BlogWood: Norwood's Fair and Balanced Nattering

Colonial keepsakes

So, George Bush keeps Saddam's gun under his pillow, more or less.

Time magazine, which first disclosed the gun's location, said military officials had it mounted after it was seized from Saddam near his hometown of Tikrit last year, and soldiers involved in the capture gave it to Bush.

The magazine quoted a visitor who had been shown the gun, which is kept in a small study off the Oval Office where Bush displays memorabilia. It is the same room where former President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) had some of his encounters with former intern Monica Lewinsky.

Bush shows Saddam's gun to select visitors, telling them it is unloaded, both now and when Saddam was captured, Time reported.

"He really liked showing it off," Time quoted a visitor as saying. "He was really proud of it."

The Rude Pundit has more (and follow the link to see if George is breaking DC firarms laws by posessing his little trophy):

Oh, sweet castration image, Bush brandishing Saddam's gun, his trophy, his medal that he'll never toss over a wall, the unloaded cock of the dictator. Oh, how Bush must caress that burnished metal, polishing it over and over and simmering in primal vengeful bloodlust. Goddamn, Bush must think, how he he'd love to shove that pistol up Saddam's ass, smiling at Hussein, making him wonder if he's gonna fire it. "Try to kill my Daddy, shithead? Is it loaded, motherfucker? Does this feel like a weapon of mass destruction?" Yeah, it's good to be the President so you can pretend you've got heads mounted on the wall, like the great white hunter.

Happy Jesus Day!

Sharpen your sticks!

Why does pResident Bush hate our troops?

SP Times:

More than 1,200 bulletproof vests donated for the 351st Military Police Company in Iraq remain at the unit's headquarters here as the Army decides whether to approve the shipment.

Marion County Sheriff Ed Dean helped collect the vests, which the Army Reserve unit said it will use to line the bottoms of Humvees for extra protection against roadside bombs.
......

Sgt. Hugh Baugus, a local spokesman for the 351st, said the unit's 175 soldiers need the vests urgently.

"The longer the delay, the greater the chance one of my soldiers is going to get hurt," Baugus said.

Dean made a statewide appeal for the vests this month and 40 sheriff's offices and police departments contributed.

Our Commander in Thief, having never come close to serving in combat himself, obviously cares very little for the safety of the soldiers which he is totally responsible for having sent to die in Iraq. If he was concerned for their safety, he would make sure that generous gifts like this one were totally unnecessary. See, Bush could easily make sure that troops have needed body armor and armored Hummers. But he doesn’t care, so he just ignores the problem:

As for the thousands for armor kits the military says it needs, the proposed (2005) budget includes exactly zero dollars for them.

Tribune torn over titillating statue: rock hard penis poses problems

This is what happens when you are home schooled. This is what happens when you are never ever exposed to other cultures, other ideas. This is what happens when you have such a low opinion of your own morality that you fear that even the smallest penis temptation might set you off on the road to hell and perdition.

Some readers also called to express their dismay over side-by- side photographs of Michelangelo's David that ran in the Nation/World section Tuesday. The statue, completed in 1504, is considered to be one of Michelangelo's greatest sculptures and a Renaissance masterpiece.

The story was about the eight- month restoration of the marble sculpture. Experts removed dirt and chalk deposits in the marble's pores, which had given the masterpiece a gray patina. We ran photographs of the sculpture before and after the restoration so readers could see the change.

The people who complained to The Tampa Tribune said they were offended we would run images of the naked David, who is shown poised before battle with Goliath. Some said they did not want their children exposed to the photographs.
......

The response, however small, shows the sometimes difficult job of anticipating the varied responses people have to the newspaper's content.

And, apparently, if you are the Tampa Tribune, this is what you report as news, even if only one or two people actually complained, because to simply ignore these sick Ashcroftian moralists would be to let the pernicious amoral child-fucking priests pornographers win.

No longer will US Attorney General John Ashcroft appear in public with a semi-nude statue towering above him.

The US Justice Department has spent $8,000 on curtains to hide the statue from the cameras.

The female, art-deco "Spirit of Justice" statue, with one breast exposed, is located on the podium in the department's ornate Great Hall where news conferences are often held.

Florida Secretary of State says computers are not computers, denies responsibility for upcoming fiasco

Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood was in Miami yesterday to calm fears of another problem-plagued election this November. With a controversial new “felon” purge list having just been released and with more and more voters clamoring for a receipt from new computerized paperless voting machines, it would seem that Jeb! appointee Glenda would have her work cut out for her. Nah - she’s not worried about a thing.

Hood, grilled by league members with serious reservations about the county's voting equipment, repeatedly sought to distance her office from election operations.

''I have absolutely no authority over the running of elections in this state,'' said Hood, a former Orlando mayor who was appointed to the job by Gov. Jeb Bush. She said the department's responsibilities include certifying voting equipment, ensuring that supervisors follow state law and verifying election results.

Editor’s note: From the Florida Department of State - Office of the Secretary

In addition, the Secretary of State is Florida’s chief elections officer...

Now, back to our article:

The new machines have come under scrutiny for the lack of a paper trail, but Hood defended the touch-screen machines and likened some of the criticism -- that the machines could be tampered with -- to conspiracy theories.

''The touch-screen machines are not computers,'' she said. ``You'd have to go machine by machine, all over the state.''

Uh, Glenda, they actually are computers. What the Miami machines are not is networked computers, however that does not eliminate the very real possibility of tampering. From earlier in the same article:

But Hood acknowledged her office is investigating a voting machine glitch in Miami-Dade County, which she said was not properly reported to the state.

A spokesman for Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan noted it was the county that detected the problem and said that Kaplan had sought to balance the need to report potential problems against unnecessarily alarming the public.

The glitch involves the auditing system of the iVotronic touch-screen machines Miami-Dade and Broward installed after the mishaps that plagued the 2000 presidential election.

County officials have said the glitch does not affect voting -- only the audits performed days after the election itself. The problem, according to Kaplan, is in the flashcard that downloads the voting information.

When the votes are downloaded, some machines scramble the serial number of the machine, making it difficult to identify where the votes came from.

Hood said her office is investigating ''whether it's truly a problem or not.'' County officials said they could resolve the problem.

The issue arose after a citizens' group, the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, filed a public records request and received county memos criticizing the computerized audit.

Hey Glenda, check this out: I’m a right wing partisan hack, and I want to tamper with the election. Having perused exactly one short Miami Herald article, I’ve figured out that I can simply switch flash cards or tamper with flash cards en-route to the counting places where the information is to be transferred. There is no kind of paper trail of actual votes whatsoever, so even if the vote totals look “funny”, there’s no way to do a manual recount.

So, no, I wont be tampering with every computerized voting machine in the state. I don’t have to. I just need a few hundred more votes for my man W. See, once we combine the felon purge list with a partisan Secretary of State and partisan County Elections Supervisors, maybe even sprinkle in some good old fashioned election day police intimidation, why we can’t lose.

See you in November!

Jeb! spokesperson: Florida education standards are plenty low already

SP Times:

A national education advocacy group was in the Tampa Bay area Thursday to criticize state and federal accountability systems that give schools A grades before labeling them as failures.

Communities for Quality Education, backed by the National Education Association teachers union, criticized Gov. Jeb Bush's state accountability system and President George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act for giving polar-opposite assessments of public schools.

"It's just an inconsistency that calls out for leadership," said CQE spokesman Reggie Johnson.

Under the governor's plan last year, almost as many Florida schools received A grades as B's through F's combined. But under No Child, more than 80 percent of the schools failed to meet federal standards.

Jacob DiPietre, a spokesman for Gov. Bush, called the group's criticisms "rhetoric." He said the governor knew the two accountability standards would conflict, but felt they would challenge schools to improve education for minority students.

"Florida refused to lower our accountability standards, unlike a lot of other states," DiPietre said. "We're confident our schools will be up to the challenge."

So, taking DiPietre at his word, Florida refused to lower standards that resulted in failure, so I guess the Governor feels that education standards in the state are already plenty low, which seems like a fair enough assessment. After all, we don’t want our public schools slipping to this level:

Nearly a third of the private schools that take state money to teach students from failing public schools aren't accredited, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

But state education officials say they don't have to be as long as they meet certain standards. The officials also note that most public schools aren't accredited either.

The Palm Beach Post reported that the state paid 10 unaccredited private schools to teach students from failing public schools in the "opportunity scholarship" program this year, and said it may have violated the Florida school voucher law's intent. Thirty-four schools are receiving opportunity scholarship money.

The Senate sponsor of the 1999 law creating the voucher program said private schools were intended to be accredited, but the administration of Gov. Jeb Bush - who championed vouchers and shepherded them into being - says they weren't.

It’s all about the standards. See, if we set those standards too high, then it would just encourage learning and perhaps the ability to think critically and make independent decisions. Scarey stuff, but don’t worry. Jeb! will make sure that “No Knowledge Will Be Left Behind!” in the empty little heads of our best and brightest standardized test takers.

We’re number ONE! USA! USA! USA!

All too often, I present a view that may be seen as overly critical of our country and the way it is run. Where others see American compassion and strength, I might see dehumanizing colonial policies or another meaningless photo op.

Well, today I’m going to take off my cynical blinders and present a story that shines a bright light on America and the kind of true greatness and world leadership that we, as a nation, can still achieve when we truly believe in something.

According to Justice Department figures released yesterday, America is the world leader in incarcerating our own citizens! That’s right - Russia, China, even the Axis of Evil - none of these countries are even close to our unmatched superiority in this highly competitive international race.

The nation's incarceration rate tops the world, according to The Sentencing Project, another group that promotes alternatives to prison. That compares with a rate of 169 per 100,000 residents in Mexico, 116 in Canada and 143 for England and Wales.

Russia's prison population, which once rivaled the United States', has dropped to 584 per 100,000 because of prisoner amnesties in recent years, the group said.

The U.S. inmate population in 2003 grew at its fastest pace in four years. The number of inmates increased 1.8 percent in state prisons, 7.1 percent in federal prisons and 3.9 percent in local jails.

And unlike a lot of Government programs that are criticized for shoddy management and inefficiencies, our prison system continues to grow at a such a healthy clip that soon, with any luck, every man, woman, and child in the US will have interfaced personally with a friendly jailor.

Here are some highlights from the excellent report on US Prison Population released yesterday by the Justice Department:

The nation's prisons and jails held 2,078,570 men and women on June 30, 2003, an increase of 57,600 more inmates than state, local and federal officials held on the same date a year earlier, the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. The 50 states and the federal government together held 1,380,776 prisoners. Local municipal and county jails held 691,301 inmates.

From July 1, 2002, to June 30, 2003, the number of state and federal prisoners grew by more than 2.9 percent, the largest increase in four years. The federal system increased by 5.4 percent, and state prisoners increased by 2.6 percent. During the same period, the local jail population increased by 3.9 percent.

The BJS report, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2003, indicates that incarceration rates of state and federal prisoners continued to rise. At midyear 2003, the number of sentenced inmates was 480 per 100,000 U.S. residents, up from 476 per 100,000 on December 31, 2002. There were 238 jail inmates for every 100,000 U.S. residents on June 30, 2003. Overall, one out of every 140 U.S. residents was incarcerated in prison or jail.

During the year the number of female state and federal inmates grew by 5.0 percent, compared to a 2.7 percent male inmate growth. By June 30, 2003, the female inmate population reached 100,102.

On June 30, 2003, the federal system had 170,461 prisoners, more than any state prison system. Since 1995, the federal system has grown an average of 8 percent per year, compared to an average annual growth of 2.9 percent for state inmates and 4 percent for jail inmates during the same period.

An estimated 12 percent of all black males in their twenties were in jails or prisons last June 30, as were an estimated 3.7 percent of Hispanic males and 1.6 percent of white males in that age group. Sixty-eight percent of prison and jail inmates were members of racial or ethnic minority groups.

Jails — locally operated correctional facilities typically holding inmates sentenced to a year or less as well as people in various stages of the criminal justice system, such as awaiting trial- added more inmates than new beds in the 12 months preceding June 30, 2003. Still local jails were operating at a national average of 6 percent below their official rated capacities. State prisons were between 1 and 17 percent above rated capacity, and federal prisons operated at 33 percent over capacity at the end of 2002.

The 50 largest jail systems housed a third of all jail inmates. Nineteen of these operated at or above their rated capacities.

White non-Hispanics made up 43.6 percent of the local jail population, blacks 39.2 percent, Hispanics 15.4 percent, and other races (Asians, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders) 1.8 percent.

So, good numbers, but still room for improvement: Local jails are operating below capacity, so lets fill them up. Also, I can’t help noticing that only 12 percent of young black males are in prison at any one time. Now, I realize that we can’t lock up all young black males, but isn’t 12 percent a rather low threshold? Let’s set the bar a little higher for next year!

The Sentencing Project

Dear American Forces Radio: Remove Rush!

A letter about Rush:

Mr. Melvin Russell Director American Forces Radio and Television Services

Dear Mr. Russell,

I applaud your airing of Rush Limbaugh's show on Armed Forces Radio. He sends our soldiers a message they need to hear--that it's OK to have a little medieval fun with the prisoners they capture.

Where else will our young servicemen and women hear the truth about the so-called Abu Gharib "scandal?" If it wasn't for Rush, there would be no one to tell them that anally raping prisoners and forcing them to masturbate into each others' mouths is good clean soldier fun.
......

Thank God we have people like you and Rush who aren't afraid to tell our troops that war crimes are no big deal. Keep up the good work.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, Patriot

cc: Sen. Carl Levin
Sen. Mark Dayton

Oops... here’s the one I meant to post... a petition, actually. And you can sign it yourself if you like what it says.

To: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

We request that Secretary Rumsfeld remove talk radio host Rush Limbaugh from the American Forces Radio and Television Service (formerly known as Armed Forces Radio). Mr. Limbaugh, whose program is broadcast for one hour per day to U.S. troops overseas, has spent the past four weeks condoning and trivializing the abuse, torture, rape and possible murder of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. guards at the Abu Ghraib prison—gross misconduct that you have described as “fundamentally un-American.”

In recent weeks, Rush Limbaugh has: Compared the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib to a fraternity initiation; called the abuse “brilliant” and “effective”; said the guards were just “having a good time” and “blow[ing] some steam off”; likened the abuse to “a Britney Spears or Madonna concert … [or] the MTV music awards”; compared pictures of the abuse to “good old American pornography”; and said “the reaction to the stupid torture is an example of the feminization of this country.”

Limbaugh’s radio program is broadcast to American troops via the American Services Network, a taxpayer-funded radio and television broadcasting agency that reaches nearly 1 million US troops in more than 175 countries, including Iraq.

Both Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush have rightly denounced the acts that took place at Abu Ghraib – but American service men and women abroad are getting the wrong message when the Department of Defense simultaneously broadcasts Limbaugh’s condoning of what Secretary Rumsfeld has called “fundamentally un-American” acts. Limbaugh’s comments directly contradict orders issued by the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq -- which, according to the Washington Post, bar “military interrogators from using the most coercive techniques available to them in the past” -- thus undermining the military’s chain of command. The comments may also inflame anti-American sentiment abroad, putting our service men and women at risk.

In addition, as Media Matters for America detailed in a May 2 report, Meet the New Rush, Same as the Old Rush, Mr. Limbaugh has recently made several racially-charged and sexist remarks on his broadcast. For example, Mr. Limbaugh said on April 26 that women who protest sexual harassment “actually wish” to be sexually harassed. And on March 26, Mr. Limbaugh said, “A Chavez is a Chavez. These people have always been a problem.” Given the extraordinary importance of troop morale and unity during this time of conflict, we ask Secretary Rumsfeld to review whether it is appropriate for the U.S. government to broadcast such messages, which may sow seeds of discord in the ranks.

We, the undersigned, ask Secretary Rumsfeld to order the American Services Network to cease broadcasting Rush Limbaugh’s radio program immediately, before he further undermines the military’s command structure and endangers our troops.

Sign Here

Felonious Junk: Lawsuits threatened over “secret” list

The First Amendment Foundation, an open government advocacy group, is threatening legal action if the State of Florida does not release a controversial list of “felons” to be scrubbed from the state voter rolls.

Calling it an issue of national importance, First Amendment advocates Monday formally demanded that Florida election officials release the names of nearly 50,000 possible felons who could be stripped from voter rolls. The group says it will likely file suit if the state refuses to provide a list.

"If they say no, chances are good," said First Amendment Foundation President Barbara Petersen, who sent a legal request Monday for the names. "This is critical not only to Florida but to the whole country. We don't want what happened in 2000 to happen again. This information is critical to public confidence."

What happened in 2000? I’m glad you asked. Florida, through the machinations of Katherine Harris and brother Jeb! contracted with a republican owned company to compile a database of suspected felons to be removed from Florida’s voting rolls. In Florida, ex-felons can’t legally vote, unless they get a special dispensation from the Governor.

There were a couple of problems with the2000 list. First, the list included out of state felons who had moved to Florida having had their voting rights restored in their home states. Jeb! had been told again and again that these ex-felons from out of state who now resided in Florida could not be denied the right to vote in Florida.

It has been well reported that Florida denies its nearly half a million former convicts the right to vote. However, the media have completely missed the fact that Florida's own courts have repeatedly told the Governor he may not take away the civil rights of Florida citizens who committed crimes in other states, served their time and had their rights restored by those states.

People from other states who have arrived in Florida with a felony conviction in their past number "clearly over 50,000 and likely over 100,000," says criminal demographics expert Jeffrey Manza of Northwestern University. Manza estimates that 80 percent arrive with voting rights intact, which they do not forfeit by relocating to Florida.

Nevertheless, agencies controlled by Harris and Bush ordered county officials to reject attempts by these eligible voters to register, while, publicly, the governor's office states that it adheres to court rulings not to obstruct these ex-offenders in the exercise of their civil rights. Further, with the aid of a Republican-tied database firm, Harris's office used sophisticated computer programs to hunt those felons eligible to vote and ordered them thrown off the voter registries.

Yes, this is an allusion to the 2000 list of felons. As well as illegally including known eligible voters from out of state, the list was designed to produce many false positives, thus creating an often insurmountable barrier to voting for many people who have never been accused of any wrong doing, much less convicted.

Willie Steen is one of them. Recently, I caught up with Steen outside his office at a Tampa hospital. Steen's case was easy. You can't work in a hospital if you have a criminal record. (My copy of Harris's hit list includes an ex-con named O'Steen, close enough to cost Willie Steen his vote.) The NAACP held up Steen's case to the court as a prime example of the voter purge evil.

The state admitted Steen's innocence. But a year after the NAACP won his case, Steen still couldn't register. Why was he still under suspicion? What do we know about this "potential felon," as Jeb called him? Steen, unlike our President, honorably served four years in the US military. There is, admittedly, a suspect mark on his record: Steen remains an African-American.

Coincidentally, most of the people wrongly disenfranchised due to the faulty 2000 list were minorities. Go figure.

A lawsuit brought by the NAACP and other groups resulted in the state promising to tighten up “felon” lists in the future. The state also vowed to return the voters who were wrongly purged in 2000 to the rolls, but there is no deadline for the state to comply, and as of now, only half of Florida counties have followed up on a state request to inspect their rolls for possible problems.

Those counties that have responded told the state that they have restored 679 voters to the rolls so far -- more than enough to have tipped the balance of the 2000 election had they voted for Al Gore. President Bush won Florida and the presidency by 537 votes.

The fact that many counties have yet to add voters back to the rolls comes at the same time that election supervisors across Florida are being asked to look at purging more than 47,000 voters that the state has identified as possible felons who are ineligible to vote under state law.

NO DEADLINE

But state election officials say there is no deadline for when counties must reinstate voters who may have been wrongly removed four years ago. That upsets some of the groups that sued the state over its 1999 and 2000 purge lists.

''It's scandalous that the state has not simply undone the error that was done in 2000,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. ``It calls into question this and so many other issues and makes you wonder, how much has really changed four years after the 2000 election?''

Well, not much has changed. As noted above, the 2004 list contains over 47,000 names, and the state is already pressuring county supervisors of elections to purge purge purge.

Which brings us up to date, more or less. The 2004 list is being hyped by the state as new and improved, but the state is refusing to allow inspections of the list, so no one really knows if it’s any better than the 2000 failure. Florida’s has fairly liberal open records laws, and the state constitution state constitution requires any law limiting public records to be passed as a separate bill, with a specific statement of why it's necessary.

The First Amendment Foundation maintains that the state is unlawfully extending an exemption for actual voter registration records to the list of possible felons.

The First Amendment Foundation is challenging a decision by the state's chief elections officer that the list not be made available to the general public.

"I'm sorry, but that list is suspect," foundation President Barbara Petersen said Wednesday. "I just can't understand, considering all of the trouble we went through four years ago, why they wouldn't want anyone else to help them verify it."

Petersen said she mailed and faxed a formal public-records request for the list on Monday, but a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood said Wednesday that the office had not received it.

In a May 12 memo to the 67 county supervisors of elections, however, Division of Elections Director Ed Kast mentioned a similar request by the civil rights group People for the American Way and cited two recent statutes that he said allow the public to view only voter registration records, without making copies or taking notes.

He noted, though, that the law does allow political parties, candidates and committees, and elected officials to obtain copies.

Petersen said one of the laws Kast cites is unconstitutional because it was not passed by the legislature as a separate exemption to the state constitution. Petersen also argues that the law applies to a voter registry, not the list of possible felons the state wants to remove from the registry.

Petersen said there is a good chance her group will file a lawsuit, but for now she has to wait.

"I really can't do anything until they respond to my request," she said. "Isn't it interesting that they can't find it?"

Florida elections officials sent the list to county elections supervisors early this month. The law requires supervisors to send certified letters to each person on the list and ask for verification. Recipients are entitled to an informal hearing. If officials get no response, they are required to follow up with an advertisement in a local newspaper. If there is still no response in 30 days, the name is purged from the rolls.
......

Many changes have been made since the historic recount in 2000 that spawned scores of lawsuits and a U.S. Supreme Court decision anointing George W. Bush the winner with a 537-vote margin over Al Gore in Florida. Punch-card voting machines have been banned and the state has launched an unprecedented voter education drive.

But Florida remains one of a handful of states that deny felons the right to vote even after they have completed their sentences, forcing them to go before a clemency board to restore their civil rights.

State officials have pledged to put the list together more carefully as part of an agreement with the NAACP to settle a 2002 lawsuit challenging the flawed process from the 2000 election.

"Part of our settlement agreement with the NAACP in 2002 was that we develop a more stringent matching procedure, and they signed off on it," said Hood's spokeswoman, Jenny Nash. "There are a lot more checks and balances."

The checks and balances aren't enough to satisfy Elliot Mincberg, legal director for People for the American Way, which also is considering a lawsuit.

"We're asking the supervisors to do an independent verification," he said. "If all they do is send out the letters and adopt the state list, we would definitely consider going to court. That would just repeat the same tragedy."

To clarify, state law requires county elections supervisors to send a letter and print an ad at a minimum. Election supervisors are free to make a much stronger effort to avoid mistakes, and some will, but many, including Jeb! appointee Buddy Johnson, plan to just follow the minimum guidelines. This puts the onus on the voter who is misidentified to have himself put back on the roles. Obviously, this is a huge impediment, especially to the working class minorities who are most likely to be affected.

So, right now, in Florida, there are 47,000 people who may soon be disenfranchised, and the state wont share those names with the public. Even as the state rushes to purge from this new list, thousands of people who were wrongly disenfranchised in 2000 remain in voting limbo due to the fact that Jeb! is in no hurry and under no legal obligation to put them back on the rolls in time for the November selection.

More information:

BlogWood

First Amendment Foundation

Greg Palast

Headline writer on drugs

Aspirin and ibuprofen, mostly, but they're drugs, right?

When a headline in a mainstream newspaper screams "Drugs found in more than 6,700 Florida autopsies in 2003," the vast majority of readers are going to assume that most of those deaths were caused or abetted by the consumption of illegal drugs, because , as we all know from our “Just Say No!” brainwashing, drugs are bad! Most people will glance at the headline, give a little “tsk tsk,” and assume that illegal drugs are causing tons of early deaths.

But read the press release that is reprinted under the headline, and lo and behold:

Alcohol was the drug most commonly found, showing up in more than 3,400 bodies, according to an annual report compiled by medical examiners. After alcohol came tranquilizers or sleeping pills...

So, the most common drugs found in people whose deaths were suspicious enough that they led to an autopsy were legal drugs available over the counter or through prescription. But these were just substances found in the body. It turns out that if you just count deaths caused by the ingestion of drugs, the numbers are in the hundreds, not the thousands.

Oh, and in the history of the world, marijuana has never killed anyone. Ever.

Here’s an idea: instead of buying into the false hype of the drug war, why don’t we, as a society, spend money on education and rehabilitation. Real education, not “All drugs are bad, and oh, yeah, so is sex, so don’t do drugs and don’t have sex or you’ll end up miserable and diseased if not dead...”

The Vaults of Erowid - reliable information on drugs.

Drug WarRant - information on prohibition.

Iraq Torture Rape Plame Chalabi Oil Prices World Opinion FEAR

Asscroft: “We have but one thing to fear and that is that the American people are starting to pay attention.” (Okay - he didn’t really say that, but that’s what he meant.)

The Bush administration said on Wednesday that it had credible intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda is planning to attack the United States in the next several months, a period in which events like an international summit meeting and the two political conventions could offer tempting targets.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news conference that intelligence reports and public statements by people associated with Al Qaeda suggested that the terrorist group was "almost ready to attack the United States" and harbored a "specific intention to hit the United States hard."

But some intelligence officials, terrorism experts - and to some extent even Mr. Ashcroft's own F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III - offered a more tempered assessment. And some opponents of President Bush, including police and firefighter union leaders aligned with Senator John Kerry, the expected Democratic presidential candidate, said the timing of the announcement appeared intended in part to distract attention from Mr. Bush's sagging poll numbers and problems in Iraq.

The administration did not raise the terrorist threat advisory from its current level of elevated, or yellow, and the White House said Mr. Bush would not alter his schedule because of security concerns.

"There's no real new intelligence, and a lot of this has been out there already," said one administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "There really is no significant change that would require us to change the alert level of the country."

Mr. Ashcroft said the government did not have any information about where the terrorists might strike, and he said there was "extraordinary" security being put in place for events like a summit meeting of international leaders next month in Savannah, Ga., the Democratic convention in Boston in late July and the Republican convention in New York in late August and early September.

Mr. Ashcroft called for greater public vigilance, especially in looking out for seven people sought by the F.B.I. who are suspected of being Qaeda members or sympathizers.

The names of six of the seven were publicly circulated by the authorities months ago, and officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said that they had no reason to believe any of the seven suspects were in the United States.

Asked about the timing of his new warnings about the suspects, Mr. Ashcroft said, "We believe the public, like all of us, needs a reminder."

Some intelligence officials said they were uncertain that the link between the fresh intelligence and the likelihood of another attack was as apparent as Mr. Ashcroft made it out to be. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security said just a day before Mr. Ashcroft's announcement that they had no new intelligence pointing to the threat of another terrorist attack.

(Updated - edited for clarity)

Police get away with killing another black man child

This one was killed for driving a pickup truck while black.

State Attorney Bernie McCabe has determined two Pinellas sheriff's deputies were justified in shooting to death 17-year-old Marquell McCullough earlier this month.

Deputies David Antolini and Nelson DeLeon fired a combined 15 times at a pickup McCullough was driving, striking the teen nine times.

Sheriff's officials said McCullough smashed the pickup into DeLeon's cruiser, tried to clip Antolini, then headed toward another car.

Although deputies thought they had seen McCullough dealing drugs earlier that night, the investigation revealed it probably wasn't him, but a man who looked similar and also drove a pickup.

Sheriff's officials now will begin an internal investigation to determine whether the deputies followed agency policies.

McCabe's ruling drew sadness, outrage and more questions among some community leaders.

"It's just another layer on the already tense atmosphere that exists in the community," said Sateesh Rogers of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement.

Uhuru members have been marching at BayWalk and in Midtown, protesting the shooting.

Darryl Rouson, president of the NAACP's St. Petersburg chapter, said he finds it hard to believe deputies were completely justified. Yet, he urged people not to react until the internal review is done.

"The pain ... is still in the fact that a young black male's life has been snuffed out and there remains clouds over what happened," Rouson said.

Sheriff's deputies point out the fact that this "uppity nigger should have been on the back of the bus," and that he got "everything that he deserved" for having the gall to drive a pickup truck while someone somewhere was buying or selling or doing drugs or something.(Okay - they did not really say that, but it’s pretty much the gist of there attitude)

(Updated - edited for clarity)

Website of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement

Drug WarRant

Get Up with MorningWood

Get Up with MorningWood, on Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org.
4 to 6 am (eastern time, US) every Tuesday!

Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD

Today on MorningWood

It’s the MorningWood Memorial Day Special. Remembering those who have fallen, and getting pissed off at one particular chickenhawk “leader” who is responsible for the deaths of over 800 American troops to date.

His illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq have put our country in a state of perpetual war for the foreseeable future and made America an object of hatred for thousands of victims of US might. The Iraq debacle has also distracted from the war on terror. Remember: Sadam had nothing whatsoever to do with 911.

Are we safer than we were 4 years ago? Even the White House says to expect a big terrorist attack on American soil before the election. Don’t be surprised if a major city is hit with a dirty bomb or even a full blown nuclear device. And if you get upset when our pResident “delays” the election in order to deal with the latest “crisis,” then you must want the terrorists to win.

Having written all that, I’ll mostly let the music do the talking today. Not a lot of ranting, but I may jump in with some spontaneous radio blogging as the mood strikes and the need arises.

I’m also offering a couple BlogWood bonuses today, including a “sneak preview” of sorts.

George Bush spoke last night, but he didn’t say anything new. This is the start of a new PR push to convince voters that he has a brain. Don’t buy it. Remember: Every word out of George W. Bush’s mouth is a lie, including the words “is” and “and.”

If you think he’s sincere, just watch this video clip from a German TV show of our brave leader just before he announces the glorious liberation by force of the Iraqi people. This is from the same footage that Michael Moore uses in his new movie “Fahrenheit 9/11,” so when you see the movie this summer, you can nod knowingly and thus impress your peers with the fact that you are already familiar with this part of the film. (Thanks to Sadly, No! for posting the clip so that I could come along and steal it.)

Note: you should right-click the link and “save link target” to your hard drive and then play the WMV file from your own computer. This type of video file will not stream over the Internet.

That’s bonus number one. Bonus number 2 is a link to Music for America. This site uses music to lure visitors into it’s labyrinth of leftist ideals. Check it out, and download some free and legal MP3s.

Playlists

Hour 1 planned playlist

Hour 2 planned playlist

Live playlist

WMNF Community Radio

WMNF is a non-commercial community radio station that celebrates local cultural diversity and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice. WMNF provides broadcasts and creates other forums to serve the community by the exposure and sharing of these values.

Who fed Chalabi?

Read Josh Marshall.

"An intelligence source confirmed to Newsday reports in Time and Newsweek that the FBI had launched an investigation into who in the administration had passed the classified material to his Iraqi National Congress." ......

Chalabi's interlocutors in the US government were a fairly small and well-known group, stacked heavily toward the top of the totem pole and very much on the appointive, civilian side -- start with the acronyms OSD and OVP. For those who know the nature of the relationship it would, quite frankly, be hard to imagine that they weren't sharing highly sensitive information with him.

If one of those guys gets pegged for giving Chalabi info that later ended up in the hands of Iranian intelligence, everything up till now will seem like it was a breeze.

W's wild weekend

First, a nice little ride through the cleared brush of the Crawford set ranch:

Here's the official story line from Crawford: President Bush took a spill during a Saturday afternoon bike ride on his ranch, suffering bruises and cuts that were visible later on his face just two days before he was to deliver a major prime-time speech on his Iraq policy.

The president was nearing the end of a 17-mile ride on his mountain bike, accompanied by a Secret Service agent, a military aide and his personal physician, Richard Tubb, who treated him at the scene, said White House spokesman Trent Duffy.

"It's been raining a lot and the topsoil is loose," Duffy said. "You know this president. He likes to go all-out. Suffice it to say he wasn't whistling show tunes."

So it's been raining a lot in Crawford, we are told. So here's the recent precipitation levels from Crawford:

May 22: 0"
May 21: 0"
May 20: 0"
May 19: 0"
May 18: 0"
May 17: 0"
May 16: 0"
May 15: 0"
May 14: 0.03"
May 13: 2.79"
May 12: 0"
May 11: 0.15"
May 10: 0"
May 9: 0"

May 13th saw some serious rain, but other than some sprinkles on the 14th, Crawford saw nothing but sun. In the last week alone, the temperature was in the high 80s the entire time.

So rain on the 13th and (barely) 14th was blamed for a Bush fall on the 22nd. As everything else, it wasn't Bush's fault. Nothing is Bush's fault.

Ever.

Liars.

Wonkette gives no respect where none is due:

WH Pool Report: This Doesn't Make President Gay Edition

This White House pool report covers Bush's weekend bike accident. WH spokesperson Trent Duffy wanted reporters to know that just because the president took a tumble, that doesn't make him a pussy: "He wasn't poking along, whistling show tunes." Well, OK, but according to Duffy, the president was riding his bicycle while wearing a helmet and a mouth guard.

Pussy.

After all the excitement down to the ranch, W went to Austin to see daughter Jenna graduate from UT. Apparently, Jenna takes after dear old dad:

Jenna goes AWOL:

President Bush wasn't the only one who skipped the pomp and circumstance of his daughter's graduation from the University of Texas on Saturday. Jenna Bush did not participate either.

Despite her name being listed on the commencement program, Bush was not among the more than 150 English majors receiving degrees Saturday afternoon at the Austin campus. Attendance at the event is not required to graduate from the university.

[...]

A White House spokeswoman said she did not know why Jenna Bush did not attend the commencement but added that the administation declines to comment on matters related to the president's daughters.

Jenna claims that she instead attended graduation ceremonies at the University of Alabama...but no one remembers seeing her there.

“How many people go to the middle of the desert ... to hold a wedding...”*

I think it’s safe to say that at least 2 people went out to the middle of the desert to get married, and they invited a bunch of friends and family to celebrate. Gee, maybe they were in the middle of the desert because that’s where they live? Nah. That’s just what they want us to believe.

The videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck.

The U.S. military says it is investigating the attack, which took place in the village of Mogr el-Deeb about five miles from the Syrian border, but that all evidence so far indicates the target was a safehouse for foreign fighters.

"There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday. "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."

But video that APTN shot a day after the attack shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans and brightly colored beddings used for celebrations, scattered around the bombed out tent.

Nope, no instruments or dishes... just the fragments of instruments and dishes that were left over after we bombed the shit outa the place... see, fragments do not meet the Pentagon’s strict definition of “evidence.”

The wedding videotape shows a dozen white pickup trucks speeding through the desert escorting the bridal car - decorated with colorful ribbons. The bride wears a Western-style white bridal dress and veil. The camera captures her stepping out of the car but does not show a close-up.

An AP reporter and photographer, who interviewed more than a dozen survivors a day after the bombing, were able to identify many of them on the wedding party video - which runs for several hours.

APTN also traveled to Mogr el-Deeb, 250 miles west of Ramadi, the day after the attack to film what the survivors said was the wedding site. A devastated building and remnants of the tent, pots and pans could be seen, along with bits of what appeared to be the remnants of ordnance, one of which bore the marking "ATU-35," similar to those on U.S. bombs.
......

Prominently displayed on the videotape was a stocky man with close-cropped hair playing an electric organ. Another tape, filmed a day later in Ramadi and obtained by APTN, showed the musician lying dead in a burial shroud - his face clearly visible and wearing the same tan shirt as he wore when he performed.
......

Kimmitt said U.S. troops who swept through the area found rifles, machine guns, foreign passports, bedding, syringes and other items that suggested the site was used by foreigners infiltrating from Syria.

The videotape showed no weapons, although they are common among rural Iraqis.

*Major General James Mattis is the source of this quote.

I'm not worthy

of this effusive praise, but it sure is nice to see it from such an informed source:

I'm delighted to see a Tampa Bay blogger who has such a comprehensive grasp of the situations facing this country. Would that other citizens were so aware and concerned.

Thanks to Poor Richard's Anorak for these kind words.

Bootlicking Bandar buoys Bush

In April we learned that

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, promised President Bush the Saudis would cut oil prices before November to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day, journalist Bob Woodward said in a television interview on Sunday.

I guess Bandar felt it was time to make good on his promise:

Saudi Arabia has assured the United States that it will supply up to 2 million barrels a day in additional crude oil if the market demands it, the U.S. energy secretary said Sunday. Saudi Arabia has pledged to pump an additional 600,000 barrels a day starting in June, lifting its total daily output to 9.1 million barrels, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told a news conference at an Amsterdam hotel after meeting privately with Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi.

"He also stated that going forward they will meet all requests up to their full capacity of 10.5 million barrels a day. I think this was a very important comment on his part," Abraham said.

Abraham said he expected the new Saudi commitment would help reassure oil markets about the reliability of supplies.

Oil prices have soared above $40 a barrel in recent weeks due to fears about instability in Iraq and other oil-rich Gulf countries, bottlenecks in gasoline production at U.S. refineries, and an unforeseen burst in global demand, particularly from China and the United States

Speaking of wafers

Florida Politics makes another good catch. If you follow news and politics in this state, this blog should be on your daily reading list.

Finally, someone in the media asks:

Is the church prepared to deny the Eucharist to Gov. Jeb Bush, a Catholic?

"Bishops' choice: Holy hypocrisy". In the column, Marquez points out that

Not only has Bush signed death warrants for convicted murderers, but he has argued for narrowing their rights to appeal even though evidence shows people have been wrongly convicted and put on death row.

Click through for links and the full text.

Rich review of "Fahrenheit 9/11"

Frank Rich:

"But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer." — Barbara Bush on "Good Morning America," March 18, 2003

SHE needn't have worried. Her son wasn't suffering. In one of the several pieces of startling video exhibited for the first time in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," we catch a candid glimpse of President Bush some 36 hours after his mother's breakfast TV interview — minutes before he makes his own prime-time TV address to take the nation to war in Iraq. He is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. A makeup woman is doing his face. And Mr. Bush is having a high old time. He darts his eyes about and grins, as if he were playing a peek-a-boo game with someone just off-camera. He could be a teenager goofing with his buds to relieve the passing tedium of a haircut.

"In your wildest dreams you couldn't imagine Franklin Roosevelt behaving this way 30 seconds before declaring war, with grave decisions and their consequences at stake," said Mr. Moore in an interview before his new documentary's premiere at Cannes last Monday. "But that may be giving him credit for thinking that the decisions were grave." As we spoke, the consequences of those decisions kept coming. The premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11" took place as news spread of the assassination of a widely admired post-Saddam Iraqi leader, Ezzedine Salim, blown up by a suicide bomber just a hundred yards from the entrance to America's "safe" headquarters, the Green Zone, in Baghdad.

"Fahrenheit 9/11" gets top prize at Cannes

NYT

"Fahrenheit 9/11," a scathing indictment of White House actions after the Sept. 11 attacks created by the American filmmaker Michael Moore, won the top prize on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival.

It was the first documentary to win Cannes' highest prize, the Palme d'Or, since "The Silent World" by Jacques Cousteau in 1956.

Was Iraq invasion at Iran’s behest?

Ahmed Chalabi, the thug whose Iraqi compound was raided by US soldiers this week, may have fallen from George’s grace due to his Iranian connections. Chalabi fronts an Iraqi exile group, the INC, that has been tight with the neocon crowd. In fact, intelligence from the INC was largely used to justify the war with Iraq.

Now it turns out that the INC, despite being on the US payroll for $340,000 per month, may have been an working for Iran. In a nutshell, the significance of this revelation is that, if true, it means that the US invaded Iraq at the behest of Iran. It means that hundreds Americans died in order to further the cause of a radical anti-American theocratic regime. It means that George W Bush was played like a chump.

The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources.

"Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein," said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency's conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents..

See Josh Marshall for lots more details and much better analysis than I can give.

Low wage Republican outsourcing

Orcinus

It's probably also worth remembering that the claim that Bush was outsourcing his campaign work dates back to early last year, when the New Delhi Business Standard reported a GOP-HCL connection. Buzzflash, you'll recall, picked this up and briefly carried it.

However, the Republican National Committee immediately issued a denial of sorts, through a UPI political report:

The Republican National Committee, through spokesman Kevin Sheridan, completely denies the allegation, telling UPI, "Any report that the Republican National Committee has hired HCL eServe -- the firm mentioned in the original Business Standard article -- is a case of bad reporting, bad business practices or both. The RNC has no affiliation with HCL. Any inference to the contrary is flat out wrong. The RNC has informed both HCL and rediff.com of the inaccuracy of this report."

This was a carefully worded denial with holes large enough to drive large trucks through. The RNC, for instance, is a separate entity from the Bush re-election campaign. Or HCL could even be operating as a subcontractor, meaning the RNC might not have any affiliation with HCL, but one of its contractors might.

Military sentencing: conscientious objector=torturer

One of the reasons Mejia stayed home in the first place was the fact that he witnessed the abuse of prisoners. Now he's getting the same punishment as a convicted torturer.

Just after the last strains of a bugle call signaling the end of the day faded across this Army base, two burley MPs ushered a handcuffed Camilo Mejia out of the courthouse where he was convicted Friday of desertion and sentenced to a year in prison.

''Viva Camilo! Bravo Camilo,'' family and friends shouted as the MPs put him in the back seat of a patrol car, the first step on an immediate journey to a military detention facility -- mostly likely in Jacksonville, Charleston S.C. or Fort Knox, Ky., where he'll spend the next year.

In a repudiation of Mejia's efforts to defend himself by criticizing the conduct of the war in Iraq, a military jury took less than two hours to find the Miami member of the Florida National Guard guilty.

After the conviction, an unapologetic, unrepentant Mejia took the stand in his sentincing hearing Friday and told the jury he felt no shame for what he had done.

''I sit here as a free man. I will sit behind bars as a free man. I strongly believed something had to be done. I followed my conscience and provided leadership.'' Mejia, 28, said in a calm voice, looking straight at the four officers and four enlisted soldiers on the jury.

The sentence imposed on Mejia was the maximum the jury could impose for a desertion conviction, and his attorney said he will appeal.

It was the same sentence received two days earlier by Army Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, who pleaded guilty in Baghdad to maltreatment of prisoners and three other charges, and agreed to testify against other soldiers in their prisoner-abuse trials.

Just havin' a little fun...

WaPo:

Prisoners posed in three of the most infamous photographs of abuse to come out of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were not being softened up for interrogation by intelligence officers but instead were being punished for criminal acts or the amusement of their jailers, according to previously secret documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Support Nancy Pelosi

Support a Democrat who is not afraid to take on our bumbling Commander in Thief. Read the article excerpted below. Then take this poll.

House Democratic Leader Pelosi calls Bush 'incompetent'

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called President Bush "incompetent" and said he is responsible for hundreds of deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

"Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he's not a leader," Pelosi told the San Francisco Chronicle in a 45-minute interview Wednesday in her Capitol office. "He's a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon."

Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, is a frequent critic of the president and led the effort against the war in 2003. But this was her strongest criticism of Bush to date.

"He has on his shoulders the deaths of many more troops, because he would not heed the advice of his own State Department of what to expect after May 1 when he ... declared that major combat is over," Pelosi said. "The shallowness that he has brought to the office has not changed since he got there."

The White House dismissed Pelosi's comments as partisan politics.

"It's clear that the election season is drawing near, and there are those who will pursue politics over policy," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius told the newspaper. "That doesn't change the fact that the president is focused on winning the war on terror, protecting our homeland security and strengthening our improving economy."

Pelosi also said the only way to get allies to commit more troops to Iraq is to have a new president.

"Not to get personal about it, but the president's capacity to lead has never been there," Pelosi said. "In order to lead, you have to have judgment. In order to have judgment, you have to have knowledge and experience. He has none."

Take the poll. (Link via Atrios)

Details of wedding massacre emerge

A story in The Guardian has more evidence that the Pentagon mad a grievous error that it is refusing to admit to. (Or else they knowingly targeted a civilian wedding party in order to get at the “ two dozen military-age males.”)
(Link via Steve Gilliard)

The wedding feast was finished and the women had just led the young bride and groom away to their marriage tent for the night when Haleema Shihab heard the first sounds of the fighter jets screeching through the sky above.

It was 10.30pm in the remote village of Mukaradeeb by the Syrian border and the guests hurried back to their homes as the party ended. As sister-in-law of the groom, Mrs Shihab, 30, was to sleep with her husband and children in the house of the wedding party, the Rakat family villa. She was one of the few in the house who survived the night.

"The bombing started at 3am," she said yesterday from her bed in the emergency ward at Ramadi general hospital, 60 miles west of Baghdad. "We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one," she said. She ran with her youngest child in her arms and her two young boys, Ali and Hamza, close behind. As she crossed the fields a shell exploded close to her, fracturing her legs and knocking her to the ground.

(click the link to continue this long post)

She lay there and a second round hit her on the right arm. By then her two boys lay dead. "I left them because they were dead," she said. One, she saw, had been decapitated by a shell.

"I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me. My youngest child was alive next to me."

Mrs Shibab's description, backed by other witnesses, of an attack on a sleeping village is at odds with the American claim that they came under fire while targeting a suspected foreign fighter safe house.
......

By the time the sun rose on Wednesday over the Rakat family house, the raid had claimed 42 lives, according to Hamdi Noor al-Alusi, manager of the al-Qaim general hospital, the nearest to the village.
......

Dr Alusi said 11 of the dead were women and 14 were children. "I want to know why the Americans targeted this small village," he said by telephone. "These people are my patients. I know each one of them. What has caused this disaster?"

Despite the compelling testimony of Mrs Shihab, Dr Alusi and other wedding guests, the US military, faced with apparent evidence of yet another scandal in Iraq, offered an inexplicably different account of the operation.

The military admitted there had been a raid on the village at 3am on Wednesday but said it had targeted a "suspected foreign fighter safe house".

"During the operation, coalition forces came under hostile fire and close air support was provided," it said in a statement. Soldiers at the scene then recovered weapons, Iraqi dinar and Syrian pounds (worth approximately £800), foreign passports and a "Satcom radio", presumably a satellite telephone.

Uh, if I were living in Iraq, very close to the Syrian border, I would carry currency from both countries, and I would go nowhere without being armed. None of these items is unusual, especially considering that there was a wedding celebration in progress, so some people probably traveled (“foreign passports”) to get there. Boy, that cell phone sure is incriminating, though...

"We took ground fire and we returned fire," said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the US military in Iraq. "We estimate that around 40 were killed. But we operated within our rules of engagement."

Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, was scathing of those who suggested a wedding party had been hit. "How many people go to the middle of the desert ... to hold a wedding 80 miles (130km) from the nearest civilisation? These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naive."

This was a village in the middle of the desert. This is where these people lived. This is actually the most logical place for them to hold the wedding.

When reporters asked him about footage on Arabic television of a child's body being lowered into a grave, he replied: "I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologise for the conduct of my men."

The celebration at Mukaradeeb was to be one of the biggest events of the year for a small village of just 25 houses. Haji Rakat, the father, had finally arranged a long-negotiated tribal union that would bring together two halves of one large extended family, the Rakats and the Sabahs.

Haji Rakat's second son, Ashad, would marry Rutba, a cousin from the Sabahs. In a second ceremony one of Ashad's female cousins, Sharifa, would marry a young Sabah boy, Munawar.

A large canvas awning had been set up in the garden of the Rakat villa to host the party. A band of musicians was called in, led by Hamid Abdullah, who runs the Music of Arts recording studio in Ramadi, the nearest major town.
......

The ceremonies began on Tuesday morning and stretched through until the late evening. "We were happy because of the wedding. People were dancing and making speeches," said Ma'athi Nawaf, 55, one of the neighbours.

Late in the evening the guests heard the sound of jets overhead. Then in the distance they saw the headlights of what appeared to be a military convoy heading their way across the desert.

The party ended at around 10.30pm and the neighbours left for their homes. At 3am the bombing began. "The first thing they bombed was the tent for the ceremony," said Mr Nawaf. "We saw the family running out of the house. The bombs were falling, destroying the whole area."

Armoured military vehicles then drove into the village, firing machine guns and supported by attack helicopters. "They started to shoot at the house and the people outside the house," he said.

Before dawn two large Chinook helicopters descended and offloaded dozens of troops. They appeared to set explosives in the Rakat house and the building next door and minutes later, just after the Chinooks left again, they exploded into rubble.

"I saw something that nobody ever saw in this world," said Mr Nawaf. "There were children's bodies cut into pieces, women cut into pieces, men cut into pieces."

Council denounces PATRIOT Act

This is a good trend. Let's hope it continues.

The City Council delved into national politics Thursday, adding its voice to the growing chorus of local governments speaking out against a controversial law aimed at finding terrorists.

By a 5-2 vote, council members approved a resolution denouncing portions of the Patriot Act, which was passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. President George W. Bush is asking Congress to reauthorize the law as he runs for re-election.

Supporters say it is an important tool that aids the government in its search for terrorists and protects the country from attack.

Critics argue it is too drastic and erodes civil rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of association and privacy.

Council members sided with the critics.

"We have to protect our freedom," said council Chairman James Bennett. "If you give up your freedom, you may never get it back."

Locally, the Tampa City Council was the first to weigh in on the issue, passing a similar resolution last month.

So far, more than 290 communities throughout the country have opposed portions of the act, including Sarasota and the counties of Lee, Broward and Alachua in Florida.

TAMPA: Safe AND Free - Defending Our Civil Liberties and The Bill of Rights

Unforgivable

Juan Cole:

The Associated Press reports that

"American tanks and AC-130 gunships pounded insurgent positions near two shrines in the center of the holy city of Karbala early Friday, and the U.S. military said it killed 18 fighters loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The fighting began after insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. tanks patrolling Karbala's so-called ''Old City,'' said U.S. Army Col. Pete Mansoor of the 1st Armored Division. The tanks returned fire, and more than two hours of heavy fighting followed. Smoke billowed from burning buildings. A rebel weapons cache was hit, the military said. Much of the fighting was near the city's Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas shrines, which U.S. forces allege are being used by militiamen as firing positions or protective cover. Mansoor said the shrines were not damaged."

Even if the shrines were not damaged, you can't imagine how much Shiites don't want to hear phrases like "American tanks and AC-130 gunships pounded insurgent positions near two shrines in the center of the holy city of Karbala early Friday . . . " I cringed when I saw it. I don't see how Iraqi Shiites are going to forgive us for this. Ever.

Total Information Awareness MATRIX

Via Daily Kos, an update on just what MATRIX is and why you should fear it:

Do you remember Total Information Awareness (later remarketed as Terrorist Information Awareness and always referred to as TIA)? This was a proposed database that would coordinate info on every American from a host of disparate databases, allowing the government to immediately call up personal info Americans based on a number of criteria. These criteria would potentially include things like race, religious affiliation, income, medical history, credit, past addresses and phone numbers, car make, model and color, hunting and fishing licenses, marriage and divorce records, arrest records, real estate information, photographs of neighbors and business associates, surfing habits, reading habits and more.

Congress rightly rejected that system, but it's come back as a state-level program heavily funded by Messrs Ashcroft and Ridge. Now it's called MATRIX... the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange.

Lots more...

The sales tax holiday has no clothes

Meaningless feel-good election year tripe:

The governor signed into law Thursday legislation that will cut the gasoline tax by 8 cents a gallon for the entire month of August.

The law also restores a popular one-week holiday on sales taxes for books and clothes valued at less than $50 and other school supplies under $10. The tax holiday, the first since 2001, runs July 24-Aug 1.

"I have always believed it's the right thing to do to help Florida shoppers, readers and drivers keep more of their hard-earned money," Bush said in a prepared statement. He thanked lawmakers for adding books to the holiday for the first time.

The sales tax holiday is expected to save shoppers an estimated $35.5-million. Retailers say the state won't lose tax revenue because people will shop more that week and pay just as much sales tax on other items that aren't exempt.

The gas tax cut, pushed by Democrats in the Republican-run House, is expected to save drivers $59.7-million. Gas stations must pass the savings on to consumers or they can be charged with third-degree felony and lose their state fuel-dealer's license.

Reality check:

Advocates of sales tax holidays have their heart in the right place. Sales taxes are regressive, requiring low- and middle- income taxpayers to pay a larger share of their income in tax than the wealthiest taxpayers. Virtually any sales tax cut will therefore provide larger benefits, as a share of income, to low-income taxpayers than to the wealthy. But sales tax holidays are a problematic way of achieving low-income tax relief, for several reasons:

* A one-week sales tax holiday for selected items still forces taxpayers to pay sales tax on these items in the other fifty-one weeks of the year. In the long run, sales tax holidays leave a regressive tax system basically unchanged.
......

* Sales tax holidays are poorly targeted, providing tax breaks to even the wealthiest taxpayers. The benefits of sales tax holidays are not limited to state residents, but also extend to consumers visiting from other states.

* Many low-income taxpayers spend essentially all of their income just getting by—which means that they have less disposable income than wealthier taxpayers. These poor taxpayers may not have the luxury of shifting the timing of their consumption to coincide with weeklong sales tax holidays. By contrast, wealthier taxpayers are more likely to be able to time their purchases to coincide with the holiday without throwing their finances out of kilter.

* Retailers know that consumers will shift their spending toward sales tax holidays to take advantage of the temporary tax exemption. Savvy retailers can take advantage of this shift by increasing their prices during the holiday. There is some evidence that Florida retailers did exactly that during a recent sales tax holiday there: one study found that up to 20 percent of the potential benefits from that state’s sales tax holiday were reclaimed by retailers in the form of higher prices.

Sales tax holidays do have advantages, of course. As previously noted, the biggest beneficiaries from a sales tax cut are the low- and middle-income families for who these taxes are most burdensome. And the heavily-publicized manner in which sales tax holidays are typically administered means that taxpayers will be very aware of the tax cut they receive—and will know that state lawmakers are responsible for it.

But in the long run, sales tax holidays are simply too insignificant (and too temporary) to change the regressive nature of a state’s tax system—and may lull lawmakers into believing that they have resolved the unfairness of sales taxes. Policymakers seeking to achieve greater tax equity would do better to shift the overall tax burden to wealthier taxpayers by scaling back sales taxes permanently, or by providing a permanent low-income tax credit.

So, in Florida, lawmakers have specifically threatened to prosecute any gas stations that do not pass on the savings from this bill, but they have done nothing about the gouging by other retailers mentioned above. This means that SUV owners will be sure to get their breaks, but that the poor are likely to see little or no savings.

A permanent fix to Florida’s highly regressive tax system is sorely needed.

Florida taxes its poorest people nearly five times as hard as the very wealthiest (those whose incomes average $946,000) and more than twice as hard as the upper middle class. In Alabama, contrastingly, the bottom-to-top ratio is just over two to one.

These statistics were compiled by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington-based public interest organization, which rates the 10 most regressive state tax systems according to the differences between tax burdens on the poorest and richest citizens. The 10, in descending order of unfairness, are Washington, Florida, Tennessee, South Dakota, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Alabama.

Posted by Norwood at 07:41 AM | Comments (0)

Chalabi roundup

Daily Kos has all the speculation you need.

Felonious Junk: Secrecy surrounds Florida’s Voter Purger 2004(tm) list

The State of Florida has sent out its 2004 list of potential felons. Each county elections supervisor is supposed to use the state’s list to scrub ineligible voters from the roles. (In Florida, a felon who has served his time must go to the governor, hat in hand, and beg for a restoration of his right to vote in order to be able to legally cast a ballot.) I’ve been blogging heavily on this subject for the last few days, and we’ve learned that lazy county supervisors of elections may put the onus on the voters by following the letter of the law and simply scrubbing every name on the list after sending the voters a letter.

We’ve also found out that Hillsborough County’s supervisor of elections, a partisan appointed by our own Jeb!, may well be in a position to throw a close election to George Bush.

Today, via The Tallahassee Democrat (Thanks to Florida Politics for the link), we find out that the list is super secret, despite Florida’s still kinda liberal open records laws:

The state has identified 47,687 Florida voters - 1,671 in the Big Bend alone - as suspected felons possibly ineligible to vote. Who's on the list? It's hard to know, thanks to an unusual veil of secrecy.

The state, while acknowledging the list is a public record, refuses to allow more than quick inspections of it, with no note-taking or photocopying allowed.

Civil-liberties groups and open-records advocates are questioning the secrecy, especially in light of the black eye the state suffered in the 2000 presidential election, when perhaps thousands of legitimate voters were erroneously struck from the rolls. As the 2004 election nears, state, national and even international groups are monitoring the state's progress.

"It's an atrocity," said Sharon Lettman-Pacheco of the People for the American Way Foundation. "They're coming up with a whole lot of legal barricades to not allow advocacy groups to assist the citizens."

People for the American Way sent letters to all 67 county elections supervisors, offering to help notify people in danger of being purged. In response, state Elections Director Ed Kast sent a memo to supervisors last week telling them they don't have to comply with the group's request for the list.

The Division of Elections says it's only following the law - a law that allows voter registration lists to be dispensed to candidates, political parties, political committees and public officials, but not to the general public or the press. Those allowed to get the list must sign an oath saying they'll use it only to conduct political campaigns.

Department of State spokeswoman Jenny Nash said anyone can view the list, so there shouldn't be a controversy.

Inaccurate lists of felons

The law has been on the books in some form for county voter rolls since as early as 1913, but it was expanded as part of the massive overhaul of state election laws in 2001.

Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, says attorneys in her organization are looking into whether the law was expanded improperly. The state constitution requires any law limiting public records to be passed as a separate bill, with a specific statement of why it's necessary.

Possibly thousands of voters were turned away from the polls in 2000 because the Division of Elections sent counties an inaccurate list of 173,142 felons and others not qualified to vote.(ed. note: The vast majority of purged voters were Democrats)

"When they went to vote, they were told they were criminals, and their names had been purged from the files. We got a great number of calls," said Anita Davis, then president of the Tallahassee branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

It's not known how many people were erroneously barred from voting. Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho said his office could verify that only 34 on the list of 694 supposed felons in his county were actually felons ineligible to vote.

Five counties - including Palm Beach, Broward and Duval, three of the state's largest - refused to use the list at all.

The NAACP and other civil-rights groups sued elections officials, alleging that blacks had been denied their voting rights.

Settlement brings changes

The suit was settled in 2002, with the state agreeing to restore the names of voters improperly removed, implement more stringent criteria for verifying names on future lists and create a new position to monitor compliance with the National Voter Registration Act.

The new system more closely matches state felons against the voter rolls before creating the potential purge list, Nash said. The list is then sent to county supervisors, who must notify suspected felons and give them a chance to prove they're not felons before purging them.

"If the supervisor can't determine, yes, that's a definite match, then the voter stays on the rolls," Nash said.

Sancho said he isn't taking any chances that voters could be dissuaded from voting simply by getting a registered letter or seeing an ad in the paper saying the state considers them felons.

"That's not legally justifiable, and it's not how we operate," Sancho said. "We have to do a thorough, full-scale investigation before we send out any registered letter. We will do the research before we identify any person in the newspaper as a potential felon."

Good for Sancho. Unfortunately, every county supervisor is free to use the list as they see fit. Sancho fears that many county supervisors will punt:

``This puts a tremendous burden on the supervisors, not unlike the burden in 2000,'' he said. ``Some may just throw up their hands and send everybody a letter. We know from past experience that's a road we don't want to follow.''

Once the letter is sent, he said, the burden of proof is no longer on the supervisor. A voter who doesn't respond within 30 days must be removed.

Camp Redemption

This is just too much (link via Suburban Guerrilla)

Abu Ghraib is where U.S. troops sexually humiliated and abused Iraqi prisoners in their custody. Its name has been changed to "Camp Redemption" at the suggestion of the Iraqi Governing Council.

The Iraqi Governing Council, aka The Pentagon Stooges, may not know the implications of this name, but the Americans who okayed this sure as hell do.

The computer ate my vote ripped me off

So, a system that has been in place for years with very few errors suddenly goes haywire and double bills customers. This is the second time (that we know about) that this has happened to a major retailer in the last few months. Well, at least these customers had a paper receipt to compare to their bank charges. This November, we will be voting on a similar system with absolutely no paper trail, no way to go back and check that the votes were counted correctly.

A computer error double-billed customers who used debit cards or credit cards May 12 at Publix supermarkets, but those customers have been paid back, store officials said Wednesday.

The problem affected purchases at the company's 819 stores in five states. A spokeswoman for the Lakeland- based chain said officials discovered the error the next morning and contacted credit card companies immediately.

They should have gone one more step, said Bill Newton, executive director of Florida Consumer Action Network in Tampa.

``People need to know as soon as possible when something like this happens,'' Newton said. Customers whose debit cards were double-billed were at risk of overdrawing their bank accounts and bouncing checks to other businesses, Newton said.
......

On March 31 and April 1, Wal-Mart suffered a similar computer mishap.

Computer Ate My Vote:

TrueMajority’s “Computer Ate My Vote” campaign is about protecting the integrity of America’s elections and avoiding a replay of the embarrassing Florida election fiasco in 2000. We’re working with grassroots activists across the U.S., urging state election officials to prohibit the use of computerized voting machines until we know they are safe and have a way to run reliable recounts. Can you help?

UPDATE - Are parking lots more important than voting? E-voting wasn’t on the agenda, but here’s city council member Rose Ferlita on what she sees as a big problem:

Ferlita has asked the city's legal department to investigate whether the city at least could require parking lot owners to issue receipts.

``You get a receipt when you buy gas through a machine,'' she said. ``Why can't you get a receipt when you park your car? If this happens one time to a tourist, they're going to think the whole city is a sham.''

Uh, Rose, let’s answer this question first: Why can't you get a receipt when you VOTE? If this happens one time to a voter, the whole world is going to know that democracy in America is a sham.

50 questions

Nick Berg. Strange story. Fits like a custom made tinfoil hat.

Update: Lots more here. (Thanks to corrente for the tip.)

Anti-Christ?

Is Bush the Anti-Christ?

You decide.

Thanks to Joe Redner (yes, the same Joe Redner who is the proprietor of Mons Venus, Tampa's greatest claim to fame) and Voice of Freedom for the concept, the building, and the action!

Can it get any worse?

Update - 5:30pm - The Pentagon is acknowledging an attack, but claims that

...the attack early on Wednesday was within the military's rules of engagement.

"At 0300 (2300 GMT Tuesday) we conducted an operation about 85 km southwest of al-Qaim...against suspected foreign fighters in a safe house," Kimmitt said. "We took ground fire and we returned fire."

Kimmitt said there were no indications that the victims of the attack were part of a wedding party. He said a large amount of money, Syrian passports and satellite communications equipment had been found at the site after the attack.

But Dubai-based Al Arabiya television, quoting eyewitnesses, said the raid on the village of Makr al-Deeb before dawn had targeted people celebrating a wedding and had killed at least 41 civilians.

"We received about 40 martyrs today, mainly women and children below the age of 12," Hamdy al-Lousy, the director of Qaim hospital, told Al Arabiya. "We also have 11 people wounded, most of them in critical condition."

Arabiya showed pictures of several shrouded bodies lined up on a dirt road. Men were shown digging graves and lowering bodies, one of a child, into the pits while relatives wept.

Ap reports

Associated Press Television News footage showed a truck containing bloodied bodies, many wrapped in blankets, piled one atop the other. Several were children, one of whom had been decapitated.

The attack happened about 2:45 a.m. in a desert region near the border with Syria and Jordan, according to Lt. Col. Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, the provincial capital about 250 miles to the east. He said 42 to 45 people died, including 15 children and 10 women. Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45.

So, a wedding. Guns fired into the air in celebration equals “ground fire.” Dozens more innocents dead and maimed due to the illegal, shortsighted and dishonest invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation that, regardless of the inherant evil of Saddam, had nothing to do with 911.

###

Update - 4PM - Yes, it gets worse...

A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party in the remote desert near the border with Syria, killing more than 40 people, most of them women and children, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it was investigating.

Associated Press Television News footage showed a truck containing bloodied bodies, many wrapped in blankets, piled one atop the other. Several were children, one of whom had been decapitated.

The attack occurred about 2:45 a.m. in a desert region near the border with Syria and Jordan, according to Lt. Col. Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, the provincial capital about 250 miles miles to the east. He said between 42 and 45 people died, including 15 children and 10 women. Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45.

###

TBO

A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party early Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it could not confirm the report and was investigating.

Abu Ghraib

Kevin Drum helps us catch up:

ABU GHRAIB ROUNDUP....This is getting worse and worse, and it doesn't look like it's going to let up anytime soon. Here's the latest:

* An ABC News source claims that the Army is still covering up abuse at Abu Ghraib:

* The Denver Post reports that "brutal interrogation techniques" are being investigated in connection with five POW deaths in Iraq:

* Three journalists say they were abused in custody:

* The Wall Street Journal reports that the Army has known about the abuses at Abu Ghraib since at least last November but did nothing about them:

* The Los Angeles Times reports that at least one senior officer refused to testify at an Abu Ghraib hearing because of fears that his testimony could leave him open to criminal charges:

To summarize: the Army knew about this back in November and didn't try to stop it; there are many more than just seven people involved; some of them are at a senior level; and the abuses may have caused at least five deaths.

Oh, and there are more pictures.

Some people just don't get it

Some people just don’t get it. Must be my fault. Let’s see if I can reeducate.

In response to this post where I take Sticks of Fire blogger Tommy to task for calling The Uhuru movement “anti American,” I got a letter from Tommy. Tommy’s worried that I might post some of his comments out of context, so I’ll reprint the entire letter here, but I’ll insert my comments and responses to his arguments as needed.

(note: this post got way to long to leave here on the front page. Click the link that says "Continue reading..." to see Tommy's letter and my response.)

Subject: Your blog post re:Tommy, InPDUM and St. Pete Cops. To: norwood@blogwood.com Norwood,

You made quite a few assumptions about me in your
post. Some are close. Some are not so correct.

I don’t think you are too harsh on the St. Pete Police
in general. Racism does exist in that police force
(it may even still be pervasive), just as it exists in
many institutions, and at the very least, you and your
blog get people to think about these things (even if
they then do nothing about it). However, I do take
issue with the Tyron Lewis fiasco and the similar
McCullough tragedy.

I know very well that police oppression and violence
against minorities is a significant problem
nationwide. I don’t feel I’m an “apologist” for the
cops, but I do think they have a very, very difficult
job. Can you put yourself in that officer's position?

Let’s see: the officer’s position? That would be in front of the car that Tyron was driving, where the officer had placed himself so that he could get a good kill shot off at a teenage driver who was panicking due to the fact that he was carrying a small amount of drugs. The officer’s position did not change much as he pumped 3 bullets, in a very tight pattern, through the windshield and into Tyron.

The officer claims that Tyron was trying to run him over, but witnesses dispute this allegation, and Tyron’s foot was on the brake when he was killed.

Perhaps there would have been no killing, but there
would still have been a messy arrest, or a longer car
chase, or both.

So, you are assuming that Tyron would have fled? Maybe, but he was never given a chance. If he had fled, there probably would have been a chase. That’s one of the problems. Why do we have policies for the police to chase in situations like this? A routine traffic stop. Tyron was not about to go on a murderous crime spree. He was not endangering anyone’s life.

The idea that the police should engage in high speed pursuit of suspects in minor crimes is absurd. Innocent bystanders are quite often injured or killed during these incidents, and as often as not, the justification used is that the suspects were in a stolen car. So, a teenager steals a car and takes it for a joy ride. He should be punished, but sending the police out to engage in a dangerous pursuit through densely populated urban areas is overkill to say the least. In fact, having a trained policeman engage in a high speed pursuit against a youth who has very little driving experience, much less training, is like giving a blanket death sentence to car thieves. The reaction (chase) is absolutely not justified by non-violent crime against property.

Just as generalizations of all
members of a race are incorrect, so is simplifying by
saying “all cops.” Furthermore, I have not “bought
into” the idea of American equality. I have bought
into the idea that there CAN BE American equality 
but we as a society are not anywhere close to that.

You’re right. We are not anywhere close to having true equality in this country. I don’t recall saying anything about “all cops” . I am referring to the policies of police departments in general, and specifically to the policies of the St. Pete police. If a cop is a member of the St. Pete police, then he is bound by their regulations and policies. It is more than fair to refer to the department as a whole in this context.

As far as the falling crime rate  yes I’m a bit of a
cheerleader for the area here, so I’m not afraid to
mention good news such as this. And you are right -
this is a tourist state, and tourism certainly
sustains many of the jobs here, so it makes good
economic sense for us to note positive advances. If
you read my blog, you will see that I document the
“not so good” about the area as well (admittedly not
as loudly).

Good news? Did you even read my post? Rising incarceration rates are not good news for anyone. Crime rate statistics are bullshit numbers that are used by politicians and police departments, as well as by chambers of commerce, for their own narrow agendas. Crime rates have little basis in reality.

Your original contention that rising incarceration is the primary catalyst for falling crime rates is what set me off in the first place. The prison population in this country is now over 2 million strong, and growing. We will be paying monetary and societal costs of our shortsighted penal policies for generations. People in jail do not necessarily deserve to be there, and minorities and other economically disenfranchised groups contribute a disproportionately high percentage of inmates to our penal institutions.

It comes down to this: if you support higher incarceration rates under our current “justice” system, then you are supporting and helping to perpetuate racist policies.

In addition, I certainly believe it makes absolutely
no sense to incarcerate non-violent drug offenders.
Current drug laws may indeed be racist. But it is the
law. Until the law is changed, it is what it is.

Tommy, if you admit that drug laws are racist, and your reaction is to shrug your shoulders and say “it is what it is,” then that makes you a ... well, you do the math.

I find it laughable that you say that “the poor black
person may be forced to use” drugs on the street. If
you are poor, perhaps you would be better spending
your hard-earned money on getting a safer place, and
then purchase your illegal entertainment. (yes,
that’s very simplistic, but it makes sense to me)
(side note: I’m addicted to cigarettes, it seems an
awful lot of people are addicted to food  everyone
has their personal demons)

Okay - where do we draw the line? Should the poor be allowed to drink beer? Should the poor be allowed to buy cigarettes? How ‘bout a little TV in the evening? Maybe poor people should be required to spend all of their money on food and shelter. And if they don’t then we can have the police shoot them for breaking the law.

In fact, in Tampa, it is now against the law to consume beer from a glass bottle, unless you are on private property. That law was passed with much talk about keeping the Gasparilla festival safe for carousing, breast-flashing celebrants, but it is aimed squarely at Tampa’s black population. When was the last time you saw a wealthy white person chugging a quart of Colt 45?

So, you’re borderline homeless. Some nights you sleep on the streets. Some nights you luck into one of the very few shelter beds that are around, but to get one you have to be inside by early early evening, and you have to abide by the prison-like house rules. Occasionally you have enough cash for a week at a rooming house, but cash is hard to come by.

You work out of a labor pool, getting up a 4am to compete for a few low-paying backbreaking jobs. You are driven to the jobsite in the back of a pickup, rain or shine. You put in 8 hours or more of hard physical labor. At the end of the day, if you’re lucky, the “boss man” might actually pay you what he promised (maybe $50 or $60 if he’s generous) and drop you off near to where you were picked up.

Don’t you deserve a break? A beer, or some recreational drugs to take the edge off? Well, unless you can afford a hotel room, you’re likely to be arrested or ticketed or shot by the police before you have a chance to enjoy your buzz.

Norwood, why is it that only “a few exceptional
people” are able to crawl up and out of the economic
morass? It’s hard to do. Very hard to do. But it’s
not impossible. You do not have to be “exceptional.”

Uh, you defeat your own argument. Something that is very hard but not quite impossible can only be accomplished by the exceptional or the exceptionally lucky.

I am dead center of the middle-class, but how did I
get here? It is not because anything was handed to
me. I have worked (and continue to work) two jobs for
most of my adult life. For most of my life, I have
not been able to go to Bucs games or Lightning games
on a whim. I’d love to go to the playoff game
tonight, but I cannot afford it  so I won’t. I
suppose somewhere down the line, it’s certainly
possible that I was awarded a job (or two, or ten)
over another candidate based on my race. But I have
been turned down for many, many jobs over the years,
also. I just had to go find another. I never thought
the government (or anyone) owed me anything. America
is the land of opportunity. Everyone has an
opportunity. Nothing else. And there is definitely
no handouts (whether there should be is another
issue).

Yes, everyone has an opportunity. But not everyone has an equal opportunity.

Jim Hightower likes to say of George W. Bush that he “was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.” It’s a good analogy and I’m going to stretch it as far as I can.

So, if life is a baseball game, and the rich are already on base when they are born, then most of America’s middle class is born in the dugout, or on deck. Anyway, they’re pretty sure to get a turn at bat, to get into the game.

The poor, on the other hand, are born one or 2 counties away from the stadium. They have no way to get to the stadium, and, in fact, they have not even been notified that the game is today or that there even is a stadium. Someone born in this situation is rarely going to get a chance to play, much less get on base.

So, unless you were born into extreme poverty, you did have something handed to you. You got a head start.

(Completely off topic, but in answer to your work situation): Tommy, you’re making the most of your life, working hard and scraping by. But why work 2 jobs? Most people who work 2 jobs do so out of economic necessity, and it sounds like you fit this mold. We have been brought up in this country to believe in the American work ethic. But should you really have to work 2 jobs just to make a living?

In Europe, 30 hour work weeks and very liberal vacation time is the norm. Wages are such that a person can actually be quite comfortable with “only” one job, and economies are strong. Guess what: if you pay people a fair wage and give them time off to enjoy life, they’ll spend money and further stimulate the economy.

Anyway, in this country, there has never been such a wide gap between the haves and have nots. Me, you , and just about everyone we know are in the “have nots” category (even though we have a lot more then the “have nones”).

Perhaps “anti-american” isn’t exactly a correct
description of InPDUM. That was a reference to the
repeated mention of African People, rather than Black
or even African-American. (I’ll assume now - please
tell me if I’m wrong - that “African People” is a
euphemism for “African-Americans.”)

Uh, Tommy, here is the 1st line item from the InPDUM platform: “We Demand National Democratic Rights and Self-Determination for African People in the U.S. and Around the World.” I’ll assume now - please tell me if I’m wrong - that “the U.S.” is a euphemism for “America.”

And based on their entire platform, I wouldn’t call them
“pro-community” either. They don’t want to include
any other race. They are not calling for an end to
racial disparities. They instead call for
preferential treatment. They want “Community Control
of the Police,” but their words and actions indicate
they want zero consequences for black criminals (not
just talking about drug crimes here, either). In
fact, they want complete “withdrawal” of the police
(Do you think the crime rate would go down if this
were the case?).

Actually, what InPDUM calls for is “Community Control of the Police in the African Community and the Immediate Withdrawal of the Terroristic Police and Military Forces from the African Community.” Community control does not equal no police. You would rather keep the status quo in which black and other minority people have their rights violated and worse on a daily basis by a police force that is sent out to intimidate and keep people down?

Yes, I think that criminal activity would tend to decline within a community that is given local control over criminal justice.

The entire point of this platform is that black communities have never ever been given an equal chance in this country. Typically, when a black community defies the odds and becomes prosperous, an Interstate Highway is rammed through its heart (Tampa and St. Pete) or it’s simply burned to the ground like Rosewood.

InPDUM calls for “Mandatory African
History” in the public schools. Again, assuming they
mean Black American History, I’m all for it. That is
a horrific story (and it continues today) that should
never be forgotten by any race. Demanding African
Community Control of Health Care and Housing is a call
for segregation. Parasitic Merchants and Slumlords
should be removed from all areas of the community, not
just the “African” community. They want a separate UN
representative  more segregation. The “Parasitic
Relationship” they speak of does benefit rich whites 
but certainly not ALL whites. Fair treatment and
self-determination? I think preferential treatment
and a dereliction of accountability.

So, without a white overseer, black people could never survive, much less make decisions for themselves? We should keep the status quo because not ALL white people are wealthy parasites? Again, with the deck stacked so heavily against the black community, all white people benefit from this parasitic relationship. Most benefit indirectly, but the benefits are undeniable (Tommy: “I suppose somewhere down the line, it’s certainly possible that I was awarded a job (or two, or ten) over another candidate based on my race.”).

As with most
intelligent causes, InPDUM’s platform includes areas
that are essential to American equality.
Unfortunately, there is no call for personal
responsibility. And some ridiculous demands for
segregation. And in their supposed rigid defense of
all blacks, the criminals get their support and calls
for violence, but the black business owners in that
neighborhood are ignored.

Tommy, are you purposefully taking the platform’s demands out of context? The idea of personal responsibility is inherent in the demands for self determination, as is the implied support for locally controlled (African) businesses, a necessary component in any community. It is a tired old trick of closet racists to turn around and accuse the victims of institutionalized racism of being anti-white (anti-American?) or segregationist. The fact of the matter is that whenever a community of color attempts to compromise and live within the arbitrary confines that the white ruling class has set for it, the white ruling class breaks its promises and demands ever more concessions (See countless examples in Native American history).

InPDUM is not pro-criminal. They are calling for fair treatment. Many people are locked up in this country simply for standing up for their rights. (See Leonard Peltier, for one example.)

One of the most powerful events in St. Pete history is
when Yeshitela stormed into city hall and tore down
that mural in 1966. Not quite as significant, but
definitely noteworthy, was the uprising in ’96, which
led to the ongoing economic investments in Midtown.
However, Yeshitela is not so good at picking his
battles anymore, seemingly ascribing to the theory
that any press is good press.

Actually, Omali Yeshitela has been active in politics - he ran for mayor - and, lately, has been a local leader of the peace movement.

Finally, my posts (including this email here) are
written with very simplistic view  I do believe that
any problem can be overcome. And I do not live in
fear of cops coming after me or my family. But I am
not so shallow, or stupid to think that “there is no
race problem.” Racism is pervasive and widespread.
But as my post said, to support criminals will earn
InPDUM no sympathy, support or respect. Instead I
think InPDUM only helps to create greater friction.

Again, a cheap copout. Often, friction is necessary to affect meaningful change. This quote springs to mind:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Earlier I mentioned that American equality can be
accomplished (it’s better now than it was in 1966,
1976, and 1986, but there’s still a LONG way to go).
The government is not going to do it all by itself.
Helpful necessities include personal responsibility,
fair treatment, focus, voting power, education,
sacrifice, and yes, radical acts (among many other
things).

But InPDUM’s agenda won’t get us there. Their rigid
defense of criminals and threats of violence most
certainly will not get us there, and may even lead us
in the opposite direction.

Tommy

PS: I haven’t yet decided if I will post this on my
blog. If you choose to make this email public, please
feel free, but I encourage you not to post any part
out of context.

I’m afraid it’s you who are taking things out of context. I recommend that you purchase and study Howard Zinn’s A people's history of the United States : 1492-present for some proper historical context.

Norwood

Felonious Junk: CYA letters not enough*

The “purge list” of possible felons that the state has sent to local elections supervisors continues to make the news. This time, the SP Times talks to several Bay Area elections supervisors to find out exactly how they plan to use the list.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the state over the 2000 purge of felons, wants elections supervisors to look up criminal records at local courthouses.

"It would be a mistake and it would be an evasion of a legal responsibility of county supervisors of elections just to act on the list of potential felons," said Florida ACLU executive director Howard Simon. "Don't remove anybody from the rolls unless there is some piece of paper with evidence on it that shows they are a convicted felon.

"We're dealing with the most fundamental right of the American system."

Some supervisors may go find paper records. Others could simply compare the list they get from state elections officials with a felons roster from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement before mailing letters informing voters that they have been flagged as potential felons.

Tampa Bay area supervisors said they are still sorting through the procedures they will follow.

But the letter is the only verification state law requires of local supervisors.

So many qualifiers, so little substance. Yes, they might do this or they could do that, but in real life, they will probably only send the letters. Read on.

"I feel better about it in the sense that they have heightened the filter," said Pasco Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning. "If I'm arrested as a felon, what are the chances I'm going to give you my proper name? I could give you any name, and it's up to you to disprove it. It's like hitting a moving target. It's a tough job.

Uh, Kurt: folks arrested as felons have nothing to do with this procedure, unless and until they are convicted. Usually, by the time an accused felon is convicted in a court of law, we have a pretty good idea of his or her real name.

"Did we, the state, or us, do our job well the last time we did this? I don't think we did."

It's not a perfect system, elections officials say, and some felons could wind up voting after all.

"I'm really erring on the right to vote, there being something considerable before denying that right," said Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson. "At the end of the day, it's a judgment call in some cases. ... The matching process is not as empirical as it might appear."

Florida is one of a seven states that bar felons from voting unless they successfully petition to have their rights restored, a long and cumbersome process.

Because felons are disproportionately Democrats, critics said the improper purge in 2000 could have been a decisive factor in the presidential election, when 19,398 voters were purged because the state said they were felons.

Many of the voters who were improperly removed from voting rolls were from states that do not bar felons from voting.

Remember: we still have not fixed this problem. Ex-felons with full voting rights who moved here from other states may still be denied their right to vote in the upcoming election.

This year, the state has flagged more than 47,000 of the state's roughly 9-million registered voters as potential felons.

In 2000, the state hired ChoicePoint, a computer database company, to identify felons. State officials said the company cast too wide a net, but the company said the state wanted a wide net.

State elections officials, led by then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris, made little effort to verify ChoicePoint's list. Twenty elections supervisors ignored the list. But the rest simply purged their voter rolls without notifying voters.

Dozens of voters across Florida found out on election day that they could not vote.

This year, the state compiled its own list by comparing a statewide voter roll with a database of felony convictions compiled by FDLE. Each match is assigned a score, depending on the strength of the match.

To be flagged as a potential felon, the match has to score 50 points on an 80-point scale. Typos, nicknames, misspellings and data entry errors can affect the match.

But being flagged as a potential felon doesn't mean a voter is kicked off the list.

Each supervisor now has access to the FDLE and clemency board records used to match the voter file, as well as the match score. Elections workers can then review each record to verify the match.

But the only thing elections supervisors are required to do is mail a letter to voters informing them that they have been flagged as a potential felon, giving them the chance to challenge or correct information.

Local supervisors now have the list of potential felons, totaling nearly 7,000 in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties.

Pasco's Browning plans to mail letters in the coming weeks. Pinellas is still working on its procedures. Hillsborough plans to mail letters by June 15.

Here we go. Letters are the only thing required by law, so who really thinks that most supervisors of elections are going to go beyond the basic requirements of the law and attempt to actually ferret out the false positives from this list? By putting the onus on the voter to prove eligibility, the elections supervisors can claim that they have done their jobs.

If a voter has moved, and the letter doesn’t reach him? Too bad. If a voter does not regularly peruse the legal announcements in the classified section of his local paper? Too bad. And if many democratic voters are wrongly denied the right to vote in November? Well, that’s just an unfortunate tragedy, one that no one, even in their wildest imagination, could foresee.

Learn more about this issue here.

*CYA - Cover Your Ass - d as little as you can get away with without getting in trouble.

Felonious Junk: Is Buddy Johnson the new Katherine Harris?

The new Voter Purger 2004(tm) list is out, and in the news lately. In a nutshell, thousands of Floridians, mostly minority Democrats, were wrongly disenfranchised in 2000 due to what many feel was an intentionally error ridden database of supposed felons. County supervisors of elections were instructed to use the state’s faulty list to scrub the voting roles of anyone whose name kinda sorta matched up with one on the list. William March picks up the story:

Now, just in time for the 2004 presidential election, the state is sending out another list, this one with about 47,000 names.

State officials say the public should trust this time that they got it right, and no one should be wrongly denied voting access because of the new list. ``It's not like 2000. It's a whole different system,'' said Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood.

In Tampa, Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson said he isn't worried about the process this year. His predecessor, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, is among those worried for him.

``It could be that since I left the office [last year], the state has done a really good job of improving their list of felons. If so, that's great,'' she said. ``But when I left, it was clear that the state simply did not have an accurate database of people who have felony convictions.''

In Tallahassee, Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho said he and his fellow supervisors may not have the time, money or personnel to check the accuracy of the list, and he fears ``a replay of 2000.''

Process Appears `Hurried''

``The process to me appears hurried, incomplete, and changing in midstream of the election cycle,'' Sancho said. ``It's troubling to me.''

Nash said the new list won't repeat problems of the old one because it won't leave responsibility with those on the list to prove they're eligible to vote. ``The onus now is on the supervisor'' to prove a voter ineligible, she said.

The 2000 list and other voting problems led to lawsuits against the state and some counties by the NAACP. The civil rights organization and others expressed concern about a disproportionate effect on minorities.
......

As part of the legal battle settlement, Florida officials agreed to send counties information to help locate and restore voters whose names were wrongly removed from the rolls. That process is about halfway complete, said Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for the American Way Foundation, co-counsel in the lawsuit.

He said county supervisors have reported restoring about 770 voters, but that doesn't include those from automatic- restoration states. The Florida secretary of state's office hasn't sent information about them to the counties yet, he said.

``Frankly, the state should first fix the problems with people who were erroneously thrown off before they start on another purge,'' Mincberg said. ``Any purge they do this year has to be scrupulously accurate and carefully done.''

Nash said the current list comes from comparing Florida Department of Law Enforcement records with a new, statewide database of registered voters. County supervisors should consider it a list of ``potential matches,'' not proven ineligibles, she said.

The list used standards, now tightened, for matching a name on a criminal record with a voter name that may not be identical in spelling, birth date or address.

The supervisors must send voters on the list certified letters, including forms to establish eligibility. Alternatively, the voter can attend a hearing. Supervisors then must consider each voter's evidence before making a decision. Still, if a voter doesn't respond within 30 days to the letter, or to an advertisement published in a local newspaper, the name must be purged from the list.
......

Sancho said his budget doesn't include money for postage for hundreds of certified letters or employee time to investigate criminal histories.

``This puts a tremendous burden on the supervisors, not unlike the burden in 2000,'' he said. ``Some may just throw up their hands and send everybody a letter. We know from past experience that's a road we don't want to follow.''

Once the letter is sent, he said, the burden of proof is no longer on the supervisor. A voter who doesn't respond within 30 days must be removed.

In his county, Sancho said, ``25 [percent] to 30 percent of our database is inaccurate at any given time because the population is so transient. The burden is still on the voter if they've moved.''

Two Sides In Tampa

Johnson, a Republican, said he's confident about doing the job in Hillsborough if his office gets information about possible felons and checks on them.

``The lists are really just reminders,'' he said. ``We may already have sorted through these or gotten the names from other sources.''

Johnson said the 2000 list included names of about 3,200 possible matches in the county. Of those, about 866 appeared to be matches. Under the state's new criteria, he said, 333 appear to be matches. Of the other 533 possible matches, he said, some may have been reinstated after being removed wrongly from the rolls.

Iorio, a Democrat, said eliminating former felons from the rolls is ``a misallocation of resources. The state spends an awful lot of money making sure ex-felons are kept off the rolls. When they're back in society, we want them back in the community doing things that are positive. We want them to vote. It would be far easier just to restore their right to vote.''

This article is a fairly accurate summary of where we stand, and several things jump out as worrisome.

First, it seems that we are probably going to have more problems this year. The serious, non-partisan supervisors of elections around the state all seem to be worried.

Next, the article mentions that the state is not even halfway toward restoring the in-state false positives from 2000, yet it is surging ahead with the latest new and improved version of Voter Purger 2004. Pam Iorio is right - we should restore felons’ right to vote. But state law prevents this right now.

Which brings us to my next concern: Republican Buddy Johnson was appointed by Jeb! to serve out Pam Iorio’s term as Hillsborough elections supervisor. The 2000 election may well have been decided by the actions of Katherine Harris, who held the dual roles of Florida’s Secretary of State, in charge of elections supervisors, and head of George Bush’s Florida campaign.

The fact that she was allowed to carry out her duties as Secretary of State while serving as a partisan supporter of one of the candidates whose election she was in charge of is mind boggling. Now, we have an obviously partisan (appointed by the pResident;s brother) elections supervisor in one of the most populous and most evenly divided counties in the state.

This partisan is downplaying the significance of removing close to a thousand Hillsborough voters from the roles. And that’s not all. The article says that Johnson says “he's confident about doing the job in Hillsborough if his office gets information about possible felons and checks on them“ (emphasis mine)

So, what’s with the qualifier? Is his office going to check? Or is he going to punt and make the voters take the initiative, as supervisor Sancho of Tallahassee suggests many of his colleagues might do?

The next paragraphs are even more disturbing: ``The lists are really just reminders,'' he (Johnson) said. ``We may already have sorted through these or gotten the names from other sources.''

Johnson said the 2000 list included names of about 3,200 possible matches in the county. Of those, about 866 appeared to be matches. Under the state's new criteria, he said, 333 appear to be matches. Of the other 533 possible matches, he said, some may have been reinstated after being removed wrongly from the rolls.”

So, our Republican Jeb!-appointed elections supervisor may or may not have already scrubbed the county rolls from some mysterious, unnamed “other sources”?

Further, he doesn’t seem to know or care if any names that were previously removed in error have been reinstated.

Gee, it looks like ole Buddy is doing exactly the job that Jeb! appointed him to do.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of Buddy and his laissez-faire “supervision”, remember that Buddy is one of those who really thinks it would be too much trouble to give a voter a receipt to verify that Hillsborough County’s new, paperless e-voting machines actually record the votes correctly:

"There's never been a perfect election," Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson said. "And there never will be."

So, when thousands of voters in Hillsborough are “mistakenly” turned away at the polls, and when a “glitch” results in thousands more electronic ballots not being counted, and when a recount proves to be impossible due to the lack of a paper trail, we’ll pat Buddy on the back and congratulate him on persevering through the maddening imperfections of his job.

Get Up with MorningWood!

Get Up with MorningWood, on Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org.
4 to 6 am every Tuesday!

Studio line: 813-239- WMNF WOOD.

Today on MorningWood

Blogging on the radio

This morning on MorningWood, I’ll continue with my radio blogging experiment. The Instant NPR Headlines Radio Blog may or may not happen. If I get inspired or pissed enough at something I hear, I’ll jump in, but last week’s INHRB seemed rather forced and very disjointed. I didn’t like it.

I’ll be reading from a fresh post on Florida’s new and improved Voter Purger 2004 and Hillsborough supervisor of elections Buddy Johnson’s possible Katherine Harris-like role in the upcoming elections.

Around the verbal bloggings, a freeform mix of music and recorded spoken word.

Playlists

Hour 1 planned playlist

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Live playlist

WMNF Community Radio

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The truth can be offensive

Dear Tommy: The truth can be offensive

Tommy at Sticks of Fire has a problem with my post on the activities in St. Pete the other night. Tommy thinks I am being too harsh on the St. Pete Police and too sympathetic to the Uhuru movement (InPDUM).

In fact, Tommy calls InPDUM "anti-American" for calling for an end to racial disparities in the US.

Tommy doesn’t seem to realize that police oppression and violence against blacks and other minorities is an ongoing problem in this and many other communities in the US. Perhaps Tommy is misinformed.

I stand by my original post. Tommy sounds like he’s bought into the myth of American equality, and he’s definitely an apologist for the police. A few posts before the one attacking InPDUM, he praises the falling crime rate and gives credit to our rising prison population. Arguments like this are absurd.

First, crime rate statistics are laughably manipulable. It behooves cities and states to report lower crime rates and therefore appear safe to potential visitors. Florida happens to be a tourist state, and is therefore extremely sensitive about these numbers. Also, rates often “coincidentally” go up when law enforcement is fighting hard for budget increases - higher crime rates tend to lead politicians to throw money at the “problem”.

Once the money is allocated, crime rates invariably go down, and people who don’t really understand what is going on buy into the statistical lies and trumpet higher law enforcement budgets, tougher penalties, and increased incarceration rates as the cure to all evil.

A quick Google search yields this study.

Results suggest that the growth in prison populations has little to do with changes in crime rates or government response to citizen attitudes. Instead it is the most basic elements of the political environment (partisanship and elections) and the continuing legacy of racial social cleavages that explain why incarceration rates have increased.

In America, we have over 2 million of our friends and neighbors in prison right now, many for non-violent drug “offenses” that, if not for our backward culture of prohibition, would harm no one. Drug laws keep non-violent “offenders” in jail for years, drug laws are racist by nature and racist enforcement causes even more resentment in minority communities. (Simple example: crack and powder cocaine are the same basic drug, yet penalties for crack remain higher. Furthermore, a poor black person is more likely to use crack than powder, and is more likely to be caught using or buying, since he will not have the luxury of an expensive home in a gated community in which to purchase and consume his drugs. In fact, the poor black person may be forced to use the drugs on the street where the odds of being caught are disproportionately high. Think about that the next time you’re cutting out a line behind the curtains of your air conditioned condo.)

Another problem: the privatization of prisons leads to corporations profiting from incarceration, thus the corporations lobby for tougher laws and penalties, thus increasing the numbers of prisoners and their bottom lines.

But crime is down, so according to Tommy, who apparently relies on knee-jerk reactions rather than factual research, incarceration must be making us safer and what’s more American than sending people to jail?

According to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice, more than two million men and women are now behind bars in the United States.1 The country that holds itself out as the "land of freedom" incarcerates a higher percentage of its people than any other country. The human costs — wasted lives, wrecked families, troubled children — are incalculable, as are the adverse social, economic and political consequences of weakened communities, diminished opportunities for economic mobility, and extensive disenfranchisement.

Contrary to popular perception, violent crime is not responsible for the quadrupling of the incarcerated population in the United States since 1980. In fact, violent crime rates have been relatively constant or declining over the past two decades. The exploding prison population has been propelled by public policy changes that have increased the use of prison sentences as well as the length of time served, e.g. through mandatory minimum sentencing, "three strikes" laws, and reductions in the availability of parole or early release.

Although these policies were championed as protecting the public from serious and violent offenders, they have instead yielded high rates of confinement of nonviolent offenders. Nearly three quarters of new admissions to state prison were convicted of nonviolent crimes.2 Only 49 percent of sentenced state inmates are held for violent offenses.3

Perhaps the single greatest force behind the growth of the prison population has been the national "war on drugs." The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges.4

Even more troubling than the absolute number of persons in jail or prison is the extent to which those men and women are African-American. Although blacks account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black (Figure 1).

Blacks in Florida make up a small minority of the population, however they form a majority within the state’s prisons.

So, when InPDUM says “We Demand an End to the Colonial Court and Prison Systems which have the Majority of African Men Incarcerated, on Probation or Parole,...” they know what they’re talking about.

While Tommy is enjoying Lightning playoff games at one of our many corporate welfare sports palaces, built with tax dollars to benefit wealthy, mostly white team owners, the vast majority of the black population in this country has no disposable income whatsoever. There is no equality in this country. Black and poor children start off so far behind the mostly pale middle class that it becomes almost impossible for the kids to escape their lowly beginnings.

A few exceptional people always manage to crawl their way up, and they will invariably be held aloft Alger-like by the Tommys of this country to prove that there really is no racial or economic divide in America, but these few examples are far from the rule.

I see nothing in the entire InPDUM platform which is “anti-American.” Quite the contrary: the platform calls for fair treatment and self determination. What could be more American than that? I was making a point with the posting of part of the InPDUM platform, but I also agree with the part that I didn’t post. Here’s the whole thing.

1 We Demand National Democratic Rights and Self-Determination for African People in the U.S. and Around the World.

2 We Demand Community Control of the Police in the African Community and the Immediate Withdrawal of the Terroristic Police and Military Forces from the African Community.

3 We Demand Community Control of the Schools and Mandatory African History in Public Schools.

4 We Demand African Community Control of Health Care.

5 We Demand Community Control of Housing.

6 We Demand the Removal of Parasitic Merchants and Slumlords from the African Community.

7 We Demand an End to the Colonial Court and Prison Systems which have the Majority of African Men Incarcerated, on Probation or Parole, and the Immediate Release of all Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War.

8 We Demand an End to the Theft, Kidnapping, Sale, Abuse and Removal of African Children from their Communities under the Genocidal Foster Care System.

9 We Demand an End to the Political and Social Oppression and Economic Exploitation of African Women.

10 We Demand Reparations for African People.

11We Demand a United nations Supervised Plebiscite to Determine the Will of the African Community in the U.S. as to their National Destiny.

12We Demand an End to the Political Economy of the Counterinsurgency; the Parasitic Relationship that Benefits the White Population with Millions of Dollars for Jobs, Resources and a Stabilized Economy off of the U.S. Counterinsurgency (war) on African People in the U.S.

Tommy’s posts, the ones under discussion, are written from the simplistic point of view of one whose comfortable middle class existence makes him feel that the police will never come after him or his family. I hope he’s right. I hope he never has to live in fear of the police and other government authorities who have been teaching black communities the harsh lessons of capitalistic American “freedom” ever since we liberated their forefathers from their homelands in chains.

More abuse allegations

This time from Camilo Mejia, the conscientious objector whose desertion trial is scheduled to start on Wednesday.

Two months after he surrendered to the Army saying he preferred prison to fighting an "oil-driven war," a U.S. soldier who left his unit in Iraq faces a court-martial this week on desertion charges.

Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, 28, of the Florida National Guard could go to prison for a year and receive a bad conduct discharge if convicted by a military jury of officers and enlisted soldiers.

Col. Gary W. Smith, a military judge at nearby Fort Stewart, has scheduled the court-martial to start Wednesday and last three days.

Mejia of Miami Beach, Fla., left his unit - the 1st Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment - in Iraq last October on a two-week furlough to the United States.

He was gone for five months until he turned himself in to the Army in March, saying his war experience made him decide to seek conscientious objector status.

The desertion charge against Mejia is being treated separately from his application for objector status because he did not return to the Army as ordered before filing the paperwork.

"They're totally separate actions," said Lt. Col. Cliff Kent, a spokesman for Fort Stewart, 30 miles south of Savannah.

Mejia has said he left the war in part because he was upset over seeing civilians killed. He said he was particularly upset over an incident in which his unit was ambushed and civilians were hit in the ensuing gunfire, and another in which he said an Iraqi boy died after confusion over which military doctor should treat him.

He also claims he saw Iraqi prisoners treated "with great cruelty" when he was put in charge of processing detainees last May at al-Assad, an Iraqi air base occupied by U.S. forces.

In his objector application, Mejia states that detainees were kept blindfolded and troops were ordered to use sleep-deprivation tactics to aid with interrogations.

He did not allege that detainees were stripped naked or sexually humiliated as in the scandal over treatment at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. However, he said prisoners were kept awake for up to 48 hours at a time, normally by yelling at them or having them sit and stand for several minutes.

"When these techniques failed, we would bang on the wall with a huge sledgehammer ... or load a 9 mm pistol next to their ear," Mejia wrote in his objector application. "The way we treated these men was hard even for the soldiers, especially after realizing that many of these 'combatants' were no more than shepherds."

Mejia filed the statements March 16, before the Iraqi prisoner scandal became public. Fort Stewart officials have forwarded his account to the Department of the Army, Kent said.

Felonious junk: Florida's voter purges are back

A recent piece in The Nation by Greg Palast brings memories of disenfranchisement rushing back:

On October 29, 2002, George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Hidden behind its apple-pie-and-motherhood name lies a nasty civil rights time bomb.

First, the purges. In the months leading up to the November 2000 presidential election, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, in coordination with Governor Jeb Bush, ordered local election supervisors to purge 57,700 voters from the registries, supposedly ex-cons not allowed to vote in Florida. At least 90.2 percent of those on this "scrub" list, targeted to lose their civil rights, are innocent. Notably, more than half--about 54 percent--are black or Hispanic. You can argue all night about the number ultimately purged, but there's no argument that this electoral racial pogrom ordered by Jeb Bush's operatives gave the White House to his older brother. HAVA not only blesses such purges, it requires all fifty states to implement a similar search-and-destroy mission against vulnerable voters. Specifically, every state must, by the 2004 election, imitate Florida's system of computerizing voter files. The law then empowers fifty secretaries of state--fifty Katherine Harrises--to purge these lists of "suspect" voters.

The purge is back, big time. Following the disclosure in December 2000 of the black voter purge in Britain's Observer newspaper, NAACP lawyers sued the state. The civil rights group won a written promise from Governor Jeb and from Harris's successor to return wrongly scrubbed citizens to the voter rolls. According to records given to the courts by ChoicePoint, the company that generated the computerized lists, the number of Floridians who were questionably tagged totals 91,000. Willie Steen is one of them. Recently, I caught up with Steen outside his office at a Tampa hospital. Steen's case was easy. You can't work in a hospital if you have a criminal record. (My copy of Harris's hit list includes an ex-con named O'Steen, close enough to cost Willie Steen his vote.) The NAACP held up Steen's case to the court as a prime example of the voter purge evil.

The state admitted Steen's innocence. But a year after the NAACP won his case, Steen still couldn't register. Why was he still under suspicion? What do we know about this "potential felon," as Jeb called him? Steen, unlike our President, honorably served four years in the US military. There is, admittedly, a suspect mark on his record: Steen remains an African-American.

Here in Tampa, we may well be in dire trouble. Former Hillsborough County elections supervisor Pam Iorio was wary of the year 2000 Florida felon list, and used it very carefully.

Hillsborough County's elections supervisor, Pam Iorio, tried to make sure that that the bugs in the system didn't keep anyone from voting. All 3,258 county residents who were identified as possible felons on the central voter file sent by the state in June were sent a certified letter informing them that their voting rights were in jeopardy. Of that number, 551 appealed their status, and 245 of those appeals were successful. Some had been convicted of a misdemeanor and not a felony, others were felons who had had their rights restored and others were simply cases of mistaken identity.

An additional 279 were not close matches with names on the county's own voter rolls and were not notified. Of the 3,258 names on the original list, therefore, the county concluded that more than 15 percent were in error. If that ratio held statewide, no fewer than 7,000 voters were incorrectly targeted for removal from voting rosters.

Iorio says local officials did not get adequate preparation for purging felons from their rolls. "We're not used to dealing with issues of criminal justice or ascertaining who has a felony conviction," she said. Though the central voter file was supposed to facilitate the process, it was often more troublesome than the monthly circuit court lists that she had previously used to clear her rolls of duplicate registrations, the deceased and convicted felons. "The database from the state level is not always accurate," Iorio said. As a consequence, her county did its best to notify citizens who were on the list about their felony status. "We sent those individuals a certified letter, we put an ad in a local newspaper and we held a public hearing. For those who didn't respond to that, we sent out another letter by regular mail," Iorio said. "That process lasted several months."

As a result, less people in Hillsborough County were disenfranchised than in many other Florida counties. Now, though, new elections supervisor Buddy Johnson, appointed by Jeb Bush to serve the remainder of Pam Iorio’s term when she resigned to run for Mayor of Tampa, seems eerily sanguine about the state of the state’s new list.

"What the state is doing is building a central voter registration database, so all the registration information is going into a central repository run by the state," said Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson.

"If someone was convicted of a felony in Pasco, served their time, got out of jail, and moved to Hillsborough and registered to vote, without a central system, the process of getting information was at best archaic and slow.

"I feel pretty comfortable with what they did."

So, Buddy feels comfortable that the state is being thorough and is not likely to let any of those wily felons sneak in and vote. Thankfully, not all of Florida’s county elections supervisors are as trusting as Buddy. From OrlandoSentinel (link via Florida Politics):

The state's push to remove thousands of "potential felons" from voter rolls is causing angst among local election officials, who worry about inaccurate information, unfair results and yet another round of election-year lawsuits.

Orange County Elections Supervisor Bill Cowles, who has almost 2,200 potential felons to verify, said computer data supplied to counties by the state is riddled with problems, including wrong names and criminal charges that may have been reduced.

Under state law, it is county election officials, not the state, who must verify convictions and notify people who would be dropped from voter rolls.

"You have to sift through it all -- and that comes down to us," said Cowles, a Democrat. "We become the one who needs to face the voter."

State officials have identified nearly 50,000 voters as "potential felons" who could be stripped from voter lists -- many of them Democrats and minorities who could swing an election in a state where Republicans and Democrats are roughly equal in number.

For some, the voter purge stirs unpleasant memories of the 2000 presidential election in Florida, when thousands of voters were dropped, in some cases based on flawed lists of convictions.

Cowles vows to carefully examine potential felons "individual by individual," and to "err on the side of caution." But in some cases, he said it will come down to voters themselves proving they're eligible to vote.
......

Florida already has more felons barred from voting than any state -- more than 400,000. And it is one of a handful of states that doesn't automatically restore civil rights to prisoners who finish sentences.

Felons are banned for life from voting unless they go through a long process of applying to have their right to vote restored and appearing before a state clemency board.

It took almost two years and "a lot of pushing" to regain the right to vote for Cindy Adkins of Seminole County, who won executive clemency. But she worries she could show up on a state list and be stripped from voting again.

"Even though I've re-registered, and I have my voter card, once you're in the spin cycle, you're always beat up," said Adkins, a longtime Republican. "I think I will always be blacklisted."

She said she's had trouble landing a good job since she was convicted of felony drug charges.

"I'm from a good family," she said. "But just because I got a little screwed up in the '80s, they treat me like I'm trailer trash."

Uh, yeah... ‘cause if you weren’t a good Republican, you would deserve te be treated like shit, but you are a card carrying Republican, and from a good family, so you shouldn’t be treated like some common crackhead. You were probably just popping pills. You are different and obviously superior to the low class losers who shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

So Cindy will probably get to cast a ballot this November, and it will probably even count. Wow, maybe she is superior white.... (back to Palast)

If you're black, voting in America is a game of chance. First, there's the chance your registration card will simply be thrown out. Millions of minority citizens registered to vote using what are called motor-voter forms. And Republicans know it. You would not be surprised to learn that the Commission on Civil Rights found widespread failures to add these voters to the registers. My sources report piles of dust-covered applications stacked up in election offices.

Second, once registered, there's the chance you'll be named a felon. In Florida, besides those fake felons on Harris's scrub sheets, some 600,000 residents are legally barred from voting because they have a criminal record in the state. That's one state. In the entire nation 1.4 million black men with sentences served can't vote, 13 percent of the nation's black male population.

At step three, the real gambling begins. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 guaranteed African-Americans the right to vote--but it did not guarantee the right to have their ballots counted. And in one in seven cases, they aren't.

Take Gadsden County. Of Florida's sixty-seven counties, Gadsden has the highest proportion of black residents: 58 percent. It also has the highest "spoilage" rate, that is, ballots tossed out on technicalities: one in eight votes cast but not counted. Next door to Gadsden is white-majority Leon County, where virtually every vote is counted (a spoilage rate of one in 500).

How do votes spoil? Apparently, any old odd mark on a ballot will do it. In Gadsden, some voters wrote in Al Gore instead of checking his name. Their votes did not count.

Rumsfeld approved torture

From Symour Hersh's latest:

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

Mel Sembler: Corporate Welfare Daddy

Yesterday, the Tampa City Council signed a check for another big mortgage payment for strip mall developer and Corporate Welfare Daddy Mel Sembler’s generic failure of a mall known as Centro Ybor.

The Dick who was our last Mayor made a sweetheart deal with Sembler. The city spent millions to build parking garages and promised to route the $56 million Marriott Tourist Trolley right past the doors of Centro. But that was just the start. Dick also had the city guarantee Centro’s mortgage. At the time, of course, Dick smiled and pretty much said that no way would we ever have to pay a dime of this guarantee because his buddy Mel was absolutely sure to make sizable profits every year as Centro brought the great unimaginative washed white masses surging back to Ybor, a rushing current of disposable income!

Unfortunately, the masses chose to steer their own course, and their money has been flowing to Baywalk in St. Pete (another Sembler joint) and the Channel District in Tampa. Centro Ybor is a massive failure, and Tampa is now on the hook for over $16 million in guaranteed mortgage payments as well as the maintenance and upkeep of a few mostly empty parking garages.

In January, the city decided to steal from the poor to make February’s mortgage payment:

The February payment, about $300,000, will come from Community Development Block Grant funds, city officials said. But after that, no one knows for sure where they're going to come up with the money. ......

The city is scrambling to come up with money because Centro Ybor, the shopping complex that was supposed to drive the revitalization of Ybor City, defaulted on its loans and sought a bailout.

To make the project happen, the city had pledged tax funds to cover a $9-million loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. If developers couldn't make the payments, the city promised it would. It pledged dollars intended for low-income housing and community development.

Over the next 14 years, the total price tag, with interest, will be more than $16-million.

Yesterday, the city stole the money from funds designated for infrastructure improvements, and they’re looking for more accounts to raid:

The city council approved taking $455,755 reserved for improvements in Ybor City to make an August bail-out payment for the struggling Centro Ybor entertainment complex. ......

City officials learned in January that a 1998 agreement to help build the $53 million Centro Ybor complex had left the city on the hook for $16 million when the developers couldn't continue making loan payments.

The city, under former Mayor Dick Greco's administration, agreed to guarantee a $9 million loan for developers. Under the agreement, the city would take over payments after five years if the complex struggled.

Including the interest, the city now must make payments twice a year of about $400,000, with a $5.6 million balloon payment due in 2018.

In January, $300,000 in federal grant money intended for housing programs and improvements in low-income neighborhoods was used to pay the city's first installment. The city council then urged the administration to come up with other sources for future payments so poor neighborhoods wouldn't shoulder all of the burden.

The council said Thursday that it doesn't like Iorio's alternative any better.

Council members questioned the legality of using tax increment finance money dedicated for Ybor City to pay a city debt because it is set up specifically for infrastructure improvements.

Sam Hamilton, an assistant city attorney, said there is a loophole in Ybor's community redevelopment plan that makes it legal.

When Ybor's redevelopment district was created, the historic Centro Espanol building was identified as a potential redevelopment project. Because that building is part of Centro Ybor and was renovated by the complex's developers, the tax money can be used, Hamilton said.

``Just because it is legal doesn't mean it's right,'' Councilman Kevin White said.
......

CRAs are designed to improve infrastructure by capping property taxes that go into city and county general revenue. As property values increase, the extra tax revenue is reserved for the district.

Actually, CRAs are designed to improve the bottom line for the rich developers who tend to benefit from them, uh kinda like what is happening here.

Speaking of rich developers, just who is this Mel Sembler, and why are we giving him so much money. First, the second question. Mel is a friend of Dick. Friends of Dick did very well during Dick’s tenure as Mayor.

Now, on to the burning question: who is Mel Sembler?

Mel is the founder of Straight, which offers cultish, much aligned drug treatment programs for children (whose parents can afford it) and has received hundreds of millions of dollars in government money since its founding.

How bad is Straight? Even conservative Fox News has some problems with its methods:

Samantha Monroe was 12 years old in 1981 when her parents enrolled her in the Sarasota, Fla., branch of Straight Inc., an aggressive drub rehab center for teens.

Barely a teen, Samantha also had no history of drug abuse. But she spent the next two years of her life surviving Straight.

She was beaten, starved and denied toilet privileges for days on end. She describes her "humble pants," a punishment that forced her to wear the same pants for six weeks at a time. Because she was allowed just one shower a week, the pants often filled with feces, urine and menstrual blood. Often she was confined to her closet for days. She gnawed through her jaw during those "timeout" sessions, hoping she'd bleed to death.

She says that after she was raped by a male counselor, "the wonderful state of Florida paid for and forced me to have an abortion."

There are hundreds of Straight stories like Samantha's. Wes Fager enrolled his son in a Springfield, Va., chapter of Straight on the advice of a high school guidance counselor. Fager didn't see his son again until three months later — after he'd escaped and developed severe mental illness.

Since then, Fager's set out to clear the air on Straight. He has accumulated stories like Samantha's and his son's on a clearinghouse Web site. They are stories of suicides and attempted suicides, rapes, forced abortions, molestations, physical abuse, lawsuits, court testimonies, and extensive documentation of profound psychological abuse at Straight chapters all over the country.

Yet, the Straight model of drug treatment is thriving, with the trend toward "boot camp" style rehab centers growing more and more en vogue and Straight's founders, high-powered Republican boosters Mel and Betty Sembler, wielding enormous influence over U.S. drug policy.

Mel Sembler is currently serving as President Bush's ambassador to Italy, and the Semblers serve on the boards of almost every major domestic anti-drug program. They are longtime close associates of the Bush family, and are behind efforts to defeat medicinal marijuana initiatives all over the country. Despite the horrors that have surfaced about Straight's history, they are proud and unrepentant about the program.

With more and more U.S. states turning to mandatory treatment instead of incarceration for minor drug offenses — with Mel and Betty Sembler continuing to flex political muscle in the power corridors of the drug war — the story of Straight is one worth hearing.

Straight was spun off of a rehab program called The Seed based on the "synanon" method of treatment. Established in 1972, the program lost its funding after a congressional investigation turned up evidence of brainwashing and cult-like mind control tactics. But a Florida congressman named Bill Young persisted. He found advocates in the Semblers and persuaded them to start a similar rehab center in St. Petersburg, which they called "Straight Incorporated."

Despite allegations of abuse from escaped members and pending lawsuits, over the next 15 years Straight won laudatory praise in Republican circles. Luminaries from Nancy Reagan to Princess Diana visited Straight branches and touted their successes (though by most estimates only about 25 percent of Straight "clients" ever completed the program).

But Straight's tactics soon caught up to it in the courts. A college student won a false imprisonment claim of $220,000 in 1983, and another claim cost Straight $721,000 in 1990. A Straight spin-off called Kids of North Jersey lost a $4.5 million claim in 2000. Straight chapters across the country began to shut down, culminating with the last branch in Atlanta closing in 1993.

But the Straight philosophy was far from finished. Many chapters and directors reopened new clinics that employed the same tactics under different names — such as KIDS, Growing Together and SAFE. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush visited and praised SAFE, despite the fact that a Miami television station reported widespread Straight-like abuse at the facility in a 2000 expose.

Amidst mounting lawsuit losses and bad publicity throughout the 1990's, the umbrella organization Straight Inc. changed its name in 1996 to the Drug Free America Foundation. DFAF thrives today — receiving $400,000 in federal subsidies in 2000 and $320,000 from the Small Business Administration.

"It amazes me that despite the pattern of complaints and abuse allegations, Straight chapters can simply change their names and continue to operate," says Rick Ross, a cult expert and intervention specialist. Ross says there's an unfortunate market for "rehab" centers that take burdensome children off the hands of troubled parents.

Most troubling, however, is the considerable and continuing political clout of Straight Inc.'s founders. Former President Bush once shot a television commercial for DFAF, and designated the Semblers' program as one of his "thousand points of light."

Long a presence in Florida Republican circles, Mel Sembler was tapped as ambassador to Australia in 1989. Today he serves the younger Bush as ambassador to Italy, and he served on the board of the 2000 Republican National Convention.

Betty Sembler co-chaired Jeb Bush's campaign committee. In return, the governor declared Aug. 8, 2000, "Betty Sembler Day" in Florida — due, he said, to her work "protecting children from the dangers of drugs."

She also serves on the board of DARE, the largely failed anti-drug program for elementary school students.

DFAF also worked with then-governor Bush on anti-drug programs in Texas, and today claims to have his ear on national drug policy as well. Indeed, Arizona prosecutor and Sembler favorite Rick Romley was on Bush's short list for drug czar. Though Romley wasn't nominated, Bush did tap staunch drug warrior John Walters. The nomination caused Betty Sembler to remark, ".... we have lacked the leadership and support of the White House ... until now."

"It's really shocking that the Semblers are still lauded and honored after all that's come out about their organization," says cult expert Ross, a self-described Republican.

Last year, a reporter from the Canadian e-zine Cannabis News asked Betty Sembler in person about the horror stories he'd read from Straight survivors. "They should get a life," Sembler replied. "I am proud of everything we have done. There's nothing to apologize for. The legalizers are the ones who should be apologizing."

That's the attitude of the drug war's power duo, who can be unrepentant about the lives their program destroyed because they believe a win-at-all-costs approach is the only way to remove the scourge of drugs from society. Shattered lives, suicides, forced abortions, fractured psyches — all necessary casualties of the drug war, and nothing to apologize for.

I read that article 3 times hoping to edit it down, but there’s just too much good stuff in it. Now, besides being the King of Anti-Drug Crusading Corporate Welfare Daddies, Mel also has a knack for slapping up ugly strip malls, specializing in providing retail space for Eckerd’s.

And Sembler has his hands in other developments all over the Bay Area. A quick google search turns up tons of references that tie Sembler to project after project around here. It seems that even if Centro Ybor is failing due to competition from other shopping districts (like the Sembler developed Bay Walk) that Mel is making his money. And rest assured: odds are good that many of Mel’s other projects benefit from corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks or incentives or other government subsidies. Mel has gotten rich off the backs of the taxpayers.

Which brings us back the the point of this post: Mel Sembler is an unapologetic right wing crusader who has ruined countless lives and continues to lure unsuspecting victims into his web of government subsidized treatment programs cults. He has more money than god, yet he sits back and allows hundreds of thousands of dollars (so far, but we’re still counting) to be stolen from poor people who actually need the money so that one of his many shopping malls can keep its mismanaged doors open.

Actually, I have no idea if Sembler still has any stake in Centro Ybor, but I have no problem using him as the poster daddy for shiftless, lazy, greedy corporate welfare cheats who get paid by the government to give birth to butt-ugly strip malls and other generic piles of bricks.

If Corporate Welfare Daddy Supreme Mel Sembler had an ounce of compassion, if he cared one iota about the community as a whole, he would let the city of the hook and take his losses in Centro Ybor just like an average investor who made a bad choice would have to.

That’s not likely to happen, of course, since Mel knew going in that his “investment” was safe, guaranteed by the FDWC (Friends of Dick Welfare Corporation, aka Tampa). People like him, folks who claim to be conservatives, yet get fat off of questionable government subsidies and then get rewarded for their thefts with cushy government jobs, have usually brainwashed themselves into truly believing that they are somehow deserving of this public largesse.

I say we stop payments to Centro Ybor. Let it default on its mortgage, and let the bank have the damn place. Nobody around here likes it enough to visit anyway.

Florida fights to keep innocent man jailed

Via Florida Politics, The Daytona Beach News-Journal tells thestory of an innocent man who is serving time because the state will not admit to a mistake. Our criminal justice system is full of stories like this. Is it any wonder that enlightened groups like The International Democratic People’s Uhuru Movement are calling for reform?

If you think the mission of our justice system is to seek out the truth, try telling that to Wilton Dedge. He has spent the last 22 years, more than half his life, locked in prison. The great state of Florida wants to keep him there, despite the strongest scientific evidence that Dedge didn't commit the rape for which he was convicted.

For three years, prosecutors have known about a DNA test that pointed toward a different assailant, yet they have vigorously opposed any efforts to free Dedge or get him a new trial.

Just last month, an assistant attorney general told incredulous appellate judges that Dedge's guilt or innocence was irrelevant. The issue, she said, was the timing -- not the outcome -- of the DNA test.

The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Editorials

The Justice Project

International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement

Residents demonstrate in St. Pete

In Pinellas County, the police keep shooting black men dead, and the city of St. Petersburg is pressing ahead with a vigorous defense of their 1996 killing of TyRon Lewis, despite the fact that one of their own high ranking officers says that the officer involved did not have to kill the kid.

Officer Jim Knight shot 18-year-old Lewis three times Oct. 24, 1996, after pulling him over for speeding at 18th Avenue S and 16th Street. The shooting sparked two nights of civil disturbances.

Lewis' mother, Pamela Lewis, filed the wrongful death lawsuit and is seeking undisclosed compensatory damages in excess of $15,000.

On Monday, a jury of three men and three women, one of whom is black, was picked, and openings statements were heard before Judge Horace A. Andrews in St. Petersburg.

Attorneys for Lewis' family will begin calling witnesses today. Expected to testify during the proceedings is police Maj. Cedric Gordon, who believed Knight had plenty of time to remove himself from danger.

The most recent killing happened May 2, and protesters gathered last night to mark both events:

Dozens of police officers in riot gear converged on Midtown and parts of Childs Park late Wednesday to quell a disturbance in which motorists were pelted with rocks and bottles, a car was set on fire and sporadic gunfire was reported.

Five or six people were injured, and four or five people were arrested, police said.

Police blocked the intersection of 34th Street and 15th Avenue S just after 10 p.m. One man reportedly was beaten by a crowd, but the motivation for the violence was unclear.

"The one thing that really concerns all of us is sporadic gunfire," said police spokesman Bill Doniel.

Police were first called about 9:30 p.m. to 18th Avenue S regarding a crowd of 50 to 100 people carrying signs, shouting and marching toward 34th Street.

The International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement in St. Petersburg, an activist group known for its antipolice platform, was demonstrating against the May 2 fatal shooting of Marquell McCullough by two Pinellas deputies.

They compared it with the 1996 police shooting of TyRon Lewis, which sparked two nights of civil disturbances.

A trial is under way in a lawsuit Lewis' mother filed against the city in the death of her son.

An Uhuru spokesman called the violence Wednesday and into the early hours of today a "rebellion" and blamed Mayor Rick Baker for not settling the Lewis lawsuit before trial.

"The people are angry and outraged," said Chimurenga Waller, an Uhuru leader. "The mayor incited this rebellion."

News reports are breathlessly describing a disturbance, but it sounds like residents were just blowing off a little steam. I have no doubt that a few people got ugly, especially once the police made their presence felt, but this was far from a riot, and there may well have been no disturbance at all if not for the incendiary presence of the murderous police.

Also, if not for the Uhuru movement, St. Pete’s black population would be even more marginalized than they are right now. Calling Uhuru an “antipolice” movement is like saying that peace activists “hate the troops”. Uhuru fights abuse and murder carried out by the police against black and other socially powerless groups. Note to St. Pete Times: The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement has its own web site. The home page shouts “Self-determination is the highest form of Democracy” and the InPDUM platform calls for the following:

1. We Demand National Democratic Rights and Self-Determination for African People in the U.S. and Around the World.

2. We Demand Community Control of the Police in the African Community and the Immediate Withdrawal of the Terroristic Police and Military Forces from the African Community.

3. We Demand Community Control of the Schools and Mandatory African History in Public Schools.

4. We Demand African Community Control of Health Care.

5. We Demand Community Control of Housing.

6. We Demand the Removal of Parasitic Merchants and Slumlords from the African Community.

Perhaps “pro-community” would be a better description than “antipolice”, especially since most white people in St. Pete already quiver in fear at the mere thought of a self-empowered black community.

Glass eating Deputies file suit

Two Deputies were eating at McDonald’s when they discovered tiny bits of glass mixed in with the onions on their burgers. Only 17 employees were in the restaurant at the time, so the list of suspects was, shall we say, limited. But the case was never solved.

Two Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies who said they were fed shards of glass in their McDonald's cheeseburgers filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the restaurant, its parent company and its local holding company.

The lawsuit claims the businesses were negligent for hiring employees who would put glass in a meal and should have more carefully inspected the food.

``It's really sad when you think these law enforcement people are out there protecting our community and they can't even go into a restaurant without getting targeted,'' said Barry Cohen, the attorney representing both deputies.

About 5 p.m. July 10, Stuart O'Shannon and Daniel Witt stopped at the McDonald's at 920 E. Fowler Ave. The two uniformed deputies were the only customers in the restaurant.

As O'Shannon ate his burger, he started choking, then began to spit up blood. He opened the bun and saw small shards of clear glass mixed in with the chopped onions, the lawsuit states. Witt also ate some of the glass but was not injured as severely, Cohen said.
......

No one has been arrested in the incident, Cohen said. About 17 employees were interviewed by detectives that night, sheriff's officials said.

The fact that no arrests have ever been made in this case is bizarre.

I see two possible explanations. First, an employee may have intentionally targeted the Deputies, stealthily inserted the glass into their burgers, and somehow avoided detection during the ensuing investigation. Not all that likely, when you consider that the Sheriff’s Office had the restaurant locked down for hours after the incident and that they had a very limited pool of suspects.

The other, much more likely scenario, is that the Deputies did this to themselves. I have seen no evidence to back this theory, but it makes a lot of sense. Both Deputies noticed this glass before doing much damage to themselves. No employees have ever been charged, despite a thorough investigation. McDonald’s has very deep pockets and may even settle this lawsuit out of court rather than risk negative publicity.

Stay tuned.

Byrd aide destroys public records

Johnnie Byrd’s Chief of staff, a lawyer who ought to know better, has apparently been deleting public record emails from her computers for quite some time.

House Speaker Johnnie Byrd's top aide deleted hundreds of e-mails in the last two days of the legislative session, a practice questioned by a leading open records advocate and the next speaker of the House.

Chief of staff P.K. Jameson, a lawyer and the most powerful staff member in the House, said she routinely deletes e-mails, sometimes from her computer at home, because she does not consider them public record.

"I don't keep my e-mails ever because I get such a large volume of them every day during the session," Jameson said Wednesday. "The kind of stuff that was in there was a lot of "please hear this bill' kind of stuff, and after session, those are of no value."

The deletions became known when the St. Petersburg Times requested all e-mails received by Jameson and Byrd on the session's final two days, April 29 and 30, when the House did most of its most important work, passing or defeating dozens of major bills.

Some lawmakers were so desperate to get their bills on the calendar they fired off e-mails to the speaker's office. Hundreds of Floridians sent e-mails on many issues.

More than 1,000 e-mails were retrieved from Byrd's computer, but Jameson had none. She deleted all of them by May 1, the day after the session ended.

"It's unbelievable," said Barbara Petersen of the First Amendment Foundation. "I think it's a violation of law."

The probable next House speaker, Republican Allan Bense of Panama City, also questioned the practice. "If it was intentional, I have some real problems with it," Bense said.

Closing the barn door...

Ok. 22nd Street has been made a little safer. Now, let's work on installing sidewalks and other pedestrian necessities on our other busy roads.

County road crews have nearly completed pedestrian improvements along North 22nd Street near the University Area Community Center where a hit-and-run accident claimed the lives of two young brothers six weeks ago.

Silk flowers and teddy bears linger as a makeshift memorial to the boys. Just steps away, a new traffic signal with a pedestrian crosswalk has been installed and is expected to be activated next week. New speed humps force motorists to observe the new 20 mph speed limit.

``It definitely makes everybody slow down,'' Varissa Caldwell said. She lives near the community center, and she said she feels safer crossing the street.

The improvements came too late to save 13-year-old Bryant Wilkins and his brother Durontae, 3. The boys were struck and killed as they attempted to cross the street March 31. Their brother and sister also were hit. Schoolteacher Jennifer Porter has been charged with leaving the scene of an accident with a fatality in connection with the incident.

True confessions

SFGate:

Apparel marketer Gap Inc. conceded Wednesday the global manufacturing network it uses to make its clothes offers low paying work under often hazardous conditions.

In an unusual report, the clothier said it found a range of workplace violations in thousands of inspections in 2003 of the more than 3,000 factories worldwide that produce goods for Gap. The violations included improper storage of hazardous or combustible materials, machinery that lacked "some operational safety devices" and inadequate first aid and fire safety, according to the report.

Officials at San Francisco-based Gap have previously defended their relationships with plants in about 50 countries that supply its Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic chains, saying they abided by the company's "ethical sourcing" policy which pledged fair treatment of workers.

But in the new report, Gap said, "Few factories, if any, are in full compliance all of the time."

Coming soon to a theater near you

'Fahrenheit 911'

Miramax Films said on Wednesday it has reached a deal with Miramax's owners, the Walt Disney Co., allowing it to find a new distributor for director Michael Moore's controversial documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which Disney refused to distribute.

"We are very happy that Disney has agreed to sell 'Fahrenheit 911' to Bob and Harvey," Miramax spokesman Matthew Hiltzik said in a statement, referring to Miramax co-chiefs Harvey and Bob Weinstein.

Under the agreement, the Weinstein brothers would acquire the rights to the film that chronicles America's response to the Sept. 11 attacks and looks at links between the family of President Bush and prominent Saudis, including the family of Osama bin Laden.

Hiltzik said the Weinsteins are providing a "term sheet" to Disney based on a similar deal for a previous, controversial Miramax film "Dogma," and that the brothers "look forward to promptly completing this transaction."

The Weinsteins would then be free to find a new distributor to release the documentary into theaters, possibly as soon as July.

Thank Disney for the free publicity. See you at the movies!

Wining hearts and minds

The following is via Eschaton, and is certified NOT to be an Internet hoax:

All:

As many of you know, I am currently in the apolitical position of Army public affairs specialist in Afghanistan. I only recently arrived, after waiting for 2.5 months at Ft. Riley, Kansas, but that's another issue. I'm writing you all today because I'm going to take many of you up on your offers and rudely ask a favor of those who made no offer.

When I first mentioned on my blog, Nitpicker, that I was going to be deployed, a large number of you asked how you could help me, what I would need for Afghanistan. The truth is, there's not much. However, I just went on my first mission with a civil affairs group and found a way you might be able to help me out.

It seems that the children of Afghanistan want nothing more than they want a pen.

It was explained to me that the villages through which I traveled (near Kandahar, where I'm based) are so poor that a pen is like a scholarship to these children. They desperately want to learn but, without a pen, they simply won't. It's a long story. I won't bore you with it. Trust me, though, when I say that it would be a big deal if even a few of you could put up the call for pens for me. Anyone interested in helping out could either send some directly to me or go to these sites and send them, where you can find them for as cheap as $.89 a dozen.

You can send them to me at this address:

Terry L. Welch
105th MPAD
Kandahar Public Affairs Office
APO AE 09355

The links he included are OfficeMax.com, which has an easy way to send to an APO address, and OfficeDepot.com, which requires that you email apo-fpoorders@officedepot.com with your order details and a callback number.

Bush knew

Talking Points Memo:

...The Baltimore Sun quotes Colin Powell as saying that "we kept the president informed of the concerns that were raised by the ICRC and other international organizations as part of my regular briefings of the president, and advised him that we had to follow these issues, and when we got notes sent to us or reports sent to us ... we had to respond to them, and the president certainly made it clear that that’s what he expected us to do." ......

Not only does that contradict what the White House and the president have said. It contradicts the testimony of one of Don Rumsfeld's principal deputies from only yesterday.

US kicks ass in Karbala

Juan Cole:

AP is reporting heavy fighting in Karbala between Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and US forces, with the Shiite militiamen taking heavy casualties, some 25 estimated dead. The US used heavy firepower in the sacred Shiite city, destroying half of the historic al-Mukhayyam Mosque not so far from the shrine of the Prophet's martyred grandson, Imam Husain. For Shiites, this is as though a Muslim army was fighting in Vatican City and damaged a Renaissance-era church near the basilica of St. Peter. You wonder if the US can survive its victory in Karbala.

I'm sure that the mosque was acting in a threatening manner toward our liberating troops...

Super Patriot Fundamentalist Freak

Rumor has it that Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, infamous for uttering the phrase “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol”, is involved in the Iraq torture scandal.

Gitmo General at heart of prison torture scandal

Juan Cole:

"Taguba said that when control of the prison was turned over to military intelligence officials, they had authority over the military police who were guarding prisoners. But Stephen Cambone, the Pentagon's undersecretary for intelligence, said that was incorrect, that authority for the handling of detainees had remained with the MPs. "

What is going on here is that Taguba is giving an honest and faithful account of what happened. He says that the militiary intelligence guys got command control of the MPs. Cambone knows that this is against army regulations and should be denied, not openly admitted. Either way, Taguba is right that this is what happened.

WaPo:

The U.S. general who was in charge of running prisons in Iraq told Army investigators earlier this year that she had resisted decisions by superior officers to hand over control of the prisons to military intelligence officials and to authorize the use of lethal force as a first step in keeping order -- command decisions that have come in for heavy criticism in the Iraq prison abuse scandal.

Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, head of the 800th Military Police Brigade, spoke of her resistance to the decisions in a detailed account of her tenure furnished to Army investigators. It places two of the highest-ranking Army officers now in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, at the heart of decision-making on both matters.

Karpinski has been formally admonished by the Army for her actions in Iraq. She said both men overruled her concerns about the military intelligence takeover and the use of deadly force.
......

Karpinski said the decision about transferring control of the prison to military intelligence officials was broached at a September 2003 meeting with Miller, who was then in charge of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, known colloquially as "Gitmo." Miller had come to Iraq at the insistence of top political officials in the Pentagon, who were frustrated by the meager intelligence coming from prisoners. Two weeks ago, he was appointed to reform the U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.
......

Karpinski recalled that Miller told her he wanted to "Gitmo-ize" the prison -- a concept that critics have said opened the door to the use of aggressive interrogation techniques suited to loosening the tongues of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo, not Iraqis in a common jail. Miller said through a military spokesman yesterday that he does not recall using the word "Gitmo-ize."

Bush's "successful" foreign policy

Kos on how the neocon plan to ignore Afghanistan and draw terrorists to Iraq (the “flypaper” theory) is, unfortunately, working just fine:

And in the process, the killing of thousands of innocent men, women and children by errant American bombs, artillery shells, mortars, and bullets have swelled the recruiting offices of every militia and terrorist organization in the Mideast, in and out of Iraq. Congrats with that as well. You can't have flypaper if you don't have an enemy shooting at you. So we energized our existing enemies and gave rise to new ones who didn't seem to understand that "collateral damage" is acceptable in war.

And the abuse of Iraqi prisoners -- up to 90 percent of which could be innocent according to the Red Cross -- just added fuel to the fire.

So no, the prison abuse didn't cause Berg's horrific murder. Bush's (inept) War, in all its glory, did. The Neocon agenda, in all its folly, did. The war cheerleaders now trying to use this for propaganda purposes, in all their idiocy, did.

Congrats. Your war spirals ever out of control. Good luck trying to wash the blood out of your hands.

The moral price of occupation

YellowTimes.org

The shock over torturing Iraqi prisoners is all a show. How many people reading this believe that torturing Iraqis is new? How many people believe that this was just an isolated incident of six wayward soldiers who had not been trained properly?

There are twenty open cases of systematic torture under investigation that we know of right now. But this is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Americans are coming face-to-face with what occupation means. Succinctly put; occupation destroys the moral fiber of both the occupied and occupier.

French television got a hold of stolen footage from an American helicopter "blowing away" a few of the occupied. Using its 30 mm guns, a scrambling Iraqi holding "a tube- like implement" was severely wounded. He was crawling, apparently no threat to anyone anymore (30 mm caliber are extremely destructive to human flesh) and the helicopter circled over him.

We next hear the words, "Hit him"...and the wounded Iraqi moved no more. Occupation is a dirty business. Rules of engagement are thrown out the window, especially when the occupied have a different color skin, have a different religion, and everything about them is, well, different.

Succumbing to the savage

Ben Tripp

America has fallen prey to the savage inside it. How did it happen? The same way it always does. Savage retribution for a savage act. Abstractions like honor, patriotism, and divine mission were brought out to screen the beast from view. An opportunity to kill was presented. Vengeance against the brown savage from Mesopotamia! Freedom! Terror! Madness. All our justifications for war were nothing more than drapery on the dragon. But they were enough to validate the claim that somebody, somewhere, needed to be slaughtered, raped, destroyed, their goods despoiled, their homeland taken away. Because we are still savages - something the older empires understood of themselves, and thus drew our scorn as we rushed into this campaign - we Americans were eager to strike out at the enemy, whoever that was suggested to be. Armed with righteousness, we triumphed.

But the amateurs in command of our own civilization refused to acknowledge the savage, because they are his slaves. They turned their back on the decades of detailed effort required to wrestle the savage back into its cage. They believed the mad notion that entropy would work in their favor. Now we find an American schoolgirl tugging at the leash around a naked, groveling war prisoner's neck. We find torture and cruelty for no other purpose than that it was not forbidden. We find more than a hundred thousand of our sons and daughters in a land without rules, without morals, without civilization - because we took it all away and turned our backs. The leader of that country was barbaric, but his land was known as "the Cradle of Civilization" for thousands of years. We dismantled the civilization ourselves, deemed it imperfect, replaced it with nothing, expected a new civilization to grow like a scab over the wound. Unless we find the will to resist history, the next civilization to fall to the savage inside us will be our own.

US torture in Afghanistan comes to light

NYT

A former Afghan police colonel gave a graphic account in an interview this week of being subjected to beating, kicking, sleep deprivation, taunts and sexual abuse during about 40 days he spent in American custody last summer. He also said he had been repeatedly photographed, often while naked.

"I swear to God, those photos shown on television of the prison in Iraq — those things happened to me as well," the former officer, Sayed Nabi Siddiqui, 47, said in the interview on Sunday at his home in the village of Sheikho, on the edge of the eastern town of Gardez.

His account could not be independently verified, but members of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission accompanied a reporter during the interview and said his story matched the one given to them last fall, shortly after his release and long before the abuse at the Abu Ghraib near Baghdad came to light.

The commission, which was set up by the transitional government of President Hamid Karzai in 2002 and receives money from the United States Congress and other foreign donors, has in recent months received 44 complaints against various actions by American forces.

Those include several on the abuse of detainees who have alleged rough and degrading treatment, including being stripped naked and doused with cold water, even before the pictures of prisoner abuse emerged in Iraq. Afghan military and police officials say they have heard similar stories from detainees and their families.

The torture of prisoners started with the war on terror. Since Iraq was justified as a war against terrorists, the Pentagon, and most likely Don Rumsfeld himself, had no problem in authorizing Afghanistan style torture for POWs in Iraq.

We have no moral authority left. Our actions are the best recruiting tools a terrorist could ask for.

Could Bush have prevented Nick Berg's brutal death?

So, who is this Zarqawi guy who is being credited with the brutal slaying of Nick Berg in Iraq? He’s the same guy that pResdient Bush decided not to kill or capture before the war, because that might have weakened Bush’s argument for invading a sovereign nation which had absolutely nothing to do with 911.

...NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself - but never pulled the trigger.

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.

The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.

“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.

The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.

The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late - Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. “Here’s a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we’re suffering as a result inside Iraq” Cressey added.

And despite the Bush administration’s tough talk about hitting the terrorists before they strike, Zarqawi’s killing streak continues today.

Food Not Bombs wins right to feed hungry

SPT

The group, which says it's part of an international revolutionary movement, declared victory this week against Mayor Pam Iorio. It got Iorio to back away from a ban on feeding the homeless in city parks.

Iorio's administration persuaded prosecutors to drop criminal charges against protesters who were arrested when they fed the homeless at Massey Park downtown.

For now, the city also will allow the group to feed the hungry at city parks.

But the group's celebrations could be fleeting.

City lawyers will rewrite a city ordinance that governs how people can use parks to include specific, clear guidelines on what's allowed.

The new language could give city officials stronger legal authority to prohibit the group from feeding the homeless without providing security, bathrooms and insurance.

City Attorney David Smith said Monday that he doesn't want to create another conflict with Food Not Bombs.

But the ordinance will have clear rules designed to keep parks clean and safe that everyone will have to follow, he said.

"I don't see why they would have a problem with it," Smith said.

Smith has asked a lawyer for the protesters to help him craft the new ordinance.

The lawyer, University of Florida law professor Joe Jackson, said the city struck a "cooperative tone."

His clients were arrested on trespassing charges when they refused to follow police orders to leave the park. They were distributing food to the homeless in a park, which violated city policy.

Iorio originally defended the arrests, saying the city needed to enforce the ban to keep parks inviting for everyone.

Monday, she said she backed down on advice from city lawyers who thought the ordinance needed "improvements."

The old ordinance offered no guidelines for how city parks could be used. Instead, it delegated power to the parks director, who had blanket authority to do what he wanted. The broad authority to curb speech in parks would not have won a court challenge, Jackson said.

Under the current city rules, people applying for a permit to use a park had to explain how the event would reflect positively on the city, Jackson said. Applicants also had to give city officials copies of any literature that would be distributed at parks.

More from the archives.

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Council throws token to MLK supporters

The Zephyrhills City Council has voted for a condescending compromise on renaming Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue:

Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue signs will remain in Zephyrhills as a tribute to the slain civil rights leader, but Monday night the street's official name was restored to Sixth Avenue.

The compromise marked an end to months of debate over what the street should be called, and, city officials hope, a beginning to an open dialogue among residents that can heal the fractured city.

``It's a victory in the fact that we were able to get our voices heard,'' said Elaine Jones, a member of the Democratic Black Caucus of Pasco County. ``But we still have a long way to go.``

That distance was evidenced by the diverse opinions of the more than 200 people who attended Monday's meeting. One speaker criticized King for his anti-Vietnam War stance, while others accused Zephyrhills residents of being racist. Speakers were alternately booed and applauded, and Council President Clyde Bracknell had to call the meeting to order several times.

The council was initially voting on a resolution that would return Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue to Sixth Avenue, but Councilwoman Elizabeth Geiger amended it to allow the King signs to remain. She was supported by Bracknell and Councilwomen Cathi Compton and Celia Graham.

Councilwoman Gina King, who campaigned on her promise to bring the renaming issue back before the council and did so at a meeting April 26, voted against the compromise. She had previously spoken in favor of leaving the signs up, but now believes the signs would only serve as a reminder of the bitterness.

``I'm not sure what good it can do,'' she said after the vote. ``But if it makes the members of the black community happy, I'm supportive of it.``

Those who supported honoring King's name plan to continue to work toward positive change.

However, making a political statement will be difficult for the city's black citizens, which according to 2000 U.S. Census figures, only number 340. Blacks make up 3.1 percent of the city's 11,000 residents. Fewer than half are registered voters.

The renaming issue, which has garnered national attention including a story in Monday's New York Times, has united and ignited black residents as well as those who supported the Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue name. For the past week and a half, daily protests at city hall attracted dozens of people from around Pasco County who disagreed with the decision to take back the street name.

There's talk of finding people to run against Bracknell and Compton, who have voted in favor of the Sixth Avenue name. They are up for re-election next year. Jones also said there will be a push to get more black voters registered and educated on the issues.

Hopefully, through organizing and followup, enough voters can be motivated by this to put some new people into the Zephyrhills City Council in November. See, although this is a partial victory for the racists (don’t be distracted by the Vietnam argument - this is all about racism), the big bright light that has been thrown on this issue through national press attention could well result in the scattering of the cockroaches who do their best work in dark and greasy backward corners.

Like, omigosh: FCC responds to fundamentalist pressure

The NY Times tells us about the strict but incredibly vague FCC rules for broadcasters and how a chill is falling on free speech:

Television and radio broadcasters say they have little choice but to practice a form of self-censorship, swinging the pendulum of what they consider acceptable in the direction of extreme caution. A series of recent decisions by the F.C.C., as well as bills passed in Congress, have put them on notice that even the unintentional broadcast of something that could be considered indecent or obscene could result in stiffer fines or even the revocation of their licenses.

"If you're asking if there has been overcaution on the part of broadcasters today, I think the answer is yes," said Jeff Smulyan, the chairman and chief executive of Emmis Communications, which owns 16 television stations and 27 radio stations in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and other cities. "Everyone is going to err on the side of caution. There is too much at stake. People are just not sure what the standards really are."
......

Michael J. Copps, an F.C.C. commissioner who has been one of the strongest critics of media companies, acknowledged that some broadcasters appeared to be overreacting. But, he said, "I applaud the effort at self policing."

He also disputed the notion that the commission's standards on indecency were too vague. "I think most of the things we're dealing with right now are pretty clear, from the standpoint of being indecent," he said. "There's enough stuff out there that shouldn't be on."

Still, Mr. Copps said that the broadcasters themselves could resolve any ambiguities they perceive by drafting and adopting what he described as a "voluntary code of broadcaster conduct."

James P. Steyer, founder and chief executive of Common Sense Media, a nonpartisan organization that advocates better programming aimed at children and families, said that "a few extreme, silly examples" of media companies being perhaps too cautious were far preferable to what he considers the "completely unregulated environment" of the recent past.

Completely unregulated environment? Has this guy ever heard of a remote control or an on/off switch? Not everyone wants to watch fare that is suitable for a 5 year old. The LA Times has more on just who is doing all of this complaining:

Across the Potomac from Capitol Hill, on the second floor of a red brick-and-glass building, Caroline Eichenberg toils away in her homey cubicle, watching television. Monday through Friday, 7 1/2 hours a day, she keeps tabs on dramas, sitcoms and reality shows.

It would be a slacker's dream job in any other workplace. Here at the Parents Television Council, though, it's called intelligence gathering. In the battle for America's airwaves, Eichenberg and her fellow analysts deliver the data to wage an increasingly effective, and controversial, assault on prime-time "indecency."

The half a dozen analysts are all college graduates, usually between 22 and 30 and unmarried, like Eichenberg. Many of them are Christians and hold ideals of making a difference. They've grown up with TV and, despite a mix of political affiliations, have adopted the council's mission: "To restore a sense of responsibility and decency to the entertainment industry."

Though their group is officially nonpartisan, they share an open work space with researchers for the Media Research Center, a partisan organization that alleges a liberal political slant in the national press.

The television council analysts' work drives torrents of testimony, reports and e-mails that have clearly grabbed the attention of broadcasters, advertisers, members of Congress and government regulators at the Federal Communications Commission. The group claimed its first big victory in March when the FCC responded to its persistent lobbying and ruled that a vulgarity casually uttered by U2's Bono during the 2003 Golden Globe Awards violated indecency and profanity prohibitions.

That came on the heels of Janet Jackson's breast-baring Super Bowl halftime dance; by the organization's own estimate, a quarter of the 530,828 complaints that poured in afterward came from its members or those informed of the performance by the group's e-mail alert. While many broadcasters now delay live shows or pursue a course of self-censorship, Congress is poised to adopt huge new fines and regulations that might extend even into cable.

Troubled by the crackdown, some say the Parents Television Council is creating a skewed and unduly conservative impression of the public's taste in television. Others say its statistics, gathered here and later posted online, should be viewed with skepticism, as its methodology does not meet academic standards.

"They are, in a large way, setting the agenda at the FCC," says Robert Corn-Revere, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who is working to undo the council's victory regarding the Bono decision. Corn-Revere represents a coalition of broadcasters and free-speech activists — including the American Civil Liberties Union and Viacom, which owns CBS — that is challenging the ruling on 1st Amendment grounds.

He suggests that the council, rather than representing most Americans, as it claims, actually churns out complaints that represent its own socially conservative agenda.

As an example, he points to figures from the FCC: In 2000, commissioners received 111 complaints about 101 shows. Last year, they fielded 240,350 complaints, most of them about only nine programs, all of which were targeted on the group's website. (Sample wording: "Flood the FCC with thousands of indecency complaints." "Your urgent action is needed!" "Buffy the Vampire Slayer Mocks Christian Faith During Holy Week.")

FCC Chairman Michael Powell clearly had the organization in mind recently when he told members of the National Assn. of Broadcasters in Las Vegas that he can't help but respond to those who "spam" him with complaints. "You get an advocacy group that purports to speak for a huge audience and they will have the members write you and the members have heard what that association tells them is the problem…. There's a tendency in our system to focus on the part making all the noise."
......

Analysts, however, also monitor edgy cable shows like "The Shield" and "Nip/Tuck" because they know the networks likely will also push the envelope. And while cable content is hard to attack directly, a new front has lately opened up regarding subscriptions. Along with others, the council is targeting cable companies' practice of charging for a package that includes some channels parents might find objectionable.
......

Founder and president Brent Bozell is known in conservative circles as a feisty commentator and founder of the right-leaning Media Research Center. The nephew of William F. Buckley Jr., Bozell is also the executive director of a political action committee that funds conservative candidates.
......

Bozell formed the council nine years ago; he tightened his focus two years ago on the FCC, calling it a "toothless lion." While analysts from the council and the Media Research Center occupy separate ends of the same office floor, Bozell says the council is strictly nonpartisan. "The rule of thumb would be: We would work with anyone we could find common ground with as long as everybody agreed to check his political guns at the door," he says.

"This is about culture; it's not about politics."

Bozell calls himself "staunchly pro-life, staunchly against gay rights," and while the religious right is naturally allied, so, he says, are some socially conservative Democrats.

As evidence of its bipartisan support, the council often cites the late Steve Allen, who served as honorary chairman emeritus of its advisory board, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a member of that board until his nomination in 2000 for vice president.
......

Bozell has been forced at least once to concede that his information can be wrong. In 2002, the council settled a $3.5-million lawsuit with World Wrestling Entertainment regarding statements linking the deaths of four children to the "WWE Smackdown!" television program. Bozell issued a personal letter of apology.

As the organization has grown more influential, its methods have been criticized as unscientific by some in the media research community.

The council's data don't meet academic standards, says Dale Kunkel, a UC Santa Barbara communications professor, who conducted the largest study so far on media violence. Multiple coders are required in an academic setting to double-check one another's judgments, he says. And strict definitions are crucial.
......

"If we are watching something outside of here, and they say a curse word, we automatically are like, 'I've got to log that,' " Eichenberg says. On the other hand, after two years, Eichenberg says she is rarely shocked. Occasionally, though, "there will be something, and you're like, omigosh."

“Cause like, you know, the government is good as long as it is practicing censorship or ignoring science...”

A few rogue soldiers "part of the process"

Reuters

The Red Cross saw U.S. troops keeping Iraqi prisoners naked for days in darkness at the Abu Ghraib jail in October, and was told by the intelligence officer in charge it was "part of the process", a leaked report reveals.

The International Committee of the Red Cross also described British troops forcing Iraqi detainees to kneel and stomping on their necks in an incident in which one prisoner died.

The Red Cross said it had repeatedly alerted U.S.-led occupation authorities to practices it described as "serious violations of international humanitarian law" and "in some cases tantamount to torture".

It confirmed the confidential February 4 report, which appeared on the Wall Street Journal website on Monday, was genuine.

The 24-page report concluded that "persons deprived of their liberty face the risk of being subjected to a process of physical and psychological coercion, in some cases tantamount to torture, in the early stages of the internment process".

During a visit to Abu Ghraib in October, Red Cross delegates witnessed "the practice of keeping persons deprived of their liberty completely naked in totally empty concrete cells and in total darkness," the report said.

"Upon witnessing such cases, the ICRC interrupted its visits and requested an explanation from the authorities. The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was 'part of the process'."

It said it met prisoners who were being held naked in complete darkness. Others had been held naked and were allowed to dress, but given only women's underwear.

The Red Cross's visit took place two months before pictures were taken of U.S. troops abusing prisoners, which later led to criminal charges against seven soldiers.

Show-trial ahead

NYT

A 24-year-old military policeman from Pennsylvania will be court-martialed here on May 19, the first American soldier to face trial in the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, military officials said Sunday. In an extraordinary gesture to address outrage over the abuse scandal, the military is permitting broad public access to the trial and will invite the Arab news media.

The policeman, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, who American officials contend took some of the photographs of Iraqi prisoners that captured the abuse as it unfolded, is one of seven American soldiers to face criminal charges and the first to receive a trial date. There were indications that Specialist Sivits had reached a plea agreement with prosecutors in exchange for leniency at sentencing.

The decision to allow a wide level of public access to Specialist Sivits's court-martial appears to reflect a conclusion by American commanders that the abuse and the photographs have severely damaged the credibility of the United States enterprise in Iraq and the country's reputation in the Middle East. While American courts-martial are not usually conducted in secret, it is unusual for the military justice authorities to make them easily accessible to the public.
......

In anticipation of intense interest from around the world, General Kimmitt said military officials might hold the trial in Baghdad's convention center, a spacious building with several auditoriums, in the heavily fortified area known as the Green Zone.

Hersh part 2

A walk in the park

Riverfront park is near my house. I drive by all the time. Two weeks ago on a Sunday, I thought that there must be some kind of organized event winding down, because the parking lot was full of parked police cars, but not many civilians were around. It turns out that the police were intimidating and harassing park goers, most likely due to the fact that any time more than 3 black people get together around here, the white establishment assumes there’s a riot brewing.

Concerned about allegations of police intimidation at downtown Tampa's Riverfront Park, City Council member Kevin White decided to check things out for himself last Sunday.

Residents had complained at last week's City Council meeting that Tampa police officers walked around on a recent Sunday, writing parking tickets and displaying orange bean bag guns.

They said a police helicopter had circled the area.

All this, and there wasn't a single fight or example of inappropriate conduct on display, people said. They blamed the police for targeting Riverfront Park because it has become a popular gathering spot for black people on Sundays, with crowds of up to 3,000.

"If what the citizenry was saying at council was true ... I could not believe that the police department would be walking around with the bean bag shotguns," White, a former police officer, said Thursday. "I did not think that was true. Unfortunately, it was."

Tampa police Chief Stephen Hogue said the bean bag guns are standard equipment for officers' cars. On Sunday, no officers used them. But two weeks ago, about seven officers responded to a call for crowd control at the park and and prepared to use the weapons.

"Two weeks ago, they had their bean bag guns out and they had them out on the edge," Hogue said, adding that officers weren't walking around through the crowd as some park goers alleged.

The reason they pulled the guns out at all: "It was a little bit of a miscommunication," Hogue said.

"They had received a call from the parks department dispatched to them that the park was getting out of control," Hogue said. "I'm sure they pulled them out thinking there was a problem. When they found out there wasn't, they put them away."

Locals say visitors come from as far away as Orlando and Ocala to play basketball, barbecue and congregate at Riverfront Park on Sundays. Near Interstate 275 at N Boulevard and W Cypress Street, the park is easily accessible. And with the summer approaching, park goers expect more people, but don't want unnecessary police presence.

With a crowd so large, White said, having the police at the park is "mandatory." But those officers shouldn't use unnecessary tactics, he said.

White notified Hogue's office about his concerns, saying he planned to investigate the allegations of intimidation.

White said he talked to the chief about complaints about a police helicopter in the area, and Hogue said the pilots had been told not to fly near the area unless called for service.

Connie Burton, 49, of Tampa, called on council members last week to "stand up and do the right thing ... come out there when the people are gathering and see what the people see."

Although White took her up on the offer, Burton said Thursday she's not sure how helpful the visit from White and Hogue will prove.

"African Americans have a right to utilize the park without intimidation," Burton said. "I guess we're in a wait and see mode."

That helicopter: it’s a favorite weapon of intimidation against the poor. My neighborhood is best described as up and crumbling, aspiring toward transitional. Residents around here come in all colors, but most of them are poor. Police helicopters circle within earshot of my house almost constantly. Oftentimes, they are so close that the walls shake.

When I called the police to report a break-in next door, having been alerted by a neighbor, the police came and immediately declared the person who had alerted me to the break-in as the prime suspect. Why? Because he has brown skin, few communication skills, and looks borderline homeless. I spent most of an hour convincing the cops that this person was personally known to me, and that he was here to help. When the cops finally figured out that I was not going to give them an excuse to arrest this person, they closed up their notebooks and hurried to a call of a bar fight down the street. I guess they figured there might be an opportunity to bash some skulls.

Anyway, my point is that the police in Tampa have never been known for their diplomacy, especially when dealing with poor and/or minority residents. Civil rights? If you’re poor, you have none. The police are in charge. Period. Cross them at your peril. And when I say cross them, I mean things as simple as refusing to show an ID when being harassed. See, in this country, we are not yet required to carry our papers everywhere we go.

But if you’re poor, it’s a different story. Big bullies with badges can ruin your life forever. And if they order you to do something, there is no one to stop them from repeatedly and egregiously violating your civil rights. So poor people are required to carry ID, or face arrest for “suspicion” or an open container violation or some other nonsense.

When I attend big marches and demonstrations, there is always a team of “Legal Observers” milling around in the crowd. Their job is to witness actions of police and demonstrators so that they may challenge the official version of events if needed.

Perhaps it’s time to form a group of “Pale Observers,” white people (less likely to be harassed by the police, who thrive on attacking the weak and the poor, but hesitate when they think they might be about to hurt a white person who could have enough economic clout to actually raise a stink) in bright t-shirts with cameras and notebooks to document the constant intimidation of the powerless.

I’m sure the situation at Riverfront park will improve somewhat in the coming weeks, but only because a big bright light is now shining on it. As soon as the City Council members stop paying attention, the police will resume their bullying tactics, and most Tampa residents will just shrug and assume that “those people” must have done “something” to deserve whatever violations of their civil liberties that the police are perpetrating.

Schiavo Law unconstitutional

SP Times

The law pushed by Gov. Jeb Bush to keep a severely brain damaged woman alive is unconstitutional, a Circuit Court judge ruled Thursday. The governor's office filed an immediate appeal.

Pinellas Circuit Court Judge W. Douglas Baird's ruling voided the law passed in October after Terri Schiavo was disconnected, at her husband's order, from the feeding and hydration tube that has kept her alive for more than a decade.

The law allowed Bush to order that tube reconnected, and his filing with the state 2nd District Court of Appeal will keep the tube in place.

Schiavo's husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, has fought a long court battle to carry out what he said were his wife's wishes not to be kept alive artificially. Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, doubt those wishes were made and believe her condition could improve with therapy.

Baird ruled the so-called "Terri's Law" unconstitutional because it violates Terri Schiavo's right to privacy and delegated legislative power to the governor.

Calling the measure "extraordinary," Baird said he assumed the law was passed with good intentions but allowed the government to go too far in overriding a citizen's private medical decisions, plus gave the governor "unbridled discretion."

Responding to the centerpiece of Michael Schiavo's argument against the law - that it violates his wife's right to make her own medical decisions - Baird wrote Terri's Law "in every instance, ignores the existence of this right and authorizes the governor to act according to his personal discretion."

Terri Schiavo, 40, was left severely brain damaged more than 14 years ago after her heart stopped beating because of chemical imbalance brought on by an eating disorder. She left no written directive about her wishes if she were ever incapacitated.

Attorneys for both Bush and the woman's parents said they were not surprised by the ruling, which also ended an effort by the governor for another trial regarding Terri Schiavo's wishes.

"It is profoundly disappointed that the mere bald and naked assertions Mr. Schiavo makes go untested in this proceeding," said Ken Connor, Bush's attorney. "The effect of all of this is that Mr. Schiavo gets to kill his wife through starvation and dehydration if this order is upheld."

The case is likely to go before the Florida Supreme Court and perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court if the governor does not get a chance to question witnesses and bring the matter to trial, Connor said.

Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, said his client was "pleased and grateful."

"This is a very big day for Terri, for the enforcement of Terri's rights," said Felos, who may ask the matter be immediately referred to the Florida Supreme Court to avoid another round of court rulings that either side would surely appeal.

Baird said the governor's argument that he is protecting the disabled doesn't stand up against a Florida Supreme Court opinion that the disabled retain their personal right to privacy. Baird said Bush failed to spell out any compelling state interest adequate to override violating Terri Schiavo's right to privacy.

"The extent to which the governor or the Legislature wants to step in to any particular case ... opens the door for a wide range of invasions of constitutional right to privacy," said Randall Marshall, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who joined with Felos in arguing the case. "And it may be that's what the governor wants to do, is to establish the precedent."

State purging "felons" from voting rolls

Here we go again:

Six months before a presidential election that is again expected to be decided by a narrow margin in Florida, state officials ordered local election supervisors Wednesday to begin purging voter rolls of felons -- a move that may take as many as 40,000 people off the rolls, many of them likely to be black Democrats.

The state Division of Elections is turning the list over to local election supervisors in all 67 counties, and has ordered them to make sure to remove any felons whose voting rights have not been restored. The state says a preliminary check shows as many as 40,000 former felons are still registered to vote.

''As part of our quality assurance testing, felon and clemency information was run against a copy of the current voter registration database and has identified over 40,000 potential felon matches statewide,'' wrote Ed Kast, director of the state Division of Elections, in a memo sent out to election supervisors on Wednesday.

The issue of felon voting became controversial after the contested 2000 presidential election, when critics said Florida used out-of-state lists to purge former felons, taking voting rights away from people who had committed crimes outside the state but had had their voting rights restored in those other states.

During the 2000 election, some local election supervisors refused to purge their rolls based on the state list, saying they had no faith in how the list was compiled.

NEW DATABASE

State election officials said Wednesday they are relying on a new $2 million database developed after the 2000 election fiasco, which saw George W. Bush win Florida by 537 votes. And they reminded local election officials that under a 2001 state law, they must comply and purge anyone who fails to contest the state's information.

A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who oversees the state elections office, defended the new voter list, which is drawn exclusively from Florida arrests.

But some Democratic legislators and liberal groups that sued Florida over the purging of the list in 2000 remain skeptical.

''I'm glad they are using Florida data only and not Texas data,'' said Rep. Chris Smith, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat. ``But it's still disturbing, and I don't trust any numbers that the secretary of state gives.''

One election supervisor, Ion Sancho of Leon County, was suspicious of why state officials are pressing ahead to use the felon list this year.

''Why is the state doing this now?'' said Sancho, who is a Democrat. ``What kind of error rate will come with these lists?''

'MANDATORY' MOVE

Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Hood, said the state is moving ahead with the list because it is ''mandatory'' under state law. She also noted the new list has the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice, which must clear any changes to voting procedures, as well as the NAACP, which in 2001 sued the state over the list used before the presidential election.

''Part of the NAACP settlement was that the Division of Elections use more stringent matching criteria,'' Nash said. ``We feel confident that the same mistakes made in 2000 will not be repeated.''

Adora Obi Nweze, president of the Florida chapter of the NAACP, said the group is ''optimistic'' that there would not be a repeat of what happened in 2000.

''We know the state is capable of making all sorts of errors, they done it before,'' Nweze said. ``We are certainly hoping it won't happen again.''

Florida is one of just a handful of states that does not automatically restore the voting rights of convicted criminals once they leave prison. Instead, felons must ask for the restoration, which in many instances requires approval by the governor and other elected officials.

MANY DEMOCRATS

Any move to eliminate thousands of felons from voter lists would probably aid President Bush and Republican candidates. State records since 1990 show that even though blacks are nowhere near a majority of the state's population, they make up a majority of those serving time in state prisons. And a large majority of blacks traditionally vote Democratic.

Four years ago, Florida came under fire because it hired an Atlanta company to come up with a statewide list of voters that should be purged. One list given out before the 2000 election contained the names of 42,000 voters who were reportedly felons or dead or registered to vote in more than one county.

One lawyer for the People for the American Way Foundation, which participated in the 2001 lawsuit, contended that this list included 2,800 voters from states that automatically restored civil rights.

Nash said Wednesday that the new list has been provided to all 67 election supervisors, but that not all of them have yet reported back their findings to state election officials.

The Ghost Detainees of Abu Ghraib

Via Billmon, a must read:

But the most chilling revelation doesn't have anything directly to do with either the known atrocities or the slapstick soldiering within the prison. The scariest figures described in Taguba's report are the ghosts - specifically, the ghost prisoners:

The various detention facilities operated by the 800th MP Brigade have routinely held persons brought to them by Other Government Agencies (OGAs) without accounting for them, knowing their identities, or even the reason for their detention. The Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center (JIDC) at Abu Ghraib called these detainees “ghost detainees.”

On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of “ghost detainees” (6-8) for OGAs that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) survey team. This maneuver was deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law. (Findings and Recommendations, Part II, No. 33)

This suggests the existence of an entirely off-the-books detention system within Iraq, run by the CIA, (or some other "other government agency") and kept secret not just from the American and Iraqi publics but from the International Red Cross as well.

Jeb! now asks that you bow your head and pray to Christ

If you are not a Christian, you may secretly worship another deity, but be advised that the State of Florida only recognizes one true religion.

Here’s an update (via Americans United) on The National Day of Lies and Hypocrisy (see previous post) and how the State of Florida is helping to push the far right agenda, this time through an “innocent” mistake.

Visitors to an official state Web site Friday found a link to a Christian prayer group that urges people to devote their lives to Jesus Christ.

On the home page of Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice, a link titled "National Day of Prayer" led readers to the Florida Prayer Network. The site encourages people to be baptized, profess their faith in Jesus and allow the Holy Spirit to control their lives.

The site also announced that Christian author Tommy Tenney will speak Thursday at the Capitol in observance of the National Day of Prayer.

Some religious leaders and civil-liberties activists said they were disappointed that a branch of state government would help promote one particular religion -- Christianity. The Web site had no information about other religions.

"Florida has no business promoting prayer events for the National Day of Prayer on any of its official Web sites, any more than it should be promoting an atheist event," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "I was really shocked."

State officials quickly removed the link Friday after they were contacted by The Palm Beach Post, saying it was posted by accident. "That link should not have been there," said Department of Juvenile Justice spokeswoman Catherine Arnold.

The staff was looking up information for National Day of Prayer events at Polk County juvenile justice facilities, Arnold said. A different Christian group will hold rallies next week for juvenile offenders at five Polk County detention and treatment centers and a prayer breakfast for staffers, Arnold said.

"We had the site up and were working on it, and somehow it got posted," Arnold said.

Murtaza Kakli, president of the Muslim Community of Palm Beach County, said he doesn't understand why a state government would link to a Christian site.

"This is not a Christian nation. There are all kinds of religions in this country," said Kakli, an aerospace engineer who lives in Palm Beach Gardens. Kakli didn't see the link before it came down Friday. But sometimes, he said, "These right-wingers, to me, do not seem to be tolerating people other than Christians. And this is not the policy of the government."

William Gralnick, Southeast regional director of the American Jewish Committee in Boca Raton, said the link should not have been posted. "You either advertise everybody or you advertise nobody," he said.

For Gralnick, the state's gaffe raises larger issues with the National Day of Prayer. The annual observance "has become more and more and more a problem for many faith communities because it tends to be so evangelically dominated. We have, all over the country, made appeals, stomped up and down and waved our fingers, saying it can't be a national prayer day and be exclusive," Gralnick said. But every year, he said, Christian pastors say prayers invoking the name of Christ.

The National Day of Prayer was established by Congress in 1952, when the United States wanted to distance itself from Soviet communists. For decades, government and religious leaders have joined at government buildings on the first Thursday in May to bow their heads in prayer.

Any religious group can sponsor a service on the National Day of Prayer. But in reality, many are organized by the National Day of Prayer Task Force.

That group is headed by Shirley Dobson, wife of Christian fundamentalist and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, and raises private money to host the events.

National Day of Lies and Hypocrisy

The Tribune’s feel-good Christian, Michelle Beardon, “reports” on the National Day of Prayer, an event that only godless America-hating heathens could possibly oppose, right?

Today, more than 2 million Americans - including thousands in the Tampa Bay area - are expected to participate in about 40,000 events in observance of the National Day of Prayer.

This year's theme is ``Let Freedom Ring.''

Dozens of local events are planned, including a prayer marathon from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the King of Kings Royalty Theatre in downtown Clearwater, a luncheon at the Tampa Convention Center and a prayer rally in Lykes Gaslight Park in downtown Tampa from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Praying passengers will join pilots and boaters as they fly the skies and cruise the seas of Tampa Bay.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer my pilots to be flying the plane, not praying for guidance.

``Participation seems to have doubled from last year,'' said Bill Malone, co-coordinator of the local effort with his wife, Pam. The Malones run a Clearwater-based ministry.

``The response tells us that people are hurting and feel things are out of control,'' he said. ``They're reaching out to someone who has control.'

The national observance was established by Congress in 1952. Although all of the events are Christian-oriented, Malone emphasized that the day of prayer is for people of all faiths.

Right. The day of prayer is ostensibly for people of all faiths. Funny thing, though: most people of faith don’t need the government to tell them when to pray. And the National Day of Prayer has been taken over by Fundamentalist Christians (shocking, I know).

Congress by federal law has designated the first Thursday in May as an annual National Day of Prayer. (May 6 this year.)

In recent years, the event has been dominated by the National Day of Prayer Task Force, a Religious Right group based in Colorado Springs. The task force is chaired by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson, and operates from the offices of Focus on the Family.

Dobson’s NDP Task Force sponsors thousands of prayer day events in congressional offices, at state capitols and other public buildings around the country. The Dobsons also visit the White House for a ceremony with President George W. Bush. The speakers and topics at Task Force events are chosen to promote the Religious Right’s “Christian nation” viewpoint.

Observes Americans United Executive Director Barry W. Lynn, “The Dobsons depict their prayer day events as merely an ecumenical worship service. But in fact, they are promoting a fundamentalist political agenda that most Americans reject.

“These events are carefully managed to give the general public the impression that the government has endorsed the Religious Right’s religious and political viewpoint,” Lynn continued. “It’s exactly the opposite of what our nation’s Founders intended.”

So, The National Day of Prayer is actually a vehicle that the religious right uses to drive their agenda. Here’s more from Americans United for Separation of Church and State:

Material on the NDP Task Force website promotes controversial Religious Right political views. The site encourages Americans to pray for leaders in five areas government, the media, the education system, churches and families.

The education section bashes public education and repeats common Religious Right misstatements about schools, asserting, “Many of our schools and universities are minimizing traditional subjects such as history and math, and are instead promoting a radical social agenda. For example, some schools begin teaching homosexual propaganda to kindergartners. As a result, our children are entering the ‘real world’ knowing more about politically correct ideas than they do about reading or science! Pray that your schools will get ‘back to basics’ when it comes to educating our children, instilling the leaders of tomorrow with a respect for the Judeo-Christian values upon which our nation was founded.”

The media section assumes widespread bias against “Christians,” asserting, “We can also pray for the Christian individuals in the news and entertainment industries, asking the Lord to grant them strength and perseverance as they endeavor to let their lights shine in what is often an environment hostile to those who voice their belief in Christ.”

This year’s NDP Task Force Honorary Chairman is Oliver North, a longtime Religious Right activist and former radio talk-show host known for his outspoken far-right views.

Dubya does nothing

FDR Harry Truman (Thanks to alert reader Mustang Bobby at Bark Bark Woof Woof for the correction. I should check my facts before I make them up.) is famous for saying “The buck stops here.” With Bush, it’s more like “The buck$ stop here.” The only thing he seems willing to take responsibility for is his fundraising successes. He certainly is not taking responsibility for the rapes and torture and murders that American troops are engaging in. Nor is he expecting Donald Rumsfeld to take responsibility.

President Bush said in the first of two interviews with Arab satellite television stations today that mistreatment of Iraqis at a Baghdad prison by members of the American military was "abhorrent," but that he wanted the people of Iraq to know that it did not represent "the America that I know."

"Everything is not perfect," and mistakes are made, he said, adding, "But in a democracy, as well, those mistakes will be investigated, and people will be brought to justice."
......

He also said that he retained confidence in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. He said he had talked to Mr. Rumsfeld earlier today and told him to "find the truth and tell the Iraqi people and the world the truth. We have nothing to hide."

Television images of prisoners being subjected to acts of humiliation, sexual and otherwise, at Abu Ghraib have been shown worldwide, particularly enraging countries of the Middle East.

Shorter George Bush: “Everything is not perfect, but trust me. Oh, and I’m not going to apologize, nor am I gonna fire any top level people. And we’re gonna keep the prison open, but, hey, we’re not raping as many people as Saddam did, so chill.”

Yeah, that oughta win over those enraged countries of the Middle East.

Disney can't handle the truth

Censorship is alive and well: Corporate welfare daddy supreme The Walt Disney Company is worried about its allowance. Disney, through its ownership of Miramax, is refusing to allow Michael Moore’s new documentary “Fahrenheit 911" to be distributed in the US.

Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor.

"Michael Eisner asked me not to sell this movie to (Miramax executive) Harvey Weinstein; that doesn't mean I listened to him," Mr. Emanuel said. "He definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."

This film details business dealings and other ties between the Bush and bin Laden families. It is not expected to be overly complimentary toward Bush and his handling of 911, Iraq, and other crises of his stolen presidency.

Conservative groups have been hounding Disney for over a year about Miramax’s decision to invest in “Fahrenheit 911".

Miramax wants to distribute the film and they are negotiating with their corporate parent big brother to have the documentary released. The goal here seems to be to delay the film until some time after the November elections.

Michael Moore plans to fight Disney, but first there is Cannes:

There is much more to tell, but right now I am in the lab working on the print to take to the Cannes Film Festival next week (we have been chosen as one of the 18 films in competition). I will tell you this: Some people may be afraid of this movie because of what it will show. But there's nothing they can do about it now because it's done, it's awesome, and if I have anything to say about it, you'll see it this summer -- because, after all, it is a free country.

Persistent patterns of incompetence

From IRIN News, a U.N. publication, an interview with Samir Sumaidy, Bush's Iraq's new Minister of Interior: (via The Agonist)

Q: What is your background for the job?

A: I'm a total novice, and the best thing to do is to admit it immediately. I have management ability. I think that is the main thing I bring to this task with the help of Iraqi experts and (US-led administrators) the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). I'm looking at this in terms of management and the best way to marshal the resources available for a specific task.

140 in April, 19 already in May

Jason Schmidt is dead, just like 759 other American soldiers. 140 American troops died in April.

...Schmidt, 23, was killed last week in Iraq. ......

``I'd put on the news and sit here and cry for the loss of every man and woman that was killed in a needless war over what? Oil,'' (Schmidt's mother, Lenore) Roberts said. ``I have major bitterness. I do.''
......

Schmidt's tour in Iraq was to conclude April 12, but days before he was to return to his Army base in Germany, the tour was extended three months. Schmidt had to postpone his wedding to his German fiancee, Stephanie Kohler.

Schmidt's grandfather, John Schmidt of Cortez, is a retired Air Force colonel who fought in Vietnam. On Monday, he questioned whether Justin Schmidt should have been put back on the front line after his tour was extended, and he questioned the war itself.

``You can't help but question whether we should be there. I don't think the United States can be the world's police,'' he said. ``War is the end of the line. That's when you start shooting and killing. That's a terrible thing. I think anyone who's been involved in a war wants to avoid it at any cost.''

Note to aWol: getting your teeth cleaned by a NAtional Guard dentist does not qualify as having been involved.

Fallujah excuses nothing

Juan Cole points out the flawed logic in the argument that the Fallujah mercenary killings somehow justify creating hundreds or thousands of Iraqi victims of American violence:

The four dead American commandos at Fallujah, who were not uniformed military, have already occasioned a brutal siege of the city and over 600 Iraqi deaths, some proportion of them civilian. Shall they now also excuse the torture of dozens of Iraqis at Abu Ghuraib? And this, months after the fact? Is this Iraq enterprise an occasion for endless serial revenge, or an attempt to share democratic values with a beleaguered population all too used to torture and oppression? In the sordid calculus of race, how many Iraqi lives and psyches exactly are worth four American ones?

The issue of hypocrisy is also important here. The rabble of Fallujah never pledged that they were committing violence in order to end torture and establish democracy. George W. Bush boasted repeatedly that "there are no more torture chambers" in Iraq.

I am not only outraged that the US military committed these crimes, but I am extremely alarmed that the images coming out of Abu Ghuraib have damaged US credibility in Iraq beyond repair. Anyone tempted to make light of this issue or dismiss it with feeble and inappropriatecomparisons would be making a serious error of judgment.

Juan posts daily updates on Iraq.

Get Up with MorningWood

Get Up with MorningWood, on Community Radio WMNF 88.5 fm, Tampa, and streaming at wmnf.org.
4 to 6 am every Tuesday!

Studio line: 813-239-WOOD.

Today on MorningWood

I think I’ll do a little blogging on the radio: Reading and commenting on news stories and/or reading blog entries from BlogWood and other sources. We’ll see how it goes - I may be too exhausted to string 2 words together. I’m just not drunk enough to be up and functioning at this hour.

Lots of good music planned too. See the playlists below.

Playlists

Hour 1 planned playlist

Hour 2 planned playlist

Live playlist

WMNF Community Radio

WMNF is a non-commercial community radio station that celebrates local cultural diversity and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice. WMNF provides broadcasts and creates other forums to serve the community by the exposure and sharing of these values.

Excuses excuses

Haven’t really had a whole lotta time to blog in the last coupla days, what with organizing and leading a parade , and doing lots of other Heatwave related stuff. Then I had to do some paid work before I could start paying attention to BlogWood again.

I’ve been catching up on news today. The situation in Iraq keeps getting stranger and stranger, and the fatalities on all sides continue to mount. See Juan Cole for continuing coverage.

Closer to home, the Florida Legislature ended the 2004 session on Friday. Surprisingly, the attempt to snatch democracy form the hands of the people by greatly curtailing citizen initiatives mostly failed, though there is a watered down version that still must be fought at teh ballot box. See Florida Politics for details on this and all the other Legislative goings on.

There. Now that I’ve found others that have already done my job, I’ll find something totally Tampa to opine on. Stay tuned.

I Love a Parade!

"...yet gay parading floats drift by
decorated with gorgeous gussies in silk tights
and attended by moithering monkeys
make-believe monks
horny hiawathas
and baboons astride tame tigers
with ladies inside
while googly horns make merrygoround music
and pantomimic pierrots castrate disaster
with strange sad laughter
and gory gorillas toss tender maidens heavenward
while cakewalkers and carnie hustlers
all gassed to the gills
strike playbill poses
and stagger after every
wheeling thing...."

Tropical Feetwave Parade: The March of a Thousand Billionaires
Today: May 1, at 4:30 PM.

Become a Billionaire and March with the elite.