Quick Hits and Sarcastic Commentary
Living up to our moniker: Opinions. Observations. Ornery Human Beings
- Time to buy that locking gas cap someone was telling us about. Too bad this goof wasn't smoking as he siphoned. A Darwin Award missed.
- A victory in the fight to keep the Ground Zero memorial free of anti-American tripe. Too bad it took hillary clinton's disapproval to get republicans to act - but no one ever accused a clinton of not being able to read public approval polls.
- Frank Main writes about the Media Alert we referenced yesterday on the CPD website regarding cameras in the squad cars. No word on whether the cameras will be activated for stops involving white cop/white citizen, black cop/black citizen or only in the cases of cop/man of god.
- Another victory in the fight against democrat obstructionism. John Roberts sworn in as, hopefully, the court begins a march to the right.
posted by SCC at 8:00 PM
26 Comments:
It's hard to keep up with all these Republican indictments! soon Bill Frist, The Ohio governor, Delays "closest friend" Abramoff, Delay himself, the republican party chair that has four felony indictments for interfering with the democrat partys phone bank during the election- James Tobin, the Kentucky governor (don't recall the name), Rob Ebensteiner- the list seems endless. Also, I find it to be of interest that the defense is always the same- a politically motivated attack by liberals... hmmmnnnn... apparently a VAST LEFT-WING CONSPIRACY is in motion- BEWARE!!!
Anybody here about a weener waiver at Ebinger school. Funny.. if it was in boo booville. It would of had all the stations covering it. I guess as always we dont matter no mo.
Any attorney general with a history of indicting himself is a freaking softball. These are the death throes of a democratic party on life support in texas. Delay will be cleared and the main stream media will cry and pout about corrupt courts in a further attempt to marginalize the judiciary.
dreaaaaammmm onnnn dearest SCC, I mean BB... ;-)
I guess if you spell it DALEY, he's lucifer, DeLay- saintly... all those ethics charges in the past... mere misunderstandings! Sad...
10:11:31
10:38:53
Oh, censorship... I rue this solipsistic transgression on your part SCC... three times- even if he is a lefty... for shame!
"culture of corruption" said... (censored 3x & counting- this had been the 1st post in this thread... ;-> !)
WOW- Tom DeLay and John Roberts torn off the front pages... because JUDITH MILLER is out of jail after 86 days- because her tough guy source has finally assured her she can sing with impugnity. The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that the source is none other than I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, V.P. Cheney's Chief of Staff. So let's see- ROVE. LIBBY. And a supposed THIRD high level government official involved. Hmmmn- rumor has it that it's BOLTON, but wouldn't CHENEY or BUSH be a gas?
9/29/2005 08:48:36 PM
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS IMPLODING.
THEY STAND FOR NOTHING BUT HATRED , HATRED OF GW, NO IDEAS, NO AGENDA, JUST PURE SEETHING HATRED. THOSE WITH SOOO MUCH HATE ARE UNABLE TO THINK CLEARLY AND OBJECTIVELY. THE DEMOCRATS OFFER , HATE, HATE AND MORE HATE.
And what was the go-go impeachment `90's??
A love-fest for the left from the right???
What blatant hypocrisy!
Cram it, clownie! Laughable!!
Hardee-har-har!!
If you can't stand the heat in the kitchen when the LAW breaks in to take YOUR crooks, maybe you out to start a bass-fishing blog next time- something real relaxin'-like! You're choking on all that crap propaganda you've been gorging on now that you see your heroes are really villains! WAKE UP! Pat Fitzgerald's going to get them all- be grateful! Left, Right and Center- going dowwnnnnnnn!!!
DEMOCRATIC PARTY IMPLODING???
YES!!! ABSOLUTELY!!!
LOOK AT THE SENATE VOTE FOR ROBERTS, 22 DEMOCRATICS VOTED FOR ROBERTS W/ 1 INDEPENDENT (AKA DEMOCRAT) WHILE 22 VOTED AGAINST ROBERTS. THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CAN'T EVEN STAY TOGETHER W/ A SENATE VOTE. CLEARLY THIS IS FACE VALUE EVIDENCE THAT THERE IS REAL LEADERSHIP/LEADERLESS PROBLEMS IN THE DEOMCRATIC PARTY. ANOTHER VICTORY FOR THE REPUBLICANS, SLIT THE OPPOSITION IN HALF. WAY TO GO ROVE, U THE MAN!!!!!
HEY PAYBACK...LET GO OF YOUR HATRED, YOUR ARE RAMBLING ON INCOHERENTLY AND YOUR HATRED FOR BUSH IS OOZING OUT, CLOUDING YOUR MIND. LAST I HEARD WE ALL ARE INNOCENT UNTILL PROVEN GUILTY, OH I FORGOT UNLESS YOUR A LEFTY LIKE PAYBACK, THEN ANYONE WHO DOES NOT AGREE OR SHARE YOUR BELIEFS IN LOCKSTEP, THEN YOU GUILTY. SEE YOUR HATRED IS UNDERMINNING ANY POSSIBLE VALUE YOUR RANTINGS MAY HAVE.
ROVE & LIBBY are on the HOT SEAT for OUTING a C.I.A. Agent- (maybe others!) Those are the FACTS as we know them at the moment- m-a-y-b-e it'll go nowhere- but how it is HATE, HATE, HATE to discuss FACTUAL situations? Is Patrick Fitzgerald a HATER? Is it cool for him to tighten the dragnet around RICHIE DALEY cause he's a Dem, and your Boss, and you HATE him? THAT HATE is okay- but BUSH & his capos are OFF-LIMITS??? Think about it dude- you've lost perspective on this one! They are one and the same- Mayor/President... our elected guys- if found dirty, them or their underlings- THROW THE BUMS OUT- "Red" or "Blue"...!
WHOA- PRETEND DISSIN' DEM- TRY LOSING ALL THE CAPS- YOU'RE SO STEAMED YOU'RE SHOUTING!!!
Look GUYYYYY-
The ROBERTS thing was a slam dunk- the guy is teflon, the righties measured it perfect- why go nuts in a battle you can't win- KUDOS to Kidney Stone Rove and your team! IF the DEMS had fought it tooth and nail, NOT ONLY would they STILL have LOST, but they would have lost a second time in the court of PUBLIC OPINION (wisely they AND Rove know this is the ultimate stage of all!) So you'd just dis' "us" if we filibustered Roberts too- even mose histrionically... so breath into your paper bag and bring the heart rate down- your about to have a grabber! Now- what do you think anout the the guy(s) in charge around here CENSORING my initial MILLER/LIBBY update THREE TIMES? Is that not HATEful? or something bad? Wouldn't you get a little steamed if they "twilight zone"'d yer stuff like that? THAT'S why this htread went into the crapper- bogus b-havior! Not the first time either; unfortunately probably not the last from their record! Not the way to get more hits and page-views, by censoring fellow coppers! Uncool!
Miller agrees to testify in leak investigation
September 29, 2005
BY JOHN SOLOMON ASSOCIATED PRESS
Advertisement
WASHINGTON-- After nearly three months behind bars, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was released Thursday after agreeing to testify about the Bush administration's disclosure of a covert CIA officer's identity.
Miller left the federal detention center in Alexandria, Va., after reaching an agreement with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. She will appear Friday morning before a grand jury investigating the case.
"My source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations," Miller said in a statement.
Her source was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, reported The Times, which supported her contention that her source should be protected.
"As we have throughout this ordeal, we continue to support Judy Miller in the decision she has made," said Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. "We are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver, both by phone and in writing, releasing her from any claim of confidentiality and enabling her to testify."
Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn declined to comment.
Miller has been in custody since July 6. A federal judge ordered her jailed when she refused to testify before the grand jury investigating the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's name by White House officials.
The disclosure of Plame's identity by syndicated columnist Robert Novak in July 2003 triggered an inquiry that has caused political damage to the Bush White House and could still result in criminal charges against government officials.
The federal grand jury delving into the matter expires Oct. 28. Miller would have been freed at that time, but prosecutors could have pursued a criminal contempt of court charge against the reporter if she continued to defy Fitzgerald.
Of the reporters swept up in Fitzgerald's investigation, Miller is the only one to go to jail. She was found in civil contempt of court.
Time reporter Matthew Cooper testified to the grand jury after his magazine surrendered his notes and e-mail detailing a conversation with presidential aide Karl Rove.
Last year, Cooper and NBC's Tim Russert answered some of the prosecutor's questions about conversations they had with Libby.
Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus also answered the prosecutor's questions about a conversation with an unidentified administration official. Under the arrangements for his testimony, Pincus did not identify the official to the investigators, who already knew the official's identity. Prosecutors also say they know the identity of Miller's source.
Novak apparently has cooperated with prosecutors, though neither he nor his lawyer has said so.
Novak's column on July 14, 2003, came eight days after Plame's husband said in an opinion piece in the Times that the Bush administration twisted intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
Novak wrote that two senior administration officials told him Plame had suggested sending her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the African nation of Niger on behalf of the CIA to look into possible Iraqi purchases of uranium yellowcake.
Wilson's article in the Times had stated it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.
The timing of Wilson's article was devastating for the White House, which was struggling to fend off criticism because no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. The president's claims of such weapons in Iraq were the main justification for going to war.
According to an affidavit of Miller's in the investigation, the reporter spoke to one or more confidential sources regarding Wilson's op-ed piece, which was titled, "What I Didn't Find In Africa." She never wrote a story about Wilson or Plame.
Fitzgerald wanted Miller to tell the grand jury about the confidential conversations she had with a particular administration official and the prosecutor demanded that she produce documents relating to those conversations.
Fitzgerald said in July that he thought he had identified Miller's source and that the source had waived confidentiality.
Miller's cooperation could clear the way for Fitzgerald to wind up his investigation. Whether he will seek any indictments or is trying to negotiate guilty pleas with anyone isn't publicly known.
While the expiration of the grand jury on Oct. 28 would seem to be a milestone signifying the end of the investigation, Fitzgerald could ask the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Thomas Hogan, to impanel a new grand jury.
Miller is a veteran national security reporter. In the 1980s, she became the first woman to be named chief of The Times' Cairo bureau in Egypt. For her work on Osama bin Laden in 2001, she won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism as part of a small team of Times reporters.
Starting in 2002, her stories about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq helped bolster the Bush administration's case for toppling Saddam Hussein. The failure to find the weapons prompted heavy criticism of Miller and the Times as well as of the Bush administration.
The news media is in a less-than-ideal position in the Plame probe.
The reporters' sources-- rather than being whistle-blowers exposing wrongdoing and facing retaliation if identified-- are government officials whose motives in leaking appear to have been to undermine the credibility of a critic of the Bush administration.
Contributing: AP reporter Pete Yost in Washington contributed to this report
Can someone please explain to me how citing someone for a vehicle noise violation = racial profiling? Unless, of course, Ms. Mitchell is suggesting that ONLY blacks / minorities play music at such a loud decibel. Now that sounds like racial stereotyping to me....
Going after loud car stereos sounds like profiling
September 29, 2005
BY MARY MITCHELL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement
No one hates those loud car speakers more than I do. That being said, I have a serious problem with the city's "automatic vehicle impoundment" ordinance. The city's law gives police officers the right to take someone's car "if a vehicle is found to have a device that generates sound clearly audible to a person with normal hearing at a distance greater than 75 feet."
That's the legal way of saying a cop can pull someone over if he thinks the car stereo is too loud.
I'm no fan of obnoxiously loud car stereo systems, but this law gives cops too much power. Take what happened to Dwan Jones, for example.
Last weekend, the 36-year-old South Side man was on his way to a skating rink when he was pulled over for allegedly playing his car stereo too loud.
"He asked me for my license and stuff. Then he asked me if he could check my person. Then he asked if he could search my vehicle," Jones said.
I need to digress right here.
A recent study released by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics showed that while black, Hispanics and white motorists are equally likely to be pulled over by police, blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched, handcuffed, arrested and subjected to force or the threat of it.
Jones should have just said no. But because he had nothing to hide and was still trying to get to the midnight rumble at the skating rink, he let the police conduct a search.
"He opened the trunk and saw that I had speakers in the trunk," Jones said.
He drives one of those customized cars that are so hot. Jones has outfitted his 2000 Monte Carlo with 20-inch rims, a woodgrain dashboard, a DVD player and $3,200 worth of stereo equipment, including the 12-inch woofers the cops spotted in the trunk.
The search makes it easy for the cop to claim in an administrative hearing that he heard loud music. But what happened next makes the traffic stop seem more like a carjacking than an impoundment.
'They just left me on the street'
A couple of additional police officers showed up. Jones was ordered out of his Monte Carlo. One of the police officers jumped in and sped off. That's when Jones said he was told by another officer that he was being cited for noise pollution.
"The whole thing was not done professionally," Jones said. They just left me on the street."
The police officer claimed he was able to hear "a device that was broadcasting sound greater than 75 feet."
"That is an automatic vehicle impoundment violation," said David Bayless, director of Chicago Police Department News Affairs. "The officer drove the vehicle to the station to secure it, and then it was towed to the pound. That is not unusual."
Luckily, Jones was stranded in a familiar area. He called his fiancee to pick him up.
Because Jones has an anti-carjacking device on his car. It stalled on 76th and Ashland, a few blocks away from the police station. When Jones and his fiancee saw the car in the street, he stopped and punched in the system's code.
"When I got to the police station at 79th and Halsted, another officer told him the unit that pulled him over didn't work out of that police station,'' and allegedly told Jones to take pictures of his vehicle.
Bayless said the police officer should have told Jones exactly why he was being stopped, but Jones claims that didn't happen until after the police officer drove off with his car.
Easy targets
When he got to the auto pound to pick up the Monte Carlo, Jones said he noticed many of the cars were similar in appearance.
"I saw about 20 cars and all of them got the same style," he said. "It's like they are targeting us out here. They shouldn't think that everybody who puts on rims or drives a fancy car is into the drug dealing or is up to no good."
Allegations that Jones was playing loud music cost him $500 for the "automatic violation," $150 for towing fees and $10 per day for storage. In total, he was out $700 and a night at the skating rink.
"The way the system is now, they are just taking money," Jones told me. "I have been working hard for money to buy a home. It just felt like I might as well have taken the money, balled it up and thrown it out of the window."
Noise pollution is an infuriating nuisance. I can't tell you how many times I've wondered why the police aren't ticketing more people for this violation. But noise pollution isn't a crime. And the current ordinance, as worded, makes it too easy for police to target young men like Jones.
All a police officer has to do is claim that the music coming from a hip-hop-mobile is too loud, check the car's stereo system, and the motorist must pay hundreds of dollars before getting a hearing? That's absurd.
The discretionary nature of the law also could lead to more complaints of harassment and profiling.
I may dislike the very sight of a hip-hop-mobile.
But I hate class profiling even more.
Fo' shizzle, my nizzle, BEOTHCH!
Black,white,brown, we all get pulled over at about the same rate. The fact that some people are then issued citations or taken in custody has more to do with them not having license,insurance,city stickers,expired plates,than the color of thier skin. That is a good thing with all the money we shell out to be legit.
Upstanding citizen Dwon Jones has a nice arrest history-oooppppssss
Some coppers FART at over 75 decibels!
Instead of spending all that money on a 5 year old Monte Carlo, he could have bought a pair of earbuds at a dollar store and lost his hearing much cheaper!
Responding to 9/29/2005 9:57 P.M.
I live in the area of Ebinger school. I have a child that plays at that playground. Can you tell me more information what you're talking about?
Links please, not 500 line posts.
Move away from Ebinger School! The Diaper Dicks are trying to catch a wee wee waiver.
We can't move away, Daley won't let us move to a safe neighborhood.
Residency my man, residency.
To Ms Mitchell,
You are an enabler, much like your screwball leftwing cohorts...you do nothing but divide America into groups...Oh what would you write about if not the poor, poor...black man.You are one more idiot along with Sharpton, Meeks, Jakes, Jackson...who believes ,"I'm offended therefore I am..." you and people like you are the reason why the black race will never have that real chance to make it in America...because they will not take it...victim is where they feel most comfortable and you provide the space...Sadly, America is lacking in the concept of personal responsibility...and you are there to make sure being a victim has its rewards...Sad....
A G R E E D !!! WELL SAID
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