Our socialist (oops, sorry, that's a racist code word) President-in-Waiting from 2001. More discussion from Mrs M.
Update: Also read Bill Whittle. If this had been Sarah Palin giving the interview, you know the freaking news media would have been all over the story.
Update II: Unexcitable Andrew:
Here's what it's based on: the "tragedy," in Obama's telling, is that the civil rights movement was too court-focused. He was making a case against using courts to implement broad social goals - which is, last time I checked, the conservative position.
Clearly, that was not what Obama was saying. The tragedy was that they didn't redistribute the wealth. It's true that Obama went on to say that using the courts in the future was liable to be counterproductive, but counterproductive to the goal of redistribution.
Update III: Full transcript of the entire show here. I am reading it myself now and will append my thoughts.
Update IV: Having read the relevant sections, I can say that the idea that this video unfairly characterizes Obama's position is false.
Update V: Ann Althouse says that Obama's position is uncontroversial from a law school professor's standpoint.
Obama was not showing disrespect for constitutional law in any of this. More radical law professors would criticize the courts for not engaging in more expansive interpretations of the Equal Protection Clause and for failing to provide much more expensive, invasive remedies. He did not do that. He accepted the limits the courts had recognized and advised against the unfruitful pursuit of economic justice in the judicial forum. It's a political matter. That is a moderate view of law.
But he did criticize the court, by saying it wasn't as radical as people think. And she hand-waves away the desirability of redistribution here:
Now, there remains the question of how much he would want the legislative branch to do in the name of economic justice, and obviously, the phrase "redistribution of the wealth" gets people going. But that's the same old question we've been talking about for months.
Since he didn't talk about how exactly how much he wants the government to redistribute the wealth, it's not socialism, or it might be but it's not proven how much socialism he desires. It's the same old question: Just how much of a communist is Barack Obama? We don't know, so let's find out.
