The video is out. Finally. After long attempts to sweep it under the rug failed. This Sun-Times editorial provides good background. It’s a bad shooting. (Though honestly I was expecting even worse, like an unarmed rationally behaving victim.) The mayor (now, at least) and the police chief have said the officer is at fault. The officer who killed McDonald fits…
Year: 2015
Five black protesters shot by white supremacists in Minneapolis
Shouldn’t this be biggernews? This is shocking (at least to me). Sure, “all of the gunshot wounds are non-life-threatening.” OK… but… that doesn’t make it OK. I don’t get it. Do we not care just because, I don’t know, white people be crazy? Imagine the outcry had the shooters been Muslim. Or black.
What the War on Drugs was really about: “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black”
Dan Baumwrites about what the Drug War was really about: In 1993, I was researching my first book, Smoke and Mirrors, which is the tale, starting in the 1968 Nixon presidential campaign, of how drugs were turned into a political weapon. I tracked down as many people as I could who had been involved in drug policy in the Nixon,…
Right-Wing Lies (XI): Donald Trump says…
There’s something that’s starting to scare me about Trump and his supporters. I mean, is it really inconceivable that he will win the Republican nomination for president? Here’s a doozy of a Tweet posted by Donald Trump: Leaving aside the racist imagery, Trump’s numbers aren’t even close to being true. Here are the (approximate, but true) numbers (which, like Trump,…
Sing with SATAAAAAN!
Apparently an officer in Sanford FL (pop 57,000, 30% African American) was fired for this (and quit before termination). I don’t know if he was on duty of off duty (or why it would matter). A cop with a clean record gets on stage at a concert and shouts, best I can tell, “Let the journey begin!” I thought this…
“The Islamic State bombed a neighborhood [in Beirut], not a ‘Hezbollah stronghold.'”
My friend Annia Ciezadlo wrote this piece for the Washington Post. How come when innocent Parisians were killed by terrorists, everybody shed a tear? (as they should) But when innocent Beirutis get killed by terrorists, they’re described as living in an “Hezbollah stronghold.” If you’re too lazy to click though, here’s a chunk of it: The Syrian refugee crisis has…
The Ferguson Effect
Another good piece by Leon Neyfakh at Slate.com. This one on the “Ferguson Effect.”
Jury Duty
How do I talk about jury duty without sounding like I’m whining about jury duty? (As to Cynthia Citizen on 1 Democracy Way in Queensville…. They can’t fool me. I know the system. That’s no Queens address.) I don’t want to whine, but I will mention the security line to get in the building in the morning takes 20 minutes.…
Why police need big guns
My man Eugene O’Donnell wrote this in the Daily News. It’s worth reading, given general opposition (including some from me) to the militarization of police: At present only a handful of police departments have the capacity to intimidate would-be terrorists and, if need be, wage sustained combat against them in the streets of America. This is a weakness to correct,…
Just cause it’s legal don’t make it right
Sometimes it’s fun to play a bit fast and loose with the numbers to make a greater point: By 2014, [civil asset forfeiture] had ballooned to roughly $4.5 billion for the year…. According to the FBI, the total amount of [reported] goods stolen by criminals in 2014 burglary offenses suffered an estimated $3.9 billion in property losses. This means that…