by TChris

According to students at Santa Monica High School, the school administration has done little to address persistent racism within the school district. A coalition of students of color has decided to tackle the problem by creating a ten point plan to attack the root causes of racial violence.

The document calls for a variety of reforms that include more people of color in faculty and administrative positions, teaching conflict resolution and role modeling, using discipline in ways that “focus less on punishment and more on transformation” and instituting “culturally relevant teaching practices in every course” to “de-colonialize the curriculum.”

The plan comes "two weeks after inter-racial strife erupted into a lunchtime melee" at the school. The students contend that the school administration has long ignored the racial tension that underlies incidents of violence within the school district.

Tonight at 9 p.m. on PBS you can watch the first in-depth American television interview with Haj Ali, a former prisoner who says he was the man under the black hood in the infamous photo from Abu Ghraib.

"Abu Ghraib is a breeding ground for insurgents," says Ali, who describes his experience in detail. "99% of the people brought in are innocent, but with all the insults and torture, it makes them ready to do just about anything."

....Before the Iraq war Haj Ali was the mayor of the Al Madifai district, near Baghdad. After the U.S. took control of the area he was removed from his position. As an official, he was required to join the ruling Baath Party. Haj Ali then worked as an administrator for a mosque, until he was picked up off the street one day in October 2003. Today Haj Ali works for a prisoner's association. He says he has no part in the insurgency.

[link via Cursor.]

In the "you can't make this stuff up" department: The toad story is like a real-life twilight zone. They're still in Germany, but may be moving into Denmark.

Dave Cullen of Conclusive Evidence can't look away and is following the gruesome story. And Instapundit makes a connection between the toads and the Salazar/Dobson feud. Question though: Who's the toad and who's the crow?

If you haven't read about the toads yet, go now. You won't be sorry, maybe just a little sick to your stomach.

Update: On a much more pleasant note, Defenders of Wildlife has a plea to save the ivory-billed woodpecker.

The evidence was he is legally sane because he understood the consequences of his actions, but he is mentally ill, suffering from schizophrenia and paranoia. He apologized to the jury.

I want to apologize for the attack that occurred. I felt that my life was in jeopardy, and I had no other options. I also want to ask you for forgiveness," Akbar told the jury before it deliberated in the sentencing phase.

The jury rejected life without the possibility of parole, and sentenced Sgt. Hasan Akbar to death. The media's principal comment: His apology wasn't under oath. Only in America. And people wonder why our international image has lost its luster.

Did you watch? What did you think?

Update: Shorter version:

Listen Up, said the President
We are programmed to deceive.
We will spin out any lie we like,
'cause money you won't receive"

[hat tip to the Eagles and Hotel California]

Update: The Washington Post article on the speech (not an oped, but a news article) bears the headline, "Bush Social Security Plan Would Cut Future Benefits"

And another illiterate Bush line that makes no sense: "Bush said. "I don't ascribe a person's opposing my nominations to an issue of faith."

The Pentagon today announced the end of the CIA's ghost detainee practice, where it hides imprisoned terror suspects in foreign prisons while it interrogates them.

Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, assured the U.S. Senate that new interim rules on military interrogations eliminate the CIA's practice at Abu Ghraib of hiding detainees and subjecting them to separate interrogation methods that critics say were harsher than those employed by the military.

Does this mean Ghost Air is grounded? Or will it continue to fly the unfriendly skies because the detainees are housed in prisons under the control of a foreign government rather than in a U.S. Military prison? Background on Ghost Air is here.

Can Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed now be transferred to a U.S. prison? If they are no longer to be held in secret, can Moussaoui now depose them for his death penalty trial?

Rush Limbaugh lost his medical records appeal. This isn't just a blow for Rush Limbaugh's privacy, but for all citizens of Florida.

In October, Florida's 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that the state did not violate Limbaugh's privacy rights when it seized his medical records with a search warrant. Limbaugh's lawyer, Roy Black, has argued that using a warrant gave Limbaugh no opportunity to challenge the seizure.

Here's Roy Black's statement:

Jackson Trial Update
Thursday, April 28

Ex-wife Debbie Rowe continues to buck the prosecution. Her second day of testimony supported Jackson. In addition to calling Jackson a great father,

"Jackson's ex-wife Deborah Rowe also depicted the entertainer as a victim of "opportunistic vultures" in his inner circle who sought to make millions from his troubles."

"By portraying Jackson as a victim of his associates, Rowe may have undermined the prosecution's child molestation case. That is because she was called to bolster a charge that the singer and the associates conspired to hold the accuser's family captive to make a video praising him."

Now the prosecution says it won't rest until Tuesday. The case sounds like its sputtering to a close.....

Why is there so little media coverage of a Gallup poll in early April that shows 50% of Americans believe Bush lied to the public about WMD's in Iraq? Via Cursor:

Uncritical Mass. According to a Google News search, about the only mainstream media citations for a finding from an early April CNN/USAToday/Gallup poll that 50% of respondents now believe the Bush administration
deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq had WMD, is a column. by Paul Krugman.

OK, so Editor and Publisher.com carried it. And Rich Lewis in the Sun Sentinel. Where's everyone else?

There's a new law in Houston, banning offensive odors in libraries, that critics say target the homeless:

Library officials said people have been using the libraries as temporary shelters, restaurants and changing stations. The new ordinance prohibits sleeping on tables, eating, using restrooms for bathing and "offensive bodily hygiene that constitutes a nuisance to others." Two council members voted against the ordinance, saying it was a direct attack on the homeless.

Just in case you thought no one was listening....

The number of secret court-authorized wiretaps across the country surged by 19 percent last year, records show. As law enforcement authorities scurried to keep apace of improving technology favored by criminals, not a single application was denied.

State and federal judges approved 1,710 applications for wiretaps of wire, oral or electronic communications last year, and four states - New York, California, New Jersey and Florida - accounted for three out of every four surveillance orders, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. That agency is required to collect the figures and report them to Congress.

And these numbers don't included FISA applications for national security wiretaps, which also reached a record number of 1,764 last year. One more unsettling statistic:

Most of the wiretap applications, some 1,507 wiretaps, targeted portable devices, such as cell phones and pagers.

Air America Radio Host and comedian Al Franken is moving his show to Minnesota, where he will decide whether to challenge Norm Coleman for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Al Franken wants to be a senator.

"I'd rather be part of [the process] than commenting on it," he insists. But he pauses, shrugs indecisively, a boyish chuckle follows. "I think. I don't know. That might be part of the calculus of whether I go for it or not." Whether Franken will "go for it" in 2008, against freshman Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, remains to be seen. "I can tell you honestly, I don't know if I'm going to run," Franken continues, as we now sit 41 floors below his studio, in the skyscraper's courtyard. "But I'm doing the stuff I need to do, in order to do it."

Does he have a chance? Former Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi thinks so.