Far more fascinating than the “jerk” comment, we already know Newt is a jerk, is the fact that the grandson of the 10th President of the United States, John Tyler, is still alive. What’s more, the former president has two grandsons alive today, 220 years after his birth and 171 years after his inauguration. President John Tyler, who died in 1862, had 15 children, more than any other president. Tyler’s son Lyon Gardiner Tyler, born in 1853, fathered Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr. in 1924 and Harrison Tyler in 1928, both alive today at 88 and 84.

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• August 1, 2011 -- Newt gets no respect, buys his Twitter followers
  The self-aggrandizing and mononymous Newt is complaining about the lack of press coverage for his perennial book tour camouflaged as a lackluster presidential campaign. He thinks he deserves some respect because he has 1.3 million Twitter followers. Compare this with Mitt Romney's 63K, Michelle Bachman's 24K, Tim Pawlenty's 42K. Did I forget someone? Does it matter? The point here is that Newt is obviously many times ahead of the other jackals combined, whining, "I have six times as many Twitter...
• June 11, 2011 -- Newt and his plasticine wife
  She goes this long on a single charge....

HRH The Princess Elizabeth in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, April 1945

h/t

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Future generations will look at our age as pivotal in human history and Steve Jobs’ name will be remembered for centuries as one of the great minds who made it possible.

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• December 8, 2010 -- 30 years ago today: In memoriam John Lennon
  October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980...
• December 7, 2010 -- In memoriam Elizabeth Edwards
  ...

In a South Carolina prison sixty-six years ago, guards walked a 14-year-old boy, bible tucked under his arm, to the electric chair. At 5′ 1″ and 95 pounds, the straps didn’t fit, and an electrode was too big for his leg.

The switch was pulled and the adult sized death mask fell from George Stinney’s face. Tears streamed from his eyes. Witnesses recoiled in horror as they watched the youngest person executed in the United States in the past century die.

Now, a community activist is fighting to clear Stinney’s name, saying the young boy couldn’t have killed two girls. George Frierson, a school board member and textile inspector, believes Stinney’s confession was coerced, and that his execution was just another injustice blacks suffered in Southern courtrooms in the first half of the 1900s.

In a couple of cases like Stinney’s, petitions are being made before parole boards and courts are being asked to overturn decisions made when society’s thumb was weighing the scales of justice against blacks. These requests are buoyed for the first time in generations by money, college degrees and sometimes clout.

“I hope we see more cases like this because it help brings a sense of closure. It’s symbolic,” said Howard University law professor Frank Wu. “It’s not just important for the individuals and their families. It’s important for the entire community. Not just for African Americans, but for whites and for our democracy as a whole. What these cases show is that it is possible to achieve justice.”

Some have already achieved justice. Earlier this year, syndicated radio host Tom Joyner successfully won a posthumous pardon for two great uncles who were executed in South Carolina.

A few years ago Lena Baker, a black Georgia maid sent to the electric chair for killing a white man, received a pardon after her family pointed out she likely killed the man because he was holding her against her will.

In the Stinney case, supporters want the state to admit that officials executed the wrong person in June 1944.

Stinney was accused of killing two white girls, 11 year old Betty June Binnicker and 8 year old
Mary Emma Thames, by beating them with a railroad spike then dragging their bodies to a ditch near Acolu, about five miles from Manning in central South Carolina. The girls were found a day after they disappeared following a massive manhunt. Stinney was arrested a few hours later, white men in suits taking him away. Because of the risk of a lynching, Stinney was kept at a jail 50 miles away in Columbia.

Stinney’s father, who had helped look for the girls, was fired immediately and ordered to leave his home and the sawmill where he worked. His family was told to leave town prior to the trial to avoid further retribution. An atmosphere of lynch mob hysteria hung over the courthouse. Without family visits, the 14 year old had to endure the trial and death alone.

Frierson hasn’t been able to get the case out of his head since, carrying around a thick binder of old newspaper stories and documents, including an account from an execution witness.

The sheriff at the time said Stinney admitted to the killings, but there is only his word — no written record of the confession has been found. A lawyer helping Frierson with the case figures threats of mob violence and not being able to see his parents rattled the seventh- grader.

Attorney Steve McKenzie said he has even heard one account that says detectives offered the boy ice cream once they were done.

“You’ve got to know he was going to say whatever they wanted him to say,” McKenzie said.

The court appointed Stinney an attorney — a tax commissioner preparing for a Statehouse run. In all, the trial — from jury selection to a sentence of death — lasted one day. Records indicate 1,000 people crammed the courthouse. Blacks weren’t allowed inside.

The defense called no witnesses and never filed an appeal. No one challenged the sheriff’s recollection of the confession.

“As an attorney, it just kind of haunted me, just the way the judicial system worked to this boy’s disadvantage or disfavor. It did not protect him,” said McKenzie, who is preparing court papers to ask a judge to reopen the case.

Stinney’s official court record contains less than two dozen pages, several of them arrest warrants. There is no transcript of the trial.

The lack of records, while not unusual, makes it harder for people trying to get these old convictions overturned, Wu said.

But these old cases also can have a common thread.

“Some of these cases are so egregious, so extreme that when you look at it, the prosecution really has no case either,” Wu said. “It’s apparent from what you can see that someone was railroaded.”

And sometimes, police under pressure by frightened citizens jumped to conclusions rather than conducting a thorough investigation, Wu said.

Bluffton Today – ‘Crusaders look to right Jim Crow justice wrongs’ by Jeffrey Collins

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• January 25, 2010 -- André Bauer, another dumb right-winger with stupid ‘solutions’
  It's always enlightening when right-wingers' true colors show.  Having been immersed in the right-wing swill I can tell you there is a thick layer of crazy, insecure, paranoid hatred that is abundant below the surface and sometimes (more often recently it seems) some of this putrefaction bubbles to the top becoming olfactible to all. Well here is another story, reported by the Greenville News, that well reveals more of the right-wing cruel daftness we have all become well acquainted with. Sou...

source

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• April 2, 2010 -- At a Catholic church near you?
  ...
• March 21, 2010 -- Documentary film on the pope from Kansas
  I have previously blogged on this guy in Kansas, David Bawden, who claims to be the true Pope of the Catholic Church.  You might remember Thomas Frank devoted a chapter to Bawden in his excellent book What’s the Matter with Kansas? Up-and-coming filmmaker Adam Fairholm is nearing completion of a feature-length documentary about Bawden, who lives in Delia, Kansas with his mother and a seminarian.  Fairholm produced a short documentary on Bawden as a class project three years ago and he decided...
• February 5, 2010 -- Catholics playing the role of victim
  Harry Knox, who serves on President Obama’s faith-based advisory council, was called a "Catholic bigot" by John Boehner this week for saying that Pope Benedict XVI is is "hurting people in the name of Jesus." This phrase "Catholic bigot" has been gaining currency in right-wing Catholic blogs and is applied to anyone who criticizes the Pope, the church or Catholics in general. Much of this whining has been coming from a Thomas Peters who runs the American Papist blog. While bigotry can be de...

Thanks to the American labor movement we…

• Don’t have child labor
• Have the 8 hour work day and paid overtime
• Compensation benefits for workers injured on the job
• Unemployment insurance
• Guaranteed minimum wage
• Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) which enforces workplace safety laws and regulations that have reduced on-the-job fatalities and injuries
• Pensions
• Health care insurance for workers
• Paid sick leave, vacations, and holidays
• The Civil Right Acts and Title VII which outlaws job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin
• Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Lawrence Textile Strike 1912

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On August 24, or nine days before the Kalends of September in the Roman calendar, of the 79th year of the Common Era, Mount Vesuvius erupted, destroying the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Pliny the Younger, in a letter to Tacitus recounts (he refers here to his uncle who raised him, Pliny the Elder, who would die attempting to save a friend and his family from the wrath of Vesuvius),

They consulted together whether it would be most prudent to trust to the houses, which now rocked from side to side with frequent and violent concussions as though shaken from their very foundations; or fly to the open fields, where the calcined stones and cinders, though light indeed, yet fell in large showers, and threatened destruction. In this choice of dangers they resolved for the fields: as resolution which, while the rest of the company were hurried into by their fears, my uncle embraced upon cool and deliberate consideration. They went out then, having pillows tied upon their heads with napkins; and this was their whole defence against the storm of stones that fell round them. It was now day everywhere else, but there a deeper darkness prevailed than in the thickest night; which, however, was in some degree alleviated by torches and other lights of various kinds. They thought proper to go farther down upon the shore to see if they might safely put out to sea, but found the waves still running extremely high, and boisterous. There my uncle, laying himself down upon a sail-cloth, which was spread for him, called twice for some cold water, which he drank, when immediately the flames, preceded by a strong whiff of sulphur, dispersed the rest of the party, and obliged him to rise. He raised himself up with the assistance of two of his servants, and instantly fell down dead; suffocated, as I conjecture, by some gross and noxious vapour, having always had a weak throat, which was often inflamed. As soon as it was light again, which was not till the third day after this melancholy accident, his body was found entire, and without any marks of violence upon it, in the dress in which he fell, and looking more like a man asleep than dead.

Pompeii was accidentally discovered in 1749 and archeologists found a city frozen in time. In 1860 archeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli first realized that the many cavities he encountered in the ash were left by the decomposed humans. He decided to inject subsequently discovered cavities with plaster recreating the forms of the unfortunate Pompeiians.

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• December 4, 2009 -- Pompeii ruins now on Google Street View
  You can now "walk" down an ancient Pompeian street with Google Street View. Pompeii, near the modern city of Naples, is an ancient Roman city which was buried by pumice and ash by a volcanic eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. and remained buried for almost 1700 years until its rediscovery in 1748. Pompeii is an excellent example of Roman life in the early Empire, frozen in time. Enjoy... ...

Gettysburg Address from Adam Gault on Vimeo.

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In 1967 CBS aired a controversial episode of CBS Reports on a taboo subject at the time entitled, The Homosexuals. It was hosted by Mike Wallace and was the first national network documentary dealing with the topic of homosexuality.  Originally proposed in 1964, it took three years, two producers and multiple revisions to complete.

It is fascinating to see how far American culture has come when watching this documentary. There is exclusive attention to gay men. At no point in the documentary are lesbian women mentioned. The otherworldly approach to the gay community is interesting. Homosexuality is explicitly and implicitly treated as an aberration, a condition, a desease, a syndrome or even a handicap. There is constant talk of treatment and cure and what parents can do to prevent it. The gay-rights movement was viewed as a conspiracy, a kind of mafia, a cosa nostra, as clannish.

Mike Wallace cites some statistics of the time.  According to a 1967 CBS News survey, 90% of the American public viewed homosexuality as an illness, with two-thirds viewing homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear and one-in-ten viewing homosexuals with hatred. A majority of Americans favored legal punishment even for homosexual acts even performed in private.

At one point Wallace states,

The average homosexual, if there be such, is promiscuous. He is not interested in nor capable of a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage.

To get an idea of the disproportionate approach of the law at the time, a Judge James Brackston Craven of the Federal District Court in Charlotte, North Carolina appears saying,

Is there any public purpose served by a possible 60 year maximum or even 5 year minimum imprisonment of the occasional or one time homosexual without treatment? And if so, what is it? Are homosexuals twice as dangerous to society as second degree murderers? Is there any good reason why a person convicted of a single homosexual act with another adult may be imprisoned six times as long as an abortionist, twice as long as an armed bank robber, 730 times as long as the public drunk?

Warren Adkins, who is in fact the prominent gay rights activist Jack Jichols, founder of the Mattachine Society, appears early saying,

The innermost aspects of a person’s personality is his sexual orientation, and I can’t imagine myself giving this up, and I don’t think most other people who are sure of their sexuality, whether they’re homosexuals or heterosexuals, can imagine giving that up either.

The great Gore Vidal is also interviewed offering a metacultural view,

We have a sexual ethic which is the joke of the world. We are laughed at in every country of the world for our attitudes toward sex. The United States is living out some mad Protestant 19th century dream of human behavior. Instead of saying, aren’t we wicked because we are at the highest divorce rate? Or aren’t we wicked because men like to go to bed with men and women like to go bed with women? Why not begin by saying that our basic values are all wrong. The idea of marriage is obsolete in our society. Everybody knows it. There are natural manogamers. There are people who indeed enjoy one another’s company, but can you imagine a man and a woman who are told that for 60 years they are going to have to live together and have sex only with one another? This is nonsense. Why not began by accepting the fact of what human beings really are, men and women, which is we are open. We have something André Gide referred to as “floating sensuality.” We can be aroused by this, by that, not necessarily by men, not necessarily by women. So let us begin with the reality of human relations and not start talking about moral fibre because we are not living out this mad 19th century dream of that everybody, we must, of Noah’s Ark and tombs, one male and one female and for 60 years in one another’s company. This is what’s at fault. This is breaking down. I think the so called breaking of the moral fibre of the country that these commentators speak of is one of the healthiest things that has begun to happen.

Wallace closes the documentary with the following,

The dilemma of the homosexual, told by the medial profession he is sick, by the law that he is a criminal, shunned by employers, rejected by heterosexual society, incapable of a fulfilling relationship with a woman and for that matter with a man. At the center of his life he remains anonymous, a displaced person, an outsider.

44 years later, we can look at all of this as an old attitude largely dead thanks to the efforts of so many men and women, gay and straight, who have tirelessly worked at moving the culture.

ht brain pickings

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• August 6, 2011 -- A century of Lucille Ball
  The late Lucille Ball was born 100 years ago today. In an 1980 interview with People magazine she was asked what she thought about gay rights. Her response, It's perfectly all right with me. Some of the most gifted people I've ever met or read about are homosexual. How can you knock it? What an amazing woman and one of the best entertainers of the last century!...
• August 5, 2011 -- President bars certain haters from entering the country
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