Thanks. If I ever troll and bait, or lose my temper more than the normal sort of edginess that sometimes creeps into my prose, I hope you’ll quickly let me know that I have stepped over the line.

I am not surprised you are baffled though Sam because I do not have a “position”. I am not swayed one way or another by opinions.

I am simply saying, yet again, that it has not been proven to me (thus far) that there are racist motivations behind the DA’s handling of certain cases that came before him in Jena.

Of course I am interested in the insights of Southerners. Politics, however, is something of a gooey mess…

Washington I have time for because I have read the transcripts and his words resonate.

If he and others find there was bias that is when it is case proven…for me. Until then the jury is out.

“I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.”

Your position on Jena has baffled me to no end, as has your abject lack of interest in the insights of people who know Southern race politics from the inside. Frankly, I’d expect a little credibility to attach to that experience. But whatever.

Debate all you like, but come on, let’s at least keep the snark reality-based, huh?

Unfortunately, you addressed me in the first instance so I was being polite in acknowledging you. Damm I really must remember not to talk to strangers…

I’ll go back to skimming over what you usually write because the way you comment leaves a lot to be desired…judging by your habit of trolling and baiting.

Meanwhile I will carry on reading the interesting posts rather than be sidetracked by someone who seeks to argue and bait as opposed to having the tools at his disposal to discuss properly.

Night Night.

If you wish to make arguments based on data, I’m your Huckleberry. If you want to simply make unsupported rants about “witch hunts,” I can find far more interesting people with which to converse.

Washington composed himself with dignity and self respect whilst the younger political race hustler with a somewhat dubious reputation bullied, ranted, interrupted and refused to let the older man speak.

Hmm…

“JS: Amazing how some commentators will with the strike of the keyboard attempt to take away the good name, strength of character and real knowledge of public servants and substitute their own VIEWS as fact.

Oh those nasty Republicans”

Note that I did nothing to impugn anyone’s reputation, not that it should matter to any public figure. Nor have I said anything to imply that any view of mine is fact. On the contrary, I’ve been very careful not to do that.

I was simply pointing out that the blind, and naive, trust you seem to have in Mr. Washington could be misplaced. But don’t take my word for what the current Administration has done to the Justice Department. Take what Richard Thornburgh, a former Republican Attorney General has to say, as well as Donald Shields, a professor at the University of Missouri who has done a statistical analysis of prosecution patterns in the current Justice Department.

Thornburgh says that his client, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, was unfairly prosecuted by the Justice Department after getting pressure from Karl Rove. Shields says that the Justice Department has prosecuted 5.6 local Democratic officials for every one Republican. He goes on to say that the probability of that happening without bias towards prosecuting Democrats, is less than 1 in 10,000.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/opinion/24wed1.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Of course, we’re getting far afield here. This is relevant only in the context of how much trust one can put in the Justice Department, these days. I’d say it’s very, very little.

Thanks. Because it was posted right after mine, I thought it was a reaction to what I was posting. Now I’m glad I didn’t unload on you

I don’t see where… it could just be the tangle of my attempts to post that link. My second try was held for approval, so it showed up late. I wanted Elaine to see for herself that Washington (the man, not the government) had admitted that the nooses constituted a hate crime, then offered up an excuse for not prosecuting. Isn’t that what you were saying?

Perhaps I shouldn’t attempt to post and work at the same time.

“Huh what? I’m lost.”

You seem to be objecting to something I said, and I don’t understand why. Could you elaborate, please?

May I gently suggest that when you post a quote that says, “The national media has not mentioned a single time that there was an FBI investigation into the hanging of the nooses and the conduct of Reed Walters that concluded there was no criminal activity or “hate crime” involved,” you check it out, first. Here is what CNN has to say (and that’s just one instance quickly found on google):

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/law/09/19/jena.six.link/

“Washington said FBI agents who went to Jena in September to investigate the noose report, and other federal officials who examined what happened, concluded it “had all the markings of a hate crime.”

Now, to me, this sounds like there was a “hate crime,” but that the fact that the kids were underage meant they couldn’t be prosecutred. In other words, it’s a technicality.

“The incident wasn’t prosecuted as such because it didn’t meet the federal standards required for the teens to be certified as adults, Washington said. A court makes the final decision on whether to drop their juvenile status.

While critics contend the nooses and the beating are two sides of the same problem, U.S. Attorney Washington said a direct link would be hard to prove.

There was “no connection that a prosecutor could take into court and say, ‘You know, judge or jury, we’re prosecuting these white kids for these nooses, and look at all the damage they caused downstream, all the way down to the fight at Jena High School on December 4,’” he told CNN’s Kyra Phillips on Tuesday.

So, what Washington is saying is not that there was no effect, but that he couldn’t prove it.

“Justice Department attorney Lisa Krigsten, who also testified before the committee, countered that the DOJ had actually dispatched a representative to talk to school officials, as well an FBI agent to investigate, in August 2006.

Krigsten said that although it was “undeniable” that noose hanging constituted a “”a symbol of hate and racial violence,” the federal investigation found it wasn’t appropriate — due to the ages of those involved — to bring charges.”

Huh what? I’m lost.

I tried to post a link to the House Judiciary Committee website, where they have webcasts of hearings, including one on the Jena 6 with Donald Washington. That response didn’t come through, so I posted again, since Elaine said she wanted something she could see for herself. I don’t know if it’s the same interview you saw, but he says the same thing you heard – that the nooses did constitute a hate crime. His rationale for not prosecuting appears to have been the age of the offenders.

…taken from

http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=17296&id=32967

Huh?

Thank you will watch.

JS: Amazing how some commentators will with the strike of the keyboard attempt to take away the good name, strength of character and real knowledge of public servants and substitute their own VIEWS as fact.

Oh those nasty Republicans…

I’m not at liberty to spend the time looking for the interview I saw with Washington, but it was also on CNN (I think) and was aired as part of a one-hour special on the day of the march.

What Washington says in this video you posted is roughly the same as what I saw in the other one. There was a lot of waffling in that interview, too, though he DID say in the first one that charging the kids with attempted murder is probably not the decision he would have made.

I don’t know how much you know about US politics and/or the US judicial system, but it doesn’t appear to be all that much. You say you have trust in the FBI, yet this is not an FBI matter. This is a Louisiana matter. As for Washington, he is a political appointee, a Republican, operating in a strongly Republican (except on the local Dixiecrat level) state. His career depends on the continuing goodwill of Republicans. Already, there are allegations that the Justice Department has been used by the Republican Administration as a tool to attack political enemies.

You are correct that some of us, here, are viewing what is happening in Jena in context of what we know, from experience, about Southern justice. You seem to be implying that one should not view events in context but, instead, take every event in the world as though there is no context. I submit that this leaves us gullible and vulnerable to the most egregiously ridiculous arguments, such as “The German people attacked Poland in response to a Polish incursion onto German territory.” In the context of what was known about Hitler at the time, it would have been ridiculous to believe that statement.

But there were people who believed him.

http://judiciary.house.gov/oversight.aspx?ID=379

I didn’t think to post the actual link, just where it was. You’ll need RealPlayer.