After the months of chatter over Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “outrageous” comments on race, and Sen. Barack Obama’s supposed traffic with a former member of the Weather Underground, isn’t it about time to look into the tacit approval Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice gave to the Black Panther Party three years ago?
Rice says gun rights are as important as right to free speech and religion
By Barry Schweid
ASSOCIATED PRESS6:03 p.m. May 11, 2005
WASHINGTON Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, recalling how her father took up arms to defend fellow blacks from racist whites in the segregated South, said Wednesday the constitutional right of Americans to own guns is as important as their rights to free speech and religion.
In an interview on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Rice said she came to that view from personal experience. She said her father, a black minister, and his friends armed themselves to defend the black community in Birmingham, Ala., against the White Knight Riders in 1962 and 1963. She said if local authorities had had lists of registered weapons, she did not think her father and other blacks would have been able to defend themselves.
Armed self-defense was the rationale behind the inception of the Black Panther national organization, based in Oakland, California.
Given the rather tenuous nature of the issues Obama’s been pressed to address, perhaps someone could ask Rice why she gives the Panthers the thumbs up.