How far we've come...NOT!

Let me, as old "Tricky Dick" Nixon used to say, make one thing perfectly clear: I am in no way, shape or form condoning what the so-called "Jena Six" are alleged to have done, nor am I condoning what the young Caucasian students earlier involved in the town's racial tensions did. I do, in fact, condemn both sets of actions strenuously.

But another thing I cannot and will not condone, and must likewise condemn, is unequal, biased treatment of any defendant, regardless of crime, by the criminal justice system of my country. The white boys got off with suspensions and slaps on the wrist; the black ones are being charged in heinous disproportion to the crimes with which they are charged. That is the reason the Jena Six are found by many to be comparable to the Little Rock Nine, the 50th anniversary of whose integration of Little Rock, AR's Central High School was observed this week. Both groups were victims of racially-based discrimination; one may be less innocent and noble than the other, but neither deserves to be treated differently than whites on the basis of their not being white.

This cartoon by Tim Jackson says it better than I ever could:

(click here to view)

Tim Jackson Chicago Defender, Madison … Sep 27, 2007 EditorialCartoonists.com

Movie Night @ Chez Wynne, Week 2

Many thanks once again to autographedcat and kitanzi for opening their home to me and several others for pizza, snacks and a DVD movie. As last week's film was the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost starrer Hot Fuzz (see previous entry here), ACat and Kit decided to show us its 2004 predecessor starring these same two, Shaun of the Dead. They have thus saved me the trouble of looking up the disc myself and renting it, which I had planned. Present were joyeuse13, her husband, Alice T. and a lady whose name I can't recall but had come by a couple weeks previous.

( Cut for spoilage. )

One of my homeboys nails it on state funding for fundies

With thanks to mshollie for the tip: James Gill was one of my fave columnists in the Times-Picayune, New Orleans' major daily newspaper, when I lived there (1985-89). Nice to see he's still writing for them...and hasn't lost any of his smarts or his edge, as he shows in his latest column on creationism follies in the state lege here.

Bear in mind: this Vitter guy came within a hair's breadth of being the GOP candidate to succeed his party's outgoing governor, Mike Foster, in 2003 until a NOLA madam came forward with the news that he was one of her clients, showing yet another "family values" Republican for the sham he was and handing Bobby Jindal the top slot on the state GOP ticket on a platter. (Whether Vitter would have suffered the same defeat as Jindal did at the hands of Democrat Kathleen Blanco is left as an exercise for the reader.)

For those of you who've always wanted to jam while doing housework...

...would you believe a MIDI-capable ironing board? (Courtesy of Wired News)

Where I come from, people used to use washboards as musical instruments (and a few still do), but this is reed-iculous...