I usually am skeptical of claims that someone is improperly injecting race into a political issue. But I find Senator Durbin’s comments about Republican obstructionism (and it is obstructionism) on the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be attorney general to be an improper injection of race into a purely political issue:

“And so, Loretta Lynch, the first African American woman nominated to be attorney general, is asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar,” Durbin said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. “That is unfair. It’s unjust. It is beneath the decorum and dignity of the United States Senate. This woman deserves fairness.”

Durbin, of course, was comparing Lynch to Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon who in 1955 refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger.