Month: August 2007

Ryan Skipper’s Death Inspires New Awareness of Hate Crimes

Trish

It’s been a long time since we had any news about the murder of Ryan Skipper, a gay Florida man who police believe was the victim of a hate crime.

In that time, another man was slain because his murderer wanted to kill a gay man — any gay man. In both deaths, investigators immediately arrested and held suspects, awaiting trials that might still be a year or more away. And while we — and especially the friends and families — wait there is silence.

At least there was. A new organization, inspired by Ryan’s brutal killing, is trying to raise awareness of the consequences of mindless hate. Gay American Heroes seeks:

To honor and remember LGBT victims of hate crimes
To engage and inform the public about hate crimes against LGBT persons
To inspire compassion and greater appreciation and acceptance of diversity

The group is putting together a traveling memorial for display at colleges, gay pride events, and other public venues including communities where hate crimes have occurred or been threatened. The exhibit will honor lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people who were murdered because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

[…]

Another Man Killed for Being Gay; Murderer Says He Was Serving God

Trish

We wish Ryan Skipper’s death were the last one we ever had to hear happened because someone was so threatened by the idea of homosexuality that they killed. But it wasn’t.

Mangum, who described himself as “definitely not a homosexual,” said God called on him to “carry out a code of retribution” by killing a gay man because “sexual perversion” is the “worst sin.”

A Texas man said he was doing God’s work when he randomly targeted and brutally murdered a 46-year-old Southwest Airlines flight attendant named Kenneth Cummings Jr. earlier this summer.

Terry Mark Mangum, 26, told [Brazoria County newspaper] The Facts in a jailhouse interview Friday that he had targeted and killed Cummings because he was homosexual and that he stabbed him in the head. He called his actions “God’s justice.”

…Mangum told The Facts he went to a known gay bar in Houston that night to specifically target a homosexual and said that Cummings, “just happened to be the one that I bumped into.”

…After 600 volunteers spent several days searching through high weeds, dense brush, dump sites and even an abandoned golf course, a bone was found in a dried-up pond. Searchers originally thought the bone belonged to a cow, but after looking at it again, searchers dug around it and found charcoal, Miller said. As they dug deeper, they found a burned body that later was confirmed to be Cummings, Miller said.

The murderer in this case was obviously not only hate-filled but deranged.

“I believe I’m Elijah, called by God to be a prophet,” said 26-year-old Terry Mark Mangum, charged with murder June 11. “…I believe with all my heart that I was doing the right thing.”

[…]

Why You Should Care About New Orleans

Trish

On the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall near New Orleans, all the ink was about the progress, and lack thereof, in restoring the city and the rest of the Gulf coast.

We live in an era of failed leadership. Corrupt and incompetent politicians. Thieving CEOs. Priests as pedophiles. Media monopolies. A president’s unpopular, intractable war. Steroid-enhanced sluggers.

Two years later, Ron Fournier says it’s time to start learning the real lessons of Katrina, and they’re not about wind or water.

We need to wake up to the fact that we are all just one big storm or disaster away from being one of those people whose calls for help were answered by voice mail.

Katrina is old news, right? New Orleans — who cares? It’s just another big city with big problems, bad luck and bad weather. Get over it.

Actually, please don’t.

Don’t ever get over the tragedy of New Orleans. It’s your tragedy, too.

What happened to this historic city two years ago is more than the obvious cautionary tale of what might befall your community after a natural disaster or a terrorist strike. It’s also a sad reflection of what’s happening now — today, in your hometown and across an anxious and ailing nation…

If this country can’t help New Orleans rebound — if we and our leaders break the promises made to its citizens — what are the odds your health care will ever get cheaper? Your bridges safer? Your schools better?

“New Orleans is an incubator for all our nation’s ills,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, author of “The Great Deluge,” a book about Katrina.

“If you study what’s going on in New Orleans, it’s just an exaggerated version of what’s hitting us in many areas of the country,” he said. “Just pick your topic.”

OK, let’s start from the top.

[…]

Sen. Craig Blames His Men’s Room Trysting Guilty Plea on the Media

Jon Ponder

Sen. Larry Craig, the proudly homophobic Republican who pleaded guilty to soliciting an undercover cop in an airport men’s room the summer, apologized today — but not for his behavior in the bathroom stall in June, but rather for entering a guilty plea in August. Craig said he acted hastily because he was being “harassed” by a newspaper’s investigation into allegations he is gay:

It strains credulity that an innocent person — especially one as powerful a United States senator — would plead guilty to accusations of this sort.

For a moment, I want to put my state of mind into context on June 11. For eight months leading up to June, my family and I had been relentlessly and viciously harassed by the Idaho Statesman. If you’ve seen today’s paper, you know why. Let me be clear: I am not gay and never have been.

No? Well then why such agita over the newspaper’s investigation?

Let’s review what Craig did in the bathroom stall at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June, according to the officer:

“Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moved his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.

Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could … see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.”

It strains credulity that an innocent person — especially one as powerful as a United States senator — would plead guilty to accusations of this sort. An innocent man would have hired a lawyer right away and set about to fight the charges, come what may. Craig’s first priority was managing news about his arrest, not clearing his name or declaring his innocence.

Now he’s claiming innocence, of course, and says he screwed up after the arrest because he was operating solo, without counsel from lawyers, his staff or family. It’s probably true he didn’t bring his family into it, but at some point after his arrest on June 11 and before the hearing on August 8, someone came up with the strategy that has played out before our eyes: Plead guilty as quietly as possible and then, in true Bush Republican fashion, go before the cameras and lie with all the steely-eyed fervency that can be mustered.

*

The complete text of Craig’s statement follows:

[…]

Cuba Creating Mega Death Ray Technology to Repel Impending U.S. Invasion

Buck Banks

Maybe something was lost in translation, but I think the reporter for Agence France Presse must have gotten something wrong in the story about Cuba beefing up its weapons to repel a U.S. invasion. Or maybe the original story was written by the former Bat Boy story editor from the recently defunct Weekly World News.

But it was posted on DefenseNews.com, so it must be true, right?

Weapon systems that have been upgraded in precision targeting and destructive capabilities include munitions, grenades, land mines and anti-tank rockets.

Cuba has been upgrading its military arsenal since President Fidel Castro fell ill 13 months ago, to defend itself against a possible U.S. invasion, senior officers told Trabajadores weekly on August 27.

Ah-ha! I knew it. Translated from Trabajadores weekly to Agence France Presse, then to English. Get a load of this stilted, yet oddly meaningless quote:

“In the irregular combat we would face in Cuba in case of an invasion, the engineering, infantry and artillery systems we produce and repair here are of vital importance, because they’re designed for the aggressor’s direct assault,” said Lt. Col. Pascual Machado, chief coordinator of Cuba’s Military Industrial Firm (EMI).

Huh? Sounds like somebody’s been using Babelfish again. But if true, these developments would be, well really scary:

Weapon systems that have been upgraded in precision targeting and destructive capabilities include munitions, grenades, land mines and anti-tank rockets, Trabajadores said.

As an example, the weekly said a laser-guided targeting system called VLMA has boosted the AK-M automatic rifle’s precision by 80 percent to 90 percent, regardless of the shooter’s skill level.

Wait, aren’t these the same people who are still driving 1950s-era cars? Of course, I suppose if you can keep a Chevy running for 50 years, you could probably build a laser-guided targeting system out of old sardine cans and some bailing wire. And wait, what was the accuracy of the AK-M rifle before it got the VLMA and increased 80 percent up to 90 percent, 10 percent? Or did something get mangled between Spanish, French and English?

One thing the Cubans do have for their fancy-schmancy weapons system is a cool name:

Raul Castro said special military operation Caguairan, put in place following Fidel Castro’s illness, would finish at the end of 2008 — U.S. presidential elections take place in November of next year.

Caguairan is either a province in Cuba that contains Guantanamo, the name of a local tree or, translated with a little latitude, means “mega death ray” in Spanish. I guess we’ll find out around election time next year, because everybody knows the best time to invade a Third World dictatorship is just after the presidential elections when the minds of most Americans are occupied by Florida’s latest vote scandal, and, after all, George W. Bush will still be president ….

Ted Nugent Befouled Himself to Avoid Vietnam Draft

Jon Ponder

Richard Roeper:

Nugent stopped all forms of personal hygiene for a month and showed up for his draft board physical in pants caked with his own urine and feces, winning a deferment.

So Ted Nugent roams a concert stage while toting automatic weapons, calls Barack Obama “a piece of —–” and says he told Obama to suck on one of his machine-guns. He also calls Hillary Clinton a “worthless bitch” and Dianne Feinstein a “worthless whore.”

That Nugent, he’s a man’s man. He talks the talk and walks the walk, right?

Except when it was time to register for the draft during the Vietnam era. By his own admission, Nugent stopped all forms of personal hygiene for a month and showed up for his draft board physical in pants caked with his own urine and feces, winning a deferment. Creative!

Ah, but that was a long time ago. Nugent isn’t just a washed-up rocker — he’s a right-wing madman who’s not afraid to call out some of the leading Democrats in language so vile it makes the Dixie Chick Natalie Maines’ comments about President Bush sound like a love poem.

You’d think even someone such as Sean Hannity would dismiss Nugent as a macho clown, desperate for attention.

Yeah, right.

In a discussion on his show last week, Hannity refused to condemn Nugent’s remarks, saying, “I like Ted Nugent . . . he’s a friend of mine,” and even laughing loudly as Alan Colmes read the transcript of some of Nugent’s remarks.

Funny. I don’t remember Hannity being so cavalier about the Dixie Chicks went they criticized Bush.

Not that he’s operating under a double standard or anything.

Self Loathing: Voting Record of Secretly Queer Senator Is 100% Anti-Gay

Jon Ponder

The hypocrisy of the voting record of Sen. Larry Craig, the Idaho Republican who has outed himself by pleading guilty to naughty behavior in a men’s room, is just sad:

“Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.” — Sen. Craig, in 1999
  • 1996: Voted YES on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prohibiting same-sex marriage.
  • 2000: Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation.
  • 2002: Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes.
  • 2002: Rated 25 percent by the ACLU, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record.
  • 2006: Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage.

And let’s not forget that Craig is very much married (to a woman), thus adding adultery to his catalog of sins. In 1999, he stated his feelings about the character of cheating spouses on “Meet the Press,” reacting to a question about the Clinton impeachment:

MR. RUSSERT: Larry Craig, would you want the last word from the Senate be an acquittal of the president and no censure?

SEN. CRAIG: Well, I don’t know where the Senate’s going to be on that issue of an up or down vote on impeachment, but I will tell you that the Senate certainly can bring about a censure reslution and it’s a slap on the wrist. It’s a, “Bad boy, Bill Clinton. You’re a naughty boy.” The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy, a naughty boy.

I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy. The question issue now is simply this: Did he lie under oath? Did he perjure himself and did he obstruct justice? And that’s where we’re trying to go now in this truth-seeking process.

In statement on his website today, Craig says he pleaded guilty too hastily:

“I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously.”

But go here to read the testimony against Sen. Craig by an undercover cop, and you’ll see that pleading guilty was the only option he had.