_____
Did Luciano Pavarotti waste his talent?
_____
Alan Greenspan desperately tries to cover his ass over the mess he helped create.
_____
A revival of the old 1960s marches can be seen in the Jena Six protests:
Bell and four other teenagers initially were booked with attempted murder, and those four still face aggravated battery charges. Charges against a sixth person, a juvenile, haven't been made public. The case stems from the six students allegedly beating a white classmate in the wake of other white students hanging nooses from a tree in the school courtyard.
Critics of Walters' handling of the case have said the six teenagers were the victims of an overzealous prosecutor and that they were treated unfairly because they are black. They say some of racial attitudes that persist in Jena are reflective of how the justice system handles black and poor defendants in other parts of the country.
Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader, described the scene as reminiscent of previous civil rights struggles. He said punishment of some sort might be in order for the six defendants, but "the justice system isn't applied the same to all crimes and all people."
Some background in case people haven't paid attention to this case:
The December beating was the culmination of racial taunts and confrontations involving Robert Bailey Jr., one of the accused teens, after black students sat under an oak tree in the school courtyard where for two decades white students traditionally gathered. A day later, the black students found nooses hanging from the tree. The white students who put them there were given only in-school suspensions by the schools superintendent, even though the high school's principal had recommended they be expelled.
Walters said he didn't charge the white students accused of hanging the nooses because he could find no state law under which they could be charged.
Bean said parents met in a Baptist church after the nooses incident. The next day, Bailey and several friends decided to stand under the tree in protest, Bean said.
In an emergency assembly called at the school, black students say Walters warned students he could "take away their lives with a stroke of my pen." Walters has denied making the comment.
Bean said sporadic skirmishes between black and white students sparked even more tension between the students who hung the nooses and the Jena Six, a group of close football players. Last November, an arsonist burned a wing of the school, heightening tensions even more. That case remains unsolved.
More at the link.
_____
Floyd Landis is shit out of luck.
_____