I wrote about Denali the other day. That is the name that has been given to a  mountain peak because the people who lived near it before it became part of the United States used to call it that.  It had been named after a person who was a newcomer to the land. Those who decide on naming places believed that was wrong. They changed the name of the mountain peak back to that the original people used. The highest mountain peak in North America which used to be known as Mount McKinley is no longer known as that.

In this land the newcomers call the United States of America there are many places that had original names given to them by the original folk. The newcomers changed those names. Are we going to be consistent and start using the original names given to places by the original people? Will people now go on their honeymoon to Onguiaahra the name given to Niagara Falls by the original people? 

I suppose if the newcomers are changing names we should start with the most fundamental one. What is the name by which newcomers should refer to the original people of this land. Obviously it is not right to call them Indians a name erroneously applied to them by Columbus who thought he landed in India.

I did a double take at the lead of the article: “The US attorney goes way overboard.”  I was reading the Boston Globe so I figured the column by Scot Lehigh was about some US attorney out in New Mexico who was prosecuting those who cross our borders illegally.  Glancing at it I saw the name Tim Sullivan which did not ring a bell until the name Mayor Marty Walsh came into view. It wasn’t about some US attorney in a far away land it was about our own US attorney; it was about the Globe’s Bostonian of the Year and its witting servant of many years Carmen Ortiz the Boston US attorney. 

What happened I wondered? It always appeared they had a tacit agreement that it would not criticize her as long as she played along with it. It would pick some people to write nasty things about and she would call a federal grand jury to investigate them. It could always depend on her to add publicity to its stories with an indictment or two against people it did not like. In return it appeared she was just too marvelous for any words to be written against the way she ran her office.

I wrote yesterday how some people just commit crime after crime and the criminal justice system in Massachusetts acts indifferently to these lifelong criminals by putting them back into the communities where they ply their evil trade. One reason that happens is that few if any of the judges live in those communities. They do not feel the crime on their skin or go off to work hoping someone will not break into their house while they are gone or go to sleep hoping their car will be outside their house in the morning. Judges are too removed from the people they are judging so they are unable to appreciate the agony caused to the people in the neighborhoods where these criminals operate.

That is a bad problem with our justice system. One should go into the district courts especially those in the city and see the daily activity and the type of people who are caught up in the system as both criminal and victim. They are usually from the lowest level of our society and the system is set up to keep them there.

The real problem is no one wants to determine why the FBI is screwing up. It won’t admit it. That would result in them being embarrassed which is the one thing it most fears. Better one thousand terrorist bombings than be embarrassed!

It acts as if things are fine. Well, folk, they aren’t. The best thing it has going for it is the timidity of our leaders. No one will call it to account.

How absurd is it to hear the Republican congress members complain about the FBI’s investigation of Hillary’s email and that despite overwhelming evidence against her the FBI’s director James Comey cleared her? Every once in a while a courageous and astute reporter, a dying breed, will ask whether they are criticizing Director James Comey, the man who wants to be another J. Edgar and who knows the only way to do that is to have his ten-year term extended indefinitely by a friendly president (Hillary?) the way J. Edgar did when he had the president after president keep him on long past his retirement due date. (Don’t think it could happen? Wasn’t the prior one extended two years without a peep from anyone? If it can be done for two it can be done for twenty.)

Have you seen this FBI “Seeking Information” poster? It has the picture of the two men shown in this post. The wording on it is: “The FBI is asking for the public’s assistance in locating these two unknown individuals. Closed circuit television recordings indicate that these individuals allegedly located a piece of luggage on the sidewalk, removed an improvised explosive device from the luggage, and then left the vicinity leaving the device behind but taking the luggage.. . . The FBI is interested in speaking to these people and recovering the luggage.”

The matter at issue is a bombing that occurred in New York City last Saturday on September 17. It has received much publicity.  The poster was published on Wednesday, September 21.

Is it possible that two people could have picked up the suitcase, taken out a pressure cooker and placed it on the sidewalk, walked off with the suitcase and not have any idea that what they discovered may have an important connection to the bombings?

Reading a 2014  well researched and written article in the Boston Globe about Jerry Remy’s son reminded me of the time I created the Repeat Felon Program (RFP) in the Norfolk District Attorney’s office. The idea behind the program was that there were some people who belonged in State Prison, at that time it was called Walpole rather than Cedar Junction. These were people with extensive adult felony records who were either being put on probation over and over again in the district court; or, if they received a sentence it was a short one to the house of corrections (the House) of two years or less.

Every county has what we called the House. Nothing is corrected there. It is a county jail. It is not a prison. It holds people waiting for their trials who cannot make bail as well as people doing lesser type sentences. It is not “big time” where the worst of the criminals are confined; it is still being locked up but some find it more home-like than they would prison.

Over the Labor Day holiday Chicago had 13 murdered and over fifty persons shot. This meant that over 500 people had been murdered in Chicago in 2015, 400 of whom were African-Americans. I wrote before what Superintendent Eddie Johnson said about them: “It’s not a police issue, it’s a society issue.  Impoverished neighborhoods, people without hope do these kinds of things. You show me a man that doesn’t have hope, I’ll show you one that’s willing to pick up a gun and do anything with it. Those are the issues that’s driving this violence. CPD is doing its job.”

Previously I wrote to say he was wrong when he says it is not a police issue. It clearly is. The next matter to consider the other part of the answer. Is this is a society issue?

I suggest that it is. It is a major issue in our society even though it is confined mostly to black areas in our cities. It is tempting to say it is not a society issue but a black issue. The problem with that type of response is you are isolating a racial group from the rest of society. Unless you want to think of American society as comprising two parts: blacks and others then you cannot escape with that thought.

I wrote earlier this week about Chicago’s murders which are on a record-setting pace this year. 400 blacks have been murdered by the time it passed the Labor Day holiday. My wife and daughter were in Chicago over that holiday but why was it I was never concerned for their safety. It was because they were not in the areas where the murders were taking place. Strange to say in America we have safe zones and danger zones in some of our cities. The danger zones are usually in the black areas.

I checked some statistics writing this. Throughout our country the majority of the cities that have the highest murder rates also have the highest percentage of blacks. The same goes for the most violent cities. Fortunately most Americans other than African-Americans do not have to spend much time in those areas.

This is why the great majority of the victims in these areas are black. The murders are mostly black upon black. They far surpass any black murders by police officers about which we hear so much from groups like Black Lives Matter or from those protesting America by sitting down during our national anthem.