Carceral Nation

Who knew Ken Starr -- of cum-stained blue dress infamy -- would be the new darling of the liberal press this morning after he leapt to the defense of Justice Department lawyers venomously labeled the "Al-Qaeda 7" for providing legal counsel to accused terrorists, and against Liz Cheney, the conservative and vile offspring of Dick.

We are often taught to give the disabled extra accommodation to help them better fit into the mainstream workplace.  We are encouraged to be extra kind to the disabled because of their unfair and frail state of living.  We are often surprised when we learn the disabled can be just as devious and evil as their able-bodied peers.  David Paterson is the current, non-elected Governor of the State of New York -- he came into power when Eliot Spitzer was ousted over a hooker scandal -- and as a Black and Blind man, we put as much hope in David Paterson as we did Barack Obama to bring some safety and sanity back to governance.

When many around the world imagine the American Mid-West, they think of white picket fences and golden, homespun values.  We, who grew up in the Middling West, know the brutal reality of the Plains states, and here's evidence of violence against Blacks in Omaha, Nebraska stretching back to September 29, 1919.

Here is a headline from the New York Times published on November 21, 1922:

J. D. Salinger, John Hughes, Greta Garbo, and Thomas Pynchon. Writer, director, actress, and another writer -- but what do they have in common? Simply put, they all are, or were, seekers of intensive privacy even though they live(d) public lives. They all sought to create Art and then chose to retreat back into their own private world to enjoy their lives without the intrusion of cameras or interviewers.

You are your cellphone and the New York Police Department knows your phone identifies you better than a fingerprint or an identity card because you can be marked and tracked throughout your life in real time and the breadcrumbs of your history in movement and communication can be recorded, saved, and used against you for future prosecution -- and it may not be legal.

The media have trained us to fear Anthrax even though it is a naturally occurring substance found in the soil of any working farm.  Militarized Anthrax is not the natural Anthrax you find on a farm.  Anthrax that has been militarized means that is has been "ground up" into the tiniest possible spore form for easy transmission in the air via the wind for inhalation into the lungs.  Once Anthrax gets inside your body, your chances of survival are not very good.  Militarized Anthrax is a silent killer that takes a bit of time to develop in the body as a cause of death, so marking the time and point of infection is more difficult, and that makes Militarized Anthrax an effective, invisible, assassin.  Anthrax, and its natural danger to humans, is all around us all the time.