Prometheus 6

I went ot a John Edwards fundraiser yesterday. They got this "Small Change for Big Change" tour working, $15 a head. Kind of the inverse of your typical Republican fundraiser. I got email asking if I was interested in blogging it, so I'm still uncommitted because I didn't make the donation.

I wasn't a huge venue but the joint was packed, seriously. The crowd sort of looked like the Deaniacs grew up. Out of the couple hundred there I could count the Black folks, excluding me, literally on one hand but I've been watching long enough by now not to put that on anything but choice.

Edwards as you know is focusing on poverty and he ran down the list of his issues and positions thereon. Two surprised me. He promised to regulate predatory lending out of existence. Good, bringing back usury laws would be a good thing. Tough...I'm pretty sure the Feds could do something with federally chartered banks but the 'good faith and credit" thing would keep the door open for usury by state chartered banks.

While you're busy at Darkstar's join I can write up my impressions of a John Edwards fund raiser I attended yesterday.

Justice: The Front Line

I forget my blog manners. A lot of what I'm writing here is in response to a "back and forth" I'm having with Cobb in the comment section and with some comments with Baldilocks here concerning Nifong and here concerning questions I raised.

So, as I stated:

Because I am a "gadfly" or "contrarian" as some have put it, I have raised the question concerning the lack of outrage from some of the same people who have expressed rightful outrage at the antics of Nifong. As a result of some of the "feedback" to my comments, I think there is a need to write more on my blog about my thoughts, not feelings but thoughts, of the need for inspection and possible correction of our law enforcement and justice systems.

Now is the time.

Washington Journal again. This morning Brigadier General Michael Bednarek is asked what can people at home do to support the troops in a substantial way beyond sending cookies. Here's his response.

The first inference is obvious...there's nothing they can do help in any substantial way. The second...

Seen on Afrospear's forum

Announcement: Hate groups
Posted: francislholland @ Wed Jun 20, 2007 10:35 pm
In Facebook, every administrator has the same control as the originator of the group. So, if you open up the group to whites, the group could well be taken over by whites and become a group that announces positions counter to those taken by the Black AfroSpear. Were it not for that problem, an integrated Facebook group might be a good idea.

I think it might actually help us if we are called a "hate group," or attacked as Black separatists, because we could explain our reasons for believing in Black self-determination and because it would help us gain publicity for our positions. We would make other Black groups and politicians seem relatively more moderate in the eyes of whites, compared to us. This is the good-cop/bad-cop functions performed by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.

If ALL Blacks are moderate, what's the point in negotiating with them? It's only when some Blacks seem ready to give up on the Democratic Party altogether that the Party might see a need to nominate a Vice President Barack Obama.

I think it's a good idea to have white non-member supporters and to keep them advised of our actions and of ways that they can become involved without actually being members.

I'm not registered and so can't read the comments.

Three significant errors here. In reverse order of their occurance:

“The idea here is to level the playing field, so it’s not just your word against the police’s word,” said Brenda Jones, executive director of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri. The program is not just a reaction to one incident, but years worth of complaints about police misconduct in St. Louis, she said....

St. Louis police spokesman Richard Wilkes declined to comment in detail on the ACLU program when asked how it might affect police relations with the community.

“We don’t have any opinions or feelings about it one way or another,” Wilkes said. “Hopefully it records positive interactions between the police and the community.”

ACLU gives St. Louis residents video cameras to monitor police

ST. LOUIS (AP) — After a year of delays, the American Civil Liberties Union chapter in St. Louis is launching a program that will put video cameras in the hands of St. Louis residents so they can monitor police activity in their neighborhoods.

Wiretap charge dropped in police video case
Posted by Matt Miller/The Patriot-News June 21, 2007 04:00AM

A case that attracted nationwide attention has ended with the dropping of a felony wiretapping charge against a Carlisle man who recorded a police officer during a traffic stop.

Cumberland County District Attorney David Freed said his decision will affect not only Brian Kelly, 18, but also will establish a policy for police departments countywide.

"When police are audio- and video-recording traffic stops with notice to the subjects, similar actions by citizens, even if done in secret, will not result in criminal charges," Freed said yesterday. "I intend to communicate this decision to all police agencies within the county so that officers on the street are better-prepared to handle a similar situation should it arise again."

It's a surprising new market for Vision Robotics, which had been focused on developing consumer devices, including a robotic vacuum cleaner to compete with iRobot's Roomba.

Farms Fund Robots to Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers
Eliza Strickland

As if the debate over immigration and guest worker programs wasn't complicated enough, now a couple of robots are rolling into the middle of it.

Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season.

Hillary's tone-deaf campaign
A Celine Dion theme song? Written for Air Canada?
Rosa Brooks
June 22, 2007

AFTER MUCH trumped-up suspense, Hillary Clinton's campaign announced this week — via a YouTube spoof of the last episode of "The Sopranos" — that the votes are in.

No, sorry, not those votes. You'll have to endure another year of stilted YouTube spots before the last presidential primary votes are cast.

I mean the votes from the Clinton campaign's YouTube "pick our theme song" contest. And, in case you missed this major national event, the winning song was "You and I," by Celine Dion.

in order that I may be AFK.

Brave Convictions
Two Southern states belatedly pardon civil rights activists.
Friday, June 22, 2007; A18

FIFTY-SIX YEARS later, Lillie Mae Bradford is ready for her pardon.

Ms. Bradford was convicted in Montgomery, Ala., in 1951 of disorderly conduct for walking to the front of a bus -- where blacks were not allowed -- and asking for a bus transfer. The Rosa ParksTennessee, allows civil rights trailblazers such as Ms. Bradford to clear their records. Act, passed last year in Alabama and signed into law this month in

The act pardons individuals convicted of a felony or misdemeanor that occurred while protesting laws meant to maintain racial segregation or discrimination. While many civil rights leaders consider their civil disobedience convictions a badge of honor, others lament the toll the criminal records may have taken on their careers.

When's the last time you saw a Washington Post headline call anyone other than an Arab country "defiant"?

Oh, and North Korea.

I'm serious. Who got a Lexis/Nexis account? And since we're talking Dick "Shoot'em in the Face" Cheney I think the term of art is well used here.

Cheney Defiant on Classified Material
Executive Order Ignored Since 2003
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 22, 2007; A01

Vice President Cheney's office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee yesterday.

Yesterday I said

[F]or all our protestations, the official progressive movement is but so progressive. The conservative movement, having lost its damn mind long ago, dredge up the craziest voices they can find...I swear, I think they search them out...but to my mind progressives stop well before the point where the good ideas start getting a little loopy...never mind the point where the good ideas get scary.

Today E. J. Dionne Jr. said

What passes for "left" in American politics is quite moderate by historical standards...

Join the Movement — sign up to the left to receive text messages on your phone or text GO to OBAMA (62262).

By signing up, you can expect periodic updates from the campaign as well as advance notice about local Obama events and important updates about Barack's public appearances. We value your privacy and will not share your information outside the campaign.

Yeah, but Obama ringtones? Really?

Destroy civil rights enforcement and find the guys the states always knew were guilty.

Whatever.

House votes to reopen civil rights cases
By Ben Evans, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The House passed a bill Wednesday to establish a new division of federal prosecutors and FBI agents focused strictly on cracking unsolved murders from the civil rights era.

The bill, which is also moving swiftly through the Senate, would authorize $10 million a year over the next decade to create a unit at the Justice Department to pursue cases that have sat cold for decades. It also would earmark $2 million per year in grants for state and local law enforcement agencies to investigate cases where federal prosecution isn't practical, and another $1.5 million to improve coordination among investigating agencies.

The bill, passed 422-2, is named in honor of Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who was beaten and murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman. His killers were never convicted.

Because they really need it.

Miss. closer to civil rights museum
By Julie Goodman, USA TODAY

JACKSON, Miss. — Momentum is finally building in Mississippi for creation of a civil rights museum as a state commission spends the summer reviewing possible locations.

Mississippi already has museums to honor the blues and the Muppets, launched with a combination of private and public funds, but no space dedicated to the state's role in the civil rights struggle, despite years of trying.

"Why did it take us 130 years to adopt and ratify the 13th Amendment of the Constitution? We're very deliberate in Mississippi, very deliberate, to put it mildly," said state Sen. Hillman Frazier, a Democrat, referring to the amendment that abolished slavery.

Bills and resolutions to create a civil rights museum in the Magnolia State have had little support over the years, with committee heads reluctant to bring them up for debate, Frazier said.

Cheney Power Grab: Says White House Rules Don't Apply to Him
June 21, 2007 12:57 PM

Justin Rood Reports:

Vice President Dick Cheney has asserted his office is not a part of the executive branch of the U.S. government, and therefore not bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information by government agencies, according to a new letter from Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., to Cheney.

Bill Leonard, head of the government's Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), told Waxman's staff that Cheney's office has refused to provide his staff with details regarding classified documents or submit to a routine inspection as required by presidential order, according to Waxman.

You know, Michael Fisher has concerns I don't always share but when he's right he's right.

Via Truthdig. This is hilarious if you actually remember Abba.

I think it was hilarious...

Video on the other side of the link.

Does FOX News have insider info on Cheney and a pardon?
By: John Amato on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 12:59 PM - PDT

Today both CNN and MSNBC said that Cheney and Bush weren’t speaking about a pardon at this time soon after Judge Walton ruled Libby has to serve his time in jail during the appeal process. However, FOX News said that sources told them Cheney was working like crazy to get Bush to pardon good old Scooter.

How Liberal Activists Outfoxed Fox
Submitted by Rick Perlstein on June 19, 2007 - 5:52pm.

Fox was pissed. Republicans don't take kindly to losing -- especially Republicans like Roger Ailes, the Fox chief who got his start in politics as Richard Nixon's media advisor. They came up with a brilliant idea: sponsoring a new Democratic debate, with the Congressional Black Institute as co-sponsor.

What good liberal movement, after all, would go after black congressmen?

Everyone who says our youth are just not concerned with race anymore has looked sillier and sillier in my eyes with every race-themed party. I think we have seen enough reflexive, over the top racist actions to dismiss the idea that things will change simply with the passage of time.

Anger at Coach Fuels Racial Divide in Rural Colorado
By DAN FROSCH

LA JARA, Colo. — The photograph, of four popular high school students standing side by side, each clutching a gun in one hand and giving a stiff-armed Nazi salute with the other, terrified many people in La Jara and the surrounding poor farming communities of the San Luis Valley. Its discovery further intensified a bitter racial divide between supporters of a longtime coach, who is black, and a largely white group of students and their parents.

What began as a dispute over playing time on the football field has, in recent months, led to the closing of the school, Centauri High, for a day, the postponement of the prom and a series of emotional community meetings. Tensions between opposing factions have grown so pronounced that some people fear they are tearing apart a remote region in southern Colorado near the New Mexico border that is more diverse than many in the state.

Both sides agree that the problems at Centauri emerged long before the photo of the seniors, Trey Jackson, Dylan Valerio, Cole Smith and Kyle Martin, surfaced on the Internet in May.

All four were part of a group that in the fall of 2005 clashed with the veteran coach, Larry Joe Hunt, one of only a handful of African-Americans who live in Alamosa, near La Jara, where white and Hispanic residents predominate.

Sylvia said

My mind and my body are in a process of review, and I need to keep a relaxed and open mind to do it well. Friends on their blogs and in private conversations have shared great advice and inspiration with me, and I honestly can’t thank those people enough. I’m realizing that right now I need to break the internet habit completely, as well as others I won’t discuss, so I can renew.

With no more detail than that, I can relate. She won't see this, but...

It is possible that this Internet thing will turn out to be spiritually toxic for activists. The constant flow of bad news can be like white crystaline sugar vs chewing a slab of ripe sugar cane. Given that we're really talking about true hostility aimed squarely at minorities (Syl is the anti-essentialist where I'm merely the non-essentialist, so she actually takes a spiritual hit from attacks on just about all people of color) a sweetness metaphor seems weird, but there it is. Maybe it makes more sense if you push it all the way to diabetes.

His first life narrative having failed at its task, I guess.

Yes, I am still annoyed at this bit

Fryer well appreciates that he can raise questions that most white scholars wouldn't dare. His collaborators, most of whom are white, appreciate this, too. ''Absolutely, there's an insulation effect,'' says the Harvard economist Edward L. Glaeser. ''There's no question that working with Roland is somewhat liberating.''

So. Do we allow for the possibility of evolution?

Oh! Oh! Why you got to get all personal, P6?

EYE am not he who made it personal. You raise these folks up in the media and I feel compelled to point out that service to the Black communities has never been the reason it was done.