Rep. Charles Rangel Turns Fire Hose on Bush

The New York Sun is reporting that Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY), compared President Bush to infamous segregationist Bull Connor at a Congressional Black Caucus event September 22, to “wild applause and cheering”:

Comparing President Bush to the Birmingham, Ala., police commissioner whose resistance to the civil rights movement became synonymous with Southern racism, Rep. Charles Rangel said yesterday of the president: “George Bush is our Bull Connor.”

Mr. Rangel’s metaphoric linkage of Mr. Bush to the late Theophilus “Bull” Connor – who in 1963 turned fire hoses and attack dogs on blacks, including Martin Luther King Jr., demonstrating in favor of equal rights – met with wild applause and cheering at a Congressional Black Caucus town hall meeting, part of the organization’s 35th Annual Legislative Conference…

Other participants in the event, according to the Sun, included Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Senator Barak Obama (D-IL), former entertainer Harry Belafonte, Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX).

Project 21’s response is here.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee represents Houston. I’d have thought she might have been too busy helping constituents yesterday to attend a hate conference, but perhaps I am being too hasty. Maybe she was there on hurricane-related business: Lobbying to get Hurricane Rita renamed after an ethnic minority.

The Sun article says the Congressional Black Caucus event was a four-day legislative conference. Other participants included Rev. Al Sharpton and former Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD). Cindy Sheehan also was present, perhaps attempting to prove that no black legislative conference is complete without a speech from a white woman who has no legislative experience.



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