This is not about the politics of populism. It's about the politics of the jackboot. It's not about an opposition that has every right to free expression. It's about an angry minority engaging in intimidation backed by the threat of violence.

There is a philosophical issue here that gets buried under the fear that so many politicians and media-types have of seeming to be out of touch with the so-called American heartland.

The simple fact is that an armed citizenry is not the basis for our freedoms. Our freedoms rest on a moral consensus, enshrined in law, that in a democratic republic we work out our differences through reasoned, and sometimes raucous, argument. Free elections and open debate are not rooted in violence or the threat of violence. They are precisely the alternative to violence, and guns have no place in them.

On the contrary, violence and the threat of violence have always been used by those who wanted to bypass democratic procedures and the rule of law. Lynching was the act of those who refused to let the legal system do its work. Guns were used on election days in the Deep South during and after Reconstruction to intimidate black voters and take control of state governments.

Yes, I have raised the racial issue, and it is profoundly troubling that firearms should begin to appear with some frequency at a president's public events only now, when the president is black. Race is not the only thing at stake here, and I have no knowledge of the personal motivations of those carrying the weapons. But our country has a tortured history on these questions, and we need to be honest about it. Those with the guns should know what memories they are stirring.

And will someone please tell the armed demonstrators how foolish and lawless they make our country look in the eyes of so much of the world? Are we not the country that urges other nations to see the merits of the ballot over the bullet?

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From The Progressive If I were Barack Obama, I wouldn’t be doing many public events.

And if I were Michelle, I’d be demanding that he stay home.

Why?

Because the crazies are out in force.

When the rightwing nuts start carrying signs with Obama as Hitler and the Antichrist, when they start bringing loaded guns to his events, when they start saying things like “Euthanize Obama,” the climate is getting just too ugly.

“Since Mr. Obama took office, the rate of threats against the President has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service,” reports the Telegraph of London.

Obama is facing more than 30 death threats a day, the paper said. And the Secret Service doesn’t have the resources to handle them all.

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Beating caught on dashcam under investigation
MINNEAPOLIS (NBC) and [HERE] and [HERE] and [SEE U-TUBE] - It was a traffic stop like many others. Derryl Jenkins, 42, was pulled over in February as he drove through north Minneapolis, stopped for speeding as he allegedly went 15 miles over the limit.

The stop was recorded on a seven minute tape from the squad car of Officer Richard Walker.

Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan said he reviewed the arrest video and said Officer Walker's actions all appear to be very appropriate.

In a statement released Monday, Chief Dolan also said some of the actions of responding officers did give him concern and because of that he is asking for an outside review by the FBI.

"Additionally, the incident has been referred to my Internal Affairs and Training Units for a review of our arrest procedures in dealing with suspects resisting arrest," Dolan said.

Derryl Jenkins said Officer Walker refused to explain why he was stopped that night, and he asked for a police supervisor. When Walker said one wasn't available, Jenkins said he got out of the car to get his drivers license from his back pocket.

That's when he said Walker tried to tackle him. Backup arrived, and six officers helped Walker as Jenkins was punched, kicked and stunned three times with a Taser.

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[From ThinkProgress] The OhioDaily blog reports on a “rogue” dispatcher from the North Canton Police who recently sent out a racist e-mail from her work account. Dispatcher Anita Malachowski forwarded this message:

“New “Air Force One” Tail Number and yes, please forgive me, I’m really sorry, I really, really tried not to laugh, but …………………..!”

Attached to the e-mail was an Photoshopped image of Air Force one with NI66ER written on the plane’s tail. As OhioDaily writes, “This type of message is offensive coming from anyone, but coming from someone in the position of dispatching police and prioritizing calls, it’s downright horrifying. The North Canton police have a hard enough job as it is without rogue dispatchers trying to incite a race riot or stirring tensions during the hot months of summer.”

More than a month after 15 year old Alonzo O'Kelley was shot by Housing Authority Police the officer who fired the fatal shot is back on the job. Leaders in a community already distrustful of police, say his reinstatement only makes matters worse.

Alonzo O'Kelley's Mother Gloria Duncan says, "I just feel like my baby been murdered for no reason. They still haven't shown me where he did something wrong. All that I know is that my baby's gone."

Nearly six weeks after she lost her youngest son in a police shooting Duncan is a woman in crisis, "I just want some closure to what happened to my son."

Police say on July 1st 15 year old O'Kelley shot back at a passing car outside East Lake Courts.

Housing Authority Officer Lt. Erik Reeves responded to the shots fired and ordered O'Kelley to drop his gun.

Police say instead O'Kelley pointed his gun at the officer.

Autopsy reports show O'Kelley died of a single gun shot to the back shoulder. Now Lt. Reeves, the officer who fired that fatal shot, is back on the job...

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A man whom prosecutors say was tortured while handcuffed by an Orange County sheriff's deputy wants more than $5 million in damages, alleging that the deputy repeatedly used a Taser on him without provocation. Criminal charges were dropped in April against Deputy Christopher Hibbs, 45, of Corona, over the treatment of Ignacio Gomez Lares of Santa Ana after a jury deadlocked on whether Hibbs used excessive force in the Sept. 13, 2007, incident. Prosecutors blamed the mistrial on a "code of silence" among deputies, suggesting other deputies protected Hibbs in their testimony.

Hibbs, though, remains on paid administrative leave pending an internal Sheriff's Department probe.
In a federal lawsuit filed Friday, Lares claims that Hibbs stunned him as "corporal punishment/torture" for running away from police officers.

Prosecutors have said the incident began when Hibbs and a deputy trainee spotted Ignacio Gomez Lares, wearing a trench coat and holding a beer bottle, as he walked down Ball Road toward Brookhurst Street, near the border of Stanton and Anaheim, around 2 a.m. Hibbs pulled over the patrol car, and got out and asked to search Lares, prosecutors have said. Lares said no, according to prosecutors, and got into a physical fight with the deputy. Hibbs was knocked to the ground, and Lares ran away.

Lares' lawsuit, filed by Newport Beach attorney Jerry Steering, says two deputies began searching Lares without good cause before Lares ran away. Hibbs caught up to Lares, and then stunned him in the neck with an "X-26" Taser for about 35 seconds, the lawsuit says. Lares claims he was not resisting Hibbs.

"While tasing Lares … defendant Hibbs was screaming at Lares to 'stop resisting'; not because Lares was 'resisting,' but because Hibbs was torturing Lares in public, and wanted to make sure that anyone seeing his torturing of Lares would be under the impression that there was some sort of legitimate reason" for the use of the stun gun, according to the lawsuit.

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The Associated Press and [HERE] and [HERE]

The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a new hearing for death row inmate Troy Davis, giving the condemned killer a chance to present evidence his lawyers say could clear him in the murder of an off-duty police officer almost 20 years ago.

The court told a federal judge to hold a hearing to decide whether evidence "that could not have been obtained at the time of trial" could establish Davis' innocence. His case has become a rallying cry for death penalty opponents.

Davis' attorneys contend he deserves a new trial because new evidence proves he was mistakenly identified as the killer. They say several trial witnesses have recanted their testimony, and others who did not testify during the trial have said another man confessed to the killing.

"This is exactly what we asked for," said Jason Ewart, Davis' attorney. "It's been years since these witnesses have come forward, and they've never had their day in court. And now they will."

Davis was convicted 18 years ago for the 1989 slaying of Savannah, Ga., police officer Mark MacPhail, who was shot twice while working off-duty as a security guard at a bus station. He was gunned down after rushing to the aid of a homeless man who had been attacked.

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During August's summer daze, right-wing mini-mobs (egged on by corporate interests) have run wild at town hall meetings, propagating all kinds of smears and misinformation in an effort to derail an important Democratic campaign. Yet the mini-mob members have been treated as deeply important newsmakers by the press during a slow summer news month.

Sound familiar? Recall August 2004, when the right-wing Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (egged on by corporate interests) stole a month's worth of campaign headlines by propagating all kinds of smears and misinformation in an attempt to derail an important Democratic campaign. Yet they were treated as deeply important newsmakers by the press during a slow summer news month.

Honestly, the only thing missing this time around is a crackpot, best-selling book. In 2004, the Swifties used the release of Unfit for Command to launch their media-based smear campaign. This summer, it could have been something like ObamaScare: How Liberal Health Care Will Destroy America. (The Swifties' right-wing publisher must be kicking itself over the missed marketing opportunity.)

But what has been perfectly consistent is the way the press has, again, fallen for a right-wing smear campaign and dressed it up as news. Just as with the Swifties, the press has turned over its summer coverage to a band of agitators spreading misinformation. Five summers ago, the Swift Boat Vets helped hijack the election. They lied about documents, they lied about eyewitness, and they lied about their partisan affiliations and connections. For several crucial weeks during the campaign, journalists turned away from the pile-up of Swift Boat falsehoods and contradictions, rarely daring to call the Swift Boat attack out for what it really was -- a hoax. Too spooked by the GOP Noise Machine and its charge of liberal media bias, the press propped up the Vets as serious men and showered them with attention.

This year, the press has handed over untold hours of free airtime to mini-mob members whose sole purpose seems to be to spread as much fear as possible.

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So much for post-racial America.

But how did things turn around so fast? They didn’t. They may never have turned in the first place.

Largely overlooked in the understandably good feelings generated by the election of our first black president was the simple fact that white America did not vote for him.

Most white Americans voted for John McCain. In fact, Barack Obama lost the white vote in 2008 by a landslide. While Obama won the overall vote by 53 percent to 46 percent, he lost among white voters by 55 percent to 43 percent.

Whenever I give speeches and mention that no Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson has won the white vote, I always see some head shaking in the audience, as if that could not possibly be true.

But it is. Three Democrats have become president since Lyndon Johnson — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Obama — but none of them has won a majority of white votes.

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Obama - "The Cambridge police acted stupidly when there was already proof" Gates was in his own home," the president said. "What we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latino being stopped by policy disproportionately." [MORE]

The incident began when a neighbor phoned 911 to report two black men trying to break open the front door of the house Gates rents from Harvard, according to a police report. The woman reported seeing "two black males with backpacks on the porch," one of whom was "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry," the report said. A statement issued by Ogletree said Gates was returning from a trip to China and couldn't get into his house because the door was jammed. He forced the door open with his driver's help and was on the phone when police arrived. An officer asked for his identification, which Gates provided, according to Ogletree's statement. The officer ignored requests by Gates for his name and badge number, the statement said.

The police report said Gates was arrested after he yelled at an officer, accused him of racial bias and refused to calm down after the officer asked that Gates show him identification to prove he lived in the home.

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With Congress and the White House squabbling over health care reform, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said on Tuesday he’s not really sure which insurance company covers him.

Asked about his health care coverage at the RNC, Steele told CNN, “BlueCross BlueShield, I believe. Or maybe not. I think it’s BlueCross BlueShield.”

In fact, two sources say it’s Cigna that provides the RNC health coverage.

“I haven’t had to use the plan too much, thank goodness – although there are days on this job,” Steele said.

An RNC spokeswoman declined to comment.

Steele said in the CNN interview he’s “happy” with the coverage, “just like 85 percent of the American people.”

Steele has stepped up his attacks recently on the Obama administration’s drive to overhaul health care.

On Monday, he blasted the president during a speech at the National Press Club for being part of a health care “cabal” that Steele said was intent on conducting a health care “experiment.”

“President Barack Obama is a good man who cares deeply about this country, but he is determined — with an unprecedented single-mindedness — to transform it into something none of us would recognize,” Steele said. “The Barack Obama experiment with America is a risk our country cannot afford.”

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Like one out of five prisoners in California, and nearly 10 percent of all prisoners nationally in 2008, Ms. Thompson is serving a life sentence. She will be eligible for parole by 2020.

More prisoners today are serving life terms than ever before — 140,610 out of 2.3 million inmates being held in jails and prisons across the country — under tough mandatory minimum-sentencing laws and the declining use of parole for eligible convicts, according to a report released Wednesday by The Sentencing Project, a group that calls for the elimination of life sentences without parole. The report tracks the increase in life sentences from 1984, when the number of inmates serving life terms was 34,000.

Two-thirds of prisoners serving life sentences are Latino or black, the report found. In New York State, for example, 16.3 percent of prisoners serving life terms are white.

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On July 17, the California legislature quietly approved a landmark bill to apologize to the state's Chinese-American community for racist laws enacted as far back as the mid–19th century Gold Rush, which attracted about 25,000 Chinese from 1849 to 1852. The laws, some of which were not repealed until the 1940s, barred Chinese from owning land or property, marrying whites, working in the public sector and testifying against whites in court. The new bill also recognizes the contributions Chinese immigrants have made to the state, particularly their work on the Transcontinental Railroad.

The apology is the latest in a wave of official acts of remorse around the globe. In 2006, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a similar apology, expressing regret to Chinese Canadians for unequal taxes imposed on them in the late 19th century. Last February, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized to his country's Aborigines for racist laws of the past, including the forced separation of children from their parents. Five months later, the U.S. Congress formally apologized to black Americans for slavery and the later Jim Crow laws, which were not repealed until the 1960s. And most notably, in 1988 the U.S. government decided to pay $20,000 to each of the surviving 120,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned in camps during World War II.

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Convicted murderer Marvallous Keene on Tuesday became the 1000th person to be executed by lethal injection in the US since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1976 case of Gregg v. Georgia [opinion text]. In 1993, Keene was found guilty of five counts of murder based on his participation in a series of six killings committed over three days the previous December. The Ohio Adult Parole Authority unanimously recommended against clemency [clemency report, PDF] late last month and Ohio Governor Ted Strickland denied Keene clemency [WHIOTV report] last week. Keene refused to speak with the parole board and instructed his appointed public defenders not to present any arguments on his behalf.

Last month, Ohio first used its new lethal injection method, called "set-to-die." The procedure requires officials to shake and call out to the prisoner after a sedative has been administered, and a second dose can then be given, if necessary. A de facto national moratorium on the death penalty ended last year when the US Supreme Court ruled in Baze v. Rees that the three-drug lethal injection sequence used in most states does not violate the Constitution.

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Federal immigration agents conducting home raids have committed numerous constitutional violations, according a report released Wednesday by the Immigration Justice Clinic [academic website] at the Cardozo School of Law. The report found that, since 2006, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [official website] agents routinely entered private homes in the middle of the night without warrants and seized residents without a legal basis in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The report also found that Latinos were disproportionately likely to be arrested during home raids, suggesting a pattern of racial profiling. Clinic director and co-author of the report Peter Markowitz said:

This report reveals an alarming pattern of federal immigration officials breaking into people's homes and bedrooms in the pre-dawn hours in flagrant violation of the Constitution. The government's heavy handed tactics are a monumental waste of public resources resulting primarily in the arrest of hard working immigrants who pose no danger at all to society.

The report concludes with several policy recommendations, including limiting home raid operations, obtaining warrants before conducting home raids, and improving training and supervision of home raid teams. [MORE]

Obama, America's first black president, took his family for a poignant tour of Cape Coast Castle, a seaside fortress used by slave traders starting in the 17th century and which is now a monument to millions of Africans cast into slavery.

"As painful as it is, I think that it helps to teach all of us that we have to do what we can to fight against the kinds of evils that sadly still exist in our world, not just on this continent but in every corner of the globe," Obama said somberly at end of his visit to the compound.

He likened his tour of the slave castle to his visit last month to the site of the former Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald in Germany, saying "it reminds us of the capacity of human beings to commit great evil."

But Obama also suggested that from an African American perspective, seeing Cape Coast was bittersweet.

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"We need to bring new language to this debate," Republican message man Alex Castellanos wrote in a memo to fellow GOP strategists this month. "If we paint the house the same color, no one will notice anything has changed: We will still be the same, outdated Republicans who have no new ideas and oppose everything."

Castellanos, a consultant to the Republican National Committee, offered poll-tested language that the party could use to kill President Obama's health-care legislation in Congress. "If we slow this sausage-making process down, we can defeat it," he reasoned.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele must have liked what he read. When he gave a speech at the National Press Club on Monday, he all but read aloud from Castellanos's memo.

"Slow down, Mr. President: We can't afford to get health care wrong," said the memo.

"Slow down, Mr. President: We can't afford to get health care wrong," said the chairman.

Memo: "The old, top-down Washington-centered system the Democrats propose will empower Washington to restrict the cures and treatments your doctor can prescribe for you."

Steele: "The old top-down Washington-centered system the Democrats propose is designed to grow Washington's power to restrict the cures and treatments your doctor can prescribe for you."

Memo: "President Obama is experimenting with America, too much, too soon, and too fast."

Steele: "The Barack Obama experiment with America is a risk our country can't afford -- it's too much, too fast, too soon."

In the back of the room sat the ventriloquist, admiring his work. Castellanos used the word "experiment" six times to criticize Obama's plan; Steele, the eager pupil, used it 30. Only one thing would have made the performance more impressive: if Castellanos had been able to drink a glass of water while Steele was talking.

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Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday on charges of conspiring to get financial benefits through his authority to appoint a U.S. senator to fill the vacancy left by Barack Obama's election as president. According to a federal criminal complaint, Blagojevich also was charged with illegally threatening to withhold state assistance to Tribune Co., the owner of the Chicago Tribune, in the sale of Wrigley Field. In return for state assistance, Blagojevich allegedly wanted members of the paper's editorial board who had been critical of him fired.

A 76-page FBI affidavit said the 51-year-old Democratic governor was intercepted on court-authorized wiretaps over the last month conspiring to sell or trade the vacant Senate seat for personal benefits for himself and his wife, Patti. The affidavit said Blagojevich discussed getting a substantial salary for himself at a nonprofit foundation or an organization affiliated with labor unions.

It said that Blagojevich also talked about getting his wife placed on corporate boards where she might get $150,000 a year in director's fees. He also allegedly discussed getting campaign funds for himself or possibly a post in the president's cabinet or an ambassadorship once he left the governor's office. "I want to make money," the affidavit quotes him as saying in one conversation. U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a statement that "the breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering."

"They allege that Blagojevich put a for sale sign on the naming of a United States senator," Fitzgerald said."
Among those being considered for the post include U.S. Reps. Danny Davis and Jesse Jackson Jr. Blagojevich also was charged with using his authority as governor in an attempt to squeeze out campaign contributions.

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US President-elect Barack Obama officially announced [transition materials and transcript] on Monday that he is nominating former Department of Justice (DOJ) official Eric Holder as the next US attorney general. If confirmed by the Senate, Holder will be the first African American to lead the DOJ. Holder served as Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton Administration and led Obam's VP selection team during the election.

Age: 57; born Jan. 21, 1951, in New York City.

Education: Bachelor's degree in American history, Columbia College, 1973; law degree, Columbia Law School, 1976.

Experience: Senior legal adviser, Obama campaign, 2007-08. Litigation partner at Covington & Burling, 2001-present. Deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, appointed by President Clinton, 1997-2001. U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, appointed by Clinton, 1993-97. Associate judge for the Washington, D.C., Superior Court, appointed by President Reagan, 1988-93. Prosecutor in the Justice Department's public integrity section, 1976-88.

Family: Wife, Sharon Malone, an obstetrician. Three children.

Quote: "It is incumbent upon those of us who lead the department to ensure not only that the nation is safe but also that our laws and traditions are respected," Holder said Monday.

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Nationally, an estimated 56,300 people are infected each year by the virus that causes AIDS. In Indiana, 8,851 people are living with HIV/AIDS, 15 percent of whom live in Northwest Indiana. In Lake County, half of the people living with HIV/AIDS are in Gary. Overall, the AIDS epidemic is ravaging the black community at a disproportionate rate, with African-American men and woman accounting for almost half of the new cases reported across the country and in Indiana.

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