Random Politics & Religion #00

I remember goths and emo kids in school but not werewolves !

I heard the same, I think she's working at a chipotle too.

That's the direction this thread has been going, right?

Rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos Monday, torching a pharmacy, setting police cars ablaze and throwing bricks at officers hours after thousands mourned the man who died from a severe spinal injury he suffered in police custody.

The governor declared a state of emergency and called in the National Guard to restore order. A weeklong, daily curfew was imposed beginning Tuesday from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., the mayor said. At least 15 officers were hurt, and some two dozen people were arrested. Two officers remained hospitalized, police said.

Officers wearing helmets and wielding shields occasionally used pepper spray to keep the rioters back. For the most part, though, they relied on line formations to keep protesters at bay.

Monday's riot was the latest flare-up over the mysterious death of Freddie Gray, whose fatal encounter with officers came amid the national debate over police use of force, especially when black suspects are involved. Gray was African-American. Police have declined to specify the races of the six officers involved in his arrest, all of whom have been suspended with pay while they are under investigation.

Emergency officials were constantly thwarted as they tried to restore calm. Firefighters trying to put out a blaze at a CVS store were hindered by someone who sliced holes in a hose connected to a fire hydrant, spraying water all over the street and nearby buildings.

The smell of burned rubber wafted in the air in one neighborhood where youths were looting a liquor store. Police stood still nearby as people drank looted alcohol. Glass and trash littered the streets, and small fires were scattered about. One person from a church tried to shout something from a megaphone as two cars burned.

"Too many people have spent generations building up this city for it to be destroyed by thugs, who in a very senseless way, are trying to tear down what so many have fought for, tearing down businesses, tearing down and destroying property, things that we know will impact our community for years," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a lifelong resident of the city.

Gray's family was shocked by the violence and was lying low; instead, they hoped to organize a peace march later in the week, said family attorney Billy Murphy. He said they did not know the riot was going to happen and urged calm.

"They don't want this movement nationally to be marred by violence," he said. "It makes no sense."

Police urged parents to locate their children and bring them home. Many of those on the streets appeared to be African-American youths, wearing backpacks and khaki pants that are a part of many public school uniforms.

The riot broke out just as high school let out, and at a key city bus depot for student commuters around Mondawmin Mall, a shopping area northwest of downtown Baltimore. It shifted about a mile away later to the heart of an older shopping district and near where Gray first encountered police. Both commercial areas are in African-American neighborhoods.

Later in the day, people began looting clothing and other items from stores at the mall, which became unprotected as police moved away from the area. About three dozen officers returned, trying to arrest looters but driving many away by firing pellet guns and rubber bullets.

Downtown Baltimore, the Inner Harbor tourist attractions and the city's baseball and football stadiums are nearly 4 miles away. While the violence had not yet reached City Hall and the Camden Yards area, the Orioles canceled Monday's game for safety precautions.

Many who had never met Gray gathered earlier in the day in a Baltimore church to bid him farewell and press for more accountability among law enforcement.

The 2,500-capacity New Shiloh Baptist church was filled with mourners. But even the funeral could not ease mounting tensions.

Police said in a news release sent while the funeral was underway that the department had received a "credible threat" that three notoriously violent gangs are now working together to "take out" law enforcement officers.

I've actually been to Baltimore many times and it is a very nice city for the most part.

The last time a Clinton and a Bush ran for president, the country was awash in crime and the two parties were competing to show who could be tougher on murderers, rapists and drug dealers. Sentences were lengthened and new prisons sprouted up across the country.

But more than two decades later, declared and presumed candidates for president are competing over how to reverse what they see as the policy excesses of the 1990s and the mass incarceration that has followed. Democrats and Republicans alike are putting forth ideas to reduce the prison population and rethink a system that has locked up a generation of young men, particularly African-Americans.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Rand Paul want to ease mandatory minimum sentences. Gov. Chris Christie wants to release nonviolent offenders pending trial without bail. Gov. Scott Walker, former Gov. Rick Perry and former Senator James Webb want to expand drug treatment as an alternative to prison. Senator Marco Rubio wants to make it harder to convict federal defendants without proving intent.

The focus on overhauling the criminal justice system comes at a time of protests over the use of lethal force by the local police and unrest in cities like Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., and represents a profound shift in American politics. Where the elder George Bush won the presidency in part by attacking his opponent as soft on crime and Bill Clinton enacted landmark crime legislation pouring police officers into the streets and ratcheting up sentences, today’s candidates across the ideological spectrum have concluded that previous leaders went too far.

“This really does reflect a huge change in the political momentum from decades when parties and candidates competed to see who could be the most flamboyantly punitive,” said Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law and a former aide to Mr. Clinton. Now, Mr. Waldman said, “there’s a competition for reform and to take on the issue of mass incarceration. It’s really unheard-of in recent decades.”

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The extent of that change is made evident in a new book Mr. Waldman’s center has compiled featuring essays by many of the major presidential candidates laying out ideas for tackling the criminal justice system. Mrs. Clinton and her Democratic rivals approach the issue from a social justice perspective, while Republicans like Mr. Cruz, Mr. Perry, Mr. Paul and Mr. Rubio see it through a fiscal, libertarian or religious lens, but they share a consensus about the goal.

“There is an emerging consensus that the time for criminal justice reform has come,” Mr. Rubio wrote in the book. “A spirited conversation about how to go about that reform has begun.”

For Mrs. Clinton, it was time to avoid another “incarceration generation,” as she put it. “We need a true national debate about how to reduce our current prison population while keeping our communities safe,” she wrote.

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Significantly, her husband added a foreword in which he implicitly agreed that some of the policies he himself embraced two decades ago were too extreme. “The drop in violence and crime in America has been an extraordinary national achievement,” Bill Clinton wrote. “But plainly, our nation has too many people in prison and for too long — we have overshot the mark.”

In addition to Mrs. Clinton’s essay, the book, called “Solutions: American Leaders Speak Out on Criminal Justice,” scheduled to be released Tuesday, includes essays by two likely Democratic challengers, Mr. Webb of Virginia and former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland. Republican contributors include Mr. Christie of New Jersey, Mr. Cruz and Mr. Perry of Texas, Mr. Paul of Kentucky, Mr. Rubio of Florida, Mr. Walker of Wisconsin and former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas.

Also included is a recent speech from Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has positioned himself to run in 2016 if Mrs. Clinton falters. Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida was one of the few major candidates who did not participate; a spokeswoman for him had no comment, but he has signed on to a conservative group’s call for cost-effective alternatives to prison.

While crime has fallen in recent decades, the prison population has risen, although it has plateaued in recent years. More than 2.2 million Americans are behind bars, and a National Research Council study found that the state and federal prison population in 2009 was seven times what it was in 1973. Although the United States makes up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it has more than 20 percent of its prison population.

The issue has been particularly acute among younger African-American men. Almost one in 12 black men from 25 to 54 are locked up, compared with one in 60 nonblack men in that age group. Many more have been released but have convictions on their records that make it hard to find jobs or vote.

The issue has drawn together an odd-bedfellows coalition of liberals and libertarians seeking bipartisan solutions. Mr. Paul has worked across the aisle with Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, and several other candidates have also been working in this area. In Texas, Mr. Perry diverted some drug offenders to treatment, generating praise from liberals and conservatives alike. Mr. Cruz has signed on to several pieces of legislation to change the system.

“They’re actually all agreeing on mass incarceration,” said Inimai Chettiar, the head of the justice program at the Brennan Center and a co-editor of “Solutions.” “This has now risen to the level where virtually everyone running for president is saying this has to change.”

John Malcolm, the director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, said Republicans came from different perspectives. Fiscal conservatives see a drain on public resources; social conservatives are focused on redemption. Others see this as part of scaling back the reach of government.

“There’s just a sense that the pendulum perhaps has swung too far, that there are unintended consequences of overly draconian criminal justice processes,” said Mr. Malcolm, who helped the liberal-leaning Brennan Center recruit Republican candidates to contribute essays.

Mark Holden, a senior vice president and general counsel for Koch Industries, also helped. David H. and Charles G. Koch, the billionaires who have bankrolled Republican causes and candidates, have joined efforts with liberal groups like the Center for American Progress to work on criminal justice changes.

“This is one of those issues that’s exciting because regardless of your political ideology or affiliation, there’s something here for you,” Mr. Holden said.

The essays from the candidates suggested the different perspectives. Mrs. Clinton cited the racial unrest in Ferguson after a white police officer shot a black teenager, an episode that the Republicans generally did not mention. Several of the Republicans, on the other hand, said the changes should include “reining in out-of-control regulatory agencies,” as Mr. Rubio put it, a goal the Democrats did not mention.

Not all Republicans advance the same ideas. Mr. Walker took a more traditionally Republican view by focusing on the impact on crime victims and advocating drug testing in workplaces to head off drug crimes. Mr. Rubio made clear that he opposes legalizing drugs but that disagreement on the issue should not stop broader changes.

But the Republicans clearly were not as worried about appearing soft on crime. “A big, expensive prison system — one that offers no hope for second chances and redemption — is not conservative policy,” Mr. Perry wrote. “Conservative policy is smart on crime.”

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For some reason that's all I saw.

Of course, so I made it bigger and flashier just for you!

The most racist places in America, according to Google

California should be glowing red.

California should be glowing red.

I think this is called projection.

The only part of Cali that would be red would be SoCal and look at that, its red. Rest of the map doesn't surprise me at all, West Texas, East Texas to Alabama, up through Tennessee and West Virginia, Philly, Pittsburgh, Detroit, New York, Jersey, Boston.

I had that same thought, but I think its safe to say Houston is in that deep red, straight north to Shreveport, LA.

Well then you are right, that map is a little off, because Houston should be red.