"The intellectual honesty of the author makes us share the inner struggle in his mind. It is this that is the mark of the born teacher. Knowledge exists in two forms--lifeless, stored in books, and alive in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position."
p.80, IDEAS AND OPINIONS, by Albert Einstein (Three Rivers Press, NY: 1954, 1982)
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
TWO FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE
"The intellectual honesty of the author makes us share the inner struggle in his mind. It is this that is the mark of the born teacher. Knowledge exists in two forms--lifeless, stored in books, and alive in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position."
p.80, IDEAS AND OPINIONS, by Albert Einstein (Three Rivers Press, NY: 1954, 1982)
EQUITY: THE DISFAVORED TWIN OF LAW?
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
EQUITY: THE DISFAVORED TWIN OF LAW?
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized the providence of
equity by writing in Article III, Section 2, Clause 1, that the "judicial
Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity." http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity.
Later, in the 11th Amendment, such broad judicial power was somewhat reined in:
“The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to
extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by
Citizens or subjects of any Foreign State.”
Viewing “law and equity” in tandem is deceptive. They are not flip
sides of the same coin, called “justice.” They are ancient, historic
antagonists, derived from different sources, serving different ends.
Put bluntly, “law” is man-made, while “equity” is divine amendment.
Law concerns statutes and case law. Equity asks what is morally
right. Law is callous justice. Equity is grace and mercy, applied.
The Old Testament explicates the distinction more fully. After
having defied and disobeyed God by causing the people of Israel
to be numbered, David, through his seer, Gad, is offered three
forms of punishment by God. They are, “Three years’ famine; or
three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while the sword of
thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the
Lord, even the pestilence in the land, and the angel of the Lord
destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel.” David’s response to
Gad is classic: “I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of
the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the
hand of man.” 1 Chron.21:12-13.
Though the tendency is to equate the doctrine of “equity” with the
Chancery Courts of England, “equity,” as a notion, is much older
than England as a nation. “Equity,” arguably, prompted King John to
capitulate to the nobility, in assigning to them certain rights under
2
the Magna Charta in 1215 at Runnymede, as a check, albeit
tentative, against the untrammeled abuse of royal prerogatives.
“Equity” has biblical roots.
One of its earliest usages is found in Psalms 98:8-9, “Let the floods
clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for he
cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the
world, and the people with equity.”
At the outset of the book of Proverbs, we find “equity” also, viz.:
“The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; To know
wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; To
receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
to give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and
discretion.” (Prov.1:1-4)
“Equity’s” roots, in fact, predate, the Bible, disappearing into the
daunting mists of Ancient Egypt’s prehistory. “Ma’at,” a teleological
value system, appears to be where law and equity originated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law#cite_note-86.
“Ma’at” is the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law,
morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess
regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the
deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of
creation. The earliest surviving records indicating Maat is the norm
for nature and society, in this world and the next, is recorded during
the Old Kingdom in pyramid texts (c. 2780-2250 BCE).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at
All the great civil rights victories attained by such legends as
Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit,
Spotswood Robinson and others involved some form of equity, as
the remedy. No civil rights victory not involving equity comes to
mind. Neither am I aware of any civil rights case in which
monetary damages were either sought as a remedy or awarded.
Jack Greenberg, Esq., in his memoir, Crusaders in the Courts,
Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement, (Twelve Tables
3
Press: NY, 2004) states in the concluding chapter, “A Summation:
Victories and Defeats, Imagining The Future”: “The foregoing areas
[‘Ghetto areas…welfare cases…housing’] are within the domain of
what is often termed economic rights. Court action has been
notably unsuccessful in addressing what in large part is an issue of
economic distribution.” (p.553) The “issue of economic
distribution,” is the area wherein Mr. Greenberg, successor to
Thurgood Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, concedes “defeat.”
Equity is defined as “fairness, or equality.” As used herein, it is also
defined as “1 a: justice according to natural law or right; specif:
freedom from bias or favoritism…2 a: a system of law
originating in the English chancery and comprising a settled
and formal body of legal and procedural rules and doctrines
that supplement, aid, or override common and statute law and
are designed to protect rights and enforce duties fixed by
substantive law…” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,
11th ed. 2003) p.423.
In its broadest sense, equity is fairness. As a legal system, it is a body
of law that addresses concerns that fall outside the jurisdiction of
Common Law. Equity is also used to describe the money value of
property in excess of claims, liens, or mortgages on the property.
Equity in U.S. law can be traced to England, where it began as a
response to the rigid procedures of England's law courts. Through
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the judges in England's
courts developed the common law, a system of accepting and
deciding cases based on principles of law shaped and developed in
preceding cases. Pleading became quite intricate, and only certain
causes of action qualified for legal redress. Aggrieved citizens found
that otherwise valid complaints were being dismissed for failure to
comply with pleading technicalities. If a complaint was not dismissed,
relief was often denied based on little more than the lack of a
controlling statute or precedent.
Frustrated plaintiffs turned to the king, who referred these
extraordinary requests for relief to a royal court called the Chancery.
The Chancery was headed by a chancellor who possessed the power
to settle disputes and order relief according to his conscience. The
decisions of a chancellor were made without regard for the common
4
law, and they became the basis for the law of equity.
Equity and the common law represented opposing values in the
English legal system. The common law was the creation of a judiciary
independent from the Crown. Common-law courts believed in the
strict interpretation of statutes and precedential cases.” http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity
Those “opposing values” between “common law” and “equity,”
found a fertile climate in American jurisprudence. On July 21,
2009, in an appeal of an unemployment compensation case, in
Kansas City, Missouri, the Court of Appeals, decried the fact that
under the law the state agency in charge lacked authority “to
consider issues of fairness.” Thus, the court affirmed a decision
authorizing the recoupment of $7280 in unemployment benefits to
the state by the unemployed worker, who did nothing wrong, but be
overpaid.
http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp?id=12087&search=Andrea
Harris v. Division Employment Security&dist=Opinions
Western&n=0
In effect, the Missouri Court of Appeals recoiled from the harshness
of its own opinion, and hinted to the legislature that by changing
the word “shall” to “may” it would enable equity in deserving
cases, such as that then under consideration.
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized the providence of
equity by writing in Article III, Section 2, Clause 1, that the "judicial
Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity." http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity.
Later, in the 11th Amendment, such broad judicial power was somewhat reined in:
“The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to
extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by
Citizens or subjects of any Foreign State.”
Viewing “law and equity” in tandem is deceptive. They are not flip
sides of the same coin, called “justice.” They are ancient, historic
antagonists, derived from different sources, serving different ends.
Put bluntly, “law” is man-made, while “equity” is divine amendment.
Law concerns statutes and case law. Equity asks what is morally
right. Law is callous justice. Equity is grace and mercy, applied.
The Old Testament explicates the distinction more fully. After
having defied and disobeyed God by causing the people of Israel
to be numbered, David, through his seer, Gad, is offered three
forms of punishment by God. They are, “Three years’ famine; or
three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while the sword of
thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the
Lord, even the pestilence in the land, and the angel of the Lord
destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel.” David’s response to
Gad is classic: “I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of
the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the
hand of man.” 1 Chron.21:12-13.
Though the tendency is to equate the doctrine of “equity” with the
Chancery Courts of England, “equity,” as a notion, is much older
than England as a nation. “Equity,” arguably, prompted King John to
capitulate to the nobility, in assigning to them certain rights under
2
the Magna Charta in 1215 at Runnymede, as a check, albeit
tentative, against the untrammeled abuse of royal prerogatives.
“Equity” has biblical roots.
One of its earliest usages is found in Psalms 98:8-9, “Let the floods
clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for he
cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the
world, and the people with equity.”
At the outset of the book of Proverbs, we find “equity” also, viz.:
“The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; To know
wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; To
receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
to give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and
discretion.” (Prov.1:1-4)
“Equity’s” roots, in fact, predate, the Bible, disappearing into the
daunting mists of Ancient Egypt’s prehistory. “Ma’at,” a teleological
value system, appears to be where law and equity originated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law#cite_note-86.
“Ma’at” is the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law,
morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess
regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the
deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of
creation. The earliest surviving records indicating Maat is the norm
for nature and society, in this world and the next, is recorded during
the Old Kingdom in pyramid texts (c. 2780-2250 BCE).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at
All the great civil rights victories attained by such legends as
Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit,
Spotswood Robinson and others involved some form of equity, as
the remedy. No civil rights victory not involving equity comes to
mind. Neither am I aware of any civil rights case in which
monetary damages were either sought as a remedy or awarded.
Jack Greenberg, Esq., in his memoir, Crusaders in the Courts,
Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement, (Twelve Tables
3
Press: NY, 2004) states in the concluding chapter, “A Summation:
Victories and Defeats, Imagining The Future”: “The foregoing areas
[‘Ghetto areas…welfare cases…housing’] are within the domain of
what is often termed economic rights. Court action has been
notably unsuccessful in addressing what in large part is an issue of
economic distribution.” (p.553) The “issue of economic
distribution,” is the area wherein Mr. Greenberg, successor to
Thurgood Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, concedes “defeat.”
Equity is defined as “fairness, or equality.” As used herein, it is also
defined as “1 a: justice according to natural law or right; specif:
freedom from bias or favoritism…2 a: a system of law
originating in the English chancery and comprising a settled
and formal body of legal and procedural rules and doctrines
that supplement, aid, or override common and statute law and
are designed to protect rights and enforce duties fixed by
substantive law…” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,
11th ed. 2003) p.423.
In its broadest sense, equity is fairness. As a legal system, it is a body
of law that addresses concerns that fall outside the jurisdiction of
Common Law. Equity is also used to describe the money value of
property in excess of claims, liens, or mortgages on the property.
Equity in U.S. law can be traced to England, where it began as a
response to the rigid procedures of England's law courts. Through
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the judges in England's
courts developed the common law, a system of accepting and
deciding cases based on principles of law shaped and developed in
preceding cases. Pleading became quite intricate, and only certain
causes of action qualified for legal redress. Aggrieved citizens found
that otherwise valid complaints were being dismissed for failure to
comply with pleading technicalities. If a complaint was not dismissed,
relief was often denied based on little more than the lack of a
controlling statute or precedent.
Frustrated plaintiffs turned to the king, who referred these
extraordinary requests for relief to a royal court called the Chancery.
The Chancery was headed by a chancellor who possessed the power
to settle disputes and order relief according to his conscience. The
decisions of a chancellor were made without regard for the common
4
law, and they became the basis for the law of equity.
Equity and the common law represented opposing values in the
English legal system. The common law was the creation of a judiciary
independent from the Crown. Common-law courts believed in the
strict interpretation of statutes and precedential cases.” http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity
Those “opposing values” between “common law” and “equity,”
found a fertile climate in American jurisprudence. On July 21,
2009, in an appeal of an unemployment compensation case, in
Kansas City, Missouri, the Court of Appeals, decried the fact that
under the law the state agency in charge lacked authority “to
consider issues of fairness.” Thus, the court affirmed a decision
authorizing the recoupment of $7280 in unemployment benefits to
the state by the unemployed worker, who did nothing wrong, but be
overpaid.
http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp?id=12087&search=Andrea
Harris v. Division Employment Security&dist=Opinions
Western&n=0
In effect, the Missouri Court of Appeals recoiled from the harshness
of its own opinion, and hinted to the legislature that by changing
the word “shall” to “may” it would enable equity in deserving
cases, such as that then under consideration.
LAW IS PROTEAN LIKE GRACE
Law is a protean proposition amenable to any prevailing set of facts, as is grace, whose legal name is 'equity.'
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
THE HOAX OF INDIVIDUALISM
The hoax of individualism
Conception and birth brought us here
Labor love and sacrifice kept us here
All of these things were cooperative
None of these efforts were individual
Whence, then, this disassociation?
This vapid praise for individualism ?
Jesus had twelve disciples .
Ali Baba had forty thieves.
Whence then the vaunting of solo effort over collective work?
John Shaft is a fictional character.
Matt Damon acts on a movie screen.
Horatio Alger is totally made up.
Yet, we are programmed to become John Shaft, Matt Damon, and Alger.
Notice a group of villains are always organized, while the good guys are solo or alone in the movie portrayals.
This hoax serves the ends of the organized, as it disembodies rivals, who might organize and challenge them for power, money, privilege.
Let those hear who have ears.
Monday, July 21, 2014
racists are megalomaniacs
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/megalomaniac
White supremacists are megalomaniacs. Delusional. sick.
ENOUGH TO KILL YOU
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
Enough to kill you: confessions of a solo practitioner
October 15, 2010
Dread tinctured by angst discomfits me, as I write this epitaph on 33 years of professional life as a lawyer. This was not how it was supposed to end, this concluding phase of my private law practice.
I suppose I shall be deemed a failure by some. I was, after all, felled, finally, by an evolving stroke, which started out mildly and which culminated in complete paralysis—hemiplegia- left-sided. The doctors, despite multiple inquiries, have never told me what precisely caused my cardiovascular accident (CVA).
There were, of course, the usual suspects; diabetes, high blood pressure, morbid obesity, a crushing work load, unappreciative and/or non-paying clients, persecution by IRS and the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel of the Missouri Supreme Court, swarms of creditors, and no employees to help bear the load. Enough!
It was enough to kill you. It almost did.
But God, in his infinite mercy, spared me. I express my gratitude to him by heeding his word and warning, by returning to my first love: WRITING. This first love has impelled me to read impulsively, compulsively since childhood, and to write impulsively, compulsively from childhood. I have read deeply and yet read: Shakespeare, Dumas, Mark Twain, Richard Wright, Saint Augustine, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, The Bible, The Koran, Machiavelli, Herodotus, Homer and many, many others. A writer is perforce a reader, and a reader is perforce a writer.
At the end of ninth grade Civics, I initially listed ‚writer‛ as my future vocation, only to change it to ‚lawyer,‛ later. I feared the proverbial, if apocryphal, Greenwich Village table-waiting vocation looming as a less-than-desirable occupation, pre-publication. ‚Lawyer‛ was more emotionally satisfying, more financially promising, and also conformed to my skill sets. One could always do both, right? I rationalized. Along the way, I took a Bachelor of Arts degree in Print Journalism (cum laude) at Howard University in 1973, while serving as Editor in Chief of THE HILLTOP, which was founded by the great writer, and folklorist, Zora Neal Hurston, whom I’ve also read, during her student years at Howard in the 1920’s. http://www.zoranealehurston.com/
While a student in Howard’s School of Communications, my senior year, I took a course in Communications Law, which was taught by then-attorney, now Judge Paul Webber. What amazed me about the class was the fact that although the cases in our textbook were written in pristine English, and although I deemed myself to be a master of the English language, even then, I could not understand what they were saying. The language was too arcane, obtuse. How can something be written in English, and I not understand it? I enrolled in Howard Law School to find out that specific answer.
I obtained my Juris Doctor from the fountainhead of American civil rights law, Howard Law School in Washington, D.C. in 1976, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_University_School_of_Law#cite_note-howard-6 being admitted to the Missouri Bar in 1977. So armed, I set out to conquer the world. Or, at least to mollify it. Along the way, I learned that ‚legalese‛ is a language unto itself, with its own devices, idioms, conventions, and vocabulary; and that what plainly appears may not be as plain as it appears.
Cervantes’ Don Quixote at least had the loyal, if wistful, Sancho Panza, as a sidekick. http://www.online-literature.com/cervantes/don_quixote/ I, however, was utterly alone, having left the District of Columbia where I knew many, and moving to Kansas City, Missouri, where I knew few. Yet, therein, was the vortex of my spirit perfected: in the wilderness of western Missouri, in the land where the Civil War began.
My first job was with the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of the Regional Solicitor in 1976. There, I enforced Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules and regulations in a four state region. I also enforced minimum wage and overtime laws. After a 2 ½ year stint, I left to become an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri in February 1979, the only black AUSA in that office at that time, and until I left in August 1986 to launch my own practice. At the U.S. Justice Department I did exclusively civil litigation, by choice, trial and appellate. I left, because my soul cried out for ‚freedom.‛
No law firm, black or white, to which I applied, would hire me, so I struck out on my own, emulating thereby the Horatio Alger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger%2C_Jr. legend, which I had not read – although I did read Gerald Singer’s classic, How to go into Private Practice Without Missing A Meal. http://www.amazon.com/Directly-Into-Your-Practice-Succeed/dp/B0006E7XNC/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1. I’m happy to say I never missed a meal either! Au contraire, I easily gained 100 pounds during my 23 years of private practice!
I could not have chosen a more inauspicious time to launch a solo, largely civil rights, practice in the western district of Missouri. The Western District of Missouri is historically‚conservative,‛a popular and palatable euphemism for racist. Jackson County, which houses Kansas City and Independence, was one of four western Missouri counties which were subject to General Thomas Ewing’s infamous and efficacious General Order # 11, issued four days following Confederate guerilla leader William Quantrill’s fiery raid and massacre at Lawrence, Kansas in August 21,1863. http://www.theamericanmuseum.org/december.09.cover.html That order resulted in the forced evacuation of all rural Confederate sympathizers from the counties of Jackson, Cass, Bates, and Vernon from which Quantrill and others drew comfort and support in the execution of their depredations. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, along with its two-mile-distant counterpart, the District of Kansas, across the wide Missouri River in Kansas, were instrumental in aborting post-Civil War civil rights ‚Reconstruction‛efforts, while ushering in ‚Jim Crow,‛separate-but-equal segregation practices, through decisions invalidating the Rights Act of 1875.
http://www.answers.com/topic/civil-rights-cases The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently affirmed these decisions. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883);;; http://www.learner.org/courses/democracyinamerica/dia_5/dia_5_readings.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Cases. This decision, also featured an admonitory dissent by Mr. Justice Harlan, which preceded his more famous dissent in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson by 13 years.PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) ; http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=163&invol=53 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_uncivil.html
I had long been aware of this rancid legacy, and this region’s role in it. From Lloyd Gaines, the honor student from Lincoln University who was purposefully denied admission to the University of Missouri School of Law because of race, Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938)[1], which sable hue, doubtless, contributed to his March 19, 1938, sudden and mysterious ‚disappearance‛ in Chicago, Illinois http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_L._Gaines to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which needs no introduction.
An astute student of African American legal history, the historical precedents were well known to me. What I did not know, and could not have known, without honest mentoring and actual experience—both of which I lacked—was the day-to-day situation on the ground, as it related to black solos in light of the legacy. I had heard, for example, that black lawyers, at one time, were prohibited from sitting inside the ‚bar‛ of the court room. It had also been widely reported that certain judges at court en banc meetings would openly, and with impunity, use the epithet, ‚nigger.‛ Black lawyers, in short, were viewed as grasshoppers and saw themselves as grasshoppers. Black clients overwhelmingly patronized white lawyers, perversely believing that would cancel their racial disadvantage, from which there was no escape.
But, hope sprang eternal, until Ronald Reagan was re-elected President of the United States, in 1984. By 1986, when I opened my office, his so-called ‚revolution‛ had imperiously polluted the private practice of law. Unsupported and ubiquitous claims of ‚frivolous‛ lawsuits presaged numerous changes to the form and substance of the law practice. Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, particularly Rule 11’s ‘sanctions’ provision , would destroy the traditional fiber of collegiality among
plaintiff and defense lawyers. Monetary sanctions in the thousands of dollars were routinely sought and awarded against plaintiffs’ lawyers by federal judges who were appointed during the Reagan era, and Bush eras.
Secondly, insurance companies, the ‚third rail‛ in American litigation tightened their purse strings, so claims adjusters who were formerly content to ‚move along and get along, ‛were now obliged to reject and discard old formulas for dispute resolution. This resulted in more lawsuits being filed, which appreciably increased the costs of civil litigation for plaintiffs’ lawyers, especially solo practitioners. As these ‚costs‛ are often borne, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, by plaintiffs’ lawyers, their income decreased as their expenses increased.
In a similar vein the insurance lobby had blanketed the airwaves with lies about ‚run-away‛ juries, which would award millions of dollars for minimal slights or for manufactured injuries. Their favorite involved the elderly passenger who put the McDonald’s hot coffee cup between her knees, which spilled, scalding her. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaurants
This case became the poster child for frivolous lawsuits to a gullible and non-empathetic public, conditioned by media ads.
A corollary consequence to this was one-sided media hype was that the plaintiffs themselves came to have an exaggerated and distorted views of the value of their own case, based upon media reports about other cases. If that guy got $5 million from a jury, why can’t I ? These expectations belied the reality that well over 90% of civil rights cases are lost in U.S. District Court before they ever get to a jury. This truth is not reported in the media, and is not generally known. Plaintiffs labor under
an illusion of judicial liberality in civil rights litigation, where none exists on the federal level at all.
So, the plaintiff either resents, distrusts, or files a bar complaint against the lawyer, believing the lawyer is breaching his duty of representation. I have had such a complaint filed against me. As a consequence, my license was ‚probated.‛ That means it was suspended and placed on probation for one year, while I completed certain conditions. During this period of probation I was able to practice law, while making quarterly reports to the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel. http://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=34347
Another corollary consequence of federal judicial hubris is that civil rights defense counsel, aware of their hostile reception in federal courts, routinely ‚remove‛ civil rights cases from state court, where they may have been originally filed, to federal court where they are routinely dismissed, or subjected to ‚summary judgment.‛ Plaintiffs’ lawyers rightfully fear federal court.
Summary Judgment is a procedural mechanism whereby a court can dispose of a case summarily, without hearing any evidence in open court, basing its ruling solely on documents filed and legal inferences. When the court determines there to be no genuine issues of material fact, warranting trial, it can grant judgment for the defendant, without more. Plaintiffs can’t get summary judgment in employment cases, however. So, none ever has.
It’s enough to kill you, if you are a black, plaintiff’s civil rights attorney, and enough to sicken you if you’re white.
All of these factors, and others, have an adverse economic impact from which there is no apparent relief. Tax woes and debt collectors vamp. It’s enough to kill you! It almost did!
#30
WHY IS 'RACISM' NOT LISTED AS A MENTAL DEFECT?
Racism has never been listed by the American Psychiatric Association as a psychopathology or mental disease, despite repeated requests. Hmm. Wonder why?
Is Racism an Illness? | TIME.com
ideas.time.com
Some psychiatrists believe that racism is a mental disorder, but medicalizing social ills gets us no closer to a solution
Sunday, July 20, 2014
PERTINENT ECONOMICS
In the present economic scheme, they that "have not" today, mortgage away their tomorrows; or borrow at usurious rates, to pay debts that mock their penury. It is a vicious cycle that the 'have nots' may escape by not wasting money on the "haves."
THE BANTU SHINES THROUGH
The Bantu Shines Through!
As a teenager, in the hot summer of 1964, I was painting a house in St. Louis with my father, when Daddy said to me from out of the blue: "The man who owns this house is very well educated. He knows many things.'"
A bit later, an elderly black man stepped outside to inspect our work.
"Larry, come here son. I want you to meet someone."
Daddy then introduced me to the homeowner whose name now escapes me; though, I believe it was Dr. Weathers.
Our conversation was brief. All that I recall was this man looking at my father and saying that he saw Indian features in his face; then looking at me and saying: "In you, I see Bantu."
Inwardly, I recoiled at that facial comparison. For reasons I could not fully understand, I was embarrassed!
Even at age 13, I knew that the Bantu was an African tribe or group of tribes. I also knew that they were frequently depicted as savage, backwards, brutish, and ugly.
Indians, were also a group of tribes, American tribes, 'noble savages'. They had high cheekbones, and straight black hair. From them, many of us colored folks proudly claimed descent. None claimed to be Bantu.
Later that day, Daddy said "I'm an Indian, you're a Bantu." I did not reply right away. But, I do recall thinking: "Still, I am your son, Bantu or not."
Eventually, I worked up the nerve to say, "Father Mitch must be Bantu, too, Daddy, because he is jet-black. "
Noting this truthful retort respecting his own father, my grandfather, Daddy wryly smiled and said, "Yes, son, he sure is, and he is very proud."
Years later in our high school's one-half semester Psychology class, I learned that the dark gene or melanin was dominant, while all others were regressive or subordinate to it.
That is another way of saying that through it all, the Bantu shines through. Now, too, I know that the Bantus are the first humans from whom all men descended in Africa eons ago, as well as fire, language, and human civilization itself. Here too and in all ensuing civilizations:
THE BANTU SHINES THROUGH!
As a teenager, in the hot summer of 1964, I was painting a house in St. Louis with my father, when Daddy said to me from out of the blue: "The man who owns this house is very well educated. He knows many things.'"
A bit later, an elderly black man stepped outside to inspect our work.
"Larry, come here son. I want you to meet someone."
Daddy then introduced me to the homeowner whose name now escapes me; though, I believe it was Dr. Weathers.
Our conversation was brief. All that I recall was this man looking at my father and saying that he saw Indian features in his face; then looking at me and saying: "In you, I see Bantu."
Inwardly, I recoiled at that facial comparison. For reasons I could not fully understand, I was embarrassed!
Even at age 13, I knew that the Bantu was an African tribe or group of tribes. I also knew that they were frequently depicted as savage, backwards, brutish, and ugly.
Indians, were also a group of tribes, American tribes, 'noble savages'. They had high cheekbones, and straight black hair. From them, many of us colored folks proudly claimed descent. None claimed to be Bantu.
Later that day, Daddy said "I'm an Indian, you're a Bantu." I did not reply right away. But, I do recall thinking: "Still, I am your son, Bantu or not."
Eventually, I worked up the nerve to say, "Father Mitch must be Bantu, too, Daddy, because he is jet-black. "
Noting this truthful retort respecting his own father, my grandfather, Daddy wryly smiled and said, "Yes, son, he sure is, and he is very proud."
Years later in our high school's one-half semester Psychology class, I learned that the dark gene or melanin was dominant, while all others were regressive or subordinate to it.
That is another way of saying that through it all, the Bantu shines through. Now, too, I know that the Bantus are the first humans from whom all men descended in Africa eons ago, as well as fire, language, and human civilization itself. Here too and in all ensuing civilizations:
THE BANTU SHINES THROUGH!
Saturday, July 19, 2014
AN AMERICAN DILEMMA ...EXCERPT
"In 1938, Dr, Frederick Keppel of the Carnegie Corporation asked my father to come to the United States to study 'the American Negro Problem.' Keppel's courage, honesty, warm-heartedness, and imagination impressed my father deeply. Keppel insisted that my father begin his study by traveling through the South rather than settling down to do library research on race issues. My father soon recognized Keppel's wisdom in forcing him to confront the realities of discrimination right away: 'I was shocked and scared to the bones of all the evils I saw, and the serious political implications of the problem which I could not fail to appreciate from the beginning.'
"It was clear from the outset that the problem my father had been asked to study, far from affecting blacks alone or simply dividing blacks and whites, was lodged in the hearts of all Americans: 'It is there that the interracial tension has its focus. It is there that the decisive struggle goes on. This is the essential viewpoint of the treatise.'
"This struggle generates the dilemma in the book's title. How can Americans square lofty ideals--the American Creed--with the base realities of racial discrimination? How can they claim to respect the dignity of all persons, equality, and the inalienable right to freedom, justice, and a fair opportunity, while countenancing pervasive violations of the dignity of blacks and of their rights to that freedom, that justice, and that fair opportunity?
"'The Negro in America has not yet been given the elemental civil and political rights of formal democracy, including a fair opportunity to earn his living, upon which a general accord was already won when the American Creed was first taking form. And this anachronism constitutes the contemporary 'problem' both to Negroes and to whites.'"
OUR FOREBEARS EXPLOITED MINUTE FISSURES AND DISTINCTIONS
It is blithely said by some that, historically, 'white racism is all the same' whether North or South. This statement is unscientific, hyperbolic, and grossly inaccurate.
Our enslaved and self-liberated forebears discerned and successfully exploited the minute fissures and distinctions between and within the racial, religious, patriotic aptitudes and attitudes, and sources of profits of the whites of the North and of the South, in order to obtain their freedom.
First, they ran away; second, they constructed the Underground Railroad to Canada, with the aid of numerous whites, with agents, stations, and conductors in the North and the South; third, their self-liberating and other abolitionists activities--including their literary and speaking international activities--induced their "Freedom War"; fourth, so valuable were their services to the North and so great was their loss to the South that they constituted that 'military necessity' that engendered the creation of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, including its prior promulgation, and its epochal release on January 1,1863; fifth, their force of arms--200,000 black troops-- were decisive in deciding the outcome of the Civil War in their favor and in favor of the North; and sixth, their foregoing activities' effects compelled the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution "to secure these rights," and of enabling legislation, that ensuing generations of blacks would use to continue the freedom struggle through the present, electing black Senators and a President Obama in 2008 and in 2012!
Friday, July 18, 2014
ALBION WINEGAR TOURGEE
Albion Winegar Tourgee was the attorney for Homer Plessy in the famous Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896 that reified the 'separate but equal' canard in American law. He was also a great novelist, and strong defender of the rights of black people.
HOMER PLESSY
Meet Homer Plessy, the 1/8 African-blood descendant from Louisiana, who tested the Louisiana law which required persons with any discernible trace of Negro blood be segregated from white people. Plessy was supported by 'gens de couleur' merchants and landowners in an attempt to overturn that Louisiana state law, who hired his lawyer, Albion Winegar Tourgee. The U.S. Supreme Court later affirmed the Louisiana 'Jim Crow' law in 1896.
still learning
"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge....Study to show thyself approved unto God..."
These simple instructions were abandoned by the blacks long before the European or the Arab/Muslim slave traders invaded Africa; long before the term "Africa" was conceived or applied; long before Africans began internally trading themselves and lost their knowledge of God/self, mathematical/astronomical/cosmological mastery.
Consequently, study is the key. Ignorance, fear, and superstitions, have been our racial undoing. Perhaps it was foreordained in our stars; perhaps that explains why ancient blacks left pyramids, monuments, temples, statues, papyri, holy books, fractions, geometry, arts and sciences, etc., behind for their blind progeny to see!
No need to stupidly ask any more, "What must I do to be saved? What can we do to help?" Study! Study! Study! Teach! Teach! Teach! Create.Create.Create. Perfect!
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
GENGHIS KHAN: ECUMENICAL CONQUEROR
He was religiously tolerant and interested in learning philosophical and moral lessons from other religions. To do so, he consulted Buddhist monks, Muslims, Christian missionaries, and the Taoist monk Qiu Chuji.[18] The Secret History of the Mongols chronicles Genghis praying to the Burhan Haldun mountain. http://www.ask.com/wiki/Genghis_Khan?o=2800&qsrc=999#Religion http://www.ask.com/wiki/Genghis_Khan?o=2800&qsrc=999
root it out
To build effectively the foundation must be solid, or the structure will collapse. Similarly, to learn effectively one must dig down to the foundation, to the root, of any subject matter and then come up slowly, gradually, reviewing frequently, until it is clearly understood.
Metaphors of Plants and Trees
www.politicalmetaphors.com
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
BIG FAT HYPOCRISY
BIG”FAT “HYPOCRISY
Friday, September 23, 2011
Edited: Tuesday, July 15, 2014
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Monetary obesity--non-circulating, entropic wealth--is akin to stored, white fatty tissue on the human body!
While human corpulence is well documented and usually derided, monetary opulence is not. Instead, such wasted, unutilized economic capacity is praised, envied and coveted! Why is this? Is one any better than the other?
Weight loss programs for personal fat assail the airwaves and print media in 24-hour cycles. Nothing of the sort, however, troubles monetary fat’s life of ease, idleness, and indolence.
Society would be better served—indeed enriched—by getting the monetarily fat to disgorge much more of that money, than in getting the personally fat to lose some of that weight. Wealth redistribution benefits many. Losing excess pounds may only benefit the few weight-losers themselves.
Maybe these fat-based sentiments are displaced. Then again, maybe they are not.
Either way the contrasting public perceptions and approaches to this weighty issue strike me as a big fat hypocrisy!
Either way the contrasting public perceptions and approaches to this weighty issue strike me as a big fat hypocrisy!
REST NEVER RESTS
'Rest never rests'
Day rests at night.
Night rests at day.
In rests at out.
Out rests at in.
Near rests at far.
Far rest at near.
Inhale rests at exhale.
Exhale rests at inhale.
Life rests at death.
Death rests at life.
Male rests at female.
Female rests at male.
Negative rests at positive.
Positive rests at negative.
Numbers rest at letters.
Letters rest at numbers.
War rests at peace.
Peace rests at war.
Wake rests at sleep.
Sleep rests at wake.
But, when does rest rest?
Does rest ever rest?
Can rest rest?
No, there is no rest for the weary.
Hence, rest never rests.
Monday, July 14, 2014
PERIGEE OVER KC
http://www.newsdaily.com/article/487edc0ebdda04cb2aa82ddf8b8fcc1b/debut-summer-supermoon-hangs-in-the-summer-sky
Saturday, July 12, 2014
HOT-HAIR HERESIES
HOT-AIR HERESIES
A thirsty man needs water not song.
Hungry men need food not psalms.
A naked man needs clothes, not contemplation
Sick men need medication, not meditation.
A homeless man needs shelter, and and a jobless man needs work.
Prisoners need periodic visitation.
The point being made should be clear by now. Prayer, alone, very rarely suffices for help, and is more often an unreal, pretense of assistance.
Prayer without help is hot-air heresy.
True assistance is actively tangible.
Psalms 82: 3-4 says:
"3 Defend the weak and the fatherless;
uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked."
Notice the verbs: defend, uphold, rescue, and deliver. All action verbs!
Similarly., Matthew 25: 31-46, says:
The Judgment of the Nations.*
31
f “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne,
32
g and all the nations* will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
33
He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34
Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
35
h For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,
36
naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’
37
Then the righteous* will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
38
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?
39
When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’
40
i And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’
41
* j Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42
k For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
43
a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’
44
* Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’
45
He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’
46
l And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Hot-air heresy is abominable.
ABE LINCOLN: 'POOR WHITE TRASH'--SAYS SENATOR WADE
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Benjamin_Wade?o=2800&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
This "Radical Republican" Senator/lawyer, from Ohio, referred to President Abraham Lincoln as "poor white trash."
ADMINISTER JUSTICE NOT INJUSTICE
I would amend this oath of office to add the assertion: "that I will administer no injustice to any minorities be they racial, religious or other"....
28 U.S. Code § 453 - Oaths of justices and judges | LII / Legal Information Institute
www.law.cornell.edu
The table below lists the classification updates, since Jan. 3, 2012, for this section. Updates to a broader range of sections may be found at the update page for containing chapter, title,.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/453
28 U.S. Code § 453 - Oaths of justices and judges | LII / Legal Information Institute
www.law.cornell.edu
The table below lists the classification updates, since Jan. 3, 2012, for this section. Updates to a broader range of sections may be found at the update page for containing chapter, title,.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/453
Thursday, July 10, 2014
"HOW SHOULD A CHRISTIAN VIEW COMMUNISM?"
"Surely it is unchristian and unethical for some to wallow in the soft beds of luxury while others sink into the quicksands of poverty....
"Capitalism may lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the theoretical materialism taught by Communism.
"We must honestly recognize that truth is not to be found either in traditional capitalism or in Marxism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically, capitalism failed to discern the truth of collective enterprise and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise. Nineteenth-century capitalism failed to appreciate that life is social and Marxism failed, and still fails, to see that life is individual and social. The Kingdom of God is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis that reconciles the truth of both.
"For so many Christians, Christianity is a Sunday activity having no relevancy for Monday, and the church is little more than a secular social club having a thin veneer of religiosity. Jesus is an ancient symbol whom we do the honor of calling Christ and yet his Lordship is neither affirmed nor acknowledged by our substanceless lives."
p.106-107, STRENGTH TO LOVE by Martin Luther King, Jr. (Fortress Press: 1963, 2010)
saddened by certain black christian sayings
I am both saddened and baffled to hear so many Christian black people say:
"I'd rather have Jesus than silver and gold;" or who say "long as I got King Jesus, I don't need nobody else!"
Such lyrical expressions are canards or lies, which defy logic and human nature, even if they are popular in certain quarters of their faith clutch.
Both King David and his son, King Solomon had vast quantities of silver and gold. Both men were forebears of Jesus, epistemologically, genealogically and spiritually.
Jesus himself said, "Man does not live by bread alone (not even by the bread of life, alone); but, by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."
There is no need for humans to try to make Jesus more appealing by such untruths; as the 'only begotten son' of God, he is plenty strong now!
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Wednesday, July 9, 2014
WANTON INTEGRATION IS BLACK SELF-DESTRUCTION
http://www.thenorthstarnews.com/fullstory/story/the-downside-of-brown-v-the-board-of-education
Accepting that "anything all-black is inherently inferior" as wanton integrationists did, jubilantly, in 1954, after the Brown v. Board decision, is tantamount to saying that you are too, as is your church, fraternity, your kids, your dad and your mama!!
The Brown decision is tantamount to the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision. They both support the notion of black inherent inferiority.
Accepting that "anything all-black is inherently inferior" as wanton integrationists did, jubilantly, in 1954, after the Brown v. Board decision, is tantamount to saying that you are too, as is your church, fraternity, your kids, your dad and your mama!!
The Brown decision is tantamount to the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision. They both support the notion of black inherent inferiority.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
MARIJUANA: THE PRISONER OF WAR QUESTION
A question has been raised relative to the fate and future of those inmates now imprisoned for marijuana offenses in states where its possession and use have become legal? That is a very good question.The disposition of crime and punishment is a function and incident of power: economic, political, military, cultural and spiritual power. Those incarcerated or those desirous of their marijuana-related release would do well to access one or more of those levers of power in some persistent and organized manner! It is rather like being held as a prisoner of a now-finished war!
WHATSOEVER IS...WHATSOEVER WAS.
Whatsoever is, is based upon whatsoever was. 'Nothing' is just a 'nonexistent' Illusion, a convenient construct, "zero."
Even when/where it appears nothing is, something is. That you cannot access it, does not mean that another cannot access it, harness and use it.
Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, Albert Einstein famously proved. Thus, mass or matter is a derivative of energy and light.
Most light is outside of our visible spectrum, or sensory spectrum, as is most energy.
Yet, they are, as we are. They: energy mass and light speed squared preceded us; hence, they parented us all.
'Nothing' is 'nonexistent.'
Monday, July 7, 2014
EDUCATION: WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION OF IGNORANCE
HOW TRAGIC, considering that Muslims invented algebra, chemistry, trigonometry, introduced the Hindu-Arabic numerals and zero to Fibonacci of Pisa, who introduced them to Italy in 1202 in his masterpiece, LIBER ABACI, replacing Roman numerals. These same Muslims preserved the Greek classics in Arabic, through which means Europe was pulled from 1,000 years of 'Dark Ages,' into its Renaissance. The Muslims also settled in Spain for over 700 years where their foods, agriculture, wine, art and architecture still reflect the Moorish forebears, from whose west African contacts an Italian adventurer learned of lands beyond the "Pillars of Hercules," the Americas. So, it is tragic that learned Muslims remain silent and inactive while their uncouth brethren run amok, debasing this awesome history and heritage by their terrorist acts, and shameful kidnapping and oppression of women, and the propagation of mayhem and backwardness.
'CAPITAL' ACQUAINTENCES
Reading Thomas Piketty's book last night, before bed, I encountered a passage that rocked my world. 
It dealt with the time period, 1914-1945, that of my oppressed parents, grandparents, and great- grandparents' , and also yours,-and the period thereafter, when me and my siblings were born, as were you.
It was then that the captains of capital and politics finally retrenched sufficiently from the downward income-equalizing tendencies of two World Wars and the Communist movements, to restore that unregulated capitalism and political cronyism that had produced their prior periods of opulent privileges during the "gilded age" in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Their "good ole days," were not happy days for us. They were to our forebears' political and economic detriment, producing black American people's present consumerist, hand-to-mouth, economic orientation and predicament. These overarching political ramifications, and incipient global macroeconomics our folks, were, seemly, ignorant of; yet their spirits are very sensitive to their own injustices and economic deprivation.
Piketty writes:
"Briefly, the shocks that buffeted the economy in the period 1914-1945--World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Great Depression, World War II, and the consequent advent of new regulatory and tax policies along with controls on capital--reduced capital's share of income to historically low levels in the 1950s. Very soon, however, capital began to reconstitute itself. The growth of capital's share accelerated with the victories of Margaret Thatcher in England in 1979 and Ronald Reagan in the United States in 1980, marking the beginning of a conservative revolution. Then came the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, followed by financial globalization and deregulation in the 1990s. All of these events marked a political turn in the opposite direction from that observed in the first half of the twentieth century. By 2010, and despite the crisis that began in 2007-2008, capital was prospering as it had not done since 1913."
P.41-42, CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY by Thomas Piketty (2014)
It dealt with the time period, 1914-1945, that of my oppressed parents, grandparents, and great- grandparents' , and also yours,-and the period thereafter, when me and my siblings were born, as were you.
It was then that the captains of capital and politics finally retrenched sufficiently from the downward income-equalizing tendencies of two World Wars and the Communist movements, to restore that unregulated capitalism and political cronyism that had produced their prior periods of opulent privileges during the "gilded age" in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Their "good ole days," were not happy days for us. They were to our forebears' political and economic detriment, producing black American people's present consumerist, hand-to-mouth, economic orientation and predicament. These overarching political ramifications, and incipient global macroeconomics our folks, were, seemly, ignorant of; yet their spirits are very sensitive to their own injustices and economic deprivation.
Piketty writes:
"Briefly, the shocks that buffeted the economy in the period 1914-1945--World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Great Depression, World War II, and the consequent advent of new regulatory and tax policies along with controls on capital--reduced capital's share of income to historically low levels in the 1950s. Very soon, however, capital began to reconstitute itself. The growth of capital's share accelerated with the victories of Margaret Thatcher in England in 1979 and Ronald Reagan in the United States in 1980, marking the beginning of a conservative revolution. Then came the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, followed by financial globalization and deregulation in the 1990s. All of these events marked a political turn in the opposite direction from that observed in the first half of the twentieth century. By 2010, and despite the crisis that began in 2007-2008, capital was prospering as it had not done since 1913."
P.41-42, CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY by Thomas Piketty (2014)
MONEY, MISSISSIPPI MEMORIES
In 1971, I was a poll-watcher in Money, MS, 8 miles north of Greenwood. This is where Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, for whistling at a white woman. Voting took place in a ramshackle cotton gin, when a truck rolled up. A white man with a shotgun entered and stood on one side of the entrance; then, another white man with a switch blade entered at stood on the other side of the entrance. Finally, about 30-40 black men trooped in; voted on the flat table top with paper ballots and trooped out. Then, each white man, in turn, pivoted and exited and the truck left. Nary a word was spoken the whole time. My friend, William Lightfoot, a Howard Bison brother, and now an esteemed attorney, who was paired with me to poll watch, exchanged meaningful glances with me, after which we both split! Greenwood's Broad Street Park is where Stokely Carmichael also called publicly for "Black Power!" in Greenwood in June 1966, during the Meredith March for Freedom. We do not know who those voters or their guards were, nor did we care!
Greenwood, MS - Official Website - African-American
www.greenwoodms.com
African-American
humble pie
Shop class in eighth grade at Steger Jr. High School, in Rock Hill, Missouri, was the greater leveler, the great equalizer, for me. There, in shop, the academically oriented students were integrated with the vocationally oriented students. I was in the academically-oriented group. In shop class under Mr. Primm, we worked with our hands in woods, metals, and plastics, and made stuff, whatever we wanted.
I marveled repeatedly as those vocational students produced the most beautiful and elaborate creations, while I eked by making a wooden tie rack, a plastic initials escutcheon, later broken at home by an inquiring younger brother, and nothing in metal that I now recall. Meanwhile those other guys, the ones we were conditioned to believe were beneath us, were practically mass-producing furniture, tools, cutlery. It was no contest. We got smoked!
Humble pie comes in many taste and textures. This was definitely one of them!
Sunday, July 6, 2014
PARASITE--HOST INTERPLAY
PARASITE -- HOST INTERPLAY
Parasites are also human, though they are much better-known, in virus, plant, animal, and bacterial genres.
Some people must prey upon others, just to subsist if not to exist. There are entire families of burglars, armed robbers, rapists, and hooligans: of both the street and the suite variety.
In due course, we all eventually encounter them, in whatever mode best suits their means of parasitism: flattery, mimicry, cajolery, larceny; extortion, identity-theft, siphoning, bullying, stealing, befriending, bonding, murdering, masquerading, massaging, beguiling or seducing.
We, occasional hosts of parasitism, are variously referred to as patriots, investors, members, dupes, victims.
Fortunately, not all parasites are unto death. Some work together with the host to expel a greater parasite. One example of cooperation is in the pea aphids, a would-be host, that teams up with viruses and bacteria to destroy and consume wasp larvae, which would eat the aphid inside out!
So, hosts, though not all defenseless, had best be conscientious to threats.
Whether parasite, host, or prey, all are headed the same way: unto that yawning vortex whence comes birth, life and death and all in between.
PACTOLUS PRIME, a novel by Albion Winegar Tourgee, excerpt
"Just let me say one more word, Senator. You have the 'Record' and the press to give circulation to your ideas. I have only the men who sit in my chairs or who are waiting for a place in them to talk to. This bill which you think such a fine thing, to my mind is a plan for using 'nigger's' fingers to pull chestnuts out of the treasury for the benefit of white people of those States!...
"But what would you have? We cannot undo all the wrongs of the past at once!
"True enough, Senator ; but it is better to do nothing than add a new wrong to the long category of the old ones.
"'The fact that a man is black does not prove that he knows what is best for the colored race,'petulantly.
"Very true, sir; but it's a universal rule that the man who wears a shoe knows best where it pinches.
"But he may not know how to mend it.
"Very likely, nor will the cobbler, until he learns just where it rubs. I know what it is to be a nigger, Senator, and you don't ; and you never will be able to devise an efficient remedy for our ills until you have learned just what that means!
"'Perhaps you are right, said the Senator in a dissatisfied tone,' as he turned thoughtfully away. 'It's a very difficult problem to deal with. We try to be as considerate and charitable as we can; but it seems as if the more we did for the colored man the more dissatisfied he becomes.'
"Suppose you try just a little justice, Senator ; Charity is a good thing, but I think a pound of justice would go further than a ton of charity."
P. 114, 116-117, PACTOLUS PRIME by Albion Winegar Tourgee (1890)
Pactolus Prime
www.amazon.com
THE AGENCY OF THIS MYSTERIOUS LIFE
THE AGENCY OF THIS MYSTERIOUS LIFE
However much one may reason, reflect, intuit, or pray, to, about, or upon: things cosmological, ethereal, infinite, or eternal, one must, yet, breathe, eat, drink, live, love, and eliminate all things of Earth, on Earth. That is the essence of our 'human' nature. We brought 'nothing' here, and we take 'nothing' away from here. None can breathe in outer space, eat the wind, drink the air, marry a moonbeam, nor make deposits in infinity. Four-fold we live and four-fold we die: material, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional.Yet the agency of this mysterious life is always being continually renewed in, by, and through us on Earth and well beyond. Amen.
Each is the agent of its producer
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Agency_(philosophy)?o=2800&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Friday, July 4, 2014
ATUM
Atum is the progenitor of 'atom' or 'Adam,' as Amun is the progenitor of 'Amen'. Glory to God!
Atum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org
Thursday, July 3, 2014
EQUITY: THE DISFAVORED TWIN OF LAW?
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.
EQUITY: THE DISFAVORED TWIN OF LAW?
“The Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized the providence of
equity by writing in Article III, Section 2, Clause 1, that the "judicial
Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity." http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity.
Later, in the 11th Amendment, such broad judicial power was somewhat reined in:
“The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to
extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by
Citizens or subjects of any Foreign State.”
Viewing “law and equity” in tandem is deceptive. They are not flip
sides of the same coin, called “justice.” They are ancient, historic
antagonists, derived from different sources, serving different ends.
Put bluntly, “law” is man-made, while “equity” is divine amendment.
Law concerns statutes and case law. Equity asks what is morally
right. Law is callous justice. Equity is grace and mercy, applied.
The Old Testament explicates the distinction more fully. After
having defied and disobeyed God by causing the people of Israel
to be numbered, David, through his seer, Gad, is offered three
forms of punishment by God. They are, “Three years’ famine; or
three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while the sword of
thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the
Lord, even the pestilence in the land, and the angel of the Lord
destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel.” David’s response to
Gad is classic: “I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of
the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the
hand of man.” 1 Chron.21:12-13.
Though the tendency is to equate the doctrine of “equity” with the
Chancery Courts of England, “equity,” as a notion, is much older
than England as a nation. “Equity,” arguably, prompted King John to
capitulate to the nobility, in assigning to them certain rights under
the Magna Carta in 1215 at Runnymede, as a check, albeit
tentative, against the untrammeled abuse of royal prerogatives.
“Equity” has biblical roots.
One of its earliest usages is found in Psalms 98:8-9, “Let the floods
clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for he
cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the
world, and the people with equity.”
At the outset of the book of Proverbs, we find “equity” also, viz.:
“The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; To know
wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; To
receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
to give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and
discretion.” (Prov.1:1-4)
“Equity’s” roots, in fact, predate, the Bible, disappearing into the
daunting mists of Ancient Egypt’s prehistory. “Ma’at,” a teleological
value system, appears to be where law and equity originated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law#cite_note-86.
“Ma’at” is the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law,
morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess
regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the
deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of
creation. The earliest surviving records indicating Maat is the norm
for nature and society, in this world and the next, is recorded during
the Old Kingdom in pyramid texts (c. 2780-2250 BCE).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at
All the great civil rights victories attained by such legends as
Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit,
Spotswood Robinson and others involved some form of equity, as
the remedy. No civil rights victory not involving equity comes to
mind. Neither am I aware of any civil rights case in which
monetary damages were either sought as a remedy or awarded.
Jack Greenberg, Esq., in his memoir, Crusaders in the Courts,
Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement, (Twelve Tables
Press: NY, 2004) states in the concluding chapter, “A Summation:
Victories and Defeats, Imagining The Future”:
“The foregoing areas [‘Ghetto areas…welfare cases…housing’] are within the domain of what is often termed economic rights. Court action has been
notably unsuccessful in addressing what in large part is an issue of
economic distribution.” (p.553)
The “issue of economic distribution,” is the area wherein Mr. Greenberg, successor to Thurgood Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, concedes “defeat.”
Equity is defined as “fairness, or equality.” As used herein, it is also
defined as “1 a: justice according to natural law or right; specif:
freedom from bias or favoritism…2 a: a system of law
originating in the English chancery and comprising a settled
and formal body of legal and procedural rules and doctrines
that supplement, aid, or override common and statute law and
are designed to protect rights and enforce duties fixed by
substantive law…” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,
11th ed. 2003) p.423.
In its broadest sense, equity is fairness. As a legal system, it is a body
of law that addresses concerns that fall outside the jurisdiction of
Common Law. Equity is also used to describe the money value of
property in excess of claims, liens, or mortgages on the property.
Equity in U.S. law can be traced to England, where it began as a
response to the rigid procedures of England's law courts. Through
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the judges in England's
courts developed the common law, a system of accepting and
deciding cases based on principles of law shaped and developed in
preceding cases. Pleading became quite intricate, and only certain
causes of action qualified for legal redress. Aggrieved citizens found
that otherwise valid complaints were being dismissed for failure to
comply with pleading technicalities. If a complaint was not dismissed,
relief was often denied based on little more than the lack of a
controlling statute or precedent.
Frustrated plaintiffs turned to the king, who referred these
extraordinary requests for relief to a royal court called the Chancery.
The Chancery was headed by a chancellor who possessed the power
to settle disputes and order relief according to his conscience. The
decisions of a chancellor were made without regard for the common
law, and they became the basis for the law of equity.
Equity and the common law represented opposing values in the
English legal system. The common law was the creation of a judiciary
independent from the Crown. Common-law courts believed in the
strict interpretation of statutes and precedential cases.” http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity
Those “opposing values” between “common law” and “equity,”
have found a fertile climate in American jurisprudence.
On July 21,2009, in an appeal of an unemployment compensation case, in
Kansas City, Missouri, the Court of Appeals, decried the fact that
under the law the state agency in charge lacked authority “to
consider issues of fairness.” Thus, the court affirmed a decision
authorizing the recoupment of $7280 in unemployment benefits to
the state by the unemployed worker, who did nothing wrong, but be
overpaid.
http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp?id=12087&search=Andrea
Harris v. Division Employment Security&dist=Opinions
Western&n=0
In effect, the Missouri Court of Appeals recoiled from the harshness
of its own opinion, and hinted to the legislature that by changing
the word “shall” to “may” it would enable equity in deserving
cases, such as that then under consideration.
Such harshness would be substantially mitigated if judicial discretion as statutorily prescribed, mandated the application of equity to law in civil, criminal, and administrative cases; thereby restoring balance to justice
“The Framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized the providence of
equity by writing in Article III, Section 2, Clause 1, that the "judicial
Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity." http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity.
Later, in the 11th Amendment, such broad judicial power was somewhat reined in:
“The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to
extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by
Citizens or subjects of any Foreign State.”
Viewing “law and equity” in tandem is deceptive. They are not flip
sides of the same coin, called “justice.” They are ancient, historic
antagonists, derived from different sources, serving different ends.
Put bluntly, “law” is man-made, while “equity” is divine amendment.
Law concerns statutes and case law. Equity asks what is morally
right. Law is callous justice. Equity is grace and mercy, applied.
The Old Testament explicates the distinction more fully. After
having defied and disobeyed God by causing the people of Israel
to be numbered, David, through his seer, Gad, is offered three
forms of punishment by God. They are, “Three years’ famine; or
three months to be destroyed before thy foes, while the sword of
thine enemies overtaketh thee; or else three days the sword of the
Lord, even the pestilence in the land, and the angel of the Lord
destroying throughout all the coasts of Israel.” David’s response to
Gad is classic: “I am in a great strait: let me fall now into the hand of
the Lord; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the
hand of man.” 1 Chron.21:12-13.
Though the tendency is to equate the doctrine of “equity” with the
Chancery Courts of England, “equity,” as a notion, is much older
than England as a nation. “Equity,” arguably, prompted King John to
capitulate to the nobility, in assigning to them certain rights under
the Magna Carta in 1215 at Runnymede, as a check, albeit
tentative, against the untrammeled abuse of royal prerogatives.
“Equity” has biblical roots.
One of its earliest usages is found in Psalms 98:8-9, “Let the floods
clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for he
cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the
world, and the people with equity.”
At the outset of the book of Proverbs, we find “equity” also, viz.:
“The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; To know
wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; To
receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity;
to give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and
discretion.” (Prov.1:1-4)
“Equity’s” roots, in fact, predate, the Bible, disappearing into the
daunting mists of Ancient Egypt’s prehistory. “Ma’at,” a teleological
value system, appears to be where law and equity originated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law#cite_note-86.
“Ma’at” is the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law,
morality, and justice. Maat was also personified as a goddess
regulating the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the
deities, who set the order of the universe from chaos at the moment of
creation. The earliest surviving records indicating Maat is the norm
for nature and society, in this world and the next, is recorded during
the Old Kingdom in pyramid texts (c. 2780-2250 BCE).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27at
All the great civil rights victories attained by such legends as
Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit,
Spotswood Robinson and others involved some form of equity, as
the remedy. No civil rights victory not involving equity comes to
mind. Neither am I aware of any civil rights case in which
monetary damages were either sought as a remedy or awarded.
Jack Greenberg, Esq., in his memoir, Crusaders in the Courts,
Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement, (Twelve Tables
Press: NY, 2004) states in the concluding chapter, “A Summation:
Victories and Defeats, Imagining The Future”:
“The foregoing areas [‘Ghetto areas…welfare cases…housing’] are within the domain of what is often termed economic rights. Court action has been
notably unsuccessful in addressing what in large part is an issue of
economic distribution.” (p.553)
The “issue of economic distribution,” is the area wherein Mr. Greenberg, successor to Thurgood Marshall as Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, concedes “defeat.”
Equity is defined as “fairness, or equality.” As used herein, it is also
defined as “1 a: justice according to natural law or right; specif:
freedom from bias or favoritism…2 a: a system of law
originating in the English chancery and comprising a settled
and formal body of legal and procedural rules and doctrines
that supplement, aid, or override common and statute law and
are designed to protect rights and enforce duties fixed by
substantive law…” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary,
11th ed. 2003) p.423.
In its broadest sense, equity is fairness. As a legal system, it is a body
of law that addresses concerns that fall outside the jurisdiction of
Common Law. Equity is also used to describe the money value of
property in excess of claims, liens, or mortgages on the property.
Equity in U.S. law can be traced to England, where it began as a
response to the rigid procedures of England's law courts. Through
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the judges in England's
courts developed the common law, a system of accepting and
deciding cases based on principles of law shaped and developed in
preceding cases. Pleading became quite intricate, and only certain
causes of action qualified for legal redress. Aggrieved citizens found
that otherwise valid complaints were being dismissed for failure to
comply with pleading technicalities. If a complaint was not dismissed,
relief was often denied based on little more than the lack of a
controlling statute or precedent.
Frustrated plaintiffs turned to the king, who referred these
extraordinary requests for relief to a royal court called the Chancery.
The Chancery was headed by a chancellor who possessed the power
to settle disputes and order relief according to his conscience. The
decisions of a chancellor were made without regard for the common
law, and they became the basis for the law of equity.
Equity and the common law represented opposing values in the
English legal system. The common law was the creation of a judiciary
independent from the Crown. Common-law courts believed in the
strict interpretation of statutes and precedential cases.” http://legaldictionary.
thefreedictionary.com/Equity
Those “opposing values” between “common law” and “equity,”
have found a fertile climate in American jurisprudence.
On July 21,2009, in an appeal of an unemployment compensation case, in
Kansas City, Missouri, the Court of Appeals, decried the fact that
under the law the state agency in charge lacked authority “to
consider issues of fairness.” Thus, the court affirmed a decision
authorizing the recoupment of $7280 in unemployment benefits to
the state by the unemployed worker, who did nothing wrong, but be
overpaid.
http://www.courts.mo.gov/page.asp?id=12087&search=Andrea
Harris v. Division Employment Security&dist=Opinions
Western&n=0
In effect, the Missouri Court of Appeals recoiled from the harshness
of its own opinion, and hinted to the legislature that by changing
the word “shall” to “may” it would enable equity in deserving
cases, such as that then under consideration.
Such harshness would be substantially mitigated if judicial discretion as statutorily prescribed, mandated the application of equity to law in civil, criminal, and administrative cases; thereby restoring balance to justice
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
LIBER ABACI...excerpt
"'Liber abaci' is one of the most important books on mathematics of the Middle Ages. Its effect was enormous in disseminating the Hindu number system and methods of algebra throughout Europe. This is the first translation of the Latin manuscript of Liber abaci into a modern language. it is hoped that its availability to historians, mathematicians, and the public in general will make a contribution to their knowledge of this part of their cultural heritage. Mathematics and science are, after all, as much a part of our culture as literature, art, and music. It is as important for a person to know about the classics of mathematics and science as it is to know about the classics of literature and art."
P.3, "Introduction," FIBONACCI'S LIBER ABACI, translation by L. E. Sigler and J. M. Sigler (Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.: 2003)
Fibonacci's Liber Abaci: A Translation into Modern English of Leonardo Pisano's Book of...
www.amazon.com
Elders are repositories of proverbial wisdom
Familial proverbs are far more potent than is usually understood, or credited, and they last a lifetime. Indeed, they are a family's true generational wealth which must be passed on assiduously to the next generation in season and out! Elders are both the bearers and purveyors of such proverbial wisdom. Treasure both them and it!
THOUGHT-EXPERIMENTS' POWER
"It is no accident that the emergence of Newtonian physics in the seventeenth century and of relativity and quantum mechanics in the twentieth should have been both preceded and accompanied by fundamental philosophical analyses of the contemporary research tradition. Nor is it an accident that in both of these periods the so-called thought experiment should have played so critical a role in the progress of research. As I have shown elsewhere, the analytical thought experimentation that bulks so large in the writings of Galileo, Einstein, and Bohr, and others is perfectly calculated to expose the old paradigm to existing knowledge in ways that isolate the root of crisis with a clarity unattainable in the laboratory...
"The preceding remarks should suffice to show how crisis simultaneously loosens the stereotypes and provides the incremental data necessary for a fundamental paradigm shift. Sometimes the shape of the new paradigm is foreshadowed in the structure that extraordinary research has given to the anomaly... More often no such structure is consciously seen in advance. Instead, the new paradigm, or a sufficient hint to permit later articulation, emerges all at once, sometimes in the middle of the night, in the mind of a man deeply immersed in crisis. What the nature of the final stage is--how an individual invents (or finds he has invented) a new way of giving order to data now all assembled--must here remain inscrutable and may be permanently so."
P.88-90, THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS, by Thomas S. Kuhn (U. of Chicago: 1962, 2012)
