Thursday, April 20, 2006

Black and White and Spied on all over

Townhall chooses to highlight columns on occasion, often during fundraisers. Today they are highlighting an article by Black Conservative Dexter Ingram. The column itself is pretty banal. Ingram notes that a lot of black people live in America's major cities and would be targets of a terrorist strike. He then expresses his opinion that President Bush's warrantless surveillance is necessary to protect these cities from getting blowed up.

That's all pretty standard, other than the racial twist. Conservatives want to portray Bush's warrantless surveillance as the only way to stop the terrorists, mocking the idea that President could do all of what he claims to have wanted to do by acting within the law (which begs the question of why it's so important to do it outside the law).

Bringing in the racial angle is more interesting because of how this column is being presented. In other words, Townhall (and I would guess radio hosts, when they get around to discussing it) want this article to be about how Liberals oppose warrantless wiretaps because we don't really care about Black people. If we really cared about Black people we'd support warrantless wiretapping. Because the article itself doesn't go quite that far, Townhall only hints at that conclusion.

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