NOW THAT'S INTERESTING

Hostage situation involving American troops abroad? That's right: You better call Jesse:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson will contact religious leaders in Iraq to seek the release of Thomas Hamill, the American civilian truck driver abducted in Iraq, Hamill's wife said today.

Kellie Hamill, who has been pleading in the media for her husband's release, said Jackson made the offer last week and she asked him to intervene.

"We talked with him several days ago," she said in a telephone interview from the couple's home in Macon.

U.S. Sen. Trent Lott said Friday at a news conference in Tupelo he had talked with Jackson and helped the longtime civil rights advocate contact the Hamill family.

Lott said one step Jackson wanted to take was to write a letter to Al-Jazeera, the Arabic language television network, and encourage Hamill's release.

There was no immediate response to messages seeking comment from Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH coalition in Chicago on Saturday, and it was unclear if he had already sent the letter or taken other steps.

(link via Atrios)

Wait, Trent Lott? Before we make too big a deal of the fact that Trent Lott is making common cause with a man who was standing with the guy who ended the policies so adored by Lott's late ideological brother Strom when he got shot, (that was a mighty handful of prepositional phrases there, hope you made it, fyi "when he got shot" modifies "guy"), note that the hostage's home-state is Mississippi, so this is run-of-the-mill constituency service on Trent's part. In the meantime, Lott gets some incidental good press.

Remember, conservatives ran Lott out of his Majority Leadership position because they thought he was a shitty leader, not because he was racist. Rather, his unfortunate quip at Strom's bday party gave them an opening to do what they had wanted to do anyway. If Senate Republicans were actually concerned about his racism, he wouldn't still be chairman of the Rules Committee.

I dunno, but the mention of Trent Lott in the article got me thinking about the blog response to Strom-Lott-gate back in late '02. At the time, there was a broad left-right consensus that Lott was in deep shit and needed to be punished for his remarks, whether it meant being stripped of his Majority Leader status, or removed from the Senate altogether. But while both sides of the partisan spectrum kept the heat on Lott, it was largely the left half (particularly Josh Marshall and Atrios) who pushed the story of the racism advocated by Thurmond (and by extension, Lott), including the "blog-excavation" of the 1948 Dixiecrat party platform. While there are sure to have been exceptions, the right was much more concerned at the time with political implications (Lott's ineffectiveness as a leader going back through the years, etc). Again, broad brush, but it's what I observed.

Interesting fact about Trent Lott: He voted to convict President Clinton in 1999, but voted against impeaching Richard Nixon in 1974, when he was a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Explain.

Anyway, TFM sends its kudos to Trent Lott for communicating with Jackson on this matter. Sure, since he's no longer a standard-bearer for the Republicans, Lott has less to lose party-wise by corresponding with a man long-reviled by the right wing. As Chris Rock once joked about Jesse's efforts to win the release of US hostages in Serbia: "He said 'Listen, if you really want Americans to hate you, you should give the hostages to me!' "

(note: TFM thinks very highly of Jesse Jackson)

And speaking of Chris Rock, don't miss his new HBO special "Never Scared", tonight at 10. Salon has a good piece on it, btw.