Sunday, October 14, 2012 1:42:32 AM
Bullet shatters window at Obama campaign office; shooter unknown
A window remains boarded at the Obama campaign office in downtown Denver after a bullet shattered the glass on Friday afternoon. The shooter is unknown.
(Ed Andrieski / Associated Press / October 13, 2012)
By Paloma Esquivel
October 13, 2012, 3:15 p.m.
A bullet from an unknown shooter shattered a window at an Obama campaign office in Denver on Friday, leaving the window frame and the surrounding ground covered in glass shards but injuring no one.
The incident remains under investigation, with Denver police examining footage from surveillance cameras near the downtown office in order to identify possible suspects, the Associated Press reported.
Police spokeswoman Raquel Lopez confirmed to the AP that workers were inside the office when the afternoon shooting occurred.
A photo posted by Westword [ http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2012/10/suspect_shoots_at_obama_campai.php (next below, along with a closer look also from that source)]
captured the aftermath of the shooting, showing a gaping hole in the window next to a U.S. flag and Obama campaign posters. The window was covered with plywood later in the day.
Lopez told the Denver Post [ http://www.denverpost.com/ci_21761706/shot-fired-at-obama-campaign-headquarters-denver ] that police had a description of a "possible vehicle of interest."
Colorado is one of the most contested states in the upcoming election and President Obama, Republican challenger Mitt Romney and their surrogates have made multiple trips to the state in recent months.
A spokeswoman for the Obama campaign declined to comment on the incident.
Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-bullet-fired-at-obama-office-denver-20121013,0,5003174.story [with comments]
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Romney Supporter Wears 'Put The White Back In The White House' T-Shirt At Ohio Campaign Event (PHOTO)
Posted: 10/13/2012 11:16 am EDT Updated: 10/13/2012 2:04 pm EDT
A supporter of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was spotted wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "Put the white back in the White House [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/man-at-romney-rally-in-ohio-wears-shirt-put-the-w ]" at a campaign event this week:
(Credit: Getty Images)
The Getty Images photograph was taken on Friday at a Romney/Ryan campaign event in Lancaster, Ohio.
According to Buzzfeed, a Romney spokesperson "commented that the shirt was reprehensible and has no place in this election."
This is not the first time in recent weeks that racism has been directed towards President Barack Obama.
On Tuesday, The Huffington Post reported that "a spate of symbolic protests against [the president] that have featured empty chairs and racist imagery [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/09/obama-empty-chair-california_n_1951000.html ] continued this week in California, with an arrangement featuring a noose, watermelons and a birther sign."
"Go back to Kenya you idiot [id.]," read the sign that was reportedly set up along a remote road in Santa Clara County, Calif.
And last month, an Obama supporter in Texas said her Obama/Biden yard sign had been vandalized with the words "N*GGER LOVER -- Obama Sucks D*ck! [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/25/obama-sign-vandalized-texas-cassy-zobel_n_1913963.html ]"
"We have at least 4 African American families living on this street. I’m so offended," said the woman in the wake of the vandalism. "Not just because whoever did this is ignorant and misinformed and trespassed and vandalized my sign, but infinitely more for my neighbors who might have driven by and seen it.”
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/13/romney-supporter-wears-put-the-white-back-in-the-white-house-campaign-event-ohio_n_1963583.html [with comments]
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Kyle Counts, Obama Supporter, Says He Received Death Threat Over Yard Sign
By John Clelock
Posted: 10/12/2012 2:06 pm EDT Updated: 10/12/2012 3:06 pm EDT
An Oklahoma man is alleging that he received a death threat from his neighbor after he placed a sign in his front lawn supporting President Barack Obama.
Kyle Counts, of Tulsa, said that on Oct. 5, a neighbor started screaming at him based on the Obama lawn sign and followed it up with a threat to "shoot you guys," which Counts thinks means himself, his girlfriend and a friend who was visiting at the time. Counts, who first told his story to Fox 23 [ http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story/Election-sign-allegedly-leads-to-death-threat/wMNYiWgCA0imgHidoKysFA.cspx ] in Tulsa, told The Huffington Post that the interaction was the first time he had talked to the neighbor, who lives down the block, in the two months he has lived in the house.
Counts, who does not know the neighbor's name, said he and the friend were standing outside of his house, near the sign he put up six days before when the neighbor drove by and engaged Counts.
"Are you a Democrat or a politician," Counts recalled the neighbor saying, adding, "He seemed like he was drunk."
After telling his neighbor that he was voting for Obama, he said the neighbor drove off, but nevertheless continued the confrontation.
"We stood there dumbfounded, he started screaming from his driveway," Counts said.
Counts, a 27-year-old law school student, said the neighbor then came over and told him that he was new to the neighborhood and the sign was a problem. He said the neighbor's tone became more confrontational and he asked the neighbor if he was threatening him. Counts said the neighbor's wife came over and escorted him away.
Around the same time, Counts' girlfriend, Alisa Hopkins, came outside and started recording the end of the exchange with her iPhone. Hopkins' video is posted on Fox 23's website [(embedded at) http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story/Election-sign-allegedly-leads-to-death-threat/wMNYiWgCA0imgHidoKysFA.cspx ]. In the video, the neighbor can be heard screaming, "I'm going to shoot you guys," before going inside his house.
But speaking with Fox 23, the neighbor's wife, who did not give her name, claimed her husband did not threaten Counts.
Counts said he called Tulsa police who responded and talked to both Counts and the neighbor's wife, though he said no police report was taken.
Tulsa police spokeswoman Jillian Roberson confirmed to The Huffington Post that officers did respond to the dispute and talked to both Counts and the neighbor's wife. She said that Counts did not request a police report, and that it is common for no report to be requested in the event of a disturbance. Roberson said police officers asked the neighbor's wife to ask her husband not to bother Counts and advised Counts that he could file trespassing charges and call back in the event of another incident.
But Counts said he asked police if a report was necessary and that officers said "no" and advised him to call back if the neighbor bothered him again.
"I did not specifically demand they file a report because they frankly seemed annoyed with being called out for the situation," Counts told HuffPost.
This isn't the first response a neighbor has had to the pro-Obama yard sign. Counts said another neighbor had expressed displeasure when he first put the sign up, but that he did not issue a threat.
"A different neighbor called me and let me know that it made him cringe to have an Obama sign on his corner," he said. "He could not understand how two intelligent people could support him.
Counts said the incident has left him on edge, and that he went public with the story as a form of protection and to highlight the political climate in Oklahoma.
"Tuesday night someone knocked on my door to sell meat. I would not have thought anything of it," Counts told HuffPost. "Now I am paranoid to answer my door. I would not be paranoid to go to my door at 8:30 at night, but I got a death threat a week ago."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/kyle-counts-obama-death-threat-oklahoma_n_1961540.html [with the Fox23 video report embedded (do go watch it), and comments]
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Romney family insults of President Obama are no child’s play
Martin Bashir | Aired on October 10, 2012
Martin Bashir criticizes Mitt, Ann, and Josh Romney for repeatedly denigrating President Obama as a “baby” or child – while complaining about Team Obama’s lack of “sportsmanship”.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/martin-bashir/49364221/#49364221
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Stella Tremblay, New Hampshire Legislator, Emails Link To Video Questioning Obama's Citizenship
The New Hampshire capitol dome in Concord.
By John Celock
Posted: 10/12/2012 3:26 pm EDT Updated: 10/12/2012 3:43 pm EDT
A Republican member of the Tea Party-controlled New Hampshire House of Representatives has circulated an email to her colleagues raising concerns about President Barack Obama's citizenship.
State Rep. Stella Tremblay (R-Auburn) sent the email Monday to Secretary of State William Gardner and the 400-member state House with a link to the YouTube video, "Not Natural Born - TRUTH MATTERS [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwhKuunp8D8 (next below)]."
"I do not know if this video has been edited," Tremblay wrote in the email. "If this is not the case, there is a BIG PROBLEM."
The 2-year-old video, posted on the YouTube account of Freedom Flag 1776 [ http://www.youtube.com/user/freedom1776flag ], includes clips of Obama appearing to say he was born in Kenya. The source of the clips, according to the posting, is ObamaSnippets.com [ http://www.obamasnippets.com goes to http://www.youtube.com/user/ObamaSnippetsDotCom ], a parody site.
The video also includes clips of first lady Michelle Obama and a Kenyan official, edited to show Obama was born in Kenya. Birther queen Orly Taitz is in the video, along with the Pennsylvania Democrat Philip Berg, who filed the first birther lawsuit in 2008. Politifact reported in 2010 [ http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2010/aug/05/chain-email/e-mail-sends-readers-youtube-video-where-obama-adm/ ] that the video, which has received more than five million views, was highly edited and did not contain factual information from the Obamas.
On the YouTube account for Freedom Flag 1776 is the website, gdmp.org [ http://www.gdmp.org/ ], which describes itself as "Conservative Watch News."
Tremblay did not return voicemails and an email left for comment. Obama's New Hampshire campaign spokesman, Harrell Kirstein, declined to comment on Tremblay's email. A spokeswoman for Gardner said she did not know if the secretary of state would respond to Tremblay.
One Democratic state legislator denounced the video and tied it to other Tea Party efforts in the legislature since 2011. "I think the birther thing is ridiculous as does everyone else, I thought we were past that" state Rep. Christopher Serlin (D-Portsmouth) told HuffPost. "I think it is an embarrassment to us as a chamber. There has been a lot of that the last two years."
Tremblay, elected in 2010, is known as one of the more conservative legislators in the state. She has sponsored a bill that would have required the teaching of the Bible in public schools and a bill to form a committee to study the impact of Agenda 21, the United Nations' environmental sustainability treaty, on New Hampshire. Neither passed, but the House did pass a measure to ban Agenda 21, which does not carry the force of law in the United States, in New Hampshire. Tremblay also sponsored a successful resolution to praise pregnancy care centers, which counsel women not to seek abortions.
New Hampshire was the site of a contentious state Ballot Law Commission hearing [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/23/new-hampshire-birther-hearing-orly-taitz_n_1110349.html ] last year where several state legislators, aligned with Taitz, sought to have Obama removed from the primary ballot. At the hearing, several legislators confronted state officials, two of whom sought safety in a private office [ http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/294203/birther-meeting-canceled ].
Tremblay is not listed as one of the nine state legislators [ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/nine_nh_republicans_help_birther_cause/ ] aligned with Taitz's efforts last year.
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/stella-tremblay-email-video_n_1961940.html [with comments]
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New Rules with Bill Maher 12 October 2012
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Santorum: Gay marriage will destroy church, family
Posted By: Joel Connelly | Oct 10 at 5:33 pm
Ex-Sen. Rick Santorum entered the campaign against same-sex marriage in Washington state on Tuesday with an apocalyptic warning about its potential consequences on America’s families and churches.
The former Republican presidential candidate spoke to a closed-door Spokane fundraiser for the Family Policy Institute of Washington. He was preceded to the podium by U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, a leader in Mitt Romney’s state campaign and member of the House Republican leadership.
“This is a turning point in American history and, yes, the state of Washington,” Santorum argued. A video [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW4O2g2ot1I (next below, as embedded)] of Santorum’s address was obtained by SeattlePI.com.
“This issue will destroy and undermine the church in American more than any other movement,” said Santorum.
Washington, Maryland and Maine are voting on marriage equality in November. No state has ever approved same-sex marriage at the polls, but opinion polls in all three states have shown marriage equality in the lead.
Joseph Backholm, head of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, is the chief spokesman against Referendum 74, the measure which would make Washington the seventh state to adopt marriage equality.
Opponents are “on the side of truth,” Santorum told his audience, “You folks are in the front line. You folks are in the foxhole.”
Supporters of marriage equality have amassed an $8.9 million campaign war chest. They have aired TV spots featuring Methodist and United Church of Christ ministers. A group of 63 former Roman Catholic priests is scheduled to endorse Referendum 74 at a Thursday morning news conference.
As in California four years ago, hover, opponents are rallying late in the campaign. They have reserved $1.5 million in TV time. The Catholic Bishop of Yakima, the Rt. Rev. Joseph Tyson, issued a pastoral letter on Referendum 74, claiming: “It endangers our religious liberty and the right of conscience.”
A longtime critic of gay rights — he even raised the issue of bestiality after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling that threw out Texas’ anti-sodomy law — Santorum charged that foes of marriage equality are being “cast as bigots.”
In Santorum’s words, “a secular revolution, a Godless revolution” has swept across every Western European country, which he said “is why they are declining.”
The revolution threatens to cross the pond, he argued. If successful, it will “destroy the institutions of America’s foundation, destroy the American family,” Santorum said.
The former Republican presidential candidate noted that the percentage of Americans who are married has declined from 72 percent to 51 percent in recent years.
He talked of a movement of “normalization, acceptance, tolerance” of the gay/lesbian lifestyle that has grown up since the mid to late 1990's, aided by “elites” and the “popular culture.”
“This will be the norm in America,” he said. “This is what you are fighting. You are on the front lines.”
© 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.
http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/10/10/santorum-gay-marriage-will-destroy-church-family/ [with comments]
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2 ministers at Tulsa megachurch want charges of failure to report child abuse to be dismissed
John and Charica Daugherty walking into court in late September.
[ http://www.news9.com/story/19809171/attorney-victory-christian-youth-pastors-were-not-obligated-to-report-abuse ]
Pictures of John Daugherty, Charica Daugherty, Anna George, Paul Wilemstein and Harold Sullivan.
[ http://www.news9.com/story/19645088/5-victory-christian-employees-plead-not-guilty-to-fail ]
By Associated Press, Updated: Saturday, October 13, 2012 3:04 PM
TULSA, Okla. — Two youth ministers at a Tulsa megachurch say misdemeanor charges of failing to report child abuse against them should be dismissed because no one in the case has been, nor can be, charged with child abuse.
Victory Christian Center ministers John Daugherty, his wife, Charica, and three other employees were charged in September for allegedly waiting two weeks to notify authorities of the reported rape of a 13-year-old girl by a former employee in a stairwell on the campus of the 17,000-member church. All have pleaded not guilty.
The motion, filed Friday in Tulsa County District Court, states that state law defines child abuse as an act committed “by a person responsible for the child’s health safety or welfare.”
The document says that 20-year-old Chris Denman, who is charged with first-degree rape of the girl and other sex crimes, was not a church employee at the time of the Aug. 13 assault, was not responsible for the girl and cannot under state law be charged with child abuse.
State law “applies to a very specific event, abuse by a person responsible for the child’s health, safety, or welfare,” according to the motion. “The facts of this case do not meet” state law.
The Daughertys and their attorney, Jason Robertson, did not return phone calls seeking comment Saturday.
John Daugherty is the son of church co-founder and head pastor Sharon Daugherty, who is not charged in the case.
Denman is due in court Oct. 22 to enter a plea on the charges related to the 13-year-old, including rape, forcible sodomy and lewd molestation after waiving a preliminary hearing on Thursday.
The 13-year-old’s mother has sued the church seeking more than $75,000. She claims the church sought “damage control” rather than pursuing the case properly.
Denman also faces charges of molesting a 15-year-old girl and making a lewd proposal and using a computer to commit a sex crime involving a 12-year-old girl. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges. Another former church employee, Israel Shalom Castillo, 23, has pleaded not guilty to charges of making a lewd proposal to a child and using a computer to commit a sex crime.
John and Charica Daugherty’s motion also claims Castillo was never responsible for the health, safety or welfare of children at the church. Both Denman and Castillo had been employed as janitors.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/2-ministers-at-tulsa-megachurch-want-charges-of-failure-to-report-child-abuse-to-be-dismissed/2012/10/13/cbd6ff8e-1567-11e2-9a39-1f5a7f6fe945_story.html [no comments yet]
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Kevin Kavanaugh, Former Aide To Scott Walker, Convicted Of Embezzlement
By Brendan O'Brien
Posted: 10/12/2012 10:39 pm EDT Updated: 10/13/2012 10:15 am EDT
MILWAUKEE, Oct 12 (Reuters) - A former aide to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was convicted on Friday of stealing money from a fund for families of U.S. soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A jury in Milwaukee County Circuit Court found Kevin Kavanaugh guilty of embezzling more than $42,000 from Operation Freedom, a military appreciation event held each year at the Milwaukee County Zoo.
Kavanaugh, who worked for Walker when the first-term Republican governor served as Milwaukee County executive, faces up to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine. Sentencing is expected on Dec. 7.
Kavanaugh, 62, was the treasurer of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, a charity involved in Operation Freedom, from 2006 to 2009. Walker appointed him to serve on the Milwaukee County Veteran Service Commission during Walker's term as Milwaukee County executive.
Walker originally ran the Operation Freedom event through his county office. It was later turned over to the Purple Heart organization after Walker received legal advice the event should be handled by a charitable organization.
The investigation began when Tom Nardelli, Walker's chief of staff in Milwaukee, voiced concerns about how funds for the event were being handled. Tim Russell, another close Walker aide, also was implicated in the investigation.
Russell is accused of diverting more than $21,000 to his personal bank account and using some of the money to go on Hawaiian and Caribbean vacations. He is scheduled to go to trial in December.
The investigation is part of a wider probe into Walker's county executive office. Walker, who was county executive from 2002 to 2010, has not been charged in the investigation.
On Thursday, Kelly Rindfleisch, who was Walker's deputy chief of staff, pleaded guilty to felony misconduct in public office, a charge that grew out of the investigation into the funds missing from Operation Freedom. Rindfleisch admitted she did campaign work for Republicans while she was on the clock in Walker's office working for the taxpayers of Milwaukee County.
Walker had been subpoenaed to testify during Rindfleisch's jury trial.
(Editing by James B. Kelleher and Bill Trott)
Copyright 2012 Reuters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/13/kevin-kavanaugh-scott-walker-aide_n_1963072.html [with comments]
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Scott DesJarlais' Medical License May Be At Risk From Affair With Patient
10/11/2012
WASHINGTON -- Even if Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) manages to win reelection, his job as a doctor in the Volunteer State could be in jeopardy after a phone transcript has revealed him pressuring his patient and mistress [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/scott-desjarlais-abortion-pro-life_n_1953136.html ] to get an abortion.
In the transcript, first reported Wednesday by The Huffington Post, DesJarlais cajoles his mistress, whom he met on the job, to abort a pregnancy he suspected was the result of their affair. The woman was under DesJarlais' care for a foot injury, and in their conversation they discuss how their relationship began after DesJarlais called her to check in on her progress.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/scott-desjarlais-medical-license_n_1958132.html [with comments]
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Scott DesJarlais Presides Over Congress Pro Forma Session Despite Abortion Scandal
10/12/2012
...Republican House leaders handed [philandering Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.)] the gavel to preside over Friday's pro forma session despite revelations this week that the doctor-politician had pushed his mistress to get an abortion [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/scott-desjarlais-abortion-pro-life_n_1953136.html ].
The woman had also been his patient.
Yet House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) apparently was comfortable enough with DesJarlais to appoint him president pro tempore to gavel in a short session of the House, in which no business was conducted. Pro forma sessions are being held to limit President Barack Obama's ability to make appointments while Congress is in recess.
A Boehner spokesman did not immediately answer a request for comment.
News that DesJarlais, a Tea Party freshman, had at least four extramarital affairs, including one with the patient he pressured to have an abortion in a September 2000 phone call, has roiled his Tennessee race. Some local Republicans are backing DesJarlais [ ].
[...]
DesJarlais had begged off a debate set for Thursday night, saying he had to preside over the pro forma session.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/scott-desjarlais-congress-pro-forma-session_n_1961522.html [with comments]
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Rep. Rick Berg On Abortion, KVRR, 10/10/12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKQwFyssnNE [via/embedded at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/rick-berg-women-abortion_n_1962135.html (with comments)]
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Roger Rivard Loses Support From Wisconsin Republicans After Saying 'Some Girls Rape Easy'
10/12/2012
Wisconsin Republicans are quickly disowning state Rep. Roger Rivard (R-Rice Lake), after he told a newspaper that "[s]ome girls rape easy [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/roger-rivard-rape_n_1956491.html ]."
[...]
Rivard actually made his controversial remark -- which he said was advice shared with him by his father -- in December, when he talked to The Chetek Alert newspaper about the case of a 17-year-old high school student who was charged with sexual assault after having sex with an underage girl in the band room. The interview came to wider public notice after the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported [ http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/state-legislator-criticized-for-comments-on-rape-hj76f4k-173587961.html ] on it on Wednesday.
Rivard told the Journal-Sentinel that his comments were "taken out of context," saying his father meant to convey that if "you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry."
"Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she's not going to say, 'Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.' All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she's underage. And he just said, 'Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,' he said, 'they rape so easy,'" Rivard said.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/roger-rivard-wisconsin-republicans-rape_n_1961124.html [with comments]
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America's Next Generation Super PAC Linked Closely To InfoCision, Controversial Telemarketing Firm
Posted: 10/11/2012 4:25 pm EDT Updated: 10/11/2012 4:34 pm EDT
NEW YORK -- "Now is the moment when we can do something," Mitt Romney says in the TV ad [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nEf8S9LPfk (above, as embedded)], "And with your help, we will do something."
After the clip of Romney, taken from his Republican National Convention speech in August [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMuU-EwcIzs&t=7m41s ], a narrator appeals to conservative voters. "Attention, patriots who oppose Barack Obama," the narrator says. "We can still turn back the tide of socialism that's been taking over our country for the past four years."
Unlike other super PAC ads, this one, which has been running nationally on cable networks like CNN in recent days, mixes conservative cheerleading with a marketing pitch: Give us money, and we'll throw the president out of office.
Viewers who call the 800 number displayed prominently throughout the ad are asked to sign a "voice petition" to defeat Obama, and then to donate money to America's Next Generation [ http://www.thenextgen.org/ ; http://www.thenextgen.org/site/ ], the conservative super PAC behind it. As thanks for their donations, callers will receive bumper stickers that say "Don't Tread on Me Obama" and "Romney 2012."
Whereas most big-name super PACs involved in this year's election have collected money from wealthy mega-donors to spend on advertising and organizing in crucial swing states, America's Next Generation is attempting to pioneer a new model of grassroots donor-based advocacy.
"Instead of giving $25 million they're giving $25," R.C. Hammond, a Republican political operative who serves as spokesman for America's Next Generation, told The Huffington Post. "The idea of a grassroots super PAC -- that hasn't been done yet."
Hammond said that America's Next Generation has made 600,000 advocacy calls so far this year and received contributions from 35,000 donors since its inception two years ago. "That's a pretty powerful grassroots movement," Hammond said.
A large proportion of the group's money has not been spent on ads designed solely to defeat Obama or other campaign-related activities, however. America's Next Generation has spent more than $1 million so far this election cycle, much of which has gone toward appealing to donors for more money, via phone calls and national television ads, according to a review of Federal Election Commission records.
The majority of the spending disclosed so far has gone to a single telemarketing firm, InfoCision Management Corporation, which has personal ties to the super PAC. By the end of June, according to yearly and quarterly FEC reports, America's Next Generation had spent $546,453 -- 97 percent of which went to InfoCision.
America's Next Generation's treasurer and interim executive director, Matthew Palumbo, is a former vice president of marketing at InfoCision. Lance Davis, the super PAC's designated agent in FEC filings, is a former director of political marketing for InfoCision.
"Telemarketing is the primary tool with which we're reaching and communicating with people," Hammond said. The large percentage of the group's spending directed towards InfoCision's services, he argued, is the only way its grassroots-focused strategy can succeed.
But one critic argues that donors who believe they are giving primarily to elect Romney are being misled.
"What you essentially have is a telemarketing operation that's also paying for some ads to try to drive potential donors to their website or their phone lines, and for the most part generating income for their company," said Anthony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College who studies campaign finance. "But they haven't really generated much in the way of campaign activity, and it's getting late."
America's Next Generation was created in November 2010, not long after the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case legalized unlimited political expenditures by unions and corporations. At the time, the group was registered to an address at a medical and dental office building in Great Falls, Va. [ http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2010/two-groups-file-super-pacs/ ], a suburb of Washington DC. Its headquarters are now in Akron, Ohio -- the same city where InfoCision is based.
The group was mostly dormant until it started raising small contributions towards the end of 2011. At the same time it began spending money on "telecommunications charges" from InfoCision. More fundraising followed, and the super PAC sent more money to InfoCision, for the purposes of "automated advocacy," "automated calling," "telephone marketing" and "automated phone calling," according to FEC reports.
The telemarketing firm has extensive experience with political campaigns and is known for its work with Christian and conservative causes. On its website, it describes itself as "the nation’s second-largest privately held teleservices company."
In 2009, American Solutions, a political non-profit associated with former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, spent $7.2 million on InfoCision's services. The telemarketer raised $9.2 million for the non-profit -- a 16 percent return on investment [ http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/coal_interests_fueling_gingrichs_cash-burning_527.php ]. When Gingrich threw his hat into the 2012 presidential race, he again spent millions of dollars on InfoCision's services [ http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/03/01/candidates-boost-ohios-economy.html ]. Hammond was a spokesman for both of Gingrich's efforts.
The company has prospered even in the wake of do-not-call registries. Lance Davis, the former director of political marketing for InfoCision who now helps run America's Next Generation, told [ http://www.massnonprofit.org/news.php?artid=517&catid=60 ] an interviewer in 2007, "We have to be very aggressive in our scripting. … You’ve got to hit them with a sledgehammer in the first five seconds of the call."
After Davis left InfoCision, however, that hard-charging approach got the company in trouble. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, a Republican, reached a $75,000 settlement [ http://www.cleveland.com/consumeraffairs/index.ssf/2012/04/infocision_to_pay_75000_to_set.html ] with InfoCision in April over alleged violations of charity solicitation rules. The company did not admit to any wrongdoing.
In September, Bloomberg Markets magazine published a lengthy investigation [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-12/charities-deceive-donors-unaware-money-goes-to-a-telemarketer.html ] of the company's fundraising activities for non-profits. On repeated occasions, Bloomberg found, call center employees had misled donors into believing that large percentages of their donations would go to charities like the American Cancer Society. Instead of the 70 percent for the charity promised by an InfoCision telemarketer script, only about 44 percent was going to the fight against cancer.
InfoCision, which did not respond to requests for comment, released a statement [ http://www.infocision.com/MediaCenter/PressReleases/Pages/Response-to-FALSE-media-reports-about-the-work-InfoCision-does-for-charities.aspx ] after the Bloomberg Markets story saying that "Recent news reports about the work InfoCision does for charities are completely false and misleading."
Corrado, the campaign finance expert, said that Romney supporters should be wary of giving to America's Next Generation, however. "They're essentially giving to a fundraising operation that's using a conservative appeal to raise money in a manner that will produce a very small percentage of its take for actual campaign activity," he said.
"It's all just an attempt to identify conservatives who might be willing to part with some of their hard-earned cash to stop President Obama."
America's Next Generation started spending on TV ads in August, and advertising has increased dramatically in the last weeks of the campaign. As of Oct. 9, it had spent at least $1.2 million against Obama [ http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00491373/813920/se ] so far this calendar year, according to FEC records.
Thus far, however, most of the ad spending has gone toward national spots on CNN and other cable stations, not local stations in swing states, where the candidates' campaigns typically direct their efforts [ http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012/09/14/swing-state-ads-bill-575m----so-far/57751750/1 ]. Hammond said that to date, the group has been concentrated on building up its donor base, but that its strategy will start to shift in the coming days. "As we move towards the election day, that focus will shift more towards Ohio and other battleground states," he said.
"The Next Generation plans to spend between $400k to $500k in the next 30 days on television ads in battleground states, with a strong emphasis on running advertisements in Ohio," said Hammond in an email. "In the next week, a $50,000 TV and Radio advertising buy is in place in Ohio."
Hammond pointed to anti-Obama ads that place less emphasis on fundraising [ http://www.thenextgen.org/site/our-latest-ad/ ] on America's Next Generation's website as examples of activity that will affect the election, but it's not clear how widely they have been used. He could not provide figures, but said that "spending is disproportionately leaning towards advocacy advertising."
In recent weeks, the super PAC's spending has expanded beyond InfoCision to include $455,000 in media buys with the Eleventy Media Group, another organization run by a former InfoCision employee [ http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ken-dawson/14/852/1a0 ].
Despite the links between America's Next Generation and InfoCision, Hammond said no donor information would be shared with the telemarketer, and decisionmaking is "independent" of the company. "They're a vendor," Hammond said.
If any of America's Next Generation's donors are concerned about where their dollars will go, however, experts say they should keep in mind a crucial fact about super PACs: They are largely unregulated.
"Super PACs are the Wild West frontier of money in politics," said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, which advocates for stronger campaign finance laws.
"Just about anything goes, so long as the super PAC isn’t contributing to candidates or coordinating expenditures with candidates," Ryan said. He had two words of advice for anyone giving to a super PAC: "donor beware."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/americas-next-generation-infocision_n_1958570.html [with comments]
===
Who Will Mourn George Whitmore?
Matt Dorfman
By T. J. ENGLISH
Published: October 12, 2012
I RECEIVED news this week of the death of George Whitmore Jr., an occurrence noted, apparently, by no one in the public arena.
That Whitmore could die without a single mention in the media is a commentary on a city and nation that would rather bury and forget the difficult aspects of our shared history.
Forty-eight years ago, as a New York City teenager, Whitmore was initiated into an ordeal at the hands of a racist criminal justice system. For a time, his story rattled the news cycle. He was chewed up and spit out: an ill-prepared kid vilified as a murderer, then championed as an emblem of injustice and, finally, cast aside. That he survived his tribulations and lived to the age of 68 was a miracle.
I first met Whitmore in the spring of 2009 while doing research for a book that posited that his experiences constituted an important subnarrative to the racial turmoil of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Finding him was not easy. I eventually tracked him down in Wildwood, N.J., not far from where he’d been born and raised. I found a man who was broken but unbowed, humble, with glimmers of an innocence that had been snatched from him a long time ago. For a time in his adolescence, he’d been infamous. By the time I found him, he was anonymous, and that was O.K. with him.
Back in April 1964, like a horrifying urban-jungle version of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Whitmore began a nearly decade-long ramble through the justice system that still boggles the mind. It started on a misty morning when Whitmore, 19 years old, African-American, raised in poverty and a grade-school dropout, was taken by a handful of New York City detectives into the 73rd Precinct station house in East New York, Brooklyn. After a 22-hour interrogation by numerous detectives — all of them white — he was coerced into signing a 61-page confession detailing a series of horrific crimes, including, most notably, a brutal double murder of two young white women on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The case had become known in the media as “The Career Girl Murders.” The killings took place on the same day — Aug. 28, 1963 — and perhaps at the exact time that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
The confession was front-page news. The Brooklyn cops who were involved congratulated themselves; one was given a special award for exemplary work. But the confession was a fraud. To most objective observers, it didn’t seem likely that Whitmore could have committed the murders. At his arraignment, he told the judge that he’d been coerced into admitting guilt. Few cared: he was a disposable Negro who’d been raised in a shack alongside a junkyard in Wildwood — a “drifter,” described in one account as “possibly mentally retarded.” He was indicted, imprisoned and declared a monster.
America was just on the cusp of the civil rights revolution; it was a time of pernicious institutional racism. A black kid had been railroaded, and he wasn’t the first nor would he be the last. But the detectives had made the mistake of pinning on him the city’s most notorious open murder case, which brought about a higher level of scrutiny than the average homicide.
The case quickly began to fall apart. The detectives claimed that they had found a photo of one of the career girls in Whitmore’s wallet when they arrested him. He’d told them he’d found it at the murder scene and stolen it, they said. None of it was true. (He did have a photo on him, but it was not of either of the victims.) On the day of the murders, witnesses had seen him sitting in an empty catering hall in Wildwood, where he was working at the time, watching King’s speech on television.
Despite a mounting belief among some civil rights activists associated with the N.A.A.C.P., and a few intrepid journalists, that Whitmore was innocent, he remained in prison, facing two death sentences. Depressed, frightened and alone, he pondered his imminent demise at the hands of the state. He asked other inmates: “If you were going to be put to death, which would it be? The chair? Lethal injection? What’s the least painful way to die?” A teenager, having committed no crime — ever — at that point in his life, pondering what means of execution he would choose: this was his reality.
It would take nine years for Whitmore to clear his name. It wouldn’t have happened without the help of many lawyers, a few newspaper reporters and the civil rights activists. Though the “Career Girls” murder charges were dropped early on — and the actual killer, Richard Robles, was eventually tried and convicted — Whitmore had also been forced to confess to another murder charge, and the assault and attempted rape of a woman in Brooklyn. There followed a numbing cycle of trials, convictions, convictions overturned, retrials and appeals. Whitmore went from being a nobody to being a perceived murderer to being a terribly “wronged man” and back to being a nobody. In prison, he learned to make rotgut hooch and, trying to dull the pain, became an alcoholic.
In April 1973, he emerged triumphant. A few weeks before all the charges against him were finally thrown out, CBS broadcast a highly promoted movie-of-the-week based on his ordeal. The movie, “The Marcus-Nelson Murders,” based on a book by the New York Times reporter Selwyn Raab, was produced and written by Abby Mann, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter. Whitmore was paid a pittance for his cooperation. In the end, the movie is best remembered for having introduced a character named Detective Theo Kojak, played by the actor Telly Savalas. Mr. Savalas and Kojak would go down in the annals of TV history. Whitmore watched the movie from the medical ward at the Green Haven state prison in Dutchess County.
NINE years after his name was finally cleared and he’d been released from prison, Whitmore won a settlement of half a million dollars from the City of New York. But it was too little, too late. He’d been crushed by the system, his self-worth obliterated in ways that could never fully be put back together. He squandered the money he’d been awarded through bad business ventures and at the hands of devious friends and relatives. By the time I found Whitmore, he was living in poverty similar to what he’d known in those years before he was led into that police station in Brooklyn back in 1964.
Meeting Whitmore was eerie for me. Though he was 65 years old at the time, I could still see that 19-year-old kid who had been so horribly wronged all those years ago. You could see the pain in his face. In one of our first meetings, in the backyard of his tiny rented house on Route 9, I took a photo of him. You can look in his eyes and almost hear him asking the question, “Why me?”
Over the next two years, I frequently made the drive to Wildwood from Manhattan, a three-and-a-half-hour jaunt along the Jersey Shore. I’d take Whitmore to the market to buy groceries to fill his empty kitchen cabinets and refrigerator. Then we’d sit and talk.
Going over the past was painful for him. I tried to catch him early in the day. After he had his first couple of drinks, he was lucid and charming. He remembered his ordeal with such detail that it could send a chill up your spine and bring you to tears. After a few more drinks, he would lose focus, get sloppy and sometimes become ornery and difficult.
When the book was finished, I delivered a couple of copies to Whitmore. He held it in his hands, felt its heft and smiled with pride. Since adolescence, he had had poor eyesight, and I’m not sure he ever learned to read. But after he’d taken a few minutes to look at the pictures in the book and flip through its pages, seeing the familiar names and descriptions of events, he wept at the memory of his lost youth.
In recent months, I’d fallen out of touch with Whitmore. Knowing him, and attempting to assume a measure of responsibility for his life, was often exhausting. While I had come to love him, the drunken phone calls, the calls from hospital emergency rooms and flophouses, and the constant demands for money became overwhelming. When people who claimed to be friends of his starting calling me and asking for favors, I decided to back off. But when I received a cryptic e-mail from one of his nephews, informing me that Whitmore had died on Monday, I was overcome with sadness and regret.
Whitmore never saw himself as a race activist. In the 1960s and 1970s, from prison and on the streets, he watched the civil rights movement and the Black Power Movement at a wary distance. He did not judge people by their skin color. He knew he had been the victim of a grave injustice, but he did not assume that the detectives who framed him, or his slow torture at the hands of a rigged system, were motivated by racial prejudice.
By staying strong for all those years — by not taking a plea deal, as he had been offered numerous times — Whitmore forced the justice system to come to terms with the injustice that had been done to him. His ordeal was a key factor in the abolition of the death penalty (except for cases involving the killing of a police officer) by the State Legislature and Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, in 1965, and in the United States Supreme Court’s decision in the 1966 case Miranda v. Arizona, which broadened the rights of criminal suspects under interrogation. (The death penalty was restored in New York in 1995, but it was ruled unconstitutional by the state’s highest court in 2004.) Whitmore’s plight turned the wheels of justice, however painfully and incrementally.
Yet there are no plaques in honor of George Whitmore Jr., no schools named after him, or any civic recognition of his humble fortitude. His name should be known to every student in New York, especially kids of color, but it is not part of the curriculum.
This week, a flawed but beautiful man who offered up his innocence to New York City died with hardly any notice. To those who benefited from his struggles or who believe the city is a fairer place for his having borne them, I ask: Who grieves for George Whitmore?
T. J. English [ http://www.tj-english.com/ ] is the author of “The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge [ http://www.amazon.com/The-Savage-City-Murder-Generation/dp/B005Q5OXIY ],” about George Whitmore Jr.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/opinion/who-will-mourn-george-whitmore.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/opinion/who-will-mourn-george-whitmore.html?pagewanted=all ]
===
(linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=80051332
A window remains boarded at the Obama campaign office in downtown Denver after a bullet shattered the glass on Friday afternoon. The shooter is unknown.
(Ed Andrieski / Associated Press / October 13, 2012)
By Paloma Esquivel
October 13, 2012, 3:15 p.m.
A bullet from an unknown shooter shattered a window at an Obama campaign office in Denver on Friday, leaving the window frame and the surrounding ground covered in glass shards but injuring no one.
The incident remains under investigation, with Denver police examining footage from surveillance cameras near the downtown office in order to identify possible suspects, the Associated Press reported.
Police spokeswoman Raquel Lopez confirmed to the AP that workers were inside the office when the afternoon shooting occurred.
A photo posted by Westword [ http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2012/10/suspect_shoots_at_obama_campai.php (next below, along with a closer look also from that source)]
captured the aftermath of the shooting, showing a gaping hole in the window next to a U.S. flag and Obama campaign posters. The window was covered with plywood later in the day.
Lopez told the Denver Post [ http://www.denverpost.com/ci_21761706/shot-fired-at-obama-campaign-headquarters-denver ] that police had a description of a "possible vehicle of interest."
Colorado is one of the most contested states in the upcoming election and President Obama, Republican challenger Mitt Romney and their surrogates have made multiple trips to the state in recent months.
A spokeswoman for the Obama campaign declined to comment on the incident.
Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-bullet-fired-at-obama-office-denver-20121013,0,5003174.story [with comments]
===
Romney Supporter Wears 'Put The White Back In The White House' T-Shirt At Ohio Campaign Event (PHOTO)
Posted: 10/13/2012 11:16 am EDT Updated: 10/13/2012 2:04 pm EDT
A supporter of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was spotted wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words "Put the white back in the White House [ http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/man-at-romney-rally-in-ohio-wears-shirt-put-the-w ]" at a campaign event this week:
(Credit: Getty Images)
The Getty Images photograph was taken on Friday at a Romney/Ryan campaign event in Lancaster, Ohio.
According to Buzzfeed, a Romney spokesperson "commented that the shirt was reprehensible and has no place in this election."
This is not the first time in recent weeks that racism has been directed towards President Barack Obama.
On Tuesday, The Huffington Post reported that "a spate of symbolic protests against [the president] that have featured empty chairs and racist imagery [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/09/obama-empty-chair-california_n_1951000.html ] continued this week in California, with an arrangement featuring a noose, watermelons and a birther sign."
"Go back to Kenya you idiot [id.]," read the sign that was reportedly set up along a remote road in Santa Clara County, Calif.
And last month, an Obama supporter in Texas said her Obama/Biden yard sign had been vandalized with the words "N*GGER LOVER -- Obama Sucks D*ck! [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/25/obama-sign-vandalized-texas-cassy-zobel_n_1913963.html ]"
"We have at least 4 African American families living on this street. I’m so offended," said the woman in the wake of the vandalism. "Not just because whoever did this is ignorant and misinformed and trespassed and vandalized my sign, but infinitely more for my neighbors who might have driven by and seen it.”
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/13/romney-supporter-wears-put-the-white-back-in-the-white-house-campaign-event-ohio_n_1963583.html [with comments]
===
Kyle Counts, Obama Supporter, Says He Received Death Threat Over Yard Sign
By John Clelock
Posted: 10/12/2012 2:06 pm EDT Updated: 10/12/2012 3:06 pm EDT
An Oklahoma man is alleging that he received a death threat from his neighbor after he placed a sign in his front lawn supporting President Barack Obama.
Kyle Counts, of Tulsa, said that on Oct. 5, a neighbor started screaming at him based on the Obama lawn sign and followed it up with a threat to "shoot you guys," which Counts thinks means himself, his girlfriend and a friend who was visiting at the time. Counts, who first told his story to Fox 23 [ http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story/Election-sign-allegedly-leads-to-death-threat/wMNYiWgCA0imgHidoKysFA.cspx ] in Tulsa, told The Huffington Post that the interaction was the first time he had talked to the neighbor, who lives down the block, in the two months he has lived in the house.
Counts, who does not know the neighbor's name, said he and the friend were standing outside of his house, near the sign he put up six days before when the neighbor drove by and engaged Counts.
"Are you a Democrat or a politician," Counts recalled the neighbor saying, adding, "He seemed like he was drunk."
After telling his neighbor that he was voting for Obama, he said the neighbor drove off, but nevertheless continued the confrontation.
"We stood there dumbfounded, he started screaming from his driveway," Counts said.
Counts, a 27-year-old law school student, said the neighbor then came over and told him that he was new to the neighborhood and the sign was a problem. He said the neighbor's tone became more confrontational and he asked the neighbor if he was threatening him. Counts said the neighbor's wife came over and escorted him away.
Around the same time, Counts' girlfriend, Alisa Hopkins, came outside and started recording the end of the exchange with her iPhone. Hopkins' video is posted on Fox 23's website [(embedded at) http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story/Election-sign-allegedly-leads-to-death-threat/wMNYiWgCA0imgHidoKysFA.cspx ]. In the video, the neighbor can be heard screaming, "I'm going to shoot you guys," before going inside his house.
But speaking with Fox 23, the neighbor's wife, who did not give her name, claimed her husband did not threaten Counts.
Counts said he called Tulsa police who responded and talked to both Counts and the neighbor's wife, though he said no police report was taken.
Tulsa police spokeswoman Jillian Roberson confirmed to The Huffington Post that officers did respond to the dispute and talked to both Counts and the neighbor's wife. She said that Counts did not request a police report, and that it is common for no report to be requested in the event of a disturbance. Roberson said police officers asked the neighbor's wife to ask her husband not to bother Counts and advised Counts that he could file trespassing charges and call back in the event of another incident.
But Counts said he asked police if a report was necessary and that officers said "no" and advised him to call back if the neighbor bothered him again.
"I did not specifically demand they file a report because they frankly seemed annoyed with being called out for the situation," Counts told HuffPost.
This isn't the first response a neighbor has had to the pro-Obama yard sign. Counts said another neighbor had expressed displeasure when he first put the sign up, but that he did not issue a threat.
"A different neighbor called me and let me know that it made him cringe to have an Obama sign on his corner," he said. "He could not understand how two intelligent people could support him.
Counts said the incident has left him on edge, and that he went public with the story as a form of protection and to highlight the political climate in Oklahoma.
"Tuesday night someone knocked on my door to sell meat. I would not have thought anything of it," Counts told HuffPost. "Now I am paranoid to answer my door. I would not be paranoid to go to my door at 8:30 at night, but I got a death threat a week ago."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/kyle-counts-obama-death-threat-oklahoma_n_1961540.html [with the Fox23 video report embedded (do go watch it), and comments]
===
Romney family insults of President Obama are no child’s play
Martin Bashir | Aired on October 10, 2012
Martin Bashir criticizes Mitt, Ann, and Josh Romney for repeatedly denigrating President Obama as a “baby” or child – while complaining about Team Obama’s lack of “sportsmanship”.
© 2012 NBCNews.com
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/martin-bashir/49364221/#49364221
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Stella Tremblay, New Hampshire Legislator, Emails Link To Video Questioning Obama's Citizenship
The New Hampshire capitol dome in Concord.
By John Celock
Posted: 10/12/2012 3:26 pm EDT Updated: 10/12/2012 3:43 pm EDT
A Republican member of the Tea Party-controlled New Hampshire House of Representatives has circulated an email to her colleagues raising concerns about President Barack Obama's citizenship.
State Rep. Stella Tremblay (R-Auburn) sent the email Monday to Secretary of State William Gardner and the 400-member state House with a link to the YouTube video, "Not Natural Born - TRUTH MATTERS [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwhKuunp8D8 (next below)]."
In the email, Tremblay said she did not know if the video was legitimate. A liberal blog in New Hampshire, miscellanyblue.com, first reported Tremblay's email earlier this week and The Huffington Post confirmed the legitimacy of the email Friday morning.
"I do not know if this video has been edited," Tremblay wrote in the email. "If this is not the case, there is a BIG PROBLEM."
The 2-year-old video, posted on the YouTube account of Freedom Flag 1776 [ http://www.youtube.com/user/freedom1776flag ], includes clips of Obama appearing to say he was born in Kenya. The source of the clips, according to the posting, is ObamaSnippets.com [ http://www.obamasnippets.com goes to http://www.youtube.com/user/ObamaSnippetsDotCom ], a parody site.
The video also includes clips of first lady Michelle Obama and a Kenyan official, edited to show Obama was born in Kenya. Birther queen Orly Taitz is in the video, along with the Pennsylvania Democrat Philip Berg, who filed the first birther lawsuit in 2008. Politifact reported in 2010 [ http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2010/aug/05/chain-email/e-mail-sends-readers-youtube-video-where-obama-adm/ ] that the video, which has received more than five million views, was highly edited and did not contain factual information from the Obamas.
On the YouTube account for Freedom Flag 1776 is the website, gdmp.org [ http://www.gdmp.org/ ], which describes itself as "Conservative Watch News."
Tremblay did not return voicemails and an email left for comment. Obama's New Hampshire campaign spokesman, Harrell Kirstein, declined to comment on Tremblay's email. A spokeswoman for Gardner said she did not know if the secretary of state would respond to Tremblay.
One Democratic state legislator denounced the video and tied it to other Tea Party efforts in the legislature since 2011. "I think the birther thing is ridiculous as does everyone else, I thought we were past that" state Rep. Christopher Serlin (D-Portsmouth) told HuffPost. "I think it is an embarrassment to us as a chamber. There has been a lot of that the last two years."
Tremblay, elected in 2010, is known as one of the more conservative legislators in the state. She has sponsored a bill that would have required the teaching of the Bible in public schools and a bill to form a committee to study the impact of Agenda 21, the United Nations' environmental sustainability treaty, on New Hampshire. Neither passed, but the House did pass a measure to ban Agenda 21, which does not carry the force of law in the United States, in New Hampshire. Tremblay also sponsored a successful resolution to praise pregnancy care centers, which counsel women not to seek abortions.
New Hampshire was the site of a contentious state Ballot Law Commission hearing [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/23/new-hampshire-birther-hearing-orly-taitz_n_1110349.html ] last year where several state legislators, aligned with Taitz, sought to have Obama removed from the primary ballot. At the hearing, several legislators confronted state officials, two of whom sought safety in a private office [ http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/294203/birther-meeting-canceled ].
Tremblay is not listed as one of the nine state legislators [ http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/nine_nh_republicans_help_birther_cause/ ] aligned with Taitz's efforts last year.
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/stella-tremblay-email-video_n_1961940.html [with comments]
===
New Rules with Bill Maher 12 October 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT_zKjWfut0 [further in particular to (linked in) "Now Shut Your Hole & Wallow in Your Delusion-Induced Shame, Christian Right", about half-way down at http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=80372627 ] [via/embedded at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/13/bill-maher-slams-focus-on-family-being-wrong-no-punishment_n_1963628.html (with comments); this YouTube for as long as it lasts; originals of episodes at http://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher/index.html#/real-time-with-bill-maher/episodes/index.html&isVideoPage=true&g=u&subcategories=none&order=date-desc&limit=none , Friday's episode (will be, not yet) at http://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher/index.html#/real-time-with-bill-maher/episodes/0/262-episode/index.html ]
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Santorum: Gay marriage will destroy church, family
Posted By: Joel Connelly | Oct 10 at 5:33 pm
Ex-Sen. Rick Santorum entered the campaign against same-sex marriage in Washington state on Tuesday with an apocalyptic warning about its potential consequences on America’s families and churches.
The former Republican presidential candidate spoke to a closed-door Spokane fundraiser for the Family Policy Institute of Washington. He was preceded to the podium by U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, a leader in Mitt Romney’s state campaign and member of the House Republican leadership.
“This is a turning point in American history and, yes, the state of Washington,” Santorum argued. A video [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW4O2g2ot1I (next below, as embedded)] of Santorum’s address was obtained by SeattlePI.com.
“The movement you are fighting is the most important movement to win,” Santorum added. He said it is even more important that the movement to block abortion in America. He warned that marriage will “disintegrate” along with the American family if same-sex marriage becomes legal.
“This issue will destroy and undermine the church in American more than any other movement,” said Santorum.
Washington, Maryland and Maine are voting on marriage equality in November. No state has ever approved same-sex marriage at the polls, but opinion polls in all three states have shown marriage equality in the lead.
Joseph Backholm, head of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, is the chief spokesman against Referendum 74, the measure which would make Washington the seventh state to adopt marriage equality.
Opponents are “on the side of truth,” Santorum told his audience, “You folks are in the front line. You folks are in the foxhole.”
Supporters of marriage equality have amassed an $8.9 million campaign war chest. They have aired TV spots featuring Methodist and United Church of Christ ministers. A group of 63 former Roman Catholic priests is scheduled to endorse Referendum 74 at a Thursday morning news conference.
As in California four years ago, hover, opponents are rallying late in the campaign. They have reserved $1.5 million in TV time. The Catholic Bishop of Yakima, the Rt. Rev. Joseph Tyson, issued a pastoral letter on Referendum 74, claiming: “It endangers our religious liberty and the right of conscience.”
A longtime critic of gay rights — he even raised the issue of bestiality after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling that threw out Texas’ anti-sodomy law — Santorum charged that foes of marriage equality are being “cast as bigots.”
In Santorum’s words, “a secular revolution, a Godless revolution” has swept across every Western European country, which he said “is why they are declining.”
The revolution threatens to cross the pond, he argued. If successful, it will “destroy the institutions of America’s foundation, destroy the American family,” Santorum said.
The former Republican presidential candidate noted that the percentage of Americans who are married has declined from 72 percent to 51 percent in recent years.
He talked of a movement of “normalization, acceptance, tolerance” of the gay/lesbian lifestyle that has grown up since the mid to late 1990's, aided by “elites” and the “popular culture.”
“This will be the norm in America,” he said. “This is what you are fighting. You are on the front lines.”
© 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.
http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/10/10/santorum-gay-marriage-will-destroy-church-family/ [with comments]
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2 ministers at Tulsa megachurch want charges of failure to report child abuse to be dismissed
John and Charica Daugherty walking into court in late September.
[ http://www.news9.com/story/19809171/attorney-victory-christian-youth-pastors-were-not-obligated-to-report-abuse ]
Pictures of John Daugherty, Charica Daugherty, Anna George, Paul Wilemstein and Harold Sullivan.
[ http://www.news9.com/story/19645088/5-victory-christian-employees-plead-not-guilty-to-fail ]
By Associated Press, Updated: Saturday, October 13, 2012 3:04 PM
TULSA, Okla. — Two youth ministers at a Tulsa megachurch say misdemeanor charges of failing to report child abuse against them should be dismissed because no one in the case has been, nor can be, charged with child abuse.
Victory Christian Center ministers John Daugherty, his wife, Charica, and three other employees were charged in September for allegedly waiting two weeks to notify authorities of the reported rape of a 13-year-old girl by a former employee in a stairwell on the campus of the 17,000-member church. All have pleaded not guilty.
The motion, filed Friday in Tulsa County District Court, states that state law defines child abuse as an act committed “by a person responsible for the child’s health safety or welfare.”
The document says that 20-year-old Chris Denman, who is charged with first-degree rape of the girl and other sex crimes, was not a church employee at the time of the Aug. 13 assault, was not responsible for the girl and cannot under state law be charged with child abuse.
State law “applies to a very specific event, abuse by a person responsible for the child’s health, safety, or welfare,” according to the motion. “The facts of this case do not meet” state law.
The Daughertys and their attorney, Jason Robertson, did not return phone calls seeking comment Saturday.
John Daugherty is the son of church co-founder and head pastor Sharon Daugherty, who is not charged in the case.
Denman is due in court Oct. 22 to enter a plea on the charges related to the 13-year-old, including rape, forcible sodomy and lewd molestation after waiving a preliminary hearing on Thursday.
The 13-year-old’s mother has sued the church seeking more than $75,000. She claims the church sought “damage control” rather than pursuing the case properly.
Denman also faces charges of molesting a 15-year-old girl and making a lewd proposal and using a computer to commit a sex crime involving a 12-year-old girl. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges. Another former church employee, Israel Shalom Castillo, 23, has pleaded not guilty to charges of making a lewd proposal to a child and using a computer to commit a sex crime.
John and Charica Daugherty’s motion also claims Castillo was never responsible for the health, safety or welfare of children at the church. Both Denman and Castillo had been employed as janitors.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/2-ministers-at-tulsa-megachurch-want-charges-of-failure-to-report-child-abuse-to-be-dismissed/2012/10/13/cbd6ff8e-1567-11e2-9a39-1f5a7f6fe945_story.html [no comments yet]
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Kevin Kavanaugh, Former Aide To Scott Walker, Convicted Of Embezzlement
By Brendan O'Brien
Posted: 10/12/2012 10:39 pm EDT Updated: 10/13/2012 10:15 am EDT
MILWAUKEE, Oct 12 (Reuters) - A former aide to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was convicted on Friday of stealing money from a fund for families of U.S. soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A jury in Milwaukee County Circuit Court found Kevin Kavanaugh guilty of embezzling more than $42,000 from Operation Freedom, a military appreciation event held each year at the Milwaukee County Zoo.
Kavanaugh, who worked for Walker when the first-term Republican governor served as Milwaukee County executive, faces up to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine. Sentencing is expected on Dec. 7.
Kavanaugh, 62, was the treasurer of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, a charity involved in Operation Freedom, from 2006 to 2009. Walker appointed him to serve on the Milwaukee County Veteran Service Commission during Walker's term as Milwaukee County executive.
Walker originally ran the Operation Freedom event through his county office. It was later turned over to the Purple Heart organization after Walker received legal advice the event should be handled by a charitable organization.
The investigation began when Tom Nardelli, Walker's chief of staff in Milwaukee, voiced concerns about how funds for the event were being handled. Tim Russell, another close Walker aide, also was implicated in the investigation.
Russell is accused of diverting more than $21,000 to his personal bank account and using some of the money to go on Hawaiian and Caribbean vacations. He is scheduled to go to trial in December.
The investigation is part of a wider probe into Walker's county executive office. Walker, who was county executive from 2002 to 2010, has not been charged in the investigation.
On Thursday, Kelly Rindfleisch, who was Walker's deputy chief of staff, pleaded guilty to felony misconduct in public office, a charge that grew out of the investigation into the funds missing from Operation Freedom. Rindfleisch admitted she did campaign work for Republicans while she was on the clock in Walker's office working for the taxpayers of Milwaukee County.
Walker had been subpoenaed to testify during Rindfleisch's jury trial.
(Editing by James B. Kelleher and Bill Trott)
Copyright 2012 Reuters
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/13/kevin-kavanaugh-scott-walker-aide_n_1963072.html [with comments]
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Scott DesJarlais' Medical License May Be At Risk From Affair With Patient
10/11/2012
WASHINGTON -- Even if Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) manages to win reelection, his job as a doctor in the Volunteer State could be in jeopardy after a phone transcript has revealed him pressuring his patient and mistress [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/scott-desjarlais-abortion-pro-life_n_1953136.html ] to get an abortion.
In the transcript, first reported Wednesday by The Huffington Post, DesJarlais cajoles his mistress, whom he met on the job, to abort a pregnancy he suspected was the result of their affair. The woman was under DesJarlais' care for a foot injury, and in their conversation they discuss how their relationship began after DesJarlais called her to check in on her progress.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/scott-desjarlais-medical-license_n_1958132.html [with comments]
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Scott DesJarlais Presides Over Congress Pro Forma Session Despite Abortion Scandal
10/12/2012
...Republican House leaders handed [philandering Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.)] the gavel to preside over Friday's pro forma session despite revelations this week that the doctor-politician had pushed his mistress to get an abortion [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/scott-desjarlais-abortion-pro-life_n_1953136.html ].
The woman had also been his patient.
Yet House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) apparently was comfortable enough with DesJarlais to appoint him president pro tempore to gavel in a short session of the House, in which no business was conducted. Pro forma sessions are being held to limit President Barack Obama's ability to make appointments while Congress is in recess.
A Boehner spokesman did not immediately answer a request for comment.
News that DesJarlais, a Tea Party freshman, had at least four extramarital affairs, including one with the patient he pressured to have an abortion in a September 2000 phone call, has roiled his Tennessee race. Some local Republicans are backing DesJarlais [ ].
[...]
DesJarlais had begged off a debate set for Thursday night, saying he had to preside over the pro forma session.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/scott-desjarlais-congress-pro-forma-session_n_1961522.html [with comments]
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Rep. Rick Berg On Abortion, KVRR, 10/10/12
Uploaded by HuffPostPolitics on Oct 12, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKQwFyssnNE [via/embedded at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/rick-berg-women-abortion_n_1962135.html (with comments)]
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Roger Rivard Loses Support From Wisconsin Republicans After Saying 'Some Girls Rape Easy'
10/12/2012
Wisconsin Republicans are quickly disowning state Rep. Roger Rivard (R-Rice Lake), after he told a newspaper that "[s]ome girls rape easy [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/roger-rivard-rape_n_1956491.html ]."
[...]
Rivard actually made his controversial remark -- which he said was advice shared with him by his father -- in December, when he talked to The Chetek Alert newspaper about the case of a 17-year-old high school student who was charged with sexual assault after having sex with an underage girl in the band room. The interview came to wider public notice after the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported [ http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/state-legislator-criticized-for-comments-on-rape-hj76f4k-173587961.html ] on it on Wednesday.
Rivard told the Journal-Sentinel that his comments were "taken out of context," saying his father meant to convey that if "you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry."
"Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she's not going to say, 'Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.' All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she's underage. And he just said, 'Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,' he said, 'they rape so easy,'" Rivard said.
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/12/roger-rivard-wisconsin-republicans-rape_n_1961124.html [with comments]
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America's Next Generation Super PAC Linked Closely To InfoCision, Controversial Telemarketing Firm
By Matt Sledge
Posted: 10/11/2012 4:25 pm EDT Updated: 10/11/2012 4:34 pm EDT
NEW YORK -- "Now is the moment when we can do something," Mitt Romney says in the TV ad [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nEf8S9LPfk (above, as embedded)], "And with your help, we will do something."
After the clip of Romney, taken from his Republican National Convention speech in August [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMuU-EwcIzs&t=7m41s ], a narrator appeals to conservative voters. "Attention, patriots who oppose Barack Obama," the narrator says. "We can still turn back the tide of socialism that's been taking over our country for the past four years."
Unlike other super PAC ads, this one, which has been running nationally on cable networks like CNN in recent days, mixes conservative cheerleading with a marketing pitch: Give us money, and we'll throw the president out of office.
Viewers who call the 800 number displayed prominently throughout the ad are asked to sign a "voice petition" to defeat Obama, and then to donate money to America's Next Generation [ http://www.thenextgen.org/ ; http://www.thenextgen.org/site/ ], the conservative super PAC behind it. As thanks for their donations, callers will receive bumper stickers that say "Don't Tread on Me Obama" and "Romney 2012."
Whereas most big-name super PACs involved in this year's election have collected money from wealthy mega-donors to spend on advertising and organizing in crucial swing states, America's Next Generation is attempting to pioneer a new model of grassroots donor-based advocacy.
"Instead of giving $25 million they're giving $25," R.C. Hammond, a Republican political operative who serves as spokesman for America's Next Generation, told The Huffington Post. "The idea of a grassroots super PAC -- that hasn't been done yet."
Hammond said that America's Next Generation has made 600,000 advocacy calls so far this year and received contributions from 35,000 donors since its inception two years ago. "That's a pretty powerful grassroots movement," Hammond said.
A large proportion of the group's money has not been spent on ads designed solely to defeat Obama or other campaign-related activities, however. America's Next Generation has spent more than $1 million so far this election cycle, much of which has gone toward appealing to donors for more money, via phone calls and national television ads, according to a review of Federal Election Commission records.
The majority of the spending disclosed so far has gone to a single telemarketing firm, InfoCision Management Corporation, which has personal ties to the super PAC. By the end of June, according to yearly and quarterly FEC reports, America's Next Generation had spent $546,453 -- 97 percent of which went to InfoCision.
America's Next Generation's treasurer and interim executive director, Matthew Palumbo, is a former vice president of marketing at InfoCision. Lance Davis, the super PAC's designated agent in FEC filings, is a former director of political marketing for InfoCision.
"Telemarketing is the primary tool with which we're reaching and communicating with people," Hammond said. The large percentage of the group's spending directed towards InfoCision's services, he argued, is the only way its grassroots-focused strategy can succeed.
But one critic argues that donors who believe they are giving primarily to elect Romney are being misled.
"What you essentially have is a telemarketing operation that's also paying for some ads to try to drive potential donors to their website or their phone lines, and for the most part generating income for their company," said Anthony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College who studies campaign finance. "But they haven't really generated much in the way of campaign activity, and it's getting late."
America's Next Generation was created in November 2010, not long after the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case legalized unlimited political expenditures by unions and corporations. At the time, the group was registered to an address at a medical and dental office building in Great Falls, Va. [ http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2010/two-groups-file-super-pacs/ ], a suburb of Washington DC. Its headquarters are now in Akron, Ohio -- the same city where InfoCision is based.
The group was mostly dormant until it started raising small contributions towards the end of 2011. At the same time it began spending money on "telecommunications charges" from InfoCision. More fundraising followed, and the super PAC sent more money to InfoCision, for the purposes of "automated advocacy," "automated calling," "telephone marketing" and "automated phone calling," according to FEC reports.
The telemarketing firm has extensive experience with political campaigns and is known for its work with Christian and conservative causes. On its website, it describes itself as "the nation’s second-largest privately held teleservices company."
In 2009, American Solutions, a political non-profit associated with former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, spent $7.2 million on InfoCision's services. The telemarketer raised $9.2 million for the non-profit -- a 16 percent return on investment [ http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/coal_interests_fueling_gingrichs_cash-burning_527.php ]. When Gingrich threw his hat into the 2012 presidential race, he again spent millions of dollars on InfoCision's services [ http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/03/01/candidates-boost-ohios-economy.html ]. Hammond was a spokesman for both of Gingrich's efforts.
The company has prospered even in the wake of do-not-call registries. Lance Davis, the former director of political marketing for InfoCision who now helps run America's Next Generation, told [ http://www.massnonprofit.org/news.php?artid=517&catid=60 ] an interviewer in 2007, "We have to be very aggressive in our scripting. … You’ve got to hit them with a sledgehammer in the first five seconds of the call."
After Davis left InfoCision, however, that hard-charging approach got the company in trouble. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, a Republican, reached a $75,000 settlement [ http://www.cleveland.com/consumeraffairs/index.ssf/2012/04/infocision_to_pay_75000_to_set.html ] with InfoCision in April over alleged violations of charity solicitation rules. The company did not admit to any wrongdoing.
In September, Bloomberg Markets magazine published a lengthy investigation [ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-12/charities-deceive-donors-unaware-money-goes-to-a-telemarketer.html ] of the company's fundraising activities for non-profits. On repeated occasions, Bloomberg found, call center employees had misled donors into believing that large percentages of their donations would go to charities like the American Cancer Society. Instead of the 70 percent for the charity promised by an InfoCision telemarketer script, only about 44 percent was going to the fight against cancer.
InfoCision, which did not respond to requests for comment, released a statement [ http://www.infocision.com/MediaCenter/PressReleases/Pages/Response-to-FALSE-media-reports-about-the-work-InfoCision-does-for-charities.aspx ] after the Bloomberg Markets story saying that "Recent news reports about the work InfoCision does for charities are completely false and misleading."
Corrado, the campaign finance expert, said that Romney supporters should be wary of giving to America's Next Generation, however. "They're essentially giving to a fundraising operation that's using a conservative appeal to raise money in a manner that will produce a very small percentage of its take for actual campaign activity," he said.
"It's all just an attempt to identify conservatives who might be willing to part with some of their hard-earned cash to stop President Obama."
America's Next Generation started spending on TV ads in August, and advertising has increased dramatically in the last weeks of the campaign. As of Oct. 9, it had spent at least $1.2 million against Obama [ http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00491373/813920/se ] so far this calendar year, according to FEC records.
Thus far, however, most of the ad spending has gone toward national spots on CNN and other cable stations, not local stations in swing states, where the candidates' campaigns typically direct their efforts [ http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012/09/14/swing-state-ads-bill-575m----so-far/57751750/1 ]. Hammond said that to date, the group has been concentrated on building up its donor base, but that its strategy will start to shift in the coming days. "As we move towards the election day, that focus will shift more towards Ohio and other battleground states," he said.
"The Next Generation plans to spend between $400k to $500k in the next 30 days on television ads in battleground states, with a strong emphasis on running advertisements in Ohio," said Hammond in an email. "In the next week, a $50,000 TV and Radio advertising buy is in place in Ohio."
Hammond pointed to anti-Obama ads that place less emphasis on fundraising [ http://www.thenextgen.org/site/our-latest-ad/ ] on America's Next Generation's website as examples of activity that will affect the election, but it's not clear how widely they have been used. He could not provide figures, but said that "spending is disproportionately leaning towards advocacy advertising."
In recent weeks, the super PAC's spending has expanded beyond InfoCision to include $455,000 in media buys with the Eleventy Media Group, another organization run by a former InfoCision employee [ http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ken-dawson/14/852/1a0 ].
Despite the links between America's Next Generation and InfoCision, Hammond said no donor information would be shared with the telemarketer, and decisionmaking is "independent" of the company. "They're a vendor," Hammond said.
If any of America's Next Generation's donors are concerned about where their dollars will go, however, experts say they should keep in mind a crucial fact about super PACs: They are largely unregulated.
"Super PACs are the Wild West frontier of money in politics," said Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, which advocates for stronger campaign finance laws.
"Just about anything goes, so long as the super PAC isn’t contributing to candidates or coordinating expenditures with candidates," Ryan said. He had two words of advice for anyone giving to a super PAC: "donor beware."
Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/americas-next-generation-infocision_n_1958570.html [with comments]
===
Who Will Mourn George Whitmore?
Matt Dorfman
By T. J. ENGLISH
Published: October 12, 2012
I RECEIVED news this week of the death of George Whitmore Jr., an occurrence noted, apparently, by no one in the public arena.
That Whitmore could die without a single mention in the media is a commentary on a city and nation that would rather bury and forget the difficult aspects of our shared history.
Forty-eight years ago, as a New York City teenager, Whitmore was initiated into an ordeal at the hands of a racist criminal justice system. For a time, his story rattled the news cycle. He was chewed up and spit out: an ill-prepared kid vilified as a murderer, then championed as an emblem of injustice and, finally, cast aside. That he survived his tribulations and lived to the age of 68 was a miracle.
I first met Whitmore in the spring of 2009 while doing research for a book that posited that his experiences constituted an important subnarrative to the racial turmoil of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Finding him was not easy. I eventually tracked him down in Wildwood, N.J., not far from where he’d been born and raised. I found a man who was broken but unbowed, humble, with glimmers of an innocence that had been snatched from him a long time ago. For a time in his adolescence, he’d been infamous. By the time I found him, he was anonymous, and that was O.K. with him.
Back in April 1964, like a horrifying urban-jungle version of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Whitmore began a nearly decade-long ramble through the justice system that still boggles the mind. It started on a misty morning when Whitmore, 19 years old, African-American, raised in poverty and a grade-school dropout, was taken by a handful of New York City detectives into the 73rd Precinct station house in East New York, Brooklyn. After a 22-hour interrogation by numerous detectives — all of them white — he was coerced into signing a 61-page confession detailing a series of horrific crimes, including, most notably, a brutal double murder of two young white women on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The case had become known in the media as “The Career Girl Murders.” The killings took place on the same day — Aug. 28, 1963 — and perhaps at the exact time that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
The confession was front-page news. The Brooklyn cops who were involved congratulated themselves; one was given a special award for exemplary work. But the confession was a fraud. To most objective observers, it didn’t seem likely that Whitmore could have committed the murders. At his arraignment, he told the judge that he’d been coerced into admitting guilt. Few cared: he was a disposable Negro who’d been raised in a shack alongside a junkyard in Wildwood — a “drifter,” described in one account as “possibly mentally retarded.” He was indicted, imprisoned and declared a monster.
America was just on the cusp of the civil rights revolution; it was a time of pernicious institutional racism. A black kid had been railroaded, and he wasn’t the first nor would he be the last. But the detectives had made the mistake of pinning on him the city’s most notorious open murder case, which brought about a higher level of scrutiny than the average homicide.
The case quickly began to fall apart. The detectives claimed that they had found a photo of one of the career girls in Whitmore’s wallet when they arrested him. He’d told them he’d found it at the murder scene and stolen it, they said. None of it was true. (He did have a photo on him, but it was not of either of the victims.) On the day of the murders, witnesses had seen him sitting in an empty catering hall in Wildwood, where he was working at the time, watching King’s speech on television.
Despite a mounting belief among some civil rights activists associated with the N.A.A.C.P., and a few intrepid journalists, that Whitmore was innocent, he remained in prison, facing two death sentences. Depressed, frightened and alone, he pondered his imminent demise at the hands of the state. He asked other inmates: “If you were going to be put to death, which would it be? The chair? Lethal injection? What’s the least painful way to die?” A teenager, having committed no crime — ever — at that point in his life, pondering what means of execution he would choose: this was his reality.
It would take nine years for Whitmore to clear his name. It wouldn’t have happened without the help of many lawyers, a few newspaper reporters and the civil rights activists. Though the “Career Girls” murder charges were dropped early on — and the actual killer, Richard Robles, was eventually tried and convicted — Whitmore had also been forced to confess to another murder charge, and the assault and attempted rape of a woman in Brooklyn. There followed a numbing cycle of trials, convictions, convictions overturned, retrials and appeals. Whitmore went from being a nobody to being a perceived murderer to being a terribly “wronged man” and back to being a nobody. In prison, he learned to make rotgut hooch and, trying to dull the pain, became an alcoholic.
In April 1973, he emerged triumphant. A few weeks before all the charges against him were finally thrown out, CBS broadcast a highly promoted movie-of-the-week based on his ordeal. The movie, “The Marcus-Nelson Murders,” based on a book by the New York Times reporter Selwyn Raab, was produced and written by Abby Mann, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter. Whitmore was paid a pittance for his cooperation. In the end, the movie is best remembered for having introduced a character named Detective Theo Kojak, played by the actor Telly Savalas. Mr. Savalas and Kojak would go down in the annals of TV history. Whitmore watched the movie from the medical ward at the Green Haven state prison in Dutchess County.
NINE years after his name was finally cleared and he’d been released from prison, Whitmore won a settlement of half a million dollars from the City of New York. But it was too little, too late. He’d been crushed by the system, his self-worth obliterated in ways that could never fully be put back together. He squandered the money he’d been awarded through bad business ventures and at the hands of devious friends and relatives. By the time I found Whitmore, he was living in poverty similar to what he’d known in those years before he was led into that police station in Brooklyn back in 1964.
Meeting Whitmore was eerie for me. Though he was 65 years old at the time, I could still see that 19-year-old kid who had been so horribly wronged all those years ago. You could see the pain in his face. In one of our first meetings, in the backyard of his tiny rented house on Route 9, I took a photo of him. You can look in his eyes and almost hear him asking the question, “Why me?”
Over the next two years, I frequently made the drive to Wildwood from Manhattan, a three-and-a-half-hour jaunt along the Jersey Shore. I’d take Whitmore to the market to buy groceries to fill his empty kitchen cabinets and refrigerator. Then we’d sit and talk.
Going over the past was painful for him. I tried to catch him early in the day. After he had his first couple of drinks, he was lucid and charming. He remembered his ordeal with such detail that it could send a chill up your spine and bring you to tears. After a few more drinks, he would lose focus, get sloppy and sometimes become ornery and difficult.
When the book was finished, I delivered a couple of copies to Whitmore. He held it in his hands, felt its heft and smiled with pride. Since adolescence, he had had poor eyesight, and I’m not sure he ever learned to read. But after he’d taken a few minutes to look at the pictures in the book and flip through its pages, seeing the familiar names and descriptions of events, he wept at the memory of his lost youth.
In recent months, I’d fallen out of touch with Whitmore. Knowing him, and attempting to assume a measure of responsibility for his life, was often exhausting. While I had come to love him, the drunken phone calls, the calls from hospital emergency rooms and flophouses, and the constant demands for money became overwhelming. When people who claimed to be friends of his starting calling me and asking for favors, I decided to back off. But when I received a cryptic e-mail from one of his nephews, informing me that Whitmore had died on Monday, I was overcome with sadness and regret.
Whitmore never saw himself as a race activist. In the 1960s and 1970s, from prison and on the streets, he watched the civil rights movement and the Black Power Movement at a wary distance. He did not judge people by their skin color. He knew he had been the victim of a grave injustice, but he did not assume that the detectives who framed him, or his slow torture at the hands of a rigged system, were motivated by racial prejudice.
By staying strong for all those years — by not taking a plea deal, as he had been offered numerous times — Whitmore forced the justice system to come to terms with the injustice that had been done to him. His ordeal was a key factor in the abolition of the death penalty (except for cases involving the killing of a police officer) by the State Legislature and Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, in 1965, and in the United States Supreme Court’s decision in the 1966 case Miranda v. Arizona, which broadened the rights of criminal suspects under interrogation. (The death penalty was restored in New York in 1995, but it was ruled unconstitutional by the state’s highest court in 2004.) Whitmore’s plight turned the wheels of justice, however painfully and incrementally.
Yet there are no plaques in honor of George Whitmore Jr., no schools named after him, or any civic recognition of his humble fortitude. His name should be known to every student in New York, especially kids of color, but it is not part of the curriculum.
This week, a flawed but beautiful man who offered up his innocence to New York City died with hardly any notice. To those who benefited from his struggles or who believe the city is a fairer place for his having borne them, I ask: Who grieves for George Whitmore?
T. J. English [ http://www.tj-english.com/ ] is the author of “The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge [ http://www.amazon.com/The-Savage-City-Murder-Generation/dp/B005Q5OXIY ],” about George Whitmore Jr.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/opinion/who-will-mourn-george-whitmore.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/opinion/who-will-mourn-george-whitmore.html?pagewanted=all ]
===
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upon the Right of Election, 1790
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