Author: Linn Washington

The HISTORY channel is catching righteous hell for crafting the character of Satan in its miniseries “The Bible” to bear an uncanny likeness to U.S. President Barak Obama.

Is it just coincidence that the dark-skinned Satan in this HISTORY channel miniseries looks hauntingly similar to the first black man to occupy the Oval Office seat in America’s White House?

Even worse than the meticulous use of makeup to craft the actor playing this miniseries’ devil to look eerily like Obama is the defensive reaction from producers of The Bible curtly dismissing criticisms of their malicious make-up usage as “utter nonsense.”

The producers of that miniseries, one being actress Roma Downey of “Touched by an Angel” television series fame, are assuming roles of angels-of-ignorance in their insultingly ridiculous antic of casting-out critics of their makeup slight as if they were demons spewing unadulterated balderdash of biblical proportions.

What’s utterly nonsensical is for Downey and her co-producer husband to pretend there is no potential for prejudicial spirits lurking in that make-up scheme because, as they contend, the actor playing Satan is from Morocco (in North Africa) and because that actor has played devil roles in other biblical movies prior to Obama’s election.

The resemblance between Obama and Tunisian actor Mohamen Mehdi Ouzaani is quite close in the History Channel movie, but not so much when compared to the actor himself (right image). Was the Satanic make-up job deliberate?

The controversial acquittal of a Philadelphia policeman caught on video violently punching a woman at a Puerto Rican Day parade last fall quickly produced a second stink bomb.

The Philadelphia judge who freed fired Lt. Jonathan Josey during a non-jury trial where that jurist brushed aside compelling evidence recorded on that video is married to a Philadelphia policeman.

The wife of Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Patrick F. Dugan was among the 100-plus police officers who jammed Dugan’s courtroom during Josey’s one-day trial in mid-February.

Judge Dugan neither revealed his marital relationship nor removed himself from the case – formally known as recusal.

Dugan presiding at Josey’s trial seemingly flaunted provisions of Pennsylvania’s Code of Judicial Conduct, particularly provisions prohibiting the “appearance of impropriety” by judges and judges not allowing “family to influence” their judicial judgment.

Dugan issued his acquittal verdict two weeks after Josey’s trial. When ruling, Dugan said he was troubled by Josey’s conduct captured on a cell phone video but he was impressed by the testimony from other police officers plus character witnesses for Josey who supported his claims of innocence.

Police assault video: You watch, you decide (click on the image to play the video)

On September 10, 2012 the Los Angeles Times published an article with the headline: “LAPD to hold meetings on use of force policies.”

Top Los Angeles police officials announced those community meetings to counter growing criticism about videoed brutality incidents involving LA police officers in the preceding months, that article noted.

On November 24, 2012 The Daily Beast posted an article with the headline: “In Los Angeles, Questions of Police Brutality Dog LAPD” reporting abuse incidents by officers of that department placed under federal oversight between 2001 and 2009 after repeated brutality and corruption scandals.

Over two months after that Daily Beast posting about LAPD brutality a fired LAPD officer unleashed a murderous rampage as revenge against his claimed unfair firing by the LAPD.

That former LAPD cop, military veteran Christopher Dorner, claimed his attack campaign was retaliation against retaliation LAPD personnel directed against him for his reporting a 2007 brutality incident he observed while on duty.

Following a controversial hearing, LAPD officials found Dorner’s brutality claim against a policewoman unfounded and fired him for filing false statements. The father of the alleged victim said his mentally ill son confirmed Dorner’s account.

To some, Chris Dorner is a 'Dark Knight' charac battling alone against a corrupt LAPD that has sent an army out to hunt him down

Cory Booker, the charismatic Democratic mayor of Newark, NJ currently considering a campaign for the U.S. Senate, enjoys extraordinary media exposure — exposure that exceeds that of many top-tier entertainers and professional athletes. However, that fawning media coverage from CNN to Vogue Magazine of this mayor rarely reports facts like the increasing ire among Newark residents over Booker’s practices and the right-wing political roots of this politician who is generally portrayed as possessing solid center-left credentials.

Those right-wing roots, for example, provide an under-examined explanation for Booker’s lashing out at President Obama last May after a campaigning Obama criticized economic deprivations caused by hedge fund manipulations when he took Mitt Romney to task for the then GOP candidate’s tenure as head of venture capital firm Bain Capital.

Journalist Glen Ford has reported extensively on Booker’s conservative connections for over a decade, beginning with Booker’s September 2000 New York City address at the Manhattan Institute, one of America’s leading right-wing think tanks.

“It’s amazing that most people don’t see this background,” Ford said.

Newark's mayor Cory Booker is more popular outside of Newark than in the city he runs

Many millions around the world are convinced they know imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal from closely examining the ‘whodunit’ contentions surrounding his contentious conviction for the December 9, 1981 slaying of a Philadelphia policeman.

However, few really know the ‘Who’ of Mumia –- the individual behind the international image of a victim of injustice; the grandfather with a layered life beyond the simplistic characterizations of both opponents who bash him as a murderous monster and of supporters who ascribe to him powers of mythical proportions.

The all too often missing ‘Who’ of Mumia Abu-Jamal is what is makes the focus of an engaging new documentary film, “Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal,” truly unique. The film opens in New York City on February 1 and Los Angeles on March 1.

“Long Distance Revolutionary” presents the personality and the person of Mumia before, during and after his arrest and conviction for the murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner unlike all the pervious movies on Abu-Jamal that principally probed contours and contradictions of his trial and conviction.

That missing ‘Who’ is what sparked the interest of Stephen Vittoria, a respected LA-based documentarian who wrote, directed and edited the this film.

Keith Cook, Mumia's older brother, appeared with Valerie Jones, sister of the late Veronica Jones, a witness to the Faulkner shooting, at an advance screening of “Long Distance Revolutionary” last Dec. 8 (photo by Linn Washington)

America’s corporate news media love highlighting David-besting-Goliath stories…except apparently, when the fallen Goliath is major media mogul Rupert Murdoch – the billionaire owner of America’s caustic FOX News and other entities.

Arguably the biggest Goliath slaying story in the world during the past two years involved the unraveling of Murdoch’s news empire in England, where he exerted extraordinary influence over top British governmental officials from police to Parliament and even into that nation’s Prime Minister’s Office.

But disturbing documentation of wrongdoing by Murdoch minions, such as illegal hacking into telephones, arrests of top Murdoch executives and a scathing report from Parliament, elicited little sustained interest from America’s mainstream media into what is known variously as the ‘Murdoch Scandal’ and ‘England’s Watergate.”

This lack of ‘news’ coverage interest existed despite the fact that Murdoch’s News Corp is also a huge enterprise in the US where Murdoch’s FOX News routinely injects its highly partisan self in politics and public policy.

Even when one of the journalists who exposed America’s 1970s-era Watergate Scandal – Bob Woodward – broke a story in early December 2012 about a scheme by Murdoch to insert himself into the US presidency, America’s news media continued focusing on celebrity fluff and the looming ‘Fiscal Cliff.’

The face that launches a thousand news programs and misleads and manipulates millions of minds

Listening to NRA chief Wayne LaPierre lash out at any notion of gun control during that staunch gun advocate’s first public appearance in the wake of the horrific Connecticut school shooting triggered flashbacks to defiance I once heard from 1960s-era segregationist George Wallace.

Wallace rode a racist declaration from his 1963 governorship inauguration in Alabama to campaigns for the U.S. presidency years later: “Segregation now…Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever!”

LaPierre’s refusal to embrace any reform of America’s gun laws exhibits defiance similar to arch-segregationist George Wallace — interestingly a man forced from the public political arena in 1972 by a gunman whose unsuccessful assassination attempt left Wallace paralyzed from the waist-down.

The bluster and bullshit of both LaPierre and the late Gov. Wallace are/were astounding in the extreme, each evidencing a pathological inability to accept the fact that their respective defenses of the indefensible were and are not acceptable.

George Wallace waged war against extending full civil rights to blacks while NRA head Wayne LaPierre continues to wage war against any gun control regardless of how moderate the proposed control measures are.

NRA whackjob Wayne LaPierre calls for guns in schools to combat gun violence in schools

On a recent Saturday morning people streamed into a church building in south Camden, NJ, all carrying similar items–some items bundled in blankets, some wrapped in rugs with others in cases and plastic bags.
Those items were not toys for tots or assistance for the destitute.

These items were guns – handguns, rifles and shotguns – some working, many inoperable, most old – all brought to that church center for bundles of cash ranging from $50 to $250 during a vaunted gun ‘Buy-Back’ program.

This government sponsored Buy-Back program did net a record number of firearms: 1,137.

The record-setting figure easily exceeded the previous New Jersey high mark of 700 guns which was set in 2009 during a similar buy-back program in the Newark area.

The Camden buy-back netted five fully automatic weapons, which is a plus.

But judging from photographs of that record return of guns featured in media coverage those five full auto weapons were not the dreaded AK/AR-style assault rifles rightfully feared by police for their ability to rapidly fire bullets that, unlike pistols, can shred bullet-proof vests.

And irrespective of that record number of guns turned in for cash, this program – like so many other buy-back programs around the nation – missed its real target.

Weapons turned in at last weekend's "guns for cash" event in Camden, NJ

A Philadelphia police officer stood outside the front door of the department’s headquarters building next to a “No Smoking” sign, cavalierly smoking a cigarette and ignoring the smoking ban imposed by the police commissioner.

While the officer flaunted the department’s smoking ban, inside Philadelphia’s Police Administration Building (PAB) department officials were holding a disciplinary hearing for a policewoman charged with an alleged tax scam detailed in headline-making news coverage.

The actions of that smoking-ban ignoring police officer and the tax-scamming police officer each make a mockery of the Philadelphia Police Department’s professed motto of “Honor-Integrity-Service” –- a motto emblazoned in large letters on a wall outside the PAB’s main entrance.

Further, those actions, albeit not comparale in their severity, both symbolize a disturbing reality operative in law enforcement across America: violations by police receive different treatment from the authorities than violations by ordinary citizens.

The tax scam, detailed in reports by the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, involved 15-year veteran Officer Elaine Thomas, who fraudulently signed court documents claiming she was related to six persons she obtained houses from. By claiming the sellers were relatives, she was able to avoid paying city and state real estate transfer taxes, since transfers between relatives are exempt from taxation.

Corrupt cops have long been a staple of Hollywood films, but the problem is real and wide-spread in today's America

President Barack Obama, a former professor of constitutional law, has just nominated to the Federal bench a lower court magistrate in Philadelphia who appears to be a legal bully with a dim understanding of the First Amendment and the Code of Conduct required of federal judges.

That Code of Conduct clearly forbids jurists from actions that undermine “public confidence” in the integrity of the judiciary, such as judges using their authority to harass people.

Some in the Philadelphia area feel a federal magistrate clearly broached that code’s requirements last year when he ordered U.S. Marshals to investigate a Delaware man who had sent him a short letter urging that magistrate to act fairly in a court proceeding.

The target of that investigation, military veteran Hampton Coleman, filed a complaint with federal judicial authorities claiming federal marshals, dispatched by that magistrate, harassed him, including threatening him with losing his house if he sent another letter to that magistrate.

President Barack Obama recently nominated that federal magistrate, Luis Felipe Restrepo, to fill a vacant U.S. District Court judgeship in Philadelphia. The nomination is supported by Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senators, Democrat Bob Casey and and Tea Party Republican Pat Toomey.

Coleman’s “Complaint of Misconduct” against Magistrate Judge Restrepo stated in part that Restrepo “made an intentionally inaccurate and false claim of a threat…and then employed the United States Marshals Service to retaliate, threaten and intimidate me for exercising” his First Amendment rights, which expressly include freedom of speech and the right to seek redress from authorities.

Flawed judicial pick? Federal Magistrate and district judge nominee L. Felipe Restrepo