Justice

Dear Sandra,

I don't mean to rub it in, but I bet you're wishing you had paid attention to that open letter I wrote you a few years ago. This week, a report on channel KPNX leaked that your Alzheimer's-stricken husband John is living, happily, with a new girlfriend in an old age home. Their video exposé even contains hard-core shots of your husband John holding hands with Kay, the local hooch of the Huger Mercy Living Center. Far from being jealous or upset, you, according to your own son, are a bit of a voyeur who likes to watch: "For Mom to visit when he's happy ... visiting with his girlfriend, sitting on the porch swing holding hands... No stress on mom. No guilt laid on mom."

Well I'm glad you enjoy watching your husband and his lady friend "exchange oxygen masks" and play footsie under the Bingo table. And I'm glad that you don't feel guilty about your John. But I still haven't forgiven you for what you did to me and, more importantly, what you did to America. And that is something to feel guilty about.

Liberals were so busy pointing their fingers at Alito and Roberts for shifting the court to the right they forget to look at the bigger question: How did Alito and Roberts get there? By replacing Rehnquist and O'Connor, respectively, on the bench. We can hardly blame Rehnquist, or as Nixon liked to call him, " Renchburg" the "Jewish clown". I mean Rehnquist could barely walk, couldn't talk, and had a gaping hole in his throat, which he covered ingeniously with his signature "tracheo-scarf." And yet this judge chugged away on decision after decision until the day he died at the age of 81.

Imagine your son coming from school and telling you that he had to ask permission to the school principal to sit during recess under the "white's only" tree, which happens to be the only tree in the schoolyard. Then imagine your son coming back from school telling you that he could sit under that tree but now there were lynching nooses covering it.

Then imagine that word spreads. People of all ages and races talk about the incident. Some white and black kids get into an altercation and the rumble. One of the white kids draw a gun on 6 of the brawlers, but they're able to rumble harder with one of the white guy's friends.

Now, imagine you are the mother of one of those guys. The white kid that got his ass kick luckily is fine. He even goes to school and to an event the next day.

Now imagine being the mother of one of the 6 brawlers. While the white instigators threatened to kill the black teenagers with a gun, there's a police officer knocking on your door with a warrant for your son's arrest. The crime? Attempted murder. Not disorderly conduct or assault and battery, which would have been possible valid reasons to take your son to the police station. No. Your son is going to jail for attempted murder of a guy who walked away with some cuts and bruises.

That's what The Jena Six Case is all about.

Majora Carter is a rising star in NYC and nationally, focusing on environmental racism, urban planning and economic fairness. Have had the pleasure and honor of meeting her twice to date. Awesome woman who is doing great things for some of America's most ignored citizens. Here is a YouTube video from the Sundance Channel.

Just when I think the Bush administration couldn't get into a deeper cesspool of corruption, that then comes news like the one about Michael Chertoff being the possible replacement for Alberto Gonzales and ... well ... I have to slap myself out the shock.

Let me refresh your memory :

This the same Michael Chertoff that allegedly traced the 9/11 to Al-Qaeda and who helped market and brand "the war on terror".

Michael Chertoff is the guy that helped write the "torture memorandum" while he was at the criminal division of the Justice Department.

This is the same guy that was supposed to manage and supervise FEMA, especially before, during and after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

At least we can say one thing about Bush : He's loyal.

The Chicago tribune is reporting, based on a statement from a Texas state representative about his advocacy, that Shaquanda Cotton will be freed in the near future.

Hat Tip to Howard Witt

, author of the Chicago Tribune article below, for his e-mail informing me of this development.

TRIBUNE UPDATE
Girl in Texas prison controversy to go free, lawmaker says

By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
Published March 30, 2007, 1:09 PM CDT

HOUSTON -- Shaquanda Cotton, the teenage black girl in the small east Texas town of Paris who was sent to prison for up to seven years for shoving a teacher's aide, will be freed soon, a senior Texas legislator confirmed today.

"She is going to be freed, I know that for a fact, either today or sometime next week," state Rep. Harold Dutton, chairman of the Texas legislature's juvenile justice committee, told the Tribune. "I told [prison officials] I wanted her out of there immediately. When I learned about this case, I thought, this case just looks so bad and smells so bad it made me hurt." Chicago Tribune

A couple of weeks ago Japanese Prime Minister Abe turned his back on law and justice, declaring that there is no evidence that the Japanese army coerced women into serving as sex slaves during and before WW II. Although Japan is one of my favorite nations to visit and a culture I admire greatly, I find it shocking that Japan cannot face up to the mistakes of their past and I realize that this failure is the primary reason why they are still hated by all their neighbors.

I wanted to once again remind our readers that Abe's comments are atrocious and go against international opinion. From the report of the International Commission of Jurists:

"It is indisputable that these women were forced, deceived, coerced and abducted to provide sexual services to the Japanese military ... [Japan] violated customary norms of international law concerning war crimes, crimes against humanity, slavery and the trafficking in women and children ... Japan should take full responsibility now, and make suitable restitution to the victims and their families."

International Commission of Jurists, November 1994

The face of a racist murderer : James Ford Seale

It took 43 years for the families of Henry Dee and Charles Moore to close the case on their murders but they've finally done it.

People believed that for 43 years the Ku Klux Klansman who killed them was dead. That was until a Canadian reporter and a team that included family members of the victims found the man in 2005 living miles away from the scene of the crime.

My first reaction is to say, "Amazing". Yet, there is only one obvious question to ask about this case : How the hell did this man walk free for 43 years? Oh right, he retired as a deputy sheriff.

Hat tip to Rox.
____________________________________________

Mississippi Alt-Weekly Revealed Indicted Klansman Was Still Alive
Source: AAN press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 24, 2007 -- The federal government today charged reputed Klansman James Ford Seale -- reported as dead by media for several years -- for his role in the kidnapping murders of two young black hitchhikers, Henry Dee and Charles Moore, in 1964 in Meadville, Mississippi, near Natchez. Seale's alleged accomplice, Charles Marcus Edwards, has not been charged and is expected to testify against Seale. The Department of Justice has granted Edwards immunity for his testimony.

I have been emailing with people back and forth about the Hussein execution. One of those people, Dan Jacoby, is one of our contributors at The Daily Gotham. He pointed us an article he wrote two and a half years ago about Where, Not When and may I add, why wasn't Hussein tried by the World Court.

There's a lot of buzz about when the Bush administration is going to turn Saddam Hussein over to some American-appointed Iraqi interim governing body. The question people should be asking, however, is not when we're going to turn him over, but where, and to whom.
Slobodan Milosevic was the tyrannical leader of a country who attacked his neighbors, slaughtered thousands of people, and was eventually captured. He was quite properly turned over to the World Court in The Hague to stand trail for crimes against humanity. Saddam Hussein deserves the same fate. But we're not going to send him to Holland, we're keeping him in Iraq.

Why?

[...]

Chances are neither of these is the real reason for not turning Hussein over to the proper authority. Chances are that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others are afraid of what will come out in a real, public trial.

As if on cue, CNN is reporting Bush's comments on the execution : He considers Hussein's demise as the end of a fair trial and the beginning of Iraq's new democracy.