By GottaLaff
In his response to Barack Obama tonight, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal spoke glowingly of the late Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee.
It was a curious, even provocative choice: Lee, a colorful 300-lb. Chinese-American lawman was repeatedly accused of racially profiling blacks in the predominantly white parish he dominated prior to his death in Oct. 2007.
Jindal:During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. [...] He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. [...] And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.
In the wake of Katrina, Lee grabbed national headlines by suggesting his deputies could randomly stop blacks to combat a rise in drug crimes caused by the displacement of low-income New Orleans residents.
He never apologized for that. Surprised? Me neither. Want a couple of more quotes from the late Sheriff Lee? You do? I'm happy to oblige. Here he is, giving orders to his force:
[S]top “young blacks in rinky-dink cars” driving in white neighborhoods.
And the ever-popular:
"We know the crime is in the black community. Why should I waste time in the white community?"
Seems Ba-ba-ba-Bobby is proud of pallin' around with racial profilers.
UPDATE: Keith Olbermann just blew a hole in Jindal's story. Apparently, he wasn't even in the same town as Lee at the time.
*After watching Jindal's rebuttal to President Obama's speech last night, Rachel Maddow was dumbstruck, literally. She was supposed to respond to him, and all she could muster up were the syllables, "ba-ba-ba-ba."
H/t: Babzter
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