Most passing strange

Race card: I've not written about the selection of Roland Burris to fill Obama's seat, because I have had little to say, and what little I did have probably would have annoyed many readers. He strikes me as a good choice. Too bad he was not chosen under better circumstances. And that, until recently, was pretty much it.

But now I'm infuriated to learn that he secured the seat only after the race card was flashed.

Once supporters of Roland Burris made his appointment to the Senate all about race, the deal was done, though it took a few days for Senate leaders to wake up to the fact.

At a news conference in Chicago, Rep. Bobby Rush, who represents a district on the South Side of Chicago, said that the mere criticizing of Burris was akin to lynching.

Rush then went on to say: “I don’t think that anyone, any U.S. senator who is sitting right now, would want to go on record to deny one African-American from being seated in the U.S. Senate. I don’t think they want to go on record doing that.”

After Burris was turned away from the Senate when he tried to get seated last week, Rush went on “Hardball” and told Chris Matthews, “It reminded me of the dogs being sicced on children in Birmingham, Ala. That’s what it reminded me of.”

And that was that.

Those Democrats who had once opposed Burris for accepting a job from a governor who has been arrested for trying to sell the job caved.

These tactics are, first and foremost, an insult to Burris, who has had a distinguished career and who needs no favoritism. More than that: These tactics insult everyone. God knows I don't want Congress to remain a club for old white guys, but neither do I want the new rule to read: "If you're black, you can't be criticized."

Such is the world we now inhabit. Anyone who opposes Israel's atrocious behavior of Gaza stands damned as a bigot. Anyone who opposed Burris taking a seat in the Senate stands damned as a bigot. Anyone who argues that Obama's Chicago past disqualifies him from the presidency stands damned as a bigot.

Why Obama: Riverdaughter and Corrente ask a damned good question: Why were Barack and Michelle Obama interviewed by French writers in 1996 -- an interview recently published in Le Monde? (Here is an ABC News story about that interview, and here is the Le Monde story.) In 1996, the future president was not even a state senator -- he was just a lawyer working for a rather shady firm connected to Tony Rezko.

So why Obama?

In the past, I've noted other strange examples of favoritism. The most striking example of this phenomenon occurred in 1981, when he made the jaunt from Occidental to Columbia.

We are not told how he paid for these schools; he claims to have been down-at-heels in this time period. More importantly, we are not told how Barack Obama paid for a very expensive between-school summer jaunt to Pakistan and India -- a foray he neglected to mention in either of his memoirs. Pakistan was then under martial law, and the U.S. State Department discouraged travel to that country. I'm not saying that the trip was legally impossible; I'm saying that it was an adventure, and thus worthy of note in his autobiographies.

But that's not all.

While in Pakistan, he was the guest of a very wealthy Pakistani power broker named Muhammadmian Soomro, who is now pretty much running that nation. Obama did not know anyone in the Soomro family. An "American friend" -- almost certainly someone in the CIA or the diplomatic corps -- told Soomro to help young Barry. Why?

Back to the Le Monde interview.

Corrente and Riverdaughter seem to be under the impression that the famed French magazine conducted the interview in 1996. Not true. Here's how the piece opens (my translation may be faulty):

Completing a book on “couples in America,” a photographer spoke with the young couple twelve years ago. But his editor proved uninterested. And the interview never appeared. Le Monde publishes it exclusively.

Well, that's the story -- believe it if you will. Frankly, I can't imagine that anyone in France ever wanted to read, or to write, a book on "couples in America." (Be honest. Do you have any desire to read an entire book about marriages in France?)

And of all the couples in America, why was this pair chosen? Could the go-between have been anyone connected to Nadhmi Auchi, described as "Obama's bagman," and later convicted by a French court?