Simply Stunning

26-YO Botham Jean, shot & killed by Dallas PD
officer Amber Guyger in his own apartment 

As is my habit when writing about the unjustified use of force against American citizens by some members of law enforcement, let me once again preface this by repeating that the vast majority of police officers in this country, some of whom I know personally, are dedicated to the idea of "protect and serve" and conduct themselves as professionals.

But after the senseless death of 26-year-old Botham Jean in Dallas, something has got to be done about those cops who do not.

While the Dallas Police Department is still being tight-lipped about the specific circumstances, the facts surrounding the fatal shooting of an upstanding man who comes from a distinguished family on the island of St. Lucia are truly disturbing.

Jean, a church-going, full-time employee of the London-based multinational accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, was inside his own apartment on the fourth floor of the South Side Flats apartment complex when Dallas PD officer Amber Guyger entered his apartment, saw Jean and fired her handgun at him.

Guyger, who lives in the same building and was in uniform and just getting off duty when the incident occurred last Thursday night, allegedly claimed she mistakenly thought that Jean's apartment was her's.

How she confused someone else's apartment with her own when she doesn't even live on the same floor has left a lot of people scratching their heads - how Guyger gained access to Jean's apartment in the first place remains a mystery.

As the Dallas Morning News reported, DPD officials were remaining tight-lipped about Guyger's actions leading up the shooting - and they've turned the investigation over to the Texas Rangers.

Dallas PD officer Amber Guyger 

Recent media headlines have been filled with the high-profile killings of innocent, unarmed American citizens by police in some truly murky circumstances.

In July of 2017, a 40-year-old Australian woman named Justine Damond called 911 to report a possible assault in an alley behind the home she was staying in - upon arriving at the scene Minneapolis PD officer Mohammed Noor shot and killed HER.

Minnesota was the same state where widely respected elementary school cafeteria supervisor Philando Castile was pulled over for a broken tail light in Falcon Heights, MN on July 6, 2016.

After St. Anthony PD officer Jeronimo Yanez ordered Castile to take out his ID, Yanez pulled out his pistol and fired seven shots into the car at point blank range with Castile's girlfriend in the passenger seat and her young daughter in the back seat.

By the way Yanez fired those shots 74 SECONDS after pulling Castile over for the busted tail light, despite the fact that Castile was heard being polite and courteous to Yanez on an audio recording of the incident.

These kinds of excessive use-of-force cases by some cops aren't limited to fatal shootings either.

Back on August 6th, off-duty Cincinnati PD officer Kevin Brown fired his taser at 11-year-old Donesha Gowdy who refused to stop after he caught her shoplifting food from a Kroger grocery store after her friends dared her to do it.

If she did shoplift, by all means hold her accountable and face the appropriate disciplinary actions - but firing a taser into her back and jolting her with electricity?

The video of him verbally admonishing the little girl after the incident, including blaming her actions for the dearth of grocery stores in some primarily- African-American communities - drew sharp criticism from members of the Cincinnati City Council.

87-year-old Martha Al-Bishara with her great-
granddaughter Martha Douhne in Georgia

Officer Brown might want to spend some time reading about redlining by American banks and how they've historically worked with real estate companies and local politicians to intentionally isolate some communities both geographically and economically in order to manipulate the price of housing. 

Or maybe it's easier to just blame an 11-year-old girl, I don't know.

Oh and speaking of the questionable use of a taser by police officers...

Chatsworth, Georgia Police Chief Josh Etheridge is still trying to defend his department after he and two other officers responded to a call of 87-year-old Martha Al-Bishara wandering around on an uncut section of field next to a Boys and Girls Club across the street from her home with a knife back on August 10th.

As the New York Times reported, Al-Bishara was simply using the knife to cut dandelion leaves to toss with garlic and lemon for a salad traditional to her native Syria.

She's been in the U.S. for decades but speaks no english, so when Chief Etheridge and two other Chatsworth officers showed up, she couldn't understand their commands to drop the knife according to her great-granddaughter Martha Douhne.

So one of the three officers fired a taser at the 87-year-old woman. Really.

"An 87-year-old woman with a knife still has the ability to hurt an officer." Etheridge insisted.

Again, I'm not a police officer and I certainly wouldn't want any of the police officers I know to get hurt trying to arrest a suspect.

But as Martha Al-Bishara's great-nephew told reporters, "If three police officers couldn't handle an 87-year-old woman, you might want to reconsider hanging up your badge." 

Whether it's a Dallas police officer coming home, walking into an apartment that's not even her's and fatally shooting the innocent man who lives there, an off-duty Cincinnati officer firing a taser at an 11-year-old girl for shoplifting, or a Georgia cop firing a taser at an 87-year-old woman who was using a knife to cut dandelion leaves for a salad - the decision to use force in these cases seems rushed, and not well thought out.

And the lack of common sense displayed is simply stunning.

Where Was the "Resistance" in Hollywood?

Bob Woodward and the man being called
"an idiot" by some members of his own staff

Now if the jaw-dropping New York Times op-ed anonymously written by a senior White House official that was published late Wednesday is to be believed, not only is Trump as dysfunctional, ignorant and delusional as many critics and observers thought he was.

Allegedly, he's also surrounded by a patriotic Republican "resistance" - folks who are bound and determined to do everything they can to "preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump's more misguided impulses until he is out of office."

It's unprecedented in American history.

High level members of a sitting president's own staff working inside the White House, actively working to prevent the chaotic narcissist who hired them from doing any more damage to the nation than he's already done.

Like many Americans trying to absorb all this news, I'm equal parts relieved and dumbfounded.

The Times op-ed comes a day after advance copies of journalist Bob Woodward's new book "Fear: Trump In the White House" (a devastating expose on the inner workings of the White House under Trump) were leaked to reporters ahead of it's publication next Tuesday.

The anonymous op-ed backs up the portrayals of a dysfunctional White House and a staff astounded by Trump's idiocy and inability to grasp complex issues or even stay on topic in meetings.

True to form, Trump has only lent credence to these stunning accusations by lashing out in ways that simply reinforce the perception that he's a completely incompetent moron with the attention span of a "fifth or sixth grader" who is totally unqualified to sit in the Oval Office.

Brett Kavanaugh brushes off Fred Guttenberg, whose
daughter was killed in the Parkland, FL mass shooting 

Trump lashed out at Bob Woodward as having "credibility problems" - the same man who (alongside Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein) used dogged investigative journalism to expose widespread corruption within the Nixon administration that led to the Watergate hearings and Nixon's eventual resignation.

Sources tell CNN that Trump also allegedly ordered an internal "West Wing Witch Hunt" to uncover leakers on his own White House staff.

Yet at the same time, according to a Vox.com article by Zack Beauchamp, Trump is trying to claim that Woodward's book is part of a left-wing plot hatched to torpedo Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Unfortunately for Trump, his (latest) conspiracy theory is undermined by that that fact that, as Beauchamp noted, the publication date of Woodward's book on Trump was set well before the Kavanaugh hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee were even scheduled.

One of the things that strikes me as remarkable about all this, is that Trump has only been in office about nineteen months - yet his actions are apparently so reprehensible to his own staff that a number of them have formed this "resistance" within the White House described in the NYT op-ed.

Earlier today I was reading the news that the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office announced that they will not pursue sexual assault charges against actors Steven Segal and Kevin Spacey because the alleged incidents took place back in the 1990's and the statute of limitations to charge them has already expired.

In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations, when actor Anthony Rapp publicly accused Spacey of trying to initiate sex with him when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26, and Spacey publicly acknowledged the incident had happened, at least ten other accusers made similar claims against the Oscar-winning actor.

I couldn't help but wonder, where was the internal "resistance" movement to confront and stop Spacey's reprehensible behavior?

Or the behavior of any number of high-profile actors, directors, producers and agents in Hollywood for that matter?
 

Actress Rose McGowan (left), her ex-manager Jill
Messick and producer Harvey Weinstein 

As I've mentioned before in this blog, my parents raised my siblings and I with lots of magazines around the house growing up, a habit that's carried over into my adulthood.

One of the problems with having a magazine habit in todays multimedia, digital-heavy world is that they can (literally) stack up when you're busy.

So it wasn't until last week that I finally got to read Chris Gardner's interview with actress/ activist Rose McGowan published in the May 9th issue of the Hollywood Reporter.

McGowan has become one of the central figures in the #MeToo movement that emerged in the wake of the downfall of producer Harvey Weinstein after she became one of the first of many well known actresses to go public with accusations of sexual assault against the one-time Hollywood mogul.

A role for which she's been alternately praised and vilified by members of the entertainment industry.

Gardner's THR article is definitely worth a read if you're interested in getting a more in-depth understanding how McGowan's public accusations against one of most powerful figures in Hollywood have changed her life and career.

Aside from Weinstein's criminal sexual appetites and his employing Israeli security agencies to spy on, intimidate and professionally discredit some of the actresses who accused him of rape and assault, one of the most disturbing claims McGowan made in the article involves her former manager Jill Messick.

As Gardner's article reports, after what many consider her breakout on-screen role as Tatum in the successful 1996 horror film Scream, McGowan attended the premiere of Going All the Way at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival (which also starred Ben Affleck and Rachel Weisz).

Rose McGowan, Jeremy Davies and Ben Affleck
in a scene from Going All the Way (1997)

According to Gardner's THR article:

"Harvey attended the premiere of...Going All the Way, in which she [McGowan] has a topless scene. After it came onscreen, McGown claims, she saw her then-manager Jill Messick turn and nod to the mogul. 

It was Messick who set up the meeting the next morning between Weinstein and McGowan at the Stein Eriksen Lodge that McGowan says ended with her being sexually assaulted in a hot tub."

As a former actor I have no illusions about the kinds of things people will do, or the depths to which they will sink, to achieve fame, money or power in the entertainment industry.

But the idea that a professional adult talent manager who gets paid to help manage an artist's career would knowingly send a young, 24-year-old actress to a meeting in a hotel room with a Hollywood producer with a reputation for demanding sex from young women, disturbed me.

In all fairness, Messick (who took her own life back in February) publicly denied McGowan's accusations that she knowingly sent the actress into the meeting with Harvey Weinstein knowing he would rape her.

But yet as Gardner reports, in 1998, a year AFTER McGown was raped by Weinstein and paid $100,000 as part of a settlement agreement, Messick took a job with Weinstein's company Miramax.

Call me a cynic but I don't believe in coincidence when it comes to things like that, and McGowan claimed that Messick protected Weinstein in exchange for her job at Miramax.

By the way, after taking the position with Weinstein at Miramx in 1998, Messick went on to produce a number of films including She's All That (1999), Frida (2002) and later Mean Girls (2004) - (after she'd left Miramax in 2003).

Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, Steven Segal and Jill Messick are just a handful of the high-profile figures in the entertainment industry who allegedly (by their actions, non-actions or silence) were part of the rampant culture of sexual abuse that's come to light in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

Again, members of Trump's top staff formed a "resistance" to stop his behavior after only nineteen months in office - so where was the "resistance" in Hollywood and the entertainment community when the kind of sexual abuse suffered by actors like Anthony Rapp or Rose McGown has been going on since the early part of the 20th century?

Was Trump's behavior just that bad?

Or was Hollywood just that complacent with an abusive status quo?

Judicial Mulligans for Stanford in Santa Clara?

Photo of a bizarre creature from the depths of
the Norwegian Sea taken by Roman Fedortsov 

One of my guilty online pleasures is logging into my Twitter account (@culturegeist) and checking in with some of the almost 1,800 Twitter accounts I follow to try and get a sense of what people and organizations are thinking, feeling and saying about news and current events.

Unlike Trump, who uses his Twitter account like a spigot for his lies, kooky propaganda and incessant whining, I enjoy using Twitter to follow people who have knowledge about topics that interest me.

Be it a journalist, politician, NASA scientist, or Roman Fedortsov, a Russian fisherman who works on a fishing trawler in Murmansk and enjoys posting photos of really bizarre deep sea creatures that get pulled up in the nets.
  
The cuddly fellow on the left is just a small example of the weird life forms he chronicles, for more check out @fedortsov - after you eat.

I never studied economics in college, but as a self-professed political junkie, I am fascinated by the subject, so in addition to reading Nobel laureate-winning economist and Princeton professor Paul Krugman's column in the New York Times, I also follow his posts on Twitter (@PaulKrugman).

One of the more interesting takes on various issues relating to economics I follow on Twitter is a woman who tweets under the pseudonym Ninja Economics (@NinjaEconomics).

Like Krugman, she finds creative ways to intertwine economics, politics and current events in her tweets, and she doesn't make the subject too "highbrow" - so it remains accessible.

A few weeks ago she sent me a message on Twitter about a strange and troubling story about the selective prosecutorial tendencies of the Santa Clara County (California) District Attorney's office when it comes to defendants accused of violent crimes who happen to have ties with Stanford University.

Two-tier justice in the American legal system is a recurring topic of focus on this blog, and this story involving the Santa Clara County DA sheds some light on the ways in which sexual assault against women too often goes under-punished - and privilege and race too often shield individuals who've committed violent felonies from facing substantive legal repercussions for their actions.

So I thought it'd be interesting to take a closer look as Ninja Economics asked me to share the story.

Ex-Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner 

To make better sense of this, let's quickly look back at a case that made national media headlines just a couple years ago.

While it's hardly front-page news from the standpoint of mainstream media coverage, today September 2nd marks the two-year anniversary of what was widely considered one of the more absurd miscarriages of justice in recent American history.

For many in this country, the name Brock Turner has largely faded from the mainstream media spotlight, but many recall the "Stanford Swimmer rape case."

As the Wikipedia summary of the incident notes, sometime around 1am on January 18, 2015, two Swedish graduate students were biking on the Stanford campus near the Kappa Alpha fraternity house when they saw the then 20-year-old Turner behind a dumpster on top of an unconscious 22-year-old female student identified only as "Jane Doe" in court proceedings.

When the two grad students jumped off their bikes and confronted Turner, he tried to run, but one of the students ran after him, tackled him, and with the help of the other grad student, held him until police arrived.

Turner, a member of Stanford's swim team and an Olympic hopeful, was arrested, charged, tried and as Wikipedia summarized, eventually "found guilty of three felonies: assault with the attempt to rape an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object."

While the maximum possible sentence was 14 years, prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of six years for Turner, but Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky stunned observers by sentencing Turner to just six months in the Santa Clara County jail - plus three months of probation.

Ex-Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky

Then, on September 6, 2016 judge Persky released Turner after he'd served just three months behind bars.

Ensuing outrage over the sentence prompted a grassroots effort spearheaded by Stanford law professor Michelle Dauber and an organization called Recall Judge Aaron Persky made up of volunteers who were successful in getting the thousands of signatures required to get a special recall election on the California ballot.

Many citizens and advocates of stronger domestic violence and sexual assault laws were troubled by the fact that Persky was a Stanford University graduate who'd played lacrosse in college.

To many, the perception that Persky's allegiance to Stanford, and concerns about the negative impact on the prestigious university's reputation as one of the top schools in the nation, clouded his perception of Turner - a talented college athlete on one of the country's best swimming teams.

Some saw that as the real reasoning behind Persky's decision to sentence Brock Turner to just six months in jail for the felony rape and assault of a defenseless, inebriated 22-year old woman who was unconscious at the time.

Many felt that the case was an example of the two-tier justice that too often plagues the American judicial system, a system where young white people from privileged backgrounds who commit felonies are viewed differently than young Hispanic or Africa-American men who commit the same kinds of felonies.

Particularly after Persky openly admitted that he'd worried that "a prison sentence would have a sever impact on him" before he handed down what was effectively a slap on the wrist for Turner for a violent sexual assault of an unconscious woman.

Ethan Couch after being arrested in Mexico

The Turner decision had echoes of the infamous "affluenza" case back in 2013 in which 16-year-old white teenager Ethan Couch was sentenced to probation in a cushy rehab facility because Tarrant County Judge Jean Hudson Boyd reasoned that his wealthy upbringing and being spoiled by his parents had prevented Couch from understanding the concept of being responsible for his actions.

She termed this condition "affluenza" and was widely criticized, considering that she gave another 16-year old teen named Eric Miller 20 years in jail for killing a man while driving drunk in 2004.

Back on June 15, 2013 Ethan Couch was drunk and on Valium when he lost control of a pickup truck he was driving at 70 mph in a 40 mph zone on a residential street in Burleson, Texas.

The ensuing crash killed four people (including a pastor and woman and her daughter who'd stopped to help another driver fix a flat tire) and injuring nine others.

Including a passenger in the truck he was driving who was left permanently paralyzed and only able to communicate by blinking his eyes.

When video surfaced on social media of Couch drinking at a beer pong party in 2015, and he failed to report in to probation officers as required by the court, a national manhunt ensued and Couch and his mother were eventually found and arrested in the Mexican resort city of Puerto Vallarta - where she'd helped him to flee the U.S.

Couch was sentenced to two years in jail for violating his probation and was released back in April to continue the original probation he was sentenced to in 2013 for killing four people.

Now I think it's important to have digressed from the Brock Turner case because while a number of judges and prosecutors in California disagreed with Santa Clara County voters efforts to remove Judge Aaron Persky from the bench because he sentenced Turner to just six months in jail, the outrage by citizens and legal experts alike didn't just happen in some vacuum.

Remember, in 2016 when Turner was released after three months in jail, media headlines were also being dominated by the nine high profile cases of unarmed African-Americans who'd been killed by police officers for no justifiable reason - beginning with Eric Gardner in Staten Island in 2014.

Ex- Santa Clara County Assistant DA
Cindy Hendrickson

For perspective, Turner was released from jail in September, 2016, just two months after Baton Rouge, Louisiana PD officers shot and killed Alton Sterling after confronting him for selling CD's in front of a convenience store, and elementary school cafeteria manager Philando Castile was shot and killed inside his vehicle after being pulled over for a broken tail light in Minnesota.

Neither of the officers responsible for those deaths were found legally responsible for their actions, so there was clearly a lot of frustration and anger over the failure of the court system to hold people accountable for their actions.

On June 5, 2018, Santa Clara County citizens voted to remove judge Aaron Persky from the bench - the first time in 80 years that California voters elected to remove a sitting judge from the bench.

Interestingly, Persky was replaced by an assistant district attorney from the Santa Clara County DA's office named Cindy Hendrickson - whose questionable oversight of a case involving an individual with ties to Stanford University has also caused controversy.

Back in the spring, Hendrickson made headlines herself over a controversial case involving a troubled Stanford University researcher named Alana Pague.

As Roger Whitacre reported for Patch.com back in May, the 32-year-old Pague was accused of hacking into computer devices to illegally obtain personal photographs and video from her ex-boyfriend Drew Moxon.

In a civil lawsuit filed in the California Superior Court Moxon accused Pague and her mother Ana of trying to blackmail him and his girlfriend Cynthia Phan by threatening to release intimate personal photos and videos surreptitiously taken of them to friends and family if he didn't agree to pay Pague money every month.

As Whitacre reported, three days after Moxon called police to report that Pague had threatened him with a knife, she stole that his vehicle and kidnapped their child, Jude Alexander Moxon.

Alan Pague and the child she kidnapped 

Fortunately Pague did return the child (pictured left) but as the then-assistant DA responsible for reviewing the charges related to the kidnapping and blackmail threats, Cindy Hendrickson declined to file charges against Pague and rejected the case.

She also refused to offer any comment about the criminal investigation.

One of the things that's odd about this case is the lack of local media coverage about it.

If you read details of the lawsuit on a Go Fund Me page set up by the plaintiff to help with legal expenses, the lawsuit accuses Pague (pictured left), an Uber driver and someone described as a "San Francisco millionaire" of conspiring to threaten to release intimate video of Moxon and his girlfriend Cynthia Phan in what's come to be known as "revenge porn" - releasing intimate video to enact revenge or shake someone down for cash. 

What's also odd about Cindy Hendrickson refusing to file charges in this case is that Alan Pague admitted to the Mountain View Police Department that she did illegally obtain the video and kidnap she and Moxon's child - so why hasn't she been charged by the Santa Clara County DA's office?

According to an article posted on AngryGamer.net, throughout her campaign for judge, Hendrickson has consistently refused to even answer questions about the case, even though she's been repeatedly asked about it on social media.

Santa Clara County is also home to Mountain View, CA which is essentially the epicenter of Silicon Valley and home to some of the leading computer technology companies including Google, Symantec and Mozilla.

It's situated in close proximity to both San Francisco and is also the home of Stanford University.

Does the as-yet unidentified "San Francisco millionaire" named in the lawsuit alongside Alana Pague have ties to Stanford as well?

Former DA now-judge Cindy Hendrickson certainly does - as her Twitter profile shows, like the man she replaced, Judge Aaron Persky, she's also a Stanford Alum.

So while there are complex sides to the lawsuit against Alana Pague, it's legitimate to ask if her being an employee of Stanford University has influenced the decision of the Santa Clara County DA's office not to file charges against her.

A majority of Santa Clara County voters clearly felt Aaron Persky's ties to Stanford influenced his decision to allow convicted rapist Brock Turner to walk after serving just three months in jail.

So there certainly is the appearance of two-tier justice in Santa Clara County, and it's fair to ask if the DA's office there is effectively handing out judicial mulligans to people who commit felonies simply because they have ties to Stanford.

Justice in Dallas County, Texas: Echoes of Money, Mississippi

Ex-Balch Springs PD Officer Roy Oliver guilty in
the murder of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards

The news that a Texas jury found former Balch Springs Police Officer Roy D. Oliver, II guilty on Tuesday for the unjustified fatal shooting of 15-year-old high school freshman Jordan Edwards is hardly a cause for celebration.

On a Saturday night back in April, 2017, Oliver pointed a high-powered rifle at a car full of unarmed teenagers who were driving away from a house party and pulled the tigger.


The fatal shot, one of three Oliver fired into the window of the vehicle, struck Edwards in the head as he sat in the passenger seat, killing him instantly - his brothers Vidal and Kevon (along with two friends) were inside the car when it happened.

I blogged about this incident last May if you're interested in reading about some of the details, but Edwards and his brothers were among approximately 100 teenagers milling around outside a party when a neighbor called Balch Springs PD because it was getting rowdy.

Oliver and his partner were actually in the house speaking with the home owner as teens were leaving when shots rang out outside, and as teens began scrambling for safety, Edwards, his brothers and their friends got in the car to leave the area.

Oliver, who'd ran outside when the shots were fired, saw the teens in the car and began yelling and cursing at the vehicle, aimed his rifle and fired three shots in the passenger window - just like that.

According to a Dallas Morning News article on Tuesday, those shots were actually fired from a nearby nursing home.

Since the vehicle was driving away from Oliver when the shooting happened, he tried to use the defense many police officers who've shot and killed innocent people have successfully used time and time again in America - he lied about what happened.

Oliver told police investigators that the car came toward him in an "aggressive manner", but police body-cam footage taken at the scene (along with witness testimony) revealed that the teens were simply driving away and that the vehicle was not driving towards Oliver.

14-YO Emmitt Till and Carolyn Bryant, the 21-
YO store clerk who accused him in 1955

It was moving away from him when he fired the shots - Oliver later tried to claim that he shot at the vehicle because he feared for his partner's safety.

But his partner testified on the stand that he never felt his life was in danger.

It only took the jury two days to find Oliver guilty of Edwards' death on Tuesday August 28th.

And as author Angie Thomas observed on Twitter on Tuesday, the date is also significant in the longer arc of American justice.


As she noted, Oliver was found guilty on August 28th, the very same date that 14-year-old Emmitt Till was brutally tortured and killed in Money, Mississippi back in 1955 by two white men enraged over accusations that he'd whistled suggestively at a 21-year-old white store clerk named Carolyn Bryant while he was buying bubblegum inside the small store she ran with her husband Roy Bryant.

A few nights later at around 2am, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam armed themselves and abducted Till from his great-uncle Moses Wright's home, savagely beat and tortured him, before shooting him in the head, tying his body to an engine block with wire and dumping it in the Tallahatchie River.

Exactly what happened between Till and Bryant inside that store has always been shrouded in mystery, but as was widely reported last year, Carolyn Bryant told writer Timothy Tyson that her original claims that Till had put his hand around her waste, verbally propositioned her and tried to physically touch her were not true.

62 years after the trial she admitted she made that part up.

J.W. Milam (left) and Roy Bryant celebrate after
their acquittal by an all-white jury  

Whether she admitted that to clear her own conscience at the age of 83 only she really knows.

But such an admission did Emmitt Till little good.

The horrifying photos of his mangled face, which sparked outrage around the nation and helped to spark the civil rights movement in America, attest to the depth of his suffering and the unfathomable cruelty and brutality of the crime.

Which both Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam freely admitted to in an interview with Look magazine after being acquitted by an all-white jury in less than an hour.

Part of what's tragic about Till's murder, something that hasn't been widely reported, is that Till's mother Till Mobley claims that her son had a slight speech impediment that caused him to stutter sometimes when he tried to say words beginning with the letter 'B'.

As Chris Jones reported in the Chicago Tribune back in 2008 she insisted that her son wasn't trying to whistle at Carolyn Bryant in a sexual way - she'd taught him to whistle quietly whenever he stuttered as a way to relax himself and stop the stutter.

Her son, who was trying to order 2-cents worth of bubblegum in the store, likely began stuttering and whistled to make it stop - Bryant likely misunderstood what was happening, and the rest is history.

Now the specific circumstances of the death of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards in Texas last April are obviously very different from the death of Emmitt Till back in the summer of 1955.

Roy Oliver during sentencing on Tuesday 

But the context in which they both took place, against the backdrop of periods in American history defined in part by racial division, and the fact that they were both young black teenagers in the south who were innocent and unarmed when they were violently killed by enraged white men, links both cases in my view.

In ways that are emotional and even spiritual in some way given the complex backdrop of America's racial history.

To me, the outcome of this case occupies a larger dimension, not just because a police officer was held legally responsible for killing an innocent, unarmed American child for no reason (and then trying to lie about it).

It's also important because the circumstances touch on issues related to the two-tier justice system that still pervades the American legal system - this case bucked that trend.

At the time I'm writing this, none of the members of the jury have spoken out about the decision.

But I think there's little doubt that the atmosphere of divisiveness based on race, and the kinds of xenophobic retribution against undocumented immigrants that has been the hallmark of the Trump administration, weighed on the minds of the jury when they decided this case.

Both Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have made it perfectly clear that they have absolutely no interest in directing the resources of the the White House or Department of Justice to address, or investigate the cases of police misconduct or excessive use of force against unarmed, innocent people.

It's quite possible the members of the jury, who acquitted Roy Oliver on two counts of aggravated manslaughter, but found him guilty of Jordan Edwards' murder, felt a responsibility to send a message about the American justice system.

Not so much about race specifically, but to reaffirm that Americans believe that there is a definitive line between right and wrong in this country, no matter the color of your skin, where you hail from, who you love, or how you worship.

Such a decision taking place on the 28th of August, 62 years after the death of Emmitt Till in Money, Mississippi, offers hope that however long it may be, the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend towards justice.

A Win For Voting Rights in Randolph County

Democratic Congressman Conor Lamb (PA-18)
pictured with a child he mentors

Well it's Friday (thank God).

Yesterday a parole board denied John Lennon's murderer Mark David Chapman parole for the 10th time.

And just 74 days remain until November 6th when millions of Americans will head to the polls to cast votes in the widely-anticipated 2018 midterm elections.

For many people, including yours truly, that day can't come fast enough.

Especially for those repulsed by the ongoing abomination that is Donald Trump's chaotic presidency, abetted by an almost silent, do-nothing Republican-majority in Congress.

If Democratic and independent voter turnout in early primaries and some of the various special Congressional elections that have taken place are any indicator, the 2018 midterm could have grave implications for the Republican Party - like Democrat Conor Lamb's upset of Republican Rick Saccone in western Pennsylvania's heavily-Republican 18th Congressional District back in March.

All 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, along with 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate, are up for grabs in November, along with governor's seats in several key states, including Georgia where some early polls show the Democratic candidate Stacy Abrams holding a slight lead over Republican candidate Brian Kemp.

He is Georgia's current secretary of state, and like his notorious vote-suppressing counterpart in Kansas, Kris Kobach, Kemp has spent eight years doing everything possible to remove hundreds of thousands of state citizens (mostly people of color) from the state's voter rolls in a flagrant attempt to suppress non-white voter turnout.

One of those efforts has made national media headlines recently both for it's absurdity and audacity.

Republican voter suppression efforts in majority-
black Randolph County Georgia were rejected 

Randolph County is located in a rural area of southwestern Georgia not far from the eastern border of Alabama.

It covers an area of 431 square miles and is situated in a fertile region known for its high density of plantations during slavery.

The county is about 61% African-American with a population of 7,719 people according to the 2010 U.S. Census, many of whom live in the kinds of impoverished economic conditions common to many rural areas of the Deep South.

While Georgia voted for Trump during the 2016 presidential elections, Randolph County voted for Hillary Clinton with a margin of 55%, which is likely the reason that state Republicans targeted the county with its notorious voter suppression efforts.

As Mark Joseph Stern reported for Slate.com, earlier this year Brian Kemp tapped a man named Mike Malone, a conservative "elections consultant" who contributed money to Kemp's campaign for governor, to basically travel around the state and "recommend polling place closures" in various counties.

Kemp sent Malone out on this sketchy mission ahead of the May primary vote for governor.

Now according to Stern's Slate.com article, ten of the counties identified by Malone complied with his recommendations and closed polling places where mostly rural folks go to cast their votes.

Not surprisingly, all of those counties shared one thing in common - their populations have large percentages of African-American citizens.

Republican candidate Brian Kemp poses with a
shotgun in one of his ads for Governor

Randolph County, the sixth smallest county in the state, has nine voting precincts.

That's nine places for people to vote over a 431 square-mile area.

Malone proposed closing seven of those nine polling locations.

That means he proposed closing a staggering 78% of Randolph County's polling sites, including one precinct that is 97% black.

Word of this blatant and discriminatory effort to disenfranchise black voters began making media headlines.

In response, Kemp tried to backtrack in order to cover his ass by releasing a "recommendation" to Randolph County suggesting that it wasn't actually a good idea to close seven of the nine polling places.

Even though he was the one who originally sent Mike Malone out to urge Georgia counties to do just that (Malone told that to the Randolph County Board of Elections by the way.)

Kemp's public recommendation to scrap the plan to close all those precincts wasn't made out of some kind of noble change of heart or soul-reckoning self reflection - it was purely for self-serving reasons.

He knows he wasn't the overwhelming favorite Republican candidate for governor by any stretch, so as much as he wants to go "full right-wing Republican", he doesn't have the mandate from Republican Georgia voters to do it.

Neither he nor Lt. Governor Casey Cagle were able to win the 50% of the vote in the May primary needed to secure the GOP nomination for governor.

So they were forced into a runoff primary election in July, which Kemp won with some help from predictably right-wingy tweets from Trump, as well as the series of controversial political television ads he'd been running in the spring.

Like the one in which he pointed a shotgun at a teenager (pictured above).

Brian Kemp's anti-immigrant truck TV ad

Or the one where he proudly shows off his guns, revs up his chainsaw and was photographed in his pickup truck boasting:

"I gotta a big truck, just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take 'em home myself. Yup, I just said that."

Yup, he really did say that, watch the ad for yourself - the ad also features an explosion in a field too, which I guess really pumps up conservative voters.

Even though he's running on embracing his hardline conservatism and directly appealing to Trump voters, Kemp is politically savvy enough to recognize that being linked with efforts to suppress African-American voters could torpedo his chances in November against Georgia's Democratic former minority state house leader Stacy Abrams - who is African-American.

Abrams, who's also an attorney and a romance novelist, has developed a national political following as her candidacy is, in many ways, symbolic of the ideological differences that define the broader 2018 midterm elections - which is not just a mandate on Trump's presidency.

The midterms are also a gauge on how Americans feel about national domestic policy, Russian interference in the 2016 elections, the overall direction of the country, and a House of Representatives that's been under Republican control for the past eight years.

And with the 2020 presidential race just months away from kicking off, there's little doubt that the Democratic Party sees the election of a Democratic governor in Georgia as a critical step towards winning Georgia's 16 electoral votes in a southern state that hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton won the state over George H.W. Bush back in 1992.

"Elections consultant" Mike Malone 

So while Randolph County Georgia may be a relatively small rural community, Republican's attempts to try and close 78% of the polling sites to make it more difficult for African-Americans to vote for governor in November are reflective of just how critical this governor's race is.

But fortunately those efforts failed.

During a meeting on Friday morning the Randolph County Board of Elections took less than a minute to shoot down the proposal to close seven of nine polling sites three months before the November elections.

And "elections consultant" Mike Malone?

He was fired by Randolph County elections officials on Wednesday.

As USA Today reported, the failed voter suppression effort in Randolph County actually had the effect of energizing voters, activists, and national organizations dedicated to fighting Republican voter suppression efforts around the country - including the NAACP, the ACLU and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

And with regards to Republican candidate Brian Kemp, the Randolph County debacle is simply a reflection of who he is, both as a person and as a Georgia secretary of state dedicated to suppressing the votes of black voters in a state with a long legacy of institutionalized racism.

As I blogged about back in September 2014, Kemp was the guy caught on tape at a Republican breakfast meeting saying:

"In closing I just wanted to tell you, real quick, after we get through this runoff, you know the Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them, you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there, and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November."

They can indeed.

Like I said, if the Democratic turnout in recent primaries and special elections around the country are any indicator, "all these minority voters" Brian Kemp and the Republicans are so busy trying to prevent from casting a ballot, will be showing up en masse on November 6th.

And the results could be very different from the 2014 midterms when a mere 37% of American voters turned out in what was the lowest midterm election turnout in 70 years.

My guess is that if the people of Randolph County have anything to say about it, the results this November will be very different indeed.

Proud of What Exactly?

Fired White House speech writer Darren Beattie

The culturally-divisive views, racist comments and anti-(non-white)-immigrant  xenophobia expressed by Donald Trump with almost clockwork regularity are as well documented as they are repugnant to many.

So it's hardly a secret that a range of known white nationalists have, and do, work inside the White House as advisers helping to shape the domestic and foreign policy agendas and messaging that Trump espouses.

So it's interesting how quickly the White House quietly fired speech writer Darren Beattie last week after his own association with a fringe extremist group became public.

As CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski first reported on Sunday, Beattie was a visiting professor in the political science department of Duke University in 2016 when he appeared on a panel and spoke at the H.L. Mencken Club - an annual gathering that attracts leading white nationalists and an assortment of anti-immigrant zealots united around, and energized by, their hatred of people who don't look, think or worship they way they do.

According to an article by Washington Post national politics reporter Robert Costa (who recently began a stint as host of Washington Week on PBS), "Beattie spoke on a panel alongside Peter Brimelow...founder of the anti-immigrant website Vadare.com, [who] is a 'white nationalist' and 'regularly publishes works by white supremacists, anti-Semites, and others on the radical right,' according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that tracks extremists."  

Costa quotes three unnamed White House sources as saying that within days of Kaczynski contacting the White House to comment on Beattie's appearance at the H.L. Mencken Club event in 2016 (at which he also spoke too), Beattie was fired and his WhiteHouse.gov email address was shut down by Saturday.

(Trump's lightweight economic adviser Larry Kudlow is also facing media heat today after the Washington Post reported that Peter Brimelow was at Kudlow's home for a birthday party last weekend just a day after Beattie was fired by the White House...)

Journalist and critic H.L. Mencken was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1880 amidst the landscape of post Civil War America and the dawning of the institutionalized racism and segregation of the Jim Crow Era.

Writer H.L. Mencken

He was a prolific writer whose personal diaries later revealed anti-Semitic and racist personal opinions of both Jews and African-Americans.

Views that were clearly shaped by some of the common beliefs and stereotypes that defined the era in which he came of age.

But is it fair for white nationalists / supremacists to name their little conference after Mencken?

He was an early admirer of Atlas Shrugged author (and Republican demigod) Ayn Rand, advocated the philosophy of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and criticized the principles of "one man, one vote".

But he was also a conservative with complex opinions and views that seem to contradict the ideology of the fringe white nationalists who've splashed his name across their annual gathering.

Mencken frequently employed satire to poke and criticize organized religion, and his colorful written accounts of the famous 1925 Scopes Trial for the Baltimore Sun (in which Tennessee substitute teacher John T. Scopes was charged with violating the Butler Act which made it illegal to teach Darwin's Theory of Evolution inside the classroom), made national headlines in what many consider the trial of the century.

Mencken's efforts to pander to the conservative southern readers who were engrossed in the trial seep through in some of his Baltimore Sun dispatches - for example, on the eve of the highly anticipated start of the trial on July 9, 1925, Mencken observed of Dayton, Tennessee where the trial took place:

"The town, I confess, greatly surprised me. I expected to find a squalid Southern village, with darkies snoozing on horse blocks, pigs rooting under the houses and the inhabitants full of hookworm and malaria. What I found was a country town of charm and even beauty."  

Despite Mencken's use of common racial slurs like "darkies" to describe black Americans, and the even more racist private observations revealed years after his death in 1956, he publicly criticized the U.S. for not admitting more Jewish refugees into the country during World War II.

And he occasionally spoke out against the lynching of black Americans, calling out local white leaders of the small towns in which the horrific acts of racist terrorism took place for their silence and refusal to intervene to stop the heinous events from taking place.

Ex-White House adviser Sebastian Gorka wearing
the medal of Hungarian neo-Nazi group Vitezi Rend 

While I've never attended a meeting of "The H.L. Mencken Club", it's doubtful a condemnation of the lynching of African-Americans is on their agenda - and I'd wager that Darren Beattie never used his visiting professorship at Duke University to teach on such a topic.

Now in all fairness, Beattie isn't the first person to be fired from the Trump White House for known associations with white supremacists.

Former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka, who famously attended a Trump inauguration event in 2017 wearing the medal of a Hungarian neo-Nazi group called Vitezi Rend (or Order of Vitez) pinned to his chest (pictured left) was fired by the White House after months of calls for his resignation due to his ties and membership in Vitezi Rend.   

Unlike the British-born Gorka, whose parents were Hungarian (he lived there from 1992 until 2008), Darren Beattie didn't attend a white nationalist conference years before he was associated with Trump.

He attended and spoke at that conference in 2016, the same year he wrote publicly about his support for Trump's anti-immigrant policy proposals in the Duke University campus paper Chronicle. 

The presence of Beattie on a White House staff that also included Gorka (and still includes xenophobic hate-monger Stephen Miller) only confirmed what many critics have charged about Trump for months.

That he has surrounded himself with a creepy cabal of right-wing extremists with fringe views on race, ethnicity and immigration - individuals whose beliefs are radically out of step with mainstream American society.

Ex-Louisiana sheriffs deputy Brian Green

By now it's more than clear that Trump has effectively brought racism, bigotry and xenophobia into the conservative / Republican mainstream.

Making it "OK" for individuals to feel proud about holding such views in one of the most racially and ethnically diverse nations in the world.

And not just White House advisers in Washington either.

People like former Plaquemines Parish Sheriff Deputy Brian Green.

Last Thursday, just a day before the White House fired Darren Beattie, the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office announced that Green was being fired after being outed as a member of the Proud Boys - a men's only, far-right group with racist leanings.

As the Southern Poverty Law Center reports, members of the Proud Boys have aligned themselves with white nationalists and other extremists - even though they claim not to be racists.

Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler (a former member) is one of many white nationalists associated with the Proud Boys, whose members were seen at the violent rally in Charlottesville alongside neo-Nazis and members of the KKK.

Obviously Americans have a right to their own beliefs and opinions.

But the idea of government employees who work for taxpayers, whether they're White House speech writers who influence national policy, or members of local law enforcement sworn to uphold and enforce laws fairly, being actively involved with organizations that promote intolerance, racial hatred and bigotry, crosses a line that the majority of Americans consider wrong.

Under the Trump administration, individuals feel strangely empowered to openly align themselves with extremists groups that advocate hatred of, and hostility towards others.

And they're even proud to do so.

But proud of what exactly?

America's Situational Attorney General

El Tiempo Cantina faced social media backlash after
posting a photo of Jeff Sessions' visit last Friday

With the appointment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017, Americans have witnessed the nation's top law enforcement official using his office as a platform to enforce principles that reflect a combination of his own brand of religious fundamentalism, and the rigid, right-wing "Fox News" ideology that has come to define the Republican Party.

His media footprint hasn't exactly been a positive one, either for himself, the Department of Justice, or the Trump administration.

This past weekend Sessions made headlines after a massive social media backlash forced El Tiempo Cantina, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston, Texas that he visited last Friday, to shut down their social media accounts because of a flood of criticism after someone posted a photo of the smiling AG standing next to what appears to be a chef (pictured above).

Now if Sessions was under the impression that visiting a Tex-Mex restaurant and taking a selfie with one of the guys who cooked his ethnic food would distract from the fact that he's now widely vilified for championing locking up non-white asylum seekers, banning Muslims from entering the country and separating the innocent children of undocumented immigrants from their parents, he was sadly mistaken.

Sessions was in Houston reportedly meeting with local law enforcement officials to discuss the enforcement of the Trump administration's controversial immigration policies.

Likely on that agenda are the approximately 360 children of asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants who are still locked away in facilities around the U.S. - innocent kids stuck in incarcerated limbo who've yet to be reunited with their parents as ordered by a federal judge weeks ago.

Despite the Tex-Mex restaurant flap, and Houston's notorious jungle-like humidity in August,
Sessions was probably relieved to be as far away from Washington, D.C. as possible.

Hillary-bashing Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy questions
FBI Agent Peter Strzok during July 12th hearings

Especially after the whiny tweet sent out on Saturday by a raving Donald Trump, who was holed up over the weekend at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club - fuming in the midst of one of his frequent tantrums about the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

The unhinged POTUS used his social media account to accuse Sessions of being "scared stiff" and "Missing in Action".


Now 45 tweeted that nonsensical, juvenile claptrap to his followers despite the fact that longtime senior FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok was recently fired by FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich as a result of a lengthy internal investigation conducted by Inspector General Michael Horowitz that revealed a number of private text messages that the married Strzok sent to his then-girlfriend (former FBI attorney Lisa Page) that were highly critical of Trump.

Even though Strzok insisted under oath during a contentious Congressional hearing back in July that his personal opinion of Trump did not interfere with his ability to conduct counterintelligence investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, some Republicans seized on the text messages as proof of the concocted "Deep State" conspiracy that alleges an internal government "plot" to topple the floundering Trump presidency.

As the New York Times reported on Monday, Strzok's attorney Aitan Goelman told reporters:

"The decision to fire Special Agent Strzok is not only a departure from typical bureau practice, but also contradicts FBI Director Christopher Wray's testimony to Congress and his assurances that the FBI intended to follow its regular process in this and all personnel matters."

FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich

As the Times reported, while the IG report was critical of Strzok's personal text messages given his senior role in both the investigation of Hillary Clinton's email server as well as the investigation into Russian interference, the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility recommended a 60-day suspension.

But Bowdich, the bureau's deputy director, dismissed the OPR recommendation and fired Strzok, a 20-year veteran of the FBI considered one of the most senior counterintelligence agents in the bureau.

Strzok's firing effectively nullified his ability to collect his government pension and health benefits, so the dismissal was clearly intended to please Trump's childish need for petty vindictiveness against anyone who disagrees with him or criticizes his policies or decisions.

Now I'm not an "FBI insider" or anything, but I don't think Strzok's firing was Bowdich's call; the high-profile firing of a respected career-FBI Special Agent, is not something that's going to be left up to a deputy director.

Especially a dismissal with clear political implications just three months before a mid-term election.

Bowdich was the man tapped to replace former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was famously fired by Jeff Sessions back on March 16th just 26 hours before he was scheduled to retire in a highly-politicized firing that denied McCabe (a 22-year veteran of the FBI) his pension and benefits.

But if you take a quick look at Bowdich's resume, the former Albuquerque Police Officer distinguished himself as an exceptional FBI agent (like McCabe he previously served on the FBI's SWAT team), it doesn't seem like he's one for the kind of partisan back-stabbing that Trump delights in using to try and protect himself from the Mueller investigation.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe 

There's little question that Jeff Sessions was behind the blatantly-politicized, vindictive pettiness that was behind Strzok's firing - but he ordered Bowdich to do it to avoid the kind of criticism and charges of cronyism he received after firing McCabe back in March.

So two different widely-respected and accomplished FBI senior officials, each with more than 20 years of service, fired based on trumped-up charges in order to appease Trump.

Yet Trump STILL took to Twitter to suggest Sessions was "scared stiff" and "Missing in Action"?

Why would Trump publicly make such unsubstantiated and inflammatory accusations about his own attorney general?

Apparently because Sessions hasn't publicly defended Trump's own rampant incompetence, myriad ethical lapses, lengthy trail of documented lies and lack of morality more vigorously.

Remarkably, Trump's criticism of Sessions (a man he appointed) seems to suggest that he's still laboring under the misconception that the attorney general of the United States, and head of the Justice Department, is supposed to also function as the president's personal defense lawyer.

Given the job that conservative wack-job Rudy Giuliani seems to be doing, one couldn't blame Trump for pining for capable counsel, but that's not the AG's job - and Sessions brought his own baggage to this meandering clown car of a presidency.

"Linda" the Jenkinson's Aquarium gift shop clerk
refused to serve 7 black girls in Point Pleasant, NJ

What's unfortunate is that we're temporarily stuck with an attorney general who's more loyal to his own extremist ideology and xenophobic beliefs than he is to enforcing the laws that protect all Americans.

He's been all but silent on the sharp rise in incidents of overt racism and bigotry that have made headlines across the country since Trump's inauguration in 2017.

Store clerks and restaurant managers refusing to serve or kicking out people of color, property managers preventing African-American residents from using pool facilities - crazy shit is happening.

You heard nothing from Sessions about the group of 7 young African-American girls from Camden, New Jersey's Princess to Queenz summer mentoring program who were refused service in the Jenkinson's Aquarium gift shop on the boardwalk in Point Pleasant, NJ last Friday by a woman only identified as "Linda" (pictured above) - whose comments caught on video went viral.

According to an NJ.com article posted Tuesday evening, the still-unnamed woman has been fired from her job and Jenkinson's media relations director issued an apology.

As New Jersey Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly told reporters, "these types of displays of racism are occurring entirely too frequently in our country."

White Supremacist James Fields and the car he used
to kill Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, VA in 2017

In my view, Americans being denied service in restaurants, stores, public parks or recreational facilities they have a right to use based on their race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or nationality is a serious issue that warrants at least some degree of leadership or direction from the person who's supposed to be the nation's top law enforcement officer.

Sessions' silence on these kinds of incidents is troubling, but hardly surprising.

Dogged by criticism of his own racial bigotry and xenophobia since he served as a federal prosecutor in Alabama in the 1980's, Sessions was predictably silent about the white supremacists who staged what turned out to be underwhelming public rallies in Charlottesville and in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. across the street from the White House last weekend on the anniversary of the violent Unite the Right protests in Virginia last year.

(Remember, he was in Houston meeting with local law enforcement and eating Tex-Mex food.)

Back in June, Sessions did release a fairly tepid public statement when federal hate crime charges were filed against James Fields, Jr., (pictured above) the-then 21-year-old man who intentionally plowed his car into a crowd protesting a white supremacist march in Charlottesville - killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than 12 others.

But those federal charges came months after the state of Virginia indicted Fields on charges of first-degree murder and nine other felony counts back in December, 2017.

Jeff Sessions: attorney general for some but not all?

Sessions' unwillingness to enforce the laws of the United States to protect all citizens is indirectly putting people's lives at risk - literally.

As Rob Arthur reported for Vice News back in February, an analysis of records from the Department of Justice reveals that "Total activity in the agency's civil rights division is at a 17-year low, falling well below levels seen in the last two [presidential] administrations. One DOJ section charged with enforcing laws on police misconduct has been completely inactive."

When it comes to mounting ICE raids on places of work to arrest undocumented immigrants trying to earn an honest living, arresting asylum seekers at the U.S. border, or separating children as young as three-years old from their parents, Jeff Sessions is the high-profile attorney general.

When Trump wants respected career FBI senior officials fired because they don't like him, or because they believe the Mueller investigation on Russian interference into the 2016 elections is legitimate and should be allowed to complete it's work without being undermined by partisan political meddling, Sessions is the guy.

Loyal and subservient to an erratic president who both reviles and repeatedly humiliates him.

Since his appointment in 2017, Mr. Law and Order's idea of law enforcement is situational at best - and that situation seems to depend on whether or not it conflicts with his own divisive ideology.

When it comes to enforcing those laws that protect innocent Americans from prejudice, bigotry and hatred based on race, ethnicity or nationality, Sessions is invisible, unseen and absent.

He is America's Situational Attorney General.