On January 4, 1971 history was made at the Columbus Police Academy. Seven Black men would begin training at the police academy. This was highest number of Blacks to take training at this facility. Joseph (Andy) Edwards, Charles Martin, Warren Hanna, Freddie Robinson, William McDonald, Sam Allen, and I, James Moss would become the new trend in police hiring. Blacks in this class were the aftermath of the turbulent times of the 1960’s.

Riots had plagued the large cities with a great number of people losing their lives, buildings were destroyed and the inner cities looked like a war zone. Unlike, Chicago, Cleveland, Trenton, and Los Angles, Columbus was spared from the destruction of its inner city. The riot in Columbus was not large and the property damage was less than the Ohio State- Michigan Football Celebration on campus.

There was something unsettling about Donald Rumsfeld recent tough-talk speech in Singapore in which he described his concern over what he viewed as China’s alarming weapons buildup. Rumsfeld speech was the top story next day in the Los Angeles Times, my local paper. And at the nearby Starbuck’s I saw it was also the top story in the New York Times.

The specifics of Rumsfeld’s speech were not very interesting or informative. For that one needs to consult the recent issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and an article by Jeffrey Lewis, “The Ambiguous Arsenal,” which argues effectively that China’s strategic weapons buildup has not changed significantly over the last decade. Rumsfeld held one trump card however. An updated intelligence estimate on China’s defense programs is “expected to be released soon,” according to mainline media speak. But since the Iraq intelligence debacle, who is going to take that seriously? Thanks to Bush, Condi and Rumsfeld, we now live in a time when the word “intelligence” is a guaranteed laugh-getter for Jay Leno and David Letterman.

As Mark Felt, one of the main responsible FBI officers overseeing illegal counterintelligence programs targeting the American Indian Movement and other groups in the 60s and 70’s, is hailed as a hero for catalyzing the toppling of the Nixon administration, Leonard Peltier approaches his fourth decade of unjust imprisonment.

Today, from the perspective of the U.S. government, everything is excusable in the war theatre, even as the world questions U.S. policies and actions that point unequivocally to human rights abuses. A puppet government, people murdered and terrorized, that was the climate in the Pine Ridge reservation in 1975 when two FBI agents were killed in a shootout. Leonard Peltier and fellow warriors responded to the call for protection from the Oglala Lakota people, but he was blamed for the deaths of the agents and is serving two consecutive life terms for that.

As the Senate votes in Bush's long-filibustered nominees, the nuclear option compromise is looking more rancid than reasonable. The seven Democrats who helped broker the compromise pledged not to filibuster except in the most extraordinary circumstances. But given the track record of Priscilla Owens, Janice Rogers Brown, and William Pryor, I wonder how extreme a candidate has to be before these Democrats and their seven Republican colleagues would reject them.

Would a prospective nominee have to be caught wearing white Klan robes to Sunday church? Having public sex with a live animal? Receiving videotaped bribes from Don Corleone? I suppose these actions might meet the "extraordinary circumstances" standard, but running roughshod over legal precedents to favor the wealthy and powerful clearly doesn't.

Because the participating Democrats agreed not to filibuster Owens, Brown, and Pryor, the public barely heard the stories of why their nominations crossed an unacceptable line. We heard mostly the inside baseball of legal abstractions. But their history is pretty drastic:

* Brown considers protections like the minimum wage and food safety

Voters across the country are concerned about electronic touch-screen voting machines.  At last count, citizens in almost every state have formed more than seventy non-partisan grassroots organizations to ensure that a voter-verified, manually auditable paper record of every vote is required at both the state and federal levels.  More than 200 of these electronic voting reform activists, representing 25 states,  are meeting in Washington DC on June 9 and 10 to lobby for the passage of H.R. 550 The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act Introduced by Rep. Holt of New Jersey.