Reading The Dead

I participated in a reading of the Iraq War dead today. It was an important experience for me to partake in. Most of the people participating were opponents of the Iraq War. I started off as a supporter. In some sense, then, these deaths lie on my head. So while I'm normally loathe to join in such public political acts (this may sound surprising, but it's true--I don't do much political activity beyond my writing), I felt I had an obligation to come out and acknowledge those who made the ultimate sacrifice for a misguided policy that I joined in supporting.

Obviously, after awhile the names began to bleed together, but a few did stand out to me. Lori Piestewa, who died in the same firefight where Jessica Lynch was captured. There was the young Army Captain who died on Christmas Eve. One man in his early fifties who had "Sr." after his name, so I knew he had kids. And the last name I read, ironically enough, died on my birthday.

I thank them for their sacrifice, and I mourn for their loss.

Tee Hee

Ezra Klein on Karl Rove's claim that it was Osama Bin Laden's idea that we launch a preventative strike on Iraq:

You see, I too have long thought the war in Iraq was Osama bin-Laden's idea. What better way to unite the world against us? What better way to divert attention from the hunt for al-Qaeda? What better way to overstretch our military and reduce our flexibility? What better way to divide our society and embitter our politics? What better way to exhaust our treasury and degrade our capacity for international leadership? But whenever I have thought this way, I've assumed that there's no way George W. Bush is letting Osama bin Laden advise him on foreign policy.

Turns out I was wrong.

Cute.

Eleanor Holmes Norton is a Baller

Check her speech in favor D.C. voting rights. Norton, the long time delegate for the District in the House, kicks ass and takes names. Specifically, the name of Republican Representative David Dreier:

Dreier: Will the gentlewoman yield?

Holmes Norton: I will not yield, sir. The District of Columbia has spent 206 years yielding to people who would deny them the vote. I yield you no ground. Not during my time. You have had your say, and your say has been that you think the people who live in your capital are not entitled to a vote in their House. Shame on you.

Bang. And the rights of my co-citizens who have the misfortune of living 5 minutes away from my house across Western Avenue (a sin which, clearly, makes them unworthy of holding the franchise) come a little closer to being realized.

Screw Health

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Kennedy, has upheld a federal law prohibiting so-called "partial birth abortions." This represents the first time the Supreme Court has upheld an anti-abortion bill that did not include a health exception for the mother. Justice Kennedy did hedge his opinion by saying that, though he was rejecting a facial challenge to the law, he would accept one "as applied." Presumably, then, if a mother was faced with a case where her health was in jeopardy, she could file suit (what happens then is anyone's guess).

This, to me, is small consolation. If a doctor tells a women that a certain medical procedure is necessary for her health, the next step should be "start the procedure," not "go to federal court."

Laws like this have consequences--not always what they are intended. Women who know that the law requires them to forfeit their bodies to the state once they become pregnant, simply may choose to forgo having children.

Regardless of what the majority opinion tells you, it's pretty clear that this ruling has overturned Stenberg v. Carhart. This is not unexpected, as Justice Kennedy issued a passionate dissent in that case (though I hoped Kennedy would tact to the center), and nobody could think that Alito replacing O'Connor would mean preserving a pro-choice vote on the court. Elections have consequence, and as Publius notes, we share some of the blame:

This case was not decided today. It was decided on November 2, 2004. Don't blame the Court, blame the American people. They voted in a Republican President and the entirely-predictable consequence was increasing restrictions on abortions. In fact, Bush is one Justice Stevens illness away from overturning Roe entirely. And for what it's worth, if any of the current Republican candidates win, Roe is over for at least a generation. Maybe you think that's good, maybe you don't. That's not the point. The point is that voting for Republicans has consequences and this is one of them. And these things are worth thinking about when you base your vote on things like John Kerry's windsurfing, or Bush's probably-fun-to-drink-with-ness.

Many people have also noted Justice Ginsburg's rather scathing dissent. While the health implications probably will have the most material impact, the biggest insult might be the majority opinion's retrograde views on women:

Revealing in this regard, the Court invokes an antiabortion shibboleth for which it concededly has no reliable evidence: Women who have abortions come to regret their choices, and consequently suffer from '[s]evere depression and loss of esteem.' Because of women's fragile emotional state and because of the bond of love the mother has for her child,' the Court worries, doctors may withhold information about the nature of the intact D&E procedure. The solution the Court approves, then, is not to require doctors to inform women, accurately and adequately, of the different procedures and their attendant risks. Instead, the Court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of their safety.

This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women's place in the family and under the Constitution ideas that have long since been discredited.

She goes as far to compare the opinion to Justice Bradley's infamous concurrence in Bradwell v. State, 16 Wall. 130, 141 (1873) ("Man is, or should be, woman's protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. . . . The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfil[l] the noble and benign offices of wife and mother."), possibly the most infamous example of misogyny in the Supreme Court's history.

Ginsburg then cites to a whole string of authorities--including several that note that childbirth carries at least as much of a risk, if not a stronger one, of harming a woman's psychological health than does abortion.

This is strong language for Justice Ginsburg. But it needed to be said.

UPDATE: Elsewhere, I've been asked why I didn't include any quotes from Kennedy's opinion. For sure, I only quoted once from any opinion (the Ginsburg passage), but still, fair question. But Isabel Medina has a good answer on why quotes from the majority may not be showing up in a post focusing on how this ruling disrespects women:

The majority’s opinion is striking for the almost absolute lack of focus on women. The medical procedure itself is discussed extensively. The role of the physician and medical judgment is discussed extensively. The impact on women and the idea that the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy has something to do with women, however, their right to body integrity, autonomy, liberty, is completely missing from the opinion. Only a reference to “an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child” and the conclusion that “some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained” suggests this majority’s view of women in the context of the issue – we are by-standers to the issue and by-standers to the right ultimately recognized in Roe and Casey, rather than those most affected.

And hey, her passage includes quotes from Kennedy's opinion! So now we can all be happy.

And also, Reproductive Rights Law Professor Caitlin Borgmann has put up her first bit of legal analysis on the case, with more promised ahead.

The 15 Second Negative Speech

Here's an upcoming resolution being debated by the prestigious Oxford Union (a debating society): "This House believes the pro-Israeli lobby has successfully stifled Western debate about Israel's actions."

To repeat, they are having a debate at a prestigious western university about whether the west can debate about Israel.

The resolution was not a paradox of self-reference, and neither is this one.

End of the Road

The end has come for Jordan v. Alternative Resources Corporation. I first blogged about the case here when the 4th Circuit issued its 2-1 panel ruling, and wrote again with an update when the ruling was approved by an even 5-5 vote en banc. To refresh y'all's memory, here are the facts of the case:

Jordan worked for IBM. As many of you know, the "DC Sniper" was operating in our area, causing much fear and tension. The two snipers (both of whom were Black) were caught while Jordan was at work. One of his fellow employees, seeing the news, proclaimed: "[t]hey should put those two black monkeys in a cage with a bunch of black apes and let the apes fuck them." Jordan consulted with several of his other coworkers, who confirmed that this particular employee had made comparable comments many times in the past. Pursuant to IBM policy, which mandated that employees report racial harassment, Jordan filed a complaint. His supervisor responded by changing his work hours to less convenient times, making a derogatory gesture and comment towards him at an office party, and within a month firing him. It does not appear that anyone is seriously arguing that these actions were not retaliatory. Incredibly, the Court found that this did not constitute a retaliatory action in violation of Title VII, because Jordan could not even have reasonably believed that his coworkers action could have created a hostile work environment. To be clear, the protection against retaliation does not only kick in if the conduct would have breached Title VII; all Jordan had to prove was that it was reasonable for him to believed it would have.

In any event, the Supreme Court has denied cert., so that's the end of the road for Mr. Jordan. What an appalling injustice.

Incidentally, this LA Times story on the case is really bad. The case is not about whether there should be "stricter limits on racial slurs in the workplace." It is about whether employees should be protected from retaliation by their employers when they report racial slurs. Retaliation is a separate (and in many ways, more offensive) crime than the slur itself.

Righteous Gentiles

Khaled Abdelwahhab is set to become the first Arab Muslim to be honored as a "righteous gentile" at Yom HaShoah. Abdelwahhab protected dozens of Jews in his compound during the German occupation of Tunisia.

Obviously, heroes like Mr. Abdelwahhaib deserve our respect and honor. But speaking more broadly, I hope this becomes an opportunity to bridge a gap between Jews and Arab Muslims.

Yad Vashem has so far honored 21,700 men and women with the Righteous designation. Among them are 60 Muslims, all from the Balkans, but none are Arab. As a follow-up to his research, Satloff is working with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to organize a conference in Morocco on the Shoah's impact on North African nations.
[...]
Satloff said in a phone call from Jerusalem, where he was visiting, that he hoped that his book and recognition of Abdelwahab by Yad Vashem would stimulate both Jews and Arabs to look at the Holocaust in "a different way, beyond the purely European narrative."

In addition to the dramatic Boukris story, Satloff's investigations showed that there were other individual Arabs who aided their Jewish neighbors, but, as in Europe, they represented a small minority of the population.

"The majority of Arabs, as the people in occupied Europe, were indifferent," he said. "A regrettably large minority of Arabs collaborated with the Axis powers. Many served as guards at forced labor camps, helped the SS hunt down Jews and even fought in the German army."

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, urged that the deeds of Abdelwahab and other compassionate Arabs become "part of both the Jewish and Arab collective memories."

To the current Muslim rulers and media who denigrate and deny the Holocaust, Abdelwahab's deeds send a different message, Cooper said.

"If you deny the Shoah, you also deny that there were noble Arabs and other Muslims, those who put their lives on the line to rescue Jews."

When the President of Iran denies the Holocaust, he also denies the heroism of Khaled Abdelwahhab and every other human being--of all religions and creeds--who decided that they could not stand passively while their neighbors were being systematically exterminated. Far more than anything Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can offer, this man represents a legacy that the entire Arab and Muslim world can learn of and be proud of.

Via Opinio Juris

Compare

Here's John Derbyshire on the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre:

As NRO's designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake—one of them reportedly a .22.

At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren't bad.

Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It's true—none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.

And here's Nathaniel Blake:

Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that. ...

Like Derb, I don’t know if I would live up to this myself, but I know that I should be heartily ashamed of myself if I didn’t. Am I noble, courageous and self-sacrificing? I don’t know; but I should hope to be so when necessary.

And here's the story about Virginia Tech shooting victim (and Holocaust survivor) Liviu Librescu:

Virginia Tech University Prof. Liviu Librescu, described as a family man who once did research for NASA, sacrificed his life to save his students in the shooting rampage yesterday.
[...]
The students in the class dropped to the floor and started overturning desks to hide behind as about a dozen shots rang out, he said.

Then the gunfire started coming closer. Librescu, 77, fearlessly braced himself against the door, holding it shut against the gunman in the hall, while students darted to the windows of the second-floor classroom to escape the slaughter, survivors said.

Mallalieu and most of his classmates hung out of the windows and dropped about 10 feet to bushes and grass below - but Librescu stayed behind to hold off the crazed gunman.

Alec Calhoun, 20, said the last thing he saw before he jumped from the window was Librescu, blocking the door against the madman in the hallway.

He died trying to protect the students.

As well as survivor Zach Petkewicz's heroic actions:

Monday's toll inside Virginia Tech's Norris Hall might have included 11 more students had it not been for a long, rectangular table and a quick-thinking senior who used it to deflect the rampage of his fellow classmate.

Zach Petkewicz said he didn't recognize the sounds that pierced the door and cinder-block walls of his classroom as gunshots until he heard a scream from the hallway of the engineering building.
[...]
"They immediately slammed the door shut, told us, everybody kind of went into a frenzy, a panic. I hid behind the podium and then just kind of looked up at the door. Like, there's nothing stopping this guy from just coming in. And so I said, 'We need to barricade this door.' "

Petkewicz described his state of mind unabashedly: "I was completely scared out of my mind originally, just went into a cowering position, and then just realized you have got to do something."

Petkewicz and two other students shoved a table against the door and held it there as gunshots continued to ring out from the hallway outside the classroom.

"He came to our door, tried the handle and couldn't get in because we were pushing up against it -- and tried to force his way in and got the door to open up about 6 inches -- and then we just lunged at it and closed it back up and that's when he backed up and shot twice into the middle of the door, thinking we were up against it trying to get him out."

But Petkewicz said that instead he and the other students had placed themselves in front of the cinder-block walls, where they listened to what was going on out of sight a few inches away.

"I just heard his clip drop to the ground, and he reloaded and I thought he was coming back for a second round to try to get his way in there. He didn't say a word, and he just turned and kept firing down the hall and didn't try to get back in."

Suffice to say, even had there not been heroes like these, I'd hold Derbyshire and Blake in utter contempt. If you ever needed one, they are the picture of tactless, disgraceful assholes.

Paging Mr. D'Souza

8% of French Muslims say they'll vote for far-right xenophobe Jean-Marie Le Pen. Why?

Fayid Smahi, a regional councillor and National Front member in Paris, claims Mr Le Pen offers much more wholesome values than mainstream politicians.

"Above everything it's his family values we share. When we're eating our dinner, watching TV at night and we see two homosexual men kissing, it upsets us. As Muslims, and as decent French citizens, it shocks us."

Via.

Fuzzy Math Returns!

Jon Chait has a low tolerance for morons. In this case, former Bush press flack Ari Fleischer, who is seemingly unaware that 60 > 40, 31 > 30, and 37 > 31. Such are the mathematical contortions one needs to make in order to argue that our tax system actually fleeces the rich. I'd chide the Wall Street Journal for publishing such tripe, except that after their infamous "lucky duckies" editorial (the ducks, in the WSJ's opinion, are the impoverished Americans who don't pay taxes), I don't think they have any standards I could possibly appeal to.

Grudging Props

I have a lingering dislike of Quiz Bowl, since I felt they unjustly took attention from the manifestly superior debate team at my high school. However, here at Carleton, I will freely admit (even as now-emeriti Debate Team Coach) that Quiz Bowl deserves its position at the top of the totem pole. And they cemented that high status with a national title this week, their second in eight years. Even better, they beat none other than The Carleton of the East in the final round. Which makes it all the sweeter.

Congratulations!

Money Says This Won't Be On CNN

There's another athlete-rape case budding, this time at the University of Minnesota. The accused are three football players, the victim, a student at a neighboring university. All four are Black.

The hook right now is that the Black Student Union of UM has rallied in favor of the accused players, while everyone is accusing the woman of being a liar and whore. Slant Truth sayeth: "Listen, black men. You don’t get a pass for assaulting black women just because you’re black. You need to get out there and support that woman." BrownFemiPower also is working to build support for the victim-survivor.

This case is interesting to me in the wake of the Duke case, for a couple reasons. For starters, it kind of gives lie to the idea that the Duke case was some reverse-racial witch hunt on the part of the left-wing community, which is one of the more annoying memes coming out of the right blogosphere right now.

As for said conservative bloggers: I suspect their comments will not be forthcoming on the issue. I obviously suspect that it won't get anywhere near the media attention of the Duke case. But even if it does, I suspect that their suddenly-found love of due process and fair hearings and all that jazz will not be voiced when the defendants are Black men. After all, this case pits two conservative policy agendas against each other--they want to "get tough on crime" by throwing as many Black men into prison as possible, but they certainly don't want to forward the trend of believing victims of rape and sexual violence. So, I predict a studied silence--unless a misstep somewhere in the process creates an opening for some opportunistic race or gender bashing.

And as for me? I don't venture an opinion. Cases like this come at the intersection of two areas I do not trust the criminal justice system to adequately deal with: rape victims and Black defendants. I have no reason to suspect the women is lying. I have no reason to suspect that the men are guilty. And until I am given reason to change my opinion on either of these two positions, I, too, will maintain a studied (if I hope less self-righteous and hypocritical) silence on the matter.

Can You Keep A Promise?

I think Bitch Ph.D's review of Promises I Can Keep really offers some illuminating points about unwed mothers in inner-city, Black areas. Here's the nuts:

What [the authors] found is that the moms have mainstream, even conservative ideas of what marriage should be, and they don't want to get married if they don't trust that the men will be faithful, help provide for their children, not be abusive, etc. And that these fears are quite reasonable, given the men they have to choose from.

But. The women also have mainstream, conservative ideas about the value and importance of children--so much so that they often think of abortion as irresponsible. Which is an interesting and profound realization, I think, and one that those of us who are pro-choice would do well to think very hard about. A lot of the time we argue for abortion rights as if we were doing so on behalf of poor women; we need to realize that many poor women are not themselves pro-choice, and that if we really want to advocate for them, we should start by listening to what they have to say.

The key thing the women in this book have to say is that having kids while young and poor has been good for them. According to their own account (and the author's observations), their children have given them a reason them to straighten up their lives, grow up, and become responsible adults. Their children provide a source of love for these young women, where boyfriends, peers, and parents have so often failed them. I think most of us in the middle class think it's a little fucked up to want a child for the love that child will give you (and Edin and Kefalis say this too). But at the same time, I think those of us who have had children will say that one of the most powerful and gratifying things about parenting is precisely that experience of love. It's possible that poor young women, who are often much closer to the experience of parenting than their middle-class peers by virtue of helping raise their siblings, or seeing friends have babies, are simply more realistic about the emotional benefits of parenting than the middle class is.

The one major argument we usually offer, though, for why young and/or poor women shouldn't have children, is that doing so is economically damaging: they won't get ahead if they have kids too early. It turns out that this argument isn't true. Poor women's economic prospects are demonstrably no better if they postpone childbirth than if they have children young. In fact, there's some evidence that their lives, economically and otherwise, would be worse, as kids provide them an incentive to stop using drugs, to end abusive relationships, to get jobs, and to further their educations. Setting an example for their children, or improving their situations for their children's sake, proves to be a much more powerful motivator than doing so for themselves.

Now, I understand that some folks really don't care what happens to women once they get married, so long as the ring gets on the finger. But for the rest of us, this offers an interesting twist to the tired cliches about unwed mothers in the inner cities. It seems that these Black women aren't opposed to marriage, per se, they just have high standards about who they're want to marry in the first place. Men who are responsible, hard-working, caring, not abusive. Things everybody deserves in a spouse. Lecturing them about the evils of not being married when they have a kid, when the immediate option to marry might not be to the most attractive candidate, is both patronizing and misguided.

Hippity Hop

PG has a nice post regarding the whole flap about how rappers use the word "ho" too. The sight of a load of middle age White men waxing lyrical (so to speak) over the dangers of hip hop is pretty hilarious, if a bit obnoxious. The irony is that I don't actually like most rap music (with a few exceptions), but I'm constantly pressed into defending it from increasingly ridiculous charges by people who really don't know the genre (I'll bite off my left thumb if more than two of the concern-trolls focusing on this issue have ever listened to more than 5 complete rap songs).

Surely if you can take the time to put Ludacris lyrics into a cartoon, you actually listened to the song (the same one infamously cited in an appellate opinion) and might have noticed that Ludacris clearly distinguishes "hos" from other women. While I find it hypocritical to deprecate a woman's promiscuity or actual prostitution while availing yourself of it, and am uncertain of whether I'd rather be a 'ho or a housewife in his binary, Ludacris explicitly is not singing about all women: "Not all, just some / You ho who you are." (From whence comes, I suppose, Chris Rock's claim that women will dance to the most misogynistic music and when Rock points out how awful the lyrics are, women will retort, "He ain't talking about me.")

Within my limited knowledge of rap, black women who are seen as strong don't get dissed even by rappers; Sir Mix-a-Lot actually paid tribute to their attractiveness: "You can have them bimbos, I'll keep my women like Flo-Jo." There's probably someone who has picked on Secretary Rice, but that's an unfortunate side-effect of political disagreement. Ludacris had a much-publicized beef with Oprah when she criticized his lyrics on her show, and neither he nor the other rappers she called out seem to have taken the fight to the studio -- indeed, Ludacris even urged his fans not to boycott her.

I'm not saying that all rap is exactly a model of female empowerment. There's a fair bit of misogyny involved. But on the other hand, rap scores points for being the most politically conscious music currently out there. And of course, cherry-picking a few songs is kind of ridiculous when you're claiming to condemn an entire musical genre.

Unfortunately, despite being White, I feel my Whiteness credentials aren't sufficiently strong enough anymore to rehabilitate hip-hop before my predominantly White audience (this is what happens when you focus on racial issues too much--the "enhanced racial standing" you enjoy begins to slowly fade away). So instead of offering up the concluding line myself, I'll defer to a man whose White-cred is unassailable: Roger Ebert:

Rap has a bad reputation in white circles, where many people believe it consists of obscene and violent anti-white and anti-female guttural. Some of it does. Most does not. Most white listeners don't care; they hear black voices in a litany of discontent, and tune out. Yet rap plays the same role today as Bob Dylan did in 1960, giving voice to the hopes and angers of a generation, and a lot of rap is powerful writing.

I grew where you hold your blacks up/ Trap us, expect us not to pick gats up/ Where you drop your cracks off by the Mack Trucks/ Destroy our dreams of lawyers and actors/ Keep us spiralin', goin' backwards. --Jay Z, "Dope Man."

A Story Is Worth A Thousand Words

I'm not a fan of fiction. Yet, oddly enough, I am a fan of stories. By stories I mean actual, real life events, told in the form of a story. I believe stories can bring across important truths that are obscured in dry, academic prose or even passionate speech and argument. One of my interests as a scholar is on incorporating storytelling into approved, official legal discourse.

As you all know, I have a deep and abiding interest in issues of racial justice. I write on a variety of issues on the topic, but one of the more interesting and distressing ones is racial profiling, and the general treatment of (mostly young) Black men by the police. You can read a wide variety of polemics on why racial profiling is bad, ineffective, or immoral. But the tales of racial profiling rarely make it out, because the people being targeted are primarily poor and don't have access to major media arms to publicize their stories. I excerpted from a stellar Washington Post article once that was an exception to this rule. And now, I want to share another story, which I will leave without comment.

The author is andre douglas pond cummings, and he is a law professor at West Virginia University. Prior to that, he was a corporate attorney for the prestigious Chicago firm of Kirkland & Ellis, which was his position at the time of these events.

While practicing corporate law at Kirkland and Ellis in Chicago, once a week (or sometimes twice) I quietly left the firm at 7 P.M. or so, to participate in a formal inner city youth mentoring project. I drove due west from downtown Chicago, 200 W. Randolph Street, to the "west side" near Grand Avenue and Monticello, one of the many "west side" neighborhoods in Chicago, where I met up with several young men and women, typically between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, and drove them to a local church where we did homework together for two hours or so. I engaged in this mentoring program all three years that I lived and worked in Chicago, prior to entering the legal academy. Up close and personal, I witnessed a variety of astonishing incidences:

As a reward for homework well done and high marks received, I planned to meet several of my mentees on a Friday night at 9 P.M. for dinner and a movie downtown in "the Loop." On this particular Friday night, I could not break away from K & E to make my 9 P.M. appointment with the mentees. By the time I was able to finish my work it was 10:30 P.M. or so. I immediately retrieved my car and drove out west to see if the disappointed youngsters would at least like to grab a late dinner in downtown Chicago. After picking up two young men, the three of us were accosted by two members of the Chicago Police Department ("CPD"). The two officers quickly turned into six and before we knew what was going on we had been cuffed, searched, my vehicle had been tossed and we had been tussled and menaced by the officers. Constitutional search and seizure violations were plentiful. Apparently, I had trespassed into a "well known" drug area, and that my interaction with two young black males indicated a "clear" drug transaction.

Once I was able to force the officers to realize that I was a practicing attorney, the four "extra" officers disappeared quickly, and we were left standing at the rear of my car, the contents of our pockets strewn across the trunk, my vehicle car doors open and contents of my glove box strewn about, and having heard enough threats to "stay out of this well known drug area" to last a good long time. This experience, where I was personally bullied and where attempts to physically intimidate all three of us had been exercised, was one that I could not let pass. I wrote a letter to the supervising lieutenant in that police precinct and clearly delineated the experience and made demands on the police department as to how I thought they should appropriately respond to the clear constitutional violation of our Fourth Amendment rights. The initial officers on the scene had an internal affairs investigation opened into their behavior on that evening and both were required to hire attorneys to represent their interests. Some of my demands were met by the CPD while the eventual conclusion to the investigation was a finding of "no cause." Apparently, we needed more witnesses than the three of us involved in the police malfeasance, in order to effectuate suspensions of these officers.

As we continued on our way toward downtown Chicago, one of the high school students remarked that he was unfazed by this incident. "Happens every day," he stated nonchalantly.

Here is the letter Professor cummings relayed to the Chicago Police, requesting an investigation:

A Friday Round-Up

I wasn't the best of bloggers this week, so I give you a round-up of material I meant to post on but never got around to.

In the context of the White House "losing" those emails, Glenn Greenwald reminds us that we've heard this excuse before. This administration has a history of "losing" key documents when the heat is on.

Powerline explains the mysterious lack of Voting Rights cases brought by the Bush Administration against efforts to disenfranchise Black voters: There are none left! Racism is over! Whites and Blacks live in perfect harmony, and the fairies run free amid sharing glen!

Come on, is that the best you got?

Condi Rice deflects the pressure to run for President by saying she wants to go back to Stanford (where she is a tenured professor). I can't help but wonder what her reception among the students there will be (I'm thinking Kissenger at Georgetown).

For my part, I've always found Rice to be competent if nothing else, which is far more than I can say for her colleagues. I think her cousin, Constance Rice, hit the right mark: "I admire Condoleezza. I just think she's hanging around the wrong crew right now."

Concurring Opinion's Nate Oman offers up the secular case for Establishment. Oman notes that the history of establishment has supported the view that it has the effect of moderating the church and ushering in a more secular society. This post, of course, mirrors the religious case for separationism, which holds that establishing a church tends to degrade and weaken religion. Interesting bonus fact: The last established church in America? The Unitarians in Massachusetts.

Also at the Co-Op, a post on the process by which Iraqis make claims against the US for civilian deaths. They can be tough to read--this one features a female US soldier crying next to the body of the Iraqi soldier in colleague had just killed (the US offered $4,000 in compensation to the family).

BlackProf has, unsurprisingly, a bevy of great posts centering around the Imus scandal. I can't excerpt them all, so here's a list:

Adrien Wing: Women's Sports Foundation Responds to Imus

Paul Butler: Hip-Hop and the "H" Word

Darren Lenard Hutchinson (out of retirement!): Beating Up Imus and Other Idiots: How "We" Construct Racism

Angela Onwuachi: On Becoming Don Imus: What Happens When Insults Go Unanswered?

Melissa Harris-Lacewell: On Forgiveness for Imus and Misunderstanding the Movement

Melissa Harris-Lacewell: A Little On The History of the "Nappy Headed Ho"

Matt Yglesias unpacks the stats on the surge in interracial marriages since Loving v. Virginia. Certainly a better surge than the one in Iraq!

Finally, the Blogging the Bible project is at the Book of Job. Definitely interesting.

Quick Thoughts on the Duke Lacrosse Case and Other Innocent Folk

LGM documents what happens to innocent men who aren't rich enough to afford top-flight legal talent and don't have DNA evidence that can "prove" their innocence. Fernando Bermudez was ID'd in a shooting by five witnesses. The problem is they were all coerced into making the ID, and have all since recanted. He's still in prison. This was the part that made me want to bang my head against a wall:

The reason is based in the prevailing wisdom of the American justice system, which views recantations as untrustworthy, acts not of conscience, but of sympathy or bribery or coercion. That view is so deeply ingrained that one judge, rejecting one of Mr. Bermudez’s appeals in 1995, said candidly that five recantations were simply too many to believe.

Wow is that annoying. Quick poll: Are all five witnesses more likely to recant their testimony because they've all been bribed, or because there was a systematic problem in how their testimony was obtained in the first place that they're trying to correct? Of course, if only two of the witnesses recanted, I have no doubt this same judge would point to the other three as proof that the conviction is still valid.

I bring this up, because the now exonerated Duke Lacrosse players say that their ordeal has exposed them to the manifest injustices in the criminal justice system. I don't doubt it. They've pledged to work to reform some of these excesses, and I wish them all the luck in the world towards it. The Duke players had access to excellent lawyers, constant media exposure (which must have been painful but also is responsible for publicizing much of the exonerating evidence), and DNA evidence. Many people can't count on any of that. One hopes that these recent events can spark reform efforts that benefit not just innocent upper-class Whites, but innocent men like Mr. Bermudez.

I've been waiting to hear from the feminist blogosphere on this development in the Duke case. Commentary by feminist bloggers can be found at Alas, a Blog, Feministing, Feministe, Reverse Paranoia, and Slant Truth. They're hardly of one mind, and my links don't necessarily signal agreement. But they're thinking hard about the implications of the announcement. And that's worth noting.

For my part, I do now believe that these men were innocent of rape. That does not mean that a sexual assault did not occur (other people were at the party that night). It doesn't mean that one did, either--I don't know. That they are innocent also does not mean that they are particularly good people--one has an assault conviction, another spouted some pretty racist stuff, and its relatively uncontested that the folks at the party harassed the stripper at the party, probably using racial language. But that falls through the wayside. I've stated before that I am terrified of being falsely accused of a crime. In all likelihood, that's what these men went through. They deserve our empathy for that. And I'll reiterate my hope that their story encourages us to make reforms in our legal system so that it is less likely to railroad innocent men who can't afford top-notch legal talent to prison.

86ing the Voter Fraud Panic

Following up on my post regarding the Bush Administration's fraudulent presentation of voter fraud evidence, the New York Times did the legwork on voter fraud prosecutions for the 2006 election.

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

Let's see...86 convictions, across four years, even assuming they were all in one electoral jurisdiction (unlikely), that gives us....almost no impact on the democratic process!

So am I saying people who do commit voter fraud shouldn't be prosecuted? No. Well, except sometimes yes. Like in this case:

Ms. Prude’s path to jail began after she attended a Democratic rally in Milwaukee featuring the Rev. Al Sharpton in late 2004. Along with hundreds of others, she marched to City Hall and registered to vote. Soon after, she sent in an absentee ballot.

Four years earlier, though, Ms. Prude had been convicted of trying to cash a counterfeit county government check worth $1,254. She was placed on six years’ probation.

Ms. Prude said she believed that she was permitted to vote because she was not in jail or on parole, she testified in court. Told by her probation officer that she could not vote, she said she immediately called City Hall to rescind her vote, a step she was told was not necessary.

“I made a big mistake, like I said, and I truly apologize for it,” Ms. Prude said during her trial in 2005. That vote, though, resulted in a felony conviction and sent her to jail for violating probation.

Careless? Sure. Worthy of criminal prosecution? I don't think so. Greatest threat to democracy ever? Oh please.

Rich Hasen of the Election Law Blog (Loyala-Los Angeles) comments:

Together, these two reports show that despite tremendous efforts by the DOJ and others to ferret out instances of voter fraud taking place at polling places (as opposed to, for example, vote buying occurring with absentee ballots), there is very little evidence at this point. It is now incumbent upon those who still believe a great deal of voter fraud is taking place at the polls to come forward with a plan with sound methodology to show that such fraud is occurring on any kind of scale that would justify efforts such as the new recent onerous voter identification laws that have been put in place by some legislatures. But some who raise the fraud arguments do not appear to have an interest in relying on more than anecdote. The stories show the unfortunate politicization of election administration reform efforts in recent years.

The litany of laws that put ever-higher hurdles to voting is truly staggering (for my source-demanding friends, Publius is citing to NYU's Brennan Center for Justice) is staggering. The laws work to disenfranchise disempowered communities--and that's when the administrators aren't deliberately targeting them for removal from the rolls. They stop some people who can't vote legally, sure, but they disenfranchise many, many more law abiding US citizens whose right to vote is constitutionally protected. This is a travesty. And given the history that I already mentioned, it's a travesty that we have no valid plea of ignorance towards.

Passing Over Jewish Voices

This story from Jews on First, about a Texas law under consideration that would mandate schools carry elective Bible courses, illustrates an interesting point from my Religion Clauses as Anti-Subordination Principles article. The obvious route to go would be that the proposed curriculum closely mirrors Biblical interpretations favored by evangelical protestants. That's definitely a concern, but one that is quite easily addressed within the prevailing separationist paradigm. It's actually this anecdote that I want to pursue briefly:

Texas legislators are moving full speed ahead with a bill mandating elective Bible classes in the state's public high schools that appears crafted to facilitate use of a fundamentalist Protestant curriculum. Jewish groups have opposed that sectarian curriculum, but they were unable to testify at a hearing scheduled during Passover.

Scheduling a hearing on a bill of obvious importance to the Jewish community during Passover? Is it possible that this was deliberate? Well, while I'm not a fan of one of the bill's authors, I still doubt it. It strikes me as very unlikely that the scheduling was anything more than an unfortunate coincidence. I don't think it was motivated by malice.

But let's unpack this a little. I'm guessing that the folks scheduling this hearing were either unaware of Passover, or ignorant to its importance to the Jewish community. And so they scheduled debate on a day that most Jews couldn't attend. To understand why I think this is significant, try to imagine a similar situation, but with Christians as the disadvantaged group. What are the odds this hearing would be scheduled for Easter or Christmas morning? Is the legislature even in session during those times? Simply by virtue of its majority status, the dominant religion gets a whole package of intrinsic benefits, one of which is that there will rarely if ever be a case where a major political hearing will be scheduled to conflict with a major holiday--even if the topic isn't one that's important to them qua Christians. And if a conflict does occur, it is more likely that the legislature will respond to their concerns by rescheduling or offering an alternative venue for their views to be expressed.

This anecdote was brought up due to the irony Jews not being able to testify against a bill they opposed as Jews, but that's actually only a tangential point. If the legislature had been holding a critical hearing on, say, expanding healthcare for the poor or revamping educational funding, the same analysis would apply. Jews still wouldn't be able to attend, it still would be bad, and it still would be difficult to imagine important business being conducted on Easter Sunday. It's also important to note that a strict separationist approach would have little to say about this situation. If there was proof that the sponsors of the bill were deliberately trying to exclude Jewish testimony, that might be cause for worry. But without that proof, there is nothing "religious" about why the date and time were chosen for the testimony, and it is difficult to see how from a separationist perspective their decision could be condemned. It's these little things that structure the system in favor of dominant paradigms, and one of the reasons why it is important to be especially cognizant of the practices and perspectives of minority groups which may be lost when following Standard Operating Procedures designed by and for a Christian majority.

UPDATE: I've been made aware that the legislature did in fact schedule another hearing later on to accommodate Jews who wished to testify. This is excellent to hear, and while it may have been better not to have scheduled the original hearing on Passover in the first place, this is the right way to remedy that oversight.

I'll Show You A Fraud

The topic of the day is voter fraud, as this article detailing Bush administration "edits" to a report on voter fraud has been racing around the blogosphere. Basically, a bipartisan panel concluded that there was a solid consensus that voter fraud in the 2006 elections was minimal--specifically, "there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud." By some magical coincidence, this rather definitive conclusion was morphed by Bush's political appointees into "there is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud."

Obviously, I have a lot to say as to how this impacts the voter fraud/voter disenfranchisement debate. Since placing more stringent laws to combat voter fraud will inevitably deter some legitimate votes (and vice versa, more liberal voting laws make it easier to commit fraud), a fair examination of the issue needs to look at whether the we should care more about fraud or disenfranchisement, because from a policy perspective we can only pursue one or the other. I have blogged at length on this point before, and the empirical data is beyond question that voter disenfranchisement is a more serious problem than voter fraud. Voting rights expert Spencer Overton has estimated that there is 1000:1 ratio of legitimate to fraudulent votes deterred caused by imposing voter ID requirements. Indiana managed to justify its voter ID law on fraud-prevention grounds, despite never having a prosecuted instance of voter fraud in the history of the state. In the America we live in today, the quantity of evidence that voter disenfranchisement is a more serious problem for electoral integrity than voter fraud rivals that for gravity. The mendacity of the boys who cry fraud is akin to Young Earth Creationists, except that I'm more inclined to chalk up the former to pure hackery, with the latter ascribed to mere ignorance.

But before we get there, I think it's important to link this revelation into the scandal d'jour for the Bush administration--the attorney purge. There is a nexus point between the two stories, and it stems from a concerted conservative effort to lock out of democratic participation its political enemies--often racial minorities. Quoteth Josh Marshall:

You have to put all these pieces together to see the whole picture. The Republican party is heavily invested in hyping and inventing claims of voter fraud which they then use to stymie legitimate voter registration drives and institute 'ballot integrity' efforts which have the actual goal of limiting voting by racial minorities and under-income voters. The truth can hurt but that's the unvarnished truth. And the backdrop to the US Attorney Purge was a concerted effort to enlist US Attorneys to put the power of the state criminal prosecution apparatus behind this partisan gambit.

This is a crucial point. The firings of the New Mexico and Oregon attorneys, especially, are being linked to these public servant's refusal to pursue politically motivated voter fraud charges against Democrats. These activities have a long and sordid history in America. Scott Lemuiex summarizes:

It should be noted as well that the use of ostensibly neutral franchise-restricting measures to suppress the vote along racial and class lines has an extensive and incredibly ugly history in this country. A lot of people aren't aware of this, but even in its most conservative periods, the Supreme Court wouldn't allow direct violations (or transparent evasions, like the grandfather clause) of the 15th Amendment. But the use of facially neutral techniques like poll taxes and literacy tests allowed states to disenfranchise African-Americans anyway. "Vote ID" laws, felon disenfranchisement that results in the purging of some non-felons, and other techniques repeat the pattern at a lower (but, in a tightly divided electorate, potentially decisive) level.

Consider this passage from Michael J. Klarman's magisterial work on the Jim Crow era, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights:

Southern whites carefully avoided open contravention of the [15th] amendment. They assumed that the implementation of explicit racial conditions on suffrage would prompt federal intervention—either court action or reduction of southern congressional representation under section 2 of the Fourteenth amendment. Thus, in 1910, southern politicians were alarmed by Maryland’s disfranchisement proposal, which denied that the Fifteenth Amendment was binding and expressly qualified the suffrage based on race. Critics thought the nation would ‘not submit without a protest to the barefaced nullification’ of the Fifteenth Amendment and feared that Maryland’s scheme would endanger more subtle disfranchisement measures. Even southern state courts might have felt compelled to invalidate laws expressly barring black political participation, much as they reversed convictions of blacks where jury commissioners had deliberately and openly excluded blacks jurors. In 1904, a Georgia court invalidated a law forbidding blacks from voting in municipal elections.

Yet most white southerners thought the Fifteenth Amendment was illegitimate. A leading Louisiana disfranchiser stated a prevalent view when he called the amendment ‘the greatest crime of the Nineteenth Century’; crazed Republicans bent on partisan gain had imposed ignorant ‘negro domination’ on the South. Deterred from explicitly nullifying the amendment, white southerners generally felt ‘morally justified in evading and defeating [its] admitted purpose.’ Disfranchisers were not subtle about their objectives. At the Virginia convention, Carter Glass acknowledged that his mission was ‘to discriminate to the very extremity of permissible action under the limitations of the Federal Constitution, with a view to the elimination of every negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally.’(33)

We tell the history of racist oppression in America as one of Southerners openly and proudly passing laws that said, in substance, "No Blacks." But often times, that wasn't what happened, and they specifically drew up the laws to pass formalist muster.

Here's a primary source from the era saying much the same thing:

Largely through the foresight and sagacity of the late Hon. J.Z. George, the Mississippi Constitution of 1890 securely guards against the registration of Negroes in large numbers. Its provisions relating to the prerequisites to registration as an elector, impose the following requirements: Two years of residence in the state; one year of residence in the election district; payment of all taxes for the preceding two years (the applicant must produce evidence to the satisfaction of the election officials that all taxes have been paid); freedom from disqualification by a prior conviction of certain crimes; payment of a poll tax; and a literacy requirement.
[...]
Large numbers of Negroes are automatically disqualified from the exercise of the franchise by moving from one county to another to make crops at the first of each year.

Most the [sic] Negroes in Mississippi are poverty-stricken. That fact, coupled with the natural improvidence of the race, will lead to a default of many in the payment of taxes….
[…]
In specifying those crimes which would disqualify a citizen from exercise of the privilege of voting, upon conviction, the compilers of the Mississippi Constitution listed those offenses which the irresponsible and impulsive class of uneducated Negroes are most prone to commit….
[…]
The illiteracy of the Negro population of the South is well known. Few have more than the rudiments of education. Wholesale disqualification would follow the imposition of a literacy test, in the event of any general tendency of Negroes to apply for registration. The Mississippi Constitution requires that an elector shall

‘be able to read any section of the constitution of this state; or he shall be able to understand the same when read to him, or give a reasonable interpretation of the same.’

The constitution leaves to the choice of the election officials the selection of the section to be interpreted. The most illiterate white man could readily give a clear interpretation of the provision that ‘The governor shall be at least thirty years of age,’ but it would tax the wits of any Negro applicant not educated in law (and lawyers may not serve as jurors) to adequately explain just what is meant [*203] by the provision that ‘The writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended,’ or that ‘Ex post facto laws shall not be passed.’[J.F. Barbour, Note and Comment Mississippi Law Journal 8 (1935): 196-204, pp. 201-203]

Barbour, mind you, wrote this in an article agreeing that laws which explicitly forbade Blacks from voting or serving on juries were unconstitutional. This was the section where he explained why acceding to that formalistic principle would not threaten White Supremacy.

I stress these points because we simply cannot discuss this issue blind to the history behind these sorts of policies, and the manner in which formally neutral voting laws were a key pillar in America's racist hierarchy. The willful blindness exhibited on this issue is simply unbecoming of genuine deliberative dialogue, and ought to be called out more often.

Here's a round-up of other views

Steve Benen

Hilzoy's post explains why, if you want to steal an election, voter fraud is a really dumb way to do it.

FireDogLake

PoliBlog offers a strong and sober analysis of the story.

Mark Kleiman discusses the Bush Administration's efforts to suppress reports contrary to their policy on voter fraud and related issues.

Politburo Diktat certainly sounds like "a conservative whose been mugged by reality" in this post.

Brilliant at Breakfast: "It can no longer be denied: Republicans will rig the system to ensure Republican power by any means necessary. The question now is this: What are we going to do about it?" Maybe a bit hyperbolic, but its tough to argue with the trend line.

Kevin Drum finds the "great deal of debate" line echoing eerily of global warming "skeptics." No kidding.

And finally, Matthew Yglesias' short but sweet post has been a reference point for many of the top bloggers--for good reason.