In the early morning hours on July 14, 2008 in Northport, Alabama, which bills itself as an All-American City (no immigrants allowed?), a number of residents of the Quail Ridge Mobile Home Park—which is nestled between Harper Road and Park West Drive—had their vehicles, homes and yards vandalized with painted racial slurs and the letters "KKK". The Unsolved Hate Crimes webpage of the Northport Police Department's website described the attack on the mixed-race trailer park community which sits adjacent to the Tuscaloosa Regional Airport in detail:

This is a different diary for me.  It's not link heavy, but rather is a written exchange between Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who I proudly voted for, and myself regarding his February 12, 2008 vote and his July 9, 2008 vote on FISA.  Rather than editorialize (I'll leave that up to you all) and rather than attempt to paraphrase Senator Whitehouse (I want to avoid miscommunicating his response to me), I will simply present the written, unedited exchange between his office and myself below the fold (in the spirit of my right to privacy, however, I have chosen to delete my actual name and my address).  As I promised the senator, I said I would attempt to teach others what he has taught me about his FISA voting record. So, class, here's your lesson:

This is an emerging story, so I'll keep this diary very brief.  Today, the Justice Department reported that Alaska state Senator, and member of the Republican party, John Cowdery, was indicted on one count of bribery and one count of conspiracy.

My question is serious:  does anyone know of any person or organization that keeps a detailed compendium of elected officials charged with wrongdoing?

The Associated Press reported June 28th that the Texas State Supreme Court, in a 6 to 3 decision, overturned a lower court's ruling regarding the suffering caused by the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God church in Colleyville, Texas to Laura Schubert in 1996 when she was 17 years of age. As I read the story, I was gob-smacked. I've never heard of such practices in a church by church members in modern times (no, I didn't grow up in Texas and I've never lived there either).

For those looking to feel a little more patriotic--a little more proud to be American--as the Fourth of July approaches, please, don't read this.  Cooper City, Florida, a town in Broward County of about 31,000 folks, whose motto is "Someplace Special", has had some ugliness--ugliness in the form of anti-Semitism--directed at its mayor and her staff this year.  Hopefully, the folks at Family Circle magazine will catch wind of this story and re-assess whether Cooper City really is worthy of its Top 10 Best Towns for Families, unless of course the author of that list, Michael J. Weiss, wishes to specify that the list is for non-Jewish families.  Oh, it's not that the good people of Cooper City haven't tried to beat down the hateful beast of anti-Semitism, they have.  The problem, they've concluded, is that fighting their local anti-Semitism is simply too financially draining.

"Far-left nuts" of Toledo, Ohio beware:  should you publicly voice your opposition to the war in Iraq, voice your support for universal health care, or dare to criticize former Lucas County (Ohio) Republican Party chairman turned federal (then state) inmate, Tom Noe, you could be hearing from Michael Edward Coon, the 52-year-old white, Christian owner of Holland Benefits Group, a 24-year-old employee benefits consulting firm based in Ohio.  If you’re retired surgeon Dr. S. Amjad Hussain, a University of Toledo trustee and guest editorial writer for The Toledo Blade, you already have heard from Coon who lives in the Point Place section of Toledo.

Perhaps no other domestic social issue divides the two major political parties more than hate crimes and hate crime legislation.  You'd be hard-pressed to find an issue with such consistent party-divided voting records as the ones that occur regarding hate crime legislation.  In 2000, for instance, the U.S. Senate voted on the "Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act of 2000", a hate crime amendment (S. Amdt. 3473) meant to beef up an already existing federal hate crime law sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy. The amendment vote had 44 of 45 Democrats voting for the measure (only West Virginia's Robert Byrd opposed it) whereas only 13 of 55 Republicans voted for it (one Republican abstained).  The amendment fell short by three votes to move it closer toward passage.

Here's some mind-numbing irony from the far right.

I had intended to write my third and final diary about an alleged hate crime that took place recently in Champaign, Illinois, after the case had been adjudicated.  The defendant, Brett Vanasdlen, 18, of Minooka, Illinois, goes to Court on May 6th.  However, since last night when I posted part two of my series of diaries on the April 12, 2008 incident, the Brett Vanasdlen case has spread further around the blogosphere with increasing vitriol directed at the victim, Steven Velasquez, a gay man who suffered some head trauma in the alleged hate crime that took place near his school, the University of Illinois. (And if you don't want to read my diary, but I hope you take a short break from all the election-focused diaries and check it out, then please take the poll).

We know from examining the FBI's hate crime statistics from 2006 that hate crimes based on hatred toward non-heterosexuals accounted for 1,387 of all 9,080 hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2006.  Over nine hundred gay men were the victims of reported hate crimes that year; they constituted 9.46% of all reported hate crime victims.  That percentage is totally out of proportion to the estimated percent of gay men that make up the population of the United States which is about 2.8%, according to a reputable study from the National Health and Social Life Survey by Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael, and Stuart Michaels titled "The Social organization of sexuality in the United States".  In other words in 2006 gay men were 3.38 times more likely to be the victim of a reported hate crime (often genteelly called a bias-motivated crime) than would be expected.  

Apologies for this very short diary.  I've just learned that the Army has declassified and made available reports regarding the My Lai massacre.  Here is the link and the reports can be downloaded on pdf format.

Understandably, there was national outrage and sadness about last year's very probable hate crime murder of a young gay man from South Carolina, Sean William Kennedy, 20, of Greenville.   A stranger with hatred in his heart and homophobia swirling in his mind is said to have thrown a single, fatal punch at Kennedy--a college student with a life's worth of promise--on a sidewalk in downtown Greenville in May, 2007.  Less than two months later in early July, a west coast picnic outing with friends similarly ended in a violent, homophobia-fueled death.  The single-punch hate crime murder of 26 year old Satendar Singh outside Sacramento, California, will be another tic-mark in the "Murder and non-negligent manslaughter" column of the FBI's annual report of hate crime statistics for 2007 to be released later this year. Whether or not the FBI chooses to bring Mr. Singh's alleged killer to justice is another story; Andrey Vusik, 29, fled to his native Russia and there seems to be no political will to have him returned to the United States to face a murder charge, although he has been charged with manslaughter.  

Below the fold is letter that was sent to American Psychological Association (APA) President Alan Kazdin via FedEx on February 6, 2008, and to members of the APA Council of Representatives via the Council listserv Thursday morning, February 7, 2008.

Kenneth Pope's resignation came about, as you will read in his letter, in large part because he disagreed with the APA's lack of a stance regarding detainees and their interrogations.  

Dr. Pope is a goliath figure in psychology, especially regarding ethics in psychology.

This is not the first time the APA has been on the wrong side of a human rights issue.  They currently, as they have for decades, allow psychology training programs to have the coveted APA-accreditation, even when the univeristies where the training programs are located discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

Ok, so first of all don't crucify me, because this diary is short and not link-heavy.  I'm posting to draw some attention to:  a really nice diary I read by a first-time diarist about the United States' occupation of its territories (something you don't see here at dkos and which seems totally appropriate for this blogsite); and, what is the bashing of this first-time diarist's posting.

These short news stories will come as no surprise to kossacks.  Grassroots and local as they are, these stories speak, I believe, to national differences between the GOP and the Democratic party.  Share these news stories with your Republican friends and family members and then ask them what is so prized about the Republican party values platform that they continue to remain Republican.  Then ask them if now is the time for them to change their party affilation.  (Bolded material is mine).  Read below the fold.

In the surreal socio-political landscape that has become the United States since the Bush Administration took and began to abuse power comes another strange, surreal (and sad) story.  This one comes from New Bedford, Massachusetts, a working class, somewhat impoverished fishing community on the Bay State's south coast.

More below the fold.

Here's the link from yahoo.  

One wonders just how many unexpected turns to this godawful mess the US has created there will be before we get the hell out......and for his part, Cheney continues to hawk it up about Iran.

How much has it monetarily cost the United States so far for each U.S. servicemember killed or so gravely wounded that they are unable to return to duty in Iraq?

In a televised address to Congress on January 31, 2006, President George W. Bush detailed the pressing issues of our nation; among them, he singled out our dependence on foreign oil as a particularly worrisome and growing problem.  President Bush also proposed developing non-petroleum based energy sources as a solution to this problem, and he mentioned, among others, switchgrass as one potential solution.  Switchgrass—which is a native North American plant, thereby requiring little, if any, water-, land-, or animal-damaging fertilizers or pesticides—can be converted, as corn is, into vehicle-powering ethanol.  In addition to reducing the demand for gasoline, ethanol derived from plants such as switchgrass provides the added environmental benefit of not augmenting the ozone-damaging problem of automobile carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (plants absorb and use CO2 as they grow).