PPP, on behalf of the House Majority PAC, did a recent poll of one of the congressional districts in Minnesota that is set to be a "swing district" in 2014. By swing district, I mean it is -- so far -- looking likely to change from a red district to a blue district, and where an established, multi-term incumbent is failing badly. There appear to be a few of these enough across the nation to change the control of the House of Representatives, If - and this is a big IF - the Democrats get a net g...

Remember mid-summer, when the reports circulated during the two very expensive special sessions of the Texas legislature called pretty much just to force through anti-abortion legislation?  Remember the sight of law enforcement confiscating feminine hygiene products which brought a heady mix of laughter at the expense of the LEOs and scorn for fear of tampons and other sanitary products? There was a serious side to that, which had everything to do with what received media attention - and what d...

Does the media convey information clearly, neutrally, accurately, or has it too often become something else, particularly sensationalist? Sadly, I'm finding it to be the latter. When a black high school honor student, Kiera Wilmot, was arrested for blowing up a bottle bomb, and misrepresented it as a science project, the media launched a blitz on her behalf.  The ACLU took up the cause as well. The reality is that while we have a very real problem with school to prison pipelines and an enormou...

There has been a global trend for decades among free nations with representative government, a decline in voter turnout in elections.  In 31 nations, spread over every continent, the franchise - the right to vote - is treated as BOTH a right AND a civic duty. Right and duty are treated as two sides of the same coin, as well they should be, and as our own founding fathers (and mothers) strongly believed. The argument is reasoned that the greater the participation of the electorate, the more legit...

On August 4th, 2011 police in a norther area of London, England shot an unarmed black man, Mark Duggan, leading to protests, which in turn were followed by outbreaks of incredibly destructive looting and burning, sometimes referred to as the Blackberry riots, aka the 'English Spring'. While these events were given some coverage back in 2011, the subsequent analysis of events is insightful, not only in understanding those events, but in a different insight into our own protests and rioting in th...

This was a suspicious story from the beginning. We have seen news reports of protesters doing thousands of dollars of damage to be wrong. The claims of separate attacks by protesters over the Zimmerman verdict turned out to be false. Now added to the list of  false news reports appears to be the story of George Zimmerman heroically rescuing a family of four from a burning SUV. The initial report was that George Zimmerman was 'just coincidentally' driving by after a car accident occurred, that h...

There is an aspect to the Zimmerman trial that has been under-addressed in spite of the attention devoted to it. That issue is that while following a person is legal, (unless there is a restraining order/order of protection in place, or unless it violates an anti-stalking law), being followed is generally perceived as suspicious and threatening, and the public is consistently advised  by law enforcement and other authority to be aware of it and to fear it. The legality of an action is not the ...

Although it is a statement widely attributed to Abraham Lincoln relating to a temporary suspension of habeas corpus under the Suspension Clause of the Constitution (Article 1, Section 9, clause 2), the first actual recorded quote that the U.S. Constitution is "not a suicide pact" was made by Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson in his Terminiello v.  Chicago dissent, not quite 100 years later.  It was used again almost 15 years later in another SCOTUS decision in 1963, also about freedom of s...

Earlier this week I wrote about the misinformation, and misleading by various law enforcement, media, and bloggers about the Zimmerman Verdict Protesters.  We saw it in LA, with false claims from the LAPD and NBC, claiming $15k in damage to the Hollywood W Hotel. We saw this in the right wing blogosphere false reporting of two white men killed by a group of black men over a "Free Zimmerman" bumper sticker THAT DID NOT EXIST; it was a drug deal gone bad, where two white men were  killed by anoth...