Truthout

Last week, the court heard some of the most dramatic testimony yet from New Yorkers who have been illegally stopped and frisked by the NYPD. In a packed schedule, it also heard from officers who conducted stops; various supervisors and officials throughout the system whose testimony made clear that no one is adequately reviewing stops to ensure they are constitutional; and two officials involved in the release of the NYPD's RAND report on racial profiling in the department.

CCR witnesses recounted stops that highlighted exactly why this trial challenging unconstitutional stops and frisks is so important: Clive Lino and a friend, waiting for a take-out order outside a Chinese restaurant, stopped and frisked when officers deemed Lino's entering the restaurant a "furtive movement"...Cornelio McDonald, stopped and frisked on his way home from his mother's house...Leroy Downs, sitting on his stoop and talking on the phone, pushed up against a fence, frisked and searched...David Ourlicht, standing outside with a friend on a smoke break, stopped by cops with guns drawn...

Nearly 300,00 people have signed the Move To Amend petition that states:

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.

Businesswoman Melissa Chipman (case number 13030034.01), Farm Owner Michael Dineen (case number 13030032.01), and Author, Biologist, and Heinz Award Recipient Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D (case number 13030033.01), refused to pay their fines on ethical grounds and were sentenced to fifteen days in jail by Reading Court Justice, Raymond H. Berry. Steingraber is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Ithaca College and a Prominent Critic of Fracking and Its Related Infrastructure. The three Peaceful Protesters were arrested as part of a civil disobedience blockade of Inergy's salt cavern gas storage facility in Reading, NY, just a few miles north of Watkins Glen. The charge was trespassing.

It feels like we have entered an era of turbulence.

On a personal level, my thoughts are about life-long LA educator, Sal Castro. He passed away a few days ago. How do you explain who he was to someone who never knew him? In a way, he was like LA Times journalist Ruben Salazar - the journalist that was killed in 1970 in ELA. Castro had a similar impact, but he did not die. He inspired a generation. Most people know of him through the movie Walkout! But if that's how they know him, then in a sense they only know about six months of his life. Sal never stopped crusading for what some people call educational reform. We he really did was commence a campaign against educational apartheid. And that battle never ended.

I'm honored to have been chosen as the Secretary of Comedy and Arts for the Green Shadow Cabinet. However, I must say that I feel I have the hardest job in the entire governmental body—far more difficult than, say, the President or that other guy who makes the President's decisions. Why do I believe I have the hardest job? Because we live in a country where reality has lapped satire and surpassed humor altogether.

We live in a country where Congress is unwilling or unable to pass any sort of meaningful Wall Street reform immediately following the largest financial crime, and collapse, mankind has ever seen. We have a government that passes the STOCK Act to stop government officials from trading on insider knowledge, but then just last week they pass a new bill UNANIMOUSLY that guts the prior one. We have a government that prosecutes whistleblowers far more strenuously than they go after the fraudsters, banksters, and murderers exposed by those whistleblowers. How am I supposed to create comedy when reality is as ridiculous as anything can be?! Only fiction like Catch-22 and 1984 can EVEN BEGIN to describe the reality in which we live.

Dr. Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, the 2012 Green Party presidential and vice-presidential nominees, marked the beginning of Earth Week by announcing a new Green Shadow Cabinet that will serve as an independent voice in U.S. politics, putting the needs of people and protection of the planet ahead of profits for big corporations. The Cabinet will operate in the tradition of shadow cabinets in other countries, such as the United Kingdom and France, responding to actions of the government in office, and demonstrating that another government is possible.

Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) appealed the dismissal by a federal judge of a lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of the federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) without addressing the central First Amendment question in the case. The Center for Constitutional Rights brought the case on behalf of five long-time animal rights activists who say the 2006 law violates their right to free speech.

Attorneys and activists expressed concern over the direction corporate lobbyists are taking the law, both at the federal level with the AETA and with proliferating state-level "Ag gag" laws.

Today, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) rejected claims in a lawsuit by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging government secrecy around the court martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning. The suit, bought on behalf of a group of journalists, asked the court to ensure members of the press and public have access to court documents and transcripts in the case and challenged the fact that important legal matters in the pre-trial proceedings have been argued and decided in secret. The court rejected the claims on the grounds that military appellate courts lack jurisdiction to address the scope of public access until a trial is over and the sentence has been issued. The decision was 3-to-2, issued over two vigorous dissents.

Who're you rooting for – Tom or Jerry? For many people, picking Tom or Jerry is about the same as asking whether you are for or against privatization. It's a team sport. You just pick a side and support it.

But, dig into the facts, and the question becomes, Do you support accountability or not?

In the private sector, robust competition forces companies to constantly improve the services and goods they provide. Failure to improve means losing out to competitors. When there is a monopoly in the private sector, there is no competition, and accountability is lost.

Prejudice can kill. George Zimmerman saw a young black male wearing a hoodie, and made a decision that reflected the dictionary definition of prejudice — a "preconceived judgment or opinion ... An adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge." Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch coordinator of a gated community in Sanford, Florida, didn't know Trayvon Martin, the teenager he followed. Martin didn't do anything specific that would have been suspicious to an unprejudiced observer. He was unarmed and gave no indication that he harbored criminal intent of any kind. Zimmerman simply prejudged him. And it cost Martin — a seventeen-year-old out to buy some Skittles — his life.