Wow

Bill Bennett Wednesday on Morning in America:

But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.

You know, my first reaction is just "wow." And I was going to leave it simply at that. But then I thought, in fairness to Bennett, I should explain that he claims he was merely giving an example of a bad argument for abortion and being quoted out of context, as I have above, makes it seem as though he supports such a "morally reprehensible" idea.

And so, in the interests of balanced reporting, I'd like to just make it clear that Bill Bennett is not a racist. From his own lips on yesterday's Hannity and Colmes:

I'll not take instruction from Teddy Kennedy. A young woman likely drowned because of his negligence. I'll take no moral instruction with him. That's much worse than legal gambling what Teddy Kennedy did....

When I was drug czar, you bet, we were working on the issue of black crime, Alan and Sean, because there was a lot of crime in the black community.... We got the bad guys. And drug use went down. And we raised the price and lowered the purity of cocaine.... [W]hen we went into the inner city black community, the people said to me, Mr. Czar, or Czar, or Mr. Bennett, you get those people off the street and protect us. And we did our best to do it.

. . .

my wife's program, best friends, has kept more young women from having abortions...than the entire black caucus. She has done more for inner city black girls than the entire black caucus. So I will not bow my head to any of these people. I will not give up the ground of compassion and sympathy.

. . .

All day I've been reading reports and statements by people about me, Sean, and it's interesting, some use the whole quote and are fair, some don't. And that tells you something. But the problem, I think, on the liberal side, the democratic side is they attitudinize

Far be it for me to attitudinize, Bill. For a minute there I thought you might be racist but that was before I read that your wife has done more for urban black girls than the whole black caucus. I stand corrected.

(Our younger readers may not recognize Bennett as Reagan's Ed Secretary and Bush Sr.'s Director of Drug Control Policy--aka Drug Czar.)