My court date originally scheduled for March 2 has been postponed until Thursday, March 8, 2007 at 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 21 at 10 a.m.

The supervised pre-trial conference will have to sit about a week three weeks because of my attorney's scheduling conflict. And the fact that the day we asked for to reschedule was unavailable. An apparently rare occurence. But nothing shocks me anymore.

Oh well. I'm anxious for justice, but I gotta sit tight and wait. So here's to the first day of spring.

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Forget any of the work that I have been doing. Kiri Davis, a high school student from Washington state, has produced a solid news documentary with great production values that puts the race issue back at the center of the debate.

Kiri interviews African-American teen women and they discuss the difference between being dark and light skinned black. The kicker, though, is the black and white doll test she conducts with black children, identical to the one done for Brown v Board of Education, the school desgregation lawsuit.

When 15 out of 21 black children choose the white doll as the nice one and the black doll as the one they don't want to play with in Kiri's documentary, we know we are still mired in racial issues.

This comes to me the same day Wendy Wallace of Poynter.org wrote a story about the Washington state legislature considering legislation to extend First Amendment protections to high school journalists. Right now, Supreme Court law limits the rights of high school journos.

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This one is in this week's New Haven Advocate, from a night at QUSL last week.

When it comes to prosecuting the war on terror, distinguishing between dissent and danger is an art.

So said Kevin O’Connor (the Republican U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General who doubles as U.S. Attorney for Connecticut) last week at a Quinnipiac University Law School forum on terrorism and the U.S. courts.

Link to Story on Advocate site...

After listening to Matt Stoller this morning, I am not so sure I want to be labeled a journalist.

Stoller, blogger extraordinaire from MYDD, excoriated the ethical shortcomings of dead tree media during the Hartford Courant Key Issues Forum panel discussion at Hartford's Christ Church Cathedral.

"To say journalists have a system of ethics is false. It is not true," Stoller said. "It is an attempt to make a larger conversation that needs to happen in journalism, not happen...[Ours] is a corrupted and corroded media system."

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While it's a little to early to write the epitaph for Mayor Eddie Perez, City Council showed some teeth this week and went after him on the nasty, dirty rotten parking deal Perez gave Abe Giles.

But by moving it to the Parking Authority and not calling for an investigation, City Council is helping Perez save face here. Perez failed to inform voters of his tricky political giveaway in his Winter 2007 franking privilege. I wonder why.

The eight-page color brochure that Perez and his taxpayer financed re-election committee sends out quarterly has highlighted his latest achievements, including groundbreaking on Aetna's new 1200-space parking garage on Flower Street, the doubling of property values in Hartford since 1999 and the results of a 25-year study which show that serious crime has trended downward.

How Perez wants to take credit for property values doubling and crime trends dating back a quarter of a century, I’m not sure. He made sure to tell us that taxes are not doubling.

Double speak, though, erodes the integrity of the entire piece of literature. And frankly, I'm pretty tired of dishonesty in government.

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Luis Cotto over at La Paloma Sabanera has himself a kickass new blog IonHartford.

Friday afternoon, Luis posted the story of Francisco Acevedo, who in June 2006 was president of the Senior class at Conard High School. Frankie had the temerity and gall to videotape a white cop pushing a black student, and was arrested shortly thereafter for breach of peace.

The comment after Luis' post is key, and Luis has linked to the video, which tells of chaos in school after the senior class prank of releasing thousands of crickets.

Frankie took it to trial and was acquitted of all charges on Feb. 15, 2007, based partly on the video. Frankie filed his 42 USC § 1983 action before he finished his criminal case.

I had been following his case since it happened last June, and when he was cleared of all charges, it gave me strength. So, thanks for sharing some fight with us all, Frankie!

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The Man in Black - some lyrics in honor of his Feb 26 Birthday - (and Victor Hugo, and my grandmother Nonne, and my friend Scott, and local guitar maestro Daniel Salazar, and Michael Bolton, and Erykah Badu, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayep Erdogan, and Jeanine's Dad, and hey, whaddya know - me too!).

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.

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The Stamford Advocate editorial board showed courage on Saturday, February 17 with this gem. Unfortunately, they don't post all their editorials online, so I typed this one in.

Here goes:

As he tries to extricate himself from dubious charges in which police say he threatened the governor, Kenneth Krayeske can at least console himself that he's won some new friends in high places.

Whether they'll be able to help him much is doubtful, but their involvement signals how important Mr. Krayeske's situation is to all of us, and why it bears scrutiny. At stake could be our ability to speak out against public figures without fear of reproach, a bedrock value of our society that came under attack last month in Hartford.

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The concept of non-binding resolutions opposing the war in Iraq anger Sen. Chris Dodd.

"We need to get away from the non-binding proposals. They are infuriating," Dodd said this afternoon during a short conference call with Ned Lamont and Congressman John Larson.

"The House did better than the Senate in this regard," Dodd said during his three minute call. The call between Dodd, Larson and Lamont was piped into about 30 organizing meetings attended by around 1,000 people.

CTNewsjunkie.com covered more of the meetings held simultaneously across the state to help plan the March 17 anti-war rally at the Old State House in Hartford sponsored by COW - Connecticut Opposes War.

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