Two Seconds

In two seconds, a photon of light travels over 372,000 miles.

In two seconds, a heart at its resting rate will have beat 2-3 times.

In two seconds, the worlds fastest computer performs 67,720 trillion calculations.

In two seconds, an innocent Black boy died.

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His name was Tamir Rice. He was all of twelve-years-old. He lived in Cleveland and was out playing in a park with his sister and friends on a cool November day in 2014, carrying around a fake pistol, in the way most kids do. Or did.

Growing up, I can remember boys playing "War" or "Cops and Robbers" or "Cowboys and Indians" - back before we knew better - running around yards, and parks, and neighborhoods, brandishing toy pistols or rifles, or even long tree branches, playing with reckless abandon.

Tamir was no doubt doing something similar. He was young, he was having fun... and then he was dead.

Someone called 9-1-1. They reported someone running around with a gun. They made offhand remarks that it might be a fake gun. That it might be a kid. So weak were these remarks, the police dispatcher saw no need to mention them in the radio call to officers.

What happened next is on video for all the world to see. You can look it up yourself, measure the time from the moment police arrived at the park to the time of Tamir's death.

Two seconds.

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Many things happen quickly in the span of two seconds, if you're a ray of light, or a computer, or even a heart. What shouldn't happen in the span of two seconds is the death of an innocent child at the hands of a person sworn to protect him and all the all other citizens of Cleveland. Two seconds is not enough time to size up a situation. Two seconds is not enough time to make the crucial decision about what action to take. Two seconds is not enough time to prepare for what may come.

It is enough time to kill an innocent boy if you have it in your mind to do it.

The officer rolled up on the scene, threw open his door, and fired, all in a span of two seconds. No thought, no analysis, no attempt to warn the subject of his machinations to drop the weapon. Car, door, shots, death.

The only way it took so little time for these actions to be accomplished was if there had been forethought about them. The officer took the report of a person possibly brandishing a weapon - from which no shots had been fired - and used that as the fuel to play "hero" in his head. He would stop this shooter before anyone could be harmed. He would save lives.

Instead, he took one.

Thoughtlessly.

Callously.

Cruelly.

Tamir's sister was there. Distraught over his death, the police manhandled her rather than trying to identify why she was distressed. They did not perform even rudimentary first aid on Tamir. If there had been a chance to save him, they did not take it. There he lay, and died.

And now, as if the insult and injury of the senseless murder of a child was not enough, the officers involved will face no charges. Not even for their reckless behavior or failure to render aid. No charges. Because a system, built of interlocking parts that cover each others' backs, will not condemn its own. The police, the District Attorneys, the Judges, they are woven together into a system that grants White people absolution for their crimes and anyone else "justice" in the form of a callous disregard for their life.

A White man shoots up a movie theater, or a Planned Parenthood clinic, or a Black Baptist church, and they walk away, weapons surrendered, shackled, off to meet a justice system that is more than willing to play host to the idea they simply "weren't in their right mind." That same system takes a Black boy with a toy gun, a grown man with an unpurchased rifle in a store, a man trying to bring peace to his neighborhood, a woman pulled over for not signaling, and condemns them to quick or slow death, but death all the same.

If Black people are angry, if they are upset, if they rage at the system, it is because they are allowed. They watch daily as their kind are subject to the depredations of "justice," which so often result in the death of innocents and a lack of contrition by, or accountability for, those who dole out senseless death.

There is no reforming this system. It is diseased, so shot through with privilege and hypocrisy as to be worthless to any but the richest, Whitest citizens. It is a system built on the backs of slaves, powered by tax money of the poor and middle class, and twisted by those with power and wealth to suit their ends. It is filled with people who crave power, who see victory in court as a check-mark in the "win" column, and a handful of believers in true justice overwhelmed by a caseload they cannot keep up with, leading them to short-change defendants by encouraging them to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit, in the name of expediency.

When a system exists that allows the murder of a twelve-year-old boy in a park by law enforcement to go unchallenged, it is time for that system to be torn down.

Simply Murder

By now, you know here name: Sandra Bland.

You know what happened to her: pulled over by a police officer, he proceeded to abuse his authority, and she wound up in jail.

Then she "hung herself."

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As we reel off the litany of Black people who have lost their lives unfairly and unjustly - Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Renisha McBride, Tamir Rice, Tanisha Anderson, John Crawford, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and on and on - we should, to use Eric Garner's words, find it difficult to breathe. The constant stream of dead Black bodies being heaped at our feet cannot help but tighten the chest of any decent person. In most, if not all, cases these people were no threat to anyone, not armed, not doing anything that could be construed at the moment of their death as a threat to anyone. Some were murdered in the street, some shot in the back, some killed in their own homes, some in their cars, some running, some standing, some looking for help... and they are ALL DEAD.

DEAD. Killed in the main by law enforcement, with the occasional support of "law-abiding" citizens and racist malcontents, they have been set down in the ground and there have been outcries and protests and meetings and speeches and calls for justice...

...and still they die.

Every day.

Every day, we are greeted with the latest addition to the butcher's bill. Even since Sandra Bland's horrific arrest and subsequent death, there have been more. It is a ceaseless parade of Black people being cut down for no reason, no purpose, no need. These people are just trying to live their lives and being deprived of those lives by a callous, cruel, heartless system of endemic racism that they cannot fight. Punches are thrown, jabs are taken, blows are struck, but at the end of the day, Whiteness is still the law of the land and Blackness is marked for death.

America may remove the chains, it may fight a war, it may pass laws, but all that does nothing to stem the infernal spread of toxic bigotry that envelopes and swallows Black life at a breakneck pace. Black people, ancestors dragged from their African homes to provide free labor, continue to suffer the depredations of taskmasters who have never known the feel of the lash in their hand. Whiteness is a disease, a despicable malady, that creeps into the souls of many who suffer from it but do not realize they are infected. They see the creeping, inexorable snuffing out of Black life as something that they are not party to, for not once in generations did they or their family own slaves, as if that were the only yardstick by which to measure such galling hatred.

We, the White people, are beneficiaries of a system that was built by the sweat, toil, and blood of Black slaves to provide White people comfort, strength, and power. Whatever strides have been made, whatever battles fought, whatever ink dried, that system lives and we benefit from it still. It is not torn down, rings and all, but stands in silent reproach of those who seek to surmount it, to collapse it, to bring White masters down to the level of everyone else, to take their rightful place in American life as free and equal citizens. No sound is made as its tentacles creep out from hidden dens to strangle and snuff out Black hope. Even a Black President cannot beat it down from the seat at the heart of that power.

No matter the circumstances, the actual events, of Sandra Bland's death, we mark it murder, wicked and foul. She was Black, she was strong, she knew her rights, and it did her no good, for the White power would not recognize her simple humanity or rights. Automatically, without thought, she was reduced in the eyes of a law enforcement officer who saw her challenges as weapons as potent as knives and guns. He stepped out of the guise of peace keeper and into the well-worn suit of slave master, and proceeded to attack her as if she were no more than an animal.

Our nation may well burn, consumed in a fire set by our recalcitrant need to maintain a death grip on a past that has no purpose or place in the 21st Century. If we suffer such self-immolation, it will be well-deserved, for allowing ignorance and bigotry to flourish in a time of knowledge is a crime that only a society may be asked to pay for in its own blood. We may weep at the destruction, but as the flames lick us, we should remember well that our hands could have put out the fire, if only we had reached down to our Black brethren and brought them up to their rightful place as equals. There is yet time, but Sandra Bland is the first wisp of smoke, a signal of the fire that waits to rage among us.

His Name Was Walter Scott

He was a 50-year-old Black man.

He was pulled over for having a broken tail light on his car.

An officer confronted him. He broke and ran.

And received 8 bullets in the back for it.

From a White police officer.

The whole thing was caught on video.

I won't link to the video. You can find it easily enough. It's sickening. It's repulsive. It's irritating. It's mystifying. It's enraging.

I wrote a lament for Eric Garner (Sons And Daughters Of Rodney King) after there was a video of him being choked to death by a police officer, even though he was doing nothing that could be considered harmful or dangerous. That hearkened back to Rodney King, for like King, Garner's attacker was let off the hook. A Staten Island District Attorney did a slapdash job of presenting a case and a grand jury refused to convict. The only person charged with anything was the man who took the video.

The death of Walter Scott, more brutal and violent than that of Eric Garner, might have been just another source of outrage, protest, condemnation for the Black community and, ultimately, ambivalence by the White community, but the officer involved was arrested and charged with murder. His after action report read like so much bad fiction compared to the reality of the unblinking camera eye. That he felt no compunction to honesty, spinning tissues of obfuscation into the whole cloth of "fearing for his life," points to how "acceptable" we, as a society, have allowed this to become.

These police officers, they are not the Sergeant Joe Fridays of "Dragnet" or the Lennie Briscoes of "Law & Order"; those are fabrications that Hollywood purveys in an effort to secure ratings. These are White men, mainly, who have deep seated veins of casual bigotry running through the valleys of their minds. They see the Black person as automatically the villain, the criminal, the threat. This default value denies the flight and energizes the fight, and the moral circuit breaker that should snap before they brandish a weapon is fused shut, leading to hails of lead and bleeding bodies in the street, often unarmed.

If the circle of White-Officer-on-Black-Person violence and murder is to end, this may be the first crack that breaks the linkage. It may be. Innocent until proven guilty, there is still a trial to be navigated, a jury to be seated, and an array of law enforcement and justice officials to be overcome, all of whom are naturally predisposed to believe the officer if infallible and honest. It makes the landings at the Normandy beaches seem a Sunday stroll through the park.

As Eric Garner taught us, not even the clearest evidence of impropriety can guarantee charges, let alone a guilty verdict. George Zimmerman, not even a police officer, was let off even though there was no solid evidence Trayvon Martin ever posed a threat. For the Justice system to earn it's name back in this case, it will have to set aside all the prejudices and predispositions as to the stalwart trustworthiness of a police officer, and judge his actions as a man, a man emboldened by the shield on his chest to follow a course of action that no one should ever follow. The death of Walter Scott must become a watershed moment, like Selma, if we are ever to disentangle ourselves from the skein of bigotry and racism still clinging tightly to the fabric of America.

Sons And Daughters Of Rodney King

Rodney King was supposed to be the turning point.

LAPD officers caught red-handed, on tape, beating him senseless. No way the officers could not be indicted.

Guess what happened.

The turning point that was Rodney King only allowed us to turn a complete circle. A circle that lead to Amadou Diallo. To Sean Bell. To Trayvon Martin. To Eric Garner. To Mike Brown. To John Crawford. To Tamir Rice.

Circling, ever circling around a fact of life in America: Liberty and Justice is for some, not for all.

Of course, even Rodney King was just another circle back from Emmett Till. And James Earl Chaney. And Medgar Evers. And Malcolm X. And Martin Luther King, Jr.

Circling, ever circling from a time when it was clear that a large portion of America saw Blacks as sub-human, as slaves, as property.

The calendar may say we are in the 21st Century as the Earth processes around the Sun, but in the hearts and minds of many Americans, it is still the 18th Century. To them, America has been poisoned by the continual struggle for racial equality. They still hold to Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's credo, that Blacks do not have rights White men should respect. This thread of racism is so woven into the fabric of our nation, that even though it has long petered out, it simply continues to be pulled along.

"Thou shall not murder." There are no qualifiers on that sentiment, no exceptions outlined. A fundamental law of all human societies, it should know no color or creed. And yet, here we are, mere hours after a video of a cop choking a gasping Eric Garner to death could not bring about the indictment of the officer in question and we have to ask: why?

You know the answer.

You see, it's not enough that we see the ugly thread of racism and attempt to pull it, for when there are too few of us doing the pulling, we cannot hope to dislodge it. Those who need to pull are White; the profusion of other races have been pulling a great while now, but cannot make headway because the force resisting them is too strong. That strength is not because the bigoted are strong, it's because the vast majority of White people sit on the thread, inert, generating a resistance others cannot easily overcome.

Yes, you and I, we Whites, we stumble along through life wrapped in the knowledge that our history books tell us we are righteous, we have done many great things, and that we have established a nation built on Peace and Justice for a long time.

And a lot of it is lies.

Maybe lies is too harsh; more like half-truths and obfuscations. Ask any member of a Native tribe if our arrival in North America "improved" anything.

The vast bulk of White America sits upon the thread of bigotry, thinking little of it, assuming that all is right with the world. They refuse to see their place in the injustice that Blacks suffer at the hands of White police and White gun owners. The bigoted simply yammer about "Black on Black" crime, as if there were no other form of crime. A pipeline has been built to line the pockets of investors by shuttling Black children from the womb to the iron cell and there is no hew and outcry by White America.

The blood is on our hands, where we turn a blind eye to such injustices, where we take for granted how secure we are in our rights. The Black man pulled over for a traffic stop may wind up being shot by a police officer for merely attempting to get out his license; the White man is given a scolding and sent on his way. That disparity has never been more evident now, but that evidence seems to only drive many Whites to work harder to ignore it.

The change must come. The change must be led by White America, because, frankly, we are the only ones with the power to force the change. To do this, we must accept our role in the disparity. We must acknowledge our privilege and all that it buys us. We must deny that privilege, forswear it, and work to ensure that the words "Liberty and Justice For All" are more than words, but the code by which our nation is known.

It is high time, that the circle be broken.

American Crucible

Ferguson, Missouri was licked by the flames of unrepentant grief and anger, when her son, Mike Brown, was judged to have been unworthy of being given a voice by the justice system which supposedly protects him and all Americans from the murderous excesses of society. A police officer, who by many accounts took unwarranted action unfettered by justification, was allowed the triumph of spilling blood in the street.

Ferguson burned.

We revile the idea of violence. The violence of police, who seem less interested in protecting and more interested in assaulting. The violence of poverty, that causes a community to be sown with the seeds of despair. The violence of rage, unloosed with little provocation when the mood suits it. Violence in any form is despicable. We cannot condone the actions of those who thought bricks and bottles were appropriate counterpoints to grief and anger. We cannot applaud those who chose to punish innocent shop owners for the failures of a justice system by torches and thievery. No amount of violence makes the thing better or more palatable.

But we can understand.

For in the breast of every decent and compassionate American is a heart pounding, picturing a Black man sprawled on the ground, a White officer standing over him as rivulets of blood soak the pavement. Within that heart, our blood cries out to that blood, as it is forced to our brain, carrying the chemical equivalent of sorrow, grief, and above all, rage. Like the flames that devoured Ferguson, our anger flows into the tiny recesses of our brains, devouring hope and decency, leaving a furious ash, that would have us strike out and smite those who so gleefully revel in the actions of a rogue police officer.

We, too, are consumed by fire.

Mike Brown and Darren Wilson are far from symptoms of the wider scope that is a society still shot through with racism and hatred, unbent and undimmed despite a century-and-a-half's passing. They are the wound, that now should cause the blood of the body politic in America to flow, to bring the platelets that are required to heal the wound and the antibodies to inoculate us from further outbreaks of this malevolent disease that clings to life within. For when invaded, the body will turn to fever to try to burn away the invading organism, to deprive it of the conditions that allow for its growth. The cycles of fever and chills are meant to break the grip of the infection, to give the body time to build immunity.

So, too, must it be with Ferguson, Missouri. Let the fire smolder and let the chill of November descend. Let us cleanse the American body of this vile disease, which blemishes us and cripples us. Let it be known that no decent American will tolerate the denigration and destruction of any among us, no matter color nor creed. Let it be known that all who are citizens of America have equal rights under LAW, and where that law will not protect all, let us do what we must to ensure it does. Racism CANNOT prevail. We will NOT allow it. We will provide the antidote and the American body will take it in full measure.

If It Means What It Says

It becomes increasingly clear, that there are forces within the United States who are bent on the reversion of our nation to a state of puritanical and parochial existence, such that none may have the inherent, inalienable rights one is born with, save at their whim. At every juncture, at every turn, they seek to tear at the fabric of open, honest liberty with medieval precision, purveying fear, giving in to greed, and fed by self-righteous fury at those who would dare speak against them, as if they come wreathed in unquestionable Solomonic wisdom. They warp the meaning of the hallowed documents that form our nation, to build up their own "patriotic" facade, even as they make  shambles of them, all in the name of American "exceptionalism."

There is nothing exceptional in hypocrisy and being holier-than-thou.

Even now, states across our country seek to limit the rights of women, seek to deny the LGBT community their rights as citizens, and seek to place the imprimatur of Christianity on a nation founded on the precept of division of Church and State. They stand against anything that works toward the benefit of the whole nation, where they would be asked to sacrifice something of theirs to provide for others, a very Christian notion in and of itself. They look down upon anyone who does not work, and then look down upon them again when they do. They are prepared to take what everyone has worked so hard for and flush it away in an orgy of self-congratulatory fiscal prudence.

It is madness.

Our nation is caught up in a torrent of bigotry, racism, sexism, narcissism, homophobia, ignorance, and blind hatred the likes of which could be seen during the Dark Ages. A nation founded on individual freedom and liberty, steeped in the expansive leanings of The Enlightenment, built to give its citizens full power and faith in their government, is being wrecked, internally, by covetous, pandering, fear mongers who are determined to drag the bulk of the citizenry before their version of God and pass sentence, denying us our legal rights and trampling on the precepts of democracy in the process, all in a vainglorious attempt to prove their piety.

This iteration of our nation is nothing that Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, Washington, or any of the Founders would recognize as a product of their handiwork. The trappings would seem familiar, but the atmosphere in the halls of Congress would lead them to believe that bedlam had replaced discourse, and that the "united" in "United States" was being paid lip service in the name of partisanship and self-righteousness. Even among the many, varied, and sometimes divisive opinions held by the Founding Fathers, consensus could be reached for the good of the whole nation, or it would not even exist.

If the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States mean what they say, that we are a nation conceived in liberty, that the general welfare is paramount, and that the rights of the individual are inviolate save where the greater good of all citizens is involved, then the current wave of right-wing attacks on individual liberty and freedom goes contrary to what this nation is supposed to be. We recognize that each of us has the right to be who we are, and make decisions for ourselves, save where there are larger considerations. Our nation cannot become slave to narrow-minded thinking, to muddled intellect, to religious fervor, to absolutism, like so many other nations have. Our flexibility, our diversity, our strength of purpose, are our greatest assets; where we fail as a nation is in denying them.

No woman should be told what she can and cannot do with her body by another person. No two people -- where the government says it holds the right to so legislate -- should be told they cannot seal eternal love for one another in matrimony. No black person should have to walk down the street in fear that they will die for no greater offense than to have been born with their skin. No immigrant to this nation -- here legally or not -- should be treated as less than a human being solely for the desire to provide a life for their family. No person, of any stripe, should be told that because of who they are, they may not take full advantage of all the rights and privileges of American citizenship. No American citizen should be denied the right to vote, merely because they cannot produce an ID card.

If the words that were written in support of our nation mean what they do, then it is time to stop the witch hunt, time to bring down the prejudices, time to rectify the injustices suffered by so many in our nation, as opposed to furthering and deepening them. America cannot support and defend the cussedness of intemperate and backward thinking any longer. For the nation to grow, we must move forward, ever forward, not remain mired in the past. Stagnation leads to death, and so noble an experiment as America was conceived to be, should not be killed by the very people who benefit from its existence. The hypocrisy must end. Our nation must rise to become the nation it was always meant to be.

Shot For The Crime Of Being Black

Trayvon Martin died by the hand of George Zimmerman. This is not in dispute. Zimmerman claimed self defense, which is a tacit admission that he killed the boy.

What is in dispute, thanks to a new body of evidence, including 911 calls and eyewitness testimony, is that there is a case for self defense at all.

Return To Hooverville

It was the laissez faire economic strategy of Herbert Hoover that led to the implosion of the United States economy after the crash of the Stock Market in 1929. It was his ambivalence toward government intervention and his unwillingness to use government to aid American citizens that caused the country to slide into depression. The most he could muster was begging and pleading with businesses to stop laying off workers, but at the time, it was everyone for themselves. When World War I veterans marched on Washington, D.C. in 1932 (the "Bonus Army") and demanded redemption of their service certificates, so they might use the money to survive, Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to clear them out of their encampment, one of the derisively-named "Hoovervilles." A cavalry charge and gassing later, fifty-five veterans were injured; one hundred thirty-five were arrested. One 12-week-old child died after the gas attack.

Flash forward to 2011, when an economic malaise brought about by a collapse of the housing market engineered by Wall Street, leads to demonstrations across the nation. Occupy Wall Street brings forth collections of the disenfranchised and desperate, making the displeasure heard through civil disobedience, in cities all throughout the nation. They want The Monied Powers and their retainers to see the damage they have done to the American Dream, and they want government to recognize that it has failed them, failing to protect them and their livelihoods and their finances from the rapacious greed of the money-changers on Wall Street. Then, last night, October 26th, the mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, gives her tacit approval for the Chief of Police to move in and drive out the protesters, which he chooses to do by assembling overwhelming force and using tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades. The attack leads to dozens of arrests, and the hospitalization of a two-tour Iraq veteran, who had managed to survive that war without a scratch before being assaulted with a teargas canister, leading to serious head trauma and a trip to the hospital in critical condition.

Those who do not learn the lessons of history...

One Last Appeal In The Matter of Troy Davis

In one more attempt to bring reason to the case of Troy Davis, and every person The State sees fit to sentence to death, I wrote the following at the behest of Amnesty International UK:

I will not vouchsafe the merits of Mr. Davis' case; to me, they are irrelevant. What is relevant, in his case and the case of every inmate the State seeks to murder in the name of "public necessity," is that by taking such action, you drench your hands and mine in blood that need not be shed.

If we accept the proposition that a living, breathing human has the right to the integrity of their life, whether we are taught this as part of religious teachings or civics lessons, or simply because we enjoy our life and inherently understand the "wrongness" of the purposeful and premeditated ending of such a life, then we cannot, we should not, countenance the taking of life in our name, through the agency of the State, which we brought into existence as an extension of ourselves. If one person has no inherent right to take the life of another person, then we cannot logically conclude that hundreds upon hundreds of us -- in the guise of the State -- somehow has a greater right to do so, nor the implicit right to ignore the admonition against the murder of one person. Execution is a symptom of the hold of Medievalism on our modern society, and it has no place where we consider ourselves an enlightened, just, and fair people.

Do what you know in your heart to be right and end this despicable spectacle.

We cannot countenance murder in our name. Medievalism has no place in the 21st Century. If only each letter, each call, each FAX, each Tweet, each blog post, were a physical poke, like the pecking of hundreds of thousands of birds upon the conscience of everyone involved in this travesty. If only.

Georgia On My Mind

I wrote a letter. I signed petitions. I voiced my opinion wherever I could. I prayed. And I was not alone.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles did not hear. Did not listen. Did not want to listen. Could not accept even the simplest argument against putting Troy Davis to death: it is hypocritical. Hypocritical for a "Christian" nation to stand by the Biblical and moral admonition against the taking of another person's life, and yet have no trouble with allowing the State the power to do what we ourselves have stated we will not, as if the creation of the State imbues it with some form of shield against moral ambiguity, or worse, proclaims it to have some authority capable of overriding even the highest admonition in human society. Apparently, when handed to the State, a soul no longer has any meaning to anyone.

There is nothing of justice in this decision, only the need to quench a thirst for vengeance. One hesitates to pin ulterior motives on those who are left with the weighty responsibility of determining who shall live and who shall die, but even an iota of doubt should be sufficient for anyone to see it reasonable to choose life over death, for the system must always err to the side of conservation and justice. To beat a hasty path to the executioner's chamber in the face of reasonable doubts is the mark of those who would see their power unchallenged and their prejudices confirmed.

One would hope the merest hint of this execution would stick in the craw of a decent person, but if it were to do so only after the fact of a man's death, this would not say much for those who claim aegis over clemency or those who claim to revere life. Execution is a tool of emotion, a hearkening back to the Middle Ages, to the triumph of fear and prejudice over reason and humanity. It is a tool that is best relegated to the shed, abandoned like so many other ancestral barbarisms: stoning, crucifixion, inquisition, etc. A modern society such as ours should not hold on to the egregious behaviors of our past.

One can only hope that there is yet a bolt from the blue, that some reasonable, sensible member of the State moves to terminate this reprehensible act before its culmination. If not, the death of Troy Davis will be another stain upon our American society, heaped upon the many others we have yet to fully wipe away.

The Rape Of Morality

There is a movement afoot to subvert a woman's control of her own body. For the longest time, it was held in abeyance, but now the movement has reached one of the pinnacles of power in Washington, D.C.: the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Representative John Boehner, heir to that title through the power of fear-mongering and President-bashing, coupled with Tea Party fomentation and ranting, along with the abdication of backbone by the Democratic Party, now stands at the forefront of the effort to strip women, not just of choice of what to do with their bodies, but even what constitutes violation of their bodies. One of his acolytes, Representative Chris Smith on New Jersey (who, sadly, is this author's representative), is introducing a bill that, amongst other things, redefine what constitutes rape, to include only cases of overt force.

So much for the party that claims to have the best interests of America at heart.