Oxnard conference to focus on “extra-judicial killings” by officers

They should discuss white supremacy and the justifiable homicide of non-whites. [MORE]

VCStar

Civil-rights groups and relatives of those killed in confrontations with police will gather Saturday in a conference at Oxnard College to address what organizers are calling “extra-judicial killings” by officers.

“We want to call attention to the effects that police brutality has on the community and the families of those who have been killed by police,” said Francisco Romero, a member of Todo Poder al Pueblo Collection, a community group out of Oxnard. Romero spoke Tuesday afternoon at a news conference in front of the Cruz Reynoso Justice Center in downtown Oxnard.

The center is named for a former California Supreme Court justice who is scheduled to speak at the conference on Saturday.

The conference comes some six months after hundreds of protesters marched through Oxnard over deaths in incidents involving police officers.

Organizers hope the families of those who died in the incidents will be at Oxnard College on Saturday along with the families of others who have been killed elsewhere in California.

“This will be the first statewide conference of its kind,” Romero said. “We want to unite families that are the victims of these extra-judicial homicides.”

Judge Made Miranda-Rights Call in Boston Bombing Case - Patriotic Republicans Wanted Police to Get All Info/Fabrication without worrying about Constitution

WSj

A federal judge decided to advise Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of his Miranda rights, even though investigators apparently still wanted to question him further under a public-safety exception.

The judge’s move, made on Monday in the hospital where Mr. Tsarnaev was recovering, has prompted some Republican lawmakers to press the Justice Department as to why it didn’t make a stronger bid to resist the judge’s plans.

Those lawmakers say Mr. Tsarnaev’s interrogation should have continued without him being advised of his right to remain silent, because they say agents should have had more time to determine if there were other undetected bombs or plotters. After being read his rights, the suspect stopped talking to investigators, officials said.

“There will be more instances like this, and we will need to have a much better understanding about what is appropriate,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R., Mich.) said in an interview Thursday. “We have a long-standing tradition that the judiciary does not interfere with investigations. This sets a very dangerous precedent.”

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said Thursday, “The rules of criminal procedure require the court to advise the defendant of his right to silence and his right to counsel during the initial appearance.” Mr. Boyd said Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler made it clear on Sunday, after the first sealed charges were filed in her court against Mr. Tsarnaev, 19 years old, that the hearing would be held the following day.

Federal rules require that defendants appear before a judge without unnecessary delay—usually defined as within one business day.

Judge Bowler convened the brief, makeshift court hearing in the hospital room about 16 hours after the complaint was filed. Her reading of the Miranda warning came as part of the formal presentation of charges to the suspect, an act that would normally take place in court.

Judge Bowler was the first government official to advise Mr. Tsarnaev of his right to remain silent after his capture Friday night, officials briefed on the matter said.

The judge first told the Justice Department on Saturday that she intended to read Mr. Tsarnaev his rights on Monday, according to people briefed on the discussions. One U.S. official said the judge cited the intense television coverage of the capture as one reason for initiating the criminal prosecution.

Through a court clerk, the judge declined to comment.

Under a 1984 Supreme Court ruling, a public-safety exception allows investigators to question suspects for an unspecified period without giving them a Miranda warning. The exception is designed to give law-enforcement officials time to determine if there are other threats to public safety.

It will ultimately be up to a court to decide which, if any, of the statements Mr. Tsarnaev made before he got the warning could be admissible evidence for the prosecution.

Andrew Arena, the former head of the Detroit office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation when it handled the case of the plane “underwear bomber” in 2009, said he thought the Boston case was handled properly.

“When you bring the judge into it, that’s what’s going to happen. They don’t work for the Justice Department, they don’t work for Capitol Hill, they are going to do what they are legally obligated to do,” said Mr. Arena. “I think [investigators] got what they were going to get out of him, anyway.”

The legal treatment of Mr. Tsarnaev will revive a debate over how terrorist suspects should be interrogated and treated, a charged topic.

Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up the plane landing in Detroit, was read his Miranda rights shortly after his arrest, setting off a political furor. He initially stopped cooperating with investigators but later resumed.

Mr. Rogers said Justice officials should have pushed back on the judge’s plans, citing the unique circumstance that additional bombs could still be in play. He wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder late Wednesday to register his concerns.

“What I find shocking is that the judiciary proactively inserted itself into this circumstance and the Justice Department so readily acquiesced to the circumstance,” he said. “The court doing this proactively, they may have jeopardized our ability to get public-safety information.”

Mr. Rogers, a former FBI agent, said because of the severity of the threat and the suspect’s poor health, investigators didn’t have sufficient time to question him. Among the information investigators were still seeking was whether others were involved in the attacks and whether there were additional explosives hidden somewhere, he said.

The FBI was aware Judge Bowler was planning to go to the hospital Monday and was “not happy about it,” he said. “They believed they needed more time. This is not a good way to stop another bomb from going off.”

An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

Chicken And Ground Beef Are The Meats Most Likely To Make You Sick

ThinkProgress

A new report from the Center for Science in Public Interest (CSPI) reveals exactly which meat products pose the biggest threats to Americans. After analyzing more than 33,000 cases of foodborne illness over 12 years, CSPI found that chicken and ground beef have caused more hospitalizations than any other meat, while chicken nuggets and sausage are the least likely to send you to the ER:

It’s no secret that the United States’ meat industry is rife with public health hazards. A recent report confirmed that more than half of the meat sold in the U.S. contains antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which can end up being passed to humans. Foodborne illnesses sicken an estimated 48 million Americans each year — and the cost of treating all of those food poisoning cases works out to be about $152 billion per year.

Nonetheless, government cuts to food safety programs continue to hamper the regulatory efforts of agencies like the USDA and the FDA. And in states across the country, “ag gag” laws suppress activists and journalists from bringing more information to light about the food industry’s unsafe practices.

North Carolina Senate Passes Bill Requiring Welfare Applicants To Pay For Their Own Mandatory Drug Tests

ThinkProgress

A bill that passed the North Carolina Senate Monday night would impose mandatory drug testing on all welfare applicants, in spite of federal court rulings blocking similar state provisions as likely unconstitutional. North Carolina’s proposal goes even farther than Florida’s court-invalidated provision, requiring all applicants to a program for the indigent to pay for the mandatory test out of their own pockets. Only if they pass the test will they later be reimbursed by the state for the tests, which average $100. The Senate measure passed along party lines – without a proposed amendment to also subject lawmakers to the invasive tests. Raw Story explains:

At the same time, senators rejected an amendment offered by Democratic state Sen. Gladys Robinson that would have drug tested lawmakers, the governor and cabinet secretaries.

“We receive state funds, we represent the law, we institute policy,” Robinson told senators on Monday night. “So, it should not be above any of us to submit to drug screening.”

Republican State Sen. Jim Davis said that he did not mind being tested, but insisted that he would vote against the amendment because it had no mechanism to provide him with a reimbursement for the $100 test.
Instead of voting on Robinson’s amendment, state Senator Tom Apodaca (R) used a substitute amendment as a parliamentary maneuver to kill the proposal.

“The substitute amendment is offered to have the effect of killing the other amendment,” Democratic state Sen. Martin Nesbitt explained in a floor speech. “You need to know that before you vote because you’ll be killing the one that requires a drug test of the leaders of this state since we want to require it for the followers of this state.”

“And we seem to be getting into a situation where where we’re kind above the people,” he added.

At least eight other states have laws that test public benefit recipients or applicants, and at least 29 introduced new proposals this year, following an the ALEC and Big Pharma-backed movement to pass drug-testing provisions. But like the Florida law struck down by a federal appeals court in February, North Carolina’s law is particularly onerous and constitutionally suspect, because it contains a blanket provision requiring all applicants to be drug-tested. A drug test is considered a search under the Fourth Amendment, and “there is nothing inherent to the condition of being impoverished that supports the conclusion that there is a ‘concrete danger’ that impoverished individuals are prone to drug use” to justify the warrantless search, that court held.

In addition to imposing a potentially unconstitutional requirement on applicants, North Carolina’s bill imposes what would for many constitutes an impassable barrier to entry. Those indigent enough to qualify for Temporary Assistance For Need Families likely do not have $100 to pay for a drug test up front – whether or not they are later reimbursed.

Rush Limbaugh Compares Suspected Boston Bomber To Trayvon Martin

ThinkProgress

Conservative radio prognosticator Rush Limbaugh used his nationally syndicated show on Tuesday to try and tie Dzhakar Tsarnaev, the captured suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings last week, to murdered teenager Trayvon Martin.

Last March, weeks after 17-year-old Martin was shot and killed, Limbaugh and the rest of the conservative echo chamber spent a considerable amount of time attacking Martin’s character and pushing back against a widely circulated photograph of the teen, claiming that the media was trying to gin up sympathy for the murdered boy.

On Tuesday, Limbaugh compared the media’s portrayal of Trayvon to the treatment of the captured Tsarnaev, citing the media’s use of slightly outdated photographs in both instances:

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh called out a variety of media outlets on Tuesday for trying to [do] “to Dzhokhar [Tsarnaev] what they did to Trayvon Martin.” He said that showing images of Tsarnaev at 14-years-old is an effort to humanize him and frame him as a “normal” or “mixed-up kid,” rather than an accused murder[er] and terrorist.

‘The news media are doing to Dzhokhar what they did to Trayvon Martin,” Limbaugh observed. “They’re regularly showing a photo of Dzhokhar that was taken when he was about 14. Soft, angelic, nice little boy. Harmless. Cute. Big, loveable eyes.”

“Not at all what he looks like today,” Limbaugh added. “The way, when we’re shown Osama bin Laden, it’s in his shepherd pose with his walking stick, walking through the mountains or whatever.”

The implication, subtly made, is that the liberal media is somehow supportive of Tsarnaev, who is responsible for the murders of three people and the injuries of more than 170 others. In reality, the outdated photograph of the younger Tsarnaev brother is one of several photographs in constant rotation on every news network since he was first identified late last week.

The comparison is also deeply offensive for Trayvon Martin and his family. Martin was a victim of gun violence in a state that remains lenient towards gun owners who turn their weapons on other Floridians.

ACLU reacts to failure to read Boston bombing suspect his Miranda rights

Jurist

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] on Saturday released a statement [press release] reacting to statements by federal officials that the recently apprehended Boston bombing suspect will not be read his Miranda rights [LII backgrounder] before being interrogated. A US Department of Justice [official website] official announced on Friday that the government will be invoking the public safety exception [AP report] to not read him his Miranda rights before interrogating him on certain topics. This exception was announced by the US Supreme Court [official website] in New York v. Quarles [opinion], but has been applied narrowly to allow police officers to refuse to read suspects their Miranda rights when they believe that there is an ongoing threat to public safety which requires answers to certain questions related to that threat. The ACLU, however, stated that this exception "should be read narrowly" and "is not an open-ended exception to the Miranda rule." ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero cited the dangers to fair application of the justice system that could result:

Additionally, every criminal defendant has a right to be brought before a judge and to have access to counsel. We must not waver from our tried-and-true justice system, even in the most difficult of times. Denial of rights is un-American and will only make it harder to obtain fair convictions.

The suspect remains hospitalized in serious condition and is being guarded heavily [AP report], but investigators have been unable to interrogate him and establish the motive for the bombing.

Although the right of criminal defendants to be read Miranda warnings was established in 1966 in Miranda v. Arizona [opinion], the practice of reading defendants their rights and the exceptions that apply still create controversy. Earlier this month, JURIST guest columnists Hank Asbill, Brian Murray and Andrew Pinson of Jones Day [official website] wrote an op-ed [JURIST comment] arguing that allowing prosecutors to use refusal to answer pre-arrest, pre-Miranda warning questions as an admission of guilt violates the Fifth Amendment [text]. The Supreme Court has also examined two aspects of the rule in recent cases. Last month, the Court in Howes v. Fields [opinion; JURIST report] refused to expand the Miranda rule to apply to private questioning of prisoners about events occurring outside of prison. Last year, the Court ruled that age is a factor [JURIST report] in determining whether a suspect is considered to be in custody for the purpose of reading Miranda rights.

More than half of Guantanamo detainees now on hunger strike

[JURIST]

The US Military confirmed on Monday that 84 of the 166 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST backgrounder] are on hunger strike, protesting their conditions and indefinite detention. The hunger strike [RT timeline] began in February with just a few prisoners and has grown over the past weeks to include more than half of the detainees. According to the military, while there are no life-threatening conditions [BBC report], guards are force-feeding 16 of the 84 strikers, and five are being treated in the hospital. The current hunger strike constitutes the longest protest affecting the largest number of prisoners at Guantanamo...

Federal appeals court lifts stay of execution for Georgia death row inmate

Jurist

The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit [official website] on Monday lifted [order, PDF] a stay of execution for Georgia death row inmate Warren Hill [JURIST news archive]. The appeals court halted the execution [JURIST report] in February to allow time to consider whether a federal court can reconsider Hill's case. In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court found that Hill's claim of mental retardation was already presented and that his claim does not address his actual guilt or innocence, meaning that it cannot be further reviewed. Judge Rosemary Barkett dissented:

The Supreme Court has said unequivocally that it is a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to execute a mentally retarded person. ... Despite the Supreme Court's command "that such punishment is excessive and that the Constitution 'places a substantive restriction on the State's power to take the life' of a mentally retarded offender," ... the state of Georgia will execute a mentally retarded man when it carries out the execution of Warren Lee Hill. There is no question that Georgia will be executing a mentally retarded man because all seven mental health experts who have ever evaluated Hill, both the State’s and Hill’s, now unanimously agree that he is mentally retarded.

Hill's lawyer said they are exploring their next options [AP report].

Hill was sentenced to death for the 1990 murder of a fellow inmate while serving a life sentence for killing his girlfriend in 1986. His execution has been stayed several times. The Eleventh Circuit granted the latest stay in February, hours after the US Supreme Court [official website] denied [JURIST report] Hills' petition for certiorari. Hill's appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court [official website] was denied earlier that month. In July the Supreme Court of Georgia unanimously granted a stay of execution [JURIST report] 90 minutes before Hill was scheduled to be executed, in order to consider the state's new single-dose lethal injection protocol. In a separate order the court also denied Hill's request to hear his appeal of a Butts County Superior Court ruling, which held that Hill had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt [JURIST report] that he is mentally disabled, and that the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard itself is constitutional. The US Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia [opinion] that the execution of mentally retarded individuals is cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment [text].

The Constitution Still Applies in Cases of Alleged Domestic Terrorism

NACDL

In cases of alleged domestic terrorism, as with other state and federal crimes, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) supports the use of America’s civilian criminal justice system. NACDL also opposes any expansion whatsoever of the “public safety exception” to Miranda v. Arizona. Indeed, NACDL has long resisted legislative and other efforts to restrict individuals’ constitutional rights, including the right to receive the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona.

Miranda is the landmark Supreme Court case requiring law enforcement officials to read criminal suspects in custody their rights, including their right to an attorney, before questioning them. Furthermore, Miranda itself is an evidentiary rule that determines whether statements may be used in evidence. The Miranda rule does not prevent the government from questioning anyone, including a suspect, for informational purposes as long as any statements provided are not used as evidence against them. A narrow “public safety exception” permits law enforcement to temporarily interrogate suspects without providing them their constitutionally-mandated Miranda warning in emergency situations.

NACDL President Steven D. Benjamin said: “The ‘public safety exception’ is precisely that – an emergency exception. It cannot become the rule for any category of alleged criminal conduct without undermining the Constitution. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil, has been in custody for nearly three days and the government will have a heavy burden to show that any further questioning without a reading of his Miranda rights is justified. In addition, the suggestion that Tsarnaev be treated as an enemy combatant or diverted out of the civilian criminal justice system would amount to a radical suspension of due process and NACDL opposes it. All crime is by definition an attack on civil society and the civilian population. Distinctions in degree, breadth, or inhumanity do not distinguish these crimes from the conduct that our criminal justice system is designed to prevent and punish. The crimes committed at the Boston Marathon took place on Patriots’ Day, a holiday marking the first battles of the American Revolution. It would certainly add to this tragedy if the events of last week lead the government to abandon the core protections the founders fought so hard to secure.”

According to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday, “the immediate threat, I think all of law enforcement feels, is over, based on the information we have.”

Public Defender Assigned To Represent Bombing Suspect

NPR

The suspect in the the marathon bombings in Boston, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wakes up Tuesday morning in the custody of Federal Marshals — his prosecution officially under way. Federal prosecutors are charging him with using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction.

It's Called American Justice but we know the truth: Boston suspect Interrogated 60 hours before being Mirandized

MSNBC

The suspect in the twin explosions that shattered the Boston marathon last week had been in custody for more than 60 hours before being advised of his Miranda Rights. The Justice Department had said it had held off on the warnings—which protect suspects from coercive questions—outof fear that the public was still in danger. The decision by the department to invoke the public safety exception came despite repeated assurances by numerous public officials that there is no imminent threat or danger to public safety.

“There isn’t any basis for concern about another imminent threat,” to the citizens of Boston, Massachussetts Governor Deval Patrick said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.  Boston Mayor Thomas Menino also dispelled concern that any accomplices were at-large. There is  ”no evidence of a broader plot involving more people,” he told ABC News.

By Monday midday, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old prime suspect in the bombings, had been held longer, without Miranda protections, than any other terrorism suspect since the Obama administration announced it would rely on this expanded exception in 2010. Civil rights groups expressed concern about relying on the exception and the importance of Miranda as a fundamental protection.

Maryland prison guards helped gangs smuggle drugs, fathered inmate's children

Rt.com

Thirteen female Maryland prison guards have been indicted on charges that they assisted a powerful prison gang with a money-laundering and drug-trafficking scheme while the gang leaders sat behind bars.

The guards were charged by the Maryland US Attorney’s Office after the indictment was unsealed in federal court on Tuesday, according to the Washington Post. The guards are accused of smuggling cell phones, prescription pills and other contraband into Baltimore City Detention Center at the behest of Tavon White, the alleged leader of the Black Guerilla Family gang, or BGF. 

White and six other inmates as well as five “outside suppliers” were also indicted. Prosecutors claimed White had sexual relations with at least four of the guards and had fathered five children with them since he was incarcerated in 2009 after an attempted murder conviction. 

“Correctional officers were in bed with BGF inmates, in violation of the first principle of prison management,” US Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein told reporters. “Preventing prison corruption requires intensive screening at prison entrances and punishment for employees who consort with inmates or bring cell phones and drugs into correctional facilities.” 

Two of the accused guards had tattoos reading “Tavon” and at least four were given gifts including luxury cars and diamond rings. Marijuana, Oxycodone, Xanax, Klonopin and Vicodin were among the drugs brought into the prison, reported Baltimore CBS affiliate WJZ. 

Prosecutors also included a transcript of a wiretapped phone call from January 5, 2013, in which White brags of making roughly $16,000 from black market activities in the prison in a month, among other implicating details. 

“This is my jail. You understand that? I’m dead serious,” White is quoted as saying in the documents. “I make every final call in this jail and nothing go past me, everything come to me. Any of my brothers that deal with anybody, it’s gonna come to me…”

State Sen. Joseph M. Getty said the charges are a “pretty harsh indictment” of the prison policies set forth by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. 

CNN's John King Fails to Explain His 'Dark Skinned' Comment - white man got excited when he mistakenly said Boston Killer was Non-white

ColorLines

(another reason CNN sucks - BW)

Last night CNN correspondent John King took to Twitter to offer more context on how he ended up reporting that a suspect, described as a "dark-skinned man" had been arrested in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing. CNN ran with King's "exclusive news" of the "dark-skinned" suspect for an hour until they announced their report turned out to be false.

"Source of that description was a senior government official. And I asked, are you sure? But I'm responsible," King tweeted on Thursday evening. "What I am not is racist."

King offered his explanation only after the NAACP, Al Sharpton, and the National Association of Black Journalists called him out for his inflammatory reporting.

Even the FBI released a statement asking journalists to be more thorough because his action lead to real world effects.

"Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting," the FBI statement read.

Racism instead of Evidence: Govt. Crime Lab Worker accused of lying about completing tests on evidence

Spokesman

A former manager at the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab in Cheney is accused of lying to his boss about completing tests on evidence from at least five cases.

The employee, Kevin Fortney, resigned during the investigation, State Patrol spokesman Robert Calkins said.

He said another employee came forward to report she suspected her boss had not completed certain lab tests he claimed to have done.

WSP has identified at least five cases where evidence went untested. Calkins said the internal investigation is ongoing and the law enforcement agencies that submitted the evidence will be contacted to see what they want done with the evidence.

Calkins said most of the evidence affected was trace evidence from arson cases. Whether convictions resulted in any of those cases is unclear.

“Because this was work that went undone as opposed to work done (sloppily) or poorly, we think the likelihood of a wrongful conviction is very low here,” Calkins said.

He added that the cases were all more than a year old.

An internal audit of the evidence in the lab will be done as well as an investigation into lab practices.

“This is going to be a very thorough look,” Calkins said.

WSP has a history of problems in its labs.

Employee Denise Olson was fired from the crime laboratory in 2011 for shoddy work.

In 2008, the head of the Forensic Laboratory Bureau resigned after ethical lapses and scientific mistakes at the state toxicology lab put thousands of breath-test results into question.

A 2007 audit of the crime lab a month after it lost blood samples in a high-profile case discovered lab workers had lost or broken hundreds of blood vials during a transfer between freezers.

Calkins said the most recent incident is isolated to one employee and is not indicative of a systemic problem in the labs.

Spokane County Public Defender Director John Rodgers said the latest development will cause people on all sides of cases, including police, prosecutors and defenders, to re-examine any convictions to see if Fortney was a part of the case.

“Forensic science is shaky enough in a lot of ways without adding on inaccurate reports and incomplete tests,” Rodgers said.

How FAIR's Activists And Radio Supporters Are Preparing For The Immigration Fight

MediaMatters

The timing must have seemed too good to be true. And in the end, it was.

On Tuesday, the same day the Federation for American Immigration Reform kicked off its annual "Feet to the Fire" media and lobbying event on Capitol Hill, the "Gang of Eight" released its bipartisan immigration reform package. The bill's arrival is the biggest event in immigration politics in half a decade, and FAIR's organized presence could only be seen as a fortuitous start to its plan to kill any bill containing a path to citizenship. But the landing of the legislation wasn't quite the national story FAIR expected, and neither was FAIR's event. On Wednesday, guns overshadowed immigration when the Senate voted down another high-profile bipartisan bill. Celebrating this front-page defeat was the National Rifle Association, whose outsized role in the gun debate FAIR imagines for itself in the immigration debate.

The comparison is flattering to FAIR, but like the group's ideas about immigration, it enjoys an ever-thinner margin of overlap with political reality. The NRA may be a punch line in much of the country, out of step with national opinion and internal membership polls, but the gun group still draws ritual genuflections from Republican presidential hopefuls, and its press conferences enjoy close media scrutiny. FAIR is more of a shadowy outlier.

Despite FAIR president Dan Stein's 2013 convention-program claim that "we could not be more relevant," the group is less relevant than ever. After three decades of advocating single-mindedly punitive immigration policies often dripping with racial bile, few elected officials above county sheriff risk public association with the scandal-plagued outfit, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designated a hate-group in 2007. Sen. Marco Rubio, possibly the biggest GOP star contending for 2016, reportedly plans to conduct radio interviews at the event, but he and FAIR stand so far apart on the issue of immigration that Politico has described his appearance at the event as walking "into the lion's den."

As the political ground shifts following November's election, the conservative media has begun to move with it, shifting away from the Nativism that flows naturally from Stein's view that the 1965 Immigration Act -- which ended the racial quotas of the 1920s -- was "a form of revengism" against "Anglo-Saxon dominance." Many of the most influential national right-wing talkers have "evolved" on immigration issues in the months since Barack Obama's reelection. So have powerful voices on Fox News, which appears to be moderating its style-guide on immigration lexicon in hopes of both reeducating the base and winning Latino viewers and voters. The new signals on the right doesn't mean Bill O'Reilly and his prime-time colleagues at Fox will ever be seen marching behind a La Raza banner, but they have stepped away from "no amnesty" absolutism. This shift hasn't escaped the notice of Rush Limbaugh, who has suggested he may be the last media lion standing on FAIR's side of the line.

That day hasn't come yet. FAIR-style rhetoric is still popular on talk radio and with some hosts on Fox. The result is conservative-media schizophrenia. The buzzwords of the new Republican Realism are often just one commercial break from the sounds of Tucker Carlson slandering immigrants as welfare-addicted gang members who harm American workers, Neil Cavuto casting undocumented immigrants as part of an "illegal invasion," and Brian Kilmeade joking about undocumented students using "night vision video" footage of themselves to win scholarships.

This post-2012 split was audible on radio row at the Park Phoenix, which FAIR sees as America's best and last line of defense against a path to citizenship. 

Florida leads in denying voting rights to Non-white People

The Sentencing Project 

Reporter Bill Kaczon writes that changes under Republican Gov. Rick Scott have made it more difficult for Floridians with past felony convictions to get their voting rights restored—a situation critics say has suppressed the minority vote and hurt Democratic candidates. Civil liberties activists say Florida's rights restoration rules are the most restrictive in the nation and have the effect, if not the intent, of suppressing the minority vote.  Only 16.5 percent of Floridians are black, yet blacks make up 31.5 percent of the state's prison population, meaning a higher percentage of African-Americans, who tend to support Democrats, don't have the right to vote after completing their sentences.

New Publication: Ending Mass Incarceration: Charting a New Justice Reinvestment

The Sentencing Project 

Justice Reinvestment was conceived as part of the solution to mass incarceration.  The intent was to reduce corrections populations and budgets, thereby generating savings for reinvestment in high incarceration communities to make them safer, stronger, more prosperous, and equitable.

Senator Denounces Heritage Foundation’s Discredited Immigration Study

ThinkProgress

At Friday’s Senate Judiciary hearing on comprehensive immigration reform, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) — a member of the “Gang of 8″ — tore into a Heritage Foundation study that claims immigration reform would impose a $2.6 trillion cost to the U.S. The analysis, which was produced under the leadership of former Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, has been widely discredited by conservatives for its flawed methodology.

In an exchange with American Action Forum economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Flake cited criticisms from Cato Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, and Holtz-Eakin’s own group, which found immigration reform would cut trillions from the deficit.

Holtz-Eakin explained the Heritage study has several fundamental issues, including how it omits a before-and-after scenario of immigration passage and falsely assumes that immigrants draw more from social programs than the native-born. “It is not the case that program participation is higher than in the native-born population on the whole,” he said.

FLAKE: Heritage Foundation came up with a study with a headline that this would cost the taxpayers $2.6 trillion over some time. That study has now been discounted by quite a number of organizations the Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute and others. I know you have looked at that. What are your feelings on a study like that that purports these kinds of costs to the taxpayers?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: I will resist temptation to turn this into a graduate seminar, but I think the top line is I have reservations on the study [...] it leaves out things that I think our most important, the dynamic effects in my testimony and the study I did. Heritage has the capability of doing that analysis, and I would hope they would bring something like that out if the opportunity arose. The second thing I worry about in that study is the basic design does not shed light on immigration reform. There is nothing about that study that says what happens as a result of passing legislation, so it does not inform decisions that Congress might face, and I would like to see studies designed before and after reform.

The last, and I will not the belabor it, the comparisons and that study are between very low-skill immigrants and all of Americans, including by implication Bill Gates, myself, you, whoever. I think that’s not a very meaningful comparison. And you can anticipate they outcome of that comparison without doing any kind of detailed analysis. You know the answer by the way the study’s constructed.

The Wall Street Journal recently echoed these arguments in an editorial on the economic benefits of reform.

Supreme Court hears arguments on right to remain silent

Jurist The US Supreme Court [official website] heard oral arguments [day call, PDF] Wednesday in two cases [JURIST report]. In Salinas v. Texas [transcript, PDF] the court considered the boundaries of the Fifth Amendment [text] right to remain silent prior to arrest. Genovevo Salinas was suspected of being involved in a murder. He consented to a search of his home, where police found a shotgun, and consented to questioning at the police station, but he was not arrested or given Miranda warnings [backgrounder]. An officer asked, "if the shotgun [his father had given them] would match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder." Salinas looked down and refused to answer the question. The state then offered the refusal to answer as a key piece of evidence against Salinas, which he contends was a violation of his right against self-incrimination. The attorney for Salinas argued that using Salinas' silence in this way violates Griffith v. Kentucky [opinion]: The Fifth Amendment prohibits using a person's silence during a noncustodial police interview against him at trial, and nothing about the specific facts of this case give this Court cause to refrain from applying that rule here. To the contrary, the State's closing argument in this case urging the jury to find Mr. Salinas guilty because, quote, "an innocent person would have denied law enforcement's accusations," strikes at the core of everything the Griffin rule, and indeed the Fifth Amendment, is designed to prohibit. It evokes an inquisitorial system of justice. It effectively shifts the burden of proof onto the defendant, and it demeans individual dignity by conscripting the defendant as a product of his own demise. An assistant district attorney in Houston argued on behalf of Texas. He suggested that "absent invocation" of the right to silence, refusing to answer a question can be used as evidence against a defendant's innocence. The federal government supported this view, suggesting that Minnesota v. Murphy [opinion] holds as "the general rule that the Fifth Amendment privilege is not self-executing and that a suspect must invoke it in order to claim its protection to a noncustodial interview in." Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed skeptical of this argument: "That is such a radical position, that silence is an admission of guilty. That's really what the argument is. I certainly understand that speaking can implicate you, and if you choose to speak, clearly whatever you say can be used against you unless you're in custody and unless you've invoke the right before. But this is radically different. ... [Y]ou're trying to say acts of commission and omission are the same, but statements are different than silence, because then you're making the person who is asking the question your—your admission. You are saying you're adopting their statement as true." The court also heard arguments in United States v. Kebodeaux [transcript, PDF] on whether the federal government can compel a convicted sex offender to register with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act of 2006 (SORNA) [text] if they have completed their sentence before SORNA [JURIST news archive] was enacted. The deputy Solicitor General argued that "Nothing in Article I prevents Congress from legislating retroactively with respect to civil remedies for past violations of Federal law. The Ex Post Facto Clause, the Due Process Clause, and Article I analysis under the Necessary and Proper Clause all provide some degree of protection against retroactive provisions, but no per se rule bars Congress from applying sex offender registration requirements, which this Court has held to be civil remedies not barred by the Ex Post Facto Clause to past Federal criminal convictions." An attorney on behalf of Anthony James Kebodeaux argued that the situation should be analyzed under the five factors in United States v. Comstock [JURIST report]. She also argued that under "necessary and proper" analysis, the government's requirement of registration here is beyond the scope of that power. "I don't see any problem with them giving notice. That does not impose a Federal obligation on an individual. So there is no power being exerted on the individual."

More terror theater: Why Were Bomb Sniffing Dogs At Start & Finish Lines?

BlackListedNews and Alabama.com

(rigged like an electtion or a justification for a war?) 

Boston Police: "Don't worry, it's just a training exercise."

Interview with college coach who noticed things weren't normal before the race.

NBC 15 Mobile

Coach Saw Bomb Sniffing Dogs, Roof Spotters, Police Drills Before Explosion

University of Mobile’s Cross Country Coach, who was near the finish line of the Boston Marathon when a series of explosions went off, said he thought it was odd there were bomb sniffing dogs at the start and finish lines.

"They kept making announcements to the participants do not worry, it's just a training exercise," Coach Ali Stevenson told Local 15.

Stevenson said he saw law enforcement spotters on the roofs at the start of the race. He's been in plenty of marathons in Chicago, D.C., Chicago, London and other major metropolitan areas but has never seen that level of security before.

"Evidently, I don't believe they were just having a training exercise," Stevenson said. "I think they must have had some sort of threat or suspicion called in."