The letter, signed by 45 Catholic leaders says:

Mr. Gingrich has frequently attacked President Obama as a “food stamp president” and claimed that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment. Campaigning in Iowa, Mr. Santorum remarked: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

“At a time when nearly 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty, charities and the free market alone can’t address the urgent needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. And while jobseekers outnumber job openings 4-to-1, suggesting that the unemployed would rather collect benefits than work is misleading and insulting,” the letter adds.

“This statement is urging prominent Catholics in the race to go back and look at church teaching,” John Gehring, the Catholic outreach coordinator at Faith in Public Life, told The Florida Independent, adding “that the letter is also about poverty.”

“The Catholic bishops have been incredibly important in raising a prophetic voice that really challenges those who think that the free market alone can sort of solve our economic problems,” Gehring said. “You have Catholic conservative leaders, like John Boener, Paul Ryan, Rick Santourm, Newt Gingrich and they’ve all been looking to dismantle vital social safety nets.”

Faith in Public Life “works to promote a common good message in the media and helps progressive and moderate faith leaders to get their message out,” Gehring exlained. “We’ve done a lot of work around common ground issues on abortion, we try to talk with pro-choice leaders. We provide an alternative voice, making sure that the values debate is not one-sided. For many decades the Christian right has dominated political conversations over faith and values.”

Gehring highlighted the idea of “intrinsic evil,” adding that “a lot of people look at Catholic teaching and think about abortion as being a preeminent political issue, and that is true, but the bishops are also very clear that racism and torture — where Santorum is very bad on, Santurom has been an apologist for enhanced interrogation — are an intrinsic evil.”

He also said that Gingrich and Santorum’s “rhetoric around class and racial issues is in many ways out of line with Catholic social teaching. That is something Catholic voters will be concerned about, particularly given that both Santourm and Gingrich have not been shy about talking about the importance of their faith from a personal perspetcive and also how it shapes their political views as well.”

Color Lines, which reports on racial justice issues, reported Thursday that ”Gingrich argues that the reason so many people are on food stamps is not that the economy has thrown millions into poverty, but rather that lazy black families are getting on the dole and don’t want to work. Earlier this month, Gingrich told an audience in New Hampshire, ‘If the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.’”

Color Lines adds: “Gingrich’s attack on the food stamp program is not surprising; it’s the kind of politics that he’s been helping to perfect for over 30 years.”

On Saturday, Gingrich won the GOP primary in South Carolina by a wide margin over presumed frontrunner Mitt Romney.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) (WDCpix)

The White House immediately leaped to Reid’s defense, but for Republicans, this was manna from heaven. The National Republican Senatorial Committee blasted out three press releases on Reid’s “embarrassing” secondhand quotes. “For those who hope to one day live in a color-blind nation,” said NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh, “it appears Harry Reid is more than a few steps behind them.” On Sunday, after no Democrats had stepped out to criticize Reid, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele rebounded from a tough week of attacks on his extracurricular book tour by demanding that Reid resign as Senate majority leader.

“If the standard is the one set by the Trent Lott incident,” said Steele, referring to the speech that felled the then-leader of Senate Republicans in 2002, “where he was wishing happy birthday to Strom Thurmond and talked about him as a possible president at the time, you know, 1948 or whatever, compared to calling a candidate for president, you know, light-skinned, Negro… there is this standard where the Democrats feel that they can say these things and they can apologize when it — when it comes from the mouths of their own. But if it comes from anyone else, it’s racism.”

The comparison between Reid and Lott, and the suggestion that he needed to resign his leadership post, was echoed across the Sunday shows by Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and on Twitter and blogs from party activists. “Reid is simply getting a taste of the medicine he has so eagerly dished out to others,” wrote the blogger Patterico. “Unacceptable,” tweeted Ryan Frazier, an Aurora, Colorado councilman who’s one of the GOP’s leading African-American candidates for Congress. “Democrat Harry Reid should step down as Senate Leader.” One goal was to weaken Reid for a 2010 re-election campaign that’s flagging despite months of TV ads on his behalf. Almost as important, Republicans were attempting to do what they have had trouble doing since the rise of Barack Obama: to make the Democrats sweat and suffer for a perceived racial gaffe and to get revenge for Lott’s downfall. On Sunday, Democrats and other analysts struggled to see the comparison, pointing out the history that made Lott’s remark so damaging and the politically incorrect-but-accurate thrust of Reid’s remark. But Republicans stayed on message.

“The media covered up [Reid's] statement for nearly two years,” argued Michael Zak, a conservative writer who penned the “GOP Heroes” section of the RNC’s website, built to highlight the party’s African-American leaders of the past. “Had a Republican made such a racist statement, the media would have reported it immediately. As for whether Senator Reid should resign, both Barack Obama and Harry Reid called for Trent Lott’s ouster for a remark less offensive than Reid’s ‘Negro dialect’ remark.”

This isn’t the first time that Republicans have tried to recreate the Lott controversy and bring down a Democrat. In February 2005, then-Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean joked that Republicans couldn’t fill a room with non-white members “unless they invited the hotel staff in.” Mississippi Republicans sprang to action, sending their African-American leadership out to demand Dean’s resignation. “Ask the Democratic party do the same thing to Dean that Republicans and other Democrats did to Senator Lott,” said Charles Evers, an African-American GOP activist and veteran of the Civil Rights movement.

But a contrast between Lott and any other politician is hard to make. When Lott made his remarks–unlike Reid, he did it in front of video cameras–he added that a Thurmond presidency would have prevented “all these problems over all these years.” Lott’s office was unable to explain what “all these problems” were. In the following days, two more instances of Lott waxing nostalgiac about Thurmond’s segregationist 1948 presidential bid surfaced. By comparison, Republicans like Steele have not produced more evidence of Reid racial slip-ups, focusing instead on his hypocrisy for criticizing Lott in 2002. Even Zak agreed that Lott, a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens who left the Democratic Party during the Civil Rights era, had a credibility problem when he tried to combat charges of racism.

Continue reading at the Washington Independent, the Colorado Independent’s sister site in D.C.

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“What I find fascinating is, if that is all you got– to scream racism– then the damn thing is a probably a pretty good ordinance.”

On a hunch, Boyles suggested city council, through Denver Elections Director Michael Scarpello, engineered a confusing title for the Initiative 300. Boyles irritated at being confused by the language, asked initiative proponent Dan Hayes who had appointed Scarpello. Hayes offered that perhaps it had been the city council.

“Ah, and City Council voted what on this [initiative]?” said Boyles

“Oh, [the council voted] overwhelmingly against it,” said Hayes.

But Scarpello was appointed by Denver’s first elected Clerk and Recorder, Stephanie O’Malley, in 2007, not by the Denver City Council.

Boyles also railed against present state laws outlining legal driving as “legalese, gobbelygook, verbal diarrhea.”

The gobbelygook states in part that vehicle will be immediately impounded if a person is driving contrary to the restrictions indicated on their license, including, for example, people who fail to wear glasses if they’re required to do so or people driving a car when they only hold a motorcycle license.

The law also states that undocumented citizens or illegal aliens would have their car impounded.

Boyles said he saw nothing in the law that smacked of racism.

Hayes expanded on the point. The man who has described his initiatives as an attempt to get “Hernandezes off the road” commented that in fact the current law is racist– but in favor of illegal immigrants. He said legal drivers are treated “wholly differently” from illegal aliens.

In discussing his initiative earlier this month, Hayes told the Colorado Independent that it’s important that everyone be properly licensed but he indicated that finding and penalizing illegal immigrants was at the heart of the bill’s objectives.

The authorities who would be affected by the law see it as a legal fishing expedition and have vocally opposed it. The Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police and County Sheriffs have come out strongly against the initiative, saying they would be diverting and costly and would unnecessarily take discretion out of the hands of officers on the scene. Colorado Common Cause and Coloradans for Safe Communities also oppose the initiative, as do Denver Mayor Hickenlooper, the Denver police and the city council.

“Danny we are going to have you on again tomorrow, and tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow up until the final day,” said Boyles. “And remember, it is only a mail-in initiative, or a deliver ballot. Remember, vote yes,” Boyles told his listeners.

27 October; 6 a.m.

BOYLES: I got my ballot on Saturday sat down yesterday. That is probably the most confusing ballot initiative that I have ever read.

HAYES: Huh. Well that is what Michael Scarpello wanted–he demanded at the ballot title.

BOYLES: Who is Michael Scarpello?

HAYES: He is the new head of elections.

BOYLES: That is what I thought.

HAYES: He is an attorney.

BOYLES: And he is appointed by whom?

HAYES: Well, I don’t know who appoints him actually. Probably city council.

BOYLES: Ah, and City Council voted what on this?

HAYES: Oh, well, you know, overwhelmingly against it. I guess there was Jeanie Fautz.

BOYLES: So how tough is this for the average bear to figure out.

Hayes: I don’t know but I’ve got dozens of calls wanting me to explain it. .

BOYLES: Just vote yes.

HAYES: Right. Apparently the city put something on the ballot where No is Yes and Yes is No. I am not familiar with what that was.

BOYLES: That is right. I read it yesterday. I opened it up. And I have been receiving email on it. And I opened it up and I am sitting there and I said ‘Oh my god. Yes means No and No means Yes.’ So when you are getting ready to vote on your 300. You vote Yes. Just ink in the line that says Yes. That is all you need to know. Because the rest is a bunch of legalese gobbelygook verbal diarrhea.

HAYES: It is a laundry list of state law really why you would be driving without a license. That is if you drove a big truck and you needed a chauffeurs license and you just had a regular operators license you would actually be driving unlicensed. If you were glasses and didn’t have them on. Remember some people are practically blind. it is a good thing to require people to drive the way they are supposed to.

BOYLES: I know and I am going to drop mine off today.

[...]

BOYLES: My Fear is that you will say Yes I want this ordinance or No I read it wrong. The answer is read and vote Yes. It is one that you just ink in between two dots. And the Yes means you want this enforced.

HAYES: Yes, it is a yes vote.

BOYLES: We will see. This is my day. The initiative that will toughen the impound ordinances. And as I tried to make the case. We had very interesting go around with one of Denver’s City Council members. David Hancock was on the show. He couldn’t even describe why he called it racist. He would just get mad.

HAYES: I know. But really it is reverse racism on their part because they are allowing illegal aliens.

BOYLES: Sure.

HAYES: If they even bother to go in, ticket–if they are identified at all get a small fine and walk. If that happens to you three times and it’s a habitual driver.

BOYLES: That’s right.

HAYES: Treated wholly differently. It’s not fair.

BOYLES: Well, what I find also fascinating is, if that is all you got– to scream racism– then the damn thing is probably a pretty good ordinance.

[...]

BOYLES: Danny we are going to have you on again tomorrow, and tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow up until the final day up. And remember it is only a mail in initiative, or a deliver ballot. Remember vote yes.

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The results, The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent writes, “strongly suggests that the two main right-wing talking points about Sonia Sotomayor are a bust.”

Despite a barrage of attacks by Tancredo, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and others characterizing Sotomayor as a racist, voters aren’t buying it, according to a telephone poll of 2,400 adults conducted by Research 2000 for Daily Kos.

Even among Republicans, only 19 percent think the federal judge, who would be the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court, is a racist.

Among Latinos surveyed, only two percent say Sotomayor is a racist — within the poll’s margin of error — and 83 percent say she isn’t.

Here are the results for all adults surveyed:

Based on what you know or have heard about Sonia Sotomayor do you think she is a racist?
YES 8 percent
NO 61 percent
NOT SURE 31 percent

Do you think empathy is an important characteristic for a Supreme Court Justice to possess or not?
YES 52 percent
NO 29 percent
NOT SURE 19 percent

Based on what you know or have heard about Sonia Sotomayor do you think she is qualified to become Supreme Court Justice or not?
YES 54 percent
NO 26 percent
NOT SURE 20 percent

“I have been very impressed at the courage he has shown in turning his life around,” said Buchanan. “He has acknowledged the many personal problems he was facing at the time, and he’s addressed them.”

Buchanan attributed the release of court documents to “some low-life” who was acting out of spite. “Marcus is going off to law school [at the University of Virginia] at the end of the month,” she said, pointing out he had planned to leave before this case became public. “Who cares? This is something that happened two years ago that Marcus has paid a price for.”

According to Buchanan, none of this should affect Team America’s criticisms of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor — whom Tancredo has called a racist. “Sonia Sotomayor has been nominated to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States and we’re going to talk about her judicial approach and her record. That’s unrelated to any 21-year-old’s life or any problems he’s had.”

Buchanan expected Epstein’s ordeal to be over after his July 8 court date, which follows his plea bargain and two years of good behavior. “Are people allowed a second chance in this life when they realize their mistakes and their errors? I think so.”

Epstein has been targeted for years by civil rights groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the One People’s Project, who have obtained Epstein’s guilty plea to a hate crime he committed two years ago.

From the U.S. Attorney’s factual proffer:

On July 7, 2007, at approximately 7:15 p.m. at Jefferson and M Street, Northwest, in Washington, D.C., defendant was walking down the street making offensive remarks when he encountered the complainant, Ms. [REDACTED], who is African-American. The defendant uttered, “Nigger,” as he delivered a karate chop to Ms. [REDACTED]’s head.

Epstein has pled guilty and will be sentenced on July 8, although he changed his plea to water down an admission of guilt into the belief that “the government could prove me guilty.” A spokesman for Team America PAC confirmed that Epstein is still at work until he leaves for law school in the fall, and an official statement is forthcoming.

Ironically, Tancredo has taken a large public role, telling multiple cable news outlets, that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor “appears to be a racist” and the civil rights group La Raza is a “Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses.”

Well, that ought to be a real Frost/Nixon television moment.

CNN host Rick Sanchez’s tweet refers to former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo’s shocking assertion that civil rights organization La Raza is “a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses” in yet another feeble attempt to brand Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a racist.

Tancredo’s been on the quite the downward spiral this week dredging up every awful stereotype he can muster to tar Sotomayor who is all but assured Senate confirmation to the Supreme Court.

What I’m still waiting for are the disavowing statements by sane Republican leaders who have no interest in Tancredo, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck and their ilk spewing misogynistic, hate-filled rhetoric on behalf of their rudderless party.

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” National Council of La Raza spokesperson Lisa Navarrete told The Colorado Independent. “He’s defamed our organization and told falsehoods about our organization without any basis in fact or evidence. That’s not who we are or what we do.

“If you look at Mr. Tancredos’ record, he’s often spoken about things he doesn’t know anything about.”

While the stakes couldn’t be higher, with Sotomayor poised to become the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court, Navarrete sounded more weary than incensed over Tancredo’s latest antic.

“He’s at the far extreme of the Republican Party,” she said. “He’s someone who has been instrumental in alienating the Republican Party from the Latino community. We’ve been urging the Republican Party to try to outreach to the Latino community, and they did a good job of it until they let people like Tom Tancredo take over the debate on immigration.”

A congressman from the 6th Congressional District until he retired last year, Tancredo has made statements over the years threatening to bomb Mecca, calling Miami a Third World city and suggesting the U.S.-Mexico border wall separate Brownsville, Texas, from the rest of America.

It’s not the first time the Latino civil rights group has been inaccurately characterized by Tancredo, Navarrete said, though he hasn’t gone so far as to compare NCLR with the Ku Klux Klan before.

“He is a leading spokesperson and a leading figure in the anti-immigrant extremist movement, and as such we’re a target for anti-immigrant extremists,” Navarrete said.

Two years ago, before giving up his failed presidential campaign, Tancredo famously sang “Dixie” standing in front of Confederate flags in Columbia, S.C. His audience: a secessionist group and others called bigoted hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“He has hung around with a lot of bigots,” Navarrete said, “that’s where he’s getting his information, or misinformation from.”

Tancredo piled on the information, or misinformation, during his CNN appearance, making the charge NCLR’s “logo is ‘All for the race, nothing for the rest.’ ”

“What he said was our motto is not our motto,” Navarrete said, giving Tancredo the benefit of the doubt that he meant motto, not logo. “It’s not anybody’s motto. He doesn’t really know what he’s talking about if he doesn’t know the difference between a logo and a motto.”

As for the phrase Tancredo finds so offensive? “It was a phrase that was found in a document from a college student group more than 40 years ago but has nothing to do with our organization,” Navarrete said.

She pointed to an NCLR site devoted to debunking misperceptions and critics who are “willfully distorting the facts and deliberately mischaracterizing our organization and our work.”

If you belong to an organization, called La Raza, in this case, which is — from my point of view anyway, is nothing more than a Latino, it’s a counterpart — it’s a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses. If you belong to something like that, you’ve got to explain it in a way that’s going to convince me and a lot of other people it’s got nothing to do with race, even though the logo is “All for the race, nothing for the rest.”

“She’s a member! She’s a member of La Raza!” Tancredo says as the CNN host tries to steer the conversation away from La Raza. “But she’s a member! She’s a member of La Raza!”

Watch for yourself:

TPM’s Josh Marshall puts it thus:

For those who aren’t familiar with it, La Raza is basically a Latino equivalent of B’nai Brith or the NAACP. Garden variety and uncontroversial unless you thinks it’s a public safety issue if more than a handful of Mexicans or Puerto Ricans get together in one place at the same time.

La Raza, by the way, counts executives from Johnson & Johnson, Comcast and Wal-Mart on its executive board and has sponsors including The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Pepsi and the U.S. Department of Education.

The KKK doesn’t list corporate sponsors but does manage to misspell “evangelism” on its home page and sells a “Cross Pin with the Letters KKK below” for $3 as part of its fundraising campaign.

Crooks and Liars.com supplies the jaw-dropping video of Tancredo’s remarks on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show”:

Here’s the transcript:

Schultz: If there’s no red flag out there, if there’s no glaring issue …

Tancredo: scoffs

Schultz: … wouldn’t it be political suicide to challenge a Hispanic woman — which is part of the fastest growing demographic politically in this country? What would be your strategy to make sure that she doesn’t get on the court?

Tancredo: If, in fact, there was nothing to challenge her on I would suggest that they don’t challenge her on anything. Unfortunately, for her and fortunately for us, there are plenty of things that we haven’t talked about already that you keep ignoring. [Tancredo refers to an earlier segment where he used discredited GOP talking points alleging that Sotomayor claimed that Latina judges are better than their white male counterparts.]

I’m telling you she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context. That’s exactly how we would portray it and there’s no one who would get on the Supreme Court saying a thing like that except for a Hispanic woman and you’re going to say it doesn’t matter. Well, man. Where are you coming from? How can you possibly say that?

There’s plenty of stuff.

Schultz: Bill Press, Bill, I gotta ask you, is she going to get special protection in the public arena because she’s a woman and Hispanic. What about that?

Press: No, she’s not going to get any special protection.

Tancredo: [Laughs] Oh, jeez.

Press: She’s going to be examined as a candidate for the Supreme Court, Ed. One thing I think we’ve got to lay on the table as Tom seems to ignore is, right, all the years that as a district attorney, as a corporate attorney, as a trial judge and then as an appellate court judge she brings to the court — listen to this — more judicial experience than any member of the court now sitting on the Supreme Court had when they were nominated.

I mean, she is extremely well qualified.

Tancredo: You can still be a racist and have all of those things in your background. You can be a racist and have all of that stuff in your background. One does not preclude the other.

Schultz: Alright, Mike Allen as a journalist, quickly would you check out to see if she had some racist comments?

Allen: No.

Schultz: Okay, that pretty much says it. Gentlemen, good to have you with us.

Tancredo: You won’t do it? You won’t check it out? There you go.

Press: No. She’s not a racist. She’s not a racist, Tom.

Tancredo: They won’t even check it out.

Read the Colorado Independent archives for the low-lights of Tancredo’s antics, as a member of Congress, GOP presidential candidate and now private citizen, over the last three years — including statements about bombing Mecca, calling Miami a Third World city, singing the praises of torturing terrorists, carousing with eugenics proponents or singing Dixie in front of a Confederate flag.