At
The Atlantic, former Chicago Cub Doug Glanville
explains how he was "racially profiled in his own driveway":
| It was an otherwise ordinary snow day in Hartford, Connecticut, and I was laughing as I headed outside to shovel my driveway. I’d spent the morning scrambling around, trying to stay ahead of my three children’s rising housebound energy, and once my shovel hit the snow, I thought about how my wife had been urging me to buy a snowblower. I hadn’t felt an urgent need. Whenever it got ridiculously blizzard-like, I hired a snow removal service. And on many occasions, I came outside to find that our next door neighbor had already cleared my driveway for me.
Never mind that our neighbor was an empty-nester in his late 60s with a replaced hip, and I was a former professional ballplayer in his early 40s. I kept telling myself I had to permanently flip the script and clear his driveway. But not today. I had to focus on making sure we could get our car out for school the next morning. My wife was at a Black History Month event with our older two kids. The snow had finally stopped coming down and this was my mid-afternoon window of opportunity.
Just as I was good-naturedly turning all this over in my mind, my smile disappeared.
A police officer from West Hartford had pulled up across the street, exited his vehicle, and begun walking in my direction. I noted the strangeness of his being in Hartford—an entirely separate town with its own police force—so I thought he needed help. He approached me with purpose, and then, without any introduction or explanation he asked, “So, you trying to make a few extra bucks, shoveling people’s driveways around here?”
All of my homeowner confidence suddenly seemed like an illusion. […]
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Ken Starr (!) rejects Fox's smears against Harold Koh:
| Over the past few weeks, Glenn Beck and Fox News have been pushing a totally baseless smear against Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh and the Obama Administration. Their essential claim: that through Koh, the White House was seeking to impose Sharia law in the United States.
Despite being fueled by a New York Post column written by a former Bush speechwriter, the absurd smear has mostly fizzled. Earlier this month, former conservative attorney Ted Olson, who served both Reagan and Bush, endorsed Koh.[…]
We've now got two leading conservative legal minds who have rejected the loony attacks advanced by Fox News against Harold Koh.
Neither Starr nor Olson agree with Koh on every legal issue; they are conservatives, he is not. But at the same time, Starr and Olson recognize that Koh is perfectly qualified for the job, and absolutely capable of preserving and protecting the Constitution of the United States.
The fact that taking such an eminently reasonable position sets them apart from the bulk of the conservative movement is all you need to know to understand just how extremist and nutty the right-wing has become.
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Tweet of the Day:
"There's never been a better time to quit government & go into the lucrative business of bitching about government."
http://t.co/...
— @theprospect
On
today's rerun of the Kagro in the Morning show, it's the April 15, 2013 show. We marked Tax Day with Liz Day's account of "How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing."
Armando reminded us it's not just Tax Day, it's Jackie Robinson Day. He also noted Gallup's poll asking if people thought their taxes were "fair." That is, he noted it's kind of dumb. Other items: "Hedge Fund Titans' Pay Stretching to 10 Figures," the continuing problems of Guantanamo detainees, and Missouri's move to certify & arm teachers, even as a St. Louis-area gun instructor was busted faking students' qualifications.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.
