According to the Texas Tribune, Governor Rick Perry has overseen the executions of 261 people since he assumed office in 2000. "Perry has rarely used his power to grant clemency, granting 31 death row commutations, most of them — 28 — the result of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning capital punishment for minors."

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Martin Luther King Jr. thought that poor whites as well as nonwhites should benefit from compensatory programs. Bayard Rustin, the organizer of the March on Washington, argued correctly that race-based public policies would help to destroy the fragile coalition between civil rights activists and the white working class. Christopher Lasch dismissed affirmative action in college admissions and business set-asides as cynical, low-cost ploys to co-opt nonwhite elites. And progressives like Richard Kahlenberg continue to make the liberal case for class-conscious but race-neutral approaches to public policy.

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New York city officials were told of Holder's decision Wednesday, according to the News. On Tuesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly reportedly "vigorously objected to the plan in telephone conversations with Holder."

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Neither had the inmates: “I have had inmates tell me that this is the only joint they have been in where they ‘let inmates jack off on women,’” another Coleman employee, Eva Ryals, wrote in a legal complaint against the facility.

That’s because, according to a rare class-action lawsuit filed by White and over 200 of her fellow correctional officers, management wasn’t particularly interested in putting a stop to it. When female correctional officers would file complaints about, for example, an inmate masturbating in front of them or making rape threats, the complaints would either get downgraded to a lesser charge or actually shredded. In at least one case, a captain told a woman she had filed too many complaints.

A Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman did not respond to Salon's request for comment, and has previously cited the pending litigation in declining comment.

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On the night it happened, my partner of sixteen years, Tony, and I were up the street having dinner with a friend. After dinner, we wandered over to a neighborhood gay bar for a quick drink. We then left our friend and walked arm-in-arm, arriving back home around midnight. The same time that Mark Carson was being assaulted and fatally shot just a few yards away.

He had been followed for several blocks by a man taunting him, yelling out “faggot” and “What are you, a gay wrestler?” When they reached the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street, his attacker spat out his final threat, “Do you want to die here?” before shooting Mark in the face with a .38 caliber gun. Mark Carson’s body lay dead just a couple blocks from the Stonewall Bar, the birthplace of the gay rights movement.

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In the Future remix called "Karate Chop," Wayne compared the 14-year-old civil rights icon Emmett Till, murdered in 1955, to a sex act.

Wayne sent a letter to Till's family recently, saying he "acknowledged" the hurt caused by the lyrics:

Dear Till Family:

As a recording artist, I have always been interested in word play. My lyrics often reference people, places and events in my music, as well as the music that I create for or alongside other artists.

It has come to my attention that lyrics from my contribution to a fellow artist’s song has deeply offended your family. As a father myself, I cannot imagine the pain that your family has had to endure. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge your hurt, as well as the letter you sent to me via your attorneys.

Moving forward, I will not use or reference Emmett Till or the Till family in my music, especially in an inappropriate manner. I fully support Epic Record’s decision to take down the unauthorized version of the song and to not include the reference in the version that went to retail. I will not be performing the lyrics that contain that reference live and have removed them from my catalogue.

I have tremendous respect for those who paved the way for the liberty and opportunities that African-Americans currently enjoy. As a business owner who employs several African-American employees and gives philanthropically to organizations that help youth to pursue their dreams my ultimate intention is to uplift rather than degrade our community.

Best,

Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr.
Lil Wayne

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Sen. Paul’s speech will focus on the importance of outreach to younger voters, as well as minority groups. He will also discuss the history of the African-American community’s roots in the Republican Party and current issues, such as school choice and civil liberties

It will be interesting to see what the audience at the school, which is still overwhelmingly African-American, makes of the speech from a senator who once said he didn't support the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on the grounds that it impinged on business owners' rights (he later walked back the remark).

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However, for millions of people, that date celebrates something else: Easter Sunday. Several conservatives and Christians alike took issue with Google's decision to honor the rights icon over their holiday:

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Black History Month just ended, which means grade schools nationwide recently celebrated how the Civil War abolished slavery, that George Washington Carver invented peanut butter, and, of course, how the Civil Rights Movement ended segregation and disfranchisement. Children everywhere rehearsed familiar narratives about how after enduring years of racist oppression, valiant African-American women and men like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. peacefully demanded and secured equal rights.

And in a bizarre reminder of the political significance the struggle for civil rights still carries, Barack Obama and John Boehner capped the month with a rare joint appearance to unveil a statue of Parks in the Capitol building on the same day that the Supreme Court heard a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We can expect a ruling a few months before we celebrate the 50^thanniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where, on August 28, 1963, King delivered his renowned “I Have a Dream” speech.

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Via the NYCLU:

“This disturbing milestone is a slap in the face to New Yorkers who cherish the right to walk down the street without being interrogated or even thrown up against the wall by the police,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. “The NYPD’s routine abuse of stop-and-frisks is a tremendous waste of police resources, it sows mistrust between officers and the communities they serve, and it routinely violates fundamental rights. A walk to the subway, corner deli or school should not carry the assumption that you will be confronted by police, but that’s the disturbing reality for young men of color in New York City.”

To stop a person lawfully, a police officer must have reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime.

This year the racist stop-and-frisk practices have come under increasing scrutiny. Monday will see the beginning of a landmark trial -- a federal class-action lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights challenging the constitutionality of stop-and-frisk practices. As HuffPo's Matt Sledge noted, the lawyers bringing the suit against the police believe it will be the "trial of the century."

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Eric Hobsbawm called the 19^th century “a gigantic machine for uprooting countrymen.” He believed that the reason for mass migrations of people was straightforward. For the immigrants of the 1800s, the United States “was not a society but a means of making money,” often in the hope of “returning home, rich and respected, to their native villages.”

Those immigrants began their American lives by and large doing low-wage, back-breaking, monotonous manual labor and domestic work, which was still better than what was available from in their homelands. In the old country, they’d starved; in the new one, they’d strive. The United States was to forge a national identity out of the collective national identities of millions of foreigners.

In the age of globalization, however, the nation state has retreated as the locus of world power. Multinational free trade agreements, supranational financial institutions, and transnational corporations ensure that capital can float between nations with all the ease of a monarch butterfly. Labor, on the other hand, remains under the jurisdiction of border-obsessed states.

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The federal Justice Department is investigating Denver for failing to provide sign-language interpreters for deaf prisoners. Investigators are seeking to determine whether Denver – which touts itself as “one of America’s most accessible cities” — is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In a November 20, 2012, letter obtained by The Colorado Independent, the Justice Department threatened legal action and noted that any violation of the Act might jeopardize federal funding for the city’s police and sheriff departments.

“We would like to resolve this matter expeditiously,” wrote Mary Lou Mobley, a Justice Department lawyer.

The investigation stems from a lawsuit filed by Major Jon Michael Scott, who was booked into the Denver County Jail seven times between 2006 and 2012 on burglary charges, on warrants from other jurisdictions and for several parole violations. Scott’s guilt isn’t in question. He’s now serving time at Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility based on a probation violation related to a burglary charge.

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There’s no shortage of badly behaving Republicans in Washington. There’s the take-or-leave-it congressional leadership, who constantly show they value rightwing ideology more than its impact on people. There are intransigent obstructionists, like the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, who believes the answer to gun violence is more guns. But Scalia isn’t simply another Republican bully; he may be the most venal and fascist Republican of all.

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When people think of Denver, many think of skiing and, since the last election, marijuana. But from here in the Mile High City, things seem a bit different. In the day to day operation of the city, we aren't as much defined by snow and pot as we are by the fact that we live under the rule of an increasingly brutal police force. It is a police force that our political leaders are more than happy to deploy to punish undesirables, and worse, that the most powerful media organ is more than happy to defend.

We have become, in short, a national cautionary tale -- one that no doubt epitomizes similar trends throughout the country.

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As someone whose white Southern ancestors go back to the 17th century in the Chesapeake Bay region, I have some insight into the psychology of the tribe. The salient fact to bear in mind is that the historical experience of the white South in many ways is the opposite of the experience of the rest of the country.

Mainstream American history, from the point of view of the white majority in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast, is a story of military successes. The British are defeated, ensuring national independence. The Confederates are defeated, ensuring national unity. And in the 20th century the Axis and Soviet empires are defeated, ensuring (it is hoped) a free world.

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Blacks constituted the majority of bus riders, paid the same fare, yet received inferior and disrespectful service — often right in front of and in direct contrast to white riders. “I had so much trouble with so many bus drivers,” Parks recalled. That black people comprised the majority of riders made for even more galling situations on the bus. Some routes had very few white passengers yet the first 10 seats on every bus were always reserved for whites. Thus, on many bus routes, black riders would literally stand next to empty seats. Those blacks able to avoid the bus did so, and those who had the means drove cars. Black maids and nurses, however, were allowed to sit in the white section with their young or sick white charges, further underscoring the ways that bus segregation marked status and the convenience of white needs, and did not simply regulate proximity.

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Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM reports:

With [state Sen. Henry] Marsh’s absence, Senate Republicans in Richmond had one more vote than Senate Democrats and could push the measure through. The new redistricting map revises the districts created under the 2011 map and would take effect before the next state Senate elections in Virginia and would redraw district lines to maximize the number of safe GOP seats.

Currently, the state Senate is split evenly, 20-20, between Democrats and Republicans. But in the event of a tie, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Republican, gets a vote, and Republicans were not sure he would have gone their way (a spokesman for Bolling told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the Republicans' move “is not something that he supported.”)

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The men, whose complaints were brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, are immigrants in the U.S. who hail from from Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria and Turkey, as well as natives of India and Nepal. "In the weeks following the attacks, they said they were held in federal custody on the pretext of minor immigration violations while the FBI investigated them for potential links to terrorism," Reuters reported.

The dismissed complaint claimed that former U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft, FBI director Robert Mueller and former Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner James Ziglar oversaw federal policies which led to the men's harsh detention. However, on Thursday the judge ruled that although the men were certainly detained on the basis of "race, religion and national origin," the federal officials named in the suit did not intend to discriminate.

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A New York man, John Swartz, was followed by police, arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in 2006 when, according to court filings, he saw police officers with a radar detector at an intersection and "expressed his displeasure ... by reaching his right arm outside the passenger side window and extending his middle finger over the car’s roof."

The charges against Swartz were dismissed on speedy trial grounds, but he then brought a damages claim against the police -- a claim that was tossed out in a lower Albany court when the judge sided with the police's account that they had followed the man believing his hand gesture to be some sort of distress signal. On Thursday, however, the appeals court ruled against this conclusion, noting "the nearly universal recognition that this gesture is an insult." (The ruling highlights the ancient history of the insult in its footnotes, pointing out that Aristophanes wrote of Strepsiades flipping off Aristotle).

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