 According to Associated Press, Ohio Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones died this evening due to a brain hemorrhage. Jones was the first Black woman to represent Ohio in Congress and a strong critic of the Iraq war.
Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones (OH-11)
Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones is the first African-American woman elected to the United States House of Representatives from Ohio. Congresswoman Jones is a lifelong resident of the 11th District, which encompasses most of the East Side of Cleveland and parts of the West Side of Cleveland and includes parts of 22 suburbs.
Currently in her fifth term in office, the Congresswoman, a strong advocate for many issues, has championed wealth building and economic development, access and delivery of health care, and quality education for all. The Congresswoman chairs the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (Ethics). Additionally, she serves on the powerful Ways and Means Committee and is an active member of numerous Congressional Caucuses, including the Congressional Black Caucus.
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NEWS: In Georgia's outsourced justice system, a traffic ticket can land you deep in the hole.
By Celia Perry
July/August 2008 Issue of Mother Jones
Welcome to Americus, Georgia. Located 10 miles east of the peanut farm where Jimmy Carter was raised, the town has a charming city center with broad streets, a diner that still sells hot dogs for 95 cents, a Confederate flag that flies conspicuously on the outskirts of town, railroad tracks that divide white and black neighborhoods, chain gangs that labor along the roadways, and, on South Lee Street, right across from the courthouse, its very own private probation office. Middle Georgia Community Probation Services is one of 37 companies to whom local governments have outsourced the supervision of misdemeanor and traffic offenders. It's been billed as a way to save millions of dollars for Georgia and at least nine other states where private probation is used. But to its critics, the system looks more like a way to milk scarce dollars from the poorest of the poor.
Read the full story here
This is a warning for all of the organizations out there conducting voter registration campaigns. In 2004 there were several instances of voter fraud. Most of it was perpetrated by young people thinking they were smarter than the people who set up the rules. The said thing is that a youthful indiscretion like filling in a voter registration form with false information is a federal offense. If you don't want to register voters, get a job at a fast food restaurant, don't think you can beat the system!
Voter Registration Is the New Battleground
By COREY DADE and JOHN D. MCKINNON
August 12, 2008; Page A4
As Barack Obama tries to draw hundreds of thousands of new voters to the polls, Republicans are beginning to scrutinize registrants' eligibility as both sides draw a major battle line over voting rights.
Republicans are moving to examine surges in voter registrations in some states. A Republican lawyers group held a national training session on election law over the weekend that included campaign attorneys for Sen. John McCain and other Republican leaders. One session discussed how party operatives can identify and respond to instances of voter fraud. Read the full story in the Wall Street Journal
NEWS: What happens when you lock up 1 in every 100 American adults?
By Jennifer Gonnerman
July/August 2008 Issue of Mother Jones
The number first appeared in headlines earlier this year: Nearly one in four of all prisoners worldwide is incarcerated in America. It was just the latest such statistic. Today, one in nine African American men between the ages of 20 and 34 is locked up. In 1970, our prisons held fewer than 200,000 people; now that number exceeds 1.5 million, and when you add in local jails, it's 2.3 million—1 in 100 American adults. Since the 1980s, we've sat by as the numbers inched higher and our prison system ballooned, swallowing up an ever-larger portion of the citizenry. But do statistics like these, no matter how disturbing, really mean anything anymore? What does it take to get us to sit up and notice?
Apparently, it takes a looming financial crisis. For there is another round of bad news, the logical extension of the first: The more money a state spends on building and running prisons, the less there is for everything else, from roads and bridges to health care and public schools. At the pace our inmate population has been expanding, America's prison system is becoming, quite simply, too expensive to sustain.
Read the full story at Mother Jones
McCain security ousts reporter by Paul Flemming Florida Capital Bureau
Tallahassee Democrat senior writer Stephen Price on Friday was singled out and asked to leave a media area at the Panama City rally of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain.
Price was among at least three other reporters, and the only black reporter, surrounding McCain's campaign bus — Gov. Charlie Crist and his fiancee, Carole Rome, were already aboard — when a member of the Arizona senator's security detail asked the reporter to identify himself. Price had shown his media credentials to enter the area.
Price showed his employee identification as well as his credentials for the Friday event.
"I explained I was with the state press, but the Secret Service man said that didn't matter and that I would have to go," Price said.
When another reporter asked why Price was being removed, she too was led out of the area. Other state reporters remained.
Read the full report at Florida Capital News
So says country singer Toby Keith in a pro-lynching song "Beer For My Horses." In addition to the racist lyrics in the song, Max Blumenthal notes in his Huffington Post article, there's a forthcoming movie inspired by the song. I thought Ludacris was bad but this one takes the prize. And no, Mr. Keith is not talking about giving his horses a keg.
Some of the lyrics from "Beer For My Horses": (for lyrics click here)
"Grandpappy told my pappy back in my day, son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he'd done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys
Hang them high in the street
For all the people to see"Lynching Advocate Toby Keith: Obama "Talks, Acts, And Carries Himself As A Caucasian" by Max Blumenthal, The Huffington Post
Last week, I reported for the Huffington Post that country singer Toby Keith had performed a pro-lynching anthem on the Colbert Report, and would be playing the same song soon on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and a slew of nationally televised talk shows.
The lyrics of Keith's song, "Beer For My Horses," which I transcribed, could hardly be less explicit -- "Hang 'em high, for all the people to see." In my piece, I also noted the racially tinged nature of the song's video and the forthcoming movie that Keith's song inspired. read the full story here.
This story illustrates the corrupt environment created by the use of snitches. By Christopher Moraff - In These Times
Levon Jones is supposed to be dead.
If the state of North Carolina had its way, Jones, 49, would have been strapped to a gurney years ago, hooked to an IV and pumped full of a lethal, three-drug cocktail until he asphyxiated.
Instead, on May 2, he walked out of prison a free man after spending 13 years on death row, and another 24 months locked up awaiting retrial — all for a murder he almost certainly did not commit.
Jones — known to friends and family as “Bo” — was released with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Capital Punishment Project after the prosecution’s star witness recanted her testimony against him. (Lovely Lorden, a former girlfriend, admitted she’d collected $4,000 in reward money in exchange for testifying against Jones.)
He was an easy target: an African-American ex-con with a history of mental illness and violent behavior. When Lorden came forward with her story — a full three years after the 1987 shooting of a local bootlegger named Leamon Grady — Jones was doing time on an unrelated assault charge.
The prosecution felt little obligation to question the veracity of Lorden’s claim. And if the witness is to be believed today, investigators actually helped her keep her story straight.
As a result of Lorden’s testimony — and despite the lack of physical evidence tying him to the crime — a jury convicted Jones in 1993 and he was sentenced to die for Grady’s killing.
What Jones’ attorneys didn’t know at the time — and, as it turns out, didn’t really bother trying to uncover — is that Lovely Lorden had made something of a career out of testifying against people close to her. By her own admission, she has aided law enforcement in dozens of investigations and says she helped police make cases against several other boyfriends, as well as her own brother and sons.
What’s more, her work as a confidential informant didn’t stop after Jones was sent to death row. Jones’ attorneys sent In These Times copies of receipts that show Lorden was paid money at least seven times for her work as a confidential informant from December 2003 to April 2004, while Jones sat in jail.
Today, Lorden contends she testified against Jones under pressure from the police, in particular Dalton Jones (no relation), the lead officer in the case. Read the full story at In These Times
When healthy Baron "Scooter" Pikes suddenly died soon after he was arrested and tasered, there is a sense of something terribly wrong in the little backwoods town of Winnfield, Louisiana. Corruption and cover-ups are just the beginning of this story.
Winnfield, LA - The official website for this little backwoods town boasts,
In some ways, visiting the city of Winnfield, Louisiana is like taking a step back in time.
This couldn't be more true. On the 17th of January this past year, Barron Pikes was walking along a street, when Officer Scott Nugent stopped him, and tried taking him into custody because of an arrest warrant citing him for possession of drugs. Pikes took off running but was cornered by another police officer who subdued him in front of a grocery store. Pikes resisted arrest and Nugent subdued him with a shock from a Taser. Read the full story a Digitaljournal.com .
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