Race Discrimination in Jury Selection, and America’s Secret Drunk History

With his strong debate performances, Marco Rubio appears to be taking over as the Republican Party’s establishment candidate. He often talks about his family’s background: leaving Cuba to come to the States. But Rubio has become hard-line on immigration in an effort to appeal to the Republican base. And it appears that any pathway for undocumented immigrants to become citizens is dead for now. Newly elected Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced over the weekend that he will not work with President Obama on immigration reform. Next, for nearly thirty years now, a case called Foster v. Chatman has been an example of how racial discrimination in jury selection has managed to survive. Today, the case has reached the Supreme Court. Then, when Johnny Appleseed went around planting apple trees, those apples were meant for hard cider. That’s because America loved to drink. It was founded on alcohol and most of its major historical moments took place under the haze of booze. Finally, on Friday, the Republican National Committee canceled a February debate that was supposed to be hosted by NBC and sister station Telemundo. They pulled the plug because of so-called gotcha questions in last week’s CNBC debate. So is this a big setback for NBC? How much do these debates matter to the networks?