Month: March 2007

Ryan Skipper: Media Statements Disputed in Murder of Gay Man

Jon Ponder

As the two rural Florida men who allegedly stabbed Ryan Skipper to death two weeks ago await trial in a local jail, questions are being asked about how the events leading up to the murder were described in the press.

At one point, Matthew Shephard’s killers tried to assert the “gay panic defense,” saying they were driven to temporary insanity by their victim’s alleged sexual advances. Later, they said they only wanted to rob him and never intended to kill him when they lashed him to a fence and bashed his head in.

The sequence of events that night as reported seemed not to add up from the start, when a Polk County Sheriff’s Dept. spokesman was quoted as saying:

Skipper was driving around Wahneta on Tuesday night when he found [21-year-old Joseph] Bearden walking along Sixth Street in Eloise about 11 p.m. Tuesday, and offered him a ride. The two went back to Skipper’s house, where they smoked marijuana and discussed using Skipper’s computer to copy checks, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The problem with this statement is that it appears to come from a single source: Joseph Bearden, the alleged murderer.

However, there was at least one other witness who was apparently not consulted by investigators. Ryan had two roommates, one of whom, Kelly Evans, disputes Joe Bearden’s story:

Evans was home the night of the murder and disputes what has been reported in the news. “Ryan went out and never came back,” Evans said. “They keep saying he was here with those two guys, smoking marijuana and taking his computer when they left. I was here. That never happened. He wouldn’t do that.”

Did early reporting get this wrong or did investigators base their timeline solely on the word of a young man whom they suspected of murder?

One investigator also made this odd declaration: “What we do know is that Ryan was out looking to pick up someone that evening.” How could the police “know” this? They might suspect it, especially if that’s how the young alleged murderer characterized Ryan’s motives. Similarly, investigators appear to have accepted without scrutiny the alleged murder’s claim that Skipper was conspiring with him in a forgery scheme.

The reality is, only one person could have actually “known” for certain what Skipper’s intentions were that night, or whether he conspired to forge checks with someone he’d only just met. That would be Ryan Skipper himself, and the fact that he can’t defend himself against these slurs compounds the tragedy of his death.

Bearden and William Brown, 20, whom Kelly Evans describes as a relative of her landlord, are accused of stabbing Skipper 20 times and dumping his body on the shoulder of a road. Brown later told someone that Ryan Skipper was “messing with him,” that Ryan Skipper was a homosexual, so [he] killed him.

All of this brings to mind memories of the murder of college student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming a decade ago. Like Ryan Skipper, who was 25 years old, Shephard was killed violently by two young men and left to die on the side of a rural road.

As the Shephard case advanced, the killers tried to assert the “gay panic defense,” saying they were driven to temporary insanity by their victim’s alleged sexual advances. Later, they said they only wanted to rob him and never intended to kill him when they lashed him to a fence and bashed his head in.

Reports say Skipper’s murder is being treated as a hate crime. But what remains to be seen is whether entrenched homophobia will prevent this heinous crime from being investigated and tried objectively.

Ryan Skipper: Cops’ Statements Disputed in Murder of Gay Man

Jon Ponder

As the two rural Florida men who allegedly stabbed Ryan Skipper to death two weeks ago await trial in a local jail, questions are being asked about how the events leading up to the murder were described in the press by investigators.

At one point, Matthew Shepherd’s killers tried to assert the “gay panic defense,” saying they were driven to temporary insanity by their victim’s alleged sexual advances. Later, they said they only wanted to rob him and never intended to kill him when they lashed him to a fence and bashed his head in.

The sequence of events that night as reported seemed not to add up from the start, when a Polk County Sheriff’s Dept. spokesman was quoted as saying:

Skipper was driving around Wahneta on Tuesday night when he found [21-year-old Joseph] Bearden walking along Sixth Street in Eloise about 11 p.m. Tuesday, and offered him a ride. The two went back to Skipper’s house, where they smoked marijuana and discussed using Skipper’s computer to copy checks, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The problem with this statement is that it appears to come from a single source: Joseph Bearden, the alleged murderer and apparent homophobe.

However, there was at least one other witness who was apparently not consulted by investigators. Ryan had two roommates, including one, Kelly Evans, who says she was home all night on the evening in question:

Evans was home the night of the murder and disputes what has been reported in the news. “Ryan went out and never came back,” Evans said. “They keep saying he was here with those two guys, smoking marijuana and taking his computer when they left. I was here. That never happened. He wouldn’t do that.”

Did investigators interview Kelly Evans — or did they base their timeline solely on the word of a young man whom they suspected of murder? One investigator also made this odd declaration: “What we do know is that Ryan was out looking to pick up someone that evening.” How could the police “know” this? They might suspect it, especially if that’s how the young alleged murderer characterized Ryan’s motives. Similarly, investigators appear to have accepted without scrutiny the alleged murder’s claim that Skipper was conspiring with him in a forgery scheme.

The reality is, only one person could have actually “known” for certain what Skipper’s intentions were that night, or whether he conspired to forge checks with someone he’d only just met. That would be Ryan Skipper himself, and the fact that he can’t defend himself against these slurs compounds the tragedy of his death.

All of these questions lead to the conclusion that the police were ready to believe the worst about Skipper because he was gay.

Joseph Bearden and William Brown, 20, whom Kelly Evans describes as a relative of her landlord, are accused of stabbing Skipper 20 times and dumping his body on the shoulder of a road. Brown later told someone that “Ryan Skipper was messing with him, that Ryan Skipper was a homosexual, so [he] killed him.”

All of this brings to mind memories of the murder of college student Matthew Shepherd in Wyoming a decade ago. Like Ryan Skipper, who was 25 years old, Shepherd was killed violently by two young men and left to die on the side of a rural road.

As the Shepherd case advanced, the killers tried to assert the “gay panic defense,” saying they were driven to temporary insanity by their victim’s alleged sexual advances. Later, they said they only wanted to rob him and never intended to kill him when they lashed him to a fence and bashed his head in.

What remains to be seen is whether local police are so blinded by their own homophobia that they are unable to investigate this heinous crime objectively.

Florida Power Company to Build Huge Coal Plant in the Everglades

Trish

It’s not just because I finally watched “An Inconvenient Truth” this weekend that I find the news that Florida Power & Light is planning to build one of the country’s largest coal-fired generating plants in the Everglades so infuriating.

The plant would emit 16 million tons of climate- changing carbon dioxide, making it the largest single source of global warming pollution in the state.

It’s also the unmitigated gall of a company that sucks every last dime of profit from its customers while feeding at the public trough. Floridians will be a long time forgetting how FPL used hurricane damage as an excuse to raise rates and then asked the state legislature for money to fix its equipment and lines. And got both.

But this latest news takes the cake.

Florida Power & Light’s rush to build one of the largest coal plants in the nation sets back the state’s efforts toward a clean energy future and dramatically increases global warming pollution…

The proposed coal plant would be a 5,000-acre industrial facility constructed in the heart of the Everglades, in the city of Moore Haven in Glades County, and would emit harmful pollutants 24 hours a day for more than 50 years.

The pollutants include: sulfur dioxide, that would acidify lakes, rivers, and the Everglades; nitrogen oxide, which is a precursor to smog and exacerbates respiratory diseases like asthma; soot that has been scientifically linked to lung cancer and cardiac arrest; and mercury, which is a potent neurotoxin that has already contaminated every major water body in Florida, leading to fish consumption advisories by the Department of Health. Lastly, the plant would emit 16 million tons of climate-changing carbon dioxide, making it the largest single source of global warming pollution in the state.

FPL does not talk about the emissions from the plant and its effect on our health and environment but rather on the low cost of coal as compared to other fuels.

It also talks, on its web site, about what a great friend to the environment it is.

We strive for more efficient operations and improved performance with less impact on the environment.

…Our commitment to reduce emissions has yielded important dividends for air quality.

…We look for ways to improve our operations to minimize impacts on wildlife near our facilities.

If, like me, you can’t let this plan stand, contact FPL and tell them what a bunch of money-grubbing hypocrites they are. As you might expect, they make it hard to give them feedback by requiring names and addresses in an online form but make something up. And give them an earful.

Novakula: GOP Rats on Capitol Hill Deserting USS Bush

Jon Ponder

Robert Novak says Pres. Bush has lost GOP support on Capitol Hill:

The I-word (for incompetence) is used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally.

With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress — not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment…

The I-word (for incompetence) is used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to described a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI’s misuse of the Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. “We always have claimed that we were the party of better management,” one House leader told me. “How can we claim that anymore?”

…A few Republicans blame incessant attack from the new Democratic majority in Congress for that image. Many more say today’s problems by the administration derive from yesterday’s mistakes, whose impact persists. The answer that is not entertained by the president’s most severe GOP critics, even when not speaking for quotation, is that this is just the governing style of George W. Bush and never will change while he is in the Oval Office.

Nothing to Fear But the War on Terror

Jon Ponder

The timing of the Sept. 11 terror attacks couldn’t have been better for al Qaeda and worse for us. When they launched the attacks, Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen were probably not aware that a radical coalition of neo-cons and Christian nationalists had gained control of the United States government — just as most Americans were not aware of the true natures of Dick Cheney, George Bush and the cabal that surrounded them.

A normal president would have rallied the public to conquer their fears and shoulder on after such a horrendous attack.

A normal president would have rallied the public to conquer their fears and shoulder on after such a horrendous attack — as people have done in Britain, Israel and other places for decades. But this group of radicals operating out of the White House did the opposite.

Using carefully crafted rhetoric (and even a color-coded chart), they instilled a fear of terror in the public and then used it as a throttle to ratchet public paranoia up and down to suit their own politicals needs. The most dastardly bit of messagemeistering in this, however, was the way they aggrandized the attackers, raising them in stature from the ideological gang of street thugs that they are to warrior priests and adversaries worthy of the United States and its “global war on terror,” which they are not.

Here’s Zbig today in the Post:

The “war on terror” has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration’s elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America’s psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

The Bush cabal could not have succeeded without a propaganda tool like the fear of terror. Bush could not have won reelection without his ability to terrorize voters — gay bashing would not have been enough on its own.

The attacks worked out so perfectly for them that it’s easy to see why some people believe 9/11 was an inside job. (It wasn’t.The Bushies are operationally incompetent and could never pull off such an elaborate fake.)

If our grandparents had been as easily terrified in the 1930s as Republicans are today, they would have watched in horrified silence while the Germans conquered Europe, and hidden under their beds when they came after us.

We need national leaders who call on us to be both brave and smart in combating terror. Using the military to fight terrorism, as I have said before, is like using a chainsaw to perform an appendectomy. The British army did not stop the Irish terrorists after decades of attacks, just as the Israeli army will never stop the terrorist attacks from Palestinian insurgents.

Stopping terrorism requires starts with street-level intelligence and a population on alert, but it also will require understanding the enemy in all its dimensions, not the cartoon characters presented to us now.

Hatch Said He Supports Gonzales ‘Unless He Lied’ – After New Evidence of Lying Was Revealed

Jon Ponder

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, revealed himself this weekend to be either the biggest fool on the Hill or a political hack who has sold himself out by shilling for the Rove machine. After a long silence on the federal prosecutor purge, Hatch came out with a statement of support for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday:

When Hatch issued his statement yesterday, was he aware of the stark new evidence produced the night before that Abu was caught on tape lying about his involvement?

“He has always been straightforward and honest with me … So, unless there is clear evidence that the attorney general deliberately lied or misled Congress, I see no reason to call for his resignation.”

Less than 24 hours before Hatch issued this statement, a Friday-night document dump by the Dept. of Justice revealed new evidence that Gonzales has lied about his role in the firings.

On March 13, at his “mistakes were made” news conference, Gonzales said:

I never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood.

But records from DOJ’s Friday-night dump show that Gonzales was directly involved in planning the purge:

The records show that Gonzales approved plans to fire the prosecutors at an hourlong meeting Nov. 27, less than two weeks before the dismissal of seven of the prosecutors.

When Hatch issued his statement yesterday, was he aware of the stark new evidence produced the night before that Abu was caught on tape lying about his involvement?

If not, Hatch is a fool for putting his trust in anyone in Bush’s inner circle (and one who is poorly served by his staff who should have known about it). On the other hand, if he knew about the new evidence when he made the statement, he is a political hack of the first order.

We’ll see which is which in fairly short order.

Clinton, Bush I and Reagan Fired All US Attorneys

Jon Ponder

Rightwingers can’t seem to grasp this:

Presidents Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Reagan replaced the 93 U.S. attorneys at the beginning of their administration as part of the normal turnover involved in the alternation of power. A report issued on Feb. 22 from the Congressional Research Service revealed that between 1981 and 2006, only five of the 486 U.S. attorneys failed to finish their four-year terms, and none were fired for political reasons. Only three were fired for questionable behavior, including one on “accusations that he bit a topless dancer on the arm during a visit to an adult club after losing a big drug case.”

In brief, Bush’s firings were unprecedented…”

We’re Letting Abramoff Out of Jail Early

Trish

Jon provided some background on the highest-ranking former Bushite convicted so far in the Abramoff scandals.

But while Jack is implicating others for doing the crime, it looks like he himself won’t be doing much more time.

I don’t know about you but I must have missed the meeting. Had I been there, I would have voted to throw away the key.

Federal prosecutors took the first steps toward reducing the prison sentence of former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, currently scheduled for release in 2011 for a Florida fraud conviction.

Documents filed in federal court say Abramoff has provided “substantial assistance” in a separate Washington corruption scandal investigation and continues to work with investigators from his prison cell in Cumberland, Md.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul F. Schwartz did not recommend how much Abramoff’s sentence should be cut.

We’re guessing a whole bunch.

Abramoff, in case you forgot, was sentenced to six years for his role in defrauding the owner of the SunCruz Casinos gambling boats and other investors of $20 million, which was leveraged into a staggering $60 million in financing.

Unlike Jack, the fleet’s former owner could not provide incriminating evidence against Abramoff or his partners in crime because of an unfortunate hail of bullets delivered by a mob hit man.

“Federal prosecutors,” as we all know, means the ones who are designated “the United States” anytime it’s “The United States versus, say, Jack Abramoff or Some Other Lowlife Criminal.” So that’s you and me, folks. We evidently decided to let federal inmate No. 27593-112 out of jail early.

I don’t know about you but I must have missed the meeting where we agreed to do that. Had I been there, I would have voted to throw away the key.

Oops, Rudy’s Wife Did It Again

Trish

Oh no, she di-ent say that: Turns out Rudy Giuliani’s third wife is mathematically challenged. She — like her current husband — is currently on her third, not second, marriage.

Rudy’s third wife commenting on their six marriages: “It makes you appreciate marriage a little bit more”

She kind of forgot the five years she was married to some guy in the ’70s. These things happen, but the good news for Republicans is that the Giulianis really respect the sanctity of marriage.

“Rudy and I both have been married three times,” Judith, 52, told the New York Post.

“I’d honestly like to say we got it right the first time around,” she told the paper. “But that was not to be … and so what that has done for us is, I think, it makes you appreciate marriage a little bit more.”

She and Rudy are appreciating the heck out of marriage, with six total between them. And counting…