OH-02: Culture of Corruption and Jean Schmidt

Bob Brigham flew to Ohio and files this report.

Video Clip Special

Talk Left's Jeralyn Merritt was on Hannity & Colmes last night discussing the Scott Peterson verdict.

Video

Many props to Jeralyn's fine blog Talk Left

The clip is edited down to highlight her segments. Viewed better on Windows XP. Soon we will have a much increased bandwidth, that we allow us to offer better quality video since the files are so large!

Mudflats: What is John McCain Thinking? One Alaskan's perspective

State of the Day: Is Sarah Palin American enough?

at-Largely: Yes Mrs. Palin, you are right in that Mrs. Clinton "showed determination and grace," but you my dear, are no Mrs. Clinton.

Clusterdouche!: Google collapses under "Who the F*ck is Sarah Palin??"searches

Petrelis Files: Time to start reading those financial disclosure files

Agitprop: I Had A Dream

KAKE.com: (h/t J)

No criminal charges will be filed in the death of a Goodyear worker, who passed away after being tased by Shawnee County Sheriff's deputies.

Shawnee County District Attorney Robert Hecht released his report Tuesday on the March 29th death of 59-year old Walter Haake. The report says Haake had suffered a head injury in a fall at his home the night before his death. It says Haake had been incoherent at work and fellow workers tried to deter him from driving when he left the plant. Shawnee County Sheriff's Deputies were called in when Haake refused to get out of his vehicle.

"Mre Haake physcially resisted removal, leaving the officers in the position of simply leaving him in the vehicle and letting the medical condition play out or using such force as may be required to remove him," Hecht wrote in the report.

The deputies chose to remove Haake by tazing him, then restraining him. The coroner ruled that an existing heart condition, combined with the compression to his chest when he was placed on the ground to be handcuffed, led to his death. Read on...

We posted this story back in April, and it appears the tragedy has gotten even worse. Haake was guilty of being injured and refusing treatment -- nothing more. That no charges will be filed against these officers is a travesty of justice and its a slap in the face of his poor family. This man's civil liberties were obliterated and I hope his family files a civil lawsuit. This case deserves national attention, as it sets a very dangerous example.

This is what George Bush and his band of cronies have turned America into. This is on all of our hands, whether we accept it or not.

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CBS:

At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America's shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one.

The story Kurnaz told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley is a rare look inside that clandestine system of justice, where the government's own secret files reveal that an innocent man lost his liberty, his dignity, his identity, and ultimately five years of his life.

There's Dick Cheney's One Percent Doctrine in action for ya. Mother Jones has a profile of Murat Kurnaz as well as a timeline of his experiences.

I appreciate the fact that the music business is in the midst of considerable turmoil. CD sales are abysmal, record companies are losing a lot of money, and music pirating has become fairly routine, prompting thousands of lawsuits from the RIAA against consumers. It’s an industry facing major, system challenges.

But if the music business wants to get back on track, this definitely isn’t the way to do it.

[I]n an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.

“I couldn’t believe it when I read that,” says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. “The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation.”

It’s as if the industry is anxious to destroy any remaining goodwill it may have left.

People for the American Way:

President Bush has nominated Leslie Southwick to fill a seat on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Bush previously tried to fill the seat with Charles Pickering and then Michael Wallace, both of whom faced significant opposition due to their disturbing legal records, especially on civil rights.

"Regrettably, Southwick also has a troubling record and appears to be cut from the same cloth as the others," said Ralph G. Neas, President of People For the American Way. "First Pickering, then Wallace, and now Southwick - Bush has completely struck out on the Fifth Circuit." More...

As Timothy McDonald said in an op-ed in WaPo:

Now is the time to contact your senators and demand that they stop Southwick before he gets a lifetime opportunity to roll back decades-worth of social justice gains.

It is expected that the full Senate will come to a vote for confirmation as early as tomorrow. You can use the widget on the right margin of the home page to contact your Senators or PFAW has a directory as well. PFAW, Magnolia Bar Association, AFL-CIO, NAACP and Human Rights Campaign (.pdf files) all oppose his confirmation.

It looks like we found where Saddam hid those weapons of mass destruction...or do you suppose John Bolton was planning on taking out those ten stories he scoffed at?

CNN:

Workers found vials believed to contain the poison gas phosgene at a U.N. office building in New York Thursday.

U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said U.N. chemical weapons experts quickly secured the toxic material.

U.N. archivists for UNMOVIC, the U.N. chemical weapons agency, unexpectedly turned up samples of material from an Iraqi chemical weapons plant in old files.

The samples were in weapons inspectors' files dating back to the 1990s, but the substance is not believed to pose any immediate danger, U.N. officials said Thursday.

The building where the samples turned up is several blocks away from main U.N. Secretariat building along New York's East River. Tests found no toxic vapors in the offices, U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said. [..]

The material was taken from al-Muthanna chemical weapons plant north of Baghdad. The samples are sealed and have been there since 1996.

The samples were in containers that ranged in size "from small vials to tubes the length of a pen," Okabe said.

Ewan Buchanan, a spokesman for UNMOVIC, said the substances are in a sealed metal box and wrapped in a plastic bag, "so there is no immediate danger."

As you know, I'm a huge Zappa fan and C&Ler Doug reminded me that he passed away on December 4th, 1993. As a tribute I'll repost this clip which has been a fan favorite.

Zappa: When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view and if that code happens to be very, very right wing almost toward Attila the Hun.

Lofton: Well then you are an anarchist. Every form of civil government is based on some kind of morality, Frank.

Zappa: Morality in terms of behavior-not in terms of theology.

One of the women that I most admired growing up was Jane Goodall. I loved watching nature programs of her with her beloved chimps. I was so enthralled by these chimps, I even remember their names to this day: Greybeard, Fifi, Frodo and Freud --so recognizably like us that it forced me to re-evaluate my notions of what made us uniquely human. Jane's work seemed so noble and exotic to me in a way that made me wish I could do something that made an impact as she has.

Jane Goodall is still making a difference today. Almost fifty years after she landed in Africa and at the age of 72, Jane travels nearly 300 days a year for her Roots and Shoots Project which has 8,000 groups in 96 countries.

On September 30th, Roots and Shoots is sponsoring their 2006 Day of Peace:

Last year, peace doves flew in 69 cities in a total of 22 countries. They reached some incredible places, including top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and the grounds of a monastery in Mongolia. In Nepal, more than 400 children from the Buddhist community paraded their hand-made Giant Peace Dove around the compound of their school, released balloons, sang songs, and gave Tibetan prayers. In Bahrain there was a remarkable parade led by the Bahrain Police Band and doves made by Bahrain children were included on more than 30 Gulf Air flights. In Los Angeles, almost 1,000 people came together to fly 50 peace doves during a day of festivities in Griffith Park.

On this day that marks the anniversary of a horrible act of terrorism, I hope that it will prove to be a starting point for conversations about peace, activism, conservation and protests. I share it here with you in the hopes that other C&Lers (and I see from the comments that you are truly an international group) also consider Jane Goodall's simple words of peace.

Directions to make your own peace dove here and here. (.pdf files)