The three police officers on trial for killing Sean Bell were acquitted today.

As someone who had inside information during the trial of four police officers in the Amadou Diallo case, I was unsurprised by that acquittal eight years ago. I lack the inside information this time, but having followed the case in the papers I am again not surprised by the acquittal.

The problem here is that we have a built-in racism in our society. It does not help that the vast majority of so-called "progressive" organizations are all, or nearly all, white. It does not help that the few groups that consist primarily of people of color (oh, screw being PC -- make it "consist primarily of blacks or Hispanics") are portrayed in the media as violent or potentially violent.

It does not help that those relatively few cases when violence erupts are

Why is it, do you think, that some tyrants love show trials? Why not, as death squads did in Argentina and Chile kidnap, torture and murder at midnight? Why detain & torture people, coerce confessions, rig kangaroo courts (my apologies again to the kangaroos who, after all are innocent unlike our Decider-in-Chief) and bar lawyers from representing them effectively?

As you may well know by now, Mr. Bush as decided to follow up on the show trial and hanging of Saddam Hussein (who may well have been guilty of something, but we’ll never know) by trying” six people in Guantanamo before military commissions and executing them. Their crime? A la little Rudy one-note, claimed involvement in the September 11 attacks.

In order to make acceptable the “evidence” extracted by Mr. Bush by torture (Did he watch the torture tapes?) a public relations campaign has launched to show that water boarding is just fine. Mr. Injustice Antonin Scalia loves torture , he tells us, rewriting the Federal Rules of Evidence with scenes Fox’s 24. (Do you think Mr. Justice S plans to recuse himself from deciding these issues? Me neither.)

The White House whitewash of water boarding, here and here is buttressed by a bizarre argument: after we tortured them, we interrogated them nicely, indeed treated them to Starbucks Coffee and they still confessed.

This July 4th, I'm listening to Paul Robeson sing "Ballad For Americans" a left wing cantata (music by Earl Robinson, lyrics by John La Touche) You can listen here (scroll down four past other Robeson masterpieces). The Declaration is still worth reading. Try substituting George W. for George III.

As a person who brings the American Flag to anti-Iraq-war demonstrations, I love leftist patriotism. This year's red, white & blue bunting award goes, in my view, to The Nation for three posts: John Nichols channels Tom Paine, Katrina vanden Heuvel recalls a 1991 Nation edition in which leading leftists wrote about love of country and Peter Rothberg outlines five July 4, action planks to create our American dream (together with Bruce Springsteen singing "This Land is Your Land".

Just in case that's not enough, think about July 4th & the Jewish Question