The students chanted, the students yelled, and eventually they prevented New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly from speaking. The Taubmann Center at Brown University had invited Ray Kelley to discuss his department's controversial policing strategies, but the protestors disinvited him. It's hard to imagine a scenario where shouting down an invited speaker would be appropriate, but in this case it was a particularly poor choice, since Ray Kelly was one of the few people who could really shed light on the issues raised in Judge Scheindlin's ruling against the city. As in other recent situations, the media's slanted coverage of these issues contributed to public outrage. The media led people to believe that New York City has a law called "stop-and-frisk," which allows cops to accost and search people without probable cause, and that they use this law to harass innocent minorities. No such law exists, but you wouldn't know that from watching programming like "The Young Turks."...(Read Full Post)