Juan Williams and I don't see eye to eye on more than a few things, but he's not a raving leftist. What follows is the text of his commentary during the Free Speech segment on the CBS Evening News last week. It's here because I didn't want to forget what he said...

Here is some news that should be at the top of the front page everyday: 70 percent of black children are born to unmarried women.

Here's some more real news for the front page: As many as half of black children drop out of high school.

This is the scandal of modern American life.

It is bad enough that a quarter of white children and half of Hispanic children are born out of wedlock. But when 70 percent of any group of children don't have a mom and dad it is a sure fire prescription for family breakdown, educational failure, poverty and criminal behavior.

And the problem is compounded by Hip-Hop culture. All the videos feature poisonous images of black people as threatening, violent, over-sexed and dressed like pimps, strippers, gangsters and prisoners - you know, no belt and pants hanging down low. It is bad enough that these images are imprinted on white minds. But it is cruel to send young black people seeking direction the message that this is the most they can hope for in America.

Yet when I wrote this in my new book – "Enough" - I was charged with airing dirty laundry and taking attention away from the power of on-going racism. Well, it is going to be a long wait for the end of racism. That should not stop work on the big issues that threaten all Americans, but especially poor minorities: family breakdown and failing schools.

This is our civil rights struggle. We will be judged if we fail to act now. This is front page news for this generation.

Juan Williams
October 6, 2006
CBS' Free Speech Segment

Juan Williams is a senior correspondent for NPR and a frequent, if not regular, panel member on Special Report with Brit Hume at FOX news. And after THIS bit of commentary, not that bad a guy after all.

Now if only he and others would accept the fact that the responsibility for much of the ills in the black community-- to say nothing of the entire American poverty class --lies at the feet of 40 years beneath the yoke of the American welfare system.