A Living Wage? D.C. education agency pays Chicago firm nearly $90,000 for one day of work

WashingtonPost

A D.C. government agency paid a Chicago consulting firm $89,995 for one day of work at a recent city education conference, a fee that included a half-hour keynote speech, three 45-minute parent workshops and hundreds of copies of parenting books.

The Office of the State Superintendent of Education hired the firm without soliciting or considering other bids, according to an agency spokeswoman. The agency sponsored the Sept. 7 conference in an effort to reach out to parents, using D.C. tax dollars to pay the Chicago firm even as many speakers that day — as well as the keynote speaker at the same conference in 2012 — volunteered.

The payment to SPC Consulting is about $12,000 more than the average D.C. Public Schools teacher earns in a year, and is more than three times the “living wage” — $26,000 per year — that Wal-Mart would have been required to pay employees under a bill that Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) vetoed this year. It’s also higher than the $50,000 that former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, arguably the most widely recognized education figure in the country, charged for individual speaking appearances in 2011.

The superintendent’s office is responsible for citywide education policies, and the agency funnels federal and local funds to city schools. The agency selected SPC Consulting based on a recommendation by Chief of Staff Jose Alvarez, a top agency official who has played a leadership role during months of turnover, and who knew the firm and its founder from a previous job in Chicago. [MORE]

Israel's So-Called Discovery of Oil in the West Bank - Reserves are under Palestinian territory

From  [HERE] Israeli investors had reason to celebrate last month with the news that Israel may soon be joining the club of oil-producing states, in addition to its recent finds of large natural gas deposits off the coast.

Shares in Givot Olam, an Israeli oil exploration company, rallied on reports that it had located much larger oil reserves at its Meged 5 site than previously estimated.

The company, which says it has already sold $40m worth of oil since the Meged field went operational in 2011, now believes that the well is sitting on exploitable reserves of as much as 3.53 billion barrels - about a seventh of Qatar's proven oil reserves.

Only one cloud looms on the horizon. It is unclear how much of this new-found oil wealth actually belongs to Israel. The well sits on the so-called Green Line, the armistice line of 1948 that formally separates Israel from the occupied Palestinian territories.

According to Palestinian officials, Israel has moved the course of its concrete and steel separation wall - claiming security - to provide Givot Olam with unfettered access to the site, between the Israeli town of Rosh Haayin and the Palestinian village of Rantis, north-west of Ramallah.

Click to read more ...

The NYPD doesn't answer document requests

BlackListedNews

The New York Police Department's records office is notorious among reporters for being about as transparent as a bank vault. It's storied history of non-disclosure includes an overeager rejection stamp and a convenient tendency to “not receive” letters in time.

Having submitted my share of records requests to cops and military across the country, I have few illusions of chipper customer service from police clerks. But the NYPD takes it to a whole new level.

Reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, who shared a Pulitzer last year as part of the Associated Press team covering the NYPD’s surveillance activity, have summed it up perfectly: The NYPD doesn't answer document requests.

“For the most part, they don’t respond,” Apuzzo told the Huffington Post. "Even the NSA responds.”

It's not just reporters who've noticed. New York City Public Advocate and mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio gave the police department a failing grade in an April report based on its dismal response rate to Freedom of Information requests. By de Blasio’s analysis, nearly a third of requests submitted to NYPD go unanswered.

Shackles and Ivy: The Secret History of How Slavery Helped Build America's Elite Colleges

Democracy Now

A new book 10 years in the making examines how many major U.S. universities — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Rutgers, Williams and the University of North Carolina, among others — are drenched in the sweat, and sometimes the blood, of Africans brought to the United States as slaves. In "Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities," Massachusetts Institute of Technology American history professor Craig Steven Wilder reveals how the slave economy and higher education grew up together. "When you think about the colonial world, until the American Revolution, there is only one college in the South, William & Mary ... The other eight colleges were all Northern schools, and they’re actually located in key sites, for the most part, of the merchant economy where the slave traders had come to power and rose as the financial and intellectual backers of new culture of the colonies," Wilder says.

Click here to watch part 2 of this interview.

Civil Rights Coalition Victorious in Suit Against Alabama’s Anti-Immigrant Law

ACLU

The coalition of civil rights groups that challenged Alabama’s anti-immigrant law, HB 56, announced today an agreement that permanently blocks key provisions of the law and significantly limits racial profiling under Sections 12 and 18, the “show me your papers” provisions. A similar agreement is being entered in a case brought by the Department of Justice and also in one brought by church leaders. Both agreements are pending final approval by the court.

Under the agreement, the provisions currently temporarily blocked by the courts will be permanently blocked. The state will also pay the coalition attorneys’ fees and costs, as required under federal law. Alabama joins Arizona, South Carolina, Georgia and other states whose anti-immigrant laws have been stopped by the courts.

"This court order gives firm assurance that all Alabamians are on equal footing, regardless of their immigration status," said Cecillia Wang, director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "Law enforcement agencies throughout Alabama are on notice – if they detain anyone based on suspicions about immigration status, they will be violating the U.S. Constitution and we will take swift action to protect people’s civil rights against such violations."  

The state also agrees that local police cannot hold someone during a traffic stop solely to check immigration status. This is a significant victory because many departments across the state have interpreted the “show me your papers” provisions to authorize detaining people just to check their immigration status. The coalition will remain vigilant to ensure these abuses do not continue.

"I am thankful that most of the law has been permanently blocked and that tranquility has been restored to the Hispanic community," said Maria D. Ceja Zamora, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. "I am glad to see there are still organizations like those that brought the lawsuit to help stop discriminatory laws like HB 56. God bless and keep up the good work."

"We warned the legislature when they were debating HB 56 that if they passed this draconian law, we would sue in court and win," said Kristi Graunke, senior staff supervising attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center. "That we have done. Now it is time for our state lawmakers to repeal the remnants of HB 56, and for our congressional delegation to support meaningful immigration reform that will fix our broken system."

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the National Immigration Law Center (NILC), American Civil Liberties Union Foundation (ACLU), Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and other civil rights groups filed the class action suit – HICA v. Bentley – in July 2011.  It challenged provisions of the law that chilled children’s access to public schools, authorized police to demand “papers” during traffic stops, and criminalized Alabamians for everyday interactions with undocumented individuals.

"Today’s settlement should remind legislators in both Montgomery and Washington that a person’s constitutional rights may not be legislated away," said Linton Joaquin, general counsel of the National Immigration Law Center. "Supporters of attempts to nationalize racial profiling policies such as Alabama’s HB 56 should be warned: we will fight these efforts at the Capitol, and, if necessary, in the courtroom."

The following key provisions of the law have now been permanently blocked by the courts as a result of this lawsuit:

• Section 10, which criminalized failing to register one’s immigration status, was initially blocked by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and now has been permanently blocked;
• Section 28, which required schools to verify the immigration status of newly enrolled K-12 students, was initially blocked by the 11th Circuit and now has been permanently blocked.
• Section 13, which criminalized giving a ride or renting to someone who is undocumented, was initially blocked by the U.S. District Court in Birmingham and now has been permanently blocked;
• Section 11(a), which criminalized the solicitation of work by unauthorized immigrants, was initially blocked by the District Court in Birmingham and now has been permanently blocked;
• Sections 11(f) and (g), which criminalized day laborers’ First Amendment right to solicit work, was initially blocked by the District Court in Birmingham and now have been permanently blocked; and
• Section 27, which infringed on the ability of individuals to contract with someone who was undocumented, was initially blocked by the 11th Circuit and now has been permanently blocked.

"The heart of Alabama’s unconstitutional anti-immigrant law will be blocked permanently with this agreement, an historic victory for everyone living in the state," said Victor Viramontes, National Senior Counsel, MALDEF. "Other states and localities that consider targeting day laborers, immigrant school children, or immigrant workers should learn from Alabama’s costly mistakes."

The state agreed to pay $350,000 in legal fees and costs to the coalition lawyers.

"During the long two years since HB 56 was implemented in our state, we have witnessed its harmful effects on our community members and on the reputation of our state," said Isabel Rubio, executive director for Hispanic Interest Coalition for Alabama, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. "We are thankful that state and local officials have worked with the courts and our legal partners to resolve the destructive issues brought about by this unjust law. We will continue to work toward building a future in which Alabama is known as a place where immigrants are welcomed and recognized for their valuable contributions."

"We advised the legislature that HB56 would not pass Constitutional muster and warned against a state policy that pitted neighbors against one another" said Shay Farley, legal director for Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice, Inc., a plaintiff in the lawsuit. "Today, we celebrate this victory with our co-plaintiffs and counsel; thankful that the mean-spirited prohibitions and sanctions unlawfully imposed by HB56 are now history and are permanently enjoined."

More information about the case and settlement can be accessed here:
https://www.aclu.org/immigrants-rights/hispanic-interest-coalition-alabama-v-bentley-proposed-final-order

Everything That’s Happened Since Supreme Court Ruled on Voting Rights Act

Last year, we wrote extensively about photo ID laws and the Supreme Court’s decision to strike a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Now, with gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and the debt ceiling and healthcare debates already shaping the 2014 midterms, we’re revisiting voting policies to see which states have enacted tougher restrictions since the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Remind me – what is Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act?

Under the Voting Rights Act, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination needed to get permission from the federal government to enact any changes to their voting laws, in a process called “preclearance.” As of June 2013, nine states, mostly in the South – Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia – needed to get any new voting laws pre-approved. Some counties and townships in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina, South Dakota and Michigan were also subject to preclearance.

Section 5 first applied to states that imposed literacy tests or other unfair devices, and had low voter registration or turnout. Congress later expanded the law to add jurisdictions with sizable minority populations and English-only election materials.

States and localities could “bailout,” or get off the preclearance list, after 10 years of elections without any problems. Several smaller jurisdictions bailed out over the years, including parts of Connecticut, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Wyoming, Hawaii, and Colorado.

Of course, some of the biggest voting law battles of the 2012 election were in states not covered by Section 5 at all, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.

What did the Supreme Court strike down in Shelby County v. Holder?

The Supreme Court decided, 5-4, that the preclearance formula was unconstitutional under the 10^th  Amendment, which gives states the power to regulate elections. The Court ruled that the coverage formula was “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relation to the present day.”

From the decision:

The preclearance criteria was once constitutional, but it isn't anymore. (p. 3)

One important technical point: the Supreme Court actually left Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – the part of the law that describes how preclearance works – intact. Instead, the Court struck down Section 4, which explains which states and localities are subject to preclearance. If Congress amends Section 4, the Justice Department can start enforcing Section 5 again.

Why does this matter? 

While literacy tests are a thing of the past, voting rights advocates say that statutes that limit early voting and registration, require voters to show photo ID, and purge voter rolls still disproportionately affect poor and minority voters.

The Supreme Court’s June 2013 decision also effectively shifted the burden from states to citizens. Before, a state subject to preclearance had to demonstrate that a new voting law was not discriminatory and let voting law experts in the Justice Department evaluate it before it could be implemented. Now it is up to voters to challenge voting laws by filing lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination.

But most court cases involving Section 2 have been limited to redistricting, not other controversial voting measures, says Yale University law professor Heather Gerken.

“With redistricting, there’s always one very wealthy political party or another who can hire some very good lawyers and go into court and challenge it,” Gerken said. “But a lot of the types of things that were challenged under Section 5 were smaller questions, like, ‘Can you change a polling place? Can you shut down early voting hours in ways that might affect the black community?’ There are things smaller than redistricting that can fall through the cracks.”

[MORE]

Felony Disenfranchisement may exclude up to 300,000 from VA Governor's Election Today

Sentencing Project 

When the votes are tallied in Virginia’s race for governor on Tuesday, over 300,000 citizens will be missing from the voting rolls – including 20% of the state’s black population.

The reason is not low turnout or voter ID, but a growing and often invisible barrier to voting that is upending elections around the country.

Over 5 million Americans are barred from voting because they have criminal records, according to a report this year from The Sentencing Project.

The crackdown on ballot access is so intense, a majority of states actually bar former convicts from voting even after they are released from prison. 

If voting rights were restored to those former inmates, about 4.3 million more Americans would be able to vote. That is over three times margin of victory in the last House midterm elections. 

“You have this chunk of voters that’s not there,” explains NBC News political director Chuck Todd. “When you see the decisions that have been made on this issue – and a lot of voting access issues – it’s clear that political partisans are operating on what’s best for their own party’s cause, period,” says Todd.

Jean Chung, a researcher at The Sentencing Project, found that Black Americans over 18 years old are disenfranchised at “a rate more than four times greater than the rest of the adult population.” 

Restricting felony voting naturally perpetuates racial disparities at earlier steps in the criminal justice process, from presuming the guilt of blacks by disproportionately profiling and policy them, to punishing black drug defendants more harshly than white defendants.

Detroit's New Negro Removal Plan Quickly Underway: 90% non-white City may Elect White Republican [fmr. prosecutor] Tmw

Christian Science Mon

White Fraternitiy says 'Can't You Niggers Take a Joke?' Theta Xi @ University Of Michigan Hosts Hood Ratchet Thursday. Then Uses Asian Man to Shadowbox

HuffPost

A University of Michigan fraternity is in hot water after sponsoring a WorldstarHipHop-themed party. Now, a fraternity member turned the blame towards blacks for overreacting to the party's racially insensitive invite and expressed disappointment that the students are making it about race.

A Facebook event page for a Nov. 7 Theta Xi party invited people to "World Star Hip Hop Presents: Hood Ratchet Thursday." Since removed from Facebook, the invitation was extended to: “rappers, twerkers, gangsters (no Bloods allowed), thugs, basketball players, bad bitches, ratchet pussy." It also promised a Kindle to the winner of a twerking contest.

"Started from da bottom now we here but now we goin back to da hood again!!" the invitation continued.

While host and author of the event page Allen Wu said that the party was supposed to be focused on hip-hop and wasn't intended to be "cast under a racial lens," it immediately offended many students. Students Erica Nagy and Brian Thomas sent a letter to administration claiming the party violated U of M's policies and calling on them to act.

"This party is one of many incidents that are symptoms of our disheartening lack of diversity and lack of social justice education and awareness that persists at this predominantly white institution," they wrote.

The school paper spoke to Black Student Union secretary Geralyn Gaines, who said she felt "utter disgust."

Theta Xi's Allen Wu and alleged creator (designated white supremacy defender) of the invite responded with an opinion piece that black students at the predominately white university were making a big fuss over nothing and that they meant no offense.

From Wu's opinion piece in the Michigan Daily:

Of course, I'm aware of hip-hop's roots in African-American culture, and I understand why so many are upset at my usage of the words “ratchet,” “twerking,” etc. But let me be clear: in no way was it my intention to appropriate Black culture. I was attempting to emulate the distasteful party culture of hip hop, not as a synonym for Black culture, but rather as the musical genre that is consumed by all races. I wish that we lived in an age where we as people could collectively celebrate the music that we consume without aggravating racial sensitivities. It pains me to see that “hip-hop parties” are immediately cast under a racial lens, even if not so intended. Just because we celebrate and enjoy the music and terminology used by predominantly Black hip-hop artists, that does not mean we are attempting to appropriate Black culture. Wu goes to great lengths to suggest terms like “twerking,” “ratchet,” and “swag” are the property of Hip-Hop culture and not necessarily black people, adding that the terminology dominates the culture thus it's part of the lexicon. - [MORE]

Racial Shadow Boxing occurs when victims of racism (non-white people) are directly or indirectly, "assigned", bribed, coerced, and/or otherwise influenced, by the racists (white Supremacist), to speak or act to do harm to other victims of racism. White Supremacists oftentimes hide behind others whom they use as shadows of themselves. [MORE] 

White Vice President of Lady of the Lake University Resigns After Racial Remarks

Chronicle.com

Our Lady of the Lake University’s interim executive vice president and chief academic officer has resigned those administrative positions after the Texas institution investigated audio recordings in which he made race-related comments about a student and an employee, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

The official, Robert D. Bisking, apologized last week for using “unprofessional and inappropriate” language heard in the recordings, which were posted anonymously to YouTube. In one of those recordings, Mr. Bisking referred to a student as “the angry black woman.”

A university spokesman told the newspaper that Mr. Bisking would retain his faculty status, though he is not teaching this semester.

Dophins Richie Incognito sent racist, threatening texts to Demean teammate Martin

ESPN and SI

Transcripts of voice mail messages and text messages left for the Miami Dolphins' Jonathan Martin by teammate Richie Incognito indicate a pattern of racial epithets and profane language.

Multiple sources confirmed to ESPN that the following is a transcript of a voice message Incognito left for Martin in April 2013, a year after Martin was drafted:

"Hey, wassup, you half n----- piece of s---. I saw you on Twitter, you been training 10 weeks. [I want to] s--- in your f---ing mouth. [I'm going to] slap your f---ing mouth. [I'm going to] slap your real mother across the face [laughter]. F--- you, you're still a rookie. I'll kill you."

Sources tell ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter that officials from both the NFL and the Dolphins have heard the tape and have copies of the message.

Sources familiar with the tapes say these are terms Incognito used over time and were not isolated incidents, including the use of the racial epithet multiple times.

Sources also say Martin received a series of texts that include derogatory terms referring to the female anatomy and sexual orientation.

Incognito was suspended indefinitely by the Dolphins on Sunday night for conduct detrimental to the team. 

In a statement announcing his suspension, the Dolphins said, "we believe in maintaining a culture of respect for one another and as a result we believe this decision is in the best interest of the organization at this time. As we noted earlier, we reached out to the NFL to conduct an objective and thorough review. We will continue to work with the league on this matter."

Incognito, who has been a part of Miami's six-player leadership council, started all eight games for the Dolphins (4-4). He will be an unrestricted free agent after the season. Backup guard Nate Garner will start in his place.

Martin left the team last week after a lunchroom incident. It is unknown whether and when Martin plans to return to the team. The Dolphins have until 4 p.m. ET Tuesday to take him off the non-football-related illness list.

High Court in the Dominican Republic Cancels the Citizenship of 200,000 Haitians

LaTimes

MEXICO CITY — The recent decision by the highest court in the Dominican Republic to cancel the citizenship of three generations of residents is meeting a firestorm of protest, with human rights advocates warning of a humanitarian nightmare for the entire Caribbean region.

The Dominican Constitutional Court, citing the country's 2010 constitution, retroactively stripped the citizenship of people born after 1929 to parents without Dominican ancestry, declaring that they were residing in the country illegally or with temporary permits.

More than 200,000 people, most of them descendants of Haitians, may in effect be left stateless. Government officials and others could deprive them of a host of basic rights and services, including education and employment, activists say.

"To be stateless means you don't have the right to vote, to go to school … freedom of movement … [access to] travel documents," Sarnata Reynolds, who handles statelessness issues at Refugees International, said Thursday during a panel discussion in Washington about the Dominican ruling. "You're stuck in a legal limbo and in a location where you can't resolve your situation."

Some fear the Dominican Republic will embark on a mass deportation effort. But to where? Haiti and other Caribbean states would be under no obligation to recognize people who were born in the Dominican Republic as anything but Dominicans.

After years of legal dispute and with Dominicans of Haitian descent already feeling prejudice, the court's ruling in late September came in connection with a case involving Juliana Dequis Pierre, born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents in 1984. When she attempted to apply for a voting card, authorities seized her birth certificate and told her she was not Dominican, her lawyers say. Her attempts to challenge those actions led to the high court's judgment.

"This is likely one of the most discriminatory decisions ever made by a superior tribunal," said Santiago A. Canton, director of the Partners for Human Rights program at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, which joined Dequis' legal team. The RFK center branded the ruling a case of "massive state-sponsored xenophobia."

The court's judgment in September expands the definition of "in transit," a category of foreign-born people allowed to live in the Dominican Republic. It would consider people who have been in the Dominican Republic for decades "in transit" and their Dominican-born children and grandchildren ineligible for citizenship.

A spokesman for Dominican President Danilo Medina said the government, stung by a wave of fierce criticism, would seek a "coherent and humanitarian" solution that attempts to respect people's rights. But the government also insisted that it had to obey and respect the highest court of the land.

Eduardo Jorge Prats, a Dominican attorney and leading constitutional law expert, told The Times from Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital, that the high court erred by ignoring judgments from regional bodies, foremost among them the Inter-American Human Rights Court. That body in 2005 told the Dominican Republic that it could not use the nationality of parents as pretext for taking citizenship from their children. The inter-American court's rulings are binding.

At a meeting this week of the governing council of the Organization of American States, known normally for vapid diplomatic niceties, comments from Caribbean countries were particularly pointed.

Haiti said the Dominican court's action was "truly alarming," and it was joined in the criticism by the 15-member Caribbean Community.

La Celia Prince, the representative of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and current spokeswoman for the Caribbean bloc, condemned the ruling because it "strips tens of thousands of people of rights which they have enjoyed from birth and gives them no recourse to appeal."

"It directly impacts the lives of fellow human beings, citizens of our hemisphere and more specifically of our diaspora," she said.

The Dominican Republic's representative reportedly tried to have the meeting canceled.

"The neighbors are unhappy," Canton said.

Haiti, especially, already a badly dysfunctional country, could not absorb the arrival of tens of thousands of people who don't speak its language, he said.

Although many people inside and outside the Dominican Republic see the measure as racist and xenophobic, it has significant support in some domestic quarters among those who resent a large Haitian presence and what they see as outside interference, Jorge Prats said.

"In the legal community, the decision has little support," he said in an email. "But there is certain support in the population because conservative, authoritarian elites have promoted an anti-Haitianism since the times of Trujillo." Rafael Leonidas Trujillo was dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961.

In 1937, though Haitians had been working the Dominican sugar cane fields for generations, Trujillo sought to drive them out by ordering the so-called Parsley massacre, which killed thousands of Haitians. A century earlier, it was a Haiti newly freed by rebelling slaves that brutally occupied the Dominican Republic.

Tension between the two countries that share the Hispaniola island has festered continuously, with Dominicans especially begrudging Haitian immigrants, who have arrived in droves, driven by extreme poverty, political upheaval and, in 2010, one of the deadliest earthquakes on record.

The Role of Faulty Science in Death Row Case of Latino Man

Innocence Project

More than a decade after a Texas man was convicted of the murder of a 19-month-old boy in his care, an appeal was filed last month claiming he was convicted based on faulty science.

 
Rigoberto Avila was watching a basketball game on TV while babysitting his co-worker’s two young sons, when the older boy, Dylan, alerted him that his younger brother, Nicholas, wasn’t breathing. Nicholas died a few hours later at Providence Memorial Hospital.
 
Avila, as well as Dylan and the boys’ mother said that the boys played roughly, the older one sometimes mimicking wrestlers he saw on TV. But, the notion that horse play could have led to the death of the toddler was dismissed by the county’s longtime medical examiner and other doctors. The medical experts on the case at the time said that the extensive internal injuries could not have been caused by his roughly 40-pound brother. Avila was convicted and sentenced to death.
 
The Austin Chronicle reported that according to forensic pathologists, as well as a physicist and a biomechanical engineer who were asked recently to review Avila’s case, the assertion made at trial — that it’s impossible that the injuries were a result of normal playing around — is inaccurate. That assertion was made by George Raschbaum, the pediatric surgeon who worked on Nicholas at the hospital, and medical examiner Juan Conti.
 
Experiments conducted by renowned biomechanical engineer Chris Van Ee and physicist Richard Reimann revealed that a drop from just 18 inches off the ground could have increased Salinas’ weight by up to 500 pounds on impact, and that it was possible that the older brother delivered enough force to cause the injuries.
 
“In short, says attorney Crawford, ‘I think that this is a case where scientific evidence really calls into question the reliability of the conviction,’ demonstrating that Nicholas’ death was a ‘tragic accident’— exactly the kind of case that newly enacted Senate Bill 344 was intended to address.”
 
SB 344, authored by Houston Democratic Senator John Whitmire, expands the law to give inmates convicted by outdated or “junk” science the ability to appeal those convictions. In Whitmire’s statement of intent, he specified cases of infant trauma: “ ‘So this case is … the poster child case for SB 344 and the reasons that led to its passage,’ argues Crawford, who notes that Avila’s is the first appeal of a capital case filed under the new law.”
 
In addition to faulty science claim, there are serious questions about the merit of Avila’s interrogation and written statements from the night Nicholas died. Avila maintains that El Paso Police Department Detective Tony Tabullo, then a 24-year veteran, had him read over his account of events and initial before and after each paragraph of the statement before signing off on the document. Sometime later, Tabulla returned with photos of Nicholas’ body and asked what happened. According to Avila, he said he had no idea, but according to Tabulla, Avila then confessed to stomping on the young child. Tabulla amended Avila’s statement, but Avila’s initials after the new insertions about what happened were missing. The interrogation wasn’t recorded and Tabullo was alone in the room with Avila.
 
It is unclear if the new law will be applied to Avila’s case, but according to the Chronicle, it is hard to imagine that Avila would have been convicted if biomechanics had been reviewed pre-trial. Crawford is hoping Avila will be granted a hearing in which a district judge can evaluate the impact of the science on the conviction. 

Even Amnesty Int’l & Human Rights Watch Accuse US Drone Strikes (against non-whites) As War Crimes?

4th Media

US officials responsible for the secret CIA drone campaign against suspected terrorists in Pakistan may have committed war crimes and should stand trial, a report by a leading human rights group warns.Amnesty International has highlighted the case of a grandmother who was killed while she was picking vegetables and other incidents which could have broken international laws designed to protect civilians.

The report is issued in conjunction with an investigation by Human Rights Watch detailing missile attacks in Yemen which the group believes could contravene the laws of armed conflict, international human rights law and Barack Obama’s own guidelines on drones.

The reports are being published while Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, is in Washington. Sharif has promised to tell Obama that the drone strikes – which have caused outrage in Pakistan – must end.

Getting to the bottom of individual strikes is exceptionally difficult in the restive areas bordering Afghanistan, where thousands of militants have settled. People are often terrified of speaking out, fearing retribution from both militants and the state, which is widely suspected of colluding with the CIA-led campaign.

There is also a risk of militants attempting to skew outside research by forcing interviewees into “providing false or inaccurate information”, the report said.

Toronto police say they have video of White mayor smoking crack: White Media Yawns

FoxNews

Backers of embattled Toronto Mayor Rob Ford called Friday for police to release a video that appears to show him smoking a crack pipe, as outraged residents of Canada's largest city called for the mayor's resignation.

Ford's lawyer and the mayor's brother, a city councilor, attacked Police Chief Bill Blair for talking publicly about the video, despite acknowledging it does not provide enough evidence to file charges against Ford. Police announced Thursday that they had recovered the video during a massive surveillance operation of an associate suspected of providing drugs to the mayor.

Dennis Morris, Ford's lawyer, told The Associated Press that Blair acted as "judge, jury and executioner" when he said in a news conference that he was "disappointed" in the mayor. Ford's brother Doug said the chief erred when he made his personal opinions known to the public.