Blog entry

Held Suspect

Terrance Heath — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:28:08 -0400

I don't remember how old I was the first time it happened. I couldn't have been more than ten years old. We were in Philadelphia — my mother, my younger sister, and I — visiting my great grandfather on my mother's side of the family. For my sister and me, it was our first time traveling that far from home, and our first time in a city like Philadelphia. Everything amazed us, from the size of the buildings, downtown to the narrow little houses on my great great-grandfather's street, with no yards to speak of and no space between them; so different from our suburban home back in Augusta, GA.

Even going shopping was different. Instead of driving to the store, my mom pushed her grandfather's folding cart a few blocks to a store a few blocks away, and we followed her. The store was a wonder unto itself; on the outside a rowhouse like the one my great grandfather lived in, but on the inside there were long, narrow shelves holding food, toys, and other items we'd never seen before.

Our mother had told us time and time again not to touch anything whenever we went shopping, but we couldn't help it this time. We picked up toys and candy and other items, exclaiming to each other to "come look at this." Until it happened.

I heard the shopkeeper before I saw her.

"Put that back!" a female voice shouted. "What are you doing in here?! You better not take anything, 'cause I'm watching you." I looked up and into the anger-twisted face of a large, angry white woman.

We too much in shock and too frightened to say anything. I don't remember what else she said, but I'm pretty sure she called us theives and threatened to call the police. I looked around for out mother, who hadn't realized that we were no longer behind her. I didn't see her for a moment, and then she appeared, no doubt drawn back to the front of the store by the commotion. She flashed us a look, and apologized to the shopkeeper (who was still giving us an angry look as we left the store with our purchases). It wasn't until we ere out of the store that our mother explained.

The shopkeeper thought that we were stealing from her store. We didn't understand until mom made it clear: the shopkeeper assumed because we were two black children we were going to steal from her store, and that's why she treated us like criminals.

It was a lesson I never forgot, and one that's been repeated throughout my life. I thought about that first time when I read this article from CNN's Black in America series, about how being black automatically means being suspect.

For Anthony Williams, being black in America means being a suspect.

The 39-year-old former Marine said he's never had any trouble with the law, other than a few traffic violations, and leads a middle-class life in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.

But the AT&T customer care representative said he still gets nervous when he hears that police are looking for a 6-foot-tall black man, "because I know I fit that description."

"I worry I will get pulled over and some police officer decides to shoot first and ask questions later," Williams wrote.

Police recently questioned him in his own driveway after getting complaints that a man was walking in neighbors' yards, Williams said. iReport.com: Tell us what you thought of "Black in America."

"You never know what to expect when you get pulled over by police, and that's how it is when you're black," he said.

I fit the description then, and I've fit the description since. The next time I can remember is when I was in college. I was walking back from class, on my way to the dining hall for dinner, dressed like most of my friends dressed on our predominantly white campus, in torn jean and a t-shirt. I was halfway across the parking lot of one of residence halls when it happened.

I'd seen the police car when I was waiting to cross the street. I didn't give it much thought, because I wasn't doing anything. But the officers had paid a lot more attention to me than I had to them. They turned into the parking lot, and stopped right in front of me as I walked across.

One of the officers got out of the car and began asking me questions. Was I a student? Where was I going? Where was I coming from? Could I show him my student I.D.? I did, and he told me that there had been some cars broken into in that lot, and some break-ins at the nearby dorms, and that I fit the description of someone seen in the area around the time of the earlier crimes. And then more questions. Did I know anything about the robberies? Did I know who might be responsible? Did I walk through that lot every day? (Not after that day, I didn't.)

Eventually, the officer finished his questions and let me walk away. They sat parked in the car as I went on. Keeping an eye on me, I'm sure. I thought about how differently that situation might have ended, because I knew even then the truth in what Anthony Williams said: "You never know what to expect when you get pulled over by the police, and that's how it is when you're black." This was before the Amadou Diallo shooting, before Malice Green, and before Abner Louima. But being from the south, I heard stories, and I knew that I couldn't completely trust the police, even if I'd done nothing wrong; not so much because of the police a whole, but because I didn't know who — what kind of person — was behind the uniform, and what they might project upon me as a black man. I'd been trained without even know it on how to respond to the police; saying "Yes, officer," and "No, officer," and offering only the information that was requested, and then only if they had a right to ask for it and I didn't have a right refuse. Ask the questions I had a right to ask, but never show anger or disrespect, even if they do.

iii

I knew even though it was years before my father tried to tell me what law enforcement might both projected upon me and then respond to whether I reflected it back to them or not.

I was in college at the time. I’d been home for a weekend visit, and was heading back to school — at the University of Georgia, in Athens, GA. As I made several trips back and forth, loading up the car, my dad sat on the couch, watching television. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I caught my dad looking at me with what appeared to be concern, as though he was trying to decide whether to say something to me about it.

Finally, I finished loading the car, and said my goodbyes. But my dad stopped me before I could make it out the door and finally spoke his concern.

“Son,” he asked, “is that what you’re wearing to drive back to Athens?”

I was wearing my basic school “uniform” at that time: a ripped pair of old, faded jeans, and a old t-shirt.

“Um, yeah,” I said.

My dad then breathed a sigh that seemed a mix of resignation, exasperation, and trepidation over what he was about to tell me — what he had to tell me, really.

“Son,” he said, “You are going to be driving through a lot of southern counties. Now, I’m not saying you’re going to do anything wrong. But you are a young black man, and if you get pulled over by one of these southern sheriffs or policemen, they are going to take one look at you and get the wrong idea. They’re not going to treat you like they would a white boy dressed like that.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to argue with him, and say that stuff like that may have happened when he was my age, but it certainly didn’t happen anymore. Instead, I unpacked some clothes, and changed into a pair of khakis and a buttoned-down oxford, which met with dad’s approval.

I was still thinking about my dad’s words when I got back to UGA. After unloading the car and carrying everything up to my room, I turned on the television. At some point, the news came on and I saw this.

"This" was the Rodney King beating.

Since then there has been Sean Bell. There has been Kathryn Johnston. There has been Robert Davis.

There has been Jessie Lee Williams. There has been Albert Mosley. There has been Anthony Carty. There has been the Jena Six.There have been many.

And now, half a year after his death, there is Baron Pikes.

Baron "Scooter" Pikes, a 21-year-old sawmill worker, had tried to run from police in Winnfield, Louisiana, when they tried to arrest him on an outstanding warrant for cocaine possession.

But a coroner's report found Pikes had been handcuffed and on the ground when first hit with the Taser and might have been dead before the last two shocks from the 50,000-volt device were delivered.

...In the year since Winnfield police received Tasers, officers have used them 14 times, according to police records -- with 12 of the instances involving black suspects. Ten of the 14 incidents involved Nugent, who had no public disciplinary record.

Police said Pikes told officers he suffered from asthma and had been using PCP and crack cocaine.

But Dr. Randolph Williams, the Winn Parish medical examiner, said he found no sign of drug use in the autopsy and no record of asthma in Pikes' medical history.

And for every Baron Pikes there are hundreds, even thousand of men like Michael Tillman.

Michael Tillman was 20, with a 3-year-old daughter and an infant son, when he was brought into the Area 2 police station on Chicago's South Side for questioning. His mother, Jean Tillman, says that although he had gotten into some trouble with the law as a youngster, he had been on the straight-and-narrow, working as a janitor and paying his bills, since he and his girlfriend had their first child. That was July 22, 1986.

He hasn't been home since.

Tillman is one of at least 24 African-American men that the People's Law Office in Chicago claims are still serving sentences for crimes they say they confessed to only after enduring hours of torture at the hands of Chicago police officers under Commander Jon Burge between 1972 and 1992. Although 10 of Burge's victims have been pardoned or given new trials after their illegally obtained confessions were exposed, the vast majority of the 100-plus cases have yet to be reviewed by the state of Illinois. Those men have either served out their sentences, died in custody or, like Tillman, continue to live their lives behind bars, hoping that one day they will have a fair trial.

According to Tillman's 1986 trial testimony, when he arrived at the Area 2 police station in the predawn hours of July 21, 1986, Detectives Ronald Boffo and Peter Dignan took him to a second-floor interrogation room and pressed him for information about the murder of 42-year-old Betty Howard, whose body was found the day prior in the apartment building Tillman oversaw. When he told the detectives that he knew nothing about the murder, he says that Boffo and Dignan, along with three other officers, became abusive. Without ever reading him his Miranda rights, he says they handcuffed him to the wall, hit him in the face and punched him in the stomach until he vomited blood. During the course of what appeared to be three days, rotating pairs of officers brought him to the railroad tracks behind the station and held a gun to his head, suffocated him repeatedly with thick plastic bags, poured soda up his nose and forced him into Dumpsters outside of the apartment building, ordering him to search through the rubbish for a murder weapon until, according to Detective John Yucaitis, Tillman confessed to the crime.

According to Tillman's mother, she, her husband and an attorney they called for counsel were all denied access to her son during his three days of interrogation.

There will be more.

How can there not be? A black man reporting on crime is held suspect.

THE police officer had not asked my name or my business before grabbing my wrists, jerking my hands high behind my back and slamming my head into the hood of his cruiser.

“You have no right to put your hands on me!” I shouted lamely.

“This is a high-crime area,” said the officer as he expertly handcuffed me. “You were loitering. We have ordinances against loitering.”

Last month, while talking to a group of young black men standing on a sidewalk in Salisbury, N.C., about harsh antigang law enforcement tactics some states are using, I had discovered the main challenge to such measures: the police have great difficulty determining who is, and who is not, a gangster.

My reporting, however, was going well. I had gone to Salisbury to find someone who had firsthand experience with North Carolina’s tough antigang stance, and I had found that someone: me.

A black woman with a big purse can't even go shopping. (Or, to quote EnVogue, "can't look without being watched.")

About ten minutes into my search for the perfect boot my sister comes to me and says that she has to go to the restroom. I told her okay and that I’d watch Erica. By then I had zoned in on a pair of 9 ½ red Kenneth Cole boots and was searching for an employee to get the left shoe so I could try them both on. I told Erica that “Big TT” needed her fashion advice while “Little TT” handled her business.

So while Erica and I weighing the pros and cons of the red Kenneth Cole boot my sister comes running up to me looking both very frantic, frustrated, and upset. She says that we need to go and that I shouldn’t spend my money here.

Now my sister Jorjanna is the sweetest person, aside from my Grandmother that I know, maybe almost to a fault. She’s always cheerful and happy, yeah, nothing like her big sister, lol. So for me to see her so upset I wanted to know why.

She said that she didn’t think anything of it at first but that when we separated and were looking at shoes on our own, that she was asked more than four times by various employees if she needed help, to which she politely replied no. However, when she went to the back of the store to use the public restroom, one of the employees came in after her and my sister overheard the tail end of a conversation on a walkie-talking wherein the employee said “Who? The Black girl that just went into the restroom,” before realizing that my sister heard her. When my sister finished in the restroom, she came out and realized that she forgot to put on her lipgloss and as she reached in her purse and turned around to go back into the restroom the same employee who just asked if she needed any help accosted her yet again. By then, my sister said she got it and she quickly made her way back to where my niece and I were.

While my sister is telling me what happened three of the employees were standing a few feet away watching her. This angered her and so my sister said, “Yeah, I’m talking about you.”

To media figures like Ann Coulter, Toby Keith and Bill O'Reilly, even lynching is a joke. And for all of the above and more, cotton-picking black folks should be grateful.

Meanwhile, the KKK distributes fliers in Virginia, claiming residents requested information; students at a New Jersey middle school are assigned a project defending slavery; the vice president relaxes at a hunting lodge that flies the confederate battle flag; nooses start appearing at various college campuses, and even re-appear in Jena, LA, and the discussion ends up being about whether hanging nooses is just a prank; an all-white panel of journalists debates whether Barrack Obama is black enough.

Is it any wonder that racism literally makes us sick? (And when it does, we get substandard treatment?)

Years after that conversation with my dad, I was held suspect again, in another police encounter that could easily have gone south.

Several years later, I was living in Washington, D.C., and found myself driving home late one night. I was giving a fraternity brother of mine, also a black male, a ride home after a late night fraternity event. My car wasn’t in the greatest shape. I’d been in a traffic accident just a few days before, and hadn’t taken it to be repaired because I needed to drive it that weekend.

We were driving past the Capitol when we got pulled over. I saw the flashing lights, and as soon as I heard the siren I pulled over. By then, I knew the drill. Don’t argue with the officers. Don’t get out of the car unless they tell you to. Get out of the car if they tell you to. Answer any questions with “Yes, officer,” or “No, officer,” give them any information they ask for, and maybe — just maybe — you won’t have any trouble. Still, what happened then was a bit surreal.

As the officer came up to my window, I said a silent prayer that my fraternity brother — Neal, who was known for having a sharp tongue and a willingness let it loose — would keep cool. The officer asked for my license and registration. She asked if I knew why she stopped me, and I said no. She said it was because one of my tail lights wasn’t working, and agreed with me when I said it was probably a result of the accident I had a few days earlier. She seemed to believe me when I told her I didn’t know about the tail light.

I thought maybe she’d give me a ticket or a warning, and give my documents back to me. Instead, she walked back to her car and got on her radio. I wasn’t worried, because it wasn’t like I had an outstanding warrant or anything more than a couple of unpaid parking tickets. But while she was in her car, another police car pulled up, and two more officers got out.

In my rear view mirror, I saw the officer who stopped us get back out of her car, at the same time that I saw yet another police car pull up. At this point, I started to get nervous — after all there we were, two black males, driving through D.C. at 4 a.m., in a banged up car, with the police units and six police officers now at the scene. Depending on any number of factors, including what we said or did, it might not matter if we’d done anything wrong.

“Is this your vehicle?” the officer asked me when she arrived back at my window. “We’ve had some car thefts reported in this area.”

I assured her that it was my car, and she stepped away for a moment to confer with one of the other officers now milling about the scene. At that moment, a police van showed up, and stopped alongside the passenger side of the car. Neal, who hadn’t said a word up to this point, looked at the van, looked at me and just said “What the…”

I finished his sentence silently, in my mind.

The officer, at this point, was back at my window. “Sir,” she asked me, “do you have the title to the vehicle.”

How many people keep the title to their car in the car itself? I didn’t know, but I knew that I did have the title in the car. I knew just where it was. It was in my briefcase, which was in the trunk of the car. I knew that in order to retrieve the title, I’d have to get out of the car — and with at least eight officers now pretty much surrounding us — walk over to the back of the car, open the trunk, open the briefcase, and retrieve the title.

What if, I thought, just one of these officers thought I was reaching for a gun at any point in that series of steps? That I had no gun — had never even owned one, in fact — was and would have been meaningless in that moment. It wouldn’t have mattered.

...I told the officer that I had the title, and that it was in my briefcase, in the trunk of the car. I told her I’d have to get out of the car, open the trunk, and open the briefcase to get the title out and show it to her. She gave me the go ahead, and I walked around to the back of the car, opened the trunk, opened the briefcase, and got the title. I don’t remember if the officer followed me, and I didn’t look to see if any of the officers had their hands on their weapons. I couldn’t.

I showed the officer the title. She looked it over, handed it back to me, and told me to get back in the car. The van drove away, and one of other police cars drove away. Finally, the officer came back to my window.

“I’m giving you a warning,” she said. “You take him home, get yourself home, and then I don’t want to see you driving this car again in this condition.”

I assured her that she wouldn’t.

“Alright,” she said. “Have a good one.”

I rolled up my window, and started the engine. To this day, I am eternally grateful that Neal waited until the windows were rolled up and we were driving away from the police officers to exclaim — well out of their earshot — “Have a good one? F___ you!”

I laughed, out of sheer relief, but I understood that there was a moment back there when we could have been “another Rodney King.” We could have been “another Malice Green.” We could have been Amadou Diallo, or even Abner Louima.

Almost thirty years after that trip to Philadelphia, and my first experience of being held suspect because of my race, I am a father to two sons, who will grow up to be black men in the same world that I did; a world that has changed very much, and very little since then. The youngest is seven months, and it will be a few years before he knows anything about the notion of — or the implications of — race. My oldest on the other hand, is five (or five-and-three-quarters, as he tells anyone who asks), and the day is approaching faster than I'd like to think when I will have to find a way to tell him what I've experience, in a way that may help him avoid some of what I've experience, but that doesn't chip away the confidence that makes me smile with a fatherly pride I understand better now than I did when I saw the same in my dad.

Part of me must learn to see them -- however much it pains me -- not with a father's eyes, but as my father saw me in that moment before I drove back to school, with the eyes of the rest of the world. It's necessary, in order to spare them pain, to somehow let them know that there are people in the world who will not see them as I see them. There are people who will see them and not see their intelligence, the loving home and family they came from, their potential or their personhood. There are people who will project upon them what they believe about black men, and about black people, and respond to that even if that's not who my sons are, even though I will teach them that they do not need to reflect back all that's projected upon them. And some of those people will be in uniform.

I will have to teach them something else that my parents taught me, which Michael Eric Dyson articulated commentary written for the CNN series, about himself and his brother.

And he is not alone. There are thousands of black men who are rotting in jail cells who have done nothing to merit incarceration. And even when they get in trouble, a great number of black men go to prison for nonviolent drug offenses. Often, crippling racial profiling and suspicion of black men put them on a path to prison, while white males who commit similar offenses are arrested and convicted in far smaller numbers.
The point is not affirmative action for black thugs. The point is that white males often get second, third and fourth chances for reform -- either because they weren't suspected to begin with, or they are given far lighter sentences and far more favorable treatment -- while black males are severely punished for even relatively small infractions.

Even though I grew up in an integrated neighborhood, went to an integrated school, my parents made sure I understood that I couldn't do everything some of my friends might do, and expect the same treatment if I got into trouble. It's a knowledge that probably kept me out of trouble, because it made me think twice about going along on what might be considered a "youthful prank" for my friends, but would be treated much differently in my case.

In college, I had a white roommate who had what you might call an "all-American" look (which meant, and often still means white, preferably blond and blue-eyed). His father was a bank president back in his hometown, so he came from a well-off, well-connected family. He drove around in a 1968 red Mustang convertible, dressed fashionably, and always had money. We became friends, but I was selective about where I went and what I did with him.

It snowed at the beginning of winter semester that year, and in Georgia that meant that classes were canceled for as long as the snow remained on the ground. By the second day, my roommate was board and decided to visit friends in Atlanta. He invited me to go along, but I declined, deciding that I'd probably end up over-extended financially if I made that trip, and if I ended up not having a good time I'd be stuck until he decided to head back.

The next day, I got a phone call from someone looking for him. It was from a bonding agency. It took a moment for me to realize what that meant, and I asked if he was in any trouble. The woman on the phone just said, "I'm sure he'll tell you when you see him."

He did.

Apparently, while in Atlanta my roommate had attempted to shoplift over $1000 in clothing from a major department store. Through tears he told me about being arrested, handcuffed, and locked in a cell with some "awful people," until his parents bailed him out. While I listened to him, I quietly considered that those "awful people" who were his cell-mates for a few hours probably looked a lot more like me than like him, and if I'd gone along for the trip and gotten arrested with him my folks could not have bailed me out quite so easily or quickly, if at all.

Fast-forward a bit, and his parents hired the best, and most well-connected lawyer their money and could buy -- and their connections could get them access to -- to deal with my roommates impending court date. The court date came, and the sentence was community service. I don't remember what the community service was, but at some point my roommate felt like venting and complained to me about it. I listened quietly, again, but with a bit more anger, because I knew that if I were in his shoes not only would I not have been bailed out, but there would be no well-connected lawyer, and almost certainly no sentence of community service.

I knew what my parents had taught me, that I can't do everything my friends do and get away with it. Or, more bluntly, I can't do what a white boy like my roommate might do, and expected to get treated as a white boy like my roommate got treated. If I got caught, my story would have quite a different ending. I had to know that, I guess, in order to have the future my parents wanted for me.

I took my five-year-old to see a movie a few weeks ago; one he'd been asking to see for weeks prior. As we were settling into our seats, the previews began, and one of them was the preview for The Express about Ernie Davis -- the first African American to win the Heisman trophy -- and his experience with racism during a trip south to play in the Cotton Bowl. I squirmed in my seat, realizing that up to that point, the history of segregation and the struggle against it had not yet been part of my son's education, which focused more on basic things like learning the alphabet, learning to count, etc. As we watched the preview, which spelled out the central conflict in the movie, without making it too explicit, I wondered how much he absorbed, and what he thought about it. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to discuss it with him afterwards. Not yet, I thought, let him be a child a little longer.

And later, at home, we watched "Barney," a show he has since declared himself to have outgrown. The episode explored the roles of various people in the community — teachers, doctors, fire fighters, and police officers — and the refrain sung for each job was "the (fill in the blank) is a friend of mine."

When he asked us what the police officer's job is, we answered that the police officers are there to keep people safe. And they are. But I know that at some point both he and our youngest son will have to understand that there are some people who will hold them suspect because of their race, and that some of those people will wear police uniforms, and will be armed with batons, guns, tasers, and more. And they will have to know -- and know at a young age, as I learned on that trip to Philadelphia long ago -- how to carry themselves in a way that that may be less likely to cause an encounter to end badly, or tragically, when or if they are held suspect.

Perhaps they will have to learn to hold others suspect, and potentially guilty of holding them suspect, until proven innocent. Part of me knows they will, and the part of me that is their father dreads it. Because it will mean the death of at least a small part of the innocence they have a right to hold on to for a bit longer, though they really can't afford to.

Weekend Watchdog Wrap-up

Terrance Heath — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:08:22 -0400

This Sunday was a real head-scratcher for the Watchdog. Depending on how you look a it we 0-for-3, because none of our questions were asked. On the other hand, maybe we 2-for-3, since two of our questions were answered even though they weren't asked.

On ABC's This Week George Stephanopolous turned to Red Markey, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, during the debate about offshore drilling. But instead of asking our question, George asked about exploration and drilling on public lands, giving Markey a chance to pooh-pooh the idea. Ironically, doing so, Markey underscored that exploration comes before drilling, and we don't find oil everywhere we look.

MARKEY: … Let me give you an example. Over half the leases in the Gulf of Mexico are Out in the deep water. We drilled 296 Wells in deep water. Only 21% ended up having any commercially available [oil].

It then fell to economist Jeffrey Sachs to remind the panel that any talk about offshore drilling is really a distraction from the problem Americans are facing today.

SACHS: That's why this is a distraction. It's 10 to 12 years off. A small amount compared to the world balance. … My point is that if we're going to get serious about this we have to do the arithmetic, and the President got us distracted in a useless debate about the offshore, continental shelf. This is a tiny part of the puzzle.

On Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer didn't get around to asking McCain advisor Carly Fiorina our question about whether offshore drilling will really impact gas prices, but Gov. Bill Richardson answered it anyway.

Gov. RICHARDSON: Well, I was energy secretary and I can tell you that every bipartisan administration has opposed offshore drilling for pristine reasons, the ecosystem, but also the fact that you're not going to get any of this oil out offshore for the next 10 years and prices won't go down till the year 2030 according to the Energy Information Agency, which is part of the Department of Energy.

Now, secondly, what we have here is Senator McCain is basically following the policies of George Bush: drill, drill, drill. Now, the oil companies have millions of acres of leases in America and continental US that they need to drill in, but we lead a long-term solution and face the facts, and that is renewable energy, that is fuel conservation, 50 miles per gallon fuel efficiency. We need dramatic efforts to promote conservation, we need dramatic efforts to generate new technology in the areas of solar wind and biomass. The solution is not drill, drill…

Fox News Sunday was the one unquestionable disappointment, since our question to Tom Daschle didnt' get asked or answered. But two out of three ain't bad at all, depending on wheher we're talking questions or answers.

Weekend Watchdog

Terrance Heath — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:38:45 -0400

Every Friday in our Weekend Watchdog feature, we post suggested questions for scheduled Sunday guests. You can add your own questions in the comment thread. We'll also include contact information for the shows, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked. We'll post a wrap-up here on the blog on Monday.

The watchdog is back, and it looks like this week's line-up on the Sunday shows gives us a perfect chance to sink our teeth into some of the slipperiest questions of the past week. That is, if any of them toss us a bone in the form of a relevant question or two.What's on your list? What questions do you want to hear asked and — more importantly — answered this Sunday? We've got a few of our own in mind.

For Red Cavaney, President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute (ABC, This Week): Your organization estimates that it will take at least seven to 10 years before offshore drilling provides Americans with any oil.

Is drilling really the fastest way to relieve the economic squeeze Americans are feeling at the pump?

For Carly Fiorina, (CBS, Face the Nation): You've pointed out that the price of oil has doubled since John McCain began talking about our energy problems.

It's estimated that the amount of usable oil thought to be off our coastlines would only reduce the price of oil by $2.25 per barrel, and gas by 2.5 cents per gallon, by 2025. How does drilling significantly lower the price of oil, or gasoline?

For Tom Daschle (Fox New Sunday): Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the controlling health care costs is our biggest economic challenge, and the same week we're heard reports that health care costs are driving more seniors in to bankruptcy.

As the co-author of a new book about our health care crisis, do you agree with Ben Bernanke's assessment?

***

Contact info for the Sunday shows

Contact ABC's This Week by clicking here

Email CBS' Face The Nation at ftn@cbsnews.com

Email Fox News Sunday at FNS@foxnews.com

Contact NBC's Meet The Press by clicking here

Remember: always be brief, polite and respectful when contacting the media, so our voices will be taken seriously.

Weekend Watchdog: Open Thread

Terrance Heath — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:52:03 -0400

It's that time again. Time for the watch to patrol the Sunday shows, on the look-out for a relevant question — should one get through. Which ones should get through? Make your suggestions and pose your questions in the comments, and when the guests are announced this evening we may pick some of your questions for the Watchdog. Come back and check out our usual Weekend Watchdog post to see who's on the guest list and whether your question is on the Watchdog list.

If you've read the headlines, you know what's probably going to be the main topic — if not the topic — on just about every show. The presidential race is down to two candidates, and the debate has begun.

But a quick review of the headlines shows that there are some other big stories out there that somebody on at least one of the Sunday shows ought to be asked about.

A few come to mind right away:

Last week, Scott McClellan became the most recent ex-Bush aide to "tell all," and told us that Bush was not "open and forthright" on Iraq and rushed into an unnecessary war. This week, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee reported that, in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, both Bush and Cheney made claims they knew weren't supported by intelligence. This comes months after a report by the military's Joint Forces Command concluded — after pouring over 600,000 Iraqi documents — that there was "no smoking gun" to back up Bush's claims about a Saddam/Al-Qaeda link, and after the Pentagon buried the report.
Bear Stearns has finally been sold, and Countrywide's sale can move forward now. But we're still reeling from the crisis they've wrought. Americans' net worth has plummeted, to the tune of $1.7 trillion, and more than 1 million homes are now in foreclosure. Where's our relief?
In the meantime, is the next bubble about to burst while we're still recovering from the last one? George Soros thinks so. He says there's a "bubble in the making" in oil and other commodities, and there may well be. Federal regulators disclosed an oil trading probe last week. This week, we learned that hedge funds and Wall Street investors are buying massive amounts of oil contracts thanks to some handy loopholes in federal trading limits. How messy is that bubble going to be when it pops?

That should get us started. What's on your mind? If you could ask one question on "Face the Nation," "This Week," or "Meet the Press" what would you ask? Let 'em rip in the comments. And, as always, keep things polite and respectful, as practice for when you contact the shows with your question.

Weekend Watchdog Wrap-Up

Terrance Heath — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:01:26 -0400

It looks like the watchdog did a little better this weekend, almost going 1-in-3 when — thanks to Sen. Chris Dodd bringing it up on Fox News Sunday — Sen. Jon Kyl faced a question about John McCain flip-flopping on withdrawing from Iraq, and revising is deadline from 100 years down to just five years.

Sen. Dodd effectively countered Chris Wallace's attempt to put some distance between President Bush and John McCain.

WALLACE: Senator Dodd, in a speech on Friday, Barack Obama mentioned Bush and McCain in the same sentence 10 times in 10 minutes.

Given how many times that McCain has broken with President Bush over torture, earlier on how to wage the war in Iraq, and also a multiplicity of domestic issues, is that really fair to tie McCain to President Bush?

DODD: Of course it is. I mean, this is — again, we've been — embraced the policies on tax policy, on the war in Iraq, on the critical issues, on major economic issues. John McCain is very much a supporter of where President Bush has been and where he is today.

In fact, he's changed his view on some of these major issues in the last number of weeks, on tax policy, on the war in Iraq the other day, announcing he's now all of a sudden discovered that we ought to be out of there by 2013.

That's a very different John McCain than even a few days ago. So clearly, I think associating the policies of this failed administration in foreign policy with a candidate who embraces the same view is very legitimate.

Which forced Sen. Kyle to do a bit of fancy footwork, in an attempt to put some daylight between Sen. McCain and President Bush. Unfortunately, Chris Wallace quickly moved on from there, failing to ask about Sen. Kyl's criticism of Sen. Barrack Obama for suggesting the same Iraq withdrawal deadline long before Sen. McCain came around.

Nevermind the other obvious question: Now that Sen. McCain has finally caught up with a Democratic candidate's position on Iraq, does the implication follow that Republicans — in order to win votes — actually have to run away from their standard bearer for the last 7.5 years, and take positions resembling those Democrats have held all along?

Okay, okay. This is Fox News we're talking about, after all. But a watchdog can dream. Right?

Weekend Watchdog

Terrance Heath — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:55:31 -0400

For Senator Joe Lieberman (ABC's This Week): You recently traveled to Iraq with Seen. John McCain. Seen. McCain recently revised his estimate for victory in Iraq down from 100 years to a deadline of bringing American troops home by 2013 — just five years from now.

Based on what you saw in Iraq, what would it take get our troops out of Iraq and back home by 2013, and how soon would we have to start withdrawing troops to have even most of them out of Iraq in five years?

For Senator Jon Kyl (Fox News Sunday): You've criticized Seen. Barack Obama for suggesting that American troops could be withdrawn from Iraq by 2013.

Have you changed your mind on the feasibility of bringing American troops home by 2013 now that John McCain has proposed a timeline to do so?

For former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (CNN's, Late Edition): A year ago you told Roll Call, "The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail, and so far it's working for us."

Considering Republican's most recent loss in Mississippi, and concerns that Republicans could lose 20 more seats in Congress, do you still think being obstructionist is working for Republicans?

***

Email CBS' Face The Nation at ftn@cbsnews.com

Contact ABC's This Week by clicking here

Remember: always be brief, polite and respectful when contacting the media, so our voices will be taken seriously.

Weekend Watchdog: Open Thread

Terrance Heath — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:17:15 -0400

We're in the process of trying out some new approaches to the Weekend Watchdog. One of them is this open thread, where we hope longtime "watchdogs" and the uninitiated will engage in sorting out what questions about which issues and news items from the past week this Sunday's yet-to-be announced guests should face.

Make your suggestions and pose your questions in the comments, and when the guests are announced this evening we may pick some of your questions for the Watchdog. Come back and check out our usual Weekend Watchdog post to see who's on the guest list and whether your question is on the Watchdog list. (If it is, you might contact the shows to suggest they ask your question. Invite your friends to join in. The more the merrier.)

Some of the more interesting items from this week's news include:

A stunning loss for Republicans in a Mississippi special Congressional election, that has the party worried about prospects for the Fall and beyond.
The Republicans' attempt at rebranding themselves as a "change" party pretty much got them laughed out of the room.
President Bush's remarks at a celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary raised a storm of controversy and assertions that his policies have made America and Israel less safe.
Meanwhile, back home, jobless claims are up again, the foreclosure rate is skyrocketing, Americans are taking out loans to pay for basic needs and spending those stimulus checks on the same things, and more of us are stressed about maintaining our standards of living.

That ought to be enough to get us started. What's on your mind? If you could ask one question on "Face the Nation," "This Week," or "Meet the Press" what would you ask? Let 'em rip in the comments. And, as always, keep things polite and respectful, as practice for when you contact the shows with your question.

Recognizing the Race Chasm

David Sirota — Sun, 11 May 2008 15:52:56 -0400

The issue of race makes a lot of folks uncomfortable - and that's especially true right now when the nation is closer than ever to electing the first black President of the United States. As my new newspaper column this week shows, many Serious People who dominate our political debate have reacted to this historic election and their own queasiness about race by exposing their prejudices.

On one side, you have the ostriches - the political "thinkers" like Reihan Salam and Michael Lind who look at the Race Chasm and pretend it doesn't exist. These people look at a racially polarized election map, and explain it away with either flippant fact-free stories about Hillary Clinton's "waitress-mom sensibility," or wild theories about Northern European migration trends from a century ago. They expect us to forget that most often the simplest explanation is the most obvious - especially when it comes to a black-white racial divide that has been a defining characteristic of American culture since our country's inception.

On the other side you have the minstrel show producers - the media and politicians who are more than thrilled to exploit race and treat African Americans as less than human. My column offers up all sorts of specific examples of this, but I think Keith Woods of the Poynter Institute summed it up best. Appearing on PBS this week, he said:

"You see a full vocabulary for talking about white Americans in this debate, from blue-collar, a euphemism for white blue-collar workers. We talk about lunch-bucket Democrats. We talk about the soccer mom and the NASCAR dad, all of which are euphemisms in the national discourse for white Americans. And then we talk about black people, as though they are all the same, with pretty much all the same views."

Each side is expressing a form of bigotry. In denying the racial divide exists, the ostriches are telling African Americans that racism is just their imagination. In other words, the whitewashing (no pun intended) legitimizes racism by pretending it doesn't exist.

The minstrel show producers are more honest than the ostriches - they are overtly telling African Americans that they are unimportant, even though that's positively false in both the human and political sense.

The silver lining in all of this is the fact that - despite the ostriches - we may start to have a much-needed national conversation about race, to the great consternation of wealthy white pundits like Bill Kristol. As all of this racism oozes out of the political Establishment for all to see, we can recognize just how bigoted American culture is - and recognition is the first step towards addressing a problem.

You can read the whole column at the San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Ft. Collins Coloradoan, In These Times, TruthDig, Credo Action, or Creators. The column relies on grassroots support, so if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.

My Father's Eyes

Terrance Heath — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:35:41 -0400

This weekend, we attended a local conference for LGBT parents and families, and I spoke on a panel about interracial couples and inter-cultural families. At some point, I found myself speaking less as a gay dad and more as a Black man raising two Black sons, and wondering aloud just how I would prepare them for the reality of what they will likely face as Black men, and how I will prepare them for that without catalyzing what I know is an inevitable loss of innocence; the same innocence I love to see in them, and so want to protect as a parent.

But I know that I will be doing them a disservice as their father if I don't prepare them for the reality I've experience myself, and that they will each have to face in their own time. It's no surprise that in the middle of the panel discussion, I remembered an exchange I had with my own father.

I was in college at the time. I'd been home for a weekend visit, and was heading back to school — at the University of Georgia, in Athens, GA. As I made several trips back and forth, loading up the car, my dad sat on the couch, watching television. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I caught my dad looking at me with what appeared to be concern, as though he was trying to decide whether to say something to me about it.

Finally, I finished loading the car, and said my goodbyes. But my dad stopped me before I could make it out the door and finally spoke his concern.

"Son," he asked, "is that what you're wearing to drive back to Athens?"

I was wearing my basic school "uniform" at that time: a ripped pair of old, faded jeans, and a old t-shirt.

"Um, yeah," I said.

My dad then breathed a sigh that seemed a mix of resignation, exasperation, and trepidation over what he was about to tell me — what he had to tell me, really.

"Son," he said, "You are going to be driving through a lot of southern counties. Now, I'm not saying you're going to do anything wrong. But you are a young black man, and if you get pulled over by one of these southern sheriffs or policemen, they are going to take one look at you and get the wrong idea. They're not going to treat you like they would a white boy dressed like that."

It was on the tip of my tongue to argue with him, and say that stuff like that probably did happen when he was my age. Instead, I unpacked some clothes, and changed into a pair of khakis and a buttoned-down oxford, which met with dad's approval.

I was still thinking about my dad's words when I got back to UGA. After unloading the car and carrying everything up to my room, I turned on the television. At some point, the news came on and I saw this.

My father wasn't even one-year-old when the young black men who became known as the Scottsboro Nine were falsely accused of rape, and plunged into an ordeal that would last decades. My father was about 16 years old when the nation's last mass lynching happened in rural Georgia. My father was 25 years old and newly married when Emmett Till was murdered.

He lived through times when the life of a black man, especially in the south, wasn't worth a "plug nickel." He lived through times when his life as a black man wasn't' worth a plug nickel. He lived, like so many men before him, knowing that there were people who would think no more of snuffing out his life than killing a fly, and that there were people who would set them free afterwards. He lived knowing that it could happen, even if he wasn't doing anything wrong. It could happen just because he happened to be a black man, and happened to be in a particular place at a particular time. Any time. Any place. Any day.

My dad had lived with that reality, and I think he was trying to make me aware that I lived with that reality too. He had to, because he knew — and had probably seen with his own eyes — the danger of not being aware of that; the danger of taking for granted that the world would meet and treat me no differently than anyone else.

My father's eyes had seen things I had never seen and could not imagine then, or even now. I did not have my father's eyes, and he knew that. He also knew that I needed them and that I wouldn't have them unless he spoke. It was a legacy he had to pass on to me, for my own good.

Several years later, I was living in Washington, D.C., and found myself driving home late one night. I was giving a fraternity brother of mine, also a black male, a ride home after a late night fraternity event. My car wasn't in the greatest shape. I'd been in a traffic accident just a few days before, and hadn't taken it to be repaired because I needed to drive it that weekend.

We were driving past the Capitol when we got pulled over. I saw the flashing lights, and as soon as I heard the siren I pulled over. By then, I knew the drill. Don't argue with the officers. Don't get out of the car unless they tell you to. Get out of the car if they tell you to. Answer any questions with "Yes, officer," or "No, officer," give them any information they ask for, and maybe — maybe — you won't have any trouble. Still what happened then was a bit surreal.

As the officer came up to my window, I said a silent prayer that my fraternity brother — Neal, who was known for having a sharp tongue and a willingness let it loose — would keep cool. The officer asked for my license and registration. She asked if I knew why she stopped me, and I said no. She said it was because one of my tail lights wasn't working, and agreed with me when I said it was probably a result of the accident I had a few days earlier. She seemed to believe me when I told her I didn't know about the tail light.

I thought maybe she'd give me a ticket or a warning, and give my documents back to me. Instead, she walked back to her car and got on her radio (I think). I wasn't worried, because it wasn't like I had an outstanding warrant or anything more than a couple of unpaid parking tickets. But while she was in her car, another police car pulled up, and two more officers got out.

In my rear view mirror, I saw the officer who stopped us get back out of car, at the same time that I saw yet another police car pull up. At this point, I started to get nervous — because here we were, two black males, driving through D.C. at 4 a.m., in a banged up car, with the police units and six police officers now at the scene. Depending on any number of factors, including what we said or did, it might not matter if we'd done anything wrong.

"Is this your vehicle?" the officer asked me when she arrived back at my window. "We've had some car thefts reported in this area."

I assured her that it was my car, and she stepped away for a moment to confer with one of the other officers now milling about the scene. At that moment, a police van showed up, and stopped alongside the passenger side of the car. Neal, who hadn't said a word at this point, looked at the van, looked at me and just said "What the..."

I finished his sentence silently, in my mind.

The officer, at this point, was back at my window. "Sir," she asked me, "do you have the title to the vehicle."
How many people keep the title to their vehicle in the car itself? I didn't know but, I knew that I did have the title in the car. I knew just where it was. It was in my briefcase, which was in the trunk of the car. I knew that in order to retrieve the title, I'd have to get out of the car — and with at least eight officers now pretty much surrounding us — walk over to the back of the car, open the trunk, open the briefcase, and retrieve the title.

What if, I thought, just one of these officers thought I was reaching for a gun at any point in that series of steps? That I had no gun — had never even owned one, in fact &#8212 was and would have been meaningless in that moment. It wouldn't have mattered.

This was about four years before the Amadou Diallo shooting, but just about two years after the death of Malice Green. So, I knew we were one misunderstanding, one miscommunication, one hesitation, one moment of exasperation away from being another one of those stories.

I told the officer that I had the title, and that it was in my briefcase, in the trunk of the car. I told her I'd have to get out of the car, open the trunk, and open the briefcase to get the title out and show it to her. She gave me the go ahead, and I walked around to the back of the car, opened the trunk, opened the briefcase, and got the title. I don't remember if the officer followed me, and I didn't look to see if any of the officers had their hands on their weapons. I couldn't.

I showed the officer the title. She looked it over, handed it back to me, and told me to get back in the car. The van drove away, and one of other police cars drove away. Finally, the officer came back to my window.

"I'm giving you a warning," she said. "You take him home, get yourself home, and then I don't want to see you driving this car again in this condition."

I assured her that she wouldn't.

"Alright," she said. "Have a good one."

I rolled up my window, and started the engine. To this day, I am eternally grateful that Neal waited until the windows were rolled up and we were driving away from the police officers to exclaim — well out of their earshot — "Have a good one? F___ you!"

I laughed, out of sheer relief, but I understood that there was a moment back there when we could have been "another Rodney King." We could have been "another Malice Green." We could have been Amadou Diallo, or even Abner Louima.

And now, as I remember that night, I know we could have been Sean Bell too.

Bell, 23, had just left his stag party at a club in Jamaica, Queens, when he was shot and killed on November 25 2006.

Two of his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were also wounded as the three plainclothed police detectives opened fire on Bell's car.

All three of the men in the car were unarmed and the shooting - which recalled a 1999 episode in which an unarmed immigrant, Amadou Diallo, was shot dead by police - brought fierce criticism of the detectives.

But after a seven-week trial, Judge Arthur Cooperman ruled that the three police officers, Michael Oliver, 36, Gescard Isnora, 29, and Marc Cooper, 40, bore no criminal responsibility for the death of Bell or the wounding of his friends.

...However, the New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who had been critical of the shooting, said that the judge had followed his duty to decide the case on evidence presented in his courtroom.

"There are no winners in a trial like this," he said in a statement. "An innocent man lost his life, a bride lost her groom, two daughters lost their father, and a mother and a father lost their son. No verdict could ever end the grief of those who knew and loved Sean Bell."

Oh, but there are winners in a trial like this. The winners are the officers who walked out of the courtroom, never to bear legal consequences for actions leading to the death of a young man who should be alive today. The officers will return to their lives. However changed those lives will be, they have them to return to.

They will return to their families. They will return to their children. They will very likely see those children grow up and — if they're fortunate enough — live to hold their grandchildren in their arms.Sean Bell will not, though there is no good reason why. So, yes, there are winners in this trial. And there are losers. To say "Nobody wins," diminishes the magnitude of loss experienced by Sean Bell's family.

Under the right circumstances, I could be Sean Bell and people could be expressing the same outrage.

Hundreds of angry people marched through Harlem on Saturday after the Rev. Al Sharpton promised to "close this city down" to protest the acquittals of three police detectives in the 50-shot barrage that killed a groom on his wedding day and wounded two friends.

"We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians," Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. "This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell."

Sharpton was joined by the family of 23-year-old Sean Bell — a black man — and a friend of Bell who was wounded in the 2006 shooting outside a Queens strip club. Two of the three officers charged were also black.

The rally at Sharpton's office was followed by a 20-block march down Malcolm X Boulevard and then across 125th Street, Harlem's main business thoroughfare, where some bystanders yelled out "Kill the police!"

Fifty of the marchers carried white placards bearing big black numbers for each of the police bullets fired at Bell and his friends.

Sharpton urged people to return for a meeting this coming week "to plan the day that we will close this city down" with the kind of "massive civil disobedience" once led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Why shouldn't the city come to a halt? Why shouldn't they march and shut down the city? Why shouldn't there be a peaceful demonstration of outrage; justified outrage at an absolute lack of justice?

Sure, depending on your perspective, the system worked just the way it's supposed to.

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution ensures that we have the right to a trial by a jury of our peers in a serious criminal case. But as with all rights, you can voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently waive that right and instead have your case tried by a judge.

That is what Michael Oliver, Marc Cooper and Gescard Isnora did. Many thought it was a gamble. It was a gamble that paid off.

Justice Arthur Cooperman, a 74-year-old bench veteran, acquitted all three detectives. The public is outraged. But it shouldn't be. Cooperman did what we ask every juror to do: consider and determine the facts of the case -- that is, what he believed to be the true facts -- from among all of the evidence in the case.

Again, that there are "no winners" in a case like this is a misstatement, at best, that serves as an attempt to blunt outrage. It's the flip side of calls to redirect that outrage at less specific targets.

...The history of policing in America really is the history of race relations. So, if the takeaway from this is that there's no problem because the police weren't convicted, then that would be tragic and that would be completely missing the point. This was an operation that was extremely problematic, and every effort has to be made to make sure it never happens again.

This really is a legal case more than your ordinary criminal case, because the law of self-defense is very favorable to the police. I think what they were trying to avoid was the possibility that a jury of individuals might say, well, with so many charges, we have to convict them of something. New York law allows police … to make pretty serious mistakes and still not be criminally liable, because the state has to disprove any justification beyond reasonable doubt--which is a very high standard. A judge has to put himself in the police's shoes and look at the case through their eyes. With the jury, the concern would be that the jury would say, well, let's compromise. But this judge saw that if you have doubts about whether the cops are completely justified, then, following the law, you must return a not guilty verdict, which is what he did.

...The larger message is that there's an over-reliance on the criminal-justice system, and that that has really fallen in a whole host of ways on minority Americans. This is just one example. And it's really not fair or decent to blame the cops--they're not the ones who create the system that we have. The outrage that should really be sparked by this event should be over how we have a system where so many minorities end up on the receiving end of our criminal-justice system? Why are they constantly on the receiving end? Can't we have a more balanced and a more just approach, and a more decent and humane approach?

The problem is that the target for outrage is amorphous, faceless, and too esoteric to inspire the kind of passion that a case like this one does.

And it does little to address the specific injustice in this case. Sure, a jury probably would have recognized that injustice. A jury, or at least a significant number of jurors, wouldn't have felt right about letting that injustice go un-addressed, and probably would have wanted to charge the officers with something, rather than let those responsible for Bell's death walk out of the courtroom and back to their lives.

Mayor Bloomberg can say "there are no winners" in a case like this, but there are victims; victims who have not and most likely will not get anything approaching justice.

Black male lives are meaningless in America," a female friend just texted me, and what can I say to that? Who's going to help Nicole Paultre Bell, Sean Bell's grieving fiancé, explain to their two young daughters that the men who killed their daddy are not going to be punished?

I am willing to bet that at least half of all African American families, somewhere in their history, have a story of at least one male family member who was lynched or murdered, or at least have passed down stories of what happed to young men in their community. They know, too, where an incident like this probably wouldn't happen, and who it wouldn't happen to.

Real talk: this tragedy would have never gone down on the Upper Eastside of Manhattan or in Brooklyn Heights. I am not just speaking about the judge's decision, but the police officer's actions. Those shots would have never been fired at unarmed White people sitting in a car. Until we understand that racism is not just about who pulled the trigger in a police misconduct case, but is also about the geography of racism, and the psychology of racism, we are forever stuck having the same endless dialogue with no solution in sight.

My dad never spoke of it, but I'm willing to bet when he was growing up he'd known someone, or heard about someone, who met that same fate. He probably thought about that as he saw me about to walk out the door to drive back to school. I couldn't, in that moment, see myself through my father's eyes. Instead, he looked at me and saw all the others who'd gone before me; those who are now just plain gone.

Can my dad be blamed for thinking that so little had changed? Can anyone be blamed for thinking that the more things change, the more they stay the same?

William Bell showed the most frustration. At one point, while everyone stood and chanted, he sat stiff-jawed in his seat, his elbows on his knees and his fingers interlocking. Later, he stepped to the microphone and said, “Is this 1955 Alabama?”

Is it? It's easy to say "things like that don't happen any more." But we all know better. I was raised on it, and even when my father reminded me that I — as a black male — would not be treated the same as a white male my age, I knew enough not to even try to say he was wrong.

He wasn't wrong then, and he isn't wrong now. And if the day comes when I must have the same conversation with one of my sons that my father had with me that day, will I be wrong? Will that marrow-deep intuition — that knowing — finally be wrong?

It isn't, yet.

This Week In Blog

Bill Scher — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:01:08 -0400

Over at Bloggingheads.tv, I do a regular "This Week In Blog" feature, recounting the hot topics in the liberal and conservative blogospheres.

This week I was joined by Townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter, and we discussed blog reaction to the PA primary, Sen. Clinton's recent Iran comments, Al Gore's global warming ads, the blockbuster New York Times story on Pentagon propaganda, and new McCain and Obama attack videos. Check it out below.