The Opperman Report‪'‬ The Opperman Report

Alec Karakatsanis is interested in what we choose to punish. For example, it is a crime in most of America for poor people to wager in the streets over dice; dice-wagerers can be seized, searched, have their assets forfeited, and be locked in cages. It's perfectly fine, by contrast, for people to wager over international currencies, mortgages, or the global supply of wheat; wheat-wagerers become names on the wings of hospitals and museums.
He is also troubled by how the legal system works when it is trying to punish people. The bail system, for example, is meant to ensure that people return for court dates. But it has morphed into a way to lock up poor people who have not been convicted of anything. He's so concerned about this that he has personally sued court systems across the country, resulting in literally tens of thousands of people being released from jail when their money bail was found to be unconstitutional.
Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings—an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color and for which the legal system has never offered sufficient justification. Usual Cruelty is a profoundly radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively, wildly successfully, challenging it.

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IRVIN MUCHNICK is author, most recently, of CONCUSSION INC: The End of Football As We Know It — his third book. He is a widely published journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated, People, and many other major magazines and newspapers. He has been interviewed on forums as diverse as Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor and National Public Radio’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

In 2007, Irv published WRESTLING BABYLON: Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death, and Scandal – a collection of his writings on pro wrestling behind the scenes. Soon thereafter, the sensational double murder/suicide of World Wrestling Entertainment’s Chris Benoit brought WRESTLING BABYLON to the attention of Congressional investigators and led to the true-crime book CHRIS & NANCY: The True Story of the Benoit Murder-Suicide and Pro Wrestling’s Cocktail of Death, published in 2009. Irv’s books and blog writings moved to the center of scrutiny of WWE co-founder and former chief executive Linda McMahon’s unsuccessful 2010 U.S. Senate candidacy in Connecticut on the Republican ticket.

Over the last four years, Irv’s work has helped elevate the story of widespread traumatic brain injury and its consequences for National Football League players and other professional and amateur athletes. His reporting has identified Dr. Joseph Maroon – medical director of WWE, team neurosurgeon for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and a widely quoted NFL consultant – as being among the key figures in manipulating research that was slow to identify and take seriously evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. In the process, the $10-billion-a-year pro football industry was protected and NFL-affiliated doctors profited. The newest developments, including the suicide of retired player and NFL Players Association leader Dave Duerson, and the bargaining impasse between the NFL and the NFLPA, have increased public interest not just in the science of head injuries but also in how it is marketed by America’s most popular sport, from the NFL level all the way down to the peewee leagues.

Irvin Muchnick, who was assistant director of the National Writers Union from 1994 to 1997 and later a copyright litigation consultant, also is lead respondent of the landmark 2010 Supreme Court case Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick. Publishers Weekly calls the case “the central rights dispute of the digital age.” He blogs about writers’ rights issues at http://freelancerights.blogspot.com.

Irv can be contacted at info@muchnick.net.

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Mark R. Elsis : Who Authorized The Assassination Of John Lennon

John Lennon Was Assassinated 35 Years Ago Today

John Lennon was the greatest singer songwriter and the most influential political artist of the 20th century. He was assassinated on Monday, December 8, 1980. I am writing a new article this is filled with questions (to get people to think) about his assassination. When finished, it will be published on: December81980.com

"I am going into an unknown future, but I'm still all here, and still while there's life, there's hope."
John Lennon, December 8, 1980

In mid November of 1980, I told all my close friends John Lennon was about to be assassinated. I said the powers that be were going to blame a lone deranged crazy fan, and that this person would never have a trial. I don't know how I knew all of this.

I was driving my taxi in Manhattan on that beautifully warm evening of December 8, 1980. I was listening to Vin Scelsa on WNEW 102.7 FM, when just before 11 pm he announced that John Lennon had been shot, and then a few minutes later, crying, he announced the death of John Lennon.

When this horrible news broke, I was with a passenger in my taxi. I drove her home and immediately went to the Dakota. I stayed there for the next nine hours. These nine hours changed my life. I swore on John Lennon's blood that I would do everything I possibly could to enlighten humanity and make our world better for future generations.

...And everyday for the last thirty-five years, I have been doing this.

Mark R. Elsis

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Roger Rapoport - Searching for Patty Hearst: A True Crime Novel

November 27

Roger Rapoport joins Ed Opperman to discuss one of the most controversial kidnapping cases of the twentieth century; Patty Hearst.

On the night that Patty Hearst was kidnapped in 1974, journalist Roger D. Rapoport, was a short drive away in his El Cerrito home. He quickly became one of the primary reporters covering the saga as it unfolded in real time. His reporting gave local and national readers a window into one of the most bizarre and polarizing crimes in U.S. history. Now, fifty years later, he has written a novel, Searching for Patty Hearst, that draws heavily from that time. In this compelling new book, he explores alternative theories of the crime and delves into the complex psychology of many of the key actors in a drama that kept the country riveted. Using the techniques of fiction, Rapoport gives voice to much of the story that fell outside of the bounds of journalistic coverage. "I wrote this novel because I believed the American public deserved nothing but the truth," he says. With a wry sensibility and insider knowledge that Rapoport is one of the few people to possess, Searching for Patty Hearst, goes beyond the tabloid headlines to tell the story in all its depth. Rapoport takes on such questions as: Why did Patty participate in the kidnapping of a high school student hours before six of the SLA kidnappers were killed in a firefight with the Los Angeles police department? Did celebrity coroner Thomas Noguchi, whom Rapoport interviewed, mishandle the autopsies of six SLA victims? Why did Patty's lawyers dump her fiancée Steve Weed as a key witness at her trial at the last minute? It's often said that fiction can offer insights into the truth that reporting can't. If that is the case, the story of Patty Hearst, the SLA, and the kidnapping that carved them into the American psyche just may be told for the first time with Searching for Patty Hearst.

Book

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