With all the psychopaths & megalomaniacs on Slashdot, no one thought of this?
How lame have we become? ;-)

And the "Revolutionary" War could have accomplished that in America if only all the rebellious colonists had been able to bridge the moral & logical contradiction of casting of their own chains while keeping the yoke firmly on the necks of the black Africans that their British masters forced into permanent hereditary slavery.

African-Americans continued to be a social underclass long after the end of the Civil War and the vast majority of white Americans were either willing participants in racial discrimination or complicit. I guess not everyone could be as resolute as the Quakers, even after a century.

I'd like to believe that was the primary motivation for the Union but even a cursory glance at the history raises so many questions. Why were black soldiers paid less? There were a couple hundred thousand, not the most numerous contingent but as many as any of the largest minority groups such as the Irish or Germans.
Why were black soldiers in segregated units even when white officers were in charge and why did this persist so long, even after WW2?
Why were they excluded from the victory parade?

Again, the history shows clearly that the "protection of individual liberties" has been selectively applied for a long time and until quite recently.

That is equally true of Republicans and conservatives - you just have to listen closely when they speak.

Only if equal protection means equal ENFORCEMENT; getting to that point for all social classes & minorities has been a long fight, not yet over.

There are no "both sides" to this. The world doesn't consist of Republicans and Democrats alone

As you are well aware, I'm referring to the people on the grand jury - their bias is probably more complicated than just black / white or Republican / Democrat

"screaming" into slavery were black Africans themselves. Slaves were brought to the Americas not under US rule but under British rule"

There's not a country called Africa and the types and status of slaves there were makes for considerable complexity given the size and diversity of the continent but in most cases there was greater hope and status for slaves and their children were not usually condemned to a life of slavery themselves.
That said, some practices were much more barbaric and American slaves didn't usually have to fear castration like the "China birds" or ritual sacrifice.
The Founding Fathers could have set the slaves free; the fact that they chose not to do so is not the fault of the British and was a clear moral failure.
The inhabitants of the country of "Africa" didn't have a Constitution, a Bill of Rights or a Biblical exhortation to love thy neighbor.
And while many countries wrestled with the question of slavery for a long time, I can't think of any other in Europe or the Western Hemisphere that required a rather un-Civil War to settle the question.

No, I don't believe that social progress only occurs through government action but at some point, it needs the support of law.
The gay community is far too small to prevail through its own efforts - it needs the support & compassion of others if it wants to live openly. If the 310+ million non-gay Americans decided tomorrow to reinstitute slavery but only for the non-hetero population, there's fuck-all you could do to stop them solely through the strength of the LGBT community.
To this day, I still encounter people who think that all homosexuals should have been destroyed because they perceive AIDS as the fault of super-fornicating fags in bathhouses and there are still prisons in the USA where HIV+ people are lumped into "ghettos".

I'm an Independent

Hmmph, I've never met an independent who so indulges in continuous demagoguery that the ills of American society are the fault of "Democrats & progressives".

It could very well be that both sides are "irrationally biased". The unwillingness of people to vote in a free society has always bothered me and it's very troubling if Ferguson's participation is that low. On the bright side for you, they're aren't helping those race-baiting progressives & Democrats.

The fleeing felon rule isn't the automatic death sentence it used to be and hasn't been for 30 years. Mike Brown's case could be justified based on what happened at the police vehicle but Wilson is the only account we have, and the evidence isn't entirely conclusive.

I don't know where your family fled persecution from or why but you said I shouldn't care so I'll take you at your word.
But the ancestors of African-Americans didn't flee or immigrate, they were dragged kicking and screaming INTO persecution and not just for a single lifetime. And while slavery is a distant memory, persecution / segregation / etc. isn't.

I don't think that every problem in the black community is someone else's fault but to sweep the history under the rug is disingenuous.
America proudly celebrates its history and traditions as defining its identity & character, loudly & proudly. Race relations is an integral part of that history, too - with blacks, natives, minorities in general.

As a gay man, do you give credit to anyone for your ability to live your life openly, assuming you do?
I don't know how much of that can be credited to conservatives & the GOP. Since you're much closer to the rightwing political machine who are apparently free of racial divisiveness, perhaps you can get Rick Santorum to answer a couple questions.
First is, who exactly are the "blah people"? Second, what did he mean by " "We know the candidate Barack Obama, what he was like – the anti-war government nig , er, America was a source for division around the world, that what we were doing was wrong"

I'm still mystified by what that was all about and this guy is no lightweight - he could well be a top contender again in the 2016 presidential race.
I leave it up to you if you choose to mention that you're gay, given his past comments. It made little difference to me; perhaps this political leader of the GOP has......"evolved?"
By the way, whatever happened to GOProud?

"I don't see why spawning would have any bearing on things" - REALLY??
Go introduce your genetically male parent as your mom and see how he & everyone else reacts.
It should be perfectly acceptable for you or anyone to do that if you've had a close, loving, nurturing relationship with him - regardless of his genitalia.

If both parents are like that, then, congrats, you have two moms.

I wanted to know how to votes were cast to see if the GRAND JURY might have made their decision because of racial bias - by either side. This is still very much a factor, even in the 21st century.
As I said before a 12-0, 50-50, or 8-4 in favor of trial or a 9 against (white) vs 3 in favor (black) gives a fair bit of info into how the jury was thinking and their leanings & bias. Lawyers put a lot of emphasis on the jury selection process; since there are no lawyers present at grand jury proceedings, I don't know if the jury is screened at all for bias.

Those people in the street weren't protesting because of being whipped up by the mainstream media or the progressives or the Democrats; they were there because it's a regular part of their reality going back generations. It may be better than the bad old days but it's still very much the norm.

And even if you argue that Mike Brown had it coming, you can't say that about every one of their dead kids & relatives. Did Tamir Rice have it coming? Or Akai Gurley? Or Aiyana Jones? Or Amadou Diallo? Or Sean Bell? At least some of these went to trial even if no officer was ever convicted.
There are thousands of stories like this; citizens want the people they pay to protect & serve to be accountable.

Going to court may not be pleasant but we make hundreds of thousands of innocents submit to it all the time, for things as bad or much less so than ending a life.
Despite what happened or who may be at fault or who had the right to shoot whom, it's Mike Brown who's dead, not Darren Wilson - a fact that the prosecutor forgot when he was supposed to be advocating for the victim.
Let's say, strictly for argument sake's, that Wilson had immediately realized that Brown was the thief and ordered him on the ground and Brown complied.
Then Wilson decides to teach the strongarm thieving thug a lesson about pushing around weaker people and starts kicking the shit out of him.
Brown then bulks up to get through the barrage of kicks & blows and delivers a haymaker with his full Hulk Hogan demon power and kills Wilson with one punch.

How likely is it that Brown doesn't have to go to trial and the case against him is thrown out by the grand jury?

"but it simply doesn't fit history or political reality" - I suspect you're much younger than I.
If you go back and look at the voting on LBJs Civil Rights Act, you'll see that the split on Yea / Nay was very much a North vs South and not so much Dem vs GOP.
That said, at the time, the South was very much a Democrat stronghold. Times have turned and so have cloaks.

And you're still very reactionary but I imagine namecalling makes you feel better.

"She" used to be Bill, with facial hair and (presumably) male genitalia. How do you refer to someone who was male, fathered children, but is now female?
How do their kids introduce them?
"This is my dad, who's now my mother's wife?" If the couple stay married, does that make the original female of the pair a defacto lesbian?

The grand jury does NOT decide on guilt or innocence. Their job is to decide if there's sufficient probable cause to proceed to trial.
What's interesting is that the prosecutor was almost acting as the defence for Officer Wilson, which is not his role.
Do I know if Wilson is guilty? Nope - but there are enough questionable aspects to his description of events that I'd like to see him answer under cross-examination.

I'm been having a hard time with Wilson's story, too. And I'm not the only one.

http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/...

How is Brown "leaning" into the cop car? If Wilson is in the driver seat, there's no room for anyone's body to come through the window, especially not as big a person as Brown.
And the photos of Wilson's "injuries"? If he can take several punches from an almost 300 lb Hulk Hogan-like "demon" and come out looking like that, he should consider professional boxing. He should have had massive swelling.

That still means that 70% of the time, the perps that cops are arresting are WHITE (or Hispanic?)

Well, in your defence, "she" wasn't always thus - "her" name until 2003 was Bill (William Salvador) Heineman, something of a legend in the gaming industry, going back to winning the 1st ever national video game contest - Atari's National Space Invaders Championship of November 1980.

You're correct - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

S/he was born William Salvador Heineman

If you think the problem is only "Democrats & progressives", your eyes haven't been opened - you've merely changed the tint of your glasses.

Having read some of your other comments, I strongly discourage you from using "objectively" unless you're being ironic.