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What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White

What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White

Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.


This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Slavery, the Second Amendment, and the Origins of Public-Carry Jurisprudence - The Atlantic

"Public-carry advocates like to cite historical court opinions to support their constitutional vision, but those opinions are, to put it mildly, highly problematic. The supportive precedent they rely on comes from the antebellum South and represented less a national consensus than a regional exception rooted in the unique culture of slavery and honor. By focusing only on sympathetic precedent, and ignoring the national picture, gun-rights advocates find themselves venerating a moment at which slavery, honor, violence, and the public carrying of weapons were intertwined.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Migrants and Refugees (HBO)

Just playing politics - Kevin McCarthy credits Benghazi committee for Clinton damage | MSNBC

Kevin McCarthy, a top Republican lawmaker on track to become the next speaker of the House, credited the Select Committee on Benghazi for damaging Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers Tuesday night — a surprising admission from a party that has sought to portray the investigation as even-handed and non-partisan. 
“Let me give you one example,” McCarthy said, citing his conservative credentials during an appearance on Fox News with Sean Hannity Tuesday night. “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would’ve known any of that had happened had we not fought and made that happen.”
As the current House Majority Leader, McCarthy is considered the favorite to replace retiring Speaker John Boehner, and he promised to be a more conservative speaker than Boehner, whom he gave a “B minus” grade. McCarthy vowed to put in place a “strategy to fight and win.”


Kevin McCarthy credits Benghazi committee for Clinton damage | MSNBC

Brutalized Behind Bars in New York State - The New York Times

"New York City’s longstanding failure to curb brutality by guards at the
Rikers Island jail complex fell under a spotlight last year when the
United States attorney in Manhattan joined a class-action lawsuit and
then the city agreed in June to sweeping policy changes.
Now charges of gratuitous beatings and even torture by
corrections officers in the New York State prison system are attracting
federal scrutiny. Though it is hard to fathom, the state system for
disciplining officers who batter inmates without cause is even worse
than in the city jails. To begin to fix this problem, state officials will
need to win stronger disciplinary provisions in the next round of
contract negotiations with the corrections union and generally take a
much more aggressive approach to getting abusive officers off the job."

Slavery reparations call overshadows David Cameron's visit to Jamaica | World news | The Guardian

"A visit by David Cameron to Jamaica began awkwardly as the island’s prime minister pressed him to enter talks on reparations for slavery and campaigners called for him to personally atone for the slave-owning wealth of a relative in the 1800s."

Monday, September 28, 2015

Transcript: Pope Francis’s comments to bishops in Washington. He speaks directly about immigration. - The Washington Post

"My second recommendation has to do with immigrants. I ask you to excuse me if in some way I am pleading my own case. The Church in the United States knows like few others the hopes present in the hearts of these “pilgrims”. From the beginning you have learned their languages, promoted their cause, made their contributions your own, defended their rights, helped them to prosper, and kept alive the flame of their faith. Even today, no American institution does more for immigrants than your Christian communities. Now you are facing this stream of Latin immigration which affects many of your dioceses. Not only as the Bishop of Rome, but also as a pastor from the South, I feel the need to thank and encourage you. Perhaps it will not be easy for you to look into their soul; perhaps you will be challenged by their diversity. But know that they also possess resources meant to be shared. So do not be afraid to welcome them. Offer them the warmth of the love of Christ and you will unlock the mystery of their heart. I am certain that, as so often in the past, these people will enrich America and its Church."





Transcript: Pope Francis’s comments to bishops in Washington - The Washington Post

Friday, September 25, 2015

Lunch with the FT: Ta-Nehisi Coates - FT.com

"At the start of this year, Coates, who turns 40 on Wednesday, was a fairly well-known journalist. He had published a little-read memoir about growing up in Baltimore, The Beautiful Struggle (2008), but his reputation stemmed chiefly from a 2014 article for the Atlantic magazine arguing that the US should pay black Americans reparations for slavery. Then, this July, his slim book Between the World and Me was published in the US amid national furore over the #blacklivesmatter movement, protests in Baltimore and the massacre of black churchgoers by a white man in Charleston, South Carolina. The book argues that the “destruction of black bodies” is not simply a constant of American history but the very foundation stone of white American “progress”.



Lunch with the FT: Ta-Nehisi Coates - FT.com

Sunday, September 20, 2015

How to Close Guantánamo - The New York Times

For almost 14 years, the United States’ military prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has sat festering on the edge of the Caribbean and the Constitution. Opened by President George W. Bush in the panicky months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the detention center has had a powerful radicalizing effect, has severely tarnished America’s standing as a nation of laws and has cost taxpayers more than $5.2 billion.



This travesty could and should have ended years ago. But Congress has gone to great lengths to keep the prison open. Within the executive branch, agencies have sometimes worked at cross-purposes and at times dragged their feet. In the end, however, the buck stops with the president.



President Obama made closing Guantánamo a central promise of his first campaign for the White House. But it remains unfulfilled because of his team’s political misjudgments, dogged opposition in Congress and his failure to use his authority more aggressively. Mr. Obama has just over a year left to fulfill his pledge. The goal remains daunting, but it is not impossible.



The White House and the Pentagon will soon present to Congress a detailed plan for closing the prison. It will involve a ramping up of releases of those who have been cleared to leave and the transfer of the rest to prisons or military facilities in the United States. This proposal represents the best chance of breaking the political and bureaucratic logjams that have kept Guantánamo open.



As of Friday, 115 detainees remain. Nearly half — 53 men — have been cleared for release. The remaining prisoners include 10 who have been convicted in military tribunals or have cases before them, and 52 who have never been charged with a crime but for whom there is currently no path to freedom or due process.



“And it’s not sustainable,” as Mr. Obama said of the prison camp in 2013, in a nice bit of understatement. “The idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried — that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.”





How to Close Guantánamo - The New York Times

IOP - Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Case for Reparations

Friday, September 18, 2015

August 28th Arrest - This video shows the level of anger and hostility felt by citizens of NYC towards the New York City Police. This is sad. The officers thankfully showed restraint even though they clearly were making a trivial stop which they had to back down from later.

"They didn't think he had a bomb."

I said: it's sad they thought that kid had a bomb. 
She said: they didn't think he had a bomb. 
I said: yes, they thought he made a bomb and even called the police. 
She said: They just wanted to humiliate a little Muslim boy. They didn't think he had a bomb. 
I said: Don't be a conspiracy theorist. They might be a little prejudiced, but I'm sure they thought he had a bomb. 
She said: OK. 
But they didn't evacuate the school, like you do when there's a bomb. 
They didn't call a bomb squad - like you do when there's a bomb. 
They didn't get as far away from him as possible, like you do when there's a bomb. 
Then they put him and the clock in an office: not like you do when there's a bomb 
Then they waited with him for the police to arrive, and then they put the clock in the same car as the police. 
Then they took pictures of it. 
I said: Damn.....They never thought he had a bomb. 
EQUAL RIGHTS are HUMAN RIGHTS
The Irving PD, & the School Admin will be rightfully sued.
They can now pay Ahmed's way to MIT.
Thanks.
"They never thought he had a bomb"




"They didn't think he had a bomb."

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Questions on the Blake Assault - The New York Times

By The Editorial Board, www.nytimes.comView OriginalSeptember 15th, 2015

Yes, they can start by firing him.

James Frascatore, the New York City police officer who jumped and assaulted an innocent man, James Blake, in Manhattan last Wednesday, has disgraced the department. Commissioner William Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio should make an example of him. They should make it clear that his unprovoked aggression — caught by a security camera, so there is no doubt about what he did — reflects everything that causes people to distrust and hate the N.Y.P.D. The officer’s further transgressions — not identifying himself to Mr. Blake, not apologizing, failing to void the arrest in follow-up paperwork — speak to an appalling lack of judgment by someone unfit for the job.



The mayor and Mr. Bratton need to acknowledge all this, and they should explain a few other things.



Like: Why shouldn’t Officer Frascatore be arrested for assault? Why was he still loose on the street despite his long history of excessive-force complaints, first reported by WNYC, including punching a driver in the mouth (after stopping him for a broken taillight) and another man in the stomach (while calling him a racial slur)? That those victims were both black and Mr. Blake, is biracial deserves attention. Why is no action taken when multiple complaints are filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board?



After the death of Eric Garner on Staten Island at the hands of the police in July 2014, Mr. Bratton promised to retrain all of his officers in professional, nonlethal arrest procedures. How could Officer Frascatore not have gotten the message?



Mr. Bratton fiercely defends his department’s aggressive policing of small infractions, so that “quality of life” in the city is preserved. But “quality of life” should also mean the freedom to stand on the sidewalk without worrying that a plainclothes officer will attack you.



There is a public job, too, for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, which said in a statement that Officer Frascatore’s assignment to desk duty had been “premature and unwarranted.” What will it take for the union boss Patrick Lynch to stop reflexively defending excessive force and admit that Officer Frascatore and Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who led the group tackle that smothered the life out of Mr. Garner, reflect a larger problem?



Mr. Blake, a big name in pro tennis, has lots of media attention and is willing to use it, for which the city should be grateful. Too many people who should know better have been trying to derail the debate over police misconduct.



Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Raymond Kelly, a former police commissioner, have lately been making self-serving attacks on Mr. de Blasio and his Constitution-based approach to law enforcement. Mr. Kelly, flacking his new memoir, has argued for a return to the lawless “stop and frisk” tactic that flourished on his watch, on the grounds that violating the rights of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is smart policing.



New Yorkers deserve policing carried out with “Courtesy, professionalism, respect,” painted on the sides of patrol cars. Officers Frascatore and Pantaleo make those words a farce.



Correction: September 16, 2015

An editorial about the police attack on James Blake misidentified Raymond Kelly, the former New York City police commissioner. He served under Mayors David Dinkins and Michael Bloomberg, not Rudolph Giuliani.







Questions on the Blake Assault - The New York Times

Ferguson takes another step forward with commission's report | MSNBC




Ferguson takes another step forward with commission's report | MSNBC

All In Exclusive with Ahmed Mohamed | MSNBC



All In Exclusive with Ahmed Mohamed | MSNBC

Pure Racist - This is the real America. Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd discusses MacArthur High freshman Ahmed M...

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Some Context For America’s Pledge To Take In 10,000 Syrian Refugees | FiveThirtyEight

"The United States has promised to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees next year, about 7 times as many as America has welcomed since the start of the conflict.1 But the new quota still isn’t impressive compared with the number of refugees the U.S. has accepted from other countries and the scale of the Syrian crisis.
Had the U.S. made the same commitment in the past, Syria would have been in the top three nations sending refugees to the U.S. in only two out of the five most recent years for which we have data. In the 2013 fiscal year (the most recent on record), the U.S. acceptedmore refugees from Iraq (19,487) and Myanmar (16,299) than it plans to accept from Syria. The country’s new commitment to Syria would have placed it ahead of Bhutan (9,134) — again, in terms of 2013 numbers — but just barely."


Some Context For America’s Pledge To Take In 10,000 Syrian Refugees | FiveThirtyEight

How Segregation Destroys Black Wealth - The New York Times

The complaint, and the investigations that led to it, shows how real estate agents promote segregation — and deny African-Americans the opportunity to buy into high-value areas that would provide better educations for children and a greater return on their investments.



Over the course of nearly a year, the alliance reports, black and white testers posing as home buyers had drastically different experiences when they contacted a real estate company near Jackson, Miss. Agents often declined to show properties to black customers who were better qualified than whites, with higher incomes, better credit scores and more savings for down payments. Meanwhile, white testers who had expressed interest in properties in the majority-black city of Jackson were steered into majority-white communities elsewhere.



These problems are not limited to the South. Indeed, another alliance investigation covering a dozen metropolitan areas, including Atlanta, Austin, Birmingham, Chicago, Dayton, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, San Antonio and the District of Columbia, suggests that housing market discrimination is universal.



Despite being better qualified financially, black and Latino testers were shown fewer homes than their white peers, were often denied information about special incentives that would have made the purchase easier, and were required to produce loan pre-approval letters and other documents when whites were not.



How Segregation Destroys Black Wealth - The New York Times

Monday, September 14, 2015

Panel Studying Racial Divide in Missouri Presents a Blunt Picture of Inequity - NYTimes.com

"A commission appointed by Missouri’s governor after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by a white police officer is calling for sweeping changes across the St. Louis region on matters of policing, the courts, education, health care, housing and more.

In a 198-page report to be made public in Ferguson, Mo., on Monday afternoon, the commission lays out goals that are ambitious, wide ranging and, in many cases, politically delicate. Among 47 top priorities, the group calls for increasing the minimum wage, expanding eligibility for Medicaid and consolidating the patchwork of 60 police forces and 81 municipal courts that cover St. Louis and its suburbs."

Friday, September 11, 2015

NYTimes: U.S. Drops Charges That Professor Shared Technology With China

"WASHINGTON — When the Justice Department arrested the chairman of Temple University’s physics department this spring and accused him of sharing sensitive American-made technology with China, prosecutors had what seemed like a damning piece of evidence: schematics of sophisticated laboratory equipment sent by the professor, Xi Xiaoxing, to scientists in China."

Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Religious Right In Meltdown Mode Over Jailing Of Kim Davis

"It's clear that the latest event that has the religious right all up in arms and in meltdown mode is the jailing of Kim Davis, the Kentucky County Clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. They are OUTRAGED!
First Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel (who represented Davis in court) very offensively compared Kim Davis to a Jew living in Nazi Germany.

From Right Wing Watch:

Yesterday, Davis’ attorney, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, appeared on “Crosstalk” to defend Davis, claiming that she is simply trying to do her job, or at least, her job as she sees it. He even likened her to a Jewish person living under Nazi rule.
When host Jim Schneider of VCY America asked why Davis won’t resign, he said that the county’s residents support her and “she’d probably be able to win the governor’s seat right now rather than just the clerk of Rowan County. She’s there to do a duty, a job and the job duty was changed.”

“Does that mean that if you’re Christian, don’t apply here; if you’re a Jew, you gotta get — what happened in Nazi Germany, what happened there first, they removed the Jews from government public employment, then they stopped patronizing them in their private businesses, then they continued to stigmatize them, then they were the ‘problems,’ then they killed them,” Staver said. “The fact of the matter is, she has a right to this employment and you don’t lose your constitutional liberties just because you are employed by the government.”

Todd Starnes says that soon jails will fill up with (religious right) Christians.
“I warned people of faith that this kind of stuff is coming,” Starnes told “AFA Today” host Crane Durham. “Now we know that it is here and this is a very dangerous and very disturbing development. But quite frankly, you know what, we all knew, Crane, those of us who read our Bibles, we all knew that there was a time coming in this country where the persecution would happen and it seems as though, at least in the case of Mrs. Davis, that time is right now.”
While discussing his interview with Davis, where she said that she wouldn’t resign her position because she plans to use the county office to spread “God’s word” and act as “a vessel God,” Starnes said that Kentucky lawmakers failed to even meet with Davis about legislative remedies for her supposed plight. He added: “I hope that the folks listening to this program in Kentucky will call their state legislators and their representatives right now and demand that they take action to protect other Christians in the state of Kentucky, otherwise I suspect the jails are going to start filling up pretty quickly.”

via Right Wing Watch
According to Rick Wiles, the "homosexual gaystapa" will murder Christians like Kim Davis in a "reign of terror."

Kim Davis’ imprisonment is only the beginning of the reign of terror by the Obamanista communist regime’s gaystapo. If I am right about America being Mystery Babylon, eventually the blood of the saints must be spilled in the streets, martyrdom of Christian saints is one of the attributes of Mystery Babylon in the Last Days. When Babylon’s economy collapses, so too will its old constitutional republic framework. What will ensue in the aftermath of a massive economic collapse will be bloody and brutal tyrannical repression of Christianity by the Jesus-hating homosexual gaystapo. Just like the militant homosexuals who terrorized Germany in the 1930s through the Nazis, the National Socialist Party, the Democratic Party is the new National Socialist Party, the Nazis.
The “Trunews” host later added that America may soon face a military attack from China and Russia over its treatment of Davis, along with federal funding towards Planned Parenthood.

As Wiles explained, the U.S. government has effectively turned into Sodom and Gomorrah and will consequently be punished."




Religious Right In Meltdown Mode Over Jailing Of Kim Davis

Monday, September 07, 2015

Black Employees at a Trump Casino Were Reportedly Removed Whenever the Donald Arrived | Mother Jones



It was only recently that Republican presidential candidate and front-runner Donald Trump said he'd be willing to physically fight Black Lives Matter activists if they interrupted him on stage. Now, a new report from the New Yorker relays an alarming account of how black employees at one of Donald Trump's Atlantic City properties were routinely kept from view when the real estate magnate came to town. From writer Nick Paumgarten:
I met a bus driver named Kip Brown, who worked the Port Authority route, up and back each morning, for Academy Bus Lines. He had been at Academy for fifteen years and was No. 3 in seniority, out of seventy drivers in the region. As ridership has fallen, Academy has been cutting back on its schedule. The number of visitors arriving by bus is an eighth of what it was a quarter century ago. In the spring, Brown, just forty-seven, retired.
Now he was looking for work as a livery driver. Brown also used to work in the casinos, at the Showboat, bussing tables, and at Trump’s Castle, stripping and waxing floors. "When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor," he said. "It was the eighties, I was a teen-ager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back."
Black Employees at a Trump Casino Were Reportedly Removed Whenever the Donald Arrived | Mother Jones

Explosive Story About Trump's Racism In The Eighties

Sunday, September 06, 2015

Ky. clerk appeals jailing order

"Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk refusing to issue marriage licenses, on Sunday appealed the order putting her in jail.

Davis' attorneys filed the appeal three days after the Rowan County clerk was held in contempt of court for defying a Supreme Court ruling that legalizes gay marriage. Davis cited her religious beliefs in her refusal to issue marriage licenses.

The three page motion did not include arguments as to why Davis should be released, but amended Davis' earlier appeal. U.S. District Judge David Bunning had ordered Davis to issue marriage licenses, but she refused to do it, saying she could not betray her conscience.

Bunning sent Davis to jail on Thursday for disobeying his order. Her deputy clerks then issued marriage licenses to gay couples on Friday."

The Architecture of Segregation - The New York Times

This did not happen by accident. It is a direct consequence of federal, state and local housing policies that encourage — indeed, subsidize — racial and economic segregation. Fair housing advocates have recently been encouraged by a Supreme Court decision and new federal rules they see as favorable to their cause. Even so, there will be no fundamental change without the dismantling of policies that isolate the poor and that Paul Jargowsky, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University-Camden, and others call the “architecture of segregation.”

The Architecture of Segregation - The New York Times

Friday, September 04, 2015

Here’s how Donald Trump responded to my essay about him - The Washington Post





Here’s how Donald Trump responded to my essay about him - The Washington Post

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: This is the difference between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders - The Washington Post

Ernest Hemingway once said that courage was “grace under pressure.” Two presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, have recently tested this proposition. And how each man responded revealed the type of person he is and the type of president he would make: Trump authored his own doom, and Sanders opened immense new possibilities as a compassionate person and serious candidate for president.
Here’s where it went fatally wrong for Trump. During the GOP debate on Fox, when Megyn Kelly famously queried him about his attitude toward women (whom he has called “fat pigs,” “dogs,” “slobs” and “animals”) he hit back by threatening the questioner: “I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be, based on the way you have treated me. But I wouldn’t do that.”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: This is the difference between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders - The Washington Post

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar takes on Donald Trump | MSNBC



Kareem Abdul-Jabbar takes on Donald Trump | MSNBC