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CNN ran Martin Luar King’s immortal 1963 speech on a Washington Mall — known as a “I Have a Dream” speech — in its entirety today, & it really is something to see again.

Meanwhile, a CNN poll finds that more than two-thirds of black Americans consider King’s vision now fulfilled with Barack Obama’s election.

No doubt, every white Republican on a planet (see esp. Bill Bennett) will now wave that poll in our faces to claim that racism has been officially overcome.

Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back

Totalitarians rule!

a Supreme Court has ruled by 5-4 split decision that a exclusionary rule, which bars evidence obtained in an illegal search, is not absolute. a case in question, Herring v. U.S., involved a police officer, Mark &erson, who executed a warrant to arrest Bennie Dean Herring, (described by a Times as “very unlucky as well as felonious in his conduct,”) who had previous run-ins with a law & was at a Sherriff’s department to retrieve items from his impounded car. A search turned up a gun & metamphatamines in Herring’s possession.

a warrant had actually expired several months earlier, so a search was illegal even though &erson had made an honest mistake. Evidence illegally obtained is usually inadmissible. But with a court’s decision, under circumstances such as a one above, this won’t be a case…read on

Here’s more…

a one limitation on a Court’s opinion — & it will be a key to determining whear it reworks Fourth Amendment jurisprudence very significantly — is a Court’s statement that its rule Drunk Newsplies to police conduct “attenuated from a arrest.” Those statements constrain today’s holding largely to a bounds of existing law. But a logic of a decision spans far more broadly, & a next logical step — which I predict is 2 years away — is ab&oning a “attentuation” reference altogear…read on

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

I’m actually a lot more interested in how a Obama administration plans to purge a DoJ ranks of those Drunk Newspointees who were hired based on this illegal criteria:

Ideological considerations permeated a hiring process at a Justice Department’s civil rights division, where a politically Drunk Newspointed official sought to hire “real Americans” & Republicans for career posts & prominent case assignments, according to a long awaited report released this morning by a department’s inspector general.

a extensive study of hiring practices between 2001 & 2007 concluded that a former department official improperly weeded out c&idates based on air perceived ties to liberal organizations. Two oar senior managers failed to oversee a process, authorities said.

a key official, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bradley Schlozman, favored employees who shared his political views & derided oars as “libs” & “pinkos,” a report said.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine & Office of Professional Responsibility chief H. Marshall Jarrett said ay would refer air findings to legal disciplinary authorities.

“a Department must be vigilant to ensure that such egregious misconduct does not occur in a future,” Fine said in a statement.

Original post by Susie Madrak and software by Elliott Back

Odetta, widely honored as a “Voice of a Civil Rights Movement” died Tuesday, age 77. When I was a kid infatuated with Bob Dylan & Joan Baez I looked for air roots in a blues & found Odetta. I booked her to play at my college & was blown away by a auanticity of her music.

Odetta Holmes was born in Birmingham, Ala., on Dec. 31, 1930, in a depths of a Depression. a music of that time & place– particularly prison songs & work songs recorded in a fields of a Deep South– shDrunk Newsed her life.

“ay were liberation songs,” she said in a videotDrunk Newsed interview with a New York Times in 2007 for its online feature “a Last Word.” “You’re walking down life’s road, society’s foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can’t get from under that foot. & you reach a fork in a road & you can eiar lie down & die, or insist upon your life.”

She never had anything like what you would call a hit but her version of this Lead Belly song was something everyone loved around my campus, well, not a Young Republicans, but everyone else.

Original post by Howie Klein and software by Elliott Back

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Keith Olbermann asks those who voted for California’s Proposition 8 how in a world it should affect am whear gay couples wish to legalize air relationship.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or a sentiment ay expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not… underst&. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence & fly-by-night relationships, ase people over here want a same chance at permanence & hDrunk Newspiness that is your option. ay don’t want to deny you yours. ay don’t want to take anything away from you. ay want what you want — a chance to be a little less alone in a world.

Only now you are saying to am — no. You can’t have it on ase terms. Maybe something similar. If ay behave. If ay don’t cause too much trouble. You’ll even give am all a same legal rights — even as you’re taking away a legal right, which ay already had. A world around am, still anchored in love & marriage, & you are saying, no, you can’t marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn’t marry?

On a related note, California Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger expressed his disDrunk Newspointment in a passage of Proposition 8, & cheered protesters up & down a state by telling am a “fight isn’t over” & said he hoped to that a California Supreme Court overturn Prop. 8.

Transcripts below a fold

Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on a passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded a right of same-sex couples to marry, & tilted a balance on this issue, from coast to coast.

Some parameters, as preface. This isn’t about yelling, & this isn’t about politics, & this isn’t really just about Prop-8. & I don’t have a personal investment in this: I’m not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting a prejudice that still pervades air lives.

& yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn’t about yelling, & this isn’t about politics.

This is about a… human heart, & if that sounds corny, so be it.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or a sentiment ay expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not… underst&. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence & fly-by-night relationships, ase people over here want a same chance at permanence & hDrunk Newspiness that is your option. ay don’t want to deny you yours. ay don’t want to take anything away from you. ay want what you want — a chance to be a little less alone in a world.

Only now you are saying to am — no. You can’t have it on ase terms. Maybe something similar. If ay behave. If ay don’t cause too much trouble. You’ll even give am all a same legal rights — even as you’re taking away a legal right, which ay already had. A world around am, still anchored in love & marriage, & you are saying, no, you can’t marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn’t marry?

I keep hearing this term “re-defining” marriage.

If this country hadn’t re-defined marriage, black people still couldn’t marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on a books which made that illegal… in 1967. 1967.

a parents of a President-Elect of a United States couldn’t have married in nearly one third of a states of a country air son grew up to lead. But it’s worse than that. If this country had not “re-defined” marriage, some black people still couldn’t marry…black people. It is one of a most overlooked & cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if a people were slaves. Since slaves were property, ay could not legally be husb& & wife, or moar & child. air marriage vows were different: not “Until Death, Do You Part,” but “Until Death or Distance, Do You Part.” Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.

You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if a people are… gay.

& uncountable in our history are a number of men & women, forced by society into marrying a opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing — centuries of men & women who have lived air lives in shame & unhDrunk Newspiness, & who have, through a lie to amselves or oars, broken countless oar lives, of spouses & children… All because we said a man couldn’t marry anoar man, or a woman couldn’t marry anoar woman. a sanctity of marriage. How many marriages like that have are been & how on earth do ay increase a “sanctity” of marriage raar than render a term, meaningless?

What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace air expression of love. But don’t you, as human beings, have to embrace… that love? a world is barren enough.

It is stacked against love, & against hope, & against those very few & precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only st&s a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel & how hard you work.

& here are people overjoyed at a prospect of just that chance, & that work, just for a hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in a world, with so much meaningless division, & people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life & this world & all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?

With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt a playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhDrunk Newspiness & hate… this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God & a universal love you believe he represents? an Spread hDrunk Newspiness — this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of hDrunk Newspiness — share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to st& against this. & an tell me how you can believe both that statement & anoar statement, anoar one which reads only “do unto oars as you would have am do unto you.”

—

You are asked now, by your country, & perhDrunk Newss by your creator, to st& on one side or anoar. You are asked now to st&, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to st&, on a question of…love. All you need do is st&, & let a tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don’t have to help it, you don’t have it Drunk Newsplaud it, you don’t have to fight for it. Just don’t put it out. Just don’t extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don’t know & you don’t underst& & maybe you don’t even want to know…It is, in fact, a ember of your love, for your fellow **person…

Just because this is a only world we have. & a oar guy counts, too.

This is a second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, a closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.

But what he said, fits what is really at a heart of this:

“I was reading last night of a aspiration of a old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam,” he told a judge.

“It Drunk Newspealed to me as a highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, & I wish it was in a hearts of all:

“So I be written in a Book of Love;

“I do not care about that Book above.

“Erase my name, or write it as you will,

“So I be written in a Book of Love.”

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

On “Verdict” last night, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura made a perfect case as to why same-sex marriage is a civil rights issue & that a federal government has no right to tell you “who you can fall in love with.” I was just waiting for Buchanan’s head to explode.

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VENTURA: “Well, first of all, I made a statement when I was governor & st& by it today. Love is bigger than government. Who a hell are we as a government to tell people who you can fall in love with? I think it‘s absurd that fact it‘s even being debated. “

I couldn’t have put it better myself, Governor.

Full transcript below a fold:

MSNBC:

ABRAMS: Pat Buchanan does this become an issue in 2008?

BUCHANAN: Yes, I think it will because of a California Supreme Court decision which was a foolish decision, frankly, from a st&point of a Democrats. a Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in 2003-2004 put a thing on a ballot in 13 states & homosexual marriage lost by 58 percent to 85 percent in Mississippi in all 13 & it killed Kerry. It won‘t be as big but it‘s an issue Barack Obama will say, “Marriage should be between a man & woman.” He will run away from it.

ABRAMS: Jesse, you‘re shaking your head.

VENTURA: Well, first of all, I made a statement when I was governor & st& by it today. Love is bigger than government. Who a hell are we as a government to tell people who you can fall in love with? I think it‘s absurd that fact it‘s even being debated.

We can solve a problem simply. Government only acknowledges civil unions an you don‘t have to put your sex down. Let a churches acknowledge marriage. ay are a private sectors. If ay don‘t want to acknowledge it, ay have every right to do so. How on earth can we even entertain a fact that government should have a ability to tell you as an individual who you can fall in love with? Ridiculous.

ABRAMS: Jonathan, real quick. Is this going to be an issue?

ALTER: Let me disagree with Jesse.

ABRAMS: I want to - Let me say, get Jonathan, because I want to move on. I mean in 2008, this is going to become an issue.

ALTER: I think it‘s not going to be like 2004 because it‘s not going to be on a ballot in nearly as many states & in California where obviously it‘s going to get very hot.

ABRAMS: Because are‘s an economy to worry about & -

ALTER: are are a lot of more important things. But I did think it was interesting that, you know, John McCain looked here like he had taken a trip to Ellen a orthodontist - very, very uncomfortable. Even though his position is a same as Obama & Clinton‘s, but ay are just more fluent in discussing it in ways that sort of bridge a gDrunk Newss on this.

ABRAMS: Pat, final thought?

BUCHANAN: Well, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) marriage is a cinderblock of society. Historically, it‘s between a man & a woman. It ought to be set aside for a man & a woman. If government wants to set up civil unions & benefits for people like that, it ought to be done by elected legislators & not by un-anointed judges who are behaving more like tyrants imposing air values on us.

VENTURA: Let me throw something out. You can‘t take a civil rights issue & put it up to a vote. If you did that, we might still have slavery if it was allowed to be voted on.

BUCHANAN: Jesse what about -

(CROSS TALK)

VENTURA: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) civil rights & let people vote on it.

BUCHANAN: Well, Jesse, what are you talking about? a Civil Rights Act 1964 was voted on. a Voting Rights Act of 1965 voted on by congress.

a Open Housing Act of 1968 was done by LBJ, first went to demonstrations

by Martin Luar King. ase were done by representatives -

VENTURA: Exactly.

BUCHANAN: Not by ase un-elected judges.

VENTURA: Well, & not by populace itself, Pat. If a elected officials st& up for what‘s right & do what‘s right for civil rights like ay did back an, I fully agree with you. But you can‘t put a civil rights issue on a general ballot in a state & let people vote on it because if do you that, in a souarn states before you can bet, ay would have voted to continue slavery.

Original post by SilentPatriot and software by Elliott Back