Ruben Navarrette sticks up for Newt's comments about getting teenagers, especially poor ones, to work:

Gingrich is supposedly at war with the poor for saying this: "Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works, so they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday..."

...Gingrich pointed out that, for instance, among African-American teenagers, the unemployment rate is a staggering 43%.

Now, you can spin a statistic like that one of two ways. You can say these unemployed black teenagers are helpless victims and the system is working against them. Or you can say that many of these teenagers are unemployable because no one ever taught them the skills necessary to hold down a job. Gingrich thinks government should have a hand in creating a "pathway to work" so "people get in the work habit and learn the skills to be successful."

Bravo for Newt.

What this has to do with his being president, I'm not sure. But right is right.