In his attempt to garner national sympathy, Walters omitted several important details even among the incidents he decided to include, most notably this one:
Only the intervention of an uninvolved student protected Mr. Barker from severe injury or death. There was serious bodily harm inflicted with a dangerous weapon — the definition of aggravated second-degree battery. Mr. Bell’s conviction on that charge as an adult has been overturned, but I considered adult status appropriate because of his role as the instigator of the attack, the seriousness of the charge and his prior criminal record.
Well, aside from the details of how one Godlike student managed to deter the fiery wrath of six "attempted murderers," (attempted murder was the crime Walters originally charged five of the six with, not "aggravated battery," either way, the question remains) what is the distinction here between "severe injury" and "serious bodily harm?" and how exactly, did Justin Barker suffer one, and not the other? Walters clumsiness here hides the simple fact that Justin Barker walked out of the hospital two hours later and attended a social event, not something that people do after being the victim of a life threatening beating. Just ask John Lewis.
But perhaps most telling is that Reed Walters conveniently omits from his Op-Ed a description of the "dangerous weapon" used in the attack:
It was their sneakers.
The black boys were charged with attempted murder, which threatened to put them in prison for most of their lives. The district attorney alleged they'd used a deadly weapon: their sneakers.
Walters didn't say that because it would have made him look absurd, and it would have shattered the narrative of the reluctant white lawman trying to keep the piece in a town full of savage Negroes.
I can understand the emotions generated by the juxtaposition of the noose incident with the attack on Mr. Barker and the outcomes for the perpetrators of each. In the final analysis, though, I am bound to enforce the laws of Louisiana as they exist today, not as they might in someone’s vision of a perfect world.
That is what I have done. And that is what I must continue to do.
One might think that if Walters hadn't repeatedly used his prosecutorial discretion only to seek jail time for the Jena Six, not after the nooses, but after the series of violent incidents that occurred in the town between students at the school for months after.
I just love the detail. The sneakers as deadly weaspons thing just slays me.
But the underlying issue is very simple, and it's the same issue that has the writers and readers that network* here incandescent.
We believe that the criminal justice system should work in the same way for everybody. Black people, white people, Democrats, Republicans, assholes (sorry for the overlap, there), everybody.
Conservatives just don't. They didn't at Jena. They don't in the the Justice Department. They don't anywhere.
That's the prize here. Let's keep our eyes on it.
NOTE I like the ideas of "degrees of separation" as a metric. Social network analysis. Eh?
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Well, Hell, Lambert, that's just one step short of flat out
claiming the Constitution ought to cover everybody the same as it does the rich white people.
Can't have that. It upsets the advertisers, don't you know.
We believe that the criminal justice system should work in the same way for everybody. Black people, white people, Democrats, Republicans, assholes (sorry for the overlap, there), everybody. Conservatives just don’t.
No, I think they believe it ought to have special outs for them, and hang everybody who's not part of their club. I mean, seriously, gated communities? WTF
? In the U.S.A., that weren't built to, like, protect ambassadorial staffs and trade missions from France or some other furrin place?
They're playing "fortress America" in their make-believe, teeny-tiny imaginary worlds. You don't have to be white to belong, but you damn sure better have money and a purty mouth.
We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
You’re a trekkie. That
You're a trekkie. That explains your inexperience and illiteracy. Small wonder you receive so few replies, if indeed anyone reads you at all, my boy.
Festung America
Everything Conservative
always sounds better in the original German. You'll notice I refined the definition of Conservative again...
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
Saw the new definition.
How can so damn many of 'em always end up suckin' hind tit?
I swear, that's the only explanation for their lack of normal development of heart, brain and working conscience.
We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
Use a sneaker. Go to jail. It's the law.
He would have reduced it to simple battery had they used fuzzy pink slippers.
Mark my words
The feral Black man meme is going to grow larger and larger until the media starts to look like a D.W. Griffith film. This is how it begins . . . May I suggest Walter White's "Rope and Faggot."
If Skynet drops the Big One on you,
Terminator, you might come to realize the Trekkies had it right along.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
i know it was propaganda, but i really loved 'terminator 3'
i know it was part of getting ahnuld elected, the timing of its release, but i still enjoyed the film very much. i saw it in a theatre in an area with plenty of goopers and mouthbreather types, and it was Very Satisfying to watch their reactions to the end of the film. disappointment, cognitive dissonance, and plain old shock that they Hero Gropinator would play a character who failed to stop skynet in the end.
seriously amusing. and i think the movie's message wasn't entirely lost on some of them (nukes are bad for everyone).
sorry, Terminator, but if the bombs are falling i serioulsy doubt you'll make the short list at Crystal Peak. unless you have more than a couple hundred million in the bank, you're expendable to the warmongers.
...and how did star trek come up, exactly? trekkies are nice people, what's wrong with that?
off topic, but T1, T2, and T3 are great sci-fi
Just forget about ahnuld the barbarian.
Frank Herbert had it right: we must never design machines in the shape of a human mind.
Barring that, they should never be networked.
Of course, like so much other evil he unleashed in the world, Darth Rumsfeld has unbarred the door.
One part of his "Future Combat Systems" that DARPA and the D.o'D. has put a lot of money into are the AIs of the field robotic warfighters and the UAVs. They're all designed to be co-ordinated by a super AI satellite system run by CSC/ DynCorp, whose ex-CEO Michael Griffin also headed InQTel, the CIA's Company, and now heads NASA. The name of the network of AI's and satellites designed to control and aid in the ground control of the robotic warfighters and UAVs?
Skynet.
You just can't make this shit up.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
jeebus, kelley. really?
that's amazing. art imitating life imitating art...
Really blog whoring here
But one useful thing about a blog is you can keep a lot of related links in one easily searchable index. Hopefully they aren't too terribly dated.
Really robotic "warfighters". Really networked.
But really able to go anywhere, think for themselves, and carry guns. And being tested in war games. Incidently, UAVs with nuclear payloads are not technically missiles, either.
Really a Skynet run with the British. The movie used the name for what's been assembled in space since 1969.
And Michael Griffin? Really a heavy duty Company spook and scientist at the same time.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
Don't Forget
AMI and Tangram
jena six
I do not have to ask anyone of the traggic premeditated attack on Justin Barker. It is a horrible memory that my precious daughter relives often. I will support Reed Walters and others that are against violence. Thanks to all that are keeping our beautiful town safe. Jena is a nice place to call home.
Jena is a nice place to call home
If you don't mind the nooses.
THE JENA 6 SITUATION
LET'S TRY TO LIVE IN THE REAL WORLD, SHALL WE...
I find it interesting that you mention the nooses were painted in school colors and were apparantly intended on "supporting" a football theme of "Hang the Cowboys" - a rival town's team coming in for a visiting game.
Link?
And apparantly no protests until early September when two black on white racial fights led a black religious-community activist group to claim it was "those nooses". Which led to a full police and FBI "hate crime" investigation which found there was none.
Althouse is right. The reporting, like in the Duke case, has been very poor.
And expanding, it is the media again trying to force a story into it's patented "racial suffering of blacks and their justified outrage" metanarrative . Again willfully ignoring the facts of the case available to any reporter they dared send with an open mind to interview people. Which none of them did, as with the Duke case.
The media and black leaders tried to argue its still the 1920s in the Deep South, whites are terrorizing "innocent blacks", and lynchings haunt the landscape.
In fact, in most American's lifetimes, it is not blacks who are the hunted. They are the hunters. In the "Color of Crime", a statistical study - A white is 12 times more likely to be murdered by a black than the reverse. A black victimized by an armed non-black robber is 38 times less likely than a white, hispanic, or Asian being held up at gunpoint by a black thug. A white woman who is raped now has a 50-50 chance her attacker was black. Black women have a one in 130 chance their rapist will be a non-black.
But media, the old black leadership, and guilty white liberals prefer instead to pretend that the present reality is one where innocent blacks cower in fear of school lynchings and KKK riding and guns, not the people misusing them, are the problem. Or, desperately feel compelled to prove they are not evil racist whites as they are indoctrinated by seeking in any crime to establish a "moral equivalency" when black thugs are involved. Sure he is a black thug with multiple rapes and assaults and robberies, but he is no worse than the white racist society that forces him to act like that....
School officials are notorious about not publicizing their criminal stats, student on teacher threats or violence, classroom disruptions - but sociologists and educators in conferences and in papers admit that "agressive young black males" are the most daunting problem they face in "diverse schools".
But with the Jena 6, we have the press, black activists, and guilty whites desperately trying to tie the nooses and "life sentences the noose makers should have gotten" to a racial attack 3 months later that judge, jury, FBI, US Attorney, police investigators determined was not in the thoughts of the 6 black athlete attackers at all.
Another curious bit is a few white Lefties and females in the media who have never been in a fight or know how to fight claiming the stomping was of little consequence because the "attackers were wearing soft white tennis shoes" and "it's not like the victim was really hurt". (The victim was told to stay in the hospital overnight, he had a special ceremony he wanted to go to against doctors advice. His family, lacking health insurance, had 12,000 in bills from the neurological care, emergency care, and tests and were concerned about their ability to pay for a hospital bed)
The facts are that military combat instructors say that the "stomp" has 6-7 times more power than a full punch. In hand to hand training or reality, the killing or disabling blows focus in knocking a person down and delivering the final blow to the head, face, or throat. Preferable with a weapon, if none, then a foot, then an elbow, then a knee, and only if the other methods cant be used - a fist or open hand.
And those blows make little difference in the power applied if delivered barefoot, with "soft shoes", or with hobnailed storm trooper boots. A person who is a lawyer commenting on this remembered his city obtained convictions of 5 blacks who stomped another dug dealer to death in part from sneaker marks on the victims head and face and blood tracks the sneaker soles made leading away
The 6 black athletes had at least 4 members with criminal records for violent crimes. One was convicted of a past arson. One, whose records are sealed, is purportedly convicted of sexual assault on a 12-year old girl when he was younger. But because they were "great athletes" that made for a winning football team, black and white boosters, the local courts, coaches - all tried to ensure they remained in school.
Remember it wasn't just about the "lack of justice " for the "innocent 6", as black and white activists call them, the investigation as to who burned down half the high school continues...and two of the "Jena 6" are suspects. And investigations as to who was making death threats at the school and phoning the kid and the "3 noose hangers" with similar threats continue. And threats blacks made to other whites at school that if they showed up, they would die (reportedly invoving 2 of the 6 black athletes that a local minister said were allowed to conduct "a reign of terror" against schoolmates...
And one of the Jena 6 not in jail is suspect in 2 other violent assaults, and has convictions for 4 other significant crimes as a juvie.
Finally, the actions of the local DA make a lot more sense if it is true, as implied, that the only way to get a juvie on a violent rampage in the adult system better able to handle him was by overcharging the crime, then dropping charges in his racial attacks down to more sensible charges of aggravated battery, conspiracy to commit battery. The ringleader he wanted, Mychal Bell, was free at the time and school not notified by the juvenile system despite charges of two other violent assaults. And ability to more freely interrogate and prosecute the other 5 thugs in the adult system did offer the potential of ending the racial attacks and arson through intimidation. This was also only one week after one white kid could have been killed in a race-related gang stomping by strong athletes, an incident involving a struggle for a gun betwen a white kid and 2 of the Jena 6, and with half the high school burned and smoking......
I think once the details are fairly presented, the black leaders and local black activists will look like the bigoted assholes they were in the Lacrosse case. The media will again be exposed for pursuing their agenda and approved liberal narrative, not reporting on the facts. The town will be faulted for both enabling the black thugs to keep playing football as well as nailing them more harshly than whites because they had past extensive criminal history. The arson of the HS will continue to be investigated. Guilty white liberals and academics will again have their vapid "white oppressor" denunciations reposted and ridiculed - as with the Lacrosse case and dozens of others - when facts are better known.
Speaking of signals of moronicity: ALL CAPS
is a pretty infalliable marker, would we not agree?
Yes, DR. FESTLER, sometimes false accusations are made, sometimes people argue and even reach conclusions without knowing all the facts. Yadda yadda yadda.
I think if you had a more rational, not to mention more humane (on both and all sides of a difficult situation) point to make here you would have found a way to do it without SCREAMING and dragging in all sorts of utterly irrelevant, not to mention dubiously researched, extraneous material.
Sorry you live in such fear. I prescribe a stint of volunteer work in your local public high school. I assume anyone with the title of "doctor" should have some expertise he can pass on. And I can see from your own words that you have a great deal to learn as well.
They're not bad kids, really. Their main problem is fear too, but they're young and unsure how to either express it or get past it or grow beyond it.
What's your excuse?
You know, Xan, that may be unfair.
I live in Texas.
I sent boys to school in a system where athletics was more important than grades.
I sent kids to school in a system where "good ball players" were immunized against criminal charges fairly routinely -- criminal charges like DUI and assault and battery. I don't know if this has (locally) extended to immunizing high school athletes against sexual-assault charges, but I do know that's fairly routine among collegiate athletic departments. I don't want to come down on the side of racism here; I do want to point out that in many, many communities in the South and West, "good ball players" are a kind of elite themselves -- hoisted above the community on the shoulders of athletic boosters and celebrated as heroes for the extent of their career as "good ball players." Of course, if they become injured, or if they're not picked up by a college or the pros, then ... well, the glory's over, and the habits of indulgence and hero worship that have grown out of the crucial, character-shaping stage of late adolescence most American children complete during their years in high school have pointed these kids in a direction that is, to put it mildly, unlikely to continue down the very long futures most of them face outside the athletic elites.
It's one of the reasons my "sport of choice" is girls' basketball in high school and women's basketball in college. The exiting pro league(s) are so scattershot and poorly-paid that for the most part the young women whose prowess I so admire are very realistic about the fields of study they use their ballplaying talents to pay for in college -- accounting, teaching fields, counseling, sometimes nursing -- because, for them, the NCAA's are the pinnacle of their ballplaying career.
I wish we were not so twisted a national mindset, so that we could acknowledge the worth of teachers and doctors, nurses and counselors, equally or even beyond - as much longer careers are possible in those fields, even though the money is not equitable and the 'hero worship' is not remotely comparable.
To make money in America today you must either own stocks, sell stuff, or play sports. It helps, of course, if you were born with money as well as talent, particularly in sports that now go all year long and require travel and training year-round. Many young Hispanic, black, and working-class white athletes never have the chance to participate in these "elite" programs that less-talented but better-financed youngsters can access.
But the system that should be teaching them all how to read and write and figure and think, how to learn and why to vote, is failing them at a rapidly-accelerating rate; it hasn't been that long ago that one of the Redskins running backs, who was often suspended for discipline or substance issues, also famously couldn't read. He had a college diploma but he could not read a grocery list.
The wrongs in this country don't all stem from racism, don't all stem from politics, don't all stem from exploitation; but the wrongs in this country do, mostly, entwine among those causes.
We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill today! ~ Captain James T. Kirk, Stardate 3193.0
DR. DAN FESTLER
I know the nooses were just good wholesome fun, and those kids totally overeacted. I mean, what's a shot gun between friends, and I'm sure he meant nigger in the "good" way. Please explain the "I can end your life with the stroke of a pen" statement. I'm curious to hear your interpretation. Because we all know our justice system is fair, dispassionate and impartial; we are all treated equally under the law regardless of race or class or creed (Bullshit).
Get this straight. Before you start going down the they were "thugs" routine. Make sure your house is in order. Our system of justice needs a serious makeover. What do you do if you have no trust in the law?
My favorite part is the deadly weapons
Sneakers.
Also, that the ultimate solution of the city fathers of Jena was to cut the tree down....
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
The Left's Dogged Racism
The American left just can't seem to distance itself from political hatred and perpetual antagonization. Now that the Jena story has been subverted, reconfigured, exaggerated, grossly misreported or misrepresented by left-media--and now largely forgotten by cooler heads on the right--leave it to a publicity-hungry black rapper and recalcitrant John Mellenkamp to continue to fan the embers of leftist frustration.
If the left can't hunt down a bona fide national political 'scandal' somewhere in the country, it's certainly hellaciously adept at fabricating or conjuring one out of thin air. As for left-leaning American blacks--er, that's nearly all of our nation's 32.11 million blacks, by the way--they'll tout the Mychal Bell case as a landmark civil rights event only until Bell ends up in jail perhaps in the very near future--charged with first-degree homicide and armed robbery.
It's only a matter of time. Bell sycophants will end up eating crow in short order.
Comment deleted because fill-in-the-blanks
were throwing the page width off.
We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan
"Dr. Festler"
I grew up in Tennessee in the '60s and '70s, and got bussed from the white West End suburbs to Pearl, in the middle of the Jo Johnston housing projects, one of about 100 whites in a school of about 3000 blacks. Most the kids I knew weaseled out of the Supreme Court mandated bussing. My father was an extreme Confederate racist, who was sure that exposure to "them people" would cure me of my hippie liberal pinko faggot ways.
Mostly I think it was because he and none of the local rednecks could kick my ass and he thought they would.
What I found was a bunch of nice if confused african-american kids trying to accomplish something and live normal lives in cesspool of bad teachers and misdirection, a real prison of a school, in a neighborhood constantly patrolled by cops practicing gestapo tactics. I can remember armed cops constantly in the halls, and after a neighbor hood (black) kid was shot and killed by cops in a drug bust outside the school, of the police trying to create racial violence in the school when the blacks protested against it.
One of a group of about a dozen scared white kids in the cafeteria when this went down, I can remember the cops telling us the "niggers were going to kill us" and we all had to leave the school immediately.
I walked over to the center of the loudest angriest group of black kids, turned around and faced the cops and screamed at them as loud as I could to leave, because we were in no danger at all from anyone at all. Except the police.
I was immediately surrounded by hugs and kisses from a dozen sisters and brothers, and screaming cheers from every kid in the room.
Festler-troll, the only thing you have to fear is the fear inside of you and your Dominionist cohorts.
Your coming apocalypse will consume you and your kind first, before it runs its course, leaving the survivors of the civilized of the world to reassemble the ruins without you.
When the seas rise, the Old South goes first.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky