Some people simply don’t want the truth … they’re happier with their illusions, even if their dreamscape puts them behind the 8 ball. It’s odd and delusional and ignorant … it’s the kind of emotional disconnect that floats the What’s The Matter With Kansas theory, and it’s not always “values” oriented. Sometimes it’s more like What’s The Matter With Limbaugh or What’s The Matter With Drudge — and why would anybody think they’re role models worthy of attention?
Three new male pages have come forward to tattle Mark Foley’s pick-up lines. Matt Drudge, Dark Overlord of the Ditto Head Spin Machine [also known as He Who Feeds Limbaugh Raw Meat,] has suggested that these kids are making it all up, dupes of the Liberal media. That’s so incredibly cowardly that it takes the breath away — but the gullible are buying it. Here’s one bloggers response:
This thing has blown up in the Lib’s faces. Young punks making up pranks and then it plays perfectly into the political scheme, a month before elections. It just strengthens my resolve to go all-Republican.
Pfffft!
Wayne Madsen has further tacky insider dish on Denny Hastart and the homoerotic underpinnings on the Hill, which suggests that Hastart’s protecting his ass is both a desperate measure and an irony … and this is probably more than you want to know. As we are in the Times of Revelation, and if luck holds, I think we’ll ALL get more than we want to know about this and other pithy “internal” subjects in the next months.
As usual, I’m not going PC on this topic. Foley is a sexual stalker taking advantage of his Congressional position and status — his sexual orientation attracts him to men, and young men of the age group Foley was soliciting are usually sexually active. The odds were against him, but over the years he evidently struck pay dirt a couple of times. That’s realistic. At some point in any given week, you’ll find a teen not old enough to drink hanging around a gay bar looking for some reassurance that he’s not alone in his choices. It was extremely rash behavior from Mr. Foley, but he evidently thought his comrades in the Congress had his … mmmm … back.
The argument that Foley is a pedophile is, at least with me, suspect … he wasn’t cruising middle schools — and pedophilia is about power and control, not sex. Seems to me that Foley is, rather, a pederast … seeking sex with young men. The eye candy set. I don’t think Foley’s attention was focused in his power/control centers, but farther south, in his groin — and I doubt that he saw his sexual candidates as children. That WE do says a lot about who we pretend to be, rather than who we are.
We think that our 16 and 17 year olds aren’t sexually active … and that they would be as shocked and horrified by Foley’s proposition as we are. Their response to this should inform us … but I don’t think we’re listening. The majority of these kids knew the drill, had heard the whispers and just thought Foley was “weird” and “sick” … that doesn’t sound sexually bewildered to me. And I can’t help but wonder what kind of action a good-looking Congresswoman playing the Foley role might have gotten from the straight pages. Which is NOT to say that unwelcomed sexual advance is not traumatic and perhaps even more so to those just exploring their sexuality. It’s simply that if we regard these young people solely as “innocents” and “children,” we again miss the complexity of the issues.
This is a firestorm of ignorance breaking over the can of worms that is [a]merica’s Homegrown Mythology and Sacred Cows — and it looks to leave no one out, with the confusion about gay pederasts v. straight pedophiles still up for grabs in the mind of the church and it’s followers.
I’m not defending Mark Foley — but I see Foley as a middle-aged gay man looking for young dalliance [and evidently leaving his life partner out of the loop, as well.]
I regret that this whole affair [pun/no pun] does nothing to help gay equity and civil rights — the nation does not need further examples of irresponsible sexual behavior so it can finger-point on issues of gender bias. Studies show that most child sexual abuse is perpetrated by straight, not gay, men — but the nation isn’t ready to hear it.
In homophobic [a]merica, the distance between the concept of straight sex and gay sex is as fathomless and hard to breach as the Snake River Canyon that Evil Knevil tried to jump on his ‘cycle — you don’t just need a parachute to make a try at it … you need waders.
Our schizophrenia on this topic is what is really twisted. The truth is that if some old coot was hitting on the young women pages, it would have been a much smaller outcry … hardly a blip on the radar. Besides — women ask for it, doncha know. In Pennsylvania, Rep. Don Sherwood has apologized to his constituents for having had a mistress, but assured them, in his re-bid campaign, that he did NOT try to strangle her, despite police reports — notice he didn’t quit his campaign and doesn’t expect to lose. And Mormon polygamists, for instance, are snatching little girls right out of the cradle and pluralistically marrying them off to the old patriarch’s, while nobody but Anderson Cooper, himself a gay man, seems upset enough to explore it. In [a]merica, not all sexual crimes are equal — today, we are lost in the disproportionate.
What this is telling us is that we’re so disconnected from our sexuality in this nation, so locked down in our puritanical roles, that we are patently unable to handle either the facts on the ground or the checks and balances that allow protections against abuse. If we can’t even think it, let alone discuss it, there is no hope for oversight. And if some sexual abuse is blasphemy while other examples are excusable because “it’s always been that way,” we’ve got to wonder which of us are the sane and which are the actual “deviants.”
As I said, I’m not PC on this. Over at Huffington Post, they had a contest recently to put a caption on a picture of Dubby, Foley and the Walsh’s [from America's Most Wanted.] I made the cut — check it out here, some are very funny — and one of the first blog responses is that, based on my submission, this isn’t about “gay.”
Get real. Of course it is. That it’s being used as a conversational billy club wielded with christocratic hysteria [Gingrich has called Foley a 'flamer'] doesn’t make it NOT gay — and because the Red’s are eager and happy to try to turn the conversation to exploit one of this nations bugaboo’s doesn’t change the fact that Foley was cruising. “At the office,” and on the company dime. Can’t we just admit that? And while we’re at it, let’s acknowledge that his culpability in this matter is not an indictment of gays everywhere. The gay organizations have come out strongly against Foley’s activity and the Log Cabin Republican’s are the one’s who will take the most heat on this … at least for now.
The larger context — and the Important One — is that this is about abuse of power and moral apathy in a position of trust … priests, rabbi’s, ministers, politicians, teachers and even parents misuse authority and betray trust, and sometimes sexually. They must be held accountable. It’s also about personal cover up and partisan enabling — and if our lawmakers have no ethics, our nation will have no ethical law.
It’s simple at the heart of it … but unless we tell ourselves the truth, we’ll never cut through the crap and start behaving like adults. We need to SERIOUSLY grow up in this nation. Sometimes I think the kids are more emotionally mature than the rest of us.
Buzz is that there will be a Dem pilloried soon, a red herring offered through the maneuvering of our friend Karl — we’ll have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, here’s good news — in just this week, Bush has lost six popularity points; he’s down to 33%
Jude
The gay problem in the GOP
David Link, Boston Globe
October 5, 2006
http://tinyurl.com/mxffb
THE TRAGIC OPERA of former congressman Mark Foley is the revenge of don’t ask, don’t tell.
Foley, a Republican from Florida, resigned Friday after e-mails and instant messages between him and several teenage congressional pages surfaced. The Republican leadership knew that at least one page had gotten e-mails where Foley admired the body of one of the page’s friends, and asked the page for a picture of himself, e-mails the page naturally found sick and a bit creepy.
Republican leaders responded to the potential political problem by telling Foley to knock it off. With respect to the larger issue, though, there was no asking or telling. The boy’s own revulsion at the obviously inappropriate attention was ignored, not only by Foley’s partisan fellows, but by some news outlets that also had seen the e-mails.
If this has a familiar ring, look in the Catholic Church for the bell. Republican leadership was acting like the Catholic hierarchy, which played shell games with men accused of sexually abusing children. And there’s a good reason for the similarity. The inability to deal straightforwardly with gay people leads to other kinds of truth-avoidance when things go south. But that’s what comes from not wanting to know something, and going out of your way to remain ignorant.
We’ve come a long way since homosexuals had two basic options: the closet or jail. But a good portion of the electorate, most of them Republican, still seems to long for the good old days when we didn’t have to think about “those people.” Both Libertarians and, generally, the Democratic Party have withdrawn their official support for the closet over time. States, too, are seeing what a losing battle this is, and allowing homosexuals to live their lives in conformity with, rather than opposition to, the law.
But that leaves Republicans and the religious right trying to live a 1950s lie in the new millennium. As Foley prepared in 2003 to run for the Senate, newspapers in Florida and elsewhere published stories about his homosexuality. But you’d never hear any of his colleagues saying such a thing. And Foley himself refused to discuss the issue, until his lawyer acknowledged Wednesday that the former congressman is indeed gay.
Being in the closet is hard to pull off without help, and for years Foley was eagerly abetted by his Republican brethren, whose willful blindness is at the heart of the current tragedy. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, majority leader John Boehner, and others in the House leadership are still under the impression that the closet, like Tinkerbell, will continue to live as long as we all believe. And believe, they do — against all the evidence.
But the number of people who believe in the closet is declining day by day and generation by generation. Hastert and the rest of his cronies are their own victims. The political turmoil they caused for themselves is only just.
But their failure to acknowledge the obvious reality has other victims as well: the boys whom Foley apparently pursued. Some of the messages show some tolerance of Foley’s advances, but not much more. This was no one’s “Summer of ‘42.” The healthy disgust in one boy’s use of the word “sick” repeated 13 times seems about right.
But what can one expect from denying grown men — and women — a normal, adult sex life? Whether the denial of adult intimacy comes from religious conviction or the ordinary urge toward conformity, people who run away from their sexuality nearly always have to answer to nature somehow. For people who fear abiding and mutual love, the trust and confusion of the young is a godsend. Add to that the perquisites of power, and a degenerate is born.
Fortunately for the arc of justice, the closet ultimately works against itself. Foley’s case and the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal are the last screams of the dinosaurs. It took the dinosaurs a long time to finally die off, or evolve into creatures that could continue to survive, and the same will be true of the closet’s final supporters. But they will look more and more ridiculous each time that they take pride in holding up the ruins of this particular antiquity while tending to the wounded when the building again collapses.
Like the Catholic Church, the Republican Party in Washington guarantees its own future calamities in its enduring and steadfast habit of pretending that, unlike heterosexuality, homosexuality can be either denied or suppressed. ++
Focus On The Hucksters
by digby
10/07/2006
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
James Dobson is not just an average run of the mill preacher. In fact, he’s not a preacher at all — he’s a child psychologist:
Dobson holds a doctorate in child development from the University of Southern California (1967). He was an Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Southern California School of Medicine for fourteen years. He spent seventeen years on the staff of the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles in the Division of Child Development and Medical Genetics.
His organization, Focus On The Family, is allegedly based on an amalgam of Biblical precepts and psychology and he dispenses his child rearing and marital advice in modern psychobabble terms. He’s more than a religious leader — his followers look to him as a doctor, particularly in the field of child psychology.
He has often been critical of modern popular culture not just because of its supposed anti-Christian message but because of its effect on young, developing minds. You’ll remember this, I’m sure:
In truth, this tale has very little to do with SpongeBob himself, and everything to do with the media’s ability to obscure the facts and to direct lies and scorn toward those of us who care about defending children. It all began on an evening in late January, during Inaugural Week in Washington, D.C. At that time, I spoke briefly to 350 guests attending a banquet hosted by Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and Gary Bauer’s American Values. I concluded by sharing a word of concern about a video that will be distributed to 61,000 public and private elementary schools across the nation, for use on the proposed “We Are Family Day,” March 11.
[...]
Imagine a classroom full of wide-eyed five-year olds, sitting in a circle in front of the teacher. These kindergarteners will believe anything they are told, from the notion that reindeer can fly on Christmas Eve to the idea that bunnies lay candy eggs during “Spring Break.” They are vulnerable to whatever adults tell them. In this instance, the kids are not learning about the alphabet or about exciting fairy tales; they are potentially hearing incomprehensible references to adult perverse sexuality. And the rationale for this instruction is “tolerance and diversity.” Generations past would have been shocked and outraged by the very thought of such nonsense. Yet many parents either don’t know of the teaching or are passively willing to go along with it.
[...]
Parents, I urge you to keep a close eye on your sons and daughters. Watch carefully everything that goes into their little minds. Monitor their textbooks and the words of their teachers. Do not turn them over to harmful television programs. When God’s name is used in vain, or when sex and violence come on the screen, turn off the tube and then read and discuss together the scriptures found in Psalm 101:3: “I will set before my eyes no vile thing”.
Here’s James Dobson today on the Foley scandal:
DOBSON: As it turns out, Mr. Foley has had illicit sex with no one that we know of, and the whole thing turned out to be what some people are now saying was a — sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages … By midafternoon yesterday, a rumor emerged that in fact Mark Foley had been pranked by the House pages. It is the first plausible thing I’ve heard in seven days…
Spongebob holding hands with Big Bird on a video about tolerance is shocking homosexual brainwashing. Exchanging lewd e-mails with Republican congressman is good clean fun.
That’s an allegedly professional child psychologist and religious leader there, adopting Drudge’s GOP approved talking point that this whole sordid affair is nothing more than an elaborate joke perpetrated by the victims. No harm, no foul, no evidence. Let’s have some tolerance for powerful Republicans who can’t be bothered to stop a drunken congressman from hitting on teenagers. The kids are alright.
Please do not ever tell me again that I have to respect this man’s religious beliefs or his professional analysis of human behavior. They are clearly just disposable political garbage to be used to bilk his followers and empower himself. I don’t want to hear about morals from any of these people anymore. They are just cheap political operatives and deserve no more polite consideration than Karl Rove or Dick Morris. Less actually, Karl Rove and Dick Morris aren’t making the huge profit that Dobson and Perkins and the rest of these Jesus hucksters do. They should retire and go into the Republican religion business. But I suppose it might be too low and unprincipled, even for them. ++
“Sure I Slept With Her”
by digby
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
… but I swear I didn’t try to kill the lying bitch. Vote Republican!
In other races, the Foley case has created an unfavorable backdrop for Republicans. In Pennsylvania this week, Representative Don Sherwood, a suddenly endangered Republican, bought time on television to offer an apology in response to allegations that he had abused his mistress.
Hello?
And then there was this bizarre statement by David Brooks on last night’s Newshour:
I don’t want to minimize the Foley thing because the way kids are raised is a voting issue.
Who’s talking about the way kids are raised? No matter how you slice it, the kids behaviors are not the issue. It’s the 52 year old man trying to seduce them and his bosses and pals knowing about it and covering it up. Am I missing something here?
Why is this stuff so hard for the black and white morality crowd? Consensual sex between adults — nobody’s business. Marrying member of the same sex — nobody’s business. Choking mistress — wrong. Sexually preying on 16 year-olds — wrong.
Maybe we could make up some flash cards so the moralizing rightwing could carry them around and consult them whenever they get confused. ++
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
October 7th, 2006
Couple of years ago in the San Francisco bay area — three, I think — we got a full frontal on what protest in the land of Bu$hCo. was going to look like … the kind of damage rubber bullets did … and we were introduced to “free speech zones.” That’s Bushspeak for an out of the way holding area where containment and intimidation is easier and voices can be silenced with less fuss and bother.
The World Can’t Wait protests had just a handful of skirmishes … reading the snips on them give you a sense of what was legit and what was crap. One fool had a gun. Others didn’t “get out of the street fast enough.” Hmmmm. No problems separating the wheat from the chaff there.
Wish this was a more cheerful post — but it’s a Big Brother collection. Just think of it as a list of things that will have to change when the nation returns to its senses. To quote Tom Paine twice in one week: These are the times that try men’s souls. And we’re just beginning to understand that.
Jude
Police Spying in the Birthplace of the First Amendment
Dave Lindorff
Oct 7 2006
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1453
“This is the 21st Century. Get with it, man!”
~ Capt. Fisher, Philadelphia Police
This past Thursday I was invited by the group World Can’t Wait to talk about impeachment and Bush’s preparations for war against Iran at a Philadelphia rally–part of the group’s Oct. 5 “Drive Out the Bush Regime” campaign of 170 such rallies around the country. Assembled on the mall in front of the Rizzo Municipal Offices building in central Philadelphia in front of me were some 300 people, mostly young, and all well-behaved, if high spirited.
While I was talking about the Bush administration’s impeachable crimes against the American people and the Constitution–in particularly the ramming through Congress of a bill that, for the first time since American patriots drove the British out of the 13 colonies, authorizes indefinite detainment without charge and imprisonment of American citizens without the right to a trial–I noticed two men in sunglasses with a high-quality video camera and a high-quality still camera with telephoto lense filming the assembled crowd of several hundred mostly young people.
After I spoke, I walked over to the two men and asked what station they were with. I was pretty certain they were police, despite their total lack of identification, because normally news organizations plaster their cameras with their station call letters and these cameras had no such identification on them. When I pressed them, both men turned their cameras directly on me, from just two feet away, filming me as I denounced their intimidation.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” I said, as young people around me looked on in surprise. “This rally has a police permit, and all the people here are legally exercising their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.”
The two men remained silent, and continued to grimly film and photograph me as I spoke. I began telling everyone around me who the men were and what they were doing, and some of the young people began to pester the officers themselves.
I later saw a member of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Civil Affairs Unit, a Captain William Fisher, who unlike the camera detail, was clearly identified as a police officer by both a card pinned to his shirt, and by a prominent armband saying: Philadelphia Police Department.
Asked why the men were filming the crowd, he responded briskly, “This is a free country. This is a public space. You’re free to be here, and they’re free to come too and to take your picture.”
I allowed as this was true, technically, but that clearly there was an element of intimidation involved when police come and film the faces of everyone who comes to an event that is about criticizing the government.
“Oh, you’re so `70s,” he said, looking at my gray beard and balding head. “This is the 21st Century. Get with it, man.”
Indeed, he’s right.
It is the 21st Century.
When I was a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, it was discovered that the Los Angeles Police Department was sending unmarked police officers like these armed with video cameras to press conferences at places like the Los Angeles Press Club, where they were setting up and filming certain events as part of a campaign of keeping tabs on activist groups.
This revelation caused a sensation, with front-page articles in the Los Angeles Times, and inquiries into the practice by irate members of the Los Angeles City Council. In the end, the police were forced to back down and cease the practice, at least for a time.
Now, here in Philadelphia, birthplace of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, this trampling of the freedom of assembly and speech seems to merit no attention at all in the local mainstream media. When I called the Inquirer’s police reporter, Barbara Boyer, to alert her to what had happened, her response was “Well, I could take your picture on the sidewalk, too, if I wanted. It’s not illegal.”
Apparently the Philadelphia Police Department and most of the local media think that it’s appropriate for police to film people who are exercising their Constitutional rights, and that this is what we do in “21st Century America.” To me, though, this seems more like 1930s Germany, or 21st-Century China.
Inspector Robert Tucker, who heads the counter-terrorism task force of the Philadelphia Police Department, confirmed in a phone conversation the next day that the two men with the cameras were working for him. He apologized for their lack of identification, and for their unwillingness to identify themselves, promising that at future public events, they and others doing that kind of work would wear prominent identification showing they were with the police. But he insisted that their work was appropriate.
“At events like these, there are usually anarchists who show up,” he argued, “and they’re the ones that sometimes end up breaking glass and causing problems.” (It’s an argument that might justify video cams on every street corner of Philly, since crime is everywhere.) He said that by filming the whole group, it would be possible to identify those people later if there were incidents. Asked why the officers were videotaping the entire crowd–and the speakers like myself who were clearly identifiable anyhow–he offered no answer. Tucker claimed that the tapes and photos made at the event would ordinarily not be retained, but would be “taped over at the next event” unless there were an incident involving an arrest, but he also noted that the department does maintain files on “some people.”
What makes this whole thing feel particularly creepy is the anti-terrorism bill just passed by a Congress of supine Republicans and cowardly Democrats, which gives the president the authority, on his own, to call anyone an “unlawful combatant,” or a supporter of terrorism, and to lock them away in a military brig with no right to a trial or even a lawyer. When you put this police surveillance in that context, it becomes intimidating indeed. Especially since the Philadelphia Police counter-terrorism unit is an integral part of the federal joint counter-terrorism strike force, making it easy for such film materials to migrate over into federal hands.
It seems to me it’s time to get back not to the 1970s, but to the 1770s, when Americans knew what was happening to them, and stood up and said, “No more!” ++
Protester Prevailed, but the ‘Chill’ Lingers
Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Colorado)
Friday, October 6, 2006
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1006-24.htm
Here is a story that should cheer Steve Howards, the Denver-area man who’s filing a federal lawsuit after his arrest last summer for criticizing Vice President Dick Cheney over the administration’s handling of Iraq.
It should cheer the rest of us, too. Then, again …
As you may have read, Steve Howards was walking his 7-year-old boy to a piano camp at Beaver Creek on June 16 when he saw a crowd. Turned out, the vice president was shaking hands and posing for pictures.
Steve Howards walked past, not three feet away from Dick Cheney. Unable to hold his tongue, he said, “I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible.” He and his boy then walked on, he said.
Ten minutes later, a Secret Service agent stopped Steve Howards and arrested him for “assaulting” Dick Cheney. He was hauled off to Eagle County Jail.
He was released later that day, however, and charges were eventually dropped.
Wow.
John Blair began laughing when I telephoned and started to tell him the story of Steve Howards.
Only last June, John Blair settled a lawsuit he brought against the Evansville, Ind., police, who’d arrested him in February 2002 for holding a protest sign outside of a political fundraiser headlined by Dick Cheney.
“Oh, I won big-time,” said John Blair, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer in 1978. He refused to reveal the amount of the settlement, which remains confidential.
A self-professed rebel and gadfly, John Blair, 60, is a man who devotes most of his time now to environmental issues. He’d like to shut down the proliferating coal-fired power plants in and around Evansville, for example.
A group of college kids and other activists had called to ask if he’d join them in a protest that night in 2002. He said sure and drew up a sign reading “Dick Cheney, 19th-Century Energy Man.”
He got there before the others, so he stood across the street and waited, more than 100 yards from the entrance to the fundraiser.
What he didn’t know was that the Secret Service had set up a “protest zone,” which was a block away. Evansville police officers immediately intercepted him.
He complied with their directive to move. As he walked away, he stopped to ask another question, something like, “Where?” He was immediately arrested.
“I’d thought we were having a conversation,” John Blair said. “Obviously, we were not.”
He did a night in jail for “disorderly conduct.” As with Steve Howards’ case, saner minds prevailed and the charge was dismissed.
He sued.
U.S. District Judge Larry J. McKinney bought none of the arguments proffered by the city, which then complained that it was only following a request by the Secret Service. The Secret Service disavowed knowing anything about it.
“They completely left the city hanging - wouldn’t take a deposition. Nothing,” John Blair recalled.
It is so nice, he said, having that money in the bank. But it has come at a cost.
“I refuse now to go to any protest. My motivation is gone. I get asked all the time. I refuse,” he said. “I simply don’t want to get arrested again.”
Still, he’s happy with the position he took. “The reason I settled when I did was that this decision will stand and stand forever,” he said. “It is now a part of American law, an excellent representation of the rule of free speech and justice.”
In Evansville, John Blair is now viewed, he said, as something of a folk hero, a man who stood up to the system, took it on and won.
“With my arrest and court victory, it has raised my level of respect here a great deal. People are even hearing and respecting my environmental position.
“A lot of people think what I did was an act of courage,” John Blair said. “Exercising your rights should never be viewed as an act of courage.
“What happened to me was a very chilling thing. I consider myself a good citizen, but with everything I do now, I always have this thought that they will come and arrest me again.
“If getting arrested and taking on the government was a ‘courageous’ thing, why do I now feel this chill every time I step out of the house?”
Perhaps he ought to feel that way.
We Americans torture now. The president of the United States, with Congress’ recent blessing, can deny anyone habeas corpus. Anyone and any group can be spied on without judicial oversight. And clearly, the people we elect to represent us can order the men and women we pay to protect us to take us to jail when we say or write on poster board things they do not like.
“I am a serious activist with a serious agenda,” John Blair said. “But, no, I don’t want to go to jail again.”
Listen to that, really hear it. ++
Denver Man Sues Secret Service for Arrest After He Criticized Cheney on Iraq War
Thursday, October 5th, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/05/1429248
Steven Howards was arrested in a Denver mall after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney and denounced the war in Iraq. Secret Service agents accused him of assault and harassment. He’s suing them now for violating his civil rights. Howards joins us to speak about his ordeal. [includes rush transcript]
Yesterday, a federal lawsuit was filed against the U.S government alleging civil rights violations. The lawsuit was filed by Steven Howards - an environmental consultant in Colorado - who was arrested in June after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney and denounced the war in Iraq. The lawsuit is the third one that’s been filed charging that Secret Service agents or White House staff members violated the law when they attempted to keep people with opposing views away from President Bush or Cheney. In another suit pending in Colorado, two people say they were kicked out of a public event where Bush was speaking because of an anti-war bumper sticker. And in West Virginia the ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of two people who were arrested at an appearance by Bush because they were wearing anti-Bush t-shirts.
AMY GOODMAN: Steven Howards joins us now from Denver, where he filed the suit on Wednesday in federal district court. Welcome to Democracy Now!
STEVEN HOWARDS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Why don’t you explain exactly what happened? What day was it?
STEVEN HOWARDS: I think it was the middle of June, and I was in Beaver Creek, Colorado, with my two kids, accompanying them to a piano camp. And that morning, I had read about the deaths, the rising death toll in Iraq. And who walks by me, but Mr. Cheney. And to be honest, I couldn’t resist the temptation. So I approached Mr. Cheney and told him that I thought his policies in Iraq were absolutely reprehensible.
AMY GOODMAN: Just one sec. He, by himself, walked by you in a mall? Vice President Dick Cheney?
STEVEN HOWARDS: Well, you know, yes. There was apparently — Gerald Ford has an annual kind of get-together of political VIPs, if you will, that — I don’t know — discuss world issues. And I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to cross Mr. Cheney. Mr. Cheney was actually going across an outdoor mall, kind of a pedestrian mall, in Beaver Creek, Colorado. And there were lots of Secret Service agents, but he was walking through, taking some time, shaking hands. There were probably more Secret Service agents there than there were members of Joe Public. But I, you know, I waited my turn, and I walked up to Mr. Cheney, and I told him what I thought. And then I quickly exited, because I didn’t want to create a scene or give anyone opportunity to cause me any problems.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, what happened next?
STEVEN HOWARDS: Well, I then continued on, took my child to piano camp, came back about ten minutes later, because if you know this area, you’ve got to pass through the same area. And I was approached by a Secret Service agent, who accused me of assaulting the Vice President. My eight-year-old son was standing next to me at that point in time. His exact words were, “Did you assault the Vice President?” And I said, “No, I didn’t. But I did tell him the way I felt about the war in Iraq, and if Mr. Cheney wanted to be shielded from public criticism, he should avoid public places.”
And I closed by telling the agent that if freedom of speech was against the law, he should arrest me, at which point he grabbed me, cuffed my hands behind my back and started carting me across the mall. I stopped and told him I could not abandon my eight-year-old son in the middle of a public mall, at which point he responded, “We’ll call Social Services.” Fortunately, on the way out, we passed my wife, who — my son was with my wife. He had run off in terror. He wouldn’t even talk, he was so scared.
They took me to jail, with my hands cuffed behind my back for three hours. The Secret Service agent told my wife, myself and anyone else that would listen that I was being charged with assaulting the Vice President. Those charges were later reduced to harassment. And two weeks later or three weeks later, the charges were dismissed altogether.
AMY GOODMAN: What happened to you during that time? During that two weeks, did other people see you being arrested? Did they know who you were?
STEVEN HOWARDS: Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. No, it was a scene. I was treated as though I was a convict, like criminal. It was horrifying for my kids. And so we waited for a few weeks. Actually, we left. We were going on vacation. We left a few days later. This actually happened two days before Father’s Day, so it was quite a memorable Father’s Day, as you can imagine. We left a few days later for our vacation, and we got back. In the mail, there was a notice that the charges had been dismissed. Apparently, the Secret Service had come to my office and to try to see me, and they would not leave their names. It was very Gestapo-ish, I must say. But I never returned their calls, and I have no reason why they came to my place of work. And that’s it.
AMY GOODMAN: And why have you decided to sue the government now?
STEVEN HOWARDS: You know, because it’s such a transparent attempt to suppress free speech. You know, we view the suppression of free speech and — my family, we view the suppression of free speech and the assault that this administration has made on our constitutional rights to free speech as a greater threat to the future of this country than Osama bin Laden ever will be. You know, first this administration argued that if you criticize their policies, you were in fact providing support to people like Osama bin Laden. You were boosting the threat to national security. Then they suggested that if you oppose their policies, you were actually equivalent to a Nazi sympathizer.
You know, the nation is united on the need to fight terror. That’s not an issue. The question is, the issue is how this administration has gone about choosing to do that. And lots of people are very upset about that.
And now, the administration has forged the final link by suggesting that if you exercise your constitutional rights to free speech in opposing this administration’s policies in Iraq, you are therefore posing a threat to national security and subject to arrest. And I don’t know about the rest of America, but I find that thought and that logic, that twisted logic, absolutely terrifying. So we brought the lawsuit to really expose this issue and to raise the question of, do we in fact still live in a free nation, where people are free to express their opposition to government policies?
AMY GOODMAN: What are you asking for?
STEVEN HOWARDS: Right now, we’re asking for a jury to — we’re actually deferring to a jury to decide what the resolution to this matter should be. We’re asking for some acknowledgement by the Secret Service and by the administration that people have a right to free speech. We’re asking for an apology to my kids for the wrongful arrest and search that occurred. And if any financial rewards or any financial settlement comes of this, that’s great, but that’s not the goal of the lawsuit. And if any financial rewards come, they’ll go to a charitable organization. That’s not our goal here. Our goal here is to prove a point.
AMY GOODMAN: Isn’t the Vice President immune from prosecution as he sits in office?
STEVEN HOWARDS: Yeah, well, actually this is a civil suit. And it’s against the Secret Service officer who did the arrest. After he arrested us and, again, threatened my wife and myself, saying he was going to spend all day Monday in the U.S. attorney’s office ensuring that felony assault charges were brought against us, he then gave us his business card. So we know exactly who arrested us. And this is actually a civil suit against the Secret Service agent.
AMY GOODMAN: Steven Howards, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Again, arrested a few days before Father’s Day on harassment charges, first on assault charges, then lowered to harassment charges, for approaching Dick Cheney in a mall in Colorado. ++
Thousands Nationwide Protest Bush
Lubna Takruri
October 6, 2006 by the Associated Press
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1006-03.htm
WASHINGTON - Hundreds of people called the Bush administration’s policies a crime and held up yellow police tape in front of the White House on Thursday amid a nationwide day of protest against the president.
The 500 demonstrators were among many who gathered for similar events in more than 200 cities to protest Bush on issues ranging from global warming to the war in Iraq.
“We are turning the corner in bringing forward a mass movement of resistance to drive out the Bush regime,” said organizer Travis Morales with the activist group World Can’t Wait.
Some dressed in costume, including a hooded prisoner in an orange jumpsuit, a devilish rendition of President Bush and two grim reapers. One man wore a red cheerleader outfit with “Radical” emblazoned on the jersey.
The demonstrators held up yellow police tape along a three-block stretch in front of the White House.
Thousands of protesters clogged New York City’s streets as they marched from the United Nations headquarters. Some people lay down in the middle of the street, while others carried signs saying “Expose 9/11″ and “This war should be over.” They also handed out fliers reading, “Drive out the Bush regime.”
Lydia Sugarman, 82, of Manhattan, said she believed in the power of demonstrating.
“That’s how we got our civil rights,” she said. “If we didn’t protest we wouldn’t be Americans.”
White House spokeswoman Nicole Guillemard defended the administration’s Iraq policy.
“Our constitution guarantees the right to peacefully express one’s views. The men and women in our military are fighting to bring the people of Iraq these same rights and freedoms,” she said. “The president believes it is important to stay on the offense in Iraq.”
World Can’t Wait was founded in 2005 and has organized several marches since then, including a nationwide protest coinciding with Bush’s State of the Union address in January, according to the group’s Web site. Supporters listed on the site include Edward Asner, Ed Begley Jr. and Jane Fonda and activists such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Cindy Sheehan.
In Seattle, a person carrying a rifle wrapped in a blanket was among five people arrested. The charges against the other people ranged from resisting arrest to assault.
“They’re still investigating to determine what that person was doing with the rifle,” said Seattle Police spokeswoman Debra Brown.
The march through Seattle’s streets was peaceful as protesters chanted, waved signs and wore costumes mocking administration officials. One woman dressed as a pageant queen with a sash that read, “I Miss America.”
In Portland, Ore., at least 10 people were detained because they did not follow police instruction to get out of the street during a protest march through downtown.
Cathe Kent, a police spokeswoman, said one person, 26-year-old Christopher Knudtsen, also faced a charge of attempted assault for trying to attack a police officer.
An estimated 800 people, mostly college age, chanted “Impeach Bush” and carried signs, including one that read: “We Can’t Wait for 2008.”
Hundreds marched in Los Angeles, carrying caskets draped in U.S. flags to a federal courthouse, where protesters held a mock marriage of church and state.
In Asheville, N.C., dozens of University of North Carolina students walked out of classes. In Chicago, thousands of people flooded Michigan Avenue waving anti-Bush signs.
“We are at a defining moment for this country and our people,” said World Can’t Wait’s Rick Strandlof in Reno, Nev. ++
Whistleblowers Sued for Speaking Out and Wearing State Farm Jackets on 20/20
Joseph Rhee Reports
October 04, 2006
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/10/whistleblowers_.html
Former State Farm insiders Cori and Kerri Rigsby have been sued after blowing the whistle on what they say was “widespread” fraud at the insurance giant.
E.A. Renfroe, the outside adjusting firm that assigned the Rigsbys to work at State Farm, has filed a lawsuit accusing the sisters of breaching their employment contracts and violating trade secret laws. According to Renfroe’s suit, one of the violations occurred when the sisters wore their State Farm-issued jackets “on their appearance on national television…on the 20/20 program.”
The 20/20 report detailed the Rigsbys’ claims that State Farm cheated many Mississippi policyholders whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The sisters turned over thousands of internal State Farm documents to criminal investigators and to attorney Richard Scruggs, who is suing State Farm on behalf of homeowners.
In its suit, Renfroe says the Rigsbys’ employment agreements prohibited them from disclosing “any confidential information of Renfroe, its clients or their insureds.” The suit seeks damages “in excess of $75,000″ and the return of all documents and materials taken by the sisters.
Scruggs says the lawsuit is an attempt by Renfroe and State Farm to intimidate the Rigsbys and to discover exactly what documents were turned over to authorities. Scruggs, who represented famed tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, says such lawsuits have the effect of “discouraging people…who are brave enough to stop fraud.” ++
Report: Thousands Wrongly on Terror List
Leslie Miller, AP
Friday 06 October 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100706Z.shtml
Washington - Thousands of people have been mistakenly linked to names on terror watch lists when they crossed the border, boarded commercial airliners or were stopped for traffic violations, a government report said Friday.
More than 30,000 airline passengers have asked just one agency - the Transportation Security Administration - to have their names cleared from the lists, according to the Government Accountability Office report.
Hundreds of millions of people each year are screened against the lists by Customs and Border Protection, the State Department and state and local law enforcement agencies. The lists include names of people suspected of terrorism or of possibly having links to terrorist activity.
“Misidentifications can lead to delays, intensive questioning and searches, missed flights or denied entry at the border,” the report said. “Whether appropriate relief is being afforded these individuals is still an open question.”
When questions arose about tens of thousands of names between December 2003 and January 2006, the names were sent back to the agencies that put them on the lists, the GAO said. Half of those were found to be misidentified, the report found.
In December 2003, disparate agencies with counterterrorism responsibilities consolidated dozens of watch lists of known or suspected terrorists into the new Terrorist Screening Center run by the FBI.
People are considered “misidentified” if they are matched to the database and then, upon further examination, are found not to match. They are usually misidentified because they have the same name as someone in the database.
People are considered “mistakenly listed” if they were put on the list in error or if they should no longer be included on the list because of subsequent events, the report said.
Problems developed with terrorist watch lists after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Maher Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was detained at New York’s Kennedy Airport in 2002 because Canadian officials had asked that he be placed on a watch list. The U.S. transferred him without court approval to Syria where he was tortured and imprisoned for a year. A Canadian inquiry found that Arar should not have been on the list because he didn’t do anything wrong.
The no-fly list given to airlines to make sure terrorists don’t board airplanes grew exponentially after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The no-fly list is part of the Terrorist Screening Center database.
Young children and well-known Americans like Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., were stopped at airports because their names were the same as those on the no-fly list.
The list has contained the names of Bolivia’s President Evo Morales and Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker, according to a report by CBS’”60 Minutes,” to be broadcast Sunday.
Richard Kopel, acting director of the screening center, said in a statement that Morales and Berri are not on the current no-fly list. He did not address whether they were in the past, noting only that the list changes daily.
Two international flights - in December 2004 and May 2005 - were diverted because passenger were misidentified as on the no-fly list.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that watch lists aren’t perfect.
“The watch list was the first stage of building a security net for the aviation system,” Chertoff said.
He said an agreement reached Friday between the U.S. and the European Union would help prevent people from being misidentified.
The agreement calls for airlines to submit 34 pieces of data - including names, addresses and credit card details - about passengers flying from Europe to the United States.
The report said agencies are working to minimize the effect on people who are frequently misidentified.
TSA puts people on a special list of names that have been checked and cleared after they’ve complained to a call center and provided the agency more identification.
Customs annotates its database with a note that certain people shouldn’t be stopped. As of September 2006, Customs annotated more than 10,300 names. Customs also gives preapproved low-risk travelers ID cards that provide expedited processing.
Customs acknowledged to the GAO that it needs to do a better job of providing guidance for their redress procedures for people who believe they’ve been misidentified.
The Justice Department is leading an effort to make sure that all agencies formally document opportunities for redress and that agency responsibilities are clear, the report said. ++
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
October 7th, 2006