Reserving Judgment Before Having the Facts Is NOT a Defense of the Guilty

I discovered tonight that two tweets of mine, made in the course of a more-than-2-hour discussion, were posted out of context in an article advancing the proposition that "Progressives are defending a convicted pedophile, because he's a progressive."

 http://lolwutpolitics.com/2013/03/30/on-predators-and-progressive-politics/comment-page-1/#comment-42
 
The notion that I have done anything of the sort -- support a convicted pedophile -- is patently false. That my tweets have now been used to make me the poster child for "Progressives in Denial about Child Predators In Our Midst" is a gross and outrageous misrepresentation of my opinion on the matter and of me. That the original misrepresentation is being linked to in other articles elaborating on the same false characterization only amplifies the offensiveness of this misrepresentation.

http://www.drumsnwhistles.com/2013/04/04/its-not-ok-when-liberals-commit-crimes-stop-defending-it/

 The use of my tweets in the original article are out of context and entirely misleading. I specifically stated in that discussion that I was NOT defending William Glenn Talley, but that I did not know enough about the case in order to RESPONSIBLY form an opinion as to the facts of the case.

When I wrote those tweets, I had just learned of the existence of the case.  I had barely skimmed one of the appeal decisions on a 4th Amendment issue and was seeking additional information. At that point I was listing hypothetical possibilities that I wanted to either confirm or eliminate by consulting reliable materials -- such as published court decisions and news accounts -- about the case.

Other than the one case I had skimmed, all I knew about the case at that point was what I been told by strangers through tweets.

I had read nothing, other than such tweets, stating that Bill had been convicted.  The appeal case I had skimmed said nothing about any conviction because it was "interlocutory" in nature.  That is, the appeal had been heard and decided years *before* any conviction had happened.

Also in that thread, I was told that Bill had been found guilty by a jury of his peers, a claim that, despite the self righteousness with which it had been advanced, turned out to be FALSE.  As my review of the actual court materials demonstrated, there never was a trial on the merits of the case.  There was never any jury.  There was never any jury verdict.

This should underscore the fact that assertions made in tweets -- especially regarding the background facts on a case as serious as this one -- are unreliable and potentially inaccurate.  To rely on them alone is irresponsible.

I thought that we as progressives are supposed to be better than "Right Wing Nut Jobs" because we value basing our opinions upon sound, reliable information, not on hearsay -- what we heard from someone with only second hand or third hand knowledge of the facts -- especially when what we hear are tweets from someone we do not know.

To print my tweets out of context, and to characterize them in a manner that I had specifically stated in that tweet thread was incorrect and that did not reflect my opinion of the case or of Bill, is disingenuous and outrageous. To identify me as someone who defends or has defended Bill is false. To attempt to ridicule or shame me, based upon a position I have never taken is equally incorrect and outrageous.

The ONLY position that I took in that thread was that I was not prepared to form any opinion of the case or of Bill AT THAT TIME, and that I wanted to research the background on the charges and read any available cases and news accounts, so that I could find out what had happened, appraise the facts and decide for myself.

I have written to request that the author of the first article linked above print the entire thread, reflecting all of my tweets in that conversation, not just the two that, taken out of context, utterly misrepresent the position I was taking at the time and my position on the case as a whole.

Now that I have read all the court documents and materials on the case, that are available online, I will be happy to share my opinions on it once the record has been corrected, as requested. For now, I need to close and go to sleep. I will follow up, accordingly.

Manifesto of a Progressive Single Female Land Owner

I’m of the last generation that grew up on analogue communications – hand-written letters and no email, typing on Corasable paper in college. Word processors – the DOS kind – entered the workplace the year after I graduated, in 1985. The only phones we had was our land line, and when I was in the car, out shopping, or off picking blackberries in Webster, you couldn’t reach me. If I got lost on the way home, I stopped at a gas station and looked at a map. Cell phones looked huge and ridiculous, and having and using one cost a fortune.

Everyone raised after that point grew up with their lives being broadcast in some fashion. With email, GPS and online social networks, status updates, options on electronics and web sites with default settings on “track,” it seems that we live much more publicly than we used to, which is good in a lot of ways, but also a double-edged sword.

Privacy is a huge area of Constitutional rights that I think could use a serious shot of adrenaline. It is the very core from which We the People store and build our power. It is the locus of our integrity as individual human beings. Keep in mind as well, that with the increasing economic disparity, the Middle Class has not only lost out on income but also on privacy. With every home lost, gone is also a power base, a zone of autonomy, independence, and influence.

Privacy is the reason why the government is not supposed to tap your phone without a warrant. It is why the government can’t force you donate one of your kidneys to Rupert Murdoch, even though he’s stinking rich, and you are the only perfect match for him, and without your kidney he’ll die. Privacy, of course, is the seat of bodily integrity, and that is a kickass feminist discussion for another day.

Privacy is a zone in which we can interact freely and without government surveillance or interference. It is the zone of liberty in which, provided you don’t bother anybody else, you can do as you wish. It is also the zone in which the people are sovereign to their government, as in they get their powers from us, and all rights and powers are reserved to the People. That’s express in the 9th Amendment. It is also grounded in "The Penumbra of the Constitution."

Privacy is not the same as secrecy. It can be open to the public. It can be transparent with documentation, but it can also be free of governmental supervision and surveillance. My home is a gun-free, bigotry-prohibited, progressive-friendly, human liberation zone. It took me until my late 40s to be able to afford it and get in here, ‘cause the mortgage and taxes ended up being less than my monthly rent in NYC. Now I am a single-female homeowner and tax payer. How many times has that happened in human history, without having to marry some nobleman or captain of industry, minister to his needs, and have him die before I died of repeat child-bearing?

The private sphere is a crucial power base for the Middle Class. It is the very essence of democracy, in which every man and woman can be a king, a free and autonomous political being. As such, as a private citizen who has dominion over this land and this ediface, I want to devote the resources I have to the movement and towards the expansion and acquisition of more zones of privacy within the reach and control of the Middle Class.

25,000 who survived on 9-11

It was supposed to be the Democratic Primary for Mayor of NY. Mark Green was the front runner. Mike Bloomberg was kind of a joke, another really rich guy who wanted to buy his way into public office and political power.

The primary in September, 2001, was where the mayoral election in October would be decided. The Democrat most likely to be nominated was considered a shoo-in in the general election in November. So getting the right Democrat for the NYC mayoral race was the order of the day on September 11th.

Because this was effectively the election that would choose NYC's next mayor, a lot of people were off voting on the morning of Sept 11. That is why there were only 25,000 people in the building, instead of the 50,000 on ordinary mornings around 9 or ten.

But the election wasn't the only thing contributing to the 25,000 who happened to not be at the Towers.

For many families, September 11, 2001, the first Tuesday after the long Labor Day weekend, happened also to be the First Day of School. Parents were late to work at the Trade Center because they were personally dropping off the kids at school. So they weren't there and didn't die.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 also happened to be the day after Monday Night Football, the season opener, which happened to be the NY Giants against the Denver Broncos, a rematch of the legendary Giant Superbowl Championship of 1986. The game was in Denver. On the night of September 11, Giants fans all across the tri-state area parked themselves in front of the tube, with a healthy supply of superb munchies and beer. They dug in for the game, way past their bedtime on a work night.

Yup, TANKED.

In sum, many people who had watched the Giants MNF game the night before, were tired, maybe hungover, definitely ticked, annoyed, irritated, or pissed off and depressed due to Denver handing the Giants their asses. So they overslept and made like slugs and ended up late for work. Indeed, on that morning-after, the achy, lingering putrescence of New York Giants loss may have actually saved the lives of thousands of New Yorkers.

And then, of course, you had the incomparable contribution of the Fire Department of New York, the New York Police Department, the Port Authority police, and various Court Officers, Marshals and security throughout the downtown area. They got at least 25,000 people out of the Towers before the buildings collapsed. Talk about the ultimate sacrifice.

Oy vey! They're building a mosque at Ground Zero!

The only way someone could be upset about this is if he or she equates Islam with terrorism and assumes that all or most Moslems sponsor or approve of anti-American terrorism. That is a grossly erroneous assumption.

Islam didn't call for the attack on the WTC. Extremism and radical fundamentalism did...as well as sheer, batshit crazy, criminal impulse.

Supporting the building of the Cordova center two blocks from "Ground Zero" is not just some knee-jerk "politically-correct" attempt at appeasement of a hostile population. This is to give members of one religion the same access that an American city would give to *any* religion. It is to remain true to our democratic principles of equality and religious freedom.

Yes, it creates -- or rather affirms, since there was already a Mosque in the vicinity of Ground Zero -- an Islamic presence in the area. But this is an Islamic institution whose own principles stand in stark opposition to the violent radical fundamentalism of various Wahabist sects. This mosque openly embraces diversity in faiths and advocates tolerance. It will further cultivate and support moderate, mainstream Islamic communities who are integrated in and invested in their greater American communities. This can only be a good thing. It is crucial that Americans support and help to cultivate mainstream, moderate Islamic communities. That is a cornerstone in the delegitimization of the violent, fundamentalist sects.

Where building a house of worship in a given community is at issue, if we start saying that a different standard for approval applies to Moslems than the one for everybody else, we've just stepped out onto the same slippery logical continuum as the 1938 laws in Germany -- Jewish doctors are not allowed to treat Aryan patients; Jewish teachers cannot teach at public schools; Jewish citizens are banned from serving in public office -- or as imprisoning Japanese American citizens in internment camps. There is no principled distinction between these measures. The difference is only of degree.

And what the fuck is this development lately in our country that it is okay to attempt to surgically strike out certain fundamental civil rights of individuals, based on how certain people look or based on their religion???

This ain't right, Jeff. You know what I'm talkin' about.

Waterboarding is against UNITED STATES LAW

I can't believe the utter crap reasoning I've been seeing in DEFENSE of TORTURE. "We need to do it "-- all competent evidence to the contrary that it actually helps and to the affirmative that it actually hurts -- "because the attack on the US on 9-11 was an atrocity."

That is the very essence of a false argument, linking two things that have no relationship to one-another, other than indulging our sense of anger and helplessness respecting the attack on 9-11. And I speak as someone who breathed in the debris from the WTC as it rained down on my home...and personally know people who died, including the 20 firefighters from my neighborhood.

YES, the terrorists are utter savages and barbarians, and we should fight them FIERCELY in the field. NO MERCY.

But once they are in our custody and control...once they are CAPTIVE PRISONERS..., they are no longer a threat. They are helpless. They are human beings AT OUR MERCY.

The only conceivable threat that a captive prisoner presents to us is in the hypothetical situation, the "ticking time bomb scenario," which makes for a good episode of "24," but is so remote in actuality that in no way should the exception decimate the rule. Moreover, it's just a BAD IDEA to base major national security policy decisions on fictional television shows, as opposed to on our law, our foundational constitutional principles and on the settled professional insights of expert interrogators in the field.

Professional interrogators in the FBI and CIA -- folks like Matt Alexander, leader of the interrogation team that located Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaida in Iraq and murderer of tens of thousands, by using relationship-building methods and non-coercive techniques -- have stated repeatedly that even in the "ticking time bomb scenario," torture is the LEAST efficacious method for extracting the information needed to save lives. Befriending the subject, winning them over, using deception...these are all methods that have consistently proven MORE EFFECTIVE than torture in gaining useful and reliable intelligence.

Speaking of intelligence, it is far better to employ our brains, smarts and the accumulated know-how of professional experts to gain crucial information than it is to allow our EMOTIONS and desire for revenge to govern our responses in these situations.

What the defenders of torture stand for is akin to saving the village in Vietnam by incinerating it. We would "save" our country by voluntarily incinerating our Constitution, intentionally violating U.S. LAW, and decimating our country by destroying everything it stands for, everything that makes us great, everything that makes us a LAW-ABIDING DEMOCRACY.

Resorting to torture is the pussy's way out. It is a reaction rooted in fear and lack of faith in the greatest system of justice and democracy on this earth. We allow the terrorists to scare us into destroying ourselves. The decimation of the US becomes an inside job. Such a reaction could not be more anti-democratic, more barbaric, more ANTI-AMERICAN.

For shame!

No, Rabbi Pomerantz. You are wrong.

In a column published today on Newsmax.com, Rabbi Dr. Morton H. Pomerantz employs stunningly tortured logic to hold President Obama responsibile for Wednesday's terrorist shooting by white supremacist James W. von Brunn, at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

As a Reform Jew and a Zionist, I find Rabbi Pomerantz's remarks utterly mortifying. I cannot believe this guy is a chaplin for the State of New York. He says:

Just last week, Obama told his worldwide audience more than 100 million people that the killing of six million Jews during the Holocaust was the equivalent of Israel's actions in dealing with the Palestinians.

Although the rabbi speaks here as if he is quoting Obama directly, that is not what the President said. Rather, the President simply iterated two truths that are not in conflict -- that the Holocaust was an atrocity against humanity and that Israel has a part to play in improving the plight of the Palestinians within and adjacent to its borders.

President Obama called on the Palestinians to abandon violence...and for the Israelis to abandon the continued expansion of the settlements on the West Bank. He held BOTH sides accountable for the part they MUST play in making a lasting peace in the region in the future. He did NOT state that the plight of the Palestinians was *equivalent* to that of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis. To put such words into President Obama's mouth stops just short of libel.

What I will say as a New Yorker and a Reform Jew is this: Because of our persecution in the Holocaust, Jews here and in Israel MUST stand against persecution of people based on heritage, ethnicity or national identity, no matter how relatively mild that persecution may be. NEVER AGAIN means we MUST stand for equal rights for ALL human beings, regardless of race, color, creed, nationality, etc. To stand for Israel's security is not in conflict with these goals because security measures can and MUST be aimed against those whose behavior-- not identity -- presents a threat.

American and Israeli Jews can and must oppose the violence of Hamas while vigorously defending the rights of the Palestinian people to a country and the blessings of peace, security and prosperity. That is my position. My grandmother violated the United States Neutrality Act to ship arms to Israel during the wars in 1967 and 1973. I was raised to support Israel as a Jewish homeland, and I do fiercely stand for Israel and against antisemitism. I also stand for the equal right of the Palestinian people to their own homeland, side-by-side with Israel.

Obama did indeed condemn the violence perpetuated by Hamas. He is not letting the Palestinian people off the hook.

To state that President Obama's views "help create a danger as great as that posed by the Nazis to the Jewish people," is histrionic crazy talk, so over the top it is beyond credibility.

I see this as a common flaw among many of my fellow Jews and fellow Zionists, the false belief that to hold ourselves and our beloved Israel accountable for the part we have played in exacerbating the suffering of our Palestinian brothers and sisters is to sew the seeds of our own destruction. This is the fundamental misconception that has kept and continues to keep Palestinians and Israelis mired in perpetual conflict.

We need a paradigm shift, or we will NEVER have peace.

I am a Reform Jew. I love God. I love Israel. I love my Palestinian neighbors out here in Brooklyn, and I love my Palestinian brothers and sisters in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Rabbi Pomerantz does NOT speak for me. And I know I am not alone in feeling this way as a Jew.

Cheneyan Doublethink and Newspeak

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised Dick Cheney has the gall to come out and publicly defend torture of detainees by American authorities. As far back as I can remember, from McCarthy to Tricky Dick and Spiro, to Gingrich and Ken Starr, to Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez and Karl Rove...and that drooling idiot in the corner with the lace collar and the propeller hat..., these guys on the far right have been utterly shameless. So why should I expect an dirty old dog to suddenly learn new tricks?

Cheney refers to water boarding by the sanitizing euphemism, "enhanced interrogation techniques." He does this despite the fact that current, effective statutory law, judicial rulings and international treaties unambiguously define water boarding as torture. Let's leave aside the fact that Abu Zubaydah was "interrogatorily enhanced" over 80 times in one month.

According to Cheney, however, when Cheney calls water boarding an "enhanced interrogation technique," suddenly and magically it is no longer torture, not illegal, not a horrendous way to treat a captive human being.

Cheney's coinage is a classic example of "Newspeak" a central weapon in the totalitarian propaganda arsenal, illustrated so indelibly in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. With Newspeak, something is not what it is simply because the government authorities say so. To challenge the government’s statement is to commit a treasonous act, to invites government scrutiny and police intrusion into one's life ... like having all of one's phone calls and internet transmissions tapped, without a warrant.

Oh wait. They did that.

A self-proclaimed minion of "the Dark Side," Cheney has never wavered in his staunchly optional relationship to factual accuracy and, well, reality. If he could, he would suck the entire world into the black hole that is his psyche, so we all might play a part in the dark puppet show of Cheney's most paranoid fantasies. Combine Cheney's contempt for facts with Karl Rove's head for political strategy; add in their mutual appreciation of the manipulative power of fear, and you've got one diabolical formula: Strategic Mendacity -- a pattern of making stuff up to exploit people's fears.

Here is how strategic mendacity works: Put forth false factual assertions that justify one's position and put the burden on your opposition to marshal the facts necessary to set the record straight. Blanket the world with bullshit, and leave it to your opponent to dig the fuck out. Strategic mendacity has proven exceedingly effective, particularly in the period following 9-11, when overflowing wells of fear throughout the American public primed the field for absorption of megatons of bullshit.

It's a brilliant diversionary tactic. Instead of openly debating matters of policy and law on the merits, the Rovians mine the field of public discourse with factual misrepresentations, deliberately planted to mire the opposition in the effort required to expose and debunk the lies. It's a dirty tactic that works like a progressive tax on the opposition. Valuable time and effort that could be spent on positive efforts towards change and progress get wasted instead on Republican Roto-Rooter Research duty, sifting through the sewage.

Which leads me to one of my favorite pieces of Rovian Newspeak -- We are fighting this "War on Terrorism" in order to preserve and protect our freedom. Meanwhile, the government taps Americans' phones without probable cause, turns air travel into a universal stop-and-frisk, and obliterates core constitutional principles like the presumption of innocence and freedom of assembly.

We're preserving and protecting our freedoms by setting up a second judicial system, a shadow system of justice, outside the jurisdictional reaches of the United States Constitution, unbound by the need for a speedy trial, legal representation, the right to confront one's accuser, the right to due process or any hearing at all, prior to the deprivation of a human being's liberty or property. And this is all okay.

Newspeak. Doublethink.

Strategic mendacity, like "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction," drove us into an unnecessary war in which thousands of young Americans gave their lives and still more their limbs, their mental health, their ability to support their families and to simply enjoy life. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives were wiped out, blithely dismissed as “collateral damage” in the greater battle for "freedom" or to wipe out WMD...or whatever.

Let us not forget, for years the Bush-Cheney administration fought the release of the numbers on Iraqi casualties. They sought to keep from us crucial information bearing on our personal responsibility as citizens of a democratic country, waging war upon the people of a foreign land. As far as the Bush-Cheney administration was concerned, the First Amendment to the Constitution simply would be on hold for as long as Bush-Cheney could make their state of emergency endure.

It is nothing short of an outrage that the connection between Iraq, Al Qaeda and the "War on Terror" -- the entire justification for going to war -- was one Big Lie after another, backed by intentionally-stilted intelligence reports, cooked up to provide after-the-fact support for foregone conclusions dictated by Bush, Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Saddam had weapons of mass destruction because Dick-Bush-Rummy said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and the patriotism of anyone who would question this claim is inherently suspect. Newspeak.

One particularly galling aspect of strategic mendacity is that the mainstream media, in a misguided effort to "fairly represent both sides of an issue," habitually give equal billing and air time to the psychotic claims of the Cheney-Rovites. Their arguments are deemed newsworthy not because they are factually sound but because of their entertainment value.

This was the unintended consequence of the side-by-side coverage of the May 21 speeches of Dick Cheney and President Obama. The entertainment value of the cage fight death match elevated Dick Cheney, a personage who should be shrinking into obscurity in disgrace, to the same level of public relevance as President Obama. This "even-steven" approach to coverage confers an undeserved legitimacy upon Cheney and the toxic bullshit he shamelessly disseminates to the American public.

Let us also not forget that when Joseph Wilson published credible evidence questioning the accuracy of the Dick-Bush WMD claims, the Administration – indeed Cheney – responded by deliberately blowing the cover of Valerie Plame, an active intelligence officer of the CIA! This is the same Vice President who had the gall to fault both President Obama and Nancy Pelosi on their support of the CIA. Simply mindbending, eye-crossing, head-exploding gall. Chutzpah.

Newspeak.

An old saying among trial lawyers holds: "A jury will forgive a witness anything, except for a lie." One lie, and anything else the witness might say will be dismissed as non-credible and worthless. If a witness will lie about one thing; he will lie about anything.

With that in mind, it is dumbfounding to me that either Rove or Cheney has the nerve to show themselves in public, let alone to speak on any subject, when the American public has countless examples of reasons to never credit another single word that Cheney or Rove may utter.