Wonkette

Forty years ago tonight, Washington burned, baby, burned — just as so many other cities burned after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. And it only took about 40 years to fix up some of the destroyed neighborhoods along H Street NE, 14th and U, and various other chunks of the District that ended up looking like Hiroshima after the Bomb. And now Wonkette’s own Liz Glover says the National Guard actually burnt D.C. to the ground, not the freaked-out rioters. MORE »

Take that, Obama. You probably didn’t even know you were black yet when Hillary was throwing Rosa Parks under a bus. (PS — Sorry about the Depends commercial before this clip.)

EARLIER: Did Hillary Clinton Really ‘Shake Hands’ With MLK When She Was 14?

Hillary Clinton just gave a speech exploiting the assassination of MLK somberly remembering the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and she added a (new to us) detail: Hillary claims she saw the Reverend King speak and even shook his hand, when she was 14 years old. Wonkette operatives “Gary & Marilyn” ask, “Doesn’t her attendance at such an event sound unlikely for a Goldwater Girl? I can’t find my copy of her autobiography, think that would have been a memorable event she would have written about at the time … so I’m putting this in your capable fact-checkers’ hands.” MORE »

Hey, Barack Obama, we have rules in this country. Rules like, You cannot go around quoting the “I Have A Dream” speech, or the Declaration of Independence, or that weird/wrong thing FDR used to say (”The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) to try to soothe the desperately poor and angry people who were this close to “seizing the means of production.” And that’s why Hillary’s campaign is sending everybody these shocking YouTubes proving that another black person has also trotted out a couple of patriotic chestnuts as proof that campaign speeches really do change the world. MORE »

Uh, that was the break? Was that even two minutes? What about the old people who need a little time to use the facilities? What about your editor who can see the liquor store from his window? Anyway, here we are, solving America’s problems, around the old mill table. MORE »

After more than a year of this endless 2008 campaign, we’ve finally got a debate with the claws out. This South Carolina audience is getting a first-hand up-close answer to the question, “Can Hillary kill people with her words?” See here for Part One, and let’s get dirty with Part Two. MORE »

Wow, are we back in South Carolina again? And we’re going to be talking about race and the racial issues, is that right? Of course, that was the supposed subject of the last Dem debate, too. But that was in Nevada, and everybody knows teevee signals can’t reach from Nevada to South Carolina. So let’s do it again! MORE »

Once every year, white people in politics pretend to care about Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated four decades ago when his racial-equality preaching drifted over to the far more dangerous economic-equality preaching. It was one thing to let the black people sit wherever on the bus — white people had cars — but it’s a whole different story when you’re talking about taking the rich people’s stuff! And tonight in South Carolina, the Democrats will debate who can recite the most noble things about MLK. As a result, blacks might just “go Democrat” in 2008. We’ll be here with liveblogging action at 8 p.m. Eastern. DO NOT MISS IT UNLESS YOU ARE RACIST. [CNN Politics]

* It seems weird, but presidential candidates are talking about race for some reason today. [NYT]
* Rudy Giuliani still thinks he’ll be president of Florida just because you can get today’s New York Port on Miami Beach. [Miami Herald]
* Will the world ever recover? The Los Angeles Times loses another editor. {Reuters]
* Well, at least John Edwards is very, very rich. [The Guardian]
* Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews seems to think these presidential candidates are funny. [Fishbowl DC]

Barry Obama is the first serious black candidate for president since Bill Clinton or Alan Keyes or whoever. But does he know about Martin Luther King Jr.? Yes, he does! He knows you need to go to the church and do the thing and talk all Southern. Even Al Gore could do that, back when Al Gore was about to be elected president, back in 2000. [Washington Post]