This first trial in the murder of Freddie Gray starts today:

First trial in death of Freddie Gray begins in a city that is still on edge (Washington Post)

The first of six consecutive trials of officers accused in the killing of Freddie Gray is scheduled to begin this morning in Baltimore...

The trial of Officer William G. Porter, 26, will be closely watched locally and across the country...

The legal proceedings are expected to last until at least mid-December and will provide fresh details about how Gray suffered a severe spinal injury while being transported in a police van. It also could bring the first public account from one of the officers charged in the case, since Porter’s attorneys have said he will likely take the stand.

The word "privilege" is often used very loosely these days, to refer to a person not being subject to the penalties exacted by (for example) racism or religious bias, rather than to a someone being granted a genuine bonus of status. But the way in which cops who kill are treated is a genuine and dangerous example of special privilege, as exemplified by Georgia law.

Georgia's Special Perk For Cops Who Kill Citizens (Mimesis Law)

Georgia, unlike other states, allows police officers to give an unrebutted statement to the grand jury at the end of every grand jury proceeding. If an officer is not given that opportunity, the indictment is thrown out and he has to be retried. No cross-examination or scrutiny of any kind is allowed....

...

If a police officer is not given this privilege, his conviction is reversed and he must be retried, even when prosecutors call the privilege “manifestly unfair.”

So even when Georgia prosecutors do seriously seek indictments against police officers for killing citizens, they often run into problems. Paul Howard, the District Attorney for a large chunk of Atlanta, sought to indict an officer for “fatally shooting an unarmed black teenager twice in the back.” But because the officer got the last word, Howard said, he just had no way to rebut the officer’s emotional testimony.

Ah, bureaucracy.

Blind Girl Denied Use of Cane in School Because It's a Tripping Hazard (Reason.com)

A blind girl in Britain has been told she cannot use her cane at school because it presents a tripping hazard....

Lily-Grace Hooper, who is seven, suffered a stroke when she was just four days old, which left her virtually blind.

But her school, Hambrook Primary School, has now told the youngster she can no longer use her walking cane, because it could trip up teachers and other pupils at the school.

A risk assessment by Gary Learmonth from Sensory Support Service – done on behalf of the school – said the cane caused a high risk to other people around Lily-Grace, and that she should instead have full adult support “100 per cent” at all times.

In other words, at the risk assessor’s behest, the school is ready to create a dependent and incapacitated child out of a bold and bubbly girl who was getting around just fine.

This blog has been on hiatus for about the past year, while I focused on building my presence at Patheos, first with a column on the Agora blog and now with my own blog, "The Zen Pagan". There have also been some technical annoyances with Drupal that I needed to address.

But it's long past time to bring it back. This will still be the place for my comments on politics, culture, and technology, mostly by sharing links with brief comments; so as we head into the election campaign, look for plenty of coverage of that.

The latest entry in the hoplophobia follies. Remember, it's ok for cops to actually shoot people for no good reason (as long as those people are black), but if a kid makes any symbolic gesture that in any way reminds you of a gun, they are a dangerous psychopath. (But, fortunately, it seems we can deal with dangerous psychopaths by compelling them to sign contracts promising not to be dangerous. Then it's ok.)

​Alabama School Makes 5-Year-Old Sign Suicide/Homicide Safety Contract (Jezebel)

A mother in Mobile, Alabama, is reasonably pissed off after E.R. Dickson Elementary School had her 5-year-old sign a contract stating she would not kill or injure herself and/or others after pointing a crayon at another student and saying "Pew pew."

Paranoid criminal cops say they thought he had a weapon. It's too bad nobody did have one and used it to stop this assault and torture. In the end, the only way to stop a bad cop with a gun is a good citizen with a gun. The Black Panthers were right on that much.

It's important to note that this man was a passenger in the car. He had no obligation to carry ID papers. He was entirely within his rights to not roll the window all the way down -- indeed, that would make a sane cop feel safer, as it's impossible to try to punch or stab someone through the window. With no grounds for reasonable suspicion, there is no grounds for detention or arrest, and certainly not for assault.

Except, of course, for black people talking back to white cops. Which in the American police state, justifies anything.

Police sued for tasering passenger during traffic stop (Yahoo News)

A federal lawsuit filed Monday accuses Indiana police of excessive force after officers smashed a woman's car window with children inside, tasered an unarmed passenger and dragged him out of the vehicle during a routine traffic stop last month.

Police, though, say they feared the passenger might have a weapon after he refused to step out the vehicle and reached toward the rear seats.

Guantanamo remains a national shame, and failing to close it is near the top of Obama's crimes (below only his murders by drone).

Who Are ‘We the People’?

IN holding that corporations had religious rights, the Hobby Lobby decision sat in contrast to a case I brought under the same statute in 2004, in which the court found that Muslims at Guantánamo Bay were not persons and had no religious rights.

...

To me, the case seemed open-and-shut. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (R.F.R.A.), which was passed in 1993, prohibits the government from “substantially” burdening “a person’s exercise of religion” unless it serves some important government interest that cannot be accomplished in any other way....

The Federal District Court in Washington, which first heard the case, agreed that “R.F.R.A. expressly protects the religious exercise of ‘persons,’ a broadly applicable term, commonly including aliens.” But the government appealed and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that, as aliens held outside the United States, these men were not “persons” after all. The Bush administration had put them offshore precisely to ensure this.

So all you folks screaming "we have to stop IS!" have this blood on your hands already. How much more will it take before you understand? Because there will be plenty more, both the war-criminal Democratic president and the military-industrial-complex puppets in both parties in Congress agree on that. And each of these murdered civilians is a gold mine for IS recruiters, so the more we fight, the more people we'll have to fight. Brilliant, if your goal is a militarized nation; criminally outrageous, if you care about human rights.

White House exempts Syria airstrikes from tight standards on civilian deaths (Yahoo News)

The White House has acknowledged for the first time that strict standards President Obama imposed last year to prevent civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes will not apply to U.S. military operations in Syria and Iraq.

A White House statement to Yahoo News confirming the looser policy came in response to questions about reports that as many as a dozen civilians, including women and young children, were killed when a Tomahawk missile struck the village of Kafr Daryan in Syria's Idlib province on the morning of Sept. 23.

...

But at least one of the House members present, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who supports stronger U.S. action in Syria, said he was not overly concerned. “I did hear them say there were civilian casualties, but I didn’t get details,” Kinzinger said in an interview with Yahoo News. “But nothing is perfect,” and whatever civilian deaths resulted from the U.S. strikes are “much less than the brutality of the Assad regime.”

Forget Spotify on your Wifi-connected tablet. Forget Pandora. Forget Napster, your iPod...forget even your Walkman. No, you need a Man From Mars Radio Hat. (Tip of the Radio Hat to Boing Boing.

Radio Hat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Radio Hat was a portable radio built into a pith helmet that would bring in stations within a 20 mile (32 km) radius. It was introduced in early 1949 for $7.95 as the "Man-from-Mars Radio Hat."[1] Thanks to a successful publicity campaign, the Radio Hat was sold at stores from coast to coast in the United States.

The Radio Hat was manufactured by American Merri-Lei Corporation of Brooklyn N.Y. The company was a leading supplier of party hats, noise makers and other novelty items. Its founder, Victor Hoeflich, had invented a machine to make paper Hawaiian leis while still in high-school (1914), and by 1949 the company shipped millions of leis to Hawaii each year. An inventor and gadgeteer,[2][3][4] Hoeflich continued to develop and even sell machinery that manufactured paper novelty items.[5][6]

Christian prayer, ok. Muslim prayer, 15 yard penalty. It's not as horrible as bombing people because they're Muslim, or violating their civil rights because they're Muslim, but it's ugly.

Chiefs player Husain Abdullah gets penalized after kneeling in Muslim prayer (Yahoo Sports)

In a move that is sure to generate some discussion, Husain Abdullah of the Chiefs was flagged 15 yards after kneeling in the end zone in Muslim prayer after scoring a touchdown off an interception of Tom Brady. The unsportmanlike conduct penalty Abdullah received sparked a quick outrage on Twitter where it was noted that plenty of Christian players mark their scores with a sign of deference, reflection or tribute to their higher power.