The conventional wisdom is that Obama will win South Dakota in early June. But has there been any discussion of whether the Native Americans of that state will refuse to vote for him since he is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, which is trying to take all federal funding away Cherokee Nation if they do not reinstate their freedmen as tribal members?

Thanks for linking.

The Hogeland piece is interesting, but -- and I admit that I may have a bias here -- I don't find his moral equivalence entirely convincing. As one of the commenters point out, Seeger's mistakes were more distant, abstract; Buckley's were closer, more present. Also, though it may not seem so from the present, Buckley's audience was much larger during the time of his most significant errors, his influence greater. There's no evidence that Seeger's advocacy of Stalin's line made all that much difference to anyone.

There's more, but I don't have time for it now.

Hope you feel better soon: it's terrible struggling through the end of the semester without your full faculties.

You'll love this, by the way: McCain supports League of Nations!

Maybe I'm easily amused.

So what do you call it when you show up for an essay exam, and your brain says, "You've got to be kidding. I'm still sitting in your comfy chair at home reading Graebner and contemplating the wit of Kubrick in Strangelove. You're on your own with this bullshit between old and new immigration."

If I'm lucky, I just scraped a B out of that class after those miserable two hours.

It looks like Obama just distanced himself from the position of the Congressional Black Caucus on the Cherokee Freedmen. Obama says Congress should respect the tribe and let the courts handle the issue for now.

Interesting statement he made. It could easily be read as a kind of dual pander -- making a pro forma statement in favor of tribal sovereignty while still supporting the freedmen position -- but I think it's more fair to read it as a nuanced discussion of the limits of Congressional authority: I'm not sure I've ever seen a statement from a candidate that so clearly and correctly acknowledged tribal sovereignty as a limit on federal action.