Jail Sentence for Cops who murdered 92 year old lady, then planted pot on her… fucking wow
This goes into the category of “seriously, now, what the fuck.” Picked this up from alternet (Christopher Moraff has been doing some EXCEPTIONAL writing for them) and you can read his version of it here. This bit of police brutality brought to you by the Atlanta Police Department. It happened about two years ago, and their trial just came to an end this week.
Three former Atlanta police officers were sentenced to prison time this week for the shooting death of a 92 year-old grandmother after breaking down her door during a botched drug raid.
Jason Smith, Gregg Junnier and Arthur Tesler received sentences ranging from five to 10 years on charges of conspiracy to violate civil rights resulting in death.
In November 2006, the officers — all members of Atlanta’s narcotics squad — gunned down Kathryn Johnston inside her home. The police claimed to be acting on information they received from a confidential informant that drugs were being sold from the house. That allegation turned out to be false.
Wait, so some 92 year old is selling a shitton of drugs. When two snitches say that… the cops believe them? As it turns out, the cops thought there were a ton of drugs and money and cameras. They obtained a no-knock warrant, meaning they could just break the door, walls, windows, etc. Inside was no drug dealer… Inside was a 92 year old lady with a .38. Without warning these narcoleptics (i.e. the drug pigs) start tearing away at the outside of her house. Here’s the original 2007 post, (ht alternet)
By 6 p.m., they had the legal document they needed to break into Kathryn Johnston’s house, and within 40 minutes they were prying off the burglar bars and using a ram to burst through the elderly woman’s front door. It took about two minutes to get inside, which gave Johnston time to retrieve her rusty .38 revolver.
Tesler was at the back door when Junnier, Smith and the other narcotics officers crashed through the front.
Johnston got off one shot, the bullet missing her target and hitting a porch roof. The three narcotics officers answered with 39 bullets.
Five or six bullets hit the terrified woman. Authorities never figured out who fired the fatal bullet, the one that hit Johnston in the chest. Some pieces of the other bullets — friendly fire — hit Junnier and two other cops.
The officers handcuffed the mortally wounded woman and searched the house…
There were no drugs.
There were no cameras that the officers had claimed was the reason for the no-knock warrant.
Just Johnston, handcuffed and bleeding on her living room floor.
That is when the officers took it to another level. Three baggies of marijuana were retrieved from the trunk of the car and planted in Johnston’s basement.
I reccomend you give both stories a good read.
As an atheist, and anti-prohibitionist, I just want to point out a few things that are more dangerous than pot. In terms of health: alcohol, coffee, cubicles, stale air, monounsaturated fats, high fructose corn syrup, tv, cigarettes, stress, in-laws and any skull cracking you might receive from your local law enforcement goon. In terms of psychology, general chi there are also many things that are worse for you: alcohol, cigarettes, religion, in-laws and any skull cracking you might receive from your local law enforcement goon. In terms of general social welfare: religion, self-righteousness, alcohol, cigarettes, pollution, cubicles, stale air, stress, in-laws and any skull cracking you might receive from your local law enforcement goon… those will ALL DO MORE TO KILL YOU … than pot.
But unlike zoloft, prozac, oxycontin, cigarettes, cocaine, complex alcohols and opium… you can produce pot yourself (with a few seeds and some diligency). Unlike zoloft, prozac, oxycontin, cigarettes, religion, complex alcohols and opium, pot does NOT relax you by turning off your brain. It relaxes you by temporarily redistributing your stress/focus through your cerebral cortex. In the long run, while sacrificing some short-term memory, smoking pot has been shown in numerous studies to protect long-term memory in, well, the long run.
So I guess all I’m saying is…
… at least for anybody over the age of 85… I mean… fuck it… they’ve earned the right to a few doobs on their way out.
One Love, One Hope, One Struggle,
–Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire
Action Alert: Prosecuting the Bush Administration’s War Crimes, Crimes of State and Crimes against Humanity
My personal Hero of the Day is H. Marshall Jarrett. Why?, you might ask. Well… Mr Jarret recently put out a report critiquing the legal advice the Bush Administration used, and created for itself, in support of torture.
Here it is at Al Jazeera magazine.
By Jason Leopold
A key line in George W. Bush’s defense against war crimes charges has weakened with the disclosure that an internal Justice Department watchdog has concluded that the legal advice, which cleared the way for Bush’s policies on torture and other abuse of detainees, was tainted by political influence.
An investigation by H. Marshall Jarrett, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, reached “damning” conclusions about numerous cases of “misconduct” in the advice from John Yoo and other lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration, according to legal sources familiar with the report’s contents.
OPR investigators determined that Yoo blurred the lines between an attorney charged with providing independent legal advice to the White House and a policy advocate who was working to advance the administration’s goals, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the contents of the report are still classified.
Here’s further conjencture on what will be in the report from The Washington Independent, Newsweek, and the Examiner.
Here’s the long and short of it. You can slice this sucker about seven ways and at least half a dozen members of the Bush Administration are guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against the Constitution or Crimes Against Humanity. They are furthermore guilty of criminal negligence as holders of public office. Corruption only serves to round out the first full mouthful of possible charges against this heinous and immoral reign of the Bushists. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, John Yoo and Scooter Libby need to be conspicously punished–to clear the air for the rest of the world, as well as for future generations.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has introduced some sort of immunity for honesty trade off for any member of the Bush Administration that comes out openly and discusses what the hell went so wrong. Writechic has a fantastic post, and 2 vids on the subject here.
Now here’s the action part. We need to make sure they hear us in the Senate Judiciary Committee. We need to ask them to prosecute the crimes of the Bush Administration. Ask them to set an example for future generations and those around the world who are watching this important moment in our history. Ask them, no, demand of these people (remember, they’re OUR employees) that they prosecute this gang of criminals to the full extent of the law.
Here is a list of all the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Here is a link to send a message to Senator Patrick Leahy, who is the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Arlen Specter is the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. You can email him here.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has a Subcommittee that focuses on the Constitution. Here’s a link to who is on that Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Here is their address if you’d like to mail them your feelings.
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Subcommittee on the Constitution
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Russ Feingold is the Senator that chairs this SubCommittee. To contact Senator Russ Feingold click here.
Senator Tom Coburn is the Ranking Member of this Constitution SubCommittee (the number 2). To email Senator Coburn click here. phone numbers (notorious email dodger) Washington: 202-224-5754; Tulsa: 918-581-7651; Oklahoma City: 405-231-4941
Senator Diane Feinstein is also on this Constitution Subcommittee. To email her, click here.
Senator Arlen Specter is also on this subcommittee. To email him, click here. (You’ll have to scroll down quite a bit before you find the form)
Senator Dick Durbin is also on this subcommittee. You can email him here.
Senator Lindsay Graham is also on this subcommittee. You can email him here.
Senator Benjamin Cardin is alson on this subcommittee. You can email him here. or call at 202-224-4524
Senator John Cornyn is also on this subcommittee. You can email him here.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is also on this subcommittee. You can email him here.
Senator Ed Kaufman is also on this subcommittee. You can email him here.
+++++
Ok so maybe that’s alot of email writing for one day. But I’m going to do half the list today and then half the list tomorrow. Then the first half again the day after that, with new emails. And then the second half the day after that.
Our country has alot of problems to deal with at the moment. A good portion of these problems were created by the criminal miscreants we will just call the Bushists for now. In some ways, all of us aided and abetted to the extent that we did not fight to stop the criminality. Let’s not make the same mistake again.
One Love, One Hope, One Struggle,
Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire
ps. or we could just try the GOP solution (h/t RandTant)
Feel the Burn!! Global Warming Heating Up Faster than Previously thought
One of the many reasons I hate the MSM (especially the American brand of it) is the myopic shortsightedness with which they “pick” the news.
For example, consider the following article from Al-Jazeera.
A leading climate scientist has warned that the earth is heating up faster than previous reports had indicated.
Chris Field, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says predicted global temperature rises of between 1.1C and 6.4C in the group’s 2007 report had been underestimated.
“We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we’ve considered seriously in climate policy,” he told a meeting of the the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago on Saturday.
Btw, it’s not on ABC, NBC or CBS. I don’t see it on CNN or MSNBC either… I see it on the environmental news release thingy I subscribe too. I see it at ABC Australia. I see it in a Swedish newspaper and a Polish one. Ooo… I even see it in a British biofeul news site. But no on the America media… at least not yet.
Which only makes me loath over-educated under-thinking d’bags like George Will even more. First, here’s George Will’s pompous, assinine and ultimately incorrect op-ed piece in the Washington Post (btw, in the post-game, the WP says it doesn’t necessarily fact-check op-ed pieces… good thing Bill Kristol moved there). Here’s Matt Corley at ThinkProgress giving George Will’s piece a sweet-ass deconstruction. As it ACTUALLY turns out, Will lied about the facts, misquoting his original source (the ACRC).
In the Washington Post yesterday, conservative columnist George Will chastised Energy Secretary Stephen Chu for “doomsaying” about global warming, arguing that concerns about climate change are just “eco-pessimism.” As evidence to support his point, Will claimed that “according to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.” But, as TPMmuckraker notes, the Arctic Climate Research Center (ACRC) quickly disputed Will’s claim… (quote follows)
Dude… I mean… this is really getting stupid now.
Picture the world as a really big room with 8 billion mofos in it. If one of us farts, maybe only the people next to them notice. If we build a farting factory, many people will smell it. If we build alot of farting factories, all of us will smell it. When our very way of life is based on farting factories we will run out of air and breath nothing but farts.
Is that what you really want? A world of farts?
Think Free or Die Stupid,
—Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire
Monday Silliness
Got this from Zen Yenta . It’s a “What Breed of Liberal Are You” quiz…
try… the questions are pretty funny… you can find the quiz here.
My Liberal Identity:
You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.
Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com
Feel the FIRE Fridays! Blue collar music to keep you going.
Wudup all. Personally, I couldn’t give two flying shits about Flight of the Concords, Lil Wayne, the Chris Brown — Rihanna scuffle (wife beaters are dickheads) or the Rick Ross vs. 50 cent beef.
That’s not what music should be about. Idk.. maybe I’m wrong. But I kind of think music should relate to your existence and then somehow either make it more interesting, or elevate that existenc or make it more funny or live-able.
So with that in mind here’ s some Feel the Fire Fridays hiphop, with a blue-collar, getcha-head-straight overtones..
First up, I gotta start with the Mighty Pharaoh, aka Pharaoh monch. Pharaoh is one of these rappers that has a super-dedicated core fanbase. Recently, though, he’s expanded his sound, absolutely tearing through rock and metal sounds. It was a huge leap for him but it paid off big time in songs like the following, “Book of Judges”… alot of people first found out about this legendary underground emcee through that Marc Ecko videogame. “Getting Up” (think it involved graffing). Anyway… hard as hell.. here it is
Next up are my ppls from the West Coast. Wax n Herbal T. They’re young cats and they blew up into a craze on YouTube. Their shit is like a working man’s combination of the Beastie Boys and Outkast, alloyed with a humorous Cali sound. (check out their track, “low budget”… super fucking cool)… here’s wax in the car just spitting over the stereo… dude has crazy talent no? “ask my momma man, you could see a mic on my sonogram” This video has over 300,000 views and its just him driving in a sentra and rapping (btw, um… rated R? if you’re not comfortable with hearing the phrase “vaginal walls” in a humorous context, don’t press play)
Finally, from new jersey, check out Hasaan Salaam’s allegro. The beat is by Rugged n Raw. Salaam’s flow is bananas on this. The lyrical contest is up there too.
One Love,
–Reverend Manny
One Last BAD Days blogroll shoutout
Sorry to do this so late after BLog Amnesty Days, but I wanted to get some shout outs in and I’ve been superswamped trying to put together some last minute grant proposals for my veterans book. Here’s hoping.
During this nerdy-ass time when I live about 24 inches away from my laptop, I do at least get to take the occasional break to refresh my mind. For the last few weeks, I’ve basically gotten at least half my news first through blogroll, and THEN through RSS feeds, news sites, alerts, etc…. so keep it up, you crazy bastard children of America 2.0 . Let’s give these PowerGoons a good scare.
Near the top of any such blogroll shout out has to be Write Chick Press. She’s a twice a day read for me and always beats me to blogging about the really juicy stuff… (you rock with the timeliness!)
Recently, Sharazad has also become a regular read for me. The blog is run by an Iranian woman, of somewhat centrist values. I have found it illuminating to the n-th degree. Part of the way warpigs operate is to keep us regular, normal people away from each other. Why? Cuz if we knew who we were shooting at, we might not be as willing to pull the trigger. So thank you sharazad for your work on this front.
Politicky Bitch is another favorite of mine (sorry my blogs are so long). Writing out of San Diego, California PB does some great digging around and often picks up stories others miss.
I consider myself a devout atheist. The basic notion is you give THIS life absolutely everything you’ve got. That being said, I’m often comforted by allies in the “faith” world. While I do think its ridiculous to believe Adam and Eve had a pet dinosaur when the world was created by Charlton Heston 7 thousand years ago, I don’t believe that the best “people of faith” actually focus on that sort of muck. So I enjoy reading Catholic Musings , a blog that offers a humanist, engaged version of Catholicism. I often enjoy my debates with SB, and find that kind atheists and kind religious people often share at least 98% of the same values.
More Awesome People: Tallulah Bankhead (life, pop and politics); LeftBlogistan (read your fellow lefty bloggers!); YourBlackPolitics (name says it all); BlogOffAndDie (satire, humor and opinion–one smart mofo); Outta The Cornfield (news, views and cornfields); and of course those super awesome people at Blue Bloggin (they aint NeoCons that’s for sure).
So keep the good stuff coming. Or… I’ll have Cheney shoot you in the face!!!
One Love, One Hope, One Struggle,
–Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire
Dick Morris is a fool (continued)
My favorite whipping boy, Dick “Popeye” Morris continues to baffle the mind. A former Clinton adviser and affirmed S&M lover, Dick Morris has made a career for himself as a pundit. Pundits are political hacks that make a living by talking about their favorite pastime, political maneuvering. When old jocks retire, they become sports commentators. When old cronies retire, they become pundits.
Dick Morris is a fool who will say most anything to make the other side look wrong or even evil.
Here’s yet another example,
Recently, President Obama (aka the Big O) proposed a 500k salary cap on high ranking company executives.
“WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday announced a salary cap of $500,000 for top executives at companies that receive large amounts of bailout money, calling the step an expression not only of fairness but of “basic common sense.”
Mr. Morris, please wow us with your take. (and no i’m not linking to him… eff that)
What do you think will happen under the “Obama Regime”?
“…we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.”
Really? You don’t say… and how’s he gonna kick this process off?
“Obama will begin the process by limiting executive compensation.”
Alright, screw it, I’m linking to the bastard here so you can read it for yourself.
So, I suppose, now that Obama’s restricting executive pay IN COMPANIES THAT RECEIVE BAILOUT MONEY to 500k, we’re on our way to socialism. Idk, Mr. Morris. The more you call this sort of thing socialist, the more I think of myself as a socialist. Is that what you really want on your hands? A bunch of socialists?
Shoe Betcha! Protestor throws shoe at Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao
And people say Bush never did shit for the world…
Apparently, while he was in the UK signing a few more trade contracts with UK PM Gordon Brown, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao stopped to give a speech at Cambridge University. Towards the end of his speech, a protestor stood up, called Mr. Wen a dictator, and hurled a shoe at him — missing him by more than a couple of feet.
Here’s the blow by blow from our friends at the BBC.
If nothing else, Bush at least gave the world at least one more way to protest the power brokers and the greedfiends.
“Duck, bitches. ” — vox populi
One Love, One Hustle,
–Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire
ps. just wanted to give a massive shout out to First Draft… just added them to the blogroll, but they’re quickly becoming one of my favorite news hubs on the net… My favorite blog of theirs is the recent point by point decimation of the right wing nutjobs know as “Freepers” to the net world. Tommy T gives you a frightening analysis of the right wing mind in its own crazy habitat.
