Taking Upton Sinclair to the Big Screen (and Beyond) Ramzy Baroud Iraq and the US Elections Michael Donnelly Genitalia First! Old Guard Feminists Play the XX Card Cpt. Paul Watson The Art of Finding Whalers James L. Secor China Diary: Spring Festival and New Year 2008 Eve Bachrach Bush Returns to Africa Nikolas Kozloff Hugo Chávez's Anti-Imperialist Army Stephen Gowans Steven Spielberg, Faux-Humanitarian Missy Beattie To Vote or Not to Vote? David Michael Green Warming Slowly to Obama Wajahat Ali Attack of the Info-tainment Circus Poets' Basement Gibbons, Willson, Mickey Z., Orloski and Reuther Website of the Day Yellowstone's Bison Need Your Help--NOW!     February 15, 2008 George Szamuely The Absurdity of "Independent" Kosovo Patrick Cockburn Ground-Truthing the Surge: Is the US Really Bringing Stability to Baghdad? Wajahat Ali Pakistan is Burning: an Interview with Steve Coll on the Taliban, Bin Laden and the Bush Administration Mike Whitney Henry Paulsen's Wild Ride on the Economic Hindenberg Alan Farago God and the Democrats Chris Genovali Alberta's Black Gold Rush Jacob Hornberger Courting Injustice: Scalia on Torture Dave Lindorff Snoops Always Ring Twice: Bush's Protect America Bill Bull Website of the Day Live From the Land of Hopes and Dreams     February 14, 2008 Kathleen and Bill Christison Palestine in the Mind of America Mike Whitney Swan Song for NATO Clancy Sigal Strike Notes from a Screenwriter George Wuerthner A Bloody Sham: the Yellowstone Bison Slaughter Peter Morici Is Bernanke Headed for the Exit? John Ross Drug War Mayhem Boils Over from Border to Border Allan Nairn Mafia Rules in the Middle East: If You're Big Enough, You Can Whack Anyone Rannie Amiri Lebanon's Warmongers Niranjan Ramakrishnan The New Tractatus: Where Wittgenstein Meets Feinstein Donna Volatile Be Careful What You Vote For, You Just Might Get It Seth Sandronsky The Student Squeeze: Fighting California's Tuition Hikes Website of the Day Conventions: the Land Around Us   February 13, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff Meet John McCain: Mr. Big Stick in Latin America Alan Farago Hell to Pay: Warren Buffett on the Goal Line Christina Kasica King's Dream Foreclosed: the Subprime Crisis in Black America Vicente Navarro How to Read the U.S. Primaries Hall Greenland Australia's Finest Hour Lee Sustar Strange Stimulation: Too Little for Those Who Need It Most David Macaray The Writers' Strike Finally Ends Roderick Frazier Nash Celebrating Wilderness Patrick Irelan Hugo Chávez and High Anxiety at the NYT Anthony Papa Mean Mister Mukasey: AG Tries to Block Crack Cocaine Releases Carl Finamore Another Parade Passes Me By: Don't Let Your Movement be Coopted by Politicians Website of the Day John He Is   February 12, 2008 Frank J. Menetrez The Case Against Alan Dershowitz Paul Craig Roberts War Without End Dr. Trudy Bond The Elephant at Gitmo: Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink Andy Worthington The Guantánamo Six: Why Charge Them Now? What About the Torture? Col. Dan Smith The Psychology of Killing: Close In or Far Away? Ronnie Cummins Globalization: Standing at the End of the Road Ralph Nader Open the Government John V. Walsh Antiwarriors, Divided and Conquered Dave Lindorff Obama and Progressive Change: Let's Hope the Movement Transforms the Candidate Michael Donnelly Who's Pimping Whom? The Clintons' Selective No Talk Rules Ron Jacobs La Lucha Continua: Castro's "Life" Ben Tripp Beggars Collide Website of the Day Springsteen and Youngstown   February 11, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Lessons for Obama: When is a Delegate Not a Delegate? Wajahat Ali A Discussion with Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel Lobby Ray McGovern Waterboarding for God and Country Allan Nairn The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta Uri Avnery An End Foreseen? Chris Floyd American Psycho: the Meaning of Mitt Romney's Exit Speech Martha Rosenberg School Lessons in a Lunchbox: Lunchmeat from Tortured Cows Stephen Fleischman The Bonnie and Clyde of American Politics Marc Lamont Hill Not My Brand of Hope Liliana Segura Obama and Torture: the Sounds of Silence and Equivocation Peter Morici Challenges for the New President Christopher Brauchli A Drug Rant from a Former Taker Website of the Day Annie vs. the Blue Angels   February 8 / 10, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Does the GOP Have Aces Up Its Sleeves? Patrick Cockburn Will Moqtada al-Sadr's Truce Hold? Mike Whitney The Great Bust of '08 Anthony DiMaggio How the Press Covers Waterboarding Andy Worthington The Guántanamo Trials: Where are the Terrorists? Linn Cohen-Cole Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto? Firmin DeBrabander Notes from the Foreclosure Front: Suing Your Way to Solvency Cpt. Paul Watson The Other Whaling Industry: How Greenpeace Cashes In on the Suffering and Deaths of the Great Whales Kenneth S. Pope Why I Resigned from the American Psychological Association Jacob G. Hornberger American Soldiers Will Pay the Price for Bush's Torture Policy Robert Bryce Beyond Group Think on Climate Change: If More CO2 is Bad ... Then What? P. Sainath The Last of the Buccaneer Editors Allan Nairn Give Me Back My Land Fred Gardner / Pebbles Trippet "The District Attorney of Shasta County Doesn't Know the Law!" Andrew Wimmer Growing Up Catholic: Ignorance is Death Robert Fantina America's Disgrace: the Case of Omar Khadr David Michael Green Partycide in Six Easy Steps: Watch the Democrats Destroy Themselves Kevin Zeese Is Dennis Kucinich Being McKinney'd? Peter Morici Wall Street Gives Bernacke a Vote of No Confidence Chris Driscoll Could Nader be the Come-Back Kid of 2008? Prairie Miller Black August: Bringing George Jackson's Life to the Screen Poets Basement Davies and Buknatski   February 7, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Why Baghdad Will Explode Again Bill Christison Potholes Bigger Than Ever for Palestinians David Anderson NBC's "To Entrap" a Predator: Perverting Justice for the Sake of Ratings Ron Jacobs Innocent Flesh: Recruiting Kids to Kill Nikolas Kozloff Hugo Chávez's Coca: It's the Real Thing Jane Rockefeller The Moral Economy of an Anti-Poverty Foundation Andy Worthington On Waterboarding: Two Questions for Michael Hayden Dave Zirin Instep Intifada Saul Landau The "Honestest" Candidate Since Lincoln Susie Day Our Blob in the White House Website of the Day George Carlin on Voting   February 6, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Super Tuesday's Vote for Chaos Ben Rosenfeld Informant Games: The Disturbing GreenScare Case of Briana Waters Vijay Prashad An Intellectual Hustler Lays It All Out Joe Bageant Nine Billion Little Feet on the Highway of the Damned Michael Donnelly What White Women Do In Private Voting Booths Allan Nairn Does the US Need a Civilizing Mayan Invasion? Kathryn Gray Wilderness on Edge: The Fate of Donner Summit Ray McGovern Powell's UN Fiasco Sheldon Richman The Whining Empire Paul Cantor / Roger Sparks A Presidential Aptitude Examination John Chuckman Political Bits and Pieces Website of the Day Save the Albatross February 5, 2008 Winslow T. Wheeler The Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget Tariq Ali Why I Will Not Participate in the Turin Book Fair Stephen Soldz The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq: Did Rumsfeld Authorize War Crimes? Chris Floyd Strange Fruit: America's Gulag and the Good War William S. Lind Saddam's Secret War Strategy: Die and Win Martha Rosenberg Live From the Killing Floor Heather Gray Conversations with Georgia Voters Ayesha Ijaz Khan Obama, Bhagwandas and the Battle for a Secular Politics David Macaray Unions Need to Stop Being So Nice Eliza Ernshire Making Music and Laughing Till the Tears Run Brenda Norrell Hated Nation Website of the Day The Things I Used to Do     February 4, 2008 Marc Levy Winter in America Patrick Cockburn The Bird Market Bombings Saree Makdisi Strangling Gaza Uri Avnery From Stalingrad to Winograd Alan Farago Let's Get Bambi! Someone is Slaughtering Florida's Key Deer Ben Tripp Spare Change: the Whine of the Progressive Voter Paul Wolf Civil Wars North and South Paul Craig Roberts Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed? Joshua Frank MoveOn's Obama Endorsement: Why There's No Hope for Change John Halle Whither Progressive Democrats? Website of the Day How to Cheat in School   February 2 / 3, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Hot Democratic Properties Pam Martens Bankers Gone Bonkers: Global Finance and the Insanity Defense Ralph Nader The Great Clinton-Obama Debate: Questions They Weren't Asked John Ross Hilaria vs. "El Moreno" Wajahat Ali Hillary, Obama and the Clash of Civilizations: an Interview with Imam Zaid Shakir Robert Fantina A Colony by Any Other Name: Iraq as Stepchild of the American Empire B. R. Gowani Not All Veils and Guns James L. Secor China in Winter: On the Western Edge of the Great Snow John V. Walsh The Invisible Green Primary Niranjan Ramakrishnan Barack's Bubble, Bubba's Trouble Dave Zirin Who Stole the Super Bowl's Soul? Jeremy Scahill Blackwater and Blood Fidel Castro Reflections on Lula Joe Allen Tet Reconsidered: the Turning Point in the Vietnam War Stephen Lendman Life in Occupied Gaza Patrick Irelan What Happened to the Streetcars? Andrej Grubacic Ziga Vodovnik Caligula's Horse: the USA, New Europe and Kosovo Josh Karpoff Dead Soldiers and the Antiwar Movement Ron Jacobs Carl Oglesby's War Paul Krassner Tom Waits Meets Super-Joel Website of the Weekend Company Woman: Hillary and Wal-Mart   February 1, 2008 Ray McGovern The Iniquities and Inequalities of War Diane Farsetta The Wild Career of James "Dow 36,000" Glassman Patrick Cockburn The Most Dangerous Country in the World for Journalists Tariq Ali Et Tu, New York Times? Allan Nairn Eating Dirt for Lunch in Haiti Rannie Amiri Collective Punishment in Beirut Ramzy Baroud People Power in Gaza: They Simply Did It Kenneth Couesbouc The Mother of All Snowballs Peter Morici Recession Looms Mumia Abu-Jamal Witha "Brutha" Like This: Bill Clinton as White Negro Rosemary Jackowski 27 Reasons Nader Should Run for President Scott Campbell Direct Action to Stop the War Re-emerges Website of the Day Betes et Hommes   January 31, 2008 Saul Landau Return to Afghanistan Andy Worthington Horror at Guantánamo Mike Whitney Rate Cut as Dagger: America's Teetering Banking System Jeff Ballinger Sustainability for Dictators Initiative? Clinton Praises the "Suharto of the Steppe" Tiffany Ten Eyck The Saga of the Freightliner Five William Loren Katz Waterboarding: Torure or Mystery? Alan Farago Why the Republicans are in Deep Trouble Col. Dan Smith Oh Say Can You See the 2009 Budget? China Hand Slouching Toward Islamabad Dave Lindorff The Usual Suspects Once Again Wadner Pierre Fake Democracy in Haiti Website of the Day One Big Union   January 30, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair McCain vs. Clinton? Christopher Ketcham The Genius of the Development Industrial-Complex Robert Weissman America By the Numbers: The Shameful State of the Union Neve Gordon An Experiment in Famine Paul Craig Roberts Regulation or Deregulation, Which is Worse? Joanne Mariner How Anti-Terror Laws Threaten Free Speech David Macaray Labor's Only Real Weapon Liaquat Ali Khan Is NATO Committing Genocide in Afghanistan? Raymond J. Lawrence Prankster-in-Chief: Bush's Troubling Non-Verbal Communication Dan Bacher The Collapse of the Central Valley Salmon Website of the Day Onward Through the Fog   January 29, 2008 Franklin C. Spinney Bush's New War Budget: the $70 Billion Hand-Off Mike Whitney The Great Credit Unwind of 2008 Alan Farago Buyer Beware: Florida, the Candidates and the Latin Builders Association Patrick Cockburn "The Americans Bring Us Only Destruction" Gary Leupp "We Can't Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans:" a Sibel Edmonds Timeline R. F. Blader A World Without Abortion: USA v. Romania Ahmad Faruqui Musharraf's Post-Electoral Prospect Fran Shor Obama, the Kennedys and "Change We Can Believe In" Jeremy Scahill Secret Trials and Criminal Convictions: the Ordeal of the Blackwater Protesters Allan Nairn Bush's SOTU: Entitlement, Justice and the War of All Against All Website of the Day The Ghost of Rambo   January 28, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Return to Fallujah Paul Craig Roberts The End of American Liberty Allan Nairn The Breaking of the Gaza Wall Eyad al-Sarraj / Sara Roy Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza Martha Rosenberg Obit for the "Front Page" City Corporate Crime Reporter How They Rip Us Off David Michael Green Kristolizing Iraq: What a Great Freakin' War Jennifer Van Bergen What's Left? Nancy Oden Survival Tips for Hard Times Divya Karnad Saving India's Sea Turtles James L. Secor Pissed About Pistorious: Why the Olympics Needs a Gimp Website of the Day Yellow Journalism?         Subscribe Online

February 27, 2008 Barack Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political Dirty Tricks Playing the Race Card By DAVID ROSEN The '08 electoral dirty-tricks season has official begun. The Drudge Report's recent posting of a photograph of Barack Obama wearing a white robe and turban presented to him by elders in Wajir, in northeastern Kenya, signals the wrenching-up to the next phase of political bad-will in the presidential contest. The New York Times' ham fisted effort at sexual insinuation over John McCain's questionable liaisons with lobbyists so utterly failed as both reporting and a dirty trick that it will be easily forgotten. However, it's unclear if the Obama photo was successful in stemming the growing popularity of the Illinois' junior senator. Drudge insists that the Obama image was sent to him from "Clinton staffers" and quoted an e-mail from an unidentified campaign aide. Hillary Clinton's spokesman, Howard Wolfson, issued a statement denying any responsibility. "I just want to make it very clear that we were not aware of it, the campaign didn't sanction it and don't know anything about it," he insists. Obama's 2006 visit to his father's homeland was brought out of the archives in an effort to taint the electoral atmosphere. The race card is the oldest and deepest scare on American politics and is played to sow primitive racist nativism among white voters. It is often successful, but may not work this year. The Obama candidacy will likely witness many more examples of the race card to discredit him, especially with regard to the rarely discussed issue of interracial sex and mixed marriages. As is well known, Obama's parents were of different racial backgrounds and met as students at the University of Hawaii. His father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., was a Kenyan exchange student; his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was an Anglo-American born in Kansas. His parents married in 1960, later divorced and died, respectively, in 1982 and 1995. For four hundred years, people of different backgrounds like Obama's parents crossed the sexual color line. Some of their experiences were motivated by mutual desire and love, others driven by rape and sexual conquest; some out of a transient commercial exchange, others resulting in life-long marriages. America suffers from a kind of sexual schizophrenia and interracial sex most acutely reveals this mania. Today interracial sex is more acceptable, as evident in Census Bureau trend data and in anecdotal information involving prominent mixed couples and the children of mixed couples. However, this has not always been the case and even today, under highly-charged conditions, sex across the color line can invoke age-old sentiments that raise fears of the illicit, the forbidden. Given the Republican party's repeated use of the "race card" to disparage adversaries, the coming election is the perfect storm where sex, race, politics and dirty tricks will play out. * * * Barack Obama is not alone among a growing list of celebrity off-springs of mixed couples. Many are well known and come from all parts of the U.S. culture industry. From sports, baseball player Derek Jeter, basketball player Jason Kidd and golf champion Tiger Woods; from music, Paula Abdul, Joan Baez, Cher, Jimi Hendrix, Prince and Tina Turner; from movies, Halle Berry, Martin and Charlie Sheen, and Raquel Welch; and from fashion, Naomi Campbell. Many more live ordinary lives outside the celebrity spotlight. The growing number of mixed celebrity couples and marriages further normalizes interracial intimacies. From Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former defense secretary William Cohen and former senator Carol Moseley Braun to Tiger Woods, Robert De Niro, and David Bowie and Iman, interracial marriage for many is no longer a social stigma or something they are ashamed of. When Obama's parents were married in 1960, this was not the case. At that time twenty-two states had laws prohibiting interracial marriage. These states ranged from traditional hard-core racist strongholds like Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to otherwise moderate Delaware and Maryland. However, it would be over a Virginia ordinance prohibiting interracial marriage that the issue would be finally laid to rest. In June 1958, two Virginia residents, Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, an African-American woman, sought to marry, but were banned by a state statute. Crossing the state line, the couple married in the District of Columbia and returned to Virginia to continue their lives together. According to trial testimony, shortly after their return and in the middle of the night, their home was raided by the police and the newlyweds were arrested for their illegal cohabitation. Facing a felony conviction and the possibility of up to five years in prison, the Lovings pled guilty. They received a one-year jail sentence which was suspended on the condition that they leave the state and not return together for 25 years; the Lovings relocated to Washington, D.C. The trial judge laid-out the prevailing opinion shared by many a half-century ago (and some even today): Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix. The Lovings appealed their case and in 1967, nearly a decade after their arrest, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its now celebrated decision voiding "racial hygiene" laws then in force in Virginia and fifteen other states. The Court found that the state "anti-miscegenation" law violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution's 14th Amendment. Today, forty years after "Loving," Census data reveals that interracial marriage is becoming more common, increasing six-fold between 1970 and 2000; by 2000, it constituted 6 percent of all marriages as compared with less than 1 percent in 1970. As of 2005, about one of every 13 Americans was marrying a spouse of a different race or ethnic (e.g., Hispanic) background and more than 8.4 million people were in such marriages. * * * On April 5, 1615, Pocahontas, a Native-American woman and daughter of Chief Powhatan, married the Englishman John Rolfe near Jamestown, Virginia. The marriage took place just eight years after this first permanent English settlement was established in what would become the United States; it is the first recorded interracial marriage in the newly-colonized territory. It surely wouldn't be the last. In 1681 on William Boarmans' plantation on the western shore of Maryland, Eleanor Butler, a white servant girl called Irish Nell, and Negro Charles, a black slave, were married by a local Catholic priest. This appears to be the first legal marriage between a black man and a white woman in new America. During these early days of the new country, voluntary and noncommercial sexual relations between Euro-Americans and Native people as well as blacks and whites were not illegal. However, while some objected to the marriage between Irish Nell and Negro Charles (most notably Lord Baltimore, Nell's master) no one sought to prevent it. What most troubled many local whites was that Nell, marrying a slave, would forfeit not only her own freedom but also the freedom of her children. Interracial sexual encounters took three principal forms during America's formative era: between Euro-American and Native people; between white indentured servants and African-American slaves; and between white free persons and black slaves. However, these encounters played out along two lines: in terms of gender dynamics and whether they were "voluntary". And these lines made all the difference. Columbia University sociologist Aaron Gullickson argues that "interracial sexual contact likely peaked sometime during the early colonial period when white indentured servants and black slaves were in close contact in large numbers." [Social Forces, September 2005] However, as indentured slavery declined and the forced importation of African slaves skyrocketed, widespread interracial sex of this kind declined. Colonial male leaders were particularly troubled by interracial relationships between white women and black men. Sex between a white woman and a nonwhite man could result in a child of an African or Native man that was legally white. This concern found particularly expression in what are known as female captivity narratives that helped rally settler resentment against Native people. These tales were popular in the late 17th century and championed women like Mary Rowlandson and Hannah Swarton who escaped capture by Native tribes while preserving their virginity; they were intended to undercut or deny the stories of women like Mary Jemison, Frances Slocum and Eunice Williams, women who, after captivity, chose to marry and live out their lives with Native people. Bans on interracial marriage arose in the late 17th century. For example, in 1662 the Virginia Assembly established the first law against interracial sex and in 1691 it passed a law banning "negroes, mulattoes and Indians intermarrying with English, or other white women, [and] their unlawfull accompanying with one another." Other colonies followed with similar bans, as exemplified by the North Carolina colony, which in 1715 adopted laws prohibiting interracial marriages. As was commonly accepted, servant and slave women were vulnerable to sexual exploitation by their male master and other white males. White slave owners (such as Thomas Jefferson) engaged frequently and with impunity in forced sex, concubinage and informal sexual relationships with their female slaves. Those who violated the growing anti-race-mixing climate faced potentially horrendous consequences. This could involve the whipping of naked slaves, the tarring of white women and the castration of black men. In some colonies, a black man found guilty of sexual congress with a white woman not only faced corporal punishments, but also branding and amputation; the white defendant could be sentenced to corporal punishment. Masters objected to the execution of the offending slave because it would result in undue economic hardship. This environment of terror persisted through the Civil War and merely worsened during post-war Reconstruction. By the early-20th century, almost every Southern state had adopted what were known as "one-drop" statutes to restrict interracial marriage and preserve the white race's "purity". Nevertheless, throughout this period, interracial couples challenged these restrictions. These challenges could be informal, clandestine love affairs as well as common-law marriages. However, the most serious challenge to conventional marriage took place at the short-lived Nashoba utopian commune located a full day's coach ride from Memphis, Tennessee. Nashoba was founded in 1825 by Frances Wright, the most charismatic woman in America during the antebellum era. It was a mixed community of free black and white men and women as well as ten or more African-American slaves. This arrangement of women and men, married and unmarried, black and white, free and slave, adult and child was an historically unprecedented attempt to remake civil society. On June 16, 1827, James Richardson and Josephine Lolotte declared themselves married and began to live together. This arrangement is important now, nearly two centuries later, because Lolotte was a free black woman and Richardson a free white man. Equally important, because Nashoba was a radical (if flawed) experiment in not only interracial relations but free love, by living together Richardson and Lolotte declared not only their love and sexual desire for one another, but entered into a binding commitment outside the sanctity of church and state. Nashoba, like so many other communitarian efforts in America's peculiar history, drew the ire of contemporary moralists (including many abolitionists) and ultimately failed. But it set the stage for both formal and informal efforts by women and men to challenge traditional values as well as legal statutes prohibiting interracial intimacies. Cumulatively, these efforts set the stage for Barack Obama, Sr., and Ann Dunham to fall in love, marry and give birth to a child who just might become the next U.S. president. * * * Now, nearly four centuries after the marriage of Pocahontas and John Rolfe, nearly two centuries after Nashoba and forty years after the Loving decision, interracial relations are viewed very differently in America. According to a 2007 Gallup survey, "Minority Rights and Relations," more than three in four Americans say they approve of marriages between blacks and whites. This is a significant change from only a decade ago when, in 1994, less than half of respondents approved. Younger respondents (regardless of race or ethnicity) report greater acceptance of interracial marriages than older Americans. These findings are seconded by a 2006 Pew Research Center survey that found that more than one in five American adults say they have close relatives who are in different-race marriages. In 2005, more than 10 percent of married couples aged 20 to 29 had a spouse of a different race, compared with the national average of 7.5 percent. In addition, George Yancey, a University of North Texas sociologist, found that more than half of all black, Hispanic and Asian adults have dated someone of a different racial group. These developments in American interracial social life are playing an important, if unstated, role in the 2008 presidential race. Attendees at Democratic primary rallies for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama reflect a remarkably diverse racial mix, especially as compared with the nearly all-white Republican gatherings. If the Democrats do not implode in a blood feud, this growing multi-racial coalition, a long-term pillar of the Democratic party, will play a critical role in the November election. However, if Obama secures the Democratic nomination, one should not underestimate Republicans resorting to the race card in an effort to discredit his candidacy, particularly his mixed race background. Republican dirty tricksters in the Karl Rove mode have repeatedly played the race card to undermine not only Democratic competitors, but Republican adversaries as well. The contemporary model for such racism was established in George Bush-the-elder's campaign in 1988 when his campaign manager, Lee Atwater, linked the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, to the prisoner Willie Horton. George Bush-the-lesser's campaign employed a similar tactic in 2000 against today's leading Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, during the South Carolina primary. Allegedly orchestrated by Rove, it was intended to smear McCain with rumors that his daughter Bridget was the product of an interracial fling. (McCain and his wife adopted the girl from Mother Teresa's orphanage.) In 2006, the African-American Tennessee Democrat, Harold Ford, Jr., lost his bid for the U.S. Senate due in large part to an incendiary television ad financed by the Republican National Committee. In the ad, a series of people in mock man-on-the street interviews criticize Ford's stand on a host of issues. However, one of the people, an attractive white woman, bare-shouldered, declares that she met Ford at a "Playboy party," and closes the commercial by looking into the camera and saying, salaciously and with a wink, "Harold, call me." The truth was that Ford, along with 3,000 other people, had attended a Playboy party at the previous Super Bowl in Jacksonville, FL. But truth means very little to Republican or Democratic hard-ball propagandists and their allies who play the race (or gender) card to discredit a serious political challenger. We've seen this earlier in the efforts by Hillary backers to discredit Obama. Shortly before the New Hampshire primary, Bill Shaheen, a national co-chairman of Clinton's campaign, floated the issue of Obama's youthful drug use. However, Shaheen's rehashing of this old story (which the candidate openly discussed in his biography) failed to garner any traction and he was forced to resign his position. Similarly, prior to the Iowa caucuses, two Clinton volunteers resigned after forwarding a hoax e-mail that falsely said Obama is a Muslim and possibly a terrorist. (Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ and says he has never been a Muslim.) Clinton has also been subject to dirty tricks. On February 18th, MSNBC's bad-boy conservative, Tucker Carlson, provided air time to no less a career dirty-trickster as Roger Stone to discuss his anti-Clinton 527 group, Citizens United Not Timid, or "C.U.N.T." As Stone insists, "The more people go to the site, the more people buy the T-shirts, the more people wear the T-shirts, the more people are educated. Consequently, our mission has been achieved." Carlson surely knew (and approved) of Stone's dubious background. He most recently came to national attention during the 2007 New York State gubernatorial campaign. As an advisor to state Senator Joseph Bruno, Stone left threatening telephone messages at the office of then-candidate (and state Attorney General) Eliot Spitzer's father. He got his start in political dirty tricks as a volunteer at Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). However, the ugliest use of the race card to date is the attempts to discredit Obama's mother and wife by, first, the Chicago Tribune [March 27, 2007], and, most disgustingly, the Asia Times [February 26, 2008]. The Tribune article goes out of its way to attempt to discredit and denigrate Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, a feminist and anthropologist, into a crazy, 60-ies, atheist hippy and lover and wife of men from different racial backgrounds. All that she is not accused of is being a dope smoker. The Asia Times is even slimier and may well foreshadow what awaits Obama if he does secure the Democratic presidential nomination. After disparaging Michelle Obama's undergraduate study of her own "blackness" while at Princeton, it goes on to false site the Tribune article, claiming that Obama's mother: "Friends describe her as a 'fellow traveler', that is, a communist sympathizer, from her youth. " No such reference to being a "fellow travel" appears in the Tribune article. It then picks up the tempo of character assassination of Obama's mother, insisting that "many Americans harbor leftist views, but not many marry into them, twice." And after mentioning her role as an anthropologist, it states that Obama "applies the tools of cultural manipulation out of resentment against America. The probable next president of the United States is a mother's revenge against the America she despised." As with the cases of Willie Horton, McCain's daughter, the Ford ad and Stone's anti-Clinton 527 group, C.U.N.T, America waits to see how the race card will be played in the unfolding presidential contest. David Rosen can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com

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