Month: July 2007

(Originally posted on The Bilerico Project by Ethan St. Pierre)

“Why don’t you just demand your rights as an American instead of asking for Special Rights?”

Transgender Americans are not asking for special rights but for the same rights that other people have. The fact that transgender Americans are NOT treated equally in employment, housing, credit..etc. begs for legislation to stop discriminatory acts towards transgender people. Transgender Americans are not asking for rights that others don’t have. Transgender Americans are not asking to be treated better than everyone else or to have something that other Americans don’t have.

When I began transitioning on the job and I started exhibiting male characteristics, I was fired from my job and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I was told by every lawyer that I did not have a case because there was no law to protect transgender people from being fired in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
I was not fired because of real or perceived sexual orientation but I was fired specifically based on my gender expression. The Human Resource department was very careful in being explicit as to why I was being fired. My story of anti-transgender discrimination isn’t unique, there are hundreds just like it. So I ask you, where do we go to demand these rights? Where exactly was I supposed to go to demand justice for losing a job where I had spent years working holidays and weekends, sacrificing time that could have been spent with my family?

Demanding your rights as an American and not Special Rights
for Hate Crimes Victims and Survivors. “A Murder is a Murder, shouldn’t we all be treated the same?”

Where was Robert Eads supposed to go to demand his rights when no doctor would treat him because he was a transman? As a result, he died with ovarian cancer.

Where was Chanelle Pickett supposed to go to demand her rights when she was brutally murdered by William Palmer, only to have her family,  friends and a whole community watch him get sentenced to 2 years in prison, the maximum sentence for assault and battery?

Where was my aunt, Debra Forte supposed to go to demand her rights when she was beaten, strangled, stabbed three times in the chest, and every bone in her neck was broken by her killer, Michael Thompson? Thompson ran from the police and then turned himself in 2 weeks later only to be let out on bail. Where was my family supposed to go to demand compassion when the police came to my house and repeatedly referred to my aunt as “he,”  even though she transitioned in 1961 and had been living as a woman for 34 years?

Where was my mother supposed to go to demand her rights when the police told her that her “brother” had been stabbed to death but when my brother and I arrived at the morgue to identify her body we were faced with the horrific reality that she had been beaten beyond recognition?

Where was the justice when we had to tell my grandfather that his child had been taken from him in a senseless act of violence, that his child was brutally murdered for no other reason than that she was a transsexual?

My grandfather died a few weeks later when his heart gave out.

Where was the justice when Michael Thompson plea bargained with the district attorney and was sentenced to 15 years in prison? The District Attorney was afraid that if they went for 1st degree murder that the jury wouldn’t be sympathetic to my aunt’s “lifestyle.”

My family was beyond angry that the district attorney didn’t go for 1st degree murder, and, after Chanelle Pickett’s killer was sentenced to 2 years (her killer was tried for murder 1), the district attorney called my mother to say, “See? We told you what would have happened.”

There have been 8 murders of transgender people here in Massachusetts and only 2 of those murders have been solved. In both instances the killers turned themselves in. There are now 380 transgender people (that we know of) who have died because of anti-transgender hatred or bias and more than half of those murders remain unsolved.

It would be nice to think that we are all human and therefore we should all be treated as human beings, that we should all be treated fairly and that all laws should apply to all of us. The simple fact is that we are not and we are dying as a result.

We are not disposable people and if Congress can’t pass a law that sends that message, they might as well just paint a target on our asses.

The latest bipartisan George Washington University Battleground Poll rightfully received media attention because of its depressing data.  There is historic political pessimism and cynicism.  But something is more troubling than the data on the dire views of Americans about their elected representatives and government.  It is that 72 percent of voters still believe that “voting gives people like me some say about how the government runs things.”  Unbelievable!  Such confidence in a system that has failed them.

Despite untrustworthy elected officials and a dysfunctional government that takes care of the Upper Class more than everyone else, Americans retain still believe in their democracy.  This logical absurdity – or delusional state – is best explained by avoidance of the pain of cognitive dissonance.  Americans resist the reality that they are living in a sham representative democracy where the rule of law is a growing fiction.

It should be noted (but was not in the media coverage) that 75 percent of the likely voters were 45 or older, with a third retired.  That makes the results even more unsettling.  They should know better than to keep believing they can vote the nation into a better condition.  Self-identified Republicans were 41 percent, Democrats 42 percent, and Independents 15 percent.

Consider these reasons for giving up on voting and elections under the grip of the two major parties: Some 53 percent have an unfavorable view of politicians, with 55 percent believing that most elected officials are untrustworthy.  A majority of 52 percent disapproves of the performance of the Democrats in Congress and 61 percent disapprove of Republicans there.  An incredible 93 percent feels that lawmakers in Washington put partisan politics first compared with citizens.  But the biggest shift in voter opinion is that 71percent think their own Member of Congress puts partisan politics first compared with them, with 63 percent feeling strongly that way.

For the big picture: Seventy-percent are now convinced that the country is off on the wrong track – and 58 percent feel strongly that way.  This is the worst score recorded in the history of the Battleground survey.  Democrats are universally agreed about this point, but so are 71 percent of Independents and 49 percent of Republicans.

A plurality of 38 percent believes their children will be worse off in the future and only a third said they “think their own children will be better off than they are right now — a drop of 7 points since January.”  Pessimism is worst among white Americans: Only 29 percent believe that their children will be better off; 38 percent believe their children will be worse off.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post summed up: “the American people have entered this campaign with a wholly cynical view of the political process.”

One trick of the political status quo establishment to keep many Americans (but still less than about half of all eligible voters) believing in voting is advertising.  Consider the current crowded presidential primary season.  The mass media constantly work to play up the races among Democratic and Republican contenders.  Why not?  They make a ton of money from all the money spent on campaign advertising.  Televised debates and endless state and national poll data are entertainment that fuel fake competition.  It is sheer manipulation of the electorate – to keep them interested in the election and, worse, to keep them believing that it really matters who wins in each party.

In the end, greedy and arrogant power elites will ensure that only a “safe” candidate will be chosen so that the two-party duopoly loses no power and no presidency rocks the political boat or harms corporate America.  Having so many contenders in the primary season is a farce.  The eventual Democratic ticket will be Clinton and Obama.  Period.  End of story.  It is the lowest risk, smartest political strategy.  On the Republican side there is more uncertainty, but the likely ticket will be Giuliani and Thompson.

The true wildcard is whether Michael Bloomberg enters the race as a third party candidate.  I am rooting for this.  Objective statistical analysis of the American electorate shows that the level of public discontent with Democrats and Republicans is so high that a lavishly funded campaign by Bloomberg can make history.  Take independents, turned-off Democrats and Republicans, and the huge numbers of eligible voters that do not usually vote.  Bang!  You have more than enough votes to make Bloomberg president.  By choosing a well known but political maverick that the public trusts as a running mate, he can win.  It is exactly the kind of shake-up our political system desperately needs.

Americans must awake from their political stupor and stop letting themselves be victimized and manipulated by the media/political/financial elites running and ruining our nation.

[Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Delusional Democracy, www.delusionaldemocracy.com, and a founder of Friends of the Article V Convention, www.foavc.org.]

When the FBI and IRS show up at your home, you know it’s trouble. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), 83, is the longest serving Republican in the Senate. If he were a member of the House, this would probably mean that he’d be stripped of his committee assignments…although I don’t think the same rules apply in the Senate.

In other news, Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure and has been raced to the hospital. Early reports are that he is fine, although he did suffer a similar seizure back in 1993.

[Cross-posted at ProgressiveHistorians, Daily Kos, My Left Wing, Open Left, and Talk Left.]

I’m one of the few bloggers out there who doesn’t believe we should be pushing for impeachment of President Bush — even though I think he’s clearly committed impeachable crimes.  My reasoning is not based on Bush’s guilt or innocence, but on the fact that impeachment as a mechanism is broken and needs significant repair before it can be viewed as a legitimate means of removal from office of any public official, much less a U.S. President.

People who say there are few precedents for impeachment don’t, with respect, know what they’re talking about.  It’s true that only three Presidents have been impeached by the U.S. Congress; but limiting impeachment to that set ignores the fact that federal impeachment has been tried no less than eighteen times since our country’s founding; its victims have included, in addition to the three Presidents, a United States Senator, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, a Secretary of War, a U.S. Commerce Court Judge, and eleven U.S. District Court judges.  Meanwhile, a large number of federal officials who clearly committed impeachable offenses were not impeached for one reason or another.  At least one prominent political criminal was not able to be impeached: Vice President Aaron Burr, whose treasonous acts were committed in the last month of his term and who was subsequently tried for treason after he had been out of office for two years.  Others who got away include Iran-Contra mastermind Caspar Weinberger and Teapot Dome malefactor Albert B. Fall.  We’ll come back to these impeachments-that-never-were in Wednesday’s final installment.

While no one’s guilt can ever be completely proved or disproved, but the eighteen cases of impeachment can be pretty clearly grouped into two categories: those for whom the impeachment process worked properly, and those whose impeachments were botched or who should never have been impeached at all.  In today’s installment, we’ll examine nine impeachment cases that were properly treated by the Senate; tomorrow, we’ll look at nine cases where impeachment failed or was unnecessary.  On Wednesday, I’ll discuss some conclusions and suggest three recommendations for how to fix our broken system of impeachment.

My major source for the following is this PBS timeline; other sources include this U.S. Senate article, and this collection of documents from JusticeLearning, though I’ve consulted additional sources (including Wikipedia and JSTOR) and my own memory where necessary.
The Open-and-Shut Cases

There are surprisingly few of these, but the two men below clearly met the criteria for impeachment and were dispatched in due course:

• West Hughes Humphreys (U.S. District Court Judge, 1862): Humphreys, a distinguished judge and member of Tennessee’s 1834 Constitutional Convention, was impeached for the simple reason that he had accepted a position as Confederate District Court Judge without resigning his Union commission.  It’s unclear just how exactly Humphreys expected to carry out his Union duties while residing in and in the employ of a Confederate state.  In any event, he was unanimously impeached by both the House and Senate and fled deep into Confederate territory to avoid capture.
• Robert W. Archbald (U.S. Commerce Court Judge, 1912): Archbald was appointed to the U.S. Commerce Court in 1911 and immediately began accepting bribes from just about everyone he was charged with overseeing: coal and gas companies, attorneys, and litigants in his own court — and he was an equal-opportunity bribee, accepting land as well as cash.  Impeached by the Senate less than a year after taking office, Archbald was still only convicted on five of the thirteen counts of impeachment levied against him, despite clear evidence of his guilt of all thirteen.  Prickly Senator Henry Ashurst of Arizona, who would later become U.S. Senate Majority Leader, was the only senator to vote against all thirteen counts of impeachment.

The Head-Scratchers

The following four cases are each among the most difficult to determine what exactly the Senate should have done.  Scholars continue to debate the proper outcomes, and will probably do so for a long time to come:

• John Pickering (U.S. District Court Judge, 1803): Pickering is an odd case because he was not actually charged with any high crimes or misdemeanors.  Rather, he was clearly unable to perform his duties, owing to a mixture of alcoholism and insanity.  He failed to show up at court for a period of over a year, then suddenly appeared and handed down a judgment against the government without even hearing their witnesses, all the while raving and cursing.  The entire impeachment trial was highly politically charged, as the Federalists claimed the whole case had been ginned up by Republicans trying to replace Pickering with one of their own.  In the end, Pickering was impeached and removed from office by the barest of margins.
• James H. Peck (U.S. District Court Judge, 1830): Another strange case in which the judge was clearly not impeached for political reasons, but was also not clearly guilty.  In a fairly routine case, Peck ruled against a client represented by attorney Luke Lawless, and then published his opinion in a local newspaper.  Lawless replied with a broadside in another newspaper attacking the Peck’s ruling.  Peck, in turn, responded by finding Lawless in contempt of court, throwing him in jail for twenty-four hours, and suspending for eighteen months his right to practice before a Federal court.  Excessive and autocratic?  Absolutely.  Grounds for impeachment, something that hadn’t been tried successfully for twenty-seven years?  Maybe not.

  Nevertheless, the indomitable Lawless began a crusade against Peck and became the first private citizen to file an impeachment brief with the House of Representatives.  The House voted to impeach Peck, but Lawless was unable to get even a simple majority in the Senate for removing the judge from office.

• Halsted Ritter (U.S. District Court Judge, 1936): Ritter’s case, like that of Harold Louderback three years before, was a series of misdemeanors including income tax fraud, practicing law while serving as a federal judge, and embezzlement.  As it had with Louderback, the Senate acquitted Ritter of all these charges, which its members did not deem equal to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” needed for impeachment.  However, in an unprecedented vote, Ritter was convicted and removed from office by exactly the required two-thirds vote on a single charge: bringing the judiciary into disrepute.  Essentially, the Senate judged that Ritter’s conduct violations, while not individually meeting the threshold of high misdemeanors, did when taken together so disgrace the judiciary that they were grounds for impeachment.
• Alcee L. Hastings (U.S. District Court Judge, 1988): The Hastings case is perhaps the most confusing and uncertain of all the federal impeachments.  in 1983, Hastings was indicted by a federal grand jury for accepting a $150,000 bribe; Hastings was acquitted by a jury of his peers, though his alleged co-conspirator was convicted of the same crime.  Four years later, a judicial review panel concluded that there was a preponderance of evidence indicating Hastings had actually conspired to accept the bribe; this finding prompted the House to begin impeachment proceedings.

  The special Senate committee that investigated the evidence against Hastings was chaired by Jeff Bingaman and vice-chaired by Arlen Specter.  Both Bingaman and Specter concluded that there was not enough evidence to impeach Hastings on any count, but the full Senate disagreed, removing him from office with five votes to spare.  Undaunted, Hastings then proceeded to run for and win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, the very body that had just impeached him.  Hastings retains that seat to this day, and is the only the second impeached official (after William Blount) to subsequently run for and win political office.

The Resignations

Finally, the following three men resigned before their Senate impeachment trials could begin, obviating the need for such trials and effectively admitting their guilt:

• Mark Delahay (U.S. District Court Judge, 1873): Really, Delahay shouldn’t even be on this list; instead, he properly belongs in a separate group of twenty-two judges who, since 1818, have resigned from the federal bench before they could be impeached.  The only difference between Delahay and the rest is that impeachment charges were actually introduced in the House before he could tender his resignation.  A political appointee of Abraham Lincoln(!), who was both a personal friend and a relative, Delahay was alleged to have committed a variety of offenses including presiding while drunk and embezzling money from the government.
• George W. English (U.S. District Court Judge, 1926): English was rightfully impeached by a bipartisan group of House members after he embezzled money, showed favoritism at the bench, unfairly disbarred attorneys, and threatened to jail jurors if they did not vote his way.  It was an open-and-shut case that the Senate was never able to try; English resigned before the trial could begin.
• Richard M. Nixon (President, 1974): Not much to say about this most corrupt of all U.S. Presidents.  Nixon would likely have been impeached by a comfortable majority in the full Senate for his attempts to rig the 1972 Presidential election (attempts that were at least in part responsible for the defeat of Edmund Muskie, Nixon’s strongest potential opponent, in the Democratic primary); even such a staunch conservative as Barry Goldwater had signaled that he would probably vote against Nixon.  After the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment against Nixon, the President resigned, making further pursuit of impeachment proceedings unnecessary.

In Part II of this series, to be posted tomorrow, I’ll discuss the cases where impeachment has failed.

The Sunshine boys, Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, are out today with patent nonsense that the mainstream media will lap up–We Are Winning in Iraq.

According to O’Hanlon and Pollack in today’s New York Times:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Yes sirree. That O’Hanlon is one tough analyst and critic. Here’s what he told the Voice of America in March 2005:

The last year in particular has seen, first, a great intensification of the insurgency but, at the very end of it, perhaps a slight reduction in its strength and its lethality. And of course, then, the preparation for the elections, which took place in early 2005 and, essentially, commemorated the end of the second year and finished it on a much more positive political note. So we see an economy that’s still struggling, although gradually improving. We see Iraqi security forces that are still in their very fledgling state, although at least starting to get better. And we see a political process that is far from resolved, but at least hopeful.

So if you’re a pessimist or an optimist, either way, you have a lot of evidence to back up your view about how things have gone this last year in Iraq.

Be assured of one thing, O’Hanlon and Pollack did not freely travel around Iraq and did not travel without a security team. Their eight day visit and upbeat assessment ignores other plausible explanations:

1. The slowing of body counts in Baghdad is not a consequence of less sectarian strife; instead, the effectiveness of the death squads and ethnic/sectarian cleansing has reduced the number of targets.

2. Moqtada al Sadr’s control of police and intelligence organs is pretty extensive. He’s biding his time and smartly avoiding a direct confrontation with US forces. There is zero evidence that Moqtada is backing down or backing away.

3. The Sunni controlled forces are doing a better job of defending their sectors. That is true. But Al Qaeda is not the main threat and never has been. But the units in charge in the Sunni sectors out west are not ready and willing to join arm-in-arm with Shia units and work for the benefit of Iraq.

There are significant changes underway in Iraq that are going to hamper the movement and operations of U.S. forces. Last year, for example, when the U.S. tracked and killed Abu Musab Al Zarqawi we did not have to coordinate in advance with the Iraqi government. That operation was carried out independently of the the Iraqi government and security forces. Even with that freedom of movement, when our forces showed up on scene after dropping a bomb on Zarqawi the Iraqi police (Sunnis) were already there trying to gather up Zarqawi and get him to a hospital. Even under those so-called optimal conditions we could not trust the Iraqi security forces to be completely transparent with us.

Today we have less freedom of movement and it is going to get worse, not better. For example, US forces moving into contested areas in Baghdad must provide advance notice to Iraqi police (IP) and/or the Iraqi Army (IA). At a minimum that increases the likelihood that an operation will be compromised. It also means that Iraqi forces will protect the insurgent forces and individuals loyal to them while giving us free access to blast away at those forces they themselves want to see eliminated.

The days of free fire zones are coming to an end. (This applies to contractors as well.) We will see a gradual decline in U.S. casualties as the number of combat patrols diminish and we avoid attacking the centers of power of entrenched militia like the Mehdi Army and the Badr Brigade. But the end result is still a country fragmented into sectarian regions and not under the control of a central government.

The problem with the current surge strategy is that we are still following a plan that has us fighting both Sunni and Shia elements in different parts of the country. Oh yeah. We’re also fighting the Iranians. The fact that Sunni sheiks in Ramadi are banding together to fight outsiders does not mean they have decided to support Prime Minister Maliki and his government.

It is worth noting that despite our increased presence in Baghdad the ethnic purge is steadily marching on. Just check out these reports from the last week:

07/27/07 Reuters: Twenty-five bodies were found dumped across Baghdad in the past 24 hours, police said. Seven police commandos killed by a roadside bomb in Samarra. Seven police commandos were killed by a roadside bomb in Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. The police patrol then opened fire, killing three civilians.

07/28/07 AP: Car bomb kills at least four in Baghdad. An area in the heart of Baghdad frequently struck by suspected Sunni insurgents has been hit again. At least four people are dead and ten others wounded from a noontime bombing today. Police say the explosives were in a parked car…

07/29/07 Reuters: 20 bodies found in Baghdad on Saturday The bodies of 20 people were found in different areas of Baghdad on Saturday, police

07/30/07 AP: Insurgents attacked village south of Baqouba, killing 20 civilians

Northeast of the capital, dozens of suspected Sunni insurgents attacked a Sunni village south of Baqouba, killing 20 civilians and kidnapping others for not cooperating with them, a local police official said.

I would be impressed if we saw the perpetrators of these attacks being apprehended and punished. But that’s not happening. The task of carving Iraq up into sectarian safehavens is well advanced and continuing in part with our unwitting assistance.

O’Hanlon and Pollack are willing idiots who are happily latching on to the latest Bush Administration propaganda campaign to convince the public that things are swell in Iraq, that we are turning the corner, and that things will turn out okay if we just give it time. If you are eating a dozen donuts a day and sitting around waiting to lose weight I guarantee that you will not lose pounds no matter how optimistic you are. Well that analogy applies to Iraq. Surging US troops will not solve the basic political dilemma confronting Iraq.

Iraq is a country largely under the control of Shia forces that have a close relationship to Iran. The Sunni minority are not going to buy in to this deal. They will continue to fight it every way they can. And to the degree we get in the middle of that fight we will be casualties.

I’m not sure if it’s being a Devil’s Advocate or if I’ve just got too much Reynolds Wrap on the noggin this week, but Natasha’s article on peak oil and a review of A Crude Awakening over at Crooks and Liars got me thinking last night.

Does “Peak Oil Theory” explain the Bush Administration’s position on Iraq?
Really, think about it.

You’re Dubya.  It’s 2001, and you’re an oil man.  Your friends are oil men from an oil state.  Your Veep is an oil man.  You’re pretty sure oil is damned important.

Dick and his energy company buddies sit you down and explain Peak Oil to you.  They explain that without cheap oil, America is fucked.  The solution, Dick says, is to control the oil.  Whoever does, wins.  There’s gonna be wars over this stuff.  Big, nasty wars.  We’re going to need to go into places that have oil and set up bases and defend this stuff, or America is going to go belly up.

And, Dick says, if you don’t do this now, they are going to blame you when the crash comes, because you didn’t do it.  You’re going to be the President that lost America.  Food riots.  Millions dying.  The end times are a-comin’ and all that, Georgey.  This is it.  This is the 21st century.  One big oil war.

So Dubya goes along with the plan to hit Iraq and turn it into our base camp.  9/11 happens, and Dick says Hey man, suddenly we have 85-90% of America behind you and we can invade the country and kill the guy who went after your dad and you’ll save the country, George.  You’ll be a goddamn American War President.  

Well, Dubya’s the Decider.  He’s a big picture man.  He’ll save America, dammit.  So we go to war in Iraq.  We say it’s one thing, but we mean another.  Just have to catapult the propaganda.  Just have to fight the War on Terrah.  Cause when the real shit hits the fan, and a tank of gas is half a week’s pay, and groceries is the other half, and they will come for you, man.  But if we control the oil and we get the sweetheart deals, then it won’t happen.  Oil will remain cheap, but not TOO cheap.  And it’ll buy America another couple of decades to find a more permanent solution.

Everybody else?  They’ll have to pay up.  But we’ll be okay.  The oil companies will play along because they’ll make record profits.  The Saudis will play along, and so will the rest of the Middle East, because they need the money too.  Iraq’ll be a cakewalk, you see George.  This is a great plan.  Glad you thought of it.  Win-Win for America and the world, really.  It’ll weaken the Chinese and keep Russia in its place, and Europe will come to us as friends.

And somehow, I can see the light bulb go off over Dubya’s head as he realizes that “future historians will praise him as a visionary President” and all that, and he turns to Dick and says “Hell yeah, let’s do it.  Let’s save ‘murrica.”

Now…maybe I’m reading way, way, way too much into this.  Occam’s Razor strongly supports simple greed and power lust, if not good ol’ fundie Armageddonism.

But Peak Oil does, at least partially I think, explain why we’re in Iraq, and we’ll never leave…and why nobody will admit why we’re really there.

Not just the oil, but control of oil and its price.  And of course, that kind of power grab makes the rest of it:  the civil liberties violations, the rape of the Constitution, the naked soft dictatorship, the persecution of dissent…it makes all of it that much easier, because it’s being done by people who believe they are doing it for true patriotism.

It’ll be necessary to control the riots, Dick says.  You need the ability to respond quickly if things get out of hand.  You gotta get out ahead of this.  We’ll handle the heavy work, we just need your okay, Mr. President.

And so…yeah.  Maybe I’m just terribly cynical like Steven D says, but…I think there’s merit in thinking Peak Oil is part…maybe a very large part…of why we’re in Iraq today.

It doesn’t justify a single drop of blood, of course.  But the underlying logic, such as it is, does seem to hold.

Tonight The O’Reilly Factor is going to air a big Kos-troversy. It appears some sly dog dKos user once posted the following photoshopped image of Joe Lieberman servicing the president. It is appropriate? I don’t know. It’s kind of stupid. But it is a metaphor for Lieberman’s wayward Bush-smooching ways. O’Reilly claims that his show tonight will ‘destroy’ Daily Kos. It will do nothing of the sort. It will just make O’Reilly look more ridiculous.

Anyone that thinks a falafel sandwich is a fun sex-toy is hard to take seriously.

The House of Representatives is really getting down to business today. They’re condemning Japan (are they our last ally) for insufficient contrition about the use of comfort girls in their imperial era. They’re condemning Canada for clubbing baby seals. I think, regardless of merit, all these kinds of resolutions should be banned. Who cares what the Congress thinks about anything? Pass laws, enforce the law, and leave us alone. They already talk too much. And our executive branch is doing well enough at pissing off our allies without the assistance of the House.

What will it take to get these people to act like adults?

I was bruised and battered I couldn’t tell what I felt

I was unrecognizable to myself

I saw my reflection in a window I didn’t know my own face

oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin’ away

on the streets of Philadelphia

~ Bruce Springsteen, “Philadelphia”

I kept hearing those lyrics over the last couple of days as I felt like I was walking the streets of Philadelphia with Nizah Morris. Just a short distance, really, from Juniper and Chancellor streets to 16th and Walnut streets, before she disappeared into a few lost minutes that nobody who knows anything about is talking about. And at the end of that short journey ? half a mile, just to end up three miles from home ? she was gone, and nobody seemed to know why. And after two days, I don’t know why myself. But I do know that her story illustrates one of the reasons why one aspect of the hate crimes bill is needed.

Given how local law enforcement handled Nizah’s death, I can only imagine that the possibility of federal involvement or intervention might have lifted the haze that seems to cover the details of this case: police logs that don’t match their own accounts, police reports that were never filed; Morris lying unidentified in the hospital for 64 hours, when at least one of the three police involved knew her from past arrests, and one witness identified her to one of the officers involved; a detective who informs Morris’ mother of her death with by saying “He’s dead”; a medical examiner rules Morris’ death a homicide, but the police department assesses it as accidental until the second opinion they sought confirms the M.E.’s findings; a recording of a 911 call (one of two) edited down to 6 minutes when transmissions between the police officers involved really went on for 49 minutes; still no transcript of the call released; and an investigation that leads precisely nowhere.

But don’t take it from me. Talk a walk with Nizah for yourself.

Nizah Morris (1955 – December 24, 2002) was a 47-year-old African American transgender woman and entertainer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On December 22, 2002 Morris suffered a severe head injury from which she did not recover. Morris died on December 24, 2002, at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, when she was removed from life support. The Philadelphia Police Department’s handing of Morris’ death sparked protests in the LGBT community.

The Background



Nizah Morris began living as a woman in the in her early 20s. By December 2002 she had built a life for herself working her mother’s daycare center, performing in the weekly drag show at Bob and Barbara’s — a bar in Philadelphia’s Center City neighborhood — and practicing Buddhism.

Injury & Death



On December 22, Morris attended a party at the Key West Bar at the intersection of Juniper and Chancellor streets in Philadelphia. Morris left the bar at 2:00 a.m., and collapsed outside of the bar due to intoxication. Onlookers formed a group around Morris — who could not stand without assistance and had to be supported, according to witnesses — and waited for paramedics for approximately 20 minutes.

A 6th District police officer arrived, canceled the prior call for paramedics when Morris declined to go to a hospital, and offered her a courtesy ride to a hospital. Morris declined a ride the hospital and asked to be taken home. She was then helped into the police cruiser by witnesses at the scene.

Though Morris lived in the 5000 block of Walnut Street, police officers reported that she asked to be let out at 15th and Walnut streets, left the patrol car, and began walking toward 16th Street.

Minutes later, a passing motorist discovered Morris lying on the sidewalk, bleeding from the right side of her forehead. A call was placed to 911, and a 9th District officer arrived at the scene, but did not call a supervisor or treat the event as a crime.

Morris was transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in critical condition. On December 23, 2002, she was removed from life support, and at 8:30 p.m. on December 24, 2002, Nizah Morris was pronounced dead. [1]

Aftermath & Funeral



The medical examiner’s office classified Morris’ death as a homicide, on December 25, 2002, but however city’s homicide department refused to accept this ruling, classified Morris’ death as accidental, and requested a second opinion from a brain-injury specialist.

The following day, Morris’ mother — Roslyn Wilkins — was notified of her daughter’s death by a detective who informed her, “He’s dead.” The detective was removed from the case after Wilkins complained about his alleged insensitivity.[2]

On December 27, 2002, family members viewed photographs of Morris’ body at the medical examiner’s office, and expressed concern upon noticing slight indentation marks on her wrists. Morris’ mother and sister said medical examiners showed them pictures indicating defensive wounds on her hands.[3]

On December 31, 2002, the Philadelphia Inquirer published the first media account of Morris’ death, which referred to her as a “prostitute” in the headline and a “male prostitute” in the body of the story.

Nizah Morris was cremated on January 1, 2003, after a funeral service attended more than 300 people.[4]

Questions & Controversy



In the days after Morris’ funeral, questions concerning her death arose among her family members and in the LGBT community. During a meeting on January 7, 2003 with Homicide Captain Charles Bloom, Wilkins learned that her daughter received a courtesy ride from police 20 minutes before she was discovered lying on the sidewalk with a head injury.[5]

Details supplied by police about the moments prior to following Morris’ injury and discovery by a passing motorist conflicted with family members’ recollections of Morris,a and with witnesses’ accounts prior to Morris entering the police car outside of the Key West Bar.

Morris’ family doubted she would have accepted a ride from the police, given her fear of them, and questioned why she would ask to dropped off miles from where she lived.

Witnesses who were outside of the Key West Bar said Morris, was incapable of standing on her own,and had to be helped into the police car. They doubted that she would have been capable, just minutes later, of getting out of the police car on her own and walking away as police officers reported.

Second Opinion



On January 30, 2003, more than a month after Morris’ death and the medical examiner’s assessment that it was a homicide,the homicide division of the police department officially declared Morris’ death a homicide. Tests performed by a brain-injury specialist, on samples taken during, resulted in a finding that her death was due to cerebral injury.[6]

Police initially suggested Morris’ death had been accidental, and a police spokesman declined to comment on what led the medical examiner to conclude Morris’ death was a homicide.

Contradictions & More Questions



Contradictions between police accounts and witness accounts, and incomplete compliance with police procedures also aroused concerns that Morris case had been mishandled and the cause of her injury and subsequent death covered up because of her status as an African American transgender woman.[7]

Many of these contradictions and questions were reported by Timothy Cweik, a reporter for Philadelphia Gay News who has followed the story of Morris’ story since the first reports of her death. Cweik reported the following contradictions and procedural lapses in the Morris case[8]:

* 2:45 a.m. Police accounts say 6th District office Elizabeth Skala stopped outside of the Key West Bar and offered Morris a courtesy ride. Witness accounts say that Office Skala stopped to ask if Morris needed to be taken to a hospital, but Morris “waved off” Officer Skala’s offer. Officer Skala denied this first encounter.

* 3:07 a.m. – The first 911 call is placed and an ambulance dispatched to the 16th and Juniper, outside of the Key West Bar. Ninth District Officer Kenneth Novak was also dispatched, with Officer Skala as his back-up. Novak and Skala accepted the assignment to investigate the situation outside of the Key West Bar. Dispatch records show Officer Novak arrived first, but Officer Skala says she arrived fist.

* Skala then indicated to Novak that she did not require his assistance with Morris — who, aside from being intoxicated, was over six feet tall and a foot taller than officer Skala. Novack did not place himself back in service for new assignments, but instead tried to catch up with Skala on the courtesy ride, but did not use his police radio to coordinate movements with Skala, and arrived at the scene too late.

* Officer Skala then says she gave Morris a ride home, but thought Morris said she lived at 15th and Walnut streets, where police report Morris asked to getout of the vehicle. According to Officer Skala, the ride lasted four minutes. Her log indicated that it lasted 16 minutes.

* 3:25 a.m. Ninth District Officer Thomas Berry said he offered to help Morris out of the car at 15th and Walnut Streets, but that she did not need his help. Witnesses at the Key West Bar said that Morris was unable to stand on her own and had to be helped into the police car.

* The officers’ logs at this point record the incident as a successful hospital run, and do not record Morris leaving the police car at 15th and Walnut streets.

* 3:35 a.m. – A second series of 911 calls takes place when Morris is found at 16th and Walnut streets, injured and unconscious , but breathing. Officer Berry takes control of the scene, and reports the incident as a “DK,” police department code for a drunken fall. Officer Berry did not interview the citizen who discovered Morris and stopped to help her. No photographs were taken of the scene, nor was evidence such as Morris’ purse and hair brush preserved.

* Berry’s incident report said he left the injury scene at 3:35 a.m., but a 911 tape indicates Berry did not leave the scene until 4:05 a.m., as paramedics were placing Morris in the ambulance.

* Officer Novak was assigned to investigate the scene, and accepted the assignment, but no report was filed.

* Citizen witnesses said that no first aid appeared to be offered to Morris, nor were any apparent efforts made to stabilize her head before moving her or placing her in the ambulance. Witnesses also said that before Morris was placed in the ambulance, Officer Berry covered used Morris’ jacket to cover her face, as if to indicate that she was already dead.

* 4:15 a.m. – Hospital records indicate Morris’ admission to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Records also indicate that the hospital summoned police officers to help identify Morris, whom they suspected was a crime victim, which suggests Morris was delivered to the hospital without being identified.

* Officer Novak was dispatched to the hospital to investigate. Novack calls Officers Berry and Skala to the hospital, where the three again assess the cause of Morris’ injury as a drunken fall. No reports are filed concerning the investigation at the hospital.

* Morris remained in the hospital for 64 hours, unidentified. Officer Novak, however, was familiar with Morris due to her previous arrests for offenses related to prostitution. At no point did he share identify her to hospital staff. Hospital records show staff efforts to identify Morris, whose fingerprints would have been on file due to her previous arrests.

* Witnesses at the injury scene also identified Morris to Officer Berry by name and her employment at Bob and Barbaras. There is no indication that Officer Berry passed this information to the hospital.

* Morris is removed from life support after 64 hours in the hospital, and her family is informed of her death the following day.

Questions and concerns led to the first of several LGBT community meetings, protests and vigils in response to Morris’ death and the police department’s handling of the investigation.

In April 2003 the Philadelphia Police Department released an edited version of the 911 recording, which included 3 transmissions between officers Skala, Novak, and Berry. The edited recording started at 3:07 a.m. and ended six minutes later.[9]

The same month, in response to community concern, District Attorney Lynne Abraham launched an investigation of Morris’ case, and promised to seek physical evidence, including the related 911 recording. However, the investigation ended in December 2003, without finding Morris’ killer. Abraham asked for the public’s help to investigate the case further, stated that the three officers in the case acted properly, and cited the courtesy ride given to Morris as a “humanitarian gesture.”[10]

In September 2003 the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights launched a civil suit against the Key West Bar where Morris became intoxicated, the police officers involved, the emergency technicians and the city of Philadelphia itself.[11] The suit was settled for $250,000 in May 2004.[12]

In December 2003, in response to community pressure, the Police Advisory Commission released dispatch records suggesting that the transmissions on the tape lasted for 49 minutes.[13]

In January 2007 the Philadelphia Police Department refused to release an unedited version of the 911 recording, citing that the 911 tapes were not subject to release under the Right to Know Act. On March 2007 the department agreed to play a complete version of the 911 tape for the Police Advisory Commission.[14]

One part of the hate crimes bill allows federal agencies to step in where local agencies either cannot or will not conduct thorough investigations of hate crimes, and that would certainly seem to apply in Nizah Morris’ case. Pennsylvania’s hate crimes law on December 3, 2002, and included both sexual orientation and gender identity. And, since no one who knows what happened to Nizah from the moment she was placed in the police car until the moment she was found with a severe (and eventually fatal) head injury, it’s difficult to classify it as a hate crime.

But how do you classify the police department’s handling of the case, which seems at almost every turn to depart from procedures or cloak information about what really happened? Is obstruction a hate crime? Is it a hate crime to sweep a crime under the carpet because the victim is a African American transgender woman labeled a sex worker?

Listen to this interview with Tim Cweik, a reporter for Philadelphia Gay News who has followed Nizah Morris’ case from the beginning. He floats a theory that the police were not taking Nizah home, given her condition, but taking her to a hospital. (My guess is that they have to get people in that shape to a hospital, because of liability issues.) And when Morris got wind of that they were taking her to the hospital instead of home, she may have put up some kind of resistance, and the police officers responded with excessive force. Officers, faced with a career-ending situation, decided to cover it up, or were told to cover it. up, because their lives were worth more than that of “an African American transgender prostitute” (though words much less kind were probably used.

If that’s the case, the only response is what Ethan St. Pierre said in his interview with Cweik.

They can twist it any way they want. And they can look at it and be bigoted and prejudiced any way they want. … This was a human life. This was somebody’s child somebody’s sibling. She was loved. She was not alone in this world, and somebody that they thought they could just discard. That nobody would miss.

We are all somebody’s child, somebody’s brother or sister. We are all someone who would be missed by someone.

We all matter.

That’s the point, isn’t it?

Crossposted from The Republic of T.

This was originally posted at Howard-Empowered People, after commenter Barry posted a  link to the article Joe Trippi’s Renaissance in the comments. That link didn’t work for some reason, but I was intrigued enough to go track down one that did. Ah, where to start…

This cycle, three presidential candidates courted him. He signed on with ex-Sen. John Edwards after bonding with Elizabeth Edwards — there’s a whole separate story here about how he’s fitting in. But he’s in. That “Hair” video — vintage Trippi. Edwards hired Trippi in part because Iowa is Trippi’s specialty — he helped Walter Mondale and Dick Gephardt win the caucuses — and Edwards needs to win the caucuses.

Well, obviously I can’t let the words “Iowa is Trippi’s specialty” pass without comment. Let us all take a moment and think back fondly to the magic that Joe worked for the Dean campaign in Iowa. Oh, wait…
As far as the “Hair” video, I did see it, and agree that it was clever, but as one of the people who commented on the Trippi article remarked, it came too late.  Now that sounds familiar–raise your hand if you remember being frustrated with the Dean campaign’s sluggish response to the “scream” story.

Here’s something else I remember from the months leading up to the 2004 primaries. I remember, for the first time in my life, actually donating to a political candidate. Not only that, but putting up a “bat” and actually soliciting donations. That is so not me. But I believed in Dean. And I believed that I was part of a “people powered” campaign. I remember many other people feeling the same. For example, “Ramen for Dean”–someone was going to eat Ramen for lunch and donate the savings to the campaign. At least that’s my recollection. The point is, people made real sacrifices.

But ultimately, we were not really “shareholders” in the campaign. Many of us balked when the official ads started going negative. We were disappointed in general with the low quality of the ads, and begged anyone who would listen to use some of the ideas that we in the grassroots were offering for free. Like the “Who we are” ads some of us made in response to that dreadful ad the Club for Growth ran against Dean in Iowa. Begged “anyone who would listen”…ah, there’s the rub. The article goes on to say

The small-dollar Internet donor base attracted by the Dean and flogged relentless by Trippi has transformed the party’s fundraising. Democrats actually counterpunch these days. Every single campaign uses Trippi-patented tactics to raise money. The men and women Joe Trippi cultivated on Dean’s staff have stormed the gates and occupy positions of power in major party and campaign offices.

More “gate storming”, huh? Much like the “gate crashing” that the proprietor of Daily Kos touts, the ordinary people are still stuck outside those gates. It’s all well and good for the campaign professionals to pat themselves on the back for the “genius” of soliciting small donations from the teeming masses. But if that’s all you want from us, and you’re not going to listen to our ideas or be prepared to answer to us when you make bad choices in the way you spend the money we donated…well, we might just decide we can put that money to better use.