Boss Hawg rides again. In what can only be described as an inexplicable act, Haley Barbour granted unconditional pardons to 214 prisoners just before leaving office on Tuesday. Included in that motley group? Brett Favre's brother, a few prison trustees who worked in his office, 14 murderers, and others who just happen to be violent criminals.
As you might imagine, the victims' families are outraged by this. It's one thing to give full pardons to people who might have been wrongly convicted, and another entirely just to use the sweep of a pen to release people who present a danger to their victims and victims' families.
Recognizing this, a judge has blocked the release of a few of the prisoners, stating that Barbour violated the Mississippi State Constitution by not publishing their release date 30 days in advance. While that release may stop a few for a short time, it's doubtful that they will be able to defend keeping them in prison if the pardon holds.
According to this report on Megyn Kelly's show (yes, I know, but it's what I was recording), Mississippi Attorney General is attending to the victims' families' complaints. Well, maybe. Honestly, I was a bit chilled to hear him say this:
So I think, they're gonna be fine. Just be careful.
Ya think? I'm not sure what possessed Haley Barbour to grant these pardons, to be honest. It strikes me as a cynical and self-serving move. Maybe he wanted his own posse?
Andrew Breitbart isn't the only right-winger out there creating false narratives about his targets through selective editing -- indeed, this is a common practice at Fox News, too. But the real champion of selective editing -- in quite a different fashion -- is Matt Drudge.
Instead of chopping up video, Drudge selectively edits tidbits of information from around the country to create narratives on his widely read Drudge Report website -- narratives that, in fact, are often right-wing lies pandering to right-wing audiences.
Recently, the narrative at Drudge has been this: Criminal young black men, freed to wanton abandon by the Black Panther-coddling Obama administration, are embarking on a retributive crime wave against white people.
Since Obama actually took office, though, Drudge has seriously stepped up his "scary black people" coverage. There was, in September of 2009, the story he heavily publicized of a kid on a bus in Illinois getting beaten up. A kid on a bus in Illinois getting beaten up is not really national news -- until Drudge makes it so. The fact that the beater was black and the victim white is why Drudge made it national news. Rush Limbaugh made the subtext explicit: "In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering."
This is the narrative that Drudge is trying to create, especially on slow news weekends when there's nothing real to aggregate and post: The blacks are rising up and attacking the whites. If that sounds a bit crazy, in a Charles Manson way, then you're obviously not paying attention. Black people are angry and they're taking over! When Barack Obama was campaigning to win Chicago the Olympic games, Matt Drudge led with a terrifying photo of (black) gang violence and the breathless, all-caps headline, "OLYMPIC SPIRIT."
The violent death of a young man is definitely news ... in Chicago, where it happened. It had very little to do with whether Chicago is a suitable venue for the Olympics. Violent murders happen in big cities and small towns across the nation every day. But only some of them can be used to stoke paranoia about emboldened, angry black people rising up.
John at Gawker observes that this past weekend, there were 10 Drudge headlines supporting this narrative:
Then be sure to check in with the Drudge Report, which has conveniently rounded up a slew of run-of-the-mill summer crime stories that happen to involve black people and suggestively weaved them into a nationwide race riot.
...
The race-baiting is a bit more transparent—"urban," "rib fest"—than we've come to expect from Drudge, who is usually more elegant in his efforts to stoke white rage. All of Drudge's readers in the media business, the cable news producers and Politico reporters who regard him as "America's assignment editor," know exactly what his intent is with those headlines. But instead of being dismissed as a racist weather-obsessed recluse he continues to be regarded as a power player in right-wing politics.
Unsurprisingly, some of the wingnutosphere's duller tools in the shed promptly leapt to Drudge's defense by trotting out the classic right-wing stereotypes about blacks and crime -- thereby clinching the case that what Drudge was doing was stirring up these resentments. F'r instance, Confederate Yankee:
Pareene is a far left liberal that would like to embrace the childish fiction that all races and cultures are essentially the same. It's a wonderful view to have when you're ten.
While individuals within these cultures can be anyone and achieve anything, it is a statistical fact that African-Americans are disproportionately responsible for crimes in this nation compared to any other ethnic group. They are also more likely to commit some of the more sensational crimes, such as the near riots and wildings that are the prime headline fodder that are Drudge's bread and butter.
If Pareene really wanted to make an impact, he'd spend his time and resources trying to find the reason for the statistical discrepancy that shows African-Americans are more prone to be criminals and victims of violent crime.
Of course, he already knows the reason. It started with LBJ's "Great Society," and continued with the rise of Planned Parenthood and the destruction of the African-American family unit due to "progressive" social reforms.
Oy. The stooooooopid, it burns. And then these same conservatives look hurt and amazed when people point out that their attitudes are deeply racist.
Right-wingers like Bob Owens never seem to understand that the correlation of crime with race is not a causal relationship -- rather, the causal relationship is between poverty and crime. And black people are more likely to be impoverished in America than other races for a broad variety of reasons, many of them historical in nature, but including a number of ongoing factors: demographic segregation, job discrimination, and impoverishment of urban schools.
Drudge's choice of what stories to highlight is about creating a narrative, and the insinuation is now that we have a black President, all hell is breaking loose. One of the weirdest, most long-standing conservative myths is that black people are aching to "rise up" and take the nation by force. The argument is then that they have to, more in sorrow than in glee, argue against equal rights for black people. They'd want to share, but you know, violence! The notion that black America is revenge-minded is something that is surprisingly powerful for wingnuts. That's why there's non-stop chatter on right wing radio about slavery reparations, even though the subject has no traction in real world discourse, and even if it did, said reparations would look much different than right wingers imagine it would like. (They're picturing jack-booted thugs stealing your grandmother's pearls and giving it to some family you don't know to pawn, but it would more likely be a check that resembles a Social Security check or a tax refund.) And that's why Andrew Breitbart thinks that some court settlement to black farmers who were systemically discriminated against for decades is the biggest problem our nation faces.
Indeed, Drudge's editorial choices tell us far more about him -- and his many fans -- than anything else.
The presumption of innocence until proven guilty is, or at least was once, a cornerstone of American law, and one that the French government has been rather quick to remind us of after the arrest of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York on charges of sexual assault and rape. Which is somewhat ironic, given the inquisitorial nature of France’s Napoleonic Code.
But the presumption of innocence or guilt doesn’t seem to count for much in the courts of public opinion, however, and accusations and conspiracy theories are running rampant on both sides of the Atlantic. In France, where Mr Strauss-Kahn has long been a popular figure and would have been a serious challenger for the presidency in next year’s elections, the CSA opinion poll has indicated that 57% of those polled believe the charges against him are part of an elaborate plot to discredit him. Fully 70 percent of Socialist sympathizers agreed with that view, even though most French media have dismissed conspiracy theories. Some French journalists, who have described Mr Strauss-Kahn as ‘a charmer of women’ with a ‘taste for the fairer sex’, ‘unresistant to feminine attractions’ and his repeated harassment of women as being just a ‘romantic quirk,’ have chosen to dismiss the allegation of rape on the grounds that the woman is ‘très peu séduisant.’ Not very tempting. Mr Strauss-Kahn himself, perhaps rather unwisely, tweeted that ‘the lawyers were surprised at the appearance of the arrival of a very unattractive young woman’.
Nor is support for him confined to France; in the States, his attorneys are doing what attorneys usually do when defending a high-flying client charged with a heinous crime – blaming the victim. Sorry – ‘alleged’ victim. Mr Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, told the press that the forensic evidence ‘will not be consistent with a forcible encounter’, inferring that the maid consented to performing oral sex on Mr Strauss-Kahn. Mr Brafman’s conjecture is further bolstered by Mr Strauss-Kahn’s longtime friend, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, as well the conservative former speechwriter for Nixon and Ford, Ben Stein, both of whom have questioned how it would be possible for such a ‘short old fat man’ to forcibly rape a young hotel maid, a description rather less flattering than those employed by the French. And just about as apposite. Short old fat men can’t be rapists, apparently, and unattractive women are never their victims.
But according to Mr Stein, Mr Strauss-Kahn’s only ‘crime’ is being rich. ‘(T)his is a case about the hatred of the have-nots for the haves, and that’s what it’s all about. A man pays $3,000 a night for a hotel room? He’s got to be guilty of something. Bring out the guillotine.’ And the maid? She’s not Lara Logan, blue-eyed and blond, a respected professional journalist whose sexual assault in Egypt shocked the world. She’s black. Poor. An immigrant. A cleaner in a hotel. A single mother. A Muslim. Oh, and apparently, she’s ugly. One of those have-nots who hates the haves, the sort of people who are ‘complete lunatics’ who have stolen money, medication, even airline tickets from Mr Stein. She has to be guilty of something, naturally. Bring out the noose.
And Mr Stein and Mr Levy are not alone in this disturbing attitude. One Australian newspaper headline read: ‘Oh la la, IMF chief - and future French Prez - in rape scandal’, and began the article with equating sex and French politics with croissants and coffee. But there is nothing oh la la or romantic about a naked man who rushes out of a bathroom, chases a woman, grabs her, locks the door, drags her to the bedroom, rips at her clothing, and forces her to perform oral sex before she’s able to escape and runs for help from other hotel staff before ringing 911 in tears, distressed and traumatized.
A heavily armed gunman entered the Discovery TV building with an explosive device strapped to his body, and is reportedly holding a security guard and possibly more people hostage.
SILVER SPRING, Md. — A gunman with an explosive device strapped to himself has entered the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, Md., and may have taken at least one person hostage, police said.
Montgomery County police said there may also be other explosives in the building, but they said they could not confirm reports that one or more shots had been fired.
Law enforcement authorities identified the man as James J. Lee. They told NBC News that he had a long history of protesting at the building. NBC said the man may have posted environmental and population-control demands online.
His demands are bizarre. Expect conservatives and liberals alike to point fingers at each other. Examples below:
"The Senate seldom says it's sorry, although it is now ready to officially express its remorse over the failure to outlaw lynching in the United States. A resolution that the chamber was likely to take up Monday voices regret for the Senate's unwillingness for years to pass a law stopping a crime that cost the lives of over 4,700 people, mostly blacks, between 1882 and 1968....read on"
I never realized that it was legal in the first place. How sick is that? The fact that it was then allowed to last until 1968 is unimaginable. Read this exchange if you want to have your stomach turned from History Matters In the following testimony to a House subcommittee, four Southern Congressmen discussed their reasons for opposing what they deemed federal interference in state judicial responsibilities and defend segregation and the “peaceful relations now existing between white man and Negro” in the South. Congressman Charles E. Bennett (Florida) also offered his historical explanation for lynching. read the full transcript.
Try to figure out what group of people are being targeted now. Also, some from the right will try to equate these types of filibusters to what is going on in the judiciary. I doubt they can see how contemptable that comparison is.
And as soon as this week, or next, Abramoff will he on his way out the doors of a federal prison and into a halfway house, where he will reside until he's formally released.
I'm still amazed at what he got away with and how light a sentence he received, because I'm idealistic enough to think somehow, somewhere, justice should be done. After his 3 1/2 years in prison, he will go to a halfway house, then he will go home to his wife and children. He may be disgraced, but I doubt he is repentant.
Caution: Rant ahead
He will probably write a book and recover enough money to allow him to travel in the circles of days past. Perhaps not with the kind of high-rolling money that he wishes for, but with enough that he will never worry about where his next unemployment check will come from. While he may not be the influencer that he was once, he will have enough influence to move in the same circles as though nothing had ever happened, as though he hadn't bilked tribes out of millions, as though he hadn't sold Congressmen on the idea of giving oil companies and financial firms lots of legislative breaks in exchange for campaign booty.
I suggest you see Casino Jack to remind yourself of the evil this man is and represents. He should spill it all, name names, hand over receipts and affidavits and hammer all of his College Republican buddies. Maybe then I could forgive his easy payment of his "debt to society."
The truth of Abramoff is this: our democracy is inexorably weaker because of what he did and because he did not pay a fair price for his malfeasance.
Terrified residents canceled Fourth of July plans and holed up in their homes Friday as investigators hunted a serial killer believed to have shot four people to death.
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Plenty of evidence links the killings, though officials have not yet determined how the victims are connected or if they knew whoever shot them, said Cherokee County Sheriff Bill Blanton.
"Yes, we have a serial killer," he said at a news conference in this rural community 50 miles south of Charlotte, N.C.
So far, all investigators have to go on is a sketch of a suspect and a description of a possible getaway vehicle, though police would not say who provided that information.
The latest victims were found in their family's small furniture and appliance shop near downtown Gaffney around closing time Thursday. Stephen Tyler, 45, was killed, and his 15-year-old daughter was shot and seriously injured. Tyler's wife, his older daughter and an employee found them in Tyler Home Center, County Coroner Dennis Fowler said.
A day earlier and about seven miles away, family members found the bodies of 83-year-old Hazel Linder and her 50-year-old daughter, Gena Linder Parker, bound and shot in Linder's home. Blanton would not say if Tyler and his daughter were also bound. The killing spree began last Saturday about 10 miles from Tyler Home Center, where peach farmer Kline Cash, 63, was found shot in his living room. Blanton said the killer may have first spoken with Cash's wife about buying hay. She left and came home a few hours later to find her husband's body. Investigators said it appears he was robbed, but they have not determined if anything was taken in the other killings.
The John Douglas book called Mind Hunter, is a pretty fascinating look (it gets interesting about 80 pages in) at how the FBI developed the profiling methods we see used today. Robert Ressler coined the term "Serial Killer," and also wrote a book about his experiences: Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI. He interviewed many of these killers in jail to better understand their behavior. He was interviewed by Thomas Harris, who then wrote two of the greatest novels on the subject, Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. Both were made into excellent movies, (Who can forget Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter or SOTL's?) but South Carolina hopes that's not the case here. Let's hope he's caught quickly.
Foolocracy: C&L contributor, Blue Gal, tipped me to this along with the observation:"Your typical Republican candidate. Way old and can't seem to keep it in his pants. Admits he wasn't good to his seven kids or three wives, but endorses tougher divorce standards."
The Carpetbagger Report: Fox News or Crime Family extortionists? What's the G.D. difference?
Huffington Post: GOP looks to redistrict itself back into power
iCrew: A new site where creative people help each other out. Writers, filmakers, musicians, craftsmakers, and anyone else who'd like to use "the wisdom of crowds" to do things better, faster, and more participatively should find iCrew an exciting and useful resource.
Our friend Tammy Booth, better known as Blue Girl, Red State, has won a scholarship to the Netroots Nation bloggers convention that is being held in Austin later this month. She's trying to raise some money toward the train ticket and living expenses while in Texas. Times are tough, but kick in a few bucks if you can via Paypal over at her site.
I love Asian Yakuza movies. Heck, I love a lot of the J-horror flicks too, but I never thought I'd see this in real life. Hello, DHS---where the hell were you?
UCLA Medical Center and its most accomplished liver surgeon provided a life-saving transplant to one of Japan's most powerful gang bosses, law enforcement sources told The Times.
In addition, the surgeon performed liver transplants at UCLA on three other men who are now barred from entering the United States because of their criminal records or suspected affiliation with Japanese organized crime groups, said a knowledgeable law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The four surgeries were done between 2000 and 2004 at a time of pronounced organ scarcity. In each of those years, more than 100 patients died awaiting liver transplants in the Greater Los Angeles region...read on
You have got to read this story. It's a Pulitzer Prize winner....I have used the UCLA medical group in the past. Damn, if I would have produced a samurai sword when I checked in---who knows what kind of treatment I might have received.
