Lessons from the Tahmooressi Case

This post is presented as written by New Mexico Governor, Bill Richardson, in an opinion piece of the same title printed in the November 20, 2014 issue of the San Diego Union-Tribune.  It is not available on-line except for subscribers to the U-T newspaper.  I have faithfully transcribed every word, including capitalizations,  made by the former governor of New Mexico, presumably to confer honor upon the recipients thereof.

I chanced upon this information only upon buying a day-old newspaper in a grocery store in Oceanside.  I shall dispense with the customary italicization meant to describe quotation.  Hence, the entire op-ed by Governor Richardson as transcribed by Yours Truly, Flying Junior:

Lessons From the Tahmooressi Case

As I reflect on the successful effort to bring former U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi home after 214 days in prison in Mexico, I am pleased that despite the differing border security concerns that loom high in public perception and national policy in both countries, we were able to find the common ground that ultimately resulted in Andrew’s release.

There are two concerns, however, that remain in the American public’s mind that I would like to address; first, what took so long for Andrew’s release and, second, why Mexico deserves credit.  By addressing the underlying foreign policy issues behind Andrew’s case, I hope to answer these questions and provide a better understanding of the complexities that had to be overcome for his release.

In 2008, then president George W. Bush signed into law an agreement with Mexico – with great political and financial support from congress – known as the “Merida Initiative” which the State Department defines as a “partnership between the U.S. and Mexico to fight organized crime and associated violence while furthering the rule of law.”  Two key objectives of this initiative for Mexico were curbing illicit arms trafficking and judicial reform.

As a former border governor, I am familiar with stories about people making the wrong turn and winding up in Mexico by mistake.  This one, however, was seriously exacerbated by the fact that Andrew had guns and ammunition in his vehicle.  Furthermore, misleading advice from Andrew’s first two legal defense teams had tainted and weakened the “innocent mistake – wrong turn” defense, which made it very difficult to advocate for his release through diplomatic channels.

Mexico was facing a serious dilemma:  It had to decide whether to be consistent with the rule of law as established by the Merida Initiative or undermine the judicial reform’s credibility by what would be perceived by the Mexican public as making an exception, for the very partner that was funding and urging a stronger rule of law.

With that in mind, I started my work on Andrew’s behalf in June by sending letters to officials in the Mexican justice system seeking his release on humanitarian grounds, based on his need to return home to receive treatment for his PTSD.  This was a legal argument – not a political one—that could be used in court as an alternative defense to the wrong turn theory.  A week later I was happy to learn that he had obtained a stellar new legal defense team – and I was subsequently delighted to learn it had adopted the PTSD treatment argument.  It became central in the case’s dismissal and Andrew’s release October 31.

Although it took a long time to accomplish, the most important lesson is that Andrew is free because Mexico’s judicial reforms sought by the Merida Initiative are beginning to work.  Though there were significant flaws in the way the two countries interacted on the case, and though a devoted network of supporters led by Andrew’s mother, Jill Tahmooressi, including myself, U.S. Representatives Ed Royce, Matt Salmon and television personality Montel Williams continued to advocate on behalf of Andrew with the Mexican government and by bringing media attention to his story, it was Mexican legal due process  that freed him, not political expediency spurred by pressure from Mexico’s neighbor to the north.  It should be remembered that the U.S. has a great deal to gain by a firm rule of law taking hold in Mexico – and this case was brought to a successful conclusion in a way that strengthened that concept.

Some have criticized me for praising the Mexican government’s handling of Andrew’s case, but this was an important part of the process.  It built the good will that moved forward his release and even gained me permission to personally deliver him clothing so that he wouldn’t have to go through the humiliation of entering the U.S. in prison garb and allowed me to spare him an additional day in custody by substantially shortening his immigration processing before being handed over at the border.

I recently attended President and Mrs. Obama’s Salute to the Troops event at the White House in advance of Veteran’s Day.  Several Marines in attendance took it upon themselves to thank me for my work on Andrew’s release.  That’s the kind of response that makes it all seem so very worthwhile.

Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was governor of New Mexico from 2003-2010.

Viva la Vida, Viva la Cuba, Viva Cohiba!

La resistencia es inútil

HOW CROMNIBUS THREW DEMOCRACY UNDER THE BUS

By (O)CT(O)PUS

Let me count the ways.  For argument sake, let’s say wage-earning citizens contribute an average of $10 each to the political candidates of their choice.  Under old campaign finance rules – before Cromnibus - the maximum allowable contribution per candidate was $32,400.  In simple arithmetic, it would take 3,240 citizens at $10 each to equal the contribution of ONE wealthy donor.

Under new campaign spending limits allowable under Cromnibus, the maximum contribution has been raised to $324,000.  It means 32,400 donors would be needed to offset the contribution of ONE rich benefactor – a tenfold increase!

In essence, the Cromnibus bill has diluted the political influence of the middle class by a factor of TEN.  It means average citizens will be forced to increase donations from $10 to $100 per candidate just to keep pace.  Under new rules of the game, the cost of participatory democracy has risen ten-fold, and only those who can afford to pay can afford to play.

The loss of citizen influence is even more dramatic when viewed in terms of  past economic trends.  After 3 decades of wage stagnation and rising gaps in income inequality, our shrinking middle class has even less discretionary cash to spend on candidates that best represent their interests.

Where money talks, your vote no longer counts: Under Citizens United, the Supreme Court broke precedent by conferring legal personhood status to non-voting, non-living entities.  The concept of "one citizen - one vote" now means "one dollar - one vote;" and those with the most bucks wield the most power.  Thanks to Citizens United, all branches of government – executive, legislature, and judiciary – and all political parties have now become wholly owned subsidiaries of Corporate America Inc. 

Cromnibus is a watershed moment.  A single corporation can now write the laws of the land, and a single CEO can lobby Congress and guarantee passage of corporate-friendly legislation – as the cost of citizen participation becomes increasingly out of reach. Cromnibus reverses a key provision under Dodd-Frank that protected the public from "too-big-to-fail" bank bailouts. 

What does this mean for us?  Shall we accept a future of creeping serfdom as our votes no longer count?  Or do we turn ourselves into angry villagers brandishing pitchforks?  Occupy or Octopy?

I say Octopy:  Our votes may no longer count but - as consumers - our money still does.  Boycott graft and corruption!  Boycott CitiGroup!  Boycott Morgan Stanley!  Boycott Walmart and Koch Industries and all national companies that place profit over public interest.  Support the middle class by patronizing small, family-owned businesses in your neighborhood.

Third party, anyone? Any other ideas?

Happy Holidays 2014! Our sporadically-annual review

Well, Thanksgiving is over, that last piece of turkey breast is shoved to the back of the refrigerator, and it's time for Fox "News" to start flogging the War on Christmas.

(Trivia: in the 1920s, Henry Ford published a series of anti-Semitic articles, and noted that “Last Christmas most people had a hard time finding Christmas cards that indicated in any way that Christmas commemorated Someone's Birth.” But it wasn't until 1959 that the John Birch society published a pamphlet to warn the nation about an "assault on Christmas." In case you were curious where all this started.)

As usual, the Most Important Sign that there's a War on Christmas is the prevalence of people uttering the phrase "Happy Holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas!" An Un-American Act which blatantly fails to ignore the fact that not everybody is Christian!

But, because I'm something of a troublemaker, let's consider that little fact. Why IS "Happy Holidays" more appropriate than "Merry Christmas"?

There are any number of strange commemorations and artificial "holidays" set in December and early January, like National Bouillabaisse Day (December 14) and Poinsettia Day (December 12); I'm going to do my best to ignore those, in favor of religious (and semi-religious) holidays which might possibly mean a little more to a larger number of people.

(An argument can be made that Maple Syrup Day is holy to the Canadians, but, unlike the Américains impies, they celebrate it on February 6, when the sap first starts to flow, rather than December 17. So I'm feeling pretty safe on this one.)

December 22 is Forefather's Day, commemorating the Pilgrim's landing on Plymouth Rock. You want a whiter, more all-American holiday? And how come you didn't celebrate it last year, you commie?

The day after Christmas, December 26 is Boxing Day, which is mostly (but not entirely) only still celebrated in England.

If you're catholic, there's a whole string of feast days for various saints, if that's what you're into. (After slightly over 2000 years of history, they have wa-a-a-aayyy more than 365 saints, so there's a lot of overlap on them. You wonder if the saints sharing a particular day get along - do they go out drinking together on their day?)

In fact, you know that whole "12 days of Christmas" thing? It's twelve specific feast days, running from Christmas Day through Twelfth Night (5 January). There's a whole list of specific holidays for each of the twelve days; there's also a bunch of saint's days that have been tacked on. Both these lists vary depending on which flavor of Christian church you're dealing with. (There's also some question of how to tack on Epiphany - the day the Wise Men were supposed to have arrived - which is 6 January. If you're interested, you can read up on it on your own.

The point is, even if you're stuck on the "We're a Christian nation!" thing, you don't even have to leave your own traditions for "Happy Holidays" to be more accurate than "Merry Christmas." But we're better than that, right? We can accept that almost a quarter of the American population is not Christian, and maybe they have the right to have their own traditions, too.

For example, December 4 through December 21, a roughly 2-week string, are considered Zappadan, celebrating the life and works of Frank Zappa. Popular culture also gave us Festivus (you know, for the rest of us) on December 23.

Among the 6.6 million Jewish Americans, Hanukkah runs from December 17th through the 24th. And since our Christian friends like to talk about the "Judeo-Christian tradition," it's a little silly to complain about honoring that one, isn't it?

But this is America, and like it or not, there are plenty of people of other religions, too.

If you follow Tantric Buddhism, the 16th is Dakinis' Day, when they make offerings to the Dakinis (female embodiments of enlightened energy) and Mother Tantra. Among the Tibetan Buddhists, yesterday (December 13th, 2014) was Lha Bab Duchen, celebrating the Buddha's descent from heaven after teaching the Dharma there. And coming up on the 21st is Shakyamuni Buddha Day, where they meditate on the Buddha's teachings and strive to fulfill the Precepts. And the 29th is Tara Puja, the fast of Bodhisattva Tara (she has a lot of aspects - it's a little confusing, looking in from outside).

In the Islamic calendar, you just missed Arba'een (Arabic: الأربعين‎, "forty") on the 12th - a Shia observance that occurs forty days after the Day of Ashura, commemorating the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of Muhammad. However, coming up on either the 3rd or 8th of January (depending on whether you're Sunni or Shia), we have Mawlid, celebrating the birthday of the prophet Muhammad.

If you happen to be African-American, Kwanzaa runs from December 26 through January 1, and it's a commemoration of African heritage; having first been celebrated in 1966, it's now officially older than a lot of the people bitching about it.

Here's a thought: if you're going to complain about people not honoring your white, Christian traditions, perhaps you shouldn't complain when they hold celebrations in honor of theirs.)

Newer is Truer

The "true meaning" of Christmas.  That's something the news reader on CBS evening news knows and "those Atheists" who like to bother and annoy people like her don't know -- probably because they lack the good influences of  that religion history so thoroughly affirms as the source of peace and good will. Affirms  as the only bulwark between the undead and the damnation they all deserve.

It's about Festivus and it's bare pole tree replacement around which, whether in tongue in cheek mode or in deliberate mockery, some people  were celebrating that sarcastic alternative to Christmas with origins in the Seinfeld sitcom.  Yes, it's the annual war on Christmas, all wrapped up in colored paper. Christmas divisiveness, Christmas aggression, and Christmas fictions with which to assert Christian ascendancy and Christian victimhood at the same time.

But pay no mind, the young woman knows the True Meaning.

So which true meaning are we talking about?  Is it better to ask which  fictitious gods it's all about this time?  Certainly we know that the origins of  Winter Solstice holidays go back to our lower brow ancestors, their relief that days in the northern hemisphere were lengthening -- particularly those in higher latitudes than the tropic of Cancer, whence many of our customs and gods originated. The traces of the Norsemen are unmistakable as are the legacies of Roman Saturn and Greco-Persian deities like Mithras concerned with season change. It was celebrated on December 25 in the later Roman Empire as the Dies Natalis of Sol Invictus, the "Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun," of whom Constantine, the Romanizer of Christianity, was pontifex maximus.   Christmas has had more layers of accretion than an old piling covered with shells, worm casings and pelican shit. Let's not forget The Truth that as the major prop of consumerism in America, it's irreplaceable. Of all the saints in all the world, only St Nicholas is worth praying to.

I like to call it the Dondi effect: in which a story persists for eons while the names change to suit circumstances or objectives. 

For those who remember the  picaresque comic strip that started soon after WWII and was about a war-orphan boy named Dondi, adopted by GIs and brought home from Italy.  As memory faded and a new war emerged to produce a new crop of  orphans to sympathize with, Dondi quietly metamorphosed into a Korean.  He became Vietnamese with little fanfare some time later to keep up with our wars. Christmas, like any comic strip has been altered to fit, new patches sewn on to cover the holes left by obsolete gods and  deleted bits of history, as we tell new lies to cover the last lies as they become threadbare.

Thus the Sumerian flood hero Ziusudra, became the Accadian Utnapishtim, who became the Hebrew Noah and the details changed to fit the new characters and the new message from the new gods.  Holidays evolve and the day of Saturn becomes the day of  a failed Galilean revolutionary.  Is newer truer?  Must be if the CBS newsreader thinks so.  So no worries, we can always invent reasons to bring northern trees inside, to give presents, to hang mistletoe and make fires. We can always explain away the eggs and rabbits and the buns we used to eat for Mithras at Easter as well, as we fiddle with the calender to separate it from the holiday it used to be back before it got it's true meaning.

Democrats Bought By Special Interest Money, and They Say It's All Republicans...

Rational Nation USA 
Purveyor of Truth

We'll start with the thing that will catch your attention, as is the way: Democrats who voted for the giant spending bill on Thursday night received, on average, twice the campaign contributions from the finance/insurance/real estate industry as their colleagues who voted against it.

Yes folks, it's true. Money talks, regardless of party affiliation. And so we continue witnessing the purchase of influence by the wealthy and powerful.

 Does this register? Does it tell us anything? Should it tell us anything? Or do we simply go along to get along and be thankful things are as they are? It seems worth questioning what we view as our biggest national domestic problems.

 READ THE FULL WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE.

 Via: Memeoandum

UPDATE:

 JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon made calls to lawmakers on Thursday urging them to support the “cromnibus” spending bill... 

 Dimon's involvement came amid progressive outrage that the House cromnibus included a provision that they said would weaken Wall Street regulations.

  FULL STORY HERE.

Why go on?

There's really no point, is there?  I  mean I've been protesting and griping and occasionally exulting about things for over 50 years and although it sometimes seems I've been on the right side, sometimes on the winning side, the wins have been so slow to grow into anything and the losers so able to readjust their stories to define the losses as wins that perhaps it doesn't matter. Even angels have to fear the sticky epithets falling on the guilty and the innocent, fear to tread on the right and the wrong because right and wrong can't be discerned through the fog of politics of any denomination. Descriptions mean nothing when our language, our history, our morals are written in water and change with the tide. We are not saved by works, but damned at random.

I don't believe in protests any more. I don't believe in elections. I don't believe in the public's ability to pay attention, to be objective, rational or enlightened enough to do anything but make noise and make it all worse.  If  we actually feel we've been allowed anything like good government,  it's often really that we've been thrown a bone to distract us from seeing that the chuck wagon has rolled off  with dinner.  Take the amazing fact that Congress passed a budget rather than shutting down the country they pretend to love. Reading it you may feel like the patient who learns his illness is gone, but there's a disturbing spot on his lungs. The spot, the shadow, the tumor, the poison pills, are riders you won't hear about, unless the Fox decides they can blame them on Obama.

And of course the President will have to support it else we hear more of the chorus of  "he's a tyrant, an emperor ignoring the will of the people" even though there can't be a whole lot of "the people" who approve of allowing a huge increase in the amount of money one can contribute to the Republican Party ( up to 3 million for a married couple) and of allowing a return to the reckless bank chicanery with exotic derivatives that caused the recent recession. After all that protest and demonstration and passion! Should we just admit there's no way to control the course of events that involves democracy? 

And of course I've always been told that I hated America, because I opposed a whole shooting gallery of things, like the war in Viet Nam or segregation or torture or the end of probable cause or forfeitures without due process. I hated America, it's said,  for warning that paying  for our most expensive and lengthy war with tax cuts for the wealthy wouldn't work.  I hated America for making a fuss about My Lai 4, for the abomination of HUAC.  I hated it for not hating enough.

Perhaps now, with the voice of  evil, Fox News host Andrea Tantaros claiming that the only reason we finally admit to illegal and immoral practices like torture, is that Obama wants you to think America isn't 'awesome' ,  with the ability of  war criminals to define their crimes away,  perhaps now I can decide that yes, I really do hate this evil empire. This abomination of a country that dares screech about FREEDOM but won't let you leave, won't let you live abroad and wants to make you pay US taxes even if you're a foreign national and don't live in the US - unless you're a corporation of course.  I have to oppose it.  I can't do otherwise.

No, the center isn't holding. 

Yes, I'm a fool for protesting, for blogging, for hoping.  I can't change minds or anything else and even if I did, our country is a runaway train anyway because people do not vote, corporations do. It's a runaway train because no one can do anything without the permission of  the ruling party.  Even old John McCain who lost an election because he had to pretend his masters weren't evil, because he had to run with that Alaskan millstone around his neck must hate America for trying so eloquently  to hold it to a moral standard higher than the Spanish Inquisition. It brought tears to my eyes. Misery makes strange bedfellows indeed.

Are there enough of us to rebel, to force the money grabbers, the tyrants  out of the government?  Of course not and not only because only the worst of us vote. We can't unite because we truly are a small minded, self absorbed, uncompromising and gullible group of fractious fools and because it's too late anyway and it's all our own fault. The enemy is us. It always has been.

Long and strange

I remember Huey Newton, standing on a platform at Clark and Jackson, speaking to a Chicago crowd by the courthouse where The Chicago 7 trial was going on. A chant of "free Bobby Seale" had just ended. Mother Fuck, he began.

It was rare in those days, and possibly still rare to hear someone saying mother fuck in public, rolling the phrase around his mouth, savoring it like a piece of candy. Mother Fuck!

"The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution."

He was holding up a little boy, speaking about the brave new world he would grow up in, a world of justice, equality, opportunity and most certainly legal Marijuana. Are we there yet?  It's hard to say.  that boy would be the age of our president, Who would have believed that?

 The thing I recall most clearly about that day was saying to one of my fellow office workers, in our suits and ties and wingtip shoes, that these kids, the age of my own kids, would be so heavily propagandized by the time they were adults that they would hate and ridicule us more than the "hard hats" as we used to call them did. Nixon's "silent majority" -- lambasting us as unwashed slackers looking for handouts, dreading work and responsibility enemies of "law and order."  Indeed, an the last year of the 1960's even a modest, trimmed mustache and slightly longer than military hair could elicit shouts of "get a job." 

Indeed the generation following became young Republicans, carried briefcases around college campuses, talking about LBO's, made the word 'hippie' a vicious pejorative and forgot about Kent State and the obscenity of the '68 Chicago convention. By the time Forrest Gump came out, the vision of the hippie with red armband beating up on women was an easy sell.

Newton, by then Dr. Newton, was murdered on the street by a rival  Black Guerilla Family activist in 1983, when it seemed that everything had been lost: movement discredited, leaders gone, history rewritten and America  in love with a clueless cornball buffoon. The young seemed to have inherited the Reagan Revolution and trampled on the ruin of our hopes.  The movement was killing itself off, discrediting itself.  Michael J. Fox became a role model for conservative youth.

Bobby Seale and the rest of the group on trial for having incited the police riot directly attributed to the police and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.were eventually acquitted of  the obscene and absurd 
charges, but Fred Hampton, co-founder of the Black Panthers was murdered in his bed, shot three times in the head at point blank range by the Cook County State's Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan and the FBI 45 years ago last week.

"We expected about twenty Panthers to be in the apartment when the police raided the place. Only two of those black niggers were killed, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark."
—FBI Special Agent Gregg York--

That they claimed self defense and got away with it, that the State's Attorney was billed as a hero inspired the Weather Underground, some of whom the young Barack Obama was idiotically accused of "palling around with"  by people of the same age as that child held hopefully up before the crowd on a sunny noon in Chicago.  Welcome to his world.    

Rational Nation USA 
Purveyor of Truth

 Uh oh, overall good economic news, including the best increase in jobs for a single month in 15 years. What next, the Dow sprinting above 18,000? Can not help but thinking about whether the current administration gets any credit for the improved performance and if the Tea Boys and Girls are working on the next scandel yet.

After more than five years of elusive gains, ordinary Americans may finally be about to see the benefits of the recovery where it really counts: in their pocketbooks and wallets. 

The Labor Department reported Friday that employers added 321,000 jobs in November — a much stronger number than expected — but perhaps even more significant was the biggest gain in average hourly earnings since June 2013.

Hourly earnings rose by 0.4 percent in November, double what economists had been expecting. That gain in hourly pay was significantly above the measly 0.1 percent increase in October, let alone the unchanged number in September. At the same time, the number of hours worked ticked up by one-tenth, adding to pay envelopes. 

“The pairing of strong hiring and wage gains is a really strong indicator of the health of the economy,” said Tara Sinclair, chief economist at Indeed.com, a leading job search website. “Now, we want to see people coming back into the work force and also finding the right jobs for them in terms of wages, skills, and hours.” 

The pickup in wage growth is coming as gasoline prices are plunging, providing a double boon for consumers and retailers with the holiday shopping season underway. 

For the year as a whole, the gain in jobs, with one month still to go, is shaping up as the best in 15 years. 

In economics most things cut both ways, however, and Friday’s report was no exception. 

 The nascent labor market strength makes it more likely the Federal Reserve will start raising short-term interest rates sooner rather than later. Most economists expect the central bank to increase interest rates in mid-2015, after leaving them near zero since the depths of the financial crisis in late 2008. Some now argue that the Fed may move to raise its key interest rate lever as early as March next year, but most are still sticking with midyear. 

As positive as the figures for November were, one month’s data probably isn’t enough to shift the Fed’s thinking, said Guy Berger, chief United States economist at RBS. “You’d have to see these kinds of number over the next three or four months, then March comes into play,” he said. “Our view now is that the first rate hike will come in June.”

Full article with video BELOW THE FOLD.

 Via: Memeorandum

INNOCENT until PROVEN GUILTY (Beyond a Reasonable Doubt)

By (O)CT(O)PUS

"Innocent until proven guilty (beyond a reasonable doubt)" has been a core principle of our criminal justice system taught to generations of school children since the beginning of the Republic. Yet today, not enough people focus on the words in parenthesis, as demonstrated by this comment:

"There is nothing wrong with racial profiling (…) Our brains tell us what to think by gathering past experiences and condensing them down to create "profiles" of how we expect things to be (…) There is nothing wrong with this - and the ability to draw quick conclusions helps us in many aspects of our lives" (Timestamp: Dec 2, 2014 at 4:44 PM). 

Wrong on all counts! 'Innocent' does NOT mean ‘guilty’ by reason of racial profiling or crime statistics. Negative stereotypes perpetuate discrimination by restricting the rights, opportunities, and freedoms of people. In the public sector, racial profiling is also UNCONSTITUTIONAL under the Fourteenth Amendment, which confers equal protection under law to all peoples in all jurisdictions. Furthermore, racial profiling violates another principle of law: Reasonable Search and Seizure. It does NOT mean stopping any citizen at random on the basis of skin color and/or ethnic identity alone without ‘reasonable cause.’

Within my circle of friends - and a member of this forum - is a LAWYER who works as a legislative analyst for the North Carolina State Legislature. Despite her education and accomplishments, my friend cannot shop in upscale department stores without being shadowed by store security. Why? Because my friend is racially profiled. How utterly offensive and galling to be stopped every time you shop! Reactionary rightwing hacks justify racial profiling on the basis of crime statistics; this is the same mindset that deprives my friend of simple freedoms - taken for granted by the rest of us.

I recall this experience from my childhood: On afternoons after the religious schools of churches in my community let out, I was chased home by bullies who tormented and menaced me with this remark: “You killed our Lord.” What? Who? Me? What are you talking about! These recollections from childhood – and the fear felt by an 8-year old kid – explain my empathy for all people who are gratuitously profiled, targeted, and victimized on the basis of ethnic, racial, or religious intolerance. Racial profiling is a violation of human rights that has led to deadly consequences:

This story dominated news headlines for over a year: Ignoring the instructions of a 9-1-1 dispatcher to wait for law enforcement to arrive, a self-appointed neighborhood vigilante stalked and killed an unarmed teenager. 

In Cleveland, Ohio, a rookie patrolman shot and killed a 12-year old boy who was reportedly brandishing a toy gun in a public park. The 9-1-1 dispatcher failed to inform responding officers that the suspect was “probably a kid” and the gun was “probably fake.” 

NYPD officers savagely beat and sodomized a Haitian security guard with a broomstick handle. What provoked this outrage? The suspect reached for his wallet to show his ID. 

In Oakland, California, a BART transit officer shot a suspect in the back. The patrol officer claimed he had mistakenly reached for his revolver instead of a stun gun: One more dead boy!

'Innocent' does NOT mean ‘guilty’ by means of street justice where rookies and adrenaline-addled hotheads act in haste as judge, jury and executioner in a flash of gunfire. All too often, miscues have resulted in death. In a court of law, none of the alleged offenses would merit a death sentence. Yet, death is meted out instantaneously on the street for offenses that are normally considered minor. In practice, the default reaction is: “Shoot first, ask questions later.” Instead, the default reaction should be: "Use non-lethal means" whenever possible.

'Innocent' does NOT mean ‘guilty’ in the kangaroo court of media and public opinion. Yet, all too often, cable networks violate the meaning of “fair and balanced” as sensationalized news reports sink to the level of mob incitement. People believe incendiary journalism is motivated by partisanship. I offer a contrary view: The Gilded Age of Yellow Journalism lives and thrives in the Era of Cable News. Broadcast television is where indifference to truth and justice merges into the fast lane of free enterprise and crass commercial self-interest; where Nielson ratings, audience share, and advertising dollars take precedence over journalistic integrity and civic responsibility; where profits always trump principle.

'Innocent' does NOT mean ‘guilty’ in a court of polarizing polemics by hacks of every persuasion. The long simmering resentments of people - harassed by racial profiling - cannot be assuaged with a simple appeal: "We need to have an honest and forthright conversation about race."  We’ve had conversations about race since the beginning of the Republic - with less than universal results.  Today, we have a biracial President whose education and accomplishments should end all talk of racial profiling. Yet, we have a reactionary fringe that defames, discredits, and vilifies the President at every turn and nullifies every initiative with cheap shot tactics and theatrics. There will never be equality and justice under law for anyone unless there are full human rights for everyone.  Instead of a national conversation, we need reforms - not this national impasse driven by an old cliché:

Don’t just stand there!

Do nothing!

(But make sure you scream into the camera!)