The Fall Of The House Of Bush

Even The Dour Poe Looks Happy Beside The Besieged Bush.

“And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!–for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.”

“The Haunted Palace” poem from Edgar Allen Poe's “The Fall Of The House Of Usher”

Patience is a virtue. So too can one's being incredibly busy. Both of those factors figure into this story, as I'd actually begun to write this tale two weeks ago . The main “arc”? Merely the brutally obvious unraveling of the world around President George W. Bush like it was a stray thread-yanked whirlwind of revelation to even his staunchest defenders that his presidency was not the lovely burnt sienna toned painting they'd deluded themselves into believing it was,...but rather, the earthy, brown bed-shit of a two-term disaster.

The bullet points of the tale?

T'was to begin with the embarrassing, five-hour FBI raid on the home and Office of Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, whose “job” was to investigate federal whistle-blower complaints, and other deeply internal Federal probes of in-house wrong-doing. Issues like digging about for “Hatch Act” (of 1939) violations by one Karl Rove, who in his possible (and patently obvious) law-breaking was using federal monies and employees as a taxpayer financed, campaign workforce—patently illegal under the “Hatch Act”.

And then some...via TPM:

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Office of Special Counsel here, seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief Scott Bloch and staff.

More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency's computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch's home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office.

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Bloch's agency is a little known one that is charged with investigating whistleblower complaints, Hatch Act violations, and the like -- but who is himself being investigated for retaliating against whistleblowers and politiciang his office. The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been conducting that investigation since 2005. The feds are apparently investigating whether Bloch tried to obstruct that investigation by deleting his hard drive, among other things.

To give you an idea how fraught this investigation is with unique issues. Bloch is not only busily investigating the White House for political briefings Karl Rove and his aides made to various agencies, but he's also conducting an investigation of the politicization at the Department of Justice and issues related to the U.S. Attorney firings -- a probe that he complained was being blocked by the DoJ. Of course, he can't do much to block the DoJ investigation of him.

When Eliot Ness and his G-Men roll up into a Bush appointee's office, shut down the in-office network, knock out the e-mail system, and grab everybody's computer and the file server, then hit his house and grab his shitty Dell Inspiron with every piece of porn and Pure Prarie League music in it because they caught wind that he'd been clumsily calling “Geek Squad” guys to purge files from all of his and his staff's computers—that is a big-ass deal. This is the kind of stuff that was dealt with in the heady “We are the grown-ups!” years, in the dead of night, by shady people called in on the Red Cheney-Devilphone™ to bring the shredders and lead-lined safes to clean up a messy situation.

Those days are long gone, as months are short, scores left unsettled are coming a' cropper, and fewer and fewer seem to fear the hoarse, feeble quack of our crutch-wielding duck of a president.

Feds bustin' in the door and snatchin' ever'thang from a Bush appointee?

Could that have possibly gone down in 2003? '04? '05, '06, or even early '07?.

Yeah, I thought not.

The story's second bullet point was to be the odd, open-air bus-crushing of another Bush-picked toady-in-trouble, one Lurita Alexis Doan. You remember Doan, don't you? She was the Powerpoint-hypnotized head of the Governmant Services Administration busted for the aforementioned crime of using her office as a de-facto arm of the RNC as opposed to a free-standing government agency. When caught out there on her CLEAR violations of the “Hatch Act” she was reduced to a laughable, spluttering paranoid mess in front of Henry Waxman's congressional committee. She was a textbook case of Bush's “Heckuva Job” cronyism exposed at its worst. Unable to be defended. Rank in its stupidity. And of course...tolerated up until this month in spite of clear evidence of wrong-doing, even after being told to resign or face criminal charges. This is the kind of person Bush used to snigger at us all about as he backslapped them and told the world how Jonas Salk and MLK weren't fit to wipe these people's posteriors. No more.

It's the Bush administration's special approach to accountability: stand staunchly beside an administration official as the allegations pile up and his or her credibility dwindles to nothing, and then months later -- long after the administration could derive any credit for the deed, and it is widely assumed that they are content to let the official fester in office for the duration -- the official abruptly and inexplicably resigns. So it was with Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales. And yesterday General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan stepped down.

But Doan, who gained mucky prominence for her clueless cronyism, wants everybody to know that she's not stepping down voluntarily. She was fired. And not only was she fired, but she was fired because she refused to cave to political pressure. Or something.

“I would rather get fired for something I believe in, and a cause I was willing to fight for, rather than to believe in nothing worth being fired for.” That's what Doan told Government Executive Magazine in an email last night. It's far from clear precisely what this "something" she believes in is.

Under fear—and that's really all it was—of deeper, more embarrassing investigations as he fades into the post-power phase of his presidency, Bush canned Doan's ass like Aunt Luberta's syrupy peaches. What made the firing doubly damaging was its un-typically messy handling. Normally the members of Bush's “Losers Brigade” are eased out the door, borne aloft on a sedan chair with rose petals and florid lies strewn before the press eunuchs carrying them out. This was an ugly departure, missing only building security flanking her on the walk-out and a pat-down for filched Post-Its™ and boxes of Sharpies™ at the front door. Although, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a shitty Xerox of Doan's White House ID card photo with a hastily scrawled “Do Nott Let In Bildeng!” on it behind the security desk at 1600 Penn.

Those two recent incidents were my main bellwethers indicating the spreading cracks in the foundation of “The House Of Bush”. Then there was to be a window-rattling return to the newly smoldering potboiler of Karl Rove's legal troubles with the resurgent Don Siegelman case as handled by our own Hubris Sonic:

WASHINGTON -- The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday subpoenaed President Bush's former chief political adviser, Karl Rove, to testify about whether the White House improperly meddled with the Justice Department.

Accusations of politics influencing decisions at the department led to the resignation last year of Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales.

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Let the 45 day countdown begin. It was a mistake for Rove to leave the White House, he has little protection now and can get no help from the president's lawyers. They didn't release Siegelman because they thought he was guilty, it must have been really obvious to the appellate judge that he was railroaded.

Rove has since tried to hide behind plans for a legalistic stall, and even been forced to do his favorite thing in the whole wide world—outside of skulking about maternity wards for wriggling, downy-haired snacks—which is to go back and re-tell a story when his web of lies tightens about his scrotum.

While watching him flinch and squirm from those constricting canards pinching at the short n' curlies, other Bushian roof tiles and siding have begun peeling from the edifice at an alarming rate.

We saw the brutal volleys from the Obama camp, and most shockingly—the press—after Bush's noodle-armed serve of the “appeasement issue”, idiotically injecting himself into the presidential campaign. Obama's verbal nad-kick crossed Bush's eyes something fierce, and then doubled over Dubya's reluctant pal McCain with the deft tying of ol' McGollum™ to his previous statement regarding diplomacy, and to the electoral boat-anchor that is Bush. Worse still, it even prompted a few reporters to go punch up “the Wiki” where they found out about Grampa Bush's “Charles Foster Kane”-ish craven cuddling up to history's murderous little paper-hanger. Accounatbility? Ow! Owwww! Owwwwweeeeeee!

I dashed out of the house yesterday morning, watching only the local all-news station for the weather, so I missed much of the morning's TV, although while walking east on 23rd street to an appointment, the big screen TVs in the appliance store had an interesting and additional depressing Bush news flash that made me laugh, and probably made Bush chuck a Moussy bottle at the ol' Philco.

Apparently John McCain was so deathly afraid of being seen by the wider public with the two-term tragedy Bush at a downgraded fundraiser in his home state! (moved to a private home in Arizona making it a gold-plated “Tupperware” party instead of the planned big-room event), that the only extant visual evidence evidence of it was blurry “Bigfoot”-grade video of Bush and McCain sitting in the back of a limousine at the Phoenix Airport.

About 15 seconds worth, thank you very much.

How embarrassing is that? It's “What's Eating Gilbert Grape” embarrassing, that's what. With McCain in the neurotic Johnny Depp role and Bush in the part of the house-bound, “Oh-my-God-we-can-not-be-seen-with-her-she's-a-mess!” mom. Minus mom's good-hearted-ness and any reason for sympathy, that is.

And then I stopped at a diner for a light breakfast and almost Danny Thomas-ed my coffee over what I saw on the large TV screen near the door.

Little Squatty McMelon's incendiary new book “What Happened” was being discussed—in grave tones as the tome evidently gives Mr. Bush the grand, slow tour of the chassis-view of a Greyhound Americruiser.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the public with a “political propaganda campaign” led by President Bush, aimed at “manipulating sources of public opinion” and “downplaying the major reason for going to war.” McClellan said Vice President Cheney was “the magic man” who steered policy while leaving no fingerprints.

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News of McClellan’s tell-all book seems to have soured White House officials’ impression of him. Current Press Secretary Dana Perino said McClellan was obviously “disgruntled”, while Fleischer said he was “heartbroken”, and Bartlett called the book “total crap”.

MSNBC’s Kevin Corke reported this afternoon that White House officials, on background, went even further, calling McClellan a “traitor” and likening him to Benedict Arnold. He said the White House was “upset,” substituting that word for a word he said he could not repeat on television:

CORKE: I have heard on background they are upset. I’m using the word upset because that’s not the word they used, and it is not the word I can say on TV. Another person said they are flat out angry about what transpired here. I heard the word “traitor” and “Benedict.” I think another person said to me, not far from here, it was like a shot to the gut when you are not looking. […]

O’DONNEL: Quickly Kevin, a White House staffer said to you on background—they used the word “traitor”?

CORKE: “Traitor.” Absolutely. And I raised my eyebrows, and he said, It is what it is.

That sound you heard wasn't thunder. It was the fucking chimney on the house falling down. “Boom!”

Not the roof just yet—but a major part of “Manor Bush” is severely structurally compromised.

McLellan's rough Sacajawea-dollar dropping on his mouth-breathing boss, wasn't totally out of the blue. We caught wind of this last November and dealt with it when juicy details about the book leaked out.

What—if I may paraphrase Mr. McLellan—the fuck happened?

I think it was this:

McLellan was put out in front, every day for months without so much as a fly-swatter to fend off questions about the veracity of his boss and peers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His job was to beat the wolves back, and to change the tenor of the story around the leak and the subsequent lies about it.

I believe he knew he was lying for the boss, but that they were “good soldier” lies of necessity.

Unfortunately, the sordid mess he was tasked with smoothing over was impossible to finesse, and he became identified personally with the stumbling and bumbling in the cover-up. He was clearly frustrated with this particular project, and on several occasions pretty much threw his hands into the air in exasperation and resignation over what was a hopeless situation for him. He of course, left before the Libby trial and its negative verdict, but the damage had already been done. His inability to spin bug-eaten straw into 14-karat gold was held against him, I think. His being unable to stand and lie with the cool authority of Tony Snow—and thus take some heat off the White House—made some in the White House not like him. “How dare he not effortlessly play the 'true believer' role as we need him to!”

“Fuck him. He's dead to us.”

Note that McLellan got no hook-up at FOX, or at the Journal, or any other bastions of walk-in wingnut welfare.

And even before that, but it didn't take a genius to see it coming. Just a casual student of political history and human-fucking-nature:

(LM) I too, have come to if not a belief in "cyclical" patterns, a belief at least in "the law of averages". So much skullduggery -- and yes, patently evil acts have been perpetrated by this administration, particularly in the name of this war and all of the wrangling of people and facts involved in it that THEY'VE GOTTEN AWAY WITH, that the law of averages just seems to be coming into play now. They're the lean whip of a guy who had the fast metabolism seemingly forever, snarfing down burgers by the bagful -- shakes by the gallon, and now thirty-plus years old, BOOM!, the jello-shaking gut appears, he can't get up the steps anymore, and his chest is always hurting him now. Bad news is on the horizon for this "fella".

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3.) A major whistleblower who produces documents detailing Bush admin misdeeds. Call me an optimist, but there's always somebody who just...breaks under conscience's weight.

There is always somebody who gives it up. Always. If not necessarily for conscience, at the very least to cover one's ass. McLellan was pooh-poohed as hyping the book based on a juicy editor's pull-quote or two at the time. Now? Not so much. He's got people running around the West Wing with their faces a rich “Buchanan Purple” in rage. Got 'em tossin' around words like “Traitor!”, “Benedict!”, and “Shot in the gut!”. It severely damages Bush's desperate legacy rebuild as he staggers drunkenly into the political sunset—brass-knuckle-clad cock-punching the reasoning for his horrific war from the deep, deep inside, and it also pimp-slaps John McCain's campaign dead in the grille as he's running on the prosecution of this heinous, misbegotten conflict. It ties McCain to Bush as surely as if he were Slim Pickens' Major Kong lock-straddling that big, dumb bomb all the fucking way down to the white-hot heart of a doomsday mushroom cloud.

This is NOT the way Bush wanted this thing to end. He was hoping for a “skate”. He wanted to ride out on a sea of platitudes, shaded by an election involving personalities that would distract from him. Steve back in the day always spoke of how he expected Bush to go out spittin' and shittin' with teeth a' grittin' as the hounds tore at his ass. I never believed that. Now, I'm not so sure. I think the skatin' away ain't gonna happen. And while I don't think there'll be an episode of “Cops” featuring a sweaty, tank-topped Bush being dragged off to the hoosegow, he will almost certainly not leave 1600 Pennsylvania intact. There will be bruises and scars.

Picture the belligerent drunk stumbling out of the bar at closing time.

He's on his way out at least. Loud and stupid, yes. But thank God that son-of-a-bitch is almost out the Goddamned door.

Then you catch a whiff of something awful, and realize he's shit in a booth. Not the bathroom—but a booth in the bar proper. Some heinous shit—pardon the pun. So instead of letting him just walk out the door on his own, the bouncer kicks him dead in the middle of his back as he staggers out for good measure. “Boom!”

McLellan's book and its subsequent firestorm is a bouncer's swift Size 13 in the back. A vicious move by a one-time friend. A one-time right hand man. And a sure sign added onto the rest of the exiting drink-tosses, face-spits, and leg-out trips that the end won't be pretty. He'll leave with his popularity at Nixonian levels. Nix-fucking-onian. His original posse, gone—save for Dick, and who the hell knows where his ass is these days. I'll bet there's a layer of dust on the swivel chair in his White House office. It leaves only a lonely “Baron” in a tumbledown manor. With parapets leaning and stones pulled free—letting in a chill wind. Echoes in an empty house. “The centre cannot hold, and things fall apart”.

The Baron sits bolt upright—there's a dagger in his back. Who would do such a thing?

There are numerous “Poe”-isms from his works that'd cap that off. Stuff from “The Raven”, or “The Premature Burial” come to mind. I like to close things like this out with musical codas. The obvious musical punchline would be The O'Jays “Backstabbers”. But I think another tune from the “City Of Brotherly Love” seems more apt...

There's more...

I Believe The Term Is, “Sweat Like A Pig”?

“Hello Karl-O...”

I'm no behavioral scientist, but after we dealt with the tale of Karl Rove's uh...“people's” seeming over-reaction to “60 Minutes' airing of an interview with Don Siegelman—a.k.a. someone who is rapidly earning the moniker of “The Wrong Man To Have Fucked With”, it would appear that our favorite porcine protagonist appears to be getting a bit hotter under his wattle-spilled collar.

Via Crooks and Liars and Dan Abrams' “Verdict”:

So what happens when a journalist actually does his/her job and exposes corruption at the highest levels of our government? They get complaint letters from the criminals they exposed. Abrams detailed tonight that he received a 5-page letter from Rove complaining about the great reporting he’s been doing on the political prosecution of Don Siegelman.

“Today the House Judiciary Committee asked Rove to testify under oath about the case. But just last week, we asked Rove‘s attorney, Robert Luskin, in an E-mail whether Rove would testify if subpoenaed by congress. His attorney said, quote, 'Sure. Although it seems to me that the question is somewhat offensive. It assumes he has something to hide even though Gov. Siegelman‘s uncorroborated assertions aside, there is literally no credible evidence whatsoever to substantiate his charges.'

Now under pressure from congress, Luskin has completely backtracked, telling roll call, quote, 'Whether, when and about what a former White House official will testify is not for me or my client to decide but is part of an ongoing negotiation between the White House and congress over executive privilege issues.'

Since Rove has said he had no conversations with the White House about it, what is the executive privilege here? Rove also sent me an angry five-page letter yesterday suggesting all sorts of questions he thinks I could have and should have asked various guests in the program including the former governor himself.

But he only suggested questions, no answers. We‘ll probably talk more about that letter later and I‘ll be responding to Mr. Rove.

Mr. Rove, this is your opportunity to answer under oath many of the questions you suggest I should have asked. Your attorney had said in no uncertain terms you would testify. We have the E-mail. And since you seemed determine to get to the truth, I would think you would embrace this opportunity to testify to congress.

We are not going to let this story die. A jury found Don Siegelman guilty. But if his prosecution was driven by partisans after him because he was a Democrat, in this case needs to be revisited, and an appellate court has ruled it will be.

Counsel Robert Luskin's letter to Abrams on behalf of Rove—a five-page jobbie(!)—absolutely reeks of the same panicky over-reaction shown in the nutty string pulling that got Siegelman's damning “60 Minutes” interview blanked in half of Alabama. Seems pretty bent out of shape over things Abrams didn't actually say in his report. Oopsie! For all the bluster about the cool and calm and confidence of Rove, one cannot help but notice a strange hypersensitivity on this particular issue. There's an over-compensation at play here and a sloppy one at that. Blackouts? Five-page letters to a program that half the “Countdown” audience tunes out of?? Hmmmm...

Why, if I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to say that in Rove's supposed “post”-political career (Yes, I put “post” in scare-quotes. I'd take note of the decidedly Rovian ad-pushes in the still crimson-necktied North Carolina and other potential swing states. It's almost as if his team is trying to get their shots in now—peculiarly early—for some reason. Maybe someone's worried that there may be more pressing fish to fry come general-election crunch-time), hastened by an oddly-timed resignation and a lame-duck administration that inspires outright derision and not a worry of retribution, there may be actual concern about the freshly emboldened people out gunning for him.

You see...when you “ratfuck” enough people for a long enough time, the odds are that at some point, the law of averages will out, and you yourself may feel the not-so-gentle-probings of rodentis phallicus. Siegelman's down for the “slam-bam” and has no interest in lube or sweet talk. It would appear that others aren't terribly concerned with the mess that is sloppy seconds either. Via Newsweek:

The trial of Chicago developer and political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko has been closely watched for any mention of the defendant's onetime friend, Barack Obama. But last week, prosecutors threw a curveball, telling the judge that one of their witnesses is prepared to raise the name of another prominent Washington hand: Karl Rive. Former Illinois state official Ali Ata is expected to testify about a conversation he had with Rezko in which the developer alleged Rove was "working with" a top Illinois Republican to remove the Chicago U.S. attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.

The allegation, which Rove denies, quickly reverberated in Washington. Democrats in Congress now want to question Ata. They believe he can help buttress their theory that Rove played a key role in discussions that led to the firings of U.S. attorneys at the Justice Department in 2006. The House Judiciary Committee "intends to investigate the facts and circumstances alleged in this testimony," panel chairman Rep. John Conyers of Michigan said in a statement to NEWSWEEK.

Investigators are intrigued by the timing of the alleged conversation about Fitzgerald. According to the Rezko prosecutors, it took place in November 2004—weeks after Fitzgerald had subpoenaed Rove to testify for the third time in another matter he was aggressively investigating, the Valerie Plame CIA leak case. A source familiar with Ata's testimony (who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters) said that Ata was meeting regularly with Rezko that fall. The two men shared a concern about Fitzgerald's ongoing probe of Illinois public officials. In one of those conversations, the developer allegedly told Ata that Bob Kjellander, a prominent GOP state lobbyist, was talking to Rove about getting rid of Fitzgerald. The reason: to "get a new U.S. attorney" who would not pursue the Illinois corruption probe, the source said. Ata, who has pleaded guilty to corruption-related charges and is now cooperating with the Feds, has no evidence that the conversation took place other than what Rezko allegedly told him, the source says.

Intrigung...to say the least. But Rove according to the article denies the allegation whole-heartedly. Until that is, his all-over-the-place ass-coverer lawyer Luskin decided that statement should be...well, qualified just a bit. The categorical denial shifted to that old standby of soap-opera amnesia victims and pressured White House hacks “I don't recall” when it came down to GOP bigwig Kjellander's pressing him on Fitzgerald's removal.

And then, Luskin tried to hop into the DeLorean yet again, to go back in time and “fix” things...

I (Paul Kiel of TPM—ed. note) spoke to Luskin just now, and he said that his statement ought to be qualified a bit: his statement on Kgellander stands as is, he said, but during the independent counsel investigation, he said, Rove was "frequently" approached about canning Fitzgerald: "a number of people approached Karl and suggested that Fitzgerald be removed because of the alleged politicization of the investigation, but he never took any follow-up steps except to say that I can't talk about that. He didn't want to do anything seen as compromising Fitzgerald's independence." Those approaches, Luskin said, came during fundraisers or other political events "in an unsolicited way.... Karl simply never responded and did not take any action."

That is an awful lot of frantic ass-covering isn't it? Like a butt-nekkid Charles Barkley trying to stitch a pair of bermudas from a single square of Charmin. It's interesting to note that this was supposed to be Rove's freeing “cool-out” time where he could lay back without having to deal with the day-to-days of shtupping two other government branches in the pooper and instead freelance as an as-needed, Ratfucker Emeritus—doing the neccessary odd bit of craven evil to minimize Democratic gains this election cycle and to steal votes at the presidential-level wherever possible. Having to deal with pesky, subpoena-level shit like this was not part of the game plan. And it resurrects all sorts of ugliness, like the U/S. Attorneys scandal, and the specter of GOP criminality as we enter the stretch run of election season.

It's a perfect storm of distraction for the GOP's one-time ace (remember “The Math?”) message master and vote rainmaker. And from the looks of his clunky and ham-fisted responses to these things, they may wind up as more than just “distractions”. Yes, Luskin will do his lawyerly best to stall, dodge and clog up the works to try and keep Rove's incendiary hands off any Bibles between now and January 20th 2009, but I think people tend to get a liitle bolder when they feel a bully can't hurt 'em any more.

I think you'll hear Rove's name come up in a few more stories in ways that'll put him even more on the defensive as the months trundle on. Whether there'll be enough dimes dropped to maka a dollar remains to be seen. But a simple law of science is that oil and water do not mix—and a once-greasy,impossible to catch pig is now starting to sweat a little. Sweat's mostly water last time I checked.

Catch a piggie by the toe...if he hollers, don't let him go...

There's more...

Of Course...

Photo by Jofhus Lott/Reuters

NY Judge Hands Down Not Guilty Verdict in Sean Bell Shooting Death

As I'm coming out of a blended pain and drug haze from dental surgery yesterday, I wanted to keep things light and easy post-wise. I didn't want to have to tackle something as politically, socially and most of all emotionally loaded as this story, but...in dealing with my own small travails, this case's winding down to a finish in the last 72 hours necessitated it. The brutal news:

Three detectives were found not guilty Friday morning on all charges in the shooting death of Sean Bell, who died in a hail of 50 police bullets outside a club in Jamaica, Queens.

Justice Arthur J. Cooperman, who delivered the verdict, said many of the prosecution’s witnesses, including Mr. Bell’s friends and the two wounded victims, were simply not believable. “At times, the testimony of those witnesses just didn’t make sense,” he said.

His verdict prompted several supporters of Mr. Bell to storm out of the courtroom, and screams could be heard in the hallway moments later. The three detectives — Gescard F. Isnora, Michael Oliver and Marc Cooper — were escorted out of a side doorway. Outside, a crowd gathered behind police barricades, occasionally shouting, amid a veritable sea of police officers.

The verdict comes 17 months to the day since the Nov. 25, 2006, shooting of Mr. Bell, 23, and his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, outside the Club Kalua in Jamaica, Queens, hours before Mr. Bell was to be married.

It was delivered in a packed courtroom and was heard by, among others, the slain man’s parents and his fiancée. The seven-week trial, which ended April 14, was heard by Justice Cooperman in State Supreme Court in Queens after the defendants waived their right to a jury, a strategy some lawyers called risky at the time. But it clearly paid off with Friday’s verdict.

Before rendering his verdict, Justice Cooperman ran through a narrative of the evening, and concluded “the police response with respect to each defendant was not found to be criminal.”

“The people have not proved beyond a reasonable doubt” that each defendant was not justified in shooting, he said, before quickly saying the men were not guilty of all of the eight counts, five felonies and three misdemeanors, against them.

Mr. Bell’s family sat silently as Justice Cooperman spoke from the bench. Behind them, a woman was heard to ask, “Did he just say, ‘Not guilty?”

Yes...Judge Cooperman did say that.

For those of you unfamiliar with the case's particulars, Steve covered it in depth with several very detailed detailed posts at The News Blog. In a nutshell, seventeen months ago to today, Sean Bell, and two friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield were at a bachelor party for Bell at Club Kalua—a divey little strip club in South Jamaica, Queens, about two miles from where I grew up. Upon leaving the club, there was a brief verbal dispute with other parties and the three men—Bell, Benefield and Guzman went to Bell's car to go home.

Graphic from The New York Times

Mr. Bell was to be married later that day. Unbeknownst to the trio, the club was being watched both internally and externally by plainclothes detectives clocking for quality-of-life and liquor-law violations. Several of the plainclothes officers were consuming alcohol to “blend in”. As the trio of young men left the club, one of the officers claimed to hear one of them talk about “going to get his gun or gat”. Several of the officers converged on the car and confronted Mr. Bell and his friends. A brutal one-way shootout ensued where fifty bullets were fired by the officers at the car—31 by one officer—killing Bell and wounding his friends Mssrs. Benefield and Guzman.

There was no weapon present in the car or on the persons within it. Bluntly, it was a city-sanctioned massacre. Post-the initial spat in front of the club, tensions were evidently high and there was dispute as to whether the officers identified themselves properly or at all. Bell's car either lurched forward after he was shot or just before, and the wild and reckless fusillade of bullets flew, some striking an overhead airport monorail station and narrowly missing passengers a block and a half away.

Those are the particulars. Secondary elements of the story include the following:

1.) The officers involved WERE NOT GIVEN BLOOD-ALCOHOL TESTS in spite of the fact that several of them HAD BEEN DRINKING.

2.) As per usual, the officers were allowed to operate under the still-being-phased-out “48 Hour Rule”, where after a deadly and contested shooting, they had 48 hours before they could be questioned by investigators—(and ostensibly “get their stories together) a perk not allowed the general public, as the surviving victims, Benefield and Guzman were interrogated while in the hospital recovering from their wounds.

3.) Also as per usual, the officers opted for a judge trial as opposed to a jury trial, fearing the judgement of regular citizens and instead, placing their fate in the hands of a partner in law enforcement—a judge. This is a common tack taken by New York police to lessen the odds of conviction.

Now, once this case moved to trial, and after of course a change of venue was requested (Cops in New York routinely feel that the people they are policing are not fit to judge their actions), the NYPD pushed for a judge trial. Once that was in effect, the odds of conviction probably dropped by about seventy percent. In spite of the overweening physical evidence—no gun or anything resembling a gun present on the victims and of course, the obvious attack of “contagious shooting”—where even if the initial shot is fired by a police officer, fellow officers react and pretty much empty their clips, Judge Cooperman found for the officers.

I'd love to say that this outcome was shocking, but in New York City it isn't. It is next to impossible to convict an on-duty cop for any sort of wrong-doing against a citizen—even a killing that is fairly obvious a murder in this town. There is a seemingly endless string of such “tragic” deaths. New York police have fallen back on the “Twinkie Defense” (or in NY parlance, the “Cruller Defense”, where over-stimulation due to sugar consumption is taken as a reason for sudden, violent outbursts by cops), mystery seizures that have caused them to freakishly fire their weapons at unarmed Black kids, “black hands from nowhere” that miraculously choked to death victims of police officers, instead of the choke hold applied by the officers (reacting angrily to a errantly-thrown football in a street game striking their squad car).

Par for the course in New York City. I remember calling in to the cartwheeling idiot wingnut Curtis Sliwa's radio show after the infamous Amadou Diallo shooting. I was angry. Livid, actually after a piece of news came my way about what happened in the immediate aftermath of the murder. It turns out that after gunning Diallo down in his vestibule, officers knocked down his apartment door and “tossed” the place—looking for what, no one knows. I asked Sliwa on-air why they did this. “Can you tell me why the NYPD tossed the apartment of an unarmed man they shot down? Give me one good reason for that.” Sliwa stuttered and muttered something about how officers who show up on the scene of shootings often don't know the particulars of what's gone down beforehand. “Things happen” he said before hanging up abruptly.

“Things happen.”

Something always “happens” when it comes down to the NYPD dealing with people in the 'hood. Be they White or Black officers, there is an overwhelming fealty to “the blue”—the force. I have a close relative who worked in NYPD Internal affairs down on Hudson Street for a decade. It was he who told me about how the force doesn't release its numbers on how many are drummed out every year. A force some 37,000 strong. “Nobody wants to hear that number. X-percent of the force getting shit-canned for drinking, drugging and whatever? Just take the 'ten-percent rule' into account. Ten percent of any workforce is shitbirds and fuck-ups. And shitbirds and fuckups tend to gravitate towards each other.” The other factor is that non-shitbirds and fuckups are often covered for by their decent co-horts thanks to the “blue wall of silence”. Said idiots either get drummed out or get classified to the “rubber-gun squad”—a term for malcontents who due to union rules cannot be fired but are instead put on desk duty. Then, beyond those bad actors, there are “questionable” cops who for whatever reason make one huge, bad (and tragic) decision and are knee-jerk looked-out-for by their NYPD brethren as well.

That's what I think happened that night at Club Kalua. Somebody got jumpy, wanted to play tough-guy hero and his twitchy-trigger stupid dragged his fellow officers down that macho road into a storm of one-way gunfire. Add into the mix the decision-clouding element of the classic cop's claim “I felt my life was in danger!”, which is used as the ultimate fallback defense. 'We have no way to know what was on the officers' minds. They may well have been afraid.' That nebulous void of trying to figure out what was on an officer's mind leaves a lot of leeway for one who is pre-disposed to say, “Eh, you know what? Maybe they were scared.” And in spite of the obvious leaps beyond reality that shows like “Law & Order” take, one thing that is a truism is the cozy relationship between the police, district attorneys and judges. They have to work together every day sending civilian criminals to jail, so when you get a case where they are in essence pitted against one another, you get the weirdness where cops choose judge trials instead of juries. An awful lot of back-scratching goes on.

Yeah. Whatever. For Black folk in New York, the Bell killing goes right alongside the others on the mantle full of the unarmed victims whose killers went unpunished. Diallo. Dorismond. Zongo. Glover. Stansbury.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. 41 Shots? 50 shots? What's the difference. The only way you get a little justice in these cases is when the victim is unfortunate enough (for the police) to survive alá Abner Louima. Dead men tell no tales, indeed.

What is interesting is the odd vibe around town, what with Five-O's increased presence and all the talk in the local news about preparations being made for potential violence on the part of protesters. I noticed it this morning while traveling. Beat cops all over the place. Cruisers on the slow-crawl while clocking corner activity. The date and timing of the verdict was well known to all in town. Today, a Friday would be the day and the police were already in place to quell...whatever. The “laugh” here is over the idea that somehow one can actually “prepare” for unrest. And secondly, the idea that there is some sort of automatic default to unrest should a verdict go bad. If that were the case, New York would've been a pile of smoldering rubble decades ago.

The furrowed brows and grave tones of newsfolk over helicopter shots of people gathered outside the courthouse is laughable. 'God we hope there isn't any violence—get a tight shot of that guy with his fists balled up.' Here's how it works, idiots—shit jumps off whenever it wants to. Odds are it won't be when you have several thousand officers in the streets. It'll be random. It'll be away from where you think trouble's brewing. It happens fast and the trigger will be something you never saw coming. That's how it almost always goes. In Detroit in 1967, a raid on a “blind pig” (a Detroit-ism for an after hours spot) set things off. Rough, offensive acts that are compounded by hazy memory and mistaken word-of-mouth are a familiar trigger. Now, let a cop fuck up this weekend and kill a kid with clear evidence of malice and injustice, coming on the heels of this bullshit and you may see some ugliness. I pray to God it doesn't come to that, but hey...as Sliwa so casually said to me, “Things happen”.

What doesn't help is that after Rev. Al Sharpton effectively called for calm, and quelled tensions by leading angry people away from the courthouse (on his way to Bell's gravesite), we had the spectacle of Michael Palladino, the head of the NYPD detective's union gloating about the verdict at hi spress conference, replete with cheesy soundbites (“How do I spell relief? N-O-T-G-U-I-L-T-Y! That's how I spell relief!”), along with crass call-outs of Sharpton and other activists, local union leaders who backed the family and pretty much anyone who didn't four-square agree with the NYPD's account. He's the only one of the major players acting like an asshole about the verdict, playing the stereotypical “our way or the highway“ role of “the pig”.

There is a special place in hell for gleeful apologists and cheerers-on of police brutality and I sincerely hope Palladino's descent there is a slow and excruciatingly painful one. It wouldn't be stretch to say that there are a lot of New Yorkers who wouldn't piss on him if he were burning in plastic alongside a road. They'd probably try to put the blaze out with a bottle of Mazola™.

And I wouldn't blame 'em.

------------------------------

Home now and Five-O is on every other corner in pairs on the main drag down the block from me. Looking nervous. They can thank their good friend Mike Palladino for that. It's been a warm day, with more to come.

And “Things happen.”

There's more...

Reflections On “4/4 Time”

Image Is NOT Everything.



“Dream”-sick is what a lot of folks get around this time of year.

And maybe a little bit “Promised Land”-paralyzed.

I am effectively “How-Long”-ed out, and my brain fairly aches from desperate, clutchy tales of “I Marched With Him...” and “ I Met Him When...”.

This is the time when lazy news directors scuffle for an angle and invariably blow the dust and spider webbing off that old theme tucked in its usual spot—fourth row, fourth book—and bid their newsreaders and...“personalities” to dimly ask if a “dream has been realized” or what one man would think of today had institutionalized American racism not cut him down like some southern tree on which nooses had hung not terribly long before.

It is “4/4 Time”. Ironically enough, the time signature for “marching” music, but also signifying a certain time of year—4/4 as in April 4th. The date and month when America badly for the most part—notes the passing...oh, passing sounds so damned pass-ive, let's call it exactly what it was...the violent assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Those in a position to inform and educate on grand levels seem to invariably fail at doing so when it comes to handling the message and legacy of what Martin Luther King was about in deed. For years I thought this was done out of an inability to grasp his message and actions. That was equal parts cop-out and myopia on my part. I guess I didn't want to see and when it was visible—couldn't see. I didn't realize until many years of frustration and denial that the cathode ray and transisitor stitched, wall-hung homilies were fully intentional attempts to sand away the skin-catching rough edges of what Dr. Martin Luther King was all about in the time that he lived. Television station I.D.'s, the brief “packages” the network news runs, and the space-filling PSAs packing the unsold ad time in the early morning and late night gaps. The obligatory shot of King, hand outstretched over a teeming sea of people. Cut to the head-on shot of Dr. King speaking into the mic—with a bevy of white-hatted supporters at his side nodding affirmatively.

“I have a dream!” goes the public service ad.

“I have a dream!” blares the tepid news show “package”.

“I have a dream!” The Sunday paper toss-in reads as it wafts out when you open for the sales circular.

“Dream“-sick is what a lot of folks get around this time of year.

The reduction—and a reduction is exactly what it is—of Martin Luther King to mere kum-ba-ya-singing “dreamer” status is one of the more insidious bits of spin by a thought-sedating media.

Dreamers sleep. Do-ers walk the earth impacting it with every stride and deed. Dreamers don't take knives to the gut from progress-fearing xenophobes bent on stopping a man actively re-weaving a country's social fabric. Dreamers don't get the FBI stalking their every move and setting out to destroy them with scurrilous innuendo and family-wrecking blackmail.

Dreamers...don't take fatal sniper bullets in the neck for leading a growing multitude of Americans in a battle for fairness, equality and justice.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was NOT a dreamer. He was a do-er.

But you'd never know that from the obfuscations and gossamer shrouding his decidedly radical doings have been tangled up in that you saw on your television the last few days. You saw the usual tripe, but this year—the 40th anniversary of his being shot down like some beats to be feared, there was an additional angle injected into the mix. The politics of a presidential election—one steeped in all the ironies one could muster in dealing with this day as the would-be next presidents all spoke publicly on the anniversary and its meaning.

In a rainy, dreary Memphis this past April 4th...

You had a White female Democratic candidate—Senator Hillary Clinton, who grew up a “Goldwater Girl” but would find herself in adulthood fighting for many of the things Dr. King espoused—better education for all, equal access to health care, and many elements of his civil rights program. Her husband a former Commander-in-Chief himself, would be lionized by some (in a hopeful bit of over-projection) as “The First Black President”, and these two people—him first during his two terms, and now her during her run for the job desperately fighting for that Black vote. And when that vote did not come in the proportion hoped for, they would lapse into clumsy over-reaching and destructive, and in the minds of too many to ignore, borderline race-based (as opposed to rac-ist) under-cutting to rectify “the problem”. The Friday Memphis photo op was as necessary as it was sincere and maybe moreso based on the dilemma her campaign finds itself tangled up in. You go where the heartstrings when plucked hard, resonate the loudest.

And you had a conservative Republican candidate, a Vietnam veteran whose stated public policies fly in the face of everything Martin Luther King stood for standing in that rain trying to fix a racism-busted past when it came to things “King”. King's life was forcefully ended just as he came out hard against the war that Sen. John McCain still lionizes and slurs the Vietnamese over. “Gooks” he calls them proudly. That poisonous and still inexplicable war is a badge of honor for McCain as it remains a moral blight for a plurality of Americans in general. And McCain still unblinkingly snuggles up to the racists and dividers who giddily hated Dr. King and all he stood for while professing him to be a bucking “Maverick” who doesn't kow-tow to their bigoted ways. The same “Maverick” who tucked close to the bosom of Ronald Reagan, a man who proudly spent time “McCarthyizing” King with communist epithets. The same “Maverick” who unabashedly voted AGAINST a Martin Luther King holiday.

But in Indiana, the American mid-west's hub of Ku Klux Klan operations we saw perhaps the most viscerally pointed image of all.

A Black man, Barack Obama—who most improbably is the leading Democratic candidate for the presidency, and in many polls the leading candidate to ascend to the office of President of the United States. Forty years to the day of Dr. King's assassination this candidate...who is only now being taken 100% seriously as the person who would be, is being likened to the late Dr. King. A disturbingly unfair comparison that diminishes both men on their merits—cheaply filtering the multi-disciplined and many-triumphed King down to a “great speaker” who drew crowds, and senselessly uplifting Obama to King's impossibly stratospheric level in terms of social actual impact based on the most superficial considerations of those doing the media's short-hand boosterism. But nonetheless, this candidate again—some forty years after Dr. King's assassination for daring to push for equality now finds himself on the verge of a loud, but incremental move towards the America King pushed so hard to get to, and so many of us still hesitate thinking to be possible.

That's right. Still hesitate thinking to be possible. In the two score years since that bloody day, in spite of what progress has come, a deep well of trepidation remains. It's a pavlovian response. Not a proper response. But one burned into the circuit board of our psyches still in a new century thanks to the cause-and-effect training from the previous one. Where final vote be damned, the possibility of something potentially unheard of occurring, the emotion of pride is mixed with equal parts of palpitations.

Obama didn't go to Memphis to speak. Quite honestly, Im glad he didn't. There are those for whom the pilgrimage on that day can be a photo-op and whether it works for them or not, read “4/4 Time” Memphis differently at a gut level than those who live that day while toting a different set of baggage about. Baggage experienced. Baggage handed down like some heirloom you don't want but cannot not accept and you tote it along till you forget it's there dangling off your shoulder. Until you do think of it, that is. You feel its leaden weight and its hard dig into your body and soul. I've unpacked abit of it publicly several times before...

When I was around five years old, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. I remember the day. I was home on a half-day from school and I can recall the TV bulletin, then a frantic rush around the house by my mom to a radio, and then a breakneck flipping between different radio and TV stations and the phone then ringing off the hook seemingly every 20 seconds. I remember my mama ashen faced, sometimes sobbing into the phone, other times consoling someone on the end of the line and then sometimes silent, shaking her head with her hand over her mouth, just going “Mmmmmmmmhhhh-Mmmmmmh” into the receiver.

Just then, I heard what sounded like a lunatic shouting in the courtyard.

“F*ck this sh*t!”

“F*ck this sh*t!”

“F*CK THIS SH*T!”

It wasn’t the usual screaming freak from the area—Mr. Douglass, who’d caterwaul over a stray CreamSicle wrapper on his stoop. This was fresh crazy, a new voice just out of the incubator of wild sh*t a’ goin’ down in the world outside.

Mere minutes later, my mom had my siblings and I prepped for an odd, unexpected early evening nap. As she hustled my brothers and sister off to bed, I paused by the hall window of our fifth floor walkup on W. 115th St. in Harlem. I always looked out that window, daydreaming, watching the sun play off the terra-cotta building tops and occasionally pushing a stray baby shoe or box of tissues off the ledge, just to hear the distant “poonch!” as it landed five floors down. Next thing I knew, I was swept up into my mom’s arms, given half a cup of warm milk and then off to the land of nod.

I awoke a couple of hours later, supremely groggy and stumbled to the kitchen where the door was closed and all I could hear was my mom’s slippers “pap, pap, pap” across the linoleum as my father exasperatedly sighed “Baby…please stop pacing.” I walked back to my window perch, to look out on my little stretch of the world and the view was a horror. Plumes of smoke as far as the eye could see from buildings galore, flames licking here and there, Five-O's sirens swirling from every direction, People throwing sh*t off rooftops and howling in pain. The comfortable little spot I liked to look out on the world from was now a twisted crazy thing unrecognizable from mere hours before. What the f*ck had happened?

It's a bottomless satchel for me though. Full of memories and images.

I remember killing time in Memphis one weekend about 10 years ago, goofing 'round at Graceland, making my pilgrimage to the abandoned lot that was wherer Stax Records stood on West McLemore—and then...I went to the National Civil Rights Museum which incorporates the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was killed. I wandered through the displays, feeling the hair go up on my neck. There was an actual lunch counter from a diner where you saw sit-in folks viciously beaten down the old newsreels.

There was a “Freedom Riders” bus—with it's back end—charred and blown out like an exploding cigar from being bombed by racists in the mid-60's.

And most disturbingly, was a yellowed Ku Klux Klan robe and hat displayed under glass on a wall. I remember getting a tension headache that spread from the base of my neck, and into the base of my skull from my muscles binding up while looking at it. My forearms hurt from clenching my fists. And then, at my left was a little White girl—about 8 or 9 years old, looking up at the evil, patina-ed hate-frock. I wondered who she was with, and then her dad appeared, a sandy-haired fella in a plaid shirt.

And she plaintively asked him, looking up at the robe as he neared her left shoulder “What is that daddy?”

I didn't hear him go “Uh..uh...”,

I could feel it. Almost with him. That question from his daughter linked us invisibly, five feet apart. The air caught in his throat, and I could feel it catch as the answers swirled in his head, formed en masse, rushed to his throat and log-jammed there. From the corner of my eye, I could see him blinking—trying to sift through the pile of answers—none of 'em that wouldn't lead down a path of a day's worth of questions about race that in spite of his good intentions in being there at that museum, he was not ready to answer. I walked away—figuring if I gave him some space and wasn't there as a living check and balance to his answer, he'd find enough gumption to say what had to be said. I ran into him later in the gift shop, His wife had his daughter off to the side, and he actually said to me “That was uncomfortable.”

“I'm sure it was.”, I replied.

“I mean...what do you say to a kid about that?”, he wondered aloud.

“S'gotta be the truth. There's a way to say it to a kid.”

“How?” he almost pleaded.

“That's for you to figure out. It's not just about her. it's about you, too.

He turned and walked away muttering under his breath, “Ah...mygodmygodmygodmygodmygod...” as he trailed off.

There was more to that day. Unexpected and jarring things. Wandering upstairs from the exhibit I came cross a tableau that leadened my feet and sank my heart. Behind a plexiglass barrier was the opened hotel room—#306—that Dr. Martin Luther King stayed in on 4/4/68. The very room behind that infamous balcony everybody pointed from as a mortally wounded King lay sprawled at their feet. There was a neat bed, and an old TV Guide nearby with some strewn papers here and there. I remember seeing a set of cufflinks and a pack of cigarettes. A plate some food had been eaten from and a small container of milk or juice. And of course, that window looking outward, onto the balcony towards for him, that day...infinity.

I found myself later in the motel's parking lot downstairs where vintage cars from '68 sat parked in a time-locked open-air diorama of sorts. A local woman pointed for me—pointing is something one seems to do on impulse when at the Lorraine—to a short brick wall in the distance, a scattering of small trees and a boarded up building where Ray supposedly shot King from. Eyes darting from sniper's nest to target area. Imagining the crack of the Remington 30.06 caliber rifle. The distance a short one, a couple of hundred feet perhaps. And blinking back the image of the fallen King and the pointing co-horts. That room, in those odd 60's pastels—seafoam and beiges. The last place he willingly lay.

It would be days before my mood would brighten after being there.

And it pained me on this past Friday seeing how people took advantage of that day to paint it s something entirely other than what it was. You would think from the gauzy language and safe visuals and sanitized memories conjured that King had simply laid down that day and fell asleep, expiring quietly as he rested.

This was violence. Terrorism in fact. And no matter how many of those gauzy words, safe visuals and sanitized memories foisted upon us, the truth of the matter is that King's assassination was not the collective weepfest the historical re-imaginers would have you conveniently believe. This nation was so racially polarized that this man who never raised a hand to anyone during his protests saw not a few million twisted Americans accept his murder with a smile on their faces and if not a song in their hearts, barely a care in the world—as described via Keith Olbermann on Countdown on March 18th:

“My grandfather, a fire fighter. Put himself in danger to save people, didn't care who they were. His parents were immigrants to this country and they came to New York in the late 1800's theyre so naive they told him 'Don't touch a Black person, the color will come off on your hands'. And one night I was nine years old my parents were out to dinner he was babysitting me, television's on and you know the middle of Hawaii 50 or Ironside or whatever the show was, on comes the news bulletion from Memphis: Martin Luther King Assassinated. And my grandfather who was a good man says 'Why did they interrupt my show to tell me about some n-word getting shot'.”

It was a time when King was still referred to publicly as “Martin Luther Coon” by elected officials.

When Ronald Reagan when asked about the factors leading up to King's death said: (It's a) “great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order, and people started choosing which laws they’d break.”

He was no mere dewy-eyed “dreamer” of a better day. He was an increasingly hard-nosed opponent of injustice in America—a trench-fighter for equality who faced some of the most vicious opposition to his quest for equality for all not in the deep south that is so easy to pillory, but in the northern, supposedly civilized environs of Illinois—Cicero, Illinois to be specific, where he found himself having to step back southward to regroup in the face of caustic, blatant bigotry. Bullets fired overhead as he marched through catcall and epithet-filled streets. But again...it was more than his stance against racism that began to set the die against his living for long. It was his holistic position against injustice—nationally and internationally that helped hasten his end.

It's become a TV ritual: Every year on April 4, as Americans commemorate Martin Luther King's death, we get perfunctory network news reports about “the slain civil rights leader.”

The remarkable thing about these reviews of King's life is that several years —his last years—are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).

An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn't take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever.

Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown today on TV.

Why?
It's because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for during his final years.

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without “human rights”—including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for “radical changes in the structure of our society” to redistribute wealth and power.

“True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his “Beyond Vietnam” speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 –– a year to the day before he was murdered —King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was “on the wrong side of a world revolution.” King questioned “our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America,” and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions “of the shirtless and barefoot people” in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

In foreign policy, King also offered an economic critique, complaining about “capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries.”

You haven't heard the “Beyond Vietnam” speech on network news retrospectives, but national media heard it loud and clear back in 1967 - and loudly denounced it. Time magazine called it “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi.” The Washington Post patronized that “King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

That is the “4/4 Time” Dr. King lived in. On April 4th of 1967 he delivered that infamous “Beyond Vietnam” speech. One year later to the day—April 4th 1968 is when he fell before a sniper's bullet.

And on the day that The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died, he spent some of it working on a sermon to be delivered the following Sunday. I didn't see it amongst the effects in Room 306, but that sermon was not the treacly stuff we are led to believe King spoke of exclusively.

That sermon—little discussed by those who would spin a wan hagiography of what this country was about at that time—was brusquely titled, “Why America May Go to Hell.”

“Why America May Go to Hell.” Take that for what it's worth, folks.

That rough sentiment was on the man's mind the day a boiling over of racism wrested him from this mortal coil. Yes, people loved him.

And perhaps, just as many people hated him.

Not just then, but for the many years afterward.

Reagan bought North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms' loud and oft-shouted view that King was not just a noisy racial agitator, but had strong Communist leanings. Reagan barely finished signing the bill when he was asked whether he thought there was any merit to Helms' Communist charge against King. The Gipper couldn't resist the sly aside, “We'll know in about thirty-five years.” Reagan referred to the voluminous FBI surveillance tapes on King that a court had ordered sealed until 2027.

And then there's the dangerously flawed Senator John Sidney McCain, who stood there stiffly last Friday amidst a sea of umbrellas and tried to simultaneously pander to those with a conscience about America's racial insensitivity and lie away his refusal to support a national holiday for Dr. King. as he said, “long ago”.

“We can be slow as well to give greatness its due, a mistake I made myself long ago when I voted against a federal holiday in memory of Dr. King,” McCain said. “I was wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give full support for a state holiday in Arizona. We can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans. But he knew as well that in the long term, confidence in the reasonability and good heart of America is always well placed.“

McCain has said that he knew little of King and the civil rights struggle because he was a prisoner of war in Hanoi and received only sporadic news during his five and a half years’ confinement. But his captors told him and his fellow POW’s when King was assassinated.

----------------------------------

McCain voted against the creation of a holiday honoring King in 1983, a vote which was supported by a large number of Republicans. McCain claimed this week that he was largely unaware on the importance of King's work at the time, due to his Vietnam-era service overseas. Speaking on Thursday to reporters, he explained that his conversion occurred around 1990:

“I voted in my...first year in Congress against it and then I began to learn and I studied and people talked to me. And I not only supported it but I fought very hard in my home state of Arizona for recognition against a governor who was of my own party."

But McCain's voting record since 1990 doesn't support this explanation. In addition to voting to oppose a state holiday in 1987 (which he later supported) and a federal holiday in 1989, McCain voted in 1994 to cut funding for the commission that promoted King's holiday.

The “I wasn't aware / I was young and uninformed” excuse not only does not wash, but doesn't even wet.

I was five years old in 1968. John McCain...was a 32-year-old man. I would imagine he'd heard quite a bit about Dr. King before his imprisonment while still if not stateside, at least free as a great many American soldiers did. And in the years post his release—a decade in fact—one would think he'd maybe, possibly heard a positive thing or two about the Nobel-Prized man. Especially as McCain was then a federal legislator in Congress. That “neophyte” first year in Congress for McCain was when he was all of forty-six years old.

That vote was as much a youthful indiscretion as was Rep. Henry Hyde's “teen” wanderlust at age 41.

I remember John McCain's opposition to the King holiday quite well, it was mocked by Public Enemy in their song “By The Time I Get To Arizona”. I protested and did my small part in participating in the tourism boycott of the state of Arizona (my then-job required me to travel there—I chose not to).

All of that made the crypto-segregationist Senator's lame posturing this past “4/4 Time” that much tougher to digest...while pretty much being par for the superficial course.

“4/4 Time” is a time for those in trouble to pander. Those who have not, or can not to pretend that they will or can. It is a time for those in the media who have in their historical archives their own dismissals and vicious words against Martin Luther King Jr. to pretend to have been bastions of fairness while bleaching away the vividness of the reverend's opposition to injustice.

It becomes a time for spin and re-casting.

Turn a do-er to a dreamer. Warrior to wimp. Table-upsetter to mere talker.

How should Dr. King have been remembered that day?

Why not for what he actually was? A person who physically put himself in harm's way so that justice would eventually prevail.

As a leader who dared to grow before our very eyes. Learning, changing, and maturing as the world opened itself up to him and showed its ways to him—unprettily in many instances.

As a true multi-issue warrior against the evils of the power structure, in spite of the gross contorting of his struggle into a single-issue one.

As someone who DID things and not just some “Zelig”-esque human backdrop that the disingenuous politically “CGI” themselves into for effect.

Not as a flawless “god” to be seen in the shimmering view of a cheap 3-D roadside souvenir you'd hang on a wall in simple-minded reverence.

But as a human being—with flaws and gifts—who without argument, gave far, far more than he got and in so doing along with others, qualitatively bettered America.

So spare me this vapor-tangible talk of “Dreams” and “Mountain-tops“ and “Promised Lands” as his legacy.

I see a person who went to jail for equality. Who took a knife in the gut for freedom. Who was spied on and plotted against for forcing justice. Who was turned on by the government and media for leading on peace. And eventually killed for moving a country of 250 million people towards all of that change.

Killed, okay? Murdered.

Not for dreaming. But doing. An awful lot more than just marching...in “4/4 Time”.

There's more...

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (D) Released On Appeal

Lookin' A Little Moist There As We Play Out The Clock, Karl?

It hit like a thing falling out of the sky late yesterday. Potentially devastating in a “Donnie Darko”-sh way and just as freaky and unexpected.

For those with a stake in it—those whose law-flouting acts precipitated it, it's a late-in-the-game “Hail Mary” from the opponent unexpectedly connecting near the goal line.

Those little “plip” and “flutter” sounds you hear are sweat beads a' running and sphincters a' puckering.

Sweet music indeed to the ears of those on the side of right.

Ex-Governor of Alabama Is Ordered Released

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Donald Siegelman, former governor of Alabama, was ordered released from prison on Thursday by a federal appeals court, pending his appeal of a bribery conviction that Democrats say resulted from a politically driven prosecution.

In its order, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, said Mr. Siegelman had raised “substantial questions” in his appeal of the case and could be released on bond from the federal prison in Oakdale, La., where he has served nine months of a seven-year sentence. The order did not say what those questions were, but his lawyers have argued for months that the bribery charge on which he was mainly convicted revolved around a transaction that differed little, if at all, from a standard political contribution.

Mr. Siegelman’s lawyers maintained that — as is standard in many white-collar crime cases — the veteran Democratic politician never should have been imprisoned in the first place while he appealed his conviction.

“He should not have been manacled and taken off in the night,” said his lawyer, G. Robert Blakey, also a professor at the University of Notre Dame, citing the ex-governor’s immediate imprisonment after his conviction, a point of contention for his supporters.

The chief prosecutor in the case, Louis Franklin, told The Associated Press that he was “very disappointed” by the order but hoped to eventually prevail.

Mr. Siegelman’s case has been cited by Democrats here and in Washington as Exhibit A in their contention that politics has influenced decisions by the Justice Department, which prosecuted the former governor. In addition, Mr. Siegelman’s conviction in June 2006 here sharply polarized the political climate in this state, and suggestions by his supporters and others that the former Bush White House political director, Karl Rove, may have been involved have only increased the tensions.

Republicans have angrily denied the accusations of politics, but Mr. Siegelman has picked up some outside support for his claims of political prosecution. The House Judiciary Committee has held hearings on his case, and 44 former state attorneys general, Democrats and some Republicans, signed a petition last summer urging Congress to look into the conviction.

The court’s order came on the same day that the Judiciary Committee made a request to the Justice Department that the former governor be freed temporarily to travel to Washington next month to testify about his assertions that he was prosecuted for political reasons. A committee spokeswoman cited difficulties in getting information from the department as a reason for wanting Mr. Siegelman’s testimony.

Why does all of this matter? Let's go back, as the Incredible Jimmy Castor used to say—“Way back...to the days of the trogolodytes.” courtesy of the muckrakers over at Josh Marshall's posh, investigative digs.

A lifelong Republican attorney from Alabama, Dana Jill Simpson, has come forward and sworn out an affadavit claiming that in 2002 a close associate of Karl Rove claimed that Rove had told him that he'd gotten the Department of Justice to investigate then-Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (D) and that he was sure the investigation would eventually take Siegelman out of politics. Is the claim true? Was Rove successfully using the DOJ to pursue politics by other means as far back as 2002?

The 'denials' from the other parties on the conference call have either been feeble, non-responsive or non-existent. And the charge is serious enough that you would certainly expect that if the claim could be roundly denied it would be roundly denied.

Then there's the White House and the Department of Justice.

Had the last five months not happened, perhaps there'd be no reason for either to deny the charges. But we already have a rather detailed predicate -- abundant evidence of inappropriate contacts between the White House political office and Main Justice.

A few journalists -- included a TPM reporter -- have put this question to the DOJ and the White House. Did Rove have any contacts with the DOJ about investigating Siegelman and did he tell William Canary that Siegelman would be "take[n] care of"?

But the White House refuses to answer the question. As does the Department of Justice.

For those who aren't familiar with the case, in a nutshell, during the 2000 campaign season when Siegelman, a popular statewide Dem refused to play the Southern Dixiecrat role and back the word-mugging Texas Governor and would-be President-elect during the endorsement and post-November hanging-chad phase—and vociferously came out against Bush, he made an enemy of the administration and its heavily-wattled kneecapper Karl Rove. So, using the Justice Department as a political blackjack early on, they went after Siegelman in a shady bribery prosecution that many of the main witnesses have since recanted testimony for, (as well as the exposé that a slew of Republicans were also implicated in the “crime” but miraculously were never prosecuted for it). Siegelman was quickly tried and jailed pending appeal as the “My Cousin Vinnie-fication” of the Southern courts held sway.

But Siegelman wouldn't just make do with his bread and water, and his supporters wouldn't just shut up.

They fought back—in the actual courtroom and the virtual “court of public opinion” of the media. They (his diligent daughter and his lawyers) would keep shining a light on the ugliness of what went down, and in so doing would continually “scatter the roaches” involved—to the point where when CBS' “60 Minutes” devoted a segment to the injustices of the trial last month, said segment was “accidentally” blacked out of much of northern Alabama due to what was first reported as a network “glitch”, then changed to an affiliate “glitch”, but is widely believed to have actually been a heavy-handed bit of ass-covering to blunt the story's impact on concerned Alabamians.

Needless to say, it didn't work, and the pressure continued to mount to where this stunning reversal occurred yesterday evening. It opens the door for Siegelman and his “team” to go to Washington and participate in the one thing the Bush administration hates with a passion—no, not respecting Brown people, but rather, embarrassing congressional hearings that implicate them in wrong-doing. Henry Waxman's already got a seat warm for Siegelman, so we can expect some fun and fireworks on Capitol Hill.

But the telling thing here is the over-the-top attempts to drown this blowbacking furor in the bathtub. You don't black out half a state's TV signal during a damning investigative report unless you're worried about how it's going to play and who's going to be implicated. This isn't about the local “Boss Hoggs” on the hook for their usual shenanigans. That kind of flexing comes from the bespectacled “King Wild Boar” himself, Karl Rove. The e-mail deletin', testimony-changin', shiesty son-of-a-bitch has his M.O all over that move, but in spite of it—Siegelman is out, and free to speak and more importantly, (and worst of all for the Bush admin) fight back directly.

Strange things happen in the final months of a lame duck administration. Some people don't push back as hard, as they're gearing up to bounce and do their own thang, whole others flip the script and use the “you can't hurt me” timing to allow scores to be settled. Ol' Karl isn't in the government any more per sé, but he's still quite vulnerable here for what appear to be obvious prior misdeeds against Siegelman, and as much as he may want them to , Mike Mukasey and his people may not be able to maintain their “prevent” defense for him until time runs out.

What's the “prevent”?

“This coverage is generally used as a “prevent defense” to be used near the end of a game or half, meaning that the defense sacrifices the run and short pass to avoid giving up the big play with the confidence that the clock will soon expire.”

That has been the Rovian gambit all along—“Do the dirt, get the lead, and then stall until the clock / administration is over. Don't give up the big play”.

Siegelman's abrupt and according to the appellate court—much justified release is a “Hail Mary” into the “Red Zone” that hits, close to the goal line—and if you think it isn't, remember the “unsportsmanlike conduct penalty” Rove's team took with the northern Alabama blackout of “60 Minutes” (An FCC investigation?). That's a desperation move.

So take a deep breath. Take in the aromas. The bite of spring grass. The tang of freshly-popped fear-sweat, and the heavy, earthen funk of worry-shit.

It's not quite the smell of victory just yet, but we're sixty yards closer to it than we were 48 hours ago. And as shocking as it is to us, imagine how unsettling it must be to the bastard(s) counting every heart-stopping second off their “get over” clock. Probably seems like eternity after yesterday.

Tick...tick...tick...

There's more...

BACKGROUND: “Tucker” Cancelled or “Old Yellerbelly Put Out Of His Misery

That Tousled, Empty Head Rolls At Last...

God...90 days never seemed so long...

Our long, national nightmare that is the execrable, “nails-on-a-chalkboard-piped-through-a-speaker-punctured-P.A. system” “Tucker” show is nearing its end.

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Needless to say, the members of the MSNBC He-Man Woman Haters Club are NOT happy with seeing their little mascot Tucky about to be wished into the cornfield. The slimy Joe Scarborough is supposedly all pissy about it, and the pan-faced lout Chris Matthews is openly angry about it, as it indicates a further shift from his “Playboy Club—but no icky girllllz unless they're in bunny suits!” idea of a network.

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This should be fun to watch...in that fucked-up, “voted-off-the-island” reality-TV kind of way. I just wonder where Tucky's gonna land next? Dancin' on “Soul Train” and workin; the scramble board? Naaaaaah, they finally cancelled ST a couple of years ago. Somewhere on FOX? Sadly, he's so shitty I don't think even they would have him. That game show pilot? Yeah, but only if it's called “Let's Dunk The Jerk”, and Carlson sits over the tank.

The time just...seemed to drag by, like a lame, mange-eaten, feral dog in the heat. Ugh.

And in a final bit of mini-analysis, the Tucker Carlson death-watch gets a little more noticeable. I couldn't help but notice a definite shifting of things at MSNBC in the last ten days of the heavy primary coverage. If you watched you probably caught it too. On the primary nights, Rachel Maddow (who I still have a crush on, as does my stepson now) was featured as an in-studio guest on the panel discussions—NOT TUCKER. She sat there in the comfy, cozy studio with their big guns like Chris Cilizza and Howard Fineman and Pat Buchanan while Tucker was on the chilly-ass road as a stringer. On the night of the Iowa Caucus, he reported from New Hampshire, where nobody but three flinty old guys in Carharrt jackets were. It was the equivalent of a report on the Iditarod where an exciting, key stage just ended and you toss to the finish line for a report...where nobody fucking is. Maddow was in-studio, piquant and buffing her star as Tucky tried to unfreeze his smirk in the chill New England air. She easily topped him that night with an airtime ratio of 10-to-1.

Which is amazing as he's a network show host. Pretty damning.

In the days between Iowa and NH, they featured her even more on the big stage, showing up on all of the net's shows—save for his, and I couldn't help noticing in their promos for “Super Tuesday” coverage their usual wall of photos of correspondents featured Olbermann, Matthews, Mitchell, Shuster, O'Donnell, Scarborough, Lester Holt and even Dan Abrams...but no Tucky.

Come Tuesday night, there's Rachel again, resplendent in-studio and on for hours (including a zesty evisceration of Matthews) and on the road with a speech-stumbling John McCain was Tucker Carlson, effectively reduced to stringer status like the net's lesser lights Ron Mott, Ron Allen, Mike Taibbi and others who stand in the rain for on-scene “stand-ups”.


That's a serious bust-down in status—not to mention that his show was pre-empted on Tuesday for more pre-election coverage by...

...an in-studio Olberman.

They wouldn't