A Reasonable and Justified Manner? A Profoundly Bigoted Lens

Stephon Clark, 22, another unarmed American citizen
shot and killed by police

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra's announcement on Tuesday, that his office will step in to oversee the investigation into the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Stephon Clark by two Sacramento Police Department officers last Sunday night, does address some concerns expressed by outraged community members about the ability of SPD to conduct an impartial investigation into its own officers.

But it's hard to say how much comfort that's going to bring Clark's family members considering he was shot multiple times for holding a cell phone.

As more detailed information about this incident begins to trickle out, a familiar narrative from the Sacramento Police Department is already beginning to unfold - the now familiar claim that the two officers who fired 20 shots at Clark (including shots fired when he fell to his hands and knees) did so because they feared for their lives.

The two officers were reportedly called to the scene in response to someone reportedly breaking the windows of cars in the neighborhood, when they confronted Stephon Clark in the backyard of the home where he lived, they claim he advanced or moved towards them with something in his hand.

Seconds later an officer yelled "Gun!" and the two officers fired 20 shots; the object in Clark's hands turned out to be a cellphone.

He was shot about 60 seconds after the SPD officers on the ground first encountered him - adding to the already-suspicious fatal shooting is the fact that one of the officers can be heard telling another to mute the sound on his body camera immediately after the shooting, right before the audio cuts out.

The arc of this investigation is obviously going to take a long time, especially given the growing media attention, mounting public outrage, and the involvement of the state attorney's office.

But one of the things that troubles me about this shooting is that the officers themselves claim that they were sent to the scene in response to reports of a man breaking car windows.

21-year-old Isaiah Malailua 

Now that's clearly a crime warranting a quick police response, but is that the kind of situation that calls for discharging a weapon?

The violent response of the two Sacramento PD officers to a black man holding his cellphone in his own backyard is remarkably different from the Chicago PD's response to an armed white man arrested in Chicago's Union Station on Friday.

According to an article by Chicago Tribune reporter William Lee, a California man named Isaiah Malailua (pictured left) was arrested at an Amtrak ticket counter wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying a 9mm handgun.


Authorities quickly apprehended him after police K-9 dogs detected the odor of explosive residue on a duffel bag that belonged to Malailua that was found in another part of the station.

Now obviously I'm not suggesting that Chicago authorities should have just yelled "Gun!" and started firing in the middle of a crowded train station - they did the right thing, they located him, surrounded him and took him into custody.

The point I'm making here is that the officers who arrested Malailua in Chicago knew he was potentially dangerous because a Greyhound bus ticket with his name on it was found inside the duffel bag with the explosive residue on it that was detected by the K-9 - they also found police SWAT gear inside the bag that he'd apparently stolen from the NYPD.

So they knew who he was, and when they found him at the ticket counter he had a handgun on him and was wearing a bullet-proof vest - that's got "potential mass shooter" written all over it.

Considering recent events and the fact that Malailua was inside a crowded major urban transit hub, authorities on the scene could have been justified in shooting him, but they didn't.

What role did Malailua's skin being white have to do with how the Chicago authorities treated him?

Stephon Clark's brother Stevante leads a protest chant
during a City Council meeting Tuesday night

Contrast his arrest with the Sacramento PD's response to reports of someone breaking car windows in a neighborhood last Sunday night - where they shot and killed Stephon Clark about a minute after encountering him.

In Sacramento, the SPD had no idea who Stephon Clark was - they saw his skin color and flipped the fuck out.

Now if I was a cop, and I'm not, a report of a suspect breaking car windows on the street could sound like garden variety juvenile vandalism.

Or worse, maybe someone under the influence of heroin, crystal meth or crack desperately looking for a quick score to sell something to get high.

It's hardly the modus operandi of a professional car thief, so someone breaking car windows sounds either desperate or stupid - it makes a lot of noise, attracts a lot of attention in a neighborhood after 9pm at night, and it increases the chances of getting busted by the cops.

Does that sound like a situation where you go in with a gun drawn ready to fire shots at the first person you see?

Or does it sound like the kind of situation where it's better to ascertain who it is and what's going on?

Granted it was dark out, but responding SPD officers had a police helicopter hovering overhead that had guided them to the general location, and based on the audio that was released, the SPD officers didn't identify themselves as police officers when they encountered Stephon Clark.

If you haven't already seen it, take a look at this body cam footage when the two SPF officer come upon Clark in his grandmother's backyard - it's not bloody or anything, you can't see the actual shooting.

No charges: Baton Rouge PD officers Blaine Salamoni
and Howie Lake, II

The officer's first words at 9 seconds into the video sound like "Show me your hands! Gun!" 

He's out of breath and says the words so fast it's hard to hear what he's saying - plus the police helicopter is hovering overhead.

About 6 seconds later the officer yells, "Show me your hands-Gun-Gun-Gun!" and both officers just start firing shots.

It's the initial contact that's troubling.

In some ways it reminds me of the initial contact that Baton Rouge PD officers Blaine Salamoni and  Howie Lake, II demonstrated when they first encountered 37-year-old Alton Sterling in front of the Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the early morning hours of July 5, 2016.

The two officers were responding to an anonymous caller alleging a man was waving a gun around in front of the store, they pulled up, approached Sterling (who was known to sell CD's outside the store), interrupted a conversation he was having with two women and told him to put his hands on a car.

Not having done anything illegal and not knowing what the officers wanted with them, Sterling protested and tried to pull away - at which point one of the officers pointed their loaded gun at Sterling and said:

"Bitch, I'm gonna kill you." 90 seconds later Alton Sterling was shot dead at point blank range while on the ground pinned on his back by both officers - Salamoni fired six shots from his weapon.

There was no, "Police officer, we need to speak with you." or "Show me your hands!" or "Freeze! Police officer!"

Alton Sterling seconds before
being shot by Salamoni

They literally pulled up, pointed a loaded handgun at his head and said, "Bitch, I'm gonna kill you."  - and they did.

The last time I blogged about Salamoni and Lake back on May 5, 2017 was just after the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions announced they would not pursue criminal charges against either man.

As you likely heard, on Tuesday Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that the state would not be filing criminal charges against either Salamoni or Lake.

This despite the store owner Abdullah Muflahi saying that Sterling was not waving a gun or threatening anyone, and never brandished a gun or threatened the two officers with it at any point.

Muflahi, who witnessed the shooting, says Sterling had no idea why the two policemen were even there when they threw him on the hood of a parked car and tasered him before wrestling him to the ground.

In an April 15, 2012 op-ed in the New York Times published two months after the violent racist psychopath George Zimmerman stalked, attacked then shot and killed teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, journalist and author Brent Staples observed:

"Young black men know that in far too many settings they will be seen not as individuals, but as the 'other', and given no benefit of the doubt....Society's message to black boys - 'we fear you and view you as dangerous' -  is constantly reinforced. " 

In his lengthy statement to the press on Tuesday, after stating that probable clause (rather than an actual crime), the presence of drugs in his system and resisting an arrest for something which he was never informed, were all contributing factors in Alton Sterling being shot and killed, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry concluded "that both officers acted in a reasonable and justified manner in the shooting death of Mr. Sterling."

Writer Brent Staples

The question now facing the Sacramento City Council, the California State Attorney's Office and the Sacramento Police Department is one which members of the community who protested during a City Council meeting on Tuesday night have already raised:

Were the two Sacramento PD officers who fired 20 shots at Stephon Clark while he was in the backyard of his own home acting in a "reasonable and justified manner"?

The answer, which must come from a court of law, will obviously take time to articulate and materialize.

But it should be viewed in the context of the words of Brent Staples from his op-ed written in the wake of Trayvon Martin:

"Very few Americans make a conscious decision to subscribe to racist views. But the toxic connotations that the culture has associated with blackness have been embedded in thought, language, and social convention for hundreds of years. This makes it easy for people to see the world through a profoundly bigoted lens without being aware that they are doing so."

It's that lens that lies at the heart of the death of Alton Sterling, Stephon Clark, Trayvon Martin and so many other men of color in this country.

Tried, convicted, sentenced and executed in a span of minutes - far from any court of law, denied the right to legal counsel guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and brutally silenced before having the chance to testify on their own behalf.

And as the cases of Alton Sterling and Trayvon Martin both demonstrated, found complicit in their own deaths and cruelly forced into the unfathomable role of being silent witnesses for their own prosecution by a judicial system that views plaintiffs and defendants through "a profoundly bigoted lens."

There's nothing remotely reasonable or justified about that.

Are Republicans Indoctrinating New Democrats?

A civilian after a Saudi airstrike in Yemen [Reuters] 

Journalist Nicolas Niarchos' gripping New Yorker Radio Hour segment on WNYC, titled "The American Bombs Falling on Yemen", sheds light on a dark corner of American and British foreign policy.

The role of the U.S. and U.K. governments in the systematic bombing campaign against Yemen being carried out by Saudi Arabia.

The ongoing conflict has claimed an estimated 12,907 civilian lives.

But Niarchos' New Yorker Radio Hour piece focused on the death a highly-regarded Yemeni politician named Abdulqader Hilal Al-Dabab during a Saudi airstrike on a funeral in Sana'a on October 8, 2016 that killed 140 civilians and injured over 500 people.

The Saudi government blamed the airstrike on poor intelligence - one can only wonder what the reasoning is for the disturbing number of innocent people killed by airstrikes at weddings in Yemen.

Aside from the shocking civilian death toll, as an American, one of the most troubling aspects of "the forgotten war" is that most of the bombs, missiles, rockets and aircraft being used by the Saudis in Yemen are made by American, British and French defense contractors.

U.S. military aircraft also conduct airborne refueling operations for Saudi military aircraft and assist with targeting in Yemen for the 100-plus airstrikes per-day that currently take place - airstrikes that have destroyed homes, hospitals, markets, roads, schools, airports and port facilities.

Niarcho made the troubling observation that one of the long-term costs of America's role in what some experts are calling the world's worst humanitarian crisis, is that untold numbers of young Yemenis angered at U.S. support of the Saudi's, are being indoctrinated by radical Islamic terrorist groups eager to use the war as a recruiting tool.

Saturday's March For Our Lives protest in Washington

Given the borderless, asymmetrical nature of terrorist attacks by splinter groups associated with or funded by ISIS, the idea that the U.S. military and American defense contractors' engagement in a destructive proxy war in the poorest nation in the mideast is having the unintended effect of bolstering the ranks of ISIS (who may in turn attack innocent western civilians) is a truly frightening irony to ponder.

I was thinking about that on Saturday as Americans took to the streets in support of stricter gun control laws.

Members of Congress may be on their spring break, but the hundreds of thousands who turned out in cities and towns across America and the world for the March For Our Lives protests over the weekend left little doubt that Republicans have their homework cut out for them.

Given the numbers of people who turned out over the weekend, it's pretty clear that the Republican Party's worn rhetoric about protecting American's 2nd Amendment rights is not going cut it when it comes to the upcoming mid-term elections.

Saturday's protests made it clear that people are fed up with the Republican-majority Congress refusing to pass gun control legislation despite the thousands of Americans killed by gun violence over the past eight years that the GOP has controlled the House.

The recent spending bill passed by Congress (once again passed at the last minute with little in the way of public input or feedback) did contain goodies for both conservatives and liberals, and it rebuked the Trump administration's efforts to gut federal agencies like the State Department and EPA by underfunding them.

But there was little meat on the bone in terms of the kinds of meaningful gun control legislation that a majority of Americans now support.

Including reinstating a ban on selling semi-automatic rifles, banning large capacity ammunition clips and bolstering federal background checks for firearm purchases.

You've seen clips of some of the emotional and impassioned speeches made by young Americans mobilized in support of gun control to stop the senseless mass killings that are making America less safe.

Republicans are not going to hold onto a congressional majority by placating the NRA and the tiny fraction of the American populace who view any type of reasonable gun control law as some kind of blasphemy against the 2nd Amendment.

Mainstream Americans, Democrats, Republicans and independents alike support the 2nd Amendment.

But they want students to be safe in schools and colleges and people to be safe in public places like churches, movie theaters and clubs.

Bottom line: a majority of the American people, including licensed gun owners like myself, people of different ethnicities and religions, Republicans and Democrats, old and young - all support stricter gun controls.

A WWII U.S. Army vet who fought under General
George Patton at the Battle of the Bulge

To me it's like the U.S. backing the Saudis' war against Yemen having the effect of indoctrinating people into a radical Islamic, anti-American mindset.

By dragging their feet on gun control and refusing to respond to calls for reasonable legislation that will help stem the flow of civilian deaths by firearms in this country, Republicans are inadvertently indoctrinating a whole generation of young people into the Democratic Party.

That's not good for the long-term prospects of a political party whose average voters are older than average Democratic voters.

A party who aren't attracting as many new members either.

Republican members of Congress sitting at home watching Trump implode and quietly hoping the March For Our Lives protestors are going to slowly fade out would do well to think about which party those young activists are going to register for when they turn 18.

Aside from the odd reflexively-right-wing Tomi Lahren wanna-be, Saturday's protests gave an awful lot of soon-to-be voters a master class in influencing the legislative agenda of the congress that represents them.

And they're going to be voting the issues that directly impact their lives.

Many of them have already been indoctrinated into the Democratic Party, not necessarily because of what Democrats did, but for what they stand for.

And for what Republicans ignored.

Real Illinois Nazis - Arthur Jones' Congressional Run

Arthur Jones, Republican congressional candidate
for Illinois 3rd District sporting his MAGA hat 

Read an interesting post on Twitter the other night from Nick Lowles, an anti-fascist who works with a British organization called Hope Not Hate.

He posted a link to a Peterborough Telegraph article about Alan Bull, a Labour Party candidate running for a local city council seat in Peterborough - a city in eastern England about 73 miles north of London.

Bull faces troubling allegations about sharing anti-Semitic posts on his Facebook page.

Those alleged posts include a shared link to an article questioning the Holocaust, which instantly reminded me of the long-time Holocaust denier Arthur Jones (pictured above).

Now of course the First Amendment protects the right of free speech in this country, so it's the right of Arthur Jones (or any other American) to say or believe any kind of nonsense he wants to.

Especially given that he's a Vietnam veteran who served his country.

But Jones is also the Republican Party candidate running for Illinois' 3rd Congressional District, which includes parts of the south side of Chicago and suburban areas just southwest of the city.

Local, state and national Republican Party organizations have disavowed Jones, publicly at least; thanks to the Citizens United SCOTUS decision in 2010, dark money is basically untraceable.

Jake and Elwood Blues prepare to run Illinois Nazis
off a bridge in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers 

So who really knows which members of the Republican establishment are actually funneling money to this guy.

But it's enough that Jones won more than 20,000 votes to earn the right to be the Republican candidate for the 3rd District this November.

Now I don't know a whole lot about this district, but like a lot of other people I can't help but wonder; are there 20,000 politically-active Illinois Nazis?

In the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, when brothers Jake and Elwood Blues come upon a rally of neo-nazis in a park, Jake (played by John Belushi) famously sneers, "I hate Illinois Nazis!" before Elwood guns the accelerator of the Bluesmobile, forcing the swastika-garbed goons to dive off the bridge into the water to avoid being run over.

The subsequent cheers of the gathered anti-Nazi demonstrators makes it clear the Illinois Nazi's are vastly outnumbered.

Now obviously that was a scene in a fictional film, but it made an important cultural statement back in 1980, and Arthur Jones getting 20,000-plus votes 38 years later - when he's a known neo-nazi -  makes one wonder what's going on the mind of conservative voters in the 3rd District of Illinois.

Is it Trump, or something else?

According to Wikipedia, the Illinois 3rd is about 73% white, 33% Hispanic and 5% African-American, it's been a Democratic congressional seat since 1993 and is currently held by Dan Lipinski - so perhaps the GOP just figured the seat isn't worth spending money on to fight for this fall since the district will most likely swing Democratic.

George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American
Nazi Party at a rally in the 1960's

It's also important to note that Arthur Jones isn't just some kooky garden-variety Holocaust denier who thinks one of the worst mass exterminations in human history was a "racket" that never happened.

He's a former head of the American Nazi Party who's spoken at numerous neo-nazi and white supremacists events and rally around the country.

The ANP was founded back in 1959 by George Lincoln Rockwell.

As the photo at the top of this page shows, Arthur Jones was (not surprisingly) a Trump supporter at one point, as evidenced by his sprightly red MAGA cap.

But once Cadet Bonespurs won the election and tapped his son-in-law Jared Kushner (who is Jewish) to be one of his top advisers, Jones, and many other white supremacists quickly turned on Trump.

For example, as Al Jazeera noted in an article on Wednesday, at a National Socialist Movement conference held in Pikesville, Kentucky in 2017, Jones told a crowd:

"Now President Trump - he has surrounded himself with hordes of Jews, including a Jew in his own family." 

After reading Nick Lowles' Twitter post about Alan Bull, I sent him a message about Arthur Jones, because if he hadn't already read about Arthur Jones, I wanted to be sure that Hope Not Hate was aware that neo-nazis like Jones are trying to infiltrate American politics too.

According to their Website, Hope Not Hate was founded in 2004 in response to the disturbing rise of far-right, anti-immigrant political parties like the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL).

Republican congressional candidate Paul Nehlen

Like far-right political parties in other parts of Europe, the BNP and EDL are organizations which were gaining ground in local elections by exploiting anger, bigotry and frustration over economic stagnation to scapegoat and vilify immigrants and people of color.

Until groups like Hope Not Hate began organizing to confront them and counteract their message of divisiveness and hate.


A message parroted by some Republicans that reflects a dark side of the political playbook that's sadly familiar here in the U.S. in the wake of Trump's toxic 2016 presidential campaign and his tacit acceptance of white supremacists.

Take anti-Semite Paul Nehlen for instance (pictured above), a Republican challenger for the congressional seat currently held by House Speaker Paul Ryan - Wisconsin's 1st District.

Nehlen was crushed in the Republican primary by Ryan back in 2016, but he's running again.

Emboldened (in part) by Trump's victory and the support he's received from scores of followers on social media who are attracted to his open contempt for, and vilification of, Jews.

Nehlen is one of these delusional, racist crackpots who deals in the political currency of the fantasy of an "ethnocentric white state" to ignite disenfranchised conservative voters who are (sadly) easily manipulated by playing on economic fears conveniently laid at the feet of religious and ethnic minorities.

Republican Montana candidate John Abarr 

 "Others" on whom all problems can be conveniently blamed.

If you want to get a sense of who Nehlen is, check out Emma Green's Atlantic article from January.

In it she notes that, among other toxic comments, Nehlen has tweeted:

"Poop, incest and pedophilia. why are those common themes repeated so often with Jews?"  

Guys like Arthur Jones and Paul Nehlen aren't alone either, Klansman John Abarr is running for the state legislature in the 21st District in Montana too.

It's a pretty sad state of the Republican Party that people like this are openly running for national office.

It'll be interesting to see how that impacts mainstream American voters at the polls in November.

It's just too bad John Belushi is no longer here to exhort his fictional brother Elwood to run these clowns off a proverbial bridge - but I have a feeling American voters will do that at the ballot box.

Mark Anthony Conditt & 45's Silence

17-YO Austin, Texas bombing victim Draylen Mason 

As a gentle but steady fall of snow and sleet began to blanket the lawn outside of my office on Tuesday afternoon, it seemed prudent to use my lunch hour to swing by the bank, gas up my SUV and stop by the grocery store to pick up a few things.

The parking lot and interior of my local ACME in Hamilton, New Jersey were crowded with people doing the same thing - stocking up before the arrival of what's being called the "Four'easter".

The fourth winter storm to hit the east coast this month - and on the first day of spring no less.

March truly has come in like a lion for many here in the U.S., no more so than for 17-year-old high school senior Draylen Mason (pictured above), 39-year old Anthony Stephan House, and 75-year-old Esperanza Herrera - all residents of Austin, Texas.

They're three of the five victims of Mark Anthony Conditt, a 23-year-old white man who blew himself up inside his vehicle early Wednesday morning after a police chase -  Austin Police Chief Brian Manley described Conditt as a "serial bomber" during a press conference on Monday morning.

As has been widely reported, Conditt's first victim, Anthony Stephan House, was killed on Friday March 2nd when a package containing an explosive device detonated at his home.

Ten days later on Monday March 12th, Draylen Mason, a talented student and musician, was killed and Esperanza Herrera seriously injured when similar devices hidden inside packages blew up at separate locations in Austin. 

23-year-old Austin bomber Mark Anthony Conditt

The horrific and barbaric method of these cowardly attacks is chilling enough.

But the fact that Conditt chose to target innocent people in the homes of their families is a particularly troubling reminder of individuals with hyper-conservative political views venting their internalized rage against those they perceive as being "other".

Excerpts posted from Conditt's blog clearly show his issues with "others."

In an article for the Austin-American Statesman this morning, a 24-year-old man named Jeremiah Jensen who grew up with Conditt told reporters that the bombing suspect was home-schooled as a child in what was described as a fairly religious household.

Jensen, who attended the same church as Conditt and was also home-schooled, theorized that the relative social isolation of his upbringing may have played a factor in Conditt's decision to use bombs to kill innocent people - as he told the Austin-American Statesman:

"It's just very difficult for a lot of kids to find a way to fit in once they are out in the real world, I have a feeling that is what happened with Mark. I don't remember him ever being sure of what he wanted to do." 

As journalist Jessica Bride reported earlier this morning in an article for Heavy.com, excerpts from a blog Conditt wrote while he was a student at Austin Community College show that he described himself as "conservative" and disagreed with gay marriage, compared abortion to bestiality and was pro-death penalty.

Federal investigators at the scene of the explosion
that injured Esperanza Herrera  [Photo - Getty Images]

But simply holding those kinds of views doesn't necessarily explain Conditt's decision to target and kill two innocent African-American men with bombs.

75-year-old Esperanza Herrera was Hispanic, but supposedly the package containing the bomb that injured her was not specifically addressed to her and she was simply carrying it when it exploded and injured her.

So based on information released by investigators thus far, it's still not clear if Conditt was specifically targeting someone who was Hispanic.

Conditt also injured two white men in their early 20's on Sunday when one of them stepped on a tripwire that detonated an explosive device left near a street in southwest Austin - both men were seriously injured but not a lot of information has been released about them.

But given Conditt's views, and the fact that the two men were injured together, I suppose it is fair to ask the question if those two men were homosexual and were somehow targeted because of it.

Regardless, what is clear is that Trump waited an astounding 18 days to even offer a public comment about the bombings in Austin - was it because the first three victims were African-American and Hispanic?

After all, Trump is the same crass bigot who was so quick to take to Twitter to vilify African-American NFL players last fall for (peacefully and nonviolently) taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem to protest unjustified use of force against people of color by some police.

London Mayor Sidiq Khan riding the NY City
subway to the 9/11 Memorial in September, 2016

He also directed his vile criticism at Sadiq Khan, the Muslim Mayor of London whose parents were born in Pakistan, immediately after 7 people were killed and 48 wounded in a violent terrorist attack that took place in downtown London back in June, 2017.

Trump intentionally took a comment Khan made out of context to suggest the mayor had told U.K. citizens not to be alarmed over the attacks.

So true to form, time and again Trump has used divisive, asinine comments to inject himself into high-profile events.

The types of events receiving wide media coverage that he uses as a platform to trumpet his own bigotry and satisfy his unquenchable need for media attention.

But when these events revolve around terrorist attacks in which the victims are people of color or those he perceives as being an "other", (or the perpetrators are white...), he remains silent - as if his outrage is reserved for those he views as reflecting his own shrinking base of support.

Trump waited until Tuesday to offer some generic, tepid comments about the bombings, over two weeks after the death of Anthony House and over a week after the death of Draylen Mason and the injury to Esperanza Herrera.

And even then his comments came off as if some domestic policy advisor had handed him some hastily-scribbled comments to make about the incident because of the media flack the White House was receiving because of Trump's silence on the issue - not because he felt moved to talk about it.

Trump's silence on the Austin bombings lasted 18 days

If I had to grade the White House's reaction to the bombings in Austin over the past month, I'd probably give them a D -.

Americans saw and heard only chaos and division, rather than leadership and unity coming from an embattled president with a weak approval rating who seems disconnected from the needs of the American people as a whole.


Congress didn't fare much better on the Austin bombings this month either, which isn't surprising.

The Republican-majority House and Senate have demonstrated only legislative impotence in terms of passing laws that would place some kind reasonable restrictions on access to the handguns and semi-automatic weapons that have killed 3,076 people in 2018 - including 732 children between the ages of 0 to 17.

Sadly, random, violent attacks by right-wing individuals fueled by the hatred cultivated by Trump's own toxic rhetoric have become an unfortunate part of the landscape of this country.

For someone who seems to relish the media attention and ego rush he gets from sewing the seeds of division and hatred, Trump sure doesn't like to talk about the crops it spawns.

He likes to talk about the growth in the field, but pretends he has nothing to do with the harvest.

On the day that Mark Conditt blew himself up rather than face the repercussions of his heinous actions, perhaps it's appropriate that a large swath of the U.S. is being pummeled by the "Four'easter".

Instead of the first full day of spring being one of growth and renewal, today we've witnessed the death of a young man who left behind a dark legacy of fear and death - born of his own isolation, contempt of others, and cold indifference to life.

The end of winter can't come soon enough.

Trump's Friday Night Massacre

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe

The current political landscape in America has such a surreal quality these days that the fictional political worlds depicted on TV shows like Netflix's House of Cards and HBO's VEEP look like tamer versions of reality in comparison.

After having a few drinks at my local on Friday night, the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe just 26 hours before the 21-year FBI veteran was set to retire, left me floored.

Now Trump has done so many incredibly stupid things since being inaugurated, that ineptitude has become sort of a default mode for a chaotic White House that revolves around his narcissism, insecurity, ignorance and paranoia.

But his decision to order Sessions to fire McCabe late Friday night ranks as quite possibly one of the most vile, petty and monumentally-stupid actions ever undertaken by a sitting U.S. president.

Trump interfering in a federal agency's firing of a career employee over an internal disciplinary matter undermines the role of the FBI as a law enforcement body independent of partisan politics - though it has unfortunately been used that way in the past.

In a statement justifying McCabe's firing 26 hours before his previously-announced resignation would take effect, sanctimonious AG Jeff Sessions claimed that the FBI's internal disciplinary office and the Justice Department's Inspector General Michael Horowitz (both of whom Sessions oversees...) found "that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor - including under oath - on multiple occasions."

Remember, Sessions perjured himself under oath during Senate hearings by lying about multiple contacts he and other members of the Trump campaign staff had with Russian individuals before the election.

Dept. of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz

So he's got some cojones pointing his finger at anyone because they "lacked candor". 

Especially after firing someone late on a Friday night in a cowardly attempt to minimize the political fallout from a White House action that reeks of authoritarian overreach and vindictive pettiness.

There's something childish and trite about it that's beneath the presidency.

After all McCabe, who served as acting head of the FBI for three months last year after Trump fired James Comey, had already yielded to White House pressure and announced his resignation.

So Trump's action, essentially denying McCabe government pension benefits he earned over the course of a 21-year career at the FBI, comes off as overkill motivated by Trump's own petty personal political vendetta.

And is clearly part of Trump's desire to convince the public that he's the victim of a vast Democratic conspiracy and purge the top ranks of the FBI until he can appoint someone who will fire Robert Mueller to end the special investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections and collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

But despite his quasi-delusional perception of the world, Trump's not a king or a CEO.

Not only has McCabe lawyered-up, as ABC News' Mike Levine reported on Saturday afternoon, an unnamed source says that the highly-intelligent former protege of former FBI Director James Comey (like his ex boss) kept detailed written memos of his meetings with Trump.

Memos which were turned over to the special investigation being headed up by Robert Mueller and could be potentially used to corroborate James Comey's testimony about Trump's efforts to obstruct justice by asking Comey to back off an investigation of former General Michael Flynn.

Despite having no idea of what kind of evidence Robert Mueller is sitting on, Trump woke up this morning and began spinning the baseless accusation that McCabe is lying about taking notes during meetings he had with 45 - who, predictably, is now calling them "fake memos".

Par for the course for America's "very stable genius."

Defacing Intelligent Discourse

The Asheville Fraternal Order of Police building

Monday's report by local North Carolina ABC affiliate station WLOS that an as-yet unnamed individual spray-painted 'Black Lives Matter' on the front exterior of the Asheville Fraternal Order of Police building is troubling.

It reflects the deep divisions resulting from the videotape of ex-APD officer Chris Hickman beating, tasing and choking Johnnie Rush last August after stopping him for jaywalking.

As WLOS reported, the defacing of the Asheville FOP building (pictured above) happened early Monday morning, and though the suspect also vandalized the windows of an AFOP van and attempted to disable security cameras, he was still caught on tape.

Local news affiliates who covered the story report that he appears to be a white guy wearing a hoodie.

According to local NC television affiliate WSPA, the AFOP president Rondell Lance told reporters that he'd personally already condemned the actions of Chris Hickman.

Lance also said he doesn't believe the building was defaced by anyone associated with the Asheville chapter of Black Lives Matter.

He believes it was someone with their own agenda trying to further fuel divisiveness.

Now as I write this on Thursday night, not a whole lot is known about this guy is; or why he did this.

A BLM protest in Minnesota in spring, 2015

But he clearly wasn't dispatched by Black Lives Matter to spray paint a police organization's building with the name of their organization.

According to their Webpage, the Black Lives Matter mission statement reads (in part): "The Black Lives Matter Global Network is a chapter-based, member-led organization whose mission is to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes."

The phony, one-dimensional descriptions of BLM peddled by opportunistic conservative ex-politician blowhards like Chris Christie and Fear Meister Rudy Giuliani, or the usual media suspects of quack, right-wing media like Laura Ingraham, Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh, demonize BLM as some kind of violent terrorist splinter cell.

But in reality BLM is actually about peaceful, non-violent dissent, organized community action and education -  not spray-painting police property in the dead of night.

As a lover of the freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, I'm all for Freedom of Expression in all it's many forms.

But to me, defacing property with spray paint, or anything else for that matter, is just plain wrong.

And it's vandalism, like the kind we saw on the walls of schools, people's vehicles and homes in the days following Trump's election in November, 2016 - including the swastikas some right-wing derelict spray painted on the walls of my elementary school in Bethesda, Maryland.

Some of the thousands of students who walked out
of school to protest gun violence on Wednesday 

If someone wants to use writing to express their opposition about something, by all means put it on a sign, in an op-ed, book, magazine, social media platform or blog.

Hell, you can write on yourself (or your own property) if you want to, but to me it's just low-rent to deface public or private property with your own personal agenda.

If you want to protest something, engage in peaceful organized resistance like students across the U.S. did on Wednesday to advocate for stricter gun control laws.

There's little question that those students were, in part, inspired by the BLM-organized marches and protests that have taken place in cities and towns across America over the past four years - sparked by the outrage over the judicial system holding no one legally accountable for the unjustified killings of unarmed African-American teenagers Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice and so many others.

BLM's membership (and supporters) is made up of people of all races, so my guess would be that the individual in the hoodie who defaced the AFOP building early Monday is more than likely someone trying to steer anger over the Chris Hickman videotape onto the BLM movement.

BLM had nothing to do with Chris Hickman harassing, beating, tasing and choking Johnnie Rush as he was walking home from his job washing dishes last August.

As writer and Huffington Post contributor Gennette Cordova observed on her Twitter feed yesterday, "Video surveillance has shown that a white person did this, which all black people knew when they initially saw this story."

Whoever spray painted that building tried to use a lie to stir up the divisiveness and hatred regularly cultivated by Trump - in doing so he defaced intelligent discourse on issues that are critical to the American people as a whole.

This morning's Washington Post article about Cadet Bonespurs having bragged to a crowd of Republican donors in Missouri Wednesday night that he intentionally lied to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the U.S. having a trade deficit with our neighbors to the north shows that the hoodie-guy in Asheville isn't the only one using a lie to sew division.

No doubt they both want to Make America Great Again.

The Price of Walking Home: Chris Hickman Charged

Ex-Asheville PD Officer Chris Hickman

The disturbing body cam footage of ex-Asheville PD officer Chris Hickman brutally punching, choking and tasing 33 year-old Johnnie Rush on the night of August 25, 2017 is a sobering reminder of the extent to which internalized racial bias continues to fuel the unnecessary use of excessive physical force by some members of the American law enforcement community.

Hickman's sarcastic and cynical taunting, and his sadistic beating of a citizen is egregious enough - after being choked into unconsciousness, Rush is lucky to be alive.

Small wonder this sickening example of police brutality took almost seven month's to be released.

But what makes this incident even more disturbing is the fact that Rush was simply walking home after a long shift washing dishes at a local Cracker Barrel restaurant.

He wasn't fleeing a bank robbery, running with a loaded gun in his hand, or trying to evade the police - the man was walking home from work.

Municipal ordinances that selectively target "Manner of Walking" have been the subject of this blog on more than one occasion - starting in the wake of the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown by ex-Ferguson PD officer Darren Wilson in August, 2014.

An in-depth investigation of the Ferguson Police Department's policing practices by the Department of Justice in 2015 found that a staggering 95% of people stopped by Ferguson PD officers for one of several "Manner of Walking" ordinances were African-American.

To put that statistic into perspective, according to 2010 Census data 67.4% of Ferguson residents were African-American, 29.3% were white.

The practice of some police officers essentially criminalizing individuals for walking down the street, or even allowing officers to randomly decide that the manner in which an individual walks merits suspicion, or justifies a legal excuse to stop and frisk someone, certainly isn't limited to Missouri.

For example back on October 19, 2016, I blogged about a white, plain-clothes Minnesota police officer Tim Olson being videotaped by a passing driver as he accosted and arrested an African-American man named Larnie Thomas who was walking along the side of the road in broad daylight.

Asheville (NC) Police Chief Tammy Hooper 

But the incident with Christopher Hickman is unusual in that it's a police stop based on how and where someone was walking - one that resulted in such a violent beating being caught on police videotape.

Local residents who packed the Asheville Citizens Police Advisory Committee meeting last Wednesday night, were understandably angered, confused and looking for answers about Hickman's conduct.

Like many over the past few days, I've been trying to figure out why Asheville, North Carolina police chief Tammy Hooper took five months to launch a criminal investigation - and given the potential legal liability based on Hickman's behavior, why the Asheville City Council was kept in the dark for months too.

In a thoughtful and detailed op-ed on the incident published in the Asheville Citizen Times last Friday, City Council member Vijay Kapoor noted that Chief Hooper immediately took Hickman's badge and gun after Johnnie Rush filed a use of force complaint the day after the incident and she watched the videotape.

As Kapoor notes, she also placed Hickman on administrative duty - this was all within about 24 hours of the incident taking place.

But if you take some time to read Kapoor's comments, the investigation seems to have morphed into an intentionally slow-footed combination of bureaucratic foot-dragging by the Asheville Police Department, the City Attorney's Office and the City Manager's Office.

If Chief Hooper felt that Hickman's behavior in the videotape was bad enough that it warranted taking his badge and gun and pulling him off the street - why didn't she push harder for an independent investigation?

Johnnie Rush after Hickman's beating 

Or report the incident to the City Council?

The result seems to be sort of a ping-pong match between an APD internal investigation and the District Attorney wavering on whether or not to file charges against Hickman - and nothing happened.

That is until the videotape was finally leaked to the Asheville Citizen Times in February six months after the incident and the story blew up.

With national media attention suddenly focused on Asheville's handling of the incident amid growing outrage over the videotaped beating of Johnnie Rush, charges were filed against Hickman last Thursday - including assault by strangulation and assault inflicting serious injury.

Additionally, as the Charlotte Observer reported on Monday, the Buncombe County DA's office quickly announced it is dropping charges against 17 different people arrested by Hickman.

The FBI is reportedly investigating the incident, but with Attorney General Jeff Sessions (a proven racist who scaled back DOJ investigations of racially-biased police departments) heading up the Department of Justice, it's highly doubtful anything substantive will come of that.

But the important thing is the truth came out, even if it did take six months for the video to finally be seen by the public and the Asheville City Council - and more importantly Christopher Hickman was taken off the street and forced to resign from the APD in January.

Time will tell what becomes of the assault charges filed against him.

Would any of this had happened had the body-cam footage not been leaked to the press?

Probably not.

Johnnie Rush would likely have been charged with trespassing, jaywalking and resisting arrest etc., his complaint likely would have been swept under the rug, and in the end it would have been the word of a black man in North Carolina against two white Asheville PD officers.

And no one would ever know the price he paid for walking home.

The Narrow Scope of Republican Justice

Trump's name is removed from a Panama hotel after
his company was accused of mismanagement  

Increasingly, it seems clear that the scope of "justice" as defined by the Republican Party that now controls both the White House and both chambers of Congress, is remarkably limited to targeting those seen by some conservatives as "others".

The traditional role of the Department of Justice, as the nation's top independent legal authority, has been usurped to function as a de facto enforcer of the right-wing ideology that defines the Trump administration.

While former top White House adviser Steve Bannon was over in Paris on Saturday extolling members of France's far right political party the National Front to embrace their racism and xenophobic views, here in the U.S., rampant violations of protocol, ethics, laws and morality by the White House go all but ignored by the racist perjurer masquerading as attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

Despite a court ruling in Panama last week in favor of a majority investor in the Trump Panama City hotel named Orestes Fintiklis, who filed suit to oust the Trump Organization because of serious lapses in management of the property, you won't find Sessions directing Department of Justice resources towards investigating any of Trump's numerous violations of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution - which expressly forbids those holding office from receiving "profit", "benefit" or "advantage of any kind" from the title of his or her elected office.

After directing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to launch Operation Keep Safe, yet another round of crack-of-dawn anti-immigrant arrests in northern California two weeks ago, last Wednesday Sessions announced the DOJ was suing the state of California over three state laws intended to protect immigrant's rights.

As NBC News justice correspondent Pete Williams reported last Tuesday, Sessions' lawsuit targets SB-54, AB-450 and AB-103, three laws recently passed by the California legislature intended to put into place protections that would limit the federal government's ability to arrest undocumented immigrants at their place of employment, or target them in court or upon release from jail.
   

Part of California's Adelanto Detention Facility
owned and run by the GEO Group 

According to Williams, Sessions is even going after state law AB-103, "which requires the state to inspect detention facilities where federal authorities are holding immigrants who face deportation." 
 
Just consider that last one for a moment.

Jeff Sessions is suing California for passing a law that would mandate state inspections of federal facilities where deportees are being held.

Facilities like the Adelanto Detention Facility (pictured above), a privately-operated facility located in a remote desert region of San Bernardino County, California 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles with a capacity of about 2,000 male and female detainees.

As journalist Paloma Esquivel reported in an LA Times article in August, 2017, the Adelanto facility,  has gained notoriety for a series of suicides, hunger strikes and deaths of detainees while in custody since it first opened in 2011.

Deaths like that of Raul Ernesto Morales-Ramos back in 2015.

As Esquivel's LA Times piece notes, in the months leading up to his death, in one of the two written  complaints Ramos submitted to Adelanto officials, he told them:

"To who receives this, I am letting you know that I am very sick and they don't want to care for me. The nurse gave me ibuprofen, and that only alleviates me for a few hours. Let me know if you can help me, I only need medial attention."

GEO Group CEO George Foley

A medical report released after Ramos' death in detention noted that he had an abdominal mass which had been present for months - as Esquivel observed, a doctor who examined him wrote that it was "the largest she has ever seen in her practice."

As journalist Mirren Gidda reported in an article for Newsweek, two days after then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced that Department of Justice would begin scaling back federal use of private for-profit prisons on August 17, 2016, a subsidiary of the GEO Group donated $100,000 to Rebuilding America Now - a pro-Trump Political Action Committee.

A month later GEO gave $200,000 to another Republican PAC (the Senate Leadership Fund) and on November 1st, just days before the 2016 presidential election, GEO gave another $125,000 to the pro-Trump PAC.

So it's not surprising why Attorney General Jeff Sessions is suing California for passing a law mandating state inspections of federal facilities like Adelanto - shedding light on GEO Group's controversial record of management of juvenile and adult prison facilities across the U.S. is certainly not in the interest of the Trump administration.

Especially considering that as a U.S. Senator Sessions was not only one of the leading anti-immigration advocates on Capitol Hill, he also opposed bipartisan legislation to reduce mass incarceration in American prisons.

And as Trump's attorney general he's advocated ramping up the incarceration of undocumented immigrants as well as non-violent drug offenders since day one.

Given the fallout from media coverage of the rampant ongoing chaos of the White House following the recent resignations of Communications Director Hope Hicks and Economic Adviser Gary Cohn, it hardly comes as a surprise that Sessions would initiate a lawsuit against the state of California for its efforts to protect the rights of undocumented immigrants.

Republicans spent most of former President Obama's two terms in office whining about overreach by "Big Government", so the idea of a Republican attorney general expanding federal authority to try and trample individual state efforts to protect their immigrant populations represents a pretty remarkable change of government philosophy for both Sessions and the Republican Party.

In fact it's a total 180 degree turn that reveals that Republicans like Big Government when it suits their own ideological or financial needs and wants.

Spencer Hogue and Evelyn and Albert Turner, also
known as "The Marion Three"

Historically, when it came to the Republican Party using race as a wedge issue to expand its support among white working-class voters in the 60's, 70's and 80's, "States Rights" was the clarion call-codeword  used to champion the rights of individual states to oppose federally-mandated laws on school desegregation, voting rights and the enforcement of civil rights.

The Confederacy rallied behind "States Rights" as the right of southern states to keep the institution of slavery intact.

While Jefferson Beauregard Sessions (named after Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard) was born and raised in a rabidly pro-States Rights segregated Alabama, he demonstrated a willingness to use the power of the federal government to reflect his own racist ideology early in his professional career.

When he was serving as the U.S. attorney for the Office of the Southern District of Alabama in 1985, Sessions decided to try and prosecute three well-known and respected local civil rights activists, Albert Turner, his wife Evelyn Turner and Spencer Hogue, Jr. (pictured above) for voter fraud.

The Turners and Hogue, who became known as the "The Marion Three", had worked doggedly to help poor African-Americans in rural Perry County, Alabama register to vote and participate in the voting process in a county in which blacks were the numerical majority.

As Scott Zamost, Drew Griffin and Curt Devine reported in an article for CNN.com, Albert Turner had worked as an aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and marched alongside the civil rights icon in the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965 in support of voting rights.

Turner formed the Perry County Civic League to help consolidate and expand black representation in local politics, and Sessions tried to prosecute him, his wife and Hogue on 29 separate charges of tampering with voting ballots during the 1984 Democratic presidential primary.

Then-U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions during 1986 Senate
hearings for his failed nomination to the federal bench

While a grand jury indicted The Marion Three, they were eventually found not guilty and acquitted of all charges in a highly-publicized case that was widely seen as "racially motivated."

Especially considering the institutional segregation and voter oppression which had left blacks in Perry County marginalized in terms of political representation and county services for years.

The Marion Three case exposed Sessions' views on race and eventually helped to sink his nomination to be a federal judge.

His highly-publicized Senate hearings in 1986 included testimony from four different lawyers who'd worked with Sessions in the Office of the Southern District of Alabama - all four testified about a variety of different comments Sessions had made in DOJ offices that were seen as racist and demonstrated his personal contempt for civil rights and organizations like the NAACP.

Coretta Scott King famously penned an open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee urging Sessions's nomination to the federal bench be denied because of his having used the power of his office to "intimidate and frighten elderly black voters."

While he eventually withdrew his nomination to be a federal judge, he was later elected State Attorney General of Alabama in 1995 where he championed a state school funding model that disproportionally underfunded majority-African-American schools - a model which was later found to be unconstitutional.

Anyway that's who Jeff Sessions is.

ICE agents escorting an immigrant to plane

His announcement of a lawsuit against the state of California last week to try and attack legitimate efforts to protect immigrants within their borders is simply a reflection of the overt racial bias he demonstrated in his attempts to prosecute The Marion Three for voter fraud back in 1984.

As much as Trump demeans him publicly, including referring to him as "Mr. Magoo" recently, Jeff Sessions is exactly what the Trump administration ordered.

An attorney general whose archaic views on immigrants, people of color and mass incarceration are informed by his own personal bigotry.

One who is willing to use the power of the Department of Justice as a tool to enforce the "otherism" that lies at the heart of chaotic right-wing ideology of the Trump administration - and twist the DOJ's mission to enable it to function like a quasi-Gestapo where immigrants are concerned.

It's a reflection of the narrow scope of justice as interpreted by the Trump administration and the Republican politicians on Capitol Hill who remain silent - content to savor their precious tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while chaos reigns in the White House.

And inside the immigrant communities they vilify.