Allen said "macaca", YOU'RE the one saying it's racist. There's a huge difference.

If someone called me a cracker in anger, only the most obtuse would suggest that it meant that I was buttery smooth, or a nice toasty golden color.

To suggest that Allen would make up a word that just happens to be a slur against brown people used by people with his mother's heritage, is not believable.

I lived in Hawaii, I know many racist terms that are well known there, that are not here. Terms for whites, japanese, portuguese, phillipinos, blacks, etc., you name it. If someone used those terms to describe anyone, I'd know what they meant, even if you didn't. It doesn't mean it's not offensive and immature.

ummm...a pardon is only for a crime that has been given a sentence..

You must have been paying attention to something else when Ford pardoned Nixon.

I'm beginning to know who the older folks are around here...the ones that are old enough to remember the Nixon pardon by Ford.

I don't remember ever being taught about it, other than it happened. Maybe that's still the case today outside of law school.

Macaca[1] is a pejorative epithet used by francophone colonialists in Central Africa's Belgian Congo for the native population.

Allen's mother is French Tunisian. He speaks French. He knew what he said. And he wasn't being complimentary. And the only folks who couldn't smell the racism were the ones who'd been marinating in it themselves.

A pardon can be issued for a crime not charged, as was the case in Watergate, as Glenn Greenwald points out. The issue has even been addressed by the Supreme Court in Burdick vs. United States, which held in part that acceptance of a pardon serves as an implicit admission of guilt.

On a side note, that may be one explanation for why Bush chose clemency over a pardon for Libby. Clemency carries no such implicit confession.

@Little Brother, thanks, and feel free.

[shooter] Allen said "macaca", YOU'RE the one saying it's racist. There's a huge difference.

[AnnieW] If someone called me a cracker in anger, only the most obtuse would suggest that it meant that I was buttery smooth, or a nice toasty golden color.

I'm from (though no longer in) Virginia. It had been pretty much an open secret since his original run for governor in '93 that George Allen was a bullying, racist prick. That anyone would seriously hold Allen used "macaca" to mean something other than "sand nigger" is, well, amusing to those of us who knew him.

On a related note, Americans will never be able to sufficiently thank the people of Virginia for bringing the curtain down on that bastard's political career before it really went national.

I do not believe Obama has been seduced by the beltway swansong and is now listening to the counsel of fools. That would be truly unnerving. I think he has been caught in a particularly sticky web, one not of his own making, that for reasons of expediency he cannot tear apart, and whose twisted and embarrassing existence, under the circumstances, he cannot even reveal.

What, really, is the difference? Isn't your latter description precisely the type of situation in which Obama is supposed to be different? We didn't expect politics to change -- even pressures of politics within the democratic party. We believed our candidate when he said "I'll be different, I'll be change."

And let's face it, he's not. That's not to say he never will be. But in his first real test, he's not. And what's so frustrating -- as Glenn shows in this column -- is that in this case and at this point, doing the right thing also happens to be the best way for Obama to get elected and to project "strength." So not only is he letting us down on principle, he's letting us down on basic strategy.

And Glenn is leading the charge in exactly what we should do: urge Obama in living up to what we know he knows he should do. Not make excuses. Not pretend it's something other than what it is.

On a separate note -- I love the Greenwald-Olbermann exchange, because it's the first substantive, interesting, MSM-blog exchange that might (let's hope!) start to break the firewall in blog narratives actually penetrating MSM narratives. I think Olbermann is wrong on this, and I think he might have the humility and intellectual honesty to admit he's wrong or change his view, and seeing that sort of phenomenon on an MSM show would be a great development. Might not happen. But I'm going to watch the comment with great interest.

Thought Nixon Had been charge with crime.

How true. I only hope that someone from the campaign is paying attention to this groundswell of opinion that is pointing out the error they're making here. He already has it in the bag with his original positions. The majority wants something different, remember? That's how he just got nominated - "Change We Can Believe In?"

What is he/are they thinking?

Sing carols? Push over the standing up and sleeping moo cows? Go for a skinny dip at a creek?

Have a Sunday bandana on the head and practice a split? Have a pile on and bite each other__!

Why is it when `un-pileing and finally off the poor gal/guy on the Obama? We are not petting each other?

0~ bruises.

(bottom up?)

o linebackers.

If I want to kiss somebody, why do they insist to eat potato chips?

Simultaneously.

The last time I was offered a 'smack' there was brown milk on two lips.

shush, and no be silly.

Ask the Johnsons or the other folks at "Isles" in Trenton NJ.

http://isles.org/aboutus.html

They have been doing this forever and they have contacts everywhere. They may also be helpful in other ways.

You're not alone in thinking Nixon was charged, I think many people do.

Ford made sure that Nixon was never charged, for "healing" purposes.

That's why I made the comment about age.