Had a chance to chat with @ThePlumLineGS for his latest piece on Kevin McCarthy's proposed members for the January 6th inquiry.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Greg's whole piece is a must-read, but I thought I'd expand a bit on what I said here:
The Kerner Commission -- launched by LBJ to explore the causes and consequences of the urban riots of the 1960s -- featured some high-profile Republicans, including NYC Mayor John Lindsay, Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, and Representative William McCullough of Ohio.
The Kerner Commission was thus truly "bipartisan" but it was bipartisan only because the ideological spread of the parties at the time meant that there were liberals and conservatives in both parties, and it was much easier to find allies across party lines.
Lindsay (the liberal mayor of NYC), Brooke (the only African American in the Senate), and McCullough (a champion of civil rights who played a pivotal role in the passage of the 1964 CRA) all fit the purpose of the Kerner Commission's inquiry quite well.
There were Republicans (and conservative Democrats) who objected to the very idea of the commission and were openly hostile to it.

But they weren't appointed to it.

Because, you see, they objected to the very idea of the commission and were hostile to it.
I know, I know. "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."

And yet, maybe we could follow their lead, and not put politicians who are intent on undermining an inquiry on the inquiry itself?

Maybe? Just this once?

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More from @KevinMKruse

21 Jul
It's a good thing there aren't reporters who are just lazily going to parrot his framing of it as partisan and political.
Sure, Pelosi put Liz Cheney on the committee, and sure she was even going to let one of McCarthy's picks who voted to overturn the election on, but she didn't let *all* of the picks who voted to overturn the election on there, so clearly, *she* is being partisan and political.
If you're a reporter or pundit saying "actually, this was a gift to McCarthy," well, congratulations on picking up the "actually, this was good news ... for John McCain" torch from Mark Halperin.

Just terminal Beltway Brain Syndrome.
Read 4 tweets
18 Jul
This bill — which has already passed the Texas Senate — would drastically reduce the coverage of civil rights history in the state’s classrooms. news.bloomberglaw.com/social-justice…
This thread offers some jaw-dropping examples of what’s being left out.
Here’s a small sample of what’s being cut and what’s left behind.
Read 10 tweets
14 Jul
I'm still trying to process how Carlson wrote about wanting to PUNCH A 69-YEAR-OLD MINISTER IN THE FACE because the civil rights leader had the audacity to denounce white supremacy while touring a memorial to the slave trade.
"This former ally of Martin Luther King Jr. said that white supremacy was bad ..."
And that wasn't some off-the-cuff comment or some gotcha in a hostile account.

He wrote about wanting to punch an elderly minister himself! In his own book!

"Yes," he thought to himself, "that makes me sound cool and not remotely like a racist sociopath."
Read 4 tweets
15 Jun
"Let's see your citations" is a pretty good rule of thumb for reporting, it turns out.
What's really remarkable about all this is how many critics of Critical Race Theory believe -- with 100% confidence -- that it was designed specifically and solely to make white kids feel bad.

Which is both insane and a deeply narcissistic & self-centered way to see the world.
Read 5 tweets
13 Jun
Deleting this thread because I think people are right in noting that I misread the legislature's language a bit.

Though it seems what they wrote is actually worse?
I read the highlighted lines as Florida only wanting American history to deal with the founding era -- it's poorly written, and the emphasis on "the creation of a new nation" threw me -- but as others noted, the emphasis seems to be on the *principles* of the new nation.
Teaching US history just through the Declaration's principles is like assessing a 50-year marriage through the wedding vows, or maybe just the marriage proposal.

You can't just focus on the intentions. You've got to address what happened after (and before!) that big moment.
Read 8 tweets
7 Jun
Those who liberated the Nazi extermination camps firmly believed that the horrors that happened there needed to be witnessed widely, so they would never happen again.
In early August 1945, portions of the Third US Army came upon Ohrdruf, a Nazi labor camp and a subcamp within the larger Buchenwald system.
Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley and George Patton toured the camp. The sights and smells of what had happened there -- torture, mutilation, murder -- were so overpowering that even a veteran soldier like Patton (on the left here at the camp) turned away and vomited.
Read 6 tweets

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