Thanks, Rev. Al!

I'm delighted that George Zimmerman is in jail and facing murder 2 charges. And when I think about how that happened, it's clear to me that Rev. Al Sharpton brought this campaign together and carried it and pressed it and made major contributions to the public stir that brought about action. He deserves our thanks for that. He deserves our appreciation for going to Florida, marching, campaigning, and devoting substantial parts of his TV show to this case.

Join me is saying, "Thank you, Rev. Al." He deserves it.

In passing, let me also say that when we on the left have victories, we don't really in my opinion celebrate them. No. We just go on without stopping to give thanks, to praise others' important work, to reflect on what we've done. We just hurry off to the next issue. to the next fight. To the next injustice. For what it's worth, I think this is a terrible mistake. When we get what we've been complaining about, writing about, marching about, blogging about, fulminating about, we need to stop. If only for a second. And give the appropriate gratitude to those who brought about what we wanted so passionately.

So, thanks, Rev. Al. I appreciate what you did in the Trayvon Martin case. And I know you'll watch over it, as we all will, to be sure that ultimately justice is done.

Grandstanding In Sanford

Waiting for Godot. A clown show. These are facts: Unarmed, wearing a hoodie, and carrying Skittles and a cell phone, 17 year old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman on February 26, 2012 in Sanford, Florida. George Zimmerman has not been arrested. And he has not been charged. Today is the 43rd day since the shooting. Beyond that, is an ocean of speculation, spin, outright lies, opinion masquerading as fact, and lots and lots of “analysis.”


Today, George Zimmerman’s lawyers quit. They didn’t send a discreetly worded, carefully drafted, simple press release saying that they were no longer representing the notorious client. No. Instead, they had a press conference to which they invited the cameras. And at the press conference, they talked entirely too much, and elaborated entirely too much, and ultimately revealed some astonishing facts: that they had never met with their so-called client, that he was no longer in Florida, that he had telephoned the special prosecutor (against their advice), that he had called Sean Hannity (who wouldn’t tell them what was said), and that he was not a racist. Oh, yeah. And it was self defense. Hablando bla bla bla. Put simply, their client was out of control and not taking direction in a fashion oddly reminiscent of his February 26 shooting of Trayvon Martin. No matter. They couldn’t promote him and his “defense” any more, so they promoted themselves, just in case anyone else in Central Florida had a really big, high profile case and wanted to pay for a badly handled, lawyerish public relations campaign. Exeunt omnes. I imagine that members of the Trad media howled at this. Who could they talk to now?

Not to be outdone or elbowed out of the spotlight or excluded from the incipient drama, the special prosecutor, Angela Corey, announced that she would have some bon mots of her own “within 72 hours.” Oh the anticipation. Oh the waiting. Oh the speculations. Oh the drama. According to ABC:

A special prosecutor promised "new information regarding the Trayvon Martin shooting death investigation" within 72 hours, prompting speculation that the alleged shooter, George Zimmerman, could be charged soon.

The announcement that the prosecutor, State Attorney Angela Corey, would soon hold a news conference came just hours after Zimmerman's lawyers said they would no longer represent him.

Corey said Monday that she will not present the case to a grand jury; she retains the power to decide herself whether to press charges against Zimmerman in the shooting.

“Prompting speculation” indeed. Of course, the prosecutor had previously said she will have nothing to say until she reaches a decision about charging George Zimmerman, so her announcement strongly implied that she would announce her decision. On the other hand, that isn’t what she said she would do. No. She said she would have “new information”. Is this case about dueling press conferences? Nobody really knows what she might means by “new information.” Or why it would take 3 breathless days of anticipation to announce it. Maybe she’s going to tell us that George Zimmerman is in the Bahamas and will resist extradition like Robert Vesco. At this point, almost nothing can surprise people following this case.

And where, pray tell, is Joe Oliver, the family friend cum former talking head, the guy who was such a close friend, who assured us that George Zimmerman was not a racist and had black friends? Gone, apparently. Replaced by Zimmerman Pere, a former magistrate judge from Virginia, who has repeatedly portrayed his shooter son as the victim in the February 26th incident and has taken up and expanded all of Oliver’s talking points, which may have originally been his own talking points. No one has claimed authorship for the baloney Team Z has spewed for 6 weeks.

Enough of this. Enough of the press conferences. Enough of the leaks. Enough of the spinning and lies and waiting. Enough. Basta ya. Enough analysis. The prosecutor needs to bring the curtain down on this ridiculous clown show, and she needs to do it immediately. Right now. She needs to announce that she has charged George Zimmerman, and she needs to have him arrested and start the judicial process. That will hopefully shut Team Z up. I hope she will do that.

But it’s not quite that simple, I'm afraid. Yes, I have a gnawing fear at the base of my skull about this case. I’m afraid that the reason the National Guard has been mobilized in Sanford, and the reason for the delay in making the announcement is that the Special Prosecutor has a little Republican surprise of her own for us. I'm afraid that she is going to announce that George Zimmerman will not be charged. I hope I’m wrong about that. I really do. I’d like to be shown to be wrong. Maybe it’s just that the clown show has gone on for so long that I’m looking for an unusual, surprising twist in the plot. Maybe. I hope that’s all it is. This whole matter has been handled in the most grotesque, unprofessional, despicable matter so far. And that's a reason to expect it to result in an injustice. In a travesty. In a disgrace. Why should the fruit be different from the tree?

I hope there will be justice for Trayvon Martin. And I hope it will come this week in the form of charges against George Zimmerman. In the meanwhile, I just wish all of the clowning and all of the media games would just stop. It’s enough. Trayvon Martin and his family deserve better. And those of us who care about serving justice deserve better, too.

About Those Small Courts

So here are reasons #7282 and #7283 why town courts in New York State should be immediately abolished.

Reason 7282: I received notices to show up in town court (I am not disclosing which one, you could imagine that it might be any of a thousand) at 9 am this morning on two cases. I was early. The judge hasn't gotten on the bench yet. It is now 9:30 am. There are about two dozen people waiting for him. This does not count the four or five state troopers who are now lounging in the clerk's office since before 9 am. Or the prosecutor, who was here early. Oh. And the clock in the courtroom now reads 12:45. Nice, disorienting touch. The people who are waiting used to be strangers, now they're discussing legal issues with each other. Can anyone argue that this is an efficient use of time and resources? Oh. I finally got taken care of at 1:05.

Reason 7283: For the past three months I have been trying to get this very court to provide paperwork for an old case from 2001 or 2002. I spare you a precis of the fruitless correspondence between me and the court and my characterizing the court's responses. So today I asked the clerk who was there about all this. She says that only the other clerk can deal with it, and that clerk is here two days a week for three hours on each date. I have to deal with that clerk, who won't be in the court until tonight. Great. Is there something this clerk can do to help my client and help me get the needed paperwork? No, there isn't. You have to deal with the other clerk. She alone can do this. Well, I've been doing that for almost three months, and my client was doing that before I got involved, who knows for how long, is there somebody who can help me? No, there isn't. She'll be in tonight. Frowns all around.

Sure, I could complain to somebody about all of this. Right. And then I'd really have done it: next time I show up here I will be sure to receive royal treatment. It's a choice between being treated like an anonymous object or being truly reviled.

Time To Change The Channel On The Weiner Affair

Rangel said Weiner "wasn't going with prostitutes. He wasn't going out with little boys."

Now there’s one eloquent, highroad defense of Anthony Weiner. Those of us in the peanut gallery might even wish he had done both of those things. Then we could understand on a basic level what Weiner thought he was up to. As it stands now, there is some difficulty in understanding what he thought he was doing. And he's busy turning it into even crappier reality television.

MSNBC reports that Anthony Weiner isn’t resigning, he’s taking a leave of absence from Congress, and, an this is the important and, he’s going to be receiving “treatment.” Treatment for what? You might well ask. Treatment for being misogynistic? Treatment for being an egomaniac? Treatment for being stupid? Treatment for having some kind of OCD? Treatment for treating women as objects? What is it?

A spokeswoman for the Democrat said he has left for professional treatment and will focus on "becoming a better husband and healthier person."

Spokeswoman Risa Heller said Weiner wanted the leave of absence so he could be evaluated and work out a course of treatment. The statement did not say what Weiner would be treated for.

I have nothing at all against becoming “a better husband and healthier person.” Really I don’t. I wish more husbands would be better at husbanding, and that more people would be healthier. Hell, I wish I had been a better husband and a healthier person. But there’s something nevertheless profoundly dishonest and manipulative about Weiner’s latest attention grabbing maneuver.

In my work as a criminal defense attorney, I frequently hear alleged perpetrators of crimes explain that actually they are really victims. Of their addictions. Like this: “I burglarized this house so I could steal money so I could buy drugs.” Or of their mental health issues. Like this: “I stopped taking my medication, and when she said that, I just snapped so I punched her.” Or of provocations, real or imagined. Like this: “She disrespected me and I just went off because this has happened before.” Or of broken homes, or institutionalization, or of disease. Or of something else. The list is extensive. And ever expanding. And the reason they are telling me these things isn’t that I’m a therapist. No. It’s because they know that they’d rather take responsibility for their perceived, inherent defects than their actions and the consequences of those actions, and anyway, IF they go into treatment, and IF they are directed to stay in treatment, the penalties for their alleged criminal conduct will probably be less severe.

There is a model here in which treatment is the answer for all bad conduct. Especially when the bad conduct cannot be denied.

If somebody assaults someone else, maybe s/he should have mental health counseling and anger management and parenting classes and a batterers group and on and on and on. And if s/he does these things, the case comes out better for the accused. The Judge, who may think that treatment is better than locking somebody up, and the DA, who may think that treatment might prevent more serious bloodletting in the future, and defense counsel and the accused, who just want leniency no matter what, all get together and mandate treatment and more moderate punishment. This is how the system works.

Leave aside whether any of this treatment really works, whether it has any demonstrable rate of success. And forget, if you can, that it has become a permanent industry with job security for treatment providers. Just forget all of that. Focus instead, if you can, on the fact that in some cases (nobody can argue this is true for all cases or even for a majority of cases) treatment for drug and alcohol addictions will be of enormous worth and it will make behavioral changes and it will succeed.

Succeeding in treatment is not easy. Far from it. It is a life challenge of extraordinary magnitude. It is extremely difficult. But despite the obstacles to success, there are nevertheless successes. People do succeed. People do overcome all of the hurdles. And these brave, persistent, courageous souls who succeed have made such a strong impression on our society with their fortitude and persistence that virtually everyone whose life is in shambles might think that treatment is the answer to whatever might have caused the problem.

Forget that the first step is acknowledging the problem. Just leave out that uncomfortable part. The part that says, “I am an alcoholic.” Or a drug addict. Or a batterer. Or something else.

And now Congressman Anthony Weiner has joined the cavalcade of people who claim to be victims of something (in his case it is undisclosed what that might be) and who seek to appropriate some of the benefits earned by those persistent souls who have actually succeeded in treatment. It was inevitable. And the reason he’s telling you this? So he won’t have to resign. So he can continue. So he can put some whip cream on this ever growing pile of manure and tell you it’s dessert after all.

If Weiner were serious about this, he’d just go and do what he has to do. No more press releases. No more press conferences. No more gaping lacunae in his narrations. None of that. He’d just go and get going on what he needs. We don’t need to know what that is specifically.

But that’s not what he’s done. Yet again, he’s sought the spotlight. Yet again, he’s made it be all about him. And he’s done that, I fear, to manipulate us into sympathy for him and his behavior. In this guy’s case the first step to recovery isn’t to manipulate us further. No. It’s to STFU and get started on what needs to be done.

The entire affair continues to scan as a bad reality television show. I’m now going to change the channel. Perhaps you’ll join me.

When Is The BP Perp Walk?

It's no secret. I, who have devoted much of my professional life to defending people accused of horrendous crimes; I, who generally feel that nobody should ever go to prison; I who have spent decades fighting against state killing; I confess. I want to see BP executives indicted, perp walked in New Orleans in handcuffs before a howling media, convicted by juries and locked up. Locked up for a very long time. Like Bernie Madoff.

I don't care particularly what federal and/or state crimes the BP and drilling folks have committed. I want them to be given a full and fair trial in a federal court, and I want them imprisoned. For a very long time. I want them to be an example that this kind of environmental destruction will not be tolerated in a civilize society. There, I've said it.

And the good news for me, and for you if you feel this way is that apparently the current administration has finally decided to move in the direction of criminal prosecutions. It only took 53 days of spillage and a world record, man made environmental catastrophe. Goodness, even WFAN Sports Talk Radio in NYC today was complaining about BP and the spill and federal oversight. So finally, today, at long last, the administration is at last starting to pursue the criminals who have attempted to murder an entire ocean and all of the life in it and surrounding it.

You have some choices in how to think about this crime. You can think of it as a crime of greed. You can think of it as a crime of recklessness. You can think of it as a crime of stupidity. You can think of it as a mix of all of these. But regardless of the motivations, regardless of how one characterizes it, it's a crime.

The New York Times reports:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Tuesday that federal authorities have opened criminal and civil investigations into the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

"We will closely examine the actions of those involved in the spill,” Mr. Holder said after a meeting with state attorneys general in New Orleans. “If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response." snip...

Earlier Tuesday, President Obama vowed to pursue criminal inquiries into the cause of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, as the crisis he called “the greatest environmental disaster of its kind in our history” threatened to engulf his second year in office.

“We have an obligation to determine what went wrong,” Mr. Obama said, appearing in the Rose Garden after meeting with the two men he has appointed to lead an inquiry into the cause of the spill, former Senator Bob Graham of Florida and William K. Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

“If laws were broken, leading to death and destruction,” Mr. Obama said, “my solemn pledge is, we will bring those responsible to justice.”

If laws were broken. If we find evidence of criminal behavior. What a joke. If only these attempts to sound tones of restraint and impartiality and fairness could be the last vestige of federal dithering and misinformation and indecisiveness. For 53 days we've all watched as the Gulf of Mexico is ruined, we've watched while BP has demonstrated beyond cavil that it has no clue whatsoever how to stop the leak, we've watched them lie and fabricate and evade and lull and protect their sorry behinds.

I personally have no intention of reading all of Title 18 of the United States Code, and all of the other possibly relevant federal statutes, to figure out specifically what laws have been broken by Transocean and BP and their regulators. Sadly, unlike other cases, it's that clear to me: if global corporations can befoul an entire ocean and it doesn't violate several federal laws, the US Code isn't worth a cup of warm spit.

I've been hoping for almost two months that a criminal investigation would be launched. I look forward to the arrests. I look forward to the perp walks. I look forward to the courthouse steps statements of innocence. Bring it on. I can hardly wait for a jury to speak and for a New Orleans judge to impose sentence

Crack And Powder: A Drug War Reform That Preserves Inequality

This seems to be progress. The Senate measure is an initial, timid step in the right direction. But it doesn't end a decade's long, offensive, racially based inequality in federal drug sentencing. It just makes it a fifth as bad as it was.

The United States at this moment imprisons more than 2 million people. 7 million additional people are under supervision of some sort. Seventy percent of US prisoners are non-white. Approximately one-quarter of all those held in US prisons or jails have been convicted of a drug offense. "The United States incarcerates more people for drug offenses than any other country. With an estimated 6.8 million Americans struggling with drug abuse or dependence, the growth of the prison population continues to be driven largely by incarceration for drug offenses." Forget the statistics for a second. US prisons are disproportionately jammed with non-white people who have been convicted of drug crimes, and non-whites serve longer sentences than whites for possession of drugs.

One of the many reasons for these disparities in prison populations is that for more than a decade the law has made sentences for crack far, far more severe than those for powder cocaine. Since 1986 crack sentences have been 100 times those that would be imposed for the same amount of powder cocaine. That was offensive in 1986. And its continuation for the past 24 years has filled prisons with non-whites. One could ask whether this federal legislation was intentionally racist in its impact: the law presumes intent from the "natural and probable consequences of acts". And the natural and probable consequences of this legislation has been to fill prisons with people of color.

On Friday, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a measure that would reduce but not eliminate the sentencing disparities. The WaPo reports:

A long-standing dispute over huge disparities in sentencing between crack vs. powdered cocaine appears to be headed for a resolution in Congress.

Senate lawmakers reached across the aisle and brokered a landmark deal this week to reduce criminal penalties for defendants caught with crack cocaine...snip

The often-divided Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed the measure 19 to 0 the same day, addressing for the first time in two decades a sentencing disparity that has troubled civil rights organizations, prisoners rights advocates and officials in the Obama White House.

The compromise would reduce the sentencing disparity to 18 to 1 for people caught with crack cocaine vs. those who carry the drug in powdered form. The current ratio has rested since 1986 at 100 to 1, disproportionately hurting African Americans, who are convicted of crack possession at far greater numbers.

The Senate bill would increase the amount of crack cocaine required to trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession with an intent to distribute from 5 grams to 28 grams. Possessing cocaine in rock form would no longer carry a mandatory minimum prison term, equalizing that penalty to that of other drugs and marking the first time that Congress has overturned a mandatory minimum.

The House has passed a more equitable bill. In July, 2009, the House Judiciary Committee passed a cocaine sentencing bill that would treat all forms of cocaine the same for sentencing purposes, lowering the ratio to 1 to 1. The Senate bill leaves the ratio at 18:1.

Durbin and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) continue to argue that equalizing the penalties would be the fairest approach, but gaining Republican and law enforcement support proved difficult.

"The most important thing is to change the law," Durbin said in a telephone interview. "There's been a lot of injustice. . . . I gave a little, and they gave a little."

Officials say the crack sentences undermine public confidence in the criminal justice system because they tend to penalize minorities far more than whites.

President Obama and Vice President Biden pledged to reduce the cocaine sentencing inequity on the campaign trail, and Obama called one reluctant GOP senator in the past month to express his commitment to the issue, a Senate aide said.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. hailed the Senate Judiciary vote as a significant step toward achieving fairness in sentencing.

This is a start. It's an initial step. It does not fix the problem for the future. And it certainly doesn't fix the problem for the hundreds of thousands of imprisoned crack defendants. The bill is just "one fifth as racist as it used to be." The bill does not address whether re-sentencing should be granted to those presently serving long, crack sentences. And it doesn't address the irrationality of demonizing crack as opposed to injectable cocaine.

How many decades more will it take finally to eliminate this discrimination?

Death Penalty: The Times Speaks Up

It's a reason for optimism in the long battle to end State Killing. The New York Times editorial today called for the abolition of the death penalty. I applaud. The abolition of state killing should be a mainstream, American idea.

The Times is angry and points out the obvious about the change in Ohio from 3-drug state killing to 1-drug state killing:

This is what passes for progress in the application of the death penalty: Kenneth Biros, a convicted murderer, was put to death in Ohio last week with one drug, instead of the more common three-drug cocktail. It took executioners 30 minutes to find a vein for the needle, compared with the two hours spent hunting for a vein on the last prisoner Ohio tried to kill, Romell Broom. Technicians tried about 18 times to get the needle into Mr. Broom’s arms and legs before they gave up trying to kill him. Mr. Biros was jabbed only a few times in each arm.

The Times gets quickly from the barbarism of the Biro and Broom executions to the main point:

The larger problem, however, is that changing a lethal-injection method is simply an attempt, as Justice Harry Blackmun put it, to “tinker with the machinery of death.” No matter how it is done, for the state to put someone to death is inherently barbaric.

It has also become clear — particularly since DNA evidence has become more common — how unreliable the system is. Since 1973, 139 people have been released from death row because of evidence that they were innocent, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

An untold number of innocent people have also, quite likely, been put to death. Earlier this year, a fire expert hired by the state of Texas issued a report that cast tremendous doubt on whether a fatal fire — for which Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 — was arson at all. Until his execution, Mr. Willingham protested his innocence.

Most states still have capital punishment, and the Obama administration has so far shown a troubling commitment to it, pursuing federal capital cases even in states that do not themselves have the death penalty.

The Times conclusion:

Earlier this year, New Mexico repealed its death penalty, joining 14 other states — and the District of Columbia — that do not allow it. That is the way to eliminate the inevitable problems with executions.

Put another way, abolition is the answer to the lingering horror of state killing. Abolition just cannot happen soon enough.

Rant: No, A Beer Won't Fix Anything

In advance, I ask your pardon for a rant I am unable or unwilling to suppress. Today's White House Beer Summit On Race Relations And Police Practices has enraged me. Police Sergeant Crowley of the Cambridge PD didn't deserve an invitation for beer at the White House, he needed an appointment for a deposition in a federal civil rights case in which he and his superiors were the named defendants. But according to the Trad Media^TM, all of Crowly's vengefulness, his making an illegal arrest, his making a stupid, unjustifiable illegal arrest, his serving up a racist/classist illegal arrest of a person in his own home is now behind us. We're past all of the ugliness of his conduct. It has now been chilled (unless you have to live with brutality and oppression on a daily basis) with some beer. And pretzels. This I hasten to point out might solve Police Sgt. Crowley's immediate problem, including departmental discipline and federal civil rights action for damages, but it doesn't solve my problem. Or the country's. And I don't think it solves Prof. Gates's problem. It certainly doesn't solve the US's police problem. Not one bit.

So instead of an extremely heated, long overdue, loud and tenacious national argument about police exceptionalism, an argument that's been overdue in this country for decades, we have a tepid discussion of the symbolism of the kinds of beer consumed at the White House. Personally, I think we'd be a lot better off with the actual argument. An actual confrontation with the pervasive evil evidenced Professor Gates's arrest.

A brief bit of context, if you will. The reason why evidence seized by cops in illegal searches is suppressed in this country, is that numerous judicial slaps on the wrist over decades didn't make policeman follow the Constitutional Fourth Amendment law of search and seizure. So the Supreme Court had to introduce the suppression rule. Basically, if the constable blunders (or intentionally ignores the constitution and laws of the US) the illegally seized evidence is suppressed and the accused goes free. Has this rule, now in effect of almost 50 years, deterred the police from making illegal searches and seizures? No it has not. They do so with amazing frequency. This law has resulted only in numerous court decisions watering down the rule, handwringing that the accused should hnot be freed. It has not made police toe the line. It has made them surly. It has made the rogue cops. And the police clamor to be able to break the law with impunity has, to no one's surprise, cowered the courts. The courts would rather expand the cops' rights to break the law than require them to follow it. It's a legitimate question whether anything can make the police toe the line.

And what about Miranda warnings? The reason why Miranda warnings were required was that cops were extorting confessions from people they had taken into custody and their tactical manuals, explaining how this should be done, appalled even the US Supreme Court. Again, numerous judicial slaps on the wrist over decades didn't stop police from using coercive interrogation methods to extract involuntary confessions, so the Court required Miranda warnings to be given before there could be a custodial interrogation. Has this stopped police from coercing confessions? No it has not. This rule too has spawned numerous court decisions watering down the rule and judicial handwringing. It has not stopped police from coercing involuntary confessions. Now some states require that all interrogations be videotaped so that police might stop producing unreliable and false confessions of crimes. Will that work? Or will police find a way to subvert that rule also? I'm skeptical. What are police thinking when they coerce false confessions. What they are thinking is that they are doing God's work and that those of us who are not "on the job" don't know about the battle that goes on on the streets between good (the cops) and evil (those they arrest and interrogate).

Are these circumstances that prompt us to have a beer? I think not.

You can read in today's press that a lawyer in DC was arrested last night for shouting that he hated the police. Police evidently heard him express his opinion. This lack of "respect," the word used in the article, which as far as I can tell was a Constitutional exercise of free speech, was a reason for calling him a homophobic slur and arresting him for the bogus charge of disorderly conduct. Has the affaire de Gates made any difference to the DC cops who arrested him for lack of respect? Evidently not. Has it made any difference to any cops? Doubtful.

Can we fix this by having a beer? I doubt it.

There have been more than 135 exonerations of people who were on death row since the resumption of the death penalty in the US. The next exoneration, the next one that will be announced, is on its way, so there is right now somebody sitting on death row in a prison who doesn't belong there because s/he is innocent, completely and utterly innocent of the crime for which s/he was convicted and sentenced to death. And how did this innocent person in all probability get convicted and sent to death row? Chances are good it involves shoddy or intentionally improper police work. Can we estimate how many innocent people of the more than 2 million presently incarcerated in the US are actually innocent? No, we cannot. But we do know that when exonerations occur they come from involuntary, false confessions, jail house snitch testimony, and faulty or suggestive identification procedures. In two words, they come from police practices. The police are using the system to put innocent people in prison and perhaps to death. And this happens with regularity. It's far too common.

Can we eliminate the long term incarceration and potential execution of innocent people by having a beer? Not a chance. Can we address this issue? No.

Some may want to talk about how Obama's drinking a Bud Light means something, and how drinking Red Stripe means something, and how drinking a bland Coors product means something. That shows wonderful gifts in discerning the claimed political symbolism of today's tete a tete. That enrages me. Why? Because I'd like the see 1/100th of the same attention and analytical skills applied to correcting the obvious and pervasive police abuse in this country. I'd like to see it applied to correcting the racial disparities and wealth disparities among prisoners. I'd like to see it applied to making the criminal justice system fair.

Obama was right. The Gates affair provided a teachable moment. Too bad that the Trad Media^TM couldn't figure out what needed to be taught. Too bad that the President cowered before the long, blue line, when he should have confronted the real issues. Too bad that I'm writing this rant and that the moment for beginning to deal honestly with the police is now again relegated to the background. It's a topic for discussion in jails and prisons. Some beer hasn't solved the problem, but it's relegated it to obscurity. Until the next illegal, unconstitutional arrest of a celebrity.