Category: Commentary

Clarence Thomas last month secured his place in history as the Supreme Justice of Jim Crow Law, last month. In a bizarre demonstration of independence from his mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia, Thomas registered the sole dissent in a Dallas death penalty case that “revealed the most thoroughly documented, blatant example of racist jury selection as…

Delma Banks was just 10 minutes from execution by lethal injection when Texas prison officials told his family and lawyer, “A stay has been granted. You’re free to go.” Banks was temporarily spared by the U.S. Supreme Court, while the Justices decide whether to hear arguments that he was railroaded to death row 23 years…

Clarence Thomas is at war with himself. He festers. No conventional political or legal doctrinal analysis will ever explain what drives the man. His logic is that of the insanely self-loathing. Thomas doubts his own personhood. He is horribly damaged, having never forged a tolerable self (a self he could live in) from out of…

Two weekends ago it became apparent that the TV networks have finally lost their minds. We are not talking about the congenitally insane FOX, the Rupert Murdoch spawn from Hell, or MSNBC, now the official Savage Network. Dementia has claimed broadcasting’s founding news interview programs: CBS’s Face the Nation and NBC’s Meet the Press. They…

Condoleezza Rice has told California Republicans she is “very much open” to running for Governor of the state in 2006. The California GOP had been wooing Rice to challenge Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer but, according to unidentified sources quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle, “She’s said no on the Senate race, but is very much…

Sophie Womack, 48, was surprised when in 1985 her first child, Brandi, was born three weeks shy of her due date and six ounces below normal birth weight. The Detroit mother had received timely prenatal care and was in good health throughout her pregnancy. Yet her baby was premature. Then, two years later, Sophie’s second…

Al Sharpton’s Battle to Transform the Democrats Forget about the smoke and fog spewed by corporate media and chattering consultants of all colors. Let us begin with a stark forecast: The Democratic Party primaries must result in a national ticket that is fit for Black participation. If the party cannot loosen the fatal grip of…

Carol Moseley-Braun’s participation in the Democratic primaries provides the first opportunity to observe how African American and non-Black politicians operate when more than one Black is on the presidential ballot. In coming months we will discover a great deal about the workings of the Democratic Party, the corporate media, and the primary electorate. The two…

Clarence Thomas is number one – the most backward, reactionary, bloodthirsty, Black people hater on the U.S. Supreme Court. The pride of Pinpoint, Georgia has added yet another superlative to dazzle the Black-appointed-faces-in-high-places crowd. In defiance of storerooms of evidence, bravely disregarding all standards of human decency, and with clear-eyed contempt for legal process, Thomas…

The Bush men have obviously been pondering the imposition of Permanent National Emergency for as long as they have been planning Permanent War. The discovery of a draft of the so-called Patriot Act II, rushed forward by Bush’s national security conspirators in January for review by their allies on Capitol Hill, presents the public with…