Bob West – Voice Actor

Characters, Narration, Comedy Dialog – Barney, Jasper, Pasqually

Sessions orders Justice Dept. to end forensic science commission, suspend review policy – The Washington Post

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U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions during the daily briefing March 27. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

From the NOT ENOUGH PUBLIC OUTCRY Files: Since he got herded into office, Jeff Sessions has been very busy enacting the Authoritarian Agenda and doing his best to turn the United States into a police state.

Two examples: Sessions declared that consent decrees would be rolled back. Including those for Baltimore and Ferguson. Now he wants to stop reviews of challenged evidence and verdicts.

These actions fit perfectly with authoritarianism; they don’t want guilty verdicts ever to be questioned. They also don’t want the police to ever be questioned or criticized – and that’s why Sessions recently ordered that all consent decrees be reviewed. He said it was “almost disrespectful” to review a police department’s actions and hold them responsible. This is as authoritarian – and anti-civil-rights – as any American administration has ever been.

This should scare the crap out of everyone, and yet it’s hardly getting any traction in the press.

Article: Sessions orders Justice Dept. to end forensic science commission, suspend review policy – The Washington Post

Real American Journalism: Tiny Paper Takes Pulitzer

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Art Cullen, center, editor and co-owner of the Storm Lake Times newspaper, poses for a photo with his son, Tom, left, and brother, John, outside the paper in Storm Lake, Iowa, after Art won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. (Dolores Cullen/Storm Lake Times via Associated Press)
Art Cullen, center, editor and co-owner of the Storm Lake Times newspaper, poses for a photo with his son, Tom, left, and brother, John, outside the paper in Storm Lake, Iowa, after Art won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. (Dolores Cullen/Storm Lake Times via Associated Press)

This is thrilling. This classic story is what American journalism is all about: a tiny newspaper — circulation 3,000, printed on actual paper — cranks out fact-based, well-written editorials that stand up to big business, like the Koch Brothers.They’re in a red state, represented by the horrific Steve King, and according to other articles, Art Cullen’s editorials have also helped the immigrant community to feel somewhat safer.

If Jimmy Stewart and Frank Capra were still making movies, they’d make this one.

Take a moment to visit the Pulitzer site, where you can read all of Cullen’s submitted editorials. They’re hard-hitting, with a lightly conversational wit. I’ll be working my way through all of them soon.

Read the story at the Washington Post.

Canada’s Forced Schooling of Aboriginal Children Was ‘Cultural Genocide’

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I started reading this article thinking it was in a Canadian publication — because there is no mention whatsoever of the American Indian Boarding Schools in the United States. But the article is in the NY Times. Quite an omission. You can replace pretty much any instance of “Canada” in this article with “the U.S.”, and it will still be true, and in many cases, accurate.

OTTAWA — Canada’s former policy of forcibly removing aboriginal children from their families for schooling “can best be described as ‘cultural genocide.’ ”

That is the conclusion reached by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after six years of intensive research, including 6,750 interviews. The commission published a summary version on Tuesday of what will ultimately be a multivolume report, documenting widespread physical, cultural and sexual abuse at government-sponsored residential schools that Indian, Inuit and other indigenous children were forced to attend.

. . .

Aboriginal groups and the government see reconciliation very differently, the report said: The government appears to believe that it involves aboriginal people’s accepting “the reality and validity” of the government’s power “in order to allow the government to get on with business.”

“Aboriginal people, on the other hand, see reconciliation as an opportunity to affirm their own sovereignty and return to the ‘partnership’ ambitions they held,” the report said.

Source: Canada’s Forced Schooling of Aboriginal Children Was ‘Cultural Genocide,’ Report Finds – NYTimes.com

Bill Moyers: It’s a Non-Stop Land Grab From the American Indians

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This conversation is a major eye-opener. While most of us have understood that the Europeans and the U.S. government have run roughshod over the American Indian since the Europeans arrived, Professor Robert Williams has an incredibly tight grasp of the legal underpinnings of all that racism. From ancient Roman times to the Doctrine of Discovery that has given Congress what it thinks is the right to do with Indian lands and people what it likes. This is a fascinating and powerful edition of Moyers & Company — and, sadly, it’s the next to last to air on PBS. Thanks to Kris Nangle for the tip!

http://www.alternet.org/bill-moyers-its-non-stop-land-grab-american-indians

My response to comments about attacks on police

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‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ is not an “anti-police movement”. It is an anti-brutality movement. It is a pro-equality movement. It does not call for the death of police. It does not say that all police are bad. And yet people seem to be more than happy to lie and say the extreme opposite. If you say that the #BlackLivesMatter movement is anti-police, what you are saying is that no one should be allowed to point out police brutality, that police should never be investigated or scrutinized or criticized in any way. In other words, you are saying that the police are actually above the law, and should be allowed to do whatever they want, with complete impunity. So, is that what you really mean to say? Do you really mean to say that you want to live in a country where the police operate like the Stassi or like some other secret police force, killing and torturing people at will? I doubt that. This kind of comment — this kind of thinking — is not helpful in the least. The people who did this are sick. They’re criminals. They need to be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Police have been shot at in various neighborhoods before, and unfortunately, that will probably happen again. But to claim now that all police shootings are “caused” by people who simply speak their minds and draw attention to the very real issue of police violence — and the disproportionate number of deaths among people of color at the hands of police — makes no sense. To blame a movement that simply seeks accountability among police for the actions of the individuals is simply unproductive saber-rattling.