June 02, 2009 06:37 PM UTC

Must Be The "Sotomayor Thing"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Responding to the former executive director of his PAC’s upcoming sentencing for karate-chopping a random black woman while calling her a “n—–,” former Congressman Tom Tancredo finds himself…in a bit of a jam. As the Denver Post reports:

The executive director of Team America, the PAC founded by Tom Tancredo, pleaded guilty last year to striking an African-American woman on a Washington, D.C., street and using a racial epithet.

Marcus Epstein’s random confrontation with the woman has become part of a skirmish in the larger war over the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, a week after Tancredo thrust himself into the debate by claiming Sotomayor “appeared to be a racist.”

Tancredo, a former Republican congressman from Littleton, returned to co-chair the political action committee in the past few weeks after several years’ absence. He said Monday that he didn’t know about the incident until it surfaced on the website of One People’s Project, an anti-racism group.

“I’m assuming that the only thing that makes (the incident) even newsworthy is the fact that it comes in the context of the Sotomayor thing,” Tancredo said…

Bay Buchanan, who has day-to-day control of Team America, called the incident “an out-of-character moment” for Epstein and noted that he was struggling at the time with personal problems and was kept on only after he agreed to treatment.

Heidi Beirich, an investigator at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Epstein has a history of activism in “racist circles.”

Gosh, you think that having the head of your PAC going around beating up black women might make it a little harder for you to make a charge of ‘racism’ stick against Sonia Sotomayor on national television? Really, you think? We’re looking for the right word to summarize this: “unbelievable” isn’t precise enough. Because we agree–Tancredo surrounding himself with undiluted Dixie-flag flying racists isn’t really what you’d call “news.”

Perhaps, though, the truth about Tancredo and his marginal ilk will be news to CNN–and maybe, just maybe, they’ll remember it next time they consider giving him airtime in the first place.

UPDATE: If the hypocritical irony of this story wasn’t enough to pop your eyes out of their sockets, check out Marcus Epstein’s last op-ed at Townhall.com, linked to prominently from the Team America PAC website under the title “Immigration and Hate Crimes: The Phony Link.”

Yes, really.