The order came from the White House to send out Air Force One with two fighter jet escorts for yet more symbolism in this Obama administration, but as the photo op news went bad, Barry suddenly claims to have known NOTHING about it. With the enormous amount of planning that must go into launching these birds, does anyone doubt how high up the ladder this info originated from?
Indeed, if the little boy in the White House didn't know what his own office of military affairs was doing, then he is one startlingly stupid--and dangerous--commander-in chief.
A furious President Barack Obama ordered an internal review of Monday's low-flying photo op over the Statue of Liberty.
CBS 2 HD has discovered the feds will have plenty to question.
Federal officials knew that sending two fighter jets and Air Force One to buzz ground zero and Lady Liberty might set off nightmarish fears of a 9/11 replay, but they still ordered the photo-op kept secret from the public.
In a memo obtained by CBS 2 HD the Federal Aviation Administration's James Johnston said the agency was aware of "the possibility of public concern regarding DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft flying at low altitudes" in an around New York City. But they demanded total secrecy from the NYPD, the Secret Service, the FBI and even the mayor's office and threatened federal sanctions if the secret got out.
"To say that it should not be made public knowing that it might scare people it's just confounding," Sen. Charles Schumer said. "It's what gives Washington and government a bad name. It's sheer stupidity."
The flyover -- apparently ordered by the White House Office of Military Affairs so it would have souvenir photos of Air Force One with the Statue of Liberty in the background -- had President Obama seeing red. He ordered a probe and apologized.
"It was a mistake. It will never happen again," President Obama said.
The NYPD was so upset about the demand for secrecy that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly vowed never to follow such a directive again and he accused the feds of inciting fears of a 9/11 replay.
"Did it show any insensitivity to the psychic wounds New York City has after 9/11? Absolutely. No questions about it. It was quite insensitive."
The cost of the frivolous flight was about $60,000 an hour and that was just for Air Force One. That doesn't include the cost of the two F-16s that came along.
The mayoral aide who neglected to tell Mayor Michael Bloomberg about it was reprimanded. (source)
Porter Goss is not just some critic of this new, traitorous administration. Indeed, Goss was director of the CIA from September 2004 to May 2006 and was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 1997 to 2004.
Read his own words here:
Since leaving my post as CIA director almost three years ago, I have remained largely silent on the public stage. I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can't have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets. Americans have to decide now.
A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees charged with overseeing our nation's intelligence services had no higher priority than stopping al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA's "High Value Terrorist Program," including the development of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers.
Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.
Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:
-- The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.
-- We understood what the CIA was doing.
-- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.
-- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.
-- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.
I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed "memorandums for the record" suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately -- to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president's national security adviser -- and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.
Circuses are not new in Washington, and I can see preparations being made for tents from the Capitol straight down Pennsylvania Avenue. The CIA has been pulled into the center ring before. The result this time will be the same: a hollowed-out service of diminished capabilities. After Sept. 11, the general outcry was, "Why don't we have better overseas capabilities?" I fear that in the years to come this refrain will be heard again: once a threat -- or God forbid, another successful attack -- captures our attention and sends the pendulum swinging back. There is only one person who can shut down this dangerous show: President Obama.
Unfortunately, much of the damage to our capabilities has already been done. It is certainly not trust that is fostered when intelligence officers are told one day "I have your back" only to learn a day later that a knife is being held to it. After the events of this week, morale at the CIA has been shaken to its foundation.
We must not forget: Our intelligence allies overseas view our inability to maintain secrecy as a reason to question our worthiness as a partner. These allies have been vital in almost every capture of a terrorist.
The suggestion that we are safer now because information about interrogation techniques is in the public domain conjures up images of unicorns and fairy dust. We have given our enemy invaluable information about the rules by which we operate. The terrorists captured by the CIA perfected the act of beheading innocents using dull knives. Khalid Sheik Mohammed boasted of the tactic of placing explosives high enough in a building to ensure that innocents trapped above would die if they tried to escape through windows. There is simply no comparison between our professionalism and their brutality.
Our enemies do not subscribe to the rules of the Marquis of Queensbury. "Name, rank and serial number" does not apply to non-state actors but is, regrettably, the only question this administration wants us to ask. Instead of taking risks, our intelligence officers will soon resort to wordsmithing cables to headquarters while opportunities to neutralize brutal radicals are lost.
The days of fortress America are gone. We are the world's superpower. We can sit on our hands or we can become engaged to improve global human conditions. The bottom line is that we cannot succeed unless we have good intelligence. Trading security for partisan political popularity will ensure that our secrets are not secret and that our intelligence is destined to fail us. (source)
Where else in this world do a people ’say one thing, then do the exact opposite’? The Arab World. Where we find this two-faced kind of act to be nothing more than lying, thousands of years of cultural practice of this same thing is in fact a point of pride. Case in point.
Couple this gesture of Hill’s with Barry’s boycott of the “racism summit” held just days ago. TCO and Hill are both trying to appear to be firm in their support of Israel and Christian Lebanon, so you know that there is something bad in store for both nations.
These two actors, Hill and Barry, will stand by with their thumbs up their asses while Hezbollah finishes off Lebanon, while Iran destroys Israel, then claim that they are “gravely disappointed” at the actions of these players.
All of the MSM will recite this administration’s “long history” of being firm against Israel and Lebanon’s aggressors as the embers cool.
I shoved the print-out copies of Henrietta Hughes' property records into the hands of a WINK radio news family member at the Ft Myers Tea Party I attended last week. Now, radio "news" has turned into little more than an oral rebroadcast of what's written in local newspapers these days, but I felt that I should at least try to get the truth out there.
After all, I had gone to the trouble to make my sign and everything:
Out of around 4,000 people there, the site where Barry came down and hugged the neck of Henrietta, only one person approached me to ask what was meant by my sign. Luckily, I came prepared with 3 copies of the fine research that had been conducted by the above-average readers of my favorite blog, Sweetness & Light.
After giving a quick summary of how Henrietta wasn't the poor, pitiful victim she claimed to be, the guy and his wife (both doctors here in Ft Myers), gladly accepted the two pages I had stored in my cargo pockets.
I was simply glad that I had anticipated this conversation, had come prepared to back up my claims with proof, and that I was spreading the word about this small cog in what is turning out to be the biggest Trojan Horse "rescue" in American history.
Don't get me wrong: I know that the economy is in bad shape. After all, I lost my job 6 months ago as a computer tech at a cancer doctor's group here in Ft Myers, when the doctors laid off the entire IT department, calling it a "business decision".
I moved from my duplex in Lehigh Acres back into a 12 x 12 hurricane room in my grandmother's house. And I know that I'm one of the lucky ones. Thank God I don't have kids, like the rest of the IT staff. Three of the guys are still so upset that they are trying to extort more of a severance package from the doctors by threatening to expose HIPA violations on the network. Bad times, indeed.
But at 41 years old, having been raised in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia, I've known hard times in my life, and this is right up there near the top. But I've always been something of a miser, and living on next to nothing is not a painful thing for me. I've never owned a house, or land, and when my father died 4 years ago of alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver he left nothing to me and my brother. I still carry on with a student loan to pay off, but no credit card debt. I don't have much, but I don't need much to be happy.
So believe me when I say that I know a thing or two about living within your means. I've run into people who cry "poor me" a few times in my travels, and I'm always sensitive to it, because there are tons of people less fortunate than myself, and it is always something of which I take note, and try to base my own good fortune against.
This is why I smell such a foul odor in this story of Henrietta. From the truly hard-luck stories I've seen in my life, the sincerely down-and-out don't make displays like this:
Well, now the WINK TV News team have done a follow-up on poor Henrietta. Nothing of my Sweetness & Light data made it to this news story, of course. I didn't think it would, but at least I have my little free blog here at Blogger. Before you read the latest about Henrietta, who is living rent-free in a house provided for her by a local Republican politician's wife, I ask you to review her property records first reported at S&L:
The Property Records Of Henrietta Hughes According to Lee County, Florida property records:
6/18/01 Property (Lot 19, Block 35, Unit 9, Sec. 20, Twnshp 44S, Range 27, Lehigh Acres Subdivision) purchased by Henrietta and Corey Hughes
10/10/03 - $124,400.00 lien release due to payment in full to Henrietta and Corey Hughes.
8/9/06 - Quit claim deed signed by Henrietta Hughes granting full ownership to Corey Hughes.
No transactions since for either Henrietta Hughes or Corey Hughes which means that Corey Hughes still owns the property. Taxes current (paid) on 1/1/09. There are a number of mortgage lien holder transfers between 2001 and when it was paid off in 2003. This is normal as liens are often sold (think one mortgage holder buying out another). What is interesting is how this lien for $124,400.00 was paid off in less than 28 months.
Has this property been sold in 2005, a transfer would have been recorded since the county records not only purchases but sales as well. Also, why would someone sell a property they paid at least $124,000.00 for in June, 2001 for $47,000.00 in 2005 when market prices were still high?
The fact is this scam artist did not sell her property that was jointly owned with her son, Corey Lamont, from day one. What she did do was sign a quit claim deed in 2006, giving TOTAL ownership to her son Corey Lamont. I would guess this is because the value of the property would affect SSDI benefits along with Medicare/Medicaid. It would also affect any welfare she might be eligible for under SSDI. My guess is she applied for SSDI and was told that she could only have so much worth. Yet, the 2004 Rochester, NY article states she is already receiving Medicare/Medicaid.
It is also interesting that in 2004, Corey Lamont Hughes sought, and received, free medical treatment in Rochester, NY while he and his mother were still owners of property in Florida…
Retire05 also added this:
Here is the history (remember to keep the lot numbers separate as that is important):
6/18/01 - Henrietta and Corey Hughes purchases Lot 18 and 19, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres
8/17/01 - Henrietta and Corey Hughes purchases Lot 22, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres
10/29/01 - Henrietta and Corey Hughes receives building permit for Lot 19, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres. The builder is Holiday Builders of Cape Coral, Florida
10/29/01 - (same day) Henrietta and Corey Hughes secures mortgage financing from Riverside Bank of The Gulf Coast, Cape Coral, Florida (this would be for the building of the structure constructed by Holiday Builders) in the amount of $124,400.00
7/15/03 - Forclosure filed by Riverside Bank of the Gulf Coast on Lot 19, Block 35 Lehigh Acres in an amount of slightly over $123,600.00 (meaning she paid about $800 of the mortgage in 21 months)
10/16/2003 - Mortgage satisfaction filed by Riverside Bank granting ownership to Henrietta and Corey Hughes for Lot 19, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres for $124,400.00 6/30/05 - Lot 22, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres sold to Homeland, LLC. 8/9/06 - Quit claim deed signed by Henrietta Hughes to Corey Hughes for Lot 18, Block 35 of Lehigh Acres.
She originally owned 3 lots, #18, #19 and #22. Number #22 was sold in 2005 (when she claims she lost her home) to Homeland, LLC in June, 2005 and #18 was transferred to her son, Corey Lamont, on 8/9/06 (signing a quit claim deed gave him total ownership of #18 which they had bought jointly).
I can find no record of any subsequent sales of the home build on Lot 19.(source)
Pretty wild, huh? She has had more property in her life than most people I've ever known. Yet the world and Barry trip over themselves to showcase and help her. In fact, here's the sympathetic story that just ran from WINK TV News.
Oh well. There are as many cheats and scams as there are welfare dollars extracted from our paychecks every payday. I can't get too exercised about it. I've got my eye on bigger things:
Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002 In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say
By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, December 9, 2007; A01
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.
Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."
Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.
"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "
Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 -- by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding -- did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey's confirmation hearings for attorney general.
GOP lawmakers and Bush administration officials have previously said members of Congress were well informed and were supportive of the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques. But the details of who in Congress knew what, and when, about waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning that is the most extreme and widely condemned interrogation technique -- have not previously been disclosed.
U.S. law requires the CIA to inform Congress of covert activities and allows the briefings to be limited in certain highly sensitive cases to a "Gang of Eight," including the four top congressional leaders of both parties as well as the four senior intelligence committee members. In this case, most briefings about detainee programs were limited to the "Gang of Four," the top Republican and Democrat on the two committees. A few staff members were permitted to attend some of the briefings.
That decision reflected the White House's decision that the "enhanced interrogation" program would be treated as one of the nation's top secrets for fear of warning al-Qaeda members about what they might expect, said U.S. officials familiar with the decision. Critics have since said the administration's motivation was at least partly to hide from view an embarrassing practice that the CIA considered vital but outsiders would almost certainly condemn as abhorrent.
Information about the use of waterboarding nonetheless began to seep out after a furious internal debate among military lawyers and policymakers over its legality and morality. Once it became public, other members of Congress -- beyond the four that interacted regularly with the CIA on its most sensitive activities -- insisted on being briefed on it, and the circle of those in the know widened.
In September 2006, the CIA for the first time briefed all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, producing some heated exchanges with CIA officials, including Director Michael V. Hayden. The CIA director said during a television interview two months ago that he had informed congressional overseers of "all aspects of the detention and interrogation program." He said the "rich dialogue" with Congress led him to propose a new interrogation program that President Bush formally announced over the summer
"I can't describe that program to you," Hayden said. "But I would suggest to you that it would be wrong to assume that the program of the past is necessarily the program moving forward into the future."
Waterboarding Used on at Least 3
Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of history's worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition to North Korea and Iraq. In the United States, the technique was first used five decades ago as a training tool to give U.S. troops a realistic sense of what they could expect if captured by the Soviet Union or the armies of Southeast Asia. The U.S. military has officially regarded the tactic as torture since the Spanish-American War.
In general, the technique involves strapping a prisoner to a board or other flat surface, and then raising his feet above the level of his head. A cloth is then placed over the subject's mouth and nose, and water is poured over his face to make the prisoner believe he is drowning.
U.S. officials knowledgeable about the CIA's use of the technique say it was used on three individuals -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaida, a senior al-Qaeda member and Osama bin Laden associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002; and a third detainee who has not been publicly identified.
Abu Zubaida, the first of the "high-value" detainees in CIA custody, was subjected to harsh interrogation methods beginning in spring 2002 after he refused to cooperate with questioners, the officials said. CIA briefers gave the four intelligence committee members limited information about Abu Zubaida's detention in spring 2002, but offered a more detailed account of its interrogation practices in September of that year, said officials with direct knowledge of the briefings.
The CIA provided another briefing the following month, and then about 28 additional briefings over five years, said three U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge of the meetings. During these sessions, the agency provided information about the techniques it was using as well as the information it collected.
Lawmakers have varied recollections about the topics covered in the briefings.
Graham said he has no memory of ever being told about waterboarding or other harsh tactics. Graham left the Senate intelligence committee in January 2003, and was replaced by Rockefeller. "Personally, I was unaware of it, so I couldn't object," Graham said in an interview. He said he now believes the techniques constituted torture and were illegal.
Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.
Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.
"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."
Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings. Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but the West Virginia Democrat's public statements show him leading the push in 2005 for expanded congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA interrogation practices. "I proposed without success, both in committee and on the Senate floor, that the committee undertake an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation activities," Rockefeller said in a statement Friday.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Vietnam War prisoner who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, took an early interest in the program even though he was not a member of the intelligence committee, and spoke out against waterboarding in private conversations with White House officials in late 2005 before denouncing it publicly.
In May 2007, four months after Democrats regained control of Congress and well after the CIA had forsworn further waterboarding, four senators submitted written objections to the CIA's use of that tactic and other, still unspecified "enhanced" techniques in two classified letters to Hayden last spring, shortly after receiving a classified hearing on the topic. One letter was sent on May 1 by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). A similar letter was sent May 10 by a bipartisan group of three senators: Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
In a rare public statement last month that broached the subject of his classified objections, Feingold complained about administration claims of congressional support, saying that it was "not the case" that lawmakers briefed on the CIA's program "have approved it or consented to it." (source)
Joseph B. Muhammad, president of a black firefighters’ group, spoke in New Haven last month against the white firefighters’ suit.
When your house is burning to the ground, are you going to feel any better that the lieutenant in charge is black if he can't read obvious signs, like: Propane, Oxygen, or Allergy? How about if he leaves your spouse or child in the unburned part of the house and stands outside as the rest of it overtakes your loved ones?
The knowledge these brave men learn through their testing to advance is what easily could mean the difference between life and death.
This latest story on a firefighters' racial discrimination suit in New Haven is yet another reason why America is doomed to not only mediocrity, but Balkanization as well:
NEW HAVEN — Frank Ricci has been a firefighter here for 11 years, and he would do just about anything to advance to lieutenant.
The last time the city offered a promotional exam, he said in a sworn statement, he gave up a second job and studied up to 13 hours a day. Mr. Ricci, who is dyslexic, paid an acquaintance more than $1,000 to read textbooks onto audiotapes. He made flashcards, took practice tests, worked with a study group and participated in mock interviews.
Mr. Ricci did well, he said, coming in sixth among the 77 candidates who took the exam. But the city threw out the test, because none of the 19 African-American firefighters who took it qualified for promotion. That decision prompted Mr. Ricci and 17 other white firefighters, including one Hispanic, to sue the city, alleging racial discrimination.
Their case, which will be argued before the Supreme Court on April 22, is the Roberts court’s first major confrontation with claims of racial discrimination in employment and will require the justices to choose between conflicting conceptions of the government’s role in ensuring fair treatment regardless of race.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has repeatedly noted his hostility to what he has called the “sordid business” of “divvying us up by race.” In 2007, diverging from an important Rehnquist court decision that allowed public universities to consider race in admissions decisions, the Roberts court forbade public school systems to take race explicitly into account to achieve or maintain integration.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
But those cases involved education, and it has been decades since the court last took an intensive look at the use of race in public hiring or promotion. Among the questions swirling around Mr. Ricci’s case are whether the law should treat diversity in the work force differently from diversity in the classroom and how it should handle hiring and promotion tests that have a severely disparate impact on candidates of one race.
The city says it was merely trying to comply with a federal law that views job requirements like promotional tests with great suspicion when they disproportionately disfavor minority applicants.
“The fact of the matter is it’s a flawed test,” said Victor A. Bolden, the city’s acting corporation counsel.
Mr. Bolden added that he had sympathy for Mr. Ricci. “There’s no question that there are people who are disappointed,” he said. “But disappointment doesn’t lead to a discrimination claim.”
The promotion exam was offered in the fall of 2003, and no one has been promoted since, Mr. Bolden said.
The suit brought by Mr. Ricci and his colleagues says that the city’s rationale for throwing out the test is illegitimate and that they were denied a chance for promotion on account of the color of their skin. Karen Lee Torre, a lawyer for the firefighters, declined to be interviewed and said she had instructed her clients not to speak to reporters.
John Payton, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., which filed a brief supporting the city, said the case, Ricci v. DeStefano, No. 07-1428, must be understood against the backdrop of what he described as pervasive racial discrimination in firefighting and the pitfalls of thinking that a test can capture the qualities needed for leadership in life-or-death situations.
“Firefighting is a skilled job where all of the skills are learned on the job,” Mr. Payton said. “It’s a really good job, and it’s been racially exclusive in most of our major cities.”
In a brief supporting the white firefighters, the National Association of Police Organizations saw the injection of racial politics into public safety. Promotion decisions should be based on merit, the group said. Race-neutral decisions foster camaraderie and a sense of fairness, it added, saying that people who work in public safety “are, in the main, effectively colorblind.”
But Donald Day, a representative of the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters, questioned the value of the New Haven test, which included written and oral components. “An individual’s ability to answer a multiple-choice exam,” Mr. Day told the city’s Civil Service Board, “does nothing but measure their ability to read and retain.”
There are more important values, he added. “Young black and Latino kids have every right,” he said, “to see black and Latino officers on those fire trucks that are riding through their community. They have every right to look for a role model.”
According to the 2000 census, New Haven is 43 percent white and 37 percent black. African-Americans held 32 percent of the entry-level positions in the Fire Department in 2007, according to data compiled by the city, but only 15 percent of the supervisory positions.
In 2006, Judge Janet Bond Arterton of the Federal District Court here ruled that the city had not discriminated against the white firefighters. Since no one was promoted, Judge Arterton said, no one was harmed.
True, she wrote, “a jury could infer that the defendants were motivated by a concern that too many whites and not enough minorities would be promoted.”
But the city’s motives were lawful, Judge Arterton said. They included fear of public criticism, the possibility of “lawsuits from minority applicants that, for political reasons, the city did not want to defend” and a desire to promote “diversity in the Fire Department” and “managerial role models for aspiring firefighters.”
Judge Arterton ruled that city officials were not required to abide by the test results even though “they cannot pinpoint its deficiency explaining its disparate impact.” It is enough, she said, that the test results ran afoul of federal guidelines that presume discrimination where the lowest-scoring group is promoted at a rate of less than 80 percent of the highest-scoring group.
A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in New York affirmed Judge Arterton’s ruling in an unusually terse decision. By a vote of 7 to 6, the full appeals court declined to rehear the case and issued a set of heated opinions in the process. The six dissenting judges urged the Supreme Court to step in.
The test itself is not publicly available, but the court record offers glimpses of it. One question, for instance, referred to “uptown” and “downtown,” terms that do not make sense in New Haven.
But it is not clear what would have generated racial disparities in the results, and the six dissenting appeals court judges said the test had been “carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality.”
Blacks passed at roughly half the rate of whites and ended up low on the ranked list of possible promotion candidates.. Under the city charter’s “rule of three,” as positions became available they had to be offered to one of the top three candidates then on the list.
In practice, this meant that no black firefighters would have been eligible for the available promotions to lieutenant. After a series of contentious hearings, the city’s Civil Service Board deadlocked by a 2-to-2 vote on whether to certify the lieutenant’s test and a similar one for captain. The tie had the effect of rejecting the tests.
With no one promoted since, “we’re sort of frozen in time,” said Mr. Bolden, the city lawyer. (source)
He breezes into office without one callous on his soft hands. His character hasn't been formed from years of having to go to work everyday at a job you hate, for people who don't make a big fuss over you at all. Never has he had to "look on the bright side" of things, just to get by and keep the bills paid.
No, this little boy is used to getting everything he wants. Soon will come a day of reckoning for us, as a nation, that we ever elected this dark, hating, child into our fold.
We were whipped into a frenzy by the MSM, who not only picked Barry as a candidate, but led every newscast, interview, and headline as if you're a racist if you don't vote for this man.
And it has all caught up with us.
This is what we deserve for ever allowing the Left to guide our highest choices as a country.
We are witnessing the groundwork of persecuting President Bush and Vice President Cheney being laid right now. Barry thinks he's being judicious and thoughtful by saying that CIA operatives will be off the table for prosecution, but today he is adding that as we go up the deadly ladder to those closest to Mssrs Bush and Cheney, Barry is open to allowing the Justice Department to "make those decisions".
Of course he is. True to a life absent of any hard decisions, he is shielding himself from the fallout of having our best wartime president and administration put before a Nuerenberg-like trial system.
He is hiding behind the Justice dept, just like the little coward boy he is, to do his bidding while appearing "neutral", just as the draft-dodger Bill Clinton did during Waco. This is what any maniacal tyrant in a democracy must do. Perform a total takeover of society while appearing that you're simply letting "the process take its course."
Only a boy who has grown up with self-hate [thanks to a couple of savage fathers and mother who spawned without love] would fill his head with notions from the Left of deconstructing our American Way and grow up to do the things this man-child is now threatening to do.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama left the door open Tuesday to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations, saying the United States lost "our moral bearings" with use of the tactics.
The question of whether to bring charges against those who devised justification for the methods "is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said. The president discussed the continuing issue of terrorism-era interrogation tactics with reporters as he finished an Oval Office meeting with visiting King Abdullah II of Jordan.
Obama also said he could support a congressional investigation into the Bush-era terrorist detainee program, but only under certain conditions, such as if it were done on a bipartisan basis. He said he worries about the impact that high-intensity, politicized hearings in Congress could have on the government's efforts to cope with terrorism.
The president had said earlier that he didn't want to see prosecutions of the CIA agents and interrogators who took part in waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, so long as they acted within parameters spelled out by government superiors who held that such practices were legal at the time.
But the administration's stance on Bush administration lawyers who actually wrote the memos approving these tactics has been less clear and Obama declined to make it so. "There are a host of very complicated issues involved," Obama said.
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said in a television interview over the weekend that theadministration does not support prosecutions for "those who devised policy." Later, White House aides said that he was referring to CIA superiors who ordered the interrogations, not the Justice Department officials who wrote the legal memos allowing them.
The president took a question on the volatile subject for the first time since he ordered the Justice Department to release top-secret Bush-era memos that gave the government's first full accounting ofthe CIA's use of waterboarding — a form of simulated drowning — and other harsh methods criticized as torture. The previously classified memos were released Thursday, over the objections of many in the intelligence community. CIA Director Leon Panetta had pressed for heavier censorship when they were released, but the memos were put out with only light redactions.
Far from putting the matter in the past, the move has resulted in Obama being buffeted by increased pressure from both sides.
Republican lawmakers and former CIA chiefs have criticized Obama's decision, contending that revealing the limits of interrogation techniques will hamper the effectiveness of interrogators and critical U.S. relationships with foreign intelligence services.
The release also has appeared to intensify calls for further investigations of the Bush-era terrorist treatment program and for prosecutions of those responsible for any techniques that crossed the line into torture.
Obama banned all such techniques days after taking office. But members of Congress have continued to seek the release of information about the early stages of the U.S. response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror under former President George W. Bush. Lawsuits have been brought, seeking the same information.
Obama said an investigation might be acceptable "outside of the typical hearing process" and with the participation of "independent participants who are above reproach." This, he said, could help ensure that any investigation would be a tool to learn, not to provide partisan advantage to one side or another.
"That would probably be a more sensible approach to take," Obama said. "I'm not saying that it should be done, I'm saying that if you've got a choice."
The president made clear that his preference would be not to revisit the era extensively.
"As a general view, I do think we should be looking forward, not back," Obama said. "I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively and it hampers our ability to carry out critical national security operations." (source)
On my favorite blog, Sweetness & Light, an astute contributor started a thread which I thought worthy of reproducing here. The readers of Ann Coulter's blog (administered by Steve Gilbert) are a cut above ther rest:
proreason April 16, 2009 at 7:42 pm Has anybody noticed that every single thing said by these left wing hacks is a lie or one sort or another. At least there is one area where The Moron is demonstrating his leadership.
englishqueen01 April 16, 2009 at 9:45 pm It’s not lies, proreason. It’s PROJECTION. As in, everything liberals say about us is absolutely 100% true…about them, their beliefs, their policies, and actions.
jrmcdonald April 18, 2009 at 7:08 pm Your both right. Ayn Rand said that people do not believe in the irrational, but they do believe in the unjust. The lefts core beliefs in the unjust are:1. Punishing the producer while rewarding the parasite.2. Mocking the moral while celebrating the deviate.3. Killing the innocent while protecting the homicidal.4. Removing the sacred while expanding the bureaucrat.
proreason April 18, 2009 at 8:17 pm jr: “The lefts’ core beliefs in the unjust ” It’s a rather profound thought.
But is eq correct in saying the belief in the unjust is a projection (a generous assessment, imho), or am I correct in saying that it is a simple case of defending one’s own deviant behaviour patterns (which I summarized by just calling them liars….in fact, it goes way beyond lying to all sorts of immoral behaviours, including the one jr points out, but well beyond them as well)?
It may be a fine point, but I personally feel the left compounds their immoral and anti-social behaviours by defending them, much like children twist themselves in knots when caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
And I also believe that the core liberal beliefs arise out of their immorality. For example, the reason they defend abortion with such gusto is that they know it is murder. Another example, the reason they defend taxes in the face of the obvious failure of almost all government programs is that, like Biden, they are selfish and will give nothing to charity themselves without being forced.
Howard Roark April 20, 2009 at 12:57 pm I like all of the responses to PR’s original question, here. I think they all are true: projection, Rand’s thought on the unjust, immorality.
My only addition to this is my belief that we see a present-day version of what the Greeks knew of as Dionysian principles in the modern liberal Democrats.
We Conservatives are the Stoics.
25 years ago, you couldn’t have convinced me of the value of Stoicism. I called myself a Dionysian. In fact, I remember doing a class report in the third year of my Latin studies during my senior year in the public high school I attended. I passed around plastic cups of Kroger-brand fake wine to everyone, and launched into what the differences were between Stoicism & Dionysianism, and why I, (a 17 year-old immature kid) was indeed a Dionysian. After all, who could be an adolescent and turn your back on wine, intoxication, and ecstasy?
It took me nearly twenty years to understand the other component of living a Dionysian lifestyle, though: chaos. Add to that: irrational thought, insincerity, and faithlessness. I now merely shake my head at my foolish youth.
Democrats/liberals are stuck in their adolescent youth, living a life of satisfying their every impulse, especially the base ones. They aren’t full of “principles” as we know them.
Their only “principles”, I have found, are based on doing the exact opposite of what they think a Republican or Conservative would do. And they are happy with that shallow definition of their core belief system. They are chaos, plain and simple.
Some of us Christians would call them “lost”.
As much as J. Gerofalo would love to medicalize the “condition” of being a Conservative (her laughable display on K. Olbermann’s show recently saw her attempt at diagnosing all “Teabaggers” as having a limbic brain disorder of overgrowth, resulting in misfirings of the synapses in our frontal lobes, ‘natch.
Isn’t it ironic that a good liberal like her would rest the diagnosis of “intelligence” on brain size/growth? The last time cranial studies were done to “prove” intelligence, African Americans didn’t fare too well, so we demonized those scientists, of course. But I guess you’d have to be one of those “readers” to know that. Perhaps Gerofalo didn’t get that Twitter blast.), I, like EQ above, believe that they project the neurological/brain condition on us, yet it is they who suffer from a condition of underdeveloped sectors of the brain. As the Colonel might say, “can’t prove it, just know it.”
Their brain suffers from a suite of maladies, I believe: unresolved phobias, coping problems, attention span deficiencies, irrational thought, etc. I am not trained as a medical scientist, but I see these patterns in the arch liberals I’ve encountered in my life.
Just your average Zen Baptist, admitting upfront to being a (mostly) reconstructed hillbilly.
If you can't understand the attitude or perspective I come from, it's safe to say that we're from different realities.
If you can't start off the conversation with a respectful question about how/why I came to the particular perspective I did, and then find some way that you can relate to it, then I don't have any time to entertain your issues.
Give respect, get respect.
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Joe Shields - Brooklyn Bridge
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