Governor inept on hate crime panel

In a recent editorial, the Daily Herald urged Governor Blagojevich to get "moving on staffing hate crime panel" and to appoint people of various backgrounds who are "passionately committed to justice and tolerance."

Bringing us up to speed, the Herald said the original "commission was abolished after irreconcilable religious differences between members brought its work to a standstill."

Excuse me, but those "irreconcilable religious differences" were not doctrinal disputes over tithing requirements. Those differences were over Blagojevich's appointment of Sister Claudette Marie Muhammad, the minister of protocol in Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam , an organization whose official platform still demands that "descendants from slaves, to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of their own" and "that intermarriage or race mixing should be prohibited" and "that the offer of integration is hypocritical."

Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn and our local State Rep. Sidney Mathias said Sister Muhammad should resign unless she condemns Farrakhan's anti-white, anti-gay and anti-Semitic comments but Blagojevich never asked Sister Muhammad to repudiate those remarks or resign.

Instead, he stood by, incapable of acting, as the nationwide controversy destroyed the commission and "brought its work to a standstill," as the Daily Herald regretfully noted.

CBS reported Blagojevich "didn't know he had appointed a Nation of Islam official to serve on a hate crimes commission until learning it from news reports." And the Daily Herald wants this guy in action again?

If Blagojevich's past is his prologue, then I suggest the less we encourage him to do, the better.

Lou Eisenberg

Buffalo Grove