Jena not quite as it seemed

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools... Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sober fact checking after the circus left town found that the whole Jena incident was, in the words of one black citizen, no downright, racial affair, despite remaining questions. The AP report- read it, it's good work- includes these facts:

The “white” tree at Jena High wasn't. All races congregated under it at one time or another.

Two nooses were found in the tree and cut down because black and white students “were playing with them... swinging... and putting their heads through them,” according to a black teacher.

There was no connection between the September noose incident and the December attack, according a U.S. Justice Department attorney who investigated claims that the events might be race-related hate crimes.

Youths accused of hanging the nooses were not just suspended for three days; they were isolated at an alternative school for about a month, and then given in-school suspension for two weeks.

The six-member jury that convicted Bell was, indeed, all white. However, only one in 10 people in LaSalle Parish is African American, and though black residents were selected randomly by computer and summoned for jury selection, none showed up.

Agreement can be found among black and white townsfolk that young troublemakers of both races got out of hand. Authorities didn't respond as wisely as they might have but are muddling through. Hanging the nooses was wrong, the beating was dangerously wrong, and those responsible for any outrage like these should be punished severely regardless of race. Jena is no Eden, but people there are communicating a little more frankly than they were before this all happened and are on the way toward solving their problems.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other race-baiting carpetbaggers seeking to profit from the tribulations of others should leave the good folks of Jena alone to continue learning to live together, as we all are. Let them seek elsewhere for sensationalism to jumpstart their dead careers.

What's the count, gents? The Tawana Brawley affair was strike one. It's a swing and a miss in Jena. The folks in the bleachers are keeping score.

Read the Whole Post (opens in a new tab or window)

More Police Taser Brutality

CBS carries shocking videos of Hannah Storm's solid interview of a Taser© victim on the Early Show last week. Heidi Gill was tased until unconscious by a power drunk uniformed thug who must outweigh her by 100 pounds. Heidi, celebrating after a wedding with friends, left a bar when asked to do so after a verbal confrontation with a bar employee. She was seated in a vehicle waiting for a ride home when jumped by taser - wielding Warren, Ohio, police officer Richard Kovachs. Police cruiser video shows him repeatedly tasing his terrified, uncomprehending, and unresisting victim. Interview video shows twenty to thirty marks from taser discharge burned into the white slacks she wore that evening.

A taser is a gas-powered handgun. It fires barbed darts with enough force to penetrate an inch of clothing and embed themselves in your flesh like fishhooks. A pull on the trigger sends a 50,000 volt shock through wires and into the darts for five seconds- or until the battery is drained, if the aggressor holds the trigger down. The shock interrupts muscular control, and you fall. It's incredibly painful.

Police agencies discuss the use of physical tactics along a Force Continuum graduated from mild (the mere presence of police) to severe. When introduced, tasers were considered one step below shooting someone. In six years they've slipped toward the bottom of that scale and displaced much milder forms of control. If you doubt this, search YouTube using the term taser, and prepare to be disgusted. Leaving decisions about the use of force to street cops has allowed tasing to creep from a rare to an almost everyday event.

Department policy in Warren, Ohio states that a taser may be used when someone physically assaults or threatens to assault an officer, physically tries to defeat an officer trying to gain control, or tells the officer of intent to resist. Heidi did none of those things. In another Hannah Storm interview on CBS you can watch Gregory Hicks, Warren's Law Director and Chief Prosecutor squirm as he tries to distance the city and its police department from this incident. Officer Kovachs remains on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation.

Tasers are now used by 11,000 agencies in 44 countries. According to the manufacturer's own press kit, tasers are used about 100,000 times each year. The risk is not from death in a single use, but from the growing unwarranted use against citizens by police across the country. We never hear about most taser use because it doesn't involve premium newscast material like attractive, white, blond, articulate 38-year-old single mother Heidi Gill.

Read the Whole Post (opens in a new tab or window)

My Christ, His Christ... Awww, Christ. Stop it.

An estimated 20,000 protesters marched in Jena, Lousiana last week in a scene that evoked the early years of the civil rights movement among those who either are too young to remember it or bought into the Uncle Jesse and Cousin Al show. Despite the hype, the legal system there functioned well today as a key participant in the group beating of a high school student went free on bail after a misbegotten attempt to try him as an adult. Reed Walters, the District Attorney prosecuting the case, claimed divine guidance for the townspeople, beating a local pastor to the punch.

"The only way that I believe that me or this community has been able to endure the trauma that has been thrust upon us is through the prayers of the Christian people who have sent them up in this community. I firmly believe and am confident of the fact that had it not been for the direct intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ last Thursday, a disaster would have happened.”

The Reverend Donald Sibley, a Jena pastor late out of the gate in the Jesus race, was outraged that Walters credited divine intervention for the community's responsible behavior. Sibley told CNN that Walters had insulted the protesters by making a false separation between "his Christ and our Christ."

"I can't diminish Christ at all. But for him to use it in the sense that because his Christ, his Jesus, because he prayed, because of his police, that everything was peaceful and was decent and in order — that's not the truth."

Noted Diety Jesus H. Christ, reached for comment at home, spoke with some passion about the unsanctioned use of his name. “I've been ignoring this freak show as hard as I can. Neither one of these clowns speaks for me, no more than those other two do - you know who I'm talking about. Those white kids and black kids are completely off the rails. I pity the parents, they have their hands full. These folks claiming to speak for me will have their own hands full when I catch up with them, trust me.”

Read the Whole Post (opens in a new tab or window)

Jena isn't Selma

The news is full of the sad result of misbehavior among white and black punks in Jena, Lousiana. Mychal Bell, a black high school kid, faces prison for being one of a group of six who beat up a white classmate in a town torn by racial tensions. Accusers protest that other fights following a schoolyard turf dispute didn't result in arrests and prosecutions because white punks beat up black punks instead. Bell's conviction for aggravated second-degree battery was thrown out because he was wrongly tried as an adult. That, and a poor job by his public defender, raise legitimate concern that justice will not be served.

That being said, this isn't Selma. This isn't Little Rock. This is punk rock, white punks and black punks doing what they do best. A whole collection of idiots of all ages and all shades of grey deserve a major beat-down.

The ACLU and the NAACP, veterans of honest fights and recognizing a Bad Idea when they see it, haven't become involved in any substantive way and probably won't. Both are marginally involved through passive participation, filing information requests, presenting petitions, and organizing marches and prayer vigils.

Civil rights footnotes and media whores Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, desperate for face time, jumped in with both feet. Both are milking the incident for another shot at relevance. Jena was Jesse's chance to link arms with marchers and link his name with Barack Obama's in the press by accusing him of not being “black enough” for ignoring the march. Sharpton didn't miss the chance to invoke the patron saint of civil rights:

”This is the beginning of the 21st century civil rights movement... Martin Luther King Jr. faced Jim Crow. We've come to Jena to face James Crow Jr., Esq."

Don't be taken in by the rhetoric. Don't mistake morons for icons. Leaders are shaped by their cause. Jena is about punks misbehaving, not a nationwide struggle against Jim Crow laws. The “Jena Six” are no more the Little Rock Nine than Tawana Brawley is Harriet Tubman or Sojourner Truth.

Read the Whole Post (opens in a new tab or window)

Finally, Useful Research

A major advance is signaled today as doctors unveil details of a technique that will allow breakfast to be grown in the laboratory from human tissue samples. It will allow career women, or those waiting to meet the right partner, to delay learning to prepare meals for years.

The first stage of the technique involves removing slivers of ovarian tissue through keyhole surgery. Though just millimeters wide, each sample contains thousands of immature eggs. In the second stage, slabs, or “rashers”, of heavily marbled tissue are removed from the thighs or buttocks of the donor. The tissue is then frozen until ready to fry breakfast. At that time, it will be stimulated with hormones to grow the immature eggs and bacon slices into mature ones ready for use.

Researchers said the technique would be of "huge benefit" because women could avoid the process of injecting themselves daily with hormones to stimulate their interest in marketing, having to endure an uncomfortable trip to harvest the eggs in the ordinary manner.

Doctors working on the new method at the Tunnel Fertility and Breakfast Centre in London say different elements of the technique are already in use but it will take some time before the whole process is pieced together and perfected. Sadly, though the human reproductive system is well known as a source of yeast, bread for toast and English muffins must still be purchased at the grocery for the forseeable future.

Read the Whole Post (opens in a new tab or window)