Letters To My Country

Helen Keller with Anne Sullivan, 1930 In which Anne Sullivan...

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:52:04 -0400

Helen Keller with Anne Sullivan, 1930

In which Anne Sullivan explains how she was able to help Helen Keller to speak without her hands.

What Do You Think Of The Prosecution Of Kaitlyn Hunt?

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:15:00 -0400

In response to the above question, squashed writes:

The claim by Ms. Hunt’s parents is thats she is being unfairly targeted by a homophobic prosecutor and the homophobic parents of the 14-year-old she had sex with. I guess this is the dominant narrative online as well. It’s just that … I’m not sure that this is what’s actually driving the case. Is the claim that the age of consent in Florida should be lowered 14? That the law should not be enforced when an 18-year-old has sex with a 14-year-old?

… .

(And whether it makes sense to smear the parents of the 14-year-old in a case like this. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be upset if your 14-year-old is a victim of statutory rape. Am I wrong on this? Am I missing some details?)

I think the entire case demonstrates the absurdity of statutory rape laws. Hunt’s attorney hit the nail on the head:

“If this incident occurred 108 days earlier when she was 17, we wouldn’t even be here,” the attorney wrote.

What magic ethical wand was waived the day Kaitlyn Hunt turned 18 that transmutes her relationship with her 14-year old girlfriend from merely inappropriate (but not necessarily illegal) to a serious felony? There is a certain ethical prestidigitation one must entertain for this to make any sense whatsoever—a kiss before midnight is worth only a frown, but a kiss the moment after is seriously criminal?

That’s not to say there isn’t a world of difference between the mental and physical maturity of a 14 and 18 year old. Understandably we want to protect our young children, and the law requires a cut-off point to be practically enforceable. But the question isn’t whether we ought to protect young children: the question is whether using one of the criminal justice system’s most serious sanctions (a felony sex prosecution worth a decade and a half in prison) is the appropriate response. All too often—and particularly in statutory rape cases—the punishment does not fit the crime. As one man convicted of statutory rape put it:

A man who was convicted of statutory rape when he was 16 for having consensual sex with his 14-year-old girlfriend told Human Rights Watch: “We were in love. And now we are married. So it’s like I am on the registry for having premarital sex. Does having premarital sex make me a danger to society? My wife doesn’t think so.”

This case follows in a similar vein to stories I posted about recently, such as the special needs student who was busted for marijuana, or 18-year old Cameron D’Ambrosio’s prosecution for Communicating a Terrorist Threat. Kaitlyn Hunt appears to be an otherwise ordinary 18-year old girl. Subjecting her to a felony sex offense prosecution, with the potential for 15 years in prison, is an enormous overreaction. The 14-year old’s parents have a right to rely on public resources to help them protect their daughter. But there are less drastic means of seeking such protection (e.g. seeking a restraining order tied to an ACOD). That’s much preferable to threatening to turn this 18-year old girl into a felony sex offender and ruining her life before it has even begun.

Arresting Our Children

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:41:00 -0400

As if Cameron D’Ambrosio wasn’t bad enough, Kristen Gwynne tells us about another kid being arrested after being entrapped by an undercover police officer pretending to be his friend:

Doug and Catherine Snodgrass are suing their son’s high school for allowing undercover police officers to set up the 17-year-old special-needs student for a drug arrest.

In a video segment on ABC News, [his parents] say they were “thrilled” when their son — who has Asperger’s and other disabilities and struggled to make friends — appeared to have instantly made a friend named Daniel.

“He suddenly had this friend who was texting him around the clock,” Doug Snodgrass told ABC News. His son had just recently enrolled at Chaparral High School.

“Daniel,” however, was an undercover cop with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department who “hounded” the teenager to sell him his prescription medication. When he refused, the undercover cop gave him $20 to buy him weed, and he complied — not realizing the guy he wanted to befriend wanted him behind bars.

The young man is not alone in being targeted:

In December, the unnamed senior was arrested along with 21 other students from three schools, all charged with crimes related to the two officers’ undercover drug operation at two public schools in Temecula, California (Chaparral and Temecula Valley High School).

Thankfully, the judge overseeing the case ruled that the 17-year old could not be expelled. But that doesn’t erase the emotional trauma and psychological anxiety he must’ve endured when he realized he was being arrested for buying $20 worth of weed for someone he thought was his only friend.

When I was in high school, one of the kids on my football team got caught with weed in his locker. The school didn’t call the cops. He wasn’t arrested. They dealt with it internally. He was booted from the team and given a suspension. He returned to school a week or two later. That was the end of it.

Even if we assume that the cops in this case are doing a service to the community by trying to keep drugs out of schools, the proper thing to do here isn’t to arrest the kids. Even expulsion is harsh. How many adults used fake ID’s to buy beer when they were teenagers? How many people opted for a five-finger discount on a candy bar or a pack of baseball cards when they were young? These are, at worst, dumb mistakes that many people make growing up. Teenagers are not exactly known for their maturity, judgment, or impulse control.

The way to deal with this behavior is not by putting handcuffs on our children, and exposing them to what Justice Roberts once called “the terrifying force of the criminal justice system.” (See Robinson v. United States ex rel. Watson, 130 S. Ct. 2184, 2185 (2010)). Being arrested is an incredibly fear-inducing experience, particularly for a kid, and almost certainly more-so for a kid with special needs. Even full grown adults collapse into tears at the prospect of being arrested and thrown in jail. It is a humiliating experience, one fraught with various anxiety-inducing accouterments, and liable to inflict psychological damage on those that endure it. That damage was inflicted on 21 kids in California when police decided to slap cuffs on their wrists rather than letting the school and the parents handle it.

And that’s what’s really at the heart of the matter. Pressing criminal charges against someone is a big deal. A huge deal. When you arrest someone, you’ve potentially changed their life forever, even if the charges are later dismissed. Moreover, at some point, you will be placed at the mercy of a prosecutor. Justice Jackson wrote in 1940 that “The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America.” That statement remains true today, particularly in an era where America incarcerates more people, by far, than any other nation in the world.

We’re not improving these kids’ lives by taking this approach. Penn Jillette put it best when he discussed the Obama administration’s drug policy:

Do we believe, even for a second, that if Obama had been busted for marijuana — under the laws that he condones — would his life have been better? If Obama had been caught with the marijuana that he says he uses, and ‘maybe a little blow’… if he had been busted under his laws, he would have done hard f*cking time. And if he had done time in prison, time in federal prison, time for his ‘weed’ and ‘a little blow,’ he would not be President of the United States of America. He would not have gone to his fancy-a** college, he would not have sold books that sold millions and millions of copies and made millions and millions of dollars, he would not have a beautiful, smart wife, he would not have a great job. He would have been in f*cking prison, and it’s not a god damn joke.

Do we believe that any of these 21 kids are better off for having been arrested and subject to the “terrifying force of the criminal justice system?” I have a hard time believing it, even for a second.

Via Buzzfeed. I laughed. But it was nervous laughter…

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:55:57 -0400

Via Buzzfeed. I laughed. But it was nervous laughter…

"There are more deaths associated with Tylenol overdose than there are with oral contraceptive..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:57:57 -0400

“There are more deaths associated with Tylenol overdose than there are with oral contraceptive overdoses or potential overdose with Plan B. There have never, to my knowledge, been any overdoses with hormonal contraception.”

- Laurie J. McKenzie, MD, of both the University of Texas and Baylor College of Medicine:

Injustice For Cameron D'Ambrosio

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:55:00 -0400

Every time I look at this young man’s photo, my heart breaks apart for him and his family:

Cameron D’Ambrosio should not be in handcuffs. He should not be in a court room. He should not have been arrested, and he damn well sure should not have been accused of Communicating a Terrorist Threat, or threatened with 20 years in prison for making what amounts to poor word choices.

This entire case is shot through with injustice:

Before charges were even formally filed, local newspapers were already posting pictures from Cam’s facebook and pointing to “disturbing” posts like “Fuck politics. Fuck Obama. Fuck the government!” and “satanic” imagery (like some image from a metal band’s poster.) All of this is free speech that is 100% protected by the 1st Amendment.

And then there’s this:

Fox News went so far as to say that Cam’s facebook profile had images that they “couldn’t show on TV.” They and other media outlets frequently and intentionally printed only a small section of the lyrics that Cam was arrested for allegedly writing, and took them out of context to make rap metaphors sound like a real threat.

The media printed:

“(Expletive) a boston bominb wait till u see the (expletive) I do, I’ma be famous”

The actual line is:

“(Expletive) a boston bominb wait till u see the (expletive) I do, I’ma be famous rapping”

Notice something? The context completely changes the meaning of the line. Suddenly something that sounds like a threat of violence is clearly just bragging about how good Cammy Dee is going to be in the rap game. Last we checked, teenage dreams of grandeur were not a crime.

Such omissions are scandalous. You can see one example here (they also incorrectly stated that Cameron pleaded “guilty.” He pled “not guilty.”). The source above also reported that Cameron was arrested on a previous assault and battery charge, but neglected to mention that those charges were later dismissed.

This case involves a number of horrifying breaches of journalistic ethics, paired with a complete, utter failure to exercise prosecutorial discretion. A young 18-year old man with his whole life ahead of him may spend the next 20 years of his life in prison for doing nothing more than posting uncouth status updates on his Facebook page. As Rob D’Ovidio, a criminal justice professor at Drexel University, said recently:

When I was young, calling a bomb threat to your high school because you didn’t want to go to school that day was treated with a slap on the wrist. Try that nowadays and you’re going to prison, no question about it. They are taking it more seriously now[.]

And then there’s this gem from the local police chief:

“There are no more threats that are high school pranks,” said Joseph Solomon, police chief, during a press conference Thursday afternoon. “If they’re thinking that way, they need to get their heads into 2013.”

This is the incarceration nation in motion. The fear of legitimate threats is used to extend the scope of punitive executive scrutiny to cases that otherwise would’ve been dealt with outside the criminal justice system. Stupid mistakes and ill-timed remarks become serious felonies with decades in prison as the penalty.

Cases like this highlight the need for people to push back against the overcriminalization of America. We need to stop sending our kids to prison for dumb mistakes. We need to stop traumatizing 18-year olds by making them do the perp walk, and then telling them they’re facing 20 years in prison for being oafish online. None of this is necessary. All of it is unjust, improper, and counterproductive.

Free speech for irritating little punks

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:41:00 -0400

hipsterlibertarian:

Q. re: Ambrosia: “D’Ambrosio has a history of making violent threats, once to his sister and once to a pair of eighth graders. Police responded to an incident in 2006, during which a woman said D’Ambrosio bit her son. In September, another student severely beat D’Ambrosio and put him in the hospital. Police Chief Joseph Solomon said the altercation started with a Facebook post by D’Ambrosio about the student’s girlfriend.” — guyatree

A. Ok, so he bit someone, made threats, and got beat up for being a jerk on Facebook. In civilized societies, we don’t punish people for made-up crimes because we don’t like them or their past antics.

The issue at hand isn’t whether or not this is an unsavory individual — that question seems very settled already.

The issue at hand is that it’s a huge violation of the First Amendment to jail a kid for terrorism because he tactlessly wrote on Facebook that his coming rap career would receive more media coverage than the Boston bombing. Free speech is a right held even by jerks.

(Note: This question and my answer references this story. D’Ambrosia is the kid in jail.)

Rebloggable by request.

LTMC: There’s also a question of what, if any crime he actually committed.Even if we assumed that he did commit a crime, simply mentioning the Boston bombing in a sentence is not tantamount to Communicating a Terrorist Threat. Making verbal threats in the past is not the same as Communicating a Terrorist Threat. Biting someone is not the same as Communicating a Terrorist threat. Talking shit about someone’s girlfriend on facebook is not the same as Communicating a Terrorist threat. There is a reason why those types of prior bad acts generally get excluded from evidence in court.

When you look at the context of D’Ambrosio’s facebook post, it’s clear to any reasonable person that he wasn’t mentioning the Boston bombing as an analogy for future acts he intended to commit. He’s referring to the size of the media coverage surrounding the bombings, and saying that his rap career would garner even more media coverage than the Boston bombings.

Was this insensitive? Perhaps. But that’s completely irrelevant to the legal analysis of his actions. Think about how many “insensitive” 9/11 jokes were made on the internet after the Twin Towers collapsed. Was the person who made this series of pictures guilty of Communicating a Terrorist Threat?

Or even better, how about this person?

And what about Adam Kokesh, the organizer of the open-carry gun march on D.C., who infamously tweeted that “When the government comes to take your guns, you can shoot government agents, or submit to slavery.” Isn’t that closer to Communicating a Terrorist Threat than saying that your rap career will garner more media coverage than the Boston bombing? (Kokesh was later arrested, but not for this tweet).

This is a perfect demonstration of Harvey Silverglate’s thesis in Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. Federal law enforcement officials transmute innocent conduct into criminal activity by stringing together unrelated statements and occurrences, and then presenting them to judges and juries as if they’re meaningful. D’Ambrosio’s statement had nothing to do with terrorism, and everything to do with media coverage. He’s guilty of nothing more than using a poor comparison. But the only reason it’s poor in the first place is because of the risk that overzealous federal authorities might misinterpret his remarks. The wrongful act here is not D’Ambrosio’s statement, but the overzealous enforcement of a misguided federal law.

"For some reason when it comes to my indigent ghetto clients, it becomes easy to forget that people,..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:08:00 -0400

“For some reason when it comes to my indigent ghetto clients, it becomes easy to forget that people, including those who break the law, are complicated and often charming. That they too contain multitudes. Oddly, no one has trouble understanding the humanity of White crooks. We mythologize them all the time—Bonnie and Clyde, John Gotti, Carolyn Warmus—all are complex people we find ways to relate to and even admire. At the movies we cheer for Butch and Sundance, Scarface, or [the] Ocean’s Eleven crew. The fact that John Gotti was a ruthless killer who wreaked havoc on far more lives than any of my clients ever touched never eclipses the public memory of him as big, handsome, and defiant. People loved Gotti’s resistance to governmental authority. But put a Black face on Gotti and no matter how dapper a don he is, the press, the prosecutors, and the public only read menace. I’ve often represented people as “big,” “handsome,” and “defiant” as John Gotti, yet when I invoke the humanity of these faceless robbers and killers, it sends most listeners from the land of mere confusion to that of utter incomprehension. To this day, I wrestle with where this understanding goes off the rails. Fundamentalist Christians constantly speak passionately about seeing the possibility of redemption in everyone, and no one bats an eye. But make this same point in the secular context of the criminal justice system, and rather than praiseworthy piety it is head as liberal gibberish.”

- David Feige, Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey into the Inferno of American Justice, pg. 53–54,

"Seriously, conservatives need to wake up and realize that Benghazi just isn’t the scandal they so..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:51:00 -0400

“

Seriously, conservatives need to wake up and realize that Benghazi just isn’t the scandal they so desperately want it to be. …[E]ven if there was some remote possibility that conservatives could have stoked outrage in moderates and independents over Benghazi, that ship has long since sailed and sunk. The only thing that could make Benghazi more useless as national election fodder would be if Republicans were caught falsifying the contents of easily verifiable administration emails in order to score conservative media ratings.

Oh wait, that’s exactly what they did do. Last week. With great fanfare. When they had two actual scandals the public would have cared about.

”

- Tod Kelly, whose post is worth reading in full. He points out that the GOP was handed two scandals by a Democratic administration, and completely squandered the political capital gained therefrom by continuing to devote political resources to shine a light on Benghazi.

From a purely political perspective, the GOP has done a terrible job of “managing” these scandals. To wit, they’ve consistently undermined their own credibility by saying things about the scandals that have no basis in fact:

This weekend Rand Paul went on CNN and claimed that the IRS actually has a written policy instructing its employees to target “people opposed to the President.” That’s a pretty damning accusation to make, and it’s one that is sure to be brought up for countless hours on Fox news and talk radio. It might even be enough to heavily damage Obama, save one small thing: this written policy that IRS agents everywhere rely on? Apparently it’s one that Paul has not actually, you know, seen. He’s heard about it of course, (though he can’t say from who), but he just can’t get his hands on it. (Because really, how could one expect to get their hands on a written policy statement that steers a federal government department that employs around 100,000 people?)

This is the sort of thing that you need to be able to back up. The IRS scandal should have been a big win politically for the GOP, even though it’s not quite the scandal they’re claiming it is. But they’ve destroyed much of the political capital they could have gained from it by saying things that are false, or for which they have no concrete basis. ”A little bird told me” doesn’t hold water most of the time.

The saddest part of all of this is that the biggest scandal—the warrantless surveillance and seizures of Associated Press communications—is not really on the GOP’s radar. That’s not say nobody’s complaining—plenty of people are. But it’s pretty clear that politically, the GOP is far more concerned about Benghazi and the IRS. Freedom of the ~~liberal~~ press? Not so much. And they’ll pay for it come election time.

Judge Criticizes ‘High Error Rate’ of New York Police Stops

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:04:00 -0400

Judge Criticizes ‘High Error Rate’ of New York Police Stops:

Observing that only about 12 percent of police stops resulted in an arrest or summons, Judge Scheindlin, who is hearing the case without a jury, focused her remarks on Monday on the other 88 percent of stops, in which the police did not find evidence of criminality after a stop. She characterized that as “a high error rate” and remarked to a lawyer representing the city, “You reasonably suspect something and you’re wrong 90 percent of the time.”

Tornado Devastation In The Mid-West

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:12:56 -0400

Four states have been hit by devastating tornadoes over the past 24 hours. The picture below is from Moore, Oklahoma:

This desolated wasteland used to hold houses, yards, and streets. According to the Tri-State Weather facebook page:

A substantial part of the town has been flattened and thousands of homes are destroyed. At least two elementary schools took a direct hit from the tornado. This will go down as the worst or one of the worst tornadoes ever. The only way in and out right now is by air to some parts and the National Guard is assisting in the search and rescue operation.

The tornado that hit Oklahoma was 2 miles wide and killed at least 51 people. The America Blog has an excellent aggregation of social media coverage of the storms here.

The Yale Law Journal Online - The Myth of Prosecutorial Accountability After Connick v. Thompson: Why Existing Professional Responsibility Measures Cannot Protect Against Prosecutorial Misconduct

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:31:50 -0400

The Yale Law Journal Online - The Myth of Prosecutorial Accountability After Connick v. Thompson: Why Existing Professional Responsibility Measures Cannot Protect Against Prosecutorial Misconduct:

A fabulous Essay from Yale Law Journal:

On March 29, 2011, the Supreme Court—by a vote of five to four—overturned a $14 million jury verdict in favor of John Thompson, a Louisiana man who spent fourteen years on death row because prosecutors withheld exculpatory blood evidence from his defense attorneys. Thompson had sued the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office based on a failure-to-train theory, arguing that the office had denied him due process of law through its deliberate indifference toward the need to train its attorneys in proper disclosure procedures. Thompson’s failure-to-train theory relied on Brady v. Maryland, a 1963 Supreme Court decision that requires prosecutors to share evidence with defendants in criminal cases when that evidence is “material either to guilt or to punishment.” The Connick Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Thomas, disagreed with Thompson’s argument. According to Justice Thomas’s majority opinion, a single Brady violation—i.e., a one-time failure to disclose “material” evidence—is insufficient to establish liability on a failure-to-train theory.

Emphasis added for one of the many reasons I drink at night.

think-progress: You’ve heard the news. But what does this mean...

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:03:14 -0400

think-progress:

You’ve heard the news.

But what does this mean for your privacy?

In a recent report card from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), comparing which tech companies protect user’s data from government snooping, Yahoo received one of the lowest scores with only one out of five stars. Tumblr performed significantly better, receiving three stars for requiring a warrant for content, fighting for users’ privacy rights in Congress, and publishing law enforcement guidelines.

LTMC: Yet another reason to be skeptical of the buyout.

"According to an ongoing study conducted by Black Women’s Blueprint, sixty percent of Black girls..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:21:49 -0400

“According to an ongoing study conducted by Black Women’s Blueprint, sixty percent of Black girls have experienced sexual abuse before the age of 18. More than 300 Black women nationwide participated in the research project. A similar study conducted by The Black Women’s Health Imperative seven years ago found the rate of sexual assault was approximately 40%.”

- Brooke Axtell, Black Women, Sexual Assault, And The Art Of Resistance.

Also from the article:

There are many reasons why Black women may choose not to report incidences of sexual assault. Survivors of all races often fear that they will not be believed or will be blamed for their attack, but Black women face unique challenges.

Historically, law enforcement has been used to control African-American communities through brutality and racial profiling. It may be difficult for a Black woman to seek help if she feels it could be at the expense of African-American men or her community. The history of racial injustice (particularly the stereotype of the Black male as a sexual predator) and the need to protect her community from further attack might persuade a survivor to remain silent.

Malcolm X On Government, Racism, And Morality

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:10:27 -0400

As I was listening through some of Malcolm X’s speeches yesterday, I neglected to point out this particular gem, which is a fine example of Malcolm X’s amazing rhetorical prowess (at 1:30):

We don’t steal, we don’t gamble, we don’t lie, and we don’t cheat. And that also deprives the government of revenue. Because you can’t get into a whiskey bottle without getting past the government’s seal. You can’t get into a deck of cards without getting past the government seal. There, the White man makes the whiskey and then puts you in jail for getting drunk. He sells you the cards and the dice and puts you in jail when he catches you using them. So he’s against us, because we fix it where he can’t catch you anymore. We take the dice out of your hands, and the cards out of your hands, and the whiskey out of your head.

Also, here is Malcolm X on the position of Black women in America, from the same speech:

The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman. And as Muslims, the honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us to respect our women, and to protect our women. And the only time a Muslim really gets real violent is when someone goes to molest his woman. We will kill you for our woman. …We believe that if the White man will do whatever is necessary to see that his woman gets respect and protection, then you and I will never be recognized as men, until we stand up like men and place the same penalty over the head of anyone who puts his filthy hands out in the direction of our women.

Clearly this discourse would be a bit problematic today, as traditional gendered notions of “male as protector” are not quite as prominent as they were back then. Nonetheless, the vulnerability of Black women in the 1950’s and 60’s was real, and is still real today. Malcolm X was then, as ever, unafraid to “make it plain” for those that would listen.

Remembering Malcolm X

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:12:00 -0400

Today is Malcolm X’s birthday. He would’ve been 88. I wanted to take a moment to remember his contribution to the American civil rights movement.

Most people view Malcolm X as a manifestation of one side of the two biggest prongs of the civil rights movement. On the one side, you had the likes of Martin Luther King, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the NAACP, who preferred legislative engagement and non-violent resistance. On the other side, you have Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party, who did not preach violence, but nonetheless asserted a right for Black citizens to defend themselves against any aggression, whether from private or official in nature. Mixed somewhere in-between, you have folks like Stokely Carmichael and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, which began as a community organizing outfit, but later became “radical,” protesting the Vietnam War and later changing its name to the Student National Coordinating Committee before falling out of existence in the 1970’s.

Malcolm X’s primary contribution to the civil rights movement was to give a voice to the frustration felt by every Black American during the 1950’s and 60’s. He saw that the White stranglehold on the levers of power persisted despite years of non-violent struggle. He saw that even moderate White liberals who claimed to support racial equality often wavered and waffled when it came to political action on behalf of the Black community. His resistance to integration was scary to those who believed that it was a necessary step for racial progress. But his resistance was based on a life lived in perpetual witness of constant indignity and political disappointment. He also saw the contradictions that were constantly played out in the “White media,” as where the Nation of Islam was consistently accused of preaching racial hatred. His infamous response before a crowd in Los Angeles in 1962 still resonates today:

Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself, from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to, so much so that you don’t want to be around each other? No, before you come asking Mr. Muhammad does he teach hate, you should ask yourself who taught you to hate being what God made you.

Malcolm’s response does not directly address the question of whether the Nation of Islam preached hate, but rather points out a fundamental problem with the question itself. The question assumes, firstly, that there was no institutional aggression against Blacks, when clearly there was. That institutional aggression was based in part on the legacy of Black inferiority that still infected American culture in the 1950’s and 60’s, which is what makes Malcolm’s response relevant. Moreover, the question also assumes that like acts are being treated alike. When Whites asserted the right to defend themselves from aggression, no unusual violent motivations were imputed to them. But when Blacks asserted the same right, they were accused of inciting racial hatred and advocating violence. Malcolm believed it was reprehensible to live in a world where Whites were free to use violence to defend themselves and their families, but Blacks must remain committed to non-violence. Malcolm believed that this was simply a further perpetuation of the inequality of condition that defined race relations in America in the 1950’s and 60’s.

Even those sympathetic to Malcolm X don’t necessarily agree with everything he said. But you don’t have to agree with all of it to recognize its importance. Even when he was wrong, Malcolm X was still giving voice to the frustrations of countless Black citizens who were consistently abused in both private and official relations. He is, unfortunately, unduly vilified in many “main stream” history textbooks, despite being an important voice in the civil rights movement. His ideas had an enormous impact on public discourse. He is worth remembering, worth listening to, and worth reading, especially for those who have not been exposed to his work.

"The missile hits, and after the smoke clears there’s a crater there and you can see body parts from..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 21:23:46 -0400

“The missile hits, and after the smoke clears there’s a crater there and you can see body parts from the people. [A] guy that was running from the rear to front, his left leg had been taken off above the knee, and I watched him bleed out.

These guys had no hostile intent. In Montana, everyone has a gun. These guys could have been local people that had to protect themselves. I think we jumped the gun.”

- Former drone operator Brandon Bryant, on his first drone strike.

Bryant quit the drone program after realizing its disregard for life and how numb strikes made him feel, saying he “couldn’t do it anymore.”

(via hipsterlibertarian)

"One of the greatest threats to liberty has been the government taking people’s liberty for..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:11:00 -0400

“One of the greatest threats to liberty has been the government taking people’s liberty for things that people are in favor of. The Pew research group shows that 52% of Americans think marijuana should not be illegal. And yet there are people in jail, [and] your justice department has continued to put people in jail, for sale and use, on occasion of marijuana. That’s something the American public has finally caught up with. There’s a cultural lag, and it’s been an injustice for 40 years in this country, to take people’s liberty for something that is similar to alcohol. You have continued what is allowing the Mexican cartels power, and the power to make money to ruin Mexico and hurt our country, by having a prohibition in late 20th and early 21st century. We saw it didn’t work in this country in the [19]20’s and we remedied it. This is the time to remedy this prohibition in the 21st century.”

- Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee), speaking to Attorney General Eric Holder at a Congressional Hearing.

To be fair, the most DOJ could do is refuse to enforce federal marijuana laws in jurisdictions where state law conflicts with federal law. That’s because it raises a constitutional question that isn’t directly addressed by statute, and therefore presents an opportunity for DOJ to exercise prosecutorial discretion in the enforcement of the law. The real remedy here is for Congress were to pass a law ending federal marijuana prohibition. If that occurred, then DOJ would have no more authority to arrest marijuana users than it did any other legal activity.

Reddit restores 87yo Grandad's Navy Photo | reddit | Know Your Meme

Wed, 15 May 2013 21:48:31 -0400

Reddit restores 87yo Grandad's Navy Photo | reddit | Know Your Meme:

via The Daily What:

Back in April, at the request of his 87-year-old grandfather, Redditor stevieboy1984 turned to the /r/PicRequests subreddit to see if anyone could clean up a scanned JPEG image file of his grandfather’s World War II-era photo taken during his service in the Navy as a submarine sonar/radar operator. After a number of people offered their photoshop wizardries to help its restoration, stevieboy1984 showed his grandfather six variations before handing him a framed version of top commenter unhi’s submission.

Here’s the before and after:

See the video of the grandfather’s reaction at the link.

Charges dropped against Florida teen over amateur science experiment — MSNBC

Wed, 15 May 2013 21:35:46 -0400

Charges dropped against Florida teen over amateur science experiment — MSNBC:

Good to see the D.A. came to their senses. This young woman never deserved to be treated this way.