Arizona ban against race, gender-based abortions challenged

[JURIST]

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona (ACLU-AZ) [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] Wednesday in the US District Court for the District of Arizona [official website] seeking to permanently enjoin a state law [HB 2443, PDF] that penalizes doctors, not patients, who perform abortions when the patient's decision is based solely on the gender or race of the fetus. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the local divisions of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Asian Pacific American Woman's Forum [advocacy websites] and seeks to have the law declared unconstitutional. Senior Counsel for the ACLU-AZ stated [press release] that the law was designed to insinuate that female minorities may be convinced to abort a fetus based on a racist plot against their own demographic, but the Republican sponsors of the act insisted the rationale was to prevent discrimination.

This lawsuit comes on the heels of several developments in controversial state abortion statutes. Earlier this month Arizona's ban on abortions after 20 weeks [JURIST report] was deemed to violate women's rights. Last Friday a judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas [official website] temporarily blocked enforcement of a law banning abortions 12 weeks into a pregnancy [JURIST report]. In December a state judge in Georgia enjoined a law [JURIST report] banning doctors from providing abortions for women more than 20 weeks into gestation. Montana voters in November passed a referendum [JURIST report] requiring notice to parents of minors before a planned abortion procedure. Planned Parenthood [advocacy website] also sued Texas [JURIST report] in October claiming that its law preventing state funding from going to any clinics affiliated with providing abortions violates another state law.

Chicago Closes 50 Public Schools, Spends $100 Million in Taxpayer Funds on Private College Stadium

From [HERE] 

Gov. O’Malley’s inaction on Baltimore jail scandal

WashPost

TAVON WHITE, the imprisoned gang leader who allegedly treated Baltimore’s main jail as his fief, its guards as his concubines and his fellow inmates as enforcers, has been transferred to federal custody; for now, he is no longer Maryland’s problem.

But the revelations (and an indictment) related to Mr. White’s alleged jailhouse criminal enterprise continue to embarrass the administration of Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and the state’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. Repairing their reputation will depend largely on how seriously they undertake muscular reforms.

So far the signs are mixed. Despite Mr. O’Malley’s insistence that he has “zero tolerance for corruption,” he has called for nothing beyond a “review” of an elaborate code of workplace protections for corrections officers that the FBI says shielded crooked officers from being disciplined, transferred or fired at the Baltimore jail. The so-called corrections officers’ “bill of rights,” enshrined in legislation pushed by the guards’ union and backed by Mr. O’Malley, was enacted in 2010.

So far the signs are mixed. Despite Mr. O’Malley’s insistence that he has “zero tolerance for corruption,” he has called for nothing beyond a “review” of an elaborate code of workplace protections for corrections officers that the FBI says shielded crooked officers from being disciplined, transferred or fired at the Baltimore jail. The so-called corrections officers’ “bill of rights,” enshrined in legislation pushed by the guards’ union and backed by Mr. O’Malley, was enacted in 2010.

Nor has the governor ordered the state police to replace corrections officers at the entrances to the jail in Baltimore. Those entrances have proved exceptionally porous in recent years as corrupt guards, acting at the behest of inmates, turned a blind eye to cellphones, narcotics and other contraband being smuggled into the facility.

Other moves, both symbolic and practical, appear more promising. Gary D. Maynard, Maryland’s corrections chief, has been working out of the jail for the last month, theoretically giving him a closer look at the Baltimore facility’s operations. Corrections officials have also studied technological means to tighten their grip on contraband, especially cellphones.

Cellphones, allegedly used by Mr. White and his gang, the Black Guerrilla Family, to run a narcotics ring, are as subversive as they are pervasive in jails and prisons. In the fiscal year that ended last July, officials seized more than 1,300 of them from inmates at various facilities — and probably only scraped the surface of the problem. They are now looking to expand a pilot project that enables authorities to block cellphone service unless devices are on an approved list. Lawmakers should also toughen penalties on inmates caught with phones; bills to do just that have failed in recent years in Annapolis.

At the Baltimore facility, the chief of security has been removed from her job — and has said she will fight to regain it — but no other heads have rolled since the federal indictment was unsealed last month. Given the scale of the rot at the jail, that seems an anemic response.

Mr. O’Malley has cultivated an image as a wonkish technocrat intent on fine-tuning and finding efficiencies in state government. But the evidence suggests that he has not made a priority of the state’s troubled network of corrections facilities, despite well-publicized federal investigations dating to early in his first term.

The governor has enjoyed enormous success in pushing his legislative agenda in Annapolis. In the absence of a vigorous campaign to clean up the state’s jails and prisons, however, they will remain a stain on his legacy.

Justices Side with Prisoners in Pair of 5-4 Decisions

The National Law Journal

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday broke a recent string of unanimous decisions by dividing 5-4 in two prisoners' cases. Is it an inkling of what is to come when June arrives?

Prosecutors’ use of mobile phone tracking is ‘junk science,’ critics say

ABA Journal

At his trial last year on federal kidnapping and conspiracy charges, prosecutors sought to introduce cell tower evidence purporting to show that calls placed from defendant Antonio Evans’ cellphone could have come from his aunt’s house, where the victim was thought to have been held for ransom.

That’s not unusual. Hardly a day goes by when some prosecutor doesn’t go to court armed with cell tower evidence he or she claims places a defendant in the vicinity of a crime the defendant is accused of committing.

What made the Evans case unusual was the fact that the defense even put up a fight to keep the cell tower evidence out of the trial. Evans’ lawyers said the technique has not been shown to be scientific.

Such testimony usually goes unchallenged, presumably because most defense lawyers either accept at face value prosecutors’ assurances that cell tower evidence is scientific or because they don’t know enough about the underlying technology to understand its limitations. And, on the few occasions that it has been challenged, the courts have always let it in.

Until U.S. District Judge Joan H. Lefkow of Chicago came along, that is. Lefkow, who tried the Evans case, took an in-depth look at the cell tower evidence the government was proposing to use and found it wanting. The judge wrote that “multiple factors can affect the signal strength of a tower” and an FBI special agent’s “chosen methodology has received no scrutiny outside the law enforcement community.” As a result, the court concluded that the government had not demonstrated that testimony was reliable, Lefkow wrote in an Aug. 29, 2012, opinion and order.

Critics of cell tower tracking, as the practice is often called, say the decision is long overdue. It marks the first partial defense victory against the use of such evidence on Daubert grounds, the test formulated in the 1993 U.S. Supreme Court case Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. The test says that the judge should rule on the admissibility of scientific information submitted to assist the fact finder. It is used by federal and many state courts to determine the admissibility of expert testimony. Critics hope the case represents a turning point in the courts’ general tendency to submit when dubious scientific techniques such as cell tower tracking are proffered.

Michael Cherry, the CEO of Cherry Biometrics, a Falls Church, Va.-based consulting firm that has led the legal assault on cell tower tracking, calls it “junk science” that should never be admitted in any court for any reason. In fact, he can’t believe that such an easily disproved technique, which has been around for a decade or more, is still routinely being used in court.

“No one who understands the relevant science would ever claim that data from a single cell tower can reliably be used to specify the location of a caller at the time a particular call is made,” he says.

But in 2011, the nation’s nine largest cellphone carriers responded to 1.3 million requests for subscriber information of all kinds, including cell tower records, from law enforcement officials, according to data compiled by a congressional committee.

Cell tower records, also known as call detail records, are the billing records cell companies use to keep track of their customers’ calls. They show the date and time of all calls made or received, the numbers called, the duration of each call, and the cell towers used to begin and end a call. And those requests have been rising at an annual rate of 12 percent to 16 percent in the past five years.

Edward J. Imwinkelried, a law professor at the University of California at Davis who co-authored a treatise on scientific evidence, says cell tower records are not completely worthless. But they’re nowhere near as probative as many police and prosecutors would like to think.

EVIDENTIARY LIMITS

The records can tell you whether a person who has denied being in the coverage area of a particular tower at a given time was lying, he says. But they can’t tell you where within that coverage area the caller was; in some areas, the caller could have been anywhere within a 420-square-mile vicinity of a particular tower.

“Some of what these people who are interpreting this data are saying they can do with it is just nonsense,” Imwinkelried says.

Imwinkelried, who last year co-wrote an article in Judicature magazine on the subject with Cherry and a handful of defense lawyers, says that cell tower records, unlike Global Positioning System technology, were never designed to be used for tracking purposes. But not all cellphones are equipped with GPS technology, which can pinpoint a caller’s location down to a radius of about 50 meters, leaving cell tower records the only way of tracking a phone without it.

Imwinkelried says he’s not surprised that cell tower evidence has survived as long as it has without being subjected to serious scientific scrutiny. He likens it to voiceprint identification evidence and comparative bullet lead-analysis evidence, two once-highly touted forensic techniques that were initially embraced by the courts but eventually discredited. [MORE]

The School to Prison Pipeline (refinement of white supremacy)

NYTimes

School officials across the country responded to a surge in juvenile crime during the 1980s and the Columbine High School shootings a decade later by tightening disciplinary policies and increasing the number of police patrolling public schools. One unfortunate result has been the creation of a repressive environment in which young people are suspended, expelled or even arrested over minor misbehaviors — like talking back or disrupting class — that would once have been handled by the principal.

The policies have not made schools safer. However, by criminalizing routine disciplinary problems, they have damaged the lives of many children by making them more likely to drop out and entangling them, sometimes permanently, in the criminal justice system. The policies are also discriminatory: black and Hispanic children are shipped off to court more frequently than white students who commit similar infractions.

The need to chart a new course in school discipline is underscored in a report scheduled to be released on Thursday by the New York City School-Justice Partnership Task Force, a working group led by Judith Kaye, the former chief judge of the State of New York, and composed of people from the fields of law enforcement, education, philanthropy, civil rights and child advocacy.

The task force examined disciplinary practices in the city’s 1.1 million-student system during the 2011-2012 school year. It found that “the overwhelming majority of school-related suspensions, summonses and arrests are for minor misbehavior, behavior that occurs on a daily basis in most schools.”

The numbers are startling. The city schools imposed nearly 70,000 suspensions in the 2011-2012 school year, 40 percent more than the period six years earlier. Of the 882 arrests during the school year studied, one in every six was for “resisting arrest” or “obstructing governmental administration,” charges for which there is often no underlying criminal behavior. The authorities also issued more than 1,600 summonses — tickets that require the student to appear in criminal court and that can lead to arrest for those who fail to appear.

The discriminatory application of disciplinary policy is particularly troubling. For example, the study found that black students in New York City are 14 times more likely to be arrested because of school-based incidents than their white peers; Hispanic students are five times more likely to be arrested than whites. Special-needs children are also disproportionately affected, and are four times more likely to be suspended that than their peers.

The good news is most of the city’s schools manage to handle misbehavior without resorting to draconian measures. Only a small percentage of schools account for a disproportionate number of the suspensions, summonses and arrests. As the report notes, New York City can fix this problem by embracing comprehensive, systemwide guidelines that have proved successful in places like Baltimore, Cincinnati and Clayton County, Ga.

The report makes many detailed recommendations. For starters, it calls on the next mayor to convene an interagency leadership team — including educators, social service officials, court officials and others — to keep more students safely in school while cutting down on the use of the harshest measures. It also suggests a “graduated response protocol” that would show schools how to resolve nonserious misbehavior themselves, reserving the court system for the most egregious cases. And it asks schools with low rates of suspensions, arrests and summonses to share solutions with schools that struggle with this problem. All of these ideas make good sense for Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s successor.

Richest 20 percent (mostly all white folks) get half the overall savings from U.S. tax breaks, CBO says

Wash Post

The 10 largest breaks in the U.S. tax code will save taxpayers more than $900 billion this year, with just over half the benefits flowing to the richest 20 percent of households, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday.

And the richest 1 percent of households, those with at least $327,000 in annual income, get an especially big haul — about 17 percent of the total savings, according to the report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“Higher-income households benefit significantly more from tax expenditures in dollar terms than do lower income households,” the report says.

Republicans dismissed the report as a rehash of information that has long been widely available. But Democrats seized on the new analysis, calling fresh support for President Obama’s argument that limiting tax breaks for the rich is a more sensible path to deficit reduction than the sharp cuts to agency spending known as the sequester.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee, noted the recent announcement that schoolteachers of children of active-duty military families at Fort Bragg will be furloughed for five days in the fall because of the sequester.

“We think it’s important to decide whether we want to prioritize education for the kids of our servicemen and women or tax expenditures for the top one percent,” Van Hollen said.

According to the CBO, the top tax breaks by dollar value this year are the tax-free treatment of employer-provided health insurance ($248 billion), preferential rates for dividends and capital gains ($161 billion) and tax-free contributions to retirement savings ($137 billion). Deductions for state and local taxes ($77 billion), mortgage interest ($70 billion) and contributions to charity ($39 billion) are also among the top 10, as is the tax-free treatment of capital gains on assets transferred at death ($43 billion).

All of those breaks primarily benefit wealthy households, according to the CBO. Rounding out the top 10 are three breaks that primarily benefit low-income households: the tax-free treatment of Social Security benefits ($33 billion), the child tax credit ($57) and the earned-income tax credit ($61 billion). [MORE]

Zimmerman Defense fund is nearly gone: Lawyers have Blown over $300,000 for White Killer

USA Today

George Zimmerman's defense fund is almost depleted with less than two weeks until the former neighborhood watch leader goes on trial in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin.

Zimmerman's attorneys posted on their website Wednesday that the fund had less than $5,000 left. The fund had almost $315,000 in January.

The attorneys say they calculate that Zimmerman needs an additional $120,000 to put on a good defense or even $75,000 to give him a fighting chance.

Attorneys Mark O'Mara and Don West say they haven't been paid a cent and many interns are working on the case without pay.

They say they will need the money in the coming weeks to pay experts and for transcripts of depositions.

Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder. He is pleading not guilty.

The Story of Jude Mohammad: Why Was a U.S. Citizen Secretly Killed by U.S. Drone in Pakistan?

Democracy Now! 

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday that admitted for the first time that the Obama administration has killed four U.S. citizens in drone strikes overseas. Today we learn more about one of them: Jude Kenan Mohammad. Until this week, the FBI had Mohammad listed on its Most Wanted website, even though he was secretly killed by the United States in November 2011. Mohammad was born in Florida and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Friends say he grew radicalized under the influence of a local man named Daniel Boyd, who had converted to Islam at a young age and was later charged as the ringleader of a group of men — including Mohammad — who were accused in 2009 of stockpiling weapons and plotting to carry out terrorist attacks overseas. His name next surfaced on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, when the FBI warned of an unconfirmed tip that al-Qaeda planned to set off a car bomb in New York City or Washington, D.C. About a month later, his wife called his mother from Pakistan to say he had been killed in a drone strike in Pakistan. We speak with Khalilah Sabra, director of the Muslim American Society Immigrant Justice Center, who knew Mohammad as a child and stayed in touch with him when he moved to Pakistan as a teenager after dropping out of high school.

Obama Taps White Billionaire Fundraiser Penny Pritzker for Commerce Despite Anti-Labor, Subprime Legacy

DemocracyNow

Billionaire business tycoon and former Obama fundraiser Penny Pritzker appears headed for confirmation as commerce secretary, despite concerns about her business dealings. Pritzker and her family owned Superior Bank, a Chicago-based firm that collapsed after the Pritzkers expanded subprime lending. With net worth of more than $1.5 billion, Pritzker stands to be one of the wealthiest Cabinet secretaries in history. Her family started the Hyatt Hotel chain, which has come under scrutiny for her clashes with labor unions. The AFL-CIO says Hyatt has exhibited a broad pattern of labor abuses, including aggressive outsourcing, low wages and the mistreatment of housekeepers. We’re joined by David Moberg, senior editor of In These Times magazine. His recent article is "3 Troubling Things To Know About Billionaire Penny Pritzker."

POLL: Israelis Overwhelmingly Back Arab Peace Initiative

ThinkProgress

Israelis would strongly support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he attempted to engage with the Arab League’s proposal for a two-state solution, according to Al-Monitor, which reported the new poll results on Tuesday. 

The Arab Peace Initiative, debuted in 2002 and reaffirmed by Arab states in 2007, sets up a basic peace framework in which Israel would withdraw from all territories acquired in 1967 and 1973 and provide a “just” settlement for refugees in exchange for recognition and normal diplomatic relations with all Arab states, including an independent Palestine. While the Initiative’s provisions are not specific enough to constitute a full deal, the document is designed to serve as a guiding framework from which a more detailed final status agreement can be hammered out. For instance, the Arab League has recently signaled that it would support land swaps as a substitute for full Israeli withdrawal from its 1967 and 1973 acquisitions.

Israelis have historically been skeptical of the Arab League’s seriousness, but the new polling numbers suggest Israelis are willing to give the deal a chance. Once the contours of the deal were explained to respondents, 55 percent of Israelis said they would support implementing it “to some degree.” By contrast, a scant 27 percent “strongly oppose” the deal and 17.5 percent weren’t sure how they fell about it.

Perhaps most interestingly, Israelis would strongly support efforts by their prime minister to pursue the Arab League’s deal. A vast majority — 69 percent — of Israelis would approve of Netanyahu adopting the Arab Peace Initiative framework and used it to come to final terms with the Palestinians and Arab states more broadly. Only 18 percent would “strongly oppose” such a move. While Netanyahu’s response to recent Arab overtures has been cagey, he cannot avoid taking a position on the Peace Initiative indefinitely: a petition signed by 52 Knesset members legally forces him to address the legislature on the issue.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the Arab League’s recent announcement on land swaps discredits the view that “there is no one to talk to” for peace. “We can’t miss this opportunity to return to negotiations,” Olmert said. “The taboo, that there isn’t anyone to talk to, has been broken.”

The poll, which sampled 500 Jewish Israelis, was conducted by an Israeli polling firm on behalf of the Israeli Peace Initiative, an organization attempting to build support in Israel for negotiating on the Arab Peace Initiative’s terms.

These results come at a time of renewed American attention on Israeli-Palestinian peace. During Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Israel in April, aides leaked that the secretary “welcomes efforts to enhance the constructive role the Arab Peace Initiative can play moving forward.” In more recent testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Secretary Kerry warned that in “a year, year and a half to two years or [so, the two-state solution is] over.”

Govt Doing Nothing for you: No Evidence Chicago Red Light Cameras Based on Safety — System Made $71 Million Last Year

BlackListedNews

Contrary to its claims, the City of Chicago’s red light cameras are not based on safety, according to an Inspector General (IG) audit of the program that brought in more than $71 million in revenue for the city last year.The audit,released on May 14, sought to determine if the city’s 384 red light cameras were installed based on the Chicago Department of Transportation’s (CDOT) “stated primary criterion of reducing angle crashes to increase safety.”

The IG found no evidence to support the city’s rationale for the program, which is to “increase safety on Chicago streets.”

“CDOT was unable to substantiate its claims that the City chose to install red light cameras at intersections with the highest angle crash rates in order to increase safety,” the IG said.  “Neither do we know, from the information provided by CDOT, why cameras in locations with no recent angle crashes have not been relocated, nor what the City’s rationale is for the continued operation of any individual camera at any individual location.”

Supreme Court rules on 'actual innocence' in federal habeas petitions

Jurist The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] 5-4 in McQuiggin v. Perkins [SCOTUSblog backgrounder; JURIST report] that "actual innocence ... serves as a gateway through which a petitioner may pass" in a federal habeas action. In Schlup v. Delo (1995) and House v. Bell (2006) [opinions], the Supreme Court held that a convincing showing of actual innocence enabled habeas petitioners to overcome a procedural bar to consideration of the merits of their constitutional claims. In this case, the court considered the question in the context of 28 USC § 2244(d)(1) [text], the statute of limitations on federal habeas petitions prescribed in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). The question before the court was, "if the petitioner does not file her federal habeas petition, at the latest, within one year of 'the date on which the factual predicate of the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence,' ... can the time bar be overcome by a convincing showing that she committed no crime?" In an opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court held that: [A]ctual innocence, if proved, serves as a gateway through which a petitioner may pass whether the impediment is a procedural bar, as it was in Schlup and House, or, as in this case, expiration of the statute of limitations. We caution, however, that tenable actual-innocence gateway pleas are rare. ... Our opinion clarifies that a federal habeas court, faced with an actual-innocence gateway claim, should count unjustifiable delay on a habeas petitioner's part, not as an absolute barrier to relief, but as a factor in determining whether actual innocence has been reliably shown. The court vacated the judgment [text] of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and remanded the case for further proceedings. Justice Antonin Scalia filed a dissenting opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas and by Justice Samuel Alito as to Parts I, II and III. According to Scalia, "The gaping hole in today's opinion for the Court is its failure to answer the crucial question upon which all else depends: What is the source of the Court's power to fashion what it concedes is an "exception" to this clear statutory command?" Scalia argues that the court lacks such power.

Aboriginal Aussie Rules footballer confronted white girl, 13, who called him an 'ape'

DailyMail

An Australian Rules footballer has been praised for his uncompromising reaction after a 13-year-old girl shouted out a racist remark to him during a game on Friday night.

Sydney Swans forward Adam Goodes - who is an Aboriginal Australian - was called an 'ape' by the girl as he ran past her and responded by turning around and pointing out the girl to security who escorted her from the Melbourne stadium.

Goodes, 33, is the star player for the Sydney Swans but said that the racial abuse he received at the hands of the girl rendered his sides win 'meaningless' - such was his disappointment.

'To come to the boundary line and hear a 13 year old girl call me an 'ape', and it's not the first time on a footy field that I've been referred to as a 'monkey' or an 'ape', it was shattering,' he told the ABC.

Goodes and the Sydney Swans were playing Collingwood, at their home of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The 13-year-old girl was a Collingwood fan.

George Zimmerman to use Racism as his defense: Seek Release of Trayvon Martin Text Messages Unknown to white killer

PolicyMc

After facing a wave of controversy for their decision to release Trayvon Martin's private cell phone records to the public, George Zimmerman's attorneys are defending themselves by claiming they merely wish to demonstrate that Martin was "hostile." In their own words, their sole goal is to "assist the jury in understanding why Trayvon Martin chose to hide then confront George Zimmerman rather than simply going home."

To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway: If you believe that, it's time for you to develop a bullshit detector.

From the moment when Martin's shooting became a national news story, Zimmerman and his supporters have exploited racist stereotypes to assist their cause, and this latest incident is no exception. The defense team's documents brandish incidents in which Martin bantered with his friends about acting like a "hoodlum" or "gangsta," engaged in lengthy conversations about cannibis use (including references to a marijuana-related school suspension), discussed having arguments with his parents and making plans to skip classes, and took pictures of himself blowing smoke rings, giving the middle finger, and wearing a gold grill. At his ostensible "worst," Martin is shown bragging about winning a fistfight and talking about wanting to own a gun.

Readers with moderately well-oiled Hemingwayesque bullshit detectors will immediately notice three things about the previous paragraph's list:

1. Not one of the released texts specifically pertains to the actual events of the Martin-Zimmerman confrontation on the night of February 26, 2012. As such, according to the most elementary standards used to determine evidentiary relevance in criminal cases, these texts are entirely immaterial (and will quite likely be thrown out for that very reason).

2. None of the texts reveal anything about Martin that one wouldn't expect to discover when prying into the psyche of an average American teenager. For one thing, the handful of texts being highlighted to the public no doubt constitute a mere fraction of Martin's larger social interactions, especially given the extensive and complex socialization in which virtually all Western youth are involved today. What's more, even if our popular culture didn't glorify drugs, violence, and "gangsta" culture, young adults have been defined by their penchant for self-aggrandizing braggadocio and general rebelliousness all the way back to the days of Socrates (who himself complained of the "bad manners" and "contempt for authority" demonstrated by the youth of his time). Needless to say, most of these teenagers never engage in violent activity aside from standard juvenile scuffles (such as the ones in which Martin seems to have participated), so without proof of anything more serious from Martin's past, the released texts are meaningless.

3. The obvious motive behind releasing these cell phone records was to smear Martin's image in the eyes of the public and, by way of social osmosis, the jurors for Zimmerman's trial (although Judge Kenneth Lester will no doubt instruct his jury to disregard the texts, pre-existing impressions are hard to purge from the subconscious, much less conscious, mind). Even worse, much of the character assassination is firmly rooted in the tropes frequently conjured up to vilify and "other" urban black men. After all, of what relevance are Martin's fashion preferences (the gold grill) or slang choices (terms like "gangsta" and other chronicled uses of inner-city slang), unless one assumes that the culture with which they are associated is an inherently violent one? Why even mention that he smoked weed, hotdogged in social media for his friends, and didn't take his studies seriously, unless the implication is that these actions belied latent violent tendencies – and if so, are Martin's detractors ready to apply the same behavioral rubric to suburban whites as well as racial minorities (disingenous reassurances to that effect notwithstanding)? Even Martin's fascination with firearms isn't as automatically damning as Zimmerman's attorneys would like the public to believe. If liberals and moderates are to be regularly denounced whenever they question the benign intentions of the millions of Americans who staunchly oppose any form of gun control, what right do we have to condemn a Trayvon Martin for his own fixation with gun ownership?

If there is one good thing about cause celebres like the Trayvon Martin shooting, it is that they can shed light on deeper political and social illnesses in our country. Although this case tends to be compared to other events in American history involving violent outbursts of racial prejudice (and correctly so), I am most keenly reminded of the 1999 trial for Matthew Shepard's killers – i.e., the court case in which the idea that "gay panic" could be used as a defense for murder was exposed to the widespread public contempt it deserved. If nothing else, Martin's death and the subsequent actions of his killer's defenders make it clear that another form of hate-based panic is also prevalent in our society. While it's historic roots are quite different from those brought to light by the Shepard killing, they are no less pervasive or destructive. If we simply allow ourselves to come to grips with it, we may be able to prevent tragedies like Martin's death from happening in the future. All it takes is a willingness to reach a deeper understanding of the problems of the world in which we live ... problems which, as the very fact that these texts were released goes to show, we far too often make for ourselves.

Gallup: 54% of Americans say the federal government today has too much power.

Gallup

Fifty-four percent of Americans say the federal government today has too much power. Despite the recent controversies facing federal agencies such as the IRS, these views are only marginally higher than in 2012, and slightly lower than in 2010 and 2011. At least half of Americans since 2005 have said the federal government has too much power, whereas in the three years prior to that, Americans were more inclined to believe federal power was "about right."

Americans' views of federal power have become a renewed focal point in recent weeks with allegations that the IRS used its power to selectively audit certain types of organizations, and news reports of Justice Department investigations into Associated Press and Fox News records and emails. It does not appear, however, that these news stories have dramatically altered Americans' views of the federal government's power. The 54% who now say the federal government has "too much power" is in the same general range as it has been since 2005.

Only 8% of Americans say the federal government has "too little" power, while 36% say the government has about the right amount of power.

As would be expected, there is a major gulf between Republicans' and Democrats' views on this issue. More than twice as many Republicans (76%) as Democrats (32%) say the government has too much power, with a majority of independents coming down on the same side as Republicans.

Osaka mayor apologizes for saying U.S. troops should patronize legal adult entertainment businesses as a way to reduce rapes and other assaults.

USA Today

A Japanese mayor apologized Monday for saying earlier that U.S. troops should patronize legal adult entertainment businesses as a way to reduce rapes and other assaults.

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, who is also the co-head of an emerging nationalistic party, said his remarks two weeks ago rose from a "sense of crisis" about cases of sexual assaults by U.S. military personnel on Japanese civilians in Okinawa, where a large number of U.S. troops are based.

"I understand that my remark could be construed as an insult to the U.S. forces and to the American people" and was inappropriate, he said at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Tokyo.

Poverty: The Racist Reality Behind Budget Rhetoric

Truth-Out

Budgets are no more than numerical statements about priorities. What's conspicuously absent from any of the dialogue or rhetoric from either side is a substantive analysis about, and a commitment to, addressing poverty in America. Conservatives want to cut our way out of debt, primarily on the backs of the poor and working classes. They fail to understand or admit that by investing in educating, housing and feeding the least of us, all of us truly benefit. By turning those who depend upon the system into working taxpayers, a rising tide will truly lift all boats.

Let's start with the definition of poverty. Dictionary.com defines poverty as, "the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor." According to the Census Bureau's preliminary weighted numbers for 2012, a four-person family with two children with an annual cash income of $23,497 is considered poor. For one- and two-person family units, the poverty thresholds differ by age; an individual under age 65 with income of $11,945 qualifies as poor, whereas an individual age 65 or older is poor at $11,011 annual income.

This is the generally accepted definition of poverty. The problem with it is that poverty is much deeper than that. Poverty was defined in 1996 by Joseph Wresinski, the founder of ATD Fourth World, as "the absence of one or more factors enabling individuals and families to assume basic responsibilities and to enjoy fundamental rights." It is not just a matter of income; it is also a matter of access to services and programs. It's the issue of adequate funding and access to services that we find ourselves battling with today in the context of the budget battle and national debt and deficit.

According to CNNMoney, from October of 2012, there is one group that is just a step away from falling into the clutches of poverty. More than 30 million Americans are living just above the poverty line. These near-poor, often defined as having incomes of up to 1.5 times the poverty threshold, were supporting a family of four on no more than $34,500 last year. They are one illness or other setback away from poverty.

Perspectives about the poor and resulting policies are driven by perceptions - and misperceptions. It's interesting how so many discussions about poverty are put into the context of a race-powered politics that blame the poor for their circumstance.

As former President Reagan and other conservatives have discussed welfare and other support programs in the code language of urban welfare queens and poverty pimps, the stereotype is that the poor are predominantly African-American and unwilling to work. Census data does not support that position. Quoting Dr. Ronald Walters from White Nationalism, Black Interests, "White Nationalists have acted on the presumption that Blacks get a disproportionate share of government resources ... This attitude has translated into policies which have politicized the welfare system and the very concept of society's collective responsibility to care for the less fortunate."

Even President Obama has contributed to these misperceptions by lecturing African-Americans about changing behavior, habits and personal responsibility - while failing to address the history and conditions that contribute to their circumstances. Dr. Fredrick C. Harris addresses this in The Price of the Ticket, calling it the politics of respectability. While discussing childhood obesity in the African-American community, Obama, "neglected to mention social and economic barriers that may account for ... poor decisions - limited food choices in poor and working-class neighborhoods." It's one thing to lecture people about eating habits, but another to fail to address the fact that too many poor live in what are often called "food deserts."

These stereotypes have obscured the real problem contributing to poverty. They are resulting in what Harris calls "draconian policies targeted at poor and working-class blacks," policies which receive "the public backing of black elites" who provide "cover for the racist practices and policies."

Racism in Tel Aviv: 'Death to Arabs' on apartment door

Ynetnews

Arab youngsters residing in south Tel Aviv were shocked to discover hate graffiti sprayed on the door of their apartment earlier this week. The graffiti read, "death to Arabs" "go away" and "price tag."

According to a complaint they filed with the police, unknown assailants broke into their apartment Saturday night and spray-painted hate slogans on the front door. Police launched an investigation.

"Arab youngsters rented an apartment in a neighborhood in Tel Aviv," he wrote. "They never harmed anyone, nor endangered the wellbeing of 'Zionists' or anyone else.

"They live in harmony with their neighbors. Their house was broken into, racist graffiti was sprayed – the only thing they left untouched was the mezuzah."

A neighbor residing in the building said, "This is a free world and anyone can live wherever they want. They didn't do any harm. I don’t see what's wrong with them living here."

Environmental Racism: Toxic Gowanus Sludge Is Heading For Red Hook

Gothamist

After years of discussion, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has published its plan to clean up the highly toxic Gowanus Canal on the banks of Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hill, in tony brownstone Brooklyn. But to the horror of many in nearby Red Hook, the EPA’s proposal includes a plan to turn poisonous sediment from the canal into a concrete substance and dump it into a steel-enclosed container in the New York Harbor, adjacent to Red Hook’s massive complex of low-income housing projects.

The landfill would increase the size of a shipping dock owned by a controversial Red Hook cement manufacturer named John Quadrozzi, who was fined by the state for improperly securing hazardous waste. The fine had remained unpaid as of 2012, but Quadrozzi now tells us he'd settled with the state for $60,000.

Mud dredged from the canal, contaminated with heavy metals, mercury, PCBs, coal tar, bacteria and, yes, Gonorrhea, may very well get barged to Red Hook, where it will undergo de-watering in a not-yet-built treatment plant, on property owned by the same cement manufacturer.

The public has until this Saturday, April 27th, to comment on the plan before the EPA finalizes it. (Details on submitting comment here.)

The $500 million EPA cleanup proposal has pitted scrappy, industrial, low-income Red Hook—still reeling from the devastating floodwaters of Superstorm Sandy—against its wealthier neighbors in Carroll Gardens, where residents are itching to get the canal cleaned.