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Today in History

37		The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius' will and proclaims Caligula emperor.
1692		William Penn is deprived of his governing powers.
1863		Confederate women riot in Salisbury, N.C. to protest the lack of flour and salt in the South.
1865		The Congress of the Confederate States of America adjourns for the last time.
1874		Hawaii signs a treaty giving exclusive trading rights with the islands to the United States.
1881		Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth opens in Madison Square Gardens.
1911		Theodore Roosevelt opens the Roosevelt Dam in Phoenix, Ariz., the largest dam in the United States to date.
1913		Greek King George I is killed by an assassin. Constantine I is to succeed.
1916		On the Eastern Front, the Russians counter the Verdun assault with an attack at Lake Naroch. The Russians lose 100,000 men and the Germans lose 20,000.
1917		The Germans sink the U.S. ships, City of Memphis, Vigilante and the Illinois, without any type of warning.
1922		Mahatma Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience in India.
1939		Georgia finally ratifies the Bill of Rights, 150 years after the birth of the federal government. Connecticut and Massachusetts, the only other states to hold out, also ratify the Bill of Rights in this year.
1942		The third military draft begins in the United States.
1943		Adolf Hitler calls off the offensive in the Caucasus.
1943		American forces take Gafsa in Tunisia.
1944		The Russians reach the Rumanian border.
1950		Nationalist troops land on the mainland of China and capture Communist-held Sungmen.
1953		The Braves baseball team announces that they are moving from Boston to Milwaukee.
1965		Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first man to spacewalk when he exits his Voskhod 2 space capsule while in orbit around the Earth.
1969		President Richard M. Nixon authorizes Operation Menue, the'secret' bombing of Cambodia.
1970		The U.S. Postal Service is paralyzed by the first postal strike.
1971		U.S. helicopters airlift 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers out of Laos.
1975		South Vietnam abandons most of the Central Highlands to North Vietnamese forces.
1981		The United States discloses biological weapons tests in Texas in 1966.
1986		Buckingham Palace announces the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson.

Non Sequitur

Sleepless Nights Plague America

Americans of all races toss and turn in bed each night, and sleeplessness is affecting their jobs, social lives and even their sexual habits, the latest poll on U.S. sleep habits finds. "Everybody is sleeping less; we do live in a nation of sleepy people," said Dr. Jose Loredo, a professor of medicine and director of the Sleep Medicine Center at the University of California, San Diego, and a member of the committee that conducted the National Sleep Foundation poll, titled 2010 Sleep in America.
The survey of 1,007 adults across the country found that people sleep almost two hours less than they did 40 years ago. "You need about 8.5 hours of sleep a night," he added.
"Sleep duration is a very important variable in health, especially cardiovascular health," Loredo said. "There is a strong association of sleeping less and hypertension, sleeping less and heart attacks, sleeping less and obesity," he said.
Many Americans seemingly know this, as more than three-quarters surveyed acknowledged that too little shuteye can have serious health consequences.
Too little sleep also takes a toll on daily living, with up to 24% saying they have missed work or social engagements because they were too tired. And among married people or couples living together, as many as 26% said that they were too tired to have frequent sex.
For the first time, the annual report also identifies differences in sleep habits among blacks, whites and Hispanics. These include:

• Blacks are most likely to watch TV (75%) or pray (71%) in the hour before going to bed.
• Blacks spend more time in bed without going to sleep (54 minutes during the week, 71 minutes on weekends).
• Nightly lovemaking is most common among blacks and Hispanics. Ten percent of blacks and Hispanics report having sex every night, compared with 1% of Asians and 4% of whites.
• Doing job-related work before bed is more common among blacks and Asians than whites or Hispanics.
• More blacks and Hispanics say they lose sleep over financial worries (12 and 11%) than whites (6%) or Asians (1%).
• Blacks say they need less sleep, and get 38 minutes less sleep than whites and 34 minutes less than Asians.
• Fewer Asians (9%) say they never or rarely get a good night's sleep than whites (20%), blacks (18%) and Hispanics (14%).
• Fewer Asians (52%) watch TV before going to bed than whites (64%), blacks (75%) or Hispanics (72%), but Asians are most likely to use the Internet every night.
• Asians report getting the best sleep and infrequently use sleeping pills.
• Whites are more likely to use over-the-counter sleep aids.
• Blacks are most likely to use prescription sleeping pills.
• Blacks have the highest rate of sleep apnea, a common but potentially serious sleep disorder.

What accounts for these ethnic differences isn't clear, Loredo said. "The differences could be cultural or the environment," he said.
Television keeps many people awake, Loredo noted. As does the recession.
Dr. Bruce A. Nolan, an associate professor of clinical neurology, psychiatry and behavioral sciences and medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said the economic crisis is a common cause of sleeplessness.
"Many people are experiencing more difficulty with sleep related to economic, social and personal circumstances," he said. "It really says that bad days lead to bad nights."
But efforts to improve sleep habits will pay off, Nolan said. "Better quality of sleep gives better quality of life and also gives better performance during the daytime," he said. That helps people to feel better and function better, he said.
The National Sleep Foundation has some tips for getting a good night's sleep:

• Go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day.
• Use the bedroom only for sleeping.
• Consider taking the TV out of the bedroom.
• Have a relaxing bedtime ritual, like a warm bath or listening to soft music.
• Keep your sleep environment quiet, dark and cool with comfortable bedding.
• Reduce caffeine, nicotine and alcohol.
• Keep your worries for daytime.
• If you can't sleep, go to another room and do something relaxing until you feel tired.
• Exercise regularly, but not close to bedtime.

Dunes vs. property rights in storm-battered New Jersey

 

The sand dune that ruined Harvey and Phyllis Karan's view of the ocean allowed their beachfront home to see another day when Superstorm Sandy's surge crashed ashore. They still want the $375,000 a court awarded them for the blocked sunrise, though. The Karans were never against the dune, their attorney says; rather, they deserve to be compensated for the decrease in property value to their $1.7 million home. They have company up and down the Jersey shore, where thousands of homes were saved from the October storm because they had robust dune systems protecting them from the pounding surf. Many places that didn't suffered catastrophic damage.

Most coastal homeowners want the government to build dunes and widen beaches near their homes. Yet some still refuse to give permission for the projects to proceed, citing the loss of precious ocean views and fearing governments could build boardwalks or amusement piers near their homes — something officials stress they have no intention of doing. The prospect of honky-tonk entertainment districts like the one in Seaside Heights, once home to the hard-partying Snooki and company of the reality show "Jersey Shore," is anathema to many in oceanfront neighborhoods where even smaller houses can go for several million dollars.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers won't begin such projects without signed easements from all the affected oceanfront homeowners that give them permission to access the property for the work. Sandy has only intensified an effort that had been under way since at least 2008 to get the holdouts to sign.

But Gov. Chris Christie has little sympathy for lost views. "For the people that didn't want a dune to block their view, they now no longer have a house to block the view from," he said. "So, how about that choice?" He said he may seek to force the holdouts to submit the dune work, whether through eminent domain or some other governmental maneuver.

Sandy has indeed changed some minds. Mantoloking, which was nearly obliterated by Sandy, has signed easements or verbal commitments from 120 of the 128 oceanfront owners it needs to proceed with beach work. And many of the towns on Long Beach Island are closing in on their final pockets of holdouts, five years after first asking.

The Karans' case, which will be heard by the New Jersey Supreme Court this year, is the most highly publicized.

Harvey Cedars, a narrow spit of sand in the northern part of the barrier Long Beach Island, has been battling with oceanfront homeowners for years over permission to construct protective sand dunes. The Karans refused to sign, and the borough used its powers of eminent domain to take the land it needed for the dune project.

It included a 22-foot berm that, while offering protection from the killer storm, also blocked the couple's views of the water. That, they claim, reduced the value of the property by about $500,000, and they sued.
"What people are saying to the Karans is, 'You should give your property to the government so that my property won't be damaged,'" attorney Peter Wegener said. "But if you take it, pay just compensation for it. They want to take people's property for nothing."
Harvey Cedars had offered $300 to the couple, arguing the figure was fair, given the benefit of protection from storms that the dune project provided. A bill pending in the Legislature would force courts to consider the value of protection from storms that dune projects add to oceanfront homes when calculating damages for lost water views.
Without such a law, as state Sen. Bob Smith put it, "you'd have to be a total jabootz" not to hold out for a six-figure payday in such situations. He's sponsoring a law to hold down court awards.

Renate Early owns a small restaurant four houses in from the beach in Harvey Cedars, near the Karans. She has little sympathy for lost views, given what Sandy did to the shore.

"If you don't like the view on the first floor, go look out the second floor," she said. "If we didn't have the dunes, we would have no store. It would have floated away. I'm positive of that."
Several of the private beach associations in hard-hit Toms River are refusing to sign easements, to the great frustration of Mayor Thomas Kelaher.
"They worry we might put a merry-go-round or a hot dog stand in their front yard," he said, rolling his eyes. "People are so crazy not to sign it. I just can't believe people are so obstinate."
Ed and Patricia Newman live in the Holgate section of Long Beach Township, where dozens of homes were smashed to bits. But the home they have owned since 1999 lost only a bit of siding because of a decades-old dune system between them and the surf.
"We had a good dune with lots of pine trees and bayberry bushes anchoring it in place," Patricia Newman said. "It saved our home."
Mantoloking — like most of New Jersey's hardest-hit areas, situated on a barrier island — suffered the state's worst destruction; every last one of its 521 homes was damaged, and scores were simply washed off the map. The storm cut a channel between the ocean and Barnegat Bay, severing the town in two before repairs filled the breach.
The wealthy community has traditionally opposed beach replenishment and dune projects, although Sandy changed many minds and led borough officials to campaign for holdouts to sign their easements so beach protection can begin as soon as possible.
Police Chief Mark Wright is mystified as to why all the oceanfront owners haven't signed yet.
"What more needs to happen?" he said.
Yet even after all the damage Sandy did, the fear of the public encroaching on heretofore private patches of the coast remains a powerful deterrent for some homeowners.
Michael Becker, who owns an advertising firm, owns a vacation home on the ocean in Mantoloking. He signed — but only reluctantly.
"I don't mind that the government would own the land they place in front of ours," he said. "All I ask for and didn't get is a clause saying they won't build a boardwalk or some other form of entertainment in front of our house. They say, no, they're not going to add anything. But it doesn't guarantee that the government can't add a boardwalk in front of our house. We only want to protect against what the government can do."
Mark Donohue, whose father owns an oceanfront house in Mantoloking, supports the beach protection project. But he said his father, too, is concerned about what the government might do once it gets the right to some of the beachfront land.
"This project should happen; it needs to happen," he said. "The common good is a good thing, but you can't just do away with private property rights."

Clifford Lewis, an 89-year-old who has been sailing on Barnegat Bay since 1930s, had a large garden at his home in Mantoloking, known for its prize-winning chrysanthemums.

"I am now too old to rebuild the garden," he said. "If the problem is not quickly resolved, beachfront people will lose significant value. To expect the state of New Jersey to assist us in a second debacle is ridiculous."

Keystone fears resonate along New England pipeline

 

The Canadian energy industry insists it has no plans to reverse the flow of a pipeline that carries crude oil from Maine to Montreal, but that has done little to reassure New England towns that oppose the idea and the 18 members of Congress asking for a full environmental review.

Environmentalists in the U.S. and Canada started raising the alarm about oil they call "tar sands" or "oil sands" being moved through northern New England several months ago.

"It's a climate-destructive fuel, and Vermont is committed to clean energy," said Jim Murphy, of the National Wildlife Federation. "We don't want to be the pass-through for climate-destructive fuel."

The Portland Montreal Pipe Line carries foreign crude oil from tankers docked in Portland, Maine, inland to eastern Canada, which imports most of its oil and has refineries there. But as the Canadian energy industry tries to figure out how to profit from new technology allowing them to exploit vast oil reserves in Alberta, it's already looking at ways to ship it east — and, opponents fear, abroad through the Portland conduit.

Opponents claim moving the Alberta oil through the aging Portland-Montreal pipeline would a threat because it is thicker and more corrosive than the regular crude it now carries, making it more likely to spill and cause an environmental disaster. The oil in question is the same kind that would flow through a controversial extension of the major Keystone pipeline in the central and western U.S.

"If they find any way at all to get oil sands oil to the eastern Canadian refineries, then I think somebody will argue, 'Let's reverse the Portland-Montreal pipeline because we don't need (that) crude anymore," said David Runnalls, an energy expert with the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a Canadian think tank. "This is all basically just being talked about. How much of this is serious, in the sense that anyone has invested 25 cents in it, is dubious."

The CEO of the Maine company that owns the pipeline would welcome the opportunity to find new business uses for the 24-inch, 72-year-old pipeline, which runs through towns in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. He has made that pitch in media interviews in the United States and Canada, as well as last month to the Vermont Legislature, but hasn't specifically proposed reversing the flow.
"We just do not have a project at this time," said CEO Larry Wilson. "We'd consider any number of opportunities, we continue to do so and I want people to comprehend one of the opportunities that we have considered and we'd be happy to consider going forward, is reversal from Montreal into South Portland."
Raising suspicions of the plans — or lack thereof — is that Calgary-based Enbridge Pipelines Inc. is seeking regulatory working to reverse the flow of another pipeline from Ontario and Montreal, known as Line 9, to carry oil from western Canada to Quebec refineries.
Still, the company flatly denies having any designs on the Portland-Montreal line.
"We have no involvement with that company or that line, so it's not really for me to speak on their behalf or to speculate in any way to what their plans are," said Graham White, a spokesman for Enbridge. "The fact that we are reversing Line 9 to the Quebec refineries has no connection whatsoever to the PMPL line or moving any kind of product toward the U.S. coast or Portland."
The kerfuffle in New England is a less visible component over a larger discussion about how to ship western Canadian crude. The issue is also at play in the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would run through several Central and Western states and take the oil to U.S. refineries along the Gulf of Mexico.
Environmentalists complain the Keystone pipeline and others carrying the same Canadian crude not only are more susceptible to leaks and spills because of the nature of the oil, but also that when burned, the fuel contributes more greenhouse gas emissions than lighter crude.
The efforts to ship Canadian oil to Eastern refineries and reduce the nation's reliance on imported oil become even sharper if the Keystone plan is rejected by President Barack Obama's administration, Runnalls said.
There was a brief effort to reverse the Portland-Montreal pipeline in 2008, but it was abandoned during the economic downturn.
"If you connect the dots, there's huge interest in moving oil out of Alberta, and where is it going to go?" said Sandra Levine, an attorney with the Vermont office of the Conservation Law Foundation, one of the groups fighting the possible reversal of the pipeline.
The issue has gotten the attention of the members of the U.S. House and Senate, all Democrats save one independent, from as far away as Arizona, who have asked Secretary of State John Kerry to require a comprehensive environmental impact statement should the Portland Pipeline Corp. seek to reverse the flow.
"The State Department has the responsibility to ensure transnational pipeline projects serve the national interest and prevent projects that will put our communities and the environment at risk of destructive spills," said the Feb. 26 letter to Kerry.
The talk about tar sands oil galvanized 29 Vermont towns to hold nonbinding votes against reversing the pipeline during town meetings this month. None of the communities that considered the issue voted in favor of the pipeline — but none of the communities that voted host any portion of it.
In the Vermont town of Burke, just east of a pump station, Carol Krochak, who lives along a brook downstream from the pipeline, read an activist's opinion piece at her town meeting that conveyed the worries of pipeline-reversal opponents.
"I am not a scientist. I cannot evaluate this," said Krochak, who described herself as "very concerned" and wanted people to know of her fears. "It's critical that people who have that expertise look at it."
Burke didn't vote against the project, but its planning commission asked the state to examine any reversal proposal through Vermont's land-use planning process, which can take years.
The votes of concern led the Canadian consulate in Boston to send letters to 23 Vermont towns and to attend meetings in five Maine communities, saying Alberta oil posed no greater threat of a spill or to the environment than traditional crude oil. The letter also stressed officials are unaware of any specific plan to move tar sands oil between Montreal and Portland.
Runnalls noted, though, that the Canadian oil industry had invested at least $50 billion in Alberta oil.

"They're ramping up production like mad," he said. "If they can't find more ways to get this out of Alberta, to China or the U.S. or whatever, they're in big trouble."

Did you know ...

That Liberal homes use less electricity

That scientists say America too dumb for democracy

That two years later, Japan tsunami debris still washing ashore

Here's a dictionary for deciphering the news

Boehner Admits There is No Immediate Debt Crisis; Wants to Gut Social Security and Medicare Anyway

On ABC’s This Week, Speaker John Boehner admitted that there is no immediate debt crisis, but in the next breath argued that the country should gut Medicare and Social Security anyway.
Transcript from ABC News:

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA (VIDEO): We’ve already cut– $2.5– $2.7 trillion out of the deficit. If the sequester stays in, you’ve got over $3.5 trillion of deficit reduction already. And, so, we don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next ten years, it’s gonna be in a sustainable place.
MARTHA RADDATZ: Is he right that we don’t have an immediate crisis?
SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: We do not have an immediate debt crisis. But we all know that we have one looming. And we have– one looming– because we have entitlement programs that are not sustainable in their current form. They’re gonna go bankrupt. Washington has responsibility– to our seniors and our near seniors– that we firm up these programs so that they’re there for the long term. Because if we don’t do it, not only will they not get benefits, we will have a debt crisis right around the corner. We have time to solve our problems. But we need to do it now.
MARTHA RADDATZ: H– how long do we have to solve our problems?
SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: Nobody knows where this is. It could be a year or two years, three years, four years. The– it’s not an immediate problem. But we can all–
MARTHA RADDATZ: So, you agree with the president on that?
SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: The Amer– yes. But his point, as he went on to say in that interview, is that we don’t– we don’t really need to do anything at this point. And I would argue that we do need to do something.

The Speaker claimed that nobody knows how long we have to deal with the debt, but this was a total lie. Social Security will be solvent until 2033, and the repugican claim that Medicare is going bankrupt is an epic exaggeration. The Medicare hospital trust fund is expected to be exhausted by 2024, but this is nothing new. As FactCheck.org pointed out, “In 1980, insolvency was expected in 1994. In 1990, the exhaustion date was 2003. But those dates have been pushed back mainly by repeated tax increases.”
If there is no immediate crisis, why are repugicans so hellbent on cutting Social Security and Medicare? The answer is ideology. The repugicans have hated Social Security and Medicare from the day they each became law. The ginned up fake immediate debt crisis as championed most loudly by Paul Ryan is the latest cover story for the right wing war on the social safety net.
This isn’t about solvency and insolvency. Notice how repugicans always ignore the official numbers when talking about Social Security and Medicare. The repugicans are ideologically committed to destroying the social safety net. Speaker Boehner’s comments today were an admission that cuts don’t need to be made, but repugicans want them just because.

Random Photo

In Brazil, a mix of racial openness and exclusion

 

Many Brazilians cast their country as racial democracy where people of different groups long have intermarried, resulting in a large mixed-race population. But you need only turn on the TV, open the newspaper or stroll down the street to see clear evidence of segregation.

In Brazil, whites are at the top of the social pyramid, dominating professions of wealth, prestige and power. Dark-skinned people are at the bottom of the heap, left to clean up after others and take care of their children and the elderly.

The 2010 census marked the first time in which black and mixed-race people officially outnumbered whites, weighing in at just over 50 percent, compared with 47 percent for whites. Researchers suggest that Brazil actually may have been a majority-nonwhite country for some time, with the latest statistics reflecting a decreased social stigma that makes it easier for nonwhites to report their actual race.

It is a mix of anomalies in Brazil that offers lessons to a United States now in transition to a "majority-minority" nation: how racial integration in social life does not always translate to economic equality, and how centuries of racial mixing are no guaranteed route to a colorblind society.

Nearly all TV news anchors in Brazil are white, as are the vast majority of doctors, dentists, fashion models and lawyers. Most maids and doormen, street cleaners and garbage collectors are black. There is only one black senator and there never has been a black president, though a woman, Dilma Rousseff, leads the country now.

A decade of booming economic growth and wealth-redistribution schemes has narrowed the income gap between blacks and whites, but it remains pronounced. In 2011, the average black or mixed-race worker earned just 60 percent what the average white worker made. That was up from 2001, when black workers earned 50.5 percent what white workers made, according to Brazil's national statistics agency.
Brazil recently instituted affirmative action programs to help boost the numbers of black and mixed-race college students, though both groups continue to be proportionally underrepresented at the nation's universities. They made up just 10 percent of college students in 2001, and now account for 35 percent. Those numbers probably will continue to rise because of a new law that reserves half the spots in federal universities for high school graduates of public schools and distributes them according to states' racial makeup.
Still, black faces remain the exception at elite colleges.
Nubia de Lima, a 29-year-old black producer for Globo television network, said she experiences racism on a daily basis, in the reactions and comments of strangers who are constantly taking her for a maid, a nanny or a cook, despite her flair for fashion and pricey wardrobe.
"People aren't used to seeing black people in positions of power," she said. "It doesn't exist. They see you are black and naturally assume that you live in a favela (hillside slum) and you work as a housekeeper."
She said upper middle-class black people like her are in a kind of limbo, too affluent and educated to live in favelas but still largely excluded from high-rent white neighborhoods.
"Here it's a racism of exclusion," de Lima said.

In colorblind France, rising diversity tests unity

 

The streets in one of the Paris region's toughest housing projects, burgeoning with immigrants, bear names like Cezanne, Picasso and Utrillo, as if to stamp the French heritage onto the psyches of its residents.

But neither the names of the great masters nor the idyllic images conjured up by the name of the project, Les Bosquets, or The Groves, capture the daily realities of the French-style ghetto, an enclosed world where many residents don't speak French.

Delinquency soars and the unemployment rate is estimated at some 40 percent, nearly four times the national rate. Montfermeil's town hall could not provide an official figure.

Just 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) from Paris, Les Bosquets is light years from the world of Parisians.

Les Bosquets, like other projects that surround the big cities of France, belies this nation's special brand of integration whereby newcomers from afar assimilate into the French culture, becoming one with it whatever their origins. Despite quiet debate, French authorities, whatever their political colors, have stood by a French model that's colorblind to differences, in total contrast to the U.S. notion of a vibrant melting pot.

The story of France is often viewed as the antithesis to the U.S., one in which race and ethnicity are not counted in the government census and minority rights need not exist, due to residents who share a common identity of "French." Many French shudder at the word "multiculturalism."

But housing projects such as Les Bosquets, often cut off by poor public transport from the cities, raise questions about how much assimilation is really happening in France and whether the French model of integration, long the nation's pride, is wearing thin.

Even Muslim immigrants from France's former North African colonies, many in their third generation, and making up a large portion of residents of Les Bosquets, are far from melding with the mainstream.
For Patrick Simon, a leading demographer, the French model has a basic flaw that is becoming increasingly evident as time goes by.
"It's a model founded on the invisibility of differences," Simon said. The problem is that minorities are increasingly visible, many of them with origins in France's former colonies in Muslim North Africa, and because "we see them, we can't ignore their existence."
Even second- and third-generation citizens of foreign origin are perceived as different and treated thus.
Statisticians are not allowed to count people by their origins, complicating research.
But the postcard vision of France with church steeples perched over a contented populace wearing berets and carrying baguettes has been upended in the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris.
French kings are buried in the great cathedral of Saint-Denis, the main town, but traditional minorities have become the majority in the region.
A study by Simon puts immigrants and their descendants through the second generation at 75 percent of the city's population. It includes people from French overseas departments (8 percent), who are French but of color. The jobless rate was 16.5 percent in 2009, according to Insee, the national statistics agency. But the economic leaders are in the white minority, Simon said, putting new stress on the notion that immigrants and their children are being successfully assimilated.
In Les Bosquets, the most widespread complaint remains poor public transport and the isolation that keeps Les Bosquets at a distance from mainstream France. It takes nearly 90 minutes to get to Paris.
"They've done everything to keep us closed among ourselves," said a 34-year-old born in France of Algerian parents. "It is they who don't want us to integrate." Like most residents of the projects, the man, who works with a private fire department, refused to identify himself by name.
Discrimination is a fact of life in France for minorities, and a poll by the Ipsos firm published this year in the daily Le Monde showed no sign that that might lessen. A full 70 percent of those questioned felt there were "too many foreigners in France." The finger was pointed, above all, at those of the Muslim delusion.

CPAC racism panel derailed by audience member who suggests slaves should have been grateful for food, shelter & clothing

"A wingnut group looking to make inroads with African American Voters held a talk on Friday called 'Trump the Race Card'. It devolved into a chaos when Scott Terry of North Carolina suggested Fredrick Douglass should have been grateful for the food and shelter provided by his former slave master."

When asked by ThinkProgress if he’d accept a society where African-Americans were permanently subservient to whites, he said “I’d be fine with that.” He also claimed that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa,” and that “all the Tea Parties” were concerned with the same racial problems that he was.
At one point, a woman challenged him on the Republican Party’s roots, to which Terry responded, “I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public.”
He claimed to be a direct descendent of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

CPAC Participant Defends Slavery At Minority Outreach Panel: It Gave ‘Food And Shelter’ To Blacks

The truth be told

South Carolina man among leaders arrested in Florida gambling probe

Johnny Duncan knew how to work a room. Outgoing with a wide smile and a Southern drawl, he'd drape his arm around a stranger and ask for their backstory.

So it was no surprise that during a visit to Florida two decades ago, the former pool hustler from South Carolina walked into a bingo hall and started chatting with the owner.

Although the owner was nearly 25 years older, they quickly discovered they had a lot in common. Both served in the military and wanted to help veterans. Eventually, they became part of Allied Veterans of the World, a Florida-based charity investigators said was a front for a $300 million gambling operation.

Duncan was among 50 people arrested in a handful of states last week, and authorities said he was a leader in the organization accused of running nearly 50 gambling parlors offering computer slot machine-style games.
The group's executives gave precious little to veterans and lavished millions on themselves, spending it on boats, real estate and Maseratis, Ferraris and Porsches, investigators said.
The scandal led to the resignation of Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, a Republican who once co-owned a public relations firm that worked for Allied Veterans. She has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

Duncan, 65, was in jail Sunday. His attorney, Kelly Mathis, has been identified by authorities as the ringleader, but Duncan also played a crucial role, authorities said, and he had a history of running a similar scheme. Duncan pleaded no contest more than 20 years ago to creating a fake charity to sponsor bingo games.

His latest arrest shocked his family, who insisted he was innocent.

"He helped a lot of veterans," said his brother Donnie Duncan.

Family members blamed Mathis for Duncan's legal problems.
"His lawyer told him it was legal. If your lawyer tells you something is legal, you believe him," Donnie Duncan said.
Mathis, through his attorney, has also insisted that Mathis did nothing wrong and the games were legal sweepstakes, much like contests sponsored by fast-food restaurants or retailers.
Duncan's family was worried about his health. He had a liver transplant in 2011 and his family said he needed his medicine.

"Right now, I'm terrified that he's not going to get the care he needs," said Duncan's daughter-in-law, Dana Duncan.

Spartanburg County sheriff's office spokesman Lt. Tony Ivey said Duncan, who is being held without bond, was being given his medicine.
In interviews with The Associated Press, friends and family members described Duncan as a man who grew up in a working class family in Boiling Springs, a rural area at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
They said he was outgoing, generous and fiercely loyal to his family — he bought them homes and helped support them financially for years.
And they said the key to his success in the tough, smoky world of bars, bingo halls and gambling parlors was his personality. He could walk into a room and make everyone feel comfortable. People trusted him.
It was like that from his early days in Boiling Springs, where he hung around pool halls. After graduating high school, Duncan spent four years in the U.S. Navy.
When Duncan returned home in the early 1970s, he got into the bar business — and bingo. In the 1980s, he had a bingo operation in Florida. He knew the area well because he had spent time in Jacksonville while he was in the service.
But Duncan ran into some problems. He was arrested in Florida on gambling charges in 1987. He was charged with keeping a gambling house, sponsoring unlawful bingo games and failing to follow guidelines for games of chance in Leon County, Fla.
Duncan pleaded no contest to setting up a fake charity, called Army Navy Union, to sponsor bingo games. He was sentenced to six months of probation and ordered not to operate bingo games in Florida.
By 1989, Duncan was running South Carolina's largest bingo network, with 28 games. He was described as the commander of Army Navy Union, which sponsored the games. He also reportedly obtained national charters and state permits that allowed bingo games to operate as charitable activities, free from taxes.
In the early 1990s, Duncan was spending more and more time in Florida. He met Harold Grossman, who was running a bingo hall in Fort Walton Beach, Fla.
Grossman, a World War II veteran, was in his late 60s and active in veterans' organizations. They hit it off and soon were in business together.
But it was clear: Duncan was in charge and Grossman mostly stayed in the background.

Duncan began opening new bingo halls and bringing in family members to help, including Dana Duncan, who was married to his son.

She recalled Grossman doting on her family, and when he was diagnosed with cancer in 2004, he moved in with Dana's family. He passed away later that year.
A couple of years later, Allied Veterans started opening up storefronts across Florida, advertising themselves as Internet cafes. The unregulated shops spread rapidly, becoming big business. Duncan was the former national commander for the group, authorities said.
Customers could buy Internet time on a card and check email on any number of computers, but most would play the slot machine-style games. They were encouraged to spend more to win more.
Dana's father, Robert Gillespie, recalled that he first met Duncan in a pool hall in Greer, S.C. in the 1960s. He said the things that made Duncan a good pool player carried over into his life and his businesses.
"You didn't want to play him because you knew you'd lose and he'd take your money," Gillespie said.

'You have a right to an attorney ..."

Serious problems persist in indigent legal defense

It is not the happiest of birthdays for the landmark Supreme Court decision that, a half-century ago, guaranteed a lawyer for criminal defendants who are too poor to afford one.

A unanimous high court issued its decision in Gideon v. Wainwright on March 18, 1963, declaring that states have an obligation to provide defendants with "the guiding hand of counsel" to ensure a fair trial for the accused.

But in many states today, taxpayer-funded public defenders face crushing caseloads, the quality of legal representation varies from county to county and people stand before judges having seen a lawyer only briefly, if at all.

"There is no denying that much, much needs to be done," Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday at a Justice Department event to commemorate the anniversary.

Clarence Earl Gideon had been in and out of jail in his nearly 51 years when he was arrested on suspicion of stealing wine and some money from vending machines at a Panama City, Fla., pool hall in 1961. Gideon asked the judge for a lawyer before his trial, but was turned down. At the time, Florida only provided lawyers for indigent defendants in capital cases.

A jury soon convicted Gideon and the state Supreme Court upheld the verdict on appeal. Then, from his Florida prison cell, Gideon scratched out his Supreme Court appeal in pencil on prison stationery. It arrived at the court early in 1962, when the justices were looking for a good case to take on the issue of indigent defense. The court appointed Washington lawyer Abe Fortas, a future justice, to represent him.

Just two months after hearing arguments, Justice Hugo Black wrote for the court that "in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person hauled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him. This seems to us to be an obvious truth."
Five months later, Gideon got a lawyer and a new trial, and the attorney poked holes in the prosecution's case. A jury quickly returned its verdict: not guilty.
So that was the promise of Gideon — that a competent lawyer for the defense would stand on an equal footing with prosecutors, and that justice would prevail, at least in theory.

A half-century later, there are parts of the country where "it is better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former prosecutor. Leahy said court-appointed lawyers often are underpaid and can be "inexperienced, inept, uninterested or worse."

Regardless of guilt or innocence, few of those accused of crimes are rich, while 80 percent say they are too poor to afford a lawyer.
People who work in the criminal justice system have become numb to the problems, creating a culture of low expectations, said Jonathan Rapping, a veteran public defender who has worked in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and New Orleans.
Rapping remembers walking into a courtroom in New Orleans for the first time for a client's initial appearance before a judge. Several defendants in jump suits were shackled together in one part of the courtroom. The judge moved briskly through charges against each of the men, with a lawyer speaking up for each one.
Then he called a name and there was no lawyer present. The defendant piped up. "The guy said he hadn't seen a lawyer since he was locked up 70 days ago. And no one in the courtroom was shocked. No one was surprised," Rapping said.
Complaints about the quality of representation also are difficult to sustain, under a high bar that the Supreme Court set in a 1984 case. The relatively few cases in which a lawyer's work is deemed so bad that it violates his client's rights typically have an outlandish set of facts that would be funny if the consequences weren't tragic.

"You see too many instances of ineffective assistance of counsel, too many instances where you think, 'Was this lawyer crazy?'" Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said at the Justice Department event.

She recounted a case from last term in which a lawyer advised his client to reject a plea deal with a seven-year prison term and go to trial. The lawyer said prosecutors could not prove a charge of intent to murder because the victim had been shot below the waist. The defendant was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Kagan was part of the 5-4 decision in the defendant's favor.

In some places, lawyers are overwhelmed by their caseloads. A public defender in Indianapolis lasted less than a year in his job after being asked to represent more than 300 defendants at a time, said Norman Lefstein, former dean of the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law.

"A lawyer with an S on his chest for Superman couldn't represent these people. He simply couldn't do it. There are only so many hours in a day. But it's not just caseload. It's the other support services that go along with it," including investigators, said Lefstein, who has studied problems in indigent defense for decades.
In Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, the chief public defender told the local court he would stop accepting certain cases because his office had too many clients, too few lawyers and not enough money. A judge's ruling in June acknowledged the lack of money and manpower, but forbade the defender's office to turn away cases. The judge's ruling was encouraging, Lefstein said, but on his last visit to Wilkes-Barre in January he found "the caseloads are worse than ever."
Eighteen states, including California, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, leave the funding of indigent defense entirely to their counties, said Rhoda Billings, a former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court who has looked at the issue for the American Bar Association. Those states "have a significant disparity in the appointment of counsel" from one county to the next, Billings said.
Public defenders in those counties often report to elected officials or their appointees, rather than independent boards that are insulated from politics. But even programs run at the statewide level are not free of political influence, Billings said, citing the case of a New Mexico public defender fired by the governor.
The lack of independence raises questions about whether decisions are being made in the best interests of clients, Rapping said.
The avalanche of cases and politics come together to present a formidable obstacle to alleviating some of the problems that afflict the system in some states. Politicians do not like asking voters for money for indigent defense.
"Arguing for more money to defend criminals is not the easiest way to win a close election," said former Vice President Walter Mondale. As Minnesota's attorney general in the early 1960s, Mondale recruited 21 other states to join in a brief urging the court to rule as it did and rejected a plea from Florida to support limits on states' responsibilities to poor defendants.
Heralded for its powerful statement about the right to a lawyer, the Gideon decision also left states on their own to pay for the provision of counsel, Lefstein said. "It came as an unfunded mandate to 50 state governments and that problem endures," he said, noting that in England, Parliament provides money to local governments to pay for legal representation of the poor.
"The federal government does next to nothing to support indigent defense in the United States," Lefstein said.
Since becoming attorney general more than four years ago, Holder has shown a commitment to the issue. He established an "Access to Justice" program and made Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe its initial director. The department also has sent a few million dollars to defense programs across the country. He announced nearly $2 million in new grants on Friday.
The right announced by the Supreme Court 50 years ago only covers criminal cases. It has never been extended to civil matters, although as Mondale pointed out, they can lead to people losing their homes, their families, being confined in a mental institution or being thrown out of the country.
To people in those situations, he said, the distinction between criminal and civil law "doesn't make much of a difference."

Judge Finds Both Football Players Delinquent (Guilty) in Steubenville Rape Case

Two Steubenville High School football players were found guilty this morning of raping a 16-year-old West Virginia girl.
After the judge announced his verdict that both defendants were guilty (delinquent), one of the defendants could be heard sobbing, while attorneys for both teens immediately tried to make their case for a reduced sentence.
The case became a national story because of images and video of the rape that was put on social media, and the brazen attempt to cover up the crime. The cover up drew a push back from Anonymous and other protesters. The fact that the town of Steubenville was divided over something that everyone should agree on (sexual assault and rape are wrong) demonstrates the how the insidious repugican war on women has infiltrated the public dialogue.
Instead of taking the allegations seriously, many in Steubenville tried to cover them up or blame the victim. Today, those people are facing the reality that two members of their beloved football team are convicted rapists. The sense of entitlement surrounding the football team and their supporters has been shattered, as the message was delivered that rape is still a crime even when committed by athletes.
The defense never stopped trying to smear and destroy the victim, but in the end justice was done. My fear is that the intimidation tactics, cover ups, and smears will discourage other women from coming forward. The football players have been convicted, but some in the Steubenville community sent the powerfully destructive message that women should shut up and keep their rapes to themselves.
As long as repugicans keep advocating for laws that defend rapists, force women to carry their rapists’ babies, claim women can’t get pregnant from rape, and try to change the definition of rape, men and women who believe that rape is wrong must remain active and vigilant. The fact that the fight to convict these players was so contentious and difficult demonstrates how far we have yet to go.

 

Hey, no use crying now - You did the crime now do the time!

Ohio to consider charges against others in rape

 

Ohio's attorney general says he'll convene a grand jury to investigate whether other people should be charged in a rape of a teenage girl beyond two boys who were found guilty.

Steubenville High School students Trent Mays and Ma'Lik Richmond were sentenced Sunday to at least a year in juvenile jail. The case roiled the community amid allegations that more students should have been charged and led to questions about the influence of the football team, a source of local pride.

Activist groups have questioned why people who knew about the rape weren't charged under state law requiring people to report crimes.
Attorney General Mike DeWine said Sunday "this community desperately needs to have this behind them but this community also desperately needs to know justice was done and that no stone was left unturned."

"Don't let down hacking victims"

 Celebrities like J.K. Rowling and Hugh Grant accused the British government on Sunday of letting down the victims of media intrusion and urged tough new measures to rein in Britain's unruly press.

Lawmakers are to vote Monday on rival plans for tougher controls in the wake of the country's phone-hacking scandal.

The Conservative-led government says it will propose a new press watchdog with the power to levy fines of up to 1 million pounds ($1.5 million). But hacking victims say the regulator must be backed by a new law to give it real teeth — something Prime Minister David Cameron opposes.

"Harry Potter" author Rowling — who testified previously to a media ethics inquiry about the impact of intrusive media upon her family — said she and other victims felt they "have been hung out to dry" by the government.
Grant, who won damages for phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World tabloid, said hacking victims supported a rival plan by the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party for stronger media measures. The actor said lawmakers "promised victims to do right by them, and they have that chance on Monday."
Debate about how to control the press has raged in Britain since revelations in 2011 that tabloid journalists had eavesdropped on voicemails, bribed officials for information and hacked into computers in a relentless quest for scoops.
The scandal has brought the demise of one newspaper — Murdoch's News of the World — along with dozens of arrests and resignations, scores of lawsuits against Murdoch's media empire and a public inquiry into media ethics.
That inquiry, led by Lord Justice Brian Leveson, last year recommended the creation of a strong press watchdog body dominated by non-journalists and backed by government regulation.

But negotiations between Cameron's Conservatives and others over how to implement those recommendations have stalled amid an increasingly acrimonious debate. Politicians are divided about whether a new press watchdog should be set up through legislation — as recommended by Leveson — or through a Royal Charter, an executive act that does not require a vote in Parliament.

Proponents say passing a law will put the watchdog on a firmer footing and give it more power to discipline rogue newspapers. Opponents believe that passing a media law would endanger the country's free press.

In fact, the proposals aren't all that different. A new law would set up an independent press watchdog, not control the media directly. And the regulator would only have the power to impose fines or demand published apologies from newspapers — not to stop articles being published.

But the language of the debate has been fierce, with opponents fearing the demise of Britain's free press and advocates seeing a bullying media riding roughshod over people's rights.

"The idea of a law — a great, big, all-singing, all-dancing media law ... would have been bad for press freedom, bad for individual freedom," Cameron said.

Rowling accused the prime minister of letting down hacking victims by ignoring Leveson's proposals.

"I believed David Cameron when he said that he would implement Leveson's recommendations 'unless they were bonkers,'" she said. "I did not see how he could back away, with honor, from words so bold and unequivocal.

"Well, he has backed away, and I am one among many who feel they have been hung out to dry."

Egypt vigilantes hang two thieves in public

 

Egyptian vigilantes beat two men accused of stealing a motorized rickshaw, stripped them half-naked and hung them by their feet in a crowded bus station in the Nile Delta on Sunday, according to security officials. Both men died.

A witness said some in the crowd of about 3,000 people who watched the lynchings egged them on with chants of "kill them!"
The lynchings came a week after the attorney general's office encouraged civilians to arrest lawbreakers and hand them over to police.

It was one of the most extreme cases of vigilantism in two years of sharp deterioration in security following Egypt's 2011 uprising. The worsening security coupled with a police strike prompted the attorney general's call for citizen arrests last week.

The scene was emblematic of the chaos that is sweeping the country, mired in protests over a range of social, economic and political problems and with security breaking down to frightening proportions.
The state-run newspaper Ahram reported on its website that the two men were dragged in the street after being caught "red-handed" trying to steal a rickshaw. It said they were beaten but alive before they were hung.
Witnesses claimed the men had kidnapped a girl inside the rickshaw, but that she escaped unharmed.
A photographer who witnessed the scene told The Associated Press that some in the crowd of around 3,000 threatened to kill him if he took pictures of the lynching.
He said that women and children in the crowd watched the men being hung by their feet, and that some even chanted in support of the lynching.
Residents also threatened to lynch another two men accused of being involved in the rickshaw theft.
Photographs from the scene show the two men hanging upside down from a rafter in their underwear at an open-air bus station in the town of Samanod, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) north of Cairo. They appear badly beaten. Some initial reports said they were hung from a tree but photos from the scene showed it was a rafter.
Other photographs show the men then lying on the ground dead in their underwear, with ropes around their feet. Their bodies are covered in dirt, bruises, blood and lacerations as a group of angry looking men gathered around them. One man in the crowd grasped a knife in one fist and another held up a bloodied wooden stick.
The witness said the crowd then took the bodies to a nearby police station and dumped them at the front door.

Ahram reported that police could not reach the site of the hangings because residents had cut off the roads to protest a shortage of diesel fuel, one of Egypt's many crises. Earlier in the day, residents of the nearby city of Mahalla had cut off a main train track to protest the fuel shortages.

"The lack of security has created a sense of terror here," the witness said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. "The entire area is shut down because of protests against the fuel shortages."
Security officials said those who tried to help free the two men were pushed back by others in a crowd in the small town, which is in the Nile Delta province of Gharabiya.
They said they are preparing for possible blood feuds between residents of Samanod and the nearby village of Mahallahit Ziyad, where the two men were from.
The bodies were taken to the morgue for identification, according to security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Similar attacks have happened elsewhere in Egypt, though vigilante killings are not frequent.
In 2012 in northern Sharqiya province, police said relatives of a man who was killed when muggers tried to steal his car lynched one of the thieves.
They then burned his body while it hung on a light pole. Another vigilante incident that year was in the Nile Delta province of Mansoura, where relatives of a victim took justice into their own hands and lynched two suspected killers.
Citizens have grown bolder in taking matters into their own hands following the 2011 uprising that ousted longtime authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak. The country's once powerful and feared police force was left weakened after the revolt.

Egypt is embroiled in another wave of political unrest that has also engulfed the nation's police force. Thousands of officers and low-ranking policemen have broken ranks, staging protests and waging strikes against what they say is the politicization of the force by President Mohammed Morsi and his interior minister.

Some of the striking police officers allege that the Brotherhood group is attempting to control them. The Brotherhood denies that.

Opponents of the attorney general's call for citizen arrests fear that it is a prelude to the substitution of police by militias belonging to Morsi's powerful Muslim Brotherhood group and other allied Islamist groups.

On Sunday, Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim, who oversees the country's police, met with officers and low-ranking policemen to hear their demands.

A statement from the ministry said Ibrahim thanked the police for their efforts. Two days earlier, Morsi attended traditional Islamic prayers at a Cairo-based camp for riot police where he praised the force despite public criticism over their violent response to anti-government demonstrations.
Also on Sunday, dozens of journalists protested outside their syndicate in Cairo against what they claim were assaults on their colleagues by members of the Brotherhood.
Diaa Rashwan, the newly elected head of the syndicate who replaced a figure considered by most journalists as pro-Brotherhood, condemned the alleged assault Saturday evening outside the Brotherhood's headquarters where journalists were covering a meeting.
The journalists say that after activists sprayed anti-Brotherhood graffiti on the ground outside the headquarters, the Brotherhood guards attacked with sticks and chains.
The Brotherhood said in a statement that guards outside the building were provoked and insulted by the activists and journalists. Many of the group's offices were attacked across the country in December during violent protests over the drafting of the constitution.
Police fired tear gas and a police vehicle was torched during Saturday night's clashes. Al-Dustor opposition party, led by Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, blamed the Brotherhood's leadership for allegedly encouraging "militias" loyal to the group to join the fight.
In other developments, the Supreme Administrative Court said a body of judges is reviewing an appeal against suspending parliamentary elections. The voting was slated to begin in April and be held in several stages through June.
Morsi's Islamist supporters and some in the public exhausted by the turmoil hope the elections will be a step toward bringing some stability, accusing the opposition of stirring up unrest to derail the voting.
But the mainly liberal and secular opposition has called for a boycott of the vote, saying Morsi must first find some political consensus first to ease the wave of popular anger.

Trial over NYPD stop-and-frisk tactic set to begin

 

The New York Police Department's practice of stopping, questioning and frisking people on the street is facing its biggest legal challenge this week with a federal civil rights trial on whether the tactic unfairly targets minorities.

Police have made about 5 million stops of New Yorkers in the past decade, mostly black and Hispanic men. The trial, set to begin Monday, will include testimony from a dozen people who say they were targeted because of their race and from police whistleblowers who say they were forced into making slipshod stops by bosses who were too focused on numbers.

"When we say stop, question and frisk, we're not talking about a brief inconvenience on the way to work or school," said Darius Charney of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the lead attorney on the case. "We're talking about a frightening, humiliating experience that has happened to many folks."

U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin, who has said in earlier rulings that she is deeply concerned about stop and frisk, is not being asked to ban the tactic, since it has been found to be legal. But she does have the power to order reforms, which could bring major changes to how the nation's largest police force and other departments use the tactic.

Street stops have become a New York flashpoint, with mass demonstrations, City Council hearings and, most recently, days of protests after police shot a teenager who authorities say pulled out a gun during a stop.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly say it is a necessary, life-saving, crime-fighting tool that helps keep illegal guns off the street and has helped New York reach all-time crime lows.

It's an issue outside of New York. Philadelphia settled a civil rights lawsuit last year over its stop-and-frisk program by agreeing to court monitoring, and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee backed off plans to adopt stop and frisk after weeks of criticism last summer.

A 1968 Supreme Court decision established the benchmark of "reasonable suspicion" — a standard that is lower than the "probable cause" needed to justify an arrest.
Street stops increased substantially in New York in the mid-1990s, when, faced with overwhelming crime, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani made stop and frisk an integral part of the city's law enforcement, relying on the "broken windows" theory that targeting low-level offenses helps prevent bigger ones.
Stops rose and overall crime dropped dramatically in a city that once had the highest murder rate in the U.S.
There were only 419 murders in 2012, the lowest since similar record-keeping began in the 1960s, down from more than 2,000 in the 1990s. And there were 531,159 people stopped, more than five times the number when Bloomberg took office a decade ago. Fifty-one percent of those stopped were black, 32 percent Hispanic and 11 percent white. According to census figures, there are 8.2 million people in the city: 26 percent are black, 28 percent are Hispanic and 44 percent are white.
About half the people are just questioned. Others have their bag or backpack searched. And sometimes police conduct a full pat-down. Only 10 percent of all stops result in arrest, and a weapon is recovered a fraction of the time.
Police documents indicate that officers are drawn to suspicious behavior: furtive movements, actions that indicate someone may be serving as a lookout, anything that suggests a drug deal or a person carrying burglary tools such as a slim jim or pry bar.
Celeste Koeleveld, a city Law Department attorney, said police go where the crime is, and minorities are overwhelmingly the victims of violent crime in the city. A 2003 court settlement and various city laws have instructed police to provide stop-and-frisk data and avoid racial profiling.
"Precinct by precinct, the rates at which minorities are stopped are consistent with the rates at which minorities are identified as crime suspects. That statistic, not the census, is the appropriate benchmark for analyzing police enforcement activity," Koeleveld said.
But minority residents say they're targeted regardless of location. Nicholas Pert, a 24-year-old black man, says he has been stopped many times in his gentrified Harlem neighborhood, while his white neighbors are not.
"We go to the gym and we have hoodies," he said. "One of my friends said, 'Maybe we should walk around with yoga mats instead.'"
Recent polls show a stark divide over how blacks and whites view the tactic, while among Hispanics, disapproval of the practice has grown. The debate has drawn in Muslim-Americans concerned about NYPD surveillance revealed in a series of reports by The Associated Press; the family of a 16-year-old shot by police who say he couldn't have had a gun; and City Councilman Jumaane Williams, who was detained at the September 2011 West Indian Day Parade. He recently tangled with Kelly on the issue during a public safety hearing.
The case was first filed in 2008 on behalf of David Floyd, a freelance film and video editor, and three others. It has since been named a class-action lawsuit on behalf of everyone who may have been wrongly stopped. Floyd said he was stopped and harassed at least twice by police, once simply walking home and again outside his apartment. In both cases, he said, they had no reason to stop him.
The trial is expected to last more than a month and include more than 100 witnesses. Lawyers will also plan to play hours of audio tapes made by Adrian Schoolcraft, an officer who was hauled off to a psych ward against his will after he said he refused to fill illegal quotas. His former bosses, including some reassigned after their statements were made public, are also expected.
In addition to seeking broad reforms, the lawsuit also requests a court-appointed monitor to oversee those changes.