;)
Wednesday
Jul312013
The Commentariat -- Aug. 1, 2013
BBC News: "US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has left the Moscow airport where he has been staying since June after being granted temporary asylum. He left unobserved after receiving, his lawyer said, the necessary papers to enter Russian territory from Sheremetyevo Airport's transit zone." ...
... The New York Times story, by Andrew Kramer, is here.
XKeyscore. Glenn Greenwald: "A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its 'widest-reaching' system for developing intelligence from the internet." Read this short presentation, & you can be an NSA analyst, too. It's easy. ...
If a 29-year-old school dropout could come in and take out massive, massive amounts of data, it's obvious there weren't adequate controls.... Has anybody been fired? -- Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Judiciary Committee Chair ...
... Amy Davidson of the New Yorker: "Officials from the President on down keep talking as if the only issue was whether the N.S.A. was listening in on phone calls. The XKeyscore presentation shows how empty those words are. The N.S.A., it appears, doesn't just turn to its metadata library to see who's been calling a terrorist; it uses it in a coördinated way as one of the magnets to draw people's identities from the Web and gather information about them.... The XKeyscore presentation, again, is five years old. The Administration ought to answer -- clearly -- questions about how much of this is still going on. The safeguards we have been told are in place are not here." ...
... Spencer Ackerman & Paul Lewis of the Guardian: "The bipartisan leaders of a powerful Senate committee questioned the truthfulness of the US intelligence community in a heated Wednesday morning hearing as officials conceded that their controversial bulk phone records collection of millions of Americans was not 'the most important tool' -- contradicting statements they previously gave to Congress. Two senators [Al Franken {D-Minn.} & Richard Blumenthal {D-Conn.}] said they now planned to introduce new legislation before the August recess that would significantly transform the transparency and oversight of the bulk surveillance program." ...
... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Obama administration on Wednesday released formerly classified documents outlining a once-secret program of the National Security Agency that is collecting records of all domestic phone calls in the United States, as a newly leaked N.S.A. document surfaced showing how the agency spies on Web browsing and other Internet activity abroad. Together, the new round of disclosures shed even more light on the scope of the United States government's secret surveillance programs, which have been dragged into public view and debate by leaks from the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden." ...
... Story has been updated with a joint byline -- Savage & David Sanger -- & a new lede: "Senators of both parties on Wednesday sharply challenged the National Security Agency's collection of records of all domestic phone calls, even as the latest leaked N.S.A. document provided new details on the way the agency monitors Web browsing around the world." Plus: "Patrick J. Leahy ... accused Obama administration officials of overstating the success of the domestic call log program. He said he had been shown a classified list of 'terrorist events' detected through surveillance, and it did not show that 'dozens or even several terrorist plots' had been thwarted by the domestic program. 'If this program is not effective it has to end. So far, I'm not convinced by what I've seen,' Mr. Leahy said, citing the 'massive privacy implications' of keeping records of every American's domestic calls." ...
... Sari Horwitz & Ellen Nakashima write the Washington Post's story. ...
... Patricia Zengerle & Alina Selyukh of Reuters: "President Barack Obama scheduled a meeting for Thursday with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, including the leaders of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives Intelligence Committees, to discuss programs under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a White House official said on Wednesday." ...
... Robert O'Harrow, Jr., of the Washington Post: Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, appeared before "a standing-room-only crowd Wednesday ... [at] Black Hat, the annual hacker conference. For a few days every year, it takes center stage in the topsy-turvy worlds of cyberspace, network computing and digital security. The conference serves as a platform for hacking seminars, partying and -- more and more -- policy discussions about what the government and corporate worlds ought to be doing to confront problems like cyber-espionage and cyberattacks, growing threats with no clear-cut remedies." ...
... New York Times Editors: "The Obama administration released narrowly selected and heavily censored documents and sent more officials to testify before Congress on Wednesday in an effort to defend the legality and value of the surveillance of all Americans' telephone calls. The effort was a failure."
Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "From New York to several Midwestern cities, thousands of fast-food workers have been holding one-day strikes during peak mealtimes, quickly drawing national attention to their demands for much higher wages.... The national campaign, underwritten with millions of dollars from the Service Employees International Union, aims to mobilize workers -- all at once -- in numerous cities at hundreds of restaurants from two dozen chains."
If you nominate someone who is a life-committed deregulator to be in a regulatory position, and if you believe regulation is necessary to prevent fraud, abuse, manipulation and so forth, then there's a lot of questions to be asked: Why is this person appropriate? -- Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), on Larry Summers' possible nomination to chair the Federal Reserve
Don't believe everything you read in The Huffington Post. -- President Barack Obama, to members of Congress who questioned Summers' fitness to chair the Federal Reserve
Peter Kasperowicz of the Hill: House "Members passed the Senate-approved the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act, H.R. 1911, in a 392-31 vote. Only six Republicans and about two dozen Democrats voted against it.
Meredith Shiner of Roll Call: "Democrats and their allies lobbied Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska for more than an hour Wednesday to change her vote on the nominee to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the pressure worked. Murkowski flipped and voted to advance the nomination of B. Todd Jones to be the ATF's new director. With her vote change, Murkowski both averted a filibuster, and perhaps more importantly, staved off Democratic threats to end the minority's ability to filibuster executive branch nominees.... The other GOP 'yes' votes were: [John] McCain, [Susan] Collins, Mark S. Kirk..., Lindsey Graham ... and Kelly Ayotte...." The vote was held awaiting the return of Washington of Democrat Heidi Heitkamp, who said she would vote yes. ...
... Jonathan Bernstein, in the Washington Post: "... this one is a key test of whether the Senate deal will hold beyond the initial seven agreed-upon nominees.... So the deal holds.... As I've been arguing, everyone would be better off if the Senate simply switched to simple majority cloture, which could be done under the regular rules if all the Republicans who have joined the tag-team at least once combined with all the Democrats who were prepared to go nuclear. Without that, the Senate deal is a lot less stable than it could be."
Curtis Tate of McClatchy News: "Who needs a pipeline when you have a railroad? ... Until last month's deadly derailment of a crude-oil train in Quebec, pipelines dominated the debate about moving oil. But rail shipments of North American crude oil already have matched what Keystone XL was proposed to carry, and more is on the way. What started as a stopgap has become the go-to for transporting crude. 'A big part of the popularity of rail is that the president can't veto it,' said Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane University Energy Institute."
Quote of the Day. One of the least attractive legacies of Barack Obama will be the way he empowered freshman senators to believe they were only one or two good speeches away from the presidency. -- Gail Collins ...
Runner-Up. You know, Texas is a big, successful state. He's a long-term governor. I can't remember the third one, but, uh. -- Rand Paul, on Rick Perry's chances in a 2016 presidential run ...
Gail Collins on "the show horses of the United States Senate are Rand Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida. All preparing for a 2016 presidential bid. All making visits to Iowa. They're the new faces of the Republican Party. Really, really new. The three of them have an average age of 45 and an average tenure in Washington of 1.9 years." Droll, even as said show horses obligingly write her best lines. ...
... Jim Fallows on the he-said/she-said reporting on Tea Party debt-ceiling showdown: "... it's nihilistic; and to reduce it to gridlock amounts to 'defining deviancy down.' We're hearing that phrase, of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's, a lot these days in honor of Anthony Weiner. But it applies to current debt-ceiling threats as well." ...
... CW: I forgot to run a link to this yesterday, but if you want to know what John McCain thinks about these "wacko birds" & other stuff, Isaac Chotiner of the New Republic interviewed him. Most talked-about tidbit: McCain wouldn't say who he'd vote for in a Hillary Clinton-Rand Paul match-up. My guess: HRC - Her Royal Clintoness. ...
... Why, yesterday McCain even made a brief, and perhaps mistaken, appearance at President Obama's Wednesday meeting with Congressional Democrats. ...
... Nate Cohn of the New Republic on why the next GOP presidential nominee is screwed: "When asked [in a Pew Research survey] about the party's current stance on gay marriage, immigration, government spending, abortion, and guns, at least 60 percent of Republicans said they thought the party was about right or too moderate.... In the Pew poll, 49 percent of Republicans who participate in every primary support the tea party -- just 22 percent consider themselves moderate. In last year's primaries, evangelical Christians represented more than 40 percent of the electorate in just about every major contest, including relatively moderate Romney states like Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida." ...
... It's worse than Cohn suggests. Ed Kilgore: the survey participants include "Republican 'leaners,' who probably boost the number of self-identified 'moderates' in the survey, and also the number of those who don't regularly participate in Republican primaries." ...
... Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog: the Pew results show why it's smart for Ted Cruz to bash his own party. ...
... Dana Milbank: Ramblin' Randy is the anti-hero as Republicans battle it out on the Senate floor. ...
... Where Paul Ryan is the Voice of Moderation, Part 1. Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "... during a bilingual listening session on Friday, Ryan said he wanted all components of immigration reform to be brought up for a floor vote, regardless of whether they ultimately received majority Republican support or not. 'We don't know if we have a majority until we vote on it,' Ryan explained. He also said he'd been in close consultation with Speaker Boehner about how to proceed with the bill." CW: Speaker Boehner has said he won't bring up any bills (of any nature) unless they have the support of a majority of Republicans. ...
... Where Paul Ryan is the Voice of Moderation, Part 2. Scott Keyes: "... Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) ... have said they will try to undermine Obamacare by purposefully not helping constituents who come to them with questions about navigating Obamacare. However, Ryan ... isn't going along with this strategy. ThinkProgress ... asked [him] whether his office would be helping constituents who had questions about the program. 'We always help any constituent with any problem they have with the federal government,' Ryan declared." ...
... Well, the Voice of Moderation Except for that Budget Thingee. THUD! Russell Berman & Erik Wasson of the Hill: "Long-running Republican tensions over the Ryan budget's deep spending cuts boiled over Wednesday as the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee [Hal Rogers {R-Ky.}] accused his party of being unable to support them.... '... the House has declined to proceed on the implementation of the very budget it adopted just three months ago,' Rogers said. 'Thus, I believe that the House has made its choice: sequestration -- and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts -- must be brought to an end. And, it is also clear that the higher funding levels advocated by the Senate are also simply not achievable in this Congress.' ... 'The collapse of the partisan Transportation and Housing bill in the House proves that their sequestration-on-steroids bills are unworkable, and that we are going to need a bipartisan deal to replace sequestration,' Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said. Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, portrayed the move as the latest example of 'chaos' in the GOP-led House." ...
... CW: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor claimed the leaders pulled the THUG bill because they didn't have time for it. But -- ha ha -- Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post lists the nonsense bills the House did schedule for debate & votes on Wednesday. ...
... House of Cards. Brian Beutler of TPM: "... many close Congress watchers -- and indeed many Congressional Democrats -- have long suspected that [House Republicans'] votes for Ryan's budgets were a form of cheap talk. That Republicans would chicken out if it ever came time to fill in the blanks. Particularly the calls for deep but unspecified domestic discretionary spending cuts. Today's Transportation/HUD failure confirms that suspicion.... Ahead of the deadline for funding it, [Republicans'] plan was to proceed as if the Ryan budget was binding, and pass spending bills to actualize it -- to stake out a bargaining position with the Senate at the right-most end of the possible. But they can't do it. It turns out that when you draft bills enumerating all the specific cuts required to comply with the budget's parameters, they don't come anywhere close to having enough political support to pass." ...
... David Rogers of Politico (CW: one of the few Politico reporters I trust for analysis) has more on the sausage-making. ...
... Greg Sargent: "[Today] the Senate is set to vote on whether to end debate on the big transportation and housing bill that has been working its way through the Senate. The vote is a key test as to whether Mitch McConnell is truly losing control of his caucus as a bloc of Republican Senators indicates a willingness to break with the GOP leadership and join with Democrats in governing." ...
... Norm Ornstein argues in the National Journal that Speaker John Boehner's "passive-aggressive style heightens [the] risk of [a] government showdown.... By encouraging the extremists through his rhetoric, and by not looking to compromise spending at all in the House process, Boehner has bought some time and averted some criticism and any chance of a revolt. But that also means that if he endorses a compromise that will fund the Affordable Care Act, move spending levels back at least to the sequester numbers, and extend the debt limit without preconditions, a sizable share of his caucus will go ballistic. Can he do that before we face a shutdown for days, weeks, or months? Can he do it before we actually breach the debt ceiling and suffer the consequences of the destruction of American economic integrity?"
Democrats put together an excellent video on false GOP claims that the White House was behind IRS workers' political plot to target conservative groups. Via Greg Sargent:
Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post on how Republicans actually could derail ObamaCare. Includes a helpful map of where states stand on implementing Medicaid expansion, a key component of Obamacare & the one the Supreme Tenthers (including Justice Kagan) ruled could not be made mandatory.
Bozeman, Montana, gun-owner & veteran Bob Waters in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle: "We need Sen. Baucus to support Manchin-Toomey when it comes up again. I ask my fellow Montanans to join this gun owner in urging Sen. Baucus to join Sen. Tester in his support for universal background checks." (Baucus voted against Manchin-Toomey, false claiming that "Montanans saw the legislation as an infringement on their Second Amendment rights.") Via Greg Sargent.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) remembers former Rep. Lindy Boggs (D-Louisiana) in a Time column.
Gene Robinson in Time: "... a closer look at the Pope's statement reveals little change in the church's stance on being gay. When Francis says gay people should be forgiven their sins like other people, he means that acting on their feelings for someone of the same gender is still a sin that requires forgiveness -- a point the Vatican made clear shortly after his remarks. Francis' more open tone may mean the most for gay Catholic priests." Robinson was the Episcopalian Bishop of New Hampshire, & the first openly gay bishop of that denomination.
Local News
Prof. Charles Ogletree, in a New York Times op-ed, on the death sentence of Duane Buck in Harris County, Texas. Buck was sentenced to death based partly on a psychologist's testimony that blacks were more likely than whites to commit violent crimes. When he was Texas's attorney general, now-U.S. Senator John Cornyn "acknowledged then that Texas' exploitation of racial fears and stereotypes was unconstitutional and he promised that all six men -- including Mr. Buck -- [sentenced following race-based testimony by the same "expert"] would be given new sentencing hearings free of racial discrimination. Texas kept its promise in five of the six cases, but for no discernible reason it has reversed course and pursued Mr. Buck's execution." In addition, "at the time of Mr. Buck's trial, the Harris County district attorney's office was over three times more likely to seek the death penalty against African-American defendants ... than against similarly situated whites, and Harris County juries were twice as likely to impose death sentences on African-Americans...."
... CW: Texas is where the criminal justice system makes you feel sorry for murderers.
Washington Post Editors: Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's strategy in the gifts-for-services scandal is "to obfuscate and split legal hairs while dodging responsibility for his role, and that of his wife, in what has become his administration's disgrace. Until he levels with Virginians about his actions and motives, the scandal will not go away."
Ed Kemp of the Hattiesburg (Mississippi) Clarion: "Johnny DuPree will remain mayor of Hattiesburg after Judge William Coleman declared a mistrial Tuesday night in the lawsuit filed by former City Councilman Dave Ware, who lost the election to DuPree by 37 votes." ...
... Alan Blinder of the New York Times: "Mr. DuPree's supporters have countered that Mr. Ware's efforts amount to little more than a courtroom campaign to disenfranchise black voters in the city, where 53 percent of 47,000 residents are black. Mr. DuPree is black; Mr. Ware is white."
Senate Races
Caitlan Huey-Burns of Real Clear Politics: Arkansas "Republican Tom Cotton plans to announce his bid for the [U.S. Senate], where he grew up on his family's cattle farm. The freshman congressman -- a 36-year-old Harvard law graduate and a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- is GOP recruiters' dream challenger to take on Democrat Mark Pryor, considered among the most vulnerable incumbents in the country."
Mead Gruver of the AP: "U.S. Senate candidate Liz Cheney and her husband were more than two months late paying property taxes on a $1.6 million home they bought last year in the tony northwest Wyoming community of Jackson Hole, according to Teton County records." CW: this sounds like an actual misunderstanding, but since Cheney is using this house as the basis for her pretense that she is a Wyoming resident, you would think she would be sure to pay her local taxes. In any event, the story again calls attention to the fact that Cheney just bought the house & hasn't lived in Wyoming since she was a child.
Gubernatorial Race
Alex Rogers of Time: "E.W. Jackson, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia, is a running mate without a visible partner.... Ken Cuccinelli, the GOP candidate for governor, has largely avoided public appearances with Jackson, and rarely discusses him on the record.... The reason for the Republican disunity can be traced to the litany of controversial statements Jackson has made that could hurt Cuccinelli's efforts to court moderate voters.... Meanwhile, the Democratic ticket, including Terry McAuliffe for governor, Norfolk state senator Ralph Northam for lieutenant governor and Loudoun state senator Mark Herring for attorney general, has been running as a single package." CW: also maybe Li'l Kenny doesn't want his Civil War re-enactors base to notice his running mate is black.
News Ledes
CNN: "A terror threat prompted the State Department on Thursday to direct its embassies in key Middle East nations, including Egypt and Israel, to close on Sunday with the possibility they could remain idle longer. A U.S. official not authorized to speak publicly on the matter called the threat 'credible and serious.'"
Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Ariel Castro went to prison for the rest of his life today insisting he is 'not a monster,' and that there was 'harmony' in the home where he imprisoned three women for more than 10 years. His sentencing by Judge Michael Russo followed emotional statements from Michelle Knight, the first person abducted by Castro in 2002, as well as family members of Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus." Includes video of Knight making her statement.
AP: " U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Pakistani counterpart, Sartaj Aziz, said Thursday that the two countries will resume high-level negotiations over security issues."
AP: "Three months after an Ohio woman kicked out part of a door to end nearly a decade of captivity, a onetime school bus driver [Ariel Castro] faces sentencing for kidnapping three women and subjecting them to years of sexual and physical abuse."
Yahoo! News: "Men are more than five times more likely to be killed by lightning strikes in the United States than women, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control." CW: could be because men are five lives less likely than women to know to come in out of a thunderstorm.
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Reader Comments (13)
This political cartoon from Daily Kos pretty well sums up the liberal mood in mid-2013
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/31/1227712/-Greetings-from-flyover-country
Soooo.....Barry is singing the praises of Larry!? Yikes! Gimme a fuckin' break. It is tantrum time. Did Larry REALLY save us from a Great Depression? Is the librul press really to blame for trashing him? Does he really respect and support women?
Ya know, I am beginning to feel like Barry is my husband! There are times I love and admire him--and times I want to stab him with a dull fork, because he just does not seem to get it. I do not want to say that all men are this way, because I know that not to be true. However.........
If Obama appoints Summers as Fed Chair, when he has the option of Janet Yellen, you will see a full-blown tantrum from yours truly!
This is just a preview. @#%*&
Here's my question. Suppose you & I are American citizens living in the U.S.A. We engage in some illegal activity that does not adversely affect national security -- say, a single incident of insider trading a la Martha Stewart. We have a short, incriminating e-mail exchange about the deal. The Feds suspect us of this illegal activity (trading records show I made a bundle on a short-term buy-&-sell just as your company announced it had secured a bazillion-dollar contract). The Feds accuse us. We lie & deny everything & toss our cheap computers so they'll never find the incriminating e-mails. Can law enforcement then, with or without a warrant, get the goods on us from the NSA? I'm thinking they can. And they will.
Marie
Marie: Under current law, no. The FBI (investigating your inside trade) could not get NSA to produce your e-mails -- UNLESS you were a suspected terrorist OR terrorist-supporter whose financial transactions are suspected of contributing to support of terrorism.
If there is no terrorism link, the FBI (or any law enforcement investigator) could not use such information in a prosecution.
But if they think you are a terrorist or providing support to terrorists, you betcha. ALL the feds, not just FBI, will have access through the joint programs that now merge law enforcement and intelligence. Remember, before the post-9/11 laws, the conventional wisdom was that strict separation of intel from LE ("the firewall")was necessary and prudent. After the 9/11 laws, that was "fixed", and the imperative became "need to share" rather than "restrict based on need-to-know".
So, to keep Martha's e-mails in NSA's box, she would need to "not look like a terrorist or terrorist supporter." This, of course, requires the FBI and others to make ethical judgments about prospective definitions of who might be a T or TS. The temptation is to take a peek and see, before really associating Martha with T's. Ensuring that agencies do not fall for that temptation should be a major priority of current oversight reviews.
The good news is that the lists of "potentials" are reviewed all the time (congratulations to Kate Madison, no longer double-checked at airports?). The bad news is that, after every incident (the underwear bomber, the Boston bombs, etc.) the CT community (i.e. intel, law, foreign affairs, defense) is pressured by senior officials, legislators, the press, and resulting public opinion, to expand the definitions that allow more people to get on the "might be a terrorist link" lists. No one is willing to take the risk that maybe they won't see the next Joker Tsarnaev before he is born. It's a mug's game.
I see that kidnap/torture/rape aficionado Ariel Castro will be giving the "other side" of the story today.
Other side? What other side? You mean there was a good side to what he did?
What could that be?
Oh, I know. Every now and then, after the morning rape, he wouldn't beat the girls with a baseball bat. He'd just use his fists.
They'd get actual food once a week. And sometimes it wouldn't even be maggoty.
Once, five years ago, one of the girls was allowed to see the sun. For 30 seconds. By mistake.
What a guy. Can't wait to hear about this "other side". And then I can't wait for him to see the other side. Of the prison door. Even murderers, arsonists, and the most sadistic prison guards have daughters. Hopefully he'll get a nice welcome.
Just wondering if the misogynist wing of the GOP (that would be nearly all of them) considers what Castro did "legitimate rape".
@Kate: Are you telling me I now have to go screaming down the aisles of big box stores not only warning about the Supremes, but now have to yell, "Summers Sucks!"? Well, shucks, honey, glad to do it, although there are many who will give me the "OMG, she's bat shit crazy" look and think I'm yelling about a Motown singing group and reckon I'm complaining about the hot weather. I need a Tee with pictures , but even then...
Kate,
I'm hoping that Obama's verbum bonum about Larry (the Dee-regulay-tor) Summers is a smoke screen. There's a long time between now and confirmation of the next Fed Chair. By praising a dickhead like Summers the president can, if he is leaning towards Yellen, keep her, at least for a little while, from GOP wolves and Fox lamebrains sure to be howling if she is nominated.
Summers is a big, smelly, squirmy can of worms. Ideally, the Fed Chair should be someone who inspires confidence not someone who likes to stir things up and piss people off by trying to prove how much smarter he/she is than anyone else.
If the president is looking, as all second termers do, to the judgement of history, he would be doing himself--and the rest of us--a great disservice by sticking Summers in that limelight and letting him make with his ex cathedra pronouncements on the economy. Even though the Fed Chair doesn't have a hand in creating policy decisions beyond the scope of his/her purview, statements made by the Chair carry a lot of weight (remember "irrational exuberance"?). Just imagine the stuff this bombastic grandee would spit out.
On the other hand, I'm starting to wonder if the president doesn't have an evil twin who shows up now and then to cause trouble and/or act in inexplicable, weird ways. This is the guy who's still trying to make nice with teabagging sociopaths who want to stab him in the eye.
Remember Garry Trudeau's creation of Skippy, Poppy Bush's evil twin in Doonesbury?
Yeah. Like that.
@Akhilleus: the wingnuts must not consider Castro's rapes of his victims to be "legitimate rapes," but he did also manage to enrage the anti-abortion faction by brutally causing at least one of the women to abort.
Marie
Marie,
Just curious as to whether, were he not imprisoned for life plus nine million years, Castro would have visitation rights for the baby that did survive? I'm betting conservatives would insist on his right, you know, as the father, sanctity of the (heterosexual) family, and all that. Especially if they thought it might piss off gay-loving, heathen liberals.
Of course conservative misogynists may still insist that the baby be brought to prison so dad can see the little tyke and pass on words of fatherly wisdom.
Gotta support those family values now, don't you know?
@Akhilleus: according to this site, incarcerated fathers have few rights. If they have means, they can sue to gain visitation rights, but it's hard to imagine any judge would grant such visitation to Castro even though he apparently did have a relationship with his daughter.
Marie
I could not look away from Castro's rambling diatribe about how he's not really responsible, "most of the sex in the house was consensual", "I never tortured them", I was addicted to porno and abused as a child myself, and the much repeated "I'm not a monster". He actually said, " I practiced the fine art of masturbation" during the 5 years subsequent to his divorce and before kidnapping the girls. After Castro was finished, the Judge complemented the victim, who was in Court, for her restraint during Castro's BS.The Judge was very careful in his sentencing. Although its an Ohio case, there are similarities to California sentencing law. The Judge imposed consecutive sentencing on many many counts, which had to be justified by various factors as the preference is concurrent in Ohio. If there is an appeal, it will likely be on the issue of consecutive sentencing. Shouldn't be an appeal as he pled to the sheet and got life w/o parole on the murder count + 1000 years all part of the plea bargain.
The charging document must have taken an army of prosecutors, 937 counts. The sentencing was very complex and likely took a bunch of folks too. In my work life, I was responsible for the division that did the sentencing recommendations. That would have been a major nightmare.
He issued a no contact order for all the victims, including the child. Castro tried to inject there was a challenge being brought to that (who would act in his behalf in that matter???). Judge said not going to be litigated in this Court....in the meantime no contact.
Well, well, well. If you thought McDonnell's reasoning on the gifts was bizarre, get a load of Kenny Boy's:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/01/1228215/-Ken-Cuccinelli-says-he-can-t-return-improper-gifts-because-he-already-used-them-all