America's Fathering Crisis

On MLK Day, I find myself reflecting on my father-in-law’s story. I am also reminded that Dr. King’s famous “I have a dream” speech was about being a father. It was about envisioning the future he wanted for his children, and then working to make that dream a reality.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” he said.

We can all learn something from Dr. King, Dr. Little, and Championship Fathers across the globe …

More important than a man’s circumstances—his race, his socioeconomic status, his custodial or marital situation—is the way in which he handles his circumstances and envisions the future.

English: Dr. Martin Luther King giving his "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington in Washington, D.C., on 28 August 1963. Español: Dr. Martin Luther King dando su discurso "Yo tengo un sueño" durante la Marcha sobre Washington por el trabajo y la libertad en Washington, D.C., 28 de agosto de 1963. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Do you model self-control? Do you remain calm and rational, even when others are becoming bitter … perhaps even violent? Can you hold your head high because you know you are acting like the dignified man you want your children to see?

English: Attorney General Kennedy and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 22 June 1963, Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Little to no oversight is brought to bear for Americans...

U.S. Atty. Loretta Lynch should say to U.S. Dist. Atty. David Capp: INDIANA HERE I COME!

Opt IN USA

• On February 16, 2016, the first annual report was released on Opt IN USA, a grassroots U.S. foreign policy reform, judicial accountability, and international human rights campaign. The report title is “AMERICANS IN JEOPARDY: When Human Rights Protection Becomes America’s Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branch Shell Game”.
• Corporate sponsor of the report is National Judicial Conduct and Disability Law Project, Inc. (NJCDLP), a nonprofit U.S. public policy think tank and legal reform advocate headquartered just outside Chicago in Crown Point, Indiana.
• While all NJCDLP board members are cutting-edge pioneers in detecting and addressing patterns of U.S. legal system abuse, the organization's Executive Board member Mr. Rodney A. Logal, his wife, attorney Zena Crenshaw-Logal*, and their fellow NJCDLP co-founder, Dr. Andrew D. Jackson, are the organization's driving force.  They are NJCDLP’s full-time volunteers as well as the non-profit’s primary financial benefactors. 
• In that context it is particularly significant that two Indiana judges have taken to repeatedly placing the Logals and Dr. Jackson at respective risk of arrest:  a death threat for Mr. Logal given how jail would affect his medical care and health.  Moreover, substantial debt has been imposed by default upon the Logals and Dr. Jackson, and is in the process of being collected although the underlying judgments are void as a matter of law!
• In late September 2015, the Logals and Dr. Jackson asked the Indiana House Judiciary Committee and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana to investigate several area judges whose activities may be part of what has been dubbed “The Third Degree” (TTD).  
• As the 2016 Opt IN USA report makes clear, TTD is a persistent pattern of persecution and psychological torture imposed through U.S. legal system abuse.  
• U.S. District Attorney Capp has shown no interest in the phenomenon despite its obvious peril for Mr. and Mrs. Logal as well as Dr. Jackson, not to mention the prospect of multiple related murders, including the suspicious death of a lawyer who attested to the bribery of a now retired Indiana state court judge.
• Uncanny it is that little to no oversight is brought to bear for Americans claiming to endure TTD.
• Ironically their allegations -- specifically the notion that they are targets of TTD -- rarely if ever garner more than cursory major media and U.S. government attention. Yet for each of them, powerful private sector and/or U.S. public sector actors expend tremendous time, effort, and resources muting their government critiques through quasi-judicial and/or judicial processes.
• Whether as a result they opt to suffer in silence, become widely ignored or disregarded, cease communicating while incarcerated, and/or die . . . these supposedly too-insignificant-to-take-seriously people get silenced.
• Please do not allow the Logals and Dr. Jackson to "get silenced".  Your representatives in Northwest Indiana are in the process of letting that happen.
• The time has come for protection of the Logals and Dr. Jackson to come out of Washington, D.C.  And time is of essence as the Opt IN USA debut report makes clear, particularly its section on "Ground Zero: INDIANA, the Hoosier State" and Appendix.  
• Learn more @ www.thethirddegree.net
  

The steady erosion of the Jury Trial.

A Civil Justice System With No Trials

This article by David Beck was first published in the Texas Bar Journal‘s December 2013 issue. — Ed.

“The steady erosion of the American trial is our dirty little secret.”

A majority of the American public might be surprised to learn that there is indisputable statistical evidence that the number of jury and non-jury trials in our country is, and has been, sharply declining, both in absolute and relative terms.1 For example, in 2010, only 2,154 jury trials were commenced in federal district courts, which means, on average, Article III judges tried fewer than four civil jury trials that year. While jury trials in federal court obviously have declined, the decline in bench trials has been steadier and steeper.2 Even though the number of lawyers continues to increase, the number of trials is still decreasing3.