A Tough Weekend For Black Lives Matter, says the headline of an article in today’s Atlantic. And why? Two things: (1) an officer-involved shooting of a black youth by cops in Ferguson, Missouri at the end of a day of otherwise peaceful protests, and (2) a demonstration at a Bernie Sanders rally in Seattle on Saturday. The first one was … Read More
Adventures In Police Framing
Then: A police officer in Alabama proposed murdering a black resident and creating bogus evidence to suggest the killing was in self-defence, the Guardian has learned. Officer Troy Middlebrooks kept his job and continues to patrol Alexander City after authorities there paid the man $35,000 to avoid being publicly sued over the incident. Middlebrooks, a veteran of the US marines, … Read More
The New Word For “RINO” (And What It Says About Republicans)
In the early 2000s, just as the wars in the Middle East were ramping up, a new word started appearing in the Internet lexicon: RINO. It stands for “Republican In Name Only”. It is an insult hurled from Republicans to any member of the GOP who’s more liberal than a Republican “should be”. Any politician tagged as a RINO — and many … Read More
U.C. Officer shoots and kills Sam DuBose
Ray Tensing is the first officer in Cincinnati to face murder charges for killing someone in the line of duty. The video proved to be crucial evidence to the grand jurors who indicted Tensing, and it stunned city officials, prosecutors and the relatives of shooting victim Samuel DuBose. It also was a reminder that video, whether captured by witnesses on … Read More
New Sandra Bland Revelations
This just came out: Sandra Bland, the black woman found hanging dead in a Texas jail days after a traffic stop, smoked or possibly swallowed a large amount of marijuana while in custody, her family’s attorney reported the district attorney as saying. Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis made the disclosure in a text message to attorney Cannon Lambert, who … Read More
Updates To Sandra Bland Death Including Possible Dash Cam Edits
Background is here — Unfortunately, not a new story. Black person gets pulled over in a southern town and dies in police custody. The person was Sandra Bland, a vibrant educated 28 year old woman from outside Chicago, who as down in Houston for a job interview, which she got. After a verbal exchange with police following a traffic stop … Read More
Another Jailed Black Person “Hangs Herself”
Are you buying this? According to authorities, an 18-year-old girl hanged her self in an Alabama jail. The inmate has been identified as Kindra Darnell Chapman by the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office. Chapman was arrested on a first-degree-robbery charge for allegedly taking a cellphone and booked at Homewood City Jail Tuesday around 6:22 p.m., AL.com reports. She was last seen alive at … Read More
The Suspicious Death Of Sandy Bland
28-year-old Sandra Bland (also called Sandy). She was visiting Texas from Naperville, Illinois (a Chicago suburb) to interview for a college job at her alma mater of Prairie View A&M. She got the job. On July 10, she tweeted this: Hours before she was assaulted & arrested by police, #SandraBland posted about eating here & joked w/ friends online. pic.twitter.com/0zGKcZzAsb … Read More
RIP Confederate Flag (In South Carolina)
After a contentious and often emotional debate in the SC House, with a lot of political wrangling (and attachments of bill-killing amendments, all of which failed), Governor Nikki Haley signed the bill yesterday, and the flag came down today Well, that only took 5+ decades. Here in North Carolina, they took down the Confederate flag from inside the state capitol building … Read More
Rand Paul on Taxes and Slavery
Rand Paul recently spoke in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and to draw a line from taxes to slavery: “Now you can have some government, we all need government,” the Kentucky senator said while discussing Thomas Paine and the role of government at the local public library. “Thomas Paine said that government is a necessary evil. What did he mean by that?”Paul said … Read More
Quote Of The Day
Mike Huckabee on a radio show interrupts himself in response to a question about same-sex marriage: Because if you equate same-sex marriage to a civil right — First of all, what an insult to African-Americans, who were hosed in the street, who were beaten, who were truly discriminated against with separate restrooms, separate drinking fountains, separate entrances. That was true discrimination … Read More
Who Is Burning Black Churches?
If you could give out an award for under-reported stories these past few weeks, this is it. Granted, it has been a very busy series of news cycles, with gay marriage and confederate flags and mass murder and a million GOP candidates, but this is more important than, say, shark attacks. And to be sure, if ISIS so much as … Read More
“God Don’t Like Ugly”
The boys were out over the weekend celebrating their heritage with Confederate flags flown from the backs of their pickup trucks. All over the south. A reporter in Asheville spoke with an eighteen year-old kid doing the same: We were talking about the reaction he’s gotten flying the battle flag, and Billingsley said it’s been overwhelmingly positive — lots of … Read More
The Other Case: Victory For Fair Housing
It won’t get as much press, but the Supreme Court decision in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Community Project, Inc., is arguably as important as the Obamacare case. The 5-4 ruling (PDF) found that the housing policies could be deemed discriminatory based on “disparate impact.” This means that plaintiffs could prove discrimination by showing that the impact … Read More
The Watershed
Josh Marshall channels what I have been thinking these past few days: I still cannot believe the Charleston Massacre has triggered quite this total a collapse of support, not just for flying the Confederate battle flag in places of honor at Southern state capitols, but for public display and honor for the Confederacy and the War of the Rebellion in … Read More