Poor Sam Brownback. He fell into the quagmire of political expediency. It's the good-old race card. It's as though the Republican senator from Kansas was playing poker, got bluffed and dropped out. He was snookered. Almost no one noticed, except those who pulled the bluff.

At the core is the Washington game. There are three choices: right, wrong and politically expedient. Maybe that's why so many people are fed up with politics as usual.

It's what bothers me about politics – and the Republican Party in particular. It appears Sam is the latest loser.

But if you think about it, the Democrat Party doesn't play by the same rules; they don't have the "burden" of such choices. For Democrats, there's only one consideration – politically expediency.

It makes the game easy, for them.

Pick any Democrat and their choice of what to do in any particular situation is to choose what works for them politically. They don't bother with right or wrong in terms of intrinsic ethical or moral questions. For them, it's simply a matter of political expediency.

Read that: Whichever choice gets them the most votes or the most money is their version of "right."

While international headlines are filled with the probability of war in Iraq, the tensions in Israel, the threats of Islamic terrorism and North Korea skating on the thin ice of nuclear war, there's something else going on in the United States that's beneath the radar.

Domestic news focuses on economic issues. States and the feds are looking at historic deficits, growing unemployment and the challenge to cut spending or raise taxes.

With all that, it's easy to miss an issue that's not going away – reparations for black slavery. It's been on the back burner since the Civil War. There've been many proposals for addressing it but no major effort to do it.

For the last 14 years, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has tried to get support for a national study of reparations. Star-clout moved into the arena when high-profile activists and lawyers announced plans for a lawsuit. With such names as lawyers Johnny Cochran and Alexander Pires Jr. and Harvard law professor Charles H. Ogletree you can't avoid plenty of news coverage. Bill Clinton got headlines when he called for congressional apologies to blacks, saying that would end racism.

Many people didn't take it seriously. That was dangerous.

The ultimate political race card was dealt Trent Lott. Agree or disagree, he said what he said, and was dragged across hot coals by Democrats and Republicans alike. Motivations to be rid of him varied but the overriding perception was racism.

Despite a record of similar transgressions by Democrats, the only apparent guilty party is the Republican Party and everyone in it – and, as a result, Sen. Sam Brownback caved to expediency.

Fearsomely worried every Republican will be tainted by accusations of racism, Brownback wants a congressional committee on race to consider reparations, an apology, and a black history museum in Washington.

The museum or an apology won't cut it. The ultimate goal is reparations. Read that: Money. Lots of it and more. Take your pick: business and academic incentives, scholarships, tax breaks, special breaks, land and cash. Even if the idea were approved, how to decide who would get what would be endless. End of racism? Hardly.

What must really be addressed is the value of what this country has already done to level the playing field. It's a slap in the face of those who supported the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act to allege that nothing has been done to rectify a moral wrong.

It's also an insult to blacks who've struggled to raise their economic and educational well being to say they need the government to "give" them something for nothing.

That's not possible. Everything has a price. Minorities pay the price of our demeaning welfare system and affirmative action which was touted to "help" them but which made them 20th century slaves, beholden to the government "massa."

They may not see themselves as slaves, but they are. As long as anyone, of any color, depends on government to provide a roof, food, education, medical care, jobs and money – like it or not – they are slaves.

The sad part is that they allow it.

I doubt Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned that future for his people. It's sad so many don't recognize what's happening. Money won't solve it, nor will the same old politics.