Editorial

April 7th opened up with a raid of the home and offices of Trump attorney Michael Cohen. These raids were directed by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York not special prosecutor Robert Muller. That makes this a separate investigation and it has nothing to do with Russia. If the raids did have something to do with Russian influence on American elections, they would barely touch Michael Cohen and at least one prominent Republican would be in the cross-hairs. The narrative would draw a directly line between the US Senate, Russian banks and white supremacists.

One thing needs to be clear before any analysis of the powers behind the sudden rise of the March for our Lives movement is presented. The survivors who appear to lead the protest movement are not crisis actors as some conspiracy nuts have alleged. They are traumatized young people that really saw their friends murdered in a real event perpetrated by a really evil person. Their pain is real, their loss is real, but so is the cynical manipulation of the public mind by the powerful men and women who boosted them into the public limelight.

On Wednesday November 22, Jason Lee Van Dyke contacted Mockingbird Publishing to drop his lawsuit against us and myself personally. On Friday we agreed to his stipulation to dismiss with prejudice. That means he can not sue for the same article again. The order was filed and the judge agreed yesterday.

[The Following was posted originally as a fundraising update elsewhere.  The crowd funding platform does not like updates this long. It is post here for reader edification and so that people receiving the abreviated update can read the full text.  Thank you for your kind attention]

I'd like to thank those people who have donated to my legal defense. Your help has been a leg up, but this will be a long climb. Take a moment and share this update if you can.

I'm honored to be in such august company as Talib Kweli.  I have never met him but he has done a great deal to raise the level of political discourse in this country, indeed in the world.  He has used words as art to bring justice to the forefront of our national conversation.  I have in the past covered his former writing partner Mos Def's activism against the force feeding of hunger strikers in America's gulag.

The Metropolitan Club is where dignitaries dine, discuss and determine the next dysfunctional downtown errection. Despondent that he was underdone dissing the dogged defenders of black life in Columbus, Mayor Andrew “The bagman” Ginther raised his middle finger at the city and the truth higher than the Tax-Free edifice that is the Nationwide Arena, Office Complex and yuppie watering hole.

Nothing confirms journalistic integrity and investigative effectiveness like push back and spin. There is no better push back the threat of a frivolous lawsuit. A frivolous lawsuit has no purpose other than to intimidate, and to drain resources when it is used in an attempt to silence the press. Facing such a prospect head on, regardless of the cost in hourglass sand and treasure, is the proper thing for a news source to do. It is what is expected of us if we are to defend the public trust that is placed in us to find and report the truth.

Today is the 8th of September. The conditions reported below were still happening as of the 5th of September. No word has come out of the Federal Prisons in Beaumont Texas since as mail, phone and visits are cut off or severely restricted. Hurricane Harvey has turned the Federal Prison Complex in Beaumont into a slow motion death camp. Other Prisons run by the state of Texas may also be facing similar constructed circumstances.

Emboldened by their ability to openly attack students and clergy in Charlottesville while the police look on after having been ordered to stand down, white supremacist organizations seem undaunted by even the negative press that their murder by sports car finale got them. A series of threats against anti-racist demonstrations on August 19th for those nazis who could not make it to make it to the “Free Speech” Rally on Boston Commons.

A woman I have never met is dead. Heather Heyer was a 32 year old paralegal and she was killed by a speeding car driven into a crowd by a nazi in Charlottesville Virginia yesterday August 12th. The car struck a portion of the crowd that was mostly members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a union for which I was once an organizer and delegate. It is now clear from reports received that she was a member of the IWW.