ust three days into 2013, Annika Rydh, a Swedish government official from the town of Almhult, issued a shrill call to both her colleagues and neighbors. Worried about the perceived growth of the Muslim population in her homeland and beyond, she urged the European Union “to act by having some kind of restriction, like the one-child policy in China.” If Muslims don’t like the proposed rule, she continued, they can go back where they came from.

Rydh’s appeal comes on the heels of a decade-long campaign to curtail Muslim immigration into western countries and reduce the number of babies born to Muslim families.

An HBO documentary on the right that everyone has to a defense lawyer when they are charged with a crime, even if they cannot afford one, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film “Gideon’s Army,” was featured on “Democracy Now!” this morning.

Well, if the President is serious about his commitment to equality, as he mentioned in his inaugural address (“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law”), he may want to take a look at that non-discrimination executive order again. After all, Ashley Furniture is a federal contractor and would have to stop this behavior right quick if he signed it.

Colin Powell went on Meet the Press this week and took his party to task for not only harboring racist bigots, but doing nothing to rein in the well-known ones who blow the “dog whistle” or worse.

It”s always refreshing to be greeted with something like this in your driveway, but that’s what happened to some residents in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Apparently the local Ku Klux Klan saw some fertile recruiting ground there.

January 21st will be an odd day in the United States. We’ll honor Martin Luther King Jr. and bestow another 4-year regime on the man who, in his Nobel peace prize acceptance speech said that Martin Luther King Jr. had been wrong — that those who follow his example “stand idle in the face of threats.”

A year-end report from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) indicates the “number of new death sentences in 2012 was the second lowest since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.” The number remained near the historic low number of death sentences in 2011.

Seventy-eight people were sentenced to death in the United States. States that had typically used the death penalty at higher rates, like North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina and Indiana, had no new death sentences.

This society is soaking in hair-trigger tempers.

For those of us who have endured numerous ignorant comments about natural (nappy) hair that expose the embedded racist belief that there is “good hair” (Euro) and “bad hair,” in patient moments it can be a teachable moment. That’s what meteorologist Rhonda Lee did, and she was fired by KTBS for doing so, who said she had “violated a company rule.”

A travel agency called Al and Chuck Travel chartered a cruise on a Carnival ship with special performances by some of the popular drag queen stars of the Reality TV program Ru-Paul’s Drag Race. Six days before departure, ticket holders received a letter from Carnival Vice-President Vicky Rey informing them that passengers would not be permitted to dress in drag.