As Black History Month came to a close, two news items prove that the legacy of slavery in America is far from over.

The first was former presidential candidate, the Rev. Al Sharpton’s, revelation that one of his ancestors was owned by a relative of late South Carolina Senator and segregationist Strom Thurmond.

Professional genealogists working for Ancestry.com found that Sharpton’s great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond’s great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.

In the second report, a geneaologist claims that an ancestor of current presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s white mother owned slaves.

According to the research, one of Obama’s great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 Census in Nelson County, Ky. The same records show that one of Obama’s great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves.

None of this should be a surprise to anyone. If your ancestors were in the United States before 1860, then it is highly likely that their lives were touched by the peculiar institution in one way or another. So why is this such a big deal? (more…)

My congressman John Conyers stood before the nation on the heels of the 2006 election pushing for a full scale investigation of impeachable offenses by our current Commander and Chief George W. Bush. The whole month leading up to the election Conyers stood firm that a vote for the Democrats would be the 1st step in the impeachment of Bush.

(more…)

I was minding my own business, just driving to a meeting when I heard a brief headline on Democracy Now:

In news from Capitol Hill, Congress is coming under criticism for approving a little noticed provision last year that makes it easier for President Bush to declare martial law and to send US troops into American cities. At the administration’s request, Congress approved the changes to a law known as the Insurrection Act without ever holding a public hearing.

Under the new law, the president now has the authority to use both active-duty armed forces and the National Guard on American soil — not just during a rebellion — but also a natural disaster, terrorist attack, pandemic or other chaotic situation.

All 50 of the nation’s governors have opposed the rule changes. Earlier this month Senators Patrick Leahy, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Republican Christopher Bond introduced legislation to repeal the changes Congress approved last year.

WHAT??? Wait, how did I miss this?

Oh, yeah. This bill was signed into law on the same day as the infamous Military Commissions Act of 2006. I was so outraged that my Democratic Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow had voted “Yes” on that measure that I didn’t notice this other law. While I was writing Stabenow a heated letter telling her that she had lost my vote forever, the Bush regime was getting away with murder… again!!

Blues Talkin’

As if there weren’t enough reasons to hate the Iraq War, the Washington Post’s expose of the dismal conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital will make your blood boil.

At town hall meetings, the soldiers of Building 18 keep pushing commanders to improve conditions. But some things have gotten worse. In December, a contracting dispute held up building repairs.

“I hate it,” said Romero, who stays in his room all day. “There are cockroaches. The elevator doesn’t work. The garage door doesn’t work. Sometimes there’s no heat, no water. . . . I told my platoon sergeant I want to leave. I told the town hall meeting. I talked to the doctors and medical staff. They just said you kind of got to get used to the outside world. . . . My platoon sergeant said, ‘Suck it up!’ “

Some soldiers leave Walter Reed with zero disability ratings if military doctors can blame their illnesses on preexisting conditions. Suicides and accidental overdoses of prescription meds are common.

Now, Bush wants to escalate the violence and the impotent Congress can’t even come up with a nonbinding resolution in protest.

We should force Congress members to spend six months in Walter Reed. Bush and Cheney need to be sent to the front lines in Baghdad.
Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army’s Top Medical Facility

It can sound a little whiny when Black people are the only ones pointing out American’s love of dead white men. So we love the occassional observation from other white people.

Wonkette, the D.C. gossip, talked about U.S. Mint’s newest series of coins. Dollar coins with pictures of presidents…all dead white men.

The U.S. Mint, always up on the current trends, is also putting some serious thought into the penny. It seems the copper that is used to make a penny is worth more than the cent itself.

“How dumb do you have to be to mint money at a loss? In the latest only-in-Washington episode, we find that the government may have lost as much as $40 million coining pennies and nickels last year.” - NYTIMES

God bless America.

Wonkette, Los Angeles Times, NYTIMES

Freshman Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who has made headlines as the nation’s first Muslim member of congress is already having problems with one of his new neighbors.

Ellison’s press secretary, Rick Jauert, called the cops on Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), their next door neighbor in the Longworth House Office Building because Tancredo’s cigar smoke was coming through the walls.

This is how it all went down. On Wednesday evening, around 6 p.m., Tancredo was preparing for his trip to Mississippi. And as he so often does, he was unwinding with a cigar.

Soon enough, however, a police officer walked in to check on the smoke. The officer told Tancredo that the officer came because he was required to do so and not because the officer wanted to. The officer had already told Ellison that Tancredo was permitted to smoke in his office. The visit was more a formality.

Tancredo said he would not stop smoking in his office. “Heck, no!” he said. “If he [Ellison] would have [had] the courtesy to say something I’m sure I would have been more accommodating to his wishes.”

Who knows where this neighborly feud will lead? Cigar ashes on the Ellison doorstep? Backbiting and gossip in committee meetings?

The Hill

According to several news sources, the photos of Anna Nicole Smith and the Bahamian immigration minister Shane Gibson have caused a stir and cries of preferential treatment.

The Bahamian people want answers and the Freeport news editorial asked: “Why and how his name is associated with the whereabouts of Anna Nicole Smith and her baby?”

The photos were originally published by the Tribune of Nassau.

HeartbeatNews

Let me start by saying that I am not sipping the Barack Obama Kool-Aid. I agree with Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report who calls the junior Senator from Illinois “…an imperialist at heart who offers George Bush at least another year or two to wage war in Iraq, while warning Iraqis that they can expect no more American ‘coddling’”.

But when people like Debra Dickerson say “Obama isn’t Black”, it just confuses the issue.

According to Dickerson’s Jan. 22 article on Salon.com:

“Black,” in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent with markedly different outlooks on the role of race in their lives and in politics. At a minimum, it can’t be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won’t bother to make the distinction. They’re both “black” as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally Black, as we use the term.

Hogwash. (more…)

From the New York Times:

The Bush administration, in a surprise reversal, said on Wednesday that it had agreed to give a secret court jurisdiction over the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program and would end its practice of eavesdropping without warrants on Americans suspected of ties to terrorists.

The Justice Department said it had worked out an “innovative” arrangement with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that provided the “necessary speed and agility” to provide court approval to monitor international communications of people inside the United States without jeopardizing national security.

It’s about damn time! If they had done this in the first place, there would have been no issue, right?

Well, don’t get excited just yet… The “Justice” Department is trying to pull a fast one.

But senior lawmakers said they were still uncertain Wednesday, even after the administration’s announcement, about how the court would go about approving warrants, how targets would be identified, and whether that process would differ from the court’s practices since 1978. (more…)

Even though Michigan suffers a $1 billion budget deficit and a potential $2 billion revenue loss from the elimination of the single business tax, the state is going to pay $300 million to Ford Motor Company to help the struggling automaker upgrade aging equipment in six Michigan plants.

Where will the money come from? Does this mean Ford will keep more of the workers it previously planned to lay off or even better, will the automaker create new jobs??? Uh, no.

Half of the $300m will come from the state government, which will borrow $150m against an already-swollen budget deficit.

The other half will come in the form of property tax abatements, where the plants’ home towns will forego additional taxes that Ford would have normally had to pay on its investments.

Ford cannot guarantee that it will create any new jobs, nor offer a guarantee that it will continue to employ all of its existing workforce.

This is in contrast to similar deals where states offer car companies incentives to build car factories specifically to create new jobs.

Why is the state using money it doesn’t have to subsidize a company with poor management practices that is firing workers instead of hiring them?

The BBC

Despite universal criticism, George Bush’s efforts to destabilize the Middle East continue unabated. With a precarious situation in Afghanistan, US and Israeli troublemaking in Lebanon, and a week of airstrikes in Somalia, Bush predictably announced his plans to escalate the FUBAR in Iraq.

Bush’s “New Way Forward” speech was falsely advertised as “a change in direction”. It could have been more accurately described as “stay the course with more guns.”

The result of his new strategy - adding 21,500 new troops in Iraq - will be like dropping 21,500 troops into a quagmire. In fact it will be exactly that. Five brigades, roughly 17,000 American men and women, will go to Baghdad to combat the growing resistance to American occupation.

It’s all in the name of the “War on Terror”, protecting America’s “vital interests” and “homeland security”. If his buddies in the oil, weapons and banking industries happen to get a little richer in the process, then so be it. (more…)

So let me get this straight…

After three terms on the city council of your small town (Westlake, Louisiana; population 4,700 or so) you just won the office of mayor with 69% of the vote. You will be the town’s first new mayor in 24 years, and you will be the first black mayor in a town that is 80% white.

Most people would view this as a cause for celebration, not a reason to commit suicide, but officials in Calcasieu Parish want us to believe that Gerald Washington killed himself on Dec. 30 outside an old elementary school with a single self-inflicted gunshot to the chest.

What???

The family doesn’t buy it either.

“Calcasieu Parish is known to be racist,” Geroski Washington, Gerald Washington’s son, said in a telephone interview. “There were lots of folks who didn’t want my father to become the mayor.” (more…)