King of Civil Rights

Martin The Prophet?

2010-03-30T14:31:00.000-07:00

Dr.Martin Luther King Jr.was more than just
a civil rights and spiritual leader. He was
in my opinion a modern day prophet. Check out
the article below and let me know if you agree.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” --Martin Luther King

Those were the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., in his famous April 4, 1967, Riverside Church speech, 43 years ago this Easter Sunday. The speech was titled “Beyond Viet Nam: A Time to Break Silence.” It was delivered exactly one year to the day of his1968 assassination in Memphis.

The people who heard that speech recognized it as one of the most powerful speeches ever given articulating the immorality of the Viet Nam War. Some also saw that King was signing his own death warrant by exposing so forcefully the war crimes that were being committed daily in what the courageous Jesuit prophet Daniel Berrigan, who personally witnessed what was going on in the killing fields of Viet Nam, described as “an overwhelming atrocity.”

King and Berrigan were speaking out from their deeply felt sense of moral outrage and anguish over the horrible suffering of the millions of innocent, unarmed Vietnamese civilians. They both knew that women and children were the main victims of modern warfare, especially wars that utilized so indiscriminately the massive arsenal of highly lethal weapons, including one of the US Air Force’s favorites, napalm, which burned the flesh off of whatever part of the body that the flaming, jellied gasoline splashed on. Berrigan often used the phrase “The Land of the Burning Children” when he wrote and spoke about what he had seen in Viet Nam.

Both of these courageous prophets knew about the atrocities that American soldiers and Marines were ordered to commit in the name of “anti-communism.” And King saw the connections between the killing of dispensable “gooks” and “slants” on the battlefields of Southeast Asia and the oppression, impoverishment, imprisoning and lynching of “dispensable blacks” in America. Racism was alive and well in the US military and it didn’t differentiate between foreign or domestic targets.

King was being faithful to the nonviolent teachings of Jesus of Nazareth by speaking out against injustice wherever he saw it. He knew that the willingness to use the violence of racism or the violence of orchestrated poverty or the violence of militarism had the same sources: fear of “the other” and the perceived need to defend, by the use of violence if necessary, one’s own wealth and privilege, no matter how unjustly they were acquired.

King knew that the opposition to his civil rights movement - and now his outspoken anti-Viet Nam War stance - was formidable: from indifferent or frightened bystanders everywhere (whose silence gave consent to the violence) to privileged white Christian churches in the south who wanted the movement to “go slow” to cruel racists, including the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens Councils in the south to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI in the north. Those groups were dangerous enough, but by speaking out he was opposing entrenched systems of racism, economic oppression and militarism, each of which had the power to unleash lethal violence against any and all perceived enemies, especially those of the powerless underclass.

Tremendous fortunes are made in every war, and the Viet Nam War was no exception. Weapons manufacturers thrived, becoming more deeply entrenched as each batch of industry lobbyists and their media propaganda became more and more successful. Hundreds of billions of dollars yearly, all tax-and-spend or tax-and-borrow expenditures, were spent for weapons research and development.

Large numbers of workers were hired to work in hundreds of huge weapons factories in every legislative district in the nation, and the economy boomed -- but it boomed on tax money that then couldn’t be spent for other projects. And so the war-making and the wars were popular with the investor class, the power elite, the Pentagon, the CIA, most politicians, the defense industries and, of course, the people who needed the jobs.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

March 21st A Day Of History

2010-03-20T23:12:00.000-07:00

March 21st is a day of historical significance.
The many events that took place were that of
civil rights issues both here and abroad. Feel
free to comment after reading the article below.

On March 21, 1960, about 70 people were killed in Sharpeville, South Africa, when police fired on black protesters; the shooting drew international condemnation. (On this date in 1985, police in Langa, South Africa, opened fire on blacks marching to mark the 25th anniversary of Sharpeville; the reported death toll varies between 29 and 43.)

In 1685, composer Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany.

In 1804, the French civil code, or the "Code Napoleon" as it was later called, was adopted.

In 1806, Mexican statesman Benito Juarez was born in Oaxaca.

In 1907, US Marines arrived in Honduras to protect American lives and interests in the wake of political violence.

In 1940, a new government was formed in France by Paul Reynaud, who became prime minister, succeeding Edouard Daladier.

In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan began a four-day conference in Bermuda.

In 1963, the Alcatraz federal prison island in San Francisco Bay was emptied of its last inmates at the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

In 1965, more than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began their march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

In 1972, the Supreme Court, in Dunn v. Blumstein, ruled that states may not require at least a year's residency for voting eligibility.

TThis Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Pot War

2010-03-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

A pot war of sorts has started in the city
of Los Angeles. The city is trying to limit
the number of medical marijuana dispensaries
because the city says there are too many of them.
However the coalition of collectives fighting
the city says let competitiveness weed out the
numbers. So should the city limit the number of
outlets selling pot or should it let the businesses
weed out it's own numbers?

Seeking to overturn the city's medical marijuana ordinance even before it takes effect, a loose-knit coalition of Los Angeles collectives is quietly gathering signatures to force a referendum on the law.

The scrappy, largely volunteer effort faces a Monday deadline to turn in 27,425 valid signatures.

"We're getting down to the wire here," said Dan Halbert, who runs Rainforest Collective in Mar Vista and has coordinated the campaign. "It's going to be close."

Halbert's dispensary on Venice Boulevard, which opened last year, is one of hundreds that would have to close under the ordinance. That law, which will probably not be in effect until May, caps the number at 70. But it also makes an exception to allow about 128 dispensaries that registered in 2007, when the City Council adopted a moratorium, to stay open.

"They are just kind of arbitrarily drawing a line in the sand," said Halbert, who argues that the competitive business environment would eventually reduce the number on its own, leaving only the best-run collectives.

To City Council members, Halbert is just one of hundreds of opportunists out to make a quick buck. His store was among those targeted last summer by a chagrined council after neighborhood activists repeatedly complained that marijuana outlets were rapidly opening across the city despite the moratorium.

An entrepreneur who owned an adventure travel business in Phoenix, Halbert moved to Los Angeles to open his dispensary after three trips to investigate the city's vibrant weed industry. He said he never would have started the business if the city had been enforcing its ban. Now he has become a political activist trying to save his livelihood and torpedo an ordinance that the City Council has labored over for almost two years.

"Once you get $100,000 charged on credit cards, you really don't have any choice," he said. "You have a choice of bankruptcy or trying every legal avenue that you have to get your rights."

The last time a referendum qualified for the ballot, the City Council backed down on the targeted ordinance.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Remember Willie Davis

2010-03-09T17:10:00.000-08:00

Baseball great Willie Davis has died of
what appears to be of natural causes.
We would love to hear from you baseball
fans about this former great Dodger.

Former Los Angeles Dodgers center fielder Willie Davis was found dead Tuesday morning in his Burbank home, police said. He was 69.

Authorities said that a neighbor who usually brought breakfast to the former baseball star's Victory Boulevard home found Davis' body.

The case is being handled by the Los Angeles County coroner, but authorities said there was nothing to indicate foul play and that it appears that Davis died of natural causes.

Davis, an All-City athlete in several sports at Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights in the late 1950s, became one of the Dodgers' early stars after the team moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn in 1958. Known for his offense, Davis played center field for the Dodgers for 13 seasons starting in 1961. He hit in a team record 31 consecutive games in 1969 and batted .305 or above three years straight in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

But he also committed a World Series-record three errors in one inning against the Baltimore Orioles in 1966.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Feds Investigate L.A. Unified School District

2010-03-09T12:10:00.000-08:00

LA Unified School District will be the first target
of a probe by U.S.Department of Education. Check out
the article below and let us know if you agree.

The federal government has targeted the Los Angeles Unified School District for its first major investigation under a reinvigorated Office for Civil Rights, The Times has learned.
The probe will focus on services to students learning English, who make up a third of the enrollment in the nation’s second-largest school system.

Federal analysts will review how English learners are identified and when they are judged fluent enough to handle regular course work. They’ll examine whether English learners have qualified, appropriately trained teachers. And they’ll look at how teachers make math and science understandable for students with limited-English skills — and how a school provides extra help for those struggling the most. Reviewers also will see if the district communicates effectively with parents in a language they understand.

The inquiry was prompted primarily by the low academic achievement of English learners; about 3 in 100 are proficient in math and English at the high school level, federal officials said. Focusing on L.A. Unified also makes sense because it has so many English learners, they said.

The Office for Civil Rights, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, is charged with enforcing laws that protect students from discrimination on the basis of sex, race, national origin and disability status.

“This is about helping kids receive a good education, the education they deserve,” said Russlynn Ali, the department’s assistant secretary for civil rights. “This is about raising the bar and closing the achievement gap.”

L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said he welcomed the probe as an outside evaluation that would help the district identify and expand successful programs.

“And if there are egregious areas of misconduct by the district I will move on it immediately,” said Cortines, who became superintendent 15 months ago.

He added that district probably ranks “above average” compared to other school systems in programs for English learners. But that’s not nearly good enough, he added.

“I don’t think we have done well in making sure our young people continue to develop both written and oral language,” he said.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Black History Month A Joke?

2010-03-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

Why would Black History Month be such
a joke to three white teachers in a
South Los Angeles school? Check out
the article below and then get back
at us with your comments.

Three teachers at a South Los Angeles elementary school have been suspended for allegedly encouraging students to celebrate O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul during Black History Month, officials said Wednesday.

Children at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School were carrying pictures of the men at a parade Friday on the school playground, said Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry.

She said Supt. Ramon C. Cortines learned about the incident Tuesday and had the teachers, who are white, pulled from their classrooms for the duration of an investigation. The suspension is without pay for the first three days.

"The superintendent believes there are better choices," Pollard-Terry said.

Other students were carrying pictures of President Obama and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The teachers have not been identified and could not be reached for comment.

District officials did not provide specific details about what the teachers did, saying the investigation was still ongoing.

Some community leaders aren't satisfied with the suspensions and are calling for the dismissal of the instructors, who teach first, second and fourth grades.

"I just can't fathom what these teachers were thinking of except to make a mockery of African American history," said Leon Jenkins, president of the Los Angeles branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

L.C. "Chris" Strudwick-Turner of the Los Angeles Urban League likened the episode to a series of racially provocative incidents at UC San Diego, where a Feb. 15 off-campus party mocked Black History Month.

"These kinds of things build on each other," she said. "When something like that happens in [San Diego] and there is no immediate consequence, that emboldens others. That's why I was glad that LAUSD took them out of the classroom right away."

Pollard-Terry said Simpson, Rodman and RuPaul were included on a list of prominent African Americans approved by the school for study during Black History Month.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

One Of Many Struggles

2010-03-01T14:21:00.000-08:00

For those of you too young to remember
the story below is one of many that took
place during the civil rights struggle.
Read it and then feel free to comment.

The Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, the Rev. R.G. Williams and three local students had already spent more than 24 hours in the city jail for trespassing at Petersburg's segregated public library, when in the early evening of Tuesday, March 8, 1960, more than 200 protesters marched.

Despite a chilling 26 degrees and snow-covered ground, the protestors marched from First Baptist Church on Harrison Street past the library and toward the courthouse.

The Rev. Milton Reid had called for a prayer vigil with 200 people on the courthouse steps. City officials ordered all floodlights, which normally illuminated the courthouse area, turned off during the 35-minute service. But protesters were prepared and had brought flashlights. Some white spectators booed from across the street, but they had no choice but to listen as Reid addressed the crowd.

"[This is] a pilgrimage of prayer to give impetus to the struggle and to encourage our ministers and students who are in prison," Reid said.

Across the courthouse were the lightened windows of the city jail, where five of those arrested on the city's new trespassing charge remained behind bars. Among those who voiced protest against the city ordinance were three local white men. "Any white or Negro citizen [...] is subject to be addressed under this law," Reid told the crowd, referring to the support from white citizens.

Then protesters unanimously adopted a resolution declaring that they will be "jailed by the thousands and while there, make plans for full integration and equal rights behind prison bars."

While the protesters were in jail, they received much support from anti-segregationists statewide. "People held prayer meetings everywhere," Ann Walker said.

Walker also remembers a couple who came from as far as New York to show support for her husband. "They said they had heard about it, a white couple," she said. "They came to our house, and they had a sleeping bag with them. They wanted to support. They said they didn't need a bed, they opened their sleeping bags and wanted to sleep under the dining room table. I told them that was alright. Len Holt [of Norfolk, field secretary of the Congress of Racial Equality] told me later he checked on the background of these people, and told me to get them out of the house because they had communist leanings. I didn't know it," Walker said, laughing.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Southern Cal ACLU Director Stepping Down

2010-02-23T11:27:00.000-08:00

The lady says she's tired and after
thirty-eight years of fighting legal
battles who wouldn't be? We commend
and salute Ramona Ripston for her long
and dedicated years with the ACLU!

Ramona Ripston has never been one to back away from a fight.

As the driving force behind the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California for 38 years, she's battled police over the treatment of prisoners and the homeless. She's marched against segregation and sued for better inner-city schools. She's taken authorities to court for withholding public housing and medical care from those she believes need them most.

But with the recession taking a deep bite out of government budgets and philanthropy, Ripston has wearied of the setbacks dealt the causes she holds dear. On Tuesday, she will announce her plans to retire next year and hand off the unfinished battles to a younger successor.

"I'm very tired," the once-indefatigable liberal icon conceded in an interview, the floral bouquets from her recent 83rd birthday beginning to droop as well.

"I was very affected by the layoffs," Ripston said of the five staffers let go last year from among the 60 she had hired as executive director. "I've fired people for not doing a satisfactory job, but when you're laying off people for money reasons -- it just took a lot out of me."

Ripston said she had also been moved to step down in hopes of rejuvenating the graying landscape of liberal activism in Los Angeles, a force now driven by those who honed their social consciousness in the 1960s. The ACLU needs to attract more young talent, she said, to infuse its causes with new ideas and vigor.

Although she counts as her legacy key victories in cases alleging police abuse and getting federal court injunctions against enforcing Proposition 187, which would have denied public benefits to "suspected" illegal immigrants, Ripston laments what she sees as a recent trend of "going backwards."

California public schools were the envy of the nation when Ripston arrived in 1972, she said. "Now we're somewhere in the 40s," she said of the state's ranking.

President Obama's campaign promise to provide affordable healthcare for all citizens is one of a number of dashed expectations, she said.

"While I personally was a big Obama supporter, I have to say I've been disappointed," Ripston said. "I think he could have pushed harder on his health plan."

The ACLU of Southern California will launch a nationwide search for Ripston's successor, said Gordon Smith, communications director. Ripston will stay on as executive director until Feb. 15, 2011, he said, and remain involved with the organization in a part-time emeritus role.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Internet Access For Inmates?

2010-02-11T15:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a new twist, seems prisoners in
the U.K.have been using Facebook to
their victims. This is unusual since
in this country inmates have no access
to the internet. Check out the story
below and then add your two cents.

The criminals are behind bars but their victims are still feeling their reach — through the Internet.

The British government said Thursday that Facebook had removed the profiles of 30 U.K. inmates at its request after several incidents in which prisoners reportedly used the social networking site to organize crime or taunt others.

The announcement made some Internet users worry about government interference online, but many crime victims said even more should be done.

"When someone is convicted of a crime he loses his civil liberty though sentencing," said Gary Trowsdale of Families United, a group founded by relatives of young murder victims. "We say he should use his cyber-liberty as well."

Families United met earlier this week with Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who said the government would act "to tackle those cases where offenders seek to taunt or harass victims and their families" through Web sites.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Will The President Have To Step In?

2010-02-04T16:29:00.000-08:00

President Obamas aunt is fighting
deportation back to Kenya. The White
House says it is waiting for the legal
process to play itself out. Does this
mean that Obama may step in if a court
ruling is not favorable? Whats your
take on this issue?

An immigration hearing that could lead to the deportation of Barack Obama’s aunt ended without a resolution today.

Zeituni Onyango, 57, testified for nearly three hours at the closed-door hearing and did not speak as she left, walking with a cane. She entered the courtroom in a wheelchair this morning.

Ms. Onyango’s lawyer, Margaret Wong, would not reveal what Ms. Onyango said in her testimony, but said it went “well.”

“She was very honest. She was very to the point,” Ms. Wong told reporters outside the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston.

Ms. Wong said Ms. Onyango is “doing very well” and “really wants to stay in America.”

Lawyers have 30 days to submit written closing briefs. Judge Leonard I. Shapiro scheduled a May 25 hearing if no decision is reached.

Earlier post:

BOSTON – President Obama’s aunt is fighting a deportation order today, arguing she should be granted asylum for medical and other reasons.

Ms. Onyango, arrived at the closed hearing in a Boston federal building in a wheelchair this morning, with a cane draped over her lap. Ms. Onyango testified for more than two hours in front of Judge Leonard I. Shapiro.

Her attorney, Margaret Wong, said that two doctors would testify about Ms. Onyango’s health. Ms. Onyango has had back problems and said in an interview with The Associated Press in November that she was paralyzed for three months because of Guillian-Barre Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Woolsworth Lunch Counter Now A Museum

2010-02-01T15:43:00.000-08:00

The building which housed the F.W. Woolsworth Co. in
Greensboro South Carolina and was the site of one of the
first civil rights demonstration some fifty years ago
has now been turned into a museum and will be dedicated
in a ceremony today. Check out the story below and feel
free to comment on this historical event.

The sign still says “F. W. Woolworth Co.” in bright gold letters running across the building on South Elm Street, just as it did 50 years ago. And within that two-story structure, the same stainless steel dumbwaiters and commercial appliances line the mirrored walls. The lunch counter, which includes a bowling-alley-long tabletop that must dwarf any currently in use, is largely intact; the original chrome and vinyl chairs are still mounted in the floor. This site is an authentic, half-century-old relic, a remnant of the mundane, the insignificant, the quaint.

But one of the achievements of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, which is opening Monday in that former Woolworth building, is that you begin to understand how such a place became a pivot in the greatest political movement of the 20th century.

In the museum’s 30,000 square feet of exhibition space, the mundane luncheonette reminds us that a cataclysmic social transformation took place over the right to be ordinary. For that was what was at stake — not subtle and arcane matters of law or obscure practices that challenged eccentric codes of behavior, but the basic acts of daily life: eating, drinking, sleeping, working, playing. It was here, at this luncheonette counter, that four 17-year-old freshmen at the all-black Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina — Joseph A. McNeil, Franklin E. McCain, David L. Richmond and Ezell A. Blair Jr. — arrived on Feb. 1, 1960, sat down and ordered some food.

And when they were refused — refused because they were black, because much of Greensboro was racially segregated, and because Woolworth headquarters had decreed that the company policy was “to abide by local custom” — the four students continued to sit in mute protest.

They returned the next day and the next. Within a week 1,000 protesters and counterprotesters packed the store. By the end of March “sit-ins” had spread to 55 cities in 13 states. By mid-April the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had been established to expand student involvement. And by the end of July, when the Greensboro Woolworth’s counter was finally desegregated, this form of nonviolent protest had become one of the central strategies of the American civil rights movement.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Drivers Beware!

2010-01-29T13:36:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago my brother and I were
driving through the city of South Pasadena.
When we came to an intersection my brother
failed to stop at the designated spot and
stopped after crossing the line. We were
immediately pulled over. After the cop
explained what he had done he wrote out a
ticket. My brother had stopped at the stop
sign but missed the mark by a foot or two and
for that mistake he was cited. This would no
doubt cost him a few hundred bucks and time
wasted in court. Such pettiness shows how
desperate things have gotten in the state of
California. Check out the story below and let
us know if you've been in a similar situation.

The budget crisis facing state and local governments is becoming particularly costly to California motorists, as officials turn to parking and traffic violations as a way to boost their depleted coffers.

The ticket for an expired meter in Los Angeles jumped from $40 in 2008 to about $50 last year, and "fix-it" tickets for minor moving violations such as broken taillights more than doubled.

And officials are now hatching new ideas to bring in even more money from naughty motorists.

L.A. and other cities are urging the Legislature to allow them to place wheel boots on cars that have as few as three unpaid parking tickets. Currently, the law allows the boot only after a driver accumulates five parking tickets. In L.A. alone, officials estimate the change would help them recover overdue parking citations totaling up to $61 million.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants cities and counties to install speed sensors on red-light cameras to catch speeding cars. Fines would range from $225 to $325, and state officials estimate the change would generate more than $300 million for the state through the end of 2011.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

King Is Alive!

2010-01-19T13:27:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King Jr. is very much alive
through his speech's and writings. We must
never allow ourselves to forget this great
man and what he did and gave up for the
poor and disenfranchised of this great nation.
I'm glad to see that not only are black folks
in remembrance but also our latino brothers and
sisters. Your comments are welcomed concerning
the article below.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day inspires rememberance and homage

(The following text is taken from usconstitution.net)

In 1950's America, the equality of man envisioned by the Declaration of Independence was far from a reality. People of color -- blacks, Hispanics, Asians -- were discriminated against in many ways, both overt and covert. The 1950's were a turbulent time in America, when racial barriers began to come down due to Supreme Court decisions, like Brown v. Board of Education; and due to an increase in the activism of blacks, fighting for equal rights.
king-dreamspeech.jpg

Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, was a driving force in the push for racial equality in the 1950's and the 1960's. In 1963, King and his staff focused on Birmingham, Alabama. They marched and protested non-violently, raising the ire of local officials who sicced water cannon and police dogs on the marchers, whose ranks included teenagers and children. The bad publicity and break-down of business forced the white leaders of Birmingham to concede to some anti-segregation demands.

Thrust into the national spotlight in Birmingham, where he was arrested and jailed, King helped organize a massive march on Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963. His partners in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom included other religious leaders, labor leaders, and black organizers. The assembled masses marched down the Washington Mall from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, heard songs from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and heard speeches by actor Charlton Heston, NAACP president Roy Wilkins, and future U.S. Representative from Georgia John Lewis.

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. waves to the crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC before delivering his historic "I Have a Dream" speech.

King's appearance was the last of the event; the closing speech was carried live on major television networks. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King evoked the name of Lincoln in his "I Have a Dream" speech, which is credited with mobilizing supporters of desegregation and prompted the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The next year, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Hate Crime Cases Have Risen

2010-01-12T17:42:00.000-08:00

In a story published Dec. 17th in the New York Times
the Justice Department has had an increase in hate crime
cases. Filings of these new cases has reached previous levels
not seen since 2001. Does this mean that the Bush
administration dragged it's feet on hate crimes during the
eight years it ran the country? Certainly looks that way to
me. What do you think? Check out the article below.

Two days after the Justice Department
announced federal indictments related to the fatal
beating of a Mexican immigrant in Shenandoah, Pa.,
federal authorities said the charges were part of a
larger effort to step up civil rights enforcement after
nearly eight years of decreased hate crime prosecutions.
Thomas E. Perez, head of the Justice Department’s
Civil Rights Division, said the department brought
more federal hate crime cases this year than in any
other year since 2001.

During the budget year that ended in September, 25
hate crime cases were filed, Mr. Perez said. By
comparison, that number fell to a low of 12 in 2006,
before rising to 23 in 2008. In 2001, 31 such cases
were filed.

Mr. Perez said he was “shocked to see the downtick
in prosecutions of hate crimes” during the
George W. Bush administration, adding, “The Civil Rights
Division is again open for business.”Mr. Perez’s comments
came after a federal indictment released Tuesday charged
Chief Matthew Nestor, Lt. William Moyer and Officer Jason
Hayes of the Shenandoah police with obstruction of justice.

They are accusing of writing false and misleading reports
about the beating death of Luís Ramírez, a 25-year-old
illegal immigrant. At the time of Mr. Ramírez’s death in
July 2008, Officer Hayes was dating the mother of one of
the white teenagers accused in the case, and Lieutenant Moyer’s
son was on the high school football team with the teenagers.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top.
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Getting Their Day In Court

2010-01-11T16:40:00.000-08:00

It' been nearly ten years since the 911 attacks and it would be nice to see those accused of this heinous crime have their day in court. 911 was one of the worst days in American history and the sooner we get it behind us the better. check out the story belowand then leave us with your thoughts.

The picture below is that of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind, at time of his 2003 capture

in Pakistan (left) and how he allegedly looked this

summer in a reputed International Red Cross photo.

( AP Photo/www.muslm.net)

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try five alleged Sept. 11 conspirators in U.S. criminal courts was hailed Friday by their American lawyers and civil liberties activists as major step toward undoing damage to the nation's reputation caused by its treatment of terrorism suspects held in Guantanamo Bay.

"This is an enormous step forward in renewing the rule of law," Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union said during a conference call with reporters shortly after Holder's announcement.

The decision to try the alleged conspirators in New York City, part of the roll-out of the administration's effort to make good on its promise to close the prison at Gitmo, "puts us back on track, using our tried and true court system," Romero said.

But he and the lawyers also expressed disappointment that Holder decided to use controversial military commissions to try five additional high-value terrorism suspects, including the mastermind of the 2000 bombing in Yemen of the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole. They are among 221 prisoners still being held in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The commissions remain flawed, Romero said, even with recent tweaks by Congress that give detainees better access to legal counsel than they had under the Bush administration, and limits evidence obtained through harsh interrogation tactics.

Says Norman Reimer of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers: "It is unfortunate that some will still be subjected to military commission proceedings...[that] fall short of what we should expect as Americans."

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

New Lethal Injection Procedure?

2010-01-06T15:28:00.000-08:00

Looks as if the state of California is gearing up it's
Death Program with a new procedure for the
infamous lethal injection. But what makes me
wonder is how do they know if this new procedure
will be any different from the old one? Hmmm!
Check out the latest story on this issue below.

State corrections officials Tuesday proposed new lethal injection procedures, a first step toward resuming executions in California after a four-year halt.

The proposals involve only minor changes to the three-drug method used on 11 of the 13 men put to death in the state since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.

But the revisions appear to address the concerns of a federal judge who deemed the previous lethal injection practices unconstitutional for their risk of inflicting cruel and unusual punishment.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation issued the proposed changes in a 25-page draft and announced a 15-day period for public comment. Once any additional revisions are made and the new protocols adopted, the execution procedures must pass judicial review for their conformance with state law and the U.S. Constitution.

California has the nation's largest death row, with 697 inmates sentenced to die. The last execution was in January 2006, when convicted killer Clarence Allen was put to death by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison.

When murderer Michael A. Morales was scheduled to die a month later, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose intervened to impose conditions that led to the current moratorium. Fogel later ruled the state procedures constitutionally flawed after hearing testimony that some of those executed may not have been fully anesthetized by the first injection before receiving the second shot, a paralyzing agent, and the painful last dose that stops the heart.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger convened a task force in 2007 to revise the lethal injection procedures to ensure they were administered effectively. But those changes were adopted behind closed doors and without public input, prompting Marin County Superior Court Judge Lynn O'Malley Taylor to rule them illegal and in violation of the state's Administrative Procedures Act.

This Article Continues Here

Shades of Martin

2010-01-03T16:36:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to King of Civil Rights after a long hiatus.
Today's story deals with President Obama receiving the
Nobel Peace Prize an Honor that was also bestowed upon
Dr. King. After reading the story below feel free to comment

President Obama accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo today, acknowledging in his speech the hotly debated irony of receiving it as a wartime president.

According to a Times article today, Obama’s speech to the Nobel Committee defended his war stance, saying the pursuit of a “just peace” sometimes means more than simply refraining from violence.

The selection of Obama for the award has been controversial, coming less than a year into his first term and just days after he announced he would commit 30,000 additional U.S. troops to the war in Afghanistan.

Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland suggested the award will encourage the president to achieve his goals.

And while he didn’t mention if he supported Obama’s military buildup, a video on the Nobelprize.org website with Geir Lundestad, secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, explained how the President’s prize follows the statutes of Alfred Nobel’s will.

Twitter users and readers have mostly been critical of the president's Peace Prize, but some at least admired Obama's address to the committee:

This Article Continues Here

Bush Shot Down Again By High Court

2008-06-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

The Supreme court has handed the Bush
administration another blow to it's handling
of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Check out the article and let us know your
opinion.

The Supreme Court, for the third time, rejected President Bush's policy for holding and trying foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and ruled today these men have a right to seek their freedom in a hearing before a federal judge.

In a 5-4 decision, the high court struck down as unconstitutional an administration-backed law that barred the detainees from going to court. The right to habeas corpus is fundamental to American law and cannot be suspended except in times of national emergency, the majority said.

"The framers [of the Constitution] viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom," said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the court.

He said the prisoners at Guantanamo are far removed from the battlefield and have been held for as long as six years "with no definitive judicial determination as to the legality of their detention."

President Bush reacted during a news conference in Rome. "We'll abide by the court's decision," he said. "That doesn't mean I have to agree with it."

"We'll study this opinion ... to determine whether or not additional legislation might be appropriate."

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was less restrained. "I am deeply disappointed in what I think is a tremendously dangerous and irresponsible ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court," he said. "The court has conferred upon civilian judges the right to make military decisions. These judges have virtually no training in military matters, yet civilian judges, in some of the most liberal district courts in the country, will have an opportunity to determine who is a threat to the United States."

This Article Continues Here

What's Left Of The Movement?

2008-06-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

Things have certainly changed since Dr. King
was assassinated forty years ago. The article
below tells what is left of the civil rights
movement.

Forty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, the storied organizations that propelled the modern-day civil rights movement alongside him are either struggling to stay relevant or struggling to stay alive.

In Atlanta, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) -- which was founded in 1957 after Alabama's Montgomery bus boycott and was led by King through the most difficult days of the movement -- clings to life. Three years ago, utilities shut off the lights and the phones when the group did not pay its bills.

In New York, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which helped shape the movement's philosophy after adopting Mohandas K. Gandhi's doctrine of nonviolent protest, is scarcely known outside Manhattan. CORE conceded that it now has about 10 percent of the 150,000 members it listed in the 1960s.

In Baltimore, the near-century-old NAACP, which tore down racial barriers with deft lawyering in the courts, recently cut a third of its administrative staff because of budget shortfalls. For decades, the NAACP asserted that it was the largest civil rights group, with about half a million dues-paying members, but one of its former presidents recently acknowledged that it has fewer than 300,000.

Some groups have disappeared, such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which organized the Freedom Rides that drew sympathy to their cause and which was later led by firebrands such as Stokley Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. Others, such as the National Urban League, remain viable but have diminished visibility.

This Article Continues Here

The Start of The Gay Revolution

2008-05-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

You might think that the gay revolution started out
with peaceful demonstrations much like the civil rights
movement. Right? Wrong, it started out as a violent riot
between cops and normally peaceful gays. Check out the
article below and then let us know your thoughts.

In the 21st century, “Stonewall” is the accepted buzzword for the beginning of the gay liberation movement in the United States. It conjures up a vision of bar-raiding Greenwich Village cops terrorized inside the Stonewall Inn by a bunch of angry queens outside, tossing rocks, bottles, a Molotov cocktail and shouts reminiscent of Network ( “I'm not going to take this anymore!” ) .

But in Chicago, the events of that June day in 1969 barely made a ripple. The riot was not immediate national news. A few local gay papers existed around the country, but there wasn't any real national gay press. When word from New York finally reached here, it was recorded in July's Mattachine Midwest Newsletter with the same emphasis as was given to the item on vigilante residents of the borough of Queens who, in a campaign against homosexuals reportedly frequenting a neighborhood park, had cut down dozens of its trees. According to the writer, William B. Kelley, “The New York Times ran at least three days of stories, one editorial and one letter on the subject. They were against cutting the trees.”

Chicago gays chose to challenge the status quo in the courts instead of the streets. In a city coming out of 1968 with a nationwide reputation for police brutality, discretion was indeed the better part of valor. The Trip case, challenging bar closings, went to the Illinois Supreme Court; the case of Mattachine Midwest Newsletter editor David Stienecker involved defending him against charges brought by an officer who arrested gays in tearooms ( public washrooms ) . While slower and more low-key than Stonewall, these two cases led Chicago gays to become proactive instead of reactive in their fight against oppression and discrimination.

This Article Continues Here

New Naterial On Civil Rights Struggle

2008-05-21T17:55:00.000-07:00

A new book by author Micheal Honey tells of
the civil rights struggle. This fresh perspective
is very much en lighting and informative. If not
for yourself then for the kids who today have very
little knowledge of yesterdays struggles.

WHEN MARTIN Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, he was in Memphis supporting 1,300 striking sanitation workers.

This particular fact is sometimes mentioned in civil rights histories; when it is, the significance of that strike--for King, and for the strikers--is little understood. Likewise, the role of Black workers generally in the fight for racial and economic equality is not nearly as well studied.

In Going Down Jericho Road, historian Michael Honey brings to life the story of the Memphis sanitation strike, illuminating it not only with an organizer's sensitivity to the dynamics of the movement (Honey is a civil rights veteran himself), but with the voices of Black sanitation workers, union activists and Black radical youth.

Jericho Road is organized as two parallel stories--of the Memphis garbage workers fighting for union recognition, and of Martin Luther King Jr. searching for a way to build a movement for economic justice.

The white Memphis elite prided itself on granting enough concessions to Blacks to be able to avoid the explosive confrontations that had rocked other southern cities. Blacks could vote, and newspapers called for some compliance with the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregated schools.

Black sanitation workers saw things differently. They worked in plantation-like conditions for starvation wages, under the watch of racist white supervisors. "Since many of the white bosses came from the plantations themselves," Honey observes, "they treated black workers much like landlords in the Mississippi Delta treated their sharecroppers and tenants."

This Article Continues Here

Stories Differ In Shooting

2008-05-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

Once again stories differ in the shooting
of a person of color. The police officers
have their version and witnesses have
theirs. One thing for sure is that a man is
dead. Check out the article below and then
draw your own conclusion.

Authorities say the fatal police shooting of a 46-year-old man nicknamed "Uncle Su'e" in North Long Beach was necessary to subdue a violent suspect who was brawling with an officer and had grabbed his baton.

But neighbors and relatives described it as an unwarranted assault on a shirtless, unarmed man as he lay face down on a sidewalk.

On this both sides agree: Many in the largely Samoan enclave are deeply angry over the death of Roketi Su'e on Saturday.

Police said a hostile crowd of about 40 people surrounded the two officers involved, yelling and threatening them, and that the officers called for backup, concerned that the crowd would turn on them.

The crowd dispersed but tensions in the neighborhood remained inflamed on Sunday.

"He had no shirt on. He didn't have a weapon. He never carried a weapon," said Su'e'sniece, Lagilelei Saolotoga, 36, who did not see the shooting but ran down the sidewalk to her uncle's side as soon as she heard shots fired.

A relative described Su'e as terminally ill with cancer. He suffered from schizophrenia, but the relative and others described him as harmless and childlike.

He would dance with neighborhood children and give them money when the ice cream truck came by, they said.

He had been returning home Saturday evening from a neighborhood birthday party when the confrontation occurred.

Long Beach police spokeswoman Nancy Pratt said police were summoned to the neighborhood about 7 p.m. Saturday by callers who said a man was behaving erratically. The confrontation occurred in the 3400 block of 67th Street, a cul-de-sac of modest homes and apartments just southwest of the Downey Avenue exit of the Riverside Freeway

This Article Continues Here

A Reason

2008-05-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

The government now has got the break it's
been waiting for to investigate Al Sharpton.
But wait a minute, just because his corporation
owes 1.5 million in back taxes why should the
Justice department have to investigate? I'm
sure there are hundreds of corporations that
owe Uncle Sam but is the Justice department
investigating them? What's your take on this?

Big corporations give him money. Presidential candidates seek his endorsement. He has influential friends in Congress and the governor's mansion.

The Rev. Al Sharpton has emerged over the past decade as perhaps the nation's most prominent civil rights leader, a status that was demonstrated again this week when he led protests against police brutality that briefly shut down six of Manhattan's major bridges and tunnels.

But he still carries baggage from his early days as a fire-breathing agitator: Government records obtained by The Associated Press indicate that Sharpton and his business entities owe nearly $1.5 million in overdue taxes and associated penalties.

Now the U.S. attorney is investigating his nonprofit group, a probe that an undeterred Sharpton brushes off as the kind of annoyance that civil rights figures have come to expect from the government.

``Whatever retaliation they do on me, we never stop,'' he told the AP. ``I think that that is why they try to intimidate us.''

Over the past year, Sharpton's lawyers and the staff of his nonprofit group, the National Action Network, have been negotiating with the federal government over the size of his debt, which they dispute. The group has also been trying to pay off tens of thousands of dollars it owes for failing to properly maintain workers compensation and unemployment insurance.

Charlie King, the organization's interim executive director, said both Sharpton and the group he leads were unprepared for their rise in stature in recent years and had trouble dealing with big jumps in donations and income.

``The infrastructure was trying to keep up with that pace, and it was not a perfect fit,'' he told the AP on Friday. ``The National Action Network may not have been perfect, but nothing was going on that was untoward.''

This Article Continues Here

Mistake?

2008-05-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

Well this mistake has cost two black men their
lives! I have no printable words at this time for
this story but you can express yours after checking
out the article below.

Inglewood police officials said today that they were looking for a gunman who they believe prompted two police officers to fatally shoot an unarmed passenger in an approaching car.

The officers fired multiple times at the car in a parking lot near Crenshaw Boulevard and 8th Avenue about 1:40 a.m. Sunday, killing the passenger, Michael Byoune, 19, and wounding the driver, Larry White, 19, police said. A third person in the car was not hurt.

No weapons were found at the scene, and no one has been arrested or charged in the incident.

The two officers, whose identities have not been released, heard gunshots while patrolling the neighborhood before the confrontation, officials said today during a news conference at the police station.

Three independent witnesses told investigators that they saw a man standing in the parking lot pointing a gun in the direction of the officers before the fatal shooting, said Capt. Eve Irvine. Expended rounds that did not come from the officers' weapons were found in the parking lot, she said.

Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks expressed condolences to the family of the victim and the injured man. But she said it would be "preliminary and a judgment the facts don't support" to say that the shooting may have been a mistake.

"As the chief of police I want to assure you all that our investigation will be objective and comprehensive," said Seabrooks, who was appointed chief last year.

The two officers were in their patrol car near the intersection when they heard gunfire and pursued a man who was running, said Sgt. Hector Ramirez.

The man jumped into a slow-moving car in the 3000 block of Manchester Boulevard, and the officers heard more shots and felt something hit their cruiser, Ramirez said. The officers then fired several shots as the vehicle came toward them, according to police.

This Article Continues Here

Swept Under The Rug?

2008-05-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

How can there be a miscommunication about
a complaint against ma teacher molesting
students? Well I think charges should be filed
those board members who knew of the complaint
and did nothing about it. What do you think?

The president of Santa Monica's school board said Thursday that a "breakdown in communication" prevented the board from fully examining a 2006 complaint against a teacher who was charged this week with molesting five of his female students.

Oscar de la Torre, president of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board, said he and other board members learned about the 2006 complaint only this week after Lincoln Middle School teacher Thomas Arthur Beltran, 60, was arrested. De la Torre said then-Principal Kathy Scott, who reported the allegations to police, is no longer with the district.

"There was a transition in leadership, and I think the communication [channels] suffered a breakdown," De la Torre said. "The school board was never alerted to the allegations in 2006."

As a result, De la Torre said he still wasn't clear on whether Beltran was temporarily moved out of the classroom after the complaint was made and on what basis the principal decided to let him continue teaching. No mention of the complaint was found in Beltran's personnel file, De la Torre said.

District officials said prosecutors found insufficient evidence at the time to pursue a criminal case against Beltran after a police investigation. The student was removed from his class and Beltran, who said at the time that his actions were "misinterpreted," was warned not to touch female students.

De la Torre said that at the board's meeting May 15 the district superintendent would present a report on new protocols and policies regarding potential child abuse cases. He said the policies might include interviewing a sample of students, informing parents when such an incident is reported and instituting a districtwide open-door policy when students are alone with teachers.

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City Suspends 15 Of It's Finest

2008-05-07T14:03:00.000-07:00

A television crew captured the beating of three
suspects by fifteen police officers that went way
beyond the call of duty and immediately suspended
them. Check out the article below.

Fifteen police officers were taken off the street as authorities investigate a video showing three suspects being kicked, punched and beaten after they were pulled out of a car during a traffic stop.

"At a glance it does appear to be a bit beyond the pale," Doug Oliver, a spokesman for Mayor Michael Nutter, said Wednesday. "Officers are not allowed to operate outside of the law."

The police department identified the 15 officers who were involved in Monday night's arrests in the city's Hunting Park section, where police had been investigating a triple shooting, Oliver said.

The three suspects were charged with criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault, simple assault and reckless endangerment, according to court officials.

The video, shot by a WTXF-TV helicopter, shows three police cars stopping a car on the side of a road. About a dozen officers gather around the vehicle and pull three men out. About a half-dozen officers hold two of the men on the ground on the driver's side. Both are kicked repeatedly, while one is seen being punched; one also appears to be struck with a baton.

On the other side of the car, another group of officers can be seen kicking a third man who ends up on the ground.

This Article Continues Here

Open Policy?

2008-05-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

Has the current Supreme Court finally
realized that being so secretive is not
what the founding fathers had in mind
when they where creating this country
and that they were not beyond the scrutiny
of the American people?

There's Antonin Scalia chatting with Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes." There's Scalia speaking at length on National Public Radio. And there he is again, taking questions from high school students on C-SPAN.

Picture Greta Garbo joining Facebook, and you get the idea.

Until now, the Supreme Court justice has been notoriously averse to associating with the media. He has often excluded them from public appearances, even barring C-SPAN from covering an award he received in 2003 for protecting freedom of speech. In an incident a year later, federal marshals guarding Scalia at a speech in Mississippi confiscated and erased a reporter's tape recorder, deleting the justice's comments. Then, in 2006, he brushed away a Boston reporter with a gesture that some said was obscene.

But this apparently is a new day, and not just for Scalia, but for other members of the high court.

Seven months ago, Justice Clarence Thomas, a fierce critic of the media ever since Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations against him during his 1991 Senate confirmation hearings, also appeared on "60 Minutes," tooling around in his RV with correspondent Steve Kroft. He also took ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg to a football practice at the University of Nebraska, and he sat down with conservative talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Thomas' turnaround may be even more stunning than Scalia's. After all, not only has he resisted speaking to the media, he hasn't even said a word during oral arguments in more than two years.

But then again, Thomas, like Scalia, had a book to promote.

Traditionally, Supreme Court justices rarely gave interviews and never appeared on television. Information about the inner workings of the court was zealously guarded. The clerks who worked for the justices were sworn to secrecy, and when a behind-the-scenes book occasionally emerged, it was often viewed as unseemly.

For most Americans with an interest in the court, their only chance to watch a justice talk about himself or his judicial philosophy was during his Senate confirmation hearing, before he or she was on the court.

But there are signs of a thaw. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared on the "60 Minutes" segment on Scalia, talking about her friendship with him. Justice Stephen G. Breyer has given interviews to NPR and CNN. A profile of Justice John Paul Stevens appeared last year in the New York Times Magazine, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy recently granted an audience to Newsweek. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appeared in a PBS documentary on the court.

This Article Continues Here

Do Killers Have Right To Confront Dead Victims?

2008-04-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

That's the question put before the Supreme Court
and it it will hear the matter today. What do you
think? We'll be watching this one.

Dwayne Giles, who shot and killed his ex-girlfriend in Los Angeles, asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to overturn his murder conviction because he was denied the right to "confront" her in court.

"He never had a chance to cross-examine" the victim, said Marilyn G. Burkardt, a Los Angeles lawyer representing Giles. Burkardt called the prosecution's use of his ex's reports of his threats "highly prejudicial."

Though it sounds far-fetched, Giles' claim could prevail in the high court.

The Supreme Court took up of the case of Giles vs. California to test the outer limits of the so-called confrontation right in the 6th Amendment. It says, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right. . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him."

Until 2004, judges usually allowed jurors to hear "reliable" secondhand accounts of what witnesses said if the witness was not available. A police officer could report on what a missing witness had said.

But in a case that year, Justice Antonin Scalia insisted this "hearsay" violated the defendant's rights under the 6th Amendment. "Where testimonial statements are at issue, the only [test] of reliability . . . is the one the Constitution actually prescribes: confrontation," Scalia said at the time in Crawford vs. Washington.

Now, the court has to decide how strictly to apply that rule.

During Tuesday's argument, Scalia said the court should stick to a no-exceptions rule. He said Giles' rights were violated because a police officer had testified at his trial that the murder victim, Brenda Avie, had said Giles threatened to kill her.

On Sept. 5, 2002, two police officers were called to a house where Giles and Avie had been arguing. She had a bump on her forehead, and she told one officer Giles had pulled a knife on her and said he would kill her if he saw her with another man.

Four weeks later, Giles shot Avie six times at his grandmother's house, left her for dead and fled the scene. He was arrested, and when his case went to trial, he pleaded self-defense. He testified that Avie was aggressive and violent.

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Ignorant Society?

2008-04-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's headlines touted "Lack of Skilled Workers
in the Country." Well op-ed columnist Bob Herbert
seems to know why and his opinion is right on the money.

We don’t hear a great deal about education in the presidential campaign. It’s much too serious a topic to compete with such fun stuff as Hillary tossing back a shot of whiskey, or Barack rolling a gutter ball.

The nation’s future may depend on how well we educate the current and future generations, but (like the renovation of the nation’s infrastructure, or a serious search for better sources of energy) that can wait. At the moment, no one seems to have the will to engage any of the most serious challenges facing the U.S.

An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That’s more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters in an era in which a college education is crucial to maintaining a middle-class quality of life — and for the country as a whole in a world that is becoming more hotly competitive every day.

Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 190

“We have one of the highest dropout rates in the industrialized world,” said Allan Golston, the president of U.S. programs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In a discussion over lunch recently he described the situation as “actually pretty scary, alarming.”

Roughly a third of all American high school students drop out. Another third graduate but are not prepared for the next stage of life — either productive work or some form of post-secondary education.

When two-thirds of all teenagers old enough to graduate from high school are incapable of mastering college-level work, the nation is doing something awfully wrong.

Mr. Golston noted that the performance of American students, when compared with their peers in other countries, tends to grow increasingly dismal as they move through the higher grades:

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Special Order 40?

2008-04-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Well from what I've read it looks to me that
Special Order 40 needs to brought up to fit
the needs of today. Times change so why not
civil guidelines. Anyone Else?

If "Special Order 40" sounds vaguely like a term from a spy or science fiction thriller, that's in keeping with the surreal conversation that is raging around the 1979 Los Angeles Police Department rule. Specifically, the order has figured centrally in discussions of the murder of 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw, allegedly at the hands of 19-year-old illegal immigrant Pedro Espinoza. As LAPD Chief William Bratton noted recently, much of this conversation has been disconnected from the reality of the order, which governs how officers deal with undocumented immigrants and did not factor into the case at hand.

But the passions around this issue suggest something larger than just confusion about procedure or jurisdiction. The Shaw case opens onto a set of crises around crime, illegal immigration, gangs, proper policing roles and the difficulty of ensuring the rights of citizens and non-citizens in Southern California. For some, Special Order 40 is a symbol of L.A.'s collapse into a lawless "sanctuary city." For others it's crucial to the goal of protecting human rights, while still others see it as an important tool in maintaining civil order. There are plenty of other views as well, and though they don't all have direct bearing on Special Order 40, they speak to the tension and anger felt by many locals.

We rounded up quotes from 40 Southern Californians on this controversial police rule.

Constance Rice, co-founder and co-director of the Advancement Project
Special Order 40 is absolutely essential for any workable law enforcement system in Southern California. There will be no integrity to our criminal justice system without it. African Americans can not be advocating racial profiling, which is what ending Special Order 40 would amount to.

Harry Gamboa Jr., artist
Special Order 40 must be respected so that all people can confidently approach the LAPD for emergency assistance or to provide vital information regarding criminal activity. The LAPD should not be as cold as ICE.

Daryl F. Gates, LAPD chief, 1978-1992
Special Order 40 has been following me all these years. It was written at a different time in history, when the state attorney general said illegal entry was not our business, no one was paying attention to the influx of illegals into Southern California, and the community did not seem to be concerned. We had a lot of illegals here who had been victims of crimes, and we wanted to help them. So for one thing, it would help cooperation, and two, I didn't want my guys asking every brown-faced person if they were citizens. That was the purpose of Special Order 40. It was never ever designed to protect criminals. But today the issue is no Special Order 40; it's gangs. The city not doing enough, and it should use every tool available to us to combat gangs. If that means asking them if they're illegal and deporting them, so be it. This is not about Special Order 40, it's about using every legal tool to combat gangs. I don't see any reason for an amendment to the order, but I'm all for Dennis Zine doing something about it. I believe the LAPD has every ability to go after gangs, and to use immigration to do that. Any gang member ought to be fair game.

This Article Continues Here

Was There Any Doubt?

2008-04-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

Now this was one decision I knew would set
the current Supreme Court back in line with
their far right wing decision. You can best
believe that a lot of conservatives are breathing
a sigh of relief.

A national drive to halt the death penalty met defeat at the Supreme Court on Wednesday when the justices ruled that lethal injections, if properly administered, were a humane means of executing a condemned prisoner.

By a surprisingly large 7-2 margin, the court rejected a constitutional attack on the main method of carrying out the death penalty across America. Its ruling cleared the way for executions to resume in several states after a seven-month delay.
as
Since October, officials and judges in those states -- including California -- have put executions on hold while awaiting the outcome of the Kentucky case decided Wednesday. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the ruling "supports California's lethal-injection protocol" and should allow executions in the state to resume.

The court's opinion, by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., confirmed that there was strong support for the death penalty among the justices, and an unwillingness to tolerate endless delays.

"We begin with the principle . . . that capital punishment is constitutional. It necessarily follows that there must be a means of carrying it out," Roberts wrote.

"Some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution -- no matter how humane -- if only from the prospect of error in following the required procedure."

Roberts said the court would not allow a theoretical risk that a future execution could be botched to stand in the way of carrying out the death penalty.

He also set a high bar for future challenges to carrying out the death penalty. To halt an execution, defense lawyers must show that there is a "substantial risk" that the condemned prisoner will suffer "severe pain," the chief justice said. And they have yet to provide such evidence, he added.

This Article Continues Here

Sue The Prosecutor?

2008-04-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

Not such a good idea. These people need to
be protected from such litigation so that they
can perform their jobs. Putting a target on their
backs can make it difficult for everyone even the
defense.

Prosecutors have long been shielded from lawsuits brought by people who were wrongly convicted. Even if a defendant is later shown to be entirely innocent, the prosecutor who brought the charges cannot be held liable for the mistake.

The Supreme Court has ruled that "absolute immunity" is needed so that prosecutors -- and judges -- can do their jobs without fear of legal retaliation.

But a California case that the high court is considering taking could open a back door for such lawsuits. Prosecutors in Los Angeles are urging the court to block a suit from a man who was wrongly convicted of murder because, they say, it will allow "a potential flood" of similar claims across the nation.

Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals set off alarms among prosecutors in the West when it ruled that supervising prosecutors could be sued for alleged management failures that led to a wrongful conviction. Its ruling cleared the way for Thomas L. Goldstein to sue former Los Angeles Dist. Atty. John K. Van de Kamp.

The suit does not allege that Van de Kamp, the county's chief prosecutor from 1975 to 1983, played a direct role in Goldstein's wrongful conviction for a shotgun murder in Long Beach in 1979. Indeed, Van de Kamp said he was unaware of the details of this case until decades later when the conviction was reversed.

Rather, the suit alleges that Van de Kamp and his top deputy, Curt Livesay, failed to set up a system to monitor the use of testimony from jail informants.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office, the nation's largest prosecution office, once made regular use of jail informants, but at the time it had no system for sharing information among prosecutors countywide about which informants were reliable and what they had been promised.

This Article Continues Here

Remember!

2008-04-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the death
of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I remember that day
as if it were yesterday and yet there are a great many
Americans of all color that know very little of that tragic
day. If that is so then take a moment and click on story
continued here to get a glimpse of what it was like that
day and the events that led up to it.

This Article Continues Here

Redundant Charges?

2008-04-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

Although this case doesn't involve people of color
in a major role I still thought it might interest you
as much as it has me. The case involves a Hollywood
private investigator and the way he was getting his
information through illegal wiretaps which is a federal
offense. Now out of the clear blue sky the government
has decided to drop 28 or half the charges in the case.
See this all goes to show ya how the deck can be stacked
against you!

A federal judge granted a prosecution request today to dismiss 28 charges against private investigator Anthony Pellicano and a co-defendant.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Saunders said the government made the request because some of the alleged victims weren't available to testify and other counts were redundant. More than 35 charges remain against Pellicano and former Los Angeles police Sgt. Mark Arneson.

The dropped counts mostly involved wire fraud that authorities had alleged involved Arneson searching law enforcement databases for Pellicano.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer came as prosecutors prepared to end their portion of the trial.

This Article Continues Here

Justice Dept. Monkeying With Releases

2008-04-03T13:08:00.000-07:00

Seems the Justice Department is delaying the release
of federal inmates convicted under old sentencing
guidelines simply because it does not agree with
the Supreme Court ruling.

New federal sentencing guidelines designed to end the racially tinged disparity between prison sentences for powder and crack cocaine dealers went into effect a month ago, and so far more than 3,000 inmates have had their prison terms reduced.

Dozens have been released, including at least 15 in California, but many others who should have been released have not. Attorneys involved in the process blame bureaucratic delays as well as opposition from the Justice Department.

In North Carolina, which has the country's fifth largest population of crack offenders eligible for early release, four inmates have been freed out of some three dozen who lawyers say should have been released, in some cases, years ago.

The delays appear to be due in part to a procedural bottleneck: Federal judges there did not approve a plan for processing requests for sentence reductions until five days before the new rules were to go into effect. Courts in parts of Texas and south Florida also appear to be lagging.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission approved the guidelines in December after a two-decade debate over the fairness and efficacy of laws that have punished dealers of crack cocaine much more severely than those who sell powder cocaine. The disparity has weighed particularly hard on African Americans, who represent about 90% of the defendants prosecuted for crack offenses in federal court.

The sentencing commission has estimated that about 20,000 inmates are eligible for the reduced sentences.

When the rules were approved, the commission deferred the effective date until March 3 to give courts time to prepare. As of Tuesday, the federal Bureau of Prisons said it had received 3,077 signed orders from judges modifying the sentences of prisoners nationwide. The prisons bureau won't say how many have actually been released; even after the reductions, some inmates will still have much time to serve.

This Article Continues Here

Martin And The Garbageman

2008-04-02T14:37:00.000-07:00

Until now I never really knew or understood why Dr. King
was in Memphis supporting a garbage strike. What did the
strike have to do with civil rights? Well after reading the article
below you'll see just how important this strike by local garbage
men changed the economic picture for blacks.

WHEN MARTIN Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, he was in Memphis supporting 1,300 striking sanitation workers.

Forty years after King's last stand
The unfinished struggle

April 4, 2008 | Pages 6 and 7

MARTIN LUTHER King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis 40 years ago in the midst of a struggle that he saw as part of the next stage for the civil rights movement--supporting a strike of African American sanitation workers. Here, BRIAN JONES reviews an excellent new book, Michael Honey's Going Down Jericho Road, which tells the story of that struggle.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHEN MARTIN Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, he was in Memphis supporting 1,300 striking sanitation workers.

What else to read

Brian Jones expands on the final months of the civil rights leader's life in "Martin Luther King's last fight," published in the International Socialist Review as part of a series of articles on the high points of the revolutionary year 1968.

Michael Honey's Going Down Jericho Road tells the story of the Memphis sanitation strike and vividly renders its dynamics and lessons. It is an invaluable read for those who want to carry on King's fight for real social and economic equality.

For an overview of the struggle against racism in the U.S., from slavery to the present day, get Black Liberation and Socialism, by Ahmed Shawki. For more on the development of the civil rights struggle specifically, read Jack Bloom's Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement.

One of the best biographies of King is Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, by David Garrow. The struggle in Memphis is taken up in At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, the final volume of Taylor Branch's multi-part biography.

For more on how King's political ideas developed, see Michael Eric Dyson's I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King Jr.

Workers could be fired for being one minute late or for "talking back." They had no breaks. They had to eat their lunches in 15 minutes and couldn't be seen in the shade of a tree. The shade of the truck was their only refuge from the Memphis heat, even though the trucks were old and outmoded, smelled horribly and often had maggots falling off the side.

The city didn't require residents to pack up their garbage or even bring it to the curb, so the sanitation workers had to grab everything as it lay, including tree limbs, dead animals in the road, and unpacked garbage. "I wasn't making a damn thing," James Robinson recalled. After 15 years on the job, he was being paid $1.65 an hour, only 5 cents above the federal minimum wage. "We were workin' every day then for welfare wages."

This Article Continues Here

Which Way Are They Going?

2008-04-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

This current Supreme Court amazes me in that
one day they make a decision that leans one way
then the next day they go in the opposite direction.
Anyway check out the article below and then feel
free to comment.

If a city allows a monument with the Ten Commandments to be erected in a public park, must it also allow other religions and groups to display monuments of their choosing? The Supreme Court agreed Monday to take up that question in an unusual dispute over the reach of the 1st Amendment and freedom of speech.

In the past, the court has said the free-speech rule applies in parks and officials may not discriminate against speakers or groups because of their message. In this context, freedom of speech means a freedom from government restrictions.

But last year, the U.S. appeals court in Denver extended this free-speech rule to cover the monuments, statues and displays in a public park. It ruled in favor of a religious group called Summum, which says it wants to erect its "Seven Aphorisms of Summum" next to the Ten Commandments in Pioneer Park in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

Its ruling left the city with an all-or-nothing choice: Allow Summum and others to erect their own displays in the park, or remove the other monuments.

The city’s lawyers called the appeals court ruling "confused" and "flawed" and said it could cause problems around the nation.

"We're delighted that the Supreme Court agreed to take this critical case," said a statement by Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, which filed an appeal for Pleasant Grove.

He continued: "The lower court ruling -- if left unchecked -- would ultimately force local governments to remove long-standing and well-established patriotic, religious and historical displays."

Sekulow argued that monuments are the property of the city and are not akin to private free speech.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

"Not So Fast Babyboy" !

2008-03-31T13:51:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court has done it again, sidestepping
an issue. After reading the article below please give
us your thoughts about it, Ok?

The Supreme Court refused today to reconsider a legal rule that might surprise most Americans. It allows judges to punish defendants for certain crimes even after a jury has acquitted them of the charges.

In recent years, the justices have described the right to jury trial as one of the bedrock principles of American law. But they have been unwilling to say that a jury's not-guilty verdict means the defendant cannot be punished for these charges.

Instead, the court has said judges may take into account "acquitted conduct" when they decide on a prison term.

The case of Mark Hurn from Madison, Wis., provides a stark example. The justices today turned away his appeal of an extra 15-year prison term for having crack cocaine after a jury had acquitted him on the crack cocaine charges. He was convicted of having powder cocaine in his house, a charge that would warrant between two and three years in prison under the federal sentencing guidelines.

The high court endorsed this "acquitted conduct" rule a decade ago in a California case, but they did so in a brief opinion. They agreed judges can decide on the right sentence for a convicted criminal by "relying on the entire range of conduct" presented by prosecutors, not just the charges that resulted in guilty verdicts.

But in recent years, that rule has allowed judges to give defendants long prison terms even when a jury rejected key parts of the prosecution's case.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Mistake?

2008-03-26T13:22:00.000-07:00

Now this should fall under cruel and unusual punishment.
A mistake by a records keeper puts this woman through
the worst mental anguish that a person can experience
and I think this is wrong. I hope she sues them for this.

California authorities rearrested Sara Jane Olson at noon Saturday, just hours after she was prevented from flying home to Minnesota from Los Angeles, and said she must serve one more year in prison because they miscalculated her release date.

The former member of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army had been paroled Monday from a California women's prison after serving about six yeaOfficials from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said at a news conference that they had made a mistake in computing the amount of time Olson should serve in a separate case in which she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for participating in a Sacramento-area bank robbery in which another SLA member killed a customer.

"The department is sensitive to the impact that such an error has had on all involved in this case and sincerely regrets the mistake," Scott Kernan, the agency's chief deputy secretary of adult operations, said at a Saturday afternoon news conference. "The department has launched a full investigation."

Kernan called the case "extremely complicated, given the amount of changes to the sentencing laws that have occurred over the last 30 years."

Olson should have been sentenced to 14 years, not 12, for the two crimes, Kernan said. He said state officials had failed to account for the bank robbery. The earliest possible release date for Olson now is March 17, 2009, he said. At that point, she will have served half of the 14-year term.

Like most California inmates, Olson has earned credit against her sentence for working while in prison. She served on a maintenance crew that swept and cleaned the main yard of the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, according to prison officials.rs for her role in a 1975 plot to kill Los Angeles police officers by blowing up their patrol cars.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Supreme Court To Bush: Whoa There Partner

2008-03-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Seems president Bush ain't as bad as he thought he was
and his Supreme Court told him so. What a blow this has
dealt to his ego!

The Supreme Court dealt President Bush a defeat today and ruled that he does not have the "unilateral authority" to force state officials to comply with international treaties.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts said the Constitution gives the president the power "to execute the laws, not make them." Unless Congress passes a law to enforce a treaty, the president usually cannot do it on his own, Roberts said.

The case decided today arose from an unusual dispute and an unexpected intervention by Bush. But the justices used it to make a strong statement about the limits of presidential power.

The International Court of Justice in the Hague, acting on a suit by Mexico, ruled that the United States had failed to carry out its treaty duty to inform a native country when one of its citizens was arrested and charged with a serious crime. The decision pointed to 51 Mexican nationals who were under death sentences in Texas, California and several other states.

It was unclear how this ruling could be enforced. But in a surprise move in 2005, Bush told Texas officials they must reopen and reconsider the cases of the Mexican-born murderers on death row. Bush, a former Texas governor, said he was acting "pursuant to the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution and laws of the United States."

Texas officials refused to go along with Bush's order, and they fought him in court.

In today's 6-3 decision, the high court sided with the Texas prosecutors.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Reinforcing The Dream

2008-03-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

I happened to run across the article below and found
it to be the very thing that is needed so that we can keep
the dream of Dr. King's alive. Check it out and then give us
a holla.

The lingering vestiges of America's racist past present a serious challenge to the hope that many hold for a nation that lives out its most cherished values - liberty and justice for all.

Persistent recurrences of racial incidents such as Jena, La., remind us that hatred and animosity still fester. Suspicion lurks under the surface of many interactions. Even the government's response to Hurricane Katrina is often criticized as manifesting discernable racial discrepancies.

Movies like Crash, and the news coverage of the Duke University lacrosse team sex-party debacle, and even the prospect of a Black presidential nominee in the 2008 elections remind us of the tenuous and fragile nature of racial harmony in the United States of America.

We seem to live under an uneasy truce.

It has been four and a half decades since the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered. Yet none of us can say we have fully lived up to Dr. King's vision of a land where each person would be judged by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin.

Tensions continue, and weekly we hear of yet another incident somewhere in our country where race is presented as a precipitating factor.

Things are different today than they were 45 years ago. Yet the questions remains, why has it been so difficult for us to embrace and consistently live out Dr. King's dream?

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Race Not A Factor

2008-03-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

I have to agree with the LAPD on this one that most
of the cities homicides have been either black on black
or latino on latino. The homicides that have been committed
between races have been blown up by the media coverage
that they get. I live in a latino neighborhood and the two
rival gangs here have been keeping the local funeral homes busy.

Has racial hatred between African Americans and Latinos played a role in this year's rise in Los Angeles killings? Absolutely not, LAPD officials said earlier this week as they cited an analysis and statistics of the more than 90 people who have been slain so far this year. As has long been the case, the vast majority of homicide victims were likely to have been killed by someone of their own race or ethnic group, according to the survey (read to the end for the stats).

The statistics and statements by Police Chief William J. Bratton have not swayed many African American leaders and residents. Betty Pleasant, who writes the Soulvine Column for the Wave papers, echoed the feelings of many who say their concerns are being ignored as Bratton and others downplay the role of race in the killings of blacks.

I’m certain that he’s sitting up in Parker Center earnestly believing I am inflaming a situation that could make his job of keeping the peace that much harder. I can’t help that. It is what it is regardless of what he says it is. I’m not "taking on the chief," I’m taking on what the chief said, if that makes any sense.

-- Jesus Sanchez

Shades Of Martin?

2008-03-19T14:43:00.000-07:00

When I read the text of Barack Obama's speech
a renewed sense of well being swept through me.
The spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was very
much present. The man is taking up where Dr. King
left off. He most certainly has my vote!

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

High Court Leaning To Say No?

2008-03-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

As lawyers prepare to present their cases in the
District of Columbia handgun ban the Supreme
Court seems ready to strike the law down. It seems
to me that the city has presented a pretty strong
case. But that's just my opinion. After reading the
article below let us hear yours.

The Supreme Court justices, hearing a historic argument on the meaning of the 2nd Amendment, signaled they are likely to strike down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia and rule that homeowners have a right to keep a gun for self-defense.

But if the oral arguments are any guide, the outcome will not be unanimous. Several justices said they believed the 2nd Amendment was intended to protect the state's right to maintain a "well-regulated militia," not to give gun rights to individuals.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who is the swing vote in close cases, said he believed the 2nd Amendment did more than bolster the state militia. "In my view, there is a general right to bear arms" that goes beyond serving in the militia, Kennedy said.

Most Americans believe the 2nd Amendment protects the right of law-abiding persons to "keep and bear arms." But the legal meaning of this provision remains in doubt. The high court has never invoked this right to strike down a gun law nor has it ruled that it protects a personal right to own a gun.

Justice Antonin Scalia, like Kennedy, described the 2nd Amendment as protecting individual guns. Justice Clarence Thomas is likely to join with them. And Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they believed the city council in Washington, D.C., went too far by prohibiting homeowners from having handguns.

"Why is that a reasonable regulation?" Roberts asked the lawyer defending the city's law.

Walter Dellinger, arguing for the city, said the framers of the Constitution were concerned about protecting the right of the people to defend the state or the community. The 2nd Amendment creates "a right to participate in the common defense," he said.

The amendment says: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
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movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

FBI Doesn't Care

2008-03-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

If the FBI had so much info on the first attack
of Tupac then why the heck didn't they move on
it? Well we've always known the answer to that.
White folks have never given a hoot about blacks
killing blacks. After all these were two rappers who
were anti-establishment. What do you think?

Cameras flashed as paramedics carried the victim into the glare of Times Square on a stretcher. Blood seeped through bandages from five gunshot wounds.

Tupac Shakur had been beaten, shot and left for dead at the Quad Recording Studios on New York's 7th Avenue. As he was borne to a waiting ambulance through a swarm of paparazzi on Nov. 30, 1994, the rap star thrust his middle finger into the air.

It was a portentous moment in hip-hop -- the start of a bicoastal war that would culminate years later in the killings of Shakur and rap's other leading star, Christopher Wallace, better known as the Notorious B.I.G.

The ambush at the Quad remains a source of fascination and frustration to music fans and law enforcement officials alike. No one has ever been charged in the attack.

Now, newly discovered information, including interviews with people who were at the studio that night, lends credence to Shakur's insistence that associates of rap impresario Sean "Diddy" Combs were behind the assault. Their alleged motives: to punish Shakur for disrespecting them and rejecting their business overtures and, not incidentally, to curry favor with Combs.

The information focuses on two New York hip-hop figures -- talent manager James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond and promoter James Sabatino, who is now in prison for unrelated crimes.

FBI records obtained recently by The Times say that a confidential informant told authorities in 2002 that Rosemond and Sabatino "set up the rapper Tupac Shakur to get shot at Quad Studios." The informant said Sabatino had told him that Shakur "had to be dealt with."

The records -- summaries of FBI interviews with the informant conducted in July and December 2002 -- provide details of how Shakur was lured to the studio and ambushed. Others with knowledge of the incident corroborated the informant's account in interviews with The Times and gave additional details.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Kids Pay The Price?

2008-03-14T13:32:00.000-07:00

The article below tells of a most absurd situation.
The actions of a small group of school administrators
may jeopardize the future of 53,000 mostly African
American students. But then how can students be
discredited because of the mismanagement of the
school district. Punish the managers not the children!

Kyanda Daniels, a junior, ran for miles with the Jonesboro High School track team the other day. When she was done, she stood above the stadium, gasping for air, and wondering what on Earth she was striving for.

"We're in school for nothing, basically," said Daniels, 17. "When I get out my homework, I think to myself, 'Man, why am I doing this?' What college is going to accept us? Who would give us a scholarship?"

Anxiety has engulfed students across Clayton County, a predominantly black area south of Atlanta, ever since they learned their school district could become the first in the nation since the 1960s to lose its accreditation.

Last month, the Southern Assn. of Colleges and Schools recommended that the district's accreditation be revoked Sept. 1 because of ethical violations by its board. The national accreditation commission will vote Saturday.

For the county's nearly 53,000 public school students, loss of accreditation would mean they would not be eligible for state scholarships or be accepted at many universities. They also would have difficulty transferring to other high schools.

Such a devastating scenario would also have symbolic significance for this once mostly white, rural county, where Margaret Mitchell set her 1936 novel, "Gone With The Wind," and where large numbers of blacks have settled as Atlanta has grown in recent years. The population is now 62% African American.

For many, the accreditation problem puts an embarrassing spin on the county's transition from white to black.

"It makes me mad," said Garrett Anderson, 36, a forklift operator who came to Jonesboro High the other afternoon to pick up his 14-year-old son, Garrius, after weight training. "How can nine adults rob so many kids of their dreams?" According to the report, Clayton County Public Schools' nine-member school board is so "dysfunctional" that it has had difficulty recruiting a superintendent, teachers and bus drivers. It accuses board members of nepotism, conflicts of interest, micromanagement, lax fiscal responsibility and failure to audit school attendance.

AL Is Guaranteeing To Back A Winner

2008-03-11T20:56:00.000-07:00

The Rev. Al Sharpton has still not committed to any
presidential candidate as of yet but in his address to
The Concordia Student Union in Canada the Reverend
seemed to be leaning towards the front runner Barack
Obama. Yeah Al that’s a pretty slick ole move there. No
matter who wins you won’t be left out in the cold!

Hundreds lined up outside of Concordia University’s Henry F. Hall Building Thursday night to see Rev. Al Sharpton speak on the U.S. presidential election cycle, as well as issues that touched closer to home – like police brutality, animal rights, and reasonable accommodation.

The audience greeted Sharpton, an American civil rights activist and former Democratic Party presidential candidate, with a standing ovation.

“I’m not always treated as kindly in introductions in the States,” he said.

Although Sharpton has not officially endorsed any candidate for president, he called the career of Barack Obama an “ascension” that was “nothing short of astounding.”

He also criticized the Clinton campaign, arguing that a memo it released before last Tuesday’s primaries – which claimed Obama aides met with members of Canada’s Conservative Party to discuss NAFTA – was “suspicious.”

The memo said that an adviser of Obama had met with Canadian officials to say that he would not renegotiate the free trade agreement, which contradicted statements the Illinois Senator had made during his campaign that were strongly anti-NAFTA. After publicizing the memo, Clinton won Ohio, where a large, working-class population blames NAFTA for job losses.

Bush Tackles Obama's Foreign Policy

2008-03-06T16:18:00.000-08:00

President Bush has decided to throw a few barbs
at Barack Obama despite saying that he would stay
out of the fracas. Well we all knew that was not so.
How could he just sit back and not come to the aid
of his buddy John McCain.

Setting aside his stated reluctance to enter the presidential campaign, President Bush on Thursday strongly criticized Barack Obama's expressed readiness to meet with foreign leaders cast as tyrants, warning that such discussions "can be extremely counterproductive" and "send the wrong signal."

He also challenged Democrats' skepticism about the North American Free Trade Agreement, and reminded Obama that Al Qaeda has been seeking to establish a base in Iraq "for the past four years."

At the same time, he said at a White House news conference that he was not yet willing to join the political fray, but his comments suggested otherwise. He worked beyond the edges of the debate, challenging for the first time -- and across a broad spectrum of issues -- some of the tenets of Obama's and Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaigns and the direction in which the Democrats would take the nation.

In the lively 46-minute session with the media, during which Bush bantered with reporters, he delivered a forceful plea for congressional support of his plan to renew anti-terrorist eavesdropping legislation.

He attacked congressional critics of his Iraq policy and expressed curiosity -- as well as uncertainty -- about Dmitri A. Medvedev, the all-but-certain successor to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.

But it was in his challenge to Obama's readiness to meet with the pariahs of American foreign policy that Bush plunged most directly into the presidential campaign.

The president said that "sitting down at the table, having your picture taken with a tyrant such as Raul Castro" would lend the status of the American presidency to the new Cuban leader.

"He gains a lot from it by saying, 'Look at me, I'm now recognized by the president of the United States,' " Bush said.

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More FBI Dirty Tricks?

2008-03-05T13:19:00.000-08:00

My thinking on national security has changed since
911. I mean look if terrorist had to play by a rule
book then they'd certainly not get much accomplish.
So why must our guys continue to do so? Sure some
of the people that come under the FBI's scrutiny are
American citizens but they also aid the enemy.

The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday.

Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the privacy breach by FBI agents and lawyers occurred a year before the bureau enacted sweeping new reforms to prevent future lapses.

Details on the abuses will be outlined in the coming days in a report by the Justice Department's inspector general.

The report is a follow-up to an audit by the inspector general a year ago that found the FBI demanded personal data on people from banks, telephone and Internet providers and credit bureaus without official authorization and in non-emergency circumstances between 2003 and 2005.

Mueller, noting senators' concerns about Americans' civil and privacy rights, said the new report "will identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March." The similarities, he said, are because the time period of the two studies "predates the reforms we now have in place."

He added: "We are committed to ensuring that we not only get this right, but maintain the vital trust of the American people."

Mueller offered no additional details. Several other Justice Department and FBI officials familiar with this year's findings have said privately the upcoming report will show the letters were wrongly used at a similar rate as during the previous three years.

In contrast to the outrage by Congress and civil liberties groups after last year's report was issued, Mueller's disclosure drew no criticism from senators during just over two hours of testimony during Wednesday's hearing.

Speaking before the FBI chief, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., urged Mueller to be more vigilant in correcting what he called "widespread illegal and improper use of national security letters."

"Everybody wants to stop terrorists. But we also, though, as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and we want those protected," Leahy said. "There has to be a better chain of command for this. You cannot just have an FBI agent who decides he'd like to obtain Americans' records, bank records or anything else and do it just because they want to."

The New Civil Rights Issue?

2008-03-04T13:32:00.000-08:00

Well folks that's the way the mayor of Los Angeles sees
it and and his opponents see it as another attempt to gain
control of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Well whatya
think, can the mayor run a city of this size and and the largest
school district in the country? My answer is no, what's yours?

The high school dropout problem is "the new civil rights issue of our time," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared Wednesday in a speech that drew a line from the efforts to desegregate the South a half-century ago to today's struggles over the performance of Los Angeles students, who are predominantly Latino.

Acknowledging that there is wide disagreement about how many students are leaving L.A. schools, Villaraigosa told a conference on dropout issues that "whatever that number is, we are in a crisis."

The mayor, who is campaigning to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District, insisted that he wasn't "throwing stones" at the school system, many of whose top administrators were in the audience at the Leadership Forum on High School Dropouts at USC. But his speech contained plenty of brickbats.

"Make no mistake: There's a culture of complacency in this school district that's got to change," Villaraigosa said.

Schools Supt. Roy Romer, who was not present for the speech, gave his own talk later, defending the district even as he said he welcomed the mayor's "aggressive" approach to the district.

Ticking off the school system's accomplishments during his tenure — the nation's largest school-construction program, a sharp rise in standardized test scores in elementary schools — Romer said: "That's not complacency, folks. That's change!"

He added: "We have real challenges going forward. But to deny what we have accomplished together would be foolish." He said the reforms the district has set in place would take years to roll out.

The dropout issue has been at the center of local school reform discussions since last March, when a study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University calculated that only 45% of students were graduating in four years from Los Angeles schools. The rate was even lower for Latino students, and much higher for white and Asian American students. African Americans were close to the districtwide average.

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Chances Are.....

2008-02-28T13:07:00.000-08:00

Chances are you could be one of a hundred Americans
that are incarcerated. This growing problem was created
by the Republicans back in the 80's when they touted a
law and order platform. You would think that with all the
money spent on these so called think tanks they should
have seen this coming. Oh well!

For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report tracking the surge in inmate population and urging states to rein in corrections costs with alternative sentencing programs.

The report, released today by the Pew Center on the States, said the 50 states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, up from less than $11 billion 20 years earlier. The rate of increase for prison costs was six times greater than for higher education spending, the report said.

Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 -- one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.

The steadily growing inmate population "is saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime," said the report.

Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said budget woes are prompting officials in many states to consider new, cost-saving corrections policies that might have been shunned in the recent past for fear of appearing soft in crime.

"We're seeing more and more states being creative because of tight budgets," she said in an interview. "They want to be tough on crime, they want to be a law-and-order state -- but they also want to save money, and they want to be effective."

The report cited Kansas and Texas as states which have acted decisively to slow the growth of their inmate population. Their actions include greater use of community supervision for low-risk offenders and employing sanctions other than reimprisonment for ex-offenders who commit technical violations of parole and probation rules.

"The new approach, born of bipartisan leadership, is allowing the two states to ensure they have enough prison beds for violent offenders while helping less dangerous lawbreakers become productive, taxpaying citizens," the report said.

While many state governments have shown bipartisan interest in curbing prison growth, there also are persistent calls to proceed cautiously.

"We need to be smarter," said David Muhlhausen, a criminal justice expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation. "We're not incarcerating all the people who commit serious crimes -- but we're also probably incarcerating people who don't need to be."

According to the report, the inmate population increased last year in 36 states and the federal prison system.

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Attorneys Not Allowed?

2008-02-21T11:50:00.000-08:00

When federal agents raided a company in the
city of Van Nuys, California seeking illegal immigrants
they blocked workers from seeing their attorneys.
This is a clear violation of the law and should be
dealt with immediately. How do you feel about
this incident?

Civil rights groups filed a petition in federal court Thursday seeking a restraining order against immigration officials who allegedly blocked workers detained in a raid at a Van Nuys manufacturing plant from consulting with their attorneys.

When the workers were interviewed by federal agents their attorneys were not allowed to be present, according to the petition filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the National Lawyers Guild and the National Immigration Law Center. The petition says workers were told they did not need attorneys even after they asked for one.

Department of Justice attorneys are reviewing the claim.

"During all ICE enforcement operations, aliens are afforded access to a lawyer after routine processing," said Virginia Kice, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman. "That standard operating procedure was followed during last week's enforcement."

The action comes a week after agents swept through Micro Solutions Enterprises, arresting 130 workers on immigration violations.

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Shisty Supreme Court?

2008-02-19T18:35:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court pulled a shisty move today by
dismissing a challenge to President Bush's
warrantless wiretapping order. Rather than make
a decision on the case that would no doubt go against
the Prez it simply dismissed the case so that opponents
would have to start the process all over again thus allowing
the order to stay in place while Bush serves out the rest
of his term. Check out the article below and let us know what
you have to say about that!

The Supreme Court today dismissed the first legal challenge to President Bush's warrantless wiretapping order, but without ruling on any of the key issues.

Since Congress is now fighting with the White House over new rule for wiretapping, the court may have chosen to stand aside from the controversy.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union had argued that this dispute went beyond whether the nation's spy agency could intercept international phone calls and e-mails. It raised the question of whether the president must abide by the law, they said.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, a Cold War-era compromise, said the president could order secret wiretapping within the United States, but only with the specific approval of a special court.

But after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush issued a secret order to the National Security Agency that authorized it to intercept phone calls or e-mails coming into or going out of this country if there was a "reasonable basis" to believe there was a link to Al Qaeda. More significantly, the NSA did not need the approval of the FISA court to conduct this spying, according to the order.

When Bush's order was revealed in 2005, the president defended his decision as necessary for protecting against another attack within the United States. He also argued that the president, as commander in chief of the armed services, had the constitutional authority to act in the national interest, even if a law stood in the way.

The ACLU's lawyer urged the courts to take up the issue and rule that the law must be followed. "The president is bound by the laws that Congress enacts. He may disagree with those laws, but he may not disobey them," the ACLU said in the appeal to the Supreme Court.

But their lawsuit faced several hurdles before it could yield a ruling. They did not have proof that anyone in the United States had had calls or e-mails intercepted. They sued on behalf of several lawyers and journalists who had regular contact with people who were being investigated in terrorism-related cases. The lawyers said they did not feel free to contact their clients.

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We Need To Respect Each Others Opinion

2008-02-18T09:55:00.001-08:00

Tavis Smiley gets a backlash from African Americans because
he rocked the boat of Presidential candidate Obama. This is
just the kind of behavior that has thrown the country of Kenya
into turmoil. We have simply have to learn to respect the next
man's opinion when it goes against popular opinion. Tavis Smiley
is one of this countries top African American journalist and he's
only doing his job which can only make Obama that much more
stronger. What do you think?

"There's all this talk of hater, sellout and traitor," Smiley said to me in a telephone interview. Smiley even mentioned getting death threats, but wouldn't elaborate. He said his office has been flooded with angry e-mails. "I have family in Indianapolis. They are harassing my momma, harassing my brother. It's getting to be crazy," Smiley said.

Smiley's problems started early this month after he invited Obama to speak at the State of the Black Union, an event Smiley founded nine years ago. Held annually during Black History Month and broadcast by C-Span, the event gathers a Who's Who of black intellectuals, pundits, activists, entertainers and politicians to discuss and brainstorm about where black America is and where it is headed. This year's topic is "Reclaiming Our Democracy, Deciding Our Future."

The State of the Black Union has grown into a key event for black people since its start, but as Smiley has discovered, Obama's presidential run is far more highly regarded.

As the first black person to have a legitimate shot at a presidential nomination, defeating Sen. Hillary Clinton's rich campaign juggernaut, Obama is virtually a third civil rights movement, the manifestation of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. His candidacy has produced a fervor in black America born of centuries of wanting. Nearly every black vote that Clinton thought was hers at the beginning of the race has been siphoned by Obama.

Each of the presidential candidates were invited to speak, but only Sen. Hillary Clinton accepted. Clinton is desperate to bolster her flagging campaign with a larger share of the black vote after losing all but a small percent to Obama. Smiley said he wants the candidates to focus on the issues that black Americans care about.

If the blogosphere is any reflection, however, black America believes Smiley should check his ego. Commenters would much rather see Obama campaigning against Clinton in Texas and Ohio than at Smiley's confab in Louisiana, a state he's already won. Critics burned up Internet chat rooms, taking turns at denouncing Smiley. Pundit Melissa Harris-Lacewell, an Obama supporter, authored a biting anti-Smiley opinion on TheRoot.com (which is owned by Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive), entitled, "Who Died and Made Him King?"

A fan of Smiley commented on one blog, saying, "Tavis, Ya Killin' Me, Man." An angrier writer headlined his comment, "This is just dumb." "This man is involved in the fight of his life for the presidency of the UNITED STATES, not black states," he wrote of Obama. "I don't know if Tavis got the memo, but Hillary is leading in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the governor said that his white folks won't vote for a black." Other comments would likely be blocked by Net Nanny and can't be printed on the Web pages of a family newspaper.

For Smiley, the tumult is a major turnabout. Until now he was a darling commentator in black America. His passion for the people endeared him to many. People listened to his commentaries on the popular Tom Joyner Morning Show, and snapped up so many copies of the "Covenant" that it made the top ten lists of the both the New York Times and the Washington Post. When Smiley talked, black people listened.

"One of my friends said, 'you are being barbecued in the blogosphere,'" Smiley said. He told Black America Web writer Michael Cottman's that "I'm catching hell." In our interview, Smiley said: "This is the first time in my entire career that I have found myself in this kind of relationship with some folk in black America. I now know what it feels like to have the weight of the Internet world bearing down on you. Man, it's an eye opener when you get caught in the middle of it."

Obama's campaign said he called Smiley twice on his cell and office phones. Smiley said he returned the calls but got no response.

On the Tom Joyner Morning Show recently, Joyner brought up the controversy during an interview with Obama, relating how Smiley was taking heat for saying he thinks Obama doesn't want to talk about issues black people care about.

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore-Defying Dixie

2008-02-07T17:34:00.000-08:00

We have not spotlighted many books on the
subject of civil rights and so at this time let's
take a gander at the latest work by historian
Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore. I'm sure after reading
the article below you will want to run out and
get yourself a copy.

During the first half of the 20th century, the South routinely chased away "some of its brightest minds and most beautiful spirits," historian Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore notes in the introduction to her new book, "Defying Dixie." "Many of those who left did so, directly or indirectly, because they opposed white supremacy. . . . Counting them back into southern history reveals an insurgent South and shows some Southerners to be a revolutionary lot that fought longer and harder than anyone else to defeat Dixie."

Indeed, counting in these expatriates changes our view of history. And that is exactly what the Yale professor seeks to achieve with this complex, nuanced narrative of the civil rights movement before 1950.

That movement actually began, Gilmore argues, in 1919 when black soldiers returned from World War I and, in the face of violent opposition, began demanding the same freedoms at home that they'd fought for abroad. The author makes sweeping (and convincing) connections between Jim Crow segregation in the South and white supremacy in such places as Haiti and South Africa. In her retelling of history, the fight against Southern injustice moves well beyond Dixie to become a struggle for human rights that plays out in Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union and around the globe.

By the 1930s, Gilmore writes, African American activists and journalists had begun to sway public opinion against Jim Crow laws by successfully linking Hitler's reign of terror with domestic fascism down South. Hitler, too, compared Germany with the South -- and judged his system more humane. Echoing Hitler, one of his followers said in 1935, "The treatment of Negroes in America [is] far worse than that accorded Jews by the Nazis and America's criticism should be turned in that direction rather than toward Germany. Here in Germany we say that when a Negro is lynched for assaulting a white woman he gets what is coming to him. As we do not bother about executions of Negroes, you [Americans] should not bother when we lead a race desecrator through the streets."

With this Nazi/Jim Crow link as a backdrop, Gilmore writes, "racism had become un-American" by the mid-1940s, as World War II came to an end. Albert Einstein, deploring the second-class citizenship of black Americans, warned that "the fall of Berlin does not mean the end of fascism . . . yes, there are fascists in America, too." Around the same time, such American icons as Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra began to publicly caution against "race prejudice," which they said was better left to Hitler and his ilk. This high-profile talk of tolerance helped lay the foundation for Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement as we came to know it during the 1950s and '60s.

How that foundation was laid decades earlier is the central concern of Gilmore's narrative. Rejecting the notion that "middle-class black men in ties radicalized the nation," she writes: "By giving the movement a 1950s start, we discount the forces that generated and sustained human rights during the 1930s and 1940s and privilege its religious, middle-class, and male roots."

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The Dream Of Others

2008-01-30T18:44:00.000-08:00

We are not alone among the people of color that have
a dream.Discrimination has no color such as in India
where the Sikhs are struggling for their rights. After
reading the article below you may feel a kindred
spirit with others in the world that are also struggling
for their rights.

Every 26^th January is a day for Sikhs to reflect upon the years gone by. Many among the Sikhs feel that the last many decades have been teasing times. Though of late there are Sikh faces to be seen in the Indian landscape, for a very long time, India has taunted the Sikhs a great deal in every sphere of life, affecting their life, ideals and goals.

The founding fathers of the Indian constitution touted it as a sacrosanct document to be religiously followed by all in letter and spirit. A glance at the huge volume shows that it has reasonable language but the implementation of the clauses has invariably followed the whims and fancies of the political parties dominating the life of the people of this country.

Every 26^th January is a day for Sikhs to reflect upon the years gone by. The last many decades have been teasing times. India has taunted the Sikhs a great deal in every sphere of life, affecting their life, ideals and goals.

The Sikh nation believes that the Indian constitution has failed the Sikh people. India uses the best democratic ideals and institutions, including the constitution to scuttle our religious, social and political aspirations.

More than a century ago, in his historic “I have a dream” speech, black civil rights activist, Martin Luther King said, “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

What was then true for the black community in U.S.A, is more than true for the Sikhs in India. The situation is exactly similar. The intellectual and legal jargon of the Indian constitution failed the Sikhs, ab initio. Soon after it was ready, the Sikh members of the Constituent Assembly, sensed the injustice and proclaimed, “The Sikhs do not accept this constitution. The Sikhs reject this constitution.” Even the leaders of the Shiromani Akali Dal, who are in power today in Punjab have spent years in prison for protesting anti-Sikh provisions of the constitution. The rationale for such rejection persists. All precepts of democracy including liberty, freedom of speech, right to dissent exist in this constitution, but in reality the cheque bounces. Again and again. The funds are not insufficient but the intention is malafide.

1963!

2008-01-27T17:11:00.000-08:00

The story below tells of the year 1963 when
the black man in America sheds the passive
attitude of restraint and makes the country
sit-up and take a good look at itself. After
reading it please feel free to comment.

This is original Time "Man Of The Year" story from Jan. 3, 1964 The jetliner left Atlanta and raced through the night toward Los Angeles. From his window seat, the black man gazed down at the shadowed outlines of the Appalachians, then leaned back against a white pillow. In the dimmed cabin light, his dark, impassive face seemed enlivened only by his big, shiny, compelling eyes. Suddenly, the plane spuddered in a pocket of severe turbulence. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. turned a wisp of a smile to his companion and said: "I guess that's Birmingham down below." It was, and the reminder of Vulcan's city set King to talking quietly of the events of 1963.

"In 1963," he said, there arose a great Negro disappointment and disillusionment and discontent. It was the year of Birmingham, when the civil rights issue was impressed on the nation in a way that nothing else before had been able to do. It was the most decisive year in the Negro's fight for equality. Never before had there been such a coalition of conscience on this issue." Symbol of Revolution. In 1963, the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that coalition of conscience insatiably changed the course of U.S. life. Nineteen million Negro citizens forced the nation to take stock of itself in the Congress as in the corporation, in factory and field and pulpit and playground, in kitchen and classroom.

The U.S. Negro, shedding the thousand fears that have encumbered his generations, made 1963 the year of his outcry for quality, of massive demonstrations, of wins and speeches and street fighting, of soul searching in the suburbs and psalm singing in the jail cells. And there was Birmingham with its bombs and snarling dogs; its shots in the night and death in the streets and in the churches; its lashing fire hoses at washed human beings along slippery avenues without washing away the dignity; its men and women pinned to the ground by officers of the law ... this was the Negro revolution.

Birmingham was its main battleground, and Martin Luther King Jr., the leader of the Negroes in Birmingham, became millions, black and white, in South and North, the symbol of that revolution -- and the Man of the Year. King is in many ways the unlikely leader of an unlikely organization -- the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a loose alliance of 100 or so church-oriented groups. King has neither the quiet brilliance nor the sharp administrative capabilities of the N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins. He has none of the sophistication of the National Urban League's Whitney Young Jr., lacks Young's experience in dealing with high echelons of the U.S. business community.

He has neither the inventiveness of CORE's James Farmer nor the raw militancy of SNICK's John Lewis nor the bristling wit of Author James Baldwin. He did not make his mark in the entertainment field, where talented Negroes have long been prominent, or in the sciences and professions where Negroes have, almost unnoticed, been coming into their own. He earns no more money than some plumbers ($10,000 a year), and possesses little in the way of material things.

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Photo I.D. Needed To Vote?

2008-01-24T12:57:00.000-08:00

In this day of mass fraud and identification theft
should you need a photo I.D. to vote? The answer
I think is yes. Like so many other things in our high
tech society your right to cast your vote should not be
disrupted because of identity theft. Those who appose
this new law cite that many poor people will not be
able to afford the fees of a photo I.D. This I find to be
bull because most states have plans in place that allow
those that can't afford photo I.D.'s to either get them
for free or at a reduced rate. The Supreme Court is
taking up the matter and will make a decision soon.
What are your thoughts on this controversial subject?

There's the poor, 32-year-old mother of seven who says it would cost her at least $50 to vote in person. There's also the 92-year-old woman who's voted for decades in the same polling place, but now can't vote there because she let her driver's license expire when her eyesight began to fail.

These folks live in Indiana, home of the country's most restrictive photo-identification voter law. The U.S. Supreme Court is now scrutinizing whether that statute violates the first and 14th amendments, in the most contentious legal battle over voting since the high court issued a bitterly divided decision eight years ago that stopped Florida's recount and handed the presidency to George W. Bush.

If the law is upheld, voting rights advocates fear it will encourage conservative lawmakers across the country to enact equally restrictive measures. The high court's decision is expected in the summer -- leaving time to impact November's general election.

Opponents, most of them Democrats, say requiring photo ID at the polls disproportionately affects the poor, the elderly and minorities -- the most likely to lack photo identification.

But supporters, most of them Republicans, say such requirements are necessary to prevent voter fraud.

In states that narrowly lost fights that would force voters to produce this kind of identification, efforts are already underway to resurrect those more restrictive laws -- in anticipation of a favorable ruling from the high court.

In Kansas, for example, GOP legislators announced Jan. 11 that passing such a law was a top priority for its 2008 session. The announcement came two days after oral arguments in the Indiana case.

Setting Things Straight

2008-01-22T16:59:00.000-08:00

On April 16th, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King sat in
a Birmingham jail. He had come under criticism by
other clergymen throughout the south for his work
in civil rights movement. Having the utmost respect
for those fellow clergymen he decided to set things
straight with them and thus bringing them in to his
line of thinking. After reading this letter give us your
thoughts brilliant manuscript.

MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN:

While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine goodwill and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the South--one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Whenever necessary and possible we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because I have basic organizational ties here.

Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.

Truly Remembered ?

2008-01-20T16:06:00.000-08:00

The story below is kinda sad in one aspect in which
through time the legacy of a very great man will be
lost in time.Fifty years from now how will Martin
Luther King be defined? Will he be just known for his
famous "I Have A Dream" speech on the Lincoln Memorial
or will he be know as a man who lived and died fighting
for the rights of others? How can we preserve the
legacy of America's most famous African American?.
Your comment is welcomed.

They are some of the most famous words in American history: "I have a dream ..." And the man who said them has become an icon.

Martin Luther King Jr. has certainly gotten his share of attention this year, the subject of a presidential campaigan controversy over his legacy that blew up just around the time of the holiday created to honor him.

But nearly 40 years after his assassination in April 1968, after the deaths of his wife and of others who knew both the man and what he stood for, some say King is facing the same fate that has befallen many a historical figure _ being frozen in a moment in time that ignores the full complexity of the man and his message.

"Everyone knows, even the smallest kid knows about Martin Luther King, can say his most famous moment was that "I have a dream" speech," said Henry Louis Taylor Jr., professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Buffalo.

"No one can go further than one sentence," he said. "All we know is that this guy had a dream, we don't know what that dream was."

At the time of his death, King was working on anti-poverty and anti-war issues. He had spoken out against the Vietnam War in 1967, and was in Memphis in April 1968 in support of striking sanitation workers.

King had come a long way from the crowds who cheered him at the 1963 March on Washington, when he was introduced as "the moral leader of our nation" _ and when he pronounced "I have a dream" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

By taking on issues outside segregation, he had lost the support of many newspapers and magazines, and his relationship with the White House had suffered, said Harvard Sitkoff, a professor of history at the University of New Hampshire who has written a recently published book on King.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Happy Birthday Dr. King

2008-01-19T05:22:00.000-08:00

This year, the nation celebrates the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, on Monday January 21, 2008...

Happy Birthday Dr. King!

2007-11-06T10:57:00.000-08:00

Looks as if the NACP has hooked it's self a live one this
time. Seems that a Myrtle Beach Floridia restaurant has
decided to ignore the law and continue the practice of
racial discrimination. Read the article below an feel free
to put in your cents.

*The NAACP has filed a federal lawsuit against the owners of a Friendly's Restaurant in Myrtle Beach claiming they close shop and serve a limited menu from the sidewalk during an annual black biker rally, but keep the doors open with a full menu during a biker rally attended mostly by whites.

"The limited and substandard services available on the sidewalk in front of the Friendly's only reinforced the message that African Americans are separate and unequal," said the lawsuit, filed Tuesday (Oct. 30) in U.S. District Court in Florence.

Other issues raised in the lawsuit include the fact that food served outside the restaurant and advertised by a handwritten sign did not mirror the menu available inside; and that the owners of the restaurant did not offer ice cream for sale during the black biker weeks, which are held around Memorial Day.

Something Fishy About Legal Aid

2007-10-26T11:23:00.000-07:00

If your going to use the services of legal aid you'd
better check them out first. Scams come in all shapes
and sizes so why not with your local legal aid. Read on
and see what's so fishy about some legal aids.

One of California's largest law firms has filed a civil case seeking to put an allegedly fake legal-aid operation out of business in Northern California.

Legal experts said the lawsuit tries to address a growing problem statewide.

The suit, filed in Contra Costa County Superior Court last week, alleges that the Legal Center for Legal Aid has swindled Northern California residents who were seeking assistance with evictions.

San Francisco-based Morrison & Foerster asserts the center employed false advertising in a "brazen . . . scam" to deceive four people, including an elderly blind man, a double amputee and a plaintiff with a severe head injury, according to court documents.

The center provided either no or faulty assistance to the plaintiffs and continues to use false advertising and other illegal tactics, according to the suit, filed in Martinez.

Morrison & Foerster attorneys, led by Angela Padilla of the firm's San Francisco office, are seeking an injunction barring the center, and its principal, Richard Gugg, from engaging in fraudulent activities.

The center advertises in a number of California Yellow Page directories and its Yellow Page entry "was placed alongside and sometimes directly above and below those of legitimate legal aid services, enhancing its apparent credibility and deceiving those who were hurried or confused in their need for legal help," Padilla said in a written statement.

This Article Continues Here

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"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

If Not The Rooney Rule Then What?

2007-10-19T13:17:00.000-07:00

This looks like a case of the good-old boys trying not to
change things. But the way I see it there needs to be
some kind of a program in place so that minority coaches
can get an even shot at coaching in the college ranks.
For too long now minority coaches have been denied access
to the college ranks and a change has to come.

Mississippi State Coach Sylvester Croom said he doubted that diversity could be mandated in college football.
The Black Coaches Association has suggested Division I college football, possibly through the N.C.A.A., needs to implement guidelines similar to the Rooney Rule in the N.F.L., which requires teams to interview minority candidates when hiring a head coach.

“I don’t think that’s feasible, because every institution is so different,” Croom said during a recent teleconference. “You have so many parties to satisfy in college football.
“The N.F.L. is an organization. It’s a lot easier to have missions and address issues. I don’t see how that would work at this level.”

The Rooney Rule has resulted in a gradual increase in black coaches around the N.F.L. The N.C.A.A. has said it does not have the authority to control the way its members hire coaches.
Croom is one of only six black coaches among 119 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, along with U.C.L.A.’s Karl Dorrell, Buffalo’s Turner Gill, Washington’s Tyrone Willingham, Kansas State’s Ron Prince and Miami’s Randy Shannon.

Shannon was one of two minorities hired to fill 23 coaching vacancies for bowl subdivision (formerly I-A) teams after last season. The other was Florida International’s Mario Cristobal, who is Hispanic.
Shannon said minority candidates had been getting more interviews. “You just have to make sure you’re not interviewing somebody just to interview them,” he said. “That’s what kills you about the Rooney Rule.”

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Heroes

2007-10-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

Now here is a woman that can definetly be called a champion
for human rights. Check out her article and you'll agree that
we still have a very long way to go.

We are within hours of learning whether AB 1539 will be signed or vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to help relieve the crisis in our prisons where real people are perishing from overcrowded conditions caused by medical neglect. While this is far from being a perfect bill, we have often rallied at the prisons and at the Capitol, attended hearings for a decade, filed legal actions to put teeth into our insistence that these basic human rights be respected, and have inspired and written thousands of articles to get the issue on the front burner. The wait is nearly over and we should hear today, or at the latest by Monday whether or not our work to get even a baby step achieved toward compassionate release of sick and dying prisoners was in vain or not.

Today is my birthday, and as I mark another year's milestone in our UNION's daily, brutal, decade-long battle for compassionate release and all basic human rights, I would like to publicly thank Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton for taking action to try and stop the constant murder by medical neglect in California's prisons. There is no way that I can express enough gratitude to both they and Attorney Donald Specter of Prison Law Office and his staff for the great legal work that brought us to this point. The heroic work of our UNION family members who had the courage and common sense to file 28 lawsuits against 350 state employees also deserve a round of applause as all serious reform comes from lawsuits, initiative campaigns and putting the right people in office.

Most of their lawsuits are for wrongful deaths, and those UNION families who opened up their lives during their worst nightmare in order to help identify the true extent of the crisis deserve everyone's deepest respect and gratitude. After all, they are fighting battles for those who are still alive, even their own sons and daughters are dead at the hands of State employees still running amok. It is predicable that another 400 plus people are going to die in prison this year, while their family members live in denial and take no action to prevent it. Many of them will be young, healthy, men and women imprisoned for a non-violent, minor crime who did not have a death sentence, and those who are bereaved are fighting to benefit them and to try and find some sort of relief to their own excruciating pain, which will no doubt last a lifetime.

As part of my birthday reflection, I re-read this famous letter sent by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as he sat alone in jail in Birmingham, Alabama. He was being criticized and abandoned by fellow members of the clergy, who were the very people who should have been helping him. People were dying over the battle for the black's right to vote and those who were trying to stand up to it were being murdered, stoned, burned out of their homes and churches during the 60's.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Poor Clarence

2007-10-02T18:53:00.000-07:00

If it is which molds that we are cast from I sure
hope like hell the one Justice Clarence Thomas
came from got broken. The man was a perfect
ringer when the elder President Bush nominated
him. The way things have worked in this country
is by when one person of a race rises to prominence
then he in turn would pull up some other member
of that race up with him. Instead Thomas is stomping
on fingers. Somebody get a rope! Eugene Robinson's
commentary is right on target so check it out below.

I believe in affirmative action, but I have to acknowledge there are arguments against it. One of the more cogent is the presence of Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you caught Thomas on " 60 Minutes" on Sunday night, you know that he will probably consider me one of the many people who want to see him "destroyed" because he doesn't "follow in this cult-like way something that blacks are supposed to believe." That's what he told CBS correspondent Steve Kroft -- that he'd been persecuted for "veering away from the black gospel that we're supposed to adhere to."

The up-close-and-personal "60 Minutes" piece, timed to coincide with publication of Thomas's autobiography, was compelling television. It was also a useful reminder that whenever my Bush Derangement Syndrome flares up to the point where I'm actually feeling nostalgic for the days when George Bush the Elder was in the White House, I need only recall that it was Poppy who put Thomas on the court. That snaps me back to my senses. Thomas is only 59; we'll be saddled with him, and that gigantic chip on his shoulder, for decades to come.

Thomas said in the interview that the scorched-earth battle over his confirmation wasn't really about him, it was about abortion. Yet at other points he made clear that the whole thing was about him, specifically his commission of the ultimate sin: He is (drum roll, please) a black conservative. Cover the children's ears.

"I'm black," he told Kroft. "So I'm supposed to think a certain way. I'm supposed to have certain opinions. I don't do that. You don't create a box and put people in and then make a lot of generalizations about them."

Negative Effects Of Affirmative Action

2007-09-27T14:57:00.000-07:00

The story below needs no pre-comment from
me cause it's an issue that's very close to many
of us who are trying to make a way in this man's
land. So just check it out and leave us your opinion.

IMAGINE, FOR A MOMENT, that a program designed to aid disadvantaged students might, instead, be seriously undermining their performance. Imagine that the schools administering the programs were told that the programs might be having this boomerang effect -- but that no one

investigated further because the programs were so popular and the prospect of change was so politically controversial.

Now imagine that an agency had collected enough information on student performance that it might, by carefully studying or releasing the data, illuminate both the problem and the possible solutions. What should the agency do?

This is not a hypothetical question. The schools involved are dozens of law schools in California and elsewhere, and the program is the system of affirmative action that enables hundreds of minority law students to attend more elite institutions than their credentials alone would allow. Data from across the country suggest to some researchers that when law students attend schools where their credentials (including LSAT scores and college grades) are much lower than the median at the school, they actually learn less, are less likely to graduate and are nearly twice as likely to fail the bar exam than they would have been had they gone to less elite schools. This is known as the "mismatch effect."

The mismatch theory is controversial. One of us (Sander) has advanced it in the academic literature. The other (Amar) believes that while it raises substantial questions, it has not been empirically proved. Some dismiss the whole idea as nothing more than a politically motivated attack on affirmative action or, even worse, an attack on blacks and Latinos -- the main recipients of current preferences. Many rightly point out that definitive conclusions are difficult because the data available to researchers thus far have been limited in very important ways.

Still, certain facts are indisputable. Data from one selective California law school from 2005 show that students who received large preferences were 10 times as likely to fail the California bar as students who received no preference. After the passage of Proposition 209, which limited the use of racial preferences at California's public universities, in-state bar passage rates for blacks and Latinos went up relative to out-of-state bar passage rates. To the extent that students of color moved from UC schools to less elite ones (as seems likely), the post-209 experience is consistent with the mismatch theory.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Hip-Hop Comes Under Congressional Scurtiny

2007-09-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

Testifying today before a congressional house panel,
rappers Master P and David Banner gave two opposing
views about cleaning up rap's lyrical content. Read the
story below and feel free to make your own suggestions.

Two rappers, sitting side-by-side in a House hearing room, went in different directions Tuesday on the need for hip-hop artists to expunge their work of sexist and violent language.

One, Master P, apologized to women for past songs that demeaned them, while another was defiant.

Former gangsta rapper Master P, whose real name is Percy Miller, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing that he is now committed to producing clean lyrics. The angry music of his past, he said, came from seeing relatives and friends shot and killed.

But he said now that he doesn't want his own children to listen to his music, "so if I can do anything to change this, I'm going to take a stand and do that."

"I want to apologize to all the women out there," he said. "I was honestly wrong."

But rapper and record producer Levell Crump, known as David Banner, was defiant as lawmakers pressed him on his use of offensive language. "I'm like Stephen King: horror music is what I do," he said in testimony laced with swear words. "Change the situation in my neighborhood and maybe I'll get better," he told one member of Congress.

The two rappers were joined by music industry executives and scholars. They disagreed over who was to blame for sexist and degrading language in hip-hop music but were united in opposing government censorship as a solution.

Jesse's Loose Lips?

2007-09-20T13:53:00.000-07:00

Looks as if Jesse Jackson has once more found a way
to get his foot and mouth together. I won't ad much
more to this because for those of us that have been
around we are well aware of Jesse's loose lips.

Jesse Jackson was quoted as saying Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was "acting like he's white" for not speaking out more forcefully about a racially charged schoolyard beating in Louisiana.

Wednesday's (Columbia) State newspaper said Jackson made the comment about Obama and the Jena, La., case after speaking Tuesday at Benedict College, a historically black school. "If I were a candidate, I'd be all over Jena," Jackson said in his remarks after the speech, according to the published account.

"Jena is a defining moment, just like Selma was a defining moment," Jackson said. In 1965, demonstrators were attacked by police with billy clubs during a peaceful voting rights march in Selma, Ala. "Bloody Sunday" shocked the nation and helped bring attention to the voting barriers that kept blacks from the polls.

Jackson later told the newspaper he did not remember making the "acting like he's white" comment about Obama, who is black.

On Wednesday, the civil rights activist said in a statement that he was "taken out of context." It said he commended Obama "for speaking out and demanding fairness on this defining issue. Any attempt to dilute my support for Sen. Obama will not succeed."

The newspaper's deputy managing editor, Steve Brook, said the newspaper was standing by its story.

The Illinois senator, in a statement late Wednesday reacting to Jackson's comment, said "outrage over an injustice" such as in the Jena case "isn't a matter of black and white. It's a matter of right and wrong." Obama cited earlier statements in which he "demanded fairness" and said they "were carefully thought out with input and support" from one of his national campaign chairmen _ Jesse Jackson Jr., a Chicago congressman and son of the elder Jackson.

Is L.A. Going To Be The Testing Grounds For New Gadgets?

2007-09-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

As the 21st century moves on so does technology within
L.A.'s law enforcement as it tries to find non-lethal ways
of dealing with combatant individuals. The L.A. Sheriff's
department known for shooting first and asking questions
later is trying to turn it's track record around with space-
age weapons. Read the article below and feel free to ring in.

Charles "Sid" Heal stands excitedly in the parking lot of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's station in San Dimas, tinkering with a prototype for the ominously named "Active Denial System."
With one zap from what looks like a satellite dish on a tripod, those within target range feel a burning sensation on their skin.

Heal, a Sheriff's Department commander, tested the device on himself.

"It is like stepping into a scalding shower. You are going to step back quickly," Heal said. "It just stops them in their tracks."

Heal likes the system because he sees it as one day making rubber bullets or tear gas obsolete -- giving police a less violent way to control crowds and combative suspects. Heal said he believes the Sheriff's Department will be deploying some form of the weapon within a few years.

Heal, a barrel-chested veteran with a street-fighter's nose and bulging biceps, knows a lot about deadly force.

He was a beat cop in southeast L.A. County, headed the sheriff's SWAT unit and had tours in Vietnam, Somalia, Kuwait and Iraq as a Marine and Marine reservist.

But for the last decade, Heal has dedicated himself to helping cops avoid deadly confrontations. As head of the sheriff's Technology Exploration Unit, he has tested hundreds of high-tech law enforcement gizmos -- some backed by huge corporations, others the brainchild of garage inventors.

The 32-year veteran of the department is not a scientist, and he doesn't develop products. But a bad review from him can doom or delay an invention, while endorsements can have buyers lining up at the maker's door. Some, such as Tasers and pepper-spraying flashlights, are now a part of deputies' everyday lives.

His pursuit of improving policing through advanced technology has made him a national figure in law enforcement circles. Guys without last names from the CIA seek his advice. If James Bond were an American, colleagues joke, Heal would be Bond's gadget guy, Q.

"He is a silent warrior. He brings a skill set few possess," said Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Mike Hillman, a friend of 30 years. "He has been able to integrate technology designed for the military into law enforcement to save lives and wrote the bible on SWAT."

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
tells the story of the Civil Rights
movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Review Board Criticized!

2007-09-12T15:55:00.000-07:00

At issue is whither the board setup to oversee the complaints
against the New York police department is doing their job. Not
so according to a local civil rights group. Read the article and let
us know your thoughts on the issue.

A civil rights group yesterday criticized New York City’s system of investigating police misconduct, charging that a civilian agency responsible for the task had failed to pursue complaints aggressively, and that punishment was too lenient when misconduct was established.
The New York Civil Liberties Union, which has long been critical of the agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, said that the board dismissed more than half its cases before fully investigating them, and that only about 5 percent of the cases were ultimately substantiated.

“Our analysis concludes that the civilian oversight system has failed,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the civil rights group.

The report, which the civil liberties union said was based mainly on data made public by the board, says the board has failed to keep pace as the volume of civilian complaints about police misconduct, ranging from improper use of force to discourtesy, has risen by 86 percent since 2000.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly dismissed the findings yesterday, calling the analysis flawed. “They are going to bash us every chance they get,” he said of the civil rights group.

Mr. Kelly attributed the increase in citizen complaints to the city’s 311 hot line, which went into operation in 2003, providing a convenient way to express displeasure with the police.

Andrew Case, a spokesman for the board, which employs 147 investigators, said its most recent records showed that 60 percent of the civilian complaints were being dismissed before they were completely investigated — but only because those who made those complaints decided not to follow through. He said none of those cases would have been dropped if those who had complained, mainly through calls to 311, had been willing to appear and make formal statements at the board’s office in Lower Manhattan, as city rules dictate.

One Bad Apple!

2007-09-06T15:09:00.000-07:00

When one is sworn to uphold the violates it the he is
worse than the criminal he put behind bars. And in the
story below an F.B.I. agent lied in his testimony that
resulted in in a man being locked away for 12 years.
What do you think the agents punishment should be
for his criminal actions?

A coalition of national nonprofit groups asked the Justice Department on Tuesday to investigate and suspend an FBI employee who was found by a jury to have falsified evidence against a man who served 12 years in prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence.

The National Innocence Network, which is dedicated to clearing people who are wrongfully convicted, asked Justice Department officials to investigate former Riverside County Sheriff's Deputy Danny Miller, who now works for the FBI.

A federal jury found in April that Miller had helped wrongly convict Herman Atkins on robbery and rape charges 19 years ago.

The jury, seated in Los Angeles to hear Atkins' civil rights claim over the wrongful conviction, unanimously concluded that Miller had "intentionally attributed a statement" to a witness that the man did not make.

The jury also unanimously concluded that Miller had "failed to disclose" that he had "fabricated" the statement and that there was a "reasonable probability" that if he had told the truth the outcome of Atkins' trial "would have been different."

During the trial, Miller testified that he now works as an intelligence analyst for the FBI, focusing on homeland security, at the agency's Little Rock, Ark., office.

Tuesday's action marked the first time that the National Innocence Network, made up of organizations at 31 law schools, "has ever asked that a law enforcement officer be suspended and investigated for misconduct that led to a wrongful conviction," said Kathleen Ridolfi, executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University Law School.

This Article Continues Here

Get your copy of the award winning King:
"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
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movement and the life of
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

Coretta Worried The F.B.I.

2007-08-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

Information just released and it seems that Coretta Scott King
gave the F.B.I. the blues and so for years they kept tabs on
her. Even after the death of her husband Martin Luther King Jr
the agency still worried that Ms King could stir things up. Read on
and then let us hear your thoughts on the subject.

ATLANTA -- Federal agents spied on the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for several years after his assassination in 1968, according to newly released documents that reveal the FBI worried she'd follow in the footsteps of the slain civil rights leader.

In memos that show Coretta Scott King being closely followed by the government, the FBI speaks of concern that she might attempt "to tie the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement."

The FBI closed its file on Coretta Scott King four years after her husband's death, saying, "No information has come to the attention of Atlanta which indicates a propensity for violence or affiliation of subversive elements." The memo is dated Nov. 30, 1972.

The documents were obtained by KHOU-TV in Houston in a broadcast Thursday. Coretta Scott King died in January 2006 at age 78.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, a former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference -- which he and King founded in 1957 -- said the documents illustrated the FBI's pattern of "despicable and devious" civil-rights-era behavior against the organization and those affiliated with it.

"The FBI kept a microphone everywhere they could where the SCLC was concerned," said Lowery, who alleged that the agency had a member of the SCLC staff on its payroll.

"Since we had nothing to hide, it was no great problem for us," Lowery said. "But we don't put it past the FBI; J. Edgar Hoover hated Martin Luther King and everything that the SCLC stood for." (Hoover was director of the FBI at the time.)

Andrew Young, a King lieutenant during the civil rights movement, agreed but said he was surprised the government focused on Coretta Scott King.

"I didn't know it and I don't think she knew it," Young said. "If ever there was a woman that had the makings of a saint, it was Coretta.

"I don't know what they were looking for; I don't know what they were expecting to find. I don't know why they wasted the government's money."

Also included in the documents are:

* A 1969 FBI memo suggesting that the agency's Atlanta office make Ralph Abernathy, then the president of the SCLC, aware of death threats for the benefit of "the disruptive effect of confusing and worrying him."

* An intercepted 1971 letter by Coretta Scott King to the National Peace Action Coalition, in which she says the Vietnam War has "ravaged our domestic programs."

* An FBI review of her 1969 book, "My Life With Martin Luther King Jr." The agent says her "selfless, magnanimous, decorous attitude is belied by . . . [her] actual shrewd, calculating, businesslike activities."

This Article Continues Here

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"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
http://www.kingprogram.net/

LAPD Halts Car Impounding

2007-08-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

It always seems to me that giving a person a
ticket and impounding their car amounted to
double jeopardy but in California it's just another
way to generate money. Check out the following
story and submit your opinion.

The Los Angeles Police Department has imposed a moratorium on impounding the vehicles of unlicensed drivers amid concerns that the practice may be unconstitutional, officials said Tuesday.

The decision touches on what has long been a hot-button issue, because many unlicensed drivers who have their cars towed are illegal immigrants who cannot get driver's licenses.

Immigrant rights groups and some legislators for years have sought legislation granting illegal immigrants some form of driver's licenses -- but the bills have been repeatedly rejected, most recently by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Former Gov. Gray Davis signed such a bill during the recall campaign against him, but the Legislature repealed the law at Schwarzenegger's urging soon after he ousted Davis.

LAPD officials said they decided to stop impounding until the city attorney's office provides a final legal assessment of a 2005 decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals involving an Oregon impound case.

The department's change comes after some civil rights groups as well as L.A. politicians called on the city to consider suspending impounding because of the Oregon ruling. The LAPD impounds about 40,000 cars a year from unlicensed drivers, though officials don't know how many of them are illegal immigrants.

But many other agencies -- including the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and California Highway Patrol -- continue to impound cars of unlicensed drivers, with some counties concluding that the appeals court ruling does not apply to them.

In a memo to all the LAPD's commanding officers, Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger directed that officers no longer impound vehicles in stops when the only offense was driving without a license. Drivers will continue to be cited for driving without a license. But the vehicle will be impounded only when it cannot be driven away by a licensed driver or parked legally and secured.

The moratorium met with immediate criticism Tuesday from some who see it as giving lawbreakers a free ride.

Councilman Dennis Zine, a reserve and former LAPD motorcycle officer, said the city could be liable if that unlicensed driver gets behind the wheel of that vehicle again and someone gets hurt. "You are jeopardizing public safety," Zine said.

Councilman Jose Huizar, who in June called on city leaders to study the Oregon ruling, said the city needs to follow the letter of the law, even if it's unpopular.

"According to the case, you cannot constitutionally impound a car because the driver does not have a driver's license. So I sought thatclarification," Huizar said. "I wanted to ensure the city complies with the law."

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It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
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To learn more and hear
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http://www.kingprogram.net/

There's No Place Like Home!

2007-08-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

It's been two years since Katrina raised havoc in the
Gulf of Mexico and still the battle to rebuild New Orleans
continues as now another lawsuit has been filed accusin
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
of cleansing the city of African Americans. Please feel free
to comment after reading the story below.

PUBLIC HOUSING advocates are gearing up for a sit-in at the offices of the Housing Authority of New Orleans tomorrow. Their frustration is understandable. Two years after Hurricane Katrina scattered residents to communities outside the Crescent City, most have yet to return home. But the protesters' goal of getting the displaced back into their old units is wrong. While the historical significance of those structures is undeniable, so is their history of being forlorn concentrations of poverty.

To tour the barracks-style apartment complexes of New Orleans is to see the best and worst of public housing. Because most of them were built in the 1940s, a walk into one of their cramped units is a walk back in time. For instance, residents can't run water in the bathtub and the bathroom sink at the same time. Warmth in the winter is provided by space heaters. For the most part, the old projects are cut off from the flow of the city because the city's streets don't go through them. Now, if you go to the redeveloped Fischer and St. Thomas complexes, you'll see the best in modern public housing. Warehousing of the poor and marginalizing them from the larger community are out. Modeled on HOPE VI developments, these are mixed-income neighborhoods of townhouses. The homes are spacious. The appliances are new. The sense of hopelessness that envelops Iberville, the one fully functioning old-style public housing project, is not present.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to bring four other old public housing estates into the modern era. But a lawsuit by the Advancement Project, a Washington-based civil rights organization, has stopped HUD from doing so. The lawsuit accuses the agency of cleansing African Americans from New Orleans by keeping the four public housing projects shuttered. It demands a right of return for all New Orleans public housing residents, and it demands that those families go back to the units they fled on Aug. 29, 2005. Until the case goes to trial in November, those families will have to wait. This is unconscionable. Yes, they should return. But they should return to something much better than they left.

Mississippi Sheriff Accused Of Kidnapping

2007-08-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

The article below tells of Mexican nationals being brought
back to work in Mississippi by a local sheriff. The center of
the matter seems to be a disagreement between a recruit-
ment company and the workers and seems to be more of a
civil matter rather than criminal. Should the sheriff's
department have gotten involved in the matter or should
it have been handled by immigration?

Thirty Mexican nationals with visas to work in the U.S. claim police in Pascagoula kidnapped and threatened them with arrest or deportation if they did not return to an employer.

The workers, backed by the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups, said Wednesday that Pascagoula Police Capt. George Tillman threatened to send them to jail if they didn't return to work for a recruitment company.

The workers plan to file a lawsuit accusing Tillman of "kidnapping, kidnapping with intent to enslave, false imprisonment, human trafficking, and violations of the workers' civil and constitutional rights," they said in a news release.

Enrique Garcia, 41, one of the workers, said Tillman told the workers the company "owned" them.

Interim Pascagoula Police Chief Eddie Stewart said in a statement that the allegations were without merit. He said they stemmed from a "call for service in which two private contractors were in a dispute over who employed a group of workers."

Officers handled the situation properly, he said.

"Our responding officers, with the assistance of Immigration Customs Enforcement, explained to both the private contractors and the workers their options," Stewart said.

Jackson County Assistant District Attorney Brice Wiggins said Wednesday his "office has not received a complaint or allegation on the matter."

The workers said they received H2B temporary visas to work for Southwest Shipyards in Channelview, Texas, but left the company because they were paid less than they were promised and working conditions were poor.

He's Qualified, But....

2007-08-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

President Bush has done it again, failing to
nominate an African-American to fill a post
on the U.S. Court of Appeals therefore adding
more slant to the already tilted judicial system.
Read the article below then let us know how
you feel about this injustice.

BEFORE BEING nominated by President Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, Leslie H. Southwick served for almost 12 years on the Mississippi Court of Appeals, where he participated in thousands of cases spanning the gamut of civil and criminal law. A panel of the American Bar Association unanimously found Judge Southwick to be "well qualified" for the promotion, its highest ranking. Yet congressional opponents have latched on to two opinions that Mr. Southwick joined, but did not write, to argue that he is unfit for the federal appeals post.

One case involved a child custody dispute in which a lower court awarded custody to the biological father, in part because the biological mother was a self-identified bisexual. The lower court weighed many other factors in making its determination, including income, family stability and time spent with the child, and it found the father better situated to care for her. Judge Southwick was part of the 8-2 majority that left that decision intact after finding that the lower court had not abused its discretion in reaching that conclusion. But he went a step further, joining an unnecessary concurrence that outlined the many laws in Mississippi at the time of this 2001 custody ruling that condemned or penalized homosexual activity.

The second case revolved around a Mississippi state employee who at a workplace meeting described an African American co-worker as "a good ole [expletive]." The employee was terminated for the use of the common racial slur, but she was later reinstated with back pay by a state administrative board. In a 1998 decision, the Mississippi Court of Appeals, with Judge Southwick in the 5-4 majority, concluded that the agency had acted within the law in reinstating the employee with back pay. The Mississippi Supreme Court later sent the case back to a lower court because it concluded that the employee should suffer some consequences for the offensive remark; the court did not object to the reinstatement.

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Bush Takes Matters Into His Own Hands!

2007-08-13T13:25:00.002-07:00

This may be the one time in which I may agree
with President Bush. Since congress seems to
lack the courage or will to handle the problem
itself the prez has stepped up to the plate. Read
the article below and the feel free to size up the
situation with your opinion.

A month after immigration restructuring failed in Congress, the Bush administration yesterday mapped a broad campaign to tighten border security and to pressure employers to fire illegal immigrant workers.

The 26 measures -- most of which continue or expand on current policies -- include raising fines for knowingly hiring illegal workers, streamlining current guest-worker programs, bolstering an electronic system employers can use to verify workers' legal status, and adding 370 miles of border fencing, 300 miles of vehicle barriers and 1,700 Border Patrol agents.

"These reforms represent steps my administration can take within the boundaries of existing law," President Bush said in a statement released shortly after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez presented the plan at a news conference. "Although the Congress has not addressed our broken immigration system by passing comprehensive reform legislation, my administration will continue to take every possible step to build upon the progress already made in strengthening our borders, enforcing our worksite laws, keeping our economy well-supplied with vital workers, and helping new Americans learn English."

Republicans offered a mixed reaction to the move -- just as they had to the failed legislation.
"It's a huge political issue, and a huge chunk of the population and a big part of the Republican Party base is demanding something be done," said GOP strategist Ed Rogers. "I hope the point is to establish credibility so maybe the next president has a better opportunity to really fix the problem."

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"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
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The Price Blacks Pay To Walk The Streets!

2007-08-10T12:35:00.000-07:00

If you've ever been stopped and searched by your local
police while walking down the street minding your own
business then you know the feeling of having been violated.
This is an annoying practice that just so happens to happen
more to blacks than any other race. So why is that? If you
have an answer please step up and share it with us. But first
check out the article below.

The New York Police Department released information last night showing that officers stopped 113,945 people on city streets for the second quarter of this year, a number that a spokesman said was 12.4 percent lower than that recorded in the same period in 2006.

The spokesman, Assistant Chief Michael Collins, said the reports were turned over to the City Council yesterday, as required by law.
Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., chairman of the Council’s Public Safety Committee, said last night that the Council had received the new reports but that he had not had a chance to look at them.

The practice of “stop and frisks,” as the street stops are known by police officers, has caused some occasional tension with some city residents. The city has commissioned a study to analyze the stops made in 2006, as well as to interview officers about the decision-making process involved in making the stops.

Chief Collins said that the reports showed that 53 percent of the stops in the quarter that ended on June 30 involved blacks, and 67 percent of suspects were described as black by their victims (or by witnesses, for instance, in the case of homicides).

Chief Collins provided the breakdowns for other races: Hispanics made up 32 percent of those stopped and 26 percent of suspected offenders; whites made up 12 percent of those stopped and 5 percent of suspected offenders; and Asians made up 3 percent of those stopped and 2 percent of suspects.

Chief Collins did not provide raw numbers of those arrested or issued summonses as a result of street stops. But he said that 6 percent of the stops resulted in arrests for the second quarter of this year, an increase from the 4 percent of stops that resulted in arrests in the same quarter last year. Summonses also increased, to 8 percent of stops from 6 percent, Mr. Collins said.
Beyond the reports, the New York Civil Liberties Union wants the Police Department to turn over computerized data on its stop-and-frisk activity so it can analyze the role that race plays.

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It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
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Report Says Campus Police Were Wrong!

2007-08-02T15:03:00.000-07:00

A student failed to show I.D. on the UCLA campus
and get tasered. Well an independant report says
that the officer was wrong after his boss the chief
cleared him in the departments own investigation.
But we all know what happens when the police
investigated themselves. Read the article below,
then offer up your opinion of the situation.

Even with use of force policies that are "unduly permissive," a UCLA police officer violated department rules when he repeatedly shocked a student with an electric Taser gun last fall during a confrontation captured on video and posted on the Internet, according to a report released Wednesday.Los Angeles police accountability expert Merrick Bobb found that the decision to use the Taser on student Mostafa Tabatabainejad was "unnecessary, avoidable and excessive."

The findings are at odds with an earlier inquiry by UCLA Police Chief Karl Ross, who cleared Officer Terrence Duren and two colleagues of any wrongdoing.Tabatabainejad, then a 23-year-old senior at UCLA, was in the campus library one night last November when a security guard asked him to provide identification during a routine check to make sure everyone in the library after 11 p.m. was a student or otherwise authorized to be there.

Tabatabainejad, a U.S. citizen of Iranian descent, refused repeated requests to provide his identification, explaining later that he thought he was being singled out because of his Middle Eastern appearance.In an ensuing confrontation with university police, Tabatabainejad was shocked at least three times with a Taser when he failed to get on his feet and walk out of the library as officers demanded.

Much of the encounter was captured by students with cellphones or digital cameras. Some of the footage was posted on http://www.youtube.comand/ drew viewers from around the world. After student protests, a flood of angry e-mails and calls from concerned parents, then-Acting Chancellor Norman Abrams asked Bobb to conduct an independent review.

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It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
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Africans Inspired By Civil Rights Tour

2007-08-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

There may be much that we as African Americans have
to learn about Africa but when it comes to civil rights the
shoe is on the on the other foot. African exchange students
are touring the country studying the civil rights movement
with hopes of returning to their homelands and putting their
own movement together. Africa may be the cradle of mankind
but when it comes to civil rights the struggle is just starting.

College student Tabitha Njeri Nyoro wants more political and social empowerment and access to education for women in her native Kenya.

Her dreams of social justice were just that until this week's bus tour of historic civil rights movement sites lit a fire in her heart to do more than just talk about it.

"I should be the change I want to see in the world," Nyoro, who studies education at Catholic University of Eastern Africa, said Tuesday at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s tomb. "People like Martin Luther King didn't sit back and wait for the change to come."
There is probably much for us to learn about our
african roots but when it comes to civil rights the
shoe is on the other foot. African exchange students
are studying the civil rights movement with hopes
of taking what they've learned back to their home-
lands. Africa may be the cradle of mankind but it
has a long way to go in its civil rights struggle.

Nyoro, 23, is one of 19 African exchange students from Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa traveling from Fayetteville, Ark., to Washington studying the civil rights movement, American social justice, leadership and community development.

The seven-day tour is scheduled to wrap up in Washington on Thursday after a stop at the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, N.C., to learn more about the student sit-in movement.
They are following routes taken by the Freedom Riders, student activists who traveled South in the early 1960s to challenge segregation.

The group visited Atlanta's King Center after stops at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham earlier Tuesday. Previous stops included the National Civil Rights Museum and Davies Manor Plantation in Memphis and Central High School in Little Rock.
The Memphis museum is home to the Lorraine Motel where King was assassinated in 1968 and Central High was the site 50 years ago of a historic school integration battle.

The tour is part of an international exchange program sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the Academy of Educational Development.
Spring International Language Center at the University of Arkansas coordinated the tour designed to give student leaders participating in the exchange program at the school's Fayetteville campus a sense of place in their study of the movement and the South.

"Sometimes the significance of events becomes much clearer when you are in the physical space where it happened," said Alannah Massey, a program assistant. Within just a few days, we would have visited Martin Luther King's birth and death places. The significance certainly hasn't been lost on anyone."
Their stop Tuesday at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the site of a 1963 racially motivated bombing that killed four young girls, left Nigerian Fatima Mohammed, 24, traumatized.

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"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
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To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
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Scarf Or No Scarf!

2007-07-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

Are we westerners intimidated by the scarfs
that muslim women wear? I'd have to say yes
since we view the covering of the face as a way
of hiding ones identity. Well the story below
deals with a case in Georgia where a woman was
denied access to a courtroom. Check it out and then
feel free to comment.

A Muslim woman seeking to contest a simple speeding ticket in this south Georgia city says she was denied access to a municipal courtroom last week for wearing a traditional Islamic head scarf.

Aniisa Karim, 20, said she was stopped after entering Valdosta's municipal court building Tuesday and told she would not be permitted to enter the courtroom wearing her scarf.
"I said, 'No, I'm Muslim ... I wear this for religious reasons and if you don't allow me in the courtroom with my scarf on basically you are violating my civil rights and my right to a free religion,' " Karim told the Valdosta Daily Times.

Karim said an officer told her the denial was due to "homeland security reasons" and that allowing her to enter would show disrespect to Judge Vernita Lee Bender.
She said she offered to walk through a metal detector and allow officers to use a handheld metal detector to scan the scarf.

A national Islamic civil rights group has taken up the case. In a letter to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, the Council on American-Islamic Relations asks Baker to "take appropriate action to ensure that the legal, religious and civil rights of Georgians of all faiths be maintained."

Baker's office and the Valdosta municipal court were unable to be reached by The Associated Press for comment on Sunday.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington D.C.-based group, said neither Baker's office nor the Valdosta city attorney had responded to his group as of Sunday afternoon.

The letter from CAIR argues that barring Karim from the courtroom violated Georgia's code of conduct for judges and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which guarantees access to public facilities based on religious beliefs or practices.

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"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
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To learn more and hear
excerpts from this treasured
program,click here:
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Magic Still Has Magic!

2007-07-24T14:52:00.000-07:00

Congratulations are in order for Magic Johnson as
a recipient of the Freedom Award. Take a gander
at the article below and put in your two-cents.

Former NBA star Magic Johnson leads the list of people named Tuesday as recipients of the National Civil Rights Museum's annual Freedom Awards.
Also named were historian John Hope Franklin and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

The museum, on the site where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, will hand out the awards Oct. 23. It said it was honoring Johnson for his work since leaving the NBA on promoting economic development, improved health care and educational opportunities in low-income urban neighborhoods and other "underserved communities."

Johnson, 47, retired from the NBA after contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and campaigned for AIDS awareness. His Magic Johnson Foundation supports HIV/AIDS prevention and health care education in low-income communities.

"A committed philanthropist, Johnson continually finds time to support worthy causes," the museum said.
Franklin, 92, a chronicler of civil rights history, was part of a legal team from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that helped develop the Brown v. Board of Education case. The case led to the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools.

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"From Atlanta to the Mountain top
It's the 3-Hour Docudrama that
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Black Projects For Blacks Only?

2007-07-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

Some people believe that if a project is of a black
subject then that project ought to be handled by
a black person. If tat were the case there would
be alot of black people sitting around twiddling
ther fingers. So let us stop entrapping ourselves
with selfish notions. What do you think? Read the
article below.

Someday, a great monument in Washington may bear the name of Lei Yixin. For now, you can find him down a pockmarked road in a grungy industrial suburb of this Chinese provincial capital.The monument won't be built to honor Lei, who is scarcely famous in his own hometown, much less the United States. It is being built in memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and will rise along Washington's Tidal Basin, between the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials.

Lei's role will be to carve the statue of King that will be the centerpiece of the tribute. His selection as sculptor for the prominent memorial honoring the civil rights leader has outraged some who believe that an African American, or at least an American, should have gotten the job."This is an AMERICAN monument — not a Communist Chinese one!!" declared one entry in a website, kingisours.com, that is devoted to the controversy. Said another, "Can I just say one word? 'Outsourcing.'

"The outcry over the King statue recalls an earlier uproar over the choice of a young Asian American sculptor, Maya Lin, to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In the case of the King statue, critics of Lei have received a boost from CNN's Lou Dobbs, who recently asked David Hamilton, a member of the committee who picked the sculptor, "What in the world were you folks thinking?"A prominent African American sculptor who says he was pushed aside in favor of Lei believes he knows the answer.

The sculptor, Ed Dwight, who also holds the distinction of being America's first black astronaut, says the backers of the King memorial told him they hoped the choice of a Chinese sculptor would persuade the Chinese government to give $25 million to the King memorial fund, which has a target of $100 million

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Calling All Jews!

2007-07-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

Well this seems to be a first, imagine putting out a call
for more jews. That's just what New Orleans is doing to
build it's jewish community. This ought to get the local
klan up in arms. Check out the article below and then
voice your opinion on this novel idea.

"DO you have a pioneering spirit?" read the recent ad in the Jewish Week newspaper of New York. "Are you searching for a meaningful community where YOU can make a difference?"To generations of American Jews, the pitch had a familiar ring. But this was not an invitation to settle the Promised Land. It was a call to repopulate New Orleans, a city known less for its Jewish culture than for its shellfish, sin and pre-Lenten carnival.

New Orleans' Jewish population, in fact, has long been a subtle but important ingredient in this curious dish of a city. But its numbers, though always small, have declined precipitously since Hurricane Katrina. Of the 10,000 Jews in the area before the storm, 7,000 remain.With fewer dues-paying members, some synagogues and Jewish service agencies have been kept afloat by donations from Jews around the country. But the bulk of that largess, provided by the nonprofit United Jewish Communities, dries up at the end of the year.

The Jewish community is by no means New Orleans' most afflicted demographic. But Jewish leaders do not want to see a single Jewish institution closed. They don't wish to consolidate any of the seven synagogues and two Chabad centers that offer a full range of religious observance.

The issue is plain."We need people," said Jackie Gothard, president of Congregation Beth Israel, a modern Orthodox synagogue that has seen more than 40% of its members move away.So Jewish New Orleans has cooked up a novel solution: a recruitment drive. With an ad campaign crafted by an Israeli public relations firm, the city's Jewish leaders are hoping to attract at least 1,000 Jews to the city over the next five years. They will appeal to potential pilgrims' better natures, stressing the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, Hebrew for "healing the world" — or, in this case, healing a broken city.

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Keeping An Eye On You!

2007-07-18T14:04:00.000-07:00

Soon your city or town will have a new device that
can scan and read licence plates with incredible
speed and accuracy. Check out the article below
and feel free to ring in on the subject.

A symphony of bleeps inside the police cruiser drowned out nearby traffic on a recent morning as Sgt. Bill Dodge pulled into a public parking lot. The pace of the bleeps quickened when he passed the first row of cars. "There's nothing in here," Dodge said. "Let's head out into the street."

Turning into traffic on Beech Street, Dodge passed dozens of cars before the bleeps gave way to an alarm, then a robotic voice telling him about a parked van whose registered driver has a suspended license. "It just did in 30 seconds what usually takes an officer an entire day," he said. New York's Long Beach Police Department is among a growing number of law enforcement agencies using the roof-mounted license-plate reader, the Mobile Plate Hunter.

Bleeps and alarms are emitted as the device's two infrared cameras scan license plates at a rate of 15 to 25 a second, said North Carolina-based manufacturer Remington Elsag. Those plate numbers are sent to a database in the police car trunk and compared with a digital list of vehicles wanted for crimes, traffic violations, reported stolen cars and vehicles linked to alerts for kidnapped children, authorities said.

The infrared cameras, which work like supermarket scanners, can record the plates of moving or stopped cars. Such systems are more widely used in Europe. "We live in a post-9/11 world," Remington Elsag President Mark Windover said. "When you look at many domestic terrorism incidents, many times, a vehicle is involved."

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Remembering Ladybird

2007-07-13T14:37:00.000-07:00

Surely any decisions that a president makes on
major policies probably first starts in the bedroom.
Thats because no matter who sits on the prez's
cabinet his closest advisor will more than likely
be his wife. With that said Lyndon Baines Johnson
was greatly influenced by his wife Ladybird when
it came time to pass civil rights legislation. Only
now is it being revealed how much of a role this
great lady played in the civil rights movement.
Thank you Ms First Lady for standing tall.

Lady Bird Johnson, the widow of Lyndon B. Johnson, whose tumultuous presidency often overshadowed her considerable achievements as an activist first lady, environmentalist and founder of a multimillion-dollar media business, died Wednesday at her home in Austin. She was 94.Johnson had been in failing health for several years, weakened by a series of strokes and other ailments, including a low-grade fever that kept her in the hospital for a week last month. A family spokeswoman said the former first lady's daughters, Lynda Johnson Robb and Luci Baines Johnson, were by her side when she died at 2:18 p.m. PDT.

As the wife of the 36th president, Johnson was often portrayed by contemporaries and some historians as a meek woman who silently endured her husband's volcanic outbursts and infidelities. Yet she, perhaps more than any presidential wife since Eleanor Roosevelt, expanded the terrain of the first lady by taking a visible role in her husband's administration, most memorably in her national beautification efforts.

Her love of nature was enshrined in law when her husband signed the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. Conceived primarily to restrict junkyards and unsightly signs along the nation's highways, it was the first major legislative campaign launched by a first lady.Although often eclipsed by protests over the Vietnam War and civil rights — the dominant issues of President Johnson's tenure from 1963 to 1969 — her effort to replace urban blight with flowers and trees prepared the way for the environmental movement of the 1970s."I think there is no legacy she would more treasure than to have helped people recognize the value in preserving and promoting our native land," Luci Baines Johnson said in a statement shortly before her mother's death.

Johnson also broke new ground by campaigning independently of her husband. During the 1964 presidential campaign, she undertook a courageous whistle-stop tour of the South, where his civil rights agenda was widely reviled. Two months later, President Johnson won one of the largest landslides in U.S. history. She held the Bible at his swearing-in, a precedent followed by all her successors.

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Bush Doesn't Miss A Beat!

2007-07-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

In the scheme of things it looks as if instead
of upholding the constitution of the United States
the prez seems only interested in upholding
the political views and interest of the Republican
party. Thats what I get from the article below.
You check it out for yourself and then let's compare
notes.

President Bush's first surgeon general testified Tuesday that his speeches were censored to match administration political positions and that he was prevented from giving the public accurate scientific information on issues such as stem cell research and teen pregnancy prevention."Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard H. Carmona, who was surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, told a congressional committee.

"The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation — not the doctor of a political party."Early in the administration, when the issue of federal funding for stem cell research arose, Carmona said, he felt he could play an educational role by discussing the latest scientific research. Instead, he said, he was told to "stand down" because the White House already had made a decision to limit stem cell studies. He said administration appointees who reviewed his speech texts deleted references to stem cells.

Carmona's remarks were the latest in a series of complaints from government scientists about what they say are administration efforts to control — and sometimes distort — scientific evidence in order to support policy decisions.NASA scientists have complained, for example, of political pressure to tone down warnings about global warming. Environmental Protection Agency officials have complained that technical information on such subjects as power plant emissions and oil drilling have been ignored.

Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, recently dissented from the administration's position by saying its restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research were holding back progress and should be lifted.Scientists outside the government also have complained about what some call the administration's "war on science."In the case of the surgeon general, Carmona told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, "the reality is that the nation's doctor has been marginalized and relegated to a position with no independent budget, and with supervisors who are political appointees with partisan agendas.

"His testimony drew a pointed rebuke from the White House. Officials suggested that any breakdown in communicating health information to the public was ultimately a failure on his part. "Dr. Carmona was given the authority and had the obligation to be the leading voice for the health of all Americans," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

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Bond Takes Bush To Task!

2007-07-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

Julian Bond chairman of the NAACP has taken the
prez to task. In the article below Bond says Bush has
done very little for blacks since taking office. How do
you feel about the way blacks have been treated by
Bush?

The NAACP is needed now more than ever because the Bush administration has done little to support blacks, the civil rights organization's national chairman said Sunday as its 98th annual convention opened.

Speaking before an audience of 3,000, Julian Bond, the NAACP board chairman, cited a range of concerns including the administration's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq and its handling of immigration issues.

The number of Americans living in poverty since President Bush took office has increased by more than 5 million, to 37 million, Bond said.
"And the gap has grown between the haves and the have-nots," he said. "Almost a quarter of black Americans nationwide live below the poverty line, as compared with only 8.6 percent of whites."

Bond called present-day inequality and racial disparities cumulative and the result of racial advantages compounded over time.
"Many Americans maintain . . . that racial discrimination has become an ancient artifact," he said. "At the NAACP, we know none of this is true, and that's why we are dedicated to an aggressive campaign of social justice, fighting racial discrimination."

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Sweeping Changes Are Comming!

2007-07-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

In just one session of the Supreme court there have
been major changes in personal and civil rights. This
current panel of justices is expected to remain that way
for at least the next twenty years. So get ready for a
major shift to the right on many issues. How do you think
this will affect your everyday life and future?

In what may signal a generational shift in power, new Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. led a confident conservative majority at the Supreme Court this year and moved the law to the right on abortion, religion, campaign funding and racial diversity.Working with a 5-4 majority, Roberts prevailed in nearly all the major cases.

In just his second term, the 52-year-old chief justice wrested control from the 87-year-old John Paul Stevens, the remaining justice who served on the court during its liberal era. Roberts was able to prevail because of the key votes cast by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., 57, who last year succeeded centrist Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.Roberts and Alito were appointed by President Bush.And though Bush may fall short of creating a permanent GOP political majority in Washington, his selection of the two justices appears to have cemented his legacy of a long-term conservative majority on the high court.

Conservatives saw the rulings as historic and overdue."These are the most important decisions on the use of race since Brown vs. Board of Education," said Sharon Browne, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento. "The high court has decided correctly that children must not be stereotyped by the color of their skin, but treated as individuals."Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saw the campaign funding decision as "a victory for the 1st Amendment and political debate.

"Liberals, including some on the high court, sounded an alarm."It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much," Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 68, said in the courtroom on the final day of the term.

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Elio Carrion Should Be Compensated !

2007-06-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-06-28T11:38:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-06-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-20T13:09:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-15T14:56:00.000-07:00

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 ?

2007-06-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

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 !

2007-06-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-04T16:48:00.000-07:00

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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Blue Chip Company Charged

2007-05-31T13:48:00.000-07:00

Boeing has been accuse of helping the CIA in it's
clandestine operations. But this should be of no
big suprise, I'm sure there are many large
corporations that aid the government in these
types of operations. What is your thoughts on
this issue?

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit Wednesday that accused a Boeing Co. subsidiary of helping the Central Intelligence Agency facilitate "the forced disappearance, torture and inhumane treatment" of three men the government suspected of terrorist involvement."This is the first time we are accusing a blue-chip American company of profiting from torture," ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said at a news conference in New York City.

Since at least 2001, Jeppesen Dataplan Inc. of San Jose "has provided direct and substantial services to the United States for its so-called 'extraordinary rendition' program," the suit, filed in San Jose federal court, alleges.Extraordinary rendition is a highly secretive and extrajudicial practice of transferring terrorist suspects to third-party countries that routinely practice torture and other ill-treatment, according to Human Rights Watch.

After years of denial, the Bush administration now acknowledges the tactic but denies sanctioning torture.The suit was filed on behalf of Binyam Mohammed, a 28-year-old Ethiopian citizen and British resident; Abou Elkassim Britel, a 40-year-old of Moroccan descent naturalized in Italy; and Ahmed Agiza, a 45-year-old Egyptian. But the suit said that Jeppesen provided flight and logistical support services for more than 70 extraordinary renditions over a four-year period."Corporations should expect to get sued where they are making blood money off the suffering of others," said Clive Stafford Smith, a British lawyer who has been representing Mohammed and is serving as co-counsel on the ACLU suit.

Mike Pound, a Jeppesen spokesman, said the company had not been served with the suit and consequently had no comment on its merits.Tim Neale, a spokesman for Chicago-based Boeing, declined to confirm whether Jeppesen worked for the CIA. "The services Jeppesen provides are provided on a confidential basis for all its customers," he said.

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