James Bovard: Cops and donuts don’t mix

  On a Sunday morning early last summer, I was driving south across the Potomac River to a hike in Fairfax County, Virginia. The previous night the hike leader posted online a map of the jaunt. It looked like a typical suburban stroll until I saw a Dunkin’ Donuts marked near the start point. As the Food and Drug Administration has warned, donuts can be addictive and publicizing the location of donut stores can utterly destroy people’s free will. (Or maybe I am confusing this with the FDA’s hectoring on cigarettes.)

Charles C. Haynes: After Charleston

  The brutal murder of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17 was an act of “racial terrorism” – to quote NAACP President Cornell Williams Brooks.

  It was also a chilling assault on fundamental freedoms guaranteed every American under the First Amendment – the freedom to worship, the freedom to speak out for justice, and the freedom to assemble and organize for change.

  What happened in Charleston must not be reduced to a story about a mentally disturbed “lone wolf” – as often happens when a young white man commits mass murder.

Gene Policinski: How much violence do we need to see – or report?

  A tangle of violence and protest has engulfed parts of Baltimore and cannot be ignored by the news media. But how much reporting should be done, and when should it be done, and reports of what?

  Those questions and more swirl, even as smoke still billows over Baltimore amid appeals for calm from the family of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old man who suffered a spinal cord injury after being arrested by city police.

Gene Policinski: Our core freedoms are put to use – and put to the test

  Our First Amendment freedoms have been put to use – and put to the test – in recent weeks.

  In the U.S. Supreme Court chambers in Washington, D.C., an angry ex-husband sought to overturn his conviction for making threats over the Internet, claiming the violence-laced language and the vile visions he conjured up on Facebook were just “therapeutic efforts to address traumatic events,” even akin to some song lyrics.

Sam Fulwood III: America’s dearth of open-mindedness

  As I watch the yapping in the media and online—all these contentious mouths that pass off their opinions as real news—an important question keeps popping up: Is there any issue on which Americans collectively agree or withhold judgment with fair-minded neutrality?

  I can’t seem to find one.

Sam Fulwood III: Will the troubles in Ferguson point toward a new way forward?

  Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself by writing a presumptuous summation of the turmoil roiling the streets of suburban St. Louis. After all, it’s been just a few weeks since the fateful moment when a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer shot and killed unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown. How can I be certain this event and its immediate aftermath will yield historical significance?

  Well, I can’t. Yet I’m compelled to look ahead, hoping there is greater meaning in the death, destruction, and despair of today’s news. The future has to be better. So I trust that what’s happening in the street-level conflicts and clashes in Ferguson are the birthing pains of a new American social order, one that will be more inclusive of all voices and not defined exclusively by predominately white political, economic, or military wishes.

Gene Policinski: Media and Missouri: What the heck is going on?

  What in the heck is going on with the police in Ferguson, Mo., and journalists?

  The St. Louis suburb has been the scene of peaceful protests and charged emotions, and nightly chaos and occasional looting, since the Aug. 9 shooting death of a black teenager, Michael Brown, by police officer Darren Wilson.

Sam Fulwood III: Correcting the media’s skewed perspective

  Alarmed and frustrated by the news reports of a police officer shooting and killing an unarmed black teenager last weekend in a St. Louis suburb, C.J. Lawrence, an attorney from Jackson, Mississippi, monitored the horrific scenes as they unfolded on traditional and social media outlets. Through it all, Lawrence imagined what it might be like if he was the subject of the media’s unflinching stare.

  Eighteen-year-old Mike Brown was shot shortly after noon on Saturday in Ferguson, Missouri, a predominately African American community of about 21,000 people just northwest of the greater St. Louis metropolitan area. Details surrounding the shooting remain sketchy, but the outrage is undeniable, sparking protests against the police. Some rioting and looting occurred on Sunday night, and police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. More-peaceful protests took place Monday night as marchers challenged police with shouts of “Don’t shoot me!” Meanwhile, the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened on Monday a civil rights inquiry into the shooting.