Sunday, February 15, 2009

House Judiciary Committee Presses Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano to Investigate Sheriff Joe Arpaio

By Stephen Lemons
Friday, Feb. 13 2009 @ 12:08PM


Dennis Gilman/Adolfo Maldonado
Has Joe finally run into someone he can't flip off?

In what may be a watershed moment in the battle to end Sheriff Joe Arpaio's anti-Hispanic pogroms and his abuse of his federal 287(g) authority, the leadership of the House Judiciary Committee is pressing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security czar Janet Napolitano to investigate Sheriff Joe and to make sure his use of his 287(g) power to enforce immigration law, "is not used to justify the racial profiling of any resident of Arizona."

Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), along with other members of the House committee that has jurisdiction over both Holder and Napolitano's departments, made the request in a strongly worded letter dated February 12. The letter is highly critical of Arpaio's media stunts, such as the "200 Mexican March," which took place last week, wherein Arpaio brought back the bugbear of racial and ethnic segregation after several decades of it being declared unconstitutional.

The letter also cites Arpaio's sweeps of Latino communities, as well as the recent MALDEF/ACLU lawsuit brought against the MCSO for racial profiling, and notes that "Arpaio's actions have triggered numerous civil rights lawsuits." Yet, the committee states that our corrupt top cop's "repeated course of conduct, which values publicity opportunities over the civil rights of the residents of Arizona, is too disturbing to leave enforcement of the civil rights laws to private litigants."

The correspondence references several federal laws that Arpaio may have run afoul of, such as Section 242 of Title 18 of the U.S.Code, which "prohibits anyone from acting under the color of law to willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States."

As for the 287(g) agreement, under which Arpaio has 160 federally trained thugs ready to do his bidding, the committee indicates that if Napolitano cannot get Arpaio to comply with the dictates of that agreement, then, "We urge that such agreement be terminated..."

The press release issued today announcing the letter is even more forceful in its condemnation of Arpaio's actions.

"Racial profiling and segregation are simply not acceptable." Chairman Conyers is quoted as stating concerning Joe. "Media stunts and braggadocio are no substitute for fair and effective law enforcement."

Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-California) declared that, "The basic premise of our justice system is that people are innocent until proven otherwise...I'm concerned that in Maricopa County that basic premise appears to have been turned upside down and that Latino members of community are considered `undocumented' until proven otherwise. That's not how our Constitution works and it's time for the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to take a closer look."

Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) didn't hold back either:

"We cannot tolerate vigilantes using the police power to violate the fundamental rights of anyone they can get their hands on. Sheriff Arpaio has consistently abused his office in violation of federal law. It is time for the federal government to step in and uphold the rule of law in this country, even in Maricopa County."

Finally, those in Congress with oversight over the DOJ and DHS have heard the cries of the oppressed in Joe Arpaio's Maricopa County. Now is the time to keep the pressure on to ensure that swift action follows. If Holder and Napolitano do not respond with the appropriate speed and force, then Congress should hold hearings and subpoena Arpaio to testify. It's long since past time for him to be held accountable for his reign of terror and error. There's no elected official in this state with the gonads to challenge him. So only the federal government can finally make him comply with the law or face the consequences

Source: phoenixnewtimes.com

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Columnist Ann Coulter Defends White Supremacist Group

Posted in Extremist Propaganda by Mark Potok on February 13, 2009

Rabid far-right commentator Ann Coulter is known across America for sliming everyone and everything she disagrees with. Al Gore is a “total fag” and another one-time presidential candidate, John Edwards, is the same. Democrats are “gutless traitors” and their convention a “Spawn of Satan” gathering. Muslims are “ragheads” and America should “kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Jews are people who need to be “perfected.” The New York Times building and its editorial staff should be bombed. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens should have “rat poisoning” mixed into his food. Princess Diana “ostentatiously [had] sex in front of [her] children.” The Rev. Al Sharpton is “a fat, race-baiting black man.” President Bill Clinton was “a very good rapist,” and North Korea should be “nuked.”

But despite denouncing school desegregation as a “spectacular” failure, Coulter has generally avoided bolstering white supremacist hate groups. Until now, that is.

In her latest foaming-mouth tome — Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America, released on Jan. 6 — Coulter spends the better part of three pages defending a group called the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which The New York Times had described as a “thinly veiled white supremacist organization.” Coulter begs to differ. The CCC, Coulter opines, is “a conservative group” that has unfairly been branded as racist “because some of the directors of the CCC had, decades earlier, been leaders of a segregationist group.” “There is no evidence on its Web page that the modern incarnation of the CCC supports segregation,” she says. “Apart from some aggressive reporting on black-on-white crimes — the very crimes that are aggressively hidden by the establishment media — there is little on the CCC website suggesting” that the group is racist. Indeed, its main failing is “containing members who had belonged to a segregationist group thirty years earlier.”

Coulter could hardly be more wrong. And even if she can’t find time to read beyond a page of the CCC’s website, she really ought to know — after all, the organization where she frequently speaks, the Conservative Political Action Committee, has publicly banned the CCC from its annual gathering because it is racist. Also in the late 1990s, Jim Nicholson, then-chairman of the Republican National Committee, asked GOP members to stay away from the CCC because of its “racist and nationalist views.”

How could conservative Republicans be inspired to say such ugly things? Let us count the ways.

The CCC’s columnists have written that black people are “a retrograde species of humanity,” and that non-white immigration is turning the U.S. population into a “slimy brown mass of glop.” Its website has run photographic comparisons of pop singer Michael Jackson and a chimpanzee. It opposes “forced integration” and decries racial intermarriage. It has lambasted black people as “genetically inferior,” complained about “Jewish power brokers,” called gay people “perverted sodomites,” and even named the late Lester Maddox, the baseball bat-wielding, arch-segregationist former governor of Georgia, “Patriot of the Century.”

One day, the CCC ran photos on its home page of accused Beltway snipers John Muhammad and John Malvo, 9/11 conspirator Zacharias Moussaoui and accused shoe-bomber Richard Reed. “Notice a Pattern Here?” asked a caption underneath the four photos. “Is the face of death black after all?” On another occasion, its website featured a photo of Daniel Pearl, the “Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter” who had just been decapitated by Islamic terrorists. In the photo, Pearl was shown with his “mixed-race wife, Marianne.” The headline above the couple’s picture was stunning even for the CCC: “Death by Multiculturalism?” The CCC Arkansas chapter ran an essay waxing nostalgic for the days “when racial separation was the norm.”

But to Ann Coulter, there is “no evidence” on its website that the CCC “supports segregation.” Mostly, she says, the group — which was formed from the debris of the White Citizens Councils that Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once called “the uptown Klan” — is about “a strong national defense, the right to keep and bear arms, the traditional family, and an ‘America First’ trade policy.” Indeed, she says, The New York Times and other critics of the CCC are simply liberals “who have no principles.”

Source: splcenter.org

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Court: Lawsuit accusing Arpaio of racial profiling will proceed



A class action lawsuit accusing Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio of racial profiling will proceed, a federal court ruled Wednesday.

In July 2008, five individuals and Somos America, a Latino coalition, sued Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office and Maricopa County, claiming that they or their members were unlawfully stopped and mistreated by law enforcement agents because they are Latino.

Officials from the county asked the U.S. District Court in Arizona to dismiss the lawsuit in October, but the new ruling clears the way for the lawsuit to go forward.

According to a news release, the court recognized that Latino appearance is of "little or no use" in determining which individuals should be stopped by law enforcement seeking undocumented immigrants, and that reasonable suspicion of a traffic violation does not justify questioning of drivers or passengers about immigration status.

Copyright 2009 The E.W. Scripps Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source: abc15.com

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Mexico paper launches voodoo promo against US team

By PETER ORSI – 4 days ago



MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Mexican newspaper began encouraging soccer fans to cast a voodoo hex on the United States ahead of Wednesday's World Cup qualifier in Columbus, Ohio.

Readers of the Record could trade in coupons for voodoo-doll likenesses of U.S. players at Blockbuster video stores in Mexico City on Friday. Fans were instructed to use the doll to wish for a Mexico goal.

"Hold a needle firmly between your thumb and index finger and prick slowly the part of the doll where you want to affect the opponent," the instructions say. The back of the doll's jersey read, "Gringos."

Record calls the dolls Mexico's "secret weapon."

U.S.-based electronics retailer RadioShack dropped out as a distribution partner last week after learning details of the campaign. But Record managed to find U.S.-based Blockbuster as a new co-sponsor.

Record spokesman Daniel Paz said the promotion was a lighthearted attempt at helping Mexico, which hasn't beaten the Americans on U.S. soil since 1999.

"In soccer, training and practice are what determine the results. The best team will win," Paz said. "But without any doubt this little doll can help the good vibes of the Mexican fans to change the history of Mexico and turn things around."

In a Blockbuster to pick up one of the dolls, Mauricio Munoz didn't believe it will have any benefit for Mexico.

"But," he said, "it's a good way to have fun."

Source: google.com

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Anti-Immigrant Militants Confronted



By Humanleague002

This video shows two Americas, one of love and one of hate. Please watch and decide which one you want to be a part of.

The Macehualli Center celebrated its 6th anniversary on 01/31/09 with a peaceful celebration, friendship and multi cultural sharing with Native American Dancers and indigenous ceremony including all people-regardless of nationality. But outside the center was a world of hatred
and prejudice.

These racist militants have been terrorizing The Day Labor Center daily for over a year. They insult and threaten mothers, children and anyone with brown skin they deem as being "Illegal" (whenever they think nobody is watching with a camera).

They harass anyone that may attempt to hire a day laborer. They incite violence, carry guns and have no respect for humanity. What makes this most tragic is they have the support and encouragement of Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Demand an investigation from the Department of Justice!

http://americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/sheriff

Governor Napolitano, Arpaio, 287g and ICE.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Four Accused Of Hate Crime In Beating

By BILL LEUKHARDT | The Hartford Courant
February 3, 2009

BERLIN - Four men accused of luring a man into a home Nov. 8 on the pretense of having a party, only to beat him severely and steal $180, face assault, robbery, hate crime and other charges, police said Monday.

"He fought for his life to get away. His words," Lt. James Gosselin said of the victim's escape from his attackers. "He was bloody. As he was escaping in his car, the attackers threw pieces of flagstone at his car windows to stop him."

The victim, 28, is black. The four suspects are white. The hate-crime charges stem from racial slurs allegedly screamed during the attack, Gosselin said. The victim, whose name is being withheld by police, knew at least one of his attackers because they had been co-workers, police said.

Kyle McBriarty, 22, and Paul Russo Jr., 21, both of Berlin, and Adam Howick, 21, of New Britain, were charged on Friday with second-degree robbery, third-degree assault, first-degree criminal mischief, unlawful restraint, second-degree intimidation based on bigotry and bias, disorderly conduct, sixth-degree larceny, falsely reporting an incident, second-degree false statement and conspiracy counts for each of these charges.

A fourth suspect, Colin McBriarty, 19, of Berlin, is in jail pending trial on a separate domestic violence case and will be served with a warrant when he goes to court Feb. 18, charging him with taking part in the November robbery-beating, police said.

Howick is reputed to be a member of Aryan Nations, a white supremacist group, police said.

Kyle McBriarty and Howick were unable to post bail and remain locked up, pending trial. Russo is free after posting $250,000 bail. All three are due back in Superior Court in New Britain on Monday.

Gosselin said the investigation was complicated. The victim fled to New Britain after the attack and called police there to tell of the beating. Meanwhile, the men who were eventually charged called Berlin police to report they had been victims of a home invasion by two Hispanic males. The caller said the two invaders fought inside the home, then fled, Gosselin said.

He said police eventually determined that the home invasion complaint was a lie "to cover what happened."

Source: courant.com

Friday, February 06, 2009

Racists Threaten To Abandon GOP Over Election Of First African-American Party Chairman

It’s not easy being a white supremacist these days.

Already reeling from Obama’s win in November, believers in white superiority were dealt another blow last week when former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele became the first African-American to head the Republican Party.

Extremists view Steele’s election to the helm of the Republican National Committee as a betrayal by the party that many considered, in their words, “the lesser of two evils.” On blogs and online forums, they excoriated the Republican Party for supposedly pandering to minorities while abandoning what they see as its white base.

No one professed more outrage than David Duke, the ex-Klan boss and former Louisiana state legislator. “GOP traitors appoint Obama Junior as Chairman of the Republican Party,” proclaimed the sub-headline on his website.

Yet ever the optimist, Duke saw a silver lining in Steele’s election, just as he had in Obama’s win. “I am glad these traitorous leaders of the Republican Party appointed this Black racist, affirmative action advocate to the head of the Republican Party because this will lead to a huge revolt among the Republican base,” he wrote. “As a former Republican official, I can tell you that millions of rank-and-file Republicans are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore! We will either take the Republican Party back over the next four years or we will say, ‘To Hell with the Republican Party!’ And we will take 90 percent of Republicans with us into a New Party that will take its current place!”

Despite such rhetoric, white supremacists seem to be doing more whining than strategic planning. The Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white nationalist organization descended from the pro-segregationist White Citizens’ Councils, complained that Steele supports affirmative action, gun control and “more Federal handouts.”

Under the heading “GOP continues shooting bullets into it’s [sic] own corpse,” the CCC wrote: “Meet the new improved GOP. Steele’s supporters actually believe that having a black chairman will cause the media to be nice to them and blacks to leave the Democratic party [sic].”

Vdare.com, an anti-immigration hate website, called the election of Steele a “disaster” and weighed in with a blog post titled “RNC to White Men: — Off” that referred to Steele as a “professional Black” and called white Christians “the new Slave class.”

“Apparently Chairmanship of the Republican National Committee has become another of those positions, like being head of an Ivy League School or Governor of the Federal Reserve, to which white men of Christian heritage Need Not Apply,” fumed the writer of the post, Patrick Cleburne.

James Edwards, host of the white nationalist radio show The Political Cesspool, blogged that the Republicans were trying to “outpander” the Democrats — a strategy he said would fail as more white conservatives stopped going to the polls. “Now they’ve got a black man heading up their party, just like the Democrats do, and the GOP couldn’t be happier. It simply wouldn’t do to have a white chairman. Not with a black man in the White House heading up the Democrats.”

And the League of the South, a neo-confederate hate group, blasted Steele for reaching out to moderates in a blog post titled “New GOP chair to Southerners and conservatives: drop dead.” It concluded: “Remind me again why I should vote Republican?”

Source: splcenter.org

New SPLC Report: Three Leading Anti-Immigration Groups Share Extremist Roots

Three Washington, D.C., organizations most responsible for blocking comprehensive immigration reform in 2007 are part of a network of groups created by a man who has been at the heart of the white nationalist movement for decades, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Nativist Lobby: Three Faces of Intolerance describes how the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and NumbersUSA were founded and funded by John Tanton, a retired Michigan ophthalmologist who operates a racist publishing company and has written that to maintain American culture, "a European-American majority" is required.

"These groups have infiltrated the mainstream by presenting themselves as legitimate commentators, when, in reality, they were all conceived by a man who is convinced that non-white immigrants threaten America," said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project. "They have never strayed far from their roots."

The report examines how Tanton, who still sits on FAIR's board of directors, founded the racist Social Contract Press and has corresponded with Holocaust deniers, white nationalist intellectuals and Klan lawyers for decades — correspondence documented by his own writings stored at a University of Michigan library.

It also shows that FAIR has been aware of his views and activities for years.

FAIR, whose members have testified frequently before Congress, has hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist groups. It has promoted racist conspiracy theories. And it has even accepted more than $1 million from the Pioneer Fund, a racist foundation devoted to proving a connection between race and intelligence, the report found.

FAIR has been designated as a hate group by the SPLC.

The report also examines how the Center for Immigration Studies — which bills itself as a scholarly think tank — began its life as a FAIR program and continues to produce dubious studies furthering FAIR's anti-immigration agenda. It's a vision described by Tanton in a 1985 letter in which he wrote that CIS would produce reports "for later passage to FAIR, the activist organization, to remedy."

Similarly, NumbersUSA, a group that has achieved dramatic policy successes, began its life as a Tanton foundation program, the report found. NumbersUSA Executive Director Roy Beck has even been described by Tanton as his "heir apparent." He also edited The Immigration Invasion, a book by Tanton and a colleague that was so raw in its immigrant bashing that Canadian border authorities have banned it as hate literature.

Source: splcenter.org