On Wednesday, some people in Everett -- the hometown of Shawna Forde -- held a vigil in memory of Brisenia Flores, Forde's 9-year-old victim from Arivaca, Arizona. My friend Scott North was there to cover the event:

EVERETT -- They mourned the death of a little girl Wednesday; a child whose life ended three years ago in a robbery orchestrated by an Everett woman she'd never met.

Brisenia Flores was 9. She'd just completed third grade. The principal at her school in Arivaca, Ariz., remembers her smile, her enthusiasm and love for animals.

She died along with her father, Raul "Junior" Flores, because of hateful ideas that took root here, more than 1,600 miles away, a crowd of about 80 human rights activists, elected officials and others were told.

"We stand here as a community to say 'Never again,'" said Meg Winch, who heads the Snohomish County Commission on Human Rights.

This sort of observance is a little unusual, given that Brisenia lived hundreds of miles and several states away. But it was put together by some thoughtful advocates here who recognize that Shawna Forde's career began here, not there:

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Here's a fact set for your consideration: Two middle school boys. One a foot taller than the other. Both have difficult backgrounds. One is struggling with his sexuality and working it out publicly, which makes others around him uncomfortable. He been bullied in his past for his appearance and sexual orientation. The other one is about a foot taller, and has been raised by a homophobic, abusive, alcoholic father.

It is possible, but seems to be unproven, that the taller one is also experimenting with involvement in white supremacy groups, but whether that is true or not seems to be at issue.

Here is what isn't in dispute: Brandon McInerney took his father's Saturday night special from wherever it was stashed in the house. He loaded it with hollow-point bullets. He put it in his backpack and went to school. The day before he said he was going to bring his gun to school. When he got to school, he went to the computer lab, pulled out the gun, and shot Larry King in the back of the head.

That is not in dispute. All sides agree.

You would think, with that fact set, a jury could come to a verdict. And yet, they didn't. Thursday the judge declared a mistrial after the jury deliberated 15 hours because seven jurors wanted to convict him on voluntary manslaughter and five wanted to convict him of first or second degree murder.

What's even weirder? Suddenly all the usual law-and-order conservatives have turned into merciful Pollyannas, including the Ventura County Star itself, whose reporting mirrored their editorial belief that McInerney should have been tried as a juvenile and not an adult, and the hate crime charge should not have been part of the trial.

I'm not sure what you call it if it's not a hate crime, to be honest. Despite the defense team's best efforts to paint it as a "gay panic" defense, it really came down to one kid taunting another with his sexual orientation. If he were not dead from bullets that exploded his head like a watermelon, perhaps we could debate the wisdom of allowing the types of interactions between the two that happened.

But he is dead. He is dead after a classmate shot him in front of all of the other classmates and the teacher. He is dead and he is gone and Brandon McInerney is very much alive and in jail and on trial.

McInerney breathes. King doesn't. And still, there is this weird, strange, counter-intuitive vibe here in Ventura County about how McInerney is as much a victim as King. I can only attribute it to the usual homophobic tendencies of many in this area.

The sly implication is that King had it coming. That the victim, the one cold in his grave, deserved what he got because, well, he was gay. Or looked gay. Or acted gay. I'm not sure any of us really know whether he was or wasn't.

And in more reversals, the conservative kings and queens of personal responsibility are whispering and crying that McInerney was the victim of a school administrator and "lax attitudes." As if stepping on Larry King would have prevented the whole thing. As if a kid who dared to be different, and perhaps in a way that offended or got in others' space, deserved to have hollow point bullets put in his head.

As if being gay is a reason to be dead.

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Wouldn't you know it: For the entire day yesterday, Fox News -- for all of its copious coverage of the NYC mosque controversy and Tiger Woods' divorce -- somehow couldn't see fit to run any kind of coverage at all about the stabbing of that Muslim New York cabbie.

Indeed, when Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer brought it up as an example of the kind of viciousness being stirred up by Fox News on The O'Reilly Factor, fill-in host Laura Ingraham completely flipped out and began shouting over him, declaring that "we haven't confirmed that yet."

Well, Laura, here's your confirmation:

A college student who did volunteer work in Afghanistan was charged Wednesday with slashing a taxi driver's neck and face after the driver said he's Muslim.

A criminal complaint alleges Michael Enright uttered an Arabic greeting and told the driver, "Consider this a checkpoint," before the brutal bias attack occurred Tuesday night inside the yellow cab on Manhattan's East Side. Police say Enright was drunk at the time.

A judge ordered Enright, 21, held without bail on charges of attempted murder and assault as hate crimes and possession of a weapon. The handcuffed defendant, wearing a polo shirt and cargo shorts, did not enter a plea during the brief court appearance.

How long before we find out he was an avid Fox watcher and Pam Geller devotee, I wonder.

Incidentally, you'll notice that this video is actually quite delightful, because Stringer won't let Ingraham intimidate him or shut him up. At one point, she tries to do an O'Reilly and orders him: "Pipe down!" But he goes on to pin her ears back by pointing out her hypocrisy on the mosque, as Alan Colmes did the night before.

Ingraham obviously believes she can outsmart and outbully these liberals she's been bringing on. Instead, she's been getting her ass handed to her. Fun to watch.

BTC News: Nobody could have predicted the disaster that is Homeland Security

Facing South: The real story of racism at the USDA, and why it probably won't be seen anywhere else

Scott Horton : Another audacious whitewash at DOJ

Pruning Shears: Putting Geneva down the memory hole

jaysays: Federal Hate Crimes case illustrates Christian myopia

FavStocks: More than weather heating up in DC: Rush-Waxman bill puts Toxic Chemicals Safety Act reform back on the front burner

We're finally ready to rumble! Our new book is available for purchase now and David and I are very excited about it. Here's a blurb from the presser on the book:

Barack Obama’s election to this nation’s highest office was an historic achievement in American politics. His victory brought the best out in many Americans, but sowed the seeds of venom and hatred in many, many others.

In the first two weeks of Obama’s presidency, more than 200 hate crimes were committed throughout the United States, including assault, arson, and murder. And within a few months, a seemingly new right wing populist faction called the Tea Party Movement invaded the political landscape.

In a groundbreaking new book, Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane (PoliPoint, June 2010), blogosphere pioneers John Amato and David Neiwert carefully document the aftermath of Obama’s victory in chilling fashion.

Amato and Neiwert explain that this “movement” was not the organic uprising it was made to appear, but rather was kick-started by Roger Ailes’ FOX News and follows in a long tradition of movement conservative activism that harkens back to the street theater days of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist...

Over the Cliff puts the finger on the driving force behind this descent into madness: the extremist Radical Right, where the Tea Party movement’s most unhinged ideas originate, and the conservative pundits and politicians who were willing accomplices to a divisive politics of resentment.

Please buy a copy here too. We can use your support and it's a good read.

The amount of work it took to write this book was incredible and I have a newfound admiration for authors everywhere.

Praise for Over the Cliff

“John Amato and David Neiwert have produced a book that should stay on shelves for 50 years—long enough to remind us that at least some people understood the strange and vile energies consuming the social contract at the beginning of the third millenium. As a record of what is happening to American conservatism in the year 2010, Over the Cliff is unmatched.”

—Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

Those are wonderful words from Rick. We have a few more endorsements we'll share with you later. David and I will set up a live chat during the week, but I wanted to share the news.

You can also buy it from all the major online retailers like Barnes&Noble, IndieBound, Powell's, and Border's and Over the Cliff is now available as an ePUB and mobi-Kindlen on PoliPoint.com.

PoliPoint has all the information listed, so click on over.

John called out the case in Phoenix involving the murder of a Latino man by his white neighbor the other day: Turns out the murder indeed involved Arizona's new immigration law:

Tension surrounding the passage of Arizona's tough new law cracking down on illegal immigration contributed to the slaying of an Hispanic man, allegedly shot by a white neighbor, a representative of the dead man's family said Friday.

Police and the family said the arrested man, 50-year-old Gary Thomas Kelley, allegedly directed racial slurs at 44-year-old Juan Daniel Varela before the May 6 shooting near their homes.

...

A probable cause statement filed May 6 said Kelley confronted Varela outside Varela's home and repeated racial slurs at Varela. Varela then apparently attempted to kick Kelley who then allegedly pulled out a revolver and shot Varela, police said.

A police statement said the two men had gotten into altercations several times in recent years. The family wants Kelley charged with premeditated first-degree murder, not second-degree murder, with a hate crime allegation, Galindo said.

"This family wants justice. They're asking that violence stop and that Gov. Brewer and other elected officials take responsibility for this hostile atmosphere they have created" by the immigration law and other legislation, Galindo said.

But Phoenix Police Department spokesman, Officer Luis Samudio, said Friday the shooting was not a hate crime, an allegation that under Arizona law could subject a person convicted of a crime to a stiffer sentence.

Robert Shutts, homicide bureau chief for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, said the case remained under investigation and that the murder charge could be upgraded to first-degree and a hate-crime allegation added if evidence warrants.

Shutts wouldn't comment on whether the new immigration law was a factor in the case. But he said authorities weren't trying smooth over the case or minimize it, as the Varela family has alleged.

"That's not even close to the truth," he said. "We are treating this case with ... utmost seriousness." Kelley on Friday remained jailed in lieu of $750,000 bond, facing one count each of second-degree murder and aggravated assault.

The AZFamily.com story has more details:

The alleged killer was yelling racial slurs seconds before he fired the shots that killed 44-year-old Juan Varela.

Varela was a third-generation American, yet his family claims he was called a “wetback” who was going to be sent back to Mexico by the man who murdered him. They claim it was a hate crime and the police are not doing their job. That is a charge the department denies.

A family spokesperson says, “We ask for justice, that’s what the family wants is justice.”

As someone reasonably knowledgeable about hate crimes, I can say that this case throws up all kinds of red flags. It is true that the mere use of ethnic slurs in the commission of a crime is not enough by itself to warrant hate-crime charges, but it is a potential piece of evidence in such a case. More significant is the fact that he had a prior history of agitation in the neighborhood, and it sounds as though that was racial too.

There certainly is plenty to investigate here. The Phoenix police should not be dismissing the potential for this to be a bias crime. And frankly, second-degree murder sounds pretty light, too: This guy went over to his neighbor's property with a gun and began shouting racial slurs at him. Those sound like powerful elements of premeditation to me.

There's some comfort in knowing, at least, that the case is not being handled by Joe Arpaio's detectives. But this case bears close watching.

Right Wing Watch: ENDA: The religious right dusts off its hate crimes playbook

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TheZoo: The McVeigh tapes

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James Wolcott: Jewel of the Niles

ArmsControlWonk: Iranian ICBM: New estimate, same as the old estimate

Many of us celebrated when the Justice Department announced it had indicted three police officers for obstructing justice in the case of the bias-crime murder of a Latino named Luis Ramirez in the rural town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

But as Maegan La Mamita Mala at Vivir Latino observes (be sure to read the whole post):

Civil rights and the more expansive human rights matter little when you’re dead. So longer sentences make us feel better, like all the marching, chanting, petition signing, mouse clicking and text messaging meant something. Whatever the outcome of the Federal case, no one will go to jail for taking Luis Ramirez from his children and this world. So while we need to support this case, it has to be done in a larger context. Whatever the outcome of the Federal case, it still will be dangerous to be a Latino in the United States.

This reality is underscored by the details as they emerge in the Ramirez case. Indeed, the conditions that gave rise to the attempt to cover up the bias crime by local officers are present in nearly every small rural town in America.

Consider, for instance, what the local prosecutor saw going on with the case as he handled it:

The Pennsylvania prosecutor who failed to secure felony convictions against two teens in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant says he thought his case was "compromised" from the start.

Like many residents in the small, tight-knit eastern Pennsylvanian community of Shenandoah, Schuylkill County District Attorney James Goodman knew that an officer investigating the death of Luis Ramirez was in a relationship with the mother of one the teens involved.

Goodman also believed the investigation and evidence hadn't been handled as it should have been.

"They didn't interview the perpetrators, the boys. In fact, not only did they not interview them, they picked them up, gave them rides, helped them concoct stories, brought them back and told the boys what to say," Goodman told CNN.

The son of Shenandoah Police Lt. William Moyer also played on the same football team as the teens who were involved in the July 2008 street brawl, according to court documents.

"It's clear they were trying to help these boys out, for whatever reason -- they were football players, these police officers were trying to help these boys out and limit their involvement in the death of Luis Ramirez."

Likewise with the local eyewitnesses to the crime:

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Already we can be thankful that we finally passed a federal hate-crime law this summer -- because it's helping bring about justice in the case of a Latino man killed by white thugs in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Five people, including three police officers, have been indicted in the fatal race-related beating of a Latino man in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Two indictments charge the five with federal hate crime charges, as well as obstruction of justice and conspiracy, authorities said in a written statement. A federal grand jury handed up the indictments last week, and they were unsealed Tuesday.

Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky are charged with a hate crime for beating Luis Ramirez in July 2008 while shouting racial epithets at him, according to the department. Ramirez died two days later.

"Following the beating, Donchak, Piekarsky and others, including members of the Shenandoah Police Department, participated in a scheme to obstruct the investigation of the fatal assault," the Justice Department said. As a result, Donchak faces three additional counts of conspiring to obstruct justice and related offenses, officials said.

Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor and two other officers are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice in the Ramirez investigation. Nestor and a fourth police officer are named in a third indictment and charged with extortion and civil rights violations related to police corruption, the Justice Department said.

It's genuinely disturbing to discover that local law-enforcement officers were involved in covering this matter up and obstructing justice. It adds just another twist to an already shocking case.

The Ramirez case was a classic example of why we needed to pass a federal bias-crime law -- especially considering the outrageous circumstances in which the local jury slapped the young thugs on the wrist:

[T]his was a pretty clear-cut case of jury nullification: the weight of evidence against the accused was so powerful that it's clear the all-white jury -- like similar juries in the South during the Civil Rights struggle -- was not going to convict two young white men of murdering a Mexican. Even if, as Friedman says, "the only reason he is dead is because he was Mexican."

Prosecutors alleged that the teens baited the Ramirez into a fight with racial epithets, provoking an exchange of punches and kicks that ended with Ramirez convulsing in the street, foaming from the mouth. He died two days later in a hospital.

Piekarsky was accused of delivering a fatal kick to Ramirez's head after he was knocked to the ground.

As they poured out of courthouse, the teens' supporters shouted "I was right from the start" and "I'm glad the jury listened" at cameras that caught the late-night verdict.

But Gladys Limon, a spokeswoman for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the jury had sent a troubling message.

"The jurors here [are] sending the message that you can brutally beat a person, without regard to their life, and get away with it, continue with your life uninterrupted," she said.

Considering some of the details of the killing, it's also inordinately clear this was a classic bias crime, with the incident instigated by racially charged taunts that made clear the victim was selected because of racial animus:

"Isn't it a little late for you guys to be out?" the boys said, according to court documents. "Get your Mexican boyfriend out of here."

... Burke recalled hearing one final, ominous threat as the teens ran. "They yelled, 'You effin bitch, tell your effin Mexican friends get the eff out of Shenandoah or you're gonna be laying effin next to him,' " she said.

That is, of course, the entire purpose of bias crimes: To hold the victim up as an example: "You're next." The purpose is to terrorize the target community, to drive them out, eliminate them.

This is why Latino advocates demanded the Justice Department step in and deliver justice. It looks like they have.

Larry Keeler at HateWatch has more.

[H/t Dave E/]

Yesterday, a genuinely historic moment passed with scarcely a blip of attention from the media: President Obama signed into law the nation's first genuine federal bias-crimes statute.

Everyone interested in advancing civil rights in America and defending the nation's minorities from the deprivation of their rights by terroristic thugs -- particularly their historic victims, from African Americans and Asian Americans to Latinos, to Jews and other religious minorities, to gays and lesbians and transgender folk -- have real cause to celebrate. Brian Levin has a nice collection of their thoughts at HuffPo.

Then, of course, there's the Religious Right, which is holding its collective breath and pouting over the event. Case in point: Pat Robertson at The 700 Club, ripping into the new law both yesterday and today on his show.

His basis for opposing the law, however, is completely detached from reality. For instance, Robertson argues:

Robertson: You know, there’s a law – what about a law that says it’s a federal crime to attack somebody because of his religious beliefs? Not a chance!

Robertson seems completely unaware that in fact religious bias is one of the categories of bias crime covered by hate-crime laws -- and it has been from the very start, since these laws were first enacted on the state level in the early 1980s!

Hint to Pat: Religion was covered as a bias category from the start because Jews have long been some of the most common victims of bias crimes. For instance, in the FBI's hate-crime statistics for 2007, some 1,400 of the nation's 7,600 or so reported bias crimes were of the "anti-religion" category; of those, some 118 were varieties of anti-Christian bias.

Indeed, he needs only read the text of the the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act to see that religion is one of the categories of bias it covers:

“(1) OFFENSES INVOLVING ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED RACE, COLOR, RELIGION, OR NATIONAL ORIGIN.—Whoever, whether or not acting under color of law, willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device, attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person—

“(2) OFFENSES INVOLVING ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED RELIGION, NATIONAL ORIGIN, GENDER, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, GENDER IDENTITY, OR DISABILITY.—

“(A) IN GENERAL.—Whoever, whether or not acting under color of law, in any circumstance described in subparagraph (B) or paragraph (3), willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device, attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of any person—

, claiming that the law will attack people's free-speech rights. This is, of course, a completely bogus claim, since the bill has very specific free-speech language built into it.

Finally, as Media Matters points out, religious discrimination has long garnered special federal attention in the federal criminal code.

The mewling and fearmongering from the religious right should actually tell progressives they're on the right track here.

Below, I've preserved video footage of President Obama signing the bill into law.

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