Glenn Reynolds links this Newsbusters report about how the broadcast networks are ignoring the murder of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey.

I noticed that the Inquirer has buried the story with a tiny little notice in a column of collected news items on page A7. A very small headline reads "Handyman says he killed editor," and here's the copy:

OAKLAND, Calif. - A 19-year-old handyman at Your Black Muslim Bakery has admitted to police that he ambushed and killed Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, investigators said.

Police said Devaughndre Broussard told them Friday night that he shot and killed Bailey with a shotgun because he was angry over stories the journalist had written about the bakery, its employees and its leaders.

Investigators said Broussard was also concerned about stories that he thought Bailey might be working on. Bailey, 57, had apparently been working on a story about the Muslim splinter group and its finances, authorities said. - San Jose Mercury News

Is it being used to create distance between the Black Muslim Bakery organization and the gunman? Or might the intent be to tone down the story, to make the spin less interesting? I'm frankly worried that the shooting is being downplayed, and not just because it involves black Muslims. I think that the fact that this is a small black newspaper in Oakland makes it less interesting, and I think that had an editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, or even the Des Moines Register, there would have been big headline stories about the killer's arrest in every major newspaper, and it would be a huge story on all the broadcast news. (And I think that had the shooter been white and Christian, it would have received a lot more attention -- even if he was a "handyman.")

Far be it from me to question whether Devaughndre Broussard is truly a "handyman" as I suppose I could be called a handyman myself.

But unless there are two people having what appears to be a very unusual name in the same neck of the woods, I noticed something which makes me suspect he might be more than a handyman. According to (UC Berkeley's) Haas Business School, a "DeVaughndre Broussard" was a prize winner in an investment portfolio competition run by the school's "Young Entrepreneurs At Haas" program:

Investment Portfolio Competition

At the Investment Portfolio Competition, 38 tenth-grade students presented their top investment choices to a panel of judges at Haas on Saturday, April 26.

The teams had spent the past year in the YEAH program using a computer simulation called Stock Quest to learn about the stock market. Each team started the year with a fictional one million dollars to invest and worked with a mentor to learn how to analyze target companies.

At the competition, the teams presented their portfolios, explained the rationale behind their investment choices, and described how those investments fared over a 12-month period. This year's winners were DeVaughndre Broussard, Alberto Fuentes, and Pierre Hudson. All three were mentored by second-year Berkeley MBA Tony Brekke. Each student on the winning team won a $100 savings bond.

Since 1989, the YEAH program has been using the principles and real-life lessons of business, finance, and entrepreneurship to educate under-served youth and support their advancement to higher education. The program has prepared more than one thousand young people for success in college and in the world of business and finance. Currently, the program serves nearly 300 students from dozens of schools in the Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, and West Contra Costa school districts.

If this is the same guy, you'd think the "handyman's" once promising career would be worth mentioning.

Looking further, I found that news reports in the Bay Area not only confirm the Haas Business School connection, but the San Jose Mercury News reports that Broussard additionally describes himself with an interesting word -- "soldier":

In his confession, Devaughdre Broussard told detectives that he considered himself to be "a good soldier" when he shot and killed Bailey on Thursday morning for writing negative stories about the bakery, authorities said.

"Handyman" might be a handy word to use, but it doesn't begin to tell the full story.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and welcome all!

MORE: There's something else that's being forgotten here, which I think is at least as important as the racial and multiculturalist overtones.

The slain editor was trying to write a story about the very group that killed him.

Let this sink in for a moment. A journalist was murdered in order to stop a story.
And journalists are afraid to write about it, right?

You'd think that in this country with our grand and hallowed tradition of a fearless free press with fearless reporters, all reporters would be united in absolute outrage, and yelling holy hell from the rooftops. Furious editorials from every last desk of every last editor in America.

Yet the only factor which seems to be uniting them is fear. One of their own was murdered, and his fellow journalists can't stand to write about it.

I don't know whether the murder was intended to "send a message" or simply to silence one writer, but if the idea was to intimidate journalists in general, I'd say things are going according to plan.

UPDATE (08/06/07): Christopher Hitchens asks "Why did the Oakland police do so little about Your Black Muslim Bakery's thuggery?"

I am just asking, but what if this racket had been named the White Christian or Aryan Nations Cookie Parlor? (Motto and mission statement: "Don't F*** With Us.") I think that Oakland's mayor, Ron Dellums--who I was startled to find was still alive--would have joined a picket line around the store (as would I). The same would doubtless have been true of Rep. Barbara Lee, in whose district the YBMB was situated. But instead, in its role as a "community business," the YBMB enjoyed warm support and endorsement from both the mayor and the congresswoman. And the guns for past and future slayings were inside the store.

If this isn't softness on crime, then the term is meaningless. Residents have been complaining for a long time about the atmosphere of hatred and violence--and about what some have called the YBMB's attempt to "cleanse" the neighborhood, either of godless liquor stores on the model of jihadism or simply of business rivals and journalistic critics. What were the police doing all this time, and why did Chauncey Bailey have to be murdered before they could be moved to act? Perhaps they were doing what they do best: confiscating marijuana and rousting whores so as to painlessly improve the crime statistics. I called Bob Valladon, the extremely rude and graceless head of the Oakland police union, but I didn't even get to put my question before receiving a large flea in my ear. Other California law-enforcement officials were adamant in refusing to be quoted in any way. I can't say I blame them: Thousands of their voters and citizens are living in Third World conditions of fear, with a "no-snitch" policy openly enforced at gunpoint, and they cannot be troubled to do anything about it.

As I have written before and am sure I will write again: This has to stop, and it has to stop right now, before sharia baking comes to a place near you.