The ruling came Thursday from the New York Supreme Court after formal requests were made by civil rights groups, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Aid Society the city’s public advocate, and the NAACP.
“The failure to indict the officer responsible for the death of Eric Garner has left many wondering if black lives even matter,” NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman said in a statement. “Sadly, today’s decision will only leave many asking that same question again.”
Veteran New York Supreme Court Justice William E Garnett said in the ruling that he did not believe the civil rights lawyers had established a compelling enough reason for warrant a disclosure of the grand jury minutes.
“What would they use the minutes for? The only answer which the court heard was the possibility of effecting legislative change,” he wrote. “That proffered need is purely speculative and does not satisfy the requirements of the law.”
The Garner family was not a part of the petition but supported calls for the release of the grand jury transcripts. Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, and his daughter, Erica Garner were present in court for the oral arguments.
Okay, here’s the lead up to the Ludacris and Jeb Bush encounter!
Apparently, Ludacris’ foundation is doing some great charitable work so he was invited to the House of Representatives in Atlanta GA., for a formal recognition of said work. Jeb Bush was there on other business and someone thought it would be great if Bush was seen with Luda. Let’s call it their black outreach attempt.
The meeting happened and a pic was taken. Then Jeb tweeted with excitement that Luda was his “opening act!”
As he is leaving statehouse, Ludacris is asked which Bush is his favorite. His response: “The one outside.” #gapolpic.twitter.com/7tCh12qiOc — Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) March 19, 2015
This, from a FBI statement. “Earlier in the day, the Claiborne County Sheriffs Department and the Mississippi Wildlife Fisheries and Parks conducted a ground search for a man who had been missing since early March. Officers located a man hanging in the woods near Roddy Road a half mile from his last known residence.
“The sheriff’s department contacted the MBI and FBI for forensic and investigative assistance. Investigators are currently processing the scene for evidence to determine the cause and manner of death.”
The man was reported missing on March 8 after disappearing on March 2nd.
He’s a Republican, so you really cannot believe the words coming from his mouth. But for the few who insist on buying my Brooklyn bridge, Glenn Beck is also saying that he is “done” with the Republican party!
“I’ve made my decision – I’m out. I’m out of the Republican Party,” Beck said on his radio show. “I am not a Republican; I will not give a dime to the Republican Party. I’m out. I highly recommend – run from the Republican Party. They are not good.”
Beck’s apparent frustration lies with the GOP’s inability to defeat President Obama’s actions on health care and immigration, as well as the establishment wing’s opposition to insurgent senators like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz.
“They ran and they said they were doing all of these great things and they were going to stand against Obamacare and illegal immigration – they set us up,” Beck said. “They set us up. Enough is enough. They’re torpedoing the Constitution and they’re doing it knowingly. They’re taking on people like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz and they are torpedoing them. Knowingly.”
“So I’m done with them,” Beck continued. “Four years ago, I was with them. Four years ago, I said work from the inside: let’s change it. Let’s get new guys in there. It’s too late.”
The Cosby Show actress was defending the Univision employee who was recently fired for comparing the First Lady to a cast member from the movie, The Planet Of The Apes. Symone made a guest appearance on The View and said, rather convincingly that, “Some people look like animals. I look like a bird. So can I be mad if somebody calls me a Toucan Sam?”
Last week, an ex Univision host named Rodner Figueroa compared the first lady to an ape, saying, “Mind you, you know that Michelle Obama looks like she’s part of the cast of “Planet of the Apes,” the film.” That comment, according to Rosie Perez, a Latin member of The View, was infact… “racist.”
“There is a secret in the Latin community, specifically the Caribbean, South American, Central American Latin community. They are very racist,” Perez said. “They never want to be in the same group as black people. And it’s very, very sad. And he did say Michelle Obama looked like a cast member of the ‘Planet of the Apes.’”
Parez continued;
“I am the Latin person here on this table and I would like to tell you that it was racist, period. And the thing is this is a problem in the Latin community that we do not talk about. That we do not address. And it is real and it was revealed by this man’s statement. And you do not disrespect the first lady of our country.”
Of course we have a black president and yes, it is 2015. But there are those who are intent on keeping racism alive and they are doing their best to pass their horrid thinking on to the next generation.
Parents of a young girl have spoken of their shock after their daughter received a letter from her classmate telling her she might not be allowed to attend her birthday sleepover because she is black.
A ten-year-old girl wrote the note for her friend Harmony Jones at a school in Memphis, Tennessee, after she was invited to her birthday celebrations, WREG reports.
The letter read: “Maybe I will not be able to go to your birthday sleepover because my dad will not let me go because you are black. Not trying to be races [sic], but my mom let me no [sic] Happy birthday!’
Local civil rights activist Lasimba Gray described the note as “regrettable” but said he hoped it could be used as a learning curve.
“Fifty-two years since the Dr. King ‘I have a dream speech,’ you would think that the basis for racism would disappear, but evidently it is being perpetuated by those who teach it,” he added.
Harmony’s father Christopher Jones said he was shocked that his daughter received a letter of this nature. “It angered me a little bit,” he told the network. “It hurt me that my 10-year-old girl had to deal with this, and I myself never thought I would have to deal with this.”
“I guess as parents we have to be more aware and more conscious of what we teach our children.”
The girl’s family has not commented on the letter.
I know both sides do it, but it seems like Republicans have almost perfected the art of ripping off the government.
Aaron Schock, a Republican Representatives from Illinois is the latest Republican to realize that his version of milking the government was not foolproof, and thanks to those pesky reporters from Politico, Schock’s days of drinking from the never-ending bosom of the United States government, abruptly came to an end when the Republican realized that the gig was up and resigned.
Here’s an example of the craziness of this Schock character from Illinois. The Republican charged the government for mileage on his personal vehicle, from 2010 to 2014. No crime here, charging for mileage is common, everyone does it. But Schock was either extremely greedy or a Republican, and in today’s world of politics, greed and Republican apparently go hand in hand.
The congressman’s vehicle history was pieced together from dozens of pages of Illinois vehicle records.
When Schock transferred the SUV to an Illinois dealership in 2014, it had 81,860 miles on the odometer, documents show. However, from January 2010 to the end of July 2014, he billed the federal government for 123,131 miles on his personal vehicle. During the same period, the Republican billed his “Schock for Congress” campaign account and GOP Generation Y Fund, his leadership political action committee, for an additional 49,388 miles.
Altogether, Schock sought reimbursement for 172,520 miles on his car, despite the fact that he signed documents that certified the vehicle traveled less than half that distance.
That, in addition to other inappropriate use of campaign funds detailed by Politico, forced Schock to come to terms with the flaws in his extortion game. It couldn’t go on any longer and the Republican issued this brief statement on Tuesday.
“[T]he constant questions over the last six weeks have proven a great distraction that has made it too difficult for me to serve the people of the 18th District with the high standards that they deserve and which I have set for myself. I have always sought to do what’s best for my constituents, and I thank them for the opportunity to serve.”
Later Tuesday, a spokesman for Schock added, “In an effort to remove any questions and out of an abundance of caution, Congressman Schock has reimbursed all monies received for official mileage since his election to Congress.”
Schock will “serve” the people of his district until the end of March.
A United Airlines flight bound for Denver was forced to return to Dulles International Airport Monday night after a passenger sprinting to the plane’s cockpit allegedly yelling about jihad was subdued by a group of passengers, Gawker reports.
Officially, a United Airlines rep told NBC News, the plane returned to Dulles because a passenger “failed to comply with crew instructions.”
Video purportedly taken by a passenger (above) on the plane was posted to Reddit by user iLL_D soon after the flight landed.
When he appeared on Jimmy Kimmel last week, the President spoke about a number of important issues facing this country today. One of those issues was Ferguson, the recent DOJ report detailing the unbelievable level of racism by the Ferguson Police Department, and the rights of the community to protests and the rights of the police officers to do their job.
“I think that what had been happening in Ferguson was oppressive and objectionable, and was worthy of protest,” the President said. “But there was no excuse for criminal acts… In the same way that you can’t generalize about police officers who do an extraordinarily tough job, overwhelmingly they do it professionally, you can’t generalize about protesters who, it turns out, had some very legitimate grievances.”
16.4 Million to be exact! This, despite the constant barrage of attacks from the Republicans in Congress and the Republicans sitting in the Supreme Court. And for your information, the healthcare act is still under attack as the Supreme Court ponders whether they will gut the act and drop millions of Americans from receiving coverage!
Yay America!
A whopping 16.4 million people have gained health insurance coverage since Obamacare passed, according to a new government report released Monday.
The breakdown: 14.1 million adults insured since Obamacare’s first open-enrollment period which began in October 2013, and 2.3 million young adults aged 19-25 covered on a parent’s plan since the policy took effect in 2010.
The two-page report by the Department of Health and Human Services provides fresh evidence that the still-unpopular law has sharply reversed the trend of Americans losing their coverage. The uninsured rate fell from 20.3 percent to 13.2 percent as of March 4, 2015, a drop of 35 percent.
The reduction in uninsured is steeper among blacks (9.2 percentage points) and Hispanics (12.3 percentage points) than among whites (5.3 percentage points).
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo took another shot at Fox News in an interview that aired this week, saying the channel’s reporting that there were Muslim “no-go zones” in her city was “a lie at a very, very serious time.”
Hidalgo spoke to CNN about the city’s planned lawsuit against Fox News for its coverage of the supposed “no-go zones” in the wake of terror attacks by Islamic extremists earlier this year in Paris. Fox eventually issued multiple corrections and said there was “no credible information” to support the idea that non-Muslims are not allowed in parts of England or France.
“We are in a world that can very dangerously tip over, as we’ve seen,” Hidalgo said, according to CNN’s translation. “And we should not accept this type of talk that only adds difficulty.”
Though she did not explain details of the lawsuit against Fox, she said the city “took legal action at the Paris high court.”
She said she remained angry about Fox’s reporting and that “it has economic consequences because some in the United States suddenly become afraid of Paris.”
“What Fox News did was to lie,” Hidalgo said, according to CNN. “It wasn’t opinion or legitimate criticism. We are in a democracy, so real criticism is normal. But it was a lie at a very, very serious time. And some like Fox stigmatized a portion of the population and they wanted to show something that doesn’t exist.”
We are truly in deep PARCC mode now. Perhaps the April/May test administration should include readings from the Pentagon Papers.
Pearson Education, the company that produces the PARCC tests, and is reportedly being paid over $22 million dollars in New Jersey alone, is monitoring social media to check for security breaches and other untoward activity. The latest example is in the Watchung Hills Regional school district, where evidently a student tweeted a test question and Pearson was able to flag it. The company then contacted the New Jersey Department of Education, which then contacted the school district. A fuller discussion is here. I can certainly understand test security because every teacher in New Jersey is warned annually that any data breach can result in the loss of their teaching license.
In the new testing world, though, the students may control the balance of power. Think about it: The new tests are being given exclusively on computers to an audience that, shall we say, is less than enthusiastic about sitting for hours to complete them. Students also have access to the Internet on their own devices. Mix in the politics of test refusal and the widely acknowledged fact that these tests count for zilch to the people who are taking them, and you have a messy brew that was just waiting to foam over. And think again if you think this is only happening in New Jersey.
Testing has always been a part of education and the PARCC is just another in a long line that stretches back decades. What’s upset many more people about these particular tests is that they are tied to the Common Core Curriculum Standards, which are unpopular on both the right and the left, and which most school districts just implemented formally this past September. That means that students in grades 3-11 have only had six months with which to work with some new, sophisticated concepts. How are these tests going to do anything except tell us that we have more work to do? What’s worse, many parents and teachers with college educations and advanced degrees have taken the practice tests and have been flummoxed by what PARCC says are the correct answers.
The tests are also unpopular because they are being administered over a couple of weeks in two separate time frames; one now and one during late April or early May. This is taking an extraordinary amount of time away from classroom teaching and learning that is, presumably, the point of having children go to school and hiring teachers to instruct and mentor them. As someone who teaches Advanced Placement courses, I can tell you that this schedule has put enormous pressure on me to find time to properly prepare students for the early May AP tests while they are also taking the PARCC.
Then there is Pearson Education (remember Pearson Education? This is a column on Pearson Education). They will be paid about $22 million dollars for the tests in NJ, which is below the original estimate, but it’s still a great deal of money. Now the company is trolling through social media, monitoring student behavior and expecting that nobody will ever talk about the tests in a world where we are all connected.
This will not help schools and states that are trying to limit the number of students who are refusing to take the tests, and could possibly lead to more students not taking them in April/May. In the high school where I teach, approximately 35% of eligible students are not taking the tests. When I was proctoring the tests last week I did notice that a number of students were logging on to the test program on their computers, cycling through the pages in about 30 seconds, then taking out a book to read. Civil disobedience is alive and well.
Every social movement has its tipping point. This could be the one for Pearson and PARCC.
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