They're Substituting "The Wheels Of Justice" For Something Else Entirely (And It's A Long Trip)

Justice can move too damned slow sometimes. Especially when the murder involves a cult - and occurred just a few blocks from your house:

When an attorney for one of the defendants in the killings of Oakland newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey and two other men tried to get the murder trial moved out of Alameda County last year, he compared his client to Nazi lieutenant Hermann Goering.

Attorney Gary Sirbu argued that trying Antoine Mackey next to Yusuf Bey IV, the former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery accused of having ordered the killings, would be like trying Goering next to Adolf Hitler.

The publicity surrounding the now-defunct black empowerment group is that widespread, and the bakery's former leader is that notorious, Sirbu said.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon may well have appreciated Sirbu's dramatic flair - the jurist acts and sings in local theater productions. But Reardon ultimately ruled that the case would stay in Oakland, and that Mackey and Bey, both 25, would be tried together.

Today, after a final round of jury selection, prosecutor Melissa Krum will present her opening remarks in a trial that is being closely watched by journalists and First Amendment advocates.

Alleged motive

Bailey's slaying was shocking not just because of the way it happened - he was shotgunned in broad daylight - but because of the explanation that emerged for the killing. The Oakland Post editor was shot, prosecutors believe, to shut him up.

Bailey was working on stories about a group whose image had plunged far from its early days as an advocate for healthy eating in the black community.

Reardon has said he will allow prosecutors to tell jurors of a litany of crimes involving bakery members. They include shootings, the kidnapping of two women and the torture of one of them, the vandalism of two liquor stores to curb alcohol sales, and a sexual-assault case against the bakery's late founder that Bailey had covered.

The 57-year-old Bailey was walking from his Lake Merritt apartment to his Oakland office on Aug. 2, 2007, when Devaughndre Broussard, who had worked as a handyman at Your Black Muslim Bakery, killed him with three shotgun blasts near the corner of 14th and Alice streets.

For the whole story, check out Your Black Muslim Bakery on TMR.

What It Means To Be A Man (It Never Changes)

"It was either I remain loyal to somebody or to a cause that wasn't loyal to me, be loyal to a gang that didn't care about me, or I can do for myself."

-- Devaughndre Broussard, the totally sympathetic killer of journalist Chauncey Bailey, explaining why he decided to testify against Yusuf Bey IV, leader of Oakland, California's Your Black Muslim Bakery - and revealing the one choice all cults present, from the very beginning, but few followers discover until the very end - in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Damn, y'all. In two days I've found reason to feel *something* for an American homeopath and a cold-blooded killer:

I must be getting soft in my old age,...

New Tennis Shoes, A Little Religion, And Big Ol' Fish Sandwiches (They'll Get You Every Time)

"Y'all going bankrupt?" Broussard finally asked his leader. "Yeah, that's why we needed the people to sacrifice," [Yusef Bey, IV] replied.

"You want us to sacrifice, I'm like, man, we got holes in our shoes," Broussard shot back. "You got (Nike Air) Jordans on your feet, man, you ain't sacrificing that hard like us."

"We gotta try to save our bakery," Bey reasoned, according to Broussard. "This not just for me, this for y'all. ... This is for the brothers that need somewhere to come to work. This bakery houses people, this bakery feeds people, this bakery puts money in people's pockets."

Broussard often laughed at such talk - he was coming to view the bakery as a "little cult." Yet he also saw that it did good work - people indeed got jobs and shelter and were getting off drugs.

"Besides the people that was hurt in the process," he said, "a lot of people was helped."

Still, he told the prosecutor, he knew Bey was playing a game.

"His con was that bakery," Broussard said. "He get you to believe what they believing in. ... That's brainwashing."

He concluded, "I knew his kind, though, and I still was brainwashed. I still fell for a trap that I knew - well, I knew where the trap was."

-- Jaxon Van Derbeken, giving us the latest addition to the Your Black Muslim Bakery cult story - and the most clear statement yet of it's cultism from Devaughndre Broussard - in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Read the whole thing.

The Words Cultists Most Hate To Hear*

"He knows it all."

-- LeRue Grim, describing his client - murderer Devaughndre Broussard - as he testifies in the Your Black Muslim Bakery cult trial, in The San Francisco Chronicle.

*Because "it's not possible to know anything for sure", right?

The Former-Cult Member Understatement Of The Day: Somebody Finally Got It Figured Out

"[Devaughndre] Broussard's attorney, LeRue Grim, said late Wednesday that the deal was struck after his client realized that Bey IV (above) was "not his friend,"...

-- Jaxon Van Derbeken, on what could soon be an end to the Your Black Muslim Bakery cult case, in The San Francisco Chronicle.

I'll Have Some Pancakes With My Order

Who's In Charge? (Make That Move)

And we're off:

“Either homeopathy works or controlled trials don’t!”

— David Reilly, a homeopath, making an idiot of himself at the 2001 Harvard Medical School Complementary and Integrative Medicine Conference.

"He was saying ... 'you got to take this fall.' He was saying, like, 'as your commanding officer, you got to follow orders.'"

- Devaughndre Broussard, the "soldier" accused of killing journalist Chauncey Bailey in the Your Black Muslim Bakery cult case, which will be covered on 60 Minutes tomorrow night. Broussard claims he will reveal the name of the killer on the program. (I really like the idea of a fucking bakery with a "commanding officer",...cults are a trip.)

"Video Catches Bus Driver Fighting With Student"

- CBS5 (KPHO out of Phoenix, Arizona) which - quite obviously - should read "Video Catches Student Fighting With Bus Driver". Shouldn't it?

Who's in charge?