Virginia Democrat Jim Moran: "US Don’t Want to Be Governed by an African-American"

'Stop, Question, Frisk' Tactics in NYC Reminiscent of Slave Patrols

In order for slavery to be effective as practiced in the United States, the peculiar institution had to maintain strict control over slaves both on and off the plantation. Runaways represented a loss of labor and productivity, so to reduce the chance of that occurring, plantation owners established slave patrols.

Slave patrols had the authority to question, and sometimes punish, any slave they encountered traveling between plantations. Their general objective was control of the slave population through physical intimidation. Kenneth Stampp described slave patrols as a pseudo-police force that were even sanctioned by local political bodies. In her book Slave Catchers, Slave Resisters, Sally E. Hadden pointed out that the system of slave patrols that existed from the 1700s through the Civil War, helped give rise to the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.

That was history, but today in Brooklyn, N.Y., this practice continues. Nightly on the streets and around the public housing complexes in the Brownsville neighborhood, large contingents of police officers, most fresh to the beat patrol, question, frisk and detain people via the controversial tactic known as “Stop, Question, Frisk.”

Just entering a public housing project for these officers is reason enough to ask for identification, and run warrant checks. They even stop youth for riding bicycles on the sidewalk.

The Center for Constitutional Rights and the New York Civil Liberties Union reported that between January 2006 and March 2010, police made nearly 52,000 stops in an eight-block area. Police recorded the names of those stopped regardless of whether they were arrested or not. This is roughly equal to one stop a year for each of the estimated 14,000 neighborhood residents.

These activities result in very few arrests (less than 1 percent), in contrast to the 6 percent of stops that result in arrests across the entire city.

The United States Supreme Court has held that in order for the police to frisk someone they must have a reasonable belief that the person is armed and dangerous. Reasonable suspicion of a crime is not a legal justification for a policeman to frisk an individual.

People need to recognize that these activities are similar to those of the night riders. The only difference is that these individuals drive cars instead of horses and wear blue uniforms instead of white robes. This is not an indictment of individual police officers, but rather a system that continues to practice intimidation tactics that were used during slavery to control and keep the population enslaved.

mark of the beast

One of the benefits of being the President of the United States of America, if time is on your side is stacking the United States Supreme Court. Obama has made one move with a Latino woman but he may have the chance to put another one on giving John Paul Stevens, the senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is 90 years of age. He joined the Supreme Court in 1975 and may not have that many years to live.

My concern is that I think Obama will put a man in office that scares the ish out of me - Cass Sunstein. Obama has been linked very closely to Sunstein since their faculty days at the University of Chicago law school and has appointed him to direct the White House Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), His job is to mainly to put in place regulations to protect health, safety and the environment but history has shown us otherwise, but that is besides the point.

He is a major proponent of cost-benefit analysis as the basis for assessing regulations, even though mathematically it is not precise and can be easily manipulated to support what ever policy is retro chic. For example, it was he who used such an approach to develop his "senior discount" method for undervaluing the lives of seniors with respect to health care. He has even asked that popular or partisan websites to be FORCED to carry links to opposing viewpoints; something I will never do, could you imagine neo-Nazis and white supremist posing on my blog? Taking this farther, he even wants mandatory "electronic sidewalks" for cyberville. He would like a "notice and take down" law that would mandate bloggers and service providers to "take down falsehoods upon notice," even if they are made by commenter’s.

In a 2008 Harvard Law paper called "Conspiracy theories" Sunstein suggested that the government should ban conspiracy theorizing asserting to me that he does not desire for individuals to think independently or ask questions if it is against the body politic of who is in control of the government.

His position is that unrestrained individual choice if not controlled or regulated by the government is dangerous and must balanced in the interests of "citizenship" and "democracy." He stated that “a system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government. Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not to be rejected in freedom's name." Unlike the most of us, he see’s the internet as dangerous and that the Internet is destroying the ability for the masses to have shared social experiences.

He also is against using what is called the "precautionary principle" as a basis for regulating environmental which he would like to give the "benefit of the doubt," over possible health and safety concerns of the public. If you have read Sunstein's new book, "On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,"

He is concerned that in the future,” people’s beliefs” will be are a “product of social networks working as echo chambers in which false rumors spread like wildfire."
Sunstein suggest that the current libel standard - which requires proving "actual malice,” even if one blogger or news paper, that we should even be held responsible even for what people who comment on or blog say, this is true even for web service providers.

Cass Sunstein is a scary mother shut your mouth and I don’t believe that many folk even know or care are even up on folk, his writings, his papers, his belief or his policies. If you are not, then you need to be – he is the antithesis of liberty in word, belief and practice. Although he claims to be a progressive, he is more of a regressive to me. So take my advice and don’t be surprised if he is the folk Obama select to take the place of John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court. And if does, there will be a real mark of the beast on America.