Elio Carrion Should Be Compensated !

Ok, so the jury didn't convict the former deputy on
the charges because in light of the situation the deputy
made a mistake. However this mistake nearly cost a
man his life so will there be any justice for the victim?
Only time will tell. As far as I'm concerned Webb is
guilty and should be made to compensate Elio Carrion.


A former San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy who fired on an unarmed, off-duty Air Force police officer last year — a videotaped shooting that drew outrage when it was aired nationwide — was acquitted Thursday of attempted voluntary manslaughter.

Ivory John Webb Jr., 46, the son of a former Compton police chief, was the first law enforcement officer to face criminal charges for an on-duty shooting in San Bernardino County. Webb, also acquitted of assault with a firearm, would have faced up to an 18-year prison sentence if he had been convicted.

After the verdict was read, an emotional Webb bearhugged his lead attorney, Michael Schwartz, with tears streaming down his face. As family members hugged one another, he pointed toward the sky and then put his raised hands together in prayer."I feel great…. I want to thank God first and foremost," Webb said. "I also want to thank the jurors, who came to an honest conclusion after considering all the facts.

"The jury of eight men and four women spent less than half a day deliberating after the four-week trial in the San Bernardino courtroom. The case was dominated by the video footage of the Jan. 29, 2006, shooting on a residential street in Chino, as well as by dueling experts on police tactics and use of deadly force.Outside the San Bernardino County courtroom, jurors said they were swayed more by the volatile, dangerous situation the suspects created during the high-speed chase than by the video.

"Police officers have to be given the right to make their decisions," said juror Richard Day, 43, of Highland. "If they make a bad decision in the line of duty, should we hold them responsible for that to the point that we incarcerate them for it? I don't think so."The jury was composed of eight whites, three blacks and one Latino.Deputy Dist. Atty. R. Lewis Cope said he was disappointed but that "we have to honor and respect the verdict." "We were very confident in our case," Cope said. If it were to be retried, he said, "I'm not sure it would be done differently.

"The prosecution's case focused on 1 minute and 15 seconds of raw, shadowy video, recorded about 10:30 p.m. on the night of the shooting. The tape showed Webb towering over Elio Carrion and then opening fire as Carrion appeared to be following his order to get up from a sprawled position on the pavement.Carrion, 23, has returned to duty at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana after a long rehabilitation from his three gunshot wounds. His relatives gathered at the family home in Montclair, where a photo of Carrion in his military camouflage and beret was propped up against the side of the house. Carrion's godmother and aunt, Connie Madrigal, said the family was shocked.





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Supreme Court Does It Again!

It looks as if the Supreme Court is about to restructure the entire
civil rights movement. This time they've reversed a decision that
will undo school intergration. How will this effect the public school
systems across the country? Check out the article below and weigh-in.


The Supreme Court today declared unconstitutional the use of racial guidelines to integrate public schools, saying that neither white nor black children should be turned away from a school in pursuit of a "desired racial balance.""The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said for the 5-4 majority.

A pair of rulings struck down voluntary integration policies adopted by school boards in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., because some students were excluded based on race. Roberts said the court's decision was faithful to the Constitution's "equal protection" clause because it required officials to treat all people the same without regard to race. The decision casts doubt on integration guidelines that have been adopted by school districts around the country. Though mandatory busing programs have been abandoned as a way to desegregate, many districts have adopted guidelines in some schools, including magnet programs, that limit the percentage of black or white students who may attend.

Parents in Seattle and Louisville challenged the guidelines because a son or daughter had been turned away from the school nearest their home. They lost in the lower courts but won today.The four dissenters accused their conservative colleagues of turning their backs on the Brown vs. Board of Education decision and its promise of integrating schools."This is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret," Justice Stephen G. Breyer said in an impassioned dissent he read in the courtroom. "The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown."Breyer said the majority was wrong to treat integration and segregation as if they were the same simply because race plays a role in the assigning of students.

The full impact of today's ruling may turn on how school lawyers interpret a concurring opinion written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. He cast the deciding fifth vote with Roberts, but he also faulted his opinion for its "all-too-unyielding insistence that race cannot be a factor" in a school district's policies. In addition to Roberts and Kennedy, the majority was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.School officials cannot "ignore the problem of de facto re-segregation in schooling," Kennedy said, and they may "devise race-conscious measures to address the problem in a general way."





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Public Safety Committee Punked!

Has your local Assemlyman been punked lately?
Well if he or she served on the Public Safety Committee
of the California legislature thats just what happened.
Threatened by the implementation of term limits this
committee failed to vote on a bill that allows the public
to know about their local law enforcement officers. Check
out the article and see how state legislators got bullied.


Faced with broad opposition by law enforcement groups, legislation to reopen disciplinary hearings and records of police officers to the public stalled in a key state Assembly committee Tuesday, failing to get a single vote and virtually ensuring that the bill would not pass this year."Would somebody turn the lights out in this room, please," bill sponsor Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) said angrily after Assembly Public Safety Committee members refused to move for a vote on the bill.

The legislation passed the state Senate 21 to 10 this month, but Tuesday it drew opposing testimony from dozens of police officers from Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Fresno, Berkeley, Modesto, Anaheim, San Bernardino and Riverside. Many of them warned that disclosure of officers' personnel information would jeopardize their lives."We still consider it an anti-law enforcement bill," Ron Cottingham, president of the Police Officers Research Assn. of California, told the committee.

"It will endanger our officers. It will endanger their families."Assemblyman Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana), the committee chairman, raised several issues, including concern that the legislation could hamper police recruitment and that it would allow each city and county to decide what information to release.Solorio also talked about the potentially lethal danger that police officers face."It's a real threat that many folks face," he said. "I'm very concerned about maintaining the privacy of police officers and their families.

"Romero introduced the bill after a Supreme Court decision last year — Copley Press vs. Superior Court of San Diego — that police agencies interpreted as prohibiting them from disclosing disciplinary records and from opening disciplinary hearings to the public because they are considered confidential personnel records.Hearings such as those held by the Los Angeles Police Department disciplinary boards had been open to the public for decades before the decision. The issue took on new controversy after disclosures that an LAPD board cleared an officer of wrongdoing in the 2005 fatal shooting of 13-year-old Devin Brown, but never announced the decision.

The legislation, SB 1019, had sparked a heated clash between police officer groups and organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which are demanding more transparency.The head of the Professional Peace Officers Assn. recently threatened to oppose a relaxation of term limits for legislators if the Romero bill passed





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Bush Lacks Title IX Compliance

Seems that the bush administration lacks the will to enforce
the Title IX compliance. When will this administration start
upholding the constitution that it was sworn to do. The article
below explains the situation.


Noting that the government initiated only one of the 416 complaints filed about Title IX compliance in athletics from 2002 to 2006, the co-president of the National Women's Law Center testified Tuesday before a congressional subcommittee that stronger oversight is required. The single review was cited by Marcia Greenberger as evidence that the Bush administration has "a record substantially below that of the preceding administration" in backing Title IX, which in part protects women from discrimination in athletics. She called for congressional oversight of the Office for Civil Rights branch of the Department of Education, which has the responsibility for enforcing Title IX and other civil rights laws.

Katherine McLane, press secretary for the Department of Education, declined to be specific in responding to criticism from the law center, saying that under the Bush administration, the OCR created a policy of investigating every claim that the office receives. She also lauded the OCR's outreach program, which is designed to teach administrators Title IX regulations."They try to head a lot of this stuff off at the pass, which we hope is reflected in a reduction of cases," McLane said.Greenberger said the law center's research — it obtained documents on all the complaints through a Freedom of Information Act request — showed the OCR failed to respond to complaints in a timely manner.





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Supreme Court Sticks To It's Guns

The Supreme court is sticking to it's guns when
it comes to deadline on court filings. The court
has thrown out two cases in the last month due
to lawyers not filing on time. The article below
tells of the latest case the court has ruled on.


Deadlines set in law for filing motions cannot be waived, a divided Supreme Court said Thursday, even if a judge's error causes someone to submit a motion two days late.The 5-4 decision not only threw out an appeal filed by an Ohio convict, it sent a warning to lawyers and judges nationwide. The conservative majority said it would view these filing deadlines in civil suits as legal mandates that cannot be set aside by judges, regardless of whether the litigant or lawyer had a good reason for missing the deadline.

"If rigorous rules like the one applied today are thought to be inequitable, Congress may authorize the courts" to adopt more lenient rules, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority.In dissent, Justice David H. Souter wrote:

"It is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way." He faulted the majority for "condoning this bait and switch." It is the second time in a month that the court split along conservative-liberal lines over an issue of deadlines. In a 5-4 ruling that was seen as a setback for women's rights, the court overturned a pay-discrimination verdict in favor of the lone female supervisor at a Goodyear Tire plant because she had not pointed to unfair pay decisions within the time limit of 180 days prior to the filing of her suit. In the case decided Thursday, Kevin Bowles was convicted of murder in 1999 for taking part in the beating of another man, and his appeals were rejected by the Ohio courts.

His initial appeal was rejected by a federal district judge. His lawyer sought to reopen his appeal, and under a federal rule of civil procedure he had 14 days to file a notice. The judge granted his motion to reopen the appeal on Feb. 10, 2004, but inexplicably said his notice must be filed by Feb. 27.Bowles' notice was filed on Feb. 26, the day before the judge's deadline. But this was 16 days after he had granted the motion, or two days beyond the legal deadline





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Was It Dr. Frankenstein ?

The article below takes a look at the life of
J. Edgar Hoover one of the most feared men
to ever walk the planet. It examines what
caused him to change. Dr. Frankenstein can't
take credit for this one.


WHAT created J. Edgar Hoover? He reigned with an iron fist as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 48 years, until the day he died in 1972. By then, Hoover had evolved into an untouchable autocrat, a man who kept secret files on millions of Americans over the years and used them to blackmail presidents, senators and movie stars. He ordered burglaries, secret wiretaps or sabotage against anyone he personally considered subversive.

His target list included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Einstein, even Eleanor Roosevelt.Yet when Hoover showed up for his first day of work at the Department of Justice in June 1917, he was a bright 22-year-old, just out of law school. He still had boyish good looks and was cocky and driven. The country had just entered World War I, and Hoover had avoided the wartime draft. Instead, he was ready to help win the war at home, to save the country from spies and subversives.What changed this young eager beaver into the crass, cynical tyrant of later years?

The fact is, Hoover learned his attitudes and worldview from teachers at the Justice Department during his early years there, when the country was going through a period much like today's war on terror. In March 1919, Hoover landed a dream assignment on the staff of new Atty. Gen. A. Mitchell Palmer just in time to participate in the first Red scare, in 1919-1920, and its signature outrage, the notorious Red Raids, also known as the Palmer Raids. For Hoover, it would shape his outlook for life.

On the night of June 2, 1919, bombs exploded in nine cities across the United States, leaving two people dead, including one of the bombers. One of these bombs destroyed Palmer's Washington home, almost killing him, his wife and his teenage daughter. These bombs capped months of escalating upheaval during which the country convinced itself that we sat on the verge of a Russian-style socialist revolution. The first Red scare came on the heels of multiple traumas: World War I, the Russian Revolution and subsequent Bolshevik uprisings in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Italy and Argentina.

In the United States, the economy had collapsed, prompting waves of strikes, riots and political violence.Americans vowed vengeance after the June 2 bombings, and the targeted Palmer pledged to crush the reign of terror. He ordered a massive preemptive strike, a nationwide roundup of radicals. To manage the operation, Palmer chose his talented new staff counsel, young J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover seized the opportunity. With Palmer's blessing, he laid plans for a series of brutal raids across the country. Backed by local police and volunteer vigilantes, federal agents hit in dozens of cities and arrested more than 10,000 suspected communists and fellow travelers. They burst into homes, classrooms and meeting halls, seizing everyone in sight, breaking doors and heads with abandon. The agents ignored legal niceties such as search warrants or arrest warrants. They questioned suspects in secret, imposed prohibitive bail and kept them locked up for months in foul, overcrowded, makeshift prisons.





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No Justice For A Retarded Black Man

Why is it that five years after the Supreme Court has
ruled in his case that the death penalty was unconsti-
tutional that this man still sits on Virginia's death row?
Will they try to execute on the Q.T.? Check out his story
below and then rain in on the situation.


Five years after the Supreme Court declared in Atkins vs. Virginia that the death penalty was unconstitutional for those who are mentally retarded, Daryl Atkins still sits on death row.In August, lawyers for the man who won the landmark ruling will try again to convince a jury here that he is indeed mentally retarded and therefore deserves a life term in prison, not execution. Three times before, the county prosecutor has persuaded juries here to condemn Atkins to die, and she expects to win a fourth time as well.

"Daryl was a slow reader. He was lazy, and he came to school stoned. But until he committed this murder, no one thought he was mentally retarded," said Eileen M. Addison, the prosecutor. His case is not unique. Though the high court found that there was a "national consensus" against executing the mentally retarded, it left it to the states to decide which murderers would qualify for that exemption. Determined prosecutors have had little trouble convincing juries that a convicted killer with a low IQ is not necessarily retarded.

The definition of retardation is imprecise; test results can vary, giving prosecutors an opportunity to produce additional scores and other evidence to make the case that an inmate is actually smart enough to die. The result is that the Supreme Court's ruling has had less effect than many had foreseen."There has been more resistance than I expected," said University of New Mexico law professor James Ellis, an expert on mental retardation who represented Atkins before the Supreme Court.

A few states moved off of death row several inmates who had IQ scores in the 60s or low 70s, he said. But states where capital punishment has strong support, including Virginia and Texas, have let juries decide. And "it's an uphill fight with the jury" to establish mental retardation, Ellis said. In 2002, he told the high court there were no reliable numbers on how many of the nation's more than 3,000 death row inmates were mentally retarded. Some experts predicted several dozen inmates would qualify for the exemption. Human Rights Watch said the number could be as high as 300.





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Republicans Exposed !

The following article I found quite refreshing and
straight forward in exposing the Republician party.
Read it and the share your views on the subject.


ENOUGH Emma Lazarus. For many of us, the definitive pro-immigration speech comes from Bill Murray in "Stripes": "We're all very different people. We're not Watusi, we're not Spartans, we're Americans. With a capital 'A.' And you know what that means? Do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts…. But there's no animal that's more faithful, that's more loyal, more lovable than the mutt. Who saw 'Old Yeller'? … I cried my eyes out."Murray's speech may lack poetry and intellectual rigor, but most Americans have a similar visceral attachment to our national immigration story. To be perceived as anti-immigration is to be seen as un-American.

So how did Republicans, who normally embrace patriotism, American exceptionalism and rugged individualism, get on the wrong side of this story? How have people who oppose illegal immigration allowed themselves to be painted as both anti-immigration and, more absurdly, "anti-immigrant?"Liberals and — dismayingly — many "pro-immigration" conservatives will tell you it's because the "anti-immigration" right is racist, nativist, hate-filled and the like. That's basically President Bush's view. And to be honest, there are conservative voices on immigration I wish would shut up. But they are the minority.

There's a reason so many people claim that conservatives speak in "code" about immigration. It's because so few prominent Republicans or conservatives are actually saying anything objectively racist.But Latino groups, the Democratic Party and others who favor something like amnesty for illegal immigrants have an interest in promoting the racism charge. They lump illegal immigrants with blacks and women as civil rights victims. They argue that a wall with Mexico is racist because it keeps Mexicans out of the U.S., that opposition to bilingual education is anti-Latino because it's aimed at Spanish speakers and that complaints about illegal immigration generally are anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican because it just so happens that the majority of illegal immigrants are from Mexico.

And the really infuriating part is that so many people buy this nonsense. The reason immigration restrictions are aimed at Mexicans and Latinos is quite simple: that's where the problem is. Whether you agree with them or not, most "anti-immigration" conservatives actually think that there is an important distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Want a hint as to why? One is legal and the other isn't.





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Now Robbie Robertson Is Unemployed

All through the sixties and part of the seventies as
I was reading Spiderman comics there was Joesph
"Robbie" Robertson there in the press room of The
Daily Bugle defending Spiderman to an irate boss
John Jonah Jameson who was always cooking up
schemes to unmask the superhero. Now today
When Spiderman has become one of the top money-
making films in Hollywood Robbie Robertson is
currently unemployed. Surely if the setting of Spider-
man is New York city then there has got to be more
African Americans involved in the hero's life. Anyway
read the article about the one Africa American that
does have a speaking role in the film.


Actress Sonya Y. Maddox says she is the only African American actress to have a speaking role in “Spider-Man 3.”
“This was a miracle” said the Atlanta native of her scene with the film’s three stars Tobey Maguire (Peter Parker/Spider-Man), Kirsten Dunst (Mary Jane Watson) and James Franco (Harry Osborn/New Goblin).

Three months after her audition, Maddox was informed that she had gotten the part of an ICU nurse in the blockbuster film.
“This was a supernatural experience…A wonder! The awe-inspiring inspiration of God,” Maddox says in a statement to EUR. “I didn’t have an agent, got a direct call from casting to come and audition for the film and forgot about it. Three months later, every aspect of my life, became a challenge… The darkest hour was before dawn… The dichotomy between doing everything right versus the outcome of everything falling apart made me feel as though I was truly wearing the black webbed suit. And I cried out to God!”

Maddox says she even got to provide input on her character to director Sam Raimi.
“He was the most phenomenal director I’ve ever worked with in my life,” says Maddox. “He listened, valued and received my creative input which seemed so small – but my choice in delivering my message was to deliver as an angel. Once I arrived on the set, I asked God to come aboard as the executive producer of this film and guide us all to be on one accord. I made a creative decision that in my role – I would see myself as an angel instead of a nurse in my scene. I felt my other miracle when I found out my scene was connected to the oracle of the film!”





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