The Coffeespy

Oh, that Chicago Tribune.  Usually journalists will thinly veil their manipulation of facts in pursiut of getting their message across.  Not so with Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Silva.  Here's a man with the guts to stand up and say, "I'm a journalist, and I'm not afraid to just make stuff up."  We admire your stand against impartiality and objective reporting, Mr. Silva.  Though only a bold few are courageous enough to dress up their political views in the guise of unbiased newsmaking, even fewer forego the guise altogether.  Most impressive.

From the Chicago Tribune:

President Bush, insisting that "the fight in Iraq can be won,'' said today that the withdrawal of U.S. forces which everyone wants will come when "conditions on the ground are right.''

Ethics, standards, and grammar be damned.  That's some powerful stuff right there.  So powerful, in fact, that our resident iceman, Mr. Popsicle, says you deserve a big thumbs up!

Did you hear about Chris Newsom and Channon Christian on the news?  Likely not.  In fact, even if you were plugged into the local news, the only story I was able to find simply stated it was a carjacking, murder, and rape of a couple of college students.  From WBIR news:

Two of the suspects in the murders of a young Knoxville couple appeared in a Knoxville criminal courtroom Thursday morning.

It was the first local appearance for Vanessa Coleman, the only woman charged in the crimes.  Coleman faces a number of state charges related to the carjacking, rape, and murders of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom.

Well, these crimes happen all the time and probably don’t deserve national attention, right?

How about we look into the rest of the story.

The couple were taken with their car during a date.  They were driven to a residence and brought into the house by four men and a woman.  During the first day, Chris was beaten, repeatedly sodomized in front of Channon, stabbed, had his genitals removed, and finally shot in the head.  During this, he was forced to watch Channon get gang-raped repeatedly.

The body of Chris Newsome was rolled into some blankets, placed on some train tracks, and finally set on fire.  This occurred over about a 24 hour period.  The tale of Channon draws out over three days.

Repeatedly gang-raped and forced to watch the torture and murder of Chris, Channon was kept alive for three days in the residence.  In addition to the rapes, she was forced to drink bleach in an attempt to destroy evidence and had her breasts cut off.  Her captors then poured bleach into her open chest wounds for reasons unknown.  On the third day she died.  Her captors dismembered her for easier disposal and left her in their trash bins.

The only reason Channon was ever found was because her parents took to driving around Knoxville and located her car at the residence (Note: This information was read on-air by DC101 and I have been unable to verify from any other source).  They called police who arrived and discovered her body in the trash.  Four males and a female were ultimately arrested for this crime.

Channon and Chris were white.  Their five attackers were black.  Reverse those races and speculate how much media attention this would have received.  I’m fairly certain it would have been more than a four or five paragraph generalization of the horrific events the pair were forced to endure.  I’m fairly certain we’d have some national media attention, the term ‘hate crime’ thrown around in animated letters across the screen, and the usual suspects arriving to hold press conferences on the victims’ families’ lawns.

Welcome to the new equality.  I apologize if I interrupted the latest update on Don Imus.

• CRO has a blistering commentary on the episode.
• Flopping Aces calls it what it is: a hate crime.
• And slightly out of left field… Charlie Daniels.

This was a scandal a minute ago, wasn’t it?

Darn… that pesky physical evidence is at it again…  Why do I have to find a single passage in the Wall Street Journal on this rather than see it plastered all over CNN or NBC like the original reporting was?

From an Early Birded op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

CBS’s hit series “Criminal Minds” recently aired an episode entitled “Lessons Learned,” where FBI agents traveled to Guantanamo Bay and coaxed a confession from a known terrorist detainee that led to the prevention of an anthrax attack on a Northern Virginia shopping mall. The point of the story was that the regular interrogation tactics (pictured as brutal assaults on the prisoner) were not working, and that the military should adopt the enlightened methods of the crack interrogators from “Criminal Minds.”

Having served as an Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps officer in Gitmo, a legal adviser to criminal investigators pursuing leads in the war on terror, and a Military Commissions prosecutor, I have first-hand knowledge and experience about what happens there. And here is the ironic truth: The military has outlawed some of the “Criminal Minds” interrogators’ tactics — in response to pressure by the international community.

On TV, an analyst observed the detainee’s behavior from an adjoining room behind two-way glass for revealing body movements and language. Subtle movements and body language signaled which statements were true and which were false, leading to a breakthrough that saved lives. In reality, when such a tactic was used at Gitmo the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called it “torture.” Gitmo authorities used to employ Behavior Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs, pronounced “biscuits”), trained psychologists/psychiatrists who did exactly what the TV analyst did: used psychology to help interrogators learn the truth. But the ICRC considered their role in planning and assisting with interrogations “a flagrant violation of medical ethics.” The military responded by curtailing the role of BSCTs.

On TV, CIA and FBI interrogators used the detainee’s religion to gain leverage. The CIA interrogators refused to allow the detainee to pray; then the FBI allowed the prayers but adjusted them to manipulate the detainee’s sense of time. Because of the manipulation, the detainee admitted responsibility for an attack that he incorrectly believed had already occurred, allowing the attack to be thwarted. In reality, the U.S. does not manipulate detainee’s religious practices. In Gitmo, everything stops, including interrogations, so detainees can pray. The Islamic call to prayer is broadcast, several times a day, over loudspeakers. Everyone in and around the detention camp is forced to listen.

On TV, the interrogators give the detainee a prayer mat and point out the direction to Mecca to win his gratitude. In reality, the U.S. gives religious items such as prayer mats, prayer caps, prayer oil, prayer beads and Qurans to all detainees. They don’t need anyone to point out the direction of Mecca because the U.S. paints black arrows on the ground pointing toward Mecca in every cell and around the camp.

In fact, at Camp Bucca, a U.S.-run detention camp in Iraq, the U.S. erected a tent as a makeshift mosque and designated it off-limits to prison guards so that detainees could pray in solitude. The detainees used their privacy to turn the “mosque” into a weapons cache, and then attacked the prison guards. This led to a battle for control of the camp that lasted four days.

Despite the debacle at Camp Bucca, the military still designates some items (such as the Quran) as “off-limits” to prison guards, even though detainees misuse the Quran to conceal illegal contraband, including prescription pills. U.S. forces in Gitmo go to these great lengths despite the fact that the Geneva Conventions provide for POWs to practice their religion only “on condition that they comply with the disciplinary routine prescribed by military authorities.”

On “Criminal Minds,” the detainee glanced toward bottles of water lining a table, and said, “They line it up to show what I cannot have.” In reality, detainees at Gitmo receive ample food and water, including Halal meals and imported seasonal fruits and nuts from their native countries for special occasions.

While the crime show’s creators must resort to fiction to depict interrogations, they don’t have to fictionalize the contempt that most detainees show for Americans. Hollywood gets that part right. On TV, the fictional detainee said of killing innocent Americans: “There is no such thing, they were infidels . . . they hurt me by existing! The infidels will fall at the hands of the righteous, and that is when the jihad will end.”

In reality, according to Gitmo’s Web site, one detainee said, “The people who died on 9/11/2001 were not innocent . . . my group will shake up the U.S. and the countries who follow the U.S.” Another told military police officers that he would “come to their homes and cut their throats like sheep.” Yet another detainee threatened, “I will arrange for the kidnapping and execution of U.S. citizens living in Saudi Arabia. Small groups of four of five U.S. citizens will be kidnapped, held and executed. They will have their heads cut off.” These real statements make one thing clear: life in Gitmo has not broken the detainees’ spirits.

Hollywood sets unrealistic expectations for many things. The “Criminal Minds” episode represents one instance where truth is tamer, and many would argue stranger, than fiction.

In a ridiculously worded story from the LA Times (go figure), the call for John Walker Lindh’s sentence to be reduced has gone out.  The preference is to reduce his 20 year term to a pardon.  I’m sure, if pardoned, there won’t be any law suits using the pardon as “proof” of his “raw deal.”  From the LA Times:

The parents of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, who is serving a 20-year sentence in the country’s toughest federal prison, stepped up their request for his release Wednesday by noting that the first U.S. war crimes tribunal in Guantanamo Bay recently resulted in a sentence of nine months for an Australian detainee held in U.S. custody since late 2001.

“John has been in prison for more than five years,” said his mother, Marilyn Walker. “It’s time for him to come home.”

Sorry, it’s not time for him to come home.  It’s not that time for another 15 years.  Lindh is being billed as a ‘victim of the times.’  To use a British legal term: bollox.  Why?  Let’s take a look:

Lindh, who grew up in Marin County, left the United States when he was 18 to study Islam. In 2001 he was in Afghanistan, serving as a soldier for the Taliban army fighting the Northern Alliance.

Soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he was taken into custody by U.S. military forces and returned to the United States; the government contended that he had been trained at an Al Qaeda terrorist camp.

In a plea deal with federal prosecutors in 2002, all terrorism charges were dropped. In the end, Lindh pleaded guilty to being a soldier for the Taliban and carrying a rifle and hand grenades while doing so.

Hmm… American decides to join the Taliban, fight for Muslim fundamentalism, and gets captured by American forces in a war where the two groups are killing each other.  Lindh pleads guilty.  Could he have appealed?  Yes.  Did he have to plead guilty?  No.  Any legal question here?  No.  Just an ephemeral ‘feeling of the time’ and ‘American sentiment had turned’ garbage.

Want an example?  Back to the LA Times:

He was immediately branded the American Taliban by the tabloids, at a time when many Americans wanted revenge for the terrorist attacks.

He was American.  He was Taliban.  I don’t see where he was branded anything.  That’s what he was.  Only now, with the benefit of five years of constant liberal meme inundation, can a paper get away with saying poor Lindh is the victim.

He made the choice to travel across the globe.  He made the choice to become a Muslim fundamentalist.  He made the choice to not only be a man of that faith, but also pick up a rifle and head to war.  He made the choice to stay when his countrymen (no offense to my fellow Americans) arrived to kick in the door.  He made the choice to plead guilty.  The “I was naive” excuse doesn’t get criminals off the hook.  He should count his blessings he wasn’t shot as a traitor.

I didn’t have time to read and research anything.  But here’s Rosie O’Donnell explaining that you should get your news from foreign sources, Americans are brainwashed by the company that employs her, and Tower 7 was probably an inside job.  Via Instapundit and Hot Air:

A ROSIE O’DONNELL MELTDOWN: “I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is the video against which all future Rosie clips will be compared.”

Is Rosie representative of the mainstream left?  Perhaps it’s just because I blog, read blogs, and read the news that I’m starting to think Rosie isn’t far left, but really a mainstream lefty.  It all just seems so ‘party-line’ anymore.  Everything’s a conspiracy or scandal.  Nobody is more corrupt than America.  Calling someone good or evil is wrong.

Yech.  What the hell’s going on?

Do people really not see what’s coming?  Instapundit gives it his short and sweet:

YOUR CONGRESS AT WORK: “Spring Break may delay war funds.”

Well, Congress IS hard at work.  They want to make sure this thing takes long enough to get to the President for a veto that they can go on vacation and come back screaming that he kept the funds from the troops.  Look at the press it’s getting already.  From the Politico via Instapundit:

President Bush has repeatedly promised to veto the measure if it establishes a timetable for troop withdrawal or includes more than $20 billion in non-war funding — “pork,” to its critics — for spinach growers, dairy farmers and children without health insurance. On Tuesday, the White House reiterated Bush’s intention.

That’s right, the President will be vetoing health care for children.  Spin it a little more and we can drill through the mantle, into the core, and heat our homes geothermally.  The pork provisions were added to BUY VOTES.

Clever, really.  Buy votes so it’ll pass, add a provision to make sure it gets vetoed, then delay it long enough for the break.  Come back and declare, “the President kept needed funds from troops, denied the will of Congress, and won’t give money to the poor farmers and kids.”  Why not, the press won’t disagree, right?

No comment.

From NewsBusters, again:

Town hall or pep rally?  Hard to tell, judging from the first half-hour of Hillary’s appearance on Good Morning America today.  Host Robin Roberts lavished praise on Hillary, suggested there’s unanimous support for the Dem Iraq policy, and fielded only one audience question — which came from someone who worked on Hillarycare in 1993 and beseeched Clinton to try it again as president.

…

It wasn’t until the second half-hour that ABC disclosed that 45 members of the audience had been hand-picked by Hillary’s campaign.

Read the whole thing.

Seems my take on Chiara’s firing might apply to two other terminated attorneys as well.  Via NewsBusters:

Today the Los Angeles Times reported that 3 out of 8 fired U.S. attorneys were reluctant to push for the death penalty in capital cases.

The article goes on to explain that appointed attorneys may have a short tenure if they don’t work within their employer’s policy priorities.  I can only respond with a resounding “duh” and marvel at the Left’s need to have this explained.

But then, this is the same Left allegedly elected to ‘end the war’ but continues to push off their so-called mandate until election time in 2008.  So perhaps fulfilling the expectations of those who hired you simply isn’t in the Democratic platform.  Or perhaps the mandate isn’t so iron-clad after all.

Previous: Chiara Dismissal - No Mysteries Here

David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo says:

The WaPo looks into why Margaret Chiara, the ousted U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, made the list of the Gonzales 8–and comes up with no compelling answers.

I guess the WaPo didn’t do a thorough job researching, then.  Typical.  From the WaPo article:

In the aftermath of the surprise firing of U.S. Attorney Margaret M. Chiara, questions outnumber answers. Was she dismissed for political reasons? For poor performance? To make way for someone else? Western Michigan’s legal community does not know what to think.

The Justice Department initially announced that the reasons were “performance-related,” an explanation at odds with the current consensus in Grand Rapids. The chief federal judge firmly disputed it, as did Chiara, who said she was told her resignation was needed to clear the way for a political favorite.

Some defense lawyers speculate that Chiara, who once trained to be a nun, fell out of favor with the Bush administration over her personal opposition to the death penalty. The administration has pursued capital punishment in several states, including Michigan, that have no state death penalty or rarely use it.

A prosecutor in any office around the nation that doesn’t utilize the laws as they were appointed to has failed to perform their duties.  If a death penalty state ends up with an anti-death penalty prosecutor who refuses to seek it, that prosecutor is not fulfilling their duties as required by the state.  While this may rub the anti-death penalty crowd the wrong way, those same people would scream to high heaven if a prosecutor in a non-death penalty state announced they would attempt to have a case moved to federal court so the death penalty would apply.  Either case is a betrayal of the people they work for.

So the question is: Did Chiara let her personal beliefs color how she prosecuted?

From the Detroit News:

She did not recommend the death penalty in a 2004 murder case involving Michael and Robert Ostrander but was overruled by the Justice Department, said Phelan, who represented one of the two accused killers. They would have been eligible for the death penalty because the charges involved firearm use and drug trafficking.

DoJ had to step in on one of her cases.  In the interest of full disclosure, it is important to note the jury did not grant the death request.  That’s actually the beauty of our system - you recommend what you’re supposed to and leave it up to the people to find mercy.  But this wasn’t the only time DoJ had to step in on Chiara.  Back to the WaPo article:

There has been some turmoil in the U.S. attorney’s office. A senior prosecutor, Phillip Green, was recently upbraided by the Justice Department for “poor judgment” on a sentencing matter after a colleague complained. The Justice Department has called the office “fractured” and reported that management experts were deployed to Grand Rapids.

Seems Chiara’s office had at least two problems with their sentencing recommendations.  Since DoJ thought it was serious enough to send a managment team to fix the office I’m betting there were more.  Oh wait, I don’t have to bet… back to the Detroit News:

Chiara was in office for the federal prosecution of Marvin Gabrion, the first Michigan case since 1938 in which a death penalty verdict was returned.

Although Michigan has no death penalty, Gabrion was eligible for the federal death penalty for a 1997 Michigan murder because the killing was in a national park.

But Mitchell said Chiara had not personally sought the death penalty for Gabrion, whose case has been appealed.

Again, Chiara refused to seek the death penalty and was overruled by DoJ.  In this case, the accused was sentenced to death.  Back to the WaPo story, a Clinton appointee who preceded Chiara in the same office finds no mystery with her dismissal:

“She parted ways on certain issues that they wanted pushed, the primary issue being the death penalty,” said Dettmer, a lawyer in Traverse City. “She’s anti-death penalty. It rubbed the [Justice Department's] death penalty committee in D.C. the wrong way. I know it for a fact.”

So what’s the mystery?  Chiara was appointed to represent the people in federal cases.  She was bound by federal laws.  By not seeking the death penalty where applicable she put herself in opposition to the current body of laws approved by the people and firmly against a President who was elected with the death penalty in his platform.  Opposing the man who appointed you can get you fired pretty quickly.

One thing that I find absolutely hilarious is how the lefty blogs are already picking up on this, playing up her opposition to the death penalty, and billing it as a ‘loyalty test’ (loyalty is considered a sin to the far Left, I think).  This is based on her religious views - Chiara once trained as a nun.  Those same views, I would opine, would set her firmly against gay marriage and abortion.  I wonder how loud the Left would be if she had let those views into her prosecutorial conduct.