Category: “Social Justice”

New Poll shows overwhelming support for the death penalty

· 4 Comments ·

By Alan Bean

A new Angus-Reid poll suggests that 83% of Americans support the death penalty while only 13% oppose it. 

This distressing news illustrates how much we have changed as a nation.  In 1966, 47% opposed capital punishment while only 42% supported it.

You may be surprised to learn that support for the ultimate penalty is strongest in the “liberal” Northeast (85%) and the Midwest (86%) and weakest in the South (79%).  Incarceration rates and the actual use of the death penalty would suggest that the South is the most punitive region.  Since the reinstitution of capital punishment in 1976, there have been 464 executions in the state of Texas and virtually none in New England.  Incarceration rates in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi are at least three times as high as in the Northeast.

So why did the Angus-Reid people find that southerners are less inclined to favor the death penalty than northeasterners?  (more…)

Post-election rant exposes white liberal naivete

·

By Alan Bean

Tim Wise is taking heat for an anti-Tea Party, post-election screed that has been popping up on a host of Lefty websites. 

The basic idea is that, last Tuesday notwithstanding,  American conservatism has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.  Here’s the gist:

I know, you think you’ve taken “your country back” with this election — and of course you have always thought it was yours for the taking, cuz that’s what we white folks are bred to believe, that it’s ours, and how dare anyone else say otherwise — but you are wrong. (more…)

Osler: Obama’s Mercy Dearth

·

If Barack Obama can reduce the crack-powder disparity, why hasn’t he issued a single pardon? 

Mark Osler, a law professor, former federal prosecutor and Friends of Justice board member, poses this question in an op-ed published Sunday in the Dallas Morning News.  I hope I’m wrong, but I think I know the answer.  Like most Democrats, our president fears that a show of mercy will make him look weak.  So, like Bill Clinton before him, Obama maintains the pious fiction that the criminal justice system never errs or overreaches.  Hopefully, the next two years will see more action on the pardon front.

 Mark Osler: Obama’s Mercy Dearth

12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, November 7, 2010 

Former federal prosecutor Mark Osler teaches at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota. He previously taught law at Baylor University for 10 years. 

On Oct. 28, the White House announced that President Barack Obama had earlier in the month denied 71 pardon requests and 605 petitions for commutation of sentence, while granting none. Nearly two years into his term, Obama has issued exactly zero pardons and no commutations, a sorry record that distinguishes him from nearly all of his predecessors. (more…)

The ‘southern strategy’ and the 2010 election

·

It is perfectly normal for the minority party to score impressive gains in an off-year election.  But it could be argued that the almost unprecedented success of the GOP in Tuesday’s election is an extension of a trend that has been unfolding since the civil rights era.   

In the early 1960s, it was virtually impossible for a southern Republican to win election for any post.  Memories of “Yankee misrule” replete with “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags” made the Party of Lincoln anathema in the South during the first half of the 20th century.  As this article from the New York Times reminds us, Roosevelt’s New Deal was popular in the Jim Crow South, largely because FDR accommodated southern racists.  (more…)

The Justice Department’s “No Pardon” policy

· 1 Comment ·

By Alan Bean

Thanks to Doug Berman for alerting me to this hard-hitting critique of the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.  Samuel Morison’s comments originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times. 

Here’s the heart of his critique: “Having spent more than 10 years as a staff attorney in that office, I can say with some authority that the prevailing view within the Justice Department is that the pardon attorney’s sole institutional function is to defend the department’s prosecutorial prerogatives. There is little, if any, pretense of neutrality, much less liberality. On this parochial view, the institution of a genuinely humane clemency policy would be considered an insult to the good work of line prosecutors.”

A no-pardon Justice Department

President Obama should rely more on his own moral judgment than the Justice Department’s in making clemency and pardon decisions.

By Samuel T. Morison

November 6, 2010

The Times’ well-intentioned Oct. 30 editorial bemoaning that fact that President Obama hasn’t yet granted any pardons or commutations, in which the editorial board correctly notes that the president is “aided in such decisions by the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the Justice Department,” betrays a profound misunderstanding of the role the pardon office plays in the clemency advisory process. In particular, The Times writes, “Ideally, presidents would give great deference to the pardon attorney’s recommendations and take a liberal view of the clemency power, exercising it often and on the basis of clear standards.” (more…)

Tim Wise: Obama’s post-racial road to nowhere

· 5 Comments ·

By Alan Bean

Friends of Justice believes in dragging “subtle” racism out of the shadows.  Our narrative campaign in response to the Curtis Flowers case, for instance, asserts that everyone associated with the prosecution of this case grew up in a Jim Crow world where black people like Fannie Lou Hamer could be tortured by police officers with impunity.  When Mississippi state senator Lydia Chassaniol delivered a keynote address to the proudly racist Council of Conservative Citizens, the regional media gave her a pass.  Her views, we suggested, were too mainstream to be criticized.   

Our approach flies in the face of the prevailing liberal doctrine of colorblind universalism.  When discussing public policy issues related to criminal justice, for instance, colorblind universalists make two claims: racism isn’t nearly as bad in 2010 as it was in 1963; and, white racial resentment is so strong that the case for criminal justice reform must be presented in strictly race-neutral terms. 

The logical contradiction here should be obvious: if racism has diminished so much, why should be so concerned about white racial resentment? (more…)

Freedom Riders stand up for the Scott Sisters

· 2 Comments ·

By Alan Bean

Thirty-eight freedom riders who rode buses to Jackson, Mississippi in 1961 to set up a tug-of-war between Jim Crow and new federal law have signed a petition on behalf of Gladys and Jamie Scott.  The Scott sisters were sentenced to double life sentences for a robbery that allegedly netted $11.  They have always maintained their innocence.  But, guilty or innocent, a growing number of Americans, the freedom riders included, consider the sentences an outrage.  The article from the Jackson Clarion-Ledger is pasted below. 

Just one word of editorial comment: It would be great if more civil rights veterans would step up and condemn the New Jim Crow known as the war on drugs.  Just a thought. (more…)

Osler: Repentance of an anti-gay bigot

· 4 Comments ·

Mark Osler

Wow!  This took a lot of guts.  The national gay debate features plenty of allegations and counter-allegations, but very few words of confession and repentance.  Law professor, and Friends of Justice board member, Mark Osler is a blessed exception to the general rule.  AGB

Repentance of an anti-gay bigot

By Mark Osler

In the wake of several suicides of gay teenagers, one response has been through the “It Gets Better” project, which tells the story of gay and lesbians who have a story of hope — one in which things, over time, got better for them. (more…)

Democrats and the Drug War

· 5 Comments ·

By Alan Bean

New York Times columnist Charles Blow asks why Democrats have shown such loyal support for a drug war that targets one of its core constituencies.  Here’s the salient quote:

“It is, in part, callous political calculus. It’s an easy and relatively cheap way for them to buy a tough-on-crime badge while simultaneously pleasing police unions. The fact that they are ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of black and Hispanic men and, by extension, the communities they belong to barely seems to register.”

Exhibit A is the Obama administration’s staunch support for the Byrne Grant program.  The Tulia drug sting (which created Friends of Justice) was funded with Byrne money.  This partly explains why George Bush made drastic cuts to the program–it had embarrassed the Lone Star State.  Barack Obama knows that most Byrne funding is channelled into statistic-generating narcotics programs that (a) lock up disproportionate numbers of poor black men and (b) do absolutely nothing to address the harms associated with drug abuse. 

Tragically, support for the drug war has always been a cheap way for democrats to play the tough-on-crime card.  (more…)

Was Juan Williams sacrificed for our sins?

· 4 Comments ·

You have probably heard that Juan Williams has been sacked by National Public Radio.  I have mixed feelings. 

Like Bill Cosby, Juan Williams panders to white America (and a large portion of prosperous black America) by wailing on the black under-caste.  For instance, Williams recently penned a screed lamenting the sorry state of black America: “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It”.

Williams is an authority on the civil rights movement and has been involved with some excellent work in this connection, most notably PBS’s “Eyes on the Prize” series.  But, like far too many civil rights aficionados, he is inordinately fond of comparing the courage, intelligence and resilience of the civil rights generation with the irresponsible, dependent and self-destructive tendencies on display in poor black neighborhoods.  (more…)