Yes, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour apologized (barely) for his racist rendition of the segregationist-era Citizens Councils in his Yazoo City hometown. And at year's end, the governor did finally pardon and release Jamie and Gladys Scott, two African American sisters sentenced in 1994 to life imprisonment for their (minimal) role...

Twenty-five years ago I worked for an organization in Atlanta founded as the National Anti-Klan Network. Even after we changed our name to the Center for Democratic Renewal, we remained listed in the phone book under our anti-Klan name. And occasionally we would get phone calls from people who had...

The Labor Party lost votes and seats in the parliament. The Tories may yet cobble together a majority coalition and once again install a Thatcherite prime minister. Yet, in the London borough of Barking, the vote for the Labour incumbent increased, and Nick Griffin, the chairman of the white-ist...

Eight men and one woman from the Hutaree militia have been charged in an Eastern Michigan federal court, according to a recently released indictment. If the charges are to be believed, they apparently planned to kill a lawman and then set up IED's to subsequently kill even more people in...

It was just over one year ago. March 15, 2009. Liberals and progressives were still crowing about the election of Barack Obama and a Democratic House and Senate. The conservative movement, many told us, was dead. Friends of mine who should have known better were speculating that the demographic shift...

The Tea Party convention has come and gone, and we need to look past the speculative bubble surrounding Sarah Palin's possible presidential ambitions and examine the Nashville gathering more closely. A fact-based analytical look at this developing phenomenon is much needed. There is no call to get snarky...

After four days of uncontroverted testimony detailing the murder of Dr. George Tiller, Scott Roeder took the stand on Thursday, January 28, in his own defense. He betrayed not an ounce of emotion as he described pulling a .22 caliber pistol out of his pocket and shooting Dr. Tiller in...

Still Picking the Jury for Roeder's murder trial in Wichita, Kansas

By Leonard Zeskind

Leonard Zeskind will be following and writing about the trial as it proceeds.

Picking the jury that will vote on whether Scott Roeder murdered Dr. Tiller in the first degree or whether he simply...

To Understand the Trial of Scott Roeder Read
Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War
by James Risen and Judy L. Thomas
Basic Books 1998

Leonard Zeskind will be following and writing about the trial as it proceeds.

If you want to understand the back...

Unemployment, Race and Crimes by White-ists

by Leonard Zeskind

Unemployment rates tell us some things about how the economy is doing. But aggregate rates, even if they go down a virtual eighth of an inch like they did in November, hide high levels of disparity by race. And they...

Moscow Murder Part of a Pattern

by Leonard Zeskind

The November 16 murder of Ivan Khutorskoy in Moscow underscores the growing threat of ultra-nationalist violence in the Russian Federation. Khutorskoy, a well-known anti-fascist activist and a leader of the Red Anarchist Skinheads (RASH) group, was gunned down near the entrance...

A Re-Birth at IREHR.org,

A Personal Statement by Leonard Zeskind

The Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR) is a different kind of organization.

We didn't hesitate to point at the racism motivating the Tea Party protests. We are dedicated to countering the...

"The Republican Party and the political right will survive, but the conservative intellectual tradition is already dead." So argued Mark Lilla, author of The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West and several other highly regarded books. A professor at Columbia University and a former editor of The...

Most of the facts are well known by now. Democratic politicians returning to their home districts during the August recess have been met with a loud and angry opposition. Not in every instance, but in enough cases to make a difference, the conflict has exceeded the norms of civility....

The Wichita district court room remained virtually empty today, with rows of seats behind the defense table sitting mostly vacant during the preliminary hearing for Scott Roeder, accused of murdering Dr. George Tiller on Sunday May 31. Judging from the testimony given by three men who served as ushers...

In Houston, Texas the Tea Party was part protest and partly a statement of group identity. One sign read, "I'm the ProLife, gun toting Constitutionalist the DHS warned you about." Otherwise the 600 rallied against Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi as a symbol of their discontent. In Austin, they booed Republican Senator...

On July 4, tens of thousands of mostly middle-class white people in hundreds of different cities will register their opposition to the Barack Obama presidency at Tea Party events from coast to coast. Mainline Republicans will be among the protestors. They might carry poster signs about the rapidly expanding national...

Scott Roeder, who is being held in a Wichita jail as a person of interest in the murder of Dr. George Tiller, is widely known for his anti-abortion zealotry. Less understood is his connection to the so-called Christian common law courts and the militia movement. In the mid-1990s, Roeder associated...

It is Not the Economic Crisis,
The Department of Homeland Security Gets It Wrong, Again.

by Leonard Zeskind

Murder and mayhem motivated by white nationalist ideas never seem to end. In Brockton, Massachusetts in January, a 22-year old white man who lived with his mother and...