I'm really glad that our nation is taking the time to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr for his contributions toward promoting justice and equality. It is especially fitting that these tributes are occurrring coincident with the inauguration of our first African-American president. I'm sure that he will be looking down from heaven to see the fulfillment of one of his dreams.

Busy week in DC: MLK birthday, inauguration, and March for Life...ought to keep the transit systems hopping!

One way to honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King would be to rename the building that bears the name of the person who tapped his phone and who is the antithesis of what the United States should stand for.

Which building is named after Robert Kennedy who authorized the wiretap after learning of King's close advisor H Levison who was up to his neck in Communist Party activities for two decades?? This authorization occurred exactly one year after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

No sir. I meant J. Edgar Hoover. The efforts to change the name of that building is a bipartisan effort to recognize the way that Hoover abused his authority. Unfortunately, our nation did not learn the lessons from that era, and we have had to experience similar abuse during the past 8 years under Gonzalez, Cheney, and Bush. The following paragraphs merely scratch the surface in listing some of the abuses that Hoover was responsible for:

1. Six years ago, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, led a futile charge to expunge Hoover’s name on grounds Hoover “clearly abused his role as director of the FBI”. Burton said, “Symbolism matters in the United States, and it is wrong to honor a man who frequently manipulated the law to achieve his personal goals.” He described Hoover as “a man who threw everything out the window, including the lives of innocent men, in order to get what he wanted.”

2. Among Hoover’s foul deeds were manufacturing lies about people that were leaked to the press, the persecution of ordinary citizens for their political beliefs, the infiltration of legitimate organizations such as the ACLU, routine criminal breaking-and-entering(black bag) jobs without court warrants, attempts to get the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide, bugging of the hotel rooms of King, Eleanor Roosevelt, and others to obtain prurient information, and his aggressive attempts to derail the civil rights movement, all documented in Richard Hack’s comprehensive “Puppetmaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgard Hoover”(New Millennium Press).

3. Hoover despised King to the point of madness. Along with a tape recording made from bugging his hotel room, Hoover sent King a letter that called King a “dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile” and warned, “King, like all frauds, your end is approaching.” The letter repeated the phrase “you are done” over and over and urged King to commit suicide: “There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.” Hoover even sent a copy of a hotel room tape recording to King’s office, where it was read by his wife.

I understand and am sympathetic. I never did grasp why Hoover's name was attached to the building.

My point is that Hoover did not function in a socio-political vacuum. Neither did George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, the Democratic Party, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, or Lyndon Johnson who all added to the evil of racial injsutice. We can wash our society and history of the names and places of all who have administered injustice as some form of absolution of the nation. Hoover was one strand of a racist system. Wiping out his name in some ways is a rewriting of history in which the injustices inflicted by the federal government, by the society, and by the President and attorney general he served, are placed on the shoulders of one dead man whose name is then obliterated.

I don't think the G Washington monument honors slavery. It just needs to convey the full story. We are as well served remembering the full (and current) story of the FBI, Hoover, the presidents for whom he worked, the Congress who paid him, and the society systemically riddled with racism; as we are by making our story a bit more tidy.

There are monuments throughout the country honoring Confederate generals (Lee, Jackson, etc). In my opinion, those monuments should remain. However, I have a real problem with monuments honoring General Nathan Bedford Forrest who slaughtered hundreds of blacks at Fort Pillow and the in the post war years was instrumental in the formation of the KKK. To me, J. Edgar Hoover is the 20th century moral equivalent of Forrest, and just as the German people have managed to face the shame that Hitler brought to their country, it is time that we Americans confront the shame and abuses that Hoover perpetrated.

The life of Martin Luther King is worth emulating. And to celebrate his birthday - is a great feat to start remembering. By the way, care to share fabulous food hampers to people who are in need. This is another way to celebrate which involves people whom he loves - the needy.