McFreedom

Gonna go see Burt Rutan try to get into space on Monday. Taking my camera, should be exciting!

As much as I hate to jump in defending Kerry on an item like this, The Volokh Conspiracy as well as Best of the Web Today both complained about Kerry's words from a Washington Times news story:

Talking about education yesterday, Mr. Kerry also told the largely black crowd at the day care center that there are more blacks in prison than in college.

"That's unacceptable," he said. "But it's not their fault."

Rather than the inmates, the former Boston prosecutor blamed poverty, poor schools, a dearth of after-school programs and "all of us as adults not doing what we need to do."

While it certainly would be reprehnsible to suggest that those in prison largely aren't responsible for being there, I'd like to point out that much of the context for these quotes comes from the reporter, not Mr. Kerry. The only thing we know from this article that Mr. Kerry said is "That's unacceptable. But it's not their fault...[This is because] all of us as adults not doing what we need to do."

The reporter (and Professor Volokh and Mr. Taranto) thought he was talking about the inmates. But there's another side to the equation: Mr. Kerry stated the original problem was that there were more young blacks in prison than college. One way to fix that ratio is by raising the number of blacks in college, which might very plausibly be artificially low because of "poverty, poor schools, a dearth of after-school programs and 'all of us as aduilts not doing what we need to do.'" In other words, more black people don't get to college because their economic situation is worse than the average citizen's, and we need more programs to level the playing field and make sure we have more blacks in college. This isn't a position I hold, but I believe it is an opinion a reasonable person could hold without denigrating the moral sense of those being talked about. Unfortunately from the context of the Times article it isn't perfectly clear which sense Mr. Kerry intended (and, knowing politicians, it's quite possible he meant both senses, or neither, or some sense other that my suggestion). It's also quite possible Mr. Kerry gave further remarks that clarified his statements enough that the reporter felt justified in concluding it was the inmates being talked about, but the actual Kerry quotes in the article are too sparse to verify that conclusion ourselves, and I have been unable to find another article about this event to get another view.