Category: “civil rights”

Pimping the Culture War

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Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter says that Barack Obama isn’t a Muslim; he’s an atheist. 

How does she know that?  Because Obama is a liberal, and all liberals are atheists.

Glenn Beck says Jim Wallis of Sojourners is a Marxist.  How does he know that?  Because Wallis believes in economic justice, liberation theologians talk about economic justice, and liberation theologians have been influenced by Marxist thought. 

Beck’s real target isn’t Jim Wallis, it’s Barack Obama.  Jim Wallis is Jeremiah Wright and Jeremiah Wright is Barack Obama, hence, the president is a Marxist.

Are Beck and Coulter serious?  Do they believe their own rhetoric?

Yes and no.  Yes, because their most bizarre statements “feel” right.  No, because Beck and Coulter are so concerned about getting the fans on the red side of the stadium cheering and the fans in the blue seats leaping in alarm that they don’t really care about the rightness or wrongness of their statements.  Or, to put it another way, a remark that gets the fans up and hollering is a good statement, and if the fans are sitting on their hands the message needs to be tweaked.

According to the New York Times, Ann Coulter recently shifted in a more gay-friendly direction (conservatives love gays; we just don’t like gay marriage) because she couldn’t compete with conservatives who are even more extreme than she is.  

The culture war is a marketing gimmick designed to keep the contributions rolling in.  It’s like one of those funny mirrors on the circus midway; what you see shouldn’t be mistaken for reality. (more…)

Marcus Borg’s Radical Christianity

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Marcus Borg

Nancy Bean didn’t have a wish list for her birthday this year; she issued a birthday decree.  All five Beans were to purchase a copy of Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith and read at least the first five chapters.  We would then meet at our daughter Lydia’s home in Waco to discuss the book over birthday cake.

The discussion was loud, lively and long.  Sons Adam and Amos suspected that Borg’s version of Christianity existed primarily inside his own head.  Lydia gave the book thumbs up, but said she favored the more evangelical theology of NT Wright. 

Marcus Borg is part of an emerging cadre of Christian intellectuals calling for a new understanding of Christian theology, spirituality and ethics.  Anglican Bishop NT Wright, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, Roman Catholic theologian John Dominic Crossan and the “emerging church” writer Brian McLaren have also contributed to this project. 

They don’t agree on all points, of course, but Borg’s The Heart of Christianity comes as close to a consensus statement as you are likely to find.  Conservative scholars may quibble with Borg’s assertion that the Bible is “a human product;” but, increasingly, leading Christian thinkers are being drawn to similar conclusions. (more…)

Montana Governor says he is conflicted about the death penalty

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Montana Governor, Brian Schweitzer

Montana’s Governor must decide whether Ronald Smith will live or die.

Smith is from Red Deer, Alberta, a midsize city located midway between Calgary and Edmonton.  He was drunk and high at the time of the murders and, the evidence would suggest, also mentally unbalanced.  Initially, he turned down a plea deal that would have taken the death penalty off the table.  Then he pled guilty and asked for the death penalty, telling a jury that he committed the crime because he wanted to know how it felt to kill.  Ultimately, he decided he didn’t want to die after all.  The case has been bouncing around in the legal system for a quarter century.

Stephen Harper, Canada’s conservative Prime Minister, had no intention of interceding on Ronald Smith’s behalf, but the Canadian courts forced his hand.  Canada, like virtually every other western democracy, abolished capital punishment long ago.  As in the United Kingdom, the death penalty died in Canada without much public clamor.  Most Canadians supported capital punishment in 1976 (as they still do), but leading public figures didn’t think public support made the ultimate punishment moral or even an effective deterrent.  (more…)

Balko on prosecutorial misconduct

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Radley Balko

In his most recent column, Radley Balko discusses prosecutorial misconduct in the federal criminal justice system.  Abuse is rampant, he says, and prosecutors who break the rules rarely face consequences.  You can find the first two paragraphs below:

Misbehaving Federal Prosecutors

A USA Today investigation finds egregious misconduct at the Department of Justice, with few consequences.

Radley Balko, September 27, 2010

Last week, USA Today published the results of a six-month investigation into misconduct by America’s federal prosecutors. The investigation turned up what Pace University law professor Bennett Gershman called a pattern of “serious, glaring misconduct.” Reporters Brad Heath and Kevin McCoy documented 201 cases in which federal prosecutors were chastised by federal judges for serious ethical breaches, ranging from withholding important exculpatory evidence to lying in court to making incriminating but improper remarks in front of juries.

The list is by no means comprehensive, and doesn’t claim to be. I checked the paper’s website for examples of egregious misconduct reported here at Reason: U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan’s politically-charged prosecution of Pennsylvania doctor Bernard Rottschaefer; Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett Grayson’s outrageous persecution of the Colomb family in Louisiana; and the bogus Mann Act charges brought against Mississippi heart surgeon, Dr. Roger Wiener. None are among the cases in USA Today’s database. The paper should be lauded for its groundbreaking investigation, but as the reporters themselves acknowledge, they’ve really only scratched the surface. (The investigation also only looked at federal cases, which comprise just a tiny portion of the country’s total criminal prosecutions.)  You can find the rest of Balko’s column here.

Eddie Long’s Gospel

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Bishop Eddie Long

My post on Bishop Eddie Long has been raising eyebrows. Many readers agree with my critique of the “prosperity gospel”; others find it offensive. One reader, who asked to be taken off my distribution list, was horrified by my perceived willingness to throw Bishop Eddie to the wolves before he has his day in court.

A few words of clarification are in order.

Eddie Long’s guilt or innocence is not my primary concern. The state of Georgia has filed no charges against the Bishop; this is a civil case. When the weak find themselves on a collision course with the strong, my sympathies are with the weak (the strong can take care of themselves). Eddie Long has always been the man with all the power. Having transformed himself into an authority figure of superhuman stature, the pastor assumed the mantle of responsibility.

Pastor Long has compared to himself as David up against Goliath. That image should be reversed. Yesterday, thirty-two pastors came to Long’s church to commiserate with him and show their support. Goliath received that kind of encouragement from the Philistines; David was on his own. (more…)

A conservative case for ending the drug war?

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Jeffrey Miron’s op-ed in the Los Angeles Times argues that the drug war is just another big government boondoggle.  If you aren’t familiar with the libertarian critique of the war on drugs, Miron’s column will give you the basic outline of the argument.

Libertarians are consistent conservatives.  They aren’t fussy about wars of any kind (domestic or foreign) because they are obscenely expensive and never produce the desired results. 

American conservatives are successful because they don’t worry about consistentency.  Conservatives are a fearless lot.  They aren’t afraid of poverty or unemployment because they have secure jobs; they aren’t afraid of sickness because they have great health care; they aren’t afraid of bigotry or discrimination because they are normal (white) Americans; they aren’t afraid of civil rights violations because their civil rights are rarely infringed. (more…)

Welcome to the Parchman Plantation

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Welcome to Parchman

I write this from Lola Flowers’ dining room table.  Yesterday I travelled to the Mississippi State prison in Parchman, Mississippi to visit Curtis Flowers.  The last time I saw Curtis he was pronounced guilty of murder and sentenced to death by lethal injection.  Then they ushered the defendant out of the courtroom.

Curtis didn’t react to the verdict–it was the fourth time it had been pronounced over the past fourteen years.  Two other trials ended in juries divided along racial lines.

Lola and Archie Flowers didn’t show much emotion either.  They quietly went to the car to unload the special transparent television Curtis used the last time he was a Parchman resident.

But just beneath the surface, the emotion runs deep.  I have been corresponding with Curtis since the June, 2010 trial.  His faith is strong.  Sooner or later, he fully expects to be exonerated.  But life on Mississippi’s death row is a struggle at the best of times.

I didn’t see Curtis yesterday.  After driving nine hours from Arlington, Texas, I was informed that my name had not been placed on his visiting list.  Curtis had been told to send out visitation forms to everyone he wanted to be on his list.  I got my form and returned it.  But someone at Parchman decided to leave me off the visitation list.  So, while Lola Flowers hopped on the visitation bus, I remained in the waiting room.  (more…)

Tulia script plays out in southern Louisiana

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Sheriff Greg Champagne of St. Charles Parish reported yesterday that 70 narcotics cases made by a single undercover officer are being dismissed.  Elijah Gary, the officer responsible for making almost 100 cases in the Parish, was on loan from a neighboring Parish (see Times-Picayune article below for the details).  When it was discovered that Mr. Gary had been convicted of domestic abuse and violating a restraining order, he was taken in for questioning.  Beating up a girlfriend and violating a restraining order doesn’t disqualify an undercover cop–lying about it does.

Several attorney friends sent me this story yesterday because of the obvious parallels between Elijah Gary and Tom Coleman, the Texas “officer of the year” who implicated 47 residents of Tulia, Texas in 1999.   According to the Times-Picayune story, “[Sheriff] Champagne’s office received the Crimestoppers Law Enforcement Award at the 25th annual Crimestoppers luncheon in March in New Orleans” on the strength of Elijah Gary’s work.  (more…)

Standing up for guilty defendants

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Michelle Alexander says the criminal justice reform movement should shed its fixation with innocence.  In her groundbreaking book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Alexander suggests that reformers start focusing on normal defendants.  Since most criminal defendants done the deed, that means going to bat for guilty people.  Why would we want to do that? (more…)

Texas Tough: The Triumph of Southern Justice

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It warms the heart to read a well-researched book that confirms long-held hunches.  Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow gave me that feeling.  So did Stuart Banner’s The Death Penalty: An American History.  And now we have Robert Perkinson’s Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire. 

All three books reinforce a theme I have been developing for several years: American-style mass-incarceration is a southern export rooted in a backlash against the gains of the civil rights movement.  Banner’s The Death Penalty applies this thesis to the rebirth of the death penalty in post civil rights America.  Michelle Alexander argues that the war on drugs is a not-so-subtle extension of the cynical Southern strategy.  Texas Tough leaves no doubt that the prison boom that revolutionized America during the 1980s and 90s represented a mainstreaming of Southern-style justice.

The Austin Chronicle has published an eye-opening interview with Texas Tough author, Robert Perkinson in their August 20 edition.   Please read the entire piece, and then order the book.  I have pasted a few highlights below. (more…)