Celebrate the women and girls in your life, your world, their value and their equality.
Learn from Women's History month this month what women HAVE accomplished to better understand and encourage what women and girls can NEXT accomplish.
Katherine Johnson is 96; she is still with us. Because she is both a woman, and a black woman who lived through and made advances during the civil rights era, it is doubly apt that she be given recognition on the day that is also the 50th Anniversary of the March on Selma. For all of her remarkable abilities and contributions, Katherine Johnson would have had to sit at the back of the bus, use colored only restrooms, could be denied service in restaurants before civil rights legislation and civil rights SCOTUS victories.
"I didn't have time for that," said Johnson in her Hampton home. "My dad taught us 'you are as good as anybody in this town, but you're no better.' I don't have a feeling of inferiority. Never had. I'm as good as anybody, but no better."
But probably a lot smarter. She was a "computer" at Langley Research Center "when the computer wore a skirt," said Johnson. More important, she was living out her life's goal, though, when it became her goal, she wasn't sure what it involved.
Johnson was born in White Sulfur Springs, W.Va., where school for African-Americans stopped at eighth grade. Her father, Joshua, was a farmer who drove his family 120 miles to Institute, W. Va., where education continued through high school and then at West Virginia State College. He would get wife Joylette a job as a domestic and leave the family there to be educated while he went back to White Sulfur Springs to make a living.
Katherine skipped though grades to graduate from high school at 14, from college at 18, and her skills at mathematics drew the attention of a young professor, W.W. Schiefflin Claytor.
Katherine Johnson.
Katherine Johnson's work at NASA's Langley Research Center spanned 1953 to 1986 and included calculating the trajectory of the early space launches.
Photo Credit: NASA/Sean Smith.
Click on the images for a larger view
"He said, 'You'd make a good research mathematician and I'm going to see that you're prepared,' " she recalled.
No surprise, the celebration commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Selma is this weekend. Only one Republican, belatedly, after being pressured, is attending. Nearly the entire body of Democrats and Independents from Congress, and the President are present, in contrast.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday gutted a core part of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act and challenged Congress to come up with a replacement plan to protect blacks and other minorities in places where discrimination still persists rather than target former slaveholding states in the South. In a 5-4 ruling with the court's conservatives in the majority, the justices ruled that Congress had used outdated facts in continuing to force nine states, mainly in the South, to get federal approval for voting rule changes affecting blacks and other minorities.
The facts were not outdated. And the decision resulted in the passage of voter suppression laws in a number of states, all states controlled by extremely conservative Republicans (some of whom used to be conservative democrats).
While the claim is made that there is no racial animus in these laws, that it is in fact simply targeted at keeping majority Democratic demographics from voting, that should not be regarded as a legitimate pretext either. NO American should have unreasonable difficulty put in place as an obstacle to their voting. And to suggest that there is no longer racial animus or that we are post-racial denies facts evident in daily headlines across this country. There is still tremendous racial inequality. Some of that was by design in the past, and more of it has been by design after the SCOTUS decision.
It is further worth noting that since the decision handed down from the SCOTUS, the Republican controlled house under conservative John Boehner has done nothing to move forward any further action on the voting rights act, nor has the Senate where Republicans have consistently been obstructive.
It is also worthy of note that the original 1965 legislation, drafted by Democrats, under a Democratic administration, had the support of more liberal Republicans when it passed, and was opposed exclusively on the Democratic side by Dixie-crat southern affiliated conservatives.
And finally, it is worth noting here that a Wisconsin Republican authored a piece of legislation, introduced to the Judiciary committee in January of 2014, with the support of a genuinely bi-partisan list of co-sponsors. Under Republican control of the House of Representatives, it has never gotten out of committee. This followed an introduction of the same legislation in 2013.
Summary: H.R.3899 — 113th Congress (2013-2014)All Bill Information (Except Text)
There is one summary for this bill. Bill summaries are authored by CRS.
Shown Here:
Introduced in House (01/16/2014)
Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 - Amends the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with respect to the requirement that a federal court retain jurisdiction for an appropriate period to prevent commencement of new devices to deny or abridge the right to vote. Expands the types of violations triggering the authority of a court to retain such jurisdiction to include certain violations of the Act as well as violations of any federal voting rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.
Excludes from the list of violations triggering jurisdiction retention authority any voting qualification or prerequisite which results in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote that is based on the imposition of a requirement that an individual provide a photo identification as a condition of receiving a ballot for voting in a federal, state, or local election.
Revises requirements for determining which states and political subdivisions are covered or not covered by criteria for declaratory judgments that they have not used devices to deny or abridge the right to vote.
Subjects to the requirements for making such a determination any state (and all of its political subdivisions) during a calendar if 5 or more voting rights violations occurred in the state during the previous 15 years, at least one of which was committed by the state itself (as opposed to a political subdivision within it).
Specifies application of such new coverage requirements to any specific political subdivision if: (1) 3 or more voting rights violations occurred in it during the previous 15 calendar years; or (2) 1 or more voting rights violations occurred in it during the previous 15 calendar years and the subdivision had persistent, extremely low minority turnout during that period.
Provides that, if a state obtains a declaratory judgment that it has not used a device to deny or abridge the right to vote, the requirements for a new declaratory judgment generally will not apply, unless the new coverage requirements of this Act apply to the state solely on the basis of voting rights violations occurring after the declaratory judgment was issued.
Prescribes transparency requirements, including reasonable public notice, regarding any changes to: (1) voting prerequisites, standards, or procedures; (2) polling place resources; or (3) demographics and electoral districts.
Modifies authority to assign observers, including authorizing the assignment of observers to enforce bilingual election requirements.
Revises requirements for injunctive relief, including its scope and the persons authorized to seek relief as well as the grounds for granting it.
The identical legislation was introduced in the senate, courtesy of govtrack.us:
S. 1945 (113th): Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014
Introduced:
Jan 16, 2014 113th Congress, 2013–2015
Status:
Died in a previous Congress
This bill was introduced on January 16, 2014, in a previous session of Congress, but was not enacted.
Read Text » Last Updated: Jan 16, 2014 Length: 27 pages
It is past time, as we celebrate the catalyst for the 1965 Voteing Rights legislation, the March on Selma, that we pressure the racist and bigoted radical right that has a choke hold on any responsible governance coming out of the Congress, and if they are unresponsive, remove them from their positions in 2016.
The little town of Daphne, Alabama was targeted for a smear, not because they did anything bad or wrong, just because they were convenient. The town's reputation was sacrificed on the alter of right wing propaganda, including by the religious right -- and they do like their flames among the deeply conservative Christian right in the deep south. Those haters like to light fires, both literally and figuratively.
A weekend barbecue competition at Sam's Club in Daphne fired up more than meat on Friday after organizers ordered participants to take down their American flags due to a misinterpretation of a city ordinance.
In a Facebook post Tuesday night, Mayor Dane Haygood said the city "came under fire this past weekend when it was labeled as an un-American City by a participant" at Sam's Club National BBQ Tour.
"Unfortunately, the City of Daphne became the target of much ire on social media as city ordinances were cited as the source of the restrictions on flag display," Haygood said. "Daphne has no such restrictions nor did city officials engage with event organizers or participants in regard to flags or restrictions on signage."
He said American flags are "explicitly exempted" from the city's regulations.
The Kansas City Barbecue Society, which sanctions the competition, mistakenly thought the city sign ordinance prohibited flags and told participants they were not allowed to fly Old Glory. A firestorm erupted on social media, fueled by the Kansas City Barbecue Society.
Fox News even joined the patriotic controversy on Tuesday in an opinion column: "Stop the Insanity: BBQ pitmasters told to take down American flags."
Fox News, the Christian Post, and social media propaganda pushers like Right Wing News circulated a lie, and continued circulating that lie well after it was debunked.
That was not an accident, it was not an honest mistake, it was not an oops! for which any of the above have apologized or made corrections. This is not a one-off, this kind of story happens almost daily, along with other propaganda stories on the right.
There really is not any equivalent, in scope or frequency, to this in the center or on the lef, in a concerted effort to create an us vs them mentality of pseudo-victims.
It works by equating attacks on tradition, like BBQ, and attacks on the flag, and an attack on freedom all rolled into one emotional falsehood, told over and over and over to the same audience. Repeating it makes it feel true, or more preciesly 'truthy' to use the word coined by Stephen Colbert. And once it FEELS true, challenges to it FEELS like another level of attack. Facts become the enemy.
That lie was propaganda, part of an agenda, part of a calculated and deliberate attempt to mislead, deceive, misinform and dis-inform the right wing base, and the further right, the greater the quantity of the deception (although the quality doesn't get any better). It is in the same group of propaganda lies that falsely pushes the notion that anyone who is not a right wing radical is either secretly or openly not only unpatriotic, but a threat to the nation. It is part of the same theme or meme that inaccurately circulates bullshit about students in schools not saying the pledge of allegiance ' in order not to offend anyone', or that people are being persecuted for wearing images of the flag on t-shirts.
I'm personally fond of debunking the fake presidential quotes, especially those attributed to the founding fathers. But the right has other themes and memes, voter fraud, terroristic and diseased undocumented immigrants, Sharia phobia, they're-coming-for-to-take-your-guns, unions are evil, schools are trying to turn your kids gay, global warming is a hoax to enact martial law, etc.
The intent is to fear monger, to create a siege mentality, an emotional sense of gunned up manufactured puppet-string controlled outrage. With each new lie, that outrage is easier to get, the believers in the right wing propaganda become more gullible, and become more easily manipulated.
That is how propaganda works. It mixes lies with small details of truth -- there is a Daphne, Alabama and there are Barbecue Competitions. It gets the propaganda consumers to replace their critical thinking with emotion so they don't think, they don't reason. And after enough time passes under the influence of propaganda, of the big and little lies, repeated until they are internalized, those who consume those lies feel threatened by facts, feel angry at anyone who challenges the lies, and thereby intensifying the cycle of lies, the habit of believing lies - by choice.
It takes them from this:
to this and this, inside the heads and hearts of right wingers:
I am totally amazed that no one vociferously refutes the assertion that there is somehow a right to rebellion in US law.
The United States Constitution makes it clear in Article III, Section iii that:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war
against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and
comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony
of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
The
Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no
attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture
except during the life of the person attainted.
US History shows that one of the main forces in creating a new Constitutional framework from the Articles of Confederation was Shays' Rebellion. Shays Rebellion even had former rebels such as Samuel Adams saying:
in monarchies the crime of treason and rebellion may admit of being pardoned or
lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer
death.
US Constitution Article 1, Section 8, clause 15 states that the militia is supposed to suppress Insurrection.
Unless one can prove that the Second Amendment expressly invalidates the two aforementioned clauses of the Constitution, it is hard to say that it gives a right to rebellion. In fact, any interpretation of the Second Amendment which purports that it allows for the ownership of arms in order to wage war on the government is obviously ludicrous given that it must be internally consistent:
It is presumed that a statute will be interpreted so as to be internally consistent. A particular section of the statute shall not be divorced from the rest of the act. The ejusdem generis (or eiusdem generis, Latin for "of the same kind") rule applies to resolve the problem of giving meaning to groups of words where one of the words is ambiguous or inherently unclear. The rule results that where "general words follow enumerations of particular classes or persons or things, the general words shall be construed as applicable only to persons or things of the same general nature or kind as those enumerated." 49 F. Supp. 846, 859. Thus, in a statute forbidding the concealment on one's person of "pistols, revolvers, derringers, or other dangerous weapons," the term "dangerous weapons" may be construed to comprehend only dangerous weapons of the kind enumerated; i.e., firearms, or perhaps more narrowly still, handguns. A hypothetical court may have to determine whether a sword, a Japanese throwing star, or a Taser fit into the "other" category of the statute. Here, the term "other dangerous weapons" must be given a meaning of the "same kind" as the word of established meaning.
A statute shall not be interpreted so as to be inconsistent with other statutes. Where there is an inconsistency, the judiciary will attempt to provide a harmonious interpretation.
There is no way to harmonise a right to rebellion in the current structure of the United States Constitution.
Some people want to use the Declaration of Independence as a basis for this right, but that is also refuted by the US Constitution in Article VI, clause 2:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made
in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made,
under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of
the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything
in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary
notwithstanding.
This means that the Declaration of Independence is a historic document without legal significance. Also, there were other circumstances which the people who drafted the Declaration were addressing. As I pointed out above, there were far more signers of the Declaration of Independence who thought Daniel Shays was wrong than there were the one who thought he was within his rights.
The Jefferson quote "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing,
and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical" was written before the French Revolution occurred (30 Jan 1787). The Terror would later make him reconsider still more, though he never entirely renounced the Revolution.
Still, one quote does not make law--especially if it contradicts the law.
What the Constitution was intended on preserving is a concept called the rule of law, which is the general concept that government as well as the
governed are subject to the law and that all are to be equally protected
by the law. Its roots can be found in classical antiquity. The vast
difference between the rule of law as opposed to that of individual
rulers and tyrants is a central theme in the writings of political
philosophers from the beginning. In the works of Plato and as developed
in Aristotle’s writings, it implies obedience to positive law as well as
rudimentary checks on rulers and magistrates.
That said, one cannot claim to be a "Constitutionalist" if one does not believe in obeying the law, and working within the system to change the law if one disagrees with it.
The ultimate point is that the Constitution does not countenance violent overthrow of the government, but using the system to make any change.
It does not appear that the alleged shooter of three Muslim students, Craig Stephen Hicks, will be leaving the local slammer any time soon. And when he does, if convicted in court, he could be facing the death penalty in North Carolina -- although the 'how' of state executions is somewhat in legal limbo at the moment.
Per the web site, deathpenalty info.org for North Carolina, where there have been recent releases of men on death row, sometimes for decades, who were innocent, and in the face of a lack of approved drugs for lethal injection, even conservatives (which dominate the political landscape of NC) are opposing the death penalty. Notably a GOP party chair LED from last year opposed the death penalty continuing, where the right has previously strongly championed it:
Mark Edwards, chair of the Nash County (North Carolina) Republican Party, recently spoke about replacing the death penalty with a sentence of lfie without parole: "As a conservative seeking to find the best way to protect the residents of this great state from crime, I believe the death penalty has had its day in North Carolina. It is time to begin the debate on replacing the death penalty with life in prison without parole." He also said, "We are advocating that we replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole, which would will prevent debacles like the Oklahoma execution. It is a tough punishment, and inmates with no hope of release certainly do not live on 'easy street.'" Edwards is a member of North Carolina Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, and he pointed to the toll executions take on correctional officers, especially when executions go wrong: "No matter how professionally the staff carries out its duties, a community is formed and relationships established with the prisoners, including those who sit and wait on death row. Then they have to participate in the inmate’s execution. That cannot be easy for these men and women," Edwards said. "It is not fair for us to impose these untested (and, as the events in Oklahoma remind us, possibly unreliable) drug protocols on the dedicated staff of the Department of Corrections."
The federal inquiry into his actions, seeking to determine if this is a hate crime (presumably under federal statutes) and therefore a separate set of charges,is ongoing.
As we have noted here, and as continues to be the finding of the police investigation, this does not appear, so far as we can determine, a religious based hate crime but rather a crazy nut job obsessed with guns seeking to dominate and be an authoritarian figure, much like George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin shooting several years ago.
An interesting if not particularly pertinent detail about Craig Hicks, he was studying to become a para-legal. The information makes me wonder how this man could have such an apparent disrespect for the law, to have (allegedly) executed three people, and to have so clearly used his firearm for which he had a cc permit, to threaten and intimidate so many other people (many of whom were not Muslim).
Joseph Bologne, lived during the era of the American Revolution, 1745 -1799. He was French, the son of a slave mother and a wealthy planter father. His father essentially bought a title in 1757, and had taken his son to France for his education, along with his mother who continued to be a slave. He excelled in swordsmanship. He was SO unusual, so excellent at this skill, that when he graduated he directly became a member of the King's bodyguard, and was knighted. He also fought duels with prominent swordsmen who insulted him because he was bi-racial.
An obvious polymath, Saint-Georges was also an accomplished violinist at an early age (hence the comparison to Mozart) and became an accomplished composer in his own right as well. Saint-Georges was subsidized during his younger years by his father, but that money went to his apparently white and legitimate half-sister when his father died, leaving Saint-Georges to support himself by what he earned from his music and from the Orchestras he conducted. He continued to enjoy both tremendous popularity, but also periodic racism against him. He became a great favorite of Marie Antoinette. Saint-Georges began writing operas, met other famous talents in the music world, including the actual Mozart and Haydn. During this time his mother, who had continued to live with him, died - apparently still at least technically a slave by legal status if not in how she lived.
Subsequently, Saint-Georges spent time in England, including rubbing elbows with the Prince of Wales. Throughout his life among the nobility and wealthy, Saint Georges was an ardent supporter of the abolition of slavery.
When the French Revolution began, Saint-Georges volunteered, and headed up a legion of 'colored' troops, holding the rank of colonel. He fought on the side of the Republic against the monarchists, was imprisoned during the 'Terror', was released when the worst excesses of the Revolution were over. Without the patronage afforded him by the nobility prior to the revolution, he was somewhat less successful.
At one point he left France for about two years when there was a slave revolt on Caribbean island where he was born. Two years later he returned to France, again tried to rejoin his legion and again began composing and conducting music, as well as resuming playing the violin. He died in 1799 in comparative poverty. He left behind as his legacy a large body of musical compositions, including operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, music for string quartets, and vocal music, many of which are still performed and recorded.
You inspired a lot of people when they were kids by your role of the Star Trek science officer, even if it must have been annoying wearing those prosthetic pointy ears.
Sunday, February 22, 2015, the song Glory from the movie Selma won an Oscar, and the co-winners made brief speeches which addressed incarceration in this country, including an allusion to the inequality of that incarceration. The United States, land of the 'Free', has more people behind bars than anywhere else in the world. That is fact. The United States really DOES have more black people behind bars than were enslaved in the mid-19th century. That is also a fact.
ONLY in the fact-averse, reality-challenged delusions of the right wing bubble is the double standard we have in this country in question. It is extremely well documented, but of course, the same people on the crazy right who reject factual history courses reject the objective reality of incarceration past and present.
Perusing this right wing bubble, I was challenged to prove that there exists a different standard of justice for the wealthy, the privileged, and the majority of white people in this country.
I chose the following example of presidential wannabee, Jeb Bush and his family. Before and during his tenure as governor of Florida, Jeb Bush was a huge proponent of both private prisons and mandatory sentencing. If you were arrested, you went off to fill the quota that made private prisons so very profitable --- and which put dollars in the pocket of Jeb Bush.
While Florida crime had just begun a 20-year decline that continues to this day, Bush spent much of the 1990s pushing to build more for-profit prisons in the Sunshine State and around the country, with the stated dual-goals of putting as many criminals in jail as possible and saving taxpayer money at the same time.
...The private-prison boom came quickly in the wake of president Richard Nixon’s war on drugs. Harsher sentencing laws led to an explosion in incarceration rates and rising costs almost immediately thereafter. The U.S. now has the highest prison population on earth.
Between 1990 and 2009, private prisons took on 1,600 percent growth in prisoners, according to the federal government, due in large part to the industry spending millions of dollars on lobbying and employing hundreds of lobbyists throughout the country—including dozens in Florida alone.
On top of building for-profit prisons, Bush championed legislation that made sure the institutions were filled to capacity.
Bush boasted about his “get tough on crime” attitude on the campaign trail. When he came to office, he championed numerous landmark mandatory sentencing laws that passed early on during his first term.
In this effort, Bush was closely aligned with the goals of the private-prison lobby during his time as governor.
...Bush pushed for and passed harsher laws, like three strikes legislation and “truth in sentencing,” that an ALEC Task Force Director bragged was “based on an ALEC model bill.”
All of these laws increase the number of prisoners, increase sentences, and increase the amount of money private prisons earn in the process.
Over the course of the last two decades, the private-prison industry has spent millions on contributions to Floridian politicians, including hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican party during Bush’s tenure.
While crime in Florida declined in the 1990s, Florida’s prison population doubled yet again, to nearly 80,000 prisoners as sentencing rules became harsher.
Bush’s second campaign for governor was successful and he served the office from 1999 to 2007. During that time, the same trend continued: Crime fell and Florida’s prison population rose to over 100,000 for the first time in history, half of whom were black. African Americans make up about 15 percent of the Florida population. Similar sized states like New York had reduced their prison sizes during the same period.
At the end of Bush’s tenure as governor, half of Florida’s prisoners were nonviolent drug and property offenders, according to the Sentencing Project.
...As for shrinking government and saving money, Bush repeatedly raised spending on Florida’s corrections budget during his two terms as governor. In 2007, when Bush left office, it cost Florida over $979 million to imprison the nonviolent drug and property criminals of the state.
Florida overpaid CCA and GEO by $13 million, a 2005 audit showed, including for jobs that were never filled and maintenance that was never performed.
Both companies were paid $90 million annually despite audits showing the prisons weren't being run as efficiently as state law required, the St. Petersburg Times reported.
Nationwide, the industry's profits have gone up close to 500 percent since Bush first wrote about "deinventing government."
...The profits of private prison companies, by their own admission, rely on high incarceration rates: “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices,” according to a 2010 annual report by the largest private prison company in America, the CCA.
There is really no basis for any factual challenge that Jeb Bush and his party took money to lock up people, for the express purpose of generating profits. There is no basis for any challenge to the facts that this disproportionately affected black and brown people, as well as the poorest of white people, while largely NOT affecting middle class and wealthier people, especially white people. In other words, there is a clear, demonstrable double standard, of leniency for some people, and harshness towards others that is not fair and equal justice.
However the right wing nuts, the RWN, challenged me to show that this was not simply a case of black and brown people committing crimes more often than other people, another way of stating the right wing racist belief that 'those people' are more criminal than other people, people who are white and more affluent.
Never mind the hypocrisy and double standard that Jeb himself was a privileged pot smoker in his day, without any apparent legal consequences.
Let's look at what happened when all three of Jeb Bush's children got arrested, one for stalking and breaking and entering, one for a non-violent drug crime, and one for public intoxication and a quite violent resisting arrest charge. Then we'll move on to the criminal troubles of Mrs. Columba Bush.
George P. Bush might be a hunkalicious young Republican, but he still seems a bit creepy. So TSG wasn't too surprised to learn that "P" was involved in a troubling 1994 incident described in this Metro-Dade Police Department report. On December 31, 1994, Bush showed up at 4 AM at the Miami home of a former girlfriend. He proceeded to break into the house via the woman's bedroom window, and then began arguing with his ex's father. Bush, then a Rice University student, soon fled the scene. But he returned 20 minutes later to drive his Ford Explorer across the home's front lawn, leaving wide swaths of burned grass in his wake. Young Bush avoided arrest when the victims declined to press charges.
And then we have middle child, daugher Noelle L. Bush, who got arrested for forging a prescription and illegal prescription drug possesion -- multiple occasions of illegal drug possession.
She was charged with prescription fraud, a felony that carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail and a $5,000 fine. Noelle Bush has no known criminal record and was released without having to post bond.
Jeb Bush had said previously that one of his three children used illegal drugs during his first failed campaign for Florida governor in 1994. That episode prompted Jeb and Columba Bush to get involved in several drug-prevention groups, and Jeb Bush appointed a state drug czar after he was elected governor in 1998.
Noelle tried to tell police this was a one-off, apparently, in the hopes of getting away with it. It was not.
"Xanax is legally prescribed for stress and anxiety. Noelle Bush reportedly told police that she was panicked about starting a new job on Tuesday.
...Illegal use of the sedative Xanax is popular among some young people, particularly in combination with the party drug Ecstasy. It can help prolong an Ecstasy high or soften the crash that often follows. The practice is known as "parachuting" among users, says Joe Kilmer, spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Miami.
UNLIKE all those black and brown and poor people Jeb was putting behind bars during this time in office in Florida, Noelle went into rehab, where she went AWOL, tried to get more illegal drugs, and got busted possessing other drugs multiple times.
Jeb Bush and niece of President George W. Bush was found with crack inside her shoe in the Center for Drug Free Living in Orlando, where she was sent in January after being arrested for trying to buy Xanax with a forged prescription. It was not the first time she’s been busted while in rehab — her three-day jail term in July came after she was caught with a bag of prescription pills that didn’t belong to her.
Drug-reform advocates certainly don’t claim that Noelle Bush has been treated too leniently — even three days in jail is too harsh, they argue. But, they say, the punishment is even more severe for people without her money or connections. “The question is whether she’s being treated in a unique way,” says Bruce Bullington, the editor of the Journal of Drug Issues and an associate professor of criminology at Florida State University in Tallahassee. “I think she is.”
Her fellow patients seem to agree. As the Orlando Sentinel reports, Noelle Bush was reported to the police by a woman who said she was a Center for Drug Free Living client incensed by what she felt was the preferential treatment given the governor’s daughter.
“One of the women here was caught buying crack cocaine tonight,” the caller said in her Sept. 9 conversation with a 911 dispatcher. “And a lot of the women are upset because she’s been caught about five times. And we want something done because our children are here, and they just keep letting it slip under the counter and carpet … They said, you know, because it’s basically Noelle Bush … She does this all the time and she gets out of it because she’s the governor’s daughter.”
...According to the New York Daily News, one Center for Drug Free Living staffer heeded a supervisor’s advice and tore up her written statement about finding the drugs rather than show it to the police. Without the statement, the police didn’t have probable cause to arrest Bush. Four employees have been subpoenaed after refusing to cooperate with police, citing the center’s privacy policies.
... “Anyone else who they found with a rock of cocaine, they would turn it over to the police … And the courts will say there’s no second chances, or one second chance.”
16 Sep 2002 "While Noelle has been given every break in the book -- and then some -- her father has made it harder for others in her position to get the help they need by cutting the budgets of drug treatment and drug court programs in his state. He has also actively opposed a proposed ballot initiative that would send an estimated 10,000 non-violent drug offenders into treatment instead of jail." Arianna Huffington.
I think we can fairly say that the Bush family received a very different Justice than did those Governor Daddy Bush was putting behind bars for profit, or that the daughters of big brother President Bush received for their respective arrests.
But let's move on to the youngest Jeb Bush son, John E. Bush and his criminal problems, from CBS News:
The youngest son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was arrested early Friday and charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest, law enforcement officials said.
John Ellis Bush, 21, was arrested by agents of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at 2:30 a.m. on a corner of Austin's Sixth Street bar district, said commission spokesman Roger Wade.
The nephew of President Bush was released on $2,500 bond for the resisting arrest charge, and on a personal recognizance bond for the public intoxication charge, officials said.
Go ahead, guess how much time Jebbie Jr. did. NONE, in spite of violent conduct; anyone still want to argue that SOME people get special treatment in our Justice system?
Let's now move on to Columba Bush, first lady of Florida, and her run in with the feds, from the Sydney Morning Herald, yesterday:
Jeb Bush's wife, Columba, once detained for not fully declaring $24,000 in jewels bought in Paris
Washington: In 1999, Columba Bush, the famously private wife of then-Florida governor Jeb Bush, was detained and fined by US customs officials for misrepresenting the amount of clothing and jewellery she had bought while on a solo five-day shopping spree in Paris.
After Mrs Bush was forced to pay $US4100 in fines and duties for the purchases she had tried to slip past customs agents at Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport, the governor said her shopping habits were no one else's business.
Most other people, unless wealthy or well connected, would NOT have gotten away with a mere fine.
And that's just the 'nucular' Jeb Bush family; we could demonstrate that this is the pattern of the extended Bush family privilege, but I think it more than adequately makes the point that we have an incredibly hypocritical double Justice system in this country, EXACTLY the way it was described at the Oscars.
ANYONE with a sense of fairness has to recognize this is wrong, this is completely contrary to the intent of our founding fathers, and this is horrifically hypocritical on the part of the right, ALL the right, not just the Bush boys and their families.
The radical right has made the same claim as Dubya does below -- that we're hated for our freedoms.
That is not true; no one hates us for being free.
It is a propaganda lie for the stupid and gullible. It is part of the same mind-set that wants to eliminate AP History for taking on our failings in the past and present head on, honestly, while still loving our country.
It is the same mindset as that expressed by Rudy Guiliani when he claimed Obama does not love America.
It is wrong. It is wilfully blind, and it is profoundly dishonest.
Sooner or later, we always have to come to terms with what we, as a nation, have done wrong, or allowed or encouraged to be done wrong, in our name and with our consent, including cover ups.
THIS described below, and other abuses like it, is why we have been hated, not our 'freedoms'. This and other abuses, including some aspects of our drone policy and much of our policy in Iraq and Gitmo is why we see so many parts of the Iraq joining up with ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. It is why people leave other countries and go to fight with ISIS. It is why religion and religious government appear to offer an attractive alternative to our democracy.
Abu Ghraib
I've heard references to the following before, so it does not entirely surprise me that those rumors are true. This does NOT appear to be the exception that proves the rule that otherwise we acted better than this, especially given the statistics on rape of our own soldiers by our own soldiers.
Classified Videos Allegedly Show U.S. Soldiers Raping Boys In Front Of Their Mothers (IMAGES)
There is a reason why the White House sent the President’s Chief of Staff to personally negotiate on what was going to be included in the CIA’s Torture Report. The Executive Summary released by the Senate was only a mere 525 pages out of the more than 6,700 pages that still remain classified.
There is a reason why top U.S. leadership was genuinely concerned about the reports release; things are much, much worse than they want you to believe.
According to multiple well-respected journalists, including Seymour Hersh, recipient of the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting and known for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up in the Vietnam War, the Pentagon has a secret video. The video was recorded at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. torture dungeon in Iraq, that dominated the headlines a decade ago, where the inhumane tactics used at the prison were first exposed.
But, the problem is, the evidence released years ago was just a fraction of what was being done, all to the full knowledge of key U.S. authorities. While the video has remained under wraps thus far, Hersh says it is only a matter of time before it comes out.
Giving a speech at the ACLU, Hersh gave some insight on what was on the tape:
Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.
It’s impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had. I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we’re dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. So, it’s going to be an interesting election year.
When you put these statements together with another speech Hersh gave in Chicago, it becomes more clear that the women who witnessed these young boys were actually their mothers:
You haven’t begun to see evil, horrible things done to the children of women prisoners, as the cameras run.
Ten years ago when the initial Abu Ghraib scandal made headlines, the Guardian published the testimony of a detainee who witnessed one of these brutal attacks.
Photo from Abu Ghraib. Pic via Left Voices
Former detainee Kasim Hilas said in their testimony:
I saw [name blacked out] f*cking a kid, his age would be about 15-18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [blacked out], who was wearing the military uniform putting his d*ck in the little kid’s ass, I couldn’t see the face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And, the soldier was taking pictures.
Now, over a decade later, the evidence of what has happened is surfacing, but the government is doing everything possible to still keep the most damning evidence of these soldiers’ awful behavior classified.
With the torture report still fresh in the minds of the general population, this is why it’s important, now more than ever, to put pressure on elected officials and force the release of this evidence.
Please, share this with everyone you know.
I have to believe that if this had come out along with the other scandals from Abu Ghraib, that Dubya would not have been re-elected in 2014.
I can only speculate what this coming out in advance of the 2016 elections could mean for the candidacy of Jeb Bush, given he has hired on his brothers old, bad advisers.
And I must believe that this coming out will result in a shake up at the Pentagon for the cover up and lack of any apparent accountability for this.
But what I hope will happen, more than anything else, is that those who have excused torture will stop excusing it, and that we as a nation will re-embrace the Geneva conventions and realize, fully realize and understand, WHY there are things we do not do, and should never do, no matter what the impulse at the time to do so, and that these actions taken in our name do not make or keep us free OR safe, they only shame us and make us as bad as our enemies.
History will conclude that Dubya was THE worst president ever, and for good reason. It will also conclude that we were bad for this happening, and for our attitudes condoning torture and abuse of the prison at Gitmo and other locations, among other things we have done wrong as a nation in the 21st century.
The only option for any regaining of even a moral molehill, never mind the moral high ground, is what we do about these events when we can no longer hide them or hide from them.
That should include not electing another Bush, but it MUST include admitting what was done wrong, and NOT VIOLATING THE GENEVA CONVENTION ANY MORE, especially in how we deal with civilians.
That tends to rule out most of the recommendations and suggestions from the right on what to do about Islamic terrorism.
Homeland Security is announcing another round of data regarding the radical right, including the sovereign citizen movement, causing a round of exploding heads inside their tinfoil hats. At the same time, regional Islamist terrorists from the horn of Africa, al Shibab, is threatening an attack on the Mall of America like the one in Kenya.
I've been taking the time to observe some of the propaganda from the far right wing bubble, as it gins up the anger of the teabagger .......what is the opposite of elite? Lowest common denominator might fit, but not well, but it comes closer to the drooling and gullible sheeple that form a significant hard core demographic of the base.
It has been written that the consumers of Fox News and the rest of the right wind dis-information machine are not so much UN-informed, which can be said of those who do not bother with following any current events or issues, at any level (local, state, or national), but rather that they are MIS-informed.
Plenty of ink has been spilled in documenting that the right wing, especially the far right wrong, is angry, all the time, and distrustful of government. That is not accidental, it is not spontaneous in origin, it is not organic. IT IS CONTRIVED, FOMENTED, DELIBERATELY CREATED ANGER, DISTRUST, AND POLARIZED BEYOND RECONCILIATION.
THAT is toxic and destructive to any democratic form of government of the people, by the people and for the people. We can not have functional government so long as we have wilfully and deliberately ignorant people operating not to participate in governing, but intent on destruction or overthrow of our institutions, principles, and our very government itself, driven by that deliberately cultivated fear and ignorance.
A new Department of Homeland Security intelligence assessment circulated this month focuses on the threat of right-wing sovereign citizen extremist groups in the U.S. Some law enforcement groups say the threat is equal to, and occasionally greater than, the threat from Islamic extremist groups.
The Homeland Security report, produced in coordination with the FBI, counts 24 violent sovereign citizen-related attacks across the U.S. since 2010, CNN reported Friday.
These types of extremists believe that they can ignore laws because those laws attack their individual rights, even in routine daily instances like a traffic stop or being required to obey a court order, CNN reported Friday.
...While groups like the Islamic State and al Qaeda have dominated the global discussion on terrorism, a survey last year of state and local law enforcement officers listed sovereign citizen terrorists ahead of foreign Islamists and domestic militia groups as the top domestic terror threat, CNN reported.
Would-be members of anti-government groups are instead striking out on their own—becoming ‘lone wolves’—committing 74 percent of U.S. terrorism since 2009, according to a new report.
The radical anti-government groups that thrived after the election of Barack Obama are having trouble attracting potential new recruits, who are scared off by the “social cost” of being exposed as members. That’s the good news in a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.The bad news is that these people—and they’re all over the Internet—are moving into what the SPLC calls “Lone Wolf” violence, or “Leaderless Resistance.” “What we think is happening is very large numbers of people are leaving bricks and mortar groups for the Internet,” says Mark Potok, a senior fellow with the SPLC and editor of the report. “The action is in cyberspace these days.”Potok cited the example of Republican leader Steve Scalise, who was excoriated for having spoken to a white supremacist conference. “He was able to hang on to his job and post, but it was very, very costly, and that’s what’s making people move away from these groups,” Potok says. A second factor prompting people to strike out on their own, or in very small groups, is frustration with the lack of action in bigger organizations.“They get tired of the meet, eat, and retreat crowd, all the talk about the evils of black people, gay people, Muslim people,” he says. “They get sick of all the talk, and they’re moving out on their own and begin to shoot.”...Islamist-driven terrorist attacks dominate the headlines today, but more Americans are killed by domestic non-Islamist terror, an uncomfortable reality that is documented in the SPLC’s “Age of the Wolf: A Study of the Rise of Lone Wolf and Leaderless Resistance Terrorism.” The report covers 2009 to 2015, the period Obama has been in office, and finds that a terrorist incident took place or was disrupted every 34 days.
“We are not in any way trying to dismiss the jihadist threat, but there’s a huge amount of carnage that is carried out by the domestic radical right, and let’s not forget that.”
Of the 63 terrorist acts documented, 74 percent were committed by a lone wolf. Once pairs were included, a man and a woman, or a couple of buddies, 90 percent of all domestic terror was accounted for, whether it was Islamist or some other form of hatred or anti-government ideology. Another finding: Those who commit domestic terror are much older than those who commit other crimes. “We are not in any way trying to dismiss the jihadist threat,” says Potok, “but there’s a huge amount of carnage that is carried out by the domestic radical right, and let’s not forget that.”
The SPLC report credits Louis Beam, an early ’80s KKK leader in Texas, with popularizing the concept of “leaderless resistance” in a seminal (for the white supremacist movement) 1983 essay he wrote about the dangers of large, top-down groups. Beam urged his followers to move into single or small-cell terrorism, no more than six men, an idea that was picked up and adopted by white supremacists, and also by jihadists.
Raising the topic of homegrown terrorism in the context of the ongoing national outcry over Islamist-fueled terrorism is politically explosive. The Obama administration got an early taste of how the subject can spin out of control when then Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano released a report in 2009 on right-wing extremism that said these groups are interested in recruiting returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with military skills. Construing the report as an attack on veterans, the right was outraged, forcing Napolitano to apologize to the American Legion, among others, and withdraw it.
The timing of the SPLC report is an effort to put the terrorist threat in context. The effort is likely to get pushback, just as Obama did at last week’s prayer breakfast when he reminded the religious leaders that this is not the first time crimes have been committed in the name of religion, or in his interview last week with Vox when he said climate change poses a greater threat to national security than terrorism. In releasing the report, the SPLC is seeking to “find a balance that’s in line with reality.” That’s an elusive goal when the No. 1 threat in most people’s minds is Islamist-based terrorism from abroad, not our fellow Americans.
For years, psychologists examined terrorists' individual characteristics, mining for clues that could explain their willingness to engage in violence. While researchers now agree that most terrorists are not "pathological" in any traditional sense, several important insights have been gleaned though interviews with some 60 former terrorists conducted by psychologist John Horgan, PhD, who directs the Pennsylvania State University's International Center for the Study of Terrorism.
Horgan found that people who are more open to terrorist recruitment and radicalization tend to:
Feel angry, alienated or disenfranchised.
Believe that their current political involvement does not give them the power to effect real change.
Identify with perceived victims of the social injustice they are fighting.
Feel the need to take action rather than just talking about the problem.
Believe that engaging in violence against the state is not immoral.
Have friends or family sympathetic to the cause.
Believe that joining a movement offers social and psychological rewards such as adventure, camaraderie and a heightened sense of identity.
Beyond the individual characteristics of terrorists, Horgan has learned that it's more fruitful to investigate how people change as a result of terrorist involvement than to simply ask why they enter in the first place. That's because asking why tends to yield pat, ideological responses, while asking how reveals important information about the processes of entry, involvement and leaving organizations, he has found. Potential areas to tap include examining the myriad ways people join organizations, whether via recruitment or personal decision; how leaders influence people's decision to adopt certain roles, for example by glorifying the role of suicide bomber; and factors that motivate people to leave.
...Some psychologists believe terrorism is most accurately viewed through a political lens. Psychologist Clark McCauley, PhD, a co-investigator at START and director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College, has come to see terrorism as "the warfare of the weak"—the means by which groups that lack material or political power fight what they see as oppressive forces. As such, he believes that terrorist actions and government reactions to them represent a dynamic interplay, with the moves of one group influencing those of the other. As one example, if terrorists commit an attack and a state uses extreme force to send a punishing message back, the terrorists may use that action to drum up greater anti-state sentiment among citizens, lending justification to their next actions. Yet research focuses almost solely on terrorist actions and neglects the important other side of the equation, he contends. "If you can't keep track of what we're doing in response, how can you ever hope to figure out what works better or worse?" McCauley says.
When it comes to terrorism, in the words of the old comic strip Pogo, we have met the enemy, and he is us.......some of us, not all of us. But some of us would rather focus on the them half-way around the world. You can tell 'them', because they're the people the radical right wants us to believe "aren't like us", while those 'other people' are really more like the radical right than they care to admit. The greater threat is arguably the most proximate threat, not 'those people' half way round the world.
Because it totally contradicts what he claims when properly understood.
I offer Justice William O. Douglas’s dissent in Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S 143, 150 -51 (1972)
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, with whom MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL concurs, dissenting.
My views have been stated in substance by Judge Friendly, dissenting,
in the Court of Appeals. 436 F.2d 30, 35. Connecticut allows its
citizens to carry weapons, concealed or otherwise, at will, provided
they have a permit. Conn. Gen. Stat. Rev. 29-35, 29-38. Connecticut law
gives its police no authority to frisk a person for a permit. Yet the
arrest was for illegal possession of a gun. The only basis for that
arrest was the informer’s tip on the narcotics. Can it be said that a
man in possession of narcotics will not have a permit for his gun? Is
that why the arrest for possession of a gun in the free-and-easy State
of Connecticut becomes constitutional?
The police problem is an acute one not because of the Fourth
Amendment, but because of the ease with which anyone can acquire a
pistol. A powerful lobby dins into the ears of our citizenry that these
gun purchases are constitutional rights protected by the Second
Amendment, which reads, “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.”
There is under our decisions no reason why stiff state laws governing
the purchase and possession of pistols may not be enacted. There is no
reason why pistols may not be barred from anyone with a police record.
There is no reason why a State may not require a purchaser of a pistol
to pass a psychiatric test. There is no reason why all pistols should
not be barred to everyone except the police.
The leading case is United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, upholding a
federal law making criminal the shipment in interstate commerce of a
sawed-off shotgun. The law was upheld, there being no evidence that a
sawed-off shotgun had “some reasonable relationship to the preservation
or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” Id., at 178. The Second
Amendment, it was held, “must be interpreted and applied” with the view
of maintaining a “militia.”
“The Militia which the States were expected to maintain and
train is set in contrast with Troops which they were forbidden to keep
without the consent of Congress. The sentiment of the time strongly
disfavored standing armies; the common view was that adequate defense of
country and laws could be secured through the Militia – civilians
primarily, soldiers on occasion.” Id., at 178-179.
Critics say that proposals like this water down the Second Amendment.
Our decisions belie that argument, for the Second Amendment, as noted,
was designed to keep alive the militia. But if watering-down is the mood
of the day, I would prefer to water down the Second rather than the
Fourth Amendment. I share with Judge Friendly a concern that the easy
extension of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, to “possessory offenses” is a
serious intrusion on Fourth Amendment safeguards.
“If it is to be extended to the latter at all, this should be only
where observation by the officer himself or well authenticated
information shows `that criminal activity may be afoot.'” 436 F.2d, at
39, quoting Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 30.
Quick trivia question: What special characteristic about Justice Douglas might make him qualified to have special knowledge of the US v Miller decision?
You should know this if you’ve actually readUS v Miller.
You have read US v Miller, haven’t you?
Anyway, I'm
surprised that this explanation of the Miller decision by someone who
had been on the court when that decision was made has not had more
publicity.
Celebrate the women and girls in your life, your world, their value and their equality.
