From [HERE] and [HERE] A Black man serving a life sentence for murder was released Monday after prosecutors conceded that their star witness had perjured himself.

During 19 years behind bars, John Edward Smith, a 37-year-old former gang member, adamantly maintained his innocence in the drive-by shooting, insisting that he was miles away at his grandmother's house at the time of the crime. [MORE] 

His claims went unheard until three years ago, when a fledgling wrongful convictions group, Innocence Matters, took his case and identified problems with the testimony of the lone witness to identify him as the killer. The man subsequently recanted and at a brief and raucous hearing Monday afternoon, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge vacated his conviction. The judge's ruling came after the district attorney's office completed its own yearlong investigation and determined that the witness, a high school student injured in the shooting, had lied on the stand.

That teenager, Landu Mvuemba, told Smith's lawyers that LAPD detectives had pressured him into the identification and that he had tried on a number of occasions over the years to alert authorities about his false statements.

As we know the White Party (GOP), who represent the vanishing white majority, has been engaging in voter suppression tactics with voter ID and voter purges in various states to prevent Blacks & Latinos from voting. Advocates have responded to the disenfranchisement strategy and alerted us all to the issue.But there has been no parallel campaign to guarantee those votes are properly counted once cast. Despite serious problems with electronic tabulations in the presidential elections of both 2000 and 2004, electronic voting machines have spread further throughout the country. In Ohio, former Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, an uncle tom, (in photo) awarded a no-bid state contract to GovTech -- a well-connected Republican-owned company which no longer exists -- to help count Ohio's vote. GovTech contracted with two equally partisan Republican companies: Smartech for servers and Triad for IT support (Push and Pray Voting).

Electronic voting machines with ties to Republican-connected companies have proliferated throughout Ohio. Federal money from the Help America Vote Act has helped move electronic voting machines into other key swing states in substantial numbers that are not easy to track.

The machines can quickly tabulate a winner. But their dark side is simple: there is no way to monitor or double-check the final tally. These partisan Republican vote-counting companies have written contracts to avoid transparency and open records laws.

From [HERE] Republican election officials have been unable to find even scant evidence of voter fraud. In voter purges in Colorado and Florida, targeting mostly Democrat and independent registered voters, officials uncovered that less than one-tenth of 1 percent of voters are potentially unqualified to vote. These findings drastically downgrade Republican fears of voter fraud from the tens of thousands of noncitizens officials originally estimated. The Associated Press reports:

Last year, [Colorado Secretary of State Scott] Gessler estimated that 11,805 noncitizens were on the rolls. But the number kept getting smaller.

After his office sent letters to 3,903 registered voters questioning their status, the number of noncitizens now stands at 141, based on checks using a federal immigration database. Of those 141, Gessler said 35 have voted in the past. The 141 are .004 percent of the state’s nearly 3.5 million voters. Even those numbers could be fewer.

Officials in Florida found 207 noncitizens on its voter list, .001 percent of the state’s voters, but they did not necessarily commit fraud. Florida’s purge discovered just one Canadian who illegally voted. In North Carolina, hundreds of voters have received letters requesting proof they were citizens, but an elections board member acknowledged there were just 12 instances of noncitizen voting. Iowa has filed charges against three noncitizen voters.

Unfortunately, voter supression tactics could disenfranchise millions of low-income and minority voters, including 10 million Hispanics and Blacks (25% of African Americans have no photo ID).

From [HERE] Closing arguments Monday over South Carolina’s voter-identification law will cap an extraordinary case that has seen charges of racism directed at the law’s author and federal judges’ open frustration over state officials’ changing stances on implementing it.

Opponents of the embattled law, which U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. blocked last year under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, will challenge the credibility of its chief author, state Rep. Alan D. Clemmons (R) of Myrtle Beach.

Attorneys for the voter-ID law’s foes, including civil rights groups, will say Clemmons took false credit for its “reasonable impediment” clause, which allows voters to cast ballots if they have “reasonable” reasons for not having photo identification. Attorneys also will say Clemmons misrepresented his relationship with a man who sent him an e-mail about the law that the lawmaker acknowledged under oath last month was racist.

"This man does not have a soul. If you opened up, you know, his chest, there's probably a gold ticking watch in there and not even a heart. This is not a person. This is just a robot who will do whatever it takes, whatever he's told to do, to make it to the White House." He's just thirsty. He just wants to get in so bad, he can taste it. He just wants to get in the White House that he'll ride any boat that's going in that direction, right? So if Rush wants to throw his weight behind Romney, Romney s like, cool with me! If Sununu wants to come out babbling at the mouth about nonsense, cool with me. Anybody who will get me closer to the White House, Romney will go that way. If I have to turn my back on policies and positions that I have taken my entire life, I will do that, because I want to make it to the White House. Everything that Mitt Romney does is in opposition to everything that Mitt Romney has ever believed. And he will do that." [MORE] Apparently trying to hide his color inadequacy, the non-melaninated White Party puppetician even dyed his face brown for his Univision interview on Thursday. 

Audience also in Brownface! Mittens Bussed in/Outsourced Supporters for Univision Forum Mr. Romney packed the audience for a Univision forum earlier this week, BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins reports, busing in local supporters “after exhausting the few conservative groups on campus.” The campaign threatened to “reschedule” the event if organizers did not allow the “rowdy activists from around southern Florida in order to fill the extra seats at their town hall.” [MORE]  Romney also refused to come out on stage after the hosts introduced him by noting that he “had agreed to give the network 35 minutes, and that Obama had agreed to a full hour the next night.” Univision re-taped the introduction after Romney allegedly “threw a tantrum.”

Anti-Obama Movie Mailed To 1 Million Ohioians

An anti-Obama movie claiming — without evidence — that President Barack Obama's real father is an obscure African-American communist has been mailed to 1.5 million voters across the country, its creator told BuzzFeed Friday. The movie, Dreams From My Real Father,  claims that the Chicago activist Frank Marshall Davis is actually President Obama's father. 

The film's director and producer, Joel Gilbert, said that the film was sent out to more one million voters in Ohio; 200,000 after a mid-summer conference, and a million after that. He said that 50,000 copies had been sent to voters in Nevada and 100,000 to voters in New Hampshire.

Gilbert declined to say how much his company, Highway 61 Entertainment, is spending to distribute the film for free, but said that the film was making a profit through online orders. He also wouldn't say how the company is funded and how they come up with the money to distribute so many free disks. [MORE] 

Pew: Obama has 8 Point Lead with Likely Voters

At this stage in the campaign, Barack Obama is in a strong position compared with past victorious presidential candidates. With an eight-point lead over Mitt Romney among likely voters, Obama holds a bigger September lead than the last three candidates who went on to win in November, including Obama four years ago. In elections since 1988, only Bill Clinton, in 1992 and 1996, entered the fall with a larger advantage. [MORE]  

Mittens Fan Gets Out N**** Lover Message Vandals defaced a political sign using racial slurs and other derogatory remarks outside a home in the 1400 block of Somerset Drive in McKinney. On one side, they used a racial slur and made other derogatory comments. On the other side, they touted the Republican ticket as Christian, white and Anti-gay. [MORE] 

 White Man who hung 'Obama chair' from tree says it's not racist/ New GOP Sign Unveiled. The white man who hung a chair symbolizing President Barack Obama from a tree on his front yard has taken it down after causing some controversy. But he insists his actions had nothing to do with racism. Bud Johnson does not deny the chair was meant to symbolize the president hanging from a tree. [MORE]  Meanwhile the White Party unveiled its new sign, logo and complete message in its efforts to represent the vanishing majority (white people)  - soon to be the 47% for real (in photo). Put one in your yard, window or hang it from a tree. 

From [HERE] A Seattle couple who collected welfare while living in a $1.2 million waterfront home are headed to prison. A federal judge sentenced chiropractor David Silverstein and his longtime partner, Lyudmila Shimonova, to 18 months in prison Friday. Silverstein also must pay a criminal fine of $30,000, even though he's already paid $334,000 in restitution and civil penalties. Shimonova was ordered to pay $261,000 in restitution.

Prosecutors say Silverstein pretended he was Shimonova's landlord at a home on Lake Washington that she occupied with her two children. In reality, Silverstein was living there too. Prosecutors say the couple received more than $1,200 each month in federal housing assistance. They also say Shimonova received more than $100,000 in state and Social Security benefits while owning a $12,500 platinum and diamond ring and $17,000 diamond earrings

From [HERE] A French satirical magazine called Charlie Hebdo has published cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad - a decision that could anger Muslims already furious about a recent anti-Islam video trailer. The weekly magazine printed the images or caricatures on Wednesday. Muslims consider any representation of Prophet Muhammad offensive.

Stephane Charbonnier, the magazine's editor, says the decision was well within the law, and that that is what really matters. "We're in a country of the rule of law. We respect French law. Our only limit is French law. It's that which we have to obey. We haven't infringed French law. We have the right to use our freedom as we understand it," he said.

Despite concerns over a possible backlash, Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French prime minister, has defended France's tradition of free speech. "If people's convictions have really been offended that laws have been breached, we are in a lawful state, laws must be totally respected, then they can go to the court. That has already happened with this weekly. Then there is the issue of respect, whether the directors of this weekly decide to it or not," he said.

From [HERE] A Missouri death row inmate testified Wednesday that he was beaten so badly during an interrogation by detectives that he admitted to a role in a horrific crime.

But when an assistant attorney general repeatedly asked Reginald Clemons about details of the 1991 rape and murder of two sisters, Clemons time and again declined to answer, citing his constitutional right against self-incrimination. A specially-appointed judge is hearing the case in St. Louis, then will issue a report to the Missouri Supreme Court. Clemons' attorneys are seeking to get his death sentence commuted and also asking for a new trial The civil hearing is expected to wrap up this week, but the Supreme Court likely won't make a decision for several months. The case has drawn attention from death penalty opponents from around the world.

Clemons, now 41, was one of four men convicted in the killings of 20-year-old Julie Kerry and 19-year-old Robin Kerry. Tin April 1991, the sisters and their cousin, Thomas Cummins, were pushed off an abandoned bridge into the Mississippi River in St. Louis. Cummins survived.

From [HERE] A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit previously blocked a Dallas suburb’s ordinance prohibiting undocumented immigrants from renting housing, but the full court met today to reconsider that decision:

Farmers Branch was sued four years ago after it passed an ordinance allowing the city building inspector to evict any illegal immigrant renters. Its case will now go before the full membership of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with 10 of its judges appointed by Republican presidents and just five by Democrats. . . .

So far, no court has allowed Farmers Branch to enforce any form of the ordinance. But the appeals court’s rare move to hear the case a second time, months after a different three-judge panel ruled against the city, could be a sign that the town might finally get a victory.

The current ordinance, which replaced an earlier 2006 version, would require all renters to obtain a $5 city license and fill out an application that asks about their legal status. Then, the city’s building inspector would have to check whether any immigrant applying for a license was in the United States legally. Illegal immigrants would be denied a permit, and landlords who knowingly allow illegal immigrants to stay as tenants could be fined or have their renters’ license barred.

According to Gallup President Obama (48%) and Mitt Romney (46%) remain closely matched in key 2012 election swing states. Twenty-two percent of voters in those states are undecided or say they could change their presidential preference. Video from [HERE] If people are actually allowed to vote the results will be counted electronically, unobserved by the public and done in secrecy. 

From [HERE] Fittingly, for a prosecutor who was very sluggish in producing evidence to defense lawyers in the original Reginald Clemons trial, Nels Moss was very slow to appear on the witness stand yesterday. Josh Levine, lead attorney for Clemons in the evidentiary hearing being conducted by the Special Master in the case, called Moss to the stand, but Judge Michael Manners was forced to call a lengthy recess before a sheriff could produce the witness. Moss then remained on the stand most of the afternoon.

At issue were two pieces of evidence in the Clemons case that Moss failed to produce to defense lawyers in his 1993 jury trial in St. Louis: a draft police report that Moss annotated by hand (mostly instructing police to omit information damaging to Moss’ star witness, Thomas Cummins) and a forensic report on the corpse of the only victim retrieved from the river in the 1991 Chain of Rocks Bridge Case.

The draft police report dated May 6, 1991 contains testimony from Cummins and experts who visited the crime scene the night of the apparent murders of Robin Kerry and Julie Kerry on April 4, 1991. Though by May 6 Cummins no longer was considered a suspect, the draft report is full of evidence gathered when Cummins was the only suspect.

Moss repeatedly wrote “omit” on the margins of the police report, apparently ordering the detective sergeant preparing the final report to omit evidence that would be damaging to the person who was by then Cummins’ “star witness,” as Levine noted in court. In fact, the final police report prepared on May 31, 1991 did omit that evidence and made many other changes ordered by Moss.

From [HERE] Randy Newman has released a new satirical song, "I'm Dreaming," that finds the songwriter stepping into the shoes of a narrator who's "dreaming of a white President/ Someone whom we can understand/ Someone who knows where we're coming from." The track is available now as a free download, and Newman is encouraging listeners to donate to the United Negro College Fund.

"Fair" means "white". "Fair" does not mean just. It does not mean justice. It does not mean correct or correctness. It is always incorrect to use the word "fair", the word "just", the word "justice", or the word "correct", as if they all mean the same. To do so may lead many people to belive that "fair" means "justice", and that "fair", "justice", and "white", mean the same thing.  Thus, some people may be lead to belive that "white" people are "fair" people, and that "fair" people are people who practice justice. It is best, therefore, to use the word "fair" to mean "white" - and only to mean the word "white". The word "fair" should never be used to mean justice or correctness. [MORE] From [HERE] The prosecutor who won (is the prosecutor's job to win or to do justice?) convictions against four men in the 1991 double murder on the old Chain of Rocks Bridge had to fend off claims Monday that he bolstered his case by having a police report altered and ignoring signs of police brutality. Lawyers for Reginald Clemons also highlighted crime lab results — which they argue would have raised doubt of his culpability — that never made it into the 1993 trial in which their client was sentenced to death.

Reggie Clemons was sentenced to death in St. Louis as an accomplice to a 1991 murder of two young white women. There was no physical evidence and since allegations have arisen of police coercion, prosecutorial misconduct, and a ‘stacked’ jury in the Clemons case. Despite so many lingering questions, Missouri is still planning to execute Reggie Clemons.

"They were always telling us, 'Ssshhh. English only. English only. I felt embarrassed, ashamed," said Elnora Cayme, who worked at the hospital for more than 27 years. "I was so angry we were being followed by housekeepers and security guards," she said. "I asked the guard why he did that and he said, 'We were told to watch you and report you.'" From [HERE] and [HERE] A group of Filipino nurses who claimed they were mocked for their accents and ordered to speak "English only" won a nearly $1-million settlement against a Central California hospital where bosses and co-workers were allegedly urged to eavesdrop on the immigrant workers.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center sued Delano, California-based Delano Regional Medical Center in 2010 in U.S. District Court. The EEOC said the hospital's English-only language policy was used to harass and discriminate against Filipino employees in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The case involved claims from about 70 current and former Filipino employees who said they were taunted and threatened by non-Filipino employees for speaking Tagalog or other Filipino languages while working at Delano.

From [AP] The FBI is investigating vandalism at a mosque that was spray-painted with obscene graffiti that included a misspelled reference to Iraqis and the phrase, “This is America.” (how could AP also fail to include that "Fuck yall Niggas" was prominently displayed on the side of the bdlg.?)

Lawrence Barry of the FBI office in Richmond said Monday that the agency is helping local authorities investigate. He said the FBI joined the investigation at the request of officials at the Islamic Center of the Shenandoah Valley, one of three Harrisonburg buildings targeted by vandals late last week.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations also had called on the FBI to investigate. The American Muslim advocacy group said there was clear evidence of a bias motive in the mosque incident. “From the vulgar language and the racist language, it was very clear that the mosque was the target,” CAIR executive director Nihad Awad said.

From [HERE] and [HERE] During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don't assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

From [HERE] Money talks, and right now Republican money clearly indicates that Michigan and Pennsylvania are off the table. They've redeployed resources to Wisconsin, where Democrats are playing their own defense. But as Mitt Romney goes looking for new paths to 270 electoral votes, his campaign ever so slowly gives credence to the growing feeling that his chances are dimming.

-- And this was the week the polling dam finally broke -- both on the national and state levels. The overall preponderance of polls showed President Obama with a discernible lead over Romney nationwide and in states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia that are likely to determine the winner of an Electoral College majority.

Most notably, the national polls all showed the president at his target for reelection among white voters; Obama won 43 percent of whites in 2008 but is favored for reelection this year if he can clear roughly 39 percent. CNN/ORC showed Obama at 42 percent among whites, Fox News at 40 and ABC News/Washington Post at 41 percent. And a new poll from the Democratic outfit Democracy Corps showed Obama at 40 percent among whites without college degrees, the voters most resistant to the president in this campaign.

At these levels of support among whites, Obama is the favorite for reelection. For Romney to get back into this race, he needs to hold Obama under 37 percent or 38 percent among white voters.

In photo a miner shows a bullet the police fired at them in Marikana on September 15, 2012. Mining is central to South Africa’s economy – the industry employs some 500,000 people and makes up half of the country’s exports, accounting for around one-fifth of the gross domestic product. From [HERE] South African police fired tear gas at protesting miners who have been on strike since August over demands for higher wages. Talks to end the strike collapsed this week. Earlier in the day, police raided workers’ shacks and seized weapons.

­Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse strikers at the Marikana mine, in response to mounting unrest in the area. Protesters threw stones at the officers and burned car tires. 

That morning, police raided shacks of the striking workers, arresting five people and seizing weapons like spears and machetes. According to police, the workers were arrested on separate charges of dealing drugs. 

Police shot and killed 34 miners during a strike at the mine in August. So far, 45 people have been killed in violence connected to the strike. Lonmin increased its pay concession on Friday, but it was still short of the miners' demands; they rejected the offer. The protest has since spread to the country's gold industry, with 15,000 gold miners on strike since Sunday.