How much you wanna bet you won't hear the whole story..

Former Education Secretary and drug czar Bill Bennett is under fire for allegedly racist comments on his morning show. One could barely listen to the morning news or turn on an alphabet news show without hearing the following:

"I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”

Pretty damning, eh? The sad part is, that was but one snippet out of a context that blows the racist angle out of the water.

CALLER: I noticed the national media is -- you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that, you know, the abortions that have happened since Roe V. Wade that loss revenue for the people who have been aborted during the last 30-something years, you know, could fund Social Security as we know it today, and, you know, the media never touches this at all.

BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?

CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.

BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think, does abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.

CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics. Quite a bit are, yes.

BENNETT: All right. Well, I mean, I just don't know. I don't -- I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- one of the arguments, in this book, "Freakonomics" they make is that the decline in crime rate -- you know, they deal with the hypothesis that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up.

CALLER:Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.

BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either. I don't think it is, either. Because first of all, I think there's just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do. But your crime rate would go down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well...

BENNETT: But these far-out, these far-reaching, you know, extensive extrapolations, are, I think, tricky.

(END VIDEO CLIP))(emphases added)

So it would appear that Mr. Bennett was admonishing against making broad generalizations against extrapolating the effects of abortion. But of course the opportunistic and bombastic bozos of the left were quick to glom on

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who said last year that the Supreme Court's lone black member was "an embarrassment to the court," is demanding that Bennett "issue an immediate apology not only to African Americans but to the nation.”

Left wing Democrat Ted Kennedy, whose brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, ordered the illegal wiretapping of Martin Luther King, called Bennett a "racist."

And Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, who suggested last year that most blacks hold menial jobs, called Bennett's comments "hateful" and "inflammatory" - and called on him to apologize.

Responding to his critics, Bennett told the Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes":

"I'll not take instruction from Teddy Kennedy. A young woman likely drowned because of his negligence . . . . He should make no judgments at all about other people. He shouldn't be in the Senate."

Neither Kennedy nor Dean nor Reid has ever condemned Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, who rose to the rank of Grand Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan based on his ability to recruit new members.

In an autobiography released earlier this year, Byrd said the Klan was a "fraternal group" made up of "upstanding' people" - a characterization which drew no protest from Reid, Kennedy and Dean.

Just goes to show you a leftist axiom in action: Never miss an opportunity, no matter how spurious, to call a kettle black.