EcuProphets

(h/t digby)

In his early career, Bob Dylan used to write songs about people like Victoria Arellano. Although as I think about it, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll* seems to chronicle a far less heinous injustice in comparison, heinous as it was. (more…)

And this development was not considered?

The pattern has become familiar: Customs officers wave in vehicles filled with illegal immigrants, drugs or other contraband. A Border Patrol agent acts as a scout for smugglers. Trusted officers fall prey to temptation and begin taking bribes. (more…)

The New York Times has an article today highlighting the fact that traditional healers — curanderas — have been busily providing care to sick and injured undocumented Latinos. (more…)

I don’t recall ever seeing Chuck Norris kicked in the head, but maybe he was in rehearsals. Anyhow, in World Net Daily he states the problem– (more…)

The most memorable public utterance this week was the Alice in Wonderland logic of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia asserting on 60 Minutes that torturing detainees wasn’t cruel and unusual punishment because they weren’t, having not been convicted of anything, being punished. He even gave the example of a police officer trying to get information from a suspect. So I guess it’s only police brutality if it’s done just for the fun of it. Or maybe that’s OK too. (more…)

Yesterday I noted a chilling and under-reported story carried by the NY Times to the effct that a) Michael Chertoff has been granted godlike powers by Congress, and b) the rationale for this — “security over all” — is eerily dictatorial. (more…)

Last week, Lou Dobbs had been apopleptic about a huge defense contract being awarded to Airbus, a European company, instead of America’s own Boeing. Like King Kong about to break his chains, Sweet Lou thundered about how the powers-that-be are destroying the middle class.  (more…)

Remember the scene toward the end of the novel (and movie) Ironweed, where a group of local, baseball-bat wielding “reformers” take it upon themselves to drive all the bums out of Albany? Given the stark, albeit twisted, humanity of protagonist Francis Phelan to that point, the bat swingers come off as astoundingly ignorant as they are brutal. (more…)

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As we watched it go around last Fall with the driver’s license pile on, it may come around this Fall. There’s activity in anticipation of tomorrow’s primary:  (more…)