Author: KJ McElrath

A Dirty Little Secret About the “War on Drugs”: Two Dollar Drug Tests Give False Positives

A Dirty Little Secret About the “War on Drugs”: Two Dollar Drug Tests Give False Positives

Posted by | Jul 11, 2016 | , , , |

A story appearing in the New York Times Magazine and recently posted at ProPublica brings up a disturbing aspect of the so-called “War on Drugs” that the mainstream corporate media never talks about – and that’s the reliability of drug testing kits. The story, entitled “Busted,” tells the horrifying story of a Louisiana woman named Amy Albritton who was convicted of drug possession in Houston, Texas in 2010 on the basis of an obsolete $2 field test (today’s field tests are virtually identical to ones used forty years ago), administered by the police officer on the scene. The officer...

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Double Standards: The GOP is All Over Gun Ownership Rights – Unless You’re African-American

Double Standards: The GOP is All Over Gun Ownership Rights – Unless You’re African-American

Posted by | Jul 7, 2016 | , , , , |

We hear it all the time: Republican lawmakers shouting to the heavens about how “People need to carry guns in order to protect themselves!” and “Americans have rights under the Second Amendment!” But apparently, those statements apply only to white people. This week, two African-American men were gunned down in cold blood by law enforcement officers for doing exactly what Republicans say all Americans have a right to do. But where is the outrage from the right? Early Tuesday morning, Alton Sterling – African-American 37-year-old husband and father of five – was shot to death by white police at point-blank...

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Verdict On Clinton Email Scandal Leaves Many Scratching Their Heads: Careless, Not Criminal?

Verdict On Clinton Email Scandal Leaves Many Scratching Their Heads: Careless, Not Criminal?

Posted by | Jul 6, 2016 | , , |

After a year of investigations into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private serve to store official, classified government email communications during her tenure as Secretary of State, James Comey, FBI director, has announced that they will not be pursuing criminal charges. Though investigators found no evidence of deliberate criminal conduct, Comey stated that Clinton and her associates were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” Hillary is not completely off the hook yet. The FBI’s decision is not binding; ultimately, it will be up to the Department of Justice to determine whether or not criminal charges will...

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The Klan Is Hoping Trump Will Help Them Rise Again – Echoes Of Racism’s Past

The Klan Is Hoping Trump Will Help Them Rise Again – Echoes Of Racism’s Past

Posted by | Jul 1, 2016 | , , |

Like the Black Plague that wiped out one-third of Europe’s population in the 1340s, then returned again and again for the next five hundred years, the Ku Klux Klan is making a comeback – or at least, it hopes to. Fueled by the current wave of xenophobia that seems to be sweeping the globe these days (and fueled in the U.S. by the rhetoric of Donald Trump and his followers), the virulently racist organization that was born in the wake of the American Civil War is growing after a long decline. The history of the KKK is well-documented, but...

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Amazing: A Federal Judge Declares the U.S. Constitution Irrelevant  

Amazing: A Federal Judge Declares the U.S. Constitution Irrelevant  

Posted by | Jun 30, 2016 | , , |

In an opinion piece published this week on Slate.com, Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit dismissed the United States Constitution – the very basis of this country’s legal system – as  irrelevant and out of date. He sees “absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation.” Did Judge Posner actually go to law school? A statement like this suggests that if he did, he slept through most of his basic classes. He supports his argument by...

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