Van Jones, Rodney King Rioter

Apparently Van Jones got his radical left start thanks to drunk motorist Rodney King, whose refusal to cooperate with the LAPD earned him a whoopin'. The acquittal of King set off several days of riots in Los Angeles, and demostrations and riots elsewhere:

The political radicalization of Van Jones, President Obama's "green jobs" adviser, dates back to 1992, when he and hundreds of others took their anger to the streets of San Francisco in the infamous Rodney King protests.

Jones, a Yale Law School student who was working in the Bay Area as an intern, was part of a mob that stormed the city following the acquittal in Los Angeles of four white police officers who had been charged with beating King, who is black, after a car chase.

In an essay he wrote soon after the rioting and republished in The Huffington Post in May 2007, Jones said he "just marched around and chanted slogans" as other protesters set trash cans afire, smashed car windows and threw rocks at passing motorists. But he clearly reveled in the protest.

"Our moment had finally come! We were righteous, fired up, weren't takin' no more!" Jones wrote. "We were one thousand strong on Market Street, with the Bay Bridge shut down in rush hour traffic and the grounds around the state building swarming with angry mobs! Our rallying cry was for justice; our demand was that the System be changed!"

Jones continued, "Yes, the Great Revolutionary Moment had at long last come. And the time, clearly, was ours! So we stole stuff. Y'know, stole stuff. Radios, tennis shoes. Well, not everybody, of course."

I'm not buying the story that all he did was march around and chant slogans. My guess is there were some new Nikes adorning his feet after that event.

Interestingly, it was during this same period that he decided the answer to the world's problems was communism. Of course, the Berlin Wall had fallen in 1989, the Soviet Union broke up into a bunch of republics, and communism was being banished from the face of the earth except for a few holdouts. As the walls were coming down and people were running to freedom, Jones was running back in. Not very bright.

Anyone who thinks his radicalism is in the past clearly hasn't been paying attention. As late as three years ago he was endorsing a Maoist anti-police rally, and if you could get an honest answer out of him I'm sure he still thinks communism is the only way to go.

He is a shameful blot on the White House and needs to get out of there.