With Apologies To Jim Croce
Well in downtown old Chicago
in the saddest part of town
if you go down there, you better just be aware
of a clerk named Dorothy Brown
Posted on November 17, 2015
Special Report: An Iraqi Smuggler’s Tale
By Isabel Coles and Shadia Nasralla/Reuters
In photo after photo, Sediq Sevo’s Facebook page lays out the riches and allure of Europe.
In one picture the young Iraqi Kurd poses beneath the Eiffel Tower. In another he stands in a neon-lit restaurant in Rotterdam. A third has him grinning beside a train in Milan.
He stopped posting pictures in August. That was the month Sevo helped smuggle five fellow Iraqi Kurds to Europe, he told Reuters. They ended up dead, trapped with 66 other migrants inside a truck abandoned alongside an Austrian highway.
Like Sevo, many of the dead came from Iraqi Kurdistan. They had joined hundreds of thousands of people who have entered Europe illegally this year from homes wrecked by civil war, sectarian violence or repressive governments in countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea. Many are young men ready to risk their lives for the chance of stability and wealth. On their side are determination, sheer numbers, and people-smugglers.
Posted on November 16, 2015
Homan Square: A Report Back
By First Defense Legal Aid
First Defense Legal Aid (FDLA, First Defense) will report back on its recent experience with Homan Square and other Chicago police facilities where youth and adults are held incommunicado on Thursday.
Chicago has made international news for Homan Square, record numbers of false confessions, police shootings, torture, and a department-wide code of silence on police crimes and misconduct, all disproportionately affecting African Americans.
Chicago can be known for a unique solution! FDLA will make specific calls to action for getting volunteer attorneys into police stations.
Posted on November 12, 2015
The Dog Ate My Vote: How Congress Explains Its Absences
By Derek Willis and Cecilia Reyes/ProPublica
On a Monday afternoon in October 2011, West Virginia Democrat Nick J. Rahall II waited at the Charleston airport for a 4:50 p.m. U.S. Airways Express flight to Washington. If the plane left on schedule, the roughly 80-minute flight would allow him to get to the Capitol in time for votes in the House of Representatives that evening.
Things did not go according to plan. The flight didn’t leave Charleston for another four hours, giving Rahall, then the top Democrat on the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, plenty of time to “boil over,” as he later wrote. When he finally arrived in Washington, having missed three votes, he lambasted the airline’s handling of the delay in a statement in the Congressional Record:
“At moments, the arrival/departure information was so confused that the airplane would have had to violate the laws of physics in order to abide by the airline schedule,” Rahall’s statement read.
“Needless to say, all passengers were inconvenienced and the airline’s explanations were wholly unsatisfactory. This flight delay prevented me from carrying out my Constitutional duty to represent the people of southern West Virginia: I feel I owe them and this body an explanation about why that was not possible last night.”
Voting is one of the most important duties of a lawmaker, and most miss very few votes. Yet voting attendance has become a topic of discussion in the Republican presidential primary, as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has missed about a third of all votes this year, by far the most in that chamber.
In the House, unlike the Senate, lawmakers are given a chance to provide “Personal Explanations” to explain missed votes. These entries filed in the Congressional Record say not only how a representative came to be absent, but also how they would have voted though they don’t have the effect of adding or changing a vote.
Posted on November 10, 2015