I hope you actually apologized to Sergeant Crowley, without weasling about it.

Let's turn things around for a moment: suppose the people forcing their way into Professor Gates' house actually were burglars, and suppose the police department decided not to respond to the call. What then would Gates have had to say?

As for the arguments that the neighbor who called the cops "should have known" Gates, why? I have lived in the same house for 35 years, and some of my neighbors--even people living within sight of me who have been here a year or more--do not "know" me. Some of these neighbors are black people who have no interest in socializing with me, and by my observations do not have any white friends who visit. Are they racists? Some of them have children who are foul-mouthed louts, who shout racial epithets at me for no good reason.

You mentioned today that race is "still a factor" in American life. Can you understand the frustration of white Americans who never seem able to do enough to accomodate the social disparities between themselves and that tiny minority of black soreheads who think they define their entire race?

As it happens I despise and pity white supremacists. But since I don't know of any within my family and circle of friends, I bear no responsibility for their actions.

You, sir, need to make up your mind whether your presidency is race-neutral (as you claimed in your campaign that it would be), or whether in fact things are as they have come to appear to be with you. The black voters of the USA could not alone have elected you. It happens that I voted neither for you nor Senator McCain, but I had hoped that you would act as President of every category of American citizens. Both your legal and your extra-Constitutional appointments have created the appearance of ethnic/racial favoritism. And you have certainly done yourself no good this week, meddling in a local police matter on behalf of a personal friend, regardless of the race of the people involved.

To paraphrase [the execrable] Keith Olbermann, Mr. President, shut the hell up.

Just days after the election, Maya Angelou breathlessly told a MSNBC talking head, "I don't have to apologize for my country when I'm abroad." 

Listen to this bit of pretension, if you can stomach it. 

For someone who has lived under such oppression, Angelou has done pretty well. She knocks down $43,000 apiece for her lecture performances to audiences of other breathless limousine liberals.

I'm especially fond of the part where she mentions her European fans saying, "aren't you glad to be here in France where we don't have the racism you live under?"

Honestly! Other than having played a role in the careers of Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson and Jimi Hendrix, what have the Frogs done for blacks living there? It was within the past year that the French government raised the ire of Muslims by forbidding religious headwear in the schools. This was justified by the contention that France is a "secular" country. (I suppose Joan of Arc must be whirling in her grave.)

Politically, blacks in France possess next to zero power or representation. The Christian Science Monitor notes that among the 911 members of the French Parliament, only three are of minority background. The Monitor article quotes one Pap Nidaye of the School for Advanced Study of the Social Sciences, who thinks that the election of a French counterpart of Obama is not possible. Nidaye observes, "There's no grass-roots politics for Africans. ...What's missing is a thick layer of minority politicians in small towns; local officials just don't encourage this."

Perhaps "Doctor" [honorary] Angelou might ask some pointed questions of her European pals the next time she visits there. Better still, perhaps she ought to move to Paris and live out her life there.

Assuming that you are elected, and that you perform the duties of your office without regard to race, how do you plan to placate these tens of thousands (if not more) of people who will find themselves disappointed, and see themselves as having been betrayed?

But Berry may just find herself an unwitting hero, in the same sense that Rosa Parks did the day she had her fill of being sent to the back of the bus.

Ironically, it was the Monday after the attack on Berry that Mayor Dixon and her yes-man, Police Commissioner Bealfeld, held a press conference to boast about the reduction in the murder rate for the first quarter of the year. Only 50 people were murdered, a reduction of "thirty percent" over the first quarter of last year. But that reduction amounts to only 21 fewer murders, a number that Baltimore's thug element has demonstrated that it can rack up on its scoreboard in no more than a weekend or two.

A change in the number of murders over as short a period as three months is too statistically insignificant to be a bragging point. Moreover, if the mayor wants to credit Bealfeld's tough new policies and new efficiencies in Prosecutor Jessamy's office, she had better be prepared to demonstrate a direct correlation between the policy changes and the number of murders.

Outrageously, this announcement came scarcely twelve days after the death of Zach Sowers, who had been in a coma since a beating he took last summer. In its zeal to close the case, the city cut deals with the four perpetrators that closed out the case in November, and precluded the possibility that any of them will be tried for the murder of Sowers. They will likely be out of jail before they are 30, and it's a sucker bet to say none of them will commit more violent crimes.

That's where the attack on Berry becomes important. Dixon will have to face the fact that irrespective of the number of people who actually died, the number of violent crimes has not been reduced. Nor, I suspect, has Jessamy's dismal record of obtaining convictions. Dixon can stamp her foot all day and utter platitudes such as "This might sound harsh, but I believe we have to come up with some very stern discipline action. Young people now feel, some feel, that it's acceptable, and it's not acceptable." But she cannot escape the statistics, provided ALL the statistics are revealed. And in the aftermath of Berry's attack, it will probably turn out that violent crime is being grossly under-reported. The president of the city teachers' union has said that administrators (read: principals and superintendents) routinely avoid reporting student assaults on teachers, out of a fear that more city schools will be declared "persistently dangerous" under the federal No Child Left Behind law. We can only hope that the union president has kept careful records of her own, and will reveal them.

The city will sooner or later have to face the fact that its main source of violence is black children of school age. Unlike the beat-down of Sarah Kreager, nobody will have the luxury of claiming that Berry used a racial slur against her attacker. Because Ms. Berry herself is black, and by all appearances is not one of that stiff-necked sort that black thugs like to characterize as "Oreos," traitors to the race.

Bealfeld told the press conference that citizens should play a greater role in reporting crimes. Perhaps now he will amend that statement to include school administrators. Notably, neither he nor Dixon have made any measurable progress against the witness intimidation and jury nullification that plague the city; that might be a motivator. 

The Baltimore Sun provides a useful database for tracking murders in the city. You can see a map showing the locations where murder victims have been found, and can filter the victim population by age, gender, race, and cause of death, going back as far as January 1, 2007. One thing you quickly discover is that among the hundreds murdered last year, only thirteen were white. That's provided you don't count Sowers, who was murdered last year but didn't die until this year; or the two white would-be witnesses who were tracked into the county and killed. 

The conclusion is inescapable that it's far more dangerous to be a black person in Baltimore City than to be a white, Asian or Latino, and few, if any, black Baltimoreans have recently been murdered by people of another race. Unfortunately, none of the local rabble-rousers (such as "Doc" Cheatham, Larnell Custis Butler, Dwight Pettit and his cohort of black defense lawyers,  or the myriad "reverends" around the city, not to mention those fierce-looking Nation of Islam guys selling bean pies on the street corners) have enough spine to point this out. They are too busy trying to blame some outside influence, primarily white people.

• The Dr. Spock philosophy. Parents are forbidden any kind of physical discipline beyond sending the kid to his "naughty spot." The argument is that spanking a child is violent. And the result of that has been that the children themselves have grown exponentially more violent.
• This is probably the third generation of children raised in day care. At home, a child is under constant supervision of Mom, and has contact with other children only as she permits it. In day care, there are fewer adults than children, and thus no close supervision. The children learn from each other rather than from the adults, and apparently what they learn is the baser part of human instinct. Certainly nothing polite, noble or altruistic. I don't think many of us are born with those characteristics. 
• Black people seem to lack the will to take the next step beyond complaining these days. Most of the murders in the city are black people killing other black people. But when someone like Bill Cosby shows up and reminds people that they have only themselves to blame, for not having disciplined their offspring, he is viewed as having sold out his race. Yes, the audience will nod and applaud in agreement. Then they will go back home to the status quo.

“’There is (a) class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. … There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.’"

A spokeswoman for the county prosecutor says the charge was dropped because Snowden had no knowledge of a presence of a firearm in the vehicle.

Snowden had plead guilty in December to possession and intent to distribute marijuana and is awaiting sentencing on those charges. Nonetheless, he is a convicted felon, making it a crime under both state and federal laws for him to be in possession of a firearm. His defense was that the gun belonged to the other guy who was riding in the car, and he did not know it was there. Now, if ever there was an issue that cried out to be heard by a judge and jury, this would be one. Young Snowden should have been placed under oath and grilled along the now-classic  lines of what did he know and when did he know it. For the matter to have simply been dropped by administrative decision smacks of favoritism and unequal treatment under the law. It would be interesting if someone in the MSM took the time to look up statistics and outcomes on past arrests of this kind, because it immediately raised several questions in my mind:

Question #1: Suppose this had been some convicted felon other than the son of someone politically well-connected?

Suffice it to say that Lovell "Artie" Wheeler was not treated so generously a few years ago in Baltimore, and the crime he was accused of was a mere misdemeanor. It just happened that Wheeler is an impolitic old whiteguy, and Kojo Snowden is the son of a "prominent civil rights activist." I have no patience with white supremacists like Wheeler, but I think professional racists on both sides of the issue deserve equal treatment.

You might remember that another "prominenent civil rights" type, Carl T. Rowan, drew a "walk" some years ago when he shot an teenager found swimming in the pool in his Washington DC backyard. That incident occurred in 1988, long after the District had enacted (in 1975) the gun control law that almost completely banned firearms possession. (N.B. this is the law that is being challeneged in the Heller case.)

Question #2: Did Kojo get a "walk" due to some intervention from O'Malley? Those of you who know of Frank Weathersbee, the Anne Arundel County State's Attorney, know that he is a pretty hard-nosed prosecutor, especially compared to some of his cohorts in other Maryland counties. It seems pretty unlikely to me that Weathersbee would have backed away from this case without coercion.

Question #3: [Irrelevant, but interesting nonetheless] What sort of person would name a child "Kojo," which sounds more like the name you would hang on a zoo animal or household pet? Unless perhaps the name is intended to have been a blend of "Kojak" and "Tojo." That's possible, but unlikely...

The first three of these attacks have been black predators attacking white victims. Altogether too many words have already been said about that, none of them the right ones. In a city where blacks are in the majority, only a fool would be shocked at this information. Not only do these kids harbor a lot of unwarranted anger-even allowing for the ordinary hormonally surge-but they have somehow been conditioned to see impoverished whites (such as Sarah Kreager) and the elderly as attractive prey.

Dixon and the others act as though this is a recent phenomenon, and peculiar to the MTA's buses. Refusing to believe there is such a thing as black prejudice towards non-blacks, the Powers That Be see no connection between the attack on Kreager and-for example--the attack earlier this year on Zach Sowers. In the name of expedience, the state's attorney has done a grave disservice to Sowers (who remains comatose) by bargaining away the right to charge this monster with murder, should Sowers eventually die. This, despite the willingness of the co-attackers to testify on the prosecution's behalf.

MTA officials appear in deep denial over the long history of nasty behavior aboard their vehicles, at their bus stops, and in other public places. A few years ago on the SunSpot news forum, a woman reported having witnessed a young (black) man openly masturbating aboard a subway. Others followed in close order, saying they'd seen similar stuff. My own wife rode MTA buses to work for more than a decade, and every day I waited breathlessly until she'd gotten safely home, wondering whether the assault du jour would be merely a groping or verbal insult, a purse snatching, or something unimaginably worse. And that was more than fifteen years ago.

The city's self-anointed black authority figures have addressed their remarks not to the young generation responsible for the violence, but to their shocked parents and grandparents. They know from whose pockets their money flows, at it's from the elders who feel ashamed and powerless about the kids.

It has been at least two generations since any city has seen an activist with the courage and "street cred" to go out amongst the youngsters and work directly with them. The result is a generation of children who know that adults fear them, and use that fear to great effect. Nobody has managed to teach them that this same fear, from which they derive a transitory thrill today, will tomorrow deter someone from hiring them, for example. They have, by their own efforts, de-humanized themselves.

Meanwhile, the Deep Thinkers in the city and state government will grasp at any cockamamie notion, knowing that it will fail, but praying that it won't fail until someone else is at the helm. Kurt Schmoke, as mayor, attempted placating the thug element with silliness such as midnight basketball. Martin O'Malley attempted, during the brief period he was paying attention, to have the city arrest its way out of the problem. That bit of folly only clogged the court system so badly that many serious crimes went unprosecuted because of speedy-trial rules, or were plea-bargained away to nothing. Sheila Dixon has proven herself worse than incapable of ameliorating the violence; she's actually made herself a laughing stock. And from his new seat of power, O'Malley is about to make matters exponentially worse by abolishing officially the death penalty in this state, thus removing any genuine negative consequences for predatory violence.

This problem will not be solved by any number of people safely ensconced behind bulletproof glass watching the violence unfold on video screens, by any amount of political oratory, however sincere, or by any number of "gun buy-backs."  In this city, countless firearms have been "bought back," nearly always in violation of federal laws. Pellet guns, most knives, knuckle dusters, pepper spray, stun guns and nearly every category of improvised defensive weapon has been declared verboten. The violence grows more frequent and random, and the Deep Thinkers continue along the same course that has steadily proven itself counterproductive.

There is a reason that jackals prey upon antelopes, rather than tigers and elephants. The simple fact is that thugs, punks and other miscreants are less likely to attack victims if there is any certainty that one of their potential targets may be armed.

It is past time that governments admit they can seldom protect anyone, but only pick up the broken pieces after a tragedy has occurred. People will remain at risk until they demand that the governments quit condemning them for defending themselves.

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) - A jury on Monday convicted a millionaire couple of enslaving two Indonesian women they brought to their mansion to work as housekeepers.

Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, and his wife, Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 45, were each convicted of all charges in a 12-count federal indictment that included forced labor, conspiracy, involuntary servitude, and harboring aliens.

Prosecutors said the women were subjected to repeated psychological and physical abuse and were forced to work 18 hours or more a day.

The Sabhnanis, who have four children and who operate a worldwide perfume business out of their Muttontown home on Long Island's Gold Coast, could face up to 40 years in prison, although attorneys predicted the punishment would be considerably less.

Isn’t this always the case in the USA? The wealthier the perpetrator, the more odious the crime, the more likely it becomes that some bargain will be struck.

On the other hand, the governments will want to take that sandwich-shop operator in PA who put up a “speak English” sign, and nail him to a tree.

Any bets on whether Sharpton and Jackson will show up to protest this modern case of slavery? Or will it be outside their purview because there’s no way for them to extort money out of it.?

By Jeannie Blaylock
First Coast News

BRUNSWICK, GA -- First Coast News has been investigating allegations that a major local company is guilty of racial discrimination.

Lisa Woods ... says for months the restroom had a sign saying, "OUT OF ORDER." She alleges her co-worker, Anthony Lee, believed the races shouldn't mix. Lee had no comment.

An independent trucker, Donald Jones, says when he went to the scaling house he saw the same "OUT OF ORDER" sign.

Jones says, "I had to go off in the woods and do what I had to do."

But Lisa Wagner, a former security guard at the scaling house, says if a white truck driver came through, "No problem, no problem at all." Whites were invited to use the toilet, Wagner says. ...

Woods ... also alleges Lee put up a cartoon at the job site showing a pregnant monkey. Woods was pregnant at the time but later miscarried.

That miscarriage, verified by medical records from Southeast Georgia Health Systems, is also part of Woods' complaints. She says the company would not let her off from work, even though medical experts recommended she "rest at home for the next several days." ...

She asked the clerk to help her find a hand-cart, then launched into a complaint about how she'd been treated three days earlier. Listen in:

"Who was working here Saturday?"

"Well, there are two people working in the office on weekends..."

"I'm not talking about that Afro-American woman who was here; she always treats me nice. I'm talking about that Euro-American [I swear to God, that's what she said] woman. She did me a favor, getting me a storage unit on short notice, I know, but I just didn't like the way she talked to me. I'm going to come back here and talk to her about that, and this time she'd better treat me nice, or there might be trouble."

At this point I could not help intervening. In part because the woman she was complaining about is  one of the most unflappable, upbeat people you could hope to meet, and in part because I needed to complete my purchase and move on with my day. Excusing myself into the conversation, I remarked that what this woman had said sounded remarkably like a threat, and that perhaps the clerk ought to warn her boss to be on the alert for trouble. Predictably, that shifted the focus of the attack to me, the woman now getting shrill and demanding to know whether I worked for the company, etcetera. In an even tone of voice the clerk told her I was a long-time customer of the place, of very high standing, and a personal friend of the woman being complained about. After a bit of huffing and puffing, and looking me over from head to toe, as though she was trying to memorize my description (enough so that I offered her a business card), the woman flounced out of the place. As she left, she shouted over her shoulder, "Jena Six!"

I am at an absolute loss to understand what message this little ejaculation was intended to convey, since it was so far out of context with anything that had been said up to that point. I can only assume it was some sort of weirdly abstract threat directed at me; perhaps that I should expect Al Sharpton and a few thousand angry liberals to show up on my doorstep.

Apparently, the woman is one of those people--the ones who push race into every possible encounter, hoping to use it for leverage when she's wrong on the facts. Reflecting on the "Euro-American" remark (and I swear, I have never before heard a white person referred to thus), I formed a mental picture of this woman as a huge locomotive, with her race-resentment shoved out in front of her like a cow-catcher.

And as I have written on other occasions, I'm always amazed to hear this kind of stuff from someone who is obviously too young to have been turned away from a lunch counter, relegated to the back of the bus, or forced to use a "colored" water fountain.

The shame of this kind of behavior is that it becomes to easy to make it into a racial generalization, when the truth is simply that this woman is a racist and a jerk.

The Gwynn Oak Park had been built in the 1890s as a "trolley park," a destination at the end of one of the city's trolley lines that would provide an excuse to run the cars on weekends. In addition to a wooden roller coaster and other rides, there was the Dixie Ballroom, a venue for concerts and dancing. This being the Jim Crow era, black people were excluded altogether from admission to the park. The owners had failed to see any economic advantage, and thus had not even gone the extent of providing the separate-but-equal sort of facilities to be found in some of the city parks, such as Druid Hill Park.

On July 4, 1963 the situation reached a tipping point, and a large group of demonstrators marched from the city to the amusement park, demanding the right to spend their money there. Several people were arrested, and the event is said to have been the first time that white clergymen participated in a desegregation action. Chester Wickwire, the chaplain of Johns Hopkins University, was one of the arrestees.

The park owners grudgingly admitted black customers, and the results were predictable. A rowdy element among both races provoked a few fights, and the owners apparently decided it was no longer worth keeping up the place. The condition of the park and its rides deteriorated, until Hurricane Agnes dealt it the final blow.

Fast forward to around 1987, the year I left my 9-to-5 job to become a real estate salesman. Having lived in Woodlawn for twelve years, I decided it should be my home turf as a salesman. It was not until then that I discovered bigotry still alive and well. One popular watering hole was not formally segregated, but there seemed to be an understanding that blacks were welcome to order carry-out food through the liquor store up front, but far less welcome to spend their money in the bar/dining room. Just around the corner, a block away, I found myself trapped in a conversation in which a local lawyer and a local real estate appraiser were casually discussing how they might "keep the niggers from taking over Woodlawn." It seemed to me that particular ship had already sailed, not to mention that what they were about to discuss would have been a federal crime, so I made an excuse to leave.

Now it's twenty years farther along still, and the bigots are still out in force. Ironically, it appears that the old-time white bigots have joined forces with some black ones.

The Baltimore Sun reported the story thus: [commentary added in brackets]

School's dorm proposal has neighbors worried

It would be too much like group home, some say

By Laura Barnhardt | Sun reporter

September 29, 2007

"We don't know where these kids are coming from," said Van Ross, president of the Woodlawn Community Education and Development Association. "We don't know if they are troubled young people or what. How would you like a dormitory or a group home next to your house?"

[comment: This property is located on the corner of Gwynn Oak Avenue and Dogwood Road. The property immediately abutting the proposed school is a large tract of land that has been home to a commercial diving operation, and used for the storage of heavy equipment. The owner of the diving service DID live there, until his recent death. Across the street is Hertsch's Tavern, where you can easily observe rowdy behavior in the parking lot, in addition to a number of illegally posted beer and liquor signs on the fence. Across Dogwood road are a pair of two-story office buildings, perpetually under-utilized because they were built in a flood plain, and periodically flooded.]

A zoning hearing on the religious school's plans, originally scheduled for Monday, has been postponed, in response to a request by County Councilman Kenneth N. Oliver and community leaders, who have expressed concerns about the proposal and said they want to learn more about it.

The school, Darul Uloom Maryland, is seeking approval from Baltimore County to build a dormitory for 15 to 20 students.

[The school also happens to operate a web page, which explains quite adequately its mission. My impression is that it will be the Islamic equivalent of a Rabbinical school.]

***

Del. Emmett C. Burns Jr., a Baltimore County Democrat who organized a meeting with residents this week about the boarding school, said, "We don't want to appear that we are anti-Islamic. But we don't want any more group homes in our district."

As of last year, about two-thirds of the approximately 500 group homes in Maryland were in Baltimore County. Most are in Randallstown, Woodlawn and elsewhere in the northwestern part of the county.

[Now, nobody knows precisely how many group homes exist in the state, much less where they are located, because no single government entity regulates them.  Burns, a political veteran who knows which side his bread is buttered on, knows he'd better make some kind of obesiance to Islamic people, since there are any number of Nation-of-Islam "mosques" in the Baltimore City portion of his district.]

In letters to county officials, neighbors of the boarding school said they are also concerned about businesses being allowed to open in residential areas and about possible disruptions of what they describe as a quiet, peaceful area.

"Please," one resident wrote to county officials, "don't disturb a good thing."

[This "good thing" that the anonymous letter-writer mentions includes the high school with the absolutely worst academic performance in the county, a middle school that is in the bottom 1/3 of the heap, and a community with the county's worst crime rate. As for "businesses"opening in the immediate area, there are two auto repair shops within a block of Darul Uoom, both of which maintain junkyard conditions, in violation of county law. the high school has a football "stadium" that draws, on game days, dozens of illegally parked vehicles, and whose P.A. system can be clearly heard more than a mile away. The neighborhood is dotted with day care centers, including one that for at least five years has touted itself as providing "Christain [sic] Day Care," and the enterprises that cause the worst traffic congestion are churches of the penetcostal flavor. In the so-called business park whose buildings are scattered throughout the area inside the Beltway along Security Boulevard, the worst problem is the number of medium-to-large office buildings that have remained vacant for at least a decade.]

The neighborhood's good-news rag, a monthly calling itself The Woodlawn Villager, reports the story a little differently. The rationale this paper cites is that:

...the members of the communities surrounding the proposed school noted that the additional traffic on the narrow streets would cause safety concerns for their children.

[Unfortunately, this is more than a little disingenuous. People traveling to and from the school will use Security Boulevard (a major local highway), the widest portion of Gwynn Oak Avenue (most of which is one-way), and Dogwood and Windsor Mill Roads, two other minor traffic arteries in the area. The only reason for school staff or parents to drive on the "narrow streets" would be if they lived there! Moreover, none of these concerned citizens have stepped forward to complain about the traffic and illegal parking created by the Redemption Christian Fellowship, a block away on Dogwood Road, or the New Rehoboth Baptist Church, another large congregation two blocks away on Windsor Mill Road.]

The contention that "group homes" is insupportable, at least in terms of any hard evidence. When the community meeting was announced, I queried Captain Barry Barber, commander of the local police precinct, about trouble and group homes. Here's our exchange of emails:

Captain Barber:

Does the BCPD keep track of the number of calls to so-called group homes?

***

Stan,

... We don't arbitrarily track statistics at all group homes in the Precinct.  When we start to notice an increase in calls for service, especially criminal calls, at a particular group home location, we then begin to track all calls there.

At the same time we start to target the location with increased enforcement. At the same time we contact the home administrator in a effort to relocate some of the problem residents and/or to close the facility all together.

For all other homes, if given an address, we can pull up calls for service over a given period.  We will not do this unless specifically asked to do so.

[Captain Barber continues] As for the location on Dogwood Road, it is not a group home.  The proposal is for this to be a dormitory for an Islamic School.  There are no known problems connected to the school and there is no reason to believe that its presence would cause a problem within the community.

My sense of the group home situation in general is that it has been blown out of proportion. You see a few mentally handicapped people on the streets, and of course they are the most high-functioning members of that little sub-group. I have never known one of the folks I see regularly to misbehave in any way. We also see groups of people from these homes escorted here and there--for example you'll find them eating at Old Country Buffet, or taking a trip to the bank. Again, no problem. [The same can't be said of the local high school students, who can regularly be heard swearing at each other and us homeowners on their way to and from school. One afternoon as I was letting my dog out, some high schooler accosted me from forty yards away, yelling "What the fuck are you lookin'at, cracker?" As far as I could see, he was not mentally handicapped or a Muslim. And I'm sure it was not a Muslim or a  "mental case" who scrawled "Black is Back" on the side of my car, or who made any of the three attempted thefts of my vehicles.]

What bothers me the most about the attitude towards the group homes is that it's so unrealistic. People don't want this kind of housing in their neighborhood, but they also want the Rosewood School closed, and the same for Spring Grove. Unless someone decides to propose shipping these people out of state or euthanizing them, they have to live somewhere.

The "group home" category also includes housing for people with devastating physical problems, as well as mental ones. On Carlynn Avenue, there's one poor fellow whom I've seen now and again being dropped off at the house or at Kernan's, who is completely paralyzed, apparently with cerebral palsy, and horribly atrophied. [The man is literally a "basket case."] Again, since we do not euthanize people in this country (thank God!) the choices of housing for someone so helpless boil down to either a so-called group home, which might at least look and smell like a genuine home, or [permanent] hospitalization.

Furthermore, the houses that become group homes are often functionally and economically obsolete. The former Bauhof residence, where Darul Uloom has located itself, is a prime example of this. When the Bauhof family sold it to Mr. Cignatta (who owned it until recently), the place had between six and nine bedrooms, and only one bathroom. When you have a property of that sort, there are only a few alternatives, and re-adapting it for a commercial or educational enterprise is one of the best. Others get cut up into apartments, often in violation of the zoning regulations, and still others end up vacant and boarded. Those houses don't do anything for the neighborhood.

I'm impressed by the fact that Darul Uloom has--at least thus far--not applied for tax-exempt status. As you know, many "church" operated properties get themselves a tidy little exemption, removing a valuable property from the county tax base. (One example is the Set the Captives Free center. That property is worth at least two million, and we don't see a dime in property taxes from them. Another is the New Rehoboth church, which I believe sold
for more than half a million dollars.)

 

I am reluctant to link to TownHall columnists generally*, but I think nobody has explained better than John Hawkins how richly these six youngsters deserve punishment, and how justice cannot be served by allowing them to be tried under the more favorable rules of the juvenile justice system.

October 1, 2007 -- She wore too much Red Door, so they showed her the door.

That's the claim of a Brooklyn woman who says she was fired as a customer-service rep because she wore too much perfume.

Jorinda Sullivan, 24, of Canarsie is suing her former employer, Mindpearl, a customer-service center in Melville, L.I., for $1 million in Brooklyn federal court, claiming that co-workers' complaints about her perfume morphed into thinly veiled racial discrimination.

After complaints about one perfume, Sullivan switched to Elizabeth Arden's signature Red Door - but said she was soon hauled back into the supervisor's office for the same reason.

Later, she was allegedly attacked over her personal hygiene and asked what soap, shampoo and deodorant she used.

At that point, she decided she was being harassed because she is black and complained to the state Division of Human Rights and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In February, she was fired because, her boss said, she'd been the subject of three customer complaints the previous week.

Vincent Gaines, chairman and CEO of Mindpearl, said, "The company denies any wrongdoing and intends to continue to vigorously contest her claims."

The really insidious thing about being accused of "racial discrimination" is that it is all but impossible to disprove. Which makes it a really handy tool that "people of color" can reach for when they find themselves in a fix, and are wrong, as per the facts of the case.

(CBS) OAK LAWN, Ill. A southwest suburban school district has taken action, responding to the concerns of a Muslim parent. [ed. note: that's "a," as in "one."]

But now, as [TV newsie] Suzanne Le Mignot reports, other parents are angry that traditional school holidays will be renamed or even eliminated.

"That does not represent all the Muslims, all of the Arabs at that school," said Qais Nofel, the father of a student in Ridgeland School District 122.

There was some heated discussion between parents outside Columbus Manor Elementary School in Oak Lawn on Friday. The thought of no more traditional holiday celebrations has many parents really upset.

For now, children in Ridgeland School District 122 will celebrate fall festival instead of Halloween and winter festival instead of Christmas.

Brenda Elvidge said, "It's not fair to our kids. This is America and that's an American tradition."

The decision affects the children at four elementary schools in Oak Lawn and one junior high school in Bridgeview.

The district has a 30 percent Arab-American population, many of whom practice Islam. The superintendent says the reason for the change in tradition comes after one parent wanted Ramadan decorations put up inside Columbus Manor Elementary. They were taken down.

Superintendent Tom Smyth said, "I go back to our policy which says that public schools are to remain neutral in this respect."*

Ridgeland School District 122 has called for an emergency meeting on the issue, to be held on Tuesday.

Meantime, Muslim children are being allowed to pray during what's being called their own time, that's lunch time, during Ramadan.

Parent June Quigley said, "They get to pray in our schools. That is religion in a public school."

Muslim parents have different views on the issue.

Sala Abour said, "To take away Halloween and Christmas from little kids, that is very wrong."

Nofel said, "We go and we celebrate the holidays and traditions here, but we do have the right to be Muslims as well."

Other parents say the controversy is overshadowing what really needs to be addressed at all five schools in the district.

Ronnie Carroll said, "The fact that they are cash strapped. Our classroom size is way above the average mean, 38 children in our first grade classroom. The concern should be our school, not the whole holiday issues."

Those issues along with the holiday controversy are going to be addressed at a school board meeting on Tuesday. Members will decide if holidays will be celebrated or not.

Meantime, the Illinois PTA district director says the state is now investigating this issue and there's a meeting with the superintendent next week.

A few observations, if I may.

ONE parent objected to the more traditional American holidays. Thirty percent of the school district population (which is not to say 30% of the school's students) are "Arab-American," and MANY (not "most," in fact the percentage is not quantified) practice Islam.

Public schools have always been "sold" as the place where children learn to get along with other children who are not just like them. Removing any holiday from the mix defeats that mission.

Superintendent Smyth's statement that the schools are to "remain neutral in this respect" represents a huge departure from the philosophy of having the public school system teach the important cultural stuff about the USA, even if some of it involves (God forbid!) religion. Peruse any pre-WWII public school textbook for a perspective on this.

Until recently, parents in the USA who favored separatism for their children in areas of religion and culture formed "private" or "parochial" schools to serve this need. In some cases, those schools were an alternative to the government-funded school; in others they were supplemental education. This way of doing things has always worked adequately, has harmed no one, and ought to be left in place.

Here in Woodlawn, a suburb of Baltimore, the high school has made many concessions to Muslim students, unbalancing the privileges granted to the student body at large. I won't leap to the assumption this is the entire cause, but I don't think it is altogether coincidental that Woodlawn High School (in spite of having a "magnet" school subdivision) has the lowest standard test scores among all the county's high schools.

Some Deep Thinkers at NYU and UCLA have decided, based on very thin evidence, that "political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information." Inferring much from a very simple experiment, the Thinkers have decided that political Lefties are wired differently from political Righties. One might suppose this research to be the precursor to another study that will reveal a genetic difference between the two extremes. Of course, none of the Thinkers have been asked to account for the fact that many, MANY people reverse their political affiliations completely, and that except for a pathological and loudmouthed minority, most people become more "conservative" with age.

Quoting the LA Times,

Lead author David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University, cautioned that the study looked at a narrow range of human behavior and that it would be a mistake to conclude that one political orientation was better. [That's mighty "white" of him.] The tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing depending on the situation, he said. [For example, when driving a motor vehicle, balancing a checkbook, putting on eye makeup, and a thousand other mundane tasks...]

And yet liberals come unhinged over something that can never be proven to have significance.

University of Maryland police on Monday were investigating as a possible hate crime what appeared to be a noose hanging in a tree near a building that houses several black campus groups.

The noose — a throw-back to the days of lynching of blacks in the U.S. South — was found between the student union and the Nyumburu Cultural Center, where organizations that include the Black Faculty and Staff Association and the Black Explosion newspaper are based.

"We are starting out with the assumption that it was a hate crime," campus police spokesman Paul Dillon said Monday.

Witnesses reported seeing the 3-foot-long (1 meter) rope Thursday. The rope had a 3-inch-diameter (7.6-centimeter) noose tied at one end and was reportedly 10 to 12 feet (3.7 meters) up in the tree, Dillon said.

The rope was destroyed by campus maintenance workers before police had a chance to see it, Dillon said. But the department has photos and several witness accounts.

The rope may have been in the tree for as long as two weeks, he said.

University President C.D. Mote Jr. said in a weekend statement over the weekend that the discovery was "of great concern."

"The possibility that this act appears intended to bring to mind the horrific crime of lynching, which is such a terrible and tragic part of our nation's past, is particularly abhorrent," Mote said.

If you Google some other stories about this non-event, you will find a photograph of the "noose," which appears to be nothing more or less than a well-tied slip knot. One wonders how the maintenance workers "destroyed the rope." More likely, they simply untied the knot! Since maintenance workers found the "noose," Occam's Razor would dictate that the investigators ought to start by asking said maintenance workers whether they'd been doing any tree-trimming in the past few weeks. When you are lowering branches from a tree being pruned, it's not unusual to use a rope with a slip knot tied in it.

But the [superior?] liberal minds of the Deep Thinkers at U of MD have come completely unhinged, on absolutely no evidence. And the way the modern spin machinery works, no amount of evidence will now suffice to DISPROVE that this was a "hate crime."

It would be a distraction to observe that a student newspaper calling itself The Black Explosion might be a bit inflammatory, and that someone on the newspaper staff might even be ambitious enough to have created a little hoax here. So I won't make that observation.

Ironic, isn't it, that the University president is a man named "Mote," which as a common noun means a tiny speck of dust?

Watch the video report

(You will need your "Back" button to return here)

Having never heard America's latest Magic Negro speak, I downloaded the file for a listen. The first thing that struck me was how unprepared he seemed. Enough so that I felt "disrespected" as a listener: he was wasting my time. After four minutes of pointless blather in which he quotes a speech by Robert Kennedy, I decided to use the fast-play feature of Windows Media Player. And what I discovered then astounded me. Sped up to 4x or 5x real time, Obama sounds just like Keith Olbermann.

Now, I am no conspiracy theorist, but has anyone actually seen Obama and Olbermann in the same place together?

But Moran's rationale is pretty weak:

• Hiring strippers for a party was morally reprehensible. 
• They are "rich kids" who will get past it because of their family wealth and connections.
• Only the rich and privileged attend Duke.
• One of them was charged with assault in 2005 (emphasis added).
• They were able to afford competent legal representation.
• They managed to control some aspects of the way they were portrayed in the media.
• There are many, many cases of prosecutorial misconduct across our country every year. 
• The media covers few, if any, of these cases.
• Most of the victims in these cases are poor or minority Americans--or both.

In a word, bullcrap. These three young men were able to survive a deliberate assault on their right to due process only because they were fortunate enough to have resources. The message ought to be, "If it can happen to them, it can happen to any of us." And it does. Take the neglected case of "Artie" Wheeler, thrown in jail without bail over a misdemeanor, because there was no law covering his "real" crime, which was holding a politically unpopular opinion about race relations. Not only did Wheeler get unsympathetic media coverage, some of the MSM outlets have actually deleted the shameful story of his arrest and coercion from their archives. Or, we could discuss the incident of malicious prosecution that I personally experienced eight years ago. (Some time later, when I am calm enough...)

Moran may have forgotten this, but being charged with a crime is different from being convicted of having committed it. Thus, the remark about Finnerty's 2005 problem borders on slander.

The scandal here is that there are so many cases of false arrest and malicious prosecution that go unreported. But that is not the fault of Evans, Finnerty and Seligman; it's the failing of the so-called news media to report these very real cases of governmental tyranny. Apparently the decision-makers believe that the bread-and-circuses approach (Anna Nicole Smith, Mel Gibson, Michael Richards) approach to selecting stories is better for the bottom line. And they are probably accurate. If people realized just how badly others like themselves are mistreated by government, the entire social contract might just come apart at the seams. In which case, Moran and numerous others would be out their well-paid jobs.

It is predictable that Al Sharpton and his fellow attention-whores weighed in heavily on the recent "sins" of Don Imus. For the redoubtable Michael Steele to have done so disappoints me.

One guy utters some vaguely offensive remarks on radio, and every black person in the USA claims the right to feel insulted.

If this were true in the reverse--that is, if for example all whites or all Jews were offended by every speck of verbal filth emanating from the mouths of black entertainers--we would find ourselves in the throes of mob violence. But the black hate-mongers depend upon Whitey and Hymie being superior enough to simply absorb the insult without violent reaction. It's a curiously self-loathing attitude on their part.

It is refreshing to see that the Baltimore County Public Library at least has finally recognized Viven Thomas, who has been the unsung hero of cardiac surgery, being the member of the Blalock-Taussig team who did much of the heavy lifting involved in perfecting the so-called blue baby surgery. A skilled surgeon, but lacking a medical degree because of his rural southern roots and the Jim Crow policies of medical schools, Thomas perfected both the surgical technique and the instruments used in this operation, which has saved the lives of countless infants born with cardiac insufficiency since it was first performed 62 years ago.

It's regrettable that he did not receive some public accolade during his lifetime, instead of a generation after his death.

The NYPD conducted more than 500,000 stop-and-frisks last year, with blacks five times more likely to be searched than whites, according to statistics released yesterday.

Blacks accounted for 52% of the 508,540 individuals stopped and checked last year, according to data released by the City Council's Public Safety Committee.

That percentage has changed little in nearly a decade - it was 50% in 2000 and 52% in 1998.

But the total number of frisks soared from the 97,296 conducted in 2002.

Among the top reasons cops gave for stopping an individual were that the suspect was in a high crime area or had made "furtive movements," according to the statistics.

Hispanics accounted for 29% of the searches last year and whites 10%, the data showed.

Asians, American Indians and individuals whose race was not indicated made up the rest.

The half-million searches resulted in 21,269 arrests. Black suspects accounted for 51% of those charged, Hispanics 30% and whites 12%.

Critics long have argued the NYPD engages in racial profiling by concentrating on blacks and Hispanics for stop-and-frisks.

Police brass have countered that cops stop suspects based on crime victims' descriptions.

The City Council requires the NYPD to provide regular reports on the stop-and-frisks. The NYPD released last year's records to the Council yesterday but still has to provide part of 2003's as well as those for 2004 and 2005.

It seems to me that the story here is that the NYPD is demanding that five times as many people "assume the position" as they were compared to four years previous. The article cleverly avoids pointing this out, just as it cleverly skirts the issue of whether the number of arrests is five times what it was in 2002. Of course, that would lead to uncomfortable questions about whether crime was increasing in NYC under Bloomberg's watch, or whether the increase was in the number of people being harrassed.

Emphasizing race in this story only appeals to the worst prejudices of both extremes, and obscures what may be a genuine issue.

It also begs the question whether the coppers are expected to stop-and-frisk whites, just to even up the numbers, or more absurdly, whether the percentage of blacks confronted needs to be in direct proportion to the percentage of blacks living and working in each precinct.

On the one hand, you have dolts who want to stop the police from doing any work. And on the other, you have an entirely different set of dolts who apparently believe every last damn person on the planet should be suspected of something wrong.