An article was published today by Donald Roscoe Brown that details how he was pulled over and questioned for no apparent reason.  He believes he was profiled because he was black.  I’ve seen many people pulled over at the same circle, in fact a friend of mine received a ticket there for not having registration.  It’s a pretty well known police hangout and they will pull you over without justification.  Interestingly enough the author of the article spends a lot of time in Trenton municipal court since he works as a lawyer in Ewing.  His familiarity with the court system and laws makes the article even more insightful.  Here are some excerpts:

The officer then looked at my license, registration and insurance card and politely returned them to me in about 30 seconds. I initially felt perturbed and offended, realizing that I had been stopped without what we lawyer-types refer to as either “reasonable suspicion” or “probable cause.” Realizing further that the landmark l979 United States Supreme Court decision in Delaware vs. Prouse has for the ensuing 20 years disallowed law enforcement officers from stopping motor vehicles for the sole purpose of ascertaining the validity of the operators’ driving credentials, I could not help but conclude that, but for my blackness, I probably would not have been stopped in Lawrence Township in late May.

That the attending officer thought I “might” not be wearing a seat belt was not a sufficient justification for stopping me after only seeing me for all of about five seconds. If that was indeed the officer’s suspicion, he certainly could have — and, in fact, should have — followed me for a reasonable distance until he was able to better determine whether my seat belt was engaged. Such a period of surveillance would have constituted excellent police work.

As reported by The New York Times, New York City police officers made more than 170,000 stops on their streets in the first three months of 2009, the most for any quarter in the eight years since the department began recording such data. The percentage of stops that yielded arrests or summonses, however, has remained consistent at a lowly 10 percent. Particularly troubling was that the vast majority of those stops (144,000) were of blacks and Latinos. As such, racial profiling by municipal police officers, regardless of whether they be situated in Lawrence Township or New York City, is a practice that needs — finally — to be put to rest.

Now I disagree that following someone to ascertain whether or not they are wearing their seat belt would be “excellent police work”.  Preventing violent crimes would be excellent police work.  If someone wants to endanger their own life, that’s fine with me.  I do however support Mr. Brown in his belief that this traffic stop was unreasonable.  Most of the stops at that circle are.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/…

On Wednesday, according to news reports, James W. Von Brunn, a longtime belligerent racist and anti-Semite, walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and opened fire, murdering a security guard before he himself was shot and neutralized. Good people everywhere recognize the vicious criminality of his attack, and the particular insidiousness of his motivation to lash out where he did.

Read more…

Another excellent article by Mr. Gregory.

• The Obama administration shouldn’t bother prosecuting members of the Bush Administration (for war crimes, allowing torture, etc.) because “it could be a distraction.”
• The FCC should regulate the content of websites to remove sexists, racists and hateful speech. Especially social sites like YouTube and Facebook. This is a reaction to the whole Miss California / gay marriage story.

Nice to hear that upholding the law when it interferes with their power is out of the question.

And that “hate speech” is so bad that we need the guns of government to regulate it. I’m sure that doing so will magically make bigotry disappear.

http://www.slate.com/…

Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America. But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world’s judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn’t put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.

The way I see it is that our kids already generally grow up in a world where prejudice is a nonfactor. There are those who teach bigotry on all sides but as a whole and most importantly from the perspective of government rascism in it’s traditional sense is gone. Now we have ‘reverse’ racism but that’s another rant.

This article is a good look into the mind of the stereotypical American far left. The superficial take center stage and all people are made to be simple minded bigots. Obama couldn’t possibly loose because he’s a raging socialist with no substance. It couldn’t possibly be the fact his spine is Jello when faced with the most minor of conflicts. It couldn’t possibly be the fact that he ran on “change” and has proven time after time he is in fact for more of the same. People couldn’t possibly have honest disagreements with his policies. It couldn’t have anything to do with the Democrats amazing ability to throw elections.

So if Obama looses it’s racism. If McKinney looses is it racism and sexism?

I spend a decent amount of time on the streets of Trenton, mowing the grass, picking up trash, talking with neighbors, biking around, harassing squirrels etc.  I manage to collect some interesting stories and meet weirdos (probably because I am one).  Anyway here are two such stories that occured in the past three days:

I have a neighbor that walks his pitbull past my house every couple of days.  He’s a large white man who grew up not liking black people but kept it to himself mostly.  He went to prison and became an evangelical racist.  I think he may be affiliated with a prison group, such as Aryan Nation, but I’m not sure and I don’t really want to ask.  Anyway he walked past the house a proceeded to ask:

“Ready for school to start again?”

I responded, “Yeah, time to fight the good fight once more.”

His reply, “You know they keep taking my money but it seems all the kids end up behind the courthouse or under the ground.”

My reply, “Yeah, we’re undergoing an education crisis.  The kids don’t want to be there and they don’t want to learn what we’re teaching.  It’s unfortunate.”

His reply, “I know why that is.”

My reply, knowing what he thinks the problem is, “It’s systemic.  There’s tons of reasons.  The problem is you can’t just fix one and expect it to go away.  Personally I think compulsory education is stupid and the way we fund the schools is an affront to people who disagree with our schooling methods.”

His reply, “No it’s because…” <racist rant concerning evolution and certain people who “never made it out of africa”.  Also there was something in there about BET>

So hopefully my neighbor got something out of it before he launched into his rehearsed diatribe.  It’s almost as if everyone, even the most screwed up people, can clearly see the problems.  It’s the causes that people disagree about.

OK, second story.  I’m biking home from the post office when I roll up next to a car with a Ron Paul sticker.  I look in the car and yell, “Woo hoo Ron Paul”.  The guy looks me up and down, mind you I need a haircut so bad my hair sticks out of my helmet and I was wearing a T-shirt with a vomiting clown on it, and then proceeds to say, “Yo” and stare straight ahead.