When the protests and demonstrations became loud in D.C., Donald Trump took shelter in the secure bunker under the White House. Although this was widely reported, Trump denied it, claiming that was merely “inspecting” the bunker.
Randy Rainbow didn’t believe him.
John Thompson writes about his former student, who is scheduled to die:
As the nation wrestles with the latest police killings and Black Lives Matter protests, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board must decide whether to allow the execution of my former student, Julius Jones. Julius’ request for commutation has gained the support of the Congressional Black Caucus; criminal justice expert, Bryan Stevenson; numerous elected officials, pastors, bishops and archbishops; the Executive Director of Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform; the President of the NAACP State Conference; and public figures ranging from Kim Kardashian to a former Attorney General of Canada; and the Executive Director of the George Kaiser Foundation.
https://www.justiceforjuliusjones.com/
Now, three NBA basketball players, Blake Griffin, Russell Westbrook, and Trae Young, have joined in support of Julius.
Griffin, Westbrook, Young: Commute the sentence of Julius Jones
I was struck by the personal part of letter written by Griffin, who often was in our gym when I played basketball with Julius, his brother and his sister, as well as the person who we believe committed the murder. He wrote:
My father, Tommy Griffin, coached Julius when he played basketball at John Marshall High School, and often I would tag along to practices and watch Julius and his team play. Our familial relationship goes back generations. My father grew up with Julius’ parents. Our grandmothers were best friends. The Jones family has always had strong values and deep commitments to the community.
I feel terrible for everyone involved in the tragic events of the summer of 1999; however, I do believe that the wrong person is being punished for this crime.
Coach Griffin offers similar support: “’In my heart and my mind, I think that they should open it up and look at it strongly,’ Tommy Griffin said. ‘If we’re wrong, we’re wrong. But there are so many things leading to them being wrong.’”
Twenty years ago, we often thought that Oklahoma City was moving on from the nightmare of the 1980s and early 1990s when the War on Drugs perverted our criminal justice system. We had no idea that even today, actual innocence, alone, would not be enough to get the Supreme Court to consider the now-huge body of evidence that Julius is innocent.
Click to access Aglialoro-final.pdf
As I recall, my visit to the Jones’ home was scheduled before Julius’ arrest, so I was in their living room just after their house was ransacked by the police. I clearly remember the thoughts shared between so many people who knew both defendants. We didn’t expect the police to just take our words for it, but neither did we expect to be completely ignored. It quickly looked like the investigators had made up their minds, and targeted the least likely suspect.
Being a former legal historian who had deeply researched the Oklahoma County District Attorney office’s recent past, I recalled one DA’s favorite meme: “Every inmate at Big Mac (state prison) is guilty of the crime he was duly convicted of – or something else.”
Twenty years later, there is abundant evidence that the institutional racism, which drove so much of law enforcement assumptions, explains why Julius is on Death Row, even though the totality of new evidence has not been reviewed in court. The co-defendant, Chris Jordan, changed his story at least six times when interviewed by the police, but Julius’s inexperienced attorneys didn’t cross-examine Jones regarding his inconsistencies. The jury did not hear that Jordan bragged to fellow inmates that he, not Julius, had committed the homicide. Nor did the defense attorney stress Julius’ photograph, taken a week before the crime, which showed he did not fit the only eye witness’ description of the shooter. Julius’ attorneys also failed to present evidence that Julius was home with his family the night of the murder.
In exchange for testifying against Julius, Jordan pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, was given a life sentence with possibility of parole after 30 years. However, there is evidence of a secret deal with Jordan where he would only serve 12 to 15 years in prison in exchange for his testimony. Jordan was released from prison after serving only 15 years.
Neither was it revealed that a juror reported that another juror used the N-word when referring to Julius, but was not removed from the jury.
If jurors or judges could view all of the evidence presented in the three-hour ABC documentary, The Last Defense, they could connect the dots accordingly. I suspect few would conclude that the evidence points to Julius’ guilt. It’s hard to see how any would say that he received a fair trial.
And I expect that most would agree that much of the problem was the continuing assumption that young, Black defendants must be guilty of something or they wouldn’t be a suspect. That mindset likely helps explain why the Oklahoma City police have killed 48 people since 2013, the second highest, per capita rate in the nation.
Of course, the law enforcement mindset which targeted Julius is still alive, and it contributes to the police killings that are being protested by Black Lives Matter and a range of Americans of all races. That battle will continue for a long time. It is hoped, however, that the Parole Board will consider Julius’ case in early June. Almost 4 million have signed his petition, and I hope readers will help reach the goal of 4.5 million.
I just finished the four-part series streaming on Netflix titled “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.”
It is an engrossing program, and it rightly focuses on the voices of the survivors (the women who speak out clearly prefer to be known as “survivors,” not “victims.”)
The indictment of Epstein is powerful. He lured scores of young, underage girls to his mansion in Palm Beach for his sexual pleasure. Some say that he engaged hundreds of girls, some as young as 14.
Epstein lived a life of splendor. In addition to his home in Palm Beach, he owned a mansion in Manhattan, a beautiful spread in New Mexico, an apartment in Paris, but he claimed that his home was an island that he owned called Little St. James, also referred to as Pedophile Island or Orgy Island. He also owned two jets.
You will see some celebrities, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Alan Dershowitz. They appear in photographs with Epstein, but their memory of any relationship with him has faded. Jeffrey who?
Nothing is said about his relationship with Harvard, although he is seen wearing a a Harvard sweatshirt.
The fact that he taught at the private Dalton School in New York City is noted, which was curious since he never earned a college degree. Not mentioned is that he was hired by the Uber-conservative Headmaster Donald Barr, father of the current Attorney General William Barr.
The chief villain of the series Obviously is Epstein, as is his chief enabler Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the conservative British media mogul Robert Maxwell.
Another major villain is Alexander Acosta, who was the U.S. Attorney in Florida, who should have prosecuted Epstein years ago for sex trafficking of minors but instead made a secret sweetheart deal that allowed Epstein to get a short sentence that permitted him to leave jail six days a week, twelve hours a day to do as he wished. Trump named Acosta as Secretary of Labor, but when his velvet glove treatment of Epstein was revealed, he was forced to resign.
The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein were persistent in demanding accountability. For years, they thought that he would always be protected by his wealth and powerful connections. They were scarred for life by this monster.
The last episode raises questions about whether he committed suicide or was murdered. When you see his cell, it is hard to imagine that he hanged himself.
G.F. Brandenburg reposts an essay by Talia Levin about how she infiltrated various far-right extremist groups by join8ngbthem under an alias and joined their website.
She describes how she created Facebook pages with false identities to insinuate herself into far-right networks.
She writes:
I use a fake Facebook account, which I’ve used dozens of times for this and similar purposes. The name is false, and the profile is built out with an array of far-right groups, “patriotic” interests, and dog-whistle posts designed to maintain plausibility. I’ve made so many accounts on so many apps over the past few years that I have to take care not to lose track of my pseudonyms. Although it kicked into high gear during research for my book on the online far right, infiltrating hate groups isn’t just a strange hobby or a journalistic endeavor; it’s antifascism.
She reminds me that we should all be “anti-fascist.” We fought a war in the early 1940s to rid the world of fascism.
Shouldn’t we all be anti-fascist?”
Why is Trump so terrified of a group called Antifa?
Larry Ferlazzo, teacher blogger, concludes that students will be okay this year—they had already finished most of the academic year when schools closed. But another year of distance learning would be toxic.
The harm will be most significant for the most vulnerable students.
Ferlazzo wisely understands that remote learning is a poor substitute for real face-to-face interactions in a classroom with teachers.
The Lincoln Project is a group of prominent Republicans who have concluded that Donald Trump is an incompetent and dangerous President. It has produced a series of commercials attacking Trump and places them on FOX News and other conservative media platforms.
Here is their latest anti-Trump ad.
One of the leading figures supporting the Lincoln Project is George T. Conway III, husband of Trump’s senior advisor,
KellyAnne Conway.
George Conway’s tweets are a source of great amusement. The other day, Trump tweeted that two years from now, he would be in Alaska campaigning to defeat Senator Lisa Murkowski, who dared to express her doubts about Trump after he was criticized by General Mattis, his former chief of staff. George Conway tweeted in response to Trump that the conditions of his parole were unlikely to make him available to campaign in Alaska. He tweeted, “frankly I don’t see how you’d be eligible for parole by then.”
A number of informed observers noted that the U.S. unemployment rate did not fall precipitously.
During the campaign of 2016, Trump insisted that the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was a hoax.
The data may not be a hoax, but they are wrong.
Robert J. Shapiro explained in the Washington Monthly that the data were wrong.
The Washington Post reported a “misclassification error” that reduced the unemployment rate.
The Post reported that:
When the U.S. government’s official jobs report for May came out on Friday, it included a note at the bottom saying there had been a major “error” indicating that the unemployment rate likely should be higher than the widely reported 13.3 percent rate. The special note said that if this “misclassification error” had not occurred, the “overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,” meaning the unemployment rate would be about 16.3 percent for May. But that would still be an improvement from an unemployment rate of about 19.7 percent for April, applying the same standards. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that puts out the monthly jobs reports, said it was working to fix the problem.
Of course, these careful statements did not present Trump crowing about the jobs report and claiming outrageously that the recently murdered George Floyd would be happy to see the new data. Trump beloveds
A group of scholars recently published a peer-reviewed study of online schooling and virtual charter schools. The authors are Brian Fitzpatrick, Mark Berends, Joseph J.Ferrare, and R. Joseph Waddington.
The University of Kentucky College of Education, where Waddington is a professor, summed up the findings:
Online Schooling’s Impact on Student Achievement
Online schooling quickly became the new normal for U.S. students when school buildings shuttered to help curb the spread of COVID-19. Although the full impact this will have on student performance will not be understood for quite some time, a study published in the April issue of the journal Educational Researcher may offer a glimpse.
Dr. Joseph Waddington, an assistant professor in the University of Kentucky College of Education Department of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation, is part of a research team that analyzes student performance in charter schools. Virtual charter schools are offered in 21 states across the U.S., including in Indiana, where the majority of Waddington’s research data is collected.
The results of the study published in April do not bode well for virtual learning. The research team found that students who switched from traditional public schools to virtual charter schools saw test scores in mathematics and English/language arts drop substantially, and the lower scores persisted over time.
When students across the U.S. abruptly shifted to online learning, Waddington and his colleagues considered whether their performance would mirror that of students in virtual charters.
“Researchers, policymakers, teachers, school administrators, and parents alike have all been concerned about the negative consequences for student learning resulting from the dramatic shift to online instruction during COVID-19, amongst other health, safety, and socioemotional outcomes,” Waddington said. “We knew we could not directly compare virtual charter schools and the online learning taking place during COVID-19. However, we thought it would be beneficial to provide the community with a research-informed discussion of the two online learning environments, since many individuals have been eager to catch a glimpse of the potential impacts on student achievement.”
The discussion was published by Brookings, a non-profit public policy institute based in Washington D.C. It, along with the study published in Educational Researcher, was authored by Brian R. Fitzpatrick and Mark Berends at the University of Notre Dame, Joseph J. Ferrare at the University of Washington-Bothell, and Waddington at UK.
A bill allowing charter schools in Kentucky, HB 520, was signed into law in 2017. Kentucky’s charter school legislation does not allow for virtual charter schools.
In the authors’ Brookings blog Post, they explain their peer-reviewed work. The major conclusion is:
We find the impact of attending a virtual charter on student achievement is uniformly and profoundly negative, equating to a third of a standard deviation in English/language arts (ELA) and a half of a standard deviation in math. This equates to a loss of roughly 11 percentile points in ELA and 16 percentile points in math for an average virtual charter student at baseline as compared to their public school peers (see Figure 1 above). There is no evidence that virtual charter students improve in subsequent years. We could not “explain away” these findings by looking at various teacher or classroom characteristics. We also use the same methodology to analyze the impact of attending brick-and-mortar charter schools. In contrast, we find that students who attended brick-and-mortar charters have achievement no different from their traditional public school peers (see Figure 2 below). Our confidence in these results is further buoyed by other studies of virtual charter schools in Ohio and nationwide having similar findings.
If we want to dumb down a generation of students, we will make distance learning a permanent part of the landscape.
The leader of an influential charter advocacy group in Pennsylvania’s wrote on Facebook that the people protesting the murder of George Floyd “disgust me.”
Ana Meyers, head of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, posted — and then deleted — a statement on her personal Facebook page in which she called the protests spurred by the killing of George Floyd “not okay.”
Maybe she didn’t know that people were protesting racism and police brutality. Very likely the students in charter schools and their families were among those who “disgusted” her.
Whatever. She deleted her post.
Many medical experts expressed concern about what might happen when restrictions were relaxed and the ecomony reopened. The experience in Europe offers hope that it is possible to restart the economy without triggering a new wave of the COVID.
ROME — When Italy ended its lockdown one month ago, Angelo Pan, an infectious-disease doctor, was worried. His hospital, at the epicenter of the country’s outbreak, braced for the possibility that progress against the coronavirus might slow or reverse — and that beds might again become crowded with people struggling to breath.
But that is not what has happened.
In Italy and across most of Europe, countries have restarted their economies and resumed a degree of socializing without visible signs of the dire health consequences forecast by many. Pan’s northern Italian hospital, rather than seeing an uptick, has been able to restore once-paused services and dismantle the intensive care beds added during the emergency.
As of Friday, it hadn’t admitted a coronavirus intensive care patient in 12 days. “
It’s amazing that [the virus] has not started back,” said Pan, who leads the infectious-disease unit at the public hospital in Cremona.
Virologists from Milan to Berlin have become much more optimistic about Europe’s ability to manage the pandemic and say that, at least through the summer, the continent might have nothing more than localized and hopefully-containable hot spots.
Europe’s experience, at least so far, suggests that sending children back to school, reopening restaurants and even making way for large outdoor protests does not lead to an inevitable resurgence of the virus.
But scientists also readily admit there’s much they don’t know about the idiosyncrasies of this virus. They are still trying to make sense of why it is behaving as it has in Europe and whether those trends will hold — and what the answers might mean for the rest of the world.
Many disease experts say enduring behavioral changes, from hand-washing to mask-wearing, could by themselves be substantially limiting the spread in Europe. They say the continued ban of large-scale events is probably capping the damage wrought by highly contagious people — the “super-spreaders” who account for much of the transmission.
They also say there’s growing evidence that the virus could be proving seasonal — ebbing based on the temperature or other climactic conditions. Though warmer weather doesn’t stop the virus, it can aid in the fight. [
Europeans, heeding warnings that the virus is more transmissible indoors, have adapted their lives accordingly — something easier to do in warmer months. In Rome, the parks and alfresco restaurant tables are full; the tables indoors are empty.
In Germany, confined indoor gatherings have led to small outbreaks, while outdoor mass demonstrations against the lockdown in several cities — some drawing thousands of people — have not led to obvious consequences.
“There might be [open-air] transmissions occurring but they are rare,” said Dirk Brockmann, a professor at Humboldt University in Berlin who models infectious diseases for Germany’s Robert Koch Institute, the federal agency tasked with disease control.
“When you are in a club and there are hundreds of people dancing and breathing and yelling in a confined space — that’s a whole different ballgame,” Brockmann said.
One contested theory, aired by two Italian doctors this past week, is that the virus has weakened or become less aggressive. Many health officials have pushed back forcefully against that claim, saying there is no peer-reviewed evidence of such changes, and that cases every day are still proving deadly.
Massimo Ciccozzi, head of the molecular epidemiology unit at the Rome-based University Campus Bio-Medico, said his lab would be studying ways the virus may have mutated. But he said there were other reasons serious pneumonias might be developing less frequently — among them, the wider use of new therapies. Other experts have raised the possibility that a younger cohort of people is now being infected.
There is accumulating evidence that the “viral load” is linked to the severity of the infection, and that outdoor summer transmissions could make for a milder disease.
“It’s like a huge, huge puzzle,” Ciccozzi said. “Every day you find a piece.” All the while, in country after European country, reported daily case numbers have not just leveled off, like in parts of the United States, but continued to plummet.
In Italy, the number of coronavirus patients in ICUs has declined from 4,000, at the peak in early April, to 400; it ticked down every single day of May. In Germany, many contact tracing teams sit idle, without enough new infections to trace. In Belgium, which had been one of the worst-hit countries, hospitals are clearing out, and doctors don’t report any unusual spikes in patients reporting flu-like symptoms.
