Wow, who could have foreseen that a son of Jesse Jackson would be charged for using campaign money for things like mink capes and a Michael Jackson fedora? [UPDATE: Gawker has the court document itemizing the crap JJ Jr bought.] Mink capes and a Michael Jackson fedora. How cheap. Shocked, shocked, etc, etc. Jesse Jr. has apologized; the Chicago Tribune reports that he and his wife will plead guilty. They must have him dead to rights.
It’s a family tradition, this kind of thing. Over a decade ago, when I was writing for the New York Post, I documented and reported on gross financial irregularities with Jackson’s Operation PUSH, the kinds of things that would under normal conditions have brought a federal investigation. When I say “documented,” I mean had federal filings in hand, official documents that were shocking. Nobody else in the media (except Fox News) touched the story, and certainly the Clinton Justice Department had no interest in it. Which is why I find it very interesting that the black Chicago Democrat who sits in the White House has allowed this investigation to go forward. I bet Jesse Sr. regrets having spoken about cutting then Sen. Obama’s balls off.
(Note to readers, especially Franklin and Conor: I promised a big post today about the whole Hookers for the Handicapped brouhaha, but I ended up spending the entire afternoon with the kids at the movies. I’ll do my best to get to it over the weekend, but in truth, I’ll probably work on it all weekend and post it on Monday.)
Jeffersonian 
Darwin's S-list 
M_Young 
elvisd 
Sam M 
Noah172 
I bet Jesse Sr. regrets having spoken about cutting then Sen. Obama’s balls off.
The most interesting thing about that infamous remark was what the wimps at FOX edited out: Jackson saying that Obama was “telling n***ers how to behave.” The bit about genitals was irrelevant. Jackson’s point — in the edited bit and the publicized “talking down to black folk” — was that Obama was using get-tough rhetoric directed at blacks as a prop to gain moderate white votes. The whole remark gave a window into how older members of the civil rights racket — and perhaps nontrivial numbers of ordinary blacks — privately viewed Obama, whatever they professed publicly.
Lest we forget, Obama was crushed in his 2000 primary campaign against Representative Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther, because poor South Side Chicago blacks (among whom Jackson made his name, note) did not think that the half-white Ivy Leaguer with the funny name who lived in Hyde Park was black enough for them (although those white Hyde Park liberals adored him, and still do). Polls in 2007 showed Obama with weak support among blacks versus Clinton, which then soared after Obama’s early successes, although he was not consistently cracking 75% of the black primary vote until after the February 5th Super Tuesday races.