Is Barbara Boxer the Orville Faubus of the Climate Committee?

Michael C. Moynihan | July 16, 2009

If you were watching the Sotomayor snoozefest today (though, in fairness, it did feature some testimony from clever folks like Ilya Somin and David Kopel), you probably missed Harry C. Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, testifying before the Committee on Environment and Public Works about his group's study of the Markey/Waxman Climate Change Bill. When Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) contradicted Alford's concerns about the legislation, she did so by citing a statement from the NAACP and the CEO of 100 Black Men of Atlanta. Translation: There are black people that agree with me too! The witness promptly accuses Boxer of being "racial" by segregating evidence by color, and asks Boxer why she is "trying to put up some other black group to pit against me." A fair point, though one wonders why, if Alford believes that there is no racial component to such issues, his group is called the National Black Chamber of Commerce.

"We are referring to the experts regardless of their color. And for someone to tell me, an African-American, college-educated veteran of the United States Army that I must contend with some other black group and put aside everything else in here—this has nothing to do with the NAACP and really has nothing to do with the National Black Chamber of Commerce. We're talking energy and that road the chair went down, I think, is god-awful." 

The video, though, is far more entertaining: