Sen. Dianne Feinstein has released the testimony of Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, who testified to Congress last year about the origins of the infamous Trump-Russia “dossier.” He says the FBI took it seriously when Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, talked to them:
The ex-British spy who authored a dossier of allegations against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was told the FBI had someone inside the Trump campaign providing agents with information, according to a newly-released transcript of a congressional interview.
….“My understanding was that they believed Chris at this point — that they believed Chris might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization,” Simpson said. Using the parlance of spies and law enforcement officials, Simpson said the FBI had a “walk-in’’ whistleblower from someone in Trump’s organization.
Who’s the mole? Let the guessing games begin!
UPDATE: Wait! Maybe there was no mole after all:
A source close to Fusion GPS tells me there was no walk-in source — that was a mischaracterization by Simpson of the Australian diplomat tip about Papadopoulis.
Fusion GPS founder testified that “dossier” author Chris Steele cut off his relationship with the FBI out of a “concern that the FBI was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump people.” pic.twitter.com/qVPl0qUxq7
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Thursday announced his support for Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) to lead the Democratic National Committee.
Sanders gave his pick for DNC chair in an interview with the Associated Press. Ellison, perhaps more than other candidates to succeed former chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), has put himself forward for the job. According to an October Politico report, Ellison had reached out to state party chairs, Hillary Clinton campaign officials and other Democrats connected to the committee.
Ellison and Sanders were brothers in arms for much of the presidential campaign season. Ellison, one of two Muslim members of Congress, was the second member of that body to endorse Sander’s bid for the Democratic nomination for president.
Ellison was one of Sanders' picks to bring his progressive message into the DNC’s official platform via a series of negotiations with representatives of the Clinton campaign. He also introduced Sanders’ primetime speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Sanders was a vocally critic of Wasserman Schultz, especially stolen emails from various DNC staffers were published by WikiLeaks showing them mock Sanders' campaign.
In the same interview with the AP, Sanders said it was an “embarrassment” to the Democratic Party that white working class Americans voted in large numbers for President-elect Donald Trump.
He also failed to rule out the possibility he would run for president again in 2020, saying “four years is a long time from now.”
Sunday night, when my son asked me why we shoot each other dead almost every day in America, I got to tell him that it’s because we are “free.” We are free to get a .223 caliber AR-15–style semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm handgun. And we are free to sell those weapons to someone who might shoot and kill 49 people in a nightclub because of whom they choose to love. We are free to arm ourselves against any potentially tyrannical federal government and also free to watch our children bleed to death in our schools, and churches, and clubs.
And we are free to do it all again tomorrow and the day after that. We are free to feel paralyzed and trapped in a system that is literally killing us.
Freedom in America also means that we are free to wake up every morning hoping that it’s not our kid who gets shot with a weapon of war, and free to wake up hoping it’s not our kid who shoots someone, and free to wake up praying it’s not our kid, or our spouse, or our neighbor who shoots herself. In this freest country on earth, we also happen to be in a perpetual hostage situation, in which one false move—or merely the choice to go to class, or to dance with friends—means you may wind up dead.
What does all this have to do with freedom? Well the document that promises and protects our freedom has been interpreted to say that we are all condemned to live out our days in terror, hostage to powerful interests who urge us to become ever more free by purchasing and stockpiling ever more lethal weapons of war. Perhaps nobody so perfectly captured this twisted definition of freedom as former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who in the wake of yet another round of futile debates about gun rights last fall said this: “I never saw a body with bullet holes that was more devastating than taking the right to arm ourselves away.” Indeed.
This is where I tell you that the current interpretation of the Second Amendment—the one held onto by Carson, and Donald Trump, and practically the entire Republican Party—is a hoax. Outside of the GOP, this is widely understood. But what we fail to comprehend, as we bury more of our dead in the name of freedom, is that it is a triple-decker hoax: A lie wrapped in a fabrication, lacquered over with a falsehood. That we chose to wrap it around our necks as a symbol of our own liberty is our own fault and shame.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution says this: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” For most of U.S. history, that was understood to mean that the freedom guaranteed by the Second Amendment was precisely what it said: the right of the people of each state to maintain a well-regulated militia.
So clearly and unequivocally held was this worldview that no less a liberal squish than Richard Nixon Supreme Court appointee Warren Burger said after his retirement in 1991 that the Second Amendment “has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud—I repeat the word ‘fraud’—on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” This reading was based on precedent. The Supreme Court had clearly agreed with Burger’s interpretation and not that of the special interest groups he chastised, perhaps most famously in a 1939 case called U.S. v. Miller. That ruling said that since the possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” had no reasonable relationship to the “preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia,” the court simply could not find that the Second Amendment guaranteed “the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” Period, full stop. And that was the viewpoint adopted by the courts for years.
What changed? As Cass Sunstein and others have explained, what changed things was a decades-long effort by exceptionally well-organized, well-funded interest groups that included the National Rifle Association—all of whom “embarked on an extraordinary campaign to convince the public, and eventually the courts, to understand the Second Amendment in their preferred way.” It’s rather miraculous, if you stop to think about it: In a few short decades the NRA’s view of the Second Amendment became the law of the land. By 2008, writing the majority opinion for the Supreme Court in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, Antonin Scalia enshrined this view for first time that: “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”
That the Heller court itself qualified that right in multiple ways—and that in the years since Heller, the court has declined one important gun case after another—doesn’t change the fact that the hoax is now the law. On top of everything, most Americans believe by rather huge margins that the concededly ambiguous wording of the Second Amendment means that individuals have the constitutional right to bear arms, even if they don’t want it. According to a recent NRA poll, when asked if “[e]very American has a fundamental right to self-defense and a right to choose the home defense firearm that is best for them,” 76 percent of respondents said “yes.”
But that is only the crunchy bottom layer of the fraud. The larger fabrication is the idea that the Second Amendment—unlike other provisions of the Constitution—cannot be subject to any reasonable restriction. As my friend Sonja West pointed out in Slate after another mass shooting late last year, we impose limits, caveats, and conditions on many provisions of the Constitution without crying tyranny:
We have the constitutionally protected right to peaceably assemble, but not to block traffic. We are protected from unreasonable and unwarranted searches, unless there is probable cause, exigent circumstances, or a hot pursuit. If charged with a crime, we have the right to a speedy trial (but not if the prosecution is hunting down witnesses) and also a public one (but not if you want your trial televised). We also have the right to a trial by jury (unless the crime carries a sentences of six months or less).
Constitutional rights are subject to every sort of condition and limitation, and as Scalia himself noted in Heller, “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” He even went on to list some reasonable limits.
The second hoax—that the right to bear arms is not merely an individual right but also that it is the only constitutional right subject to zero regulation—makes no sense on its face, until and unless you are willing to fall prey to the third fraud.
Hoax number three: Obama, Clinton, Democrats, liberals, the media, whomever are coming for your guns. They are Coming. For your Guns!!! This is the crunchy candy shell that makes the other two lies seem almost reasonable. Of course you should have an inviolate individual right to defend yourself against a tyrannical federal government if you have persuaded yourself that the federal government is indeed tyrannical. This is the big lie that continues to be broadcast and pushed out ad nauseam, and no amount of fact-checking or direct confrontation with accusers makes a whit of difference. The NRA wanted us to feel that only our guns would make us free, and they have prevailed.
That is, of course the paradox. We are in thrall to a fib of epic proportions that itself relies on two other lies. And because we are captive to all these lies, we are also captive to the notion that as much as we wish someone would do something about all the innocent dead people, our hands are tied by the freedom-affording gift that is the Second Amendment. It is a sick joke of our democracy that after every mass shooting we must tell our children that the Framers gave us this precious gift of liberty, more valuable than their lives, and that we are stuck with it. This is the opposite of freedom. It is slavery by choice.
So far, 21 big-budget sequel films have been released in 2016, including Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Captain America: Civil War, and Zoolander 2. In total, theaters will see a record 37 sequels this year, more than double the amount released just a decade ago.
There's a reason for this rise — the average sequel makes more than eight times the average original release:
Zachary Crockett / Vox
But in the film business, big money does not correlate with quality. Sequels are notoriously groan-worthy and often garner terrible critical reviews. Consider, for instance, what critic Eric D. Snider had to say about Grown Ups 2: "It is worse than most comedy sequels, worse than most Sandler movies, and worse than most food-borne illnesses," he wrote.
So I got curious: Looking back over the past 20 years, which movie sequels got the absolute worst reviews compared with the reviews of the original film? And which got the best?
Metacritic aggregates movie reviews from major newsoutlets, weights them based on a variety of factors (more on that here), and then gives them a composite score on a 0–100 scale (0 = terrible, 100 = resounding acclaim).
Zachary Crockett / Vox
For my analysis, I set a few criteria:
I limited my list to sequels of originals made in the past 20 years (1996 to 2016). Historic review data often suffers from a "nostalgia bias." Older films tend to have fewer (and more generous) reviews on Metacritic — so I omitted all sequels with pre-1996 prequels.
For franchises with multiple sequels, I included only the first sequel (or part two).
Sequels had to gross at least $20 million at the box office, adjusted for inflation.
Lastly, it should be said that the opinions of film critics often differ greatly from the public's. The results here reflect only the former — so don't take it personally if one of your favorite films makes the cut. With that, here are the results.
The worst (and best) movie sequels in the past 20 years
Working from a 13,000-movie data set given to me by Metacritic, I limited my list to films that met the above criteria, then plotted them to see which jumped out.
First, let's take a look at the overall worst- and best-rated sequels:
Predictably, the worst sequels are populated by the likes of Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, and Marlon Wayans — actors who frequently star in abysmal feature films as well.
With 13 points, Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Daddy Day Camp boasts the overall lowest sequel score. On the other end of the spectrum, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is the most successful, with a score of 88. In general, franchise action sequels, like Spider-Man 2, The Dark Knight, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, seem to fare much better than comedies and horror films, which lurk toward the bottom.
But this doesn't tell the full story. To really understand which sequels performed the poorest, it's crucial to look at how they compared with their prequels.
Below, I've pulled out the films with the highest differentiation in Metacritic score points from original to sequel — both those that decreased the most and the those that increased the most:
Going by difference in points, the worst sequel of the 2000s is Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, a film in which some goth kids attempt to recreate The Blair Witch Projectand end up killing each other in a fit of paranormally-influenced rage.
The original film, The Blair Witch Project (1999), grossed nearly $250 million worldwide and was one of the most successful independent films ever made. It also gained critical acclaim; in a rave review, Roger Ebert called it "an extraordinarily effective horror film."
Its follow-up did not enjoy the same success. While the Blair Witch commanded a Metacritic score of 81, Blair Witch 2 earned a 15. In contrast to the original’s acclaim, critic Michael Atkinson called the sequel "a club-footed vomit launch of teen-horror clichés."
Taking a deeper look at the 25 most disappointing sequels, there appears to be no shortage of such "vomit launch."
Zachary Crockett / Vox
Of the 500 or so films we looked at, sequels declined an average of 8.5 points from their originals. Those in the table above fared far worse, averaging a 26-point decline.
Interestingly, five of 2016's big sequels make this list: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny; Zoolander 2; My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2; Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising; and Alice Through the Looking Glass. (The average time between these films and their originals was 10.6 years, so we should be wary of the "nostalgia bias" we discussed above.)
Though rare, some post-1996 sequels have actually outperformed their originals:
The Devil's Reject — a 2005 Rob Zombie cult horror film — tops its prequel, House of 1000 Corpses, by a whopping 22 points. But in all fairness, this shouldn’t be interpreted as a compliment: The original only had 31 points to begin with.
About 60% of the lowest-rated sequels are comedies; horror and action flicks comprise another 22%. Previously, we analyzed 200 films of each genre on Metacritic and found that these genres, in general, fail to pique movie critics' interest — so this makes sense.
Zachary Crockett / Vox
But the majority of the works we've discussed here are really just crappy films followed by slightly less crappy sequels — a trend driven by Hollywood producers looking for quick, reliable hits.
"No movie executive has ever been fired for green-lighting a sequel," Roger Ebert once wrote. "[But] movie critics despair of sequels as betraying a lack of imagination and originality."
If you have any doubts about the frequent truth in that, give Grown Ups 2 a whirl.
Note: A previous version of this article mistakenly reversed 'Justin Bieber: Never Say Never' (2011; 52 Metacritic) and 'Justin Bieber's Believe' (2013; 39 Metacritic). The data has been updated.
Why fewer computer graphics make for better movies
Security researchers have long warned of the dangers of using master-keyed locks -- if thieves get their hands on just one key, they compromise all of the compatible locks at the same time. And unfortunately, the US' Transportation Security Admini...
John Metta had given up talking to white people about racism. But after the shootings in Charleston, he gave this "congregational reflection" to a white church audience. I think it goes a long way in explaining why our attempts to discuss racism in this country tend to end in misunderstandings.
First of all, Metta explains how black people and white people see the world differently.
To understand, you have to know that Black people think in terms of Black people.
We don't see a shooting of an innocent Black child in another state as something separate from us because we know viscerally that it could be our child, our parent, or us, that is shot...
Racism affects us directly because the fact that it happened at a geographically remote location or to another Black person is only a coincidence, an accident. It could just as easily happen to us - right here, right now.
White people do not think in terms of we. White people have the privilege to interact with the social and political structures of our society as individuals. You are “you,” I am “one of them...”
What they are affected by are attacks on their own character...Without being able to make that differentiation, White people in general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or point out that it doesn't exist because they don't see it.
That leads to a powerful summary of the problem.
Living every single day with institutionalized racism and then having to argue its very existence, is tiring, and saddening, and angering. Yet if we express any emotion while talking about it, we’re tone policed, told we're being angry. In fact, a key element in any racial argument in America is the Angry Black person, and racial discussions shut down when that person speaks. The Angry Black person invalidates any arguments about racism because they are “just being overly sensitive,” or “too emotional,” or, playing the race card...
But here is the irony, here’s the thing that all the angry Black people know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings...
White people and Black people are not having a discussion about race. Black people, thinking as a group, are talking about living in a racist system. White people, thinking as individuals, refuse to talk about “I, racist” and instead protect their own individual and personal goodness.
We happen to be living during a time when the reality of that racist system is being exposed via evidence of things like police brutality, disparities in the criminal justice system and voter suppression efforts. Perhaps we can find a way forward if we quit getting defensive about individual racism and joined the "we" that is working on fixing the system.
I've argued before that the federal government should charge graduate students as much as it can get away with for their student loans, because people with advanced degrees tend to be very well off. In practice, that means setting interest rates a bit below whatever the private sector can offer, so that banks don't swoop in and steal the Department of Education's customers.
Well, there are some signs that Washington might (possibly, potentially) need to think about giving America's aspiring highly paid professionals a price break. As Bloomberg reports, a number well-funded startups are beginning to target grad students for loan refinancing, offering rates far below the feds'. Here's how the piece kicks off:
Chris Winiarz, a 31-year-old money manager with a Northwestern MBA, jumped at a student-loan deal of a lifetime.
A startup called SoFi offered to refinance his $45,000 in federal debt, slashing his interest rate to 2.69 percent from 6.55 percent. Winiarz will pay off his obligation three years early, saving about $9,500 and helping pay for an engagement ring for his girlfriend. The company even threw in a free bottle of artisan olive oil.
“I really should have done this a lot sooner,” said Winiarz, who helps oversee the University of California’s endowment and pension investments.
(A little bit of further context: Right now, new PLUS loans for grad students are carrying a 6.84 percent interest rate.)
Companies like SoFi are a potential problem for the government because the Department of Education makes the vast majority of its student loan profits from graduate students (the rest, on net, come from lending to the parents of undergraduates). That's because, while there are certainly plenty of horror stories out there from underemployed and overindebted law grads and Ph.D.s, advanced degree holders are generally high earners who rarely default. Their reliable payments help subsidize lending to low-income undergrads, who are generally far less of a solid bet for the government.
Which is why it probably shouldn't be surprising that some financial services firms are making a play for them. A New York company called CommonBond says its typical client is “a 32-year-old who makes $140,000 annually and has a near-perfect credit score of more than 760.” That's pretty much as close to a sure bet as one typically gets in consumer lending.
While Bloombergsuggests that these companies could soon blow a multibillion-dollar hole in the feds' student-lending balance sheet, I think it's a bit early for anybody to freak out. The little part of me that still believes in efficient markets feels like private student-loan giants like Sallie Mae and Wells Fargo would already be doing more in this space if it had vast untapped potential. Second, even if lenders manage to make money picking up a few aspiring 1 percenters, the government's budget math might still be better if it lets them go and keeps interest rates where they are. The trend only becomes really perilous if these lenders reach beyond truly elite grads, and start diverting average MBAs, J.D.s, and whatnot.
And of course, these are startups we're talking about here, which means this could all just be hype. Check back in three years. If they're still making money, then maybe it's time to worry.
I have no idea if Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is guilty of illegally coordinating his 2012 campaign against a recall with outside groups, as Wisconsin prosecutors have accused him of doing in documents just released by a federal appeals court. He denies it. Nor do I know if Walker is actually dumb enough to have sent this email, included in the released documents, to Republican strategist Karl Rove—an email that explains how one of Walker’s main deputies would be the point person coordinating activity between Walker’s campaign and a network of outside conservative and business organizations headed by the Wisconsin Club for Growth.
Walker hasn’t been charged, and a judge stopped the prosecutors from further investigating last month, a ruling that is now on appeal. That ruling should be reversed, because the main defense against the state prosecution is one that, if successful, could bring down the few remaining limits we have left on money in politics. It would allow virtually unbridled coordination between outside groups and candidates, giving money ever more influence over politicians and elections.
In the election law business, the distinction between “independent” and “coordinated” spending is kind of like the line between church and state in the U.S. Constitution—seemingly impenetrable, but subject to all sorts of exceptions and quirks. Independent spending is spending on election activities done without touching base with a candidate and her team. Coordinated spending involves spending in cooperation or consultation with a candidate. The suit to quash the Walker investigation would obliterate the line between independence and coordination, effectively lifting the remaining contribution limits to candidates.
According to the Supreme Court in the 2010 case Citizens United v. FEC, it is constitutional for the government to limit direct contributions to candidates to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption. But it is unconstitutional to limit spending that goes to “independent” groups that support or oppose candidates. The court held that independent spending can neither corrupt nor create the appearance of corruption. That’s a controversial notion, but you can put it aside for now, because it’s not at issue in the Walker case. Focus instead on the question of what counts as “independent” spending as opposed to spending that is coordinated.
Both federal law and Wisconsin law have rules to decide what counts as illegal “coordination,” and the legal definition is much narrower than the standard definition of that word. Under federal law, for example, a candidate can appear at a fundraiser for an outside group without “coordinating” with it. The candidate and her campaign merely cannot talk about ad buys or campaign strategy. If a candidate and an outside group engage in this form of coordination, then the amount spent is subject to limits.
State prosecutors secretly investigated Walker to figure out if he and his team were illegally coordinating with outside groups and nonprofits that worked against his 2012 recall. At the center of the investigation, we know, was the Wisconsin Club for Growth. The group sued in federal court to shut down the investigation, which it said violated its First Amendment rights to engage in political activity. The suit thus advanced a claim well beyond the constitutional right to spend money independently.
The Club for Growth did not deny coordinating its strategy with the Walker campaign. The group served as a hub for directing money to a host of groups running ads supporting Walker. Still, the club argued that its activities were legal because it simply coordinated a run of “issue ads” on the question of the Walker recall, which mention a candidate for office but don’t include the magic words “vote for Walker” or in this case “vote no on recall.”
Issue ads were a common way to avoid campaign finance restrictions before Congress passed the 2002 McCain-Feingold law. A famous issue ad accused Montana Democratic candidate Bill Yellowtail of taking a swing at his wife and implored voters to “Call Bill Yellowtail. Tell him to support family values.” Because the ad didn’t include those magic words of advocacy, the donations that paid for it didn’t even have to be disclosed: They weren’t treated as real election ads.
The McCain-Feingold law sought to put an end to that kind of runaround. The reform treated issue ads broadcast on TV or radio in the 30 days before a primary, or 60 days before a general election, the same as ads containing the magic words of “vote for” or “vote against.” Part of that provision of McCain-Feingold—the limit on corporate and union spending on issue ads—died in Citizens United. But the federal rules about disclosure still govern for issue ads, meaning that at least the public knows who is paying for them. The Federal Election Commission also counts issue ads as relevant in determining when a candidate and outside groups are illegally coordinating. Run certain issue ads about a candidate before an election in cooperation with a candidate and you’ve crossed the legal line.
Yet somehow, in the Walker case, federal Judge Rudolph T. Randa agreed with the Club for Growth that coordinating issue ads is perfectly OK. The opinion drips with hyperbole. “Attempts to purify the public square lead to places like the Guillotine and the Gulag,” Randa wrote. Also, “The plaintiffs have found a way to circumvent campaign finance laws, and that circumvention should not and cannot be condemned or restricted. Instead, it should be recognized as promoting political speech, an activity that is ‘ingrained in our culture.’ ” And with that, Randa ordered an end to the investigation and, incredibly, given that the case is only at a preliminary stage, ordered the destruction of all the evidence.
Randa’s indefensible move to destroy evidence got the attention of the United States Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, which put his order on hold. The 7th Circuit also allowed Thursday for the release of the documents setting out the prosecutors’ evidence.
If Randa’s ruling stands on appeal, then the rules against coordination between a candidate and outside groups would go out the window in Wisconsin. That would be license for big donors to give unlimited sums to groups that will do candidates’ bidding. According to the Huffington Post, the Wisconsin Club for Growth pulled in $20 million during 2011 and 2012, much of it from business and industry groups, including the controversial Koch brothers. The club then doled out the money to other groups, with some of it, for example, ending up in the hands of Wisconsin Right to Life, which could then run issue ads about the recall targeted at its abortion-opponent constituency. It all made a Big Business effort, paid for with Big Business money, look appealingly grassroots.
So that’s the future if Judge Randa’s ruling stands—big money being raised and channeled, in cooperation with a candidate to the benefit of that candidate, obliterating the line between independent and coordinated spending. There’s a good chance the 7th Circuit will disagree with Judge Randa and hold the line against this. But here’s a more alarming scenario: The case winds up at the Supreme Court. The conservative majority of justices has struck down campaign finance limit after limit. Who knows what they would do with the coordination rules? The only way to win on campaign finance before the Roberts court is not to play.
In an era when we've all got GPS in our pockets, OnStar can find a stolen car and the NSA can track anyone, anywhere, it is still possible--although rare--for an airliner to seemingly vanish. That appears to be what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which went down about an hour after leaving Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on Friday night.
Last Thursday, I took my son to meet Lucia McBath, because he is 13, about the age when a black boy begins to directly understand what his country thinks of him. His parents cannot save him. His parents cannot save both his person and his humanity. At 13, I learned that whole streets were prohibited to me, that ways of speaking, walking, and laughing made me a target. That is because within the relative peace of America, great violence—institutional, interpersonal, existential—marks the black experience. The progeny of the plundered were all around me in West Baltimore—were, in fact, me. No one was amused. If I were to carve out some peace myself, I could not be amused either. I think I lost some of myself out there, some of the softness that was rightfully mine, to a set of behavioral codes for addressing the block. I think these talks that we have with our sons—how to address the police, how not to be intimidating to white people, how to live among the singularly plundered—kill certain parts of them which are as wonderful as anything. I think the very tools which allow us to walk through the world, crush our wings and dash the dream of flight.
Jordan Davis was also given a series of talks, which McBath believes ultimately got him killed. We were sitting in the bar area of the Millennium Hotel in Times Square. She had a water. I had a coffee. My son sat back and watched. She talked about Jordan's first days in public school after several years of home school. She talked about how he went from shy caterpillar amazed at the size and scope of his new school to social butterfly down with kids in every crowd. He had strong opinions. She thought he would be a politician or an activist. It was in the blood. Her father, Lucien Holman, was head of the Illinois NAACP and served on the executive board. Lucia McBath herself is now the spokesperson for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
"We always encouraged him to be strong. To speak out," McBath told me. "We tried to teach him to speak what you feel and think diplomatically."
She took a moment here. Her voice quavered but held. She said, "Even in that case with Jordan and the car, I think that he was not as diplomatic as he could be. That does not let Michael Dunn off the hook," McBath told me. "But I say to myself as a mother, 'I didn’t teach you and train you to do that. Adults are adults and you are still a child.'"
Agency is religion in black America. Benjamin Banneker made it. Harriet Tubman made it. Madame C.J. Walker made it. Charles Drew made it. Malcolm X made it. Barack Obama made it. You must make it too, and there is always a way. The religion of autoliberation is certainly not rebutted by the kind ofgraphs and stats that keep me up at night and that can easily lead to suicidal thoughts. Yours is the only self you will ever have. One must discover how to live in it or perish.
She continued, "In my mind I keep saying, 'Had he not spoke back, spoke up, would he still be here?' I don't know. But I do know that Jordan was Jordan to the end. I think Jordan was defending his friends. 'We’re not bothering you. We don’t know you. You don’t know us. Why can’t we play our music as loud as we want?'"
I told her that I was stunned by her grace after the verdict. I told her the verdict greatly angered me. I told her that the idea that someone on that jury thought it plausible there was a gun in the car baffled me. I told her it was appalling to consider the upshot of the verdict—had Michael Dunn simply stopped shooting and only fired the shots that killed Jordan Davis, he might be free today.
She said, "It baffles our mind too. Don’t think that we aren’t angry. Don’t think that I am not angry. Forgiving Michael Dunn doesn't negate what I’m feeling and my anger. And I am allowed to feel that way. But more than that I have a responsibility to God to walk the path He's laid. In spite of my anger, and my fear that we won’t get the verdict that we want, I am still called by the God I serve to walk this out."
I asked if she'd considered that Dunn might never be convicted of Davis's murder. "It's a strong possibility," she said. "The minute we looked at the jury instructions, we thought, 'That right there is what will keep Jordan from getting a guilty verdict.' I was crushed but not surprised."
A thought came to me that had been swirling for days: Dunn might win on appeal. I considered the possibility of him walking free. I considered the spectacle of George Zimmerman walking free. I considered the great mass of black youth that is regularly interrupted without any real reckoning, without any consideration of the machinery of black pariahdom. I asked McBath how she felt about her country.
She paused, then gave an answer that perfectly summed up the spirit of African-American patriotism. "I still love my country. It's the only country we have. This is the best that I've got," she said. "And I still believe that there are people here who believe in justness and fairness. And I still believe there are people here who don’t make judgments about people based on the color of skin. I am a product of that. But I am disheartened that as far as we've come it doesn't matter that we have a black president. It doesn't matter how educated we’ve become. It doesn’t matter because there still is an issue of race in this country. No, we have not really arrived. If something like this can happen, we have not arrived. And I ask myself, 'At what point are we going to get there?' And I have no answer. And I want to be able to answer."
She wanted you to know that Jordan Davis was an individual black person. That he was an upper-middle-class kid. That his ancestry was diverse. That he had blacks in his family. Mexicans in his family. Panamanians in his family. That his great-grandfather was white. That some of his ancestors had passed.
She wanted you to know that Jordan Davis was not from the "Gunshine State." That he was from Atlanta—Douglasville, Georgia, to be exact—where black people have things, and there is great pride in this. She wanted the world to know that Jordan Davis had things. That he lived in a three-story home in a cul-de-sac. That most of the children there had two parents. That original owners still lived in the development. That she was only the third owner. That Jordan Davis had access to all the other activities that every other kid in the neighborhood did, that he had not been deprived by divorce.
And she wanted you to know that Jordan Davis had a father. That this was why he was living in Jacksonville, where he was killed. That she was battling a second round of breast cancer and Davis's father said to her, "Let me raise him, you get well." She wanted you to know that she never ever kept Davis from his father. That she never put Jordan in the middle of the divorce, because she had already been there herself as a child—placed as a go-between between her mother and father. She said that this had wreaked havoc on her as a young woman. That it had even wreaked havoc on her own marriage. That she had carried that pain into relationships, into marriage, and did not want to do the same. She wanted you to know that Davis's father, Ron, is a good man.
She wanted you to know that what happened to Jordan in Jacksonville might not have happened in Atlanta, where black people enjoy some level of prestige and influence. That Jordan believed the level of consciousness in Jacksonville was not what it was in Atlanta, and that this ultimately played into why Jordan spoke up. That this ultimately played into why he was killed. I thought of Emmett Till, who was slaughtered for not comprehending the rules. For failing to distinguish Chicago, Illinois, from Money, Mississippi. For believing that there was one America, and it was his country.
She stood. It was time to go. I am not objective. I gave her a hug. I told her I wanted the world to see her, and to see Jordan. She said she thinks I want the world to see "him." She was nodding to my son. She added, "And him representing all of us." He was sitting there just as I have taught him—listening, not talking.
Now she addressed him, "You exist," she told him. "You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid of being you."
She gave my son a hug and then went upstairs to pack.
Aditya Mukerjee was treated like shit by TSA, police, and Jet Blue because they thought the NYC-based data scientist, Linux geek, and Hacker-in-residence at @qventures was a Muslim terrorist. Mukerjee happens to be Hindu, not Muslim, not that it's reasonable to presume that Muslims are terrorists either. His blog post about a really awful experience at JFK recently is here: "Don't Fly During Ramadan."
The celebrated writer William Vollmann has revealed that the FBI once thought he might be the Unabomber, the anthrax mailer and a terrorist training with the Afghan mujahideen.
Of course, Moynihan said it first, at somewhat greater length.
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Security researchers have long warned of the dangers of using master-keyed locks -- if thieves get their hands on just one key, they compromise all of the compatible locks at the same time. And unfortunately, the US' Transportation Security Admini...
