Peter, You've got a problem... You see if Powell was ambitious (as you wondered the nature of) you might have remembered that CLINTON OFFERED HIM THE SAME DAMN JOB, AND HE TURNED THAT BAG OF PUS DOWN.

And that little fact blows Bobert out the door... Powell had a wide open opportunity to work on the Ol' Liberal Plantation where the rest of the "good" black folks be, and he politely turned them down. Whose Massa is angry now, don'cha know...

Sooo maybe it wasn't ambition, OOOOH GOD FORBID, maybe it was principle. I know it's hard for the moonstruck to conceive that someone of rational mentality could possibly disagree with their lunar calendar, and that any deviation from the "Party Line" must be due to nefarious machinations, or secret ambitions, but I find it hard to appeal to the senses of someone whose sole defense of Belafonte now consists of the statement "Well, It wasn't a deliberate lie..." and then wonders how someone who had the decency to turn down Clinton, could end up with Bush....

And Bobert, when you say "meanspirited attacks on a man that has given more than all the crybabies combined" is it possible that you actually meant Belafonte? Instead of Powell? Have you truely lost any sense of proportion?

As for Thurgood Marshall, I once asked Juan Williams, who had just done a book on Marshall, to please name even one major decision that Marshall authored. He could think of none. When you compare his writings with say, Scalia, he becomes almost inarticulate; maybe the snake comment was the best he could do...