Where are Our Liberal Fighters?

The NSA snooping scandal get worse every day.  It turns out rampant spying without any court oversight is happening on a widespread scale.  Using a loose interpretation of a single FISA Court ruling data is being collected on American Citizens and used constantly and consistently.  We clearly have a government completely and totally out of control.

Amy Davidson, writing in The New Yorker, called the FISA ruling a secret FISA court order "a gift certificate for one year of warrant-free spying "

Curiously we don't have a single evil dictator or despot.  That's the good news.  President Obama is aloof, incompetent and largely unaware.  As I've written several times before, Barack Obama isn't the President, he just plays one on TV.  But he is not evil.

Looking at his reception at the G8 last week and his laughable speech to a tiny crowd in Berlin, his star is fading, like every television star whose time has passed.  But I digress.

The bad news is that the government has become this powerful and evil all by itself.  A badly written law here, an over zealous bureaucrat there and you have institutional evil, a government totally out of control.  The Constitution is meaningless.  Your rights, rights you actually had until five or six years ago, are gone and perhaps gone forever.

What worries me most is that our protectors, our guardians of justice and liberty have gone silent.  They have disappeared into partisan political oblivion.  The Liberal Media, the ACLU, the great Liberal crusaders have all gone silent, mumbling nonsensical platitudes in the dark.

Have you read the essays or listened to the Progressive pundits over on MSNBC?  I've read some of the most frightening, convoluted defenses of the status quo I have ever seen.  No logic, no defending the down trodden, no standing up for the rights of the common man, just mumbling about how it was bound to happen anyway.  

The leaders who fought so eloquently, so vocally and occasionally fought so violently against the war in Viet Nam, now tell me everything is perfectly OK as long as we're not doing anything illegal anyway.  "If you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear."

One of the greatest Progressive voices on Twitter is the brilliant and unyielding Shoq.  He is a voice I greatly respect.  His black cat avatar is beloved by thousands and feared by his opponents.  

I recently engaged Shoq about his defense of the government's abuse of spying power and ignoring of our traditional Constitutional rights.  Quick to misinterpret my questions as an attack on President Obama, his instantly replied that Obama had done nothing wrong and, indeed, Obama has done nothing.

But, I asked, how can allow this power to fall into the hands of the next President, most likely a Republican.  Shoq's reply was simple but I fear terribly naive  "We must be careful of who we elect...."

Shoq has written a lengthy essay about the NSA and the attacks on the NSA Spying by Glenn Greenwald and The CATO Institute here.   It's an interesting read that puts a great deal of blame for the current controversy on the Koch Brothers.  You'll also always find links to Shoq's latest blog essay on the right column of my blog.

Other Progressive have multiple views of the NSA scandal, almost all defensive.  First they mount a defense to protect President Obama or the "government" in general.  Then they defend the indefensible attack on our liberty and freedom with the "... unlike President Bush, Obama got a court opinion, and he's really a good guy..." scenario.

The great Liberals of my youth who mounted the illegal protests against the Viet Nam War at the Chicago Democratic Party Convention, the Liberals who used an illegal leak to bring down the Nixon Presidency because of the SPYING at Watergate, those Liberals who dared to break the law in their fight for our rights in Selma, Birmingham and Jackson, those Liberals are gone.....   

Gone and Pretty Well Damned Near Forgotten

As of June 10th there have been no arrests and there are no suspects in the Los Angeles gangland murder of 14 month old baby boy, Angel Mauro Cortez-Nava.  You might accidentally remember Angel since I just wrote about his murder a few days ago in the obviously forgettable post, The Black Teenage Boy in the Hoodie.


There are no suspects and no arrests in spite of the fact that the murderer rode by on a bicycle and shot into a crowd gathered on little Angel's front lawn.


There are no suspects and no arrests in spite of a $100,000.00 REWARD offered by the Los Angeles City Council and the LA Kings Hockey Team.


There are no arrests and no suspects in spite of the well known gang activity in the neighborhood, multiple previous murders and the attention of the LA Police Gang Crime Unit.


A quick review of Google News Feeds show there have been no news updates on this story for three days.


The Silence of the Lambs.


Angel will be forgotten, except by his family. Even I will undoubtedly stop blogging about this story eventually.  Based on the overwhelming outpouring of comments so far, no one actually cares.

Oh, and for those who care about that "other" murder, you know the one where the black teenage boy wearing a hoodie was killed in a scuffle in a "gated community" by a neighborhood watch patrol member.  That suspect, George Zimmerman, is still in jail, awaiting trail for the murder.  That trial will receive maximum 24 hour news coverage.

UPDATE: (6/29/2012) A fifteen year old boy, Donald Ray Dokins, has been arrested for the murder of Angel Cortez. The Los Angeles District Attorney has said he will be charged as an adult and faces life in prison.  Donald is suspected in other murders.

The Black Teenage Boy in the Hoodie

Back on April 2nd I wrote that the Trayvon Martin murder got so much press because it was so exceedingly rare.  Indeed, people are almost never murdered in gated communities by Neighborhood Watch patrols.  And blacks are rarely killed by whites in any communities. I don't mean to minimize Trayvon Martin's murder. Trayvon Martin deserves justice.


But, as I mentioned in that earlier article, similar murders in poor, urban communities are tragically common, so common almost no one outside of the affected families ever bothers to notice.  Not the media, most certainly. But not even the black leaders like Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton, who dominated the media during the Trayvon Martin investigation.


There are thousands of such murders every year, ignored and quickly forgotten.  And one more occured two days ago.  Like the Travon Martin murder this also involved and black teen in a hoodie and a 24 year old Latino male.  But this one happened in the Watts area of Los Angeles.

But this time the victim was a tiny one year old baby boy, Angel Mauro Cortez-Nava, and the murderer was the black teenage boy in the hoodie.  Today police are still searching for the murderer, who shot and killed the baby and wounded the father in their own front year.  The teen shot the two as he rode by on his bicycle.


The murder was probably part of a wave of gang killings between the rival black gang, Fudgetown and the Latino gang, the Hispanic Barrio Grape Street Gang. Little Angels father was wearing a purple sweatshirt at the time of the shooting, but his friends and family claim he had no gang affiliation.


The police say this is just one of a half dozen killings in the neighborhood in the last year.


Maria Trujillo, a family friend and neighbor spoke for the entire community when she was interviewed by the media, "With these shootings going on, you don't feel safe in your own front yard,"


"I have seen plenty of people pass away here. For a child to go, this has to stop immediately," neighbor Marcus Williams said. "When a child, a child, a baby, this kid didn't have a chance at life. It really hurt. I'm afraid to let my kids play in the yard now. This is right across the street." 


If only we could generate national press and outrage over this killing.  If only community leaders and national leaders like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton would get involved in these acts of violence, perhaps we could begin to put this epidemic of violence to an end.


What if President Obama stood at a press conference and said little Angel Cortez looked like one of  his children?

Putting the Law Above Partisanship

There's a new sheriff in town.

Honor, integrity and the rule of law took a giant step forward yesterday as Attorney General Eric Holder made the difficult decision to drop the case against former Republican Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens. Holder took the extraordinary steps of both asking the federal judge in the trail to throw out the corruption conviction already won by the prosecution and then end both the investigation and future prosecution of the 85 year old Stevens.

And in ending the prosecution, Holder sent a powerful message to all federal prosecutors that the rule of law must be followed to the letter. What a refreshing change after a long parade of political partisan hacks who held the Office of Attorney General over the last eight years.

National Public Radio reports:

"After careful review, I have concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial," Holder said in a statement Wednesday. "In light of this conclusion, and in consideration of the totality of the circumstances of this particular case, I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial." U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan set an April 7 hearing on the motion to dismiss the case. Judge Sullivan has repeatedly delayed sentencing and criticized trial prosecutors for what he has called prosecutorial misconduct. At one point, prosecutors were held in contempt. Things got so bad that the Justice Department finally replaced the trial team, including top-ranking officials in the Public Integrity Section, which is charged with prosecuting public corruption cases. The straw that apparently broke Holder's back was the discovery of more prosecutorial notes that were not turned over to the Stevens defense team as required by law. The notes were discovered by the new prosecution team, which was appointed in February. With more ugly hearings expected, Holder is said to have decided late Tuesday to pull the plug. His decision is said to be based on Stevens' age — he's 85 — and the fact that Stevens is no longer in the Senate. Perhaps most important, Justice Department officials say Holder wants to send a message to prosecutors throughout the department that actions he regards as misconduct will not be tolerated. Holder began his career in the Public Integrity Section; according to sources, he was horrified by the failure of prosecutors to turn over all relevant materials to the defense. The attorney general also knows the trial judge, Emmett Sullivan, well. The two men served together as judges of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia before each was promoted to higher office. Holder respects Judge Sullivan and reportedly has watched with growing alarm as the judge repeatedly has scolded prosecutors for failing to follow his judicial orders to fully inform defense lawyers about everything from potentially favorable evidence to the travel plans of witnesses. During the trial, prosecutors' missteps led the judge to instruct the jury to disregard some evidence.

It's a bold and gutsy move. It have politically convenient to continue to attack the Republican Stevens. There is little doubt many of Holder's predecessors would have just continued to use the Stevens case for political posturing. Not Eric Holder. Eric Holder is the Attorney general all America deserves.

Holder knows that when the rule of law wins, we all win.