Colin Powell Observes that the White Party (GOP) 'Looks Down on Non-White people'

ColorLines

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday that the Republican party has to take "a very hard look at itself" because some GOP members in "look down at minorities."

"The Republican party needs to take a very hard look at itself and understand that the country has changed," Powell said. "The country is changing demographically, and if the Republican Party doesn't change along with that demographic, it's going to be in trouble."

Powell went on to deconstruct some racially coded language he's heard from other members of his party. theGrio.com has more details:

Powell described what he called a "dark vein of intolerance in some parts" of the Republican party. "They still sort of look down on minorities," he said. Referring, without naming them, to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, Powell said: "when I see a former governor say that the president is 'shucking and jiving,'" as Palin did last year, "that's a racial era slave term. And when I see another former governor [Sununu], after the president's first [2012 presidential] debate and he didn't do well, say he was 'lazy' ... he didn't say he was slow, he was tired, he didn't do well, he said he was 'lazy.'" Now that may not mean anything to most Americans but to those of us who are African-American, the second word is 'shiftless' and then there's a third word that goes with it."

Powell added the "birther" movement to his list of examples of intolerance, and asked, "why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?"

The former secretary of state under President George W. Bush added that the GOP needs to address issues like healthcare, and economic opportunity for those who are lower income, adding that "the party has gathered unto itself the reputation that it's the party of the rich."

Powell also told NBC's David Gregory that President Barack Obama's nominee to be defense secretary, former Sen. Chuck Hagel, was "superbly qualified" and would be a strong advocate for Americans in uniform.

"This is a guy who would be very careful about putting their lives at risk because he put his life at risk," Powell said.

Neely Fuller on RG3: Redskins Treated him like an Expendable Animal

Mp3 from Talktainment Radio

Discussion begins at 17:08 

Bennie Starks Exonerated After 25 Year Struggle to Clear His Name

InnocenceProject

Innocence Project client Bennie Starks walked out of a Lake County, Illinois, courthouse today a free man, ending a 25-year struggle to clear his name, including multiple rounds of DNA testing and three separate appeals. Newly elected State’s Attorney Mike Nerheim agreed to dismiss the remaining charges pending against Starks from a 1986 rape and battery. Though DNA testing from as early as 2000 excluded Starks as the perpetrator, former Lake County prosecutors repeatedly refused to acknowledge the results, coming up with improbable theories to deny Starks’ innocence.
 
Starks’ exoneration comes one month after a court date last month was rescheduled due to a legal technicality.

White Law Professor says Chicago Police Follow a Code of Silence Policy/Systematic Injustice: Defends Court Ruling

ChicagoMaroon

A U.S. district judge upheld a November 2012 jury ruling that the Chicago Police Department (CPD) follows a “code of silence” protecting fellow officers, thanks in part to the efforts of a UChicago Law School professor.

UChicago’s Craig Futterman and Northwestern University’s Locke Bowman filed a motion in December defending the original verdict that claims the existence of the code of silence against opposition from the City of Chicago and Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The case in question is that of CPD Officer Anthony Abbate who was caught on a surveillance video beating bartender Karolina Obrycka in 2007. The decision came to a close in November with the jury voting in favor of Obrycka and awarding her $850,000 in damages to be collected from the City. The jury also ruled that an unofficial policy within the police department protected Abbate from punishment until the videotape became public.

A month after the decision was handed down, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the City of Chicago bargained to throw out the code of silence ruling. This is when Futterman decided to take action.

Over the course of the five-year-long Obrycka v. City of Chicago and Anthony Abbate trial, Futterman said he watched the case from the outside, intrigued but never formally involved. However, when it was announced that a joint motion had been filed to have the judgment against the City vacated, he felt the need to intervene.

“It was outrageous. And I was far from the only one outraged,” he recalled. “It’s unfair that the City can buy itself out of a verdict. It simply doesn’t belong to them anymore.”

The terms of the joint motion proposal, agreed upon by the mayor’s office and Obrycka, was that the code of silence verdict against the city be voided, with a guarantee from the City that it would immediately pay all damages and fees from the case and not seek further appeal.

“One of the issues is, because it’s a joint motion, there’s no one who would be representing before the judge the public interest,” Futterman said. “Unless someone intervened, those arguments and those positions wouldn’t be aired.”

Futterman asked Bowman (J.D. ’82), a friend and colleague who runs a clinic similar to Futterman’s, to help him file and defend a motion opposing the City’s proposal. Ultimately, it took a team of volunteers to put together the brief defending their arguments to U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve.

In her ruling, St. Eve accepted Futterman and Bowman’s arguments. Though the City’s lawyers argued that the code of silence decision could cost the City millions in future lawsuits, St. Eve upheld it on the basis that “it has a social value to the judicial system and public at large,” she said in her ruling.

Futterman believes that the initial verdict and St. Eve’s subsequent defense of it is a step in the right direction.

“If the City’s successful in being sure that their practices are never subject to scrutiny, there isn’t sufficient incentive to change.”

He said he believes that addressing systemic sources of injustice in the police system, like the code of silence, not only benefits the victims in cases like the Obrycka case, but will also help good officers do their job better and create better relationships between police and the people they serve.

Though Futterman acknowledges that Emanuel and current CPD superintendent Garry McCarthy were not responsible for creating the code of silence, he does blame them for “continuing a policy of denial that has allowed officers like Abbate to proceed with impunity for far too long.”

“There was a political opportunity here to say, ‘Hey, we’re reformers and here are some lasting problems that need to be addressed,’” Futterman said.

He said he wishes that Emanuel and McCarthy had used the Obrycka case as a chance to correct problems of police brutality, rather than evade them.

“I was hopeful before and I remain hopeful, but what they did here was wrong.”

New Orleans Police to Remain under Court Ordered Scrutiny for Years

JDJournal

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan approved a U.S. Justice Department agreement with New Orleans to completely overhaul the New Orleans police department and also that the New Orleans Police Department would be under scrutiny of a court-approved monitor for years.

The federal court has allowed the city until Jan. 31 to file any motion intended to seek relief from the order.

The measures came following numerous accusations of the New Orleans Police Department engaging in abusing their authority ranging from discriminatory searches to using excessive force on a routine basis.

While New Orleans continues to struggle with a high rate of murder and violent crimes that has no sign of abating, police brutality is also common, and in the past two years, convictions have been won in more than a dozen cases of police brutality.

Last July, Attorney General Eric Holder had announced a mandate for complete change at the NOPD in one of the most extensive investigations conducted by the DOJ. The report by the Justice Department that resulted from the investigations found a huge number of procedural and operational faults in the NOPD. Routine behavior of police personnel included unlawful searches, discriminatory policing practices, and flagrant use of excessive force.

The consent decree was reached after several months of negotiations between federal and city officials and proposed changes include changes in department policies in interrogations, lineups, recruiting, training, and investigations into misconduct.

The city mayor, Mitch Landrieu, and the police superintendent Ronal Serpas, had both welcomed the order made by the Justice Department last summer, though Landrieu had commented the exercise would cost the city about $11 million annually and for several years.

According to the consent decree, the monitor would be an independent entity.

Sheriff's Office wants to fly drones over Orange County (Fla) skies

OrlandoSentinel 

The Orange County Sheriff's Office is experimenting with two surveillance drones that it hopes to turn loose over Metro Orlando skies this summer.

Sheriff's spokesman Jeff Williamson would not reveal specific uses for the drones, larger versions of which are known for flying over tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan to drop bombs on suspected terrorists.

But Williamson did say Orange's remote-controlled planes would not be armed. The agency still needs approval from county leaders and the Federal Aviation Administration to use them. The FAA said it does not comment on drone applications.

Privacy advocates oppose drones for civilian use, saying they can too easily be used to snoop on law-abiding citizens, not just criminals or those thought to be doing something illegal.

"This is unwise and unnecessary. … Sheriffs are supposed to be sheriffs, not the U.S. Army," said Doug Head, a Democratic activist who closely follows Orange County politics.

Alex Jones is a Creation Of The Corporate Media

BlacklistedNews

By now many people have probably heard about or have seen the on air confrontation between CNN talk show host Piers Morgan and radio host Alex Jones.  The discussion between Morgan and Jones if you even want to call it that largely consisted of Jones behaving like a loud mouthed monkey as they debated the different sides of the gun control issue.  This bizarre incident like other media spectacles that Jones has been involved in seems to be nothing more than another staged event to further the personality cult of Alex “Jim” Jones and to boost Morgan’s pitiful television ratings.  Unfortunately, there are many people who still believe that Jones is an honest man promoting freedom and fighting corruption when past history clearly shows us that this is not the case. 

Simply put, Jones is a creation of the corporate controlled media.  The reach of his Austin Texas media platform has only been made possible due to the fact that over the past decade he has been promoted by the likes of big name media outlets such as Fox News, CNN, ABC and countless other radio and television platforms.  Without the support of these big media platforms, there is no way this man would be in the position that he enjoys today.

Forget Parole Officers: Maryland and Pennsylvania using computers to predict future crimes January 11, 2013

BlacklistedNews

When police in Minority Report predicted who would commit crimes and stopped them before they did it, it was considered so futuristic, the film was set in 2054.

Now, however, law enforcers in two American states are using crime-prediction software to predict which freed prisoners are most likely to commit murder, and supervising them accordingly.

Instead of relying on parole officers to decide how much supervision inmates will need on the outside by looking at their records, the new system uses a computer algorithm to decide for them.

The Minority Report-style software is already being used in Baltimore and Philadelphia to predict future murderers, and will be extended to Washington D.C. soon.

It has been developed by Professor Richard Berk, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania, who believes it will reduce the murder rate and those of other crimes.

More Guns = Less Crime: Piers Morgan/ so-called Liberals Lying to you about Guns

Blacklisted News

Piers Morgan is getting on television every night and flat out lying to the American people about gun control.  Nearly every statistic that he quotes is inaccurate and he fails to acknowledge a whole host of statistics that would instantly invalidate the arguments that he is trying to make.  Yes, the UK has a lower gun murder rate than the United States does, but what Piers Morgan fails to tell you is that the overall rate of violent crime in the UK is about 4 times higher than it is in the United States.  A woman in the UK is not allowed pull out a gun to protect herself against a gang of potential rapists.  So perhaps that explains why the UK has about 125 percent more rape victims per 100,000 people than the United States does.  While UK newspapers are declaring that the UK has become the “violent crime capital of Europe”, crime rates in the United States have actually fallen dramatically over the past 20 years.  This was also a time period during which gun laws became much less restrictive in the United States.  Today, murder rates in the U.S. are generally far higher in cities that have very strict gun control laws (such as Chicago) than they are for the general population.  The cold, hard numbers make it clear that when there are more guns there is less crime, but hardcore leftists such as Piers Morgan are absolutely obsessed with gun control and Morgan continues to relentlessly attack the 2nd Amendment night after night.  We need to start pointing out that he is not telling the truth.

The following are 18 facts that prove that Piers Morgan is flat out lying about gun control…

Congress Begins 2013 With 14% Approval

Gallup

Americans give Congress a 14% job approval rating as the new year begins, the lowest since September of last year and one point below Congress' 15% average approval for 2012, the lowest yearly average in Gallup's history.

White Supremacist/Racist Israel forcibly evacuates 'tent city'

Aljazeera

 Israeli police have released several activists who were detained after setting up a camp to protest illegal settlements.

Limbaugh Claims Unemployed Spend Their Benefits On Lottery Tickets, "Smirnoff Ice And Chips"

MediaMatters

Ben Stein Tells An Angry Charlie Gasparino There Is "No Reputable Study" Proving Raising Taxes On The Wealthy Impairs Growth

MediaMatters

Three Years After the Quake, How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster

DemocracyNow

Three years after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, we’re joined by Jonathan Katz, author of "The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster." The earthquake on January 12, 2010, ultimately resulted in the deaths of roughly 300,000 people and left more than 1.5 million homeless in what was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. A cholera epidemic, widely blamed on international U.N. troops, killed almost 8,000 people, making more than half a million sick. Today, despite pledges of billions of dollars in international aid, rebuilding has barely begun, and almost 400,000 people are still living in crowded camps. After four years of reporting in Haiti, Katz joins us to discuss where the reconstruction effort went wrong. [includes rush transcript]

DC Mayor Says Redskins Football Team Must Consider a Name Change to Return to Town (Mayor Sucks)

ColorLines

On Monday the D.C. Council announced it wanted to bring the team back to Washington. But mayor Vincent Gray said on Wednesday the team's nickname and mascot is unacceptable and that there needs to be a discussion before a move can even be considered.

"I think that if they get serious with the team coming back to Washington, there's no doubt there's going to have to be a discussion about that," Gray said after a news conference, according to the Washington Post, "and of course the team is going to have to work with us around that issue."

"I think it has become a lightning rod, and I would be love to be able to sit down with the team ... and see if a change should be made," he said. "There's a precedent for this, and I think there needs to be a dispassionate discussion about this, and do the right thing."

The Washington Post also points out the Redskins was one of the last teams to hire a black player.

"Recall that the Redskins, under avowed racist owner George Preston Marshall, did not field a black player until 1962, after Interior Secretary Stewart Udall threatened to deny the team the use of what would later be named RFK Stadium unless it integrate," Mike DeBonis wrote for WaPo.

The Redkins played in D.C. from 1937 to '97 when they moved to Landover, Md.

'Gun Appreciation Day' Founder Says Slavery Wouldn't Have Happened if Slaves Were Armed

ColorLines

On Friday, the chairman of Gun Appreciation Day Larry Ward told CNN slavery wouldn't of happened if slaves had been armed.

"The truth is, I think Martin Luther King would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country's founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history," Ward said on CNN.

A coalition of gun rights and conservative groups announced on Monday that January 19, 2013 is "Gun Appreciation Day." Organizers hope "Gun Appreciation Day" rivals "Chick-fil-A Day" as a public statement of protest against government policies, according to a press release.

Supremes to Rule on the Right to Remain Silent Prior to Arrest

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] granted certiorari in six new cases [order list, PDF] on Friday. In Salinas v. Texas [cert. petition, PDF; docket] the court will consider the boundaries of the Fifth Amendment [text] right to remain silent prior to arrest. Genovevo Salinas was suspected of being involved in a murder. He consented to a search of his home, where police found a shotgun, and consented to questioning at the police station, but he was not arrested or given Miranda warnings [backgrounder]. An officer asked, "if the shotgun [his father had given them] would match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder." Salinas looked down and refused to answer the question. The state then offered the refusal to answer as a key piece of evidence against Salinas, which he contends was a violation of his right against self-incrimination. The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas upheld [opinion text] the conviction.

Just Like the NRA said: Obama administration plan to fund police, surveillance equipment in schools

CitizensforLegitGov

The Obama administration is considering funding many more police officers in public schools to secure campuses, a leading Democratic senator said, part of a broad gun violence agenda that is likely to include a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips and universal background checks. The school safety [sic] initiative, one of several under consideration, would make federal dollars available to schools that want to hire police officers and install surveillance equipment, although it is not nearly as far-ranging as the National Rifle Association's proposal for armed guards in every U.S. school.

In Pittsburgh prison abuse trial, inmate says he was ordered by guards to beat pedophile offenders

Post-Gazette

The inmate whose lawsuit first publicly detailed the accusations against Pittsburgh prison officers testified Thursday in the criminal trial of former guard Harry F. Nicoletti Jr.

Mr. Nicoletti, 61, of Coraopolis sat stoically as the inmate alleged a series of sordid encounters and a pattern of abuse of other prisoners. Mr. Nicoletti's attorney sought to portray the inmate's account as a wild exaggeration.

The inmate -- whose name is being withheld because he is alleging that he was sexually abused -- said that he and another inmate named Richard Cavallero were enlisted scores of times to beat up prisoners who were viewed as pedophiles.

"Is that what you're telling us?" defense attorney Steve Colafella asked the inmate. "Fifty times, [Mr. Nicoletti] had you and Mr. Cavallero do this, 50 times? And he never got caught?"

The inmate said that was his testimony. Corrections officers, he said, "don't get in trouble. ... Officers, they know that. That's why they do what they do."

Thirteen of the 89 criminal counts against Mr. Nicoletti relate to the inmate, a 25-year-old robber who spent much of the past seven years at the State Correctional Institution Pittsburgh but is now imprisoned elsewhere.

The inmate said he was one of several inmates used by Mr. Nicoletti to harass sex offenders who were placed on F Block. "It would be the weak ones, the old white ones," the inmate said.

The inmate said Mr. Nicoletti once got him thrown into restrictive housing, where time out of the cell is restricted to an hour a day and showers are rare.

When the inmate resisted Mr. Nicoletti's instructions, the officer said, "You know, I'm good with creative writing," according to the inmate. He interpreted that as a threat to trump up a disciplinary charge.

The inmate said that three times Mr. Nicoletti exposed himself and asked for sexual stimulation.

The inmate has filed a civil lawsuit in federal court, one of seven by former residents of F Block who are seeking compensation. Earlier Thursday, the jury heard from another inmate who described himself as "the intimidator."

Patrick Hogan, 32, a robber, said Mr. Nicoletti "would say to people, 'If you say anything to anybody, I'm going to let this guy right here F you up.'"

Hogan said that another inmate, whom he viewed as "mentally challenged," was subjected to persistent hazing at the prompting of Mr. Nicoletti. The Post-Gazette will not name that inmate because he is allegedly a victim of institutional sexual assault.

Mr. Nicoletti put mashed potatoes on the head of the mentally challenged inmate and poured gravy down his neck. He also forced him to stand or jump for long periods of time, and pushed his head in a toilet, Hogan said.

Testimony began Wednesday and could run for three weeks.