"I have had the honor and the solemn duty to be around many families with similar losses in the last couple of years, and there is something of an unsettling sameness: The feeling of being thrust into a harsh spotlight when you’d rather quietly grieve; being motivated by a sense of mission to fight for the person who is lost, all the while emotionally and physically running on empty; resisting the pull of a world trying desperately to reduce the man or woman you loved into a martyr it can champion or, conversely, a menace it can despise."
Friday, July 31, 2015
NYTimes: New York State Awards 5 Medical Marijuana Licenses
"The companies are Bloomfield Industries Inc., which plans to grow marijuana in Queens and dispense it in Manhattan, Nassau County and two upstate counties; Columbia Care NY, which will grow and operate a dispensary in Monroe County as well as in Manhattan, Suffolk County and Clinton County, on the Canadian border; Empire State Health Solutions, which will grow in Fulton County, northwest of Albany, and have dispensaries in Albany County and Queens, as well as two other locations; Etain, which will grow in Warren County, in the Adirondacks, and dispense in two upstate and two Hudson Valley counties, including Westchester; and PharmaCann, which will grow in Orange County, northwest of New York City, and operate a dispensary in the Bronx, and three upstate counties."
NYTimes: Dylann Roof, Suspect in Charleston Killings, Indicates Desire to Plead Guilty
"CHARLESTON, S.C. — At a brief but emotional hearing in federal court here on Friday, Dylann Roof indicated that he wanted to plead guilty to federal charges related to the killing last month of nine members of a storied African-American church."
Glare of Video Is Shifting Public’s View of Police - The New York Times
"Videos have provided “corroboration of what African-Americans have been saying for years,” said Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown University Law School and a former prosecutor, who called them “the C-Span of the streets.” On Thursday, the family of Samuel DuBose, an unarmed black man who was shot to death by a University of Cincinnati police officer on July 19, said the officer would never have been prosecuted if his actions had not been captured by the body camera the officer was wearing."
Glare of Video Is Shifting Public’s View of Police - The New York Times
Glare of Video Is Shifting Public’s View of Police - The New York Times
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Monday, July 27, 2015
Sanders, Clinton, and the Democratic Party should thank #BlackLivesMatter
"As Jamelle Bouie rightly put it, what happened in Phoenix was "more than a food fight." It brought to light a tension—really, an open wound—that already existed within the progressive movement, even if some of us couldn't or wouldn't see it until last weekend. The contentious interactions between Sanders and those who demanded he address racial injustice separately and independent from economic injustice only brought that wound to light, those interactions did not create it. Furthermore, Phoenix was absolutely necessary in order to begin to repair the wound, to heal it in a way that strengthens the progressive movement’s ability to lead this country toward substantial progress on both of these vitally important issues. What connects them, of course, is the fundamental principle of progressive politics: the fight against injustice of every kind, the fight to build a more just society."
Texas County’s Racial Past Is Seen as Prelude to Sandra Bland’s Death - The New York Times
"PRAIRIE VIEW, Tex. — When Sandra Bland enrolled in 2005 at Prairie View A&M University, the historically black institution founded here almost 140 years ago, its students were still waging a civil rights war that had ended elsewhere decades before: a legal battle, against white Waller County officials, for the right to vote in the place they lived.
Texas County’s Racial Past Is Seen as Prelude to Sandra Bland’s Death - The New York Times
It took years and a federal court order, but the students won. When Ms. Bland returned here the morning of July 9, driving 16 hours from Chicago to interview for a job at her alma mater, the Justice Department had abandoned its court-ordered oversight of students’ voter registration, the campus had its own polling place, and the county had, in one key respect, passed a racial milestone.
Four days later, Ms. Bland was dead in a county jail cell after a routine traffic stop by a state trooper escalated into a physical confrontation not 500 yards from the university’s entrance. And any talk of milestones gave way to questions about whether the county’s checkered history of race relations had set the stage for a tragedy that the authorities acknowledge might never have happened had they followed their own rules."
Texas County’s Racial Past Is Seen as Prelude to Sandra Bland’s Death - The New York Times
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Trump Builds One Brand and Damages Another - The New York Times
Donald Trump is exactly what the Republican Party deserves.
The Republican Party has nurtured anti-immigrant, xenophobic nastiness for years, but it has tried to do so, at least at the national level, in language that disguised it as a simple issue of law and order.
Trump has blown all that to bits.
Trump Builds One Brand and Damages Another - The New York Times
Sandra and Kindra: Suicides or Something Sinister? - The New York Times
“A statement from the Waller County Sheriff’s Office said that the cause of Ms. Bland’s death appeared to be self-inflicted asphyxiation. An autopsy on Tuesday classified her death as suicide by hanging, according to The Chicago Tribune.”
Indeed, the Waller County district attorney, Elton Mathis, told a Houston station last week: “I will admit it is strange someone who had everything going for her would have taken her own life.”
Friday, July 24, 2015
Lafayette Theater Shooter Fan of David Duke, Neo-Nazis, and Antigovernment Conspiracies — Hatewatch Blog — Medium
“Do not mistake yourselves for one minute, the enemy sees all posted on this website. I do not want to discourage the last hope for the best, but you must realize the power of the lone wolf, is the power that come forth in ALL situations,” Houser wrote on aforum dedicated to the New York chapter of Golden Dawn, Greece’s far-right neo-Nazi political party. “Look within yourselves.”
That comment was one of dozens of messages that Houser, 59, left on several Internet message boards, all of which provide a picture of a politically disaffected, angry man who viewed the United States as a “financially failing filth farm,” expressed interest in white power groups, anti-Semitic ideas, the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church, as well as a number of conspiracy theories often espoused by the antigovernment right."
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Monday, July 20, 2015
Why the deaths of Latinos at the hands of police haven't drawn as much attention - LA Times
"Kris Ramirez never saw police as a threat. Growing up, his body didn't tense with us-versus-them dread when police cruisers drove through his Southeast Los Angeles neighborhood.
"If someone is wearing a uniform," Ramirez said, "you show respect."
Then last year, four days before Halloween, a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy shot and killed his brother, Oscar Jr., along railroad tracks near Paramount High School. Deputies said the 28-year-old didn't comply with orders and moved his arm in "a threatening manner." Ramirez was unarmed.
The Ramirez family marched in front of the Paramount sheriff's station and held vigils, but they struggled to find wider support for their cause. As the family grieved, the national Black Lives Matter movement picked up energy, bolstered locally by the fatal shooting of Ezell Ford, a mentally disabled black man, by LAPD officers.
Watching the protests over Ford's killing, Kris Ramirez felt frustrated: "Why can't we get that same type of coverage or help?"
The muted reaction to the deaths of Latinos in confrontations with police tells a larger story: Black Lives Matter is starkly different from Brown Lives Matter. In contrast to the fatal shootings of African Americans such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Walter Scott in South Carolina, deaths of Latinos at the hands of law enforcement haven't drawn nearly as much attention.
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the release of a video showing Gardena police officers shooting two men, killing Ricardo Diaz Zeferino, an unarmed Latino. The video has been viewed millions of times on YouTube. It generated national media coverage, but very little protest."
Sunday, July 19, 2015
These Native American Tribes Legalized Weed, But That Didn't Stop Them From Getting Raided By The Feds
"U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of California
In the foggy early morning hours of Wednesday, July 8, special agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Drug Enforcement Administration and state and local law enforcement descended on the Pit River Tribe’s XL Ranch and the Alturas Indian Rancheria in northeastern California, seizing 12,000 marijuana plants and 100 pounds of processed potfrom the two large-scale growing facilities.
The Alturas Indian Rancheria and the XL Ranch are located on opposite sides of the town of Alturas, California. The tribes that operate them, Alturas and Pit River, are separate federally recognized tribes, but are descended from the same 11 bands of Achumawi- and Atsugewi-speaking peoples that called the region home long before the arrival of white settlers.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has not yet filed any charges against the tribes or individuals related to the raid. The office declined to comment on the ongoing investigation."
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Bill Clinton Admits Federal Sentencing Laws ‘Made the Problem Worse’ - The Root
"I signed a bill that made the problem worse. And I want to admit it,” Clinton said at the 106th NAACP National Convention, which concluded Wednesday in Philadelphia. “In that bill, there were longer sentences, and most of these people are in prison under state law, but the federal law set a trend. And that was overdone; we were wrong about that.”
Clinton’s comments came a day after President Barack Obama addressed NAACP delegates. Earlier in the week, Obama commuted the prison sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders, saying that they were not “hardened criminals” and that their long sentences didn’t fit the crimes."
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Mayor in Washington makes disgusting racist remarks about the Obamas, refuses to resign
"The mayor of Airway Heights, Washington—a suburb of Spokane—is refusing calls to resign despite immediate backlash regarding comments he made on Facebook:
The comment in full that was found on Patrick Rushing's Facebook page read: "Gorilla face Michelle, can't disagree with that. The woman is not attractive except to monkey man Barack. Check out them ears. LOL."
I showed Rushing the statement, and he confirmed he had posted it, so I asked him why he would write something like that.
"It's just playful back and forth banter that my friends and I do," said Rushing. "
North Carolina’s Voting Law Goes on Trial - NYTimes.com
"It would have been bad enough if the North Carolina Legislature, in a misguided effort to streamline voting procedures, had passed a law that ended up having discriminatory effects. But what happened was far worse than that.
The state’s Republican lawmakers, in passing H.B. 589 in 2013, actually repealed a series of smart and successful voting-rights measures that were enacted over the last 15 years to expand North Carolinians’ access to the most fundamental of all American rights.
Lawmakers claimed that H.B. 589, which was approved in a sneaky last-minute maneuver that insulated it from any real debate, would reduce fraud and inefficiency in elections. In truth, it is a pile of blatantly discriminatory measures that lawmakers knew would make voting harder, if not impossible, for many lower-income citizens — who are disproportionately black and Latino, and many of whom tend to vote Democratic. The election-law scholar Richard Hasen has called it “the most sweeping anti-voter law in at least decades.”
In a federal trial that started Monday in Winston-Salem, the law’s challengers — including the Justice Department, the N.A.A.C.P., the League of Women Voters and the Advancement Project, a civil rights legal group — argue that the law was specifically intended to discriminate against minority voters, in violation of both the Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act."
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
This is the video Gardena police didn't want you to see - LA Times. The plague of white racism continues.
This is the video Gardena police didn't want you to see - LA Times
"Gardena’s attempts to prevent the public from viewing the shooting met with defeat Tuesday, when a federal judge ordered the release of the recordings.
In unsealing the videos, U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson said the public had an interest in seeing the recordings, especially after the city settled a lawsuit over the shooting for $4.7 million. Wilson rejected last ditch efforts by Gardena attorneys, who argued the city had paid the settlement money in the belief that the videos would remain under. "
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Obama: Criminal Justice System Is 'Skewed By Race And By Wealth'
I disagree with the President that education will correct this problem. I believe it is structural, part of the essence of America. I disagree with the President's belief that America is self correcting.
John H Armwood
Monday, July 13, 2015
Eric Garner Case Is Settled by New York City for $5.9 Million - NYTimes.com
"New York City reached a settlement on Monday with the family of Eric Garner, agreeing to pay $5.9 million to resolve the claim over his killing by the police last July on Staten Island, according to a lawyer representing the family.
The agreement, reached days before the deadline to file suit in the death, appeared to be among the biggest reached so far as part of a strategy by the city comptroller, Scott C. Stringer, to settle major civil rights claims even before a lawsuit is filed."
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Covington & Burling Gets Eric Holder Back After 6-Year Stopover
"After failing to criminally prosecute any of the financial firms responsible for the market collapse in 2008, former Attorney General Eric Holder is returning to Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm known for serving Wall Street clients.
The move completes one of the more troubling trips through the revolving door for a cabinet secretary. Holder worked at Covington from 2001 right up to being sworn in as attorney general in Feburary 2009. And Covington literally kept an office empty for him, awaiting his return.
The Covington & Burling client list has included four of the largest banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Lobbying records show that Wells Fargo is still a client of Covington. Covington recently represented Citigroup over a civil lawsuit relating to the bank’s role in Libor manipulation."
Thursday, July 09, 2015
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
Tuesday, July 07, 2015
Eric Holder: The Justice Department could strike deal with Edward Snowden
"Former Attorney General Eric Holder said today that a “possibility exists” for the Justice Department to cut a deal with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that would allow him to return to the United States from Moscow.
In an interview with Yahoo News, Holder said “we are in a different place as a result of the Snowden disclosures” and that “his actions spurred a necessary debate” that prompted President Obama and Congress to change policies on the bulk collection of phone records of American citizens."
Monday, July 06, 2015
A Level Playing Field: Why the USA Is So Strong in Women's Soccer - NBC News
The United States Sunday will fight to win its third Women's World Cup and extend a quarter-century run of dominance in women's soccer.
The national team has never finished worse than third in the competition and has consistently ranked near the top of the worldwide rankings since FIFA started keeping such records in 2003. Four Olympic gold medals in five tries adds to the Americans' haul. Victory is normal. Losses are rare — and painful.
So, the obvious question is: Why are we so good at women's soccer? And it's especially notable considering the U.S. men's soccer team didn't even crack the top-10 ranking until 2005, and has since plummeted to 27th.
A Level Playing Field: Why the USA Is So Strong in Women's Soccer - NBC News
Saturday, July 04, 2015
Recommended read from Salon.com: As Fox News mourns, the rest of us have an Independence Day to celebrate
"July 4 has always been a time for aggrieved progressives to remind the world that most Americans weren’t liberated on that first Independence Day. Enslaved Africans; dispossessed native Indians; women of every race; white men without property; LGBT Americans; the rights claimed in the stirring Declaration of Independence didn’t fully belong to most of us for many years.
That’s still a real, historic truth. But maybe, at least this year, we can celebrate the genuinely liberating, animating ideals of a country that came close to living up to them in a dizzying 24 hours last week."
Thursday, July 02, 2015
America Ferrera: "Thank You, Donald Trump!" - CBS News
"You've said some pretty offensive things about Latino immigrants recently, and I think they're worth addressing. Because, you know, this is the United States of America, where I have a right to speak up even if I'm not a billionaire. Isn't that awesome?" she wrote.
"Anyway, I heard what you said about the kind of people you think Latino immigrants are -- people with problems, who bring drugs, crime and rape to America. While your comments are incredibly ignorant and racist, I don't want to spend my time chastising you. I'll leave that to your business partners like Univision and NBC, who have the power to scold you where it hurts. Instead, I'm writing to say thank you!"
"You see, what you just did with your straight talk was send more Latino voters to the polls than several registration rallies combined!" the former "Ugly Betty" star wrote in a blog post published Thursday, adding, "Remarks like yours will serve brilliantly to energize Latino voters and increase turnout on election day against you and any other candidate who runs on a platform of hateful rhetoric."
Pocket: Nicholas Winton, Rescuer of 669 Children From Holocaust, Dies at 106
Nicholas Winton, a Briton who said nothing for a half-century about his role in organizing the escape of 669 mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II, a righteous deed like those of Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, died on Wednesday in Maidenhead, England. He was 106.
The Rotary Club of Maidenhead, of which Mr. Winton was a former president, announced his death on its website. He lived in Maidenhead, west of London.
It was only after Mr. Winton’s wife found a scrapbook in the attic of their home in 1988 — a dusty record of names, pictures and documents detailing a story of redemption from the Holocaust — that he spoke of his all-but-forgotten work in the deliverance of children who, like the parents who gave them up to save their lives, were destined for Nazi concentration camps and extermination.
For all his ensuing honors and accolades in books and films, Mr. Winton was a reluctant hero, often compared to Schindler, the ethnic German who saved 1,200 Jews by employing them in his enamelware and munitions factories in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and to Wallenberg, the Swedish businessman and diplomat who used illegal passports and legation hideaways to save tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary.
Pocket: Nicholas Winton, Rescuer of 669 Children From Holocaust, Dies at 106
Wednesday, July 01, 2015
“You’re giving me a f***ing ticket for what?” It’s totally legal (though maybe not smart) to curse the police - Salon.com
"Being rude is not illegal, even if some of us sometimes wish it were. Being rude to cops, including cursing them out may be ill-advised, but it is protected speech. Yet that doesn’t mean you won’t end up in bracelets anyway.
As the Marshall Project reports, many citizens are illegally arrested for cursing at cop, when in fact, their speech is protected. A police officer from the McKinney, TX police department was captured on the now infamous pool party video throwing a 15-year-old girl to the ground after he accused her of mouthing off. He was later fired for his actions.
Last week, the Washington Supreme Court threw out an obstruction case against a man who cursed at cops after they were called to investigate a disturbance at his home in 2011. In December, a Georgia woman was awarded a $100,000 settlement after cops arrested her in 2012 and placed her in solitary confinement for cursing at them and flipping the officers the bird."
¹
Obama announces re-establishment of U.S.-Cuba ties - CNNPolitics.com
"Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama said Wednesday that it was past time for the U.S. to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba as he announced that the two countries were reopening their embassies after more than 50 years.
"When the United States shuttered our embassy in 1961, I don't think anyone thought it would be more than half a century before it reopened," he said in remarks from the White House Rose Garden."
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