Ruminations: Legal games people play with others' lives

Before delving into that very eye-opening trip back home that I mentioned in the previous post, I thought I'd share some ruminations first. Your two cents are more than welcome!

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"Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It’s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes."

Antonin Scalia

Now see, if the Black Misleadership Class (BMC) had been on their job for all these years they've been supposedly -- leading, Young Ben over at the NAACP wouldn't have been sending out solicitations for cash (which is where I got that Scalia quote from), or petitions at the 13th hour trying to get folk "to stand with the NAACP to say that voting is a right, not an entitlement." I mean it's not like they didn't know this shit was coming before the Supreme Court this year.  Hell, the case is Shelby County, Alabama , Petitioner v. Eric H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General, et al!!  And the et al, wait for it -- includes the damned NAACP!  And I won't even mention the number of amicus briefs filed by CBC members, to include Rep. John Lewis. {smdh}

Do follow the chronology of Shelby Co. v. Holder here, and then tell me why the BMC sat on their damned hands all this time.  Too busy screaming about how racist the Republicans have been treating the poor Changeling I guess (as if any of that's a damned surprise).  Or in the case of Young Ben, too busy "seminar-cruising to Canada and New England" aboard The Nation Magazine's, "floating palace of populism."  His photo's not yet among the rest of the alabaster brethren/sistren -- and neither are any Colored People's (except maybe David Zirin) -- but according to an email I got today, he's already signed on):

That's how Jim Hightower -- a guest on numerous Nation cruises -- once characterized it. Now is the time to book your trip with us on our 16th annual seminar cruise to Canada and New England. And if you book before May 1st we'll give you a $100 discount!

Some of the special guests who have already signed on:

Naomi Klein, Nation Columnist and author of The Shock Doctrine
Laura Flanders, Nation Contributing Writer and host of The Laura Flanders Show
Dave Zirin, The Nation's first sports columnist
Benjamin Jealous, President of the NAACP
Dan Perkins, aka political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow
...with more to come.

Yeah, donate to the NAACP for that shit; based on the above -- "You get what you pay for." {smdh}

As for Scalia, I think Mr. James Baldwin sums up pretty well, how his Sicilian-cum-white background helped perpetuate his own position of "racial entitlement" in On Being White...And Other Lies.

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The White House Joins the Fight:

President Obama made good on the promise of his second Inaugural Address on Thursday by joining the fight to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Since he declared that marriage equality is part of the road “through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall,” we can’t imagine how he could have sat this one out.

The administration’s brief to the Supreme Court was a legally and symbolically important repudiation of Proposition 8, the 2008 voter referendum that amended California’s Constitution to forbid bestowing the title of marriage on a union between two people of the same sex — a right the California Supreme Court had found to be fundamental under the State Constitution.

Like the arguments made by the lawyers for those who seek to overturn Proposition 8, and by a group of prominent Republicans earlier this week, the government’s brief says any law attempting to ban same-sex marriage must be subjected to heightened scrutiny because it singles out a class of Americans, historically subject to discrimination, for unequal treatment. (emphasis mine)

See how this works Family?  When pressed, he promises you something -- and you get it.  If he's not pressed, he doesn't promise you a damned thing (even though you are "a class of Americans, historically subject to discrimination, for unequal treatment," as in the example directly above ) and that's just what you get -- not a damned thing.

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"Transgender 6 year-old barred from girl's bathroom":

Somebody please explain this to me  (**Noticed the Post deleted its video, so I replaced it with a link to another from KOMO News).  The school said the child could use either the staff bathroom or the one in the nurse's office.  The parents say, "using anything other than the girl's bathroom would stigmatize their child."  The father said, "It just sets her up for bullying and harassment and it's not fair."  I don't get it -- what do they think having the child use the girl's bathroom will do?  Not only to their six year-old child, but to the other six year-old children?  The child is anatomically male!

UPDATE: Saw this today which is to me, similar, but different, to the story above: Transgender Student Sues California Baptist University for Reneging on Acceptance Letter after MTV Appearance -- what say you on either story?

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DHS releasing illegal immigrants before sequester:

A week before mandatory budget cuts go into effect across the government, the Department of Homeland Security has started releasing illegal immigrants being held in immigration jails across the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday.

Gillian Christensen, an ICE spokeswoman, said ICE has reviewed “several hundred cases” of immigrants being held in jails around the country and released them in the last week. They have been “placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release,” she said.

Christensen said the agency’s “priority for detention remains on serious criminal offenders and other individuals who pose a significant threat to public safety.” She did not say how released immigrants were selected or what jails they were released from.

Tuesday’s announcement of jail releases is the first tangible impact of the looming budget cuts for DHS.

So Chocolate Jesus, with a wave of the hand, anointed "Mosette" Napolitano with the power to, "Let my people go." {smdh}  Family, please stop talking about what the Changeling, can, and cannot do!  He could do more for our Black asses if he chose to -- he just doesn't choose to.  Wake the hell up, please.

This, "all in the game" move didn't have jack to do with "looming budget cuts."  He's screwing with Republican wing-nuts who fear Latinos for a host of reasons (beginning with their numbers), while he screws over Black folk who make up a measly 13% of the population.  Rather than Caribbean Blacks being “placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release,” he and "Mosette" are first, criminalizing THEM,  then shipping them the hell out in droves!

Hell, given our over-representation in the Prison Industrial Complex, you'd think they'd save a ton of money by releasing low-level, "nickel-bag boys" and other Black, non-violent offenders (if this move had something to do with budget cuts, that is).  Haven't heard anything about him doing that shit have you?  Gotta keep those fat-cat,  for-profit, private prisons afloat somehow I guess.  And, not only is the government playing money "games" with them at our expense, so is this prostitute of an "educational institution" {smdh}

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Dog Sniffs Can Establish Probable Cause for a Search; Defendants Must Contest Reliability in the Trial Court:

In a disappointing decision, the United States Supreme Court today enshrined in law a dog’s wide latitude to determine Americans’ constitutional right to be free from unwarranted search and seizure. In siding with the dog in Florida v. Harris (No. 11-817), the Court misses the point. An alert by a “trained” or “certified” drug detection dog by itself should be insufficient to establish probable cause, as the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) argued in its joint amicus curiae brief to the Court in this case. (emphasis mine)

So-o-o, you thought you had the protection of the Fourth Amendment regarding "unreasonable search and seizure" right? You don't. And in this case, even though the first part of the headline is ridiculous as hayell on its face (what if some doggie treats in your car, as I routinely carry for my road-dog, Blanca on cross-country trips, gets the K-9's nose sniffing?), it is the second part that screams loudest about the punitive nature of the decision.  You gotta pay their asses either way!  Damned if you, damned if you don't. Kinda like my confusion over all the hoopla over New York's ruling that "stop-and-frisk" was unconstitutional. Yeah, the Black mis-leadership class (along with those of you who believe they're actually giving a damn about Black folk, in particular, being unconstitutionally profiled and harassed) acted like they'd done some-damned-thing. But Judge Shira Scheindlin (a relation of Judge Judy's? More than likely) put the kabosh on that shit last Tuesday:  NYPD can temporarily continue unconstitutional stop-and-frisks:

Her ruling in early January had been celebrated by civil liberties groups like the NYCLU, who brought the suit against the police over searches carried out during sweeps of “Clean Halls” apartments. Operation Clean Halls, established in the 1991, gives police permission to stop and search individuals in and around New York apartment buildings in high crime areas. In 2011, according to the NYCLU , police stopped 1,137 of the 1,857 “Clean Halls” residents in the Bronx.

On Jan. 8, Scheindlin ruled that numerous searches in the Bronx buildings had violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. She ordered an immediate end to stop-and-frisks in instances when officers have no reasonable suspicion.

Scheindlin agreed to halt immediate enforcement of her earlier ruling to end the stop-and-frisks following a city request. As Bloomberg reported, “the city said that unless its request was granted, the NYPD would be required to take the immediate and burdensome step of having to retrain its police officers.” The city persuaded the judge that it would be both expensive and burdensome to immediately enforce a ruling that could be undone in appeals court. (emphasis mine)

Baby please! There is no intent in these alleged United States -- at all -- to ever treat us like human beings.  "Clean halls" indeed!

Related:
- State Department Will Issue 'Female' Passports to Anatomical Males
- Congress Honors Rosa Parks While the Supreme Court Targets the Voting Rights Act
- John Lewis’ Message To Justice Scalia: Voting Rights Are “What People Died For & Bled For”
- How Private Prisons Game the Immigration System
- Blacks and the Immigration Crisis, Part 1
- Too late for FAU's prison sponsor GEO Group to erase its Wikipedia record