Posted on 11/16/2006 1:39:09 AM PST by goldstategop
He'd retry them.
The lives of the students are ruined as a result of a political witchhunt. Money spent to defend themselves and a tarnished reputation at Duke. All just for a selfish man's ambitions - Mike Nifong.
Do you still think rats are idealistic?
You give them more credit than I do. I contend they simply want power and will feign enthusiasm touting whatever causes get them further down the road to absolute power and control at that moment in time. They use enforcement of public largesse to buy votes. It's as simple as that.
You know that pig probably would. Jump right back in the mud. Like he's not filthy enough.
It would be an interesting twist if nifong ended up in prison for abuse of office, perjury, and malicious prosecution. Unfortunately, it'll never happen.
That is a spot on letter. To me the most disappointing part of the NC criminal justice system has been the chicken judges.
Local speaker hopefuls jockey [Michaux, Durham Democrat] -excerpts-
BY WILLIAM F. WEST : The Herald-Sun, Nov 16, 2006 : 11:58 pm ET
DURHAM -- Sensing a "groundswell" of support for a new House speaker, state Rep. Mickey Michaux of Durham is campaigning for the position now held by the embattled Jim Black -- regardless of what Black decides to do.
And in addition to Michaux, at least two other lawmakers in the Triangle area -- state Rep. Jim Crawford, D-Oxford, and House Majority Leader Joe Hackney, D-Chapel Hill -- say they're making contacts and seeking supporters.
Meanwhile, Black's return to the House from his Mecklenburg County district remains unclear. On Thursday, Board of Elections officials there reportedly were examining provisional ballots in the aftermath of his razor-thin edge -- 7 votes -- in the Nov. 7 contest.
Back in Durham, Michaux, 76, an attorney and the senior Democrat in the House, points to his nearly three decades of legislative experience as one of the reasons he should have the speaker's gavel.
"I do believe I have the wherewithal to be able to marshal our forces and look out for the welfare of the state," he said.
Meanwhile, political scientist Andrew Taylor of N.C. State University said he believes Black is finished as speaker.
Taylor said African-Americans are going to be an important group to win over and he believes the Democrats are going to work out some sort of compromise.
But Black has suffered much embarrassing publicity resulting from federal and state probes into his role in the passage of the lottery and potential violations of campaign fund-raising laws.
http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-789610.html
* A 'behind the scenes' type of Durham leader.
Anybody on this thread following Duke's mens basketball team?
Freelancer calls for probe into arrest
BY BRIANNE DOPART, The Herald-Sun
November 16, 2006 9:09 pm
DURHAM -- Freelance photographer Julian Harrison and his lawyer want an internal investigation into his arrest for alleged "disorderly conduct" while taking pictures at the scene of a shooting earlier this month involving a Durham police officer.
Harrison, who occasionally sells photos to The Herald-Sun, was thrown up against a private car and arrested for alleged use of "abusive language" Nov. 3 while taking pictures in the parking lot of the Target store on Renaissance Parkway near Southpoint mall.
Capt. D.L. Dowdy initiated the arrest while Harrison was standing several feet beyond police crime scene tape.
The incident, which resulted in about $500 in damage to the car, occurred just two days after front-line supervisors, including lieutenants and sergeants, underwent training to learn how to deal with members of the media.
Harrison was taken downtown for booking. But Magistrate Eric Van Fleet declined to charge Harrison with a crime and immediately released him, saying the photographer was doing his job.
The Durham Police Department has said it is not conducting an internal investigation into Dowdy's conduct, and his immediate supervisor has dealt with the matter, said police spokeswoman Kammie Michael.
Dowdy was not involved in the media training, Michael said. She declined to provide more information, citing state personnel privacy laws.
Harrison and his attorney, Fred Battaglia, say they plan to request an internal investigation in hopes of showing a trend of ongoing abuse.
Harrison claims to have five videotaped incidents of himself allegedly being harassed and abused by Durham police officers while he was attempting to photograph or film breaking news in the past two years.
Harrison has been arrested at least eight times since 1994 and charged with 16 offenses, ranging from disorderly conduct to parking within 100 feet of a squad car, according to court records. He was found guilty of two. Harrison said he and Battaglia fought the rest, which were dismissed by the courts, at least one for insufficient evidence.
Harrison said he intends to fight this "assault and attack" with more intensity because he feels his right to work has been threatened.
Officer B.D. Schnee, who shot suspects Mikel and Kimberly Mobley in the Target parking lot as they allegedly moved their vehicle in an attempt to flee arrest for alleged pharmaceutical fraud, remains on paid administrative duty.
The State Bureau of Investigation and the Durham Police Department's Professional Standards Division are investigating -- normal procedure for a shooting involving an officer.
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/durham/4-789530.html
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/hsletters/
Editorial about Bradley was very condescending
Editorial about Bradley was very condescending
The late Ed Bradley was a gem. His effortless and unaffected delivery gave some of us a reason to still tune into "60 Minutes" on occasion. His sense of style made it possible for a man of his vintage to pull off wearing an earring with â??©lan while working alongside the blue-haired cretins of CBS.
I will never forget in years past when I contacted him to possibly show up for a fund-raiser that never quite got off the ground for lack of funds. He sent me a handwritten reply on a piece of paper with just the simple letterhead "60 Minutes" saying that he would be on assignment and regretted deeply that he could not attend. How many journalists of his caliber would have taken the time and the care for such a sensitive handwritten reply?
Your editorial on Nov. 12th was too condescending for my taste. Ed Bradley didn't miss a beat during his last reporting days as you attempt to imply. His very detailed and factual coverage of the Duke lacrosse fiasco only illuminated what your editorial staff doesn't want to hear. There are no "two sides" to this blood-letting hoax. Only one. And Bradley gave us what he has always given us right up to the end. Truth. And a lot of heart.
God bless you, Ed.
Debrah Correll
Chapel Hill
November 16, 2006
http://www.newsobserver.com/579/story/511242.html
Editorial:
Published: Nov 17, 2006 12:30 AM
Modified: Nov 17, 2006 03:52 AM
A painful past
The uprising by white North Carolinians against black residents in Wilmington was a tragedy. The N&O, sadly, shares the blame
From its earliest colonization, the history of North Carolina tracks the grand arc of American history writ large. Along the way have come accomplishments that are proud pillars of our heritage -- the victories on Revolutionary battlefields, the rise of a great public university, the first powered flight. Although their cause was profoundly flawed, North Carolinians fought bravely and with great sacrifice in the national cataclysm that was the Civil War.
The South's defeat tragically did not spell an end to the country's great racial divide that had been manifested in slavery. Many white citizens remained convinced of their superiority and their entitlement to a privileged place in society. They resented the modest gains in status and civil rights accorded to newly freed African-Americans.
That resentment, and political opportunism magnified to a devilish degree, led to another milestone in North Carolina's history. This time, it was a milestone of shame.
The story of the 1898 racially charged uprising in the port city of Wilmington is told once again, and in painstaking detail, in the special section published in today's News & Observer.
Again we confront the role played by the press in firing the hatreds that led white vigilantes to overthrow Wilmington's elected municipal government and wantonly to kill black residents. This newspaper was a leader in that propaganda effort under editor and publisher Josephus Daniels. Although the paper no longer is owned by Daniels' heirs, an apology for the acts of someone whom we continue to salute in a different context on this page and for the misdeeds of the paper as an institution is perfectly in order, and so we offer that apology today.
As explained elsewhere, the special section arises from the report of a legislative commission into the causes and consequences of what became known as the Wilmington race riot. That investigation was spurred by observances of the event's centennial in 1998.
The N&O, through past articles and commentaries, has shared the story of that fateful time with its readers and acknowledged its role. But now the events of 1898 have received a definitive examination. It is in the spirit of fully confronting this ugly chapter of this state's and this newspaper's past that we present, in the special section, the account by historian and author Timothy B. Tyson.
While North Carolina was by no means the only state to experience a white backlash against African-American gains during Reconstruction, the violence in Wilmington is regarded as having led to a singular episode in this country -- the armed overthrow of an elected governing body.
The uprising also coincided with the ascendance into power of white supremacists, acting through the Democratic Party, who went on to impose the repressive, segregationist legal code known as Jim Crow. These were the laws that disenfranchised black voters and relegated them to second-class citizenship, the Constitution's guarantees of equality notwithstanding.
In this climate, the scourge of lynching spread across the South. And cynical, ruthless politicians rose to authority by fanning white fear and loathing of blacks. This, sadly, was Josephus Daniels' stock in trade during those years in which he used The N&O to further the white supremacist cause and advance his party's fortunes.
It is not a history we can undo, even though the newspaper's principles under the Daniels family's leadership eventually came to embrace and even champion "equality and justice to the underprivileged." Rather, it is a history that must be recognized as we remember those whose lives were destroyed in Wilmington in 1898, and those whose rights were stripped away in the years thereafter.
Bookmark
It is no coincidence that the NandO chose now to reprise a story over a hundred years old. This is how Melanie justifies today's lynching of the DukeLax players...
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/1898_riots
The Ghosts of 1898
She's a smart young lady. :)
Duke Case: "Community Justice" Is Trumping Individual Justice
Perhaps Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Michael B. Nifong's electoral success with the overwhelming majority of Durham County's black votes is in large part the result of the perception of him as a champion of "community justice."
But, Mr. Nifong's duty under North Carolina is to be a fair and impartial minister of justice in each case. He's not entitled to try to railroad anyone to win votes or to please potential supporters or actual supporters. He is duty-bound not to pursue a case frivoulously, or recklessly, or unconstitutionally, no matter how many voters want him to do so.
In its May 1, 2006 issue Newsweek reported the commendably candid, but otherwise contemptible, attitude of North Carolina Central State student Colin Hall: Duke students should be prosecuted "whether it [the alleged kidnapping and gang rape] happened or not," as "justice for things that happened in the past."
Mr. Hall, 22, who is black, apparently believed that some white Duke lacrosse players should be sacrificed to make up for past injustices to "the black community," whether their accuser, Crystal Gail Mangum, told the truth or lied.
Justice seeks the truth, not revenge.
In the United States (and that still includes North Carolina), the criminal justice system is supposed to mete out justice on a case-by-case basis, based on the merits of each case, not to use cases to make reparation for past injustices.
Wikipedia:
"Jury nullification is a jury's refusal to render a verdict according to the law, as instructed by the court, regardless of the weight of evidence presented. Instead, a jury bases its verdict on other grounds and so asserts the jurors' own view of justice; a consequence of providing a right to trial by one's peers. Although a jury's refusal only relates to the particular case before them, juries are reluctant to pass a verdict contrary to law and therefore jury nullification often has far reaching implications signalling as it does an unwillingness by ordinary people to accept the law....:Historical examples include the revolutionary use by Americans who refused to convict under British law, juries who refuse to convict due to perceived injustice of a law in general, the perceived injustice of the way the law is applied in particular cases; and cases where the juries have refused to convict due to their own prejudices such as the race of one of the parties in the case."
In the Duke case, there seems to be a great temptation to use jury nullification TO CONVICT (or at least refuse to acquit) for a purpose supposedly more important than doing justice in the case:
The hijacking of the criminal justice system outrages the vast majority of Americans, but not people like Mr. Hall, who instead are enamored with the idea that the Duke Three are being prosecuted at the instance of Crystal Gail Mangum.
People enamored with that idea don't care that each of the Duke Three passed a polygraph test and Ms. Mangum did not. They say that the polygraph test must have been rigged, or the Duke Three are pathological liars and Ms. Mangum was wise not to take one, because it might have been rigged.
The enamored people have an explanation for everything that indicates the Duke Three are innocent and Ms. Mangum lied. Examples: The DNA results were rigged. It is to be expected that a rape victim would be confused as to whether or not she was raped, and whether there were three, four, five or twenty rapists.
The second stripper, Kim Roberts Pittman, should not be believed, the enamored people now say, because she has a criminal record. But Ms. Mangum should be believed despite her criminal record (or perhaps because the person she nearly ran down during her joyride was a policeman).
Many blacks in Durham County, North Carolina apparently believe that instances of the criminal justice system mistreating blacks constitute a good reason to proceed to trial in the Duke case.
Perhaps it is unfair to say that they believe two wrongs make a right, but they do see to be caught up in a variation of the eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth approach to criminal justice in which miscarriages of justices involving blacks demand miscarriages of justices involving whites.
NCCU Law Professor Irving Joyner, who is monitoring the Duke case for the North Carolina NAACP, yearns for a jury trial of the Duke case in Durham. He seems to believe that a Durham jury may convict when jurors elsewhere would not: "This case originated in Durham and should be tried here" and Mr. Nifong "still has a viable shot at victory before a jury in Durham."
Professor Joyner explained why he specified a "Durham" jury as giving Mr. Nifong a chance to win: "A Durham jury may see things differently than would an Orange or Wake County jury because the Durham jury will probably have more African-Americans on it than would be involved in most other counties in North Carolina."
But, a verdict should not depend upon the county in which the case is tried or the color of the accuser, the accused, the prosecutor or the jurors.
On June 6, Professor Joyner appeared on "The Situation with Tucker Carlson" (MSNBC). His comments reflected his "community" approach.
A few days earlier, the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, on which Professor Joyner had served as vice chairman, had issued a report urging North Carolina to provide reparations for the 1898 racial violence that sparked an exodus of more than 2,000 black residents from Wilmington, North Carolina..
Herewith the exchange between Professor Joyner and Tucker Carlson:
Carlson: Joining us from Raleigh, North Carolina, tonight...is vice-chairman of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, Irving Joyner.
Mr. Joyner, thanks for coming on.
—first, let me just say that the more you read about this 1898 massacre, the more horrifying it is. And I‘m not in any way attempting to minimize what happened. You can‘t minimize it.
My question that [is] simple, to whom would you pay reparations, since nobody—or pay anything, because nobody who was alive then, the perpetrators or the victims is alive today. So who gets paid?
JOYNER: Well, we‘re not trying to get paid for anyone.
CARLSON: Good.
JOYNER: What we‘re trying to do is to redress—redress a wrong that occurred, a wrong that happened not only to individuals, but to an entire community, and it is the community that deserves to be repaired. And it is that community that our recommendations are directed toward aiding and assisting in this situation.
CARLSON: OK. Now you‘re talking about taking public money and giving it to a group of people in repayment, in part, for wrongs that happened long ago to people who are no longer alive, committed by people who are also no longer alive. And so why should...
JOYNER: That‘s one approach. That‘s one approach. I mean, that‘s one way to look at it. I think the better way...
CARLSON: OK. That‘s factually accurate, I believe.
JOYNER: We‘re taking—we‘re taking tax money that these people are putting into the government and redirecting it back to that community, so that that community can be repaired. So it‘s not this money is coming from some third party or from your pockets.
CARLSON: Wait a second. Well, it‘s coming from everyone‘s pockets, including from person who had—I mean, every person it‘s coming from had no role in this massacre. I mean, nobody who pulled the trigger or incited people to riot is still alive. Why should people who were not responsible for a crime pay for the crime? How is that fair?
JOYNER: Well, because many people benefited—many people benefited from the wrong that was done, primarily the Democratic Party of North Carolina. The state of North Carolina itself. The Raleigh News-Observer and others.
These are individuals or groups that we can document involved themselves in the harm that occurred. So the state is the only organ left that can provide the redress that is needed to repair this community.
CARLSON: It‘s just so unfair, though. The state is all of us. So when you say my tax dollars, you tax dollars. Our next door neighbors tax dollars. None of us had anything to do with this.
It‘s so unfair it seems to me, so contrary to principles of American justice, based of course, on the individual, individual perpetrator, individual victim to do this.
I mean, why not say—I could say, well, my great-great-grandmother was killed by your great-grandfather. You owe me $15,000 for the mental distress I‘ve suffered... and you would say to me, I didn‘t have anything to do with this. I‘m not responsible for what my great-grandmother did. And you‘d be right.
JOYNER: I [think] you‘re talking about something entirely different [from] what we are dealing with...in Wilmington, North Carolina. We made a case for a documented overthrow of a legitimately elected government. It harmed people not only in Wilmington, but African Americans all over the state of North Carolina.
CARLSON: I believe that.
JOYNER: It has nothing to do with your grandfather being harmed by anyone.
CARLSON: I believe everything...
JOYNER: We‘re talking about, Dan, we‘re redirecting—let me job name this prize. We are talking about redirecting state money into an area that is devastated, that has a lingering impact or effect from this massacre, which occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina and it‘s time for the state middle to repair the damage that was done there. That‘s all we ask. And it‘s time ....
It should NEVER be time to prosecute innocent people as entertainment!
Michael J. Gaynor
Through the Democratic Party, whites controlled the state and local governments from 1876 to 1894. However, the party's coalition of wealthy, working class and rural whites began to unravel in the late 1880s as America plunged into depression.
...
As the 1898 political season loomed, the Populists and Republicans hoped to make more gains through Fusion. To rebound, Democrats knew they had to develop campaign issues that transcended party lines. Democratic chairman Furnifold Simmons mapped out the strategy with leaders whose names would be immortalized in statues, building names and street signs: Charles B. Aycock, Henry G. Connor, Robert B. Glenn, Claude Kitchin, Locke Craig, Cameron Morrison, George Rountree, Francis D. Winston and Josephus Daniels.
They [DEMOCRATS] soon decided that racist appeals were the hammer they needed to shatter the fragile alliance between poor whites and blacks. They made the "redemption" of North Carolina from "Negro domination" the theme of the 1898 campaign. Though promising to restore something traditional, they would, in fact, create a new social order rooted in white supremacy and commercial domination.
Tell me all this is just coincidence...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.