Joe Conason points out that the New York Times never quite got around to reporting the revelations that showed Andrew "Dim" Breitbart's ACORN videos were carefully edited to show wrongdoing. This nasty, scum-sucking piece of work has gotten away with it one too many times and I think this would be a really good time for them to rectify that omission, don't you?

For months, Breitbart continued to resist every request that he release the full, unedited ACORN videotapes, which ought to have alerted editors and producers that something was wrong. But then in the course of the California investigation, Brown struck a plea deal with O’Keefe, who was in jeopardy of indictment for violating the state’s privacy laws. (According to Brown’s final report, "the facts presented here strongly suggests that O’Keefe and Giles violated state privacy laws and provides fair warning to them and others that this type of activity can be prosecuted in California.") The plea agreement deal forced O’Keefe to turn over the complete set of tapes to state investigators. Brown’s verdict on their misuse was scathing. "The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality," he said. "Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."

Meanwhile, Times public editor Clark Hoyt, like his colleagues in other mainstream outlets, has been forced to acknowledge gross errors in the paper’s coverage – such as the false claim, encouraged by Breitbart and Fox, that O’Keefe went into the ACORN offices "dressed so outlandishly [as a pimp] that he might have been playing in a risqué high school play." In fact, the filmmaker never wore his ridiculous pimp regalia into a single ACORN office, always dressing instead like a buttoned-down junior accountant.

Amazingly, the New York Times never covered the Harshbarger report and gave little or no coverage to the other deconstructions of the Big Government “scoop” by law enforcement. Last March, when Hoyt finally offered an excuse for the failure of the Times to adequately correct and explain the complex truth behind Breitbart’s ACORN scam, it sounded weak:

The report by Harshbarger…was not covered by The Times. It should have been, but the Acorn/O’Keefe story became something of an orphan at the paper. At least 14 reporters, reporting to different sets of editors, have touched it since last fall. Nobody owns it. Bill Keller, the executive editor, said that, “sensing the story would not go away and would be part of a larger narrative,” the paper should have assigned one reporter to be responsible for it.”

Since then much more evidence has emerged, without generating the kind of reassessment that is overdue. Now Breitbart has struck again, manipulating a gullible media establishment and a frightened administration in an attempt to destroy the reputation of an innocent federal employee.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (732)

PLAYS: (1647)

Embed

Well, the facts are now being made public in this weekend's militia bust in the Midwest, and it isn't pretty:

Six Michigan residents, two Ohio residents and an Indiana resident have been indicted on charges of attempted use of weapons of mass destruction in connection with their membership in a Lenawee County Christian militia group.

Members of the Hutaree -- including a Michigan couple and their two sons -- conspired to oppose by force the authority of the U.S. government, according to a release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit.

The indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court today claims that the Hutaree planned to kill an unidentified member of local law enforcement and then attack the law enforcement officers who gather in Michigan for the funeral. According to the plan, the Hutaree would attack law enforcement vehicles during the funeral procession with improvised explosive devices rigged with projectiles, which constitute weapons of mass destruction, according to the announcement by U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade.

You can read the indictment as a PDF here. Of particular note is this:

The general concept of of operations provided that the Hutaree would commit some violent act to draw the attention of law enforcement or government officials and which would draw a response by law enforcement. Possible such acts were discussed including killing a member of law enforcement after a traffic stop, killing a member of law enforcement and his or her family at home, ambushing a member of law enforcement in rural communities, luring a member of law enforcement with a false 911 emergency call and then killing him or her, and killing a member of law enforcement and then attacking a funeral procession motorcade with weapons of mass destruction. These acts would intimidate and demoralize law enforcement, diminishing their ranks and rendering them ineffective.

The general concept of operations further provided that, once such action was taken, Hutaree members would then retreat to one of several "rally points" where the Hutaree would wage war against the government and be prepared to defend in-depth with trip-wired and command detonated anti-personnel Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), ambushes, and prepared fighting positions. It is believed by the Hutaree that this engagement would serve as a catalyst for a more wide-spread uprising against the Government.

CNN explains further:

According to the plan, the indictment said, the Hutaree wanted to use improvised explosive devices to attack law enforcement vehicles during the funeral procession. The indictment said those explosive devices, commonly called IEDs, constitute weapons of mass destruction.

Subsequently, the indictment said, Hutaree leader David Brian Stone obtained information about IEDs over the Internet and e-mailed diagrams to a person he believed could manufacture them.

He then had his one of his sons, Joshua Matthew Stone, and others gather materials necessary to manufacture IEDs, the indictment alleges.

According to the indictment, David Brian Stone and David Brian Stone Jr. taught other Hutaree members in June how to make and use explosive devices.

The only funny aspect of all this: As Blue Texan at FDL observes, the right-wing blogosphere is falling all over itself to dream up excuses for these guys.

Meanwhile, Ed Brayton reports that Mike Vanderboegh, the ex-militiaman who called for bricks to be thrown through Democratic office windows, has simultaneously denounced the Hutaree and then suggested that the arrests could still spark "civil war" from the militias.

Hmmm. I can remember when I was being called an "alarmist" for pointing out that we were heading down this road.

DOWNLOADS: (3336)

PLAYS: (10468)

Embed

If you read Rogers Ailes' dialogue on ABC's This Week, you will see just how entrenched his rhetoric is with what Fox News, the Teabaggers and the GOP puts on the air day in and night out. His own words are an indictment of his politics and the station he falsely calls "fair and balanced."

--

AILES: Well, they tried to ban us. They tried to break the pool, but the other networks stepped up and protected Fox on it, because it was tortuous (ph) interference with a contractual relationship and sort of tramping around on the Constitution...

WALTERS: But now you're OK.

AILES: We're fine. I mean, we were -- it was not as bad as it was played, and things are not as great (ph) as they should be, but we have a good dialogue. And I saw the president and his wife at the media Christmas party. They were very gracious, very nice, both of them. And we have a dialogue every day with them.

--

Lies...

WALTERS: What advice would you give to Barack Obama?

AILES: I think he's in a very tough spot. He is enormously likable and I think despite what everybody says, people would like him to succeed. But he came in with the belief that the radical change he wanted or what some people say is a radical change that he wanted would be widely accepted.

WALTERS: But give him some advice, boom, boom, boom now.

AILES: The first advice I'd give him is listen to everybody and then go in a dark room by yourself, because in the end, it's all going to happen in your brain. If you actually believe all these things that you're for, and Richard Neustadt in "Presidential Power" explains that the only real presidential power is the power to persuade the people, to be open, to go out to them and say this is the reason I believe this, this is the direction I believe the American people should go. If he doesn't do that and I don't think he can sell some of his programs. I think he has to become president of all the people and I think he's got to go to transparency and I think you'd be surprised. People who are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but you can't do this in back rooms surrounded entirely by political consultants.

He is the president of all the people.

HUFFINGTON: Well, Roger, it's not a question of picking a fight. And aren't you concerned about the language that Glenn Beck is using, which is, after all, inciting the American people? There is a lot of suffering out there, as you know, and when he talks about people being slaughtered, about who is going to be the next in the killing spree...

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: Well, he was talking about Hitler and Stalin slaughtering people. So I think he was probably accurate. Also, I'm a little....

HUFFINGTON: No, no, he was talking about this administration.

AILES: I don't -- I think he speaks English. I don't know, but I mean, I don't misinterpret any of his words. He did say one unfortunate thing, which he apologized for, but that happens in live television. So I don't think it's -- I think if we start going around as the word police in this business, it will be...

As we've noted, Roger Ailes lied through his teeth about Glenn Beck.

AILES: If you say -- if (inaudible) words are in the Constitution, if the founding fathers managed -- they didn't need 2,000 pages of lawyers to hide things, then tell, then tell...

KRUGMAN: Oh, come on. Legislation always is long.

AILES: ... then tell people it's an emergency that we get it, but it won't go into effect for three years. So you don't have time to read it, you...

---AILES: But there are 300 million people who have a health care plan that they are happy with. There are about 30 million people who don't have a health care plan. So as an executive, what do you do? You go fix the 30 million. You don't go over here and upset the apple cart for 300 million...

KRUGMAN: Which is exactly what the plan was.

AILES: No, no, no...

KRUGMAN: It was trying (ph) to leave the employer-based health care...

(CROSSTALK)

AILES: ... $500 billion away from old people.

He parrots the GOP's claims about health care. 300 million people don't have heath care and the HCR is not just about helping the 30 million people that don't have health insurance. It's about lowering costs, not kicking people out of a plan, doing away with pre-existing conditions. He's promoting the fearmongering that old people will not be covered and die too.

---AILES: Safety and sovereignty of the United States, and I think people, when they see a guy get all the way over Detroit to (inaudible) his underpants, but he could have, and now we're in a situation where we're going to have to either -- we took every body's shoes off; now we're going to have to take every body's underpants off. But the fact is, that's not going to stop. We've got to get much tougher. We've cut the hands off the CIA. We can't -- it's the Norwegians that are doing this. We know who it is. We can't seem to say it. So sooner or later, we're going to have to toughen up on all this stuff. And the American people know it, they feel it, and they're worried about it.

He uses Peter King's lunatic rantings about the underwear bomber. Another GOP trick.

--

AILES: I thought he did a pretty good job of delivering his speech. He seemed to get a little bit of his energy back. He'd fallen away over the last few months. You know, he did some dumb things, like take on the Supreme Court. But the media saved him and blamed it all on Alito. But you know, that speech, he's got to follow it up with his -- look, there is an easy way to get it done. I went to the White House one night because I had to meet with Ronald Reagan. And there was a lot of laughter down at the end of the hallway. I waited about 10 minutes, and out came Reagan and Tip O'Neill, arm in arm, with a drink in their hand, telling Irish jokes. In the paper the next day, they kind of trashed each other's ideas, but they obviously cut some kind of a deal.

And that's, you know, there are ways. If he wants to invite the four Republicans and four Democrats over to the Super Bowl and say, come on, guys, we've got to get some jobs...

(CROSSTALK)

HUFFINGTON: He tried to do that. He wasted three months...

AILES: No, that's the way it gets done.

Obama has to do it the Republicans' way or else.

And if there's one thing he knows, it's conservative victim-hood:

AILES: He's tried to get Republicans to agree with him, there's no question. And the media will report that -- what they say is a Republican is evolving, as if he's a caveman if he leans towards the president on something.

--

AILES: I have no -- no idea, no idea whether she even wants to. I don't think she -- she knows. I mean, everybody hates her who's ever written a book because they didn't sell many. She wrote a book and it sold two million in two weeks, and so now they hate her, they have a new reason to hate her. I don't know...

Everybody hates Sarah because she sold a lot of books.

WALTERS: But you hired her to be a commentator. Do you think -- so you must think she has some qualifications? She seems to be very popular with certain groups. Do you think she has the qualifications to be president?

AILES: Fox News is fair and balanced. We had Geraldine Ferraro on for 10 years as the only woman the Democrats ever nominated. Now we have the only woman that the Republicans nominated. I'm not in politics, I'm in ratings. We're willing.

HUFFINGTON: Roger, you clearly are in ratings, but if you are in ratings, can you explain to me why Fox went away from the meeting the president was having in -- why did you go away, 20 minutes before the end?

AILES: Because we're the most trusted name in news.

He's trying to be a Kingmaker and he's grooming Palin to run for president. Talking about ratings is a joke. And he has the audacity to boast that FNC is fair because he hired Geraldine Ferraro.

What head of a news organization would go on the air and expose their own political agenda as far as he did? Fox News is an exact reflection of Ailes himself: an odious, compulsive liar.

Obviously, this is going to do wonders for our image in Iraq:

WASHINGTON — In a significant blow to the Justice Department, a federal judge on Thursday threw out the indictment of five former Blackwater security guards over a shooting in Baghdad in 2007 that left 17 Iraqis dead and about 20 wounded.

The judge cited misuse of statements made by the guards in his decision, which brought to a sudden halt one of the highest-profile prosecutions to arise from the Iraq war. The shooting at Nisour Square frayed relations between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration and put a spotlight on the United States’ growing reliance on private security contractors in war zones.

Investigators concluded that the guards had indiscriminately fired on unarmed civilians in an unprovoked and unjustified assault near the crowded traffic circle on Sept. 16, 2007. The guards contended that they had been ambushed by insurgents and fired in self-defense.

A trial on manslaughter and firearm offenses was planned for February, and the preliminary proceedings had been closely watched in the United States and Iraq.

But in a 90-page opinion, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court in Washington wrote that the government’s mishandling of the case “requires dismissal of the indictment against all the defendants.”

In a “reckless violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights,” the judge wrote, investigators, prosecutors and government witnesses had inappropriately relied on statements that the guards had been compelled to make in debriefings by the State Department shortly after the shootings. The State Department had hired the guards to protect its officials.

DOWNLOADS: (1901)

PLAYS: (2312)

Embed

Many of us celebrated when the Justice Department announced it had indicted three police officers for obstructing justice in the case of the bias-crime murder of a Latino named Luis Ramirez in the rural town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

But as Maegan La Mamita Mala at Vivir Latino observes (be sure to read the whole post):

Civil rights and the more expansive human rights matter little when you’re dead. So longer sentences make us feel better, like all the marching, chanting, petition signing, mouse clicking and text messaging meant something. Whatever the outcome of the Federal case, no one will go to jail for taking Luis Ramirez from his children and this world. So while we need to support this case, it has to be done in a larger context. Whatever the outcome of the Federal case, it still will be dangerous to be a Latino in the United States.

This reality is underscored by the details as they emerge in the Ramirez case. Indeed, the conditions that gave rise to the attempt to cover up the bias crime by local officers are present in nearly every small rural town in America.

Consider, for instance, what the local prosecutor saw going on with the case as he handled it:

The Pennsylvania prosecutor who failed to secure felony convictions against two teens in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant says he thought his case was "compromised" from the start.

Like many residents in the small, tight-knit eastern Pennsylvanian community of Shenandoah, Schuylkill County District Attorney James Goodman knew that an officer investigating the death of Luis Ramirez was in a relationship with the mother of one the teens involved.

Goodman also believed the investigation and evidence hadn't been handled as it should have been.

"They didn't interview the perpetrators, the boys. In fact, not only did they not interview them, they picked them up, gave them rides, helped them concoct stories, brought them back and told the boys what to say," Goodman told CNN.

The son of Shenandoah Police Lt. William Moyer also played on the same football team as the teens who were involved in the July 2008 street brawl, according to court documents.

"It's clear they were trying to help these boys out, for whatever reason -- they were football players, these police officers were trying to help these boys out and limit their involvement in the death of Luis Ramirez."

Likewise with the local eyewitnesses to the crime:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (5807)

PLAYS: (16111)

Embed

Already we can be thankful that we finally passed a federal hate-crime law this summer -- because it's helping bring about justice in the case of a Latino man killed by white thugs in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Five people, including three police officers, have been indicted in the fatal race-related beating of a Latino man in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Two indictments charge the five with federal hate crime charges, as well as obstruction of justice and conspiracy, authorities said in a written statement. A federal grand jury handed up the indictments last week, and they were unsealed Tuesday.

Derrick Donchak and Brandon Piekarsky are charged with a hate crime for beating Luis Ramirez in July 2008 while shouting racial epithets at him, according to the department. Ramirez died two days later.

"Following the beating, Donchak, Piekarsky and others, including members of the Shenandoah Police Department, participated in a scheme to obstruct the investigation of the fatal assault," the Justice Department said. As a result, Donchak faces three additional counts of conspiring to obstruct justice and related offenses, officials said.

Shenandoah Police Chief Matthew Nestor and two other officers are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice in the Ramirez investigation. Nestor and a fourth police officer are named in a third indictment and charged with extortion and civil rights violations related to police corruption, the Justice Department said.

It's genuinely disturbing to discover that local law-enforcement officers were involved in covering this matter up and obstructing justice. It adds just another twist to an already shocking case.

The Ramirez case was a classic example of why we needed to pass a federal bias-crime law -- especially considering the outrageous circumstances in which the local jury slapped the young thugs on the wrist:

[T]his was a pretty clear-cut case of jury nullification: the weight of evidence against the accused was so powerful that it's clear the all-white jury -- like similar juries in the South during the Civil Rights struggle -- was not going to convict two young white men of murdering a Mexican. Even if, as Friedman says, "the only reason he is dead is because he was Mexican."

Prosecutors alleged that the teens baited the Ramirez into a fight with racial epithets, provoking an exchange of punches and kicks that ended with Ramirez convulsing in the street, foaming from the mouth. He died two days later in a hospital.

Piekarsky was accused of delivering a fatal kick to Ramirez's head after he was knocked to the ground.

As they poured out of courthouse, the teens' supporters shouted "I was right from the start" and "I'm glad the jury listened" at cameras that caught the late-night verdict.

But Gladys Limon, a spokeswoman for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the jury had sent a troubling message.

"The jurors here [are] sending the message that you can brutally beat a person, without regard to their life, and get away with it, continue with your life uninterrupted," she said.

Considering some of the details of the killing, it's also inordinately clear this was a classic bias crime, with the incident instigated by racially charged taunts that made clear the victim was selected because of racial animus:

"Isn't it a little late for you guys to be out?" the boys said, according to court documents. "Get your Mexican boyfriend out of here."

... Burke recalled hearing one final, ominous threat as the teens ran. "They yelled, 'You effin bitch, tell your effin Mexican friends get the eff out of Shenandoah or you're gonna be laying effin next to him,' " she said.

That is, of course, the entire purpose of bias crimes: To hold the victim up as an example: "You're next." The purpose is to terrorize the target community, to drive them out, eliminate them.

This is why Latino advocates demanded the Justice Department step in and deliver justice. It looks like they have.

Larry Keeler at HateWatch has more.

Steve Benen found a good one. Looks like the wingnuts are so eager to find "proof" for their theories about Obama, they don't even bother to check the source. Can't say I'm surprised!

Right-wing pundit Michael Ledeen published an item this week on Barack Obama's "college thesis," which Obama allegedly wrote as a student at Columbia 25 years ago. Leeden cited some website, which ran a piece in August.

The paper was called "Aristocracy Reborn," and in the first ten pages (which were all that reporter Joe Klein -- who wrote about it for Time -- was permitted to see), the young Obama wrote:

"... the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy."

That's quite an indictment, even for an Ivy League undergraduate.... Maybe instead of fuming about words that Rush Limbaugh never uttered, the paladins of the free press might ask the president about words that he did write.

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh picked up on Leeden's report, blasting Obama for the alleged paper.

The first sign of trouble was when Joe Klein noted that he's never seen or written about Obama's college thesis, and has "no idea where this report comes from."

The second sign of trouble was when one stopped to notice that Obama didn't write a senior thesis (though he did write a thesis-length paper on Soviet nuclear disarmament).

The third sign of trouble was when one clicked on the link that Leeden provided as support and found the word "satire."

Yes, Leeden and Limbaugh got all worked up, trashing the president for a paper he didn't write in college 25 years ago, relying on a satirical blog post. And for real entertainment value, notice what Leeden and Limbaugh did when they realized they'd fallen for a dumb joke -- they blamed Obama anyway.

Leeden conceded he was wrong and apologized, but added, "It worked because it's plausible." Limbaugh said the text he touted was fake, but it didn't matter because, "I know Obama thinks it." Yep, even when they're wrong, it's only because the president makes it easy for them to be confused.

The Mahablog: Drama Queen exits, stage right

The Moderate Voice: Happy Motoring America; Shafted Again

The Existentialist Cowboy: Texas: The Gulag wasteland Bush left behind

Bernard Avishai: While Prime Minister Netanyahu scoffs at Ahmedinajad’s beatings of peaceful demonstrators, his government does the same

open Democracy: The archaeology of Iran's regime

Vagabond Scholar: Diagrams On Conservatism

Bernie with his BFF.

Remember Bernie Kerik, that swaggering sack of testosterone? Looks like he's in real trouble now:

NEW YORK - Former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik has been indicted on charges of making false statements to White House officials vetting him for the position of Department of Homeland Security secretary.

The indictment was handed up Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. It means Kerik will face trials in New York and Washington.

Similar false-statement charges were brought as part of a larger case in New York but were dismissed and transferred to Washington, where prosecutors say the crimes occurred.

The indictment alleges Kerik falsely denied that as a public official he had any financial dealings with contractors seeking to do business with the city. Prosecutors say the contractors spent more than $255,000 renovating Kerik's apartment.

STLtoday:

JEFFERSON CITY -- Missouri state Rep. Scott Muschany, R-Frontenac, was indicted today in connection with a reported sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl on May 17, the day after this year’s Legislative session ended.

The alleged victim is the daughter of a state employee. The girl’s mother and Muschany -– who is married and has two children -- were romantically involved, the woman said.

A Cole County grand jury returned an indictment today charging Muschany with the Class C felony of "deviate sexual assault." The indictment identifies the victim only by initials. It says that on May 17, Muschany "had deviate sexual intercourse" with the girl, "knowing that he did so without" her consent.

The document also alleges that the mother "did admit that the incident did take place, including her witnessing same." Read on...

After so many Republican sex crimes and scandals, you just have to scratch your head and wonder how one party could attract so many deviant hypocrites. Ready for the money shot? Muschany co-sponsored a bill in 2006 that toughened sex offender laws.