black…MYstory

A big thanks to Brad Blog for this one. If you are not familiar with Brad Blog, it provides excellent coverage on voter issues, particular being a watchdog on those public officials and companies that are working against the voters through an assault on even their most basic voting rights.

In a recent post, they cover a talk given by US Attorney John Tanner, who is — get this — the Chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. This means that he is supposed to be insuring the rights of voters of color. Instead, he is actively working against them.

While addressing the National Latino Congreso in Los Angeles, he offers an amazing rationale for requiring voter ID (which is likely a violation of the Voting Rights Act). According to Tanner, those most likely to be adversely affected by this requirement are elderly voters but, since minority voters don’t live that long, this wouldn’t be an issue for them. So, according to Tanner, this should work in favor of minorities.

No, I am not twisting his words, he actually stated this. To be precise, he stated the following:

“I think it’s probably true that among those who don’t, it’s primarily elderly persons. And that’s a shame…You know, creating problems for elderly persons just is not good under any circumstance.

Of course, that also ties in with a racial aspect, because our society is such that minorities don’t become elderly…the way that white people do. They die first.”

Well, you can hear/see it for yourself…

Popularity: 31% [?]

Whether he likes it or not, the mayor of Jena, Louisiana needs to recognize that his town has become a symbol of racial injustice.

So, he can be mad about John Mellencamp’s video, “Jena”, but, what he really needs to do is to address is the racial inequities in his community. But, obviously, he recognizes that something has to change:

“At McMillin’s request, the Jena Town Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to create an interracial committee to study racial relations and suggest solutions to any problems.”

For those interested, here’s the video:

 

 Jena: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 25% [?]

A few weeks back, I posted about U.S. Attorney John D.R. Atchison, who was arrested in a sting in which he tried, via the internet, to solicit sex with a 5-year-old girl from a detective posing as a mother. Atchison was arrested in Detroit Metropolitan Airport after flying from Pensacola, FL to meet up with the girl.

Today, it is being reported that Atchison has committed suicide. He had been in federal custody since the bust where he tried, once before, to kill himself.

Eerily enough, Atchison was a married father of three who coached girls’ softball and basketball. Transcipts of his conversations with the undercover detective indicate that this would not have been his first sexual encounter with underaged girls.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Granted, I was once young and stupid but, I was at least smart enough to not make my stupidity publicly available.

Some white Louisiana college students are facing some very sharp criticisms after images and a video of them covering themselves in mud and re-enacting the altercation that has the ‘Jena 6′ facing legal issues were posted on one of the student’s Facebook page.

The students all attend the University of Louisiana at Monroe, which is located about 65 miles north of Jena. In the pictures were in an album titled, “Jena 6 on the River” and in the video, people are heard saying “Jena 6″ and “Ni**ers put the noose on.” According to the student who posted these items, they were all drunk and are not racist. According to her, “i have just as many black friends as i do white. And i love them to death.”

The video is posted below:

Popularity: 19% [?]

Mos Def, Bun B (of UGK), David Banner, Common, Talib Kweli and M1 (of dead prez) are all highly-regarded rappers but, they are now also being recognized for their stepping up on behalf of the Jena 6.

As posted here previously, Mos Def (as well as Bun B) were actually down in Jena as part of the protests. David Banner, while not being able to be in Jena, used his tour as a platform to discuss the plight of the Jena 6. Most recently, Mos Def, Common, Talib Kweli and M-1 organized a school walkout in protest of the Jena 6’s prosecution.

However, Mos Def did have some pointed words for other rappers who haven’t lent the time or voices to this issue. He calls them out in the following clip:

Popularity: 43% [?]

Yesterday, the trial began for seven former boot camp guards and a nurse in the killing of Martin Lee Anderson.

Anderson was killed in an incident with the guards to kicked him, beat him and forced him to inhale ammonia tablets in the thirty-minute encounter.

Initially, a local Florida medical examiner reported that Martin died from an “undiagnosed sickle cell trait”.  The family, doubting such claims, called for a second autopsy.  The findings of that autopsy concluded that Martin was suffocated when “guards suffocated Anderson with their hands over his mouth and nose and by making him breathe ammonia.”

Each of the defendents face charges of the manslaughter of a child and could each receive up to 30 years in prison, if convicted.

Popularity: 35% [?]

At a school for the deaf in Washington, DC, a black student there was attacked in an apparent hate crime. At the dorms of the Model Secondary School for the Deaf, the student was attacked by 7 other students — six white and one black — who held him against his will and scrawled ‘KKK’ and swastikas on his body with a marker.

The offenders, ranging in age from 15-19, have all been sent home. As yet, no charges have been filed. The victim is home with his family.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Over the last several years, we have heard more and more about people (too many of them black) being released after decades in prison when it was discovered that they could not have committed the crimes for which they were convicted. Too often, this was do to crooked cops forcing confessions out of people in order to closes cases as opposed to actually solving crimes.

It appears that we should be seeing more overturned convictions in the near future after it has been revealed that Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will be investigating claims of the torture of suspects by Chicago police in the 1980s.

A four-year study by two special prosecutors appointed by a Cook County judge, released in July 2006, found that Chicago police beat, kicked and shocked scores of black suspects in the 1970s and 1980s to get confessions. The report said it was impossible to file charges because the incidents were so old that the statute of limitations had long since run out.

On Wednesday, however, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald announced the federal government was stepping into the torture case, saying it would seek evidence of “perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice by members of the Chicago police department.”

“It’s political, it’s cultural, it’s systemic,” said attorney G. Flint Taylor, who represents several former death row inmates now suing Burge and city officials.

Attorney Richard Sikes, who represents Burge in the five civil suits, said after Fitzgerald’s announcement that allegations against his client “have been fairly investigated by the special prosecutors who found that charges were not appropriate.”

All this is being announced in the midst of other investigation of the Chicago special operations officer Jerome Finnigan, who federal prosecutors say plotted to kill another member of this unit to keep him from testifying about about a shakedown scheme in which this unit was allegedly involved.

Popularity: 37% [?]

Last month, 14-year-old DeOnte Rawlings died after being shot in a confrontation with two off-duty D.C. police officers. Now, the results of his autopsy are raising some very serious questions about police actions in this incident.

According to the police account, Officer James Haskel solicited the help fellow officer and friend Anthony Clay to help him find a minibike Haskel believed had been stolen from his home. So the two off-duty officers, out of uniform, went riding around looking for it. They came up DeOnte, who was riding the minibike.

The officers claim DeOnte shot at them and Officer Haskel exited his vehicle, pursued DeOnte on foot and shot him.

However, the recent autopsy report is somewhat disconcerting. First, it clearly indicates that DeOnte was shot in the back of the head. Secondly, there was no gunshot residue on his hands or fingers, which could very well have been there if he had indeed fired a gun. Thirdly, DeOnte’s family says that there was no gun recovered at the scene. Finally, there were serious traumatic injuries to the side and back of his body. These could have come from the fall or they could have come from him being hit.

Currently, this case is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s office, the FBI and DC police.

Personally, I believe something stinks here. Armed, off-duty police officers, out of uniform, tracking down stolen property and end up in an encounter killing a 14-year-old? Call me paranoid or conspiratorial but, I smell a cover-up.

Popularity: 31% [?]

A few days back, I was watching the Democratic Presidential debates, which happened to fall on the same day that the Senate voted on the Kyl-Liebermann amendment. In a non-binding resolution, the Senate voted in favor of the amendment, which labeled Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. Hillary Clinton voted in favor of this amendment (Obama, somehow, couldn’t make it in to vote that day) and tried to justify her vote by saying that she was not voting in favor of war with Iran but, in favor of pursuing diplomatic measures with Iran. Senate leader Harry Reid also voted in favor of this measure.

Well, guess what, now the White House is dropping concerns about the nuclear ambitions of Iran as a rationale to go after them. You want to guess its rationale, now? Yes, you figured it out — Bush seems intent on marching us into yet another war using the notion that it will need to fight terrorism in Iran so, it will need to target Iran’s Republican Guard. How much would you bet that the Kyl-Liebermann amendment will be used to tell the public that the Congress agrees with this action? Joe Liebermann, as Bush’s Democratic lapdog (he call’s himself an independent, now), has been drooling over the notion of attacking Iran. It appears he will get his wish soon.

Journalist Seymour Hersh has exposed some chilling details on what appears to be in the works. It looks like the march to the war in Iraq all over again.

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002″—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

Here we go again. So, Nancy Pelosi, is impeachment still off the table?

Popularity: 27% [?]