Talking about glass houses

Conservative Art Pope, the primary funder of organizations like the John Locke Foundation and the Civitas Institute, tells the News & Observer that he doesn't think it helps the public debate for N.C. Policy Watch to be calling the new members of the Wake County Board of Education racists. Pope has apparently not been reading N.C. Policy Watch very closely.

His remarks came in a story about editorial comments on WRAL-TV about the importance of diversity to a community. The spots end with the statement that "diversity matters and it begins in our schools."

Pope was identified by a prominent Wake County Republican as the architect of the plan to elect the new Gang of Five majority on the school board, so it's understandable that he is defensive about attacks on the new majority's plans to resegregate the schools.

But his defensiveness now appears to have affected his memory.

N.C. Policy Watch has never called the new board members racists. Columns here have referred to them as resegregationists because their drive to abolish the diversity policy in the schools would resegregate them.

That is a fact that John Tedesco, the leader of the Gang of Five, now readily admits. His assignment plan for the county would create high poverty schools that are overwhelmingly African-American and many low poverty schools that are overwhelmingly white. That is resegregation.

Even more astonishing is that Pope is now complaining about the tone of the policy debate considering how employees of the Locke Foundation talk about public officials.

Jeff Taylor of the Lockers Charlotte branch once wrote post about the head of the state's probation system Robert Guy. It was titled "Go to hell Robert Guy."

The first lines of the post were "You know you deserve it, and so does your wife. Die you worthless bastard."

People on blogs say all sorts of things, but this was not an anonymous commenter or even a post by someone not directly affiliated with the Locke Foundation.

This was an employee of the group that Pope funds wishing a politician and his wife dead. Wonder if Pope thinks that helps the public debate.

There is not enough room here to list all the offensive speech from the groups Pope funds.

Taylor wrote last week that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder loves terrorists. Referring to Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, Taylor has wished that global warming would "flood this coastal cretin out of office."

More positive contributions to the public discourse.

Tedesco's twisted logic

The only reaction to WRAL-TV's diversity spots more puzzling than Pope's was that of school board member John Tedesco, who said they were dividing the community. A message that diversity is good for a community actually divides a community?

Is today opposite day?

The non apology apology

Republican state Senator Jim Forrester was spewing all sorts of offensive rhetoric recently in a speech to the Iredell County Young Republicans. The Statesville Record & Landmarks reports that Forrester told the group that "Slick city lawyers and homosexual lobbies and African American lobbies are running Raleigh."

He also said that the investigation into former Congressman Frank Ballance was late getting started because Ballance is Black.

The State Democratic Party called for an apology from Forrester, who finally issued one—sort of. Forrester said he "he wasn't trying to be ugly or anything like that, and if it came out that way, I apologize."

If it came out like that? How else can we take it? It is pretty clear how he feels.

Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger had declined to call on Forrester to apologize but said he didn't agree with the comments. How reassuring.

From the Fringe

In this week's From the Fringe George Leef from the Pope Center to Dismantle Public Higher Education weighs in with his usual hyperbolic bitterness toward President, saying "the president has no understanding of economic principles and will trample upon the rule of law whenever it suits him."

We knew that Leef and right-wing avenue crowd thinks Nobel Prize recipient Paul Krugman doesn't understand economics. Now we know that they think President Obama doesn't know anything either.

Wonder if ever occurs to these guys that Obama may actually know what he is doing and simply disagrees with them—or does disagreeing with them automatically mean you are an idiot in their free-market book of worship?

Leef also wrote this week that "higher education is one of the greatest scams going." No need to pick a successor to Erskine Bowles. Close down UNC immediately.