Eric Holder’s life long dream
by Jesse J. Lewis, Sr.

Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. has a strong connection to the State of Alabama. Atty. Holder’s wife, Dr. Sharon Malone, a Washington D. C. obstetrician, is a Mobile native. Because of her concern for Atty. Holder’s health, she has asked him to resign.
President Obama said that Holder, 63, intends to leave the Justice Department as soon as his successor is confirmed, a process that could run through 2014 and even into next year. Holder is one of the longest-serving members of the Obama Cabinet and currently ranks as the fourth longest tenured AG in history.
Holder most wants to be remembered for his record on civil rights: refusing to defend a law that defined marriage as between one man and one woman; suing North Carolina and Texas over voting restrictions that disproportionately affect minorities and the elderly; launching 20 investigations of abuses by local police departments; and using his bully pulpit to lobby Congress to reduce prison sentences for nonviolent drug crimes.
The attorney general was a lightning rod for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) since his appointment was announced. Their relationship reached a crisis point when the GOP-led House voted him in contempt for refusing to hand over documents about Fast and Furious, but he still held his job.
In the end, the decision to leave was Holder’s alone. The next question is where will he go. Friends say Holder has made no decision about his next professional job, but they would not be surprised if he returned to the law firm Covington & Burling, where he was a partner, representing corporate clients.
According to National Press Radio, more policy and enforcement initiatives are underway and could be announced soon. Holder sent a memo to U. S. Attorneys urging them to use sentencing enhancements know as “851” tools to gain leverage in plea negotiations with defendants (threatening defendants into avoiding trial with huge amounts of prison time). He is also expected to notify federal prosecutors that the Justice Department will no longer require defendants who plead guilty to waive their rights to appeal based on ineffective lawyering; and long-waiting racial profiling guidelines for general agents will be released. These guidelines will make clear that sexual orientation, ethnicity, and religion are not legitimate bases for law enforcement suspicion.
Holder, fighting back tears in his speech after the announcement of his resignation said to President Obama, “I am proud to call you a friend,” adding “the Obama administration has done much to make real the promise of our democracy.”

White House security unacceptable

Omar Gonzalez, a 42-year-old knife-wielding Iraq war veteran, entered an unlocked door to the executive mansion. The White House door Gonzalez barged through had no remote locking mechanism and needed to be manually locked. Such a mechanism has since been installed.
A federal grand jury indicated Gonzalez on three separate federal and District of Columbia charges  that could carry a maximum of 17 years in prison.
U. S. Secret Service Director Julia Pierson called the incident “unacceptable” and told a congressional committee Tuesday, that she takes “full responsibility.” Saying she couldn’t give responses because presidential protection is highly sensitive or classified, Pierson said the incident remains under investigation and she doesn’t “want to get ahead of the investigation.”
Republicans and Democrats questioned how Gonzalez made it through five rings of security, overpowering Secret Service officer and running deep into the White House where he was finally subdued by an off-duty officer. Rep. Elijah Cummings, added, “I hate to even imagine what could have happened if Gonzalez had been carrying gun instead of a knife when he burst inside the White House. That possibility is extremely unsettling.”
At the end of the public session of the congressional hearing, Cummings said “the jury is still out” on whether Pierson can stay on in and fix the problems at the agency. Asked about his confidence in the director’s ability to continue in her post, Issa told reporters, “This hearing did not add to my confidence.”
Over and over, Democrats and Republicans sharply criticized the Secret Service director’s leadership and expressed disbelief that no one at the agency had been held accountable. Pierson noted she has been on the job for 18 months and took steps to reform the agency but also said, “when you bring change into an organization, there is pushback.”
But Pierson’s testimony only appeared to further inflame some members of the committee, yet President Obama still has confidence in the Secret Service protection.
I don’t feel Director Julia Pierson should be fired but given the responsibility of doing her job, with enhanced an budget. She should present the report to Congress and let them sign off on it. She has the authority to hire and fire anyone she so desires.

email: jjlewis@birminghamtimes.com

by Hollis Wormsby, Jr.

Adrian Peterson’s Story Brings Back Painful Memories

When the story of Adrian Peterson being accused of abusing his four- year-old son first broke it brought back painful memories for me.  Those of you who are regular readers may remember that when my father passed away a little over nine years ago, my column at the time was, “It’s Too Late To Say I’m Sorry.” A painful tale that included the fact that after the years of what I perceived to be abuse that I took from my father as a child I had basically cut off contact with him over the course of my life and had never found the will to truly forgive. So you know that child abuse is something that I feel strongly about.
I also feel for the pain of children who are trapped in physically abusive relationships, because it is a pain I remember all too well.  Sadly in the weeks since this incident first surfaced, as I have unofficially surveyed my circle of associates, I would say that fully 70 percent or more still spoke strongly that they received beatings like that and were none the worse for it, or at best that if Peterson did cross a line, too much is being made of it.
I am 58 years old and I realized again recently the magnitude of the anger that resides in me. I cannot speak for a community, but I think that some of the anger in our community comes from memories of being helpless and hurting as a child, and at least in my case swearing to yourself you will never let anyone hurt you like that again. And in my lifetime I have always had a quick and deep temper, and I have always been quick to aggressively attack anything or anyone that I even thought was trying to hurt me, even though in some cases no hurt was intended.
I think that growing up with abuse makes it hard to learn to express normal emotions. I think especially for young people who do not get help, there is a feeling that the world is doing this to you, or allowing it to happen, so obviously no one cares about you or what is happening to you.
There was an Irish folk rock singer in the ’80s, (Sinead O’Connor) who at one point was one of the darlings of the music industry, until one day in an interview on child abuse she uttered the phrase, “F**k the Pope” and her public turned on her. I remember seeing an interview with her on MTV in their early days where she just broke down in tears as she tried to explain why she had said what she said about the Pope. And essentially what she said is that she had talked to a priest about the abuse between her and her father, and that instead of the priest helping her, he told her father who then became even more abusive. She said she hated that priest because he was her last hope and that when he sold her out to her father, too, she just lost it and she expressed that so many years later by burning the picture of the Pope in her video. You could tell how real her pain was just looking at the tv, and as I watched I felt her pain, I cried her tears. Her career never really recovered, but I was glad to come across an article on her recently where she said that she had found peace.
I have a degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Wisconsin and a more than 30 year federal career, so I am not trying to be some punk. But in school I was required to take a lot of coursework in organizational behavior and behavior modification. The founding principle of behavioral modification is operant learning theory. Under operant learning theory the discipline model is stimulus-organism-response. What this means is that we as an organism respond to a stimulus, be it positive or negative. Psychologists have spent decades trying to determine the difference in the impact of using positive versus negative reinforcement for stimulus. The widely held belief is that while negative reinforcement such as beatings or shouting at people may change the targeted behavior it can also yield other unpredicted and frequently negative responses that may be difficult to control. So by this theory tearing my a** up and Peterson did his son might make me stop doing the one thing you are tearing me up for, but it will also lead to other belligerent behaviors that can neither be predicted or controlled.
In the opposite extreme positive reinforcement appears to redirect negative behaviors without creating the unpredicted and uncontrollable consequences. This is the science that is used in setting up workforce discipline systems and it needs to become more a part of our community as well.
I have two children myself now and have rarely used corporal punishment on either. I won’t say one should never use it but in my experience and in the conversations I have had on the subject over the years I have come to some conclusions on how I feel about its use. I think corporal punishment, if used at all, should be the nuclear weapon in our discipline toolbox, and just like I would not launch a nuclear weapon in response to a terrorist bombing I am not going to tear my child’s a** up for a minor offense, or in my case for any reason. But from listening to others I have found that for those who only got a whipping a few times in their lives, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but for those for whom whippings were a regular and ongoing part of their youth there seems to be more lasting results. Children need discipline.  Whipping is frequently not really about discipline it is about anger and punishment. We are fully grown adults, and in Peterson’s case he was dealing with a 4-year-old child. You cannot tell me that there are not better ways to discipline a 4-year-old child than to strip him naked and beat him until he has cuts and bruises across his body including on his privates. You cannot tell me that after being counseled by police for doing this to another child that Peterson had no clue that maybe he was wrong. I know that many of us endured this type of punishment when we were youths, it was wrong then and it wrong now, or at least that’s the way I see it.

(Do you have a question or comment on this column? Look me up on Facebook/HollisWormsby or email me at hjwormsby@aol.com.)

By James Strong

People say stupid things when pushed into a corner. One of the latest examples of this tendency is Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. The NFL superstar was recently indicted by the Montgomery County, Texas, District Attorney’s office for whipping his 4-year-old son with a tree branch.
The DA says that the whipping exceeded “reasonable discipline,” which is why Peterson has been charged with felony child abuse. Upon hearing about the indictment, the Vikings organization deactivated Peterson from team activities and from playing team games, for which the organization received praise from the league, fans, community and sponsors.
But after not playing Peterson for games one and two, the Vikings reinstated him for its third game. The decision was so shocking and so badly received that the Radisson Hotel dropped its sponsorship of the team, the beer company Anheuser-Bush publicly condemned the reversal and infuriated Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton trashed the decision as nonsensical.
Within 24 hours of the ruckus and complaints, however, Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wilf reversed his reversal and suspended Peterson indefinitely, admitting that “We made a mistake, and we needed to get this right.” Though some criticize this decision by Wilf as excessive, it still merits congratulations.
The Vikings fans, community and sponsors justifiably condemned the Vikings for the Peterson reinstatement. Therefore, the Vikings are justified in undoing their error and suspending Peterson indefinitely.
In a statement released by Peterson’s lawyer Rusty Hardin, the language presents a Peterson contrite and humbled: “It is important to remember that Adrian never intended to harm his son and deeply regrets the unintentional injury.” But as revulsion at the beating continued to spread like wildfire, Peterson tweeted this response:
“COME TO ME AND REST. Give your mind a break from its habitual judging. … But I created you to know Me and to live in rich communication with Me. When you become preoccupied with passing judgment, you usurp My role.”
The tweet quotes from Christian author Sarah Young’s book Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence. On NFL pregame shows and in other tweets, Peterson also sermonizes about God.
When Peterson publicly confessed that he was wrong to whip his son so severely and that he was not perfect, we all sympathized with him. But with a tweet as selfish as it is imprudent, we now realize that his public contrition was not an unselfish confession.
By condemning others for judging him, Peterson, in essence, judges others. And because of the flagrant hypocrisy, he invites others to judge him until their sweat becomes a storm.
He also gives the impression that he is using Christianity to soften or excuse his child abuse and defend a character full of glitches. Whipping your 4-year-old son with a tree branch such that it leaves welts on his thighs, bruises his battered buttocks and swells his testicles as though they had been munched on by flies clearly is criminal. But using Christianity to lessen guilt is the tendinitis of the Christian faith.
In this regard, Peterson’s actions rival that of megachurch prosperity gospel preacher Creflo Dollar, who also used Christianity as way of subduing criticism of a child abuse incident. Dollar was arrested and booked by Georgia’s Fayette County Sheriff’s office in 2012 for punching, slapping and choking his 15-year-old daughter. The police charged him with simple battery, family violence and cruelty to children.
Regarding the incident, Dollar wrote on his Facebook page pious words that themselves should be flogged, gagged and caged: “The fight has already been won. We are just walking it out. It’s already been determined that the devil is defeated through the victory Jesus won. Now we must walk in that victory in our own lives.” Dollar even forced his 19-year-old daughter Alexandria, who called police out of concern for her sister, to later deny the beat down occurred as she originally stated on the 911 call.
When ferried across a few hours of time, praise for Peterson’s confession sank before reaching the shores of final applause, all because of a sanctimonious tweet. We don’t know what Peterson hoped to accomplish with the tweet. But if he wanted to trumpet a plea for fairness and understanding, the notes he played were flat and sour.
When fed up with criticism, you shouldn’t soothe your anger with an angry response. Thus, Peterson’s use of religion to mitigate his crime and save his character –we say “religion” because we get the impression that if he were a Hindu or Buddhist or Muslim, he would do the same – Peterson’s abuse of religion has made all Minnesota puke.
And, after weighing his holier-than-thou attitude on the scales of honesty and sincerity, the whole sports world has seen that the merits of Peterson’s character do not match his exploits as a Viking.