Monthly Archives: January 2009

If you have been thinking that the last election ushered in a post-racial America this dispatch from Paris, Texas will give you pause.  I didn’t attend the meeting described in Howard Witt’s article, but I have been in conversation with … Continue reading →

UnChristian, a book by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons of The Barna Group, emerged in the midst of the most recent election cycle.  Kannaman and Lyons are a couple of twenty-or-thirty-something nerds who have crunched the numbers and concluded that Christians have a serious image problem.  (In the picture … Continue reading →

Over at Grits for Breakfast, Scott Henson walks us through recent scandals involving Texas sheriffs.  Texas lawmen may get more negative press than their counterparts in other states, but the problem of police corruption is widespread.  I uncovered some horrendous examples … Continue reading →

The race issue is incredibly sticky and prone to over-simplification.  When I stumble over a word of wisdom on the subject I intend to pass it on.  In this piece, New York Times columnist Charles Blow has some important things to … Continue reading →

Warden Burl Cain This article from the Wall Street Journal asks how the inauguration of America’s first black president looks to the inmates in Angola prison in Louisiana–three-quarters of whom are black.  Warden Burl Cain comes off as a criminal … Continue reading →

I first heard from Cassandra Herrman and Kelly Whalen in late 2002,  a few weeks before the week-long evidentiary hearing that exposed Tulia’s famous drug string as a fraud.  Stationed in San Francisco, documentary filmmakers Herrman and Whalen were so captivated by … Continue reading →

The major racial and ethnic communities in American life don’t talk much.  The dialogue vacuum makes it easy to assume that a generic or default American sensibility exists.  You notice the great gulf fixed between black and white America when a morally … Continue reading →

On the 29th of September, presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama stood before the student body of Howard University in Washington DC.  Four days earlier, I had occupied the same stage as part of a panel including several Jena 6 parents and … Continue reading →

Over at “Grits for Breakfast” Scott Henson has a thoughtful post on the relationship between crime and mental illness.  I’ll give you the opening paragraph as a teaser: The US Supreme Court has said executing the mentally retarded is unconstitutional, … Continue reading →