Friday, July 19, 2013 11:20:41 AM
Illinois State Senator Barack Obama Led Fight On Racial Profiling
Then-State Senator Barack Obama, D-Chicago does paperwork in his campaign office prior to participating in a televised debate with other Democratic U.S. Senate hopefuls Thursday March 10, 2004 in Chicago.
(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
By JOSH LEDERMAN
07/18/13 03:19 AM ET EDT
WASHINGTON -- In 1999, a fresh-faced state senator on Chicago's South Side heard constituents complain that police were free to pull over drivers because they were black. So Barack Obama proposed a bill to tackle racial profiling. When it failed, he revised it and proposed it again and again.
"Race and ethnicity is not an indicator of criminal activity," Obama said when his bill finally passed the Senate four years later. He said targeting individuals based on race was humiliating and fostered contempt in black communities.
More than a decade later, Obama's efforts to pass groundbreaking racial profiling legislation in Illinois offer some of the clearest clues as to how America's first black president feels about an issue that's polarizing a nation roiled by the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin.
Obama has spoken only rarely about his own experience with incidents he perceived to be race-related. In his 2006 book "The Audacity of Hope," he described his struggles with the injustices of "driving while black" and the vigilance he felt was still necessary for him and his family.
"I can recite the usual litany of petty slights that during my 45 years have been directed my way: security guards tailing me as I shop in department stores, white couples who toss me their car keys as I stand outside a restaurant waiting for the valet, police cars pulling me over for no apparent reason," Obama wrote.
Obama's administration has treated gingerly the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who fatally shot Martin. Burned in the past by injecting himself into racial flare-ups, Obama is wary of taking sides this time after, in his words, "a jury has spoken."
While Martin's family has said the teenager was racially profiled, race was barely mentioned during the nationally televised trial. Now that the state trial is over, the Justice Department is looking into Martin's death to see whether civil rights charges can be filed. Federal prosecutors would have to show evidence Zimmerman was motivated by racial animosity to kill Martin.
The president, in his only public comments on the verdict, looked to the future, urging Americans to ask themselves how such tragedies can be prevented.
These days, it's gun control that Obama cites. But as a young state senator, he and a few colleagues led a fight to require police to keep track of the demographics of drivers they pulled over – race, gender and age – then have those records analyzed to root out any patterns of bias. Diversity training was also part of the package, and another bill Obama pushed sought to prevent wrongful convictions by requiring police to videotape interrogations for crimes like homicide.
Emil Jones Jr., the state Senate's president at the time, said he told Obama he was counting on him to shepherd the profiling bill, part of a broader judicial overhaul involving death penalty reform that Jones said was his top priority.
"It called on him to work with legislators on both sides of the aisle," Jones said in an interview. "There was strong opposition from law enforcement on these issues. He was skillful enough to be able to get them on board."
One of Obama's key arguments to woo skeptical police groups was to say his legislation could actually exonerate fair-minded officers. Those unjustly accused of racial profiling would, for the first time, have evidence to show that wasn't the case.
Both the racial profiling and videotaped interrogations bills eventually passed through the Legislature in 2003.
When it first became law, the data showed blacks and other minorities were being pulled over about three times as often as whites, said Craig Futterman, who sits on the statewide panel that oversees the law. These days, it's down to about twice as often, he said.
"The fact that this data was being collected and monitored actually dramatically reduced racial profiling in Illinois," said Futterman, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, where Obama once taught. "It didn't eliminate it – there are still unacceptable racial inequalities."
In the Zimmerman case, civil rights leaders say Zimmerman racially profiled the unarmed teenager when he followed him through a gated community and shot him. But Zimmerman says Martin physically assaulted him and he shot the teenager in self-defense.
But across the U.S., as rallies crop up filled with protesters demanding justice for the teenager whose quest to buy Skittles ended in death, it's not clear what steps the administration may take.
"I don't have any process to announce today going forward," said Jay Carney, Obama's spokesman. He noted Obama's work on the issue in Illinois and said Obama "believes it's an issue worthy of consideration and action."
AP researcher Monika Mathur contributed to this report.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/barack-obama-racial-profiling_n_3616500.html [with comments]
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Christopher Wade Briggs, Armed Gunman Outside White House, Was 'Only Going To Fire A Couple Of Shots'
[ http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/18/shirtless-gunman-arrested-outside-white-house-was-only-going-to-fire-a-couple-of-shots/ ]
Posted: 07/18/2013 6:33 pm EDT | Updated: 07/18/2013 8:27 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- A shirtless man arrested on Tuesday near the White House with a loaded handgun and two knives told officers he was, according to court documents, “only going to fire a couple of shots if no one confronted me,” NBC4 Washington reports [ http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Gunman-Outside-White-House-Was-Only-Going-to-Fire-a-Couple-of-Shots-216037181.html ].
Christopher Wade Briggs also reportedly had a container of alcohol at the time of his arrest [ http://www.wusa9.com/news/article/266701/158/Christopher-Briggs-Arrested-After-Carrying-Gun-Near-White-House- ], which was precipitated when, according to The Hill, a Secret Service officer "allegedly saw him take a .45-calibur handgun out of his backpack and attach it to his belt [ http://thehill.com/video/in-the-news/312105-gunman-arrested-outside-the-white-house ]."
Briggs, who is from Texas, was arrested in Layayette Park, just north of the White House [ http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/dc30.htm ]. WUSA9 reports [ http://www.wusa9.com/news/article/266701/158/Christopher-Briggs-Arrested-After-Carrying-Gun-Near-White-House- ] that the charges immediately brought against him after the arrest include carrying a pistol without a license, two counts of possession of prohibited weapons, possession of an unregistered firearm, possession of unregistered ammunition and possession of an unopened alcohol container.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/christopher-wade-briggs-white-house_n_3619544.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Darrell Issa Compares Elijah Cummings To 'Little Boy' In IRS Hearing
07/18/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/darrell-issa-elijah-cummings_n_3617754.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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Karl Rove: Eric Holder Pouring 'Gasoline On These Smoldering Fires' After Zimmerman Decision
07/18/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/karl-rove-eric-holder-zimmerman_n_3617726.html [with comments]
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That Awkward Moment When The Tea Party Rally Gets Overtly Racist
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R) greets Ken Crow of the Tea Party of America during the Tea Party of America's 'Restoring America' event at the Indianola Balloon Festival Grounds on September 3, 2011 in Indianola, Iowa.
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
By Nick Wing
Posted: 07/18/2013 3:14 pm EDT | Updated: 07/18/2013 3:41 pm EDT
Earlier this week, tea party activists and GOP lawmakers gathered near the Capitol [ http://www.thenation.com/blog/175276/ugly-opposition-immigration-reform-comes-back-capitol-hill ] to rail against an immigration reform bill passed by the Senate.
While the event was linked to a number of controversial figures, including an organizer [ http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/06/04/2094411/white-nationalist-is-behind-black-anti-immigration-reform-march/ ] who has argued for eugenics and called African-Americans a "retrograde species," that didn't deter Republicans like Rep. Steve King (Iowa) and Sens. Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) from showing up to join the chorus against a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
When Ken Crow -- a co-founder of the Tea Party Community -- stepped up to the microphone, however, George Zornick of The Nation said [ http://www.thenation.com/blog/175276/ugly-opposition-immigration-reform-comes-back-capitol-hill ] he was taken aback by the talk of "breeding" and racial purity that followed.
The video [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRVGY04J-LQ (next below)], via Zornick:
Transcript:
From those incredible blood lines of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and John Smith. And all these great Americans, Martin Luther King. These great Americans who built this country. You came from them. And the unique thing about being from that part of the world, when you learn about breeding, you learn that you cannot breed Secretariat to a donkey and expect to win the Kentucky Derby. You guys have incredible DNA and don’t forget it.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/gop-anti-immigration_n_3618392.html [with (approaching 7,000) comments]
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Soledad O'Brien Hits Washington Post Over Richard Cohen's Trayvon Martin Column
By Katherine Fung
Posted: 07/18/2013 9:40 am EDT | Updated: 07/18/2013 2:07 pm EDT
Soledad O'Brien hit the Washington Post on Thursday over Richard Cohen's incendiary column about Trayvon Martin.
"Richard Cohen. Wash Post. Seriously? And people tell me docs abt Black in Amer and Latino in Amer are divisive?" she tweeted [ https://twitter.com/Soledad_OBrien/status/357825513127022593 ]. In response to someone tweeting, "what's worse is that Washington Post defended the piece,” O'Brien said that that was in "a whole other category of annoyance."
Cohen, a longtime columnist for the Post, recently drew sharp criticism after he attempted to justify George Zimmerman's suspicion of Trayvon Martin [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/16/richard-cohen-trayvon-martin-washington-post_n_3605079.html ] because Martin was wearing a hoodie — which Cohen described as a "uniform we all recognize." The Post defended running the piece [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/16/richard-cohen-trayvon-martin-washington-post_n_3605079.html ], saying that it was part of a "conversation about race." It was the first of two columns supporting the racial profiling of Martin [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/kathleen-parker-racial-profiling-washington-post_n_3612120.html ] in the newspaper this week.
On Thursday, O'Brien also tweeted [ https://twitter.com/Soledad_OBrien/statuses/357825980762558464 ; https://twitter.com/Soledad_OBrien/statuses/357826236384419840 ]:
Soledad O'Brien
@Soledad_OBrien
My mom used to say "because we knew America was better than that' when people would spit on her and my (white) dad for their relationship.
6:35 AM - 18 Jul 2013
Soledad O'Brien
@Soledad_OBrien
I think she's right. But it's a slow and sometimes tortuous path.
6:36 AM - 18 Jul 2013
O'Brien's father is Australian and her mother is Afro-Cuban [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/21/soledad-obrien-latino-in-america_n_974737.html ]. The former CNN anchor hosted the "Black In America" series [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/07/soledad-obrien-black-in-america_n_2258324.html ], and has called out critics [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/soledad-obrien-white-people_n_3268582.html ] who allege that the specials are "divisive." In her new role, she will continue to make documentaries for CNN and other outlets, and will be a special correspondent for Al Jazeera America [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/soledad-obrien-al-jazeera-america_n_3528378.html ].
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/soledad-obrien-washington-post-richard-cohen_n_3616491.html [with comments]
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White House Focuses on Reaching Latino Viewers
Adriana Vargas of Univision Communications, gesturing, and Maria Rozman of the Telemundo station in Denver, second from left, at a White House briefing on Tuesday.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Reporters interview Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the White House domestic policy council.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
Published: July 16, 2013
WASHINGTON — On Tuesday it was “En vivo desde la Casa Blanca” — “Live from the White House” — as four local anchors from America’s biggest Spanish-language television networks roamed America’s most famous address.
They interviewed President Obama [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html ] in the Blue Room, called it “surreal” to see the portrait of George Washington in the East Room and got briefings on immigration and health care from senior staff members in the West Wing.
“They want to make sure they reach this part of the population in their own language,” Maria Rozman, the news director for the Telemundo station in Denver, KDEN, told her viewers in Spanish during her stand-up on the South Lawn, as the White House gleamed photogenically behind her.
The White House is reaching beyond the Beltway’s traditional media and tapping into a huge and politically powerful audience: the millions of viewers who watch Univision and Telemundo. They easily surpass the audiences of cable news programs and, in some demographics, the broadcast networks themselves. In February, Univision beat out NBC as the third-most-watched network among adults 18 to 49 years old.
Much as he did in his presidential campaigns, Mr. Obama has assembled a growing but still-stealthy operation inside the White House to speak directly to Latinos. A multimedia public relations campaign pushing for an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system — delivered in Spanish and in English on a daily basis — is reaching millions of Hispanics across the country, even as it goes largely unnoticed in official Washington.
Ms. Rozman of Telemundo was flanked on the sweltering White House lawn by three colleagues — from stations in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas — who had been invited by White House officials pushing hard for the immigration overhaul. Mr. Obama did his part: In an interview on Tuesday with one of the anchors, Leon Krauze of KMEX Univision 34 in Los Angeles, he said emphatically that he would not compromise on his position that the legislation include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
“It makes no sense to me for us to say that we’re going to take a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix our immigration system and leave the status of millions unresolved,” the president said. “If we’re going to do this right,” he added, “it does not make sense for us not to resolve that situation.”
Tuesday’s events followed six lengthy sit-down interviews by Mr. Obama on Telemundo and Univision in January, March and May, along with months of regular appearances by Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the White House domestic policy council. Online, the White House office of Hispanic media posts messages on Twitter in both English and Spanish from @lacasablanca, which has more than 40,000 followers.
Mr. Obama’s weekly Internet address is matched each Saturday by a corresponding one in Spanish by an administration official, which last week was given by Jose W. Fernandez, the assistant secretary of state for economic energy and business affairs. In his “Mensaje de la Casa Blanca” — “White House Message” — Mr. Fernandez argued the administration’s economic case for the immigration overhaul.
The Latino outreach effort is an essential one, according to the president’s aides, who said that delivering their immigration message on a program like “Noticiero Univision,” Univision’s prime-time news program, reaches more than two million people. That is about equal to Fox News’s cable prime time average and almost triple the number of viewers watching CNN at the same time. The average nightly audience for “NBC Nightly News” was about 7.8 million earlier this month.
“We are making the case for why it should happen and making sure everyone knows we are fighting for it,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. “We will continue to use that megaphone.”
Mr. Obama is not the first president to focus on Spanish-language media. Members of President George W. Bush’s cabinet sometimes spoke Spanish on television networks or wrote op-ed articles in Spanish. Mr. Bush himself occasionally managed a few Spanish phrases for Latino audiences. But Mr. Obama has greatly expanded the effort.
Mr. Pfeiffer said that any politician who pays attention only to “Meet the Press” on NBC and dismisses Jorge Ramos, the host of Univision’s “Al Punto” program on Sunday morning, has “a fatal flaw” in communications strategy.
Although the White House sees Hispanics as natural supporters, the anchors do not always fall in line. Anchors on both Univision and Telemundo have been aggressive in pushing the president to demonstrate his commitment to an immigration overhaul, and have grilled him on the high number of deportations during his first term.
In an interview on “Noticias Telemundo” last March, Lori Montenegro repeatedly pressed Mr. Obama on immigration. “What more are you willing to do to make sure that you can fulfill your promise?” she asked at one point. When Ms. Montenegro asked the president what would happen to the Democratic Party if the immigration overhaul did not happen, he appeared perturbed.
“Lori, I’m not going to presuppose failure,” Mr. Obama said. “I don’t know why you keep on asking about failure, because I think this is going to succeed.”
On Tuesday, in addition to briefings on immigration, the four local anchors had interviews with top White House health care officials. Under white tents on the South Lawn, they spoke to Ms. Muñoz and other administration officials in Spanish.
But for the journalists, the main event was their interview with the president, a rare opportunity for their viewers to see the president questioned by anchors they see every day. Norma Garcia, the news anchor for KXTX Telemundo 39 in Dallas, used her five minutes with Mr. Obama in the Blue Room to press him on the fate of the immigration legislation, which faces a difficult fight for passage in the Republican-controlled House.
The four anchors waited their turns in the East Room, with the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington looming on the wall above. “It was surreal,” Mr. Krauze said. “And so much fun.”
Mr. Krauze recalled being at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 when Mr. Obama delivered the convention’s keynote address. “Today, I got to meet him nine years later, like a proper journalist,” Mr. Krauze said. It was good for me.”
His colleagues at the other stations were equally enthusiastic — but drew a line.
“Maybe we are more sympathetic to the issue because we live it; we are immigrants,” said Ms. Garcia, an immigrant from Juárez, Mexico. “But we ask the president tough questions because that’s what our viewers want us to ask.”
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/us/politics/white-house-focuses-on-reaching-latino-viewers.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/us/politics/white-house-focuses-on-reaching-latino-viewers.html?pagewanted=all ]
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Republican Who Tossed Voter Registration Forms Let Off The Hook
Colin Small, shown in a mugshot.
07/19/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/colin-small-gop_n_3619396.html [with embedded video report, and (over 4,000) comments]
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PA GOP leader admits Voter ID is for Democratic vote suppression
The Rachel Maddow Show
July 17, 2013
Rachel Maddow shares video of Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman, Rob Gleason, boasting about the effectiveness of voter I.D. at reducing the margin of victory for President Obama in that state in the 2012 election.
© 2013 NBCNews.com
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow-show/52504712 [show links at (with comments); the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we4QdDicGPA ]
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Rand Paul: Filibuster prevents 'extremist' Maddow from being Supreme Court justice - 7/16/13
Published on Jul 16, 2013 by MichaelSavage4Prez
7/16/13 - Sen. Rand Paul Appears on Fox's Your World with Guest Host Eric Bolling --- Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) on Tuesday defended Republicans use of the filibuster, saying the tactic was necessary to prevent the nomination of extremists like MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Republicans have filibustered dozens of President Barack Obama's executive nominations, delaying the confirmation of heads of multiple government agencies. Paul said he also plans to hold up the confirmation of James Comey for FBI director over the use of drones.
"I think the leverage of using the filibuster to get information and to make the President obey the law, I think it is a very important tool and our Founding Fathers put it in there for precisely this reason," Paul said on Fox News. "For that reason, to call attention to what they're trying to do, especially if you're in the minority you and do that and, frankly, if you didn't have a filibuster, what would stop President Obama from appointing say Al Sharpton as attorney general or Rachel Maddow on the Supreme Court," host Eric Bolling added.
"Right," Paul responded. "If you were to get an extremist like that, someone with an extreme point of view, the majority here could pass it with 51 votes, but with the filibuster then it would take 60 votes, so you're less likely to get someone with those kinds of extreme views to be nominated and approved by the Senate."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDkEUZfO8MA
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(linked in):
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Then-State Senator Barack Obama, D-Chicago does paperwork in his campaign office prior to participating in a televised debate with other Democratic U.S. Senate hopefuls Thursday March 10, 2004 in Chicago.
(AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)
By JOSH LEDERMAN
07/18/13 03:19 AM ET EDT
WASHINGTON -- In 1999, a fresh-faced state senator on Chicago's South Side heard constituents complain that police were free to pull over drivers because they were black. So Barack Obama proposed a bill to tackle racial profiling. When it failed, he revised it and proposed it again and again.
"Race and ethnicity is not an indicator of criminal activity," Obama said when his bill finally passed the Senate four years later. He said targeting individuals based on race was humiliating and fostered contempt in black communities.
More than a decade later, Obama's efforts to pass groundbreaking racial profiling legislation in Illinois offer some of the clearest clues as to how America's first black president feels about an issue that's polarizing a nation roiled by the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin.
Obama has spoken only rarely about his own experience with incidents he perceived to be race-related. In his 2006 book "The Audacity of Hope," he described his struggles with the injustices of "driving while black" and the vigilance he felt was still necessary for him and his family.
"I can recite the usual litany of petty slights that during my 45 years have been directed my way: security guards tailing me as I shop in department stores, white couples who toss me their car keys as I stand outside a restaurant waiting for the valet, police cars pulling me over for no apparent reason," Obama wrote.
Obama's administration has treated gingerly the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who fatally shot Martin. Burned in the past by injecting himself into racial flare-ups, Obama is wary of taking sides this time after, in his words, "a jury has spoken."
While Martin's family has said the teenager was racially profiled, race was barely mentioned during the nationally televised trial. Now that the state trial is over, the Justice Department is looking into Martin's death to see whether civil rights charges can be filed. Federal prosecutors would have to show evidence Zimmerman was motivated by racial animosity to kill Martin.
The president, in his only public comments on the verdict, looked to the future, urging Americans to ask themselves how such tragedies can be prevented.
These days, it's gun control that Obama cites. But as a young state senator, he and a few colleagues led a fight to require police to keep track of the demographics of drivers they pulled over – race, gender and age – then have those records analyzed to root out any patterns of bias. Diversity training was also part of the package, and another bill Obama pushed sought to prevent wrongful convictions by requiring police to videotape interrogations for crimes like homicide.
Emil Jones Jr., the state Senate's president at the time, said he told Obama he was counting on him to shepherd the profiling bill, part of a broader judicial overhaul involving death penalty reform that Jones said was his top priority.
"It called on him to work with legislators on both sides of the aisle," Jones said in an interview. "There was strong opposition from law enforcement on these issues. He was skillful enough to be able to get them on board."
One of Obama's key arguments to woo skeptical police groups was to say his legislation could actually exonerate fair-minded officers. Those unjustly accused of racial profiling would, for the first time, have evidence to show that wasn't the case.
Both the racial profiling and videotaped interrogations bills eventually passed through the Legislature in 2003.
When it first became law, the data showed blacks and other minorities were being pulled over about three times as often as whites, said Craig Futterman, who sits on the statewide panel that oversees the law. These days, it's down to about twice as often, he said.
"The fact that this data was being collected and monitored actually dramatically reduced racial profiling in Illinois," said Futterman, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, where Obama once taught. "It didn't eliminate it – there are still unacceptable racial inequalities."
In the Zimmerman case, civil rights leaders say Zimmerman racially profiled the unarmed teenager when he followed him through a gated community and shot him. But Zimmerman says Martin physically assaulted him and he shot the teenager in self-defense.
But across the U.S., as rallies crop up filled with protesters demanding justice for the teenager whose quest to buy Skittles ended in death, it's not clear what steps the administration may take.
"I don't have any process to announce today going forward," said Jay Carney, Obama's spokesman. He noted Obama's work on the issue in Illinois and said Obama "believes it's an issue worthy of consideration and action."
AP researcher Monika Mathur contributed to this report.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/barack-obama-racial-profiling_n_3616500.html [with comments]
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Christopher Wade Briggs, Armed Gunman Outside White House, Was 'Only Going To Fire A Couple Of Shots'
[ http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/18/shirtless-gunman-arrested-outside-white-house-was-only-going-to-fire-a-couple-of-shots/ ]
Posted: 07/18/2013 6:33 pm EDT | Updated: 07/18/2013 8:27 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- A shirtless man arrested on Tuesday near the White House with a loaded handgun and two knives told officers he was, according to court documents, “only going to fire a couple of shots if no one confronted me,” NBC4 Washington reports [ http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Gunman-Outside-White-House-Was-Only-Going-to-Fire-a-Couple-of-Shots-216037181.html ].
Christopher Wade Briggs also reportedly had a container of alcohol at the time of his arrest [ http://www.wusa9.com/news/article/266701/158/Christopher-Briggs-Arrested-After-Carrying-Gun-Near-White-House- ], which was precipitated when, according to The Hill, a Secret Service officer "allegedly saw him take a .45-calibur handgun out of his backpack and attach it to his belt [ http://thehill.com/video/in-the-news/312105-gunman-arrested-outside-the-white-house ]."
Briggs, who is from Texas, was arrested in Layayette Park, just north of the White House [ http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/dc30.htm ]. WUSA9 reports [ http://www.wusa9.com/news/article/266701/158/Christopher-Briggs-Arrested-After-Carrying-Gun-Near-White-House- ] that the charges immediately brought against him after the arrest include carrying a pistol without a license, two counts of possession of prohibited weapons, possession of an unregistered firearm, possession of unregistered ammunition and possession of an unopened alcohol container.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/christopher-wade-briggs-white-house_n_3619544.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Darrell Issa Compares Elijah Cummings To 'Little Boy' In IRS Hearing
07/18/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/darrell-issa-elijah-cummings_n_3617754.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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Karl Rove: Eric Holder Pouring 'Gasoline On These Smoldering Fires' After Zimmerman Decision
07/18/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/karl-rove-eric-holder-zimmerman_n_3617726.html [with comments]
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That Awkward Moment When The Tea Party Rally Gets Overtly Racist
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R) greets Ken Crow of the Tea Party of America during the Tea Party of America's 'Restoring America' event at the Indianola Balloon Festival Grounds on September 3, 2011 in Indianola, Iowa.
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
By Nick Wing
Posted: 07/18/2013 3:14 pm EDT | Updated: 07/18/2013 3:41 pm EDT
Earlier this week, tea party activists and GOP lawmakers gathered near the Capitol [ http://www.thenation.com/blog/175276/ugly-opposition-immigration-reform-comes-back-capitol-hill ] to rail against an immigration reform bill passed by the Senate.
While the event was linked to a number of controversial figures, including an organizer [ http://thinkprogress.org/immigration/2013/06/04/2094411/white-nationalist-is-behind-black-anti-immigration-reform-march/ ] who has argued for eugenics and called African-Americans a "retrograde species," that didn't deter Republicans like Rep. Steve King (Iowa) and Sens. Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) from showing up to join the chorus against a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
When Ken Crow -- a co-founder of the Tea Party Community -- stepped up to the microphone, however, George Zornick of The Nation said [ http://www.thenation.com/blog/175276/ugly-opposition-immigration-reform-comes-back-capitol-hill ] he was taken aback by the talk of "breeding" and racial purity that followed.
The video [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRVGY04J-LQ (next below)], via Zornick:
Transcript:
From those incredible blood lines of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and John Smith. And all these great Americans, Martin Luther King. These great Americans who built this country. You came from them. And the unique thing about being from that part of the world, when you learn about breeding, you learn that you cannot breed Secretariat to a donkey and expect to win the Kentucky Derby. You guys have incredible DNA and don’t forget it.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/gop-anti-immigration_n_3618392.html [with (approaching 7,000) comments]
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Soledad O'Brien Hits Washington Post Over Richard Cohen's Trayvon Martin Column
By Katherine Fung
Posted: 07/18/2013 9:40 am EDT | Updated: 07/18/2013 2:07 pm EDT
Soledad O'Brien hit the Washington Post on Thursday over Richard Cohen's incendiary column about Trayvon Martin.
"Richard Cohen. Wash Post. Seriously? And people tell me docs abt Black in Amer and Latino in Amer are divisive?" she tweeted [ https://twitter.com/Soledad_OBrien/status/357825513127022593 ]. In response to someone tweeting, "what's worse is that Washington Post defended the piece,” O'Brien said that that was in "a whole other category of annoyance."
Cohen, a longtime columnist for the Post, recently drew sharp criticism after he attempted to justify George Zimmerman's suspicion of Trayvon Martin [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/16/richard-cohen-trayvon-martin-washington-post_n_3605079.html ] because Martin was wearing a hoodie — which Cohen described as a "uniform we all recognize." The Post defended running the piece [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/16/richard-cohen-trayvon-martin-washington-post_n_3605079.html ], saying that it was part of a "conversation about race." It was the first of two columns supporting the racial profiling of Martin [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/kathleen-parker-racial-profiling-washington-post_n_3612120.html ] in the newspaper this week.
On Thursday, O'Brien also tweeted [ https://twitter.com/Soledad_OBrien/statuses/357825980762558464 ; https://twitter.com/Soledad_OBrien/statuses/357826236384419840 ]:
Soledad O'Brien
@Soledad_OBrien
My mom used to say "because we knew America was better than that' when people would spit on her and my (white) dad for their relationship.
6:35 AM - 18 Jul 2013
Soledad O'Brien
@Soledad_OBrien
I think she's right. But it's a slow and sometimes tortuous path.
6:36 AM - 18 Jul 2013
O'Brien's father is Australian and her mother is Afro-Cuban [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/21/soledad-obrien-latino-in-america_n_974737.html ]. The former CNN anchor hosted the "Black In America" series [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/07/soledad-obrien-black-in-america_n_2258324.html ], and has called out critics [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/soledad-obrien-white-people_n_3268582.html ] who allege that the specials are "divisive." In her new role, she will continue to make documentaries for CNN and other outlets, and will be a special correspondent for Al Jazeera America [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/soledad-obrien-al-jazeera-america_n_3528378.html ].
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/soledad-obrien-washington-post-richard-cohen_n_3616491.html [with comments]
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White House Focuses on Reaching Latino Viewers
Adriana Vargas of Univision Communications, gesturing, and Maria Rozman of the Telemundo station in Denver, second from left, at a White House briefing on Tuesday.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Reporters interview Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the White House domestic policy council.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
Published: July 16, 2013
WASHINGTON — On Tuesday it was “En vivo desde la Casa Blanca” — “Live from the White House” — as four local anchors from America’s biggest Spanish-language television networks roamed America’s most famous address.
They interviewed President Obama [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html ] in the Blue Room, called it “surreal” to see the portrait of George Washington in the East Room and got briefings on immigration and health care from senior staff members in the West Wing.
“They want to make sure they reach this part of the population in their own language,” Maria Rozman, the news director for the Telemundo station in Denver, KDEN, told her viewers in Spanish during her stand-up on the South Lawn, as the White House gleamed photogenically behind her.
The White House is reaching beyond the Beltway’s traditional media and tapping into a huge and politically powerful audience: the millions of viewers who watch Univision and Telemundo. They easily surpass the audiences of cable news programs and, in some demographics, the broadcast networks themselves. In February, Univision beat out NBC as the third-most-watched network among adults 18 to 49 years old.
Much as he did in his presidential campaigns, Mr. Obama has assembled a growing but still-stealthy operation inside the White House to speak directly to Latinos. A multimedia public relations campaign pushing for an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system — delivered in Spanish and in English on a daily basis — is reaching millions of Hispanics across the country, even as it goes largely unnoticed in official Washington.
Ms. Rozman of Telemundo was flanked on the sweltering White House lawn by three colleagues — from stations in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas — who had been invited by White House officials pushing hard for the immigration overhaul. Mr. Obama did his part: In an interview on Tuesday with one of the anchors, Leon Krauze of KMEX Univision 34 in Los Angeles, he said emphatically that he would not compromise on his position that the legislation include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
“It makes no sense to me for us to say that we’re going to take a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fix our immigration system and leave the status of millions unresolved,” the president said. “If we’re going to do this right,” he added, “it does not make sense for us not to resolve that situation.”
Tuesday’s events followed six lengthy sit-down interviews by Mr. Obama on Telemundo and Univision in January, March and May, along with months of regular appearances by Cecilia Muñoz, the director of the White House domestic policy council. Online, the White House office of Hispanic media posts messages on Twitter in both English and Spanish from @lacasablanca, which has more than 40,000 followers.
Mr. Obama’s weekly Internet address is matched each Saturday by a corresponding one in Spanish by an administration official, which last week was given by Jose W. Fernandez, the assistant secretary of state for economic energy and business affairs. In his “Mensaje de la Casa Blanca” — “White House Message” — Mr. Fernandez argued the administration’s economic case for the immigration overhaul.
The Latino outreach effort is an essential one, according to the president’s aides, who said that delivering their immigration message on a program like “Noticiero Univision,” Univision’s prime-time news program, reaches more than two million people. That is about equal to Fox News’s cable prime time average and almost triple the number of viewers watching CNN at the same time. The average nightly audience for “NBC Nightly News” was about 7.8 million earlier this month.
“We are making the case for why it should happen and making sure everyone knows we are fighting for it,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. “We will continue to use that megaphone.”
Mr. Obama is not the first president to focus on Spanish-language media. Members of President George W. Bush’s cabinet sometimes spoke Spanish on television networks or wrote op-ed articles in Spanish. Mr. Bush himself occasionally managed a few Spanish phrases for Latino audiences. But Mr. Obama has greatly expanded the effort.
Mr. Pfeiffer said that any politician who pays attention only to “Meet the Press” on NBC and dismisses Jorge Ramos, the host of Univision’s “Al Punto” program on Sunday morning, has “a fatal flaw” in communications strategy.
Although the White House sees Hispanics as natural supporters, the anchors do not always fall in line. Anchors on both Univision and Telemundo have been aggressive in pushing the president to demonstrate his commitment to an immigration overhaul, and have grilled him on the high number of deportations during his first term.
In an interview on “Noticias Telemundo” last March, Lori Montenegro repeatedly pressed Mr. Obama on immigration. “What more are you willing to do to make sure that you can fulfill your promise?” she asked at one point. When Ms. Montenegro asked the president what would happen to the Democratic Party if the immigration overhaul did not happen, he appeared perturbed.
“Lori, I’m not going to presuppose failure,” Mr. Obama said. “I don’t know why you keep on asking about failure, because I think this is going to succeed.”
On Tuesday, in addition to briefings on immigration, the four local anchors had interviews with top White House health care officials. Under white tents on the South Lawn, they spoke to Ms. Muñoz and other administration officials in Spanish.
But for the journalists, the main event was their interview with the president, a rare opportunity for their viewers to see the president questioned by anchors they see every day. Norma Garcia, the news anchor for KXTX Telemundo 39 in Dallas, used her five minutes with Mr. Obama in the Blue Room to press him on the fate of the immigration legislation, which faces a difficult fight for passage in the Republican-controlled House.
The four anchors waited their turns in the East Room, with the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington looming on the wall above. “It was surreal,” Mr. Krauze said. “And so much fun.”
Mr. Krauze recalled being at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 when Mr. Obama delivered the convention’s keynote address. “Today, I got to meet him nine years later, like a proper journalist,” Mr. Krauze said. It was good for me.”
His colleagues at the other stations were equally enthusiastic — but drew a line.
“Maybe we are more sympathetic to the issue because we live it; we are immigrants,” said Ms. Garcia, an immigrant from Juárez, Mexico. “But we ask the president tough questions because that’s what our viewers want us to ask.”
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/us/politics/white-house-focuses-on-reaching-latino-viewers.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/us/politics/white-house-focuses-on-reaching-latino-viewers.html?pagewanted=all ]
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Republican Who Tossed Voter Registration Forms Let Off The Hook
Colin Small, shown in a mugshot.
07/19/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/colin-small-gop_n_3619396.html [with embedded video report, and (over 4,000) comments]
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PA GOP leader admits Voter ID is for Democratic vote suppression
The Rachel Maddow Show
July 17, 2013
Rachel Maddow shares video of Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman, Rob Gleason, boasting about the effectiveness of voter I.D. at reducing the margin of victory for President Obama in that state in the 2012 election.
© 2013 NBCNews.com
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rachel-maddow-show/52504712 [show links at (with comments); the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we4QdDicGPA ]
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Rand Paul: Filibuster prevents 'extremist' Maddow from being Supreme Court justice - 7/16/13
Published on Jul 16, 2013 by MichaelSavage4Prez
7/16/13 - Sen. Rand Paul Appears on Fox's Your World with Guest Host Eric Bolling --- Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) on Tuesday defended Republicans use of the filibuster, saying the tactic was necessary to prevent the nomination of extremists like MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Republicans have filibustered dozens of President Barack Obama's executive nominations, delaying the confirmation of heads of multiple government agencies. Paul said he also plans to hold up the confirmation of James Comey for FBI director over the use of drones.
"I think the leverage of using the filibuster to get information and to make the President obey the law, I think it is a very important tool and our Founding Fathers put it in there for precisely this reason," Paul said on Fox News. "For that reason, to call attention to what they're trying to do, especially if you're in the minority you and do that and, frankly, if you didn't have a filibuster, what would stop President Obama from appointing say Al Sharpton as attorney general or Rachel Maddow on the Supreme Court," host Eric Bolling added.
"Right," Paul responded. "If you were to get an extremist like that, someone with an extreme point of view, the majority here could pass it with 51 votes, but with the filibuster then it would take 60 votes, so you're less likely to get someone with those kinds of extreme views to be nominated and approved by the Senate."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDkEUZfO8MA
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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