They Won't Cooperate?

You know, one way NOT to honor the sacrifice of Officer Findley is to let someone get away with killing the man accused of killing him. This isn't 1908, or 1808, or even 1008. This is not something that people should just shrug off--this is something out of the Dark Ages.

Several Prince George's County correctional officers who had access to a 19-year-old inmate found strangled in solitary confinement Sunday have initially declined to speak to investigators of the slaying, a source familiar with the interrogations said.

The Maryland State Police and federal agents were investigating the death of Ronnie L. White, who was killed less than 36 hours after he was booked into the county correctional center on first-degree murder charges in the hit-and-run death Friday of county police Cpl. Richard S. Findley.

It wasn't clear why the correctional officers reportedly declined to answer questions. Sgt. Curtis Knowles, president of the county's correctional officers union, said the union's position is that its members can be interviewed only during work hours and with a union representative or attorney present, unless a criminal investigation is underway.

[SNIP]

Sources close to the investigation, who like others in this report spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing, said county police collected most of the forensic evidence from White's cell Sunday, before state police took over the investigation at the request of county officials. An attorney for White's family called on the Justice Department, which has launched a civil rights probe, to be a partner in the criminal investigation.

"This did not happen on some dark, abandoned, lonely road," Bobby G. Henry Jr., the family's attorney, said at a news conference. "This happened in broad daylight, in the custody of county officials. Everyone who has someone or knows someone who is in the county correctional facility should have a problem with that."

The problem is, the US Justice Department already purged the Civil Rights division--thanks to the efforts of Brad Schlozman.

It is not, however, quite over yet.

Justice Department lawyers have filed a grand-jury referral stemming from the 2006 U.S. attorneys scandal, according to people familiar with the probe, a move indicating that the yearlong investigation may be entering a new phase.

The grand-jury referral, the first time the probe has moved beyond the investigative phase, relates to allegations of political meddling in the Justice Department’s civil-rights division, these people say. Specifically, it focuses on possible perjury by Bradley Schlozman, who served a year as interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo.

Mr. Schlozman left the Justice Department last year after he was challenged over his hiring of conservative lawyers at the civil-rights division and his decision later as U.S. attorney to bring voter-fraud charges against members of a left-leaning voter-registration group days before the 2006 election.

Schlozman, an inept character who’s almost amusing in his clumsiness, has a very serious problem on his hands, which will not only lead to the likely criminal prosecution of a former top official in Bush’s Justice Department, but once again bring into focus how the Bush administration operated.

We are ruled by incompetents and thugs.

--WS

Steve Benen does not write this blog

I must quash those rumors right now. Tom Burka has blown the lid off the liberal blogosphere, exposing the entire left side as the machinations of one man, Steve Benen, the Energizer Bunny of blogtopia™ (y!sctp!)

Steve Benen, the liberal blogger who runs The Carpetbagger Report, has recently been discovered to be the sole author of almost every liberal blog dealing with U.S. politics on the internet, blog readers recently discovered.

At first Benen was writing The Carpetbagger Report and allegedly guest blogging on sites such as TalkingPointsMemo, the Washington Monthly's blog, Political Animal, and Crooks and Liars. However, a visitor to TalkingPointsMemo, who saw a video of the alleged author and blog founder "Josh Marshall," immediately recognized him to be actor Marshall Mappschteen, with whom he had performed "Guys and Dolls" in college. A phone call to Mappschteen resulted in revelations that eventually uncovered Benen as the author of more than 260 liberal blogs. Subsequent investigation revealed that popular "bloggers" Atrios and Political Animal's Kevin Drum are actually fellow league bowlers who Benen recruited to be fictitious front men.

The revelations caused Salon to put an end to their Blog Report, a supposed roundup of items of interest on liberal and conservative political blogs compiled by Benen. "All the liberal blogs were him," said "Skippy", one of the few liberal bloggers who appears to really exist. "He was just linking to himself all over the place. It was unsanitary."

Benen admitted that he had orchestrated and created the liberal blogosphere in order to create the impression that more people have liberal values than actually do. "I wanted the liberal presence on the web -- and in the U.S. -- to appear to be very, very big, much larger than it actually is," admitted Benen, who welcomed the end of his deception as a chance to rest his hands. "I've been suffering from carpal tunnel something awful," he said.

So now you know the deep dark secret of Left Blogsylvania, but I must clarify that Pale Rider and I are not figments of Benen's prolific creative forces. We can, however, be accurately characterized as "minions" of the hyper-producive Mr. Benen.

It would be fair to question Mr. Burka's bona fides, however - because every leftie blogger that really exists knows that skippy is not capitalized.....just sayin'.....

UPDATE I - PALE RIDER

Full disclosure: I actually am Steve Benen.

Sorry for the confusion.

Sometimes the M$M makes me want to puke

Sorry. Sometimes I get so disgusted that I just can't muster the snark, and a rank condemnation just has to do, you know?

See, I don't watch those dog-and-pony-shows on cable that they are calling debates these days, because they aren't informative; they are phony, staged, go-for-the-lowest common denominator sideshows.

Need proof? Last night CNN reached back to the early 90's, and Bill Clinton and MTV and the "boxers or briefs" question that signaled the first sighting of the Horsemen of the Political Apocalypse on the horizon.

Last night, at the debate at UNLV, the last question was for Hillary Clinton, and it was asked by a student who wanted to ask about the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility. Instead, CNN had her ask Hillary if she preferred "Diamonds or Pearls?"

What. The. Fuck.???

People have to pay extra for access to that shit?

Via Crooks & Liars:

Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred “diamonds or pearls” at last night’s debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

“Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN,” Luisa writes. “I was asked to submit questions including “lighthearted/fun” questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance.”

And wouldn't the idiots at the Cloying News Network have just shit bricks if, instead of taking the bait, Hillary had said "Neither" and gone on to explain how Diamonds are mined and Pearls are harvested, and how the people doing the mining and the harvesting are performing dangerous jobs that kill many people every year, and making a pittance for it, while all up the chain of people standing on their backs and selling the damnable baubles and trinkets are making obscene amounts of money from the vanity of some individuals and the labor of others?

Shiny!

The always-excellent Carpetbagger Report, written by my good friend Steve Benen (aka the hardest working man in Blogtopia*™) got a new look last night while we were sleeping.

With the facelift, the bug that kept me from commenting has been fixed, too, so if you had problems commenting in the past, you should go check and see if the problem was fixed. In my case it was.

I really like the new look - it is very pleasing and easy on the eyes, but still the same hard-hitting political blogging as before!

What can I say?

It's way shiny!



*skippy coined that phrase (sctp™)