***11/17 800am EST updated with video link and more***

Via Link Mecca, Hillary gets down with the racial demagogues.

It’s her reverse-Sister Souljah moment.

Next up: A duet with Kanye West?

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The Political Teen has video.

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Reacting to Hillary’s comparison of House GOP leaders to slave plantation owners, political observer Larry Sabato said: ” “At least she didn’t mention Hitler.”

I wouldn’t put it past her.

The New York Times:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking yesterday at a ceremony honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., compared the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to a plantation where dissent is not tolerated.

Her comments, made before a predominantly black audience at the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, drew a harsh response from national Republicans, but black leaders came to her defense.

At the ceremony, Mrs. Clinton, the junior Democratic senator from New York, said that Democrats were largely responsible for much of the nation’s progress in areas like civil rights and women’s rights.

But she suggested that things had changed in recent years with the Republicans in control of the White House and Congress, according to a transcript of her remarks.

Mrs. Clinton added that the House has been “run like a plantation” under Republicans. “And you know what I am talking about,” she said. “It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary point of view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument.”

Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, accused Mrs. Clinton of using divisive and racially tinged language to score partisan points. “On a day when Americans are focused on honoring Martin Luther King, it is disappointing that Senator Clinton is focused on advancing her own agenda,” she said.

But Mrs. Clinton’s aides defended the comments, as did black Democratic leaders.

“As she said, under Republican rule the House leadership has stifled real and substantive debate, preventing Democrats from offering amendments and engaging in real discussion,” said Philippe Reines, Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman.

Standing by Hillary’s side at the church? Al Sharpton.

The NY Daily News reports:

Although several Democrats did not return calls seeking comment, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-Queens) said “the only card anybody was playing with today was the joker, because as she rightly stated, that’s who’s in charge of the people’s House and that’s who’s stifling the progress of the last century, progress that led to civil rights.”

As for Sharpton, he jokingly suggested that Clinton, who many believe is eying a run for President in 2008, had stolen his material.

“Any time you have a situation where, because of seniority and cloakroom politics, the bosses make the decision – that’s tantamount to plantation,” Sharpton told reporters.

“I absolutely defend her saying it because I said it all through the ’04 elections,” added Sharpton, referring to his failed presidential run that year.

Clinton made the plantation remark in response to a question about why national Democrats in general seem so “spineless” on major issues – a problem she blamed on the GOP’s hold on the White House and both branches of Congress since 2000.

“So here’s what I am suggesting,” said Clinton in a not-so-veiled plug for her future. “If you don’t like the way things are going now, the Democrats have to be given a chance to get into power.”

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Hillary’s new campaign motto: I’ll be your second black president.

Update: Jim Hoft notes that the audience demanded that Tawana Brawley lawyer Alton Maddox’s law license be reinstated and that a dozen convicts described as “political prisoners” be released (check out the video link).