Liberty Street has moved from Blogger to Wordpress. The new address is http://libertystreet.wordpress.com/. All of the posts (all 2,919 of them) and comments (considerably less of those!) have been imported to Liberty Street at Wordpress -- and they all remain at Blogger as well. All of the posts and comments in other words are both at Blogger and Wordpress. The difference is that there will be no new posts here -- which means that this notice will stay on top ad infinitum.
A note of caution: I had to repopulate the blogroll manually, since only posts and comments can be imported. Some blogs were no longer at the address I had, or had not been updated in a very long time (like one or two years). I did not bring those over. But if I have inadvertently delinked any blog that is still alive and kicking, please let me know and I will put you back on immediately.
I am looking forward to "seeing" my current readers at the new site, and to meeting many new ones as well.
On CNN, Dr. Sanjay Gupta claims that 20% of those without health care in America earn more than $75,000 a year. No source for those figures was given. Frankly, I'm dubious. All the folks that I know that do not have health insurance earn less than $30,000 / year.
A young woman in Ohio -- the victim of an assault -- was arrested, hogtied face down in a jail cell by seven police officers, female and male, strip-searched, and then left, completely naked, in the jail cell for six hours, using toilet paper to try and keep warm during that time. Raw Story reported this atrocity:
Hope Steffey's night started with a call to police for help. It ended with her face down, naked, and sobbing on a jail cell floor. Now, the sheriff's deputies from Stark County, Ohio who allegedly used excessive force during a strip search 15 months ago face a federal lawsuit, and recently released video won’t help their case.
Steffey's ordeal with the Stark County sheriff's deputies began after her cousin called 9-1-1 claiming Steffey had been assaulted by another one of their cousins. When a Stark County police officer arrived, he asked to see Steffey's driver's license. But instead of handing over her own ID, she mistakenly turned over her dead sister's license, which she contends she keeps in her wallet as a memento. That's when the situation became complicated.
The video below shows what happened. It is, I think, the most horrifying thing I have ever viewed. It's very hard to watch. I was shaking through most of it. The sound of Hope Steffey screaming and sobbing in terror and humiliation will stay with me for a long time.
John Cole:
Things are out of control when people can do things like this and think they are doing “the right thing.” Check their faces- an odd sort of professionalism, going through the motions pinning this defenseless woman to the ground and essentially raping her, and no one stops to think it is inappropriate for men to be in the room (not to mention against clear procedures). No one asks “why are we doing this?” No one asks “Why is this woman here” (she was the one who called for help- I bet she will not make that mistake again). No one asks why she needed to sit for hours naked, humiliated, hysterical, and alone in a cell for anyone to walk by and gawk at her in a completely vulnerable state. No one thought to give her a blanket or talk to her as she was covering herself in toilet paper to keep warm.
What is wrong with our system? What is wrong with the police that it is not a radical belief for me to think “I should probably cross the street, there is a cop walking down this side.”
The Political Cat draws a line between Hope Steffey's ordeal, and the police killing of an African-American woman a year later, allegedly in the course of a drug raid, also in Ohio.
During the course of the raid, they injured Wilson's year-old son, who was in her arms at the time. The child has since had his finger amputated as a result of the injury. Ms. Wilson's partner, 31-year-old Anthony Terry, was arrested and removed from the premises.
Obviously the common element in these two events is police brutality -- and that brutality is nourished and grows in the soil of indifference:
... If the officers who stripped Ms. Steffey had been punished immediately for their behaviour, it is possible that Ms. Wilson might be alive today. If police officers were given better staffing levels, better training, it is possible that Ms. Steffey's ordeal and the orphaning of the Wilson children would never have occurred.
And then there is this paragraph, in which Political Cat writes about the balancing act between understanding -- with empathy and compassion -- the difficulty and stress of police work, while at the same time not using that understanding as an excuse for abandoning accountability:
Law enforcement is a very tough job. Imagine yourself in the position of a cop, knowing that at any moment you could lose your life or limb or job because of one incorrect assessment, one second extra in making a decision. Understandably, cops get pretty fucked up after working a job like that day after day for years. The pressure on one's personal life, one's family life, one's relationships, has to be unreal. But that does not excuse the actions of those officers involved in either case. Ultimately, what it points to is an inability by these men and women with guns and badges to understand that people who are not white or male or do not have guns and badges are still people and should be treated humanely. We do not have to follow the precepts of the madman in charge who tells us that torture is OK, and humans have no innate rights. There is a better way. And most of all, law enforcement officers need to learn not to exercise inappropriate levels of force against others just because they can.
Well said. In fact, this being Blogroll Amnesty Day, and Political Cat being a smaller blog, and one I did not know about before finding the link on Memeorandum, I am going to add her to my blogroll.
If you knew that Hillary Clinton was pushing people to vote for her under the guise of conducting legitimate telephone polling, would you be more or less likely to vote for her?
Ed Coghlan was just starting to prepare his dinner in the northern San Fernando Valley the other night when the phone rang. The caller was very friendly. He identified himself as a pollster who wanted to ask registered independents like Coghlan a few questions about the presidential race and all the candidates for Super Tuesday's California primary.
Ed, who's a former news director for a local TV station, was curious. He said, "Sure, go ahead."
But a few minutes into the conversation Ed says he noticed a strange pattern developing to the questions. First of all, the "pollster" was only asking about four candidates, three Democrats -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, who was still in the race at the time -- and one Republican -- John McCain.
Also, every question about Clinton was curiously positive, Coghlan recalls. The caller said things like, if you knew that Sen. Clinton believed the country had a serious home mortgage problem and had made proposals to....freeze mortgage rates and save families from foreclosure, would you be more likely or less likely to vote for her?
Ed said, of course, more likely.
Every question about the other candidates was negative. If Ed knew, for instance, that as a state senator Obama had voted "present" 43 times instead of taking a yes or no stand "for what he believed," would Ed be more or less likely to vote for him?
"That's when I caught on," said Coghlan. He realized then that he was being push-polled. That malicious political virus that is designed not to elicit answers but to spread positive information about one candidate and negative information about all others under the guise of an honest poll had arrived in Southern California within days of the important election.
As Joe Gandelman points out, Clinton seems to be building a reputation for such underhanded tactics:
First, came the controversies about the innuendos about Senator Barack Obama, the apologies and the occasional resignation (after the info was thrust into the news cycle). Next came The Bill Clinton offensive and display of the race card. And now comes this L.A. Times’ blog report about push polling — again coming from supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton[.]
[...]
And the Clinton campaign? Did they immediately deny it and/or denounce it and say they not only had no part in it but they completely repudiate such tactics? Phil Singer, the spokesman for the Clinton campaign. was contacted by e-mail last night. He answered that he was there. He was asked if the Clinton campaign was behind the push-poll, knew who was behind it or had any other information on it. That was at 5:27 p.m. Pacific time Saturday. As of this item’s posting time, exactly eight hours later, no reply had been received.
Silence is sometimes eloquent — particularly if it seems to be part of a distinct pattern.
We have been through eight years of lies, prevarications, corruption, and anti-democratic tactics. Hillary Clinton knows that she is seen by many voters as the establishment, business-as-usual candidate. If, knowing that, she still runs her campaign this way, what's she going to do if she becomes president?
What is Blogroll Amnesty Day, you ask? It's an opportunity to blog about the value that smaller, non-A list blogs bring to the blogosphere, and to suit our actions to our words by linking to, and blogrolling, underrecognized blogs -- which for the purposes of B.A.D., are defined as blogs that get less traffic than our own blogs. So help yourself to a brioche and read up.
One of the great things about other bloggers' blogrolls is that you discover wonderful, intelligent, engaging, laugh-out-loud blogs you would most likely never have discovered on your own. Some of the blogs below I've known about for a while but just hadn't gotten around to blogrolling yet. Some I came across while searching on Truth Laid Bear or Technorati, and didn't know about before now. And still others I found by perusing bloggers' blogrolls.
Read. Link. Blogroll. It's the B.A.D. thing to do.
The Crone Speaks: CEPetro in a new incarnation, still much, much more than an average woman.
The Scientific Activist: "The truth isn't always black or white, but an informed public is an empowered one, so I won't shy away from the complex issues. Most importantly, though, The Scientific Activist takes on the people and obstacles standing in the way of the progress and proper application of science. Enemies of science, beware!" But for those who appreciate excellent writing and informed, intelligent commentary, enjoy!
Grammar.Police: Art, culture, grammar, and liberal politics all in one place.
Watching the Watchers: Did you know that John McCain has no objection to the U.S. occupying Iraq for the next century? You'll find out stuff like that here.
Brendan Calling: If you're a right-wing idiot, don't pick up the phone.
The Apostate: The apostate is a Pakistani woman raised Muslim in Saudi Arabia, now an atheist by belief and a paralegal by trade, living in California.
The Bilerico Project: group blogging on lgbtq issues, and more.
Bitch Ph.D.: What draws me to a blog is some mysterious combination of subject matter, attitude, writing style, and design. This one has all of the above. It's really good.
Bloggasm: Simon Owens' media blog, "with an emphasis on online media and journalism."
Blue Wren: Wren is a writer, "liv[ing] in a small mountain town with Mr. Wren, a psycho dog and a kingly cat." Or is that a kinky cat? She has gorgeous photographs of cats and her outdoor surroundings.
Mock, Paper, Scissors: This is really three separate blogs, interweaving satirical art with standard blog posting. The concept and the implementation of it blows me away. I've never seen anything quite like this blog before.
There are hundreds -- thousands -- more blogs equally as good as these 11, just waiting to be discovered and appreciated. The vast majority of blogs are small blogs. Just imagine how much more interesting and varied the blogosphere might become if we all link and blogroll five or six on a regular basis.
Just sayin'.
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