Penn State Professor Compares White Party Voter ID Laws to Jim Crow

ColorLines

A media studies professor at Pennsylvania State University compared the GOP push for more voter ID laws to methods employed by the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) to suppress people of color from voting. His lesson plan has caused some uproar on conservative blogs but Professor Matt Jordan still stands by his lesson plan.

Earlier this month Professor Jordan presented scenes from the 1915 film "The Birth of a Nation" to his class that showed armed Klansmens intimidating black voters into not voting. Jordan then went on to show video clips of recent voter ID law news coverage to illustrate both tactics were used to disenfranchise certain groups of voters.

Victor Schleich, a student in Jordan's class who objected to the lesson plan, published an e-mail he wrote to the professor on the Young America's Foundation's (YAF) New Guard blog. Schleich's email to Jordan is below:

On Jan 10, 2013, at 2:59 PM, Victor Schleich wrote: There was something at the end of class today that greatly concerned me. Towards the end of class we were going over the film THE BIRTH OF A NATION. The final shot we saw was a scene where a number of the KKK members were scaring black men back into their homes signifying voter suppression. I had no problem displaying that scene with the proper context that it was incredibly racist and that the content was unacceptable. However, as class was ending there was footage on the screen of news coverage concerning the issue of voter ID laws and commentary suggesting that these laws were new minority voter suppression. John Stewart even made references that these were the new horsemen of intimidation when it came to minorities voting. Now, in the context of the film we had discussed I can't help but see this display as an attempt to equate a voter ID law to actions taken by the KKK. If this was the intention of that footage then this is is incredibly offensive. However, I hope this is simply a misunderstanding.

Jordan's response unapologetic response was also posted on the blog:

On Jan 10, 2013, at 3:12 PM, Matt Jordan wrote: Victor I was - indeed - trying to elicit moral comparisons with this juxtaposition, given that the KKK was behind voter suppression in the 1880s and 1920s, by splicing that clip in there. I am sorry that you find that offensive, but I find disenfranchizing [sic] minority and elderly voters based on specious arguments about voter fraud (which multiple studies have shown to be trumped up and, indeed, many of the architects of these laws have all but admitted were purely designed to suppress the vote) equally offensive in a country predicated on one person, one vote. I don't think I equated them, but I certainly want you all to think about it. I am sorry that you find this work of challenging you all to think offensive. Matt Jordan Associate Professor Dept. of Film/Video and Media Studies College of Communications Penn State University

Visit Colorlines.com's Voting Rights blog for our investigative coverage on attemps to limit the electoral power of people of color.

Israeli Elections: The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same

The RealNews

White Supremacy Don't Snitch On Us Policy: CIA whistleblower sentenced to prison by US judge

BlackListedNews

A CIA whistleblower who was among the first to expose details of the spy agency’s use of waterboarding and other torture methods against Muslim suspects accused of terrorism was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison by a US judge.

The 48-year-old former CIA agent John Kiriakou, who worked for the spy agency between 1990 and 2004 and was involved in the capture of a ‘terror suspect,’ received the jail term on Friday by US District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who proclaimed that the sentence she issued was “way too light.” 

The judge harshly rejected the notion that Kiriakou was a whistleblower concerned about the illegal use of harsh torture tactics by American spies and intelligence officers and said, “This is a case of a man who betrayed a solemn trust.”

In a 2007 televised interview with the US-based ABC News, Kiriakou offered a dramatic description of the use of waterboarding in torturing a suspect that he had helped capture, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, also identified as Abu Zubaida. 

Furthermore in 2008 and 2009, Kiriakou reportedly revealed to journalists the name of a CIA agent who had taken part in interrogation and torture of suspects captured by the agency’s operatives abroad, court documents allege. 

Government prosecutors claim that Kiriakou’s motive for detailing the use of torture tactics by American officers was to raise his media profile to get consulting work and sell copies of a book he wrote about his involvement in the US “war on terror.” 

According to local press reports, Kiriakou was the first individual convicted in the past 27 years of violating the “Intelligence Identities Protection Act” and his prosecution is part of a wider crackdown on the disclosure of “national security information” by the Obama administration. 

White Man Declares that Monday was "Super Nigger Monday!"

Yourniggerpresident

Two niggers for the price of one! Make that two fraudulent niggers for the price of one. Inniggeruation Day will feature that nigger MLK of course since it’s his day. A ‘holiday’ forced upon us by the nigger lovers. And of course, the nigger loving news is already going gaga over all the nigger-ness tomorrow.

Joe Biden and the Big Joke: Cops are "Outgunned"

LewRockwell

Vice President Joe Biden recently declared at a recent PBS event that Congress needs to outlaw "assault weapons" because the police are overwhelmed by heavily-armed criminals. Declared the Veep:

One of the reasons the assault weapons ban makes sense, even though it accounts for a small percentage of gun deaths, is because police organizations overwhelmingly support it because they are outgunned on the street by the bad guys and the proliferation of these weapons.

There is only one problem with Biden's statement: it isn't true, or it isn't true unless criminals are regularly using machine guns, flash-bang grenades, troop carriers, tanks, and other combat material. The following link shows photos of a small cross-section of the military gear the American police are using on a regular basis. Just who is "outgunned" in America these days? It certainly is not the police.

Apple products made with child labor – internal report

Rt.com

Apple Inc. used child labor in the making of its products by employing 106 underage workers across 11 facilitates in 2012, an internal audit revealed. According to a report, the company also discovered wage problems and forced pregnancy tests.

Apple’s annual ‘Supplier Responsibility’ report, which includes nearly 400 audits, 72 per cent more than in 2011, reviewed sites where over 1.5 million workers make some of the world’s leading products, including iPhone and iPad.

In addition to 106 underage children that were employed, the report discovered 70 more that either left or passed the age of 16 by the time of the audit.

Seventy-four of 106 underage individuals were employed by a single Chinese manufacturer, Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics, responsible for producing circuit-board components for Apple.

The California-based company terminated work with all of the underage individuals following the investigation into the matter.

Inquiry revealed that a labor agency, Shenzhen Quanshun Human Resources, “knowingly” provided children with fake records after conspiring with families to forge identification documents, the report stated.

Upon discovery, Apple reported the labor agency to local authorities.

Anonymous hacks US Sentencing Commission website for Swartz

Rt.com

Hacktivist movement Anonymous has hijacked the US Sentencing Commission website as a personal vendetta to retaliate against the justice system that threatened to imprison web activist Aaron Swartz, who recently committed suicide, for decades.

The website was hacked early Saturday and a message was placed saying that “a line was crossed” when Swartz killed himself two weeks ago.

“Two weeks ago today, Aaron Swartz was killed. Killed because he faced an impossible choice. Killed because he was forced into playing a game he could not win — a twisted and distorted perversion of justice — a game where the only winning move was not to play,” the statement read.

Anonymous now threatens to release secret information that they have reportedly copied from several governments’ computer systems they were able to access.

The hackers also put up their video statement and a list of files named after US Supreme Court justices on the hacked website.

Earlier, Anonymous gained access to MIT’s website and the Department of Justice, DOJ.gov website, using distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to avenge the passing of Swartz.

Aaron Swartz, who co-founded both the website Reddit and the activism organization Demand Progress, was due to appear in federal court during the coming weeks because the United States says he illegally downloaded millions of academic papers from the website JSTOR, presumably for public distribution, while logged onto the computer network of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If convicted, Swartz could have been sentenced to upwards of 35 years in prison and a US$1 million fine.

The 26-year-old Harvard fellow openly discussed his bouts with depression in the past, but Swartz’s parents and advocates alike have suggested that a serious legal fight that has dominated the activist’s life in recent years played a role in his passing.

In a statement published shortly after his death, the activist’s family said, “Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death.”

Others, including Kim Dotcom, the founder of the now-defunct file-storage site Megaupload, also believe that Aaron Swartz became a political target, and that is what led to his tragic death.

"There is no reasonable cause behind going after a young genius like him in the fashion they did," Dotcom told RT in an interview.

Small Group of People March (poke holes in the air with their signs) in Washington for gun control

Aljazeera

Residents of Newtown, Connecticut, site of a mass school shooting that reignited the US gun violence debate, participated in a Washington march for gun control with activists, politicians and actors. Thousands of protesters were expected for the rally on Saturday on the National Mall, part of about a dozen across the United States in favour of gun control, organisers said in a statement. Demonstrators began gathering at the Capitol Reflecting Pool and  marched to Constitution Avenue toward the Washington Monument at 11am. A rally took place near the monument just before noon. Molly Smith, artistic director of Washington's Arena Stage, and her partner who organised the march were motivated by the December 14 massacre that killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. Politicians from Maryland and the District of Columbia, including Washington Mayor Vincent Gray, were scheduled to speak.

Deaths in Egypt after football fans sentenced

Aljazeera

Study: All-White Jury Pools Convict Black Defendants 16 Percent More Often Than Whites

DukeToday

Juries formed from all-white jury pools in Florida convicted black defendants 16 percent more often than white defendants, a gap that was nearly eliminated when at least one member of the jury pool was black, according to a Duke University-led study.  

The researchers examined more than 700 non-capital felony criminal cases in Sarasota and Lake counties from 2000-2010 and looked at the effects of the age, race and gender of jury pools on conviction rates.  

The jury pool typically consisted of 27 members selected from eligible residents in the two counties. From this group, attorneys chose six seated jurors plus alternates.

"I think this is the first strong and convincing evidence that the racial composition of the jury pool actually has a major effect on trial outcomes," said senior author Patrick Bayer, chairman of Duke's Economics Department.

"Our Sixth Amendment right to a trial by a fair and impartial jury of our peers is a bedrock of the criminal justice system in the U.S., and yet, despite the importance of that right, there's been very little systematic analysis of how the composition of juries actually affects trial outcomes, how the rules that we have in place for selecting juries impact those outcomes," Bayer said.

The study, posted Tuesday on the Quarterly Journal of Economics (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/page/4595/1), focused on how conviction rates varied with the composition of the jury pool, which is randomly determined by which eligible residents are called for jury duty that day.

UN launches probe into drone strikes

Aljazeera The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has launched an investigation into drone strikes and will review resultant civilian casualties to determine whether the attacks constitute a war crime.  Ben Emmerson, a UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, formally launched the inquiry on Thursday, in response to requests from Russia, China and Pakistan. A statement released by the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights states that the inquiry will provide a "critical examination of the factual evidence concerning civilian casualties".  It also states that the inquiry ultimately intends to make recommendations to the UN General Assembly to prompt countries to "investigate into the lawfulness and proportionality of such attacks". "This is not an investigation into the conduct of any particular state. It's an investigation into the consequence into this form of technology," Emmerson told Al Jazeera.  "The reality is that the increasing availability of this technology [...] makes it very likely that more states will be using this technology in the coming months and years and includes raising the spectre that non state organisations - organisations labelled as terrorist groups - could use the technology in retaliation," he added. He said that it was a "very serious and escalating situation" which must be addressed by the international community "urgently". At a press conference on Thursday in London, Emmerson said that the British government had already agreed to co-operate with the investigation and that he was "optimistic" that the US would do the same. He also requested the US to release "before and after" videos of the drone strikes and internal reports of those killed, including civilians. Emmerson's team will conduct the inquiry in consultation with military experts and journalists from the UK, Yemen and Pakistan.

Black Man Exonerated After Serving More Than 30 Years for a Rape and Murder Evidence Shows He Didn't Commit

InnocenceProject

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce filed a motion today dismissing the indictment against George Allen Jr., finally completing his 30 year struggle to clear his name. The motion follows a December 26, 2012 appeals court decision upholding the lower court’s decision overturning Allen’s conviction based on the state’s failure to disclose evidence establishing Allen’s innocence.
 
“We are grateful for Circuit Attorney Joyce’s decision to put this case to rest once and for all and for her initiative to prevent the police practices that led to his wrongful conviction,” said Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law. “Mr. Allen may have been released from prison two months ago, but it wasn’t until today that he was truly granted his freedom.”
 
In a statement issued today after dismissing the indictment, Joyce said that the “justice system has completely failed both Mary Bell [the victim] and George Allen.” She also expressed concern about the fact that important evidence was never turned over to the defense and said, “I am committed to finding a permanent solution to ensure that the mistakes made in the George Allen case do not happen again.”
 
Allen was convicted in 1983 and served more than 30 years behind bars before Cole County Circuit Court Judge Green ordered his release on November 14, 2012. Allen’s exoneration was delayed when Attorney General Koster filed an appeal to a state intermediate appeals court, despite Joyce’s earlier announcement that she would not retry Allen.
 
“This day is long overdue,” said Ameer Gado, an attorney with Bryan Cave LLP. “After decades of patience and hope, George and his mother can finally move on from this nightmare.” “Mr. Allen can now enjoy the freedom he has always deserved,” added Dan Harvath, another of Mr. Allen’s attorneys from Bryan Cave LLP.
 
Police initially arrested Allen for the 1982 rape and murder of a St. Louis court reporter by accident, mistaking him for a suspect in the case. Even though Detective Herbert Riley realized Allen was not the suspect, Riley decided to interrogate him anyway. Allen, who is a diagnosed schizophrenic and had been admitted to psychiatric wards several times, ended up making a false recorded confession that one of the interrogating officers has since conceded was questionable. On the recording of the interrogation, Allen informs the officers that he is under the influence of alcohol. Throughout the interrogation, the detective prompts Allen to give him answers to fit the crime, often asking Allen to change his answer to do so.
 
False confessions such as Allen’s have played a role in more than 25% of the 302 wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence.
 
“While the public may find it hard to believe that someone would falsely confess to a crime, police know it’s not that uncommon and are trained to look for other evidence to corroborate the statement,” said Olga Akselrod, a senior staff attorney with the Innocence Project. “In this case they did just the opposite, burying evidence that proved Mr. Allen’s innocence. While Mr. Allen was locked up for a crime he didn’t commit, the real perpetrator has been allowed to go free, putting the public at risk.”
 
Allen was convicted based largely on his false confession and on serology evidence, which has since been proven false, that was conducted by lab analyst Joseph Crow. Newly-discovered police and lab documents that were not disclosed to the prosecution or defense show that police actually found semen samples excluding Allen and the victim’s consensual sex partners as the source. Other undisclosed documents show that police relied on this serology evidence to exclude other suspects until they coerced the confession from Allen. The prosecution also failed to turn over fingerprint evidence excluding Allen, a drawing that Allen was asked to draw of the victim’s apartment that did not match her apartment and evidence that a witness who was called to verify a detail from Allen’s statement had been subjected to a police-organized hypnosis session in order to recall the incident.
 
“When injustice of this magnitude is uncovered, the only way to restore public confidence in the system is to conduct a systematic review to see how many others could be serving time for crimes they didn’t commit. The state has an obligation to look into every case handled by the detective and the serologist involved in this case,” said Laura O’Sullivan, Legal Director of the Midwest Innocence Project.
 
Allen narrowly escaped receiving the death penalty after the jury issued the guilty verdict by a stroke of fate. A juror was relieved of duty due to a family emergency and as a result the sentencing could not be held and the state was forced to waive the death penalty.
 
Allen is represented by Scheck and Akselrod of the Innocence Project and Gado, Harvath and Tim O’Connell with Bryan Cave, LLP. Rosa Greenbaum of Sarasota, Florida also provided pro bono investigation assistance.

FL Police Accused of Misusing Driver Database

BlackListedNews

Florida’s driver-and-vehicle database, the system that can help law enforcement identify victims of fatal crashes and decipher the identity of a suspect, can be a useful tool for cops.

But the system — known as D.A.V.I.D., for Driving and Vehicle Information Database — can also be easily abused.

Data obtained by the Orlando Sentinel show the number of Florida law-enforcement officers suspected of misusing D.A.V.I.D. skyrocketed last year.

At least 74 law enforcers were suspected of misusing D.A.V.I.D. in 2012, a nearly 400 percent increase from 2011, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Officers who needlessly pull information or photographs from D.A.V.I.D. that would otherwise be private could face criminal charges, sanctions or disciplinary action.

30 Population Control Quotes That Show That The Elite Truly Believe That Humans Are A Plague Upon The Earth

BlackListedNews

There is a clear consensus among the global elite that overpopulation is the primary cause of the most important problems that the world is facing and that something desperately needs to be done about it.

They truly believe that humans are a plague upon the earth and that we will literally destroy the planet if we are left to our own devices.

To the elite, everything from global warming to our growing economic problems can be directly traced back to the lack of population control.

They warn that if nothing is done about the exploding population, we will be facing a future full of poverty, war and suffering on a filthy, desolate planet.

They complain that it “costs too much” to keep elderly patients that are terminally ill alive, and they eagerly promote abortion for babies that are “not wanted” because they would be “too much of a burden” on society.

Anything that reduces the human population in any way is a good thing for those that believe in this philosophy. This twisted philosophy is being promoted in our movies, in our television shows, in our music, in countless books, on many of the most prominent websites in the world, and it is being taught at nearly all of the most important colleges and universities on the planet.

The people promoting this philosophy have very, very deep pockets, and they are actually convinced that they are helping to “save the world” by trying to reduce the size of the human population.

In fact, many of them are entirely convinced that we are in a “life or death” struggle for the fate of the planet, and that if humanity does not willingly choose to embrace population control soon, then a solution will have to be “forced” upon them.

Yes, I know that all of this may sound like something out of a science fiction novel. But there are a whole lot of people out there that are absolutely obsessed with this stuff, and many of them are in very prominent positions around the globe.

The following are 30 population control quotes which show that the elite truly believe that humans are a plague upon the earth and that a great culling is necessary…

"Scan & Frisk" - NYPD testing device to secretly scan New Yorkers for guns

BlackListedNews

Get ready for scan-and-frisk.

The NYPD will soon deploy new technology allowing police to detect guns carried by criminals without using the typical pat-down procedure, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Wednesday.

The department just received a machine that reads terahertz — the natural energy emitted by people and inanimate objects — and allows police to view concealed weapons from a distance.

“If something is obstructing the flow of that radiation, for example a weapon, the device will highlight that object,” Kelly said.

Withdrawn: $114 Billion From Big U.S. Banks

Bloomberg

More than $114 billion exited the biggest U.S. banks this month, and nobody’s quite sure why.

The Federal Reserve releases data on the assets and liabilities of commercial banks every Friday. The most current figures, covering the first full week of 2013, show the largest one-week withdrawals since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Even when seasonally adjusted, the level drops to $52.8 billion—still the third-highest amount on record, and one for which bank experts and analysts were reluctant to give a definitive explanation.

The most obvious culprit is the expiration of the Transaction Account Guarantee program, the extraordinary federal effort to shore up the country’s non-gigantic banks during the 2008 financial crisis. Big banks were considered “too big to fail,” while smaller ones were vulnerable to runs. The TAG program backstopped their deposit bases by temporarily offering unlimited insurance on money kept in non-interest-bearing accounts. That guarantee ended on Dec. 31, so a decrease in deposits would be expected first thing in January.

But hold on: The Fed data show $114 billion leaving the 25 biggest banks—about 2 percent of their deposit base. Only $26.9 billion left all the others, equivalent to 0.9 percent of their deposit base. Experts had predicted that the end of TAG would hurt the nation’s small banks because the big ones are still considered too big to fail. “I think [customers] are going to go back to the mega banks,” the head of a regional bank in Bethesda, Md., told The Washington Post in December. “They’ve been assured by the government that mega banks are too big to fail. It’s a horrible, bad, poorly-thought-out situation.” Small banks fearfully lobbied the Senate to extend TAG, with analysts telling the New York Times that they expected $200 million to $300 million—yes, with an m—to move from affected accounts into money market funds or elsewhere.

So if the missing $114 billion is not the result of the TAG program expiration—or at least not all related to TAG—what’s going on? Paul Miller, a bank analyst with FBR Capital Markets, cautions against reading too much into the Fed’s weekly data. “It’s a noisy database,” he says. Among large U.S. banks, there have been movements of greater than $50 billion (not seasonally adjusted) during 107 different weeks since 2000. It’s not uncommon to see 11-figure swings—that is, tens of billions of dollars—from positive to negative, or vice-versa, one week to the next.

Noise can increase near the start of a year. “The first quarter is always a wacky quarter,” Miller says. And January 2013 has seen an incredible amount of change. First, the fiscal cliff drama had companies shifting dividends and had bank clients guessing what their tax liabilities would be, which might explain the $60.4 billion pumped into the largest banks during the week ending Dec. 26. (Seasonally adjusted, it was the sixth-highest level on record.) Second, the payroll tax just went up, sticking most wage earners with paychecks that are 2 percent smaller.

Third, ordinary investors may be ready to move out of federally guaranteed accounts and into investments. Stocks did very well in 2012. As Bloomberg Businessweek’s Roben Farzad wrote on Jan. 16, equity mutual funds saw their second-highest inflows on record in the first week of the year. Economists are worrying that market exuberance is getting too high, with one measure of risk aversion at a three-decade low.

“If deposits are really trending down—and at the end of the month, we’ll be smarter than we are now—if that’s the case, it can tell us a few things,” says Dan Geller, executive vice president of Market Rates Insight. “And one thing that it could tell us is that the law of elasticity is finally catching up with deposits.” In other words, contrary to what economic theory predicts, deposits have been piling up at banks ever since the crisis, even though they offer pitiful yields. Geller says that may finally be ending—though like Miller, he says not to put too much stock in just one burst of Fed data.

“One week is just a very thin slice,” he says. Still, $114 billion is a big figure, and it’s one to keep an eye on in order to understand where the economy is headed in 2013.

Oakland Hires Former LAPD Chief Who Says Cities Without 'Stop-and-Frisk' Are Doomed

ColorLines

Early Wednesday morning, the Oakland City Council approved a $250k consulting contract with a team that includes former Los Angeles Police Department chief William Bratton. Mayor Jean Quan proposed hiring Bratton to develop a public safety plan and the City Council supported her, voting 7-1 to hire the former LAPD chief.

Bratton, who also served as the New York City Police Commissioner and Boston Police Commissioner, is known for his unapologetic support of 'stop-and-frisk' laws.

The San Francisco Chronicle interviewed Councilwoman Desley Brooks who was the lone "no" vote against hiring the consulting team:

Brooks, who cast the lone "no" vote, said Bratton would have little accountability under the $250,000 contract, and would be obligated to set foot in the city only three times over six months. She also said his overwhelmingly white consultant team didn't reflect Oakland's diversity.

"I am deeply concerned that we are feeding into the politics of fear and playing on people's emotions on crime," Brooks said. "It makes it seem like if we don't pass this contract tonight that nothing gets done

Critics worry Bratton will suggest a 'stop-and-frisk' policy that could lead to racial profiling.

"Bratton is the father of suppression policing," Oakland resident Jay Donahue told the Oakland Tribune. "He destroys black and brown communities."

Last year the NYPD released 'stop-and-frisk' statistics to the City Council that revealed that out of 685,724 stop-and-frisk stops, 87% percent of those stopped in 2011 were black or Latino. The stats also showed nine out of ten persons stopped were not arrested, nor did they receive summonses.

An NYCLU analysis showed that black and Latino males between the ages of 14 and 24 accounted for 41.6 percent of stops in 2011, though they make up only 4.7 percent of the city's population.

Bratton is an unapologetic supporter of 'stop-and-frisk' policies.

"I'm sorry, but any police department in America that tries to function without some form of 'stop-and-frisk,' or whatever terminology they use, is doomed to failure. It's that simple," Bratton told San Francisco CBS affiliate KPIX earlier this month.

Bratton told CBS 5 he also has a consulting contract in Detroit and a proposal to consult police in Baltimore, which recently hired former Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts to lead the force.

Junior Seau’s family sues NFL over brain injuries/Circus Animal Treatment

TheGrio

The family of Junior Seau has sued the NFL, claiming the former linebacker’s suicide was the result of brain disease caused by violent hits he sustained while playing football.

The wrongful death lawsuit, filed Wednesday in California Superior Court in San Diego, blames the NFL for its “acts or omissions” that hid the dangers of repetitive blows to the head. It says Seau developed chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) from those hits, and accuses the NFL of deliberately ignoring and concealing evidence of the risks associated with traumatic brain injuries.

Seau died at age 43 of a self-inflicted gunshot in May. He was diagnosed with CTE, based on posthumous tests, earlier this month.

An Associated Press review in November found that more than 3,800 players have sued the NFL over head injuries in at least 175 cases as the concussion issue has gained attention in recent years. More than 100 of the concussion lawsuits have been brought together before U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody in Philadelphia.

“Our attorneys will review it and respond to the claims appropriately through the court,” the NFL said in a statement Wednesday.

Helmet manufacturer Riddell Inc., also is being sued by the Seaus, who say Riddell was “negligent in their design, testing, assembly, manufacture, marketing, and engineering of the helmets” used by NFL players. The suit says the helmets were unreasonably dangerous and unsafe.

Seau was one of the best linebackers during his 20 seasons in the NFL. He retired in 2009.

“We were saddened to learn that Junior, a loving father and teammate, suffered from CTE,” the family said in a statement released to the AP. “While Junior always expected to have aches and pains from his playing days, none of us ever fathomed that he would suffer a debilitating brain disease that would cause him to leave us too soon.

“We know this lawsuit will not bring back Junior. But it will send a message that the NFL needs to care for its former players, acknowledge its decades of deception on the issue of head injuries and player safety, and make the game safer for future generations.”

Plaintiffs are listed as Gina Seau, Junior’s ex-wife; Junior’s children Tyler, Sydney, Jake and Hunter, and Bette Hoffman, trustee of Seau’s estate.

The lawsuit accuses the league of glorifying the violence in pro football, and creating the impression that delivering big hits “is a badge of courage which does not seriously threaten one’s health.”

It singles out NFL Films and some of its videos for promoting the brutality of the game.

“In 1993′s ‘NFL Rocks,’ Junior Seau offered his opinion on the measure of a punishing hit: ‘If I can feel some dizziness, I know that guy is feeling double (that),” the suit says.

The NFL consistently has denied allegations similar to those in the lawsuit.

“The NFL, both directly and in partnership with the NIH, Centers for Disease Control and other leading organizations, is committed to supporting a wide range of independent medical and scientific research that will both address CTE and promote the long-term health and safety of athletes at all levels,” the league told the AP after it was revealed Seau had CTE.

The lawsuit claims money was behind the NFL’s actions.

“The NFL knew or suspected that any rule changes that sought to recognize that link (to brain disease) and the health risk to NFL players would impose an economic cost that would significantly and adversely change the profit margins enjoyed by the NFL and its teams,” the Seaus said in the suit.

The National Institutes of Health, based in Bethesda, Md., studied three unidentified brains, one of which was Seau’s, and said the findings on Seau were similar to autopsies of people “with exposure to repetitive head injuries.”

“It was important to us to get to the bottom of this, the truth,” Gina Seau told the AP then. “And now that it has been conclusively determined from every expert that he had obviously had CTE, we just hope it is taken more seriously. You can’t deny it exists, and it is hard to deny there is a link between head trauma and CTE. There’s such strong evidence correlating head trauma and collisions and CTE.”

In the final years of his life, Seau went through wild behavior swings, according to Gina and to 23-year-old son, Tyler. There also were signs of irrationality, forgetfulness, insomnia and depression.

“He emotionally detached himself and would kind of ‘go away’ for a little bit,” Tyler Seau said. “And then the depression and things like that. It started to progressively get worse.”

Poll: Cory Booker favored over Lautenberg for Senate in 2014

The Grio

A recent poll from Quinnipiac University shows Newark mayor Cory Booker is preferred over incumbent N. J. senator Frank Lautenberg for U.S. Senate in 2014 by more than half of New Jersey Democrats.

Released on Wednesday, the poll shows Booker with a substantial lead over Lautenberg of 51 – 30 percent.

After making a final decision to run for the Senate, and not take on governor Christie in 2013, Booker has gotten some push-back from Lautenberg.

The current 89-year-old N.J. senator has not officially stepped down, and made it clear he doesn’t appreciate Booker jockeying for his seat.

In a recent interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Lautenberg likened Booker to a disrespectful child who needs a spanking.

This most recent poll is the second poll this month, following one from Fairleigh Dickinson University, to report Booker as the favorite for the 2014 race.

The Quinnipiac poll also reports that 71 percent of Democrats say Lautenberg’s age makes work too difficult.  If he chooses to run again, Lautenberg will be campaigning at the age of 90.

As Talking Points Memo reports, while Lautenberg did receive a 50 percent approval rating in this poll.

Still, Booker received a higher likability score among every group measured in the poll.

Pet Negro Marco Rubio Places Limits On Immigration Reform When Speaking To Conservatives

ThinkProgress

GOP Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) agrees that Congress needs to pass immigration reform and has given numerous media interviews outlining his proposal to offer legal status to immigrants here illegally. “We just have to get this thing done for once and for all,” Rubio told the New York Times.

The potential 2016 presidential candidate has been meeting with conservative lawmakers to build support for his proposal. But in selling the plan to right-wing voters, Rubio places strict pre-conditions to providing legal status to undocumented immigrants and significantly downplays the component. On Wednesday, for instance, Rubio reiterated to conservative radio host and reform opponent Mark Levin that Congress must adopt stronger immigration enforcement — including border security — before offering work permits to undocumented immigrants:

LEVIN: I want to make it clear. You want operational security of the border, and you want enforcement in the workplace of existing law.

RUBIO: Let me tell you the problem with that. In the past, people say that, but then what happens is they go ahead and do the process of legalization, but they don’t do the security. One of the things is…the security component is a trigger. In essence, none of that other stuff with regard to getting in line and applying, none of that happens until we’ve been able to certify that indeed the workplace security thing is place, the visa tracking is in place, and there’s some level of significant operational control at the border.

While the Obama administration also has offered stronger checks to verify a worker’s citizenship or legal status, Rubio’s suggestion that the border needs to be more secure before immigration reform can be implemented is ridiculous. The U.S. spent $18 billion on immigration enforcement in the 2012 fiscal year, which is more than every other federal law enforcement agency combined, according to a report from the Migration Policy Institute. A record number of people continue to be deported under Obama, and net undocumented migration is at or below zero.

Instead of wanting to focus more money and resources on the border, it is time for Rubio and Congress to consider a permanent fix to the nation’s immigration system, including a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living here.