The Politics Of Silence

Barak Obama recently responded to a question about the North Carolina, Duke University, LaCrosse team rape case charges by asserting that Mike Nifong, the prosecutor of the case, should be investigated for a variety of alleged offenses, notably the purposeful withholding of potentially exculpatory evidence in the case. Obama said this in response to a question from the forums of Liestoppers, who have a blog which I have now placed on the blogroll. You can access the forums from the blog.

My question is, where the hell is John Edwards in this? He of all presidential candidates, democrat or republican, should be especially interested in the case developments as, after all, he is from North Carolina. I linked to his web-site and to his issues page here, which is amusingly short-half a screen of blank page.

Well, John, you could easily add to the volume of this page by simply stating that you are for equal justice and rights to legal representation for all Americans, black or white, rich or poor. Wouldn’t that fit in with your usual campaign schpiel about “Two Americas”?

You wouldn’t even have to specifically mention the Duke LaCrosse case. But, really, why wouldn’t you? You made your reputation and considerable wealth as a trial attorney in North Carolina, you grew up there, and you represented the interests of North Carolina-allegedly-in one term as a US Senator. When you ran for Vice-President on the Kerry-Edwards Democratic ticket in 2004, it was as a native son of North Carolina.

How hard can it be to say that Nifong should be investigated and if the charges of prosecutorial misconduct aimed at him turn out to be true, he should be disbarred and face criminal prosecution his own self? Was it perhaps because he was a supporter of yours in the past?

Cool. I want to rob my neighborhood bank. If I promise to donate ten percent of the proceeds to your campaign can I count on your friendship and support? Naw, I didn’t think so. So why don’t you just do the obviously sensible thing and lay your cards on the table? How hard can it be to just do the right thing?

In fact, why don’t any of the Democrats besides Obama speak up? Are they so afraid of losing the monolithic black vote in North Carolina that they are willing to shut up in the face of an obvious attempted miscarriage of justice in the form of an illicit prosecution of a group of innocent men on false charges of rape? After all, isn’t it obvious that Nifong got himself into trouble, when this charge was first made during the course of an election season, by pandering to his black base in Durham? Isn’t it equally obvious that the NAACP and other black activist groups, leaders, and supporters unfairly demanded this persecution of the white students for political reasons? Why pander to the likes of people like that?

Please explain to me, how does this make the Democrats any better than certain corrupt Republicans that always look out for the interests of their crooked (in some cases) rich friends and big business interests, regardless of the potentially harmful consequences and the innate unfairness of it all? No difference that I can tell.

Again, I have to stress that Obama does deserve some credit for his publicly stated stance in this matter. On the other hand, he is a black politician, and it must be considered that, in the bizzarro parallel universe of Democratic party politics, he being a black man is allowed to criticize blacks when they demand en masse the persecution of whites despite the lack of evidence. White politicians are not allowed to do so, in fact, they should either take the oppossite position, or shut the fuck up.

There are many reasons why Democrats on the national level rarely win elections in the South. Some of those reasons are good reasons, some are bad reasons. This would be an example of one of the good reasons. It should be John Edwards as a native North Carolinian who should lead the way here. It’s one thing to exhibit personal fortitude in the face of breast cancer, or political acumen in the removal of bloggers with a decidedly anti-Catholic bias. But those are the kinds of acts of courage that can hardly be considered controversial, they could even arguably be considered self-serving. A true act of courage is one that could conceivably cost support, such as a stand in this matter. But Edwards, like most Democrats, have pandered to their base for so long, perhaps a reversal from normal procedure in a controversy such as this is just too much to hope for.

Hat tip here goes to Sonia Belle, who doesn’t wear a hat, or anything else, with which to tip back. Her original post can be accessed by clicking the link which is in this post's title.

Begging Your Pardon, Mr. President

The pardon the agents petition that is the subject of this post can be accessed by clicking on the post title, which contains the link to the site which is promoting the petition, which can be likewise accessed by a link at the upper right hand of that page. Also, a hat tip to Lemuel Calhoun of Hillbilly White Trash, who kindly posted the link on his blog at my request, as well as this one here which also goes into some detail as to the chain of events which lead to this controversy.

If you want a job where you are treated with respect, it seems the last thing you might want to consider is the life of a government employee, in at least some cases. And the lower you go down the totem pole, the worse off you are. You get about as much respect in some cases if you’re a burger flipper or 7/11 clerk. Of course, to see the idiot smiles on the faces of actors portraying clerks in tv commercials, you would think they live the life of reilly. Yeah, what do you want your daughter to bring home from Pizza Hut? A supreme with extra cheese and breadsticks, maybe, but certainly not the clerk, if she does that you’ll probably send her back.

Now, you might think you’d be proud if your daughter brought home a government employee, but you might want to rethink that a bit.

Military enlistees are, technically speaking, “government employees”, and they get little respect. Oh, sure, we all “support the troops”, some would even go so far as to say they “love” them, but where does the lip service end and the reality begin? You can leave all that love and respect right outside the door of the Walter Reed Outpatient Treatment Center, thank you very much, it might damage the decorative mold.

Or, if your daughter brings home a US Attorney, you might consider wondering just what you did wrong. Can’t your daughter find a decent tort attorney with a real job?

But it seems these days like if you really want to scrape the bottom of the barrel, you might come out with an INS border security guard. Talk about getting no respect. Here are these two guys that went out of their way to apprehend an illegal Mexican alien who was smuggling some 74 pounds or so of marijuana across the border, whom the two guards thought was armed, and when he tried to escape they shot him in the ass.

They were then tried and convicted of numerous trumped up charges, including civil rights violations.

Now, after this trial, at which three of the jurors involved later claimed they were coerced into delivering a guilty verdict, (the prosecutor, incidentally, is under investigation for prosecutorial misconduct due to his part in the trial) they have been sentenced to twelve and thirteen years in prison, where one of them was recently brutally beaten by Mexican inmates who demanded “death to the border guards.”

They were convicted in part due to the testimony of the illegal alien drug smuggler, who was granted immunity in return for his testimony. But why the hell were they even charged and tried to begin with? According to some reports, this was done at the instigation of the Mexican government itself. Now, I don’t know if that is true or not, though I certainly believe they at least encouraged it, along with the other usual suspects, the pro open borders and amnesty crowds and open immigration factions among the liberal left and the various other immigrant advocacy groups.

In the meantime, these men have gotten little in the way of support from among the conservative forces that would ordinarily be up in arms about these kinds of shenanigans. Of course, as usual, both parties for the most part care more about kowtowing to the far left (in the case of Democrats), or to the business oriented open borders, free trade neo-cons (in the case of Republicans), while both are trolling for as many Hispanic votes as they can muster. It’s fucking shameful. Out of all the members of Congress, only twelve-all Republicans-have gone on record as actively opposing this shameful sham of a trial and demanding that the border agents be granted a presidential pardon.

It is not looking good, however. Although he could definitely grant the men a pardon at a drop of a sombrero, Bush seems to be hiding behind the excuse that pardons are typically granted only after time has been served. Of course, there are numerous instances where this was not the case. Clinton’s pardon of billionaire tax cheat and fugitive from justice Mark Rich comes to mind. Granted, these two men don’t have wealthy wives who can contribute hefty sums of money to a presidential library. Nor are they former high ranking cabinet officials, as in the case of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, pardoned for his role in Iran-Contra by President George Herbert Walker Bush. Nor are they former Presidents, such as Richard M. Nixon, pardoned by Gerald Ford before he was ever even tried.

They are however men who were merely doing their jobs, maybe not perfectly, but still putting their lives on the line for little in the way of appreciation, renumeration, and respect. Now, they may be compelled to spend the best remaining years of their lives in a federal prison.

If you feel the way I do about this shit, you can click on this link, which will take you to a page where you can donate money to keep the cause alive or, at least as good and maybe even better, in the upper right hand corner of the page you will see a link to a page where you can sign a petition to President Bush encouraging him to grant these men the pardon I honestly feel they should receive as quickly as possible.

I also personally feel they should be granted a public apology, and back pay, in addition to a hefty amount of money for their pain and sufferring. In addition, they should receive an extra amount for whatever harassment they received while in prison, and the warden should be fired for not insuring their safety.

Yes, prison is rough, but all prisoners who are deemed to be potential targets are typically afforded some degree of protective custody, and this would obviously have been the appropriate precaution in the case of these two men.

You see, these two men are both Hispanics, and so in addition to the “crime” of being border agents, to the Hispanic street trash thugs who threatened them and attacked one on at least this one occasion, they are also doubtless viewed as “race traitors”.

Still, for the time being, let’s concentrate on getting them freed. Copy and paste the link and send it to as many people as you can think of to sign and forward to the President.

Like I told Lemuel Calhoun, of Hillbilly White Trash, who was kind enough to post these links on his blog at my request, if Bush would actually do the right thing in this regard, it might go a long way toward demonstrating evidence of this stiffened spine and backbone he allegedly has that we are always hearing so much about.

And I might add one other thing. I know that some that might peruse these links might have a knee jerk reaction to one of these sites, WorldNet Daily, but please try to think outside the box. You don’t have to agree with them on everything, or even on most things. I know I don’t. But when you're right, you’re right. If you agree with me that this is one of the times when they are right, not wrong-and there is little if any gray area here, in my opinion-then get over your initial objections to the site and support this petition drive.

And do more than that. Forward these links to your House Representatives and Senators. I think it’s a disgrace that no Democratic Congressmen or Senators have supported these two men. But that should be considered more a reflection of the Democratic leadership than on the individuals. After all, committee assignments might be in danger if they were to engage in an activity that goes beyond the accepted parameters of the House and Senate leadership as it currently stands. To say nothing of endangering funding of congressional projects and support for sponsored bills. Still, you would think at least one would have the balls (or ovaries) to stand up for what’s right. In all fairness, as I said, only twelve Republicans have done so, as of the writing of the petition.

The drug smuggler in question, by the way, has sued the US government for five million dollars. Like they say-only in America.