CBS 46: News and Weather for Atlanta, GA, WGCL, CBS46.com | Copyright office issues 6 new rights, including cell phone reuse

CBS 46: News and Weather for Atlanta, GA, WGCL, CBS46.com | Copyright office issues 6 new rights, including cell phone reuse:Copyright office issues 6 new rights, including cell phone reuse

Nov 23, 2006 01:13 PM

Associated Press photo

NEW YORK (AP) -- Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday.

Other copyright exemptions approved by the Library of Congress will let film professors copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations and let blind people use special software to read copy-protected electronic books.

All told, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington approved six exemptions, the most his Copyright Office has ever granted. For the first time, the office exempted groups of users. Previously, Billington took an all-or-nothing approach, making exemptions difficult to justify.

"I am very encouraged by the fact that the Copyright Office is willing to recognize exemptions for archivists, cell phone recyclers and computer security experts," said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the civil-liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Frankly I'm surprised and pleased they were granted."

But von Lohmann said he was disappointed the Copyright Office rejected a number of exemptions that could have benefited consumers, including one that would have let owners of DVDs legally copy movies for use on Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod and other portable players.

The new rules will take effect Monday and expire in three years.

In granting the exemption for cell phone users, the Copyright Office determined that consumers aren't able to enjoy full legal use of their handsets because of software locks that wireless providers have been placing to control access to phones' underlying programs.

Providers of prepaid phone services, in particular, have been trying to stop entrepreneurs from buying subsidized handsets to resell at a profit. But even customers of regular plans generally can't bring their phones to another carrier, even after their contracts run out.

Billington noted that at least one company has filed lawsuits claiming that breaking the software locks violates copyright law, which makes it illegal for people to circumvent copy-protection technologies without an exemption from the Copyright Office. He said the locks appeared in place not to protect the developer of the cell phone software but for third-party interests.

Officials with the industry group CTIA-The Wireless Association did not return phone calls for comment Wednesday.

The exemption granted to film professors authorizes the breaking of the CSS copy-protection technology found in most DVDs. Programs to do so circulate widely on the Internet, though it has been illegal to use or distribute them.

The professors said they need the ability to create compilations of DVD snippets to teach their classes -- for example, taking portions of old and new cartoons to study how animation has evolved. Such compilations are generally permitted under "fair use" provisions of copyright law, but breaking the locks to make the compilations has been illegal.

Hollywood studios have argued that educators could turn to videotapes and other versions without the copy protections, but the professors argued that DVDs are of higher quality and may preserve the original colors or dimensions that videotapes lack.

"The record did not reveal any alternative means to meet the pedagogical needs of the professors," Billington wrote.

Billington also authorized the breaking of locks on electronic books so that blind people can use them with read-aloud software and similar aides.

He granted two exemptions dealing with computer obsolescence. For computer software and video games that require machines no longer available, copy-protection controls may be circumvented for archival purposes. Locks on computer programs also may be broken if they require dongles -- small computer attachments -- that are damaged and can't be replaced.

The final exemption lets researchers test CD copy-protection technologies for security flaws or vulnerabilities. Researchers had cited Sony BMG Music Entertainment's use of copy-protection systems that installed themselves on personal computers to limit copying. In doing so, critics say, Sony BMG exposed the computers to hacking, and the company has acknowledged problems with one of the technologies used on some 5.7 million CDs.

Article written by Associated Press writer Anick Jesdanum.

New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Stanley Crouch: The hate factory

New York Daily News - News & Views Columnists - Stanley Crouch: The hate factory:

The hate factory

N-word outburst adds to the denigration that passes as entertainment

When "Seinfeld" comedian Michael Richards lost his cool and began a racist rant at some noisy customers in a Hollywood comedy club, it seemed to surprise a number of people. It shouldn't. What is actually surprising is that it has taken this long for some airhead made famous by a very popular but insipid television series to flip out within the context of today's minstrel entertainments. Naturally, a lawyer representing the affronted audience members did not feel that it was enough for Richards to apologize on television; he still needs to pay them some money for what they had to suffer at his hands. The question, however, is what exactly did the patrons suffer? What they actually suffered, if anything, was an unintended caricature of a redneck in heated rage, expressing conventional disdain for black people. Richards said that 50 years ago, the black members of the noisy group of comedy club customers would have been hanged, and stabbed in the backside with a pitchfork. Before leaving the stage, Richards reminded the assembled that when it was all over, he would still be wealthy and the black people would still be, well, N-words. The painfully unfunny comedian Paul Rodriguez performed on the same stage that evening and told the press that if one uses the N-word and is not African-American, a lot of explaining will have to be made. In the interest of equality, no black comedian should get a pass when using insulting and denigrating words in the middle of an act. It all seems very simple to me. We do not need to accept the conventions of insult and denigration that have been established by black comedians and rappers. And I do not feel that there should be a freedom of speech issue raised either. Nor do I feel that any laws need to be passed. This was another moment to question what the ongoing vulgarization of our popular culture has actually come to mean. Two groups - women and black people - are disdainfully addressed and demeaned constantly. Only one has made any protest against being the constant butt of overstated vulgarity. White women have stood up against the misogyny in popular entertainment, but black people have not had much to say about the denigration. Rap producers and others in the business of selling anything that gives a little spice to the minstrel content of our popular culture have been known to claim that the N-word has become a common means of expression and has taken on a universal understanding through rap. We can now be treated to young people of all ethnic groups referring to each other when using the word. Does that prove anything? I think not. When Richard Pryor first made liberal use of the N-word, he could not have imagined what emerged in the wake of his performances. But when Pryor himself took a position against minstrel updates, no one listened to him. He had passed out the right of irresponsibility and could not take it back. So what remains before us is the issue of coming to terms with a popular culture in which the N-word, bitches and hos have become no more than condiments in a particularly unappetizing meal. We need not ban their use, but we do need to face the fact that we have been hustled far more often than not. Originally published on November 23, 2006

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My Way News - Bush Leads King Groundbreaking Ceremony

My Way News - Bush Leads King Groundbreaking Ceremony Bush Leads King Groundbreaking Ceremony
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Nov 13, 11:23 PM (ET)

By STEPHEN MANNING

(AP) National Council of Negro Women President Dorothy Height, center, is assisted by former Amb. Andrew... Full Image

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Martin Luther King Jr. belongs among American icons like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, national leaders said Monday at the ceremonial groundbreaking for a King memorial.

"We give Martin Luther King his rightful place among the many Americans honored on the National Mall," President Bush told a crowd of about 5,000.

King's memorial, he said, "will unite the men who declared the promise of America and defended the promise of America with the man who redeemed the promise of America."

The King memorial, slated to open in the spring of 2008, will be the first monument for a civilian and black leader on the large park at Washington's core. It is also probably among the last monuments on the Mall following a 2003 vote in Congress to sharply limit development of the parkland.

(AP) Yoland King, left, and Martin Luther King III, right, children of Martin Luther King Jr., arrive on... Full Image

The stage in front of the crowd was filled with King's fellow civil rights leaders such as Jesse Jackson, celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, politicians including Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, and three of King's children. A gospel choir sang, and Maya Angelou read poetry. Children read essays they had written about King.

Clinton, who signed legislation in 1996 authorizing the memorial, received a standing ovation from the largely black crowd. He told the crowd of King's commitment to nonviolence and social justice causes such as ending poverty, saying those goals still have not yet been achieved.

"If he were here, he would remind us that the time to do right remains," Clinton said.

The memorial will occupy a four-acre plot on the banks of the Tidal Basin, near the Potomac River. The Jefferson Memorial is across the Tidal Basin, while the Lincoln Memorial lies to the northwest, near the river.

The design is based in part on King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. Before repeating the "Let freedom ring" refrain, King told the crowd, "We will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope."

(AP) Entertainer Nick Cannon smiles as he arrives on the red carpet for the National Dream Dinner Gala... Full Image

Visitors will pass through an entryway cut through a massive stone symbolizing the mountain of despair and once inside, will come upon the missing section marking the stone of hope, bearing a carved profile of King. It will be ringed with walls chiseled with King's words that may eventually be the base for a waterfall.

Obama, who has said he is considering a presidential run in 2008, spoke shortly after Bush. He imagined bringing his two young children to the memorial when it is completed and passing through the mountain of despair.

"He never did live to see the promised land from that mountaintop," Obama said. "But he pointed the way for us."

Winfrey credited King and other civil rights leaders with making it possible for her to build her talk show empire.

"It's because of them that I can be heard," she said. "I do not take that for granted, not for one breath."

(AP) Singer Michael Bolton smiles as he poses upon arriving on the red carpet for the National Dream... Full Image

The memorial was first conceived in 1983 by members of King's fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha. But it has been beset by delays and fundraising issues - the memorial's foundation still has only $70 million of the estimated $100 million construction cost.

Eugene Williams, a Washington resident and an Alpha Phi Alpha member, said he believed the rest of the money will be found now that people know the memorial will be built.

"Absolutely, it's coming forth," he said of funding. "This is a monument to the fact that no other person in history has done what King has done."

In a seat nearby, Carolyn Jackson of Philadelphia recalled how as an 18-year-old in 1963 she was among the vast crowd who heard King's "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington. With much of the civil rights struggle still ahead, Jackson didn't imagine at the time she would be back on the National Mall again because of King.

But she was back despite the cold and rainy weather, and this time not at a memorial borrowed from another leader.

"It's a full circle for black people in this country," Jackson said.

Race & The Political Race:

Race & The Political Race

Observant Americans have noticed it. Newspapers around the country are mentioning it. "It" being the subtle way in which race has become the latest weapon of choice in an increasingly destructive arsenal designed to support dirty political race tactics.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick of these political ads, the thousands of dollars they represent, wasted on slander, on below-the-belt attacks, on bashing. "This is how you should think," they tell us. "Vote for the lesser evil," is ultimately the message that comes across to me. I refuse to watch them. Particularly, when race becomes yet another offensive tool.

For example, White Massachusetts Republican Kerry Healey, running against black Democrat Patrick Deval for governor, has approved a commercial that capitalizes on Deval's earlier defense of a rapist that he believed was innocent until DNA tests proved him wrong. The commercial shows a nervous white woman being stalked. The commercial's message? "Deval Patrick, he should be ashamed — not governor." White woman being stalked, black man running for governor. These are the images emblazoned on the American voter's mind. Are we really to believe race is not a factor?

An LATimes article emphasizes the importance of context in determining the weight these images and messages carry: "Context provides the moral thicket. Consider that when South Carolina finally repealed its Constitution's ban on interracial marriage in 1998 — 31 years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down such laws — almost half of white voters voted to keep it in place. These ads and commercials themselves may not be overtly racist, they just hope you are."

Monday October 30, 2006 |

Ed Bradley, TV Correspondent, Dies at 65 - New York Times

Ed Bradley, TV Correspondent, Dies at 65 - New York Times

November 10, 2006

Ed Bradley, TV Correspondent, Dies at 65

By JACQUES STEINBERG

Ed Bradley, a fixture in American living rooms on Sunday nights for a quarter century as a correspondent on “60 Minutes” and one of the first black journalists prominently featured on network television, died yesterday in Manhattan. He was 65.

Mr. Bradley died at Mount Sinai Medical Center of complications from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, said Dr. Valentin Fuster, his cardiologist and the director of the Cardiovascular Institute at Mount Sinai. Mr. Bradley, who underwent quintuple bypass heart surgery in 2003, learned he had leukemia “many years ago,” Dr. Fuster said, but it had not posed a threat to his life until recently, when he was overtaken by an infection.

Even some close colleagues, including Mike Wallace, did not know that Mr. Bradley had leukemia or that his health had precipitously deteriorated over the last few weeks. His most recent segments on “60 Minutes” were on Oct. 15 (on the rape allegations against three Duke University lacrosse players, whom he interviewed) and on Oct. 29 (an investigation of an oil refinery explosion in Texas City, Tex.). On the day that that last segment was broadcast, he was admitted to Mount Sinai and remained there until his death.

Though Mr. Bradley had largely concealed his illness, he and his wife, Patricia Blanchet, had reached out in recent days to some of his closest friends — including Charlayne Hunter-Gault of National Public Radio (who traveled to his bedside from her home in South Africa) and the singer Jimmy Buffett (who rushed to New York to be with him following a concert in Hawaii).

Mr. Buffett said he told Mr. Bradley on Wednesday that “the Knicks and the Democrats won,” eliciting a smile from Mr. Bradley, who by that point could barely speak. Mr. Buffett and Ms. Hunter-Gault were part of a close-knit circle gathered at Mr. Bradley’s hospital room at the time of his death.

“This has been a long battle which he fought silently and courageously,” Ms. Hunter-Gault said. “He didn’t want people to know that this was a part of his struggle. He didn’t want people feeling sorry for him. And for a good part of his life, he managed it.”

To generations of television viewers, Mr. Bradley was a sober presence — albeit one with salt-and-pepper stubble and a stud in one ear — whose reporting for CBS across four decades ranged from the Vietnam War and Cambodian refugee crisis to the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and the Columbine High School shooting. His most prominent interviews over the years included those with Timothy McVeigh and the convicted killer (and author) Jack Henry Abbott, and with the performers Michael Jackson, Robin Williams and Lena Horne. He won 19 Emmy awards, according to CBS, including one for lifetime achievement in 2003.

In the three years since his bypass operation, Mr. Bradley had more than 60 segments broadcast on “60 Minutes” — more than any other correspondent. “And he kept track,” said Jeff Fager, the program’s executive producer.

But Mr. Bradley’s life off camera was often as rich and compelling as his life in the studio. Having begun his broadcast career as a disc jockey in Philadelphia, Mr. Bradley was an enormous fan of many forms of music — particularly jazz and gospel. He counted the musicians Wynton Marsalis, Aaron Neville and George Wein among his friends and made regular pilgrimages to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. At his death, he was also the host of “Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio With Ed Bradley,” broadcast weekly on 240 public radio stations.

“I made the mistake once of letting him get onstage with my band, and he never stopped doing it,” said Mr. Buffett, who was introduced to Mr. Bradley 30 years ago in Key West, Fla., by a mutual friend, Hunter S. Thompson.

Mr. Bradley had many nicknames throughout his life, including Big Daddy, when he played defensive end and offensive tackle in the 1960s at Cheyney State College (now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania); but his favorite, Ms. Hunter-Gault and Mr. Buffett said, was Teddy Badly, which Mr. Buffett bestowed on him onstage the first time Mr. Bradley played tambourine at his side.

“Everybody in my opinion needs a little Mardi Gras in their life,” Mr. Buffett said, “and he liked to have a little more than the average person on occasion.”

“He was such a great journalist,” Mr. Buffett added, “but he still knew how to have a good time.”

Edward Rudolph Bradley Jr. was born June 22, 1941, in Philadelphia. His father was a businessman and his mother a homemaker. After his parents divorced, he spent summers with his father at his home in Detroit, said Marie Dutton Brown, a literary agent and Philadelphia native.

Ms. Dutton Brown said she met Mr. Bradley in the mid-1960s, after he graduated from Cheyney State with a degree in education, when both worked for the Philadelphia schools. Mr. Bradley, she said, taught elementary school.

At the time, she said, his dream was to attend the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. But on the strength of his work in his other job at the time — at WDAS radio, where he was a news reporter and host of a jazz show — he was hired as a reporter at WCBS radio in New York. “And that was that,” Ms. Dutton Brown said.

In 1971, after four years at WCBS, he joined CBS News, as a stringer in its Paris bureau. The next year, he was reassigned to the network’s Saigon bureau, where he stayed until 1974, when he moved to its Washington office. Mr. Bradley, who was wounded on assignment in Cambodia, had become a full-fledged correspondent while in Southeast Asia. In 1975, he volunteered to return to the region to cover the fall of Saigon.

His reporting on Cambodian refugees, as broadcast on the “CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite” and “CBS News Sunday Morning,” won a George Polk Award. After covering Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign, he covered the Carter White House from 1976 to 1978. He was also anchor of the “CBS Sunday Night News” from 1976 to 1981.

It was in 1981 that Don Hewitt, the founding executive producer of “60 Minutes,” hired Mr. Bradley for the program, the most prestigious (and arguably the most competitive) news magazine on television.

And yet, despite having to jockey for airtime with heavyweights like Mr. Wallace and Morley Safer, Mr. Bradley stood out — in no small measure because of the competence and decency he conveyed, said Mr. Fager, a longtime producer on the program who succeeded Mr. Hewitt last year.

“Not only was he just a natural broadcaster and storyteller, but he was filled with integrity and credibility, in the way Cronkite was as an anchorman,” Mr. Fager said yesterday. “He had no pretensions. He was a remarkable, likeable, wonderful man you just wanted to be around.”

He also had a wicked sense of humor. At one point, Mr. Fager said, Mr. Bradley tried to convince Mr. Hewitt that he wished to change his name to Shahib Shahab, and thus the opening of the “60 Minutes” broadcast to: “I’m Mike Wallace. I’m Morley Safer. I’m Shahib Shahab.”

“He let the gag run for quite some time,” Mr. Fager said. “Don was quite concerned.”

Mr. Bradley, who had no children, is survived by Ms. Blanchet, whom he married two years ago at his home in Aspen, Colo., said Ms. Hunter-Gault. His two previous marriages, to Diane Jefferson and Priscilla Coolidge, ended in divorce, Ms. Hunter-Gault said.

For Ms. Hunter-Gault, who left The New York Times for the “MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour” on PBS in 1978, Mr. Bradley was more than just someone who helped clear an early path to national television for herself and other black journalists — a distinction he shared with, among others, Max Robinson and Lem Tucker.

“I think people might want to characterize him as a trailblazer for black journalists,” she said yesterday, by cellphone from outside Mr. Bradley’s hospital room just after his death. “I think he’d be proud of that. But I think Ed was a trailblazer for good journalism. Period.”

In the weeks before his final hospitalization, Mr. Bradley had been scrambling to finish the Duke report in particular, while fending off what would become the early stages of pneumonia.

“He just kept hitting the road,” Ms. Hunter-Gault said. “Every time I talked to him, he was tired. I’d say, ‘Why don’t you go home and rest?’ He’d say, ‘I just want to get this piece done.’ ”

“He was proud of what he did,” she said. “But he never allowed that pride to turn him into a star in his own head.”

“In his own head,” she added, “he was always Teddy.”

I am Not Teaching This Fall Semester 2006

Do to political forces beyond my control I am not teaching at Clark Atlanta University this Fall Semester 2006. Please feel free to contact me by email or by cell phone if you need to reach me. Please give me forty-eight hours to return your contact. I will be in the Mass Communication Department each and every Saturday evening from 9PM-1AM hosting my radio show "The Hard Core Jazz Cafe" in the studios of WCLK.

Communication Law PodCast 3 Summer 2006

Communication Law PodCast 3 Summer 2006


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Test 2 PodCasts Summer 2006

There are two PodCasts for test 2. Please listen to both of them. Please ignore the date references. These PodCasts were recorded originally for the Spring class but they are suitable for your class also. Good luck on the test!

Review PodCast for Test 2 Definitions

Review PodCast for Test 2 Essay Instructions

Communications Law PodCast Test 1 Summer 2006

Communication Law Summer 2006 PodCast Test 1

Right Click on the link below and save the PodCast to your computer and listen to it or transfer it to your MP3 Player. If you click on the link the PodCast will stream from the internet

PodCast Test 1

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Entertaiment Law PodCast Final Exam Spring 2006

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Communication Law Final Exam PodCast

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NPR : Roundtable: New Orleans Vote, Taxing Big Oil

NPR : Roundtable: New Orleans Vote, Taxing Big OilRoundtable: New Orleans Vote, Taxing Big Oil

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News & Notes with Ed Gordon, April 24, 2006 · Topics: The New Orleans mayoral election, and a proposed tax on oil companies making big profits at the pump. Guests: Robert George, editorial writer for the New York Post; Callie Crossley, social and cultural commentator on the Boston television show Beat the Press; and Jeff Obafemi Carr, host of the radio show Freestyle.

Osama's Crusade in Darfur - New York Times

Osama's Crusade in Darfur - New York TimesApril 25, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Those of us who want a more forceful response to genocide in Darfur should be sobered by Osama bin Laden's latest tape.

In that tape, released on Sunday, Osama rails against the agreement that ended Sudan's civil war with its Christian and animist south and accuses the U.S. of plotting to dispatch "Crusader troops" to occupy Darfur "and steal its oil wealth under the pretext of peacekeeping." Osama calls on good Muslims to go to Sudan and stockpile land mines and rocket-propelled grenades in preparation for "a long-term war" against U.N. peacekeepers and other infidels.

Osama's tape underscores the fact that a tougher approach carries real risks. It's easy for us in the peanut gallery to call for a U.N. force, but what happens when jihadis start shooting down the U.N. helicopters?

So with a major rally planned for Sunday to call for action to stop the slaughter in Darfur, let's look at what specific actions the U.S. should take. One reader, William in Scottsdale, Ariz., wrote to me to say that he had called Senator John McCain's office to demand more action on Darfur. "The lady on the phone asked me for suggestions," he said — and William was short on suggestions.

The first step to stop the killing is to dispatch a robust U.N. peacekeeping force of at least 20,000 well-equipped and mobile troops. But because of precisely the nationalistic sensitivities that Osama is trying to stir, it shouldn't have U.S. ground troops. Instead, it should be made up mostly of Turks, Jordanians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and other Muslims, and smaller numbers of European and Asian troops. The U.S. can supply airlifts, and NATO can provide a short-term bridging force if necessary.

Second, the U.S. and France should enforce a no-fly zone from the French air base in Abéché, Chad. American military planners say this is practicable, particularly if it simply involves destroying Sudanese aircraft on the ground after they have attacked civilians.

Granted, these approaches carry real risks. After we shoot up a Sudanese military plane, Sudan may orchestrate a "spontaneous" popular riot that will involve lynching a few U.S. aid workers — or journalists.

But remember that the Sudanese government is hanging on by its fingernails. It is deeply unpopular, and when it tried to organize demonstrations against the Danish cartoons, they were a flop.

The coming issue of Foreign Policy magazine publishes a Failed States Index in which Sudan is ranked the single most unstable country in the entire world. If we apply enough pressure, Sudan's leaders will back down in Darfur — just as they did when they signed a peace deal to end the war with southern Sudan.

A no-fly zone and a U.N. force are among the ways we can apply pressure, but another essential element is public diplomacy. We should respond to Osama by shining a spotlight on the Muslim victims of Darfur (many Arabs have instinctively sided with Sudan's rulers and have no idea that nearly all of the victims of the genocide are Muslim).

The White House can invite survivors for a photo-op so they themselves can recount, in Arabic, how their children were beheaded and their mosques destroyed. We can release atrocity photos, like one I have from an African Union archive of the body of a 2-year-old boy whose face was beaten into mush. President Bush can make a major speech about Darfur, while sending Condi Rice and a planeload of television journalists to a refugee camp in Chad to meet orphans.

Madeleine Albright helped end the horrors of Sierra Leone simply by going there and being photographed with maimed children. Those searing photos put Sierra Leone on the global agenda, and policy makers hammered out solutions. Granted, it's the fault of the "CBS Evening News" that it gave Darfur's genocide only 2 minutes of coverage in all of last year (compared with the 36 minutes that it gave the Michael Jackson trial), but the administration can help when we in the media world drop the ball.

The U.S. could organize a summit meeting in Europe or the Arab world to call attention to Darfur, we could appoint a presidential envoy like Colin Powell, and we could make the issue much more prominent in our relations with countries like Egypt, Qatar, Jordan and China.

Americans often ask what they can do about Darfur. These are the kinds of ideas they can urge on the White House and their members of Congress — or on embassies like Egypt's. Many other ideas are at savedarfur.org and at genocideintervention.net.

When Darfur first came to public attention, there were 70,000 dead. Now there are perhaps 300,000, maybe 400,000. Soon there may be 1 million. If we don't act now, when will we?

Liberty Beat
Mutiny at the Supreme Court
The Roberts Court signals the president that he is not immune from the Constitution
by Nat Hentoff
April 16th, 2006 11:04 AM

John Roberts delivers remarks on the State Floor of the White House
photo: White House photo by Eric Draper/whitehouse.gov
The preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. James Madison, Federalist Papers, No. 47.

There was celebration within George W. Bush's Republican base when he managed to appoint two justices to the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito and John Roberts, with the latter also becoming chief justice. At last—it was also widely assumed by Bush's opponents—whatever the ultimate failures of his administration, the high court had moved firmly to the right for some time to come.

This grim prospect may well prove true, but two recent events at the Supreme Court indicate strongly that regarding the most dangerous thrust of Bush's reign, his continuing, unprecedented expansion of his powers as commander in chief, the court is finally and crucially alarmed.

During the March 28 oral arguments in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, there were two main issues: the constitutional legitimacy of the military commissions at Guantánamo, created solely by the president, and whether the Supreme Court itself had the right to even hear the case.

In a revealing exchange, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said to Solicitor General Paul Clement: "I thought it was the government position that these enemy combatants do not have any rights under the Constitution and laws of the United States."

"That is true, Justice Ginsburg," the solicitor general said. The unmistakable subtext of the government's answer was: "So why is this court interfering with the inherent constitutional powers of the commander in chief in the war on terrorism? Get lost!"

This dismissal of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction by the administration angered at least five of the justices in that hearing during a series of hostile questions to Clement. Among the five, most significantly, was Anthony Kennedy, who increasingly appears to be the Sandra Day O'Connor of this Supreme Court—a more or less conservative swing vote.

Moreover, the questions and comments of five of the eight justices sitting on the case revealed a strong likelihood that the court will disagree with the president's skewed concept of due process (basic fairness in our rule of law) in inventing these military commissions.

Even more disturbing to the president—if he has the educational background to parse the court's warnings for the future when it refuses, for the time being, to review a case—is what happened on April 30.

In Jose Padilla v. Hanft, there were not the necessary four votes to hear the case right now, although justices Ginsburg, David Souter, and Stephen Breyer wanted to go ahead in this second appearance before the court by Padilla.

But very significantly, in a concurring opinion by John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy (again!), and most notably, Chief Justice Roberts, it became clear that this case is still very much alive, as I'll show as we go on.

Moreover, a majority of the court ( not Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito) signaled a readiness to, in the not so distant future, startle the president by striking down his method of removing terrorism suspects from our system of laws by setting them apart as "enemy combatants" imprisoned in military cells indefinitely, incommunicado, without access to lawyers,
and without charges—as he did to Padilla.

On March 8, 2002, I suddenly saw on network television, from Moscow, Attorney General John Ashcroft triumphantly announcing that an American citizen, Jose Padilla, had been captured at O'Hare Airport in Chicago before he could set off a radioactive "dirty bomb." (Ashcroft did not say "alleged" terrorist and certainly had no thought of invoking the American value of "innocent until proven guilty.")

Padilla was briefly held to testify before a grand jury but then was summarily transferred to a military brig in South Carolina for more than three years as an "enemy combatant," without charges and without contact with anyone but guards.

In 2004, the Supreme Court would not hear his case on a technicality, saying his appeal had been filed in the wrong jurisdiction. At last, when the Supreme Court indicated it would consider listening to his appeal, the Bush administration—fearing that, My God, there might be a majority to declare Bush's "enemy combatant" designation unconstitutional—pulled a not-so-hidden-ball trick.

Pulling Padilla out of the military brig and into our real justice system, the administration filed a mélange of new charges—without any mention of the "radioactive dirty bomb" that John Ashcroft had tried to scare us with. When that happened, a majority of the high court—clearly resentful of the Bush team's trying to game the system by preventing the court from ruling on the lawfulness of putting people away as "enemy combatants"—decided to hear Padilla once more.

This time, although they decided to hold off on the "enemy combatant" ruling until Padilla goes through our regular courts, a majority of the justices showed they're aware that even if he is found innocent of the new charges, the administration can still put him into military prison again as an "enemy combatant."

If this happened to Padilla—warned John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, and John Paul Stevens in their concurring opinions—the Supreme Court wouldl teach Bush a lesson he and the nation will not forget. Even, therefore, if Padilla is acquitted in a lower civilian court, the often cited Professor Michael Greenberger, director of the University of Maryland's Center Health and Homeland Security, told National Public Radio:

"I think we're going to see the end of the use of the enemy combatant status . . . arresting a U.S. citizen in the United States and claiming they can be held incommunicado without contact with the outside world."

When Padilla first appeared before the Supreme Court two years ago, John Paul Stevens, speaking for justices who wanted to hear his case then, said: "At stake in this case is nothing less than the essence of a free society." And the then chief justice, William Rehnquist, writing for the majority that dismissed the case on a technicality, spoke for the court, also emphasizing that Padilla's case was "indisputably of profound importance." Will somebody try to explain all of this to Bush?

Call to Escort Service Began a Night of Trouble at Duke - New York Times

Call to Escort Service Began a Night of Trouble at Duke - New York TimesApril 23, 2006

DURHAM, N.C., April 22 — The Duke University lacrosse team's troubles began with a phone call.

A team captain using an assumed name called an escort service to hire two exotic dancers for a party on March 13. Last week, two Duke players were indicted on charges of first-degree forcible rape, first-degree sexual offense and the kidnapping of one woman hired that night. Collin Finnerty, 19, of Garden City, N.Y., and Reade Seligmann, 20, of Essex Fells, N.J., both sophomores, are each free on $400,000 bail.

Michael B. Nifong, the Durham County district attorney, said he had identified another suspect and was gathering evidence for an indictment. The grand jury next meets May 1, one day before an election in which Mr. Nifong, a Democrat, faces two Democratic opponents.

To all but some of the people at the party, the truth of what happened that night to one of the dancers, who accused three white players of raping her in a bathroom, is a mystery.

Mr. Nifong says a sexual assault occurred, based on hospital records and the account of the accuser, who is black. A second dancer and a neighbor corroborated some of the accuser's details.

Defense lawyers say the accuser was drunk when she arrived at the party, and fabricated the assault. Taxi and bank receipts and dormitory access records prove that Mr. Seligmann could not have raped the woman, his lawyer says. A statement by the team captains said the sexual assault accusations were "totally and transparently false."

The case has polarized Durham, where tension between Duke and local residents is palpable.

"Everyone around here has strong feelings about this, one way or the other," said Renee Clark, the student government president at North Carolina Central University, where the accuser was a student. "But you can't be sure. If you weren't there in the bathroom with the players and that woman, you really don't know what happened, do you?"

Nonetheless, a skeletal timetable is evolving through court and police records, news and personal accounts, photographs and lawyers.

Using the name Adam, Dan Flannery, a senior team captain, called an escort service and hired two dancers for $400 each. The dancers were to show up at 11:30 p.m. on March 13. The address was 610 North Buchanan Boulevard, a white house across the street from Duke's east campus on a block known for parties.

A neighbor, Jason Bissey, watched the party begin as players gathered in the backyard. By 2 p.m., he said, he saw them drinking in the yard.

About 8:30 p.m., a 27-year-old single mother of two answered her phone. That woman, a Durham native, was enrolled at North Carolina Central, a historically black college on the south side of town. Its patchy grass and simple brick buildings are a world away from Duke.

The woman had held factory and store jobs but had begun working for an escort service to help pay for college. She thought she would be dancing at a bachelor party that night. When she arrived about 11:30 p.m., she was wearing a negligee and shiny white strappy high heels, and met a second dancer, Kim Roberts. They entered the house by the back door.

Team captains have told the police that 41 of the 47 Duke lacrosse players attended the party. The team captains left Mr. Seligmann off the list they gave to the police, although he had been photographed watching the dancers.

The women were paid $800 and danced briefly. Time-coded digital photographs, defense lawyers say, show the women talking and dancing in the living room between midnight and 12:04 a.m. In one photo, the accuser is prone on the floor. Men holding beers ring the living room.

Defense lawyers say the players told the dancers to leave because one was drunk. They said the women went in the bathroom for 10 to 20 minutes, then left the house. The women, however, say they were scared off. The accuser told the police that the men had become "excited and aggressive" as they danced. She and Ms. Roberts said one man held up a broomstick and threatened to sexually assault them with it.

Mr. Bissey said he saw the women get into a car after they had been in the house about 20 minutes. The players and the women exchanged heated words, he said. "Some of them were saying things like, 'I want my money back,' " he recalled the men saying. Mr. Bissey said he then saw the accuser return to the house because she had left a shoe there.

The accuser said later that both women re-entered the house after one player apologized for the behavior during their dance. She said two men then pulled her into a bathroom, locked the door and said, "Sweetheart, you can't leave."

It was then, she told the police, that Mr. Seligmann forced her to perform oral sex, and Mr. Finnerty raped and sodomized her and the third suspect strangled her, according to a transcript of a photo identification session with police on April 4. The transcript was obtained by WTVD in Raleigh, N.C. She told the police that the attack lasted for about 30 minutes.

Defense lawyers say the rape could have happened only in an improbably short period, between 12:04 and 12:30 a.m.

A photograph stamped 12:30 a.m. shows the accuser smiling on the back porch, defense lawyers said. A photo stamped minutes later shows her lying on the porch. Defense lawyers say the players helped her to the car after she passed out. A photo at 12:41 a.m. shows her in Ms. Roberts's car.

Mr. Seligmann had already left the party, his lawyer, J. Kirk Osborn, said, after phoning for a taxi at 12:14 a.m., an account confirmed by the taxi driver, Moez Mostafar. Mr. Seligmann's Duke ID card was used to enter his dormitory at 12:46 a.m., Mr. Osborn said.

Mr. Finnerty's lawyer said his client was at a restaurant several blocks away when the women were dancing. But Ms. Roberts told The Associated Press that she recalled seeing Mr. Finnerty, whom she described as the "little skinny one."

At 12:53 a.m., Ms. Roberts called 911 to report that men at 610 North Buchanan had shouted a racial epithet at her and a friend. About that time, Mr. Bissey said, he heard one partygoer yell, "Thank your grandpa for my nice cotton shirt."

The police responded to Ms. Roberts's 911 call about 12:55 a.m. They found the house quiet, lights off. No one answered a knock at the door.

Mr. Mostafar said he went to the house again at 1:07 a.m. and saw about 20 students outside the house and picked up four. The time discrepancy between his account and that of the police has not been explained.

At 1:22 a.m., a security guard at a grocery near Duke's main campus dialed 911 because a woman, later found to be the accuser, would not get out of Ms. Roberts's car in the store's lot. One responding officer told the dispatcher: "She's not in distress. She's just passed-out drunk."

Ms. Roberts later said the accuser's demeanor changed during the party, from "talkative and friendly and smiling" to "completely incoherent." She added, "It's quite possible that something really terrible had happened to her" in the bathroom although Ms. Roberts told The Associated Press that she could not say for sure because she was not there.

At 1:58 a.m., Ryan McFadyen, a lacrosse player from Mendham, N.J., sent an e-mail message from his Duke dorm, according to a search warrant affidavit.

"To whom it may concern," the message read, "tommrow night, after tonights show, ive decided to have some strippers over to edens 2c. all are welcome.. however there will be no nudity." The message said that he would kill the strippers and cut their skin off for sexual gratification "in my duke issue spandex." The message was signed "41," his jersey number.

Duke's president canceled the team's season and accepted the coach's resignation after the authorities disclosed the e-mail message.

By 2:31 a.m., the police had taken the accuser to Duke University Hospital. At 2:50 a.m., the police classified the episode as a rape investigation.

Duff Wilson reported from Durham for this article, and Juliet Macur from New York.

New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Helping a troubled continent beat its demons

New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Helping a troubled continent beat its demonsHelping a troubled continent beat its demons

Conferences and panels on foreign policy are rarely refreshing. Those held at universities can be horrific affairs in which a predictable ideology can dominate, as speakers attempt to indoctrinate naive students unaware of the complexities of the real world.

A recent striking exception was the panel on American policy in Africa that was held at New York University.

The conference, presented by Africa House and moderated by Yaw Nyarko, vice provost for globalization and multicultural affairs at NYU, was made refreshing by the fact that the speakers talked about how policy actually comes about and what influences that policy. There also was informed discussion of what is demanded of diplomats and those involved in the policies formed in the interest of the African people, who are in great need of freedom from a backward past - part traditional, part colonial and part the result of the many dictatorships.

As one panelist pointed out, $569 billion in aid has been received by African governments over the past 40 years, but the average African in the street lives no better now than he or she did when no money was coming in.

The corruption that seems to rise to the moon, the outdated customs that socially limit and imprison women and the sloppy responses that have made AIDS a plague across the continent have defined Africa's problems as not only complex, but deadly.

Why is there no outcry, no international recognition of this wasted money, no demands made on the governments that are as barbaric as any on Earth? Part of the explanation is that the press has not always been interested and when it does become interested, things are too far along to be easily drawn back.

Particularly interesting and informative was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer. Frazer pointed out that that policy of the Bush administration has come straight from the President himself, aided and encouraged first by Colin Powell and now by Secretary of State Rice.

Frazer argued for engagement with Africans from the top to the bottom of society, which would educate those in the diplomatic corps and allow for greater authority in discussions. Others pointed out that many armed conflicts in Africa have been brought to a stop because of well-focused diplomatic activity, even though much more could have been done in Rwanda.

There was some hot conflict that could have risen to the top if there had been more time allotted, and the questions from Africans in the audience offered a sense of how much goodwill is expected of the U.S., which sometimes seems to drag its feet because there is, as Congressman Donald Payne (D-N.J.) pointed out, not enough noise in the streets.

What became clear was that Africa not only has a long way to go but has, contrary to the surface readings, already come a long way.

Still, nothing is guaranteed. If the next President is less interested and the public remains tuned out, everything could slow down until a more enlightened administration takes the Oval Office.

It seems to me that the Bush administration could set a standard that might force the next few administrations to step up where it should and when it should. That, in combination with the African women who are publicly at war with traditional corruption, might brighten Africa's future much more quickly than we might expect.

Originally published on April 20, 2006

How Can Parents Teach Children to Respond to Racism?

How Can Parents Teach Children to Respond to Racism?How C
Sue Doyle, staff writer for California's Daily News, wrote an interesting piece entitled For Many Families, Racism is Fact of Life. In this piece she discusses the unique quandary faced by black families, who for generations have had (and continue) to face racism in America.

For new families, the key parenting question inevitably becomes, How do I teach my child to respond?

Is there a right response to racism?

Some parents, Doyle says, teach their children from young ages to accept racism as their fate, teach them that it is something they will inevitably face just because they are black. Others, however, are not comfortable conditioning their children to simply accept and not respond to racist behavior because they fear that reactions could result in suspensions from school, work or perhaps even arrest.

It is a question parents cannot afford to ignore; they must contemplate this tough challenge and agree on a strategy. When a child comes home from school time after time, scratched, bruised or emotionally hurt as a result of a racially motivated verbal or physical attacks, they must decide how they will help their children to develop the appropriate defenses.

Expect children to suck it up? After a while, it's very likely that frustration will build, that repeated incidences of embarrassing name calling, hateful jeering, and social exclusion will reach a boiling point and ultimately require some kind of release. But, what's an appropriate form of release? And wouldn't waiting for a boiling point reaction equate with risking a less constructive response?

Expect children to stand up for themselves? Take the chance that doing so will only confirm a pre-existing negative stereotype, result in punishment, lead to greater physical harm, or perhaps worse, translate into risk taken in the absence of any change or positive result.

Perhaps, as with most questions in life, the best answer lies somewhere in the middle of the classic either/or response, in a mix of both approaches.

This is Not a Challenge Every Family Faces

One summer, I visited an old friend of my husband's--a soft-spoken and kind-hearted southern White woman. During one of my stories about childhood, I casually mentioned the care my Irish grandmother had taken in preparing me at a young age for the bias I would inevitably face as a mixed-race, bilingual, brown-skinned girl in America. As I lounged on her patio, speed-talking in true New York style--one sentence running into the next--I almost missed the change in her expression. Her face, initially shaped by my story about a generously loving grandparent, had suddenly transformed from one of warm delight into one of shock which, I did not fail to notice, was tinged with a degree of irritation.

Applying the breaks on the replay of my childhood, I paused mid-sentence.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Your grandmother prepared you? She warned you, a child, that you would face prejudice and racism?" she asked in a tone that conveyed stunned disbelief.

"Well, yes" I said, and only then did I realize that her perspective as a White person might be different. So, I asked, "From your perspective, is that shocking?" I asked.

"I can't believe someone would tell a child they will face racism," she said. "How do you feel about that?"

I told her the truth: "As a chiild, I'm not sure I can say I completely understood. But, now that I am an adult, I can honestly say I am very thankful to her. When I did encounter prejudice and hate, it didn't come as such a surprise, first of all. Then, rather than interpret it as something wrong with me, which a child might very well be inclined to do, I recognized it as something wrong with other people's logic, something with our society. And my grandmother's wisdom and support empowered me to take constructive action rather than bottle it up."

"Wow. Well, I can't imagine saying something like that to a child," she concluded, making it clear that the idea didn't fit in with her view of proper parenting.

Although we ended the conversation agreeing to disagree on the subject, once again, I became acutely aware of a key difference in the lives of Whites and non-Whites in this country.

New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Black pessimism, blame and glimmers of hope

New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: Black pessimism, blame and glimmers of hopeBlack pessimism, blame and glimmers of hope

It sometimes seems that all we hear about black people is data seeming to prove that they are in worse shape than any other group in America: Astronomically high school dropout rates. A murder rate six times that of whites. A very high percentage of young black men twisted up in the penal system. HIV/AIDS now being officially considered a minority disease.

One school of thought has concluded that the problems stem mostly from black culture itself. For example, if Negroes would only begin to think beyond the barbaric stupidity and crass materialism of the average rap video, more young black men might understand that you don't "get paid" astronomical sums for being illiterate and ignorant (unless one's career is in entertainment).

The other body of thought blames three other culprits: capitalism, systemic racism and the global economy. These people want us to believe that domestic capitalism is predatory, that society is infested with bigotry, and that global corporations aim to keep prices as low as possible while sticking workers in the neck whenever possible.

In my opinion, both schools suffer from being superficial explanations of the problems. To ignore individual aptitude and the development of marketable skills is as irresponsible as ignoring all of the obvious problems in the world of work that are presently facing unions, workers and pensions. Individuals can affect what happens when they decide to prepare themselves as well as the educational system allows.

There is always a risk that one may not be able to successfully compete, but there is no risk if one does not prepare oneself. Then the failure is just about guaranteed, unless one beats the lottery or miraculously becomes vastly popular for chanting irresponsible doggerel over mechanical drumbeats.

Once upon a time it was understood quite well across the black community, from the bottom to the top, that getting an education dramatically increased the chances of triumphing over the limitations imposed by bigoted attitudes toward color or class. Remaining ignorant put one perilously close to slavery.

Meanwhile, we learn that there is a decline in reading comprehension skills across the nation, even beyond the Negro community.

According to a federal study by the National Center for Education Statistics, only 31% of college graduates can read or understand complex books. There is no explanation for the 10% drop of abilities since 1992. Some say we are encountering a new kind of illiteracy in a population that surfs the Internet, watches more television than ever, and rarely reads for pleasure.

With all of this going on and the constant bombardment of younger black people with the idiocy, hedonism and soft- soaping of criminal behavior of rap, we learn a surprising fact: Black people are making impressive gains in reading and math. According to a federal report, the "average rate of prose literacy" rose 6 percentage points among black people since 1992.

That's not too shabby for a group that is always talked about so badly. When we learn what accounts for those gains, we may come closer to handling some of the most ominous obstacles of our time.

Originally published on April 17, 2006