Year: 2007

The Paris Hilton Case Gets Political – No, Seriously

Jon Ponder

The over-exposed celebrity’s “get out of jail” card threatens to ramp up into a volatile political debate about race and privilege in Los Angeles.


Rev. Al Sharpton

Free Paris! Word came late yesterday that the Rev. Al Sharpton is flying into Los Angeles today to speak with Sheriff Lee Baca about his department’s decision to release Paris Hilton from the county hoosegow yesterday.

Hilton spent three days in a women’s facility in Lynwood, but had many complaints about conditions in the jail — it was too cold and she didn’t like food for example. Her psychiatrist was called in because she feared she was near a state of nervous collapse.

As a result, Hilton’s sentence was changed from 23 days in jail to 40 days under house arrest in her hillside home in West Hollywood.

This change in her sentence has sparked outrage across the spectrum of demographic groups in Los Angeles, including among affluent anglos, but especially so among blacks and latinos.

One young African-American woman who apparently had been incarcerated at the jail told a local reporter that if she had complained about the temperature or the food, she would have been ignored — and that if she’d had a medical condition, they would have treated her in the jail’s infirmary and then sent her back to her cell.

Los Angeles has plenty of activists and spokespeople within its black and latino communities — including, just to name two, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Connie Rice, who is a codirector of the Advancement Project (and whose evil cousin is the U.S. secretary of state). Beyond these respected voices on racial matters and beyond, there are any number of city council members and other high officials who could speak for their communities on this issue.

But when an issue of race meets a bank of cameras and microphones, we must accept the fact that Al Sharpton will soon be parachuting in:

“I think that it’s both another glaring display of how race and money seem to get different treatments. There seems to be a different criminal justice system for some than others,” Sharpton said.

Judge Michael Sauer, the man who sentenced Hilton to jail after she’d been caught driving three times while her license was suspended for drunk driving, has called her back to court today and may send her back to jail. Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo is also upset with the sheriff’s department for unilaterally changing Hilton’s sentence.

Finally, there is this. The L.A. County jails are experiencing a crisis of overcrowding. The truth is, a regular citizen — white, brown, black, rich or poor, infamous or not — who’d been sentenced to jail for a crime like Hilton’s would have been admitted, processed and then sent home, all within a few hours on the same day.

If this issue is going to explode in Los Angeles — and at 5:45 AM on Friday that’s where we appear to be heading — the truth is, if Paris had been treated “fairly,” she would have been released without ever seeing the inside of cell.

Update: Local news is reporting that the city attorney is threatening to sue Sheriff Baca over the change in Hilton’s sentencing.

Poll: Why Is Bush’s Approval Still So Amazingly High?

Jon Ponder

How does Pres. Bush do it? If the polls accurately reflected his job performance, not to mention the disregard for him among the public, his polling would be minus 32 — and yet:

Public approval of the job President Bush is doing now matches its all-time low, an AP-Ipsos poll says… Only 32 percent said they were satisfied with how Bush is handling his job overall, the same low point AP-Ipsos polling measured last January and a drop of 3 percentage points since May.

By any objective measure, a 32 percent approval is astronomically high considering he is hands-down the Worst President Ever. How does he do it? Here’s the answer:

Bush still wins approval from seven in 10 Republicans, though that is near his historic low for GOP support of 67 percent in January.

Bush has bungled everything he has touched, from the war in Iraq to fighting terrorism to the entire rack of domestic issues. The country suffers every day he is in office, and for the first time in a generation, the future of the United States is in jeopardy — not due to external forces but rather because of the incompetence of its current president.

Considering this, it appears that Republican deadenders put their adoration of George W. Bush ahead of their love for America. Contrast their overwhelming support for the president in contrast with his rating among normal Americans:

Only a quarter of those initially identifying themselves as independents expressed satisfaction with the president, about equaling his low with them reached in February. Eight percent of Democrats gave him their approval.

It’s obvious that the biggest crisis facing America’s future is not terrorism or the healthcare crisis, it’s our over-abundance of delusional conservatives.

Hat tip: The Bard of Shuffletown

Abramoff’s GOP Anti-Environment Galpal Italia Federici Charged

Jon Ponder

Another associate of imprisoned former GOP uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff has been indicted. Italia Federici, who served as the president for an anti-enviroment group, Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), has been charged with tax evansion and obstruction of justice.

Federici is charged with failing to pay more than $77,000 in federal income tax and for making “false and fictitious” statements during her testimony before a Senate committee in 2005.

Federici’s lawyers say she will plead guilty to both charges.

You may recall that Federici flaked on the first hearing before the Indian Affairs Commmittee she’d been called to attend, much to the anger of the chairman, Sen. John McCain. When she finally did attend, she evidentally lied through her teeth.

What we learned about Federici and CREA back then offered a thoroughly disgusting window in the ugliness of the conservative mindset, especially as regards the environment:

The “favors” Italia Federici performed for Abramoff’s clients usually involved making requests to her friend Steven Griles, who was a deputy interior secretary.

Whatever she did for Abramoff, it had little or nothing to do with the activities or purview of CREA, which was founded by anti-tax whack job Grover Norquist and Gale Norton before she became interior secretary.

Its pedigree is squeamish-making and, sure enough, CREA’s role seems to be to support the GOP’s efforts to rape and pillage Mother Earth as quickly as possible. Headlines for recent news releases on their website sound like talking points from Tom DeLay’s office: “ANWR Passage an Important Part of Energy Diversity” and “[Endangered Species Act] Reform Victory in the U.S. House.”

CREA appears to be a very light organization, without even the incumbrance of rent. It’s listed address is a mail drop.

In March 2007, Stephen Griles, the former oil industry lobbyist who was — naturally — second-in-command in George Bush’s Interior Dept., pleaded guilty to lying about his relationship with Abramoff.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

– Unnamed Bush administration aide quoted by Ron Suskind in New York Magazine, October 2004 (Note that the aide likely was Karl Rove)

Libby Shouldn’t Have Asked Judge to ‘Consider His Whole Life’

Trish

Just before the judge sentenced I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby for his role in the revenge exposure of a CIA agent by the Bush administration, Libby asked him to look at the big picture.

Libby did not admit to any mistakes, but said, “I ask that you consider my whole life.”

And maybe the judge did, which is why Libby is now facing a total of 30 months in jail and a $250,000 fine.

John Dean, in his book, “Conservatives Without Conscience” uses Libby as an illustration of an “uberneoconservative” and an “exemplary authoritarian.” He points to an American Progress backgrounder that does in fact, consider Libby’s whole life.

Dean: Libby was outraged and believed that by claiming Wilson’s wife had been involved in sending her husband to Niger, the trip would be perceived as some kind of boondoggle. In fact, she was not involved, but Libby leaked her covert identity to members of the news media anyway

It was Libby – along with Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and a handful of other top aides at the Pentagon and White House – who convinced the president that the U.S. should go to war in Iraq. It was Libby who pushed Cheney to publicly argue that Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda and 9/11.

It was also Libby who prodded former Secretary of State Colin Powell to include specious reports about an alleged meeting between 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official in Powell’s February 2003 speech to the United Nations. Libby and his staff reportedly badgered Powell’s speech writers for weeks, culminating in a meeting where Libby presented information in a manner that, according to those who were there, was aggressive and over the top…

Within the Bush administration, what has touched Cheney has also reached Libby and vice versa. Libby’s role in the awarding of at least one no-bid, multi-million dollar contract to Halliburton is a case in point.

For months, the vice president’s office denied that it played any role in the selection of the company once headed by Cheney to repair Iraq’s oil fields. But, as the Washington Post reported [in 2004], it turns out that Libby had been briefed by Pentagon officials before the contract was awarded – raising questions of impropriety at best, and corruption at worst.

So much for the big picture. Libby is dirty, and Dean has no trouble keeping the facts straight.

[…]

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Somewhere, and I can’t find where, I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?” “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.” “Then why,” asked the Eskimo earnestly, “did you tell me?”

— Annie Dillard (1945- ), American writer, poet, 1975 Pulitzer Prize recipient

GOP Debate: White Guys in Black Suits

Trish

In what promises to be a quadri-annual event, a group of white guys ranging in age all the way from their 50s to their 70s met recently in Manchester, N.H. to model black suits and determine which tie color — red or red patterned — works best with a white shirt.

The men claimed to typify the entire country — even females and non-Caucasians — yet hailed from mostly Western and Midwestern states, including Colorado, Kansas, Arizona, Arkansas, California, and Texas. Eastern seaboard states including Virginia, Massachutahmormonland, and New York were also represented.

Although no clear winner was declared, the consensus was that the wide diversity of white guys in black suits offered a fresh direction for white guys in black suits throughout the entire country, even those who don’t belong to the club or play golf.

Sen. Craig Thomas Dies at 74

Jon Ponder

Sen. Craig Thomas

Sen. Craig Thomas (R-Wyoming) died yesterday. The cause of death was acute myeloid leukemia. Thomas was 74.

Even though Wyoming’s governor is a Democrat, state law provides that when a senator is replaced, his party retains the seat. The Wyoming Republican Party will submit the names of three nominees to Gov. David Freudenthal, who will choose the replacement from among the three.

Libby Gets 30 Months for Perjury, Obstruction

Jon Ponder

No surprises here:

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was sentenced Tuesday to 30 months in prison for obstruction of justice and perjury in the investigation into the leak of a CIA operation officer’s identity.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said he thought the evidence against Libby was overwhelming. Walton said he will decide next week if Libby will remain free during the appeal.