A red green

This weekend's resignation of President Obama's "green jobs" czar and the week of partisan frothing that prompted it beg an obvious question: Is anyone really surprised that Mr. Obama would choose to surround himself with Marxist cronies like Van Jones?

After all, during last year's campaign, it was widely reported that Mr. Obama's pastor and spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was an America-bashing race baiter; that Mr. Obama associated with leftist radical and former terrorist William Ayers; and that he had a deep alliance with the shakedown artists of ACORN. The country's moderate voters decided they didn't particularly care (or maybe they were so star-struck they didn't even notice).

Mr. Jones was a perfect fit for a position that voters and Congress have no say on, a position that requires its occupant to believe the heavy hand of government can steer the economy toward a desired outcome and pick market winners and losers -- a position that requires a true believer in the dishonest politics of climate change.

In case you missed the reports this weekend, Mr. Jones hasn't been too careful in shaping a radical's resume. That he called Republicans an expletive earlier this year was his least troublesome misstep.

The former "community organizer" backed the idea that the U.S. government was involved in carrying out the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He tried to make race an issue in the Columbine High School slaughter by saying that blacks don't carry out mass shootings on campus (Mr. Jones is black). He supported a convicted cop killer. He has called himself a communist and admitted his disdain for capitalism.

And in a brazenly open 2008 interview with an ultraliberal Los Angeles radio station, he laid bare the purpose of the "green" revolution. According to Investor's Business Daily, Mr. Jones said: "The green economy will start off as a small subset" of a "complete revolution" away from "gray capitalism" and toward "redistribution of all the wealth. And we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society."

It's not about ending our "dependence on foreign oil." It's not about saving the planet from environmental catastrophe. It's about seizing complete control of the economy.

President Obama still seems to have gaping holes in his administration's vetting process for appointees.Clearly, Mr. Obama needs someone with enough common sense to point out that a background like that of Mr. Jones is political kryptonite.

Many on the far left are outraged that Mr. Jones was forced out of his position. These are the same people who routinely ridicule anyone on the right remotely associated with conspiracies and fringe causes. Just look at the condescending coverage of "Tea Party" rallies around the country. But having a communist as policy "czar"? Pundit Alan Colmes dismissed the hubbub and called Mr. Jones "a mainstream liberal."

Hmmm.