(As if integration can solve the problems caused by white supremacy/racism) Black Man who integrated Ole Miss troubled by protest

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MiamiHerald 

The man who integrated the University of Mississippi says he's troubled and confused by the protest there against President Barack Obama's re-election.

But James Meredith tells WLOX-TV ( http://bit.ly/RtAoXJ) students shouldn't get sidetracked by what he calls nonsense and foolishness.

The protest late Tuesday grew into a crowd of about 400 people as rumors of a riot spread on social media. Some people shouted racial slurs. Others yelled the school cheer, "hotty toddy."

Meredith's admission sparked riots that had to be quelled by the military and police.

Meredith said Saturday that he was cursed every day he attended Ole Miss, but he paid it no attention.

He says that if he had a fight, it was with state leaders who created unjust policies.

Shadowboxing Haters, Cornel West & Tavis Smiley Happy to get some attention from white people: Spend their time Criticizing other Black People

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DeomcracyNow

As the most expensive presidential election in U.S. history comes to an end, broadcaster Tavis Smiley and professor, activist Dr. Cornel West join us to discuss President Obama’s re-election and their hopes for a national political agenda in and outside of the White House during Obama’s second term. At a time when one in six Americans is poor, the price tag for combined spending by federal candidates — along with their parties and outside groups like super PACs — totaled more than $6 billion. Together, West and Smiley have written the new book, "The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto." Both Tavis and Smiley single out prominent progressives whom they accuse of overlooking Obama’s actual record. "We believe that if [Obama] is not pushed, he’s going to be a transactional president and not a transformational president," Smiley says. "And we believe that the time is now for action and no longer accommodation. ... To me, the most progressive means that you’re taking some serious risk. And I just don’t see the example of that." West says that some prominent supporters of Obama "want to turn their back to poor and working people. And it’s a sad thing to see them as apologists for the Obama administration in that way." Click here to see part 2 of this interview.

Mittens Inc. Cancelled Campaign Credit Cards after Election Beat Down

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NBC

From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself.

Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked.

The office at 585 Commercial St. was largely packed up by the close of business Wednesday (one aide said it looked like it had been sacked by Visigoths), but some staffers will return today to remove their things.

The Mitt Romney for President financial entity survives for as long as two more years, as bills are paid and FEC documents are filed.

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It’s official: McNegro Allen West gone!

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TheGrio

Firebrand Republican Rep. Allen West was defeated by Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy, according to the state’s vote count Saturday, but the incumbent won’t concede.

The state issued complete but unofficial results showing Murphy with a lead of 2,442 votes, or 50.4 percent. That’s beyond the half-percent margin needed to trigger an automatic recount. A handful of overseas and military ballots remain outstanding, but under state law the decision for a recount is based on Saturday’s count.

Murphy declared victory early Wednesday morning and has held his lead ever since, even as thousands of absentee and provisional ballots were processed. He issued a statement Saturday saying it was time to put the campaign behind. He called his win a signal that voters were tired of the extremism West represented.

West’s campaign insists there are many unanswered questions in the race, mostly centered in St. Lucie County, the only one of three counties in the district that Murphy won. They are concerned that votes were counted twice and have asked to review sign-in books from the polls to ensure the number of voters matched the ballot count.

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Vote Count Confirms Obama Win in Florida = an election beatdown

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NyTimes

President Obama was re-elected Tuesday. Mitt Romney’s campaign conceded defeat in Florida on Thursday. And a few indefatigable politicians are already planning on making pit stops in Iowa.

But in Florida, time stood still — until Saturday. After days of counting absentee ballots, the official results are in, at last: To the surprise of no one, Mr. Obama narrowly beat out his Republican rival 50 percent to 49.1 percent, a difference of about 74,000 votes.

The state is consumed by finger-pointing and finger-wagging as election officials, lawmakers and voters try to make sense of what went wrong on Election Day and during early voting. A record number of Florida voters — 8.4 million, or 70 percent of those registered — cast ballots. Of those, 2.1 million people voted early, and 2.4 million sent absentee ballots.

Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, said he planned to meet with the state’s top election official, Ken Detzner, the secretary of state, to see how Florida could improve the process. And the mayor of Miami-Dade County, where voters endured the state’s longest lines, has formed a task force to find out what went wrong.

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Iran issues a warning for America after attacking spy drone

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Rt.com

Following confirmation from both sides that an American surveillance drone was fired at by Iranian jets, top brass with Iran’s military say the country won’t hesitate to shoot again next time a US craft enters its airspace.

“The defenders of the Islamic Republic will respond decisively to any form of encroachment by air, sea or on the ground," Brig. Gen. Massoud Jazayeri, a senior armed forces commander, told the Fars news agency in a report published on Friday.

One day earlier, the Pentagon admitted that an unmanned aerial vehicle managed by the US Defense Department escaped unscathed from enemy fire during a routine surveillance mission 16 miles outside of Iran on November 1. Iranians do not contest that account entirely, but do dispute America’s claim in regards to where exactly the incident occurred. According to the Pentagon, the drone was targeted last week while flying far enough off of the Iranian coast that it was considered to be in international territory. While Iran has declined to offer an exact number to counter America’s claims of being 16 nautical miles off land, remarks from foreign defense officials suggest that the US could have been closer.

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Federal appeals court dismisses torture suit against Rumsfeld

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Jurist

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit [official website], sitting en banc Wednesday, ruled [opinion, PDF] that two American citizens cannot sue former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld [official profile] for alleged torture by US soldiers in Iraq. The plaintiffs, who worked for a private security firm in Iraq, were arrested in 2006 by military personnel after being suspected of dealing arms. The plaintiffs alleged that they were subject to torture tactics in military prison, including sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, and denial of food and water. In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that Rumsfeld authorized harsh interrogation methods in Iraq and that victims of torture should be able to establish a private right of action against government officials. The Seventh Circuit rejected this argument as unworkable and contrary to the government's national security interests:

[The plaintiffs] want a judicial order that would make the Secretary of Defense care less about the Secretary's view of the best military policy, and more about the Secretary's regard for his own finances. Plaintiffs believe that giving the Secretary of Defense a financial stake in the conduct of interrogators would lead the Secretary to hold the rights of detainees in higher regard—which surely is true, but that change would come at an uncertain cost in national security.

Three judges dissented, arguing that the majority opinion set a dangerous precedent for future government immunity cases. The en banc decision reverses a Seventh Circuit ruling in August 2011 that allowed the lawsuit against Rumsfeld to proceed [JURIST report].

 
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Texas White Party (GOP) official pushes secession, calls Obama voters ‘maggots’

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theGrio 

President Barack Obama’s re-election victory has been a hard loss for Republicans to swallow.

Among the chorus of outrageous comments coming from the right, one Texas GOP official is now advocating for a secession.

According to the Huffington Post, Hardin County Republican treasurer Peter Morrison thinks things would be better off if Texas just separated from the country.

“Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same government?” he wrote in his Tea Party newsletter this week.

He demanded an “amicable divorce” from the “maggots” who re-elected President Obama. More specifically, he doesn’t want to be associated with the non-white voters whom he said only voted for the president on an “ethnic basis.”

“Let each go her own way,” he wrote.

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"No Apology" from Florida’s White Party (GOP) Secretary Of State about Patriotic Effort to Stop Non-Whites from Voting

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ThinkProgress

In an interview with CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield earlier today, Florida’s Republican Secretary of State Rick Detzner tried to defend his states dysfunctional election process, which led voters waiting up to six hours in line just to cast their vote. Indeed, as Banfield told Detzner, she spoke to many voters who “tried twice to vote early,” but had to abandon those attempts due to long lines, only to wait another three hours to vote on election day. Yet Detzner appeared completely without remorse for the widespread barriers to voting he presided over.

In what was perhaps the most significant exchange, Banfield asked whether Detzner regrets a Florida law rolling back the number of days when voters could cast an early ballot. Detzner was unremorseful:

BANFIELD: Look, you all decided, with a Republican legislature to cut the early voting days from 14 to 8. For whatever reason you did that, do you regret making that choice, so that all of those people who didn’t get to the polls early stuck themselves in line and wound up waiting so long that many people walked away and were disenfranchised?

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Judge Blasts Ohio’s Last Minute Disenfranchisement Effort: ‘I Don’t Want To See Democracy Die In The Darkness’

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ThinkProgress

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted is fast becoming one of the most despised election officials in the country for his many attempts to restrict early voting and throw out legitimate provisional ballots. He’s also alienating federal judges left and right. After Husted issued a last-minute directive that could invalidate thousands of Ohioans’ votes, US District Judge Algenon Marbley did not bother to hide his impatience with the secretary’s hijinks.

Husted’s directive, which was issued at 7 pm on the Friday before the election, openly defies Ohio state law by shifting the burden of correctly filling in a provisional ballot form from the poll worker to the contested voter. As Andrew Cohen at the Atlantic explains, Judge Marbley had already worked out an agreement that placed the responsibility on poll workers and the state, so a vote would still be counted if the poll worker made an error. Husted’s directive snuck around this agreement, apparently infuriating the judge:

THE COURT: Mr. Epstein, would you agree that voting is the linchpin of our democracy?

[STATE ATTORNEY] MR. EPSTEIN: Yes, Your Honor.

THE COURT: I do too. What concerned me about the 2012-54 directive is that it was filed on a Friday night at 7 p.m. The first thought that came to mind was democracy dies in the dark. So, when you do things like that that seeks to avoid transparency, it appears, then that gives me great pause but even greater concern. So, if anyone I’m going to give additional time to, it’s going to be you, Mr. Epstein, because you have a lot of explaining to do [...] I’m really trying to get to the root of this, and I don’t want to see democracy die in the darkness on my watch, especially with voting. You know I have a special place for voting.

Ohio’s attorney was unable to point to any legal justification for ignoring the law and shifting the burden to the voter. Marbley exploded:

THE COURT: So show me where it is. Show me where it’s meant. Show me the legislative history. Show me the facts that the secretary used to make the decision to change this directive at seven o’clock on a Friday night on the eve of an election. I want to see it, and I want to see it now. Show it to me.

MR. EPSTEIN: Your Honor, I have no legislative history to present to the Court.

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Supreme Court will take up police collection of DNA samples from arrestees

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WashPost

The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will decide whether it’s legal for police to collect DNA samples from people under arrest, a case that could have nationwide implications on the question of privacy versus public safety.

The justices announced that they will review a Maryland court decision that effectively barred the warrantless collection of genetic material from suspects who have not yet been convicted of a crime, a procedure used around the country in hopes of cracking old cases.

Courts have consistently upheld DNA collection from those convicted of a crime. But the federal government and 27 states also have laws that allow the collection of DNA from people arrested but not yet convicted.

Maryland began collecting samples from people arrested for violent crimes in 2009 and authorities took a cheek swab from Alonzo King Jr., who was arrested on assault charges. Police found out the sample matched the DNA of a rapist from a 2003 rape in Salisbury, Md. King was later found guilty in the 2003 attack and sentenced to life in prison.

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Coming to Texas ballots to help trick Latinos that GOP is Definitely Not Racist: another Bush in 2014?

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Sfgate

George P. Bush, a rising star among Hispanic conservatives and the grandson of one president and nephew of another, has taken the first step toward seeking elected office in Texas.

But it's unclear what his next step will be.

The 36-year-old attorney from Fort Worth has filed a two-page candidate reporting declaration with the Texas Ethics Commission but didn't list which office he plans to seek. Bush did not return messages at his consulting firm Friday, and his campaign treasurer was traveling in Oklahoma and unavailable for comment.

Still, word of yet another Bush coming to Texas ballots was cheered by Republicans across the state, where party leaders are well aware that they will need Hispanic voters if they want to continue dominating politics here over the next two decades the way they did during the last two.

"It's a positive thing to have something besides old white guys like me on the ballot," said Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson.

Memphis youth jail training to use "therapeutic hold" restraint technique that has led to 5 deaths nationwide

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Commercialappeal

Detention officers at Memphis' juvenile jail are in training this month on how to use a "physical hold" technique to get belligerent youths under control if they are trying to harm themselves or others.

Rick Powell, the head of the Shelby County Juvenile Detention Center, had said in April that he wouldn't authorize use of the method because at least five deaths nationwide were blamed on physical restraints in which officers' surround and tightly hold the detainee. However, at a public meeting earlier this month, Powell said his staff will learn the technique, which he called a "therapeutic hold." The 78 detention officers finished training Friday.

"They're a little apprehensive," Powell said. "If you're holding the kid and they're flailing around, there's a risk someone will get hurt."

Powell said he had no other choice to gain control of youths, including those who repeatedly beat their heads into the wall or chew at their own flesh, because it can take up to two hours for crisis intervention specialists to arrive at the jail.

"What else can I do?" Powell said. "We have to respond if a child is trying to harm themselves.

"All I can do is make sure everyone is trained to the best of their ability."

His staff had been using three restraint chairs, which has straps that cross a detainee's chest, waist, arms and feet. But while inspecting the facility in April, U.S. Department o

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Justice for Alan Blueford Coalition Denounces DA Exoneration of Masso: video, photos & PDFs

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Indybay

On October 2nd, facts surrounding the shooting death of Alan Blueford finally began to come to light. Alan Blueford's parents were provided copies of police and coroner reports on the killing of their son. Those reports were redacted by authorities yet still provide insight into a number of the circumstances surrounding the murder of an unarmed teenager by Oakland police officer Miguel Masso. On October 3rd, Alameda County district attorney Nancy O'Malley's office released the results their "investigation" into the shooting, effectively exonerating officer Masso of any criminal liability in the case. The DA's report relies almost entirely on Masso's account and ignores contradictory witness statements and factual evidence. For instance, Masso claims that Alan Blueford was holding a gun when Masso first shot him, but the police report says that a gun was found twenty feet away from Alan Blueford (although no forensic photographs were made of the location of the gun). Nancy O'Malley's report makes no mention of the gun being so far from the deceased Alan Blueford. Likewise, O'Malley's report completely ignores the discrepancy in the fact that Masso claimed to have first fired when Alan Blueford was still on his feet, yet eleven witnesses stated that Alan Blueford was on the ground before Masso fired the first of three shots. On October 16th, Alan Blueford's family, attorneys, and supporters delivered an 8-page response to the District Attorney and held a press conference on the steps of the Alameda County court house to announce their disgust with the District Attorney's "biased and unprofessional" work (full video and PDFs below). The Justice for Alan Blueford Coalition (JAB) is continuing to press their demands for accountability by sponsoring the "Bay Area Families March Against Police Brutality" in downtown Oakland on November 10th.

What Obama should do now: Address racial inequality

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WashPost

President Obama cannot single-handedly undo racial inequality that was built through centuries of discrimination, and it would be absurd to suggest that he could. However, he can do more in his second term to pursue the equality and fairness that America promises to its people.

Some slices of reality: African Americans have lost half of their wealth relative to white Americans in the financial crisis. They face the highest rates of unemployment and incarceration, and have alarmingly low high school graduation rates in major cities. Although the Obama administration and the Justice Department have taken measures to pursue employment discrimination cases and reduce sentencing disparities, there is much more that should be done.

For example, in addition to lowering mandatory minimum sentences, the administration should stop funding the Byrne grant program, which provides federal money for state and local criminal law enforcement. These grants are often awarded to cities and states with high rates of arrest and conviction, therefore encouraging aggressive policing.

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Dominican Republic: Student’s killing underscores urgent need for police reform

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Amnesty.org

The Dominican Republic’s National Police must urgently address how it responds to public protests as part of a comprehensive policing reform in the Caribbean nation, Amnesty International said after a university student was shot dead in the capital Santo Domingo on Thursday.

Willy Florián Ramírez, a 21-year-old medical student, died after being shot on Thursday during clashes between police and student protesters demonstrating against a highly disputed tax reform which had led to demonstrations across the country in previous days.

According to eyewitnesses, police shot Florián while he was walking out of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) campus. Heavily armed police officers were firing live rounds towards a group of protesters who were making their way from the campus to join another demonstration at the Congress. Clashes then erupted between students and the police.

On Thursday night the National Police chief announced the arrest of 19 police officials – including a lieutenant colonel in charge of the operation – as part of an investigation into the incident.

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Nevada judge sets May 2013 date in OJ Simpson Request for New Trial - Ineffective Assistance of Counsel, def attorney never informed him of plea (has 9 -33 yr bid. plea was 2-5 yrs)

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Sfgate

A Nevada judge set the stage Friday for former football star O.J. Simpson to testify for the first time in the Las Vegas armed robbery and kidnapping case that resulted in his conviction and lengthy prison sentence.

Simpson appeals lawyers Patricia Palm and Ozzie Fumo said following a brief date-setting hearing in Las Vegas that they anticipate Simpson will take the stand to testify that he was so poorly represented by his trial attorneys that he should be freed and get a new trial.

"He looks forward to defending himself," Fumo said.

Simpson wasn't in the courtroom as Clark County District Court Judge Linda Marie Bell set the evidentiary hearing for May 13.

Simpson, now 65, was convicted at trial in 2008 of leading five men, including two with guns, in a September 2007 confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers and a middleman in a cramped room at a Las Vegas casino-hotel. He was sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison.

Simpson maintained he was trying to retrieve personal mementoes, photos and other items stolen following his 1995 acquittal in the Los Angeles slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. That televised proceedings were dubbed the "trial of the century" by some tabloid media.

Simpson never testified at the Los Angeles criminal trial, but memorably demonstrated in court that a glove found near the slaying scene didn't fit his hand. He testified at length in a wrongful death trial that led a Los Angeles civil court jury in 1997 to find him liable for damages in the case.

In Las Vegas, Bell agreed last month to hear evidence and consider 18 of 22 questions cited in Simpson's appeal for a new Nevada trial. The judge also granted a waiver of attorney-client privilege on questions in dispute between Simpson and his trial lawyer, Yale Galanter.

The appeal alleges that Galanter had personal financial and business interests that posed a conflict that should have precluded him from handling Simpson's case.

Galanter did not immediately respond to messages Friday. He denied during trial that he had anything to do with the ill-fated Las Vegas caper, but Palm asserts that the trial judge never fully explored the question.

Simpson claims Galanter advised him that the plan to confront the two memorabilia dealers was legally permissible as long as no one trespassed on private property and no physical force was used.

Simpson claims Galanter advised him not to testify at trial in Las Vegas, and that he was never told that the Clark County district attorney offered a pretrial deal that could have gotten him two to five years in prison if he pleaded guilty to robbery.

Palm said Simpson would have taken the offer.

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Lawsuit: NC Prison guards deleted beating video of Black Man

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A N.C. inmate has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that corrections officers at an Anson County prison cracked his skull with a baton and then destroyed a surveillance video that showed the assault.

In a lawsuit filed earlier this week, inmate Kevin Brower contended that the assault happened during a prison riot on Nov. 10, 2009, after he tried to protect a fellow inmate from excessive force by corrections officers.

Brower, who is serving a 45-year prison term for second-degree murder, stated that officers at Lanesboro Correctional Institution handcuffed him face down on the floor. Then, he alleged, unknown officers kicked him in the face, ribs and hips until he “heard a crack and everything went silent.”

The inmate, who was later treated for a hairline skull fracture and a three-inch laceration, argued that officers used excessive force.

CharlotteObserver 

Brower also alleged that a corrections officer deleted a surveillance video that showed a white officer striking him in the back of the skull with a baton.

In a separate lawsuit related to the same melee, inmate Lorenzo Ingram contends that a Lanesboro corrections officer also used excessive force in an assault against him.

That suit, filed last week, alleges that Ingram was trying to protect a fellow inmate when an officer held him off the ground by his dreadlocks and then repeatedly punched him in the face and head.

A surveillance video in that case shows the officer striking Ingram in the head 21 times, the lawsuit says. Ingram is in prison for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.

The officer accused in that case resigned his prison job last year.

Located in Polkton, about 45 miles east of Charlotte, Lanesboro has repeatedly drawn media scrutiny following inmate deaths and allegations of improper conduct by corrections officers.

In September, a prison brawl led to the death of a convicted murderer. And in 2009, an inmate was repeatedly pepper sprayed after requesting medical help.

State officials replaced top officials at the prison after the Observer’s reports about the pepper spray incident.

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Oakland files response to possible police takeover

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MercuryNews

Oakland city officials have asked a judge not to let its embattled police department be the first in the nation to be taken over by the federal government.

Citing that it is close to finally meeting court-mandated reforms stemming from a decade-old police corruption scandal, city attorneys made its case in a motion filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

In a 30-page filing, Oakland's attorneys said that the city is aware the matter is at a "critical juncture" and that a federal receiver overseeing the department with the authority to fire Chief Howard Jordan and his command staff would have serious and drastic consequences for the city.

Oakland's attorneys also asked Judge Thelton Henderson to allow the city to appoint an onsite compliance director and a new assistant chief of constitutional policing to ensure that the department fully implements the reforms.

"The appointment of a receiver is neither legally nor factually appropriate at this time and could be detrimental to the goal of compliance," the attorneys said. "A receiver is not likely to provide a quick and efficient remedy here, where it could take months or even years for the receiver to understand the dynamics and complexities of the department, and even longer to bring about significant change."

The move comes after John Burris and Jim Chanin, two lawyers overseeing a settlement that include the reforms, asked Henderson for a federal receiver

to oversee the department, last month. They argued Oakland city officials and the police have chronically failed to meet reforms

The settlement initially called for the reforms to be completed within five years. But the lawyers said high-ranking city officials have thwarted those efforts.

On Friday, Burris said he and Chanin have not changed their stance.

"It is our view that it is the failure of the leadership in the department to implement the reforms as such," Burris said. "The response by the city does not give the compliance officer the full authority to hire and fire command staff. Without that, this is not a sufficient enough of a change for us."

The reforms are part of an agreement reached with the department stemming from a 2003 lawsuit. Several rogue officers were charged with beating or framing drug suspects in 2000 along with other claims that resulted in nearly $11 million in payments to 119 plaintiffs and attorneys.