Author: Alan Bean

Prosecutor to Ask Second Grand Jury for Murder Indictment Against Fire Rescue Hero

· 7 Comments ·
By E. King Alexander, Jr.*
Guest Post
Keyonta Wyatt
Keyonta Wyatt

Meet four-year-old Keyonta Wyatt. On September 2, by the time first responders arrived at mother’s Mansfield, Louisiana home, it was fully engulfed in flames. At first it was believed that all four residents had made it outside, but then the family noticed that little Keyonta was not there. Someone said he had gone back inside to get his toys. People said it was too late to go in after him, but Keyonta’s uncle Michael Anthony Brown could not accept that. He ran into the flaming house and emerged injured, but with his little nephew alive.

Mansfield Enterprise photo (1)Airlifted to a Shreveport hospital and initially listed in critical condition, the boy survived with only superficial burns to his face and arms. Brown was hailed as a hero in Mansfield, and was presented with a rare Outstanding Citizenship Award by the mayor and police chief.This year Brown saved his little nephew. Last year he saved himself.

(more…)

Gupta cut her legal teeth in Tulia, Texas

· 2 Comments ·

Vanita Gupta
Vanita Gupta

By Alan Bean

President Obama has tapped Vanita Gupta, currently deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, as his nominee the lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

Reaction to the surprise announcement has generally been positive.  Liberals like the fact that she has been at the forefront of the ACLU’s fight to roll back mass incarceration  Conservatives with a libertarian streak appreciate Gupta’s reputation for respecting, and listening to, her ideological opposites.  As one might expect, pundits on the far right will oppose the nomination because Gupta works for the godless ACLU and simply because she is Obama’s nominee.   (more…)

Ignoring Jon and Oscar: Explaining a curious endorsement by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram

·
Michael Che on Saturday Night Live
Michael Che on Saturday Night Live

By Alan Bean

The Texas State Board of Education just took another hit from the late night comedians, this time on Saturday Night Live.

“You know who I feel bad for?” Michael Che asked during the shows fake news segment, “Texas schoolteachers. I mean, it’s hard enough going to school and teaching kids that God created the world in like, 1942, and the first two people were John Wayne and Barbara Bush. But now you gotta deal with 6 foot country boys coughing up a monkey disease.”

The heart of the bit, of course, was Dallas becoming home to America’s first ebola patient; but the caricature of the Texas school curriculum was a swipe at the state’s Board of Education.

For years now, the Texas State Board of Education has been grabbing headlines as its more conservative members (on the advice of their friends on the Religious Right) press the “just-a-theory” approach to evolutionary biology, support the rehabilitation of Senator Joe McCarthy, the elevation of social conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlafly to rock star status, the devaluation of progressive heroes like Archbishop Oscar Romero, Caesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall, the positive re-evaluation of the Moral Majority and the thoroughly unhistorical notion that the founding fathers were strongly influenced by Moses and the “Christian or Biblical tradition” when they framed the U.S. Constitution.

ThrowBackTexas-300x226In this memorable piece, Jon Stewart explains how “Oscar Romero got disappeared by right wingers for the second time.”  Stewart reminds his audience that what happens in Texas matters to the rest of the country because textbook companies operate with the huge Texas market in mind.  For this reason, when Texas gets it wrong, the entire country follows right behind us. (more…)