“Are you going to stand up?” the bus driver asked.
“No,” Parks answered.
“Well, by God, I’m going to have you arrested,” the driver said.
“You may do that,” Parks responded.
We shall overcome.
We shall overcome.
We shall overcome some day.
Oh, deep in my heart.
I do believe
We shall overcome
some day.
Yesterday’s New York Times covers the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruling that military commission trials are fair under the Constitution:
Judge Robertson had held that the commissions could not go on because they did not provide minimally fair procedures and violated international law. His conclusion threw into doubt the legal proceedings devised by the administration to deal with hundreds of suspected terrorists captured by the United States in Afghanistan during the military campaign that toppled the Taliban following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
President Bush has declared all Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters to be unlawful enemy combatants, and as such not entitled to be treated as legitimate prisoners of war.
Critics of the administration have argued that the military commission trials do not afford all the legal protections that courts-martial do. But in the appeal upheld today, the administration argued that the commission trials were fair - and not incidentally a vital part of its war on terrorism - and that since the stateless Qaeda terror network had never signed the Geneva Convention, its members were not entitled to the protections afforded prisoners of war, which include the right not to be put on trial for hostilities.
Administration lawyers had argued that Judge Robertson, in conferring Geneva Convention protections on Mr. Hamdan and by extension others like him, had “put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war.”
Those “legitimate methods,” as described in the Convention, include wearing uniforms to distinguish fighters from civilians and prohibitions against making civilians targets. The administration argued that Al Qaeda fighters had openly defied the Convention.
The court also ruled that Al Qaeda fighters were not prisoners of war - they were illegal combatants.
Take that.
When we began putting together our DVD collection after joining the DVD revolution late, there were two documentaries that I wanted in that collection. Ken Burn’s incredible The Civil War.. and Eyes on the Prize, the documentary about the civil rights movement.
I remember watching Eyes on the Prize in school in the late 1980s or early 1990s - for a few days during a history class. I don’t think there’s ever been a more poignant documentary about life in these United States - and one that every person should watch to understand the Civil Rights Movement. Course, I also think that history classes should travel to Fort McHenry in Baltimore to hear the story of Francis Scott Key, to the North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts to see where all of this began, and to Little Round Top near Gettysburg where Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine held the line and saved the Union army.. but I’m known to have rather extreme views.
That said, apparently I won’t be buying a DVD set of Eyes on the Prize, because of some overstrung copyright laws, as reported in today’s Boston Globe:
“EYES ON THE PRIZE,” the epic 1986 documentary series on the civil rights movement, contains a scene showing Martin Luther King Jr. on his 39th birthday — his last — in 1968. King, who was trying to take on poverty and the Vietnam War simultaneously, was under tremendous stress at the time, and his staff sang ”Happy Birthday” in an attempt to cheer him up.
But the producers of ”Eyes” almost had to leave the scene out of the finished documentary. ”Happy Birthday,” as it turns out, was copyrighted in 1935 and, following the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998, will remain so until at least 2030. Filmmakers have been known to pay $15,000 to $20,000 for just one verse, according to a recent report on documentary clearances issued by the Center for Social Media.
The song ultimately stayed in the film, but don’t plan on celebrating King’s birthday tomorrow by going to your local video store to buy a copy of ”Eyes on the Prize.” Thanks to rights restrictions on archival material used in the documentary, the 14-hour chronicle tracing the civil rights movement from the Montgomery bus boycotts in the 1950s to the rise of black mayors in the 1980s can no longer be released in new editions or shown on television. PBS’s right to air the film expired in 1993. Meanwhile, the VHS edition has gone out of print and a DVD release would require relicensing. (Complete sets of used videos are currently going for as much as $1,000 on Amazon.)
The problem goes beyond one documentary. ”We are crippling the story-telling of our own culture by the rigidity of our copyright interpretation,” says Patricia Aufderheide, who cowrote the Center for Social Media report ”Untold Stories,”
I’m friends with many artists and photographers and even a few cartoonists - I fully respect their views on copyright and share many of them. But issues like this just frustrate the hell out of me.
Let’s do the right things for Eyes on the Prize…
The Indianapolis Star is reporting that Indianapolis PD will arm their officers now with M-16 rifles that have laid in storage since last year:
Longer-range rifles that the Indianapolis Police Department has had in storage since last year will be in officers’ hands possibly by November, department officials said Thursday.The announcement follows criticism from IPD officers that they regularly face criminals who have more firepower, although officials say their announcement was not a response to those complaints.
The criticism increased after IPD Patrolman Timothy “Jake” Laird was gunned down Aug. 18 by a Southside man firing an SKS-style assault weapon from more than 150 yards away.
Indianapolis Police Chief Jerry Barker said Thursday that the 218 rifles, known as M-16s, will be given to officers as the weapons are modified and as officers are trained to use them. He said training would occur at a range at Camp Atterbury in Edinburgh, a military base about 45 minutes south of Indianapolis.
About time….
The Massachusetts Legislature apparantly has a problem reading court decisions. After last year’s Supreme Judicial Court decision stating that gays must have the right to marriage, the legislature has cooked up a few different schemes to “get around” this decision.
Civil Unions appeared to be the easy way out for them. Until they asked the SJC for an advisory opinion. Well, they got one.
“The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal,” four justices wrote in the advisory opinion. “For no rational reason the marriage laws of the Commonwealth discriminate against a defined class; no amount of tinkering with language will eradicate that stain. The (civil unions) bill would have the effect of maintaining and fostering a stigma of exclusion that the Constitution prohibits.”
Welcome to the world of having to live under the laws that we chose hundreds of years ago. Equality means equality folks.
For all of the moaning, groaning, and complaining that I do about living here from time to time, I’m enormously proud of the SJC for their two decisions in this case.
Pete Rose, has now admitted that he bet on baseball during his time as the manager of the Cincinatti Reds.
I remember Rose’s case well - it was during a brief moment of time in my life where I read Sports Illustrated religiously. His was an interesting case - because of his prominence in the sport tarnished by such a rapid fall.
As Rose discovered, all actions have consequences. His gambling on baseball resulted in his lifetime banishment from the sport. And thus, he’s ineligible to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
He’s applied for reinstatement and many have now taken up his cause.
I agree it’s a shame that he won’t be remembered as the Hall of Famer that he could have been - but his actions severely tarnished the reputation of the game, cast into doubt the result of the games in which he managed, and destroyed his own reputation.
He made the decision and now he needs to live with the consequences of that decision.
Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.”
- Lawrence v. Texas, 123 S. Ct. 2472, 2480 (2003)
Glad to see that this has come to a right and proper conclusion. Congratulations to Bishop Robinson and the Episcopal / Anglican Church.
MINNEAPOLIS, Aug. 5 %u2014 The Rev. V. Gene Robinson was confirmed Tuesday night as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church after surviving a last-minute investigation of allegations of inappropriate conduct.