Leid Stories—A Big Win Against Corruption and Injustice in Benton Harbor, Michigan—05.09.18

Last Tuesday, May 1, the Rev. Edward Pinkney, a longtime grassroots activist, received some good news—albeit after serving a full 30-month prison sentence on a bogus conviction for election fraud. The Michigan Supreme Court, finally reviewing his case, unanimously ordered his convictions vacated and all charges against him dismissed. Pinkney, a leading voice against corrupt political leadership and massive corporate …

Ask Beatty – 05.22.17

ARE YOU IN A TOXIC RELATIONSHIP? Beatty asked her listeners to reevaluate all of their relationships,  including love, work, family, friends and even acquaintances.  Are these relationships loving, respectful and mutually satisfying or are they at worse, toxic and poisonous? Beatty’s guest today is Katherine Schreiber, co-author of the Truth About  Exercise  Addiction:  Understanding the Dark Side of Thinspiration, writer, …

This Can’t Be Happening – 01.04.17

Sometimes “This Can’t Be Happening!” can refer to a bit of unbelievably good news and today’s show is one of those times. As Bret Grote, legal director of the Abolitionist Law Center, a Pennsylvania prisoner advocacy legal service and one of two attorneys fighting to force the state’s Corrections Dept. to provide effective anti-viral medication to inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal to treat his raging Hepatitis C infection, reports, a federal judge yesterday issued an injunction ordering the prison system to begin treating the internationally known prisoner within 14 days. This is a huge victory, even if the state tries to appeal it and it offers hope that Abu-Jamal, whose death sentence was overturned and replaced with life without parole, will not end up being medically executed by the state through willful neglect.

BRANDON J. DIXON, ANDREW M. DUEHREN , and DAPHNE C. THOMPSON – 11 Arrested in Dining Services Protest

Cambridge Police officers arrested 11 people Friday who were blocking traffic in protest of recent labor negotiations between Harvard and its dining services workers. The 11 people sat in a circle at the intersection of JFK Street and Massachusetts Avenue, blocking traffic, as roughly 100 other people chanting brandishing signs in support of the union lined the streets. After more …

BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and MICHAEL D. SHEAR – Once Skeptical of Executive Power, Obama Has Come to Embrace It

Once a presidential candidate with deep misgivings about executive power, Mr. Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history. Blocked for most of his presidency by Congress, Mr. Obama has sought to act however he could. In the process he created the kind of government neither he nor the …

Professor Francis A. Boyle – The Mass Rape Of The Bosnian Women Was Genocide!

University of Illinois College of Law, Women’s Law Symposium, March 9, 2016 The author won two Orders from the International Court of Justice overwhelmingly in favor of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Yugoslavia to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention on April 8, 1993 and September 13, 1993. …

Leid Stories – 12.08.15

Justice Department Probes Chicago Police, But for ‘Reform,’ Not Justice

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch yesterday announced a Justice Department probe of the Chicago Police Department’s “patterns and practices,” especially regarding its police officers’ use of force, use of lethal force and racial disparities in both. The DOJ investigation comes almost two weeks after Officer Jason Van Dyke was indicted on first-degree-murder charges for killing Laquan McDonald, 17, in a hail of 16 bullets on Oct. 20, 2014, and on the same day that Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez announced that there will be no indictment of Officer George Hernandez, who shot and killed Ronald Johnson, 25, eight days prior to the McDonald shooting. Leid Stories discusses the DOJ investigation.

Infectious Myth – Adam Lankford on Guns – 09.01.15

In Episode 69 David interviews professor Adam Lankford who recently published research, at an American Sociological Society conference, showing that the strongest factor that he studied that correlates with the number of mass shootings in a country is the rate of civilian gun ownership. David and Adam talk about whether mass shootings are important, as they represent only a small fraction of total gun deaths, and what some of the characteristics of gun shooters are, compared to other murderers, and how they differ between the US and other countries.
Some of the surprising statistics is that mass shooters are almost all male, whereas a small but significant fraction of other gun murders are by women. Mass shooters in the US on average kill fewer people, perhaps because of faster and more effective police response. Mass shooters outside the US are more likely to target military facilities, whereas American mass shooters are more likely to target civilian areas, such as schools, shopping malls and movie theaters. Mass shooters do tend to be loners, and they often focus their feelings of despair on a specific group, but this targeting does not appear to be the main reason for their violence.
Professor Adam Lankford’s website is: http://adamlankford.com

Failure To Prosecute Bush For War Crimes Threatens World Peace By Sherwood Ross

President George W. Bush did much to turn the world into the lawless battlefield it is today, and as he has not yet been prosecuted for his crimes, other terrorists will only continue down his path. The late Vincent Bugliosi, the famed Los Angeles county district attorney, wrote, “Bush should be prosecuted, in an American courtroom, for first degree murder …