Month: April 2015

This is the story of a man in Alabama who was railroaded by Alabama’s unjust legal system in 1985 when he was convicted for two murders he didn’t commit. murder for which he was sentenced to die. He sat on death row, in solitary confinement for 28 years. His prison cell was a 40 square feet rectangle of terror and anguish, as he waited day by day, year by year for the State of Alabama to put him to death. He is 58, the same age as me. He’s an African American man who spent half his life in prison because state prosecutors refused to consider evidence of his innocence after they obtained a conviction of him based solely on faulty expert testimony and racist statements made to the jury by the trial prosecutor.

His name is Anthony Ray Hinton and he is the 152nd person condemned to die in the United States since 1973 who has been exonerated. yesterday he was released from prison after all charges against him were dismissed.

You might think that this is a story with a happy ending. If you do think that, you could not be more wrong.

Please follow me below the fold for a detailed history of this travesty of justice denied, and its tragic consequences for Mr. Hinton.

In February, 1985, in Birmingham, Alabama, two fast food managers, John Davidson and Thomas Wayne Vason, were gunned down during an armed robbery. No eyewitnesses. No fingerprints to connect anyone to the crime. No suspects. Nada. In separate incident on July 25th of that year, however, a third restaurant manager in Bessemer, Alabama was also shot during a robbery, but he survived. He picked Anthony from photographs shown to him by the police. Bad news for the police – Hinton had an alibi for the Bessemer robbery. He was at work “in a locked warehouse fifteen miles away at the time of the crime.”

This inconvenient fact did not deter the police from looking for another crime to pin on him. Nor did it deter the prosecutor from indicting Anthony Hinton – not for the shooting of the restaurant manger in Bessemer – but for the murders of Davidson and Vinson back in February. When police searched Anthony’s home, they discovered a six shot, 38 caliber revolver that belonged to his mother, with whom he shared the house. This gun became the “break” in the murder case for which police and the prosecutor had been praying. They sent the gun to be examined by the states ballistic experts, and soon thereafter Anthony was on trial for his life.

The prosecution alleged that ballistics evidence showed the same gun had been used in all three crimes. The Bessemer manager, a Mr. Smotherman, was permitted to testify in order to identify Anthony as the man who shot him in July. Two other witnesses testified as to facts that “tended to link Hinton to the Smotherman robbery.” In Anthony’s defense, witnesses testified that he had been working at a secured warehouse at the time Mr. Smotherman was shot.

Again, keep in mind, Anthony Hinton was never tried on charges he robbed and assaulted Mr. Smotherman. All the testimony regarding the Bessemer assault was intended to show Anthony was guilty of two murders that occurred in a different city six months earlier. Prejudicial much? Yes indeed.

The only hard evidence that linked Hinton to the two Birmingham murders in February was the testimony given by the two ballistics experts from the Alabama’s Department of Forensic Sciences. They claimed that their analysis of the six bullets recovered from the murder scene, along with bullets they test fired from the gun owned by Anthony’s mother, confirmed her gun was the weapon used in all three crimes. The implication could not have been more clear. Despite having an air tight alibi for the July shooting, and despite no other evidence at the scene that could implicate Anthony in the murders of Davidson and Vason, the prosecution believed he would be convicted anyway based on this one tenuous tie the crime. It turns out their faith in Alabama’s justice system ability to convict an innocent man was not misplaced.

Anthony’s attorney, whether out of incompetence or a genuine mistake did not hire a qualified expert to contest the states two forensic examiners. Correspondence from the trial judge stated that only $1000 could be authorized to pay for an expert, though the defense attorney could make a request for additional funds if he wished. In any event, Anthony’s lawyer did not request additional funding for a proper, accredited ballistics expert. Instead called as a rebuttal witness a one-eyed “civil engineer with no expertise in firearms identification who admitted he could not operate the machinery necessary to examine the evidence.”

As you can imagine, things went downhill from there.

The prosecutor—who had a documented history of racial bias and said he could tell Mr. Hinton was guilty and “evil” solely from his appearance—told the court that its experts’ asserted match between Mrs. Hinton’s gun and the bullets from all three crimes was the only evidence linking Mr. Hinton to the Davidson and Vason murders.

Thus, though Anthony Hinton had “no history of violent crime” and had passed a polygraph test administered by the police, he was found guilty of both murders by the jury and sentenced to death by “the [trial] judge (now-retired Circuit Judge James Garrett).” The case was appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court, on the following issues:

I. Whether the accused was deprived of a fair trial when two capital cases against him were consolidated for trial.

II. Whether it was error to allow evidence of ballistics tests when the bullets from the victims were introduced into evidence but the test bullets were not.

III. Whether it was error to allow a ballistics expert to testify about the test bullets when they had not been admitted into evidence.

IV. Whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain the convictions.

V. Whether the accused should have been allowed to introduce polygraph results at the guilt and sentencing phases of the trial.

Unsurprisingly, the Alabama Supreme Court in it’s 1989 opinion, ruled against Anthony on each one of the asserted grounds of error by the trial court, and confirmed his conviction. Anthony Hinton would remain on death row for another 25 years. Years of torment endured by an innocent man.

Over 28 years, the outside world changed while Hinton spent his days largely in a 5ft by 8ft prison cell. Children grew up. His mother died. His hair turned gray. Inmates he knew were escorted off to the electric chair or the lethal-injection gurney. […]

Equal Justice Initiative director Bryan Stevenson, who waged a 16-year fight for Hinton’s release, said … the case was tragic.

“Not only did he lose his life, he lived a life in solitary confinement on death row, condemned in a five-by-eight cell where the state was trying to kill him every day,” Stevenson said.

Finally, in 2014, the United States Supreme Court heard another appeal on the sole issue of whether, under the Sixth Amendment, Anthony’s right to counsel had been violated because his trial attorney’s performance failed to meet an “objective standard of reasonableness” resulting in “a reasonable probability that the result of the trial would have been different absent the deficient act or omission.” In an unsigned, unanimous per curiam opinion, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) stated that in the case of Anthony Ray Hinton v. Alabama:

The trial attorney’s failure to request additional funding in order to replace an expert he knew to be inadequate because he mistakenly believed that he had received all he could get under Alabama law constituted deficient performance. […]

The … inadequate assistance of counsel here was the inexcusable mistake of law—the unreasonable failure to understand the resources that state law made available to him—that caused counsel to employ an expert that he himself deemed inadequate.

That the State presented testimony from two experienced expert witnesses that tended to inculpate Hinton does not, taken alone, demonstrate that Hinton is guilty. Prosecution experts, of course, can sometimes make mistakes. Indeed, we have recognized the threat to fair criminal trials posed by the potential for incompetent or fraudulent prosecution forensics experts, noting that “[s]erious deficiencies have been found in the forensic evidence used in criminal trials. . . . One study of cases in which exonerating evidence resulted in the overturning of criminal convictions concluded that invalid forensic testimony contributed to the convictions in 60% of the cases.” Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U. S. 305, 319 (2009) (citing Garrett & Neufeld, Invalid Forensic Science Testimony and Wrongful Convictions, 95 Va. L. Rev. 1, 14 (2009)). This threat is minimized when the defense retains a competent expert to counter the testimony of the prosecution’s expert witnesses; it is maximized when the defense instead fails to understand the resources available to it by law.

Because no court has yet evaluated the prejudice question by applying the proper inquiry to the facts of this case, we remand the case for reconsideration of whether Hinton’s attorney’s deficient performance was prejudicial …

SCOTUS overturned Anthony’s conviction and remanded the case to the Alabama state courts for further consideration, that is, to either grant Anthony Hinton a new trail or dismiss all charges and release him from prison. A state court judge, Laura Petro, ordered a new trial.

Chief deputy district attorney John R Bowers Jr. stated that “three experts with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences examined the bullets ahead of the anticipated retrial in the case.” When those experts completed their examination of the only evidence that could link Anthony Hinton to the murders of John Davidson and Thomas Wayne Vason they concluded the bullets could not be tied to the gun owned by Anthony’s mother, the gun the original prosecutor claimed justified Anthony’s conviction for murder and the death penalty. Not a big surprise, since prior experts who examined the gun had already concluded the bullets from the murder scene could not be matched to her gun:

The State’s evidence of a match was wholly discredited by three highly qualified firearms examiners, including the former chief of the FBI’s firearm and toolmarks unit, who testified in 2002 that the bullets from all three crimes could not be matched to a single gun at all, much less to Mrs. Hinton’s gun, and found that her gun could not have fired the bullets from the third uncharged robbery [referring to the shooting of Mr. Smotherman in July, 1985].

This injustice and this tragedy was not Anthony’s alone. It brought great sorrow and distress to his family, but it also denied justice to the families of the victims, as Anthony noted when interviewed after his release:

As he left the jail, Hinton said he would pray for the victims’ families as he has done for the past 30 years. They have suffered a “miscarriage of justice” as well, he said.

Confronted with the fact that they no longer had any hope of a conviction, the prosecution filed a motion to dismiss all charges, one which “Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge” Laura Petro granted.

I suppose we should be grateful that Anthony was finally released from prison and from the death sentence that hung over him lo these many years. Yet, I cannot find much to celebrate here. This is what happens every day in America to poor defendants charged with crimes by overzealous and hasty prosecutors who look for any excuse to rack up their conviction numbers. From the statement issued by the Equal Justice Initiative regarding Anthony’s long ordeal:

“Race, poverty, inadequate legal assistance, and prosecutorial indifference to innocence conspired to create a textbook example of injustice,” Mr. Stevenson said. “I can’t think of a case that more urgently dramatizes the need for reform than what has happened to Anthony Ray Hinton.”

Stevenson also said this about the case to free Anthony Ray Hinton for which he worked so tirelessly these many years:

“We have a system that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent and this case proves it. We have a system that is compromised by racial bias and this case proves it. We have a system that doesn’t do the right thing when the right thing is apparent,” Stevenson said.

“Prosecutors should have done this testing years ago.”

In closing, I’ll let Anthony Ray Hinton have the final word. He certainly deserves it.

“All they had to do was to test the gun, but when you think you’re high and mighty and you’re above the law, you don’t have to answer to nobody,” Hinton told reporters.

“But I’ve got news for you — everybody that played a part in sending me to death row, you will answer to God.”

And what did representatives of the state institutions which worked so long to deny Anthony Justice justice, the same institutions that fought so long to kill him, have to say in response?

The Alabama attorney general’s office declined to comment.

I suppose no words from them were needed. Their silence regarding the mistreatment of Anthony Hinton speaks volumes.

Yuval Levin at least offers us the opportunity to have an intelligent conversation about the intersection of gay marriage, commerce, and freedom of religion. His take is smart, in the sense that it is a better argument to say that compelling people to participate through commerce in marriage ceremonies that they find religiously objectionable is better understood as an Establishment of a religion than as an infringement on the right to practice one’s religion.

Better, I say, but still not exactly right.

What’s missing is an effort to understand how civil rights intersect here.

We’re all familiar with signs in stores and restaurants that read, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” Maybe they won’t serve minors or drunks or people without shoes. We gladly give businesses this discretion, but we call a foul when they refuse service to people based on their gender, religion, or race.

If there is a Church of Progressive Liberalism, what it is pushing is the idea that gays fit into this class of individuals who cannot be denied service based on who they are.

Now, if you ask most conservatives if it’s okay to deny a piece of pizza to someone because they’re a woman they will say ‘no.’ If it’s because they’re not wearing a shirt, then ‘yes.’ In this dichotomy, your perception or even knowledge that someone is gay is more like the first example than the latter. Therefore, most conservatives will acknowledge that it’s wrong to deny someone pizza simply because they are gay. But if they want to use your catering services for a gay marriage, then it less about who they are than what they are doing. They’re getting married. This is a choice more akin to going shirtless.

So, then, the argument shifts a bit and it becomes, for progressives, an argument about what is fundamental to who or what someone is. Not everyone gets married, but heterosexuals all have the unquestioned right to get married. It’s in these grooves where the real contention arises, because we don’t want to burden someone’s religious beliefs unless it is absolutely necessary to preserve something even more important. If we insist that the right to get married trumps the right to be unburdened in your religious beliefs, we have to explain why this is the case.

Someone else can provide that explanation better than I can, but the basic outlines are that who we choose to marry or even our decision to get married or not are fundamental to who we are. To deny us this right is to deny us part of our humanity. You can agree with that or not, and it still has to overcome the same argument applied to the right to practice your religion according to your own conscience.

But, here, at least, is where the debate belongs.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Cape May street scene.  The photo I am using is seen directly below.  I will be using my usual acrylics on an 8 by 8 inch gallery-wrapped canvas.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

There are a number of changes for this week’s cycle.  Starting to the far right (not a good place to be),  the bouse next door is now repainted and partly in shadow.  Note how the shadow includes that of the chimney.  The windows are still in need of some attention.  Below the red house, the blue car has been darkened a bit.  The grill and headlights are ready to receive details.  Just above, the front steps are now fully painted.  The blues are consistent with those up above.  To the left of the steps, the porch railing is now in shadow with a slash of lit section down the middle.  The left side of the porch now has railing and highlights.  Finally, the red car has received more paint, appearing a bit oversaturated in the photo for some reason.

 
The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week.  See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

I’m glad that David Atkins had the energy to rebut this embarrassingly stupid piece in The Hill this morning. Putting articles together that explain Electoral College math and scenarios is time-consuming and the reward often does not feel like it matches the effort. I’m much happier to keep my free time before Finn’s soccer match and just crib off David.

When I first saw the headline (“Clinton has inevitability, but Bush has the Electoral College”), I though that Eric Ham had come up with a clever angle. While Clinton can plausibly argue that she’s going to be the inevitable nominee and intimidate would-be opponents and their would-be political and financial backers, Jeb Bush can plausibly argue that he has the best chance of winning some of the crucial states the Republicans need to get an Electoral College victory. In other words, I thought the point was that Jeb had some problems on issues that upset the base of his party, he still has a really strong electability argument. As analysis, this wouldn’t have been novel or exciting, but it had the advantage of being accurate.

But that’s not the column that Mr. Ham wrote. Instead, he tried to claim that Jeb Bush has an strong advantage over Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College. Fortunately, that’s complete hokum and David explains why:

Let’s grant Ham’s premise that [Jeb] Bush’s background in Florida will help any more than Gore’s background in Tennessee aided him. Let’s also grant the dubious notion that the [Gov. John] Kasich effect and the GOP convention will somehow put the GOP over the top in Ohio. Let’s give the GOP Colorado despite its ever-more-blue demographic shifts, and let’s assume that some combination of Bush’s Spanish speaking and [Gov. Brian] Sandoval’s endorsement somehow pulls Latino voters in Nevada to Bush in spite of the GOP’s rabid freakout over immigration and unwillingness to budge on the issue.

It’s a series of dubious longshots, but let’s give Bush Florida, Colorado, Nevada and Ohio. Let’s also give Bush the swing state of North Carolina (because this isn’t a discussion otherwise), and let’s assume that 2016 isn’t the year that demography overwhelms the GOP in Arizona and Georgia. Let’s also assume (as is likely but not at all certain) that every red-leaning swing state like Missouri and West Virginia falls to Bush.

Even all that still doesn’t get the GOP to more than 268 electoral votes. The Democratic nominee would still win the White House, even under that highly improbable scenario. Bush would have to go beyond that feat to somehow pluck off Iowa, Wisconsin or Virginia just to eke out a narrow win—nor is there any particular reason to believe that will happen.

Actually, little old New Hampshire would do the trick in this scenario, too. But the point isn’t that the Electoral College is unwinnable for Republicans because it’s not. The point is that any analysis that says that Jeb Bush or any Republican is starting out with an advantage (let alone a strong advantage) is wrong. The Republicans are behind the eight-ball, which is precisely why they proposed making some changes after the 2012 loss. Being friendlier to immigrants, softer on cultural issues, basically okay with gay rights…these are their recipes for victory and Jeb will try to test the theory out to the degree he is able. It could work.

But Jeb Bush is facing an almost impossible Electoral College map, and his best argument for himself in the primaries is that he, in contrast to Ted Cruz, et. al., isn’t facing a completely impossible map.

The following is an image from an internal CIA report on the successful 1953 coup in Iran that ousted Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and put the Shah back on his throne. I provide it for you here because I want you to note that the CIA quite actively sought to enlist the support of the “powerfully influential clergy.”

Of course, twenty-six years later that same “powerfully influential clergy” came to power in their own right during Ayatollah Khomeini’s glorious revolution. You should keep that in mind when you are reading the alarmists who are convinced (or, at least, trying to convince you) that the Iranian clergy is completely intent on destroying Israel and America.

It’s disturbing that Jay Nordlinger is willing to detail numerous examples where Iranian clergy, military figures, or politicians have threatened Israel or America but he can’t be bothered to provide a single link or even a reliable translation for any of his sources. How are we supposed to know if he’s mischaracterizing what these people have said? How do we know that they even said it?

And if they did say these things, how seriously should we take their threats? Should we take them as seriously as presidential candidate John McCain’s joking rendition of the Beach Boys classic, “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran”? Should we take them as seriously as Rep. Louie Gohmert’s threats that he made just this week?

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said he thinks it’s time to take drastic measures against Iran.

“It’s time to bomb Iran,” Gohmert said in an interview Wednesday with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on the radio show “Washington Watch,” according to Right Wing Watch.

“We need to make clear to Iran: You can play these silly games with our president that buys into them and our secretary of state, but the American people aren’t buying it and you’re going to pay a price,” Gohmert added. “We have got to get that message across.”

Speaking of McCain, should the Iranians be afraid when he argues on the Senate floor that Israel should go rogue and bomb them even if they come to an agreement with the international community on their nuclear program?

Nordlinger doesn’t mince around; he goes Full Holocaust right out of the box.

An Iranian general said, “Israel’s destruction is non-negotiable.” Don’t you think President Obama should take note of that? Don’t you think he should say something like, “I understand why the Israelis are a teensy bit worried”?

You may remember what the survivor of Auschwitz said when asked, “What’s the biggest lesson you have learned?” He said, “When someone says he’s going to kill you, believe him.”

There’s no link for those quotes, either.

What’s clear here is that you can find people on both sides making bellicose threats that are really quite frightening if taken at face value. If you have trouble finding something scary enough for your purposes, you can always paraphrase, put the worst light on something, or simply invent the words that you imagine will advance your argument for war. Some publications won’t even demand that you provide credible citations, or any citations at all.

What these folks never do is take any personal responsibility for the series of events that have led us to this place. Nordlinger jokes that President Obama will soon be providing nursing care in the Lincoln Bedroom to Fidel Castro, and that’s really about how seriously we should take him, but these drumbeats for war are cumulative. And they send a message to Iran that is probably even more threatening to them than their threats are to us, because we have the means not just to blackmail them but, as Hillary Clinton said in 2008, to “totally obliterate them.”

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel),” Clinton said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them,” she said.

“That’s a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic,” Clinton said.

Iran doesn’t really need Hillary Clinton to tell them what our nuclear weapons can do to them. If we’re this scared at the mere prospect of Iran getting one 1940’s era nuclear weapon, imagine how they feel when such a wide swath of the American political scene routinely demonizes them and promises their destruction. This tough talk might deter them from doing something reckless, foolish and tragic, but it could also be their main incentive for pushing ahead for a bomb that will give them a measure of deterrence of their own.

I don’t want to make it “look like if the campus Left came to power” in this country, but John Lennon was on to something when he urged us to “give peace a chance.” I think it was Jesus who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

We don’t have to assign benign intent to the Iranian clergy or think that it would be a good idea for them to get a nuclear weapon. But we shouldn’t magnify the threat out of all proportion or give up on finding a way to resolve our differences without killing each other.

I don’t know if President Obama will be called a child of God, but I’m pretty sure those that thirst for war will not be remembered fondly.

Also, someone has to remember our history. Things have a nasty way of not turning out as planned.

I’m not bashing Kansas, but I am going to bash Kansas Republicans for the bill Governor Sam Brownback signed into law today, making it legal, starting in July, for any resident of Kansas to carry a concealed firearm legally without obtaining a permit and without any required training regarding firearm safety. Once again, Republicans lead the charge for unsafe, irrational gun laws.

(Reuters) – Kansas residents will be allowed to carry concealed weapons in the state without training or a permit starting in July under a bill signed into law on Thursday by Governor Sam Brownback.

Brownback, a Republican, said the new law will protect the rights of gun owners, while opponents said the measure poses safety risks.

“Responsible gun ownership – for protection and sport – is a right inherent in our Constitution,” Brownback said in a statement.

How does allowing people to carry concealed weapons without proper safety training further the goals of responsible gun ownership, other than in the minds of NRA extremists and knuckleheads like Brownback and his fellow Republicans in the Kansas state legislature? I sure don’t see it. Maybe someone can explain the reasoning behind this law, because to me it looks like pure pandering to NRA lobbyists and crazy people, not “responsible” gun owners.

To be fair to Kansas Republicans, they are not alone in their lunacy, at least according to Brownback’s office, which claims that Alaska, Wyoming, Arizona and Arkansas have passed similar laws, or are considering them (I hope any other state legislature considering such a law considers it a whole heck of a lot better than the idiots in the Kansas state legislature). Of course Brownback says he “encourages” all gun owners to take gun safety classes, but that’s pure hypocrisy in my view. If one can buy a firearm or carry it around, concealed or otherwise, without any legal requirement to learn how to maintain, handle and use their guns in a safe manner, how many people do you think are going to bother attending a firearms safety class?

In the meantime, this woman speaks for me:

Loren Stanton, president of the Kansas chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, questioned the wisdom of making training voluntary for carrying a concealed weapon.

“There is no way that taking away training can make guns safer,” Stanton said.

She’s got that right.

There are a couple of articles this morning on a little controversy that was created when someone leaked that House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) once applied for a job with the Secret Service and was rejected. There’s a bipartisan consensus that this was a shitty thing to do and that it should be investigated. Both Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Secret Service Director Joseph P. Clancy have personally apologized to Chairman Chaffetz. The committee’s ranking member, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), is expressing outrage.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking Democratic member of the committee, called the allegations “disturbing” and agreed with [Jeh] Johnson that they must be thoroughly investigated.

“If that’s true, I find it appalling,” Cummings said. “There is absolutely no room for this kind of activity in the Secret Service… If true, it simply continues to erode the credibility of one of our most important agencies.”

If you’re wondering why someone might have been inclined to leak this information, it’s because Chaffetz is overseeing investigations of the Secret Service and has recently issued subpoenas. Maybe someone thought that making it look like Chaffetz has an ax to grind would make him back off, or maybe they just wanted some revenge. Either way, it was inappropriate and should be punished.

Having said that, however, Chaffetz just doesn’t know how to tell the truth. The time period we’re talking about is 2002 or 2003, when Chaffetz was still barely young enough to be accepted as a Secret Service agent, but he claims he was rejected because he was too old. In reality, he received a letter saying he was rejected because there were better qualified applicants.

The application was 50 pages long, but Chaffetz claims that he can barely remember applying because he only spent ten minutes on it.

The congressman explained that he hadn’t disclosed his Secret Service application because he had spent only “10 minutes” on his application and hadn’t thought about it in years.

“I haven’t looked at that in more than a decade. It’s not something that’s entered my mind…seriously, this was like 10 minutes, 12 years ago,” he said.

In 2003, around the time Chaffetz applied, the Secret Service application form was some 50 pages long.

Around the time Chaffetz applied he began serving as chief of staff to then Utah Governor Jon Huntsman. It’s not clear if he landed that job after being rejected or applied for the job while serving Huntsman.

Maybe Chaffetz should have disclosed that he’d been rejected by the Secret Service but I don’t think it necessarily creates any conflict of interest. Theoretically, it could, but I am more concerned with Chaffetz’s reaction. It’s like he can’t handle the ego blow of rejection, which makes me wonder if he actually is nurturing some wounded pride and resentment.

Nice going, John Kerry.

Breaking news: Framework nuclear deal with Iran reached according to Iran, Germany and European sources.

Will update asap …

Negotiators in Iran talks signal ‘good news’ on nuclear accord | WaPo |

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Iranian and Western negotiators signaled what they described as good news Thursday after a marathon all-night session, followed by further talks a few hours later in a last-ditch effort to get a preliminary agreement to constrain Iran’s nuclear capacity in exchange for easing sanctions.

“Found solutions. Ready to start drafting immediately,” tweeted Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif.

“Final Ministerial Plenary of these #IranTalks. Now going to meet the press with @JZarif. Good news,” said a tweet from Federica Mogherini, the foreign policy chief of the European Union.

Negotiators from the European Union and Iran were preparing to read statements to reporters, and Secretary of State John F. Kerry scheduled a news conference to announce the results of the talks so far.

Officials: Agreement reached on outline for Iran nuclear deal | Ynet News |

JERUSALEM (AP) – European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif were to read out the same statement in English and Farsi. Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry were then expected to brief reporters separately.

The US and five other countries hope to curb Iran’s nuclear technologies that could be used to make weapons. Tehran denies such ambitions but is negotiating because it wants a lifting of economic sanctions imposed over its nuclear program.

I suppose I should explain the title to this post and the above mug shot. Since this post of mine was shared by a number of people, I’ve begun receiving email responses about the segregation and discrimination I witnessed as a young child born in Raleigh, North Carolina. Most express appreciation or thank me, but not all. A few are oddly off topic, and one went to some length to advise me of the story of C.J. Pearson. (Long story short: 12 year old African American kid claimed he was banned from Facebook after he posted a YouTube video questioning President Obama’s love of America, which led to a major conniption fit by the right wing media thanks to Fox News. The usual suspects claimed a conspiracy to censor conservative criticism by the administration in league with Facebook. In fact, Facebook requires account holders to be 13 years of age, and when advised of his age, they deactivated his account. Facebook has now given Mr. Pearson a public figure page to get around its own terms of service restrictions.)

By far the one reaction I did not expect was the following one in which I was asked for proof of my whiteness:

That was a great piece you wrote for Dailykos. Unfortunately, a young friend of mine, who is not always the most progressive thinking had this to say.

“JR. While I agree with this article. I think he is lying about his ethnicity. Almost seems like he really believes he will get more respect from saying he is white. I guess living in the Midwest for most of my life may scour my opinions on racism, but I really do not think it is as bad as it was in the 1950s. I agree that we have a long way to go as people, however, bringing up the ancient past most likely will not help.”

It would be great if you could send me a proof of life picture so that I might hit him over the head with it.

Clearly, some people believe no white person would ever write about the segregation and overt anti-black racism prevalent in the fifties, so that means in their minds my skin tone must be of a darker hue.

At first, as you might imagine, I was put off that someone would suggest I wasn’t who I said I was. It also seemed odd to me that someone would think that the rather mild stories from my childhood regarding the existence of segregation, Jim Crow laws and overt racism prevalent at that time, must have been written by a black person. After all, real stories from African Americans who lived in the South during the era of the Civil Rights movement are generally more harrowing then mine. Experiences, for example, such as those described by the people like Pearl Avery, an African American woman born in Birmingham, Alabama, who were interviewed by the Library of Congress’ Civil Rights History Project. In the following video she speaks of, among other events she recalls, the effect the deaths of Emmet Till and another black man (both killed for the crime of looking at white women in an inappropriate manner) had on her at a young age:

If you have the time, you can view other oral histories from this collection at the this website.

I considered not responding at all to this bizarre request, but then I realized that the person who questioned my identity, was not only insulting me, but his or her words were also an insult to every black person who lived during that era. Indeed, his or her reaction to my post is further evidence of a persistent racist attitude among far too many people. That is, the attitude, whether expressed or not, that African-Americans complain too much about racism, that racism isn’t that big an deal anymore, and that Americans, whether white or black, should all just get over it because things are so much better now.

You see, this person, whoever he may be, did not just question the authenticity of my white cred, but also the relevance of any discussion of racism in America, past and/or present. Because, talking about our nation’s history of racism against African Americans is just not helpful. Or to repeat the person who suggested I must be black stated:

… I really do not think it is as bad as it was in the 1950s. I agree that we have a long way to go as people, however, bringing up the ancient past most likely will not help.

I guess I have a different view of what constitutes the “ancient past.” Considering African Americans are presently being disproportionately killed in cold blood by the police, imprisoned at higher rates than whites, are discriminated against in housing, financial services and employment, and are witnessing their voting rights increasingly eroded, I think a discussion of what this country went through a mere 50-60 years ago is not only relevant to our times now, but essential.

So to that person who doubted my story, yes, I’m white, and yes speaking about the history of the racial divide in our country, whether discussing slavery, the Jim Crow era, the Civil Rights Movement, or the history of white backlash from the 1970s to the present, is more than relevant to today and our country’s persistent problem of racism. Ignorance is not a virtue, for if we fail to understand our past, how can we possibly hope to address the issues of our present?