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News: Dallas rejects New Orleans cop-outs

They probably thought it would be easy. Keep a low profile during the first week of turmoil after Hurricane Katrina. Then reappear at roll call claiming to have been incapacitated during those days. While taking advantage of the New Orleans Police Department's payroll and free vacation for its police officers, apply to cop shops in other cities. Perhaps you drove to Dallas, Charlotte or Memphis during your AWOL, maybe even in a stolen Cadillac, so you already have the lay of the land there. It is the kind of plan a sneaky person would be proud of. But, it didn't work for some NOPD cops.

The Clarion-Ledger has the story.

As many as 10 New Orleans police officers suspected of desertion during Hurricane Katrina have been rejected for employment by the Dallas Police Department.

Dallas Deputy Chief Floyd Simpson said his department's screening process for new applicants exposed about 10 New Orleans officers who vanished during the storm.

"When you are ready and take an oath of office and you do not fulfill that office, that's an issue for us and it should be an issue for law enforcement in general," Simpson said.

Capt. Marlon Defillo, a New Orleans police spokesman, said an investigation into "a small segment" of officers who failed to report to duty is under way. Defillo said the number of suspected deserters is far smaller than the original estimate of 250.

So far, no officers have been fired or suspended from the New Orleans department for leaving their posts. New Orleans police said it is possible some of the officers who applied for positions outside of the department may have resigned.

Typically for an outfit known for callousness, chicanery and corruption, the NOPD is trying to minimize the current scandals, including the leave or let go exit of the former police commissioner, the theft of hundreds of vehicles from a dealership, allegedly by cops, and the desertions. It is amazing that nearly two months later, not even one cop has been held accountable for being absent without leave. There have been reports of cops being in Baton Rouge and other cities, sometimes driving Cadillacs, during the time when they should have been serving the desperate citizens of the Big Easy. Nor is Defillo's claim that only a few cops deserted believable. No factual basis for reducing earlier estimates has been offered. A substantial number of the 1,700 member force was missing in action for at least a week after Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, the NOPD may never take action to discipline the cops who failed the citizenry so miserably. It is a relief to see someone taking the matter seriously, even if it is a deputy police chief in a city hundreds of miles away.

Reasonably related

In an investigative article, the Dallas Morning News concludes that the New Orleans Police Department has virtually no reputation left to protect.

NEW ORLEANS – The question worries even staunch law enforcement supporters: How can exhausted police in a city notorious for corruption and violent crime reassure citizens that it is safe to return and rebuild after Hurricane Katrina?

"Any city's foundation has to be built on public safety," said Rafael Goyeneche, executive director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission of Greater New Orleans. "This morning, one of my first phone calls was from Houston – someone wanting to know if it was safe to come back to town with their kids. . . .Every mother and every father out there is wondering the same thing."

Their concern has grown as images of unruly police have been broadcast worldwide in the weeks since the hurricane, when some officers were accused of deserting the city and others of looting it.

. . .In the most recent incident, on Oct. 8, three cops beat a retired six-grade teacher in the French Quarter while a fourth manhandled a television producer covering the melee.

New Orleans has so much rebuilding to do that it is mind-boggling to even consider the tasks ahead. One of its most daunting challenges will be to build, possibly for the first time, a reasonably honest police department. That task should begin now.

News: Ad exec says women workers inferior

One sees over and over again that beneath the easygoing veneer of 'things are just fine the way they are,' a great deal of hard work goes on to maintain a status quo that is unfair to much of the population. Hurrricane Katrina exposed the disproportionate poverty low-income African-Americans are still subjected to. 'Morals' guru William Bennett revealed the racism lurking behind many a conservative's bonhomie. Now, Neil French, a very successful advertising executive, has dismissed women as fit to don a French maid's outfit and serve him drinks, but not to succeed in the business. It is true that much discrimination today is systemic, but it takes individual bigots to maintain even systemic discrimination. They are the most active in convincing people that failures of the system are because of the shortcomings of the people harmed, not because of inequities built into it. As long as such men dominate corporate Anerica and the government, efforts to achieve diversity will be stifled.

The Associated Press reports French is out of a job himself.

LONDON - One of the world's most flamboyant advertising gurus has left his job after reportedly telling an audience that women made poor executives because motherhood made them "wimp out."

Marketing giant WPP Group PLC said Friday it had accepted the resignation of Neil French — a one-time debt collector, trainee matador and rock-band agent who served as the group's worldwide creative director.

The firm, which is based in London and New York, told Britain's Press Association news agency that French had offered his resignation, and it had been accepted. WPP could not immediately be reached for comment by the Associated Press.

. . .French made the contentious remarks during an industry discussion in Toronto on Oct. 6. According to a report in the city's Globe and Mail newspaper, French said women did not make it to the top because "they're crap."

Nancy Vonk, a Toronto-based creative director at WPP subsidiary Ogilvy & Mather who attended the event, said French described women as "a group that will inevitably wimp out and go 'suckle something.

French's resignation should not be interpreted to mean he regrets his intemperate remarks. Like Bennett, French (pictured) steadfastly defends his belief that his views are accurate and acceptable.

Reasonably related

Blogger S. at The Accidental Runner, is more than passingly familiar with Neil French. She says better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

Politics: Gun law is security blanket for industry

The Congress of the United States has once again proven its capacity for cronyism and its inability to grasp reality. The reality it fails to grasp is that Americans are dying needlessly. By succumbing to the gun manufacturers' long courtship with legislation that protects the industry, Congress has sold out the people who elected it. Every year thousands of those citizens die because of gunshots, often by their own hands. Though you will never see it mentioned in a National Rifle Association ad, apocryphal claims of using guns for defense notwithstanding, suicide is the most common use a gun owner makes of his weapon. The Federal Bureau of Investigation says that 67 percent of more than 16,000 homicides in 2003, the most recent data available, were committed with handguns.

The only ray of light in regard to this profoundly depressing decision is that there is a test case of the proposed security blanket for the gun industry awaiting the finalization of the law. The District of Columbia has a statute that will be in direct conflict with the law shielding manufacturers of guns from liability.

The Washington Post reports.

The House yesterday voted to shield companies that make and sell firearms from lawsuits by the victims of shootings, sending the legislation to the White House and handing the nation's gun lobby a paramount victory it has sought for years.

The House's 283 to 144 vote, less than three months after the Senate approved identical legislation, delighted President Bush, who portrayed it as part of the administration's drive to "stem frivolous lawsuits" and said he will sign it into law. Leading proponents of gun control immediately vowed to challenge the law's constitutionality.

Congress's decision has particular relevance for the District, the only place in the country with a law that explicitly allows victims of crimes involving semiautomatic weapons to bring legal claims. In April, the D.C. Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the city's 15-year-old law, and the Supreme Court this month declined to hear the case.

Supporters and opponents of the legislation said the law would halt pending District government litigation trying to win compensation from gun manufacturers for medical costs and other expenses associated with shootings and several claims by local victims and their families. The pending suits include a federal lawsuit brought against Bushmaster Firearms Inc. by the relatives of Pascal Charlot, a victim of the 2002 rash of local sniper shootings.

The legislation is intended to cut off an avenue that gun-control advocates have used in recent years to exert leverage on the firearms industry, trying to curb the sale of weapons to criminals by holding it financially responsible for crimes. The National Rifle Association and other gun enthusiasts have complained that the expense of fighting lawsuits put manufacturers and gun stores on shaky financial ground, regardless of who wins the cases.

The Charlot case is about the weapon used by John Muhammad and his teenaged accomplice in the notorious D.C. area shootings. The gun seller had a lengthy record of weapons 'lost' from his store, but had never been held accountable by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms., which has had its enforcement authority weakened under the Bush administration. The plaintiffs seek to hold the manufacturer responsible for making the inherently dangerous semi-automatic weapon, and the gun shop's former owner responsible for 'losing' it. The situation highlights just who would be protected by the new law (Bushmaster and the gun seller), and who would be left without relief (the survivors of a man who died partly because of the easy availability of lethal weapons).

The passage of this legislation is also one of those times when one is reminded Democratic politicians care more about a potential backlash that might effect their electability than they do about standing firm for what is best for the citizenry. Fifty-nine Democratic representatives voted in favor of the bill.

News: Intelligent design defense fails

Several recent articles have captured the reasons why intelligent design, a 'scientific' dust cover for creationism, fails the smell test for anyone with a human nose, an imperfect organ certainly. But before we consider a couple of them, let's revisit the definition of creationism. The defense in the Scopes II trial would like us to conveniently forget that creatonism is the issue, claiming intelligent design is something else. However, the claim does not hold water much better than the human bladder.

creationism |krēˈā sh əˌnizəm|

noun

The belief that the universe and living organisms originate from specific acts of divine creation, as in the biblical account, rather than by natural processes such as evolution.

• another term for creation science.

Note that creationism has also been presented as 'science,' just as intelligent design is by its advocates currently. But calling a belief system, the most charitable term for creationism and intelligent design, 'science,' does not make it science. To be a science, a field must rely on analysis of the natural world by observation and experimentation. When one relies on some other type of analysis, one is no longer practicing science.

Observing the trial for Slate, Hanna Rosin has a seat for a shock and awe defense. The dispenser of both is Martin Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, and the star of the intelligent design movement. Behe, bespectacled because of faulty eyesight, one presumes, has attempted to convince the judge presiding over the trial that when he spoke of belief in God as an integral part of intelligent design in the past, he was speaking as a philosopher.

Just over a year ago, the Dover [Pa.] school board voted to require ninth-grade biology teachers to tell students about "problems in Darwin's theory" and to mention intelligent design as an alternative theory of evolution. Eleven parents sued the district in federal court. The case has played out like an adult education class; the plaintiffs have called to the witness stand biologists, paleontologists, textbook writers, and science historians. All have reiterated the plaintiffs' main point: Intelligent design is just creationism hiding behind a lab coat, Genesis posing as science, a Trojan horse of the religious right. But it's obvious from Monday's testimony that this is an oversimplification. Perhaps the old creationists and the ID people share a common ancestor, but the ID folks have undergone so many stages of evolution that they are now a barely recognizable subspecies.

...Thank God for cross-examination. In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled that states can not require schools to teach creationism alongside evolution. So, the plaintiffs are intent on proving ID is just another form of creationism. To do that, Eric Rothschild, the sharp ACLU attorney, does the courtroom equivalent of "This Is Your Life," trotting out all of Behe's more embarrassing friends and relations. To give students a fuller understanding of ID, Dover's ninth-grade biology teachers are now required to read in class a statement referring them to a textbook called Of Pandas and People, which the schools will keep in their libraries. Behe wrote sections of the textbook and has called it an "excellent reference for students." But the book is not nearly as careful as Behe is to avoid the old creationist lingo: "Intelligent Design means that various forms of life began abruptly with distinguishing features already intact: fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, etc," Rothschild reads out loud from the book. Behe can manage a defense of why that statement is still consistent with certain well-accepted evolutionary principles, but it's a stretch. The passage sounds an awful lot like Genesis.

Rothschild then points to some of Behe's own writing in a magazine called "Biology and Philosophy," where Behe mused about the identity of the Great Designer. What if the existence of God is denied at the outset? he asks himself in an article. Well, yes, he admits, for those who deny God's existence, ID is much less plausible. Finally, he gets to what so far counts as the smoking gun in this trial: a 1999 article in "the Wedge," a publication of the Discovery Institute (the main outlet for ID research), where Behe is a fellow. In it, ID theorists plot their "five-year strategic plan" with Behe as the crucial tool to "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

The creationist movement decided to drop 'creation science' in favor of 'intelligent design' as part of a longterm strategy after efforts to convince courts creationism is science failed. Other than the name, the only other distinguishing feature between the two terms is that, of late, inteligent design advocates are not supposed to explicitly say the designer of the natural world they have in mind is God. However, as the plaintiffs' attorneys have demonstrated in Scopes II, the effort to cover up the obvious is so new that even the star witness for the movement has been explicit about the designer being a Christian God relatively recently.

The York Daily Record/Sunday News examined another attempt to present intelligent design as a science that will merely balance another science -- evolution.

HARRISBURG — Michael Behe testified on Tuesday that he considers God the intelligent designer, but that the scientific concept he supports doesn’t require the designer’s identification.

The distinction made by Behe, a biochemistry professor at Lehigh University, is a significant point of contention between plaintiffs and defendants in the First Amendment case in U.S. Middle District Court.

Several supporters of intelligent design, including two court spectators, Alina Kline and the Rev. Jim Grove, agree with Behe that the concept is scientifically based, and that the designer is a Christian God. Supporters of the statement say it does not violate the Constitution’s establishment clause because the designer doesn’t have to be a religious figure.

But, implying that there is a God responsible for the creation of life is the raison d'etre for intelligent design. Without the appeal to the supernatural, the religious, intelligent design lacks any reason to be at all. We have a fairly plausible theory to explain the development of the natural world -- evolution. Only if one is seeking something different does a need for creationism or intelligent design arise. Nor does the 'silent' designer pretext convince. It closely resembles 'silent' prayer, the practice in which a moment of silence replaces overt prayer. The courts have held that silent prayer cannot be used to evade the constitutional barrier to practicing religion in public schools.

Last, but not least, as you may have gathered, I'm far from impressed by intelligent design's emphasis on the perfection of the natural world. It makes me wonder if the advocates pay attention to their own bodies. If they did, there would be no doubt in their minds that though the human body is mostly functional, it is not the work of a perfectionistic designer.

Reasonably related

The Washington Post is also covering the intelligent design trial. In its coverage, Behe disputes the theory of natural selection.

Technology: There's more to Apple than polishing

Jack Shafer at the Internet magazine Slate is in curmudgeon mode. He is beside himself because of the latest news from Apple Computer Inc. Shafer believes the company, progenitor of the increasingly ubiquitous iPod, gets too much good press. He describes reporters who write about it as "Apple polishers." The occasion for Shafer's tech temper tantrum is the announcement of Apple's new Video iPod and an accompanying deal to sell videos of the most popular new television shows at the iTunes Music Store. Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the latest Apple events Wednesday.

The pairing of the V-iPod announcement with news that the iTunes store will sell Desperate Housewives and other ABC fare drove the story to Page One of USA Today and onto the biz fronts of the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. Among American newspapers, the New York Times is easily the most enamored of things iPod, having run 63 stories with the word "iPod" in the headline in the last 12 months. That's almost as many as the Post and the Los Angeles Times combined.

. . .Apple manipulates several narratives to continue to make its products interesting fodder for journalists. One is the never-ending story of mad genius Steve Jobs, who would be great copy if he were only the night manager of a Domino's pizza joint. The next is Apple's perpetual role as scrappy underdog—reporters love cheerleading for the underdog without ever pausing to explore why it isn't the overdog. (This is why the Brooklyn Dodgers will always rate higher in the minds of writers than the superior New York Yankees.) Apple incites fanaticism about its products via ad campaigns and evangelist outreach programs designed to make its customers feel as though they're part of a privileged and enlightened elite. One unnamed loser at Slate says today's V-iPod news made her want to rush out and buy one, even though she already owns two iPods, one of which she bought three weeks ago.

The problem with Shafer's argument is that he lacks much good ammunition. A person can bemoan Steve Jobs' charisma hours on end, but it is the success or failure of the products his companies produce that really matters. Contrary to what Shafer implies, there have not been that many Apple failures. More often than not, the tendency to upgrade tech products in two or three years explains the demise of past Apple computers. The only relatively recent computer to be dropped from the line because of poor sells was the Macintosh G4 Cube in 2001. It retains a community of admirers, as does Apple's Newton, an early personal digital assistant, discontinued in 1998. Shafer's claim that the iPod Photo was scrapped is false and suggests he should have done more research before penning his piece. The iPod Photo is simply the first color screen iteration of today's full-size iPod. Once Apple decided to add color screens to all of the model, the name became obsolete. Everyone who owns a current a full-size iPod owns what was formerly called an iPod Photo.

A more legitimate criticism of Apple is that it should have maintained more of its market share, about 12 percent in the 1991, than it has. The current American market share of at least 6.6 percent (online sales excluded) is an increase from a low of less than three percent in 2000. However, one should include in the analysis the fact that Apple's goal is be a successful boutique computer maker, not to unseat rival Microsoft, which has most of the market share, but not Apple's reputation for innovation. Arguably, a reasonable share of the market for Apple as a computer maker would be 8 to 10 percent.

Is it true that the media trumpets Jobs' teeth cleanings and praises every Apple product to the heavens? No. Apple's high visibility wins it negative as well as positive press. When environmentalists were looking for a computer company to scold over insufficient recycling of components earlier this year they chose Apple because of of its reputation for 'thinking different.' Even small flaws in Apple products are spotlighted because of that visibility. Apple is now the only manufacturer of MP3 players that will replace the battery and recycle the discarded devices partly because of unfavorable publicity in the media. Recently, use of flawed glass in a relative handful of the recently released iPod nanos resulted in a flurry of articles in the press and a web page hosted by an upset purchaser. Soon after, Apple promised to replace the small number of nanos with screens that cracked easily.

Shafer's tantrum may have felt good, but he has not supported it with proof of his hypotheses. He offered no proof that Apple's products are sows' ears being sold as silk purses. Apple's popularity with the press is not monolithic. Not only is Apple sometimes criticized, the business press keeps a wary eye on whether it can maintain its 74 percent of the portable music player marker. Furthermore, Shafer has said nothing to disprove the widespread belief that Apple's innovation in design is good for the tech world in general. That alone would be reason enough for the media to pay attention to the company.

Reasonably related

The Washington Post reports on Apple's newest products. Rob Pegoraro considers the pros and cons of purchasing a Video iPod.

Opinion: Miers' support for civil rights not enough

I recalled a quotation that applied to Harriet Miers' situation soon after President George W. Bush nominated her to fill the remaining open seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. I located the prescient remark yesterday.

"Even if [Judge Carswell] is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they -- a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises, Cardozos, and Frankfurters, and stuff like that there." Sen. Roman Hruska (R-Nebraska), defending, in 1970, failed Nixon-nominee, Judge G. Harold Carswell, against criticism that he was "mediocre."

Though he had spent most of his career as a jurist, Judge Carswell's nomination to SCOTUS was not confirmed, mainly because of his white supremacist views. He was again the focus of controversy in 1976 when he was accused of soliciting sex from another man in a public restroom in Atlanta.

I can't for a moment deny that many lawyers, perhaps most, are mediocre. But, I don't believe that is a reason to elevate mediocre legal professionals to important judgeships. The most recent confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee without of a record of analytical thinking, and, with a career of being a token and yes man, has proven that mediocrity matters. Clarence Thomas has made no meaningful contribution to American jurisprudence, even while warming a seat on SCOTUS.

President Bush's nomination of Miers is an symptom of his psychology. He is a person who trusts mostly those he considers his friends. That singular attribute, 'my gal Harriet,' is reason enough for him to have nominated a woman with even less of a history of making difficult decisions than the recently displaced former chief of FEMA, Michael Brown, another mediocre lawyer. Though collegiality is appreciated on the Court, its business is analysis of the most significant issues of our times. Miers' largely blank paper trail provides little evidence that she has the ability to do the work expected of a justice on the Supreme Court.

A correspondent e-mailed me news of Miers supporting a civil rights challenge in Dallas, and, supposing divestment from corporations that supported the South African government during apartheid. He wondered if the evidence of her concern about racism, an issue I care about deeply, would sway me. The article from the Chicago Tribune (registration required) is revealing.

WASHINGTON -- In what appear to be some of her only public statements about a constitutional issue, Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers testified in a 1990 voting rights lawsuit that the Dallas City Council had too few black and Hispanic members, and that increasing minority representation should be a goal of any change in the city's political structure.

In the same testimony, Miers, then a member of the council, said she believed the city should divest its South African financial holdings and work to boost economic development in poor and minority areas.

Miers' thoughts about racial diversity placed her squarely on the progressive side of the 1990 suit, which was pivotal in shifting power in Dallas politics to groups outside the traditional, mostly white establishment.

Some constitutional scholars say that if Miers were to embrace the same views as a high court justice, she would fall more in line with the court's pragmatic, moderate wing than with its doctrinaire extremes.

"There's an acknowledgement in her comments that race matters and is relevant, and from a fairness standpoint, we should acknowledge the impact of a particular political structure on voters of color," said George Washington University law professor Spencer Overton, a voting rights expert. "It's not unlike something you could see Justice Sandra Day O'Connor saying. A rigid quota system may be bad, but diversity is a compelling interest, and we want institutions to reflect society as a whole."

Though these instances of Miers actually opening her mouth and saying things that mattered occurred 15 years ago, they may indeed be signifiers that she is not one of those people who insist that race is no longer an issue in determining how Americans live. I was pleased to be informed of her willingness to confront the powers that be in Dallas, which had a minority population of 40 percent, but next to no black or Hispanic public officials at the time. But, this evidence of good works must be considered with the rest of her record. Because of the paucity of evidence of much of anything in that record, I must agree with the general consensus. Miers is too much of an unknown to elevate to the highest court in the land.

Reasonably related

~ Washington Post editorial writer Eugene Robinson says he is bewildered by the Miers nomination.

~ Robinson's colleague Richard Cohen thinks the president is sending us a message about abortion, using a peculiar code.

Commentary: Jurors key to DeLay's fate

Some friends are disappointed that I don't respond in kind to their glee about the indictments of until recently House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Sweetwater, Texas). It is not that I don't believe that DeLay is as crooked as the day is long. I do. But, an indictment is an indictment and a conviction is a conviction. Travis County Prosecutor Ronnie Earle's indictments of DeLay will not necessarily result in convictions. I say that based on my take on what a powerful Republican like DeLay can expect from a Republican jury in his neck of the woods. If the cases even make it to trial, DeLay will be judged by the people who have sent him to Congress time and again. The people who applaud his manipulation of redistricting to increase the number of Republicans from Texas there. The people who recall him fondly as "Hot Tub Tom," a happy-go-lucky Everyman that Middle America can relate to.

Nor to do I see the evidence as slam dunk. I can envision a simple scenario that would result in acquittals. All it would take is a few simpletons on the jury. As you know, the facts of the case turn on the providence of a check for $190,000 written in 2002. DeLay's political action committee sent the check, which was backed by corporate donations, to the Republican National Committee. Under election law, the funds could not be spent on or by Texas Republicans. Almost simultaneously with the donation of the check for $190,000 to the RNC, several GOP candidates from Texas received donations from the RNC that happened to amount to, you guessed it, $190,000.

The Washington Post has reported the specifics.

Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) met for at least 30 minutes with the top fundraiser of his Texas political action committee on Oct. 2, 2002, the same day that the Republican National Committee in Washington set in motion a series of financial transactions at the heart of the money-laundering and conspiracy case against DeLay.

During the meeting at his Capitol office, DeLay conferred with James W. Ellis, the head of his principal fundraising committee in Washington and his chief fundraiser in Texas. Ellis had earlier given the Republican National Committee a check for $190,000 drawn mostly from corporate contributions. The same day as the meeting, the RNC ordered $190,000 worth of checks sent to seven Republican legislative candidates in Texas.

In the past two weeks, two separate Texas grand juries have returned indictments against DeLay, Ellis and a political associate alleging that these transactions amounted to money laundering intended to circumvent a Texas campaign law barring the use of corporate funds for state election purposes. The aim of the alleged scheme was to ensure that Republicans gain control of the Texas House, and thus reorder the state's congressional districts in a manner favoring the election of more Republicans to Congress.

Back to our hypothetical jury. Let's cut to the chase. The jurors are convened. They have transcripts of testimony, bank records and printouts of telephone conversations among DeLay and his associates before them. But, that is not what is being discussed. Three stubborn jurors are taking turns making the same point over and over again. The money sent to the candidates for the GOP was not the same money as the check for $190,000, they say. It was different money, so DeLay and the other defendants engaged in no wrongdoing. Nothing the other jurors say can sway them. They are confused by the breaking down of the sum into separate checks of varying amounts. (But totaling $190,000.) The only way they would convict is if the check returned to Texas was for $190,000. That's stupid, you say. I agree. But, many a criminal case turns on convincing simpleton jurors despite the difficulty they have grasping simple facts.

In novelist Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, the hero, defense attorney Atticus Finch, says in summation:

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system -- that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up.

I hope that Earle's prosecution is successful, or, second best, acquittals occur for reasons less puerile than the scenario I've described. But, the limitations of jurors, and thus courts, may allow Tom DeLay to walk away from prosecution with his reputation under his other nickname, "Teflon Tom," intact.

News: New woes for hurricane survivors

There is a tendency in the blogosphere to move on to the news du jour. I had prepared an entry about stealth U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriett Miers. But, I think that the consequences of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are just as newsworthy as who sits on SCOTUS. There is much happening to survivors and evacuees that we still need to be concerned about.

~Gone, but not forgotten

Scout, at Scout Prime has learned that some areas of New Orleans twice deluged Ninth Ward have not been searched for bodies, despite the official end of the body retrieval program. Survivors told CNN that searchers have ignored about 150 homes in their neighborhood. They believe there are bodies in those homes.

Five weeks after Katrina, New Orleans is calling off the house-to-house search for bodies. Teams have pulled 964 corpses from storm-ravaged areas across southeastern Louisiana. Authorities admit more bodies are probably out there. They'll be handled on a case-by-case basis. The count is far short of the 10,000 dead once predicted by New Orleans mayor. As of today, the death toll from Hurricane Katrina stands at just under 1,200.

Searchers and residents insist there are still plenty of dead to find in New Orleans.

Scout believes that the decision to end the official search just when the Ninth Ward became searchable is a judgment about the worth of the lives lost there.

As we ponder William Bennett's racist comment the evidence of American racism is going almost un-noticed in NO. Tell me if this was a white neighborhood that those homes would go unsearched. We went to great pains to recover every little bit of human remains at Ground Zero but in Black America we won't even bother to pick up bodies. This is an outrage. That practically no one is saying so is even more outrageous. How quickly we forget. Let's not forget these people's dignity. Again.

I foresee quite significant discrepancies between the number of people reported dead in New Orleans and the number of bodies retrieved. Sadly, I also foresee that the survivors' concern will be cavalierly dismissed.

~Don't let the door knob hit you

The people more or less imprisoned in the fetid purgatory that the Convention Center and Superdome in New Orleans became probably would have given a not particularly useful body part for a clean hotel room. But, only a few weeks later, some hotels are ordering Hurricane Katrina evacuees to move out. The San Jose Mercury News reports.

BROOKHAVEN, Miss. - At least one hotel chain has asked some Hurricane Katrina evacuees to check out so it can honor the reservations of incoming guests. Hilton Hotels, the parent company of Hampton Inn and other brands, is trying to find other rooms for the evacuees but said they were warned when they checked in that their stays would be limited by room availability, said Hilton spokeswoman Kathy Shepard.

"We're doing our very best to accommodate these people," she said.

It's an uncomfortable situation for the hotel industry: risk bad publicity for kicking out hurricane evacuees, or anger big-spending repeat customers who travel for business.

Hurricane evacuees - often several family members packed into a single hotel room - can be a burden on hotel staff. They also use more water and electricity, and do not spend much on food and incidentals.

They "could be occupying a room that could otherwise be occupied by a higher-paying guest who's spending lots of money on telephone, food and beverage," said Bjorn Hanson, a hotel industry analyst with PriceWaterhouseCoopers in New York.

The 'business necessity' argument does not really hold up, in my opinion. There has been adequate time to inform people that reservations made weeks or months ago cannot be honored. After all, those would-be guests can either pay for other lodging or reschedule their meetings and conventions. The evacuees, however, may be rendered homeless after being forced out.

A Lousisiana evacuee says that she was more or less kicked to the curb. Her disabled, elderly parents barely escaped the same fate.

A Hampton Inn in Brookhaven, about two hours north of where Katrina struck, asked Barbara Perry of Folsom, La., to move out last week. She was living in the hotel with her parents and her three young children, and she was driving almost 90 miles a day to work.

"They told me if I didn't pick my clothes up, they were going to call the police," Perry said.

Her mother, who uses a wheelchair, and her father, who is blind, were also told to check out, but they were granted an extension after a Red Cross volunteer intervened, said Perry's mother, Betty Myers.

I guess charity, even when it is being paid for, does not begin at Hilton Hotels.

~Keeping the home fires white

To have the bodies of one's loved ones ignored by FEMA and other agencies must hurt. To be evicted from one's temporary home in a hotel despite having donenothing to deserve it must be disheartening. But, to learn that a shelter will not be approved by a zoning commission because residents of an area claim, without proof, evacuees would be a danger to them, is outrageous. Anyone who doubts that irresponsible behavior like Bill Bennett's contributes to racism need look no farther than what is happening in northwest Ohio, to confirm it does.

RIDGEVILLE CORNERS, Ohio - After an emotional public hearing last night in this Henry County rural community, the welcome mat was pulled from a temporary housing project for hurricane evacuees.

Opponents of plans to convert portions of Christ Community Church raised concerns and questions during the session attended by about 150 residents in the fire hall in Ridgeville Corners. Following a closed-door executive session, the Ridgeville Township board of zoning appeals unanimously rejected the church's request for a conditional use permit that was needed to allow the relief project to move forward.

Work on the renovation of the second floor of the church, begun a few weeks ago, was halted after Don Barnett, pastor, and his wife, Carol, assistant pastor, learned that zoning and building permits would be needed before they could proceed.

. . .Mr. Barnett said that the media has portrayed the hurricane victims as "angry blacks" who have a welfare mentality, and who have been in the welfare system for a long time. "It does not take a rocket scientist to look around and see that there are no black people among us," he said, adding that "there is a lot of racial prejudice in northwest Ohio, in this area."

He further said that blacks are not here "because they are not welcomed here."

The minister had offered to pay for background checks to be conducted on evacuees who moved into his facility, quite a compromise when one considers that most people have no criminal background information on their neighbors. There is no evidence that evacuees commit crimes at a rate any higher than other Americans.

Kudos to the Toledo Blade for following this story through several zoning meetings. But for the newspaper's attention, racial discrimination would have been under rug swept.

We are a society with a short attention span. Already, attention is shifting away from the survivors and evacuees to the Miers situation and a likely groundless terrorism alert. But, the difficulties facing hurricane these people will be present for weeks, months and years to come. Since they are largely defenseless, it is our voices that must state their case. We must call or email FEMA and the governor of Louisiana in regard to sloppy body recovery procedures, Hilton Hotels about evicting the already traumatized evacuees, and the decisionmakers in Ohio who paraded their bigotry. (The inspector who led the charade is Ed Nagel.) If Americans who care about the survivors and evacuees are not vigilant, the victims will be further abused.

News: Bennett's remarks are not benign

Wednesday, on his radio talk show, "Morning in America," former U.S Secretary of Education William Bennett took a call from a listener who said that there would be more Americans available to fund Social Security if abortion had not been legalized.

Bennett responded that the crime rate would be lower if all black babies were aborted.

"But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down,"] Bennett said.

He went on to call that "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

But he added, "The crime rate would go down."

It is not clear why Bennett responded to a question about Social Security by asserting that abortion of black fetuses would prevent most crime in America. He seemed to be implying that African-Americans are solely responsible for crime, and, that genocide is open to discussion if the concept is being applied to the black population. (Obviously, aborting all white fetuses would also reduce crime, but that idea doesn't seem to have crossed Bennett's mind, suggesting that, discussing, even briefly, abortion of all white fetuses, is unthinkable.)

Bennett's subsequent remark can be interpreted as a fig leaf meant to cover his outrageous assertion, though he claims his goal was to declare the idea of aborting all black fetuses reprehensible.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, other leaders in the Democratic Party, and several civil rights spokesmen have demanded that Bennett apologize for remarks on his radio program linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies. President George W. Bush has also taken issue with Bennett for making the remarks.

"WASHINGTON -- The White House on Friday criticized former Education Secretary William Bennett for remarks linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies.

"The president believes the comments were not appropriate," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Bennett has said he did not intend his comments to be racist. However, the obviously racist aspect of Bennett's remarks are the key to the controversy that has arisen. If his remark had applied to all fetuses, it would still be outrageous, but not evidence of racial bigotry. Bennett's singling out of African-American fetuses makes it clear that he perceives race as being key to the proposal that abortion can prevent crime.

Not all liberals in the blogosphere are offended by Bennett's remarks. Matthew Yglesias, writing at TPM Cafe, has posted a defense.

Not only is Bennett clearly not advocating a campaign of genocidal abortion against African-Americans, but the empirical claim here is unambiguously true. Similarly, if you aborted all the male fetuses, all those carried by poor women, or all those carried by Southern women, the crime rate would decline. Or, at least, in light of the fact that southern people, poor people, black people, and male people have a much greater propensity to commit crime than do non-southern, non-black, non-poor, or non-male people that would have to be our best guess. The consequences, clearly, would be far-reaching and unpredictable, but the basic demographic and criminological points here can't be seriously disputed.

Nor, as Bennett says, can the moral point be seriously disputed -- doing any of that would be wrong. Contra Harry Reid, Bennett has nothing to apologize for. Or, rather, Bennett has a great deal to apologize for, but none of it pertains to this statement. He's still a bad dude, but for totally different reasons.

In order to support Bennett, Yglesias had to change what Bennett said. As I said previously, a claim that aborting all fetuses would prevent crime would be offensive. However, Bennett did not say all babies, Southern babies, or male babies. He said black babies, specifically. He telegraphed, intentionally or not, that he believes that black and criminal are synonymous. This comes as no surprise to those of us who take more than a passing interest in civil rights issues. The 'scientific' racism movement has been offering disproportionate criminal behavior as a rationale for, if not elimination, segregation or ‘benign neglect’ of blacks and Hispanics for at least 30 years. Bennett was echoing that perspective. I have no idea whether he is an active participant in the secretive groups that promote such beliefs, but he is obviously familiar with their propaganda.

Part of being a minority or female participant in the blogosphere is confronting efforts to silence one's voice. Those efforts do not always come from the Right. Liberals like Yglesias can be just as blind to issues of race and gender as participants in Blogs for Bush. I've sometimes wondered why some liberal bloggers conspire to silence minority and female voices here. While reading Yglesias' blog entry about Bennett, I had an epiphany of sorts. If voices like mine are silenced, then voices like his are enhanced. A Matthew Yglesias -- young, white, weatlhy and privileged from birth -- becomes the 'liberal' agenda setter about issues he knows nothing about. Meanwhile, those of us who do have insights into society he never will are discouraged from sharing those insights. I don't believe the blogosphere will change much. It is mainly a bastion of middle-class white males talking to each other. Their political differences are often not nearly as deep as they claim. One of the things they agree on much of the time is silencing those who are not middle-class white males.

Anyone who believes Bennett's remarks about aborting black fetuses and crime were acceptable is wrong. That a well-known liberal blogger can defend Bennett's remarks, claiming that African-Americans do have a propensity to commit crimes, is evidence of what is wrong with blogosphere -- too many arrogant white men and not enough common sense.