Good Tuesday Morning!

1. Question – Do Mom’s know best?

2. Thought – As bad as I felt, though, my mother felt even worse. Between the day President Bush announced his intention of nominating me to the end of my testimony, she lost more than thirty pounds as a result of stress and worry. A lifelong Democrat who had always admired the Kennedys, she grew increasingly furious with the Democratic senators who were trying to sabotage my nomination.

Leola and I had never before discussed political matters. Daddy had once asked me why I had become a Republican, to which I replied that the Democrats no longer represented the things he’d taught me. But I never asked my mother how she voted, nor did she ask me why I’d chosen to ally myself with a party that so many blacks regarded as racist and evil. Now she could see for herself. Patrick Leahy, Howard Metzenbaum, Joe Biden, Paul Simon, even Teddy Kennedy: all of them were arrayed against me. How dare they treat her son that way. Never before had I seen her as angry as she was in the fall of 1991. All her life she’d assumed the Democrats in Washington were sensible leaders – but now she saw these men as single issue zealots who were unwilling to treat her son fairly. “I ain’t never votin’ fo’ another Democrat long as I can draw breath,” she told me as we walked out of the Senate building on what should of been my final day of testimony, “I’d vote for a dog first.” (Clarence Thomas, My Grandfather’s Son)

“Honesty on questions of race is rare in the United States.” (Michael Novak)