Huckabee: I've Got The "Right" Experience

Political Players: GOP Candidate From Hope, Arkansas, Says He Can Win

(CBS)  Political Players is a weekly conversation with the leaders, consultants, and activists who are shaping American politics. This week, CBS News' Brian Goldsmith talked with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee about his candidacy for president, his efforts to rally conservative Christian support, and why he's never used summer as a verb.

CBSNews.com: One of the realities of American politics is that money often means electoral success. How can you sustain a winning presidential campaign having raised only about one-fifth as much as Ron Paul last quarter?

Mike Huckabee: Well, the same way that we have stayed on the ground when people thought we had to raise 20, and 30, and 50 million dollars to be where we are today. The reality is that I am ahead of candidates right now in national polls who have raised $60 million. So, I think it is not so much about how little we have raised, but how well we have done with what we have.

More importantly, we have seen just an explosion of fundraising in the last two weeks. We have had to upgrade our web server three times in a six day period. We have hired extra people just to open mail and answer phones. So, we are where we need to be at this point. And that is a good foundation.

CBSNews.com: One of the criticisms of your campaign is that maybe you did not spend the time before you began running to travel around the country and to build a network of fundraisers.

Mike Huckabee: Well, I was busy being governor. And I told the people of Arkansas that I would give them my attention, and serve in that capacity until the day I left office. And that is exactly what I did. And for that I am not the least bit sorry.

They had elected me to do a job, and I fulfilled it, just like I would as president, if elected to do that job. It did put me behind the fundraising curve and the organizational curve. But we made up the ground. And now we are in a position where these other guys, who had been out there, burning a lot of money, now probably wish they were where I am in terms of at least gaining the ground.

CBSNews.com: At least according to one poll out this week, you are in second place in Iowa. What is the scenario for you after Iowa? Is your plan to try to win there, and then ride that momentum into other states?

Mike Huckabee: Well, we certainly believe that doing well in Iowa moves us forward in New Hampshire, where we are also working hard. In addition to that, we’re working hard in South Carolina. These three early primary states provide the sling shot to move forward.

We’ve acted to perform in these states. When we do, then we are in the game. And we think we are now. There is going to be a sorting out. It is what typically happens in these early three states. Some folks make it and others just do not get past them. We plan to get past them.

CBSNews.com: A lot of the criticism of you--on policy grounds--has come from the economic right. They say that you raised taxes in Arkansas, that you are for universal health care and higher spending. Is it absolutely impermissible for a Republican candidate for office, even if he compensates with other tax cuts, to have ever raised a tax?

Mike Huckabee: Well, the criticisms sort of ignore the nuance of being a governor. I balanced the budget every year I was in office for ten and a half years, which, by law, I have to do--to operate within the money we have.

But we had Supreme Court orders that told us we had to spend more money on education. And when we have burning issues, like a crumbling infrastructure of roads and bridges that I've inherited and I take it to the people and get an 80 percent vote for a highway program, I think that shows good management, not lack of fiscal restraint.

So, it is really one of those things that when people look at the record of even though I was in a very overwhelmingly Democrat state, going against those headwinds we still got tax cuts.

We were still able to hold the line on spending. And if you talk to the legislators that actually served with me for a considerable period of time, I think you are going to find that they felt like it was a very conservative management.

CBSNews.com: You have called the Club for Growth, which is a major economic conservative group and one of your biggest critics, the "Club for Greed." Do you think that the people who run the Club for Growth care more about themselves than the country?

Mike Huckabee: I am not going to judge their motives, because I do not know what they are. I just know that their tactics are, frankly, despicable. They take money that we do not know where it comes from, and then they use the anonymous money to take hits out on candidates that, frankly, would be a whole lot better for them than Hillary Clinton.

Why they do that is something they will have to explain. But I think the dishonesty about the issues, and how they distort and misuse them, is very troubling. And they have to answer for that.

CBSNews.com: On health care, you have said that the Democrats are for a government plan, the Republicans put too much faith in private insurance companies, and you trust the individual. What parts of the major Democrats’ plans are run by the government?

Mike Huckabee: Well, they still put a focus on the government being involved in the operation and the details. And I think for many people that is a kind of a frightening thought that we would have yet more government intervention. People know that the government's taking Social Security into bankruptcy.

The government cannot keep up with the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, and the reimbursement rates certainly make it harder and harder for doctors to get paid even their costs. The thought that government would add another layer of control I think is very troubling to many people.

[nycprophet]

Sadly, even though Clinton voted for the war in Iraq, and a host of Laws aimed at removing your liberties, so many Democrats are blinded by her cult of personality that I predict they will overwhelmingly vote to put her crime family back into office. While I''ve made some progress in educating Liberals as to the phony staged consensus of the left-right paradigm, the fact remains that a majority of Democrats still see the White House as some kind of political Super Bowl, where the success of their "team" is the be all and end all - to the expense of America as a whole. The Punch and Judy show theatre that was the "troop surge" debate in the Senate characterizes Hillary''s role in hoodwinking Americans perfectly. The debate is framed as not whether the U.S. should get out of the Middle-East altogether, but the relative minutia of whether to feed thousands of more troops into the meat grinder or not. Clinton''s Campaign Manager recently compared Hillary to Margaret Thatcher, which translates as more war, more dead Americans, and a further desecration of the tattered shreds of what''s left of our Constitution. Clinton is the ultimate global elitist and represents the Democrats supposed base, the poor and downtrodden, about as much as Lindsay Lohan represents grace and dignity. I''m sure she informed the likes of David Rockefeller and Queen Beatrix as to her presidential aspirations during her last visit to attend the Bilderberg Group conference, which brings me to my next prediction.

[nycprophet]

Are we a Nation of Laws? Consider the Patriot Act. The Law is 342 pages long, or 57,000 words, making it a bit longer than Dostoevsky''s "Notes from Underground" or, if you''re partial to pigs, about twice the size of Orwell''s "Animal Farm." The Patriot Act is the reigning champion of our government''s un-American activities. When it was first paraded before Congress and the Senate following the 9/11 attacks. Few Members, other than Congressman, Ron Paul, who dissaproved of its Draconian provisions, voted against it. Most in Congress simply gave it a rubber-stamp of approval for fear of appearing "unpatriotic" to their constituents during our national moment of crisis. Now in effect, the Law wrecks a generation''s worth of constitutional protections against government snooping, legalizing police-state tactics in searches and seizures, criminalizing certain forms of speech and political activity, and opening the way for the mistreatment of foreigners in government custody and wholesale expulsions and imprisonment. It is a repugnant, unnecessary Law that goes against the very principles its name stands for. Yet, it remains unchecked and unbalanced by public opinion, lawmakers or the Courts. So, yes, we''re a nation of Laws. But the Laws aren''t much to speak of when they''re designed to hoodwink the public and win its docility. Neither is public responsibility much to speak of these days when its docility is secured with nothing more than a ploy-riddled play on the word "patriot."

[nycprophet]

Section 1076 of the massive John Warner Defense Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies." Section 333, "Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal Law" states that "the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the Laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of ("refuse" or "fail" in) maintaining public order, "in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy." For the current President, "enforcement of the Laws to restore public order" means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a Law enforcement mode; and set them loose against "disorderly" citizenry - protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.

[nycprophet]

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act, which was supported by Clinton, Obama and McCain, also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called "potential terrorists" and other "undesirables" for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That''s right. Under the cover of a trumped-up "emergency," detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the President. The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International recently reported that "global engineering and technical services powerhouse, Kellog, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, announced in January 2006 that its Government and Infrastructure division was awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an emergency." "With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five year term," the report notes, "the contract is to be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," "for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations - in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." New Programs?

[nycprophet]

Within every generation, our country has had many weird and backward Laws, the sort of legal aberrations like our Patriot Act and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act represent, which make it more expedient for a President to wield power and for a lazy Congress and Senate to seem assertive. John Adams had his Alien and Sedition Acts, which invited suspicion of immigrants and criminalized any critical opinion of the government. Massacring Indians was a favorite sport of Andrew Jackson''s, but in order to indulge it he had to act as if Supreme Court decisions had the legal standing of a fugitive slave. His contempt was infectious. "The farce of dealing with Indian tribes," as Jackson put it, meant that none of the 374 treaties signed with Native Americans by 1868 were worth more than the feathers they were inked with. By then, the nation got busy dealing with the farce of Reconstruction, when lawmaking turned its deceptive wiles on blacks, a political pastime that continues to this day with such legal sophistries as affirmative action and the gerrymandering of "majority-minority" voting districts -- two effective ways of patronizing black participation in society while isolating it in politics. All legal, all seemingly constitutional, for now.

[nycprophet]

Following the Reichstag Fire, a historically-proven act of False Flag Terrorism which Hitler''s own party staged to encite fear in the German population, Hitler promoted the Enabling Act, which is eerily similar, in many ways, to our own John Warner Defense Authorization Act, which gives the President the power to suspend Congress, The Constitution, and to impose Martial Law following any event he or she deems an "emergency." Here''s what Hitler told the German people:

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures...The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a Law is in itself a limited one."
- Adolf Hitler

Does that ring any bells? It should, folks. It''s nearly the same promise that George Bush made to us support of the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, one of the many Orwellian Laws which Senators Clinton, Obama and McCain all voted in favor of in the Senate.

"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."
- Martin Luther King Jr.

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
- James Madison

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and those who would exploit our fear for power and their own personal, selfish, cynical gain."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

[nycprophet]

Right alongside the widely-held notion that man is somehow to blame for global warming and that we should therefore pay a global Carbon Tax administered by the U.N., when I think about the myth that is our the "Global War on Terrorism," the following two quotes come to mind:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda minister

"That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result. It is not propaganda''s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success."
- Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister

[poopbreath]

Wow. Huck is a former pastor with an arrogant attitude. Try the humility of Ron Paul who is the only viable candidate for president, but he will not say it. Vote Ron Paul for president.

[nhprophet]

What we need is a President who will show us the way. Not the old way. Not the same way, but a NEW WAY. Think about this for a minute. What if we pulled all of our troops out of South Korea? They''ve been there for 50+ years. What if we quit worrying about Iran, but instead, realized that its having a nuclear weapon will not mean the end of the world? What if we pulled all of our troops out of the Middle-East, and brought them all home? What if we realistically addressed the National Debt, and paid attention to REALLY DOING SOMETHING about stopping illegal immigration? These are the ideas of Republican Presidential candidate, Dr. Ron Paul. He''s a ten term Congressman and a physician who has delivered over 4,000 babies. He''s an intellectual who''s published four books, three of which are devoted entirely to sound economics and one to foreign policy. He was raised on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania as a pious Lutheran, but now he attends a Baptist church. Paul is given to mulling things over morally. Whenever he recollects the helicopter pilots he treated as an Air Force Flight Surgeon (Captain) during the Vietnam War, a war which he now says was "totally unnecessary and illegal," he laments, "They were gung-ho. I''ve often thought about how many of those people never came back." Candidates with the high level of personal integrity and proven track record of adherance to The Constitution, Congressman Paul has always demonstrated only come around once in a lifetime, if we''re lucky.

[candide777]

THE TRUTH ABOUT RON PAUL AND WHAT HE HAS IN COMMON WITH TIMOTHY McVEIGH:

"[C]ontrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty." Ron Paul (2004)

Starting to understand why Ron Paul is regarded as a crackpot? He and Timothy McVeigh were made of the same extremist lunatic ideological federal government-hating material. Ron Paul and McVeigh share the same vision for America: one divided by race, where hotel owners can turn away blacks merely because they are black and where bus drivers can make them give up their seats for white passengers. Do we really need to go back to those days?

[nhprophet]

My fellow Americans just don''t seem to care that our nation, along with The Constitution upon which it was founded, is being flushed-down the NWO toilet by our nations'' bought and paid for politicians and media. While the Oligarchs warn and insite fear in the sheeple about the prospect of terrorism, they at the same time leave our border wide open, and fund and conduct illegal wars overseas that do nothing but encite the terrorism which their Orwellian Laws like the Patriot Act and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act pretend to protect us from. Wake up America! It''s not about protecting you from terrorism, or saving the planet from Global Warming, or any of that other fear-mongering garbage the sold-out, mainstream media feeds you 24/7. It''s about feeding the bankers and the military industrial complex, and facilitating the global elite''s ability to ratchet-down control over the American people, placing us into a total control grid where they can surveille, track and control everywhere we go and everything we do. It''s the groundwork for totalitarianism. It''s the New World Order plan of Bush, Clinton, Edwards, McCain, Giuliani, et.al., being executed quite beautifully. You''re a frog in a pot. In order to cook a frog, you don''t throw him into a pot of boiling water. If you do, he''ll resist and jump-out. What you do instead is, you turn the heat-up REAL SLOW, and by the time the water is boiling he won''t be able to jump out anymore, because it''s too late--he''s already doomed.

[nhprophet]

In the near future Earth will be dominated by a powerful, one world government. Once free nations are slaves to the will of a tiny elite. The dawn of a new dark age is upon mankind. Countries are a thing of the past. Every form of independence is under attack, with the family, even the individual itself, nearing extinction. Close to 80% of the earth''s population has been eliminated. The remnants of a once free humanity are forced to live within highly controlled, compact, prison-like cities. Travel is highly restricted. Superhighways connect the mega-cities and are designed to keep the population from entering into unauthorized zones. No human activity is private. Artificially intelligent super computers chronicle and catagorize a person''s every action. A prison planet run by a ruthless gang of control freaks, whose power can never be challenged, will dominate. This is the vision of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and their fellow members of The Bilderberg Group. Their goal: a program of total dehumanization, where the science of tyranny is law. A worldwide control grid, designed to ensure the overlords'' monopoly of power forever. Our species will be condemed to this nightmare future unless the masses are awakened to the New World Order master plan, and mobilized to defeat it. Erected secretly, the Georgia Guide Stones are a testament to their totalitarian plan for a world religion; global laws; a global court; and a global army to enforce those Laws.

[nhprophet]

Clinton voted for the oxymoronically-named Patriot Act and for the war in Iraq, but so many Democrats are blinded by her cult of personality that they will overwhelmingly vote to put her crime family back in office. While I have made some progress in educating liberals as to the phony staged consensus of the left-right paradigm, the fact remains that a majority still see the White House as some kind of political Super Bowl, where the success of their "team" is the be all and end all - to the expense of America as a whole. The Punch and Judy show theatre of the troop surge debate characterizes Hillary''s role in hoodwinking Americans perfectly. The debate is framed as not whether the U.S. should get out of the Middle-East altogether, but the relative minutia of whether to feed thousands of more troops into the meat grinder or not. Clinton''s campaign manager compared Hillary to Margaret Thatcher. This translates as more war, more dead Americans, and a further desecration of the tattered shreds of what''s left of our Constitution. Clinton is the ultimate elitist and represents the Democrats supposed base, the poor and downtrodden, about as much as Lindsay Lohan represents grace and dignity. She was sure to inform the likes of David Rockefeller and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands as to her presidential aspirations during her last visit to the Bilderberg Group conference in 2006. They have a proven history of acting as kingmakers.

[nhprophet]

Are we a Nation of Laws? Consider the Patriot Act. The Law is 342 pages long, or 57,000 words, making it a bit longer than Dostoevsky''s "Notes from Underground" or, if you''re partial to pigs, about twice the size of Orwell''s "Animal Farm." The Patriot Act is the reigning champion of our government''s un-American activities. When it was first paraded before Congress following the 9/11 attacks. Few, if any, Members other than Ron Paul voted against it because of it''s Draconian provisions. Most in Congress simply gave it their rubber-stamp of approval for fear of appearing "unpatriotic" to their constituents during our national moment of crisis. Now in effect, the Law wrecks a generation''s worth of constitutional protections against government snooping, legalizing police-state tactics in searches and seizures, criminalizing certain forms of speech and political activity, and opening the way for the mistreatment of foreigners in government custody and wholesale expulsions and imprisonment. It is a repugnant, unnecessary Law that goes against the very principles its name stands for. Yet, it remains unchecked and unbalanced by public opinion, lawmakers or the Courts. So, yes, we''re a nation of Laws. But the Laws aren''t much to speak of when they''re designed to hoodwink the public and win its docility. Neither is public responsibility much to speak of these days when its docility is secured with nothing more than a ploy-riddled play on the word "patriot."

[nhprophet]

Under The Patriot Act, the government''s law enforcement branches have used their prosecutorial discretion to target citizens who voice their dissent. The law enforcement targeting of citizens who exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion since 9/11 is certainly no exception. The oxymoronically-named Patriot Act section 802 defines domestic terrorism so broadly that it could apply to an individual exercising his or her freedom of speech, expression, and assembly through acts of civil disobedience. In June 2004, Buffalo, New York, artist Steve Kurtz was detained by law enforcement and had his home searched by FBI agents. Despite finding only harmless paints, which Kurtz uses in his politically motivated art projects. The FBI proceeded with a Grand Jury hearing to indict Kurtz under the Patriot Act''s biological agents provision. The Justice Department frequently uses Section 805 of the Patriot Act, "Material Support for Terrorism," to imply that a person has some link to terrorism. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole''s May 5, 2004, testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary explains that "in many cases, those who have been charged with material support have done nothing more sinister than to exercise their first amendment right to freedom of speech or freedom of association."

[nhprophet]

With the full support of Senators Clinton, Obama and McCain, President Bush recently signed into Law the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, which, according to Senator Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare Martial Law. It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President''s ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions. Public Law 109-364, or the John Warner Defense Authorization Act (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the President in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of your Governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder." President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad of those who dissent and are stripped of their citizenship, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America.

[nhprophet]

Section 1076 of the massive John Warner Defense Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies." Section 333, "Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law" states that "the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of ("refuse" or "fail" in) maintaining public order, "in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy." For the current President, "enforcement of the laws to restore public order" means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against "disorderly" citizenry - protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.

[nhprophet]

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act, supported by Clinton, Obama and McCain, also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called "illegal aliens, potential terrorists" and other "undesirables" (dissenting Americans) for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That''s right. Under the cover of a trumped-up "immigration emergency" (Bush doesn''t want to stop illegal immigration), detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the President. The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International recently reported that "global engineering and technical services powerhouse, Kellog, Brown & Root announced in January 2006 that its Government and Infrastructure division was awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an emergency." "With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five year term," the report notes, "the contract is to be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," "for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations - in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

[nhprophet]

In addition to authorizing another $532.8 billion for the Pentagon, including a $70-billion "supplemental provision" which covers the cost of the ongoing, mad military maneuvers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president in a private White House ceremony, further collapses the historic divide between the police and the military: a tell-tale sign of a rapidly consolidating police state in America, all accomplished amidst ongoing U.S. imperial pretensions of global domination, sold to an "emergency managed" and seemingly willfully gullible public as a "global war on terrorism." Make no mistake about it: the de-facto repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) is an ominous assault on American democratic tradition and jurisprudence. The 1878 Act, which reads, "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both," is the only U.S. criminal statute that outlaws military operations directed against the American people under the cover of "law enforcement." As such, it has been the best protection we''ve had against the power-hungry intentions of an unscrupulous and reckless President intent on using force to enforce his will.

[nhprophet]

Within every generation our country has had its share of weird and backward laws, the sort of legal aberrations like the Patriot Act and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act, which Senators Clinton and Obama fully supported, that make it more expedient for a President to wield power and for a lazy Congress to seem assertive. John Adams had his Alien and Sedition Acts, which invited suspicion of immigrants and criminalized any critical opinion of the government. Massacring Indians was a favorite sport of Andrew Jackson''s, but in order to indulge it he had to act as if Supreme Court decisions had the legal standing of a fugitive slave. His contempt was infectious. "The farce of dealing with Indian tribes," as Jackson put it, meant that none of the 374 treaties signed with Native Americans by 1868 were worth more than the feathers they were inked with. By then the nation got busy dealing with the farce of Reconstruction, when lawmaking turned its deceptive wiles on blacks, a political pastime that continues to this day with such legal sophistries as affirmative action and the gerrymandering of "majority-minority" voting districts -- two effective ways of patronizing black participation in society while isolating it in politics. All legal, all seemingly constitutional, for now.