Rattled terrorists call Obama a ‘house Negro’ and Muslim sellout

COMPILED FROM STAFF REPORTS

Here’s a progress report on the Barack Obama administration this week:

Al-Qaeda talks trash
Barack Obama is “the direct opposite of honorable Black Americans” like Malcolm X, said Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, in a newly released video.

“You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews, although you claim to be Christian,” Zawahiri said in the 11-minute tape.

“Malik al-Shabazz (may Allah have mercy on him) was killed, while you have climbed the rungs of the presidency to take over the leadership of the greatest criminal force in the history of mankind. And in you and in Colin Powell, Rice and your likes, the words of Malcolm X (may Allah have mercy on him) concerning ‘house Negroes’ are confirmed.”

Why go after Obama?
National security experts believe al-Qaeda was surprised that America, “The Great Satan,” would elect a Black president with an Arabic middle name, and that Obama’s election puts doubt in the minds of terrorist recruits that America deserves to be destroyed.

Some experts believe that al-Qaeda has been trying to refocus its messaging to gain a recruiting foothold by sewing political and racial discontent among African-American Muslims, who form the single most numerous group in the U.S. Muslim community.

Holder, Jarrett appointed
Eric Holder, a former No. 2 Justice Department official, has been told that he can become the nation’s first African-American attorney general.

Holder, 57, would take the reins at a department whose reputation has been battered by more than a year of revelations over alleged partisan decision-making under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who resigned in September 2007. Investigations of some of those allegations are still pending. Beyond being a history-making appointment, Holder would be faced with some of the nation’s most divisive legal controversies, including the Bush administration policies on torture, electronic eavesdropping, the extent of presidential power and the imprisonment of terror suspects without charges, trials or the right to challenge their detention.

Holder, who served as deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2000, is a friend of Obama and served as co-chairman of his presidential campaign. In a quarter century of public service, Holder has served as a federal prosecutor, a Superior Court j

udge in the nation’s capital, the first African-American U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia and as the first Black deputy attorney general.

Jarrett a mentor
Valerie Jarrett joins Obama as senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental relations and public liaison. She is a personal friend who has played a key role in his quick political rise from the Illinois Senate to the presidency.

She began her political career in 1987 and initially worked for the city’s first Black mayor, Harold Washington. Between October 1995 and August 2003, she was chairwoman of the Chicago Transit Authority.

Jarrett was the highest-ranking female and African-American on the campaign and supported Obama with her personal clout, raising seven-figure money for his political campaigns at the local, state and, recently, the national level.

Widely traveled
Like Barack, Jarrett has her own unusual biography. Jarrett was born to an African-American family in Shiraz, Iran, where her father, Dr. James Bowman, ran a hospital for children as part of a program that sent American doctors and agricultural experts to developing countries to help jump-start their health and farming efforts. At age 5, the family moved to London for one year, then returned to Chicago in 1963. As a teen, she spent her summers traveling to Ghana, Nigeria and Egypt, among other places.

Her great-grandfather was the first African-American to graduate from M.I.T. Her great-uncle is Washington powerbroker Vernon Jordan. Her mother, Barbara T. Bowman, is an African-American early childhood education expert. Now divorced, Jarrett’s former father-in-law is the late Vernon Jarrett, who was a venerated Black newspaper columnist. Her daughter is a 23-year-old Harvard Law student.

Lieberman escapes punishment
Senate Democrats voted 42-13 to let Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman remain chairman but condemned him for speaking out in support of Republican presidential nominee John McCain. He will be taken off the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where he led a subcommittee responsible for global warming regulation.

Obama had spoken up on Lieberman’s behalf to urge Democrats to make sure he remains in the Democratic caucus in the Senate. It was feared that Lieberman might bolt the caucus if he’d been booted as Homeland Security chairman.

‘Move on’
“The Senate Democratic caucus has decided that if President-elect Barack Obama can forgive, so can we,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who helped fashion a compromise resolution that rebuked Lieberman for his statements but let him keep his chairmanship. “If Barack can move on, so can we.”

William Reed/Business Exchange, Herb Jackson/The Record, Greg Gordon, Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor/McClatchy Newspapers all contributed to this report.