F-ing Banned Roundup

 Ron DeSantis' botched campaign rollout includes the following hats.

What happened to the letter "F"? I have to assume that some parent filled out a form calling it obscene, and now it's banned in the state of, er, "Lorida".

Anyway, my browser needs clearing, so today you get a roundup.

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Texas Republicans set up a bespoke center at the University of Texas to promote a conservative ideological vision. Texas Republicans also look set to wreck tenure. Turns out the latter poses a recruitment problem for the former.

The Fourth Circuit upholds race-neutral admissions standards at Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia against a challenge that they discriminate against Asian-American applicants. Ilya Somin objects here; I may have my own comments later.

Now that he's running, JTA runs down all the Jewish things you need to know about Ron DeSantis. He loves Israel. Also, his campaign against wokeness has resulted in banning books on the Holocaust, and neo-Nazis are flocking to the state.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) admits she "struggles" with the idea of removing Israeli settlers from the West Bank, suggests they have the right to stay where they are. I've said it before and I'll say it again; one need not like or even fully credit Tlaib's putative commitment to "one state with equal rights for all" to admit that it's clearly better than the many, many politicians whose position is "one state that does not even pretend to provide equal rights for all."

Louisiana Republicans are completely uninterested in hearing from the child rape victims whom they want to force to give birth.

Texas forces a woman with an unviable pregnancy to stay in the hospital until she gives birth to her stillborn fetus (or becomes sick enough to potentially die) by threatening her with criminal prosecution if she tries to leave.

If we don't raise the debt ceiling, it seems we have to triage who gets paid. I've seen many proposals on how to do this. But Kevin Drum raises the possibility that our treasury system isn't built to allow for any "choosing", and so we'd be forced to basically just arbitrarily pay whoever comes to the door first.

Not My President's Day Roundup

Our apartment's water heater is being replaced tomorrow. That means my one true joy in life -- long, languid, hot showers -- will also have to go for the day. It will be terrible.

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China's crackdown on religious liberty threatens the tiny but ancient Kaifeng Jewish community.

One of the few Black mathematicians in American academia recounts the microaggressions and subtle racism which alienated him from his own discipline.

I think the tone of this column is a little off, but the broad point -- that leftist anti-Zionists have no friend more highly placed in Israel than Netanyahu himself -- is on the mark, and it's important that someone like Eric Yoffie is saying it.

Alabama newspaper editor urges the return of the KKK in order lynch Democrats (and insufficiently conservative Republicans). Yes, really.

Apparently, Louisiana has a bad habit of not releasing prisoners after they've finished serving their sentences.

"As a Jew, I’m either furious or eating. Sometimes both."

For all the talk of "creeping Sharia", the fact is that the American Muslim community is actually experiencing something very different: creeping liberalism. For a community that, for much of recent electoral history, at least leaned Republican (especially on social issues), the rapid embrace of feminism, gay equality, and sexual liberation among the younger generation is coming as a bit of a shock to the more conservative old-guard.

Mitch Landrieu on Confederation Commemoration

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu recently decided to take down several city monuments honoring various Confederate leaders. Unsurprisingly, he faced significant pushback for this decision. This is a link to the speech he gave explaining why he did what he did.

It is one of the most powerful and unflinching speeches by a White southerner on the matter of race, the "lost cause", and southern identity that I've ever read. It's not long, and I'm not going to excerpt. Just read it in full.

The New Orleans DA Office is Out of Control

The other day, I read an article about an (apparently long-standing, but about to be discontinued) practice by the New Orleans District Attorneys office of sending out fake "subpoena" notifications to potential witnesses. The notice says "A FINE AND IMPRISONMENT MAY BE IMPOSED FOR FAILURE TO OBEY THIS NOTICE,” but this is simply a falsehood. And it comes without any judicial or official sanction. Basically, it's a fraud. It's designed to mislead potential witnesses into believing they must talk to the DA's office, when they in fact do not have to.

So that's bad. But then today I read another article about a prosecution team that has been repeatedly charging its counterpart public defenders with trumped-up criminal allegations (none of them have stuck). Everything from contempt to impersonating a prosecutor to kidnapping(!). Some of the names sounded familiar, and, lo and behold, its the same office! The same DA team that's sending out fake subpoenas to witnesses is also leveling bogus criminal charges against public defenders. It's beyond parody.

This DA and his team seem completely out of control. Any one of these behaviors, on their own, would be shocking in its abuse of prosecutorial power. Together, it represents a pattern of thuggish intimidation that stands way outside of what should be acceptable in a system ruled by law.

Didn't You See Me Winking?

Louisiana has recently passed a voucher plan which would allow state educational funds to be used to send kids to religious schools. Louisiana conservatives saw that and said "sounds great". That is, until they realized Islam is a religion:

Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools …

'I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,' Hodges said.

Hodges mistakenly assumed that 'religious' meant 'Christian.'

Via.

I have to go through this every time someone mistakenly says that "religious" Americans or "people of faith" believe that, say, abortion is murder. Maybe your religion does, but mine (Judaism) doesn't. In any event, as much as the casual desire to discriminate against Muslims is repulsive, the chain of "logic" Rep. Hodges brought to the table -- it apparently not even occurring to her that there exist non-Christian religions -- is hilarious.

Richard Lazarus Takes Post on Oil Spill Commission

Congratulations to Georgetown Law Professor Richard Lazarus, who was just appointed staff director of The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. Professor Lazarus, in addition to being an experienced Supreme Court advocate, is a specialist in an environmental and natural resource law, and will thus be an invaluable asset in, you know, trying to save the planet.

On a more personal note, Professor Lazarus was a personal mentor of mine back in high school (I was on the debate team with his son), and we've maintained off-and-on contact with him in the intervening years. In fact, we were supposed to meet to catch up earlier this month, but, as he put it, "something came up". I'll say!

Poor Joe

Swing State Project has an open thread where you can list the top 15 most vulnerable GOP seats next cycle. Without fail, the number one slot is held by Rep.-elect Joseph Cao (R-LA), who managed to overcome the odds in one of the deepest blue districts in the country to oust corrupt incumbent William Jefferson (D).

I have to say, I feel a little bad. Cao seems like a nice enough guy, and he certainly did us a favor by kicking Jefferson to the curb. But alas, there is no way he survives the next cycle. He's the Republican version of Nick Lampson, only in a worse position (the district is even more liberal than Lampson's was conservative, and Lampson had far more political experience than Cao does).

Oh well. Hopefully the Democrats will nominate someone worth supporting to ease the guilt.

Give The Seat Back

Rep.-elect Anh "Joseph" Cao (R-LA) is the guy who took out scandal plagued Democrat William Jefferson to win in an ocean-blue Louisiana district. Cao, the first Vietnamese-American to serve in Congress, will be representing a district that is 64% African-American. So, understandably, he's looking to do some outreach. And Newt Gingrich is offering to help:

By midmorning Cao was interrupting an interview to take a call from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who offered good wishes and, Cao said, counseled him "to reach out to the African-American community." Cao said Gingrich offered to act as a go-between.

Now, part of me is sympathetic: It's hard to admit to yourself that a large swath of the American population finds you loathsome. But still, some self-awareness is in order here. Pat Buchanan seems reasonably aware that he is not a popular figure amongst Jews (he doesn't think it's just, but he does acknowledge it). Gingrich can reasonably be expected to know he is not the most popular figure amongst American Blacks.

H/T: Steve Benen. Also, while I don't know enough about Cao to register an opinion (though anybody who knocks of Jefferson scores points in my book, and what I have seen so far has been positive), I can already say I like his wife:

On Monday his wife, Hieu Phuong Hoang, who goes by Kate, celebrated Cao's victory by calling Walgreens, where she worked as a pharmacist, and quitting her job.

Awesome.

Jefferson Loses

Corrupt and indicted Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA) has lost his bid for re-election in his deep blue Louisiana district.

Excellent. He was an embarrassment to our caucus. Let him twist, I say.

Or Whatever

A Louisiana cop might face criminal charges after tasering to death a Black suspect in a town near Jena. Fellow officer Chuck Curry defended his (former) compatriot:

"This has come down to a police officer that was trying to apprehend a suspect that they had warrants for," he said. "He done what he thought he was trained to do to bring that subject into custody. At some point, something happened with his body that caused him to go into cardiac arrest or whatever."

The "something" that happened, presumably, was one of the 9 taser shots officer Scott Nugent used against Baron Pikes. The seventh came after Pikes was already in the squad car, the eighth and ninth might have come after Pikes was already dead.

Jindal for VP, Part II

A few posts ago I explored the possibility of McCain selecting Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal as his VP choice.

Now some liberal bloggers have tackled the issue, and they seem rather sanguine about it. Kevin Drum thinks that Jindal's youth (36) will serve to accentuate just how old McCain is (71), and Steve Benen -- in addition to that point -- wonders if the right-wing base that's uncomfortable with "difference" (read: dark people) in general will come out to vote for an Indian-American VP (once a Hindu, always a Hindu?).

Color me unconvinced. On the age issue, I guess I can see Jindal's boyishness serving to emphasize just how old McCain is. But I've always been skeptical that age will be as big a factor as some Democrats make it out to be. Maybe Democrats can make the point that the Republican ticket is lead by someone who might die tomorrow, backed up by someone with virtually no experience on the international stage. But it's hard to make that point without indicting Obama, who is more experienced than Jindal, but not by enough to immunize him from the attack. The better charge might be to simply point out that we're a heartbeat away from putting an extreme right-wing fanatic in office.

The issue of race, I think, is even less compelling. As I wrote in my last post, conservatives like big progressive shifts to come clothed in conservative garb -- it makes them less threatening. If Jindal can win statewide in Louisiana -- possibly the southern state with the worst demographics for a non-White Republican (plenty of racism combined with a Democratic Party that is still competitive in high profile elections) -- then I think he's dispelled doubts that White racism from the right will be a major strike against him.

Then, of course, there is the elephant in the room: that Jindal says he doesn't want the job. But of course, what potential VP candidate says he does want it?

Jindal for VP

There's got to be a reason I never thought of it before. Andrew Sullivan reports rumors that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal may be on John McCain's list of potential VPs. It'd make a great political counter to an Obama candidacy. Jindal's Indian-American, so it isn't an exact parallel (but that makes it easier to dodge the inevitable pandering charge), while still being historic (Indians are a special race case anyway). And it's not like he'd be plucked from complete obscurity -- Jindal's been a GOP rising star for awhile now, and has a good many people in the Party excited.

Americans tend to like it better when Republicans usher in their great progressive leaps forward (cf., Nixon goes to China), because it gives them all the symbolism without the risk that anything substantive will change. It'd be interesting to see how much significance would be ascribed to Jindal's ascension as VP. Obama's potential election as President has led a certain class of White pundits to proclaim it as evidence that anti-Black racism is effectively over. Would Jindal's election still be used to justify the same claim (because Whites have overcome their racial animosity as evidenced by Jindal, ipso facto Whites no longer harbor racist sentiments toward Black people)? It'd be convenient, but still rather difficult I think to argue.

The Past is Now: The Jena Six

The case of the Jena Six is one of those that even I, massive cynic that I am on the state of America's racial progress, thought was a thing of the past. It is reminiscent of nothing more than the "legal lynchings" that characterized the Jim Crow South. Its facts are appalling. It is an unbelievable display of state-sponsored racism that dwarfs even the Genarlow Wilson case in terms of raw injustice. Here is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer with the scoop:

This story begins in the small, central Louisiana town of Jena. Last September, a black high school student requested the school's permission to sit beneath a broad, leafy tree in the hot schoolyard. Until then, only white students sat there.

The next morning, three nooses were hanging from the tree. The black students responded en masse. Justin Purvis, the kid who first sat under the tree, told filmmaker Jacquie Soohen: "They said, 'Y'all want to go stand under the tree?' We said, 'Yeah.' They said, 'If you go, I'll go. If you go, I'll go.' One person went, the next person went, everybody else just went."

Then the police and the district attorney showed up. Substitute teacher Michelle Rogers recounts: "District Attorney Reed Walters proceeded to tell those kids that 'I could end your lives with the stroke of a pen.' "

It wouldn't happen for a few more months, but that is exactly what the district attorney is trying to do.

Jena, a community of 4,000, is about 85 percent white. While the black community gathered at a church to respond, others didn't see the significance. Soohen interviewed Jena town librarian Barbara Murphy, who reflected: "The nooses? I don't even know why they were there, what they were supposed to mean. There's pranks all the time, of one type or another, going on. And it just didn't seem to be racist to me." Tensions rose.

Robert Bailey, a black student, was beaten up at a white party. Then, a few nights later, Robert and two others were threatened by a white man with a sawed-off shotgun, at a convenience store. They wrestled the gun away and fled. Robert's mother, Caseptla Bailey, said: "I know they were in fear of their lives. They were afraid that this man was going to shoot them, you know, especially in the back, running away from the scene."

The next day, Dec. 4, 2006, a fight broke out at the school. A white student was injured, taken to the hospital and released. Robert Bailey and five other black students were charged ... with second-degree attempted murder. They each faced 100 years in prison. The black community was reeling.

Independent journalist Jordan Flaherty was the first to break the story nationally. He explained: "I'm sure it was a serious fight, and I'm sure it deserved real discipline within the school system, but he (the white student) was out later that day. He was smiling. He was with friends ... it was a serious school problem that came on the heels of a long series of other events ... as soon as black students were involved, that's when the hammer came down."

The African American community began to call them the Jena Six. The first to be tried was Mychal Bell, 17 years old and a talented football player, looking forward to a university scholarship. Bell was offered a plea deal, but refused. His father, Marcus Jones, took a few minutes off from work to talk to me: "Here in LaSalle Parish, whenever a black man is offered a plea bargain, he is innocent. That's a dead giveaway here in the South."

Right before the trial, the charges of attempted second-degree murder were lowered to aggravated battery, which under Louisiana law requires a dangerous weapon. The weapon? Tennis shoes.

Mychal Bell was convicted by an all-white jury. His court-appointed defense attorney called no witnesses. Bell will be sentenced on July 31, facing a possible 22 years. The remaining five teens, several of whom were jailed for months, unable to make bail, still face attempted second-degree murder charges and a hundred years each in prison.

Color of Change has a petition you can sign urging their freedom, and here is another petition asking the DOJ to open a civil rights investigation.

More:

Pandagon

While Seated

Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University-New Orleans, gives his account of the story at Counter Currents

Racialicious: "The racism in the behavior of the local government is as flagrant as anything that occurred during segregation. The institutions of government in Jena, Louisiana are operating on de-facto Jim Crow; they carry out through cultural practice what was once law."

Elle, Ph.D

Free the Jena Six!