June 20, 2015

Who's face should go on the ten dollar bill?

Rep Barbara Jordan

Barbara Jordan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Barbara Jordan
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's 18th district
In office January 3, 1973 – January 3, 1979
Preceded by Bob Price
Succeeded by Mickey Leland

Member of the Texas Senate from the 11th district
In office 1967–1973
Preceded by William T. "Bill" Moore
Succeeded by Chet Brooks

Personal details
Born Barbara Charline Jordan
February 21, 1936
Houston, Texas, U.S.
Died January 17, 1996 (aged 59)
Austin, Texas, U.S.
Resting place Texas State Cemetery
Political party Democratic
Alma mater Texas Southern University
Boston University
Profession Attorney
Religion Baptist

Barbara Charline Jordan (February 21, 1936 – January 17, 1996) was an American politician and a leader of the Civil Rights movement. A Democrat, she was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction, the first southern black female elected to the United States House of Representatives, and the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous other honors. She was a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors from 1978 to 1980.[1] On her death, she became the first African-American woman to be buried in the Texas State Cemetery.[2]

June 16, 2015

Blogger Gets Prison For Conspiracy To Film Sen. Thad Cochran's Ailing Wife

Blogger Gets Prison For Conspiracy To Film Sen. Thad Cochran's Ailing Wife


Blogger Gets Prison For Conspiracy To Film Sen. Thad Cochran's Ailing Wife

ByEMILY WAGSTER PETTUSPublishedJune 15, 2015, 12:25 PM EDT 886 views

CANTON, Miss. (AP) — A blogger who pleaded guilty in a conspiracy to breaking in to a nursing home and shooting unauthorized video of the ailing wife of a U.S. senator was sentenced Monday to serve more than two years in prison.

Twenty-nine-year-old Clayton Kelly of Pearl, Mississippi, shot the video of Sen. Thad Cochran's then-wife in 2014.

On Monday, Mississippi Circuit Judge William Chapman gave Kelly the full five-year maximum sentence, but he'll be in prison for half that time. The rest is on probation.

Images of Rose Cochran, who had dementia, appeared online briefly during a tough Republican primary. Investigators say Kelly was one of several people who conspired to produce the video suggesting Thad Cochran was having an affair.

Cochran's campaign said he wasn't involved in an improper relationship.

Rose Cochran died in December. Thad Cochran last month married a longtime aide.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.




Surprised he even got jail time, two years seems like a fair enough sentence.

June 16, 2015

Rachel Dolezal Sued Howard University For Discriminating Against Her For Being White

Rachel Dolezal Sued Howard University For Discriminating Against Her For Being White

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rachel-dolesal-sued-howard-discrimination

KXLY
ByCaitlin MacNealPublishedJune 15, 2015, 4:43 PM EDT 8975 views

Rachel Dolezal, the former president of the Spokane Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), sued Howard University for discrimination in 2002, according to court documents obtained by The Smoking Gun.

Dolezal alleged that the school denied her a teaching assistant post, a post-graduate instructorship, and a scholarship because she was white, according to The Smoking Gun.

Dolezal, who then went by Rachel Moore, claimed that the school and Howard Professor Alfred Smith discriminated against her "based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender" while she was a graduate student in fine arts, according to the Court of Appeals opinion.

She also claimed that the university's decision to remove some of her artwork from a student exhibition in February 2001 "was motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students over Moore," according to the court opinion.

Judge Zoe Bush dismissed the complaint in February 2004 after finding no evidence that Dolezal was discriminated against based on race or other factors, according to The Smoking Gun.

Dolezal resigned as president of the Spokane NAACP on Monday after multiple news outlets reported last week that she had been pretending to be black. Dolezal's parents describe themselves as white and claim that Dolezal is also white, even though she had said numerous times that she is of African-American descent.





Nothing but twists and turns in this story.

June 14, 2015

Suspected Van in Dallas Police Attack Sold as 'Zombie Apocalypse Assault Vehicle'

Suspected Van in Dallas Police Attack Sold as 'Zombie Apocalypse Assault Vehicle'

By VICE News
June 13, 2015 | 9:45 am

Police are working to verify if the armored van used in the shootout Saturday in Dallas was the one sold on Ebay on June 7, almost six days before the incident. Described as a "zombie apocalypse assault vehicle," the van closely resembles the armored vehicle used by the assailant to ram a police cruiser and flee after opening fire on Dallas police headquarters.

Georgia-based Jenco Sales Inc. advertised the van on May 29 as an "armored zombie busting vehicle" with "bullet proof windows" and tactical step boards for "drive-by mow downs." The 1995 E-Series three-door van was sold just over a week later for $8,250.



Jenco Sales Inc. also describes some of the other features of the van, notably gun ports conveniently located so that "no zombie juice touches you during a mass zombie takedown." The bumpers are reportedly made of reinforced steel tubing so that dents can be avoided. The entire van is said to be armor plated and has bulletproof windows "just in case you run into other zombie hunting hordes who might try to take this bad boy from you."

The ad also mentions that the van was purchased from Pickens Co, South Carolina, and has some minor wear and tear.

?resize=1000

A Dallas police sniper shot the suspected gunmen in the attack through the windshield of the van after a standoff on Saturday morning. Police also reportedly fired a .50-caliber rifle to disable the van's engine. Police fear that the vehicle may be rigged with explosives, and they are using robots for a "planned detonation." Other than the gunman, who is presumed dead, no injuries have been reported in the attack.

Follow VICE News on Twitter: @vicenews
https://news.vice.com/article/suspected-van-in-dallas-police-attack-sold-as-zombie-apocalypse-assault-vehicle

June 13, 2015

McKinney pool party officer’s past includes allegations of racial profiling, questionable police pra

McKinney pool party officer’s past includes allegations of racial profiling, questionable police practices
Records: A look at two cases from Eric Casebolt’s career
Jason Sickles, Yahoo By Jason Sickles, Yahoo
13 hours ago
Yahoo News

http://news.yahoo.com/mckinney-pool-party-officers-past-includes-allegations-of-racial-profiling-questionable-police-practices-014210547.html 

<snip>

Tommy Brown was jailed by Eric Casebolt, a McKinney police officer, in 2007 for a defective headlight. Casebolt …
McKINNEY, Texas — The latest law enforcement officer to fuel the national uproar about race and policing once jailed an African-American man for a defective headlight and was sued by another man for racial profiling, excessive force and other civil rights violations.

McKinney police Cpl. Eric Casebolt, who is white, was thrust into the country’s ongoing controversy about police conduct this week after a video of him responding aggressively to a disturbance at a suburban pool party went viral on social media. On the footage shot last Friday, Casebolt is seen drawing his gun on unarmed African-American teens and throwing one of them, a 15-year-old girl wearing a bikini, to the ground.

<snip>

Tommy Brown of Dallas was watching the controversial video on a local TV news report earlier this week when a broadcaster identified the officer involved as Eric Casebolt.

“Casebolt!” Brown recalls shouting. “That’s his name! This is the guy that took me to jail. I never will forget that name.”

Nor will he forget the charge that put him behind bars: defective headlight.

“Who goes to jail over a headlight?” said Brown, who is black and grew up in McKinney. “If I was a different color, I believe I wouldn’t have been going to jail for a headlight.”


Brown, who has a history of misdemeanor convictions, had just graduated technical college and had landed a job. “I was clean,” Brown told Yahoo News. “I didn’t have any warrants, my driver’s license was good and I had insurance on the car.”

The auto mechanic admits having smoked marijuana before getting in the car, but said he was not high while driving. He said his shirt likely smelled of pot when Casebolt stopped him for the headlight. “But he was very adamant about me selling some drugs,” said Brown, who is now 45.

In below-freezing weather, Brown said he stood for nearly an hour while the officer checked and re-checked his car.

“There wasn’t any papers, paraphernalia, any roaches, no seeds, no nothing,” he said. “The car was clean. He just wasn’t hearing it.”

As the hour wore on, Brown said Casebolt began threatening him with jail.

“He said, ‘I know you deliver some marijuana here in McKinney. I’m gonna put you in jail and I’m going to go to the East Side and anybody I find with some drugs or marijuana, I’m going to charge you for it.’”

<snip>

By all accounts, Albert Brown was at first cooperative. A check of his driver’s license returned no active warrants, despite a lengthy rap sheet for drugs and other non-violent offenses.

He consented to Casebolt searching him and the car. The officer found $180 in Albert Brown’s pocket and $50 and two marijuana seeds in the car.

“With all the nervousness, implausible and contradicting stories, I believed that someone was in possession of illegal drugs,” Casebolt wrote in his report.

Teaching others how to identifying liars, cheats and misfits has apparently been a part-time job for Casebolt. Before last week’s incident at the pool party, the 41-year-old was a featured instructor trainee on the website for Executive Self-defense and Fitness, which provides private lessons to law enforcement and citizens.

According to a bio of Casebolt posted on the site, “He has a strong working knowledge of human behavior, indicators of deception, criminal behavior, the development of situation awareness, and experience in the use of all levels of force.” The description has since been removed.

<snip>

Then Casebolt asked the female officer to search the 17-year-old again. This time, a small baggie of marijuana was found in her waistband. The teen told Casebolt it belonged to Albert Brown and, “That’s not all he has.”

Casebolt asked Albert Brown if he could search him again, according to the arrest report. “Yes, sir, but you just searched me.” The officer said Albert Brown began to struggle. “I pushed Brown onto the hood of his car, fearing he may pull a weapon out of his pants, and I told him he was under arrest [for the traffic offenses].”

<snip>

Jason Sickles is a reporter for Yahoo News. Follow him on Twitter (@jasonsickle

June 12, 2015

Your State's Signature Cause of Death

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/how-will-i-die-cdc-by-state


Unbelievable number of states where cops are the leading cause of death. That any state has that distinction is unbelievable. And then you get Louisiana and Florida (the "Biblebelt"iest states) with STDs.


Funny, I've had lung problems (non smoker) all my life and I've lived in Nebraska, Ohio, Iowa and Texas.


Anybody know of a collage town around 20,000 in population with an average winter temperature 20-30F in the winter and average summer of 80-90F, I'm very interested. Can't be in Nebraska, Iowa, Ohio - and I love all three states!

June 11, 2015

Miami high school principal removed after social media post praising Texas cop in pool party video

Wed Jun 10, 2015 at 11:18 AM PDT
Miami high school principal removed after social media post praising Texas cop in pool party video

by
Jen Hayden

?1433958009

Alberto Iber and his Facebook post that caused the controversy

Alberto Iber is in hot water after took to the comments section of a Miami Herald article on the Texas pool party to defend the Texas officer who pulled a gun on unarmed teens:

The Miami-Dade County school district announced Wednesday that Alberto Iber had been removed as principal after going online to defend a white Texas police officer who waved a gun at black teens while responding to a call about an unruly pool party.

In a brief statement, the district said employees are required to conduct themselves, both personally and professionally, in a manner that represents the school district’s core values. The district said a replacement would be named shortly and that Iber would be reassigned to administrative duties.

<snip>

Alberto Iber sort of, kind of apologized:

When Iber realized his comment had caused outrage, he deleted it. Iber told New Times yesterday he did not realize the comment was linked to Facebook and would show his picture, name, and title.

“I regret that I posted the comment as it apparently upset people and became newsworthy,” Iber said. “It was not my intent.”

"Sorry if people were upset" is not a true apology. And thinking his comments were anonymous does not make the situation any better. Clearly Alberto Iber didn't really have any business managing the day-to-day functions of a school with a largely black student body. And now that he's on administrative duties with the school district, perhaps he'll have time to learn more on the students he is supposed to be serving and the daily challenges they face as young black men and women.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/10/1392135/-Miami-high-school-principal-removed-after-social-media-post-praising-Texas-cop-in-pool-party-video



What a cheesy right wingy sort of apology.

June 10, 2015

Weird skin color illusion can reduce racism

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/weird-skin-color-illusion-can-reduce-racism

Weird skin color illusion can reduce racism
An illusion that makes people feel that a rubber hand is their own can make white people less unconsciously biased against people with dark skin.
By: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience
Tue, May 14, 2013 at 07:40 PM



Photo: ArTono/Shutterstock
Here's a novel way to reduce racism: Convince people their skin is darker than it really is.

No need to break out the tanning booth. A new study finds that an illusion that makes people feel that a rubber hand is their own can make white people less unconsciously biased against people with dark skin.

"It comes down to a perceived similarity between white and dark skin," study researcher Lara Maister, a psychologist at Royal Holloway University of London, said in a statement. "The illusion creates an overlap, which in turn helps to reduce negative attitudes because participants see less difference between themselves and those with dark skin."

<snip>

Race and the rubber hand
Maister and her colleagues wanted to know if using a rubber hand in a dark skin tone might influence the way white people perceived race. Previous studies have found that people's brains activate to mirror actions they watch other people doing; this effect is stronger when a person is watching someone of his or her own race and weakens when they see someone of another race.

Perhaps, the researchers thought, if people came to see a limb with darker skin as their own, they might perceive more overlap between themselves and someone of another race. To test the idea, they first recruited 34 Caucasian students to take part in the rubber hand illusion.

Because racism is generally frowned upon, psychologists can't always trust participants to be upfront about (or even aware of) their biases in questionnaires. To get around the problem, the researchers tested their participants' implicit racial biases. The volunteers were shown negative words, positive words and dark-skinned faces separately on a computer screen. They had to categorize the words as either "good" or "bad" by pressing a computer key.

<snip>

Reducing racism
After a few rounds of the implicit test to establish a baseline, the participants underwent the rubber hand illusion for two minutes with a dark-skinned rubber limb. Afterward, they were asked how strongly they felt the false hand was their own. Then they took the implicit racial bias test again.

The results revealed that the stronger the feeling of ownership over the dark-skinned hand, the less racially biased the participant was in the second test — regardless of their scores on round one.

In a second experiment, 69 more white participants completed the same tasks, but this time, some did the rubber hand illusion with a white hand and some with a dark hand. Again, ownership over the dark-skinned hand led to less racial bias, while ownership over the light-skinned hand changed nothing. The researchers reported their findings today (May 14) in the journal Cognition.

<snip>

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

June 9, 2015

Michelle Duggar Defends Smearing Transgender People As Pedophiles: It’s ‘Just Common Sense’

Michelle Duggar Defends Smearing Transgender People As Pedophiles: It’s ‘Just Common Sense’

by Zack Ford Posted on June 4, 2015 at 10:03 am


During Wednesday night’s interview with Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar about their son Josh’s history of molesting his younger sisters, Fox News’ Megyn Kelley pressed the conservative couple to justify their advocacy against LGBT equality. Specifically, she asked Michelle about her robocalls against Fayetteville’s LGBT ordinance, in which she smeared transgender people as a threat to the safety of women and children. “How could you unfairly… compare transgender people to child molesters, suggest they are child molesters, knowing what you know about Josh?”

Michelle doubled down on her comments, erasing the very experience of transgender people’s identities by saying, “I think that protecting young girls and not allowing young men and men in general to go into a girls’ locker room is just common sense.”

Kelley insisted, “But this is different because you injected child molestation into it.” Jim Bob interrupted to clarify that Michelle said “pedophile,” which requires the perpetrator to be of a certain age, but Josh was younger — “a child preying on a child,” not a pedophile — so it’s not a fair comparison. Michelle then claimed that they were the ones being victimized by these charges of hypocrisy, explaining, “This is more about — there’s an agenda, and there’s people that are purposing to try to bring things out and twisting them to hurt and slander.”

Watch it:

What Michelle actually said last summer was that Fayetteville’s nondiscrimination order was that men — “yes, I said men!” — would be allowed into “women’s and girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, showers, sleeping areas, and other areas that are designated for females only.” She referred to “males with past child predator convictions” — not “pedophiles” — who might “claim they are female” to enter women’s spaces. “We should never place the preference of an adult over the safety and innocence of a child.” A transgender woman is neither a man nor somebody with a “preference,” and there has never been an incident of gender identity protections somehow enabling or protecting such predatory behavior. Since the Duggars waited well over a year to even report Josh’s behavior and because criminal charges were never filed, he has no “past child predator convictions” for his admitted past child predation.

<snip>

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/06/04/3666054/duggar-interview-transgender/

One would think they'd belaying low and not stirring it up.

June 8, 2015

Cop pulls pistol on 14 yr old at the Texas Pool Party

Its a disaster from the opening, a cop running with a pistol in hand do a combat roll on the run.

Its way past time to demilitarize the police. Maybe recently separated military don't make good police.