Contradiction King: Eric Holder Testifies on Investigations and the Press

Aint No More Charles Hamilton Houston’s

Once upon a time there were activist warrior scholars who served the needs and protected African Americans against the onslaught of laws designed to subjugate, marginalize and mass incarcerate this population disproportionately to their representation and the occurrence of such crimes. Most of these involved rights proclaimed under the constitution and dealt with receiving an equal education.

As many know, during slavery, a slave was not allowed to learn to read; it was illegal. Whites didn't want black slaves to read and write because they might be encouraged to run away. In addition, People feared that slaves who could read would be more rebellious. At the time of the Civil War, only 1 or 2 percent of slaves were able to read and write meaning that Illiteracy was one of the worst handicaps of being a slave. In most cases, outside of having hands or tongues cut out or being blinded, death was the punishment for a slave learning to read.

To the slave, the ability to read and write meant freedom—if not actual, physical freedom, then intellectual freedom—to maintain relationships amongst family members separated by the slave trade. These men and women took great risks to empower themselves, and in some cases, achieved freedom. However after slavery a dark period emerged and well up into the 20th century, African Americans were still disenfranchised by the legal burden of obtaining an equal education. Charles Hamilton Houston was one of the bright lights of activism that addressed these social ills.

WEB Dubois wrote that “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” I would suspect that he would say that in the 21st century this would continue to be true but add something implicating the impact of the criminal justice system on the worsening of this problem. To put it plainly, it is like comedian Tony Rock stated, “People always say I act like I am afraid of the police, I am afraid of the police."

If there was a time in which our community need the aspiring efforts of a Charles Hamilton Houston it is now. Who was Charles Houston; well he was a lawyer, educator and a warrior. He was the man who devised and led the legal strategy leading to the end of legalized racial segregation in the United States. He also taught and mentored a generation of lawyers, including Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit, Spottswood Robinson, and A. Leon Higginbotham. It was his work and effort that laid the legal groundwork that led to 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that made racial segregation in public primary and secondary schools unconstitutional.

He completed high school at the age of 15 and graduated from as one of six valedictorians from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1915. After serving in World War I as a second lieutenant in field artillery and receiving an honorable discharge from the army, he enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1919 where he earned his Bachelor of Laws in 1922 and a doctorate in 1923. Truth be told, Houston, and not Barack Obama was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review.

He fought to end legalized discrimination and, in particular, the "separate but equal" doctrine accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson. He proceeded step by step and from 1935 to 1940, he successfully argued several cases using this strategy, including Murray v. Maryland, (1936) which resulted in the desegregation of the University of Maryland's Law School and Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada, another case that Houston argued before the Supreme Court, declared that the scholarships Missouri offered to African Americans to attend out-of-state graduate schools did not constitute equal admission. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the admission of a black student to the Law School at the University of Missouri (1938).

Thurgood Marshall took over where Houston left of as NAACP's Special Counsel. In Smith v. Allwright, Marshall successfully challenged "white primaries," which prevented African Americans from voting in several southern states. In Morgan v. Virginia (1946), Marshall won a case in which the Supreme Court struck down a state law that enforced segregation on buses and trains that were interstate carriers. In 1948 he won Shelley v Kraemer, which ended the enforcement of racially restrictive covenants, a practice that barred blacks from purchasing homes in white neighborhoods. In 1950, he won cases that struck down Texas and Oklahoma laws requiring segregated graduate schools in Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma. “In those cases, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment required those states to admit black students to their graduate and professional schools.”

Houston's said “A lawyer's either a social engineer or he's a parasite on society," the formers whose goal was to focus on "bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens." Like I said in the intro we do not have any more of these types in Law. They say we have Obama, but he went for the presidency making one wonder which he would be according to the reasoning of Mr. Houston. We have growing evidence that the current administration will not address these issues. Travon Martin aside, there is a history of injustice deserving our attention. The store clerk, who shot Michael Haynes II in the back and murdered him apparently during a dispute over the price of condoms, The Georgia business owner onto John McNeil, in jail for shooting Brian Epp, who trespassed onto his Cobb County, Georgia property in December 2005 while waving a box cutter and threatened McNeil's son, after being asked to leave his property multiple times before firing in self-defense. Not to mention the countless unknown cases that railroad black men under the guise of justice.

What is required is what Houston and Marshall did: a structured plan to address the legal burden of what leads to the disproportionate mass incarceration of African Americans. Today such an approach would have to tackle several current legal opinions:

Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202 (1965): Robert Swain, nineteen, year old black male, was indicted, tried and convicted of raping a white woman in Talladega County, Alabama, and received the death sentence. There had been five African Americans on the grand jury panel of thirty-three, two of whom served on the grand jury which indicted Swain. Of those in the county eligible for jury selection for grand and petit juries, 26% are Negroes, while the jury panels since 1953 have averaged 10% to 15% African Americans. Of the eight on the venire, two were exempt, and six were peremptorily struck by the prosecutor. The court held that: A defendant in a criminal case is not constitutionally entitled to a proportionate number of his race on the trial jury or the jury panel and that purposeful racial discrimination is not satisfactorily established by showing only that an identifiable group has been underrepresented by as much as 10%. The courts conclusion was that there is no evidence in this case that the jury commissioners applied different jury selection standards as between people based on race.

Purkett v. Elem (94-802), 514 U.S. 765 (1995): During jury selection, he objected to the prosecutor's use of peremptory challenges to strike two black men from the jury panel, an objection arguably based on Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). The prosecutor explained his strikes: "I struck [juror] number twenty two because of his long hair. He had long curly hair. He had the longest hair of anybody on the panel by far. He appeared to not be a good juror for that fact…I don't like the way they looked, with the way the hair is cut, both of them. And the mustaches and the beards look suspicious to me." The Supreme Court upheld this was valid.

Then there are Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) and United States v. Armstrong (95-157), 517 U.S. 456 (1996) among others. Like I said, we cannot depend on the current administration to do anything albeit in his book “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama admitted his drug use and how it could have derailed his future. The president is quick to say he is against the disparity in the criminal justice system yet his actions prove otherwise. His first Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel increase funding for Clintons "COPS ON THE BEAT" program in 2007 when he co-sponsored the COPS Improvements Act of 2007 - Amends the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to make grants for public safety and community policing programs (COPS ON THE BEAT or COPS program). Although Clinton claimed that this program was impactful in decreasing crime, a GAO report indicated if any reduction occurred in violent crimes it was barely 1 percent at a cost of $8 billion. Moreover, Worrall & Kovandzic (2007) showed that COPS spending had little to no effect on crime.

Two more suspect members of the team include Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder. Biden has always been in the led of the war on drugs, on everything from marijuana to steroids. He even wrote the legislation that created the position of a national "Drug Czar", and his Anti-Drug Proliferation Act provides 20-year prison sentences for folk who throw parties in their home if drug use occurs. In addition, he was a proponent of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, which allocated substantial funds for construction of new prisons, established boot camps for delinquent minors, and brought the death penalty for crimes related to drug dealing. Biden’s 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill included a provision allowing for the federal execution of drug kingpins, asserting that drug-related offenses were equivalent to, or worse than murder.

Eric Holder is no better than Biden or Emanuel. Holder, a former D.C. prosecutor, and the chief law enforcement officer in the U.S., complained that prosecuting the banking executives who caused the 2008 global financial crisis and subsequent deep recession was too difficult. But he is all game for marijuana. As U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., Eric Holder sought to raise marijuana penalties and restore mandatory minimum penalties for drug crimes. His plan was to set minimum sentences of 18 months for first-time convicted drug dealers, 36 months for the second time and 72 months for every conviction thereafter.

All I am saying is that we cannot wait for Obama, even if he is a black president with a past of self-admitted weed and drug use to protect the average black man on the street who are disproportionately targeted by the drug war and court system, to help us. We need another brave group of legal minds like Houston and Marshall to adeptly and shrewdly dismantle the new laws of modern Jim Crow. If either were living today, they would probable say the same about mass incarceration as Houston did education. “This fight for equality of educational opportunity (was) not an isolated struggle. All our struggles must tie in together and support one another. . . We must remain on the alert and push the struggle farther with all our might.”

Bye Bye 1st Amendment and Due Process

Imagine that there was no March on Washington led by the late great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., or that there was no Montgomery to Selma March or Bus boycott as a direct consequence of the actions of a Rosa Parks, or even no sit in's at Woolworths. All may have never have happened if legislation was existence during that time like the recently passed H.R. 347. Last week on a late Monday evening, the bill described by some as the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011 was passed by the US House of Representatives voted 388-to-3.

In simple terms it is another way of further reducing the constitutional First Amendment rights guaranteed to all US citizens. Through this legislation, Congress makes it illegal to trespass on the grounds of the White House and any building or grounds where the president is visiting even if just for a moment or temporarily. According to the legislation, these are considered areas “restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance." Consequently it allows the government to charge anyone who enters a building without permission or with the intent to disrupt a government function via protest or civil disobedience with a federal offense if Secret Service is on the scene.

Yes that is correct, any person protected by the Secret Service is covered under the bill meaning it will be a federal offense to even accidently disrupts an event attended by a person thus abrogating the right to assemble and peacefully protest as stated in the constitution. We all know that they not only protect past Presidents and current candidates, they also protect foreign dignitaries, many of which are mass murderers, supporters of state sponsored terrorist and human rights violators. To protest the former South African regime that practiced apartheid or even the current Syrian President Haffad al- Assad would be a federal offence punishable by a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than 10 years, or both, for a violation. In simple terms the federal government could consider a demonstration against any foreign president on American soil as a violation of federal law, if perceived to be “disruptive.”

I was under the assumption that Brandenburg V. Ohio concluded that the state cannot prohibit inflammatory speech unless it incites or produces “imminent lawlessness.” Brandenburg, a leader in the Ku Klux Klan, made a speech at a Klan rally and was later convicted under an Ohio criminal syndicalism law. The Court's Per Curiam opinion held that the Ohio law violated Brandenburg's right to free speech. The Court used a two-pronged test to evaluate speech acts: (1) speech can be prohibited if it is "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and (2) it is "likely to incite or produce such action."

We as a people are slowly losing all of our constitutional guarantees. It may even be considered against the law to even assert such. We have already seen the president approve the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, essentially suspending habeas corpus from American citizens and now what is an obvious assault on the freedom to assemble via this “Trespass Bill”. In many places it is even illegal to film police making arrest on your own property. To top it off, US Attorney General Eric Holder made a speech at Northwestern University last week in which he gave the current administrations legal justification for assassination of U.S citizens. When asked about it while addressing a hearing on the FBIs budget held by House lawmakers, FBI Director Robert Mueller said he would have to check with the Department of Justice whether Attorney General Eric Holder's "three criteria" for the targeted killing of Americans also applied to Americans inside the U.S.

This albeit as former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi wrote, “The Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution guarantee a citizen due process and a public trial, as well as the right to confront his accuser. The Obama administration is arguing that these American turncoats do not have constitutional rights because they are not physically in the United States and are actively engaged in planning terrorist acts that the government has the right to disrupt by killing them preemptively.”

Giraldi also notes that the assignation of dissident “citizens without due process is not a unique practice. Libyans, Iranians, and Soviets all did it in the 1980s and 1990s” but suggest it is out of the ordinary for a self-purported “liberal democracy.”

So if any of you all have any bright ideas about expressing your constitutional right wile in Chicago this spring for the 2012 G8 and NATO summits, be forewarned. These fools or idiots have absolved the first amendment and have curtailed due process. Although it is written, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” this is not the case anymore.

Israel’s New Bouncer

The first time I read about it, I doubted its truth on historical and political merits alone. Not saying it was not true, but rather it was questionable with respect to the aforementioned and its timely manifestation. I am referring to the recent and weird allegation made suggesting that Iran was behind a plot to assassinate Adel al Jubeir and bomb the Israeli embassy. According to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the plot was "directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government and, specifically, senior members of the Quds Force." But the catch is that according to U.S. officials, the suspect would pay $1.5 million to the Los Zetas drug cartel to kill the Saudi ambassador at a Washington restaurant also frequented by congressmen and senators.

I have written in this very forum about the US and Iran, most recently as it concerned our inability to be consistent with our positions taken concerning how we decided who should be ousted and what citizenry we supported during the unrest in the Middle East and North Africa starting with Tunisia last year and more specifically, how we tend to look the other way in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain but not Libya or Uganda. Not to mention the taciturn neglect the current administration shows to African Americans while kowtowing to the American Zionist lobby.

Even our own history should have the less than average reader concerned about our allegations concerning this plot. First, we should be reminded that the US government gave Saddam Hussein biological weapons and urged him to use them against Iran. Although Hussein decided that biological weapons went too far and backed down from the US plan, we used the same biological weapons we gave to Hussein as a basis to invade Iraq, even though UN monitors had already verified that the weapons had been destroyed.

Then there was the recent fiasco in which we provided support and approval for Israel to assassinate several leading Iranian nuclear scientist over the past two years in an attempt to impede Iran’s progression toward nuclear self sufficiency.

Like I am actually supposed to believe that Iran is a threat to us. We are just another bouncer under the auspice of a new administrative head. We already fund Israel's military, why should we fight wars for them as well? Maybe it is a ploy to take some heat away from Eric Holder is getting slammed for the illegal “fast and furious” gun running activities. After all who else better to assert that Iran tried to recruit a Mexican drug cartel to kill the ambassador of Saudi Arabia via a weed smoking used car salesman from Texas than Holder? Maybe it is a way for us to justify the Obama administrations giving cluster bombs to Israel just a week after Former New York mayor Ed Koch stated openly that Obama was no friend of Israel.

Maybe Iranian parliament member Alaeddin Boroujerdi was right when he said the accusation “a plot to divert the public opinion from the crisis Obama is grappling with.” Plus the informant is dubious to say the least seeing he was “previously charged in connection with narcotics offenses….in exchange for … various narcotics investigations” being dismissed. This based on the indictment of course.

The case made by the US is more media PR than actual fact since they are not supported by any hard evidence. The only evidence we have, which isn’t even related to this adduced collusion is the history of our relationship with this Persian nation - the only Persian nation in the world who happens to be surrounded by nations who hate Persians. Also they are the only Shia run regime in the world, surrounded by regimes that hate Shia. True they are a major producer of oil, but still have to import gasoline.

My question is why the suspect would even ask if the others involved were “any good with explosives?” We know that the US Intelligence indicates Iran's Qods Force are the best in the world when it comes to improvised explosive devices and explosively formed penetrators into Iraq. Seems as if Obama wants to show Israel we will do anything for them even start a war with Iran. Seems as well that we have been doing all in our might to fabricate a reason for such a war just to appease the Israel lobby. The only query that remains is why now and I suspect we will be finding out more real soon. But I am skeptical seeing this is the week we have a masive airlift drill in mediternanian with Saudi Arabia and Israel.

How Did Obama Know About 'Fast And Furious' Before Holder?

Information is the currency of democracy

Last I heard the United States was supposedly a bastion of democracy. You know freedom of expression, speech, information and religion. But it seems that only is consistent and true when expression, speech and religion is in support of the United Sates.

I find it strange that the principles that we as a nation promote that make us different and stand out, that the rest of the world - namely democracy, and what we fight for in other places is really just a willy nilly catch phrase. It is OK for us to put and plant what we think and call democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan - even if folk do not want such or even if we fail. But when other folk use our idealistic tendencies it becomes sacrilegious.




















Last I heard the United States was supposedly a bastion of democracy. You know freedom of expression, speech, information and religion. But it seems that only is consistent and true when expression, speech and religion is in support of the United Sates.

I find it strange that the principles that we as a nation promote that make us different and stand out, that the rest of the world - namely democracy, and what we fight for in other places is really just a willy nilly catch phrase. It is OK for us to put and plant what we think and call democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan - even if folk do not want such or even if we fail. But when other folk use our idealistic tendencies it becomes sacrilegious.

Our "imperial arrogance" asserts I guess, that the only folks with rights to a free and pen society are us and no one else. We have the audacity to proclaim being open, democratic and proponents of the free sharing of information unless it pertains to information of ours. Then we become the incarnate of Mussolini and fascism. Expression is obviously OK except for the Internet. Why? I cannot answer, but i can say we use our power to make private enterprises including Paypal and Amazon.com and master card to control what the supreme courts have considered expression as well - money, when anything we disagree with is cited or revealed. It is just ridiculous, the greatest democracy in the world asking for an Internet site to be shut down and its owner killed or jailed for sharing information that he did not steal.

How quick we are to reference Thomas Jefferson but forget it was he who wrote “Information is the currency of democracy." I just find it two-faced to say on the one hand we are a Nation of liberty and freedom yet on the other hold freedom of the Internet as being completely different. Even condemning China for their censorship but we espouse the same behavior and practice from a governmental locution regarding Wikileaks. Common sense tells me that if one condemns wikileaks we have to do the same with the New York Times and other web sites.

Freedom in the US is a myth. This is the only postulate that can be contrived from this entire wikileaks fiasco. Such is even more convoluted when we have no laws to even assert criminal behavior on the web sites owners behalf outside of an outdated 1917 espionage act that deals with maps.

same ole same ole

Ok I’m back, sorry have a lot on my plate but not enough to prevent a simple jactitation on the current President of the United States and his Cronies. Now I know we all know this is Black history month, a month in which we should I figure be trying to focus on education or even bring to the fore, past wrongs in an attempt to correct them.

If you did not know, this is the 100 year anniversary of the legendary Jack Johnson and James Jeffries fight which occurred during the summer of 1910. Born in Galveston, Texas in 1878 as Arthur John Johnson, he was the first African man to win the heavyweight boxing championship of the world. His life was one of hardship. His family lost all they owned in the great Hurricane of 1900 and he was arrested in Texas for boxing since it was against the law and considered a blood sport. Before becoming Champion of the world, Jim Jeffries refused to fight him because he was black. However Johnson went to Australia and defeated Tommy Burns to win the title in 1908 which forced Jeffries to fight him if he desired the title. After Johnson put the smack down on Jeffries (the first great white hope), folk lost their minds. There were race riots; the Texas state legislature even banned the showing of films of his victory. The only thing that could be employed to “handle” Johnson were Federal laws – mainly the Mann Act, of which he was charged for transporting white women across state lines for “immoral purposes” – a charge that was completely false. The original name of the Mann Act was the “White Slave Traffic Act”. In 1913, he was imprisoned as were many other African men to follow including Chuck Berry.

Sen. John McCain and House Rep. Peter King last year pushed a resolution through the Senate and House of asking for President Obama to pardon Johnson. However, Obama’s head of the Justice Department, Eric Holder and staff said no, suggesting they do not “traditionally” pardon dead folk compared to people "who can truly benefit" from a pardon. Truth is that Bill Clinton pardoned Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1999, who was wrongly accused of embezzlement and G.W. Bush pardoned Charlie Winters in 2008 for illegally selling planes to Israel during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948.

Strange to me that Obama is always talking about change, but his actions seem to continue the problematic approaches to politics that we have seen historically by folks trapped inside the beltway. So Mr. President, Pardon Jack Johnson, because for some strange reason, I thought you ran on a mantra of change, not the same ole same old.