Elizabeth Warren - The Unraveling Accelerates

Elizabeth Warren finally admits the obvious when fced with overwheming circumstantial evidence:

Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren acknowledged for the first time late Wednesday night that she told Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania that she was Native American, but she continued to insist that race played no role in her recruitment.

“At some point after I was hired by them, I . . . provided that information to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard,’’ she said in a statement issued by her campaign. “My Native American heritage is part of who I am, I’m proud of it and I have been open about it.’’

Warren’s statement is her first acknowledgment that she identified herself as Native American to the Ivy League schools.

Here first acknowledgment? That is putting it kindly. Here is the Boston Herald from May 4, reporting what sounds like a specific denial:

Warren — who has been dogged by questions about whether she used her claims of Cherokee lineage to further her career — has insisted she never authorized Harvard Law to count her as a Native American in the mid-1990s, when the school was under fire for not having enough minority professors.

So why the change of position?

Warren’s new statement came after the Globe asked her campaign about documents it obtained Wednesday from Harvard’s library showing that the university’s law school began reporting a Native American female professor in federal statistics for the 1992-93 school year, the first year Warren worked at Harvard, as a visiting professor.

...

The Harvard records do not list a Native American during the years Warren returned to her post at the University of Pennsylvania, but begin to list one in 1995-96, when she returned to Cambridge as a tenured professor.

Well, vigorous sleuthing has cracked the Case of the Missing Inspirational Minority.

And do let's note - the press is losing patience with their Golden Girl. Here is a Boston Herald columnist noting that he has been the only guy supporting her so in return he gets a short, unhelpful phone call about something else.

And the NY Times plays the oldest trick in the aggrieved reporter's book - print the transcript! Here they describe Ms. Warren's joint appearance with Massachusetts Governor Deval:

While recent polling shows Ms. Warren running dead even with Mr. Brown, questions about her heritage have consumed the campaign.

...[T]he Warren campaign gave the news media about 90 minutes’ notice that Mr. Patrick would appear at her headquarters and that they would hold a news conference.

This raised expectations that Ms. Warren might discuss her ancestry in greater detail than she has. But the event was orchestrated to discourage detailed questioning by including about 150 loyal Warren supporters who booed when reporters asked about it.

...

A reporter said to Ms. Warren that critics were calling her character into question, prompting the supporters in the room to boo and hiss.

Mr. Patrick told them that “even when we don’t like the question, we’ve got to let it be asked.” Turning back to the news media, he said, “We don’t care about that subject.”

Asked whether the issue spoke to Ms. Warren’s character, Mr. Patrick said, “I think I have answered that.”

“Can she answer it?” the reporter said.

Ms. Warren said she would defer to the governor.

“So, you’re not answering, basically?” the reporter asked. Ms. Warren replied, “You just don’t like the answer.”

That's not an answer.

Comments

[Danube of Thought]

I tuned in in the middle of Obama's remarkd, and missed the digs at Bush. I shoulda known better.

[daddy]

Great hashish they are smoking over at the WaPo today.

"No one is alleging that Warren used her minority status to get her jobs..."

[Extraneus]

Warren defends personal history, tells Brown that family is off-limits

Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren pushed back Thursday against nonstop questions about her claims to be part Native America by saying family member are off limits -- but not before another round or clarifying her personal history.

Warren suggested incumbent GOP Sen. Scott Brown has gone too far in suggesting her parents mislead her into thinking her ancestors were Native Americans.

“What kid asks their grandparents for legal documentation to go along with their family stories?,” Warren asks in a letter to supporters. “Scott Brown even questioned the honesty of my parents. They are not fair game. … Keep fighting the smears.”

[Captain Hate]

Scottie Centerfold is the luckiest POS in the world.

[Sara]

Romney now up in Ohio

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows Mitt Romney with 46% of the vote to President Obama’s 45%. …

Romney has inched ahead of Obama in Ohio, taking the lead in the key battleground state after the president has led there for several months. This also marks a continuing shift in the critical Core Four states – Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia – with the Republican now leading in all four for the first time in Rasmussen Reports polling this year.

[Extraneus]

I could be wrong but I'm guessing that I've been in management longer than most people here, and I can just about guarantee that there was never a discussion between Warren and HLS or any other school about her Indian claims. This stuff just can't come up in an interview, or even a post-employment discussion. It's a major no-no to talk about anything related to such things, and surely lawyers would be careful not to ever touch the subject.

The only way a respectable organization can classify an employee as a minority is if the employee self-identified as such. And nobody in such an organization would dream of challenging a self-identification. There's no upside to it. The organization benefits from having the minority on their staff, and everybody involved knows it.

Warren self-identified. She checked the box, either on her application or in a post-employment document, and once the box is checked, it's almost impossible to imagine how it could have been unchecked unless she were to subsequently go through some trouble to uncheck it herself.

[Sara]

And in more poll news:

Mitt Romney is tied with President Obama in three key battleground states that Obama flipped from red to blue four years ago, according to new NBC News/Marist polls released early Thursday.

The states – Colorado, Iowa and Nevada – are relatively small, but each is an important and symbolic bellwether. In each state, voters overwhelmingly say the economy will be the most important issue in this year’s election, but Obama either trails Romney on this issue or, at best, ties him. …

Obama holds only a one-point lead in Colorado, 46 percent to 45 percent, with 8 percent undecided. That is well within the poll’s margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points. Obama defeated Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the state by nearly 9 points in 2008.
The two candidates run even in [Iowa}, tied at 44 percent apiece. Two percent support another candidate, and 10 percent of voters are undecided. Each candidate holds between 80 percent and 85 percent of the vote among their respective party, while Obama leads Romney among independents by just 4 percentage points, within the margin of error.
Obama won Nevada by double-digits in 2008, but today he leads Romney by just 2 points in the Silver State, 48 percent to 46 percent, the poll shows. Six percent of voters prefer another candidate or are undecided.

[Sara]

I could be wrong but I'm guessing that I've been in management longer than most people here, and I can just about guarantee that there was never a discussion between Warren and HLS or any other school about her Indian claims. This stuff just can't come up in an interview, or even a post-employment discussion. It's a major no-no to talk about anything related to such things, and surely lawyers would be careful not to ever touch the subject.

Ext: You make a good point.

I know that in newspaper advertising, there was a major crackdown on what we could say in employment ads. There could be nothing, absolutely zero, zilch, of any wording that even implied age, gender, race, or ethnicity (except of course the requirement of bilingual talents). We were even restricted to certain wording in rental ads for fear of being accused of some kind of red lining by implication. This rule was relaxed slightly to accommodate senior facilities of 55 and older, but even then we had certain boilerplate that had been approved by legal that had to be included.

[Jane]

Rocco,

You need to put that on a billboard.

[daddy]

"Warren defends personal history, tells Brown that family is off-limits"

Why the hell is that off limits if Lizzy and her family are so damn proud of their Indian ancestry?

If any of us had put on official pieces of paper that we were Irish or Indian or Jewish or Polish or Mormon or whatever the hell we are these last 20 years, why now is that offensive to be asked about it?

1985 "I'm Indian
1986 "I'm Indian
1987 "I'm Indian
1988 "I'm Indian
1987 "I'm Indian
1988 "I'm Indian
1990 "I'm Indian
1991 "I'm Indian
1992 "I'm Indian
1993 "I'm Indian
1994 "I'm Indian
1995 "I'm Indian
1996 "I'm Indian
1997 "I'm Indian
1998 "I'm Indian
1999 "I'm Indian
2000 "I'm Indian
2001 "I'm Indian
2002 "I'm Indian
2003 "I'm Indian
2004 "I'm Indian
2005 "I'm Indian
2006 "I'm Indian...

It is offensive of you people to ask me about my Indian heritage.

Dog walk time.

[Rocco]

Thanks all, in my haste to post it, I forgot to resize...

[Rick Ballard]

I dunno about billboards but that would sure make a great poster.

Nice work, Rocco.

[Jane]

Today's FWDAJ podcast, where Dick advises Daddy on local politics.

[Rocco]

Thanks Rick...she really is a boob!

[Extraneus]

Volokh: Asian-Americans, Affirmative Action, and Fisher v. Texas

[Rocco]

Her family's fair game since she brought them into the fray.

Elizabeth Warren shares family business

Asked recently about tax laws that hurt small businesses, Warren told The Atlantic that her daughter runs a “small business” that has struggled to pay legal fees to negotiate government red tape.

[Dave (in MA)]

So Brown somewhat magnanimously puts out a suggestion as to how Lizzie might not have been lying, and he's "hammering her family"?

[Beasts of England]

'--It's no skin off my back to put down that I've got some Indian in me--

The PC police have declared that particualr metaphor hate speech in the context of Injuns.'

Posted by: Ignatz | May 31, 2012 at 02:01 PM

My high cheekbones are offended, that's for sure...

[Rocco]

And didn't Lieawatha criticize Brown for keeping his daughter on Obama's health care plan?

http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-02/politics/31533998_1_health-care-law-senator-scott-brown-family-insurance-plans

[Rocco]

In an address to the nurses, Ms. Warren talked about the struggles of growing up in a working class family and said those experiences molded her views.

Again, she invokes her family...Fair Game!

http://www.telegram.com/article/20120512/NEWS/105129948/1052/newsrewind

[Rocco]

Massachusetts senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is continuing to introduce herself to the voters of the state, releasing a new ad that both tells the tale of her family history as well as pulls together the threads of the current debate over the economy, taxes and education.

Warren Continues Introducing Herself In “Kids Like Me” [VIDEO]

[Porchlight]

Extraneus is right. None of this was ever mentioned out loud. Penn and HLS saw the directory info, Warren knew they saw the directory info, and nothing else needed to be said.

Remember, other white people were probably up for these jobs. With AA there is always an implicit threat of litigation if the minority candidate is passed over for a white candidate. This was absolutely ridiculous in the case of Warren, but nevertheless the threat existed, and HR administrators are the most cowardly people on earth.

For multiple reasons everyone wanted that box checked. And so it was checked.

[Clarice]

Has Dick been right about anything?

[hit and run]

Q: What's the difference between Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama?

A: One of them has high bones on her cheeks, while the other one gets cheeky when high.

[hit and run]

Clarice:
Has Dick been right about anything?

He hired Jane.

But since then...

[Dave (in MA)]

Obama's prominent cheekbones are on his wife.
And they're in the back.

[daddy]

Jane,

I loved part 1! Fine job from Dick answering my question. His response made a great amount of sense to me and was much appreciated. Listening to my name over the radio I felt like Steve Martin in "The Jerk": "I'm in the phone book!, I'm in the phone book!"

It really does sound like you 2 had fun today. Great bit on you asking Dick where he heard about the Bishops suing Obama and pointing out that it came entirely from alternative media, except for a measly 19 seconds worth from some drive-by MSM comment. That point flowed beautifully from your earlier bit on the use of facebook/twitter by candidates, and I think your disagreement as to the importance of the new media forms, as opposed to Dicks somewhat pooh-poohing that notion, was spot on.

Also I really get a kick out of listening to Dick's accent, especially "I sar" for "I saw".

I'll get to part 2 and "Swatting" later. Thanks for posting that.

[daddy]

"And didn't Lieawatha criticize Brown for keeping his daughter on Obama's health care plan?"

Damn straight Rocco,

Great point.

[narciso]

Part of what makes yesterday's idiocy so pungent;

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/05/30/smersh-and-memory/

[Gus]

Daddy, LIBTARDS like Sacashyte Churchill Warren, do not mean FAMILY is off limits, they mean THEIR family is off limits, to rebuttal. Libs are not honest.

[Cheap New Era Hats]

ZBY020120601 Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
http://www.cheaphatwholesale.com

[Neo]

“In the 1930s, when my parents got married, these were hard issues,’’ Warren said. “My father’s family so objected to my mother’s Native American heritage that my mother told me they had to elope.

I swear that this is the longest train wreck I can remember. I'm running out of popcorn.

[gorpmonger]

Dd

[justin bieber shoes]

I find it hard to believe the only alternative for survival is to chase down a bear or cat with dogs in order to supply your family with food.