Reefer Madness, Redux
Behind Closed Doors
WoD Junkie DEAth Worshipers
Racism Resurgent:
How Media Let The Bell Curve's Pseudo-Science Define the Agenda on Race
The Bell Curve was accorded attention totally disproportionate to the merits of the book or the novelty of its thesis. The book and its dubious claims set the agenda for discussions. As well they might. Nearly all the research that Murray and Herrnstein relied on for their central claims about race and IQ was funded by the Pioneer Fund, described by the London Sunday Telegraph (3/12/89) as a "neo-Nazi organization closely integrated with the far right in American politics."
The fund's mission is to promote eugenics, a philosophy that maintains that "genetically unfit" individuals or races are a threat to society.
A Review of the Bell Curve: Bad Science Makes for Bad Conclusions
by William J. Matthews, Ph.D.
PREJUDICE: MARIJUANA AND JIM CROW LAWS
John DiIulio to D.C.
Last Monday, President George Bush appointed criminologist and political scientist Dr. John J. DiIulio, Jr., to direct the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives--the first federal office intended to promote the integration of religious groups into federally financed social services. Dr. DiIulio is the Frederick Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion and Civil Society in SAS. In the newly created position he will oversee the President's effort to have religious and community organizations, using government subsidies, assume a bigger role in combating social problems such as drug abuse and juvenile delinquency. The new initiative, if approved by Congress, will allow religious charities to compete for government grants alongside secular organizations. President Bush described Dr. DiIulio as "one of the most influential social entrepreneurs in America. I can't tell you how honored I am for him to leave his post in academia to join us." He went on to say, "He has been a major force in mobilizing the city of Philadelphia to support faith-based and community groups."
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."
Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Nazi Air Force (Luftwaffe) commander, the Nuremberg Trials
Tough Guys excerpted
Given the fame of its authors, its provocative title, and its contentious rhetoric, Body Count seems destined to be a best-seller, popular with the Republican right. The former drug czar and secretary of education William J. Bennett here joins with John J. DiIulio, Jr., a Princeton University political scientist, and John P. Walters, a former deputy to Bennett in the drug war, to warn Americans of an impending wave of violent crime and to urge an expanded war on drugs, tougher policing, longer sentences, more imprisonment, and—not to be forgotten—more religion.
RACE AND CRIME
Body Count focuses on crime by young black males, who are disproportionately the perpetrators and victims of violent crime and therefore an appropriate focal point for the book. But it is distressing that the authors introduce the "morally impoverished" youth criminal as an alien. They never explicitly link young black males with the "superpredator" label, but the connection is unmistakable.
Juvenile Crime, Adult Time: Why are we so afraid of our kids?
The United States also is among the select few nations that execute child offenders. Amnesty International has documented 19 executions of child offenders since 1990 in six countries: Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United States (Yemen has since outlawed the practice). Ten were killed in the United States, which "has earned the shameful distinction of leading a tiny and dwindling group of perpetrator states" that still execute children, in the words of a December Amnesty report. Since October 1997, the report notes, all four children known to have been put to death in the world were killed in this country.
Templeton traces the trend for harsher juvenile penalties back to the "superpredator" thesis of former Princeton professor and current Brookings Institute ideologue John Dilulio. Combining demographic projections with his notion that institutions that produce decent character are disintegrating, Dilulio forecast a "rising wave of superpredators" primed to prey on society like never before. Dilulio's 1996 book Body Count, which he co-authored with former Drug Czar William Bennett and John P. Walters, warned of thickening ranks of juvenile sociopaths, "radically impulsive, brutally remorseless youngsters, including ever more pre-teen-age boys." Dilulio further described these predators as "fearing neither the stigma of arrest, pains of imprisonment nor the pangs of conscience."
The alarmist tone of this conservative tome echoed in Congress, where Florida Republican Rep. Bill McCollum introduced the "Violent Youth Predator Act," which called for confining children as young as 13 with adult offenders, denying federal funds to states that do not try 13-year-olds as adults and abolishing the federal agency charged with preventing juvenile crime. The bill, which is still being considered, has since been given a less hysterical name, but the stringent provisions remain.
Relax Your Muscles as Much as Possible
"The horrors experienced by many young inmates, particularly those who are convicted of nonviolent offenses, border on the unimaginable. Prison rape not only threatens the lives of those who fall prey to their aggressors, but it is potentially devastating to the human spirit. Shame, depression, and a shattering loss of self-esteem accompany the perpetual terror the victim thereafter must endure." U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Farmer v. Brennan
SPR - Stop Prisoner Rape
NEW BUSH OFFICE SEEKS CLOSER TIES TO CHURCH GROUPS
WASHINGTON President Bush has selected a University of Pennsylvania professor of political science to head the first federal office intended to promote the integration of religious groups into federally financed social services, several Bush advisers said today. The advisers said the opening of the office and the appointment of John J. DiIulio Jr. to fill it would almost certainly be announced at a White House event on Monday, and they acknowledged that it would draw heated opposition from organizations and religious groups that advocate a strict separation of church and state.
What Is Compassionate Conservatism? by Myron Magnet
The Wall Street Journal 2-5-9
"They say you can't legislate morality. Well, you certainly can."
John Ashcroft Chicago Tribune May 25, 1998
Bush. Religious drug treatment in Texas
Delay Requested in Chong Term
Actor and comedian Tommy Chong, who considers his stint in federal prison akin to "going on location," still would rather be someplace else. Chong, 65, turned himself in at the Taft Correctional Institution near Bakersfield, Calif., last week to begin his nine-month sentence for selling bongs over the Internet. But one of his lawyers appeared in federal court in Pittsburgh yesterday to argue that he should be let out of the lockup pending his appeal to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Pittsburgh attorney Stanton Levenson told U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab that his client, famous for such movies as "Up in Smoke," isn't a threat to anyone, isn't likely to run away and has legitimate reasons to believe he might win on appeal. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary McKeen Houghton opposed the motion to let him out, saying the nine-month sentence Schwab imposed was appropriate.
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