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.

Gun Violence in Chicago, Tamar Manasseh & M.A.S.K

The iconic downtown Chicago skyline at night  

Last Wednesday night I watched my beloved New York Yankees win their third-straight away-game against the Chicago White Sox on my iPhone as I battled through a tough case of writer's block.

While the Yanks boast one of the best records in baseball, they limped into Chicago early last Monday morning for a 3-game series against the White Sox, still licking their wounds after losing 4 straight games to their AL East rivals the Boston Red Sox.


A positive end to tough road trip after getting swept in Boston's Fenway Park.

While the Yankees arrived home early Thursday morning for a few hours rest before they beat the visiting Texas Rangers 7-3 to start a welcome eleven-game home stand up in the Bronx, the images of Chicago still linger in my mind.

As a sports fan, former TV reporter and ex-professional athlete, I appreciate good camera work, and one of the visual highlights of the past three Yankees-White Sox game broadcasts (which I watched using the Fox Sports App on my iPhone) were the various stunning evening views of the Chicago skyline with the illuminated downtown towers and streetlights of the city's vast neighborhoods stretching off into the distance on three consecutive clear nights.

My younger brother, who's in town for the weekend, was born in Chicago when my family used to live just outside the city in the suburb of Downer's Grove, Illinois in the early 70's, and I've visited the Windy City a few times since for both work and pleasure.

Most recently for a Penn State vs Notre Dame football game in South Bend, Indiana a few years ago (as a fan, not a player) when I got to spend the weekend at a friend's family's swanky high-rise condo on Chicago's famous Gold Coast on the west side next to Lake Michigan - talk about a view.

Those images, both on the screen of my iPhone and in my mind, stand in stark contrast to the shocking spate of deadly shootings that rocked some sections of Chicago last weekend.

17-year-old Jahnae Patterson, one of 12 people shot
and killed in Chicago between August 3rd - 5th

As was widely reported, between 6pm Friday August 3rd and the night of Sunday August 5th, a staggering 74 people were shot in an explosion of violence that left 12 people between the ages of 11 and 62 dead.

That grisly death toll included 17-year-old Jahnae Patterson who was killed early last Sunday morning when two alleged gang members approached a group of people she was talking with on a sidewalk in the Lawndale section of Chicago and opened fire.

The high-school junior was shot in the face and five others, including two boys aged 11 and 14-years-old, were wounded.

As her horrified mother Tanika Humphries told reporters, "They took my baby's life for no reason."

"No reason" is about the only way to possibly sum up that volume of gun violence taking place over the course of three days - according to Chicago PD, in one three-hour period during that stretch, a person was shot every six minutes.

The devastating toll that the injuries, loss of life and psychological trauma has taken on the residents of the economically-marginalized communities where gun violence is so prevalent, is all but invisible to the radar of the current White House administration - and the majority-Republican lawmakers in Congress responsible drafting the kinds of legislation that could help curb the availability of illegal guns in America.

I mean let's be honest, of all the different guns used to shoot 74 people over three days in Chicago last weekend, how many of those firearms were legally purchased or registered?

How many came from neighboring states like Indiana with much more lax regulations on firearms?

As journalist Tony Cook reported in an Indianapolis Star article re-posted on USA Today.com back in 2015:

"A report from Chicago authorities found that nearly 60% of illegal guns recovered in the city from 2009 to 2013 were first sold in states with more lax gun laws. The largest portion came from Indiana, which accounted for 19% of the illegal guns in Chicago. The report blames Indiana's lax gun laws, which allow gun owners to sell their weapons to other people without background checks or paperwork recording the sale."

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre with accused Russian spy
Maria Butina in 2014

Don't hold you breath waiting for the National Rifle Association to answer pesky questions like that.

The NRA hasn't had much to say on that lately, or much else for that matter.

They're too busy deifying the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.

As if it were a commandment etched in stone on a mountain by God, rather than a section of the U.S. Constitution written back in 1787 just six years after occupying British Army forces under General Charles Cornwallis surrendered to the Continental Army under General George Washington at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.

The ideologically conservative, dependably self-righteous and normally preachy front for gun manufacturers has been conspicuously silent in the wake of the arrest last month of Maria Butina, the 29-year-old Russian national charged with conspiracy and acting as an agent of a foreign government.

The accused Russian spy has ties to, or met with, a long list of current and former Republican politicians including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and many others.

Including South Dakota businessman Paul Erickson, a well-known Republican political consultant and conservative rainmaker currently under investigation for acting as a link between Russian figures working to influence the outcome of the 2016 elections and top Republican officials.

Butina's deep ties to the NRA, as well as to Aleksandr Torshin, the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia (a close ally of Russian President Vladimir with alleged ties to the Russian mafia),  have made the NRA's well-known outsized influence over the Republican Party a rather prickly subject for both the GOP and Donald Trump as the latter's ties to Russia threaten to topple his chaotic presidency.

Is the President of the United States responsible for alleged gang members going on a three-day shooting spree in a major American city?

Of course not, but leadership starts at the top, and the contrast in how a sitting president uses the office to address the epidemic of gun violence in Chicago couldn't be more stark.

President Obama addresses the IACP in Chicago

Back on October 27, 2015, President Obama gave a speech to law enforcement professionals gathered at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) annual conference in Chicago.

In an effort to shed light on some of the root causes of gun violence in the city, and bring attention to the devastating effects on local communities, Obama highlighted specific ways in which lax gun regulations in neighboring states allow illegal firearms to flow unchecked into the city - and the socioeconomic factors that contribute to the violence.

As journalist Rick Pearson reported about Obama's speech for the Chicago Tribune:

"Obama said the root of the city's gun violence rested in neighborhoods facing poverty, few job prospects, rampant drug abuse, broken families and easy availability of guns that youths can buy cheaper than books."

On the rare occasions that Donald Trump or his White House press secretary Sarah Sanders bother to publicly mention gun violence in Chicago, it's not about the toll it takes on the communities where it happens.

It's usually in the context of a dishonest attempt to use the firearms epidemic in the Windy City as a talking point to justify NOT passing new gun control legislation - and of course nurture Trump's warped perception of the city as some kind of violent, dystopian wasteland overrun by crime and populated by the types of "others" he regularly vilifies.

Both Trump and Sanders, dependable mouthpieces for the NRA's propaganda, are both fond of spreading the oft-repeated lie that Chicago is an example of why gun control laws are not effective.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sander tears up
as a student asks her about gun violence in May, 2018 

As Sanders suggested in a White House press conference in October, 2017 after the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead and 851 injured.

When a reporter asked Sanders whether the Las Vegas mass shooting indicated the time had finally come for the Republican-majority Congress to act and pass gun control measures, she robotically repeated the standard Republican response to any kind of mass shooting.


Saying that it was "premature" to discuss passing stronger gun control legislation, Sanders said:

"If you look to Chicago, where you had over 4,000 victims of gun-related crimes last year, they have the strictest gun laws in the country. That certainly hasn't helped there." 

As reporter Matt Dietrich reported in an article for Politifact.com, that statement was a lie.

Back in 1982 the city of Chicago did pass a ban on all handguns, so at one point it actually did have some of the most stringent firearms laws in the country.

But as Dietrich reported, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a ban on handguns in Washington, D.C. in the case of District of Columbia vs. Heller in 2008, the conservative-majority SCOTUS decision in McDonald vs. City of Chicago in 2010 struck down Chicago's ban on handguns.

A prime example of the NRA and firearms manufacturers actively lobbying to use the federal courts to override gun control laws passed on the state, local and municipal level based on arcane and often questionable interpretations of the U.S. Constitution.

A Chicago protest against gun violence

By 2012, with a solid Republican majority in Congress and most state legislatures around the country, the state of Illinois allowed its citizens to carry concealed firearms after a lower federal court ruled that a ban on carrying concealed firearms was unconstitutional.

But that hasn't stopped Trump and Sanders from repeating the NRA propaganda that Chicago has the "strictest gun laws in the country".

Even as thousands of Chicagoans have been injured or killed by the almost unrestricted proliferation of firearms that have flooded into the city.

Including the 74 victims injured or killed in Chicago last weekend.

On the Tuesday August 7th edition of the PBS Newshour, host Nick Schifrin (who filled in last week for the vacationing regular host Judy Woodruff) did an interesting segment on the recent spate of deadly shootings that rocked some sections of Chicago from last Friday evening to Sunday evening.

If you want to get a sense of how those shootings are impacting the people who live in those communities, scroll forward to the 37-minute, 20-second mark to watch the PBS segment.

Schifrin interviews local community activist Tamar Manasseh, a founder of Mothers/Men Against Senseless Killings (M.A.S.K), a grass-roots group that works to prevent violence, address food insecurity and housing issues, and also ensure that local citizens have access to city services.

Tamar Manasseh out on the block in one of MASK's
distinctive, pink "Moms On Patrol" t-shirts

Manasseh was motivated to try and do something to stop the gun violence devastating neighborhoods on the south and west sides of Chicago after becoming fed up - and her approach is simple.

She began coming out onto a street corner to establish a presence of caring adults by simply cooking food and feeding neighborhood kids dinner; her efforts have attached local volunteers and encouraged men and women to simply start showing up and being visible in high crime areas to deter street violence.

Her efforts have paid off as shootings have drastically dropped in the in the Lawndale section of Chicago where she lives, MASK also now has chapters and volunteers out on the streets working to make a difference in Evansville, Indiana, Memphis, Tennessee and Staten Island, New York.

PBS correspondent John Yang also interviewed Manasseh back in the summer 2016 when over 500 people had been killed - including 90 in the month of August 2016 alone.

In my view, Manasseh's efforts represent the kind of volunteer spirit and sense of giving that is the true definition of what American values are.

People stepping up to improve the lives of folks in their communities by giving of their time, energy  and resources - and just being a good neighbor.

Susan Bro visits the spot where her daughter Heather
Heyer was killed by a neo-Nazi in Charlottesville

On a weekend when a lot of media focus was on the one-year anniversary of the violent white supremacist marches that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia, Tamar Manasseh and the volunteers who work on behalf of MASK demonstrate how average Americans can make a positive difference.

Rather than simmer and shake my head over the string of shootings that took place in Chicago last weekend, I just went online and donated a few bucks to MASK (you can donate here) because it's a group out on the front lines quietly making a difference in the lives of average Americans.

People who've been largely ignored by the current White House administration and Republican leaders in Congress who control the purse strings and the ability to draft legislation that could make a difference.

Republican lawmakers practically tripped over themselves passing a massive tax cut that slashed taxes on the wealthiest Americans and U.S. corporations already flush with cash - even though it's going to literally explode the same federal deficit conservatives spent 8 years whining about when Obama was in office trying to get Congress to pass critical infrastructure spending initiatives.

On a weekend when another 27 people were shot in the streets of Chicago, including one person killed, Trump is playing golf and spending taxpayer money to have Secret Service personnel protect him and his family at a Bedminster, New Jersey country club that he owns and profits off of while he tweets about spending $8 billion in taxpayer funds to build a "Space Force".

If Trump authorized just a fraction of that to someone like Tamar Manasseh to spend on providing meals to kids in marginalized neighborhoods in Chicago to help curb gun violence, just imagine the lives that could be saved and the positive impact it could have on local communities.

A small percentage of that kind of money could go a long way in counteracting the impact of unrestricted firearms in Chicago and other communities.

And it would make a helluva lot more difference in the lives of Americans than a "Space Force".