Year: 2007

Reports Today on Ryan Skipper Vigils in Tampa Trib and Ledger (Sort of)

Jon Ponder

Better late than never: The Tampa Tribune reported on the hate crime vigils in memory of hate-crime murder victim Ryan Skipper set for today. A link to the article is prominently featured on the newpaper’s homepage.

The Lakeland Ledger also has posted an article about the vigils, but it is not linked from the paper’s homepage, and can only be found via the site’s search function.

The list of local newspapers that have covered the vigils now looks like this:

  • Lakeland Ledger: Yes
  • Winter Haven News Chief: Yes
  • Orlando Sentinel: Yes.
  • Tampa Tribune: Yes

Sheriff Backs Off Check Forging Allegation against Hate-Crime Victim Ryan Skipper

Jon Ponder

In an article published today — just one day shy of a month since Ryan Skipper was murdered — Donna Wood, a spokesperson for Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, tells Express Gay News that initial statements implying that Skipper was involved in illegal activities with his alleged killers were wrong:

Despite its earlier assertions, the sheriff’s office now acknowledges there is no evidence Skipper was involved in a check forging scheme with the two suspects.

“There is no indication that Ryan Skipper was involved in any illegal activity…” Wood also said that the two suspects “gave conflicting stories about time and events.”

The sheriff’s office also acknowledged for the first time that the scenario of events leading up to the murder as laid out by Sheriff Judd for the media on March 16 or 17 was based entirely on the self-serving statements of the alleged killers:

In some media accounts, it sounded as if Skipper was involved in check forgery with [accused killers William] Brown and [Joe] Bearden. But police have since clarified the statement, pointing out that they were just recounting what the suspects had told them. They have not found any evidence that Skipper was involved in any kind of check forging scheme with the two suspects.

The check-copying charge was just one of several allegations Sheriff Judd made about Skipper’s behavior. He also told reporters that Skipper picked up Joe Bearden, a stranger, and took him back to his house where they smoked pot and then conspired to forge checks. In media reports, the sheriff did not acknowledge that this version of events was based on the alleged killer’s statements. No one in the local media questioned him about the sourcing, apparently.

[…]

Cheney Finally Got That Quail

Trish

Tee hee.

Air Force Two carrying Vice President Dick Cheney struck a bird as the plane neared O’Hare International Airport on Friday.

The aircraft landed safely. Mechanics checked the plane while Cheney spoke at the Heritage Foundation’s annual leadership conference, but the incident did not delay his departure from the airport to return to Washington.

“A bird hit the right engine of the plane upon landing,” said Megan McGinn, a spokeswoman for Cheney. “He was told after he delivered his remarks.”

Remembering Ryan Skipper One Month After His Murder

Trish

Vigils will be held around the state of Florida and in Washington tomorrow to remember Ryan Keith Skipper.

Ryan was brutally murdered one month ago — stabbed 20 times, his body tossed on the side of the road. In life, Ryan was an open, fun, caring young man with enough energy to manage a retail store full-time while pursuing a degree in computer technology and fixing computers for his many, many friends on the side.

He was also gay. And this last fact is likely the reason Ryan was killed.

The vigils are not, as their organizers remind us, a time to protest. They are instead a time to honor Ryan’s life, which his friends and family are determined to remember for more than its end. I recently talked to Ryan’s brother, Damien Skipper, to find out what the handsome and friendly 25-year-old was like.

The vigils are a time to honor Ryan’s life, which his friends and family are determined to remember for more than its end

“We grew up between Auburndale and Winter Haven. We were both born in Winter Haven Hospital…and we lived in Polk County our whole lives until I went away to college.

Ryan stayed in Polk County and he’s gone to school. He went to Polk Community [College] for awhile and basically he’s carried a job since he graduated from high school. All of his friends are there and I tried a few to get him to move out of Polk County, just because of — not that I ever conceived or could conceive something like this happening — but I just told him that I thought it would be nicer if he lived in a metro area.

Ryan was a handsome and intelligent young man and he’s incredibly honest and he is a true friend to anyone who knew him and I’ll stick with the cliche that everyone has been saying, which is that if you knew Ryan you loved him. He was just that type of person. I don’t think there’s anything in his past that anyone would ever be ashamed of. Ryan, just like all of us, was imperfect. That doesn’t mean anything negative, it just means that we can all strive for perfection but none of us will reach it.

And so I remember Ryan as…I said this at his eulogy. I remember going to the hospital with my father and seeing Ryan and just knowing from that day that he’s my little brother. I’m his big brother and it’s my duty to kind of show him the ropes and protect him and just, you know, make sure that he lived a great life. And he did.

And it’s unfortunate that someone decided they could take that away from us, take that away from him.

Two men were arrested for Ryan’s murder, which is being investigated as a hate crime. They are jailed without bond, and will be until their trials.

Tomorrow we will remember Ryan, a brother and son, friend and student and coworker, who was taken from us. If we protest tomorrow, let it be against hate and intolerance, violence and ignorance, savagery and loss.

Florida Republicans Attempt to Shove Jeb Down Gators’ Throats

Trish

Everybody wants a piece of Jeb Bush this week.

Jeb’s legacy for Florida’s public education system was to attempt to underhandedly undercut and underfund it

First, a group of Florida legislators announced they would right what they see as a terrible wrong against the former governor. University of Florida faculty members recently declined to make Jeb an honorary alumni of the school, which, if we might mention in passing, just took the NCAA basketball championship for the second year in a row, along with the national football championship.

So you couldn’t blame Jeb if he wanted to be a Gator.

Calling a recent snub of Jeb Bush an insult, state lawmakers demanded Tuesday that the University of Florida find a new way to honor the former governor. Their solution: Rename the UF College of Education after the Republican governor…

”I don’t think anyone would disagree that Jeb Bush had a passion for education,” said Rep. David Rivera [R – Miami], who sponsored the proposal. Rivera acknowledged the decision by the UF faculty sparked his decision to push the legislation, which would require putting Bush’s name on the building and changing all maps, brochures and college catalogs.

Actually, quite a number of people disagree, many of them at the University of Florida. Jeb’s legacy for Florida’s public education system was to undercut and underfund it in an underhanded attempt to divert public dollars to private institutions.

One editorial said Rivera’s end run does no honor to young Bush.

There’s an old saying that the politics in academia are so nasty because the stakes are so small. Apparently, the same can be said about the Legislature…

Aside from the fact that it’s seldom a good idea to name a public edifice after a living politician (who knows what the future holds?), this bit of legislative mischief mocks both the Bush “legacy” and the integrity of campus-based decision making.

Not to mention that Jeb is an asshole. But don’t worry, others want him.

Jeb Finds a New Way to Destroy Medicare

Trish

Say you’re one of the country’s biggest hospital chains and you were recently fined hundreds of millions of dollars by the Securities and Exchange Commission for bilking Medicare. What do you do to turn your image around?

How about appointing Jeb Bush to your board of directors? After all, Jeb spent considerable time while governor of Florida attempting to privatize Medicare, cut elderly people out of reimbursement, and generally destroy the program. It’s a slam dunk!

Jeb’s previous health care experience consists of camping on the deathbed of Terri Schiavo and second-guessing her medical team

In his first publicized business activity since leaving office in January, former Gov. Jeb Bush is joining the board of Tenet Healthcare, the national hospital chain that’s working to clean up its image and performance since dealing with widespread allegations of fraud.

…The money-losing chain, which owns and operates 62 hospitals in 12 states, has been struggling to emerge from a series of legal and financial problems. Earlier this month, it paid $10 million to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into Medicare fraud allegations. Last year, it reached an agreement with the federal government to pay $900 million to settle allegations of Medicare fraud.

Jeb, whose previous health care experience consists of camping on the deathbed of Terri Schiavo and second-guessing her medical team, thinks it’s a great idea.

”It’s in the healthcare industry, which is something I know something about,” Bush said…”And it’s a place that over the next few years there’ll be some unsettled water. I prefer to go to some place where I can add value, rather than go to a place where things are going really well.”

You picked a winner there, buddy. And in a move he will one day explain to his maker, Bob Kerrey backs the appointment.

Former Sen. J. Robert Kerrey, a Democrat from Nebraska and chairman of the Tenet board’s nominating committee, said in a prepared statement: “I believe [Bush’s] decision to join us reflects the real strides the company has made in recent years to build a solid foundation for future growth based on integrity and quality.”

Not to mention big bucks.

Three Fired U.S. Attorneys Signed Letter Critical of Justice Department Last Year

Trish

When 17 U.S. attorneys questioned the Justice Department last year about why it wasn’t using a shared law enforcement database, they didn’t know that three of them would soon be among eight fired.

In a letter dated Aug. 30, 2006, the federal prosecutors questioned why the department had not taken a greater “leadership role.” Three of the U.S. attorneys were later fired.

Amid the many revelations that will no doubt come from the investigation of the Bush administration pogrom of U.S. attorneys was this one.

And, as Sen. Bill Nelson (D – Fla.) pointed out this week, the department still isn’t following the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation to share information with other law enforcement agencies in the fight against terrorism.

“We learned the hard way from 9-11 that coordinated information-sharing is imperative,” Nelson wrote Wednesday to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

The Florida Democrat’s request concerns a crime database called the Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or Linx…

Nelson’s letter follows the discovery of a pointed, written exchange last year between McNulty and a group of U.S. attorneys.

In a letter dated Aug. 30, 2006, the federal prosecutors questioned why the department had not taken a greater “leadership role” in promoting Linx. It was signed by 17 U.S. attorneys.

…Nelson and others in Congress have expressed concern over the exchange in 2006 — noting three of the U.S. attorneys who signed the letter to McNulty later were fired.

But — predictably — firing the critics didn’t solve the problem. And just as clearly, the Bush Justice Department is adrift in quibbles, incompetence, and heads up butts.

The 17 U.S. attorneys advocated an expansion of the system beyond its seven targeted regions, but doing so would require an agency other than the Department of Defense — which runs the program — to take the lead, said Mike Dorsey, head of the Linx program.

Dorsey said Thursday that the Justice Department has been supportive of the Linx program but attributed rifts about its future to debates on funding, control and turf wars.

If Imus Had Called Them ‘Dykes’ He’d Still Be on the Air

Jon Ponder

Don Imus blurted out what every crusty old white Republican watching the Rutgers women’s basketball game was probably thinking, but if he had called them “dykes” (which is the other label these old farts had in mind, I’m sure) instead of “nappy-headed ho’s,” he’d still be on the air every morning hobnobbing with the Gang of 500 and raking in millions from CBS radio and MSNBC.

Sure, there were voices of protest when the TV actor Isaiah Washington called a gay colleague a “faggot.” But corporate America didn’t pull its advertising from “Grey’s Anatomy,” as it did with Mr. Imus, did it?

Gay actor and writer Harvey Fierstein put it this way in a New York Times oped:

For the past two decades political correctness has been derided as a surrender to thin-skinned, humorless, uptight oversensitive sissies. Well, you anti-politically correct people have won the battle, and we’re all now feasting on the spoils of your victory. During the last few months alone we’ve had a few comedians spout racism, a basketball coach put forth anti-Semitism and several high-profile spoutings of anti-gay epithets.

What surprises me, I guess, is how choosy the anti-P.C. crowd is about which hate speech it will not tolerate. Sure, there were voices of protest when the TV actor Isaiah Washington called a gay colleague a “faggot.” But corporate America didn’t pull its advertising from “Grey’s Anatomy,” as it did with Mr. Imus, did it? And when Ann Coulter likewise tagged a presidential candidate last month, she paid no real price.

In fact, when Bill Maher discussed Ms. Coulter’s remarks on his HBO show, he repeated the slur no fewer than four times himself; each mention, I must note, solicited a laugh from his audience. No one called for any sort of apology from him. (Well, actually, I did, so the following week he only used it once.)

Face it, if a Pentagon general, his salary paid with my tax dollars, can label homosexual acts as “immoral” without a call for his dismissal, who are the moral high and mighty kidding?

Wolfowitz Admits Helping His Girlfriend Get a Raise at World Bank

Jon Ponder

World class corruption: Paul Wolfowitz must be thanking Don Imus right now because if Imus’ firing for using racial slurs on the air weren’t eating up all the media’s oxygen right now, Wolfowitz’ admission that he intervened to get his girlfriend — and subordinate — a raise at the World Bank.

If Wolfowitz is forced to resign because of the scandal, it will be interesting to see what sort of promotion Pres. Bush gives him this time.

Wolfowitz is one of the neocon architects of the Iraq war. As a reward for his role in the United States’ biggest geopolitical disaster in its history, Pres. George Bush rewarded Wolfowitz by making him president of the World Bank.

Wolfowitz apologized yesterday to a group of employees at the bank for his role in helping his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, get a raise and a promotion:

In a chaotic day of revelations and meetings at a normally staid institution, Mr. Wolfowitz apologized for his role in the raise and transfer of Shaha Ali Riza, his companion, to a few hundred staff members assembled in the bank building atrium, only to be greeted by booing, catcalls and cries for his resignation.

If Wolfowitz is forced to resign because of the scandal, it will be interesting to see what sort of promotion Pres. Bush gives him this time. The “war czar” position is open, as is the position we suggested, “presidential czar.”