…
this supreme court is just getting its legs.

… I met William Douglas …

I’d also forgotten that “Brown” was unanimous. unanimous!

What that means is that the Evil 5 of our court overruled not only the other 4, but all 9 of the original Brown Court and any of the other courts in between who upheld Brown (not sure how many of those there might’ve been).

The bastards!

dude @ 54

I agree the Republicans have become the Criminal Party and Dems who joined them in confirming their Supremes were idiots. Andas to this rollback of Brown v Bd of Ed—I live in the South and in a town that has been paralyzed for over a year. There is a pitched battle between a segment of parents in the community who are fighting the local Board of Ed’s redistricting plan which adjusted for race. The clique of parents have the resources to hire lawyers and they do.

I was struck during the coverage of the public hearings on the redistricting plan when the two Town Council representatives from the African-American community said they would not bother to attend any of them. They said, “We don’t need to. We already know how the people in our district feel about this plan.”

I couldn’t tell if that meant they were for or against the re-districting, but their actions were indifferent. The majority community was shall-we-say “conflicted”.

When the news of the latest decision came down, the local papers reported the redistricting plan had been built around the review and suggestions of Federal authorities (an office of civil rights enforcement I presume of the DOJ) and appeared at first blush to comply with the rules pre-decision. But now they have wait and see how the 189-page decision of the Supremes might alter the views of Federal authorities.

I have lived in the South all my life, and in 3 separate states of the South in the past 7 years. Education is always a political football. Everyone claims to want neighborhood schools, but nobody wants to pay for them, the teachers or the maintenance of them. The city-county consolidations have proven a disaster in every case because of white-flight. The new developments get the new schools and the inner city languishes. How is it race cannot be a factor?

What about removing school systems from the local property tax? What about having the federal government collect the taxes and give out the money in and equitable way? We wouldn’t have rich districts and poor districts. Or maybe it could be a state function. And then ALL schools would be equally attractive, and the emphasis would be on school offerings, not on racial distribution. I believe that racial distribution would then happen naturally. I suppose this is too pie in the sky, but I believe I read a reply (somewhere) from a NY stater that they are trying to do something like this. I really hate to read about the local wars regarding schools. It does the community and the kids no good at all.

Your second sentence moots the effectiveness of your suggestion when an a**hole like the current president can take our tax dollars and, basically, dole them out to his friends with no one in Congress doing a damn thing about it.

Pach
Soon as I hear any future Democratic president talking about forgetting what all happened between 2000-2008 for the sake of “national healing,” I ’spect I’ll be on him (or her) like a queer duck on a june bug.
Right on, brother!
Forgiving and forgetting may be a good way to go with some personal situations, but, you are so right!

But by that time it will already be too late because we will already have been fooled again and that person will be in the White House and serving his or her corporate racist homophobic masters.

And don’t for one minute think we won’t be fooled again. Why? Because we want to believe that this time, this one is different. Hell, listen to the fiery speeches of Robert Byrd and then note his name on both those lists. Look where Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold turn up. The names on those lists, the bed-ridden Tim Johnson included, are not the names of politicians Democrats should be supporting.

it sure seems like more than the old southern heartland is represented by the color coded maps shown here : http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/

one of these days, southern progressives like me and countless others will receive more than a courteous head nod in a post such as this before the beatings begin. i’m am so looking forward to the days where political neandrathals can be thrashed without taking a whole region of this country to task almost blindly. is it just too much of a challenge to write in such a manner? i suppose it may be …

Was it Justice Brennan who said that if the wrong was race-conscious, the remedy must be race-conscious?

I agree the Republicans have become the Criminal Party and Dems who joined them in confirming their Supremes were idiots. Andas to this rollback of Brown v Bd of Ed—I live in the South and in a town that has been paralyzed for over a year. There is a pitched battle between a segment of parents in the community who are fighting the local Board of Ed’s redistricting plan which adjusted for race. The clique of parents have the resources to hire lawyers and they do.

I was struck during the coverage of the public hearings on the redistricting plan when the two Town Council representatives from the African-American community said they would not bother to attend any of them. They said, “We don’t need to. We already know how the people in our district feel about this plan.”

I couldn’t tell if that meant they were for or against the re-districting, but their actions were indifferent. The majority community was shall-we-say “conflicted”.

When the news of the latest decision came down, the local papers reported the redistricting plan had been built around the review and suggestions of Federal authorities (an office of civil rights enforcement I presume of the DOJ) and appeared at first blush to comply with the rules pre-decision. But now they have wait and see how the 189-page decision of the Supremes might alter the views of Federal authorities.

I have lived in the South all my life, and in 3 separate states of the South in the past 7 years. Education is always a political football. Everyone claims to want neighborhood schools, but nobody wants to pay for them, the teachers or the maintenance of them. The city-county consolidations have proven a disaster in every case because of white-flight. The new developments get the new schools and the inner city languishes. How is it race cannot be a factor?

What about removing school systems from the local property tax? What about having the federal government collect the taxes and give out the money in and equitable way? We wouldn’t have rich districts and poor districts. Or maybe it could be a state function. And then ALL schools would be equally attractive, and the emphasis would be on school offerings, not on racial distribution. I believe that racial distribution would then happen naturally. I suppose this is too pie in the sky, but I believe I read a reply (somewhere) from a NY stater that they are trying to do something like this. I really hate to read about the local wars regarding schools. It does the community and the kids no good at all.