I forgot. Last week's edition of The Black Slate was entitled "Dropping the Butter Knives." A weird title, but as can probably be evinced here titles aren't my strong suit. I paraphrased Sean Connery in The Untouchables. He says something like "Just like a mick, always bringing a knife to a gun fight." For the last 30 years the Democratic Party has been afraid of embracing black people, afraid of embracing the sixties, afraid of truly fighting the culture wars on many fronts. There are still plenty of problems with the DNC, but at least based on what I saw of the convention, there is a willingness to fight the GOP as opposed to embracing a DLC-sponsored GOP-lite strategy. There is a long way to go before the DNC finally acts like an opposition party is SUPPOSED to act--Kerry is loathe to say that he wouldn't have gone to war against Iraq given the lack of WMD, and loathe to even mention "urban" and "agenda" in the same sentence. But this is a beginning. At some point if your opponent has a 9-mm, you've got to drop the f*cking butter knife.