Do you remember all the race clap-trap during the primaries?  Well, it ain’t over yet.

Barack Obama stands accused of introducing race into this election.

Why, before Obama quipped that the McCain campaign had nothing to offer but fear of “the other” – and then implied that he was the other because he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills” – I bet no one had given race a thought. Certainly not Billy Shaheen, the former co-chairman of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign, who suggested that Republicans would ask whether Obama had ever sold drugs.

But McCain and the Group cannot play that their hands are clean.

A newspaper has asked John McCain’s campaign why a black reporter assigned to cover a rally was singled out by security and told to leave a backstage area.

Stephen Price, a reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat, was among four Florida capital press corps reporters behind the scenes at a Panama City rally Friday when a Secret Service agent approached and asked if he were with the national media traveling with McCain. Price said no, and the agent told him he had to leave. Price said he then pointed out that there were other state reporters in the same area, but was still told to leave. The other reporters were white.

Now is not this all a bit silly?