Paul Quinn College has found a way to score big on the football field—without playing a single down.

The Dallas, Texas college, which was founded in 1872, recently abandoned its football program and converted the field into a working organic farm maintained by the students themselves.

The metamorphosis was the idea of Quinn president Michael Sorrell, whose goal was to teach agriculture to students in an urban community that, due to the dearth of supermarkets in the area, has difficulty obtaining quality food.

The 'We Over Me Farm' is, as Sorrell describes it, the fundamental core of the institution.

"It shapes the way we view ourselves," says Sorrell. "It shapes the way we teach our students, it shapes the way we reach out to the community, it provides a very real and tangible example of this notion that we simply can do better and we don't have to wait for anyone to do for us [what] we can do for ourselves."

The project has caught on with enthusiastic Quinn undergrads like Ronisha Isham, who has the neighborhood in mind. "It helps the community," Isham says, "and I'm really big on community service."

Fellow student Benito Vidaure beams, "I just fell in love with the dirt."

Slow Films has more on 'We Over Me Farm' in a short-form video viewable here. For further reading, see Janet Heimlich's article in 'The Texas Observer.'

Should the United States end the death penalty? How many false convictions come from eyewitness testimony, police lineups, and even DNA evidence? Finally, what can we learn from Norway's "permissive" prisons? Steve Oh (former prosecutor, and executive producer of The Point) leads this weeks panel to discuss these issues and more with Mike Farrell (actor/activist/writer, and president, Death Penalty Focus), Steve Ipsen (Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney), and Celeste Fremon (WitnessLA creator and editor, and author of G-Dog and the Homeboys). Special thanks to Barry Scheck (co-founder/Co-Director of the Innocence Project), and Brandon L. Garrett (professor at the University of Virginia School of Law) for sending in points.

Is there a house in your neighborhood that everybody hates to walk past? You know, the one with broken and boarded up windows, trash left to gather on the lawn, and grass so overgrown it’s becoming a habitat for rodents?

If you have a house like that in your community, you know it’s more than just an eyesore. Neglected, vacant houses depress property values throughout the community, and can threaten health and safety. They erode the sense of community and stability that creates vibrant localities, and they hamper economic resiliency. With a national foreclosure crisis still in full swing, such houses are all too common.

You might be surprised to learn, though, that if you have problem properties like that in your neighborhood, there’s a good chance your absentee neighbor is a bank. More shocking still, banks are neglecting houses they own in minority communities even more frequently—much more frequently—than those they hold in white communities.

A detailed undercover investigation unveiled last week by the National Fair Housing Alliance and several regional partners shows not only that banks too frequently fail to maintain foreclosed properties that they own, but that they tend to neglect their properties in communities of color at a much higher rate, with devastating consequences.

A large number of the neglected, bank-owned properties have broken or missing doors and windows, inviting vandalism and trespassers. And many have safety hazards that endanger the public. Those and other defects are significantly more prevalent in bank-owned properties located in communities of color. Another finding is that, on average, the banks are not marketing houses located in communities of color as aggressively to individual homebuyers as they do properties in white neighborhoods. The properties in white neighborhoods are, for example, more likely to have clear and professional “for sale” signs. When banks both poorly maintain and poorly market foreclosed houses, the properties tend to stay vacant longer and to eventually be sold to speculators, rather than to people who would make the houses their home.

The discriminatory differences are stark. In Dayton, Ohio, for example, 60% of bank-owned properties in African-American neighborhoods had broken or unsecured doors, compared to only 18% in white neighborhoods. In Atlanta, properties in African-American neighborhoods were almost five times more likely than homes in white neighborhoods to lack a “for sale” sign. And in Dallas, 73% of the bank-owned homes in predominantly non-white neighborhoods had trash on their properties, while only 37% in white areas did.

Neighbors of all races who live near foreclosed, bank-owned properties, the investigation found, are pulling together to keep them presentable—doing maintenance the banks should be doing, like mowing lawns and removing trash. But in communities of color, neighbors reported seeing home improvement contractors working on those properties at only half the rate seen by neighbors in predominantly white areas.

The bank behavior identified by this investigation is unethical, unlawful, and harmful to our economy. It breaches our basic national values of equal opportunity and the common good. It violates the Fair Housing Act of 1968, signed 44 years ago this week in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. And it is holding back our economic recovery by, among other things, depressing home prices and hampering sales.

It’s hard to know all the reasons why banks are discriminating in this way. Bias and unfounded stereotypes about minority communities and homes, however, are a likely root cause. The investigators controlled for 39 race-neutral factors like building structure, water damage, and curb appeal, so the different treatment is indisputably about race, and not class or other home or neighborhood characteristics.

This investigation should be a wake up call for banks, regulators, local governments, and the neighbors of these bank-owned properties. Among the solutions identified by the National Fair Housing Alliance are anti-discrimination investigations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other enforcement agencies, making information about bank-owned properties more publicly accessible, and prioritizing buyers who will occupy these properties over speculators who may warehouse them.

As Americans struggle together toward a lasting economic recovery, good neighbors are more important than ever. It’s time to remind America’s banks that this includes them.

You'd think the USDA would see the flaw of logic in letting the people who make the food inspect the food and decide if it is actually safe to eat.

The USDA has decided in its infinite wisdom, despite pink slime and a few other debacles of the food industry, to test a program allowing chicken companies to check their own livestock and decide whether or not the chickens are safe to eat.

The USDA claims this will save them tens of millions of dollars.

Well, USDA, I can save you even more. If you're going to let the chicken companies inspect their own chickens, just trash the whole program, because I guarantee you they will decide "ALL of our chickens are safe!"

At some point, you would hope someone at the USDA (and I looked it up, there are over 100,000 employees there) would have raised their hand and pointed out the glaringly obvious: "Uh, since these guys are selling us chicken/beef/fish/whatever, don't you think they are going to say that everything they're selling is safe?"

Ideally, another person (we're up to 2 out of 100,000 — a push perhaps, but I woke up optimistic this morning) would have seconded the first person's statement and then, just maybe, we could have our food actually inspected before we eat it.

Which, I will point out to the USDA and its 100,000 employees, is generally considered to be their core job.

And it gets worse.

There's more...

Clean energy companies are forming a political action committee (PAC) to make sure that clean energy candidates are elected to Congress. The newly-formed Accelerating Energy Leadership PAC (or AccelPAC) was in the news last week not because it represents a significant beefing-up of the clean energy industry’s political might. Bloomberg broke the story by highlighting the way the PAC will talk about clean energy issues. Rather than referring to “clean” energy, the PAC is focused on “alternative” energy.

“We want to avoid the catch words -- clean energy, green energy -- that set people off in the wrong way,” said Tim Greeff, the Washington-based PAC’s treasurer. “The political rhetoric is starting to dictate and override any pragmatic solutions.”

Whatever you call it, AccelPAC makes clear that clean energy is a bipartisan issue. The PAC’s first recipient was Nevada Republican Senator Dean Heller. We’ve highlighted Heller’s clean energy record here before, noting that Heller isn’t afraid to trumpet his support for “renewable” energy in his campaign.

As the NRDC Action Fund’s Running Clean report shows, leading on clean energy issues is a winning strategy. AccelPAC is a welcome addition to the world of clean energy politics. Because, at the end of the day, electing a clean energy majority is more important than the name we call it.

By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

It’s pretty clear that Mitt Romney has a Southern problem. The Republican candidate has consistently lost southern states. Indeed, it’s probable that if the South didn’t exist, then Mitt Romney would already have the nomination sown up today.

It’s also pretty probable that Romney will be the Republican nominee for the 2012 presidential election. At this point, it would take an extraordinary event to deny him the nomination. It would need to be something on the lines of Romney saying that he doesn’t care about poor people.

It’s a very interesting exercise to think about how Romney’s weakness amongst southerners in the primary will affect his general election performance in the South.

The Republican Party in the South is composed of two constituencies: business Republicans and evangelical Republicans. Back when the South was solidly Democratic, wealthy white suburbanites (the business Republicans) were the first to start voting Republican. The white evangelicals came late to the party; indeed a dwindling number of them still vote Democratic. Romney is weak amongst the evangelical wing of the Republican Party in the South.

A good way to think about what this weakness means for the general election is to take a look at the 2008 Democratic primary, where Barack Obama was weak amongst several groups as well. Most famously, the president did poorly amongst white working-class voters in the Appalachians. This is a bad example to use, however, because Appalachian working-class whites have been moving against the president’s party for a while now. Southern white evangelicals, if anything, are becoming more loyal to Romney’s party.

There’s another group which Obama did very poorly with in the 2008 primary, and which is better suited to this analysis (see if you can guess what I’m talking about before finishing the next paragraph).

This group opposed Obama from the beginning to the end of the Democratic primary, despite his best efforts. People today forget this fact because group (unlike working-class Appalachians) is a strong Democratic constituency. Nevertheless, Obama’s weakness amongst this group made him lose states ranging California to Texas.

Indeed, if you look at Obama’s performance in the counties bordering Mexico in Texas, you’ll find him doing just as badly amongst Hispanics in Texas as he did amongst working-class whites in West Virginia and Kentucky.

The Hispanic vote in the 2008 Democratic Primary and the southern white evangelical vote in the 2012 Republican Primary have a lot in common. Both constituencies voted strongly against the party’s nominee during the primary, but both constituencies are still very loyal to the party during the general election.

So how did Obama’s poor performance amongst Hispanics in the 2008 primary end up affecting the general election? Well, there wasn’t much effect. Obama didn’t do great amongst Hispanics, but he didn’t do poorly. He did about average. Obama won the same percentage of the Hispanic vote that a generic Democrat winning a comfortable victory would win. He did underperform somewhat in several rural Hispanic areas.

By the same logic, Romney’s poor performance amongst southern white evangelicals in the 2012 primary won’t have much effect. Romney won’t do great amongst southern white evangelicals, but he won’t do poorly. He’ll do about average. Romney will win the same percentage of the southern white evangelical vote that a generic Republican will win. He will underperform somewhat in several rural southern areas.

There is one caveat to this analysis. Hispanic opposition to Obama was generally based on Hillary Clinton’s popularity and economic reasons. On the other hand, southern white evangelical opposition to Romney is based on personal dislike for Romney and religion. One could make a pretty strong argument that the latter two are more powerful forces than the former two.

But, all in all, Democrats shouldn’t get too excited about Romney’s Southern problem.

Most Americans correctly understand that the economic meltdown was caused by a perfect storm of misconduct in the lending and financial industries and inadequate rules and enforcement.  A 2010 Pew Financial Reform Project poll, for example, found that American likely voters overwhelmingly blamed banks for making unsustainable mortgages (42%) and too little regulation of Wall Street (24%) for the crisis.

Fewer are aware, however, of the role that racial bias and discrimination by lenders and brokers played in creating the crisis.  Understanding that role and the tools available to correct it is key to ensuring our nation's full economic recovery.

Despite the progress we've made as a nation toward the goal of equal opportunity for all, significant barriers remain, especially when it comes to mortgage lending by banks and brokers.  In a 2005 report using federal data that presaged the current crisis, for example, The Opportunity Agenda, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and the Poverty and Race Research Action Council warned that-even controlling for income-African-American and Latino borrowers were significantly more likely to be sold high cost, subprime loans than whites, despite the fact that as many as 50% of those borrowers qualified for prime loans. Racial inequity in lending actually increased with borrower income levels, and with the degree of neighborhood segregation.

Loans in these communities were more costly, and were frequently predatory, carrying hidden fees and conditions or marketed through deceptive practices.  Some, for example, were designed with built-in rate adjustment features making them unsustainable over the loan's lifespan.

More recently, a series of lawsuits and settlements have revealed pervasive patterns of racial discrimination in home lending.  In December 2011, for example, the U.S. Department of Justice reached the largest fair lending settlement in its history with the lender Countrywide.  The Department says that Countrywide discriminated on the basis of race and national origin against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers between 2004 and 2008, charging more than 200,000 of these borrowers higher fees and interest rates than non-Hispanic white borrowers, and steering borrowers of color into subprime loans.

The Justice Department has settled similar discrimination cases against AIG Federal Savings Bank, Wilmington Finance Inc., PrimeLending, C&F Mortgage Corporation, Midwest BankCentre, Citizens Republic Bancorp, Inc., and others, reinforcing the reality that these practices are pervasive.

Why would subprime lenders disproportionately target minority communities for risky loans and, often, deceptive and predatory lending practices?  There are several possibilities.  Many minority neighborhoods, even middle-classed ones, lack banks or other traditional lending institutions, making them more susceptible to exploitation.  People of color are more likely to be first generation homebuyers, with fewer sources of information, experience, or advice.  Many lenders assume them to be poor credit risks, even when they are well qualified for traditional loans.

Lenders' discriminatory treatment toward communities of color previewed and paralleled exploitative practices that they visited upon moderate-income white communities, senior citizens, military servicemembers, and more broadly. Today, consequently, we are all in it together, with some two million homes in foreclosure.  In addition to homeowners, the mortgage crisis is displacing millions of renters whose landlords are in default.

Fortunately, solutions exist that can put homeownership back on track, repair devastated communities, and restore the promise of equal opportunity and fair housing for all Americans.  Just as the Obama administration has correctly insisted on a review of loans to servicemembers, for instance, they should demand a review of loans in communities with high concentrations of discriminatory and predatory loan practices.  The administration should direct the Treasury Department to issue long-overdue civil rights and fair housing regulations for programs it oversees.  And Congress should modernize the Community Reinvestment Act to reach a wider range of institutions and to strengthen equal opportunity protections.

Other needed reforms include increasing homeowners' access to financial counseling, reducing the principal of loans owned or backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and maintaining a government role in the secondary mortgage market to ensure that qualified working Americans of all races have access to 30-year fixed mortgages going forward.

Acknowledging the role that racial bias has played in the financial and mortgage crisis is crucial to understanding the scope and scale of that crisis.  Concrete steps toward greater and more equal opportunity for all are important to ending it.

How many slaves are working for you? Could a hunger strike by a University of Virginia football player lead to living wages at UVA? Should taxpayers cover plastic surgery for poor people? Cenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks) leads this weeks panel to discuss these issues and more with Annie Duke (Poker Player, Author, and Huffington Post blogger), Neal Brennan (Comedian, Co-creator of The Chappelle Show), and Kathleen Kim (Professor, Loyola Law School). The 'points' were provided by Justin Dillon (founder and CEO of Slaveryfootpring.org) and Joseph Williams (football player at University of Virginia).

It was a similar crew of conservative justices on the Supreme Court that decided that their long-held beliefs on states' rights were irrelevant and made George W. Bush our next president in 2000. Now, they're back!!! And they might decide yet another presidential election.

It was a similar crew of conservative justices on the Supreme Court that decided that their long-held beliefs on states' rights were irrelevant and made George W. Bush our next president in 2000. Now, they're back!!! And they might decide yet another presidential election.

Imagine the damage it does to President Obama to strip him of his signature accomplishment right before the election. It would also allow the Republicans to say -- "See, we told you so! It was unconstitutional all along. It was a wild, socialist over-reach of big government." It creates a permanent stain on the law -- as if there was something horribly wrong with it all along. And it takes it off the books at a moment when it is still relatively unpopular. So, before any of the popular provisions are put into effect it would go in the record books as a complete disaster.

Why don't you just hand the Republicans the election? Which is, of course, exactly what the conservatives of this court would love to do. These conservative justices are given far too much deference in the media. They are largely partisan hacks.

Antonin Scalia is a complete fraud. He will bend any so-called principle to get to the political result he wants. If it's upholding anti-gay legislation or striking down federal laws he doesn't like, he is a huge advocate for states' rights. But if it's marijuana legalization or euthanasia orBush v. Gore, then he hates states' rights. So, which one is it? Here's how you can tell -- which side is the Republican Party on?

Remember, this is a guy who goes duck hunting with Dick Cheney and attends political fundraisers with the Koch brothers. Of course, he doesn't recuse himself from any cases that involve those people. In fact, he votes on their side nearly 100% of the time.

We've been hearing for at least thirty years about the dangers of activist judges. That it is so wrong for unelected officials, like judges, to invalidate laws made by the people's representatives. Now, all of a sudden, the Republicans love that idea! They want to interpret the Commerce Clause in a way that it has not been interpreted since 1937. They want to invalidate a sitting president's signature piece of legislation for the first time in 75 years. And their hack, partisan justices on the Supreme Court can't wait to do their bidding.

The way Scalia, Alito and Thomas are going to vote is certain. There isn't a single Republican position those guys haven't wanted to fondle. They will enthusiastically wrap their legs around the idea that the mandate is unconstitutional. And they will double down by saying it strikes down the rest of the law with it.

John Roberts plays a moderate on TV, so there is some questions about which way he'll go. But in the real world, he always votes with the conservatives because... he is deeply conservative (or more accurately, party line Republican, no matter where the so-called conservative position lies).

So, that leaves us with Justice Kennedy, who is a genuine swing vote. But remember he is the one that swung toward Bush and meddled with how Florida counts its votes despite decades of empty talk about states' rights. If he sides with the rest of the conservative justices, he will forever cement his place on the Hack Hall of Fame as one of the most deeply partisan justices we have ever had. If he helped to decide two presidential elections based on which party he likes rather than his so-called deeply held beliefs, like his oft-repeated deference to precedent, than it would be hard to find a more political and disingenuous justice.

One last thought, which is on the sad incompetence of the Democratic Party. They should be screaming "activist judges" from the rooftops. Instead they are meekly mumbling about how it's unclear which way the court is going to go and how we shouldn't pre-judge. I got news for you -- the Republicans have been pre-judging your bill for years now. You should consider fighting back.

But the primary responsibility is the president's. Why did you agree to the Republican idea of mandates in the first place?

Orrin Hatch (R-UT) was the original sponsor of the mandate in the Senate back in 1993.The Heritage Foundation championed the idea. Mitt Romney was applauded wildly by conservatives when he passed a mandate in Massachusetts. Did the president think they would like him more if he agreed to their idea? No, they have always opposed you at every turn, and they always will. They turned on their own idea the minute you agreed to it -- and now they're using it to kill your whole bill.

When is the president ever going to learn that agreeing with Republicans never helps him? It never helps the country. All it does is make it easier for them to beat you because you made the fatal mistake of agreeing with them.

After initial arguments yesterday, the Supreme Court today slogged headlong into the meat of the arguments for and against the Affordable Care Act mandate (transcript and full audio via NPR).

Nothing new here but specific presentation, and maybe the political optics outside the court.  Politico has a recap of the 7 key points, including the "Brocolli Argument":

SCALIA: “Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.”

VERRILLI: “No, that's quite different. That's quite different. The food market, while it shares that trait that everybody's in it, it is not a market in which your participation is often unpredictable and often involuntary. It is not a market in which you often don't know before you go in what you need, and it is not a market in which, if you go in and — and seek to obtain a product or service, you will get it even if you can't pay for it.”

Challengers are already cheering the demise of the mandate, and SCOTUSblog's Lyle Denniston confirms this is going to be Justice Kennedy's case to call.  But where Kennedy is may be up in the air (emphasis mine):

“So,” Breyer said, “I thought the issue here is not whether it’s a violation of some basic right or something to make people buy things they don’t want, bujt simply whether those decisons of that groujp of 40 milliion people substantially affect the interstate commerce that has been set up in part” through a variety of government-sponsored health care delivery systems.  That, Breyer told Carvin, ”the part of your argument I’m not hearing.”

Carvin, of course, disputed the premise, saying that Congress in adopting the mandate as a method to leverage health care coverage for all of the uninsured across the nation.  Kennedy interrupted to that that he agreed “that’s what’s happening here.”  But then he went on, and suggested that he had seen what Breyer had been talking about.   “I think it is true that, if most questions in life are matters of degree,” it could be that in the markets for health insurance and for the health care for which insurance was the method of payment “the young person who is uninsured is uniquely proximately very close to affecting the rates of insurance and the costs of providing medical care in a way that is not true in other industries.  That’s my concern in the case.”

More interesting, was yesterday a setup? As David Dayden has pointed out: yesterday every Justice agreeing a mandate was not a tax under Anti-Injunction, today Obama's SG arguing it's just like a tax to Congress.

And the politics around of it all.  Roll Call has 5 races where health care will matter either way, and why Democrats will make this about RyanCare. Senate Republicans are squealing tires in reverse, hoping everyone forgets "Replace" is a word. For Obama, it could be win-win.  Mandate struck down, Republicans lose a major rallying point for the general election, Democrats may gain one (Activist judges!).  Robert Reich sees Obama positioned well for Medicare for All if the Affordable Care Act unravels.  And somewhere, Lil' Ricky and the Newt are firing up the attack ads on Romney.

Tomorrow's arguments: Mandate "what-ifs" and the Medicaid expansion.